Duo battles flare-ups, extinguishing spot fires in an already devastated community
Recovering from a car accident on the day of the Franklin Fire and still suffering from five broken ribs, James Sarantinos is still “hobbling around a bit.”
The Big Rock resident of over 30 years is part of a tight-knit residential group who look out for their fellow neighbors. Of course, over three decades, Sarantinos and his wife Patty have evacuated many times over the years. After a harrowing evacuation Tuesday night and seeing the devastation to his community, Sarantinos and the couple’s son Devin refused to sit idly by even after the fire passed through Big Rock. Knowing firefighters’ resources were spread thin, the father and son knew they could provide service to the neighborhood, not only by returning to extinguish hot spots, but also to alleviate anxiety of residents who were unsure if their homes were still standing.
On Thursday after the fire, the two Sarantinos men circumvented a road block and got into Big Rock to check on their own home. They saw no fire department vehicles in the neighborhood but saw plenty of trouble: smoldering hot spots everywhere they turned. The father and son grabbed shovels from their own house, which was spared and quickly started shoveling dirt on the hot ashes to prevent anything from flaring up again. James credits Devin with the heavy lifting here due to his own injuries.
Some of the hotspots needed water, but on Thursday the water was dry in any garden hoses they found. “The water was off in the entire neighborhood,” they said. Fortunately, the two discovered close to 20 water jugs used for a Sparkletts water dispenser at a neighbor’s place. “It was like finding a gold mine. We were able to utilize those and dump them on hotspots,” James recounted. Unable to pick up the heavy jugs, James credited Devin again.
The damage to Big Rock was so extensive and still under threat that Thursday. The pair stayed 10 hours checking on homes, shoveling dirt, and throwing water on any threatening spots throughout the neighborhood. Some of their work required scrambling up boulders and embankments to reach hard-to-get-to locations, but James described his son as a“mountain goat,” extinguishing precarious spots that could have reignited the whole neighborhood again. “We did the best we could with our limited resources,” James explained. While James spotted Devin, he says his son “was doing the essential work of actually extinguishing.”
The pair discovered a major hotspot behind their home, James recounted, “If we weren’t there … as we looked at it, it was in a pile of brush that popped into flames. Not like a little candle. I’m talking like a 2-foot boom right into flames and that thing was gonna torch. If we weren’t there, it would’ve started another major fire. I’m sure of it. We dumped a whole jug just to make sure it was out because smoldering roots underground could erupt into flames which we saw them do.” The two men stayed 10 hours the first day.
On Friday, father and son returned to surveil the neighborhood. Devin, 26, explained, “We went up and down all the streets we could trying to get an accurate list of what homes survived. The difficult part was throughout the day, more government personnel, firetrucks, and police showed up who necessarily didn’t want us there.” The two were able tocompile a list of 90 percent of the homes as some of them were inaccessible with gates or downed power lines. From what they were able to see the pair estimates 70 percent of Big Rock was obliterated.
Water returned Friday so again the Sarantinos’ stayed from morning until night to dampen their own and neighbors’properties and douse the deep hot spots they encountered “like tree trunks that have just been turned into cauldrons.”
As The Malibu Times spoke with the Sarantinos’ Saturday they were returning to the neighborhood again for a sharp-eyed look.
James expressed his dedication to his neighbors saying, “There’s been a lot of support over the years for each other, so we wanted to continue that and anything we could do to ensure safety of their homes, you know we’re going do it.”
Devin stated, “I’m just trying to do what anybody else would want to do for their own home in their absence and also the integrity of everybody else’s homes at this point is like the integrity of our home. If another home catches fire that could easily affect our space as well so protecting the neighborhood is protecting ours as well.
“Also, I feel like the fire department is getting beat on a lot at the moment. I would like to say that there’s a lot of personnel up there now who are scanning the neighborhoods. These guys are so weathered and beat, a lot of them have been up for 48 hours straight. They’re really putting in their effort and I just want people to know that they’re doing that.Those guys are the real heroes of all of this. What we were doing is just our small part.”
James finally added, “Leaving Big Rock on the night of the fire seeing one home after another along the coastline and realizing the immensity of the winds, it was so overwhelming. I don’t care how many fires you had out there, you couldn’tstop it. It was just … it was overwhelming.”