We Beat the Sucker!
By Lee Clausen
In these times of recent devastating fire storms affecting whole residential neighborhoods, many people forget that in 1978 there was a fire storm in Mandeville Canyon that threatened and could have burned John-Roger’s house but for the valiant efforts by many people in MSIA. This is my experience of what happened that day.
A call came into Prana one day in October of 1978 about a brush fire that was threatening J-R’s house at Mandeville Canyon. I got on my motorcycle and drove out there. There is only one paved road entrance to Mandeville Canyon, and it was cordoned off by a policeman who was blocking traffic and letting only residents pass to get to their houses, restricting everyone else from traveling up the canyon. I was determined to get to J-R’s house and help fight the fire if necessary, so I parked my motorcycle in a nearby school parking lot and walked.
When I got to the entrance of Mandeville Canyon, I waited for the policeman to get distracted with other motorists, then quickly slipped past him on the edge of the road unnoticed. I jogged up the canyon for a while, then hitchhiked a ride in the back of a pickup truck driven by a local resident. It was several miles to the house, and I rode in the pickup truck most of the way there.
When I arrived, there was a lot of smoke in the air above us and a pall of something imminent about to happen. The fire had not yet arrived. There were maybe a couple of dozen people already there who were filling water buckets and drenching blankets from the pool in preparation of saving the house. There was no water pressure, so we couldn’t use hoses. The blankets were being placed over the edges of the tar and rock roof. J-R was acting as if he were the commanding general of an army, standing in an open space and directing his troops into action.
When the fire came it was spectacular. We could hear the roar of it before we could see the flames. When they finally appeared, the wind-blown flames came roaring over a small hill that was about a hundred and fifty yards away. On the flames came, spreading in a line, bearing orange and yellow colors, shooting thirty feet into the smoky sky. For some time before this, you couldn’t see the sun as it was blotted out by dense smoke in the atmosphere.
Now the flames were being fanned by a stiff wind behind them, compelling them directly toward the house. The flames were moving very rapidly, and the roar from them sounded like a shrieking enemy as they charged across a battlefield. There was something like terror creeping into my gut. I felt a little bit like a soldier might feel going into battle and when he sees the enemy for the first time, vaguely wonders if he will survive, as he feels the blood drain into his knees.
We had prepared the best that we could, so we stood in awe and waited for the enemy to arrive. J-R’s house was nestled into a flat space between two steep hillsides, and everyone knew that the most critical point of fighting the fire would be when it roared past these hillsides, acting as if an enemy commander would try to encircle us with a pincer’s movement. We watched in anticipation of frenzied activity as the fire brazenly approached.
There was a wind always around us fanning the fire. We had no breathing protection, and the smoke, driven by the wind caused eyes and sinuses to constantly stream fluid. Some people jumped into the pool to get relief, and some tried to protect themselves with wet t-shirts tied around their heads and faces. As we awaited the flames, everyone spaced themselves in a defensive position all around the house. Some were on the roof and others stood ready to hand up buckets of water.
I positioned myself in the back yard near one of the steep hillsides next to the house. J-R was also back there, and it was in my mind that I wanted to be near him to protect him in any way that I could. The swimming pool was there, and we could all jump into the pool if need be. J-R was about 15 feet from me as we watched the flames roar past the slope nearest the house. The heat, as you can imagine, was intense. Then a funny thing happened. I don’t know if other people noticed it, but as the flames swept past the house, the wind shifted very briefly back toward us 180 degrees. For just a moment, the fire blew back at us very intensely with a distinctive roar, like it was alive, to mock our efforts. It was as if a defeated bully sneered back at us, as it moved away in disgust. Then the wind shifted again, and as the flames were carried away from the house, J-R shouted in triumphant glee to anyone who could hear, “We beat the sucker!”
And this from Brooke Danza:
An Aerial View of Mandeville Canyon with J-R's home and the hill above.
Phil and I had rented a guest house up on a hill above J-R’s Mandeville house, on property the church later purchased. The main house was rented by Gregory Peck’s son and then we sub-rented the guest house from him. At the time we were involved in duplicating and editing J-R tapes at the Mandeville studios, so it was a quick walk down the hill for us.
On the morning of the fire, we were at our guest house getting ready for the day, when we saw a fire across the canyon. We let J-R know and he came up to our place on a motorcycle. He stayed there for a while just observing the fire while we packed our car with our most valuables.
Afterward, we all went to J-R’s Mandeville house and the first thing Phil and I did, along with some others, was pack up all of the Original Master J-R Tapes that were stored at Mandeville into vehicles. Then we drove them to the parking lot at the school at the base of the canyon.
Once we were finished with that, we started removing from Mandeville anything of value and driving it out of harm’s way. I remember someone even trying to remove a refrigerator! All of this took most of the day.
After driving the last car out, and walking back, it was late afternoon and I suddenly had no more energy, having not eaten all day. I remember walking back up the Mandeville drive seeing the fire start to come towards us and having just enough energy to go inside and tell J-R. J-R immediately went outside to check it out, I didn’t even have enough energy left to go outside. I just remember thinking that it’s possible we would all die that day, but at least I would be dying in good company with J-R, Phil and many other wonderful people who had come to help. I later heard stories from people that J-R just looked at the fire, and it went back up the hill away from the house.
During the fire, I remember seeing the fire heading towards our guest house. I spoke with some fire fighters about the two houses up the hill and we all agreed it wasn’t worth risking anyone’s life. Later I saw the main house and our guest house on the hill surrounded by flames, and I assumed that our place was lost.
After the fire had passed, Phil and I were outside with J-R and looked up and we could see the main house up the hill had burned down but our guest house was still there. J-R just said to us, “That was hard,” letting us know he had helped to save the place. Later when we went up there, the plants next to the guest house and the external walls were not burned, and inside there was no smoke, not even in our clothes. It was quite a miracle! However, we couldn’t move back in because the external PVC water pipes had been destroyed by the fire. We were depressed about this, and J-R let us know that it wasn’t worth being depressed about and offered to let us stay at his house in the meantime.
Later came the winter rains and the floods created by the denuded hills; that’s a whole other story, again we all worked together to save J-R’s home from the floods.
