One Southern California Couple Living Within Distance of Wildfires Devises Clever Plan To Spare Home
The La Cresenta couple installed sprinkler systems on the roof and devised pumping devices to quickly saturate their house with pool water.
While residents in Southern California neighborhoods on the edge of being taken over by wildfires are trying anything they can to spare their homes, one savvy couple took action ahead of the emergency.
With wildfires an all-too-common occurrence, Rola El Masri and her husband, Teo, from La Cresenta, created a contraption to easily saturate their home in water to prevent it from being reduced to ash and tinder.
“My husband’s been thinking about this for a while because we live right on the [mountain] foothills where there’s a lot of fires. So, he installed a sprinkler system on the roof,” Rola El Masri told The New York Sun. Her husband, an engineer by trade, devised a way to use the tens of thousands of gallons of water in their pool.
“He invented these two contraptions that pull the water out of the pool, and it sprays it on the house,” she said. “So, we’ve just been using those. Keeping everything damp and wet.”
Ms. El Masri says that she and her husband had previously had local fire department officials inspect the devices for approval.
“They told us there were so many ways to mitigate a fire in a home and they really like the ideas we had to make sure we could water down everything.”
Ms. El Masri says she evacuated her two children to stay with a relative in Alahambra, a community just south of Pasadena, as she and her husband prepare the house.
“We evacuated our kids already and all of our cars,” she said. “So we just have one car packed here, and if it gets bad enough, we’ll just get in the car and leave.”
She says the Santa Ana winds, which are responsible for fanning the flames and causing the wildfires to spread, have been the strongest she has ever seen in more than a decade.
“Last night just felt like the whole house was going to blow off its foundation,” she said, adding that she’s hopeful her neighborhood will be spared.
“La Cresenta has already suffered a very major wildfire about 11 years ago. Maybe the brush is not as dense as it used to be because of that.”
“Hopefully it won’t be as bad this time.”
