Bel Air/Brentwood fire, November 6-7, 1961 - story, photos, rare video

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Video from KTLA (beware of the short commercial at the beginning, the sound is jarring):

http://ktla.trb.com/extras/ktla/60th/news-belairfire.html

Story with photos:

http://www.lafire.com/famous_fires/611106_BelAirFire/110761_belair_LAFDreport.htm

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1. This is pretty cool thanks for posting. n/t

[Richard D]

2. I was 8 . . .

. . . lived in Brentwood then, and still clearly remember it all. Quite something.

[cali]

3. My school and my house burned down in that fire

I was 8 and remember it clearly.

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5. Holy cow - I remember seeing color footage of that fire on TV later, and

it scared me - I had never seen a house fully engulfed in flames before and I thought that people must have been inside and died - that's what my 5 or 6 year old mind was thinking. It was really scary footage of an entire street of homes in Bel Air on fire.

[cali]

6. we were evacuated from school-

John Thomas Dye- just a few minutes before it burned to the ground, hours later our house went.

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7. They waited until a few minutes before it burned, to evacuate the school?

[cali]

8. No. The fire changed direction

and jumped, as I recall. It wasn't originally headed in our direction, but they decided to evacuate us anyway.

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10. I bet you were terrified.

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4. I remember a fire in Santiago Canyon, same location where the one is now burning,

it was sometime in the late 1960s, and we lived in Orange, California, just west of Santiago Canyon. My sister was on a girl scout campout that weekend, and she had to come home early from it, and she was kind of dazed. I remember her being kind of in shock about it. I also remember looking at the midnight sky to the east and seeing an orange glow in the sky. We were kind of worried that it would come down into Orange, but we never had to evacuate in all the years we lived there. Now that same area is burning.

[PlanetBev]

9. I remember it well...

I was 11 and remember being on the playground at Nestle Avenue Elememtary School in Tarzana, and watching the smoke and flames rise over the hills. I remember reporter Clete Roberts on KTLA sounded like he had a cold all the time because smoke got up his sinuses.

Gene Kelly lost his home and so did comedian Joe E. Brown. I think 450 homes were burned in total in Mandeville Canyon.

Anybody remember the Santa Barbara fire of 1955? My family drove right through that on the way back from my cousins wedding in San Franciso. I was only 5, but I clearly remember the highway patrol detouring our car and seeing the flames in around us in the hills.