Here we are in March, where the first kisses of spring would normally deliver a sense of hope and lightheartedness, but as the season nears, a figurative and literal haze still hangs over L.A.: the aftermath of the early January wildfires that left wide swaths of the county — towering palm trees, lavish homes and quaint cottages, mom-and-pop shops and institutions — in ash-laden ruins.

Empowered by hurricane-like Santa Ana winds, the Palisades fire (located in the western part of the county) and the Eaton fire in Altadena (situated in the eastern region) ravished more than 37,000 acres, 18,000 homes, schools and businesses and claimed 29 lives. “These very large embers were traveling far ahead of the main fire and starting multiple additional fires,” says Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) Capt. Brendan Silverman, a public information officer. “This was the worst-case scenario type of incident. A lot of our members have been through wind-driven brush fires before, but from all accounts…, this one was a lot different because we’re not used to a large brush fire impacting a very densely populated community and wiping out as many structures as it did in such a quick amount of time.”

Two months later, much of the world and even L.A. County appear to have moved on, but life for many of our neighbors will never be the same. And here’s the thing about this kind of mass tragedy: Even if your home is still standing, you likely know someone who lost everything — or whose home remains uninhabitable because of contaminated soil, water and air. Furthermore, with the pervasive threat of worsening climate change, no one can predict the next natural disaster. All we can do is prepare as best we can, help those in need and learn to graciously accept aid when tragedy befalls us.

As spring unfurls its leaves and the latest breaking news dominate our screens, we aim to continue to share resources, stories of those who have experienced loss and the beauty of ongoing community fire-relief support. Many of the families we spoke to for this story are still in waiting mode — waiting for insurance and FEMA claims to process, waiting for clearance to return to their homes, searching for more sustainable housing, hoping for better learning options for their kids whose schools burned down or are unsafe.

How do you define home when all evidence of home is gone? How do you soothe your children’s fears when the sound of sirens sends you into a state of terror? How does a racially diverse community like Altadena, where Black residents were historically able to buy homes in a nation that often barred them from home ownership, rebuild their family wealth when they were the roots of that wealth, roots now covered in rubble?

As Angelenos, we press on. As parents, too. One day, as it was for mom and trauma therapist Jennifer Seifert, hope can be found in the barely perceptible fragment of a rainbow; the next day might find her drowning in the midst of utter despair that has no color, no texture and (seemingly) no end.

Here is a glimpse into the fear, grief, resilience and optimism of some of our local residents directly impacted by the fires. 

Evacuating: “We left behind everything”

On Jan. 7, evacuation orders from the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management, LAFD and other departments hit some residents’ phones, while others learned from Facebook groups and neighbors that they needed to evacuate. In most cases, people believed they would be able to return home in a few days, get back to normal.

 “As news of the fire spreading came in, my first thought was ‘Ok, we have fires every year during the Santa Ana winds. It will be ok. The fires never come this low,’” says Altadena resident Leah Wright-Lewis. “When we got the emergency evacuation order, it was around 4 a.m. I woke to the alarm. The power, which was on when we fell asleep, was out. It was dark and extremely windy. The house smelled like smoke. We quickly threw some essentials in a bag and fled into the dark, smoky, windy night. Visibility was very low. All we could hear was the wind.

“We left behind everything,” says Wright-Lewis, who lived with her 81-year-old mother and 17-year-old son. “We could see embers flying in the wind toward our street. Some of them landed at the intersection, and we knew we had to move fast. We drove into the night, heading south away from the smoke. We found an open diner in Atwater Village and went there to get some breakfast and regroup and figure out our next move, still not imagining that we would not have a home to go back to. We called our friends Dahlia and Gio and went to their house in Van Nuys. Sometime later that morning, we got word that our house had burned down and, in fact, that our entire street, neighborhood and city were burning to the ground.”

Writer Diana Daniele lives at “ground zero” in the Palisades Highlands, which is in the high-severity fire zone and where the Palisades fire started. “The fire started around 10:30 a.m., and we were called to evacuate less than an hour later due to our proximity and the fierceness of the Santa Ana winds. However, as we were preparing to evacuate, we were then told by the LAFD to ‘shelter in place.’

“This is because residents who were already evacuating down Palisades Drive (the only street in and out of the Highlands) had panicked at the heat and size of the flames and the falling palm trees and had abandoned their cars. They ran bodily toward nearby PCH [Pacific Coast Highway] and the safety of the ocean,” Daniele says. “LAFD had to call for bulldozers to move the cars blocking the road. When Palisades Drive was cleared, we were again called to evacuate, which we did via police escort that afternoon, driving through a ring of fire at the bottom of Palisades Drive. Each side of the street was engulfed in flames where the street meets Sunset Boulevard. As we drove down PCH toward the freeway, we could see the bluffs already burning. The sky was thick with smoke and an eerie golden-gray color.”

Daniele’s house did not burn down, but it is smoke-damaged and uninhabitable. She estimates that her family, which includes her high school senior daughter and husband (an adult son lives out of state), won’t be able to return to their Palisades home for another six months to a year.

Marcia Zellers, who just bought her home in Altadena six months ago, knew that a fire was raging in the Palisades, but figured she was safe nearly 40 miles east of flames.

“I was working from home on Tuesday, Jan. 7,” says Zellers, whose 22-year-old daughter was in Paris at the time. “It was very windy. I was kind of happy that the wind was whipping all the leaves together up against the garage, which would make my monthly raking much easier. I was taking an evening French class in Silver Lake and wondered whether anyone would attend. There was a fire burning in the Palisades, but I decided that it wouldn’t affect the east side and people would still attend. So, I went to my 6 p.m. class. At 7:30 p.m., when I hopped back in my car to head home, my phone was buzzing with texts asking me if I was planning to evacuate. I had no idea what they were talking about. I called some Altadena friends, who confirmed the mountain was on fire and they were packing to-go bags, but they didn’t seem overly concerned. I headed home, and as I rounded the curve off the [Interstate] 134 East from Eagle Rock, I could see that the entire mountain was on fire. When I arrived home, a transformer had already blown on my street and the power to my house was out. I couldn’t get my [electric vehicle] into the garage because the electric gate wouldn’t open. I decided I would grab my dog and leave, not waiting for evacuation orders. Good thing — because I never got an evacuation order.”

Zellers threw a few articles of clothing, her passport and toiletries into a suitcase. She grabbed her dog and dog food and climbed into her daughter’s gas-fueled car in case she wouldn’t be able to find a place to charge her electric vehicle. She headed back to Silver Lake to stay with friends she thought she’d only need to live with “for a few days.”

The next day, her neighbor texted her with news that her house was on fire. A few hours later, another neighbor confirmed it was gone.

Altadena-adjacent resident Diane Farr’s fire story crossed from the land of fiction into a real nightmare. The actress starred in “Rescue Me” as a firefighter working in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and now portrays Cal Fire division chief Sharon Leone on “Fire Country.” On Jan. 7, she got the alert that her home was in the line of fire. “I had already left for filming the night before the fire started, but my house was full of everyone I love,” Farr says. “From our shooting location in Canada, I received a text to evacuate. I booked both my daughters on a plane as they go to high school out of state and sent them to the airport to get them out of harm’s way. My son went to his father’s house. My boyfriend and our house guest went to other friends’ houses…”

Ten days later, Farr was able to return home, which was still standing and undamaged, but her kids’ former elementary school burned down, as well as the homes of 28 teachers at the high school her son currently attends. “I think we all feel incredibly helpless in a fire,” she says. “While I was watching the destruction spread in the Watch Duty app and on the news, I dare say having trained with different kinds of firefighters (structural and wildland) for these roles over 25 years made me feel extra helpless. Evacuation is a privilege we enjoy because these brave men and women are running into the fire while the rest of us run out. Having my children and my home in the line of the fire and being entirely dependent on the incarcerated men and women fighting it back alongside Cal Fire, the LAFD, the visiting firefighters across California, the United States and the world has made me want to do the best job I possibly can bringing stories like theirs to TV. I have never wanted to get it right more than I do in this moment.”

Facing loss

The devastation of Wright-Lewis’ family home was preceded and followed by more pain. “We were simultaneously dealing with a sick pet,” Wright-Lewis says. “We had to put our sweet dog Princess down [the Tuesday following the fires]. On top of everything else, I lost my emotional support baby. I feel extremely disoriented and overwhelmed and sad. 

“All of this on the heels of me surviving breast cancer last year,” she says. “In 2023 and 2024, I underwent a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation. I also experienced acute anxiety and depression as a result of chemotherapy. I went into remission in the spring of 2024.”

Like learning one’s cancer is in remission, Southern California breathed a collective sigh of relief when the January wildfires (eight in L.A. County; 16 in SoCal) were finally extinguished. This “calm” in the storm, though, was just the beginning for fire victims.

When Jenny Yip, Psy.D., a clinical psychologist, author, parenting expert and mom of 8-year-old twin boys, escaped her Palisades home with her family, she could see embers flying into her backyard. She packed her family and a few items into the car within 15 minutes. “I was so panicked that I drove off with the trunk of my car open.”

Their home was quickly destroyed, yet processing this kind of loss is layered and long-term. “It’s not just, ‘Yes, my house is gone,’” Yip says. “It’s ‘This is really happening.’ The devastation, all of it. Am I emotionally devastated? Of course. But then you take it to the next level: Not only am I emotionally devastated, but we have no home. We’re financially devastated, too. And when you have kids, that vulnerability cuts even deeper. It’s this feeling of, ‘We can’t provide.’

“When people say, ‘It’s all replaceable,’ I think that is so inconsiderate,” she says. “Because the truth is, it is not all replaceable. Yes, I am grateful that my children are safe and that we are all together. But I do care about the baby handprints and footprints that we made into ornaments during our kids’ first Christmas that we will never get back. We lost all the art my children had made for me over the years. Toxic positivity is very invalidating. Instead, make room for the emotional experiences that other people are having.”

Jennifer Seifert, a writer and marriage and family therapy associate trained in helping trauma survivors, has been using her skills to help her family cope with the loss of their Altadena rental home, which was too smoke damaged to return to. To help herself cope, she has been crafting beautiful social media posts about loss, hope and her family’s real basic needs. “I described myself as feeling paralyzed,” she writes. “I know this isn’t a real bodily paralysis. I’m frozen, but not cold. Unable to make the next decision, yet I’m not elderly or ‘losing it’ (yet).

“This is a numbness that seeps into my arms, legs and head. A constant wanting to rewind time and go back. My little one just said (after he sang Katy Perry’s “California Girls” as “California Fires”): ‘I wish this had never happened.’ And I nodded and felt a sob catch in my throat.”

At press time, Seifert and her family, who have bounced around from one hotel to another, had found some more permanent housing. Still, most of their smoke-damaged belongings will not go with them. She and other fire survivors anticipated their needs this spring. “We need organization and monetary help,” Seifert says. And as the creator of the popular CRxEATIVITY Festival, a literary and performing arts series, she was rallying support to get it relaunched “sooner rather than later. Because I believe in the concept of healing through creativity.”

Daniele says survivors need spring and summer clothing. “Those whose houses burned [or can’t return to their homes] don’t have bathing suits or any other summer offerings,” she says. “Also, I’d like to see grocery stores give away gift cards. We all have to eat. I hope that people in Southern California don’t forget about us evacuees now that the fires are fully extinguished and there are other pressing news stories on the agenda.”

In addition, don’t overlook functional needs. For the 28 teachers at her son’s school who lost homes, Farr donated to their fundraisers, but she also offered her garage to teachers who needed a place to store their donations and have easy “access with or without me.”

Home or not, parenting goes on

In many cases, fire victims did not take time off from work, even as they dealt with home loss, filing insurance claims, taking care of traumatized children — and themselves.

“I’ve told my children, ‘I need you both to grow up a little,’” Yip says. “I can’t shield them from the reality of our situation anymore. That innocence they had — I can’t protect it right now. Having honest conversations with your children is so important. I know a lot of parents instinctively want to tell their kids that everything will be fine, but during a time when everything isn’t fine, that kind of reassurance feels disingenuous.”

“My son continues to ask to go home,” says Diane Tsow, a displaced Pacific Palisades resident who has a 2-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter. “My daughter has been surprisingly mature about the situation. She is really great at helping me take care of her brother.” Both of her children’s schools burned in the fire, though “LAUSD very quickly found a new school location where all of the students, teachers and staff could go together.”

Daniele’s daughter’s school, Palisades Charter High School, was also destroyed in the fire, and while “Dayna detests online school,” helping fundraise for the school’s alternative location has been empowering for her.

Wright-Lewis and her 17-year-old son, CJ, continue to see their therapists as an ongoing practice. “This will for sure help us moving forward into the unknown,” she says.

All of these strategies — talking openly and honestly with your children, supporting them in donation efforts, booking them with a therapist, extended community support — help young people cope. “The waves of emotions will keep coming — weeks, months, even years from now,” she says. “When my kids asked me if we still have a home, my answer was honest: ‘No, we’ve lost everything.’ That includes all the things that made them feel secure. Tristan had a favorite stuffed animal monkey he’s loved since he was 1, and that’s gone.

“But I also tell them, ‘We’ve lost those things, but we can find new comforts,’” Yip says. “It’s about helping them honor what they’ve lost while giving them hope that they can rebuild. This process teaches them it’s OK to grieve and that they’re still safe, even in uncertainty.”

Read more of these and other survivors’ stories on laparent.com.

Cassandra Lane is Editor in Chief and Elena Epstein is Creative Director of L.A. Parent. Freelance writer Michele Raphael contributed the LAFD quote to this report.