Lake Arrowhead: One Road Out When Fire Closes In
Surrounded by dense pine forest in the San Bernardino Mountains, Lake Arrowhead's 12,000+ residents depend on two narrow highways for escape. The Old Fire proved what happens when those routes fail.
Lake Arrowhead is an unincorporated mountain community of roughly 12,400 people perched at 5,100 feet elevation in the San Bernardino Mountains, centered around the private lake that gives it its name. The community spreads across steep, forested terrain along Highway 18 (Rim of the World Drive) and Highway 138, with residential neighborhoods carved into dense stands of Jeffrey pine, ponderosa pine, white fir, and black oak that extend to within feet of most structures.
The 2003 Old Fire was Lake Arrowhead's defining disaster. Igniting near the base of the mountains in the city of San Bernardino, the fire burned upslope into the mountain communities along the Rim of the World corridor, consuming 91,281 acres and destroying 993 structures. Lake Arrowhead and its neighboring communities experienced mass evacuations under chaotic conditions — with Highway 18 and Highway 138 jammed with vehicles while fire burned on both sides of the road. Homes throughout the community were destroyed, particularly in areas where decades of fire suppression had produced dangerously dense fuel loads.