It's been a month since the Eaton Fire. For the first ten days, Zoe and I stayed in Irvine, cocooned by the clean air, grandparent attention, parks, and play dates. It was our escape. Then, the time came for us to go back and face reality. Zoe had to get back into the school routine, for her own sense of normalcy. As for me, not only did I have to get back into work mode, but also go out to our destroyed neighborhoods and take it in with my own eyes. On the morning that evacuation orders were lifted for our area (January 21st), I dropped Zoe off at preschool for the first time and it was a heartbreaking separation, even though her favorite teachers were right there with her. The teachers had to hold her away from me as I walked down the hall, waving to her and holding back my own tears while hearing her scream. Fortunately, the teachers messaged me as I was still sitting in my car in the parking lot, saying that she had settled a few minutes later and was making me a heart out of markers and paper. My next task was to drive into Altadena for the first time.
As I exited Lincoln, my heart was pounding, anticipating when I would see the first burned home. There was debris on the road from the winds, but I drove past the coffeeshop not far from home and saw people lining up, buying coffee—business as usual. I saw that the supermarket was still standing, the yoga studio, the gym. Then, the first burned house came into view, with twisted metal, blackened trees, and cars reduced to misshapen metal. Then, there were a few homes after that, totally intact. The big white farmhouse survived. The one with the Japanese-style bricks was gone. Maybe some people did what Wes did and saved their houses.. or maybe the fire worked in a weird pattern. I couldn’t understand how some were unaffected and some were leveled, right next door to each other. I also wasn’t expecting Lincoln to be fully open, after hearing stories from Wes about the barricades, the National Guard, downed trees and power lines… it was surprisingly easy to pull up to our house. I felt a mixture of emotions when I saw our house, sitting pretty as it always has, on its trapezoidal lawn, framed by the eucalyptus tree and the Chinese elm, front fence intact. It truly looked like a slice of heaven, a surreal sight in a landscape of utter devastation.
Feelings of relief, guilt, fear, dejection, and incredulity washed over me. Unlike what I'd been seeing in the news and hearing from almost all of my neighbors, our house in Altadena looked… untouched, peaceful. I backed into the driveway, for the first time in what felt like a year, and stepped out. The sun was warm against my shoulder, the birds were chirping, the grass was actually green. Wes had cleaned and swept every leaf, when he was eliminating the property of more tinder between wind storms. It was eerie, like it didn't quite belong... didn't fit the narrative of widespread destruction. It was a page out of an old book edition that was mistakenly reprinted. I wondered if seeing it made people angry.
