“ Stress keeps you at night ”: emotional devastation persists in the fire areas of Los Angeles

For weeks after the late Eaton ravaged his house in Altadena, Ivana Lin lived in a constant and crushing fight or flight.

His body was tense. She was barely sleeping.

At one point, she noted a list of tasks of everything she felt pressure to do in one day – including the diversion of her lost personal effects for her insurer, the request for financial assistance and the determination of child care for her 4 -year -old son whose preschool has burned.

The list had 50 tasks.

“Stress keeps you at night,” said Lin, 38, who has lived with her husband in Altadena since 2017. “You feel like you’ve finished. … We wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning. Do as much as we can. Fall asleep around midnight.

Chris Russo, who had closed a sequestration in a house in Pacific Palisades one day before palisades fires burned him, said that it was “a full -time job to manage how to recover from this catastrophe”.

Russo, who had been living in West Hollywood for 24 years, thought that she had found her paradise: a trailer for one width in the park of Mobile houses of Tahitian Terrace opposite Will Rogers State Beach.

“Honestly, it was magic,” she said. “Now I have to rotate.”

A new survey of Los Angeles County voters registered by the Institute of Government Studies of the UC Berkeley, and co -spared by the Times, revealed that the fires of January 7 had a huge emotional number on the victims, which reported extreme stress levels and dramatic changes in their daily activities.

Invited to rank on a scale from one to 10 the additional level of stress that fires added to their lives, 84% of respondents in the Palisades fire zone and 77% in the Eaton fire zone gave the highest classification, between eight and 10.

Important parts of the county residents outside the affected areas have also been deeply affected. Almost a third reported high stress levels and 40% reported moderate constraint.

Mark DCAMILLO, director of the Berkeley IGS survey, said that for those of the affected areas, the tragedy “will probably be with them for many years while the rest of the county will spend and try to find their lives”.

Residents of the burning areas were more likely than those external to that of long -standing residents to own their houses and be more satisfied with the quality of life in the Grand Los Angeles.

Eighty-four percent of residents in the Eaton fire zone and 92% in the Palisades fire zone said they had lived in the county of the county of 11 years or more.

The survey revealed that the vast majority of residents of burning areas have expressed themselves to their neighborhoods. However, around 40% thought of leaving due to fires – much more than the county residents outside the burning areas.

Residents of fire areas were “residents established by their communities,” said Dicamillo. “They have been there for a long time. They tend to own their houses. It is not a transitional community. But they had this huge disturbance of their lives. »»

“There is a kind of interesting dichotomy,” he added. “They more like it, but they plan to move more. It’s unfortunate.

Lin, a survey respondent, said that even if she and her husband planned to rebuild in Altadena and that we actively talked about with architects, they thought about because the process of replacing their life was so intimidating.

“Even if people are like,” I really like Altadena “, you really have to consider if you want to rebuild,” she said. “For me and many others, fear was that it takes an eternity and we should leave. I don’t want to wait 10 years. And some people are not 10 years old.

Just after the fire, she and her son stayed with her parents-in-law at Dana Point, and her husband stayed with friends in Pasadena, closer to her workplace. With their scattered family and his house, his son had “a cry that I have never heard before – so much anxiety”.

They hastily rented an apartment in Pasadena to reinstall their boy as quickly as possible.

Lin lived mainly in the county of the since she and her family emigrated from Brazil at the age of 12. She and her husband bought their house on Loma Alta Drive in 2017, the year they got married. The house was a total loss.

The survey said that 74% of respondents in the Eaton fire zone had structural damage to their homes or other properties belonging to their immediate families. Among those who reported damage, almost half said that the structures were a total loss.

In the Palisades fire zone, 64% of respondents suffered structural damage to their homes or other properties. Among these, just over half has undergone total losses.

Bradley Adams and his wife, Ester Song, have also lost their House Altadena near Chaney Trail, at the base of the San Gabriel mountains.

After feeling deeply connected to Altadena, Adams said that they had not been moored for two months – occasionally remaining with a family in Beach, spending a few nights to Joshua Tree with their two excitable mixtures Husky.

Adams, 34, said that he had seriously planned to leave the County of Los Angeles due to the trauma to lose the house, that they bought in 2020. He avoids looking at photos of their lifetime – joyful kitchen scenes in the kitchen, playing games at the table, working in the garden.

“Throughout all this, I want to be happy more than anything, and be in the County of Los Angeles at the moment does not make me happy,” he said. “We were so rooted in Altadena. We want to root again. But we don’t want to put our life on hold.

Song, 36, said they planned to keep their Altadena property and rebuild a house on it – but that it liked the idea of ​​being just outside the region, perhaps in a neighboring county, for the moment.

The couple have a small company based in downtown Los Angeles, Road Runner Bags, which makes bicycle bags and accessories. They lost a fleet of bikes they used to promote their products and worry about keeping their business afloat.

In the Eaton fire zone, according to the survey, 20% of residents were self -employed workers. Among these, 51% suffered damage to their business. In the Palisades fire zone, 36% were self -employed workers. Among these, 45% suffered damage to their business.

The survey has shown that residents of the fire zone supported growing funding for the city and county fire services – even if it meant higher taxes – at a higher level than other county residents.

In the Palisades fire zone, 83% of respondents supported higher funding, as is 76% living in the Eaton fire zone. Apart from the affected areas, the support fell to 64%.

The survey asked if the insurance companies should be authorized to increase their prices for fire insurance if they allow them to offer coverage for everyone. This would include those in high -risk areas where the owners have been abandoned by their providers in recent years.

In the Palisades fire zone, 66% of respondents have awarded higher costs and wider coverage, just like 56% of respondents in the Eaton fire zone. Apart from these areas, only 38% supported this choice.

Russo, a post-production supervisor and documentary filmmaker, said that it was covered by the California Fair Plan, the state insurer as a last resort and “seriously under-assured”.

Russo said that she had “much confidence that the village of the Palisades would come back strong and beautiful”, although “it will not be fast”.

She would like to see the park of mobile houses being rebuilt and moving to her house, which was destroyed before even receiving the key.

Russo, from New York, said that she was “not in love with the, but I found this beautiful community and I fell in love with the palisades”.

But she said she had to leave the County of Los Angeles, at least for the moment. She plans to visit her mother in Florida and spend time with friends at CAPE COD.

“I need a little reset,” she said. “I need a different ocean view for a while. I need a place to heal.

The Berkeley IGS survey was conducted online in English and Spanish from February 17 to 26.

He questioned 5,184 voters registered in the County of Los Angeles. The total included over-samples of 272 registered voters living in the Palisades fire zone and 293 registered voters living in the Eaton fire zone. The margin of error can be imprecise; However, the estimated margin of error of the survey for the voters of the County of the East of the East percentage, and the estimated margin of error for people living in the burning areas is 4 percentage points.