January 7, 2025. 

It was a windy Tuesday. 

I stopped at the gas station on the way to work and the giant planters had been knocked over and broken.

Planters at the gas station

I don’t remember much about that day at work. I believe it was either that day or the day before a regular had told me about a Facebook page for a guy named Edgar from Altadena who talks about the weather. I hadn’t had a chance to read much in the group yet, but he warned many people about the threat of fire. If only we had really known what was possible.

A post from January 5th!

Tuesday nights are when I have dance class. But we’d been on a break for Christmas. January 7th was supposed to be our first class back. I was really excited to see everyone and dance again, but for some reason I was REALLY tired from work. All I wanted to do was go home, change into my pajamas, and be a potato on the couch. So I did. I often (too often) wonder what would have happened if I went to class. Would I have been able to get back to the house? Or would I have literally just had the clothes on my back.

The hammock in our yard when I got home from work.
The cushions had all blown off the patio furniture as well.

About 6:15 the power went out. We assumed it was just the wind, but we now know that’s when the Edison transformer blew and started the fire. We don’t get cell service where the house is, so when the power went out, we lost internet, and contact with the outside world. My roommate and I lit candles and battery powered lights and were just hanging out in the living room playing with the dogs. We were talking about all sorts of random things. “Do you believe in aliens?” She was debating repainting the living room and asked my opinion on colors. It’s surreal thinking about how we were talking about painting the living room, and less than 24 hours later the house no longer existed. The dogs were stretching, as dogs do, and we were jokingly doing yoga poses along with them. We were literally just hanging out having a fun time, completely oblivious that the mountain near by was on fire.

A friend's photo of the mountains from the West

I also often wonder what would have happened to my roommate if I went to dance that night. Would she and the dogs have gotten bored and gone to bed? Would they have made it out? Sometime about 8, I think, nearly 2 hours after the fire had started, we started hearing sirens. My roommate went outside to see if she could figure out what was going on. I didn’t want her to because out was so windy I was afraid a tree might fall over on her or something. But she went out. She came back, initially I thought she said she had run into a neighbor, but talking with her later she got cell service and had calls and text from friends come through. They let her know there was a fire a few miles away from us and we should evacuate. 

We ran around our respective rooms packing. I dumped everything out of my work backpack and packed a single change of clothes, because I honestly thought I’d be back in a day or 2 once the fire was put out and the threat was gone. I grabbed the purple hoodie from a pig sanctuary my parents had gotten me for Christmas because I wore it recently and it happened to be out. That’s the only Christmas present I got last year, or any year, that survived. I grabbed my laptop, birth certificate, and social security card because they had been easily accessible because I was filling out a background check form. I didn’t grab the charging cable (MacBook cables and charging blocks are EXPENSIVE to replace!). I didn’t grab my old MacBook with all my photos and music I hadn’t gotten around to transferring over. I didn’t grab my car title (thankfully I was able to replace that for free eventually) or spare car fob (people have been quoted hundreds of dollars to get theirs replaced, but I read at one point a place in Altadena was doing them for about $100. I still haven’t gotten around to it though, so hopefully I never lock my key in the car). There was a point I debated digging a suitcase out of my closet and packing more, but I thought that if this was really an emergency, I should probably get going and not waste time. At some point my roommate yelled “toiletries!” From the other room, and I went into my bathroom and grabbed my toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, and deodorant. I filled the fake Temu Stanely with bats on it my roommate got me for my birthday with water, and headed to my car. I got in my car, and she loaded her 3 dogs into her car. At this point, we still had no idea what was going on, so she suggested we regroup in the Grocery Outlet parking lot.

I started backing out, when she got out of her car and went back into the house. I stopped and planned to wait for her, but remembered that if this was an emergency, I should get out. So I headed, unknowing, towards the fire.

There were a lot of other cars evacuating as well, despite the fact that we were west of Lake, where they didn’t send out an evacuation notice until about 3:30am the next morning, after many structures were already on fire. I was heading East on Altadena Drive, when the mountain came into view. It was glowing red. Part of me wanted to take a picture, but I also needed to focus on driving to safety. I think someone posted a video of their similar evacuation, but it was so long ago I can't find it.

Seeing the mountain was when I first knew this was serious. The air smelled heavily of smoke, and there was a lot of traffic on Lake. I managed to get to the Grocery Outlet parking lot, and that’s when I was able to see all of the texts my friends had been sending me. Friends, coworkers, my entire dance troupe asking where I was and if I was ok. My roommate made it to the parking lot, but it was clear we were WAY too close and needed to get farther away. She wasn’t sure where to go though, so I told her to meet me at the parking structure of where I work. It was far enough South we should be safe, and we can figure out thing from there.

Grocery Outlet survived, but everything around it burned. When I left, it was all standing. This was my commute to work. I used to drive past the Jack in the Box, the post office, etc. almost every single day. When I left, it was all still there. The next time I went back on February 9th, it was all just… gone.

A video from January 8th, starting at the Grocery Outlet.

Traffic heading south down Lake was bumper to bumper the whole way, with the occasional car or emergency vehicle heading north. I don’t remember much except how windy it was. At one point a palm branch had fallen down in the road. Since we were stopped, my roommate got out of her car and attempted to move it out of the street, but it just blew directly back in front of her car. 

We made it to the parking garage, but the air was so bad we stayed in our cars texting each other and trying to figure out where to go for the night. She had a friend nearby who might be able to take in her and the dogs. I was offered several spare rooms from the women in my dance troupe. One was a bit far away and I was nervous about driving that far in the wind. A fire ended up breaking out in her area and she was on an evacuation watch/warning. Another was close, but I’d never been there before, and I didn’t know if late at night with all the chaos and stress was the time to find it. She lived along the foothills, and her area ended up being put on an evacuation watch as well. She decided to just load up her car and head out of town for a few days.

In the end, my roommate ended up with family in El Monte, and I went to a friend’s house I was familiar with in Burbank.

Getting there was still a challenge. It was SO windy that I didn’t want to be on the highway. So I started out taking side streets. But there were SO many downed limbs on the street that it didn’t seem safe either. So I got on the highway. Traffic was starting to get a little iffy, so I decided to get off a couple of exits early and take the side streets the rest of the way, when traffic just STOPPED. I sat in the car giving everyone updates, when just as quickly as it stopped, it started moving again. I got to the exit I had initially planned to take, and there was a tree toppled over across it. So I ended up taking the highway the rest of the way.

I finally got to her house about 10pm. They handed me a glass of wine, and apologized because they had recently lost power. I think I was up most of the night responding to messages, following the news and community groups, etc. I was maybe able to get about 4 hours of sleep. I remember my roommate telling me at some point that our neighbor we share a driveway with had gone back to his house and the bushes were on fire. He kept trying to put them out, but they kept igniting. 

The house was most likely lost sometime in the early hours of January 8th. Whether is was before or after the 3:30am evacuation notice, we may never know.