Dozens of LA residents – some armed – are defying evacuation orders to protect their homes in ‘Wild West’
As the wildfires ravage Southern California, dozens of residents have refused to evacuate and have instead opted to defend their scorched properties from blazes and looters.
Nearly 88,000 people in Los Angeles County are still under evacuation orders as of Wednesday as the wildfires continue to scorch the region. But that hasn’t deterred roughly 80 locals in Altadena from sticking around, some of them armed, to stand their ground, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Even without clean water or electricity, the stragglers remain firm since they may not be allowed to return if they leave, due to the ongoing threat of downed power lines, weakened trees and fire tornadoes.
“We do feel like we’re in the Wild West,” Aaron Lubeley, a 53-year-old lawyer, told the outlet.
When the evacuation orders were first issued on January 7, his wife and adult son fled their home — so fast that his wife forgot her purse — but Lubeley wasn’t around. When he finally arrived home, he scooped up his family’s passports, photos and other belongings. The next day, he came back to see his neighborhood covered in ash.
“If I had stayed and saved my house, I could have saved three of my neighbors’ [homes],” he told the Journal. He has stayed at his home, with a 9mm handgun, ever since.
“I could be having a Manhattan and a steak, but I couldn’t live with myself if I did that and my neighbor’s house goes up,” Lubeley said, noting that defending his neighborhood “gives me a sense of value and purpose.”
The wildfires have raged for more than a week, growing to span over 40,000 acres and are far from being completely contained. As of Wednesday, the blaze has devoured over 12,000 structures and claimed at least 25 lives.
One of Lubeley’s friends delivered supplies — including water, bagels, bananas and grain-free tortilla chips — for Lubeley and others on Monday at the neighborhood checkpoint, where law enforcement officers are stationed.
“Can you guys hurry up?” an officer said during the exchange. “We just got an order not to allow any supplies through.”
After Lubeley asked the officer for permission, the friends hugged over the yellow caution tape that’s being used to fence off a makeshift border.
Elsewhere in Altadena, EveAnna Manley, who runs an audio equipment business, has been waiting for this moment, she claims. Manley has 60 gallons of drinking water, hot-water tanks for showering, and a reverse-osmosis water filter. She’s one of the few in the neighborhood to still have power, thanks to her 22-kilowatt generator.
“My old neighbor was a real prepper, I learned it from him,” Manley told the outlet. “I also replaced my wood-siding shingles with concrete ones. I don’t know if that’s why my house survived.”
Further west, the wildfires scorched the star-studded neighborhood of Pacific Palisades where Ross Gerber, the 53-year-old president of a wealth-management firm, lives. He managed to sneak past law enforcement —which has increased its presence in recent days due to a string of burglaries and lootings — to get a look at his home last Thursday and Friday.
His home survived but had no electricity or safe drinking water, so Gerber and his family have been staying at the Ritz Carlton in the oceanfront Marina del Rey neighborhood, the outlet reported.
Gerber and his neighbors hired a private water truck and driver to sit in their neighborhood ready to pour water on their homes if another blaze erupts.
Come Tuesday morning when Gerber tried to sneak another peek at his home, he didn’t succeed. He told the Journal: “There are literally so many police. North Korea is easier.”
Police officers had been escorting small groups of residents to their properties so they could check on them — a practice that ended Sunday.
“People are saying: ‘I just want to go to my house and see what’s left,’” Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said at a Monday briefing. “We know that, but we have people literally looking for the remains of your neighbors.”
Gerber said he understands that there is a “rule” in place, “but it’s our land and our neighborhood and as much as I respect the authorities, we’re much more competent than them…Let us in to defend our neighborhood.”
He, armed with his gun, then teamed up with other locals to roam around the neighborhood and interrogate those they didn’t recognize.
“The whole neighborhood banded together,” he said.
Gerber has always been skeptical of the system, and the handling of the fires has fueled that feeling, he told the outlet. After the fires die down, he hopes his neighborhood will build “our own fire-like militia.”