Baldwin Hills Heroism in ’85 Blaze Recalled : Fire Destroyed Homes, but Not the Spirit

July 2, 1985, was a day Joe Gardner says he’ll never forget.

He was lounging around his Baldwin Hills home in the sweltering 100-degree heat, making a sandwich, when his wife suddenly appeared with an ashen face. “She said, ‘Joe, there’s smoke and fire everywhere,’ ” Gardner, president of the Baldwin Hills Estates Homeowner Assn., recalled Saturday. “I went into the back yard and saw nothing but smoke. I saw houses collapsing all around me.”

The fire that roared up the brush-filled hillsides off La Brea Avenue north of Stocker Street in affluent Baldwin Hills turned out to be one of Southern California’s worst disasters.

When the smoke cleared, three people were dead, 53 homes were destroyed and 13 were seriously damaged on the winding Los Angeles streets that bear elegant Spanish names: Don Miguel, Don Carlos, Don Felipe, Don Alegre.

In the spirit of rejuvenation, residents held a Community Appreciation Day on Saturday to celebrate their resilience and praise the efforts of fire officials, block clubs and others who helped them make it through.

On a hilltop lot overlooking Downtown, about 200 people gathered where a home burned to the ground at Don Carlos and Don Diego drives. It was one of the few houses destroyed that was not rebuilt.

In the midst of celebrating in an area that now bears few scars of the tragedy, people remembered.

Louis D. Hill said his wife, who was home sick with diabetes the day of the fire, tried unsuccessfully to help save a neighbor’s house with a garden hose. While homes burned down on either side of the hills, theirs was spared. “My roof saved it,” said Hill, a retired Air Force colonel. “It was rock rather than shingle. We were lucky.”

Doris Moore was also lucky. Her home on Don Carlos was the only one spared on a block that suffered the greatest loss of property. Being the lone house standing on a block reduced to ashes was “eerie, very eerie,” she said.

“I felt I was in a bad dream, trying to wake up,” said Moore, a 37-year resident of Baldwin Hills. “People would come in front of the house to pray. It still feels a little strange today, because I have all new neighbors. I’m still trying to meet them.”

Though fire officials attributed the blaze to arson, no one was ever caught. Many families displaced by the fire moved elsewhere because they were underinsured or decided that rebuilding was too great a financial strain, Gardner said.

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The newer homes along Don Carlos are cheery enough but clearly out of architectural step with the older, more sedate ranch-style homes in the neighborhood.

“We old-timers dreaded the new style,” said Wallace Kirk, a resident since 1967. “But I guess they’re better than empty lots.”

Everyone agreed, however, that the fire brought people together in valiant attempts to save lives and property.

Many stayed on rooftops with hoses, others rounded up supplies --everything from clothing to toothpaste--for evacuees, and still others aided city and county firefighters who battled the blaze for more than six hours.

“When you saw all the destruction, it was amazing that only three people died,” said Hershel Clady, an assistant fire chief with the county, who in 1985 was a captain at Station 58 on Slauson Avenue in Ladera Heights.

“We got tremendous cooperation from the people. They pulled hoses, did everything they could to assist us.”

There was one particularly sobering reminder of the Saturday past: a plaque, mounted on a stone in the front yard of a home at Don Carlos and Don Diego, engraved by the homeowner association with the names of the three who died in the fire: Mary Street, Robert Allen and Marie Gladden.

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Many people paused to read the inscription, “On July 2, 1985, three of our neighbors lost their lives in the Baldwin Hills Estates fire. This commemorates their living, the sacrifice of our neighbors and the acts of heroism of the day.”

It was a distressing time, said realty agent Patricia Penny, although not distressing enough to prompt her, or some of her neighbors, to move.

“I grew up in this area. I went to Audubon Junior High, Dorsey High,” Penny said. “It’s a great place to live. The property values have held here while places like Beverly Hills have gone down.”

Spooked as she was by her own survival, Moore and her husband, Eustace, have remained in the neighborhood.

“We built and designed this house, we raised our children here,” she said, gesturing to a home just a few doors down from the celebration. “It feels like a family heirloom, particularly after the fire. I guess we’ll never sell it.”