We left Benjie's around 4 pm, which is when the scary part of the day started.  Sierra Madre is about 30 minutes from our house.  At about the time we left to drive home, a couple of teenagers drove to our area to visit Sage, a teenage neighbor who lives one block from our house.  They brought a whole bunch of fireworks over to Sage's house and tried to get Sage to go outside with them to light them.  Sage is in high school and is a junior cadet at the Police Academy and he told them not to light the fireworks in our neighborhood since it is illegal to light fireworks in Los Angeles.  Sage ended up telling his friends to leave his parents house.  His friends, who he had known since kindergarten, did leave the house but they decided to light one of the fireworks called a bottle rocket.  The bottle rocket landed in the brush behind the house and the hillside caught on fire.  The two culprits saw the fire, dropped the rest of their fireworks, ran into their car and drove off. We heard from one of our other neighbor's that the father of the teenager who lit the firework that caused the fire is in law enforcement.

Sage heard the bottle rocket, saw the hillside catch fire, called 911 and quickly alerted as many neighbors as possible.  There were at least 10 fire engines involved in fighting the fire as well as two water dropping helicopters.  The pictures below, which are in sequence, were captured by Peter who is one of our other neighbors. 

The firemen started spraying fire retardant on the hillside when...

...an ember started a new hot spot.

We live at the end of a 1.25 mile long canyon road.  As we approached the entrance of the canyon at around 4:30 pm, there were a several police cars and fire trucks that were in the street.  The police had the road blocked and they were not allowing any vehicles in or out of the canyon.  They were allowing people to walk into the canyon because the fire had been brought under control but they wanted to keep the roads clear for emergency vehicles.  We parked our car and started to walk the 1.25 miles to our house to get our dog and see what was going on.

The fire department was in our area for about four hours cleaning up and making sure all the embers were out.  A group of prisoners from a local jail were brought in to cut down the burned brush.  Needless to say, we had enough excitement for the day and we decided to stay home instead of driving back out to see the real fireworks!

This is the entrance to the canyon.

This is Debbie and Drew starting the 1.25 mile walk.

This is about one mile into the canyon.

This is the area where the kids lit the firework, and where the hillside caught on fire.

We walked back to the scene of the fire with our dog Prestin, the white Poodle.

The brown Poodle is my in-laws dog, Pico, who we were dogsitting for.

There was a sign on the side of one of the fire trucks...

...stating, "fireworks are dangerous and illegal."

You can see how steep the hillside is.

These were the fireworks the teenagers had brought into the neighborhood, which they dropped when they ran after the hillside caught on fire.