Imagine having to evacuate your house due to a wildfire and coming back to find out that a 500-pound bear had moved in.
If I were going through that, I’d certainly be thinking, “Can I seriously not catch a break?” The Altadena homeowner had followed evacuation orders that stemmed from the Eaton Fire in the Pasadena area. When they returned, they called their utility company to have their services turned back on.
The utility company came to their house to restore services, but soon found out that task wasn’t going to be as easy and simple as it was supposed to.
That’s because a 525-pound black bear was underneath the home in the crawlspace, and access was needed to that area to get the utilities up and running once again. There’s a good chance that the bear found shelter under the house after being displaced by the wildfires that burned over 50,000 acres in the Los Angeles area.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife was called to the home to help solve the bear problem, and it was certainly a tricky situation. A bear that large can be hard to immobilize with a tranquilizer, so they ruled out that option pretty early on. Ultimately, it took environmental scientist Kevin Howells and eight other CDFW employees 24 hours to remove the wild animal.
How’d they do it? Typically, if the tranquilizer is determined or assumed to be ineffective, the wildlife officials would try to coax it out in due time, and then seal up the entrance to beneath the home. But power and other utilities needed to be restored, so there was more motivation to expedite the bear’s removal on behalf of the homeowner.
So after a while, members of the CDFW came up with a plan, and as they explained in their post, it ended up working like a charm:
“Howells and other experts determined a bear trap placed near the crawlspace opening would be the best decision given the situation. Within minutes of placing the trap, the bear came out of the crawlspace, walked in and triggered the trap door.
The bear was transported in the trap into Angeles National Forest and given a welfare check, GPS-collared, and measured before being safely released just after midnight. The homeowner’s utilities have been restored, and the crawlspace was securely boarded and is now bear-proof.”
Recently, CDFW safely removed a 525-pound bear from a crawl space in LA County after the homeowner was evacuated due to the Eaton Fire. The homeowner was able to return once power was restored, and the home is now bear-proof. pic.twitter.com/I7vPM5cLxZ
— California Department of Fish and Wildlife (@CaliforniaDFW) January 30, 2025
That bear is an absolute UNIT. Hard to envision it fitting through the small crawlspace opening, but out in the wild, when there’s a will, there’s a way.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s post went on to encourage homeowners in bear country to close up their crawlspaces with bear-proof material. Bears, especially in the winter months, love to squeeze their way into a warm and cozy shelter… and it doesn’t matter if that means living under someone else’s roof (and not paying rent).
That being said, boarding up the crawlspace was likely the least of this California homeowner’s worries as they evacuated due to the wildfires. Obviously, having a bear removed from underneath your home can be inconvenient, but this person was very fortunate to have a house to go back to after the natural disaster ravaged much of the Los Angeles area.
