{"id":112901,"date":"2026-07-08T16:43:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T23:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/?p=112901"},"modified":"2026-07-08T16:43:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T23:43:53","slug":"saving-j-rs-house-during-the-mandeville-canyon-fire-1978","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/archives\/112901-saving-j-rs-house-during-the-mandeville-canyon-fire-1978","title":{"rendered":"Saving J-R\u2019s House During the Mandeville Canyon Fire 1978"},"content":{"rendered":"

We Beat the Sucker!<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Lee Clausen<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 This is my experience of what happened that day.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 I got on my motorcycle and drove out there.\u00a0 There is only one paved road entrance to Mandeville Canyon, and it\u00a0was 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 I jogged up the canyon for a while, then hitchhiked a ride in the back of a pickup truck driven by a local resident.\u00a0 It was several miles to the house, and I rode in the pickup truck most of the way there.<\/p>\n

When I arrived, there was a lot of smoke in the air above us and a pall of something imminent about to happen.\u00a0 The fire had not yet arrived.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 There was no water pressure, so we couldn’t use hoses.\u00a0 The blankets were being placed over the edges of the tar and rock roof.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

When the fire came it was spectacular.\u00a0 We could hear the roar of it before we could see the flames.\u00a0 When they finally appeared, the wind-blown flames came roaring over a small hill that was about a hundred and fifty yards away.\u00a0 On the flames came, spreading in a line, bearing orange and yellow colors, shooting thirty feet into the smoky sky.\u00a0\u00a0For some time before this, you couldn’t see the sun as it was blotted out by dense smoke in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Now the flames were being fanned by a stiff wind behind them, compelling them directly toward the house.\u00a0\u00a0The flames were\u00a0moving very rapidly, and the roar from them sounded like a shrieking enemy as they charged across a battlefield.\u00a0 There was something like terror creeping into my gut.\u00a0 I felt a little bit like a soldier might feel going into battle and when\u00a0he sees the enemy for the first time, vaguely wonders if he will survive, as he feels the blood drain into his knees.<\/p>\n

We had prepared the best that we could, so we stood in awe and waited for the enemy to arrive.\u00a0 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\u00a0it roared\u00a0past these hillsides, acting as if an enemy commander would\u00a0try to encircle us with a pincer\u2019s movement.\u00a0\u00a0We watched in anticipation of\u00a0frenzied activity as the fire\u00a0brazenly approached.<\/p>\n

There\u00a0was a wind always around us fanning the fire.\u00a0 We had no breathing protection, and the smoke, driven by the wind caused eyes and sinuses to constantly stream fluid.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0As we awaited the flames, everyone\u00a0spaced themselves in a defensive position all around the house.\u00a0 Some were on the roof and others stood ready to hand up buckets of water.<\/p>\n

I positioned myself in the back yard near one of the steep hillsides next to the house.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The swimming pool was there, and we could all jump into the pool if need be.\u00a0 J-R was about 15 feet from me as we watched the flames roar past the slope nearest the house.\u00a0 The heat, as you can imagine, was intense.\u00a0 Then a funny thing happened.\u00a0 I don’t know if other people noticed it, but as the flames swept past the house, the wind shifted very briefly back\u00a0toward us 180 degrees.\u00a0For just a moment, the fire blew back at us very intensely with a distinctive roar, like it was alive, to mock our efforts.\u00a0It was as if\u00a0a defeated bully sneered back at us, as\u00a0it\u00a0moved away in disgust.\u00a0 Then the wind shifted again, and as the flames were carried\u00a0away from the house,\u00a0J-R shouted in triumphant glee to anyone who could hear, “We beat the sucker!”<\/p>\n

And this from Brooke Danza:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

An Aerial View of Mandeville Canyon with J-R's home and the hill above.<\/em><\/em> <\/p>\n

Phil and I had rented a guest house up on a hill above J-R\u2019s Mandeville house, on property the church later purchased.\u00a0 The main house was rented by Gregory Peck\u2019s son and then we sub-rented the guest house from him.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Afterward, we all went to J-R\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Once we were finished with that, we started removing from Mandeville anything of value and driving it out of harm\u2019s way.\u00a0 I remember someone even trying to remove a refrigerator!\u00a0 All of this took most of the day.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 J-R immediately went outside to check it out, I didn\u2019t even have enough energy left to go outside.\u00a0 I just remember thinking that it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

During the fire, I remember seeing the fire heading towards our guest house.\u00a0 I spoke with some fire fighters about the two houses up the hill and we all agreed it wasn\u2019t worth risking anyone\u2019s life.\u00a0 Later I saw the main house and our guest house on the hill surrounded by flames, and I assumed that our place was lost.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 J-R just said to us, \u201cThat was hard,\u201d letting us know he had helped to save the place.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It was quite a miracle!\u00a0 However, we couldn\u2019t 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\u2019t worth being depressed about and offered to let us stay at his house in the meantime.<\/p>\n

Later came the winter rains and the floods created by the denuded hills; that\u2019s a whole other story, again we all worked together to save J-R\u2019s home from the floods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 This is my experience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":112902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[266,257],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-ndh-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}