Pemberton
As a senior project manager for MATT Construction in Los Angeles for two years, Nick Pemberton never thought he’d be using his construction skills to organize his colleagues and neighbors to save their own homes, but that’s what happened on January 7th and 9th as the fast- The moving Eaton wildfire reached his family’s street in Altadena, California.
“After all my years in the industry, I’ve never been more 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 that the things we use in construction would literally put out real fires.”
Pemberton was one of many Los Angeles-area residents who were shocked when the fire swept into their neighborhood from Eaton Canyon on Jan. 7. I was making a run at Home Depot during a scheduled power outage that night due to 100 mph winds hitting Altadena. .
“It looked like a volcano with lava coming down the side of the mountain,” he says. After hearing 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 night.
But after his wife Sara learned via text messages that a neighbor and his children had stayed to fight fires that night, and after a family argument, Pemberton returned to his street around 6 :30 the next morning. When he arrived, he found the fire hydrants dry and the water turned off. “It just sank my heart,” she says. After using potting soil and other oxygen-suffocating agents to help neighbors put out fires on nearby rooftops and trees, Pemberton headed to a place he knew he had to get water.
“In the front driveway, in our gutter, we have this big pool of water that always settles, so it became the water source,” Pemberton explains. Initially, he and other neighbors formed a bucket brigade and used the pond of stagnant water to extinguish the embers of the spreading fire as they fell on the trees and roofs of their street.
The neighborhood responds
More residents returned as the day progressed, using garbage cans, potted plants and whatever else was available to haul water and dirt to use on the fire. Boxed fire extinguishers arrived by midday, but quickly ran out because most contained only 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, even from areas of the South I’d never met before.” says Pemberton. “Everybody came to help, because we were the front line of the neighborhood. If there is any good aspect of this tragedy, it was the triumph of the human spirit, that all these people just came to help and knew where they. had to be.”
Still, he knew the group would have to take other measures to fight the fire. His first thought was how to get a water truck to the job site, leading to contacts with MATT Construction Superintendent Chase Neuwald and friend and former colleague Alex Avila, superintendent of Kemp Brothers Construction in Santa Fe Springs , California. “We have pools, but we have no way to move the water, all we have are buckets,” Pemberton says he told them.
The construction team arrives
Ávila threw bombs and hoses into a truck and drove to Pemberton Street. Neuwald obtained a rented water buffalo, a transportable water storage and pumping tank, which arrived within two hours.
They immediately began pumping water from a neighbor’s pool into anything that could hold it and used the water buffalo, with its own pump and hose connection “to start shooting the fire into other structures” , says Pemberton. Neuwald’s water truck arrived soon after, as did a second water buffalo, giving the neighborhood operation a workplace level of organization, according to Pemberton.
“We’re done with this military strategic thing,” he says, with water buffalo at both ends of the street and another pump and hose in a nearby pool to fight the structure fire behind his neighbor’s house who stayed the night because “That house was on fire.” Then, Pemberton adds, “the water truck was roaming.”
A local fire truck later arrived, but with the hydrants still dry, it soon exhausted its own water supply, Pemberton says. With multiple structures on fire, a firefighter asked to use water from the neighbors’ truck. A MATT Construction crew member then filled the fire truck from the truck supply with water as firefighters sprayed the home. “It was crazy,” he says.
The Consequences
By Jan. 9, neighborhood firefighters had allowed Pemberton Street to mostly survive, he says, so he and his neighbors and co-workers canvassed the area to determine what help they could provide to homes still covered of ashes and debris.
By midnight, nine crews from Santa Clara, Calif.-based NGL Construction arrived to excavate the burned lots, looking near street curbs to find and cap gas lines and leaving yellow cuttings for later location. once the cleaning started.
Steve Matt, president and CEO of Matt Construction, has offered whatever help Pemberton and its neighbors need over the next few days. Neuwald was told that equipment rental outlet PDQ Rentals told neighbors it was donating the water buffalo and the 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 the Cayman Islands for MATT Construction, as well as others for CMF Inc. , Kemp Brothers, Fluor Corp. and Walt Disney Imagineering. He says that nothing makes him realize the value of his construction experience than how he was able to help the neighbors during those 48 hours in Altadena.
“That was the first time in my entire career that I felt like this was what I was meant to do,” he says.
