Chester Griffiths finished brain surgery, got into his car and drove across Los Angeles to save his Malibu beach home from wildfires raging through the city.

It was a scenario that the 62-year-old had been preparing for years: He had completed the training, obtained the fire hoses and informed his son and his neighbors about what to do next.

Now it was time to put it into action.

What followed was a daring mission that saw the three men face the worst inferno in the city’s history to successfully protect six homes on their picturesque cul-de-sac as the homes around them crumbled into a mess of ash and rubble.

As the Pacific Palisades fire worsened, destroying thousands of homes and leaving trails of smoldering ruins across thousands of acres, the men refused to give in.

Even as 80-mile-per-hour hurricane-level winds rained down layers of glowing embers the size of footballs, they fought on.

“At one point I started packing up my car and then I decided there was no way I was going to let my house burn down, no matter what happened,” said Clayton Colbert, Dr.’s neighbor. Griffiths, told The Telegraph.

Armed with N95 face masks, fire hoses and spades, the trio managed to keep the inferno at bay for four days and five nights.

“If we weren’t here, there’s no doubt that none of our homes would exist. “There’s not even a 1 percent chance,” Mr. Colbert said Friday as he held his hose against the smoldering remains of a neighboring house to prevent the disease from spreading.

The most delicate moment for the men came on Wednesday evening when the fire raced towards them from the west, engulfing two of their neighbors’ wooden houses and setting them ablaze within 20 minutes.

First the house was two doors down from Dr. Griffiths on Topanga Beach Drive when the inferno caused eucalyptus trees to explode. Then the next one went up “like a Roman candle.”

“Everything happened like that. The fire came here, the smoke, the embers in the air, the wind was incredible,” he said.

“Burning pieces the size of a softball were landing around us, it was almost apocalyptic. It’s like you see these things coming towards you and they land on the ground. Thank God the majority don’t go into the house, but the ones that do are deleted immediately. But if there’s no one there to do it, then eventually they’ll burn the house down.

“We didn’t know when it would end. That was probably the scariest thing.”

The trio responded by jumping onto nearby rooftops, spraying flames and using dirt and sand to put out any fires on the ground. They were overturned several times and buckled under the force of the 80 mph gusts.

In frightening recordings you can hear Dr. Griffiths breathes heavily as he looks out the window at the deep, orange fire burning just a few feet away.

“We need a drop of water,” he is heard saying. A nearby fire department arrived to help them fight the fire, and Dr. Griffiths asked the captain for a drop of water

“He said, ‘They’re all grounded.'” I said, ‘How about an airplane, fixed-wing?’ He says, ‘They’re all grounded,'” recalls Dr. Griffiths.

“I went back upstairs. I said, ‘We’ll just have to do it ourselves.'”

With the help of a team of firefighters, hoses and a water cannon, the group was able to extinguish the fire and prevent it from spreading to the other houses.

The father of two insists he was not afraid.

“I’m a surgeon,” said Dr. Griffiths, his voice hoarse from days of inhaling thick smoke that tasted almost sour from the smell of burning plastic.

“You train and prepare, and then when you’re in the thick of it, you rely on your training and preparation.

“Our exit strategy was to go out to sea on paddleboards. We knew that if shit really happened, we could just take them out. There was no time to be afraid.”

His 24-year-old student son, also called Chester Griffiths, added: “It all happened under my dad’s direction, to be honest.

“He has been preparing for this for so long. He’s a champion, he has a warrior mentality.”

Mr. Colbert hasn’t slept in days. On Friday he admits that he doesn’t know what day it is. He knows he was supposed to have kidney surgery on January 10th, which he just found out is today.

Soot, ash and smoke have stained his skin in every crevice and crevice, but he insists he is as clean as possible, having just showered for the fifteenth time since the fires started.

For the first ten hours, Mr. Colbert was completely alone, the fire shooting toward him from the east and engulfing nearby popular neighborhood establishments such as The Reel Inn, a fish shack.

He then saw a notice on his phone telling him to evacuate.

“It said, ‘Get out, grab your pets, your loved ones and leave now,'” he said. But he stayed where he was.

Fortunately, his 93-year-old father, who lives downstairs in Mr. Colbert’s home of 45 years, was at a doctor’s appointment and was unable to return.

At some point during the daring mission, Mr. Colbert’s hair caught fire, but he is not entirely dissatisfied with the result.

“I look like I have a full head of hair now, don’t I?” It’s great. “It’s all ash,” he jokes.

“All that, and people try to steal too.”

“Every bone in my body hurts,” he adds, limping across the sand in front of the seaside houses. He’s never had any problems with his knee, but now it’s strapped with a brace.

His slower mobility posed a challenge as he had to chase after marauders who had come to loot the remaining houses.

It was Thursday evening when Mr. Colbert saw two men walking down the hill.

“I started shouting at them and then they ran. Then I went to my car, turned on the car and turned on the lights and turned on my alarm so they knew we were here,” he said.

“On top of that, there are these people who try to steal from you.”

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On Friday afternoon, the trio were still working tirelessly to put out fires in nearby houses, stretching over walls to shoot water at the spring as clouds of smoke rose and eyes burned.

A few houses away is what has been described as the last house standing in Malibu.

The survival of the $9 million estate owned by David Steiner, a retired waste management tycoon from Texas, has been attributed to its fire-resistant materials.

But Mr. Colbert said he and the Griffith family kept an eye on it and doused it with water when the porch caught fire.

Dr. Griffiths bought his property in 2005 and the family moved in in 2009. They tried to make it fireproof at the time by installing sprinklers in the roof and using cement tiles instead of wood.

Dr. Griffiths, who is also a doctor for the LA Kings hockey team, said the devastating tragedy can do one thing: He wants people to get to know their neighbors.

“We were only able to do this because we are a close-knit community,” he said.

“This whole thing is a damn tragedy beyond apocalyptic proportions. I’m so sad. I am very sad for everyone who has been so affected, their families, their lives, their livelihoods, their history, everything that is happening… it is catastrophic for these people… I don’t know what to say.

“I’m glad it went well for us, but it may not have happened. I made a video on the first night of our home, recording memories in each room,” he added.

The neighbor’s precious memories of his late son were saved

Kathy Eldon, head of the Creative Visions Foundation, a nonprofit, was among the few neighbors whose homes were saved by the three men.

When she evacuated, she didn’t have time to take the diaries of her late son Dan Eldon, a British photojournalist killed in Somalia in 1993, and she feared they would be lost forever.

Ms Eldon said she felt “survivor’s guilt” because her house was still standing, but through her foundation she was determined to “turn all the horror into something really good”.

For others, what has happened is not yet fully understood.

“If I have time, I think I will be emotional,” Mr. Colbert said.

For the rest of the weekend, Dr. Griffiths is “on duty” – wearing his firefighter suspenders and protecting his home and those of his neighbors.

On Monday he will return to his day job as a brain surgeon.

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