With no help from authorities, Californians must turn to their loved ones in the midst of wildfire season.
You made things official with your new girlfriend on Monday. No “I love you’s” have been said yet, but she can see it behind your eyes – you’re both thinking it. You sit across from her in your new apartment on brand-new second-hand furniture, and you tell her you’ll be there for her. No matter what.
It’s Wednesday. So would you leave everything you love behind today, abandoning your home, and drive into a fire for her?
“There’s no ‘right’ response — but you’ll know when you have to answer,” says Hadley Ball, 24.
***
Four weeks after they began, the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles are fully contained. The fires raged through the city that spills into the adjacent hills, destroying treasured possessions and memories, and claiming 29 lives and counting. Many residents were denied fire insurance in the weeks ahead of these fires, and many more lack coverage for the toxic particles left behind in the smoke. The impacts of the fires on health, financial security, and mental wellbeing are just beginning for LA resident Hadley Ball.
When there are simply not enough firefighters and EMTs to go around, administrators are forced to confront their own impossible question: who do they save? Who will still have their lives when the blaze is put to rest? Hadley said the city’s answer boiled down to, “you’re on your own.”
“It was an apocalyptic situation. Smog on steroids. My apartment was safe, but I couldn’t see more than three feet out of my windows, and I had no idea how much of LA had to be wiped away before it made sense to leave.” - Hadley Ball
At 1:25 pm on Wednesday, January 8th, Hadley texted me; they were leaving their apartment. They drove with their new girlfriend, Emily, away from the looming fire in Hollywood Hills, directly into the Palisades Fire. They recalled watching their home disappear into the smoke, throwing their laptop and collection of birthday cards into their car, wondering if the rest of their possessions would be there tomorrow. Protecting important things by driving them into a fire felt just as futile as leaving the rest of it: “It was a series of rapid life or death decisions that lasted three straight days, and I have no idea what I’m doing,” Hadley said. But Hadley and Emily had decided to abandon their own home to join Emily’s father in protecting his house, a sitting duck in the dead center of the blaze.
Emily’s father stood pouring buckets of water on his roof for hours, watching his neighbor’s house burn to the ground. As Hadley grew near, a thick, dark sky clung to the windows of their car. Their high beams shone, two pillars defined in the dust. They crept forward. Their crawl became a winding course as more and more deserted cars appeared in front of them, becoming harder and harder to dodge in the sea of smoke. There’s no way I leave here with my car, Hadley thought. And still, they crept forward.
What force besides love could drive someone into a wildfire? Not even profession, Hadley thought, as there wasn’t another soul in sight. This was also Hadley’s first time meeting Emily’s family. Hadley laughed while recounting that to me, saying, “At least her dad doesn’t really have a choice but to like me now.”
Armed with N-95’s and whatever water they could take from their apartment in West Hollywood, Hadley and Emily surrendered Hadley’s car and raced into the backyard. Sparks poured out of the skeletal remains of the house next door, landing and dying on Emily’s father’s wet walls. They kept their eyes glued to the horrific, burning mass. They would be the last to see this stranger’s memories crumble into ruin. The three of them cradled heavy gallon jugs, pointing them at the house fire like semi-automatics. The neighborhood was eerily silent, except for collapsing wood, as though someone had lit 1000 bonfires just to abandon them there. They said that each second the house stayed safe marked another victory and another reminder: “no one is coming to help us.”
Lance Lamore, an Orange County EMT, once told me, “It’s not in the job description, but we become firefighters every summer. People stand in their backyards with hoses, spraying them at a fire that spans thousands of acres, and we gotta trust that they have it handled.” I thought of this when the water lines failed in Palisades. I stared at my phone, hoping for a text from Hadley, knowing that it was their last priority.
Even if Hadley and Emily could save her father’s house, the fight to rebuild their community was just beginning.
***
There are four seasons; fall, winter, spring, and summer, so there is a grave and bitter acceptance that comes with the colloquial use of the term “wildfire season,” a “season” that shouldn’t exist. A California resident is all but guaranteed to either experience the devastation of wildfires themselves or know someone who has. Mckenna Beck, 23, grew up with her mother in Quincy, California, a small town near Lassen National Park. Mckenna has already evacuated multiple times over the course of her life due to fires. But the threat of wildfires is undeniably growing as poor policy decisions catch up to California.
“When Greenville burned down in 2021, we packed up our entire lives: pets, important documents, whatever we could fit in the family car, just hoping our home would still be there when we returned. We could see the fire line glowing on the mountains above our house as we drove away from the house that my mom had just bought - which didn’t have the option for fire insurance.”
When asked about the aftermath of the fires near Quincy, McKenna Beck recalls, “Hundreds of displaced people came to Quincy because they had nowhere else to go. They were living in cars, in parking lots, on the streets, bathing and surviving out of their vehicles for months. My mom and I took in a family, one of her coworkers and her husband, who had a physical disability. My mom even gave up her bedroom for them. They stayed with us for five months before they could afford an RV, which became their home for the next year. They lost everything — documents, pictures, their entire history. They became like untraceable ghosts. And on top of all that, the settlement money they were supposed to receive from PG&E took over a year to reach them. The system failed them.”
“When I saw the fires in LA recently, it felt like a culmination of all the warnings my community has lived through. And it’s frustrating because we’ve known this was coming, and it feels like nothing is being done to prevent it.”
Mckenna’s mother developed asthma in the wake of a wildfire. Like most other people in Quincy, she lacks the resources to seek proper medical care or leave. “Where would she even find a job, or a place to live?” Asked McKenna. “We wouldn’t even know where to begin.” The lack of air conditioning in Quincy houses posed an even more immediate issue, “It was always, keep the windows open and breathe in toxic air, or shut them and let the indoor temperature rise above 90 degrees. Either way, it was a risk we had no choice but to endure.”
McKenna wants people to understand that the destruction of wildfires doesn’t live in statistics or news reports, “Real people’s lives are being upended. Families are being torn apart. Communities are disappearing. The emotional toll of living in constant fear of evacuation, of losing everything in an instant, watching that happen to the people you love, is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”
About 15 years ago, McKenna and her mother spread her grandmother’s ashes on the top of Mt. Claremont. Her mother spent 20 years gazing out the window at that mountain. McKenna would look up from her homework and see her grandmother staring back. The towering presence was comforting and stable, an unmovable monument to a successful life lived without help. McKenna’s grandmother didn’t even own a government ID. She relied on the kindness of family to survive.
After a large wildfire tore through the area, Mckenna’s mother trekked up Mt. Claremont to visit the site. Everything was gone; the entire area burnt to toothpicks. She turned her back to the sky and let her tears land and die on blackened ground. Just as she turned to leave, she saw the cross her and her daughter had used to mark the ashes 15 years ago. It was still there, nailed to the only living tree in the area. Against all odds, that single tree was alive.
McKenna recalled, “It was like a small reminder that not everything was lost. But it also drove home the reality of what these fires are doing. Erasing history, places, and memories that can never be replaced.”
***
Fortunately, Hadley, Emily, and Emily’s father won their battle, and each of their houses still stand. Hadley even recovered their car.
Hadley and McKenna agree that someone failed them: perhaps our predecessors, the administration, or predatory corporations. But they are proud to know that in the decisive seconds between life and death, they would not fail their loved ones. Their communities’ survival is safe in the hands of selflessness for no other reason than compassion.
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