The Fire

My buddy called me. I’m going to check on the house and I need someone to come with me, he said. His house is in Altadena, in the hills on the edge of the Eaton Fire. Did his neighborhood burn, is it still burning. Nobody knows. There are Facebook groups with people’s videos of their houses burning blocks away. Nothing on his street.

I say yes, I’ll drive. I figure if it’s bad we’ll get turned back. And I want to help the guy. But really I want to see it. Destruction all over the news, it’s covered in smoke and ashes where I live. He took his wife and kid to a hotel. He left two cars up there and his wife’s clothes, and the last stuff from his mom’s house after she died. But driving up the 110 he tells me: I just want to see it. I want to see the fire.

Ahead of us on the freeway miles of roiling smoke over the mountains. Churning from fresh flames. We get off at his exit. The main north-south drag, Lincoln Avenue, has a road block. The police turn us around. We double back and creep up the side streets. Ashes floating, the sky brown-gray. Other people are walking on the sidewalk, little houses, out rubbernecking like us. We hit another roadblock, a police SUV and behind it a house in flames. We switch streets and every tenth house is on fire at random. Most houses normal, fine, then one in flames. No fire trucks, people just walking by, cars driving by, houses on fire. A guy standing with a hose, wetting down the last wall standing from his own burnt out house, so the neighbor’s house won’t catch on fire.

Woodbury Avenue, the main east-west street, was blocked. We snuck around another side street. A narrow street and an ambulance starts coming the other way. A landscaping van in front of us takes minutes doing a 15 point turn to get out of the road. Traffic building up behind us, hemmed in on both sides, and you start to think if the wind picks up and the houses go up fast we leave the car. Take our chances.

At Santa Anita Avenue the road isn’t blocked and we get north into the hills. The phone poles hang out of the ground cockeyed and they’re on fire. Power lines hanging down in the street. We’re slaloming around them. Most houses are gone, just rubble with little flames, a brick chimney standing. Some cars made it, some are burned out. There’s thicker smoke in the middle distance, big fires still out there. And you think the wind could pick up and smother you in flames. We’re crawling up side streets tying to find one not blocked by power lines or cops, and we find one, we get to his cul de sac, and all his neighbors’ houses are gone. Black twisted metal gates and smoking crushed washing machines. But his house is still there. HOLY FUCKIN SHIT he says.

His garage is collapsed, still burning. But the house is there. He has anti gopher devices in his grass that make a whining sound every few seconds, that drives gophers away. They’re still going off.

The wind’s picking up, smoke ashes and embers. Campfire smell. I’m getting more scared. Let’s get your shit and get out of here, I say. He had a plan to get both cars but that’ll take too long. His wife’s car has the bumper melted off but it starts. There’s a tree branch the size of a whole tree blocking the road by the car, it’s on fire. I pull it out of the way.

He puts his hand on the front door to make sure it’s not hot and we go in. And the house is fine. I say what are we grabbing. Let’s get it and go. The wind’s picking up. We go in his bedroom. He shows me his wife’s list. She didn’t know the fire made it there. She thought they’d go back in two days. So it says:

In the middle right drawer is my leopard print sweater, I think. In the middle middle drawer is my green and white tank top. Can you please get my new boots and the new mom jeans I like, they should be on the top shelf in the closet…

The wind’s howling, hot smoke ashes embers. He hands me the phone with her list and says can you get this stuff. There are 15 dressers. It’s black inside and we’re using flashlights. I’m pulling open middle drawers, I can’t find anything. I find what I think is the mom jeans. There are 15 pairs of boots. Which one is new. I tell my friend let’s just throw shit in bags but he wants to follow his wife’s instructions. The wind’s picking up, outside, the flames…

I need to piss and I go to the neighbor’s yard to where a tree stump is on fire but my stream doesn’t make it. We get out. As we drive down the hill ten cop cars and two blacked out ATVs are ripping up the slope. A hundred cops in town and two fire engines.

I go home and finish my work from home tasks. That was my lunch break. Susannah texts me. She’s coming over. Did you bring the dog I say. We go to the dog park while she polishes jewelry. No, she says. I already left. She gets here, she’s polishing jewelry, I smell like a burning house and I’m shaking so I take a bath. And I look at Twitter and it says there’s a new fire where she lives. The Sunset Fire.

Should we go get the dog, I say.

Because you’d think they wouldn’t let a fire go in Runyon Canyon. Where Madonna’s house is- they’d never let that happen. Except there’s no they, there are no firemen and no water, and it would not surprise you now if they let the whole city burn down. And then her friend asks to come to her place. Because there’s yet another fire. And his house is burning down.

And on and on. We go get the dog. Traffic in the other direction so bad it’s its own news story. KTLA reporters gesticulating at stuck cars, and if the fire spreads here they’ll need a bulldozer like in Palisades for the gay guys’ Range Rovers. And for us.

We get to her house. I hug and kiss the dog. We play a game we invented. Where she pulls on her toy and it pulls me across the room while I sit in Susannah’s rolling computer chair. The Sunset Fire is contained.

A guy I know had his house burn to the ground today. Good insurance but he can’t rebuild, it might not be insurable. Altadena burned. There’s no town anymore. And if your house made it the water won’t be back, the power wont be back for a long time- there’s no they. But we’re alive, that’s something.