“It Happened So Suddenly”

Student Experiences of the Los Angeles Wildfires

Names have been changed

For most students, fire drills mean groggy dismay. For Kaia, a drill last week was “one of the most terrifying moments of my life.”  Having seen the smoke, flames, and fear as wildfires blazed through Los Angeles, her hometown, for much of January, Kaia panicked when she woke up at six in the morning to blaring fire alarms. The Palisades and Eaton fires swept through the neighbourhoods of Pacific Palisades and Altadena last month, together destroying more than 16,000 homes and buildings.

“I thought I was in my house, and my house was burning down,” Kaia said. “I yelled at my roommate that we had to go.” Though Los Angeles may seem half a world away from St Andrews, the impact of the fire has stayed with students like Kaia. 

When she first saw the fires, Kaia was surfing at Will Rogers State Beach. On the morning of 7 January, she watched as a column of smoke rose from the hills above and patches of fire came into view. For her to have seen them from the water, Kaia estimated the flames must have been at least twenty feet tall. Wildfires are common in California, and Kaia only realised how catastrophic those first flames would be later that day. 

Sadie, another student who calls Los Angeles home, had a similar experience: “It was shocking, but I didn’t realise the severity of it [at the time].” By that night, however, the world seemed “apocalyptic.” Sadie described hearing the wail of ambulances “everywhere” amidst the shudder of high winds across the county. 

Other students I interviewed shared Sadie’s shock at how quickly the fire spread. “It happened so suddenly,” Maxine , a third-year, told me. Though she now lives in Palm Springs, Maxine attended Palisades Charter High School, which was partially destroyed during the January wildfires. “There were videos online of my old school covered in ashes,” Maxine said, “but [in] Palm Springs [there were] blue skies […] it was bizarre.”

All three students told me how strange it felt to see news of the fires spread online. On social media, Sadie scrolled through a disorientating mix of ski trip photos and burnt homes. Kaia found the contrast difficult to reconcile. “I was irrationally mad and jealous […] to see people on Instagram living their normal lives,” Kaia said. While the fire was an earth-shattering event in her community, it only appeared on the rest of the world’s news feeds for a couple of days. It “completely changed” the way she now looks at any climate disaster. “I feel guilty to be back here, at school and learning, when my friends and family are at home and the fire is still consuming their lives,” she said. In St Andrews, the fires only exist as a brief conversation point, while at home everyone she knows is struggling to rebuild from the ashes. 

Though neither of their own houses were affected by the fires, both Kaia and Sadie emphasised that their impact on the community is deeply felt by all residents and will persist for a long time. Many of Sadie’s friends lost their homes during the fires — people had felt helpless, she told me: “There were no words to say.” 

“We watched live on CNN […] as our family friends' house was engulfed in flames,” Kaia recalled. Though she doesn’t live in the Palisades herself, about half of Kaia’s friends lost their homes, and most of the shops she had visited her entire life are now gone: “It was really hard to watch these memories burn up there.”

Watching the destruction on television made Kaia and her family scared that their home might be next. They prepared for a possible evacuation, hosing down the outside of their house and packing go-bags. All Kaia can remember from that night is “panic and adrenaline” — getting texts about friends evacuating, hearing about neighbourhoods burning down. Nobody in Kaia’s family slept that night.

Two hours away from the fires in Palm Springs, Maxine’s family hosted friends displaced from evacuation zones. Despite the distance and the disconnect between Palm Springs’ blue skies and Los Angeles’ smoky air, she told me that everyone was trying to be very supportive of their Angeleno friends.

Maxine, Kaia, and Sadie all repeatedly brought up their strong feelings that their neighbours looked out for them. “I think LA did a really good job of coming together,” Kaia said. Some donation centres received so many clothes they had to start turning donations away.

“Even by the second day, resources and GoFundMes were everywhere,” Sadie said. She volunteered at a donation centre herself. Throughout the experience, she witnessed the immense strength of her community. “People would come in with nothing but what they had on their backs and just break down — and they were still so generous and so gracious.”

Friends from St Andrews gave their support, too, even if they were halfway across the world. “Every single friend at St Andrews reached out to me,” Sadie said. “It was really nice to see.”

Likewise, “tons of people” reached out to Maxine from around the globe. “It was crazy to me that people from the UK or Asia knew what was happening in the Palisades,” she said. 

As much as they were touched by their community’s support, some students were less impressed by their elected leaders. “I think [Los Angeles Mayor] Karen Bass handled it so poorly […] [it’s] very infuriating to know that the fire department’s budget was cut before the fires,” Kaia said. She also found President Donald Trump’s reaction to the wildfires especially frustrating. It “infuriates” her that the United States “elected a man who refuses to give aid to one of his states and protect us because he wants to push his racist agenda […] a disaster shouldn’t be politicised.”

Despite the toxic politics and the millions of dollars of damage, these students told me that people want to rebuild. Most of Sadie’s friends displaced from the Palisades intend to return. She doesn’t know what will happen next, though. “You have to move on […] but what do we do now?” 

Photo: Creative Commons