Fire Captain and Wife Detail Battle to Save Their Own Home from the L.A. Fires: 'Memories Are All We Have Left'

"It was the first time my kids saw what I do for a living," Cal Fire Captain Isaac Baeza recalls

Courtesy of Isaac Baeza and Rosary Villegas Fire Captain Isaac Baeza watching the L.A. fires

Courtesy of Isaac Baeza and Rosary Villegas

Fire Captain Isaac Baeza watching the L.A. fires
  • Fire Captain Isaac Baeza recalls the lengths he went to to save his own Altadena home from burning down amid the L.A. fires

  • He says it was the first time his sons "saw what I do for a living," revealing that started getting nervous as soon as they could see the first signs of the blaze

  • “Memories are all we have left,” Baeza's wife, Rosary Villegas, says

On the evening of Tuesday, Jan. 7, Isaac Baeza — a fire captain for the San Bernardino/Inyo/Mono unit of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) — came home from work and was glued to the news watching the fires that had ignited throughout the Los Angeles area.

He went outside, but he didn’t see anything. “My buddy texts me who works for L.A. City Fire and says, 'Hey, there's a fire near your house. I'm watching it.' ” Baeza, 49, remembers. “He’s like, ‘If you need any help, I’m 15 minutes away.' ”

Baeza kept watch near his Altadena home but he continued not to see anything. Then he saw a “big glow.” The winds were blowing and his sons started getting nervous. “I'm like, ‘We're okay. It's far away. We're fine. We're going to be okay,' ” he recalls.

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Baeza — a Navy veteran and a Little League coach — was a fireman during his time in the Armed Forces and he worked as a Wildland Firefighter for the US Forest Service for 23 years before taking his job at Cal Fire less than a year ago.

Related: Woman Searched Through Rubble to Find Late Mom's Belongings After Her Home Was Destroyed by L.A. Fires

“I jokingly said to my wife, 'I've done more with less to save houses' because all I had was my garden hose,” he says. “I was like, ‘I'm not going to let this burn. I'm not going to let our lives go down in flames, our house, our home.' "

But, just in case, he told his kids to pack their Nintendo Switches, their headphones and three sets of clothes. He and his wife gathered the to-go safe where they keep birth certificates, social security cards and passports.

When the home lost power, his kids wanted to evacuate.

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He continued prepping his house, pulling things away from the home that could catch fire, he moved the propane tanks and the grill. “All the stuff I’ve been trained to do,” he says. Meanwhile his wife, Rosary Villegas, a licensed clinical social worker, and their younger two children ages 13 and 10 packed. (Their oldest son, 30, serves in the Navy and is currently stationed in Maryland.)

Around midnight Baeza started loading the cars. “We thought we'd be home in a few days and back to our house. So we just took enough to survive for those three or four days,” he says. “By then I could see the fire — it was actually in view. I was using my past experiences to size it up and estimate how much time we had.”

He thought the fire wouldn’t come to his Altadena neighborhood until the next afternoon. He assumed that when the sun rose, air tankers and VLA and helicopters would come out and stop the fire from moving laterally.

Courtesy of Isaac Baeza and Rosary Villegas Isaac Baeza (left) with his wife and their two sons

Courtesy of Isaac Baeza and Rosary Villegas

Isaac Baeza (left) with his wife and their two sons

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Around 3:30 a.m. the next morning, the winds were blowing and chunks of embers were catching leaves on fire. By 4 a.m. he told his wife, “It’s time to go. You guys have to go.”

Baeza then walked up the block, telling neighbors, “It’s time to go.” He stuck around for an hour waiting for everyone on his street to get out. He had his chainsaw ready in case any of the falling branches trapped one of his neighbors. “I didn’t want anybody to get stuck,” he says.

Around 5 a.m. after everyone in his cul-de-sac had evacuated he went to meet his wife and kids at his best friend’s home in Sylmar. His kids were relieved to see him. “I think it was really the first time they saw what I do for a living,” he says. “It really scared them.”

He took a one hour nap, woke up and drove back to his house. “I'm just praying to God, 'Please let my house be standing. Haven't I done enough? Haven't I saved enough houses to earn some credits to have my house standing?' " he remembers telling himself.

"When I get there, it's still standing," he says. "And I'm like, 'Oh my God, maybe I can do something and maybe I can save this house now.' And my whole block is standing, but everything around is burning. And I go to get the hose and there's a little couple of things on fire on the ground, and I go to get the hose and there's no water.”

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He and his friend tried to pull things that were on fire away from the house. “It was so unsafe,” he says.

Courtesy of Isaac Baeza and Rosary Villegas Isaac Baeza in uniform

Courtesy of Isaac Baeza and Rosary Villegas

Isaac Baeza in uniform

Related: Mother Recalls 'Catastrophic' Experience Trying to Return Home to Save Pets from L.A. Fires, amid Gridlocked Traffic

Since he was too emotionally invested, he decided he needed to walk away before doing something dangerous. That's when the back of his home started burning.

He called some firefighter friends who were having breakfast nearby. They told him they were on their way. They said, "We’re going to come save your house.’ " But it got so bad that they couldn’t even get in there.

Their home and their whole neighborhood is destroyed.

However, Baeza is thankful for all his friends and fellow firefighters who have been supporting his family. A GoFundMe has been created to help them through this difficult time, with over $56,000 raised as of Monday, Jan. 13.

That said, Baeza and his wife miss all the memories they made in the home they lived in for the last 10 years. “Memories are all we have left,” Villegas says.

She adds, “My 13-year-old said a piece of him died with that house. Hearing him say that, it's heartbreaking because we told them, just pack a few things, we're going to be back. There might be some damage, some smoke, some dirt, we will be back. And they believed us and that's the hardest thing because we were so wrong.”

But Villegas wants to rebuild, and hopes her neighbors will too. “Our community is so special,” she says. “It's not something you can find everywhere. I hope everybody does really come back. “

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