Business and neighbors come through in time of need.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
“The entire hill right outside our window was on fire,” Jerri Churchill said. “Our neighbor, Will Jacobus, saved our lives by calling us Saturday morning and waking us up.”
Churchill was describing the surreal sense of panic she felt when faced with immediate evacuation of her home in Corral Canyon in the face of the rapidly approaching fire.
“I pulled my boys out of bed and threw them in the van,” Churchill said. “My husband ran up the street banging on doors and shouting to wake up our neighbors. As I drove down the hill, I stopped to bang on doors and wake everyone up. The fire was only about a quarter of a mile away.”
The Churchills were lucky. Twelve houses around them on Lockwood Road burned to the ground, but their home survived. “I credit it to God, heroic firefighters, our stucco-and-tile construction and excellent brush clearance around our house,” Churchill said. “But the key to everyone on our street surviving the fire was neighbor helping neighbor.”
Another resident of Corral Canyon Road, Scott Palamar, also sent up an alarm to neighbors, telephoning those he could before grabbing his cat and fleeing in his car. “I honked my horn incessantly while driving down the hill,” he said.
His house was completely destroyed.
Churchill’s husband, Frank, managed to get their neighbor Joanne Robinson, 71, out of her home in time and down the hill to safety. But Robinson’s cat was trapped in the house that was entirely gutted.
“Joanne’s house is gone and she has no relatives here,” Churchill said. “She had no insurance, she lives on Social Security and I don’t know what she’s going to do.”
Robinson barely made it to the Union 76 station at the corner of PCH when the clutch on her car broke and she found herself with no transportation. She was escorted to the Red Cross Evacuation Center in Agoura where she spent two nights.
“I didn’t have any ID with me and the Red Cross has its rules,” Robinson said. “They let me stay a couple of nights, but they had to close the center because kids were coming back to classes.”
Fortunately, another friend who had evacuated brought her back to Malibu. (The Agoura Center has since reopened.)
Jerri Churchill, who was named The Malibu Times’ 2007 Mother of the Year, sought to find some kind of shelter for Robinson. But Churchill was so frustrated at not being able to find a FEMA or Red Cross office that she interrupted Malibu’s City Council meeting Monday night to ask, “Where can my neighbor go for the night?”
Reva Feldman, director of administrative services, quickly steered her to Casa Malibu Inn, which is taking in refugees from the fire and offered rooms to firefighters to rest and bathe.
“The saving angel of the whole thing was Casa Malibu,” Churchill said. “They [Richard and Joan Page] came through and footed the bill for her room and moved her into a gorgeous suite. Then Red Cross came to her room, gave her gift cards, food cards, phone card, credit cards, all kinds of services.” (Casa Malibu is owned by Larry Ellison.)
Churchill said she was grateful for the neighbors who have reached out so willingly to help her family.
“Ron and Kelly Meyer pulled clothes from their closets for Frank and the kids and me since we had to leave so quickly and didn’t know if we had a home to go back to,” she said. “The guy who did our roof, Steve Harrer, is a volunteer firefighter and he was the one who came to tell me our house was safe when we were sure it was gone.”
Following tradition, thankful local businesses are offering free goods and services to fire service heroes. Mexican restaurant Casa Escobar in Cross Creek Plaza gave out burritos to firefighters and is comping all fire personnel who stop in.
Theater director Charles Marowitz has dubbed a group of intrepid neighbors the El Nido Gladiators for their quick action and courage in refusing to evacuate in order to fight the fire with garden hoses and portable water pumps.
“They literally saved the whole of Sequit Drive from what would have been unquestionably a tragedy of devastating proportions,” Marowitz wrote in a letter to the editor.
Marowitz’s wife, Jane Windsor, said they had wet down their home before they evacuated and left the hoses out.
“The El Nido Gladiators came in and saved our house,” she said. “The fire was moving so fast it was dream-like, but they all stayed and saved every house on Sequit.”
El Nido resident Matt Haines, a private contractor, used a 31-one-year-old pumper truck and a 3,000 gallon tanker he had purchased from the Merced County Fire Department to douse flames on both sides of Sequit Drive, while neighbors John and Austin Embleton, Ken and Marguerite Wherry, Bill Raffin, Kai Chan and Kane Sickner strategically unrolled garden hoses and pumped water from backyard swimming pools to put out burning embers that had fallen on the tops of houses.
“You cannot imagine how brave they were,” Windsor said. “The fire was all around them and they just fought back.”
Churchill’s brush with tragedy has humbled her, she said. “Our home is open to our neighbors who might need showers, water, whatever,” she said. “When I saw that God spared our home, I made a commitment to serving my community for the rest of my life.”