https://hillsdalecollegian.com/2025/01/student-recounts-five-days-of-flame/
Student recounts five days of flame
January 23, 2025 =
My family’s phones screamed with alerts at about 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 7: The nearby Eaton fire required the immediate evacuation of our Altadena neighborhood. We’re used to wildfires in California and our neighborhood is often afflicted by the foul smell of smoke, but this night was different from anything we’d seen before — and it would change our lives forever.
We initially assumed the message to be a precaution. When we saw the flames racing toward us from the mountains above our neighborhood, however, we realized the fire was more dangerous than we’d thought.
Inside the house, chaos reigned. My mother dashed around and grabbed old pictures of me and my siblings, wailing about saving her babies. My sister threw clothes into a suitcase, wondering aloud what someone packs in this situation. My father collected important documents. My 88-year-old grandfather stumbled around his room in shock. I packed some clothes, spare batteries, and emergency food for myself and the family, then helped my grandfather pack his own clothes and pictures of my late grandmother.
After 30 minutes, we left the house in three cars, with my sister at the head and me driving my grandfather at the rear. Gridlocked traffic inched south, cars raced north. Triple-digit wind gusts, collapsed power lines and trees, and minimal visibility added to the peril of the drive. My family was driving to our pastor’s house, but at their advice, I left the convoy to head to a friend’s house. As I drove onto the freeway, we got stuck behind a massive car crash. A vehicle in the traffic jam stalled in front of us, hampered a fire truck responding to the crashed vehicles.
Once the traffic cleared, wary of tractor-trailers tipping over in the wind, I gunned the engine while passing each one, despite my grandfather’s complaints at my speed. We reached my friend’s house 9 miles away in Montrose, where beds awaited us, but I couldn’t sleep. A fire-tracking app — called Pulse Point — revealed that the house two doors down from mine was ablaze and the fire alarm had tripped in a house across the street. At this point, I assumed that our house, property, and neighborhood were soon to be leveled by the blaze.
At 5 a.m. Wednesday morning, our phones buzzed with another alert. My friend’s home where I’d taken shelter was now also in the evacuation zone. I contacted a relative who lived far from the burn zone and he agreed to shelter us. We hit the road again, praying fervently for the safety of family and property.
Google Maps directed us to use a freeway a previous fire had engulfed. During that fire, people were forced to exit their cars and flee on foot. Not wanting that for my grandfather, I took a long detour, and two hours after we set off, we arrived at my relative’s house, miles away from danger.
After several agonizing hours, I received the best news I’d heard in a while from my parents, who had returned to the house that morning — our house was still standing, but it wasn’t safe. My father didn’t tell me to come home and help them defend the house, but asked if I was willing to return. I gathered bottled water, food, and medical supplies and drove back alone.
Dante’s “Inferno” crossed my mind as I drove into my neighborhood — buildings ablaze, ash drifting through the air, and masked people stumbling around the ruins of their homes. My street was a scene of devastation. Out of the 16 homes on my block, only mine and my next door neighbor’s were standing. Most of the others were smoldering rubble. The ground along the edges of our property was smoking. Flames shot up from destroyed houses. These were gas leaks, fueling jets of fire from their lines.
Once my parents and sister materialized out of the haze, they rushed to pack valuables and essentials. My father and I searched for small fires threatening intact homes. During our search, we encountered one of our neighbors walking around his ruined house. He pointed out an exercise bike’s metal skeleton, ruefully mentioning his fitness plan for the year. We attempted to shut off his gas valve and several others, but the tools designed to fit the valves were misshapen from the heat. The shutoff valves were usually right next to the leaks. Even with heat-resistant gloves, the heat was unbearable, and the valves were often permanently welded open by the heat and required special equipment to be closed.
With gas explosions shaking the neighborhood and embers wafting above, we needed some way of fighting the small fires blazing around us. Fire hydrants were dry and fire trucks were absent, so we were on our own. We had a small generator with a few gallons of fuel stored in our garage, so we wheeled it out and attached it to a sump pump, which we placed in our pool. By attaching a garden hose to the sump pump, we could defend most of our southern and eastern property boundaries.
As we prepared our makeshift firefighting apparatus, my father spotted flames on the western fence of our next-door neighbor’s untouched home. We attacked the blaze with shovels and buckets. Down the hill was a destroyed property with several people poking around for remnants of their belongings. We recruited their help, and with water from the house’s pool, we doused the fire. The fire disappeared and with it, so did the neighbors.
As the red, smoke-tinted sun set on the horizon, my parents and I stayed the night to defend the house from fire and looters. My father and I walked around our block, observing the aftermath of the fire’s journey through our neighborhood.
During the night, I observed small fires in the ruins of houses across the street. Without water, I had to urinate on the embers to put them out. I resorted to this desperate method several times over the next few days.
Leaking gas valves kept causing small detonations throughout the night. The fire burning in the hills was threatening an array of telecommunications towers that serve the area. Every time I acquired a bar of cell service, I was flooded with texts and attempted calls from loved ones anxious to know about my family’s safety. One person in particular, a family friend in the fire department, provided me with wind directions, the Eaton Fire’s proximity to us, and other information on how to defend our home.
In the morning, my parents left the house to charge their phones and make a plan to remove more valuables. While I was alone, a small fire caused by embers from a neighboring house broke out on the south side of our property. I started up the generator, ran out the hose, and doused the flames with our firefighting contraption. The system worked well. After I put out the fire, I soaked the south side of my house with water. Later I learned that a man in my neighborhood was found dead with a garden hose in his hand.
Once my parents, sister, and grandfather returned, they packed up whatever else they needed. Sheriff’s deputies finally began patrolling our neighborhood to prevent looting. After we placed calls to the gas company servicing our area, workers arrived and shut off many of the valves to our west, but missed the valve in the ruins behind our house, leaving a 5-foot flaming jet directly to our south.
At 5 p.m. on Jan. 9, my family left the house to take our valuables somewhere safe. Although neither I nor my parents were comfortable with the prospect, I elected to stay behind to guard the house from fire, looters, and arsonists. Because of the dangers that the latter two posed, the sheriffs placed a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. over the neighborhood, with police checkpoints blocking access to my neighborhood. In addition to local law enforcement, the National Guard deployed to the area. I contacted neighbors whose houses to the west of mine made similar miraculous survivals. They would prove to be valuable acquaintances.
After I doused the south and east sides of the property, at 10 p.m. my neighbors alerted me to a strong smell of gas outside my house. My neighbors shut off the leak behind my house while a fire truck stopped nearby. While we neighbors and the firefighters congregated, an episode overshadowing all the day’s previous events began when a man appeared out of the shadows in front of my gate.
He was inherently suspicious. Young, wearing black attire and Birkenstocks, he clutched a bag with several pairs of expensive shoes sticking out of the open top, concealing other objects inside. My neighbors and I immediately surrounded him with questions.
The young man, unnerved by our interrogation, stammered that he was there to see some friends. This answer immediately evolved into an absurd story about hooking up with a girl. He was unable to provide her name or address, so we requested his driver’s license, which revealed that he lived several hours away. His story changed again — he claimed he’d come from Pacific Palisades, another fire-devastated area, to view the damage he’d seen on social media. His ash-covered sandals raised eyebrows. All evidence indicated that he was a looter.
Increasingly agitated, he attempted to return to his car with a firefighter, who warned us that a citizen’s arrest could land us in trouble with deputies for being out past curfew ourselves. While we discussed this, the man got up and left, vanishing immediately. Alarmed at his disappearance, the homeowners fell back to their homes.
An hour later, a sheriff’s helicopter illuminated my yard, and four sheriff’s vehicles screeched to a halt outside. Deputies piled out, guns drawn, and informed me the man had been spotted running through my backyard. While they searched my house and my next-door neighbor’s, I retrieved my father’s pistol. After law enforcement left, I donned ear protection, and armed with the Glock, a flashlight, and intimate knowledge of my home, cleared every room in the house, finding nothing. After another hour of searching the property, neighbors informed me the man was captured and released at a checkpoint for lack of evidence.
Over the rest of the night, I alternated between putting out fires and prowling around the property with the gun looking for looters and arsonists. Panicked coyotes and rats began to appear. From time to time, nearby gas explosions rattled the house, surging my adrenaline. Helicopters buzzed about, and fires still burned; a hometown warzone. Fueled only by snack bars, I ate a military ration reserved for emergencies, my only hot meal since I returned to the house. I wrote in a journal whose contents have formed this article.
At dawn, my father texted that his reentry attempts into the neighborhood failed due to National Guardsmen. Residents leaving the cordon couldn’t return. The firefighter friend managed to enter. After resupplying me and shoring up the house against embers, he helped my parents reenter. I updated my parents on the night’s events and left the house with the friend to wash up and sleep at a pastor’s house. I showered and slept for the first time in almost five days, then packed for school and helped relief workers reach the neighborhood.
While my house still stands, ash and soot litter the interior. Months will pass before it becomes inhabitable again. Compared to many around us, our hardships are easy to bear: Many neighbors lost their homes, and some lost their lives. Many blame the government for their losses, but my focus is on the repairs and rebuilding to come. God saved us and our house, but the neighborhood we called home and the neighbors we call friends will bear the scars of the fires forever.