William (“Willie”) Buckley and Jeannie Hutchinson both grew up in Malibu and have three children - two in college and one at Malibu High School. Willie is Senior Managing Director at Glass Ratner Advisory & Capital Group in Malibu, and ran the Malibu Boardriders Club for many years. Jeannie teaches at Children’s Creative Workshop preschool in Malibu.
The morning of the fire, the City of Malibu issued an official evacuation order just prior to 7:00 am. Willie Buckley is among those who decided to stay and defend his family’s property. Seven hours after the evacuation notice, the Woolsey Fire did something no previous fire had ever done: it jumped across Pacific Coast Highway and started burning its way through one of the largest residential neighborhoods in Malibu - Point Dume.
“All of the palm trees at the Pavilions parking lot started burning,” Willie said. “It was only 3:53 in the afternoon, but it was as dark as midnight. Photographers from The LA Times and Reuters were following me around. There was no more water. I know how to use hand tools for working on a fire, and I stripped vegetation along a fence line – but the other houses were already fully engulfed.
“At 5:40 pm, a camera crew from KTLA5 showed up. Only one fire engine came – not from Malibu, but from Santa Clarita [which, on a normal day, would be two hours away]. The only helicopters were news helicopters – not one of them was from the fire department.
“About 6:40 pm, another fire engine showed up – this one from Palmdale [even further east than Santa Clarita]. They tried to put out my neighbor’s house but couldn’t, so they rolled up their hoses and left.”
Willy defended his Point Dume home until 7:00 pm, losing the battle when a neighbors’ tree fell on his shed and almost immediately caught the house on fire. He was the last person to evacuate Dume Drive after over four hours of continuous firefighting, and his house was the last one standing before it finally fell.
Three generations of this one family lost their residences that day: Jeannie’s parents, Judi and Bob Hutchinson (profiled elsewhere in this book), Willie and Jeannie, and their three children.
