Editor’s Note: To commemorate one month since the outbreak of the devastating January wildfires in Los Angeles, the following e-mail recounts the events of the Eaton fire in Altadena, January 7-13th. Special thanks to Jonathan Jerald and to Christopher Fudurich for permission to publish.
Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 20:54
I wish I was emailing you under better circumstances. It is like several square miles of our neighborhood was carpet-bombed.
We had been prepared for a weather disaster a week before by our neighborhood amateur climatologist, Edgar McGregor. We knew it had the possibility of hurricane force winds, so many of us had prepared go-bags.
Monday night was a windstorm I never experienced before. In the morning, fences were down and limbs from trees on our property. The rest of the area had trees down and multiple power outages.
We spent Tuesday doing some clean-up and putting some personals in our cars. The winds started picking up again around sunset and just after it got dark there were several short power glitches. We then received a notification from Edgar that basically said, “Get out.” We went outside and saw a large orange glow from the east. The fire started under a power transmission line in Eaton Canyon.
We were in the SET stage of the local READY, SET, GO alerts from the Watch Duty app. But we decided that with the winds howling we should go. We’re lucky we did when we did.
Leaving was hectic and traffic was slow as power and lights were out in some areas and the streets were still littered with downed trees and garbage cans from trash day. Lots of confusion and no sign of the authorities. We made our way down to my partner’s parents’ house in San Juan Capistrano and watched what news we could find. I don’t really remember much from that evening.
Just about 6 AM I received a fire alarm notification from our system. I figured the house was gone. I did continue to receive intermittent alerts through the morning which gave me hope our place had survived. 11:59AM all sensors went haywire, sending multiple alerts to my phone. Motion sensor east hall. Glass break guest room. Patio door open, front door open, west hallway motion sensor, panel overheat, panel shut down. Then silence.
We got in my SUV, gassed up, and went back to Altadena. When we managed to navigate through the downed trees and communication and power lines draped across the streets, we got to our place which was still on fire. Most houses in the neighborhood were gone, no flames remaining. I’m guessing ours was the last to go in the conflagration.
When we were leaving we couldn’t fathom the destruction would be this bad. We figured some houses near the Angeles National Forest would be lost, but we never expected we’d never see ours again.
We are now trying to navigate our next steps. I set up a GoFundMe the day after as I knew we’d need some financial assistance to get us through. Response was overwhelming and made us even more emotional at the love and support of our friends and family.
Now lots of paperwork, waiting on our insurance, and FEMA. Having to acquire lost medications. Our insurance changed on Jan 1 and we don’t even have ID cards yet, so that has been difficult.
There have been daily updates at 08:00 and 16:00 and they seem disorganized and unprepared for what’s happened. I got in touch with our Supervisor Kathryn Barger and Assemblyperson John Harabedian for answers. Friday evening was the first time I felt there was some glimmer of organization.
I think that’s all I can relay at the moment. Please let me know if you have any other questions or need clarification. Feel free to pass on and edit however. Permission to use names and photos. Would like to keep addresses general. Already vulture capitalists have been descending trying to get land. Also just got a news notification that the first lawsuits against SCE [Southern California Edison] have started.
Be well.
