
As a senior project manager for MATT Construction in Los Angeles for two years, Nick Pemberton never thought he would use his construction skills to organize colleagues and neighbors to save their own homes—but that's what happened on Jan. 7-9 as the fast-moving Eaton wildfire reached his family's street in Altadena, Calif.
"After all my years in the industry, I've never been so grateful to have the resources and knowledge we had during those days and nights," he says. "We talk figuratively at work about putting out fires, but I never imagined the things we use in construction would literally put out real fires."
Pemberton was one of many Los Angeles-area residents who was shocked as fire creeped toward his neighborhood from Eaton Canyon on Jan. 7. He was making a run to Home Depot during a scheduled power outage that night due to 100-mph winds affecting Altadena.
"It looked like a volcano with lava, coming down the side of the mountain," he says. After listening to alerts from Los Angeles County for the next few hours, Pemberton and his family were able to secure a hotel room in Glendale and left home that evening.
But after his wife Sara heard via text messages that a neighbor and his sons had stayed to fight the fires that night, and after a family discussion, Pemberton returned to his street at about 6:30AM the next day. When he arrived, he found the fire hydrants dry and water turned off. "My heart sank," he says. After using potting soil and other oxygen smothering agents to help neighbors put out fires on nearby roofs and trees, Pemberton turned to one place where he knew to get water.
"In the front driveway, in our gutter, we have this big pond of water that always settles, so that became the water source," Pemberton explains. Initially, he and other neighbors formed a bucket brigade and used the standing water pond to extinguish embers from the spreading fire as they fell on trees and roofs on their street.
Credit: Nick Pemberton
Neighborhood Responds
More neighbors returned as the day progressed, using garbage cans, potted plants and anything available to transport water and soil for use on the spreading fire. Boxed fire extinguishers arrived at mid-day but were quickly depleted because most only held about three-to-five shots of carbon dioxide.
"Other neighbors started showing up, and the next thing you knew, there were almost 100 people on the street, including from areas to the south that I'd never met before." Pemberton says. "Everybody was coming to help, because we were the front line of the neighborhood. If there is any silver lining from this tragedy, it was the triumph of the human spirit—that all these people just came to help and knew it was where they needed to be."
Still, he knew the group would need to take other measures to fight the fire. His first thought was how to bring in a jobsite water truck, resulting in outreaches to MATT Construction superintendent Chase Neuwald and to friend and former colleague Alex Avila, a superintendent at Kemp Brothers Construction in Santa Fe Springs, Calif. "We have swimming pools, but we don't have ways to move water, all we have are buckets," Pemberton says he told them.
Construction Equipment Arrives
Avila threw pumps and hoses in a truck and and drove to Pemberton's street. Neuwald obtained a rented water buffalo, a transportable water storage and pumping tank, which arrived in two hours.
They immediately started to pump water from a neighbor's pool into whatever could hold it and used the water buffalo, with its own pump and hose connection "to start blasting the fire at other structures," Pemberton says. Neuwald's water truck arrived shortly after as did a second water buffalo, giving the neighborhood operation a jobsite-level of organization, according to Pemberton.
"We ended up with this military strategic thing," he says, with water buffalos at both ends of the street and another pump and hose in a nearby pool to fight the fire on the structure behind the home of his neighbor who stayed the night because "that house was up in flames." Then, Pemberton adds, "the water truck was roaming."
A local fire department fire truck later arrived—but with fire hydrants still dry, it soon used up its own water supply, Pemberton says. With multiple structures on fire, one firefighter asked to use water in the neighbors' truck. A MATT Construction crew member then filled the fire truck from the water truck supply while firefighters sprayed down the house. "It was insane," he says.
The Aftermath
By Jan. 9, the neighborhood fire brigade had enabled Pemberton's street to mostly survive, he says, so he and his neighbors and co-workers toured the area to determine help they could provide at homes still covered in ash and debris.
At midnight, nine crews from Santa Clara, Calif.-based NGL Construction arrived to excavate the torched homesites, looking near street curbs to find and cap gas lines and leaving yellow stubs for later location once cleanup begins.
Steve Matt, chairman and CEO of Matt Construction, has offered any help that Pemberton and his neighbors need throughout the next few days. It was communicated to Neuwald that equipment rental outlet PDQ Rentals told the neighbors it is donating the water buffaloes and water truck.
Pemberton, a Florida native who has lived most of his adult life in California, has delivered projects such as the $300-million Kimpton Seafire Resort in Cayman Islands for DART Enterprises, as well as others for CMF Inc., Kemp Brothers, Fluor Corp. and Walt Disney Imagineering. He says nothing makes him realize the value of his construction experience than how he was able to help neighbors over those 48 hours in Altadena.
"This was the first time in my entire career that I felt like this was what I was meant to do," he says.