A home destroyed by the Eaton Fire sits in front of a surviving home in Altadena. California, Monday, January 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
Tim Kang has been evacuated from his home in La Crescenta for nearly a week, although he never officially received a mandatory evacuation order.
Kang, who lives with his two brothers, said they woke up around 3 a.m. Wednesday morning and left an hour later after seeing that the Eaton Fire was moving west at a ” alarming rate.”
“It was super apocalyptic,” Kang said. “There was trash everywhere, trees, bushes, a huge cloud of black smoke in the background, no electricity, everything looked like, ‘Oh man, the end of the world.'”
They tried to go to Highland Park, but the smoke was so strong that Kang developed a severe cough. After spending a few nights in Santa Clarita, he decides to stay with his girlfriend in Pasadena.
“I was mostly irritated by the smell of smoke,” Kang said. “I started getting body chills, my headache was really bad for two days, my body chills kind of got worse…I was coughing all the time.”
They haven’t had running water in the kitchen for a week since his girlfriend’s sink broke just before the fires, and they only drink bottled water due to concerns regarding water quality in the region. Most area grocery stores were out of bottled water when the city first issued a boil water advisory and so had to get it from a liquor store.