Ken Haber walks through the charred vegetation in his backyard and points to a large burn mark on the side of his intact house. It was where a compost heap was set ablaze by an ember carried by the hurricane-force winds that turned January’s Eaton Fire into a historic disaster that consumed thousands of homes in Altadena. 

Haber, a retired location manager whose work includes “Fatal Attraction,” “Wall Street,” and picking out Utah’s Moab Canyon for the iconic ending of “Thelma & Louise,” could have seen his home join those thousands if it wasn’t for the quick thinking of a neighbor who had risked his life to return and use the water in his hot tub to put out as many embers as he could.