ALTADENA, Calif. – The warnings began on Saturday, January 4th.
Our neighbor, a volunteer from the local sheriff’s department, texted us to “close the hatches” in case of a “big storm.” Then everything went quickly.
On Sunday, I wore a bow tie and tuxedo to cover the red carpet at the Golden Globes. Tuesday morning, I drove from my home in Altadena toward the massive Pacific Palisade wildfire to shoot video for our coverage. I asked my wife, Meg, to prepare two cat carriers and take a video of our house for the insurance.
Just in case.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Ryan Pearson, entertainment video editor for the Associated Press in Los Angeles, lost his home to the wildfires in California last week.
On my way home, I saw orange smoke. A colleague wrote that there is another fire in Altadena. To get a closer look, I parked at a gas station across the street from a place called the Rabbit Museum. Our favorite new pizza place, Side Pie, was on the other side of the intersection. Opened since 1955, a coffee shop called “Fox” was just down the street.
Less than an hour after the fire started, flames were tearing up the mountain above Eaton Canyon. I wore a KN95 mask and ski goggles. The fire was probably still three miles from our house. But Santa Ana was blowing at a level I had never experienced before.
I went home and told Meg that we needed to pack up and get out.
Our daughter, Reese, was on a school trip. It took us maybe an hour, which felt like five minutes and a whole day. I pulled out of my closet an Ozomatli sweatshirt I just got for Christmas, some jeans, vitamins, a portable speaker. Meg packed her things and Reese’s essentials – a school backpack and some stuffed animals. I started packing the wine bottles, I thought, “What am I doing?” and put them back. We received passports and birth certificates. A litter box and some wet cat food. We loaded both wagons.
Did anyone else out there need our help? I asked our neighbor. Her next door neighbor did, so we went over and I helped Donna move her husband Phil from his wheelchair to their Subaru.
I took one last picture from our driveway, our house with a reddish-orange haze behind it. With those words, we set off into the night—into a future of flame, smoke, and loss that would change us forever.
This was our house:
We first encountered Altadena when Reese attended Summerkids camp there. I felt the hustle and bustle of the city melt away each morning as I drove past the tall pines, cedars and maples that line the quiet streets. When Reese was 5, we found a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a backyard view of the San Gabriel Mountains and a tree with thick branches perfect for a swing.
Built in 1958, it was owned by our new neighbor for many years. Megan and I loved the windows, the wood floors, and the wooden beams that cross the ceiling; they were painted brown, but we stripped the paint to expose the natural wood.
We loved the mix of people around us, the nods and hellos from our neighbors as we walked down our street without sidewalks. Along with a deep-rooted black community, the quiet and space, the trees and birds, and the relatively affordable homes have long drawn musicians, artists, and artisans from the Los Angeles area’s creative community, more blue-collar than you might think.
When the weather was nice, I followed the driveway and up the hill to the trail that leads to Echo Mountain and eventually Inspiration Point. She was so approachable that I called her “my mountain.” On Echo Mountain you could find the remains of a resort and hotel that burned down in a fire in the early 1900s. One day when I went up with Reese, she and a friend dug up dirt and unsealed pieces of pot, which we demolished, cleaned, and tried to put back together.
Two years ago, a family with two daughters moved in with us. They all became like sisters, and the girls would climb on top of our garage to watch the Fourth of July fireworks, play ping pong in the backyard, or sit in Reese’s room and play Roblox. We adopted Luke and Archie, our two orange tabby cats. The cats that were with us before the pandemic helped us get through this difficult time. Meg figured she would eventually build them a “catio” outside.
After Meg’s father passed away, we used her inheritance to renovate. Meg has modernized and styled every nook and cranny while maintaining the home’s mid-century character. She curated artworks, paintings, photographs, wooden sculptures and trinkets from places we had visited before.
One Christmas, Meg surprised me by converting the garage into a man cave/study with a TV, an elliptical and spin bike, and her dad’s old desk. We put storage sheds in the back: photo albums from pre-digital photography, holiday decorations, albums of my earliest newspaper clippings and Meg’s grade school photos and report cards. All gone now.
I ended up working a lot at home and doing a three-mile loop around the neighborhood, which gave me a regular overview of the diversity of the community: yards filled with cars in various states of disrepair. People in cowboy hats ride horses on asphalt. Ultra-modern new houses with glass walls. Coyotes — and dog people who carried thick sticks to fend them off. Rainbow flags and “In This House…” signs, “Black Lives Matter” signs, Harris signs, and a couple of Trump signs. A hillside cul-de-sac with a house where a motion-activated robotic voice told me I was being recorded every time I walked by.
Works of people and works of nature. Predictable and unexpected. The whole tapestry. All these things and more made it home.
The night we left last week, we went to stay with friends in Northeast Los Angeles, in the San Rafael Hills. I woke up around 6am and headed back to Altadena.
From the freeway, it was reminiscent of the scene in Fury Road where the orange wall spins as vehicles enter a sandstorm. But instead I drove into a completely black cloud of smoke.
Houses were burning not far from the always busy McDonald’s. I stopped sending live video from my iPhone because I knew I couldn’t get a cell signal near my house.
My house. Our house. What came of it?
I tried to drive up to check. I turned back when the smoke became too thick to see the street and I was surrounded by flames.
After a while, I headed to the evacuation site at the Pasadena Convention Center. It was fascinating to watch the development of the center: first people just wandered around and sat by the wall, then Red Cross volunteers arrived, paramedics wheeled people from nursing homes to hospital beds, people handed out free food from World Central Kitchen and Chick-fil-A.
We interviewed the evacuees a little. When enough time had passed, I drove back to Marengo to check on our house.
I swerved to avoid burning trees on the road. Debris and destruction surrounded me. Our street was blocked by a burning, fallen power pole.
I didn’t even get out of the car. I just watched long enough to realize that, like most of the community, our entire block had burned down. Reese’s tree swing and backyard ping pong table were still there, along with our chimney and fireplace, painted white. Everything else—everything in this place where we chose to live and raise our child—just disappeared, as if it never existed. But I knew better. I lived it.
Driving back down the mountain, I cried.
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