(2 of 2)
The first ignition occurred in the Malibu area above Los Angeles, apparently the result of careless trash burning. Sparked high in Las Virgenes Canyon, the flames spread across 50 acres in five minutes and were soon rushing toward the sea, consuming the $100,000 houses of movie stars and businessmen. Another fire broke out to the north near Newhall, in the dry foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains. The two blazes later joined at the Ventura Freeway. Among the casualties were beach houses owned by Tuesday Weld and Angela Lansbury, Dale Robertson's spread, part of Spahn's Movie Ranch, where Charles Manson's tribe used to live, and some acreage belonging to Governor Ronald Reagan.
Floods Next. The overriding demands of disaster forged some improbable alliances. Longhairs joined policemen and firemen in fighting the fires at Malibu. But there were also hippies who staggered into the sheriff's station after working the fire lines and said that they could not get eye drops to ease their smoke irritation. Sheriffs arrested one longhaired man in front of his endangered house, where he had gone to rescue his mother. He was booked for reckless driving and resisting arrest, and was jailed for two days before charges were dismissed.
When the fires were spent, people returned to the blackened foundations of their houses. In Chatsworth, Mrs. Ray Klein shoveled through the ashes of what was once her bedroom, sifting until she came up triumphantly with a diamond ring. Many of those who had been burned out were determined to build again on the same sites, though they know that by a perversity of nature the fires, having burned off so much ground cover, were likely to bring on a disaster of floods.