A Father and Son Called for Help to Escape the Eaton Fire. None Came.

Anthony Mitchell called his daughter from his home in Altadena, Calif., on Wednesday morning and told her that he was OK.

He had called for help, he said, and was waiting to be evacuated from his home, which was uncomfortably close to a fast-growing fire that had ignited in the Angeles National Forest.

Then Mr. Mitchell noticed something out the window.

“Baby, I got to go,” he said. “The fire just got in the yard.”

Mr. Mitchell lived on Terrace Street in Altadena with two sons, both in their 30s. It was a modest white house with a green front gate and green trim. Trees towered above the home’s carefully tended garden. The edge of a woods climbing up into the San Gabriel Mountains was just 10 blocks away.

Mr. Mitchell used a wheelchair after his leg was amputated last year, a complication of his diabetes. One of his sons, Justin, was born with cerebral palsy and was “bedridden,” according to Mr. Mitchell’s daughter, Hajime White.

Usually, Mr. Mitchell’s other son, Jordan, cared for both of them alongside a rotating team of professionals. But Jordan was not there that day. He had gone to the hospital earlier in the week with a case of sepsis. There were several cars in the driveway, but Mr. Mitchell could not drive them. As the fire came closer, whipped by strong winds barreling down the mountains, no ambulance appeared.

That night, Mr. Mitchell and Justin were both found dead.

Ms. White said that her family had been trying to piece together what happened to them.

“Where was the ambulance?” she said. “Where were the caregivers? Where was everyone at?”

Several government agencies involved in the response said they did not have records of calls, and they referred questions to the Los Angeles County sheriff. The sheriff’s office did not respond to several requests for comment about whether it had received 911 calls from the Mitchells and whether it had responded.

Carlos Herrera, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, one of the other agencies, said that by the time the Eaton fire had broken out on Tuesday, all resources were already dedicated to the raging Palisades fire across town.

When personnel arrived to respond to the new fire, he added, the immediate priority was evacuating residents. Fire crews worked with law enforcement agencies to respond to calls for help and went door to door looking for people, Mr. Herrera said. In all, as of Monday, 24 people had been reported dead, according to the county medical examiner’s office.

The Mitchell family was certain of one thing about the hours before the two died: Mr. Mitchell would have been by his son’s side.

In all, Mr. Mitchell had four children — a daughter, Hajime, and three sons, Justin, Jordan and Anthony Jr. He also had nine grandchildren and a number of great-grandchildren.

“He wasn’t going to leave my brother,” Anthony Mitchell Jr., 46, said. “He would never leave his kids. We were his legacy. We were his diamonds.”

Ms. White said that her children had called him “Fafa” instead of “Papa” because they lived far away from him in Arkansas. But though they were far, they stayed in close touch. In November, they had all gathered for Mr. Mitchell’s 68th birthday.

It was a bright spot in a difficult year. His wife died in October, and his first wife died just last month. He struggled with both deaths, his son said.

“My dad was going through a lot, but he always held on,” Anthony Jr. said.

Ms. White, 50, said that her father was 17 years old when she was born, the child of two high school sweethearts. Ms. White’s mother moved to Arkansas not long after she found out that she was pregnant, but Mr. Mitchell always kept in contact with his daughter while she was growing up.

“He would call me a lot of times, and he would ask me, ‘Baby, what do you want for Christmas?’” Ms. White recalled. “He would sometimes start in June and July.”

Her father would ask around about what the latest trends were. Big boxes of presents would then show up on Ms. White’s doorstep, filled with the latest fashionable clothes and in-demand items, such as Air Jordan shoes, Reeboks and, once, a keyboard.

Ms. White first visited Altadena when she was 10 years old, in 1986, the first time she met her father and the extended family in person. It felt like home, she said.

“The first time that I laid eyes on my dad, it was the most happiest moment of my life,” Ms. White said.

Altadena, though minutes away from a large city, had a small-town feel, Anthony Jr. said. The neighborhood was full of families whose homes had been passed down through generations. It had been a magnet for Black families in particular. The houses were in a picturesque spot, surrounded by hills and forest on three sides, but they were still affordable.

Mr. Mitchell’s house had been handed down on his wife’s side. Her grandfather built five or six houses on neighboring lots, which had been inherited by the younger generations.

Mr. Mitchell himself was a fixture in the community — always checking in with the neighborhood children to see how they were getting on in school and giving them advice, his family said.

“My dad was just one of those people, you would meet him and he would make friends with you real quick,” Anthony Jr. said. “He was an old-school guy.”

He worked in sales at Radio Shack and then studied to become a respiratory therapist. But the work was sad — many of his patients, including children and older people, died. He quit and went back to sales.

In his neighborhood, Mr. Mitchell was known for his skills at the barbecue and was often recruited to cook for a crowd. In the charred remains of his backyard on Friday, next to several blackened cars, were the tools of Mr. Mitchell’s craft — a gas grill, a charcoal grill and a smoker.

His son Justin loved to read, particularly books ordered from Amazon. Whenever someone asked if he wanted a present, he answered simply, “Amazon.” But he also liked reading the newspaper with Mr. Mitchell.

“They would both sit there, reading the paper,” Ms. White said. “My brother was phenomenal, too, just like my dad.”

As the fires continued to rage across the city this week, many of Altadena’s neat 1950s houses and towering trees had been reduced to charcoal. On Terrace Street, where the Mitchells lived for decades, debris was piled waist-high inside the remains of the white house with the green trim. In the front garden, two metal chairs, one green and one yellow, had been flipped upside down.

Until the end, Ms. White said, her father remained confident that help would arrive.

“They’ll get me and your brother,” Mr. Mitchell reassured her as flames spread through his yard. “Hopefully they should come soon.”

Mimi Dwyer contributed reporting.