My wife as usual understood the situation before I did.
The night before, Monday, Jan. 6, wed both been awoken by the wind.
Hundred-year-old pine branches snapping off like matchsticks.
Iron lawn furniture tumbling across the yard.
Our dog, shaking, tried to crawl under our pillows.
This is not good, my wife said.
Wed moved to Altadena a few weeks earlier.
We had a view of Eaton Canyon from our back patio and waterfall hiking trails half a mile away.
Wed planned to spend the morning cleaning and unpacking.
Construction screws still littered the yard, and half our moving boxes hadnt even been opened.
I dropped off our seven-year-old daughter at school, then got to work.
But the gale-force Santa Anas rattling the windows made it hard to concentrate.
Growing up in Texas, Id lived through tornados and hurricanes; I wasnt overly concerned.
Around 10:30, the Palisades Fire erupted across town.
(Little did I know.)
The next morning, theirs was gone, too.
Our house is still standing just to curtail any suspense.
By 1 p.m., the winds began to feel legitimately unsafe.
As she was packing her suitcase, the power went out.
I started packing a go-bag, just in case.
The city burning, Joan Didion wrote, is Los Angeless deepest image of itself.
Still naively, stupidly I wasnt too worried.
But thats urban fire not wildfire.
Around 6, I went to pick up dinner.
The neighborhood was pitch black: All the stoplights and streetlights were out.
I jumped back in the truck and hurried home.
Our house is on a street called Midwick Drive.
I know this now.
It was now about 6:40.
I ran inside and started frantically filling bags.
My afternoon packing had been practical and clear-eyed: passports, medicine, contact lenses.
But this was emotional, almost feral.
My wifes wedding dress.
A pair of cowboy boots from my grandfather.
And then just insane things.
A set of dominoes.
Our dead dogs old collar.
An entire duffel bag full of stuffed animals.
By the time I left around 8 p.m., the roads were clogged with cars trying to get out.
Inside, the lobby was like a refugee camp.
Kids in pajamas clutching pillows and crying.
Everyone on their phones.
When I made it to our room around 9 p.m., our daughter had just fallen asleep.
My wife and I whispered for a while about what to do.
But we both agreed that the house had burned down.
For now, it was best to operate as if the house had burned down.
Eventually, my wife fell asleep, too.
I wanted to know what time our house went up.
This was not an academic point.
Finally, we got coverage from the California FAIR Plan, the states insurer of last resort.
For the first six hours of the fire, we were uninsured.
Cal Fire incident command designated our area Division Zulu.
I listened intently as they called in strike teams and water tenders, their cool professionalism somewhat reassuring.
As more and more reports of structure fires poured in, their stress grew audible.
9:33 p.m., 1800 Braeburn four blocks away.
10:50 p.m., Midwick and Glen Canyon two blocks.
And finally, 11:31 p.m., Midwick and Midlothian half a block away.
I listened for two more hours, then fell asleep.
THE NEXT MORNING WAS brown and sickly.
White ash fell from the sky like snowflakes.
(My wife, who was in Lower Manhattan on 9/11, flashed back viscerally.)
Breakfast at the hotel was almost unbearable.
At the table next to us, two mothers and their kids were holding one another and crying.
Both of their houses had burned down overnight.
one kid kept screaming through tears.
Everything?By now, the devastation was becoming clear.
I lost count around 10.
My wife left for San Francisco.
She gritted her teeth as she passed under the plume.
After they left, I drove back to check on the house.
The Air Quality Index was in the 400s literally off the charts.
The Venn diagram overlap of 21st-century catastrophes.
I strapped one on and held my breath as I turned onto our block.
When I saw the house, I broke down.
Somehow, impossibly, we were OK.
I went inside to survey the damage.
Soot had blown through every door, window and vent; the whole place smelled like an ashtray.
Everything our friends had lost.
I drove out through the worst of it.
Sheer, unmitigated ruin.
Broken gas lines shooting out flames like refineries.
Entire blocks with nothing left but chimneys tombstones for the houses that had stood there.
And surreal things, too.
On one destroyed lot, nothing but a single orange tree the fruit still ripe.
I JOINED THE FAMILY in San Francisco.
My first morning there, an earthquake hit.
You gotta be fucking kidding me, I said out loud to myself.
Thankfully, it was only a 3.7.
We were all on edge.
The night before, four more houses on our street had burned down.
Spot fires were burning everywhere, and the winds were still raging.
We were not yet out of the woods.
But as it turned out, after those first 24 hours, the fire perimeter largely held.
Looking at the damage on a map, theres one upside-down-horseshoe-shaped area that emerged unscathed.
My only working theory was echoed by a firefighter I spoke to later.
Dude, those winds were gusting triple digits, he said.
You guys were so close, the embers just jumped right over.
You got fucking lucky.
The next few days passed in a blur.
I maxed out the tabs on my phone, refreshing Watch Duty and reading news reports.
I got very good at finding our house on a map very quickly.
At night, I read GoFundMes and cried.
One morning, I took our daughter to the zoo.
No phones at the zoo, Dada, she said as we stood in front of the meerkats.
The animals dont like it.
I apologized and put it back in my pocket.
Ten seconds later, I was staring at it again.
Down in Altadena, the National Guard sealed off our neighborhood.
No one in or out not even residents.
(At least we didnt have to worry about looters.)
Sometimes it got awkward.
The chat got a little quiet after that.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, it was almost as if nothing had happened.
Inane snippets of conversation left me irrationally fuming.
One day at a playground, I watched a woman with a newborn walk up and greet some friends.
We made it out of the house!
In my mind, a private hierarchy of trauma began to develop.
At the top were the 29 people whod died.
Then the thousands whod lost their homes.
And then, somewhere far below that way down near the bottom was us.
People whod been inconvenienced, but would ultimately be OK.
But then came the people belowthat, whom the smallest part of me started to hate.
Those whod barely been impacted, but talked like tragic refugees.
Fuck you, we both said.
We could feel the PTSD creeping in.
On a walk with my wife one afternoon, the wind picked up suddenly, and we both flinched.
Our daughter had nightmares and wet the bed for the first time in years.
A lifelong outdoors lover, I started to see the natural world purely in terms of risk.
Pretty cool, he said.
But all I saw was fuel.
ON THE SEVENTH DAY, I took the dog and drove back home.
I slept in a friends guest room and started working on next steps.
I got estimates from remediators.
Bought a generator and a chainsaw.
And I started trying to figure out where wed spend the next few… weeks?
When would it be safe to go back?
That was the big question.
Soot and ash would be blowing down off the mountains for months.
On day 11, the sheriff lifted our evacuation order.
A 6 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew was in effect,
but at least we could access our homes.
I drove up the next morning.
The block was eerily quiet.
We still had no power, no water, no gas.
What should we do?
Several families we knew had already decided they wouldnt return.
My instinct was to stay, to dig in and help rebuild.
But I also wasnt sure how much ownership of the community we could claim.
Wed only just moved there.
It felt self-indulgent to grieve too much.
At the same time, we were grieving the loss of whatshouldhave been the future in Altadena wed imagined.
The institutional recriminations will surely come.
Why didnt the city stage more fire engines?
But I also wonder about our responsibility.
A decade ago, I wrote about a devastating Arizona wildfire that killed 19 veteran firefighters.
I know about wildfires terrifying unpredictability, and our utter impotence when one sets its sights on us.
I also understand the new cycle of climate change, at least in Southern California.
It isnt that complicated.
The wet years get wetter; the brush proliferates.
The dry years get dryer; the brush ignites.
Should we really be there?
The northbound I-5 northbound was already shut, but the south side was still open.
It would be dicey, but they could make it.
But in the time it took me to call her back, the southbound lanes closed, too.
The fire was 6,000 acres and running unchecked.
Theyd have to find another way home.
