Residents, firefighters brave a ‘calm’ day on Woolsey’s eastern edge, but they’re bracing for wind

Following a day of gentler winds, things seemed almost back to normal. Tony Santoro, 41, of West Hills said he even felt comfortable enough to go see a movie that evening.

But the puff of smoke spiraling from the side of the nearby hill sent him a reminder of how quickly things could change.

“That little thing right there, that’s what’s scary,” he said.

The night before firefighters had doused a fire just up the way from his home in Quiet Hills Court, near Roscoe and Valley Circle boulevards, cutting short the spread of the fire into the residential areas on the western edge of the city of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley.

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“Luckily we had a calm day today, or it would have been a disaster,” he said.

The Santa Ana winds were expected to return to 35 miles per hour or more as early as Sunday, so Saturday was a window of opportunity for firefighters to gain ground on the Woolsey and Hill fires.

Fire crews attacked flare-ups, sprayed down hills and cut away brush to create a buffer between flammable vegetation and homes.

One small fire just yards from a half-built housing development, the Sterling at West Hills, adjacent to Santoro’s neighborhood, drew truckloads of fire crew members and prompted water-dropping helicopters to be sent over to put out the flames.

Further south of Santoro’s neighborhood, the smoldering hills near Knapp Ranch Park had some neighbors in the Valley Circle Estates on edge.

“I’m first in line,” said Zsuzsa Onstead, 49. Her Tudor-style home sits just across the way from the park area that had gone up in flames the night before. Luckily, firefighters were able to gain control of it.

The next morning, she popped outside to check and saw that the flames had been replaced with smoking, charred hills. So she went back inside and made some toast. When she came back out, the “hills were on fire” again.

Since then, she has been busy hosing down the outside of her house, and making sure not to turn her back too much on those hills. Even though she was told to evacuate, Onstead said she was staying put.

Also staying in place just down the way was John Campbell, 59, who rushed back from London to check on his home.

The former East-coaster’s home overlooks an expansive and breathtaking vista of the Las Virgenes nature preserve, which was one of the reasons he bought it. But one of the drawbacks of being up that high, are the strong winds, he said.

He clears the brush around his home twice a year, and is awed by the efforts of the firefighters who came to his home to tackle the flames that come back to life every so often.

“They come and they put it out, but it’s just tough,” he said. “Because one little ember, it stays smoldering and it just blows up when the winds come up again.”

Los Angeles Fire Department Fire Engineer Marvin Toledo and others in his company were using Campbell’s backyard as a resting spot. Their truck was parked out front in his driveway, as its water tank got a refill.

Toledo said the winds still had a little bit of kick in them, and they found themselves working to tamp down another flare-up.

“We were not expecting these winds today,” he said. “When we first got here it wasn’t that big, but it took off really fast.

Residents had done a good job of clearing away brush, he said. They also had different firefighting teams in place “dealing with it from different angles, it was easy to stop this.”

“The wind’s blowing, but right now there’s nothing else to burn, so that’s good,” he said.

But he said they planned to stay vigilant.

“We’re going to stay put here just in case something happens,” he said.

Toledo said that in preparation for the anticipated pick-up of wind speeds, he and other firefighters were being “over-staff” and stationed in places “where we know something could happen.”

A couple days ago, a red flag alert, which is sent out when there is a dangerous combination of low-humidity and winds of over 25-miles-per-hour, prompted more fire personnel to be put into position.

The key is to be ready, Toledo said, but he ackowledged that nothing is certain.

“Even when you’re ready things happen,” he said. “You know this because of Ventura,” he said, referring to the way the winds escalated and expanded the Woolsey fire further west in other areas like Hidden Hills, Malibu, Thousand Oaks and Calabasas.

“Even though you’re ready, things happen, because of the wind and the fuel — a lot of different aspects,” he said.