The sooty stone chimneys standing like cemetery markers for the 300 homes that just a few days ago lined Hook Creek Road couldn't have conveyed the message more poignantly.
"This is one of the places that probably should never have been built," said San Bernardino County Supervisor Dennis Hansberger, who toured the Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear resort communities Thursday. "I've always felt that if a fire ever came to Hook Creek, it could be a disaster."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday November 02, 2003 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 53 words Type of Material: Correction
Lake Arrowhead fire -- One of the sources of a graphic of Lake Arrowhead in Friday's Section A was inadvertently omitted. Ground temperature information came from the Pacific Southwest Research Station, part of the research arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, using a fire-mapper imager developed by Space Instruments Inc.
The homes along Hook Creek Road in Cedar Glen were not as big or ostentatious as the mansions that line the shores of nearby Lake Arrowhead. They had little in common with the carefully cultured "Beverly Hills of the mountains" image that has branded the mountain resort since the 1920s.
Still, to Hansberger, who camped in these mountains as a child, the neighborhood represented a kind of heedlessness.
Here was deep, moody forest with cottages and modest chalets packed tightly, too tightly, amid dense stands of tall pines beside a canyon creek. The homes were arranged two and three deep along a narrow, serpentine road descending deeper and deeper into the woods. People chose it for the quiet contrast it provided from the touristy bustle of the lakeside areas.
The way Hansberger sized up the charred remains, it didn't appear that a lot of attention had been paid to building materials, to how easy it would be to protect the houses or to the way winds can propel fire down a canyon.
As the fire that attacked the mountain resort finally abates, Hansberger and other local officials are assessing the extent of the disaster.
Driving through the Hook Creek neighborhood in his official SUV on Thursday, accompanied by a reporter, Hansberger shook his head and bemoaned the mishmash of planning and misguided public policy that led to the grim scene before him.
As the senior elected official for the unincorporated county areas that surround Lake Arrowhead, Hansberger hopes the fire will serve as a wake-up call to the community and result in safer development and forest tending.
But Hansberger, who grew up in nearby Redlands, is not certain many people will get the message.
"Most people are aware of the danger when they move here," he said. "They simply decided the beauty of the place was worth the risk."
As he drove through the San Bernardino Mountains, passing scenes that alternated between pristine forest and charred, fog-shrouded chaparral, Hansberger pointed to landmarks and discussed the psychology of people drawn to the disaster-prone mountain life.
