At the intersection of Midwick Drive and Sinaloa Avenue in Altadena, neighbors had mobilized to stop a situation almost exactly the same as I had seen playing out across the street from my brother’s home in the Palisades. Flames from a house, fully engulfed, were pouring up and over the fence toward the home of Eric Fiedler and his son Christopher, which had survived the fire that night. With two garden hoses and a ladder, they climbed to the roof to attempt to beat back the flames by wetting the roof and the hedges. It was 9:25 a.m.
One resident who was wearing a cutoff black T-shirt and sunglasses used the shirt to cover his mouth to prevent smoke from asphyxiating him. A fire truck from Riverside County Cal Fire pulled up, resulting in the exalted screams of even the KNBC reporter on the scene, Michelle Valles.
“Thank you so much! Oh, my goodness. Praise the Lord.”
Around the same time the Riverside County firefighters battled the flames on Sinaloa, Ashley, the daughter of Herb and Loyda Wilson, was heading back toward their house two miles away after evacuating for the night to see if McNally Avenue had survived. By the time she and her boyfriend got close, she knew it wasn’t good. She called her parents, in Hawaii, inconsolable.
“It’s gone, Dad! Everything is gone!”
“Relax,” Herb told his daughter in the Hawaiian darkness. “It’s going to be OK.”
Cate Heneghan had been receiving reports from her neighbors, too. One of them, who grew up in the home she still lived in on McNally Avenue, had tried to get close around six in the morning. But she told Cate that when she drove past Fairoaks Burger, less than a tenth of a mile away and just around the corner, all she saw was flames.
Cate attempted to get back to the block as well, but when she was within a half mile, she thought better of it.
I don’t want to be part of the problem. I know it’s gone. It’s gone, Cate. Just let it go.
Even though she saw homes just a few blocks away that were still standing, her gut told her to turn around, so she did.
Nick Schuler of Cal Fire, the state fire agency, had a thought run through his head he had never experienced in all of his years of fighting fires.
God, I hope I don’t die of cancer. This is not a good place to be. Thousands of homes have burned.
He was in the smoldering heart of the Palisades. He and Governor Newsom were driving through the area after a morning fire briefing, trying to find a cell signal for Newsom to reach President Biden. My damn cell phone, the governor thought. He had initiated the call because he was going to elevate the asks about resources, personnel, equipment, and federal reimbursements for what people were already saying could potentially be the costliest natural disaster in American history.
As the fire continued to rage both in the neighborhoods and on the ridges of the Santa Monica Mountains, the governor directed his security detail to pull over.
“Guys, turn left. Just stop. Stop.”
He checked the bars on his cell phone.
“No. Jesus Christ.”
He couldn’t get a signal.
“You know, get near the gas station—it worked there last night.”
At 9:41 a.m. we came across Governor Newsom and Schuler outside that gas station. Newsom had declared a state of emergency on Tuesday after the Palisades Fire broke out, and with it deployed hundreds of members of the California National Guard to Los Angeles. Once the Eaton Fire ignited, he knew that a major disaster declaration was needed—and had to be requested of President Biden, who was still in town—in order to mobilize federal resources for the Palisades, Eaton, Hurst, and Woodley Fires, now burning. The Hurst Fire had broken out Tuesday night and was growing in size in the north San Fernando Valley, surpassing five hundred acres Wednesday morning. Smoke plumes were rising from all corners of Los Angeles County. The Woodley fire started early Wednesday, a few dozen acre blaze in the Sepulveda Basin.
Jacob Soboroff
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