Flush with her $1.25 winnings at the bingo tables, Sharon Tanner retired to a room off the dining hall to discuss the top worry for the residents council at her senior living community: what to do about people leaving their laundry in the washing machines and dryers.
Dinner service at the Terraces at Park Marino in Pasadena, California, was about half over, and residents were gathering in the lobby for the night’s movie feature: “Scent of a Woman.” Tanner and Carlene Sutherland, the council vice president and secretary, were discussing the laundry scofflaws when something caught their attention.
“I smell smoke,” Tanner said.
“So do I,” remarked Sutherland.
High above in the surrounding hills, a fire was burning. But staff had decided they were in no immediate danger, and the women figured they were smelling a distant fire.
Then they heard a commotion in the lobby.
The space was filling up with people, many of them agitated. Outside, the wind was howling. Then the power went out.
Tanner was looking out a picture window toward the backyard, where she sometimes takes meals, when embers began falling from the sky “like hail.” She sat amazed as first the bushes, then a wooden fence burst into flames.
Within an hour, the Terraces’ staff and residents would be in a race for their lives, walking,…