Retired Fire Official’s Final Act Was One of Sacrifice

He was a retired Los Angeles County deputy fire chief and the father of a firefighter. He was a revered grandfather figure in the broad-laned Bellflower neighborhood, where he had lived since the 1960s. And he was a devoted caretaker to his wife of 61 years, who had recently become disabled.

The three threads of Walter Meagher’s life knotted in tragedy Friday, when a New Year’s Eve fire engulfed the house he shared with his wife, Anna, a few minutes before midnight.

As several neighbors and two unidentified passersby clamored outside in a futile attempt to douse the fire with garden hoses or get inside to help, Walter Meagher, 81, made a critical decision inside the house on Faust Street.

He gave up the chance to make his own escape. Instead, he worked his way to the bedroom where his 77-year-old wife slept and stayed with her until both were dead.

Firefighters said it appeared he was trying to help her get away, but found the hall engulfed in flames. Spry for his age, he could have easily clambered out a bedroom window alone, but would not have been able to carry Anna, who used a walker and required oxygen because of emphysema.

“When they found him,” said Los Angeles County Fire Department Inspector Henry Rodriguez, he was shielding his wife’s body with his own. “He obviously could have got out. He found her and tried to protect her. That was love for his wife and dedication as a firefighter.”

A Fire Department spokesman said late Friday that investigators had not yet determined the cause of the fire that gutted four rooms.

Among a group of neighbors who clustered across the street into the afternoon, speculation focused on cigarettes.

“He was always very careful with the cigarettes because of the oxygen,” said next-door neighbor Diane DeHaas.

Fire Department Inspector Mark Tolbert confirmed that both Meaghers were smokers, but said he believed that Walter Meagher had recently quit.

The couple’s son, Walter Meagher Jr., a captain with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, remained at his parents’ house Friday afternoon, but declined to speak to The Times.

He and the Meaghers’ daughter, along with three grandchildren, huddled on the lawn going through memorabilia salvaged from the house.

Other residents of the block said Meagher, who retired 25 years ago as third in command of the department, was the street’s surrogate grandfather for two generations.

“He loved the kids and the kids loved him,” said Paul Janoian, who moved onto Faust Street in 1963, two years before the Meaghers. “My son is a fireman because of him. He was the role model.”

Meagher put a pool table in his garage and kept the door open for anyone to use it, said another neighbor, Easter George. “He’s been wonderful since the day he moved here,” George said. “He treated my kids and my grandkids the same way.”

George said Meagher even took his son and other neighborhood youngsters on helicopter rides. Ever outgoing, Meagher spoke recently at their 50th wedding anniversary, George’s wife, Connie, said.

“The neighborhood’s so close, one disaster affects us all,” George said, fighting tears.

Pete and Diane DeHaas returned in the afternoon from a relative’s house in the San Fernando Valley and immediately fell somber with the realization that, but for a change in custom, they might have been able to save their next-door neighbors’ lives. In past years they had celebrated the New Year with guests at their own house.

“We would have been right out here, waiting,” Diane DeHaas said.

Instead, the street was deserted, and the fire was reported by two motorists who saw the flames from nearby Woodruff Street and came to help.

They were quickly joined by Downey Police Officer Dan Murray, who heard a sound like an explosion.

“We were trying to get those people out of the house,” said Murray’s father-in-law, Allen Kelly.

They grabbed garden hoses, broke windows and eventually pried through the security entrance door. But thick smoke stopped them.

“It was impossible for anyone to go in,” Kelly said.

Theresa Walker, another neighbor who tried to assist the men, said she went to her house and brought food for the two motorists.

She said they later gave her a hug and left without saying who they were.

“They were beating themselves up because they couldn’t do anything,” she said.