CNN
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No stranger to natural disasters, Pasadena resident Pedro Rojas keeps a safety bag in his car containing essential items like a jacket, gloves and running shoes in case he needs to flee at any time.
Rojas did not wait for an evacuation order. He and his family rushed out of their home Tuesday night minutes after seeing high winds and the Eaton Fire begin to ignite, and took shelter at his daughter’s home in nearby Eagle Rock. All he grabbed was a box containing important documents.
“It’s terrible because we left home with nothing,” he told CNN on Thursday.
In less than 12 hours, the family of 11 was forced to evacuate again. Today, Rojas is staying at a hotel in Azusa, about 15 miles east of Pasadena, and he doesn’t know when he will be able to return home. While the house is still standing, it will require chemical testing and cleaning of smoke and ash before the family can live there safely, he said.
“We don’t know if this is going to last one, two, three, four months, a year,” Rojas said, adding that he is trying to get temporary housing through his insurance company.
Rojas is one of more than 170,000 people still under evacuation notices more than a week after the fires broke out in Los Angeles. Many are staying in temporary housing like shelters, hotels, short-term rentals or with friends. Authorities face multiple challenges in ensuring areas are safe and habitable.
“Properties have been damaged beyond belief. They are filled with sediment, debris, silt and hazardous materials. » Los Angeles County Public Works Director Mark Pestrella said Thursday, adding that the Environmental Protection Agency was working to remove the toxic debris.
Frustrated, Los Angeles County evacuees are eager to return home to assess the damage, collect their essential goods, determine what their insured losses are, and assess what can be salvaged from their remaining belongings. But they will have to wait at least another week before they can do so safely, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said Thursday.
“There is this extreme level of frustration,” said Crystal Kolden, a professor at the University of California, Merced and wildfire researcher. “But that frustration…it’s really about trying to keep them safe.”
Wildfire evacuees tend to experience “evacuation fatigue” when they are unable to return home due to the danger of fires, toxic smoke, and hidden dangers such as debris flows, fallen trees, downed power lines and gas leaks, Kolden said. Additionally, energy, water and sewer infrastructure must be restored in affected neighborhoods.
“I want to go back to the house, even if you know it’s gone, even if you’ve seen the photos or a neighbor told you, returning to that house that was lost is the first step of the grieving process,” Kolden said.
In pictures: Deadly wildfires in Los Angeles County
The first house Altadena resident Eric Martin ever owned suffered extensive damage from wildfire smoke, he said. Now he doesn’t know if he can stay in Los Angeles.
“We were thrilled to find the house because we had been looking for years, and Los Angeles is so expensive and there are so few on the market,” Martin told CNN on Thursday.
In the beloved home, Martin’s sons, ages 1 and 3, created their first memories. “It was the house our kids were going to grow up in, so we were very excited to move in,” he said.
When the Eaton Fire broke out 10 days ago, Martin couldn’t find temporary housing nearby. So he and his family fled to a hotel in Long Beach, about 40 minutes away. His wife loaded the car with their sons’ stuffed animals, as well as photos and family heirlooms that Martin says are “irreplaceable.”
“We’ve just been piecing together friends, houses, hotels and Airbnbs while we wait to get answers,” Martin told CNN.
For evacuees, returning home varies greatly from wildfire to wildfire, depending on the extent of the damage and safety risks left behind, Kolden said.
“This is a very unique event in one of the most populated places in the country,” Kolden said.
The wildfires have killed at least 27 people and 31 others are missing, devastating entire neighborhoods that will take months to clear. According to Cal Fire, up to 12,000 homes, businesses and other structures may have been destroyed in the Palisades and Eaton fires alone.
After the Camp Fire broke out in November 2018 in Paradise, California, it took nearly a month for the first of 30,000 evacuated residents to begin returning home. More than 18,000 structures were destroyed, according to FEMA. More than six years later, nearly 2,600 homes have been rebuilt.
In 2023, Lahaina residents who fled the wildfires that ravaged Maui, Hawaii, began returning more than a month later, but the county warned that “many dangers remain,” including the threat of hazardous materials such as asbestos, heavy metals and by-products of the combustion of plastic and other chemicals.
Altadena resident Ryan Bojanovic received updates from his neighbor about the firestorm on his street. He waited anxiously by the phone as every house in his neighborhood burned like a fuse – until the flames reached his own house.
“All the time we were praying, it was not achieved, but it seemed inevitable,” Bojanovic told CNN.
Eventually, he heard the news that his house was gone, which was like “a sudden plunge into an ice bath,” Bojanovic said. He stayed up alone all night in a Monterey Park hotel.
Just five hours earlier, Bojanovic and his girlfriend had evacuated after noticing the fire getting closer, ash falling from the sky and the area starting to fill with smoke.
Bojanovic is “extremely upset” about not being able to return home to find a sense of closure, he said. He tried to gain access to his home three times, but police told him there were looters and he would not be able to return in the near future, he said.
“What about people who hope to see if there is anything left of their life other than ashes? » said Bojanovic. “We have to live with the fact that our lives are permanently transformed and some parts completely erased. »
Disaster survivors like Bojanovic are part of “the worst club with the best people, and so people really show up for you,” said Jennifer Gray Thompson, CEO of After the Fire USA, an organization that is part of the non-profit organization Rebuild. NorthBay Foundation and helps communities recover from wildfires.
It is important to use available resources, including assistance from FEMA and financial advice provided by nonprofit organizations. Wildfire survivors should protect themselves financially, but also take care of themselves emotionally, she said.
Having a community to share grief and trauma with is essential after major wildfires, Thompson said. Getting community support leads to much faster, better and less expensive rebuilds, according to Thompson.
“The only way to overcome a disaster, the only way to overcome a megafire, is to be able to look at it as a group project,” Thompson told CNN. “We need to protect the process because it’s for long-term health.”
Families affected by wildfires are “trying to figure out how to go about their daily lives, while rebuilding their lives,” Kolden said. Survivors must develop plans for temporary housing and rebuilding while coping with the loss of schools, places of worship and other community institutions. Accessing daily necessities like clothing, medicine and food can also be a challenge, she said.
“It’s also extremely personal for each homeowner who lost everything they collected and moved from house to house,” Thompson said. “Most people want to go back, sift through what was there and grieve. »
The rebuilding process after a wildfire typically takes two to three years, and many homes are not rebuilt at all, Kolden said.
For Martin, it could be about six to 12 months before his family can live in their home again, “but it’s still a question of when we’ll be able to get in there to start all of this,” Martin said. .
“All we can do is plan, plan, we have no idea of the timeline,” Martin said.
In the meantime, Martin hopes to find housing for his family — but he’s not sure that’s possible with Southern California’s tough and expensive real estate market, he said.
As for Rojas, he wants to return home to see if he can recover any “precious treasures” like photo albums capturing the memories of his six grandchildren and his family’s travels.
But it could take at least five to six months before his house becomes habitable, Rojas estimates.
“It’s going to take a lot of time, a lot of patience, and we’re going to have ups and downs, because emotionally it’s very draining,” he said.
