Braving Home

by Jake Halpern

  Not surprisingly, a common feature of the fires in Malibu is that almost everybody runs from them. Despite considerable research, I found almost no mention of any Malibu residents standing their ground. Both the Malibu Times and the Los Angeles Times highlighted only one such story from the 1993 fire—that of the British screenwriter Duncan Gibbins, who attempted to defend his house with a garden hose. It was an ill-fated stand. In a moment of panic, Gibbins scurried back to save his Siamese cat and ran into a wall of fire that charred 90 percent of his body. Paramedics later found him barely conscious, floating in his swimming pool. “I don’t want to die,” he kept repeating in a lung-scorched squeal, as smoke poured from his mouth. Gibbins, whose film credits seemed to foreshadow his demise—with titles like Eve of Destruction, Fire with Fire, and Third Degree Bum—died several days later in an area hospital.3

  After reading about Gibbins’s stand, I had to admit that fleeing seemed quite sensible. And yet, I also had to wonder: Didn’t anyone know how to deal with these monster blazes? Surely there had to be someone who had a better grasp on the situation. In an attempt to find just such a person I called practically every major establishment in Malibu—City Hall, the Chamber of Commerce, the Malibu Times, Pepperdine University. “I’m not sure who you’re looking for,” one receptionist told me. “Neither am I,” I replied.

  Then it happened. I got a call back from a woman named Nancy Steiner who worked as an administrator for the City of Malibu. I told her I was looking for a veteran of Malibu, an intrepid home-keeper, someone who knew something about fires. “How about old Millie Decker?” she asked me. “She’s the last of the Malibu hillbillies.”

  “Hillbillies?”

  “Yeah, the Deckers have been around for a long time.” Nancy paused to flip through some papers. “I don’t have Millie’s number, but her daughter Bonnie works over at Malibu Seafood—why don’t you call over there?”

  Like so many great leads, this one was born out of pure coincidence. In the early 1990s, Nancy Steiner had also worked at Malibu Seafood, preparing salmon filets alongside Bonnie Decker. Bonnie was a stout, ruddy-faced woman who talked mainly of horses and knew a thing or two about dynamite. In Malibu, she was the type of coworker you didn’t forget.

  Later that afternoon, I made a call over to Malibu Seafood and got ahold of Bonnie Decker. It was a fast-paced conversation, conducted over a steady din of clinking plates and whirling cash registers, during which Bonnie mentioned that the Deckers had been in Malibu since the 1880s, raising cattle and horses. As far as Bonnie knew, no one in her family had ever left a house to burn.

  “What does your family do when the fires come?” I asked her.

  “Well,” she replied, as if the answer were perfectly obvious, “we stay and fight.”

  My choice to visit Malibu next was ultimately seasonally driven. By the time I left Hawaii, made it back to Boston, and got my notes in order, August had arrived. In many ways, this is my favorite time of year. The initial thrill of summer is gone, the days seem to grow long and sleepy, the crickets find their way into the city parks, and on clear nights you can almost smell the promise of a New England fall. In southern California, however, August marks the early days of fire season. It’s a dry, arid time when deadwood readies to burn. And as the last days of summer grew hotter and hotter, my thoughts inevitably drifted west toward Malibu and the Deckers.

  At age eighty-one, Millie Decker can still lasso. Here Millie is trying to teach me how to rope cattle.

  What intrigued me most about the Deckers was Millie, who at the age of eighty-one was the family’s most seasoned firefighter. “She’s been dealing with wildfires ever since the Pacific Coast Highway was just a wagon trail,” Bonnie had told me in a subsequent phone conversation. In fact, we chatted several times over the course of that summer, and the more I learned about the Deckers, the more curious I became. According to Bonnie, her mother was well known for riding bulls as a girl and for jockeying racehorses professionally as a young woman. “Mom is a real mountain woman,” insisted Bonnie. “I guess you’ll just have to come out and meet her for yourself.”

  I arrived in California in mid-August, exactly as fire season was heating up. By then, much of the West was already aglow with wildfires. More than three hundred separate blazes were ravaging parts of California, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Nevada. In California, they were limited to the north, where seven blazes had already charred nearly 80,000 acres and forced the closure of a major stretch of Interstate 80.4 In southern California all was still quiet, but people had to be getting nervous. My timing was good, in a terrible sort of way. By now I was starting to imagine myself as a harbinger of natural disaster—a precursor to floods, snow, lava, and wildfires—a sort of loosely affiliated member of the Four Horsemen, only without a horse or even a return ticket.

  As if the many blazes already raging weren’t enough, the Santa Ana winds were soon due. At the end of each summer, these so-called Devil Winds come from the northeast, gusting low and hard across the Mojave Desert, cresting the Santa Monica Mountains, and then sweeping down the many coastal canyons that lead to the sea. Their timing is erratic, but once they arrive there is no mistaking them. You can feel their parched breath on your cheeks and in your lungs. It’s a hot, steady, skin-crackling gust of heat. The effect is unnerving. The mystery writer Raymond Chandler opens his short story “Red Wind” with a description of the sense of doom that these winds bring:

  There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen.5

  There may be truth in what Chandler writes. According to some reports, LA’s homicide rate increases dramatically on bad Santa Ana days.6 Yet the real concern is always the brushfires. Fire stations go on alert, community groups like Arson Watch call out their volunteers, and nervous homeowners keep a steady eye on the horizon. Nowhere is this truer than Malibu, where the many canyons funnel these winds in a particularly deadly fashion.

  On the evening that I arrived in Los Angeles there was a slight breeze coming off the mountains, and I followed it westward in my rental car—toward Decker Canyon at the edge of Malibu. My route took me along the Pacific Coast Highway, a spectacular seaside road that follows the cliff-hung coast of California all the way north to San Francisco and beyond. I had to take it for only about twenty-five miles to Malibu, and along the way I got my first glimpse at the legendary “burning coast.”

  The shores of southern California have been catching fire for thousands of years. Long before man arrived, wildfires were started by lightning or perhaps even by friction, as seasonal winds caused dry stems and branches to rub together. Fire is an irrepressible aspect of the region’s ecosystem, and every wave of human settlement has had to deal with it in one fashion or another.

  The Chumash Indians, who were the first known inhabitants of the Malibu area, set brushfires to feed themselves. They used the flames to clear fields for cultivation and possibly to drive out game when hunting. These fires were so prevalent that when the explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo first visited the region in 1542, he dubbed it the “Bay of Smoke.” Eventually, in 1793, the Spanish governor enacted the first fire-control regulations in California history. Even so, the wildfires were so prevalent that in 1841 a visiting French traveler wrote: “Occasionally the traveler is amazed to observe the sky covered with black and copper colored clouds, to experience a stifling heat, and to see a fine cloud of ashes fall.” These burns “seriously handicap travelers,” he concluded.7

  Malibu’s narrow coastal meadows were first developed by ranchers in 1800. The land was known as Rancho Malibu, and over the next century it was owned by a succession of prominent families. None of them, however, laid claim to many of the steep canyons that buttressed the ranch’s
meadows. Finally, around the 1880s, the first homesteaders began arriving, among them Marion Decker, the first of the Decker family.8 The homesteaders were a lean, tough, and hungry sort. They were war veterans, tenant farmers, and disgruntled midwesterners looking for a better life and a bit of free land. Under the Homestead Laws, they were entitled to as much as 160 free acres, and they found this land in the dusty canyons above Rancho Malibu. Yet these canyons had one major drawback: They were deadly firetraps. Surviving them took daring and know-how, and the homesteaders became adept at it.

  The glamour of modern-day Malibu arrived in 1892, with a millionaire from Massachusetts by the name of Frederick Hastings Rindge. That year Rindge bought Rancho Malibu, all 13,000 acres of it. He envisioned Malibu as an “American Riviera,” and this is exactly what it would become, though Rindge would never live to see it. In 1903 his ranch burned to the ground, and just two years later Rindge himself died. Rindge’s glitzy vision for Malibu was realized only when his cash-poor family leased some beachfront property to a budding movie colony in 1928. Quite fittingly, the colony’s housewarming was a raging wildfire that destroyed thirteen new homes the following year. It would be the first of many such disasters, but modern-day Malibu had officially taken hold.9

  Driving into Malibu, I passed a long procession of seafront mansions and a wide beach where a number of muscled surfers and bikini-clad knockouts were frolicking in the waves. Eventually I found some free parking at a Starbucks. I stopped in for a coffee, and as I waited for my order, I chatted with a refreshingly unattractive girl behind the counter. Somewhat grudgingly, she agreed to name a few of her more famous customers. “We get Mel Gibson, Dustin Hoffman, Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Pierce Brosnan . . .” She cut herself off as she finished filling my cup. “I can’t remember them all, but they come in here enough that it isn’t a shock.” I nodded. “It’s not like we stop pouring the coffee when they walk in,” she added. I soon learned that this was the unspoken rule of Malibu: You leave the celebrities alone. It was more than just a courtesy—it seemed to be the esprit de corps of the town. As one proud resident later explained to me: “This is probably one of the few places in the world that someone like Mel Gibson could a live a normal life.”

  After finishing my coffee, I hopped back into my car and continued up the Pacific Coast Highway. Within a mile or two the houses thinned out to a lonely rural sprawl. At last I had an unobstructed view of the sea to my left and the canyons to my right. It was a stunning, roughhewn, bipolar view. Then, before I knew it, I hit a steep little turnoff with a sign that said DECKER CANYON ROAD. As I would later learn, this canyon was once inhabited almost entirely by members of the Decker family. The children attended the Decker Schoolhouse, where they all allegedly referred to one another as “cousin.” No one spoke of “Decker Canyon,” or “Decker Road,” just “Decker.” Like the Scottish clans of old, the Deckers melded family and place until both had just one name. Yet as the rich and famous began migrating to Malibu in increasing numbers, property taxes went through the roof and slowly the Deckers moved away. Today all that remained was one last family and a lonely road sign that bore its name.

  As I turned up Decker, right away I noticed the warning signs. DANGER: EXTREME FIRE HAZARD AREA, READ ONE. NO FIREWORKS: FINES & JAIL SENTENCES MAY BE IMPOSED, read another. Beyond this, there was a gradual rise for about two hundred yards. Then, without wasting any more ground, Decker Canyon Road shot upward faster than the Roman candles it forbade.

  The road cut itself into the canyon walls and snaked upward along a series of switchbacks and blind turns—the kind that send curbside pebbles flying off the edge to fall seemingly forever. As I continued upward, I caught a glimpse up a long, winding driveway that led to several southwestern-style mansions and oversize ranch houses. They were the types of homes that tried to blend in discreetly but were far too big to do so. One had an indoor pool. Another had several Mercedes cars parked in front. It was unclear who exactly lived here, but these were the Deckers’ neighbors.

  After driving roughly two miles, I came upon a sheer gravel driveway with a mailbox labeled “M. Decker.” I pulled off the road. My tires struggled for traction, and then crunched their way upward through a curious vertical landscape. To my right was a steep orchard where the tree trunks formed acute angles with the ground. To my left was a narrow shelf of flat ground where somebody had carved away enough rock to create a small horse corral. I continued to the top of the driveway and parked between a vintage powder blue pickup truck and a dilapidated garage strewn with rusting tools and dozens of dusty deer antlers. Here I found Millie Decker, on her way over to the chicken coop to collect some eggs.

  “Hello there,” said Millie as I got out of my car. She was a slight woman, not much more than five feet tall, with a full head of curled white hair and two fierce blue eyes. From the hesitation in her every movement I guessed that her eyesight was very poor. Millie gave me a close look, nodded her head as if confirming a suspicion, and then took a step back. She was wearing a pair of reddish cowboy boots, green denim work pants, and a turquoise shirt with a wide butterfly collar. These were just her work clothes, she would later tell me. At her feet were several sheepdogs dashing about frantically, guarding her every step and barking at me in unison. Without saying a word, Millie reached down and began to stroke the largest of the dogs, patting his head and rubbing his fur. Gradually all of the dogs quieted down.

  “Bonnie told me that you’d be dropping by,” said Millie as she brushed a lock of white hair away from her eyes. “I thought I would show you my chickens. Would you like that? They’re so pretty, when the sun shines on them they’re green.”

  “Green?” I asked.

  “Green,” said Millie.

  “All right,” I said. “And by the way . . . I’m Jake.”

  “Very glad to meet you,” she replied. “I’m Millie.”

  Together we followed a small dirt road that ran above the dug-out horse corral that I had passed on my way in. The road itself cut deep into the mountainside. In fact, almost every single swath of flat ground on Millie Decker’s eighteen-acre ranch was scraped out in this fashion. It was a near vertical piece of property. The Deckers had carved a multitiered horse ranch into the steep walls of Decker Canyon. The first tier contained a horse corral, a barn, and a riding ring. A little ways up was the second tier, which included Millie’s house, a garage, a few trailers, and the chicken coop. The third tier belonged to Millie’s son, Chip, the fourth to her daughter, Bonnie, and the fifth to a renter named Dave. They all lived on the same ranch, but most of the time you would hardly know it, for the rise was so steep that no matter where you were it was almost impossible to see the tier above or below you. The landscaping seemed to exemplify the old homesteader spirit, making something out of nothing. The problem for Millie was the possibility of falling, a concern that she raised as she walked cautiously toward the chicken coop. “I’m getting old,” said Millie with a smile. “I’m eighty-one years old, and I don’t see too well, but I can still work a horse.”

  As we walked Millie explained that she was a Decker only by marriage. Her husband, Jimmy, was the last of the bloodline Deckers to live in the canyon, and he had died in 1991. In truth, Millie had only a tenuous claim to the Decker legacy, and yet she seemed to be a worthy heir. Her father, Perc Meek, was a renowned mountain lion hunter who once ran a small ranch near the top of Decker Canyon. As a young girl, Millie attended the Decker Schoolhouse. She first met Jimmy at the age of five when her father saved his dog from a hungry mountain lion. After that they became friends, yet they didn’t actually marry until their forties. By then Millie had two young children from a previous marriage (Bonnie and Chip). Jimmy Decker never had children himself, but he treated Millie’s like his own. Bonnie even changed her last name to Decker.

  “We’re horse people,” explained Millie. “I’ve been riding since I was one year old. My father just set me down on a horse and went about his business, so I guess you could say
that horse was my babysitter.”

  “At what point did you start riding in the rodeo?” I asked.

  “When I was twelve,” replied Millie. “My daddy ran a series of horse shows throughout the area, and I used to ride the bulls for him.” According to Millie, her bull riding was often the opening act. To give the spectacle a little extra oomph, her father would usually tie a “bucking strap” around the flank of the bull to really make it mad. For eight long seconds Millie would hold on for dear life, until her father rode up beside her and whisked her away. By the age of sixteen, explained Millie, she was racing horses at fairs throughout southern California. It took an enormous amount of wrist strength to work the reins of a racehorse, and Millie conditioned herself by milking the cows as much as she could. Within a few years she was jockeying professionally, riding against men who jealously guarded the sport as a bastion of masculinity. “Once they tried to run me through a fence,” Millie recalled. “That was one time I swore.”

  When we reached the chicken coop, Millie paused for a moment at the door. “Now, where did you say you were from, honey?” she asked.