Rodney Nickerson had felt the Santa Ana winds blow through Altadena before.
He’d lived there since 1968, when he bought his three-bedroom house on Alta Pine Drive with $5 down and proof that he worked as a project manager at Lockheed Martin, said his daughter, Kimiko Nickerson.
He raised two children in that home. In retirement, it became his oasis. The 82-year-old sat by the pool every morning to read the Los Angeles Times front to back, his daughter said, to listen to jazz on the radio and birds singing in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.
And so when the winds swept down from those mountains the night of Jan. 7, carrying embers that burned some 7,000 structures, Rodney didn’t want to leave, his daughter said.
“Altadena’s seen these winds before,” he told his grandson, who pleaded with him to evacuate. “I’ll be here when you guys get back.”
Rodney lived in an area of western Altadena that received no evacuation orders until 3:25 a.m. the day after the Eaton fire ignited, a Times review of radio transmissions found.
He is among the 17 people confirmed by the Los Angeles County medical examiner to have died in the Eaton fire, along with another 11 people killed in the Palisades fire that exploded the same day.
Rodney was born in 1942, the son of a Pasadena tax attorney, his daughter said. His grandfather, William Nickerson, was the namesake of the Nickerson Gardens public housing project in Watts.
Rodney grew up in the Fairfax District and graduated from Los Angeles High School. According to his daughter, he worked as a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service before joining the Navy. After a four-year tour of duty that included a posting in Japan, he got a job at Lockheed Martin, where he worked for the next 45 years, she said.
He and his late wife, Suzette, raised two children, Kimiko and Eric, in the house on Alta Pine Drive. With its swimming pool, hot tub and fireplace, it was “the place you wanted to go home to every day,” his daughter said.
In retirement, the grandfather of four found joy in taking walks at sunrise around the Rose Bowl, watching his beloved San Francisco 49ers and serving as head deacon of his congregation at Weller Street Baptist Church, his daughter said. He often clipped articles from his morning paper and passed them out to “enlighten people on current affairs,” she added.
The night the Eaton fire broke out, Kimiko was working at LAX. Her son, Chase Newton, called from Rodney’s home. The power was out. Rodney was using a lantern to load up his car.
From what Kimiko could see on FaceTime, the fire looked distant — a “bright orange far, far away.” She didn’t know if her father’s home was close enough to be threatened.
“It was chaos,” she said. “A lot of thoughts and emotions going on.”
As the night wore on, Newton pleaded with his grandfather to leave, she said. He refused. At 11:30 p.m., Newton evacuated. According to his daughter, Rodney said: “If they come and make me evacuate, I’ll evacuate.”
Kimiko said her father received no evacuation orders before the fire swept through his neighborhood. No police or firefighters came to tell him to get out, she said.
“It was at your own discretion,” she said.
Early on Jan. 8, Kimiko’s boyfriend went to the house to check on Rodney, she said. There was no house at all.
“Decimated? What word is it? It’s gone,” she said. “Burned to the ground.”
Kimiko filmed on her cellphone as she drove through her neighborhood that morning. The sky was dark with smoke as she picked her way through streets blocked with fallen tree limbs and downed power lines.
She made it to Alta Pine Drive. There was the chimney of the fireplace she loved. There was the pool, its water dark with ash. There wasn’t much else. In the corner of the backyard was a small statue.
“My dad’s priest is still standing,” Kimiko said in the video. Behind it, Altadena smoldered.