He refused to leave

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Fergie Ferguson, 77, refused to leave his Avalon home last night. He was up all night and morning monitoring the flames. ‘It was a long night. I didn’t get any sleep,’ he said. ‘The flames were busting out all over.’

Ferguson said he doesn’t like the mainland (he used to live in Newport Beach) because it’s too crowded. As the fire approached his home last night, ‘I figured if I had to run, OK,’ he said. Ferguson believes the fire would not have been so bad had Catalina kept more of the brush-eating goats on the island. ‘It was an accident waiting to happen,’ he said.

-Seema Mehta in Avalon