They just wanted to build a bike park. Their surprise mission? Restoring Santa's Village

LOS ANGELES — Santa's Village had become a ghost town, closed for nearly two decades. Rides had been auctioned off, much of its electrical equipment was stolen and bark beetle-infested trees — destined for an incinerator — had once taken up residence in its parking lot.

But after an extensive cleanup progress, the park, built in 1955 in Skyforest near Lake Arrowhead, was ready again for a close-up. A grand reopening was set for early December 2016.

Santa's house had been remodeled, transformed from an arguably awkward bedroom setting to a cozy, wood-filled nook, and the once kid-focused amusement park had been refashioned into a participatory-first playground with an emphasis on mountain biking and light sporting activities, with a zipline, archery and ax throwing among them. Almost everything, its new owners thought, had been accounted for. Everything, that is, except power surges.

"All the kitchens are running. The heaters are running. The lights are running. We're running this thing at its theoretical level," says Bill Johnson, 57, who owns the park, now christened Skypark at Santa's Village, with his wife, Michelle, 51. "But some of this infrastructure is original, and it was super cold and windy, and everyone was scrambling, plugging in wall heaters. So we're pulling an extra 13 to 20 amps, and we end up boiling and blowing the transformer."

And with it came an explosion of transformer oil near the front of the park. No one was injured, but