Topline:
Rob Caves is a model train hobbyist who built a big layout in the back of his Altadena home. After evacuating from the Eaton Fire, he went back to save his project and his home — and ended up being a custodian to the entire neighborhood.
Why it matters: Somehow, many of the homes along Christmas Tree Lane were spared.
Read on … for the dramatic tale of what he, his partner and his neighbors experienced during and after the fire.
I met Rob Caves three weeks ago as a guy who had built a giant toy train layout with his buddies behind his Altadena home on Christmas Tree Lane.
The model train club invites the public into their private universe every year during the winter holiday months. It was the first time I had heard of it, so I wrote a fun little story about this decade-long labor of love and its nod to Southern California.
I even went to see the trains in action, waiting in line for close to an hour on an unusually cold L.A. night, surrounded by towering cedars lit by Christmas lights.
It was all kind of magical.
That was on Jan. 4 — a Saturday evening.
Three days later, the winds came to Los Angeles — they were predicted to be so fierce that meteorologists issued their sternest warning for fire danger.
And the winds were as bad or worse than the predictions, driving massive wildfires that have leveled entire neighborhoods and reshaped life for tens of thousands of Angelenos.
" It was just crazy. It was like hurricane force wind," Cave said. "And I said [to myself], 'It's gonna be really, really bad. Parts of our model train club roof might rip off.'"
By nightfall, Altadena was burning, starting from its ignition point at 6:18 p.m. near Eaton Canyon.
Caves first learned about the Eaton Fire from a friend and neighbor, who texted him a photo of the flames seen from his own home up the street.
"So I was just like, OK, well, let me see if I can see it," Caves said. " And sure enough, out our front window, you could see fire."
Caves and his partner watched the crimson grow, until it moved west and disappeared from sight. Never once did it occur to them that danger was imminent.
"Christmas Tree Lane is a mile long, and we're at the bottom of it. The top of the tree line is like a mile-and-a-half from the mountain," Caves said. " Two-and-a-half, maybe three miles is how far we are from what you normally think of as a potential fire hazard."
By around 5 a.m., hours after they lost power and after one last photo from their friend showing a wall of flames behind his house — Caves and his partner evacuated.
"It was surreal, all the cars, everyone was driving out of Altadena. There was a burning car on Woodbury, which was just south of us. It was something out of a movie, like one of the zombie apocalypse movies," he said.
A couple of hours later, Caves and his partner were sitting in his parents' home, in shock, watching the fire unfold on the news, when he got a phone call from a friend.
"He says, 'I'm at your house. I'm watering down the roof. Help me, please. Help me come and fight for your house," Caves said.
The booms of exploding propane tanks and cars along the streets of Altadena accompanied their drive back — sounds that continued throughout the morning.
Caves remembered still hearing them, as his model train friends were hosing down his home after they had been summoned to Altadena.
" We have a Facebook group for the model train club members, all 50 of them. And I just said, 'If anybody's available, please come now. We need you to help — save the home, save the layout," Caves said.
Those who were available showed up. They cleared brush, soaked the outside of the house. Some turned to save the model trains.
"We can't take scenery. We can't take buildings and structures that are on the model railroad," Caves said. "We took all the trains themselves off and just loaded them into people's trucks. That took the better part of the day."
All the while, the fire was eating its way across Altadena.
"And somehow [the house] it just, it just missed the whole destruction," Cave said.
"Day Two was when we were kind of going out and actively starting to help out the community," Caves said.
They went up and down the lane putting out hotspots, went to Franklin Elementary, went to check on the box van truck the neighborhood uses for maintenance along Christmas Tree Lane.
Then they drove around to survey the damage.
"It was just a horrific scene with Altadena — just realizing the whole town was just — gone," he said.
That afternoon I texted Caves to see if he and his partner were OK.
Hours later, he replied, "Yes we are staying to the bitter end."
In the first several days, checkpoints were not yet set up to keep people out of Altadena.
Caves’ friends brought essentials like gasoline, food, water, and even a power generator. Some of their model train friends left, and their across-the-street neighbors were able to return.
" Especially the first couple of nights, we were just … all communing together at their house, just having meals together," Caves said. "The guy's a liquor salesman, and he gave everybody his best bourbon like it was going to be the last time, you know."
Once Caves and his partner had the supplies they needed for an extended stay, the decision to remain was easy.
" We were fully expecting, you know, the fire would come back through here. That was our thought," he said.
As they waited, Caves and those who stayed took it upon themselves to become the neighborhood's custodians.
He went on Altadena community groups on Facebook to connect with evacuated residents, who asked him to find their pets, take care of their chickens, check their homes.
At last accounting, Caves said a handful of homes on Christmas Tree Lane were destroyed by the fire.
"As the wildfire came through, it essentially didn't go through Christmas Tree Lane, it went around it,” he said. “ The homes that are right under the trees and even a few lots away weren't burned.”
Caves remembered on the first night of his return, after he and his friends had watered his roof, cleared the brush, packed the trains, they came together to look at a satellite image of the widespread destruction. Gobsmacked, they wondered, "How the heck did we survive this, did the structures survive on the lane?"
He likes to think the answer has to do with the soaring cedars that have lent the street its moniker — which themselves have been largely spared. That somehow, their barks or canopy had kept the fire at bay.
"Christmas Tree Lane Association, our whole mission is to protect these trees. The idea that, you know, we protected them and then they protected us, it really rings true with me right now," he said.
The real reasons may never be known.
"There are so many, so many, so many contingencies," said Char Miller, a wildfire expert at Pomona College. Wind patterns, wind directions, burn patterns and topography could all combine to play a role, he said.
"Luck isn't a rational explanation," Miller added. " And sometimes it's just luck."
Caves and I chatted on the phone Tuesday night — a full week after Eaton Fire had started. Power in his house had just come back on, which meant he had internet and TV again.
But Caves said the house is still freezing, and they can’t use the water.
And it's going to be some time before all the checkpoints and evacuation orders will be lifted, allowing residents to repopulate Christmas Tree Lane and other areas.
So in the meantime, Caves said he's going to continue doing what he's been doing — help out wherever he can. It gives him purpose.
I asked him how he is grappling with the fact that so much of Altadena has been lost.
"Honestly, I don't know that I've even fully processed it," he said. "I sort of expect things like the Post Office and the senior center where we had our Pride Festival last June ... it's sort of in my mind that it's still there, even though I've driven by it, and it's not."
But like the century-old cedars outside his house, he can only look up.
" I don't know what the community's going to look like” in the future, he said. “But I really hope that people that have made Altadena what it is stick around and fight for it.”