Woman on the Front Line

Santa Ana Winds

In Part 1, I explained the Los Angeles landscape and our specific geography, the San Gabriel Valley, to help those watching from afar understand more about the Eaton Fire. Today, I will explain another potentially foreign concept: Santa Ana winds.

Santa Ana winds are strong, warm winds originating inland (deriving their name from a large canyon) and blowing toward the coast in Southern California and Baja California, Mexico. They usually arrive in autumn, our region’s hottest time. While a breeze may sound nice in the scorching temps of late August and early September, this phenomenon creates dangerous weather conditions of low humidity and forceful, dry winds over parched land. Typically ranging from 10-25 miles an hour and lasting 1-3 days, they contribute to dangerous fire conditions, known to blow fires far and wide through dry vegetation.

Even in the absence of fire, these winds can cause a great deal of damage. The most memorable to our family was in December 2011, when the strongest Santa Ana winds on record hit our town. Gusts of up to 167 miles per hour uprooted large trees from the ground, including our town’s Christmas tree in Library Park.

January 7: Wind Event

Early morning

I no longer recall whether it was from my phone, the public school, or Alexa. Still, I was aware of the wind advisory that was in effect from January 7-8. I knew the gusts could be stronger than usual. However, I woke up expecting that this first post-new year week was moving toward a routine.

We had a friend staying with us, in town to meet with her doctoral cohort. I was surprised when I learned that Fuller Seminary had preemptively canceled its classes early the morning of the 7th. It did not appear they had experienced a downed power line, so it seemed overly cautious compared to my previous experiences with Santa Ana winds.

9:00 am-1:00 pm

I dropped our guest in Arcadia at 9:15 a.m. and headed to Sierra Madre for a meeting at Mater Dolorosa retreat center without concern about the winds. I went back to Monrovia and logged onto Zoom for an 11:30 a.m. meeting, during which I shared how puzzling it seemed that Fuller Seminary closed its campus for two days.

1:00 pm-5:00 pm

I asked my husband if we could work on an expense report from 2024 before the day got away from us then took a break on the couch. As soon as I did, a call came in from Atlanta. My former boss read aloud to me snippets from a NYTimes article about a fire breaking out in Pacific Palisades and San Gabriel Valley among the areas that could be affected by the wind event. I hadn’t heard about the Palisades and was not concerned about the SGV.

As our conversation continued, by about 2:00 pm I could hear wind whirling all around our home. After I hung up, I decided to finish my errands. I took a video of myself walking through the gusts. Before I could enter the post office, everyone exited, saying the power was out.

When I came home, the power was out at our house, too. Jeff and I celebrated when it came back on shortly after, but we gathered up candles and battery-operated lights. Sure enough, it went off again and remained off for around 27 hours total. (A relatively short amount of time compared to those going on 9 days with no utilities).

Monrovia friends were texting about who lost power and trying to figure out if sports practice was continuing at our high school. The kids had not yet returned from Christmas break, but sports had just resumed the day before.

5:00 pm-10:00 pm

The high school had power. Just before 5:00 pm, I drove our son to basketball practice, planning to return in two hours for the game. On the way there, we were at a four-way stop with a flashing red (normally a four way light with protected lefts). We could see a train approaching the intersection and the guardrails had not properly gone down. A car turned left over the train track, noticed the train was coming, and then reversed into traffic, nearly hitting the next car coming through. Our son, who studying to get his driver’s permit, noted how chaotic the scene was.

At 6:16 pm, my son called to say the game was canceled because pieces of the gym roof were flying around. I drove back, cognizant of the traffic light problems and the old Colorado Blvd trees bending toward the street as if to pray, penitently, while I headed westward. I played a mental game of Frogger. As one tree would bend, I would slow down, wait for it to pop back up, and pass by. I called Jeff to let him know how bad it looked.

A dust storm kicked up and pushed against our son as he struggled to get in our car. Departing the gym lot, I did not want to turn left and head back down the tree-lined streets, passing the train at multiple intersections. Nor did I want to go along Foothill, which seemed primed for a collision at the many pitch-black intersections.

For better or worse, I chose to go down Myrtle, the center of our cute little downtown, hoping to encounter fewer vehicles. Still, with debris swirling from all the storefronts, my son and I were eager to get home safely.

Back home around 6:50 pm, my friend and neighbor’s parents needed access to her spare key to enter the house during the power outage. I handed it into their car window in front of my home and texted her to confirm the transfer of the keys, noting that driving was becoming unsafe.

At that moment, as I paused out front, I saw something catch fire in the distance. While looking across the street between tall trees in the cemetery and buildings in the background, I called Jeff to come out. He hobbled on his crutches from a recent surgery with our son behind him. At first, I thought it may have been an explosion at a nearby industrial building, but Jeff knew it was the mountain.

I sent a quick text to the same friend before I went back in and said, “The mountain just caught on fire.”

“By us? Or Palisades?” she asked.

“Pasadena?” I replied and sent this picture.

I quickly learned that Eaton Canyon had just caught fire 8 miles west and a little north of my home. Before this moment, I would not have believed you could see Eaton Canyon while facing my front door. We now know the fire started around 6:15 pm. It was visible from my front door at 6:55 pm.

The last person to arrive safely was our guest, who was out with her class eating dinner, unaware of the full extent of what was happening outside. It took us some time for us to connect and figure out how she would get home. As soon as she did, friends evacuating Altadena near the canyon began to call.

One friend asked if her family could evacuate to us. Ever the recovering perfectionist, I told her, “Yes, but we have no power, no floors, and we have an out-of-town guest. You’re welcome, but I want you to know.” I did not even mention that my husband was on crutches from surgery a few days ago. She texted back that they would stay in a Target underground parking lot and I kicked myself for saying anything more than “Yes!”

Later, I texted her back, apologizing and telling her I should not have mentioned anything. “Just come,” I said. At that moment, another friend called. She lives directly across from Eaton Canyon, and they left their home with embers all over their yard (see link for a video from her neighbor two doors down). They had secured a hotel in Monrovia, but it had no power. It was after 7 o’clock, and they had been driving around with two of their teenage sons, unable to find a place to get food. I said we would throw something together.

Jeff and our guest quickly lit the gas stove to boil water for noodles and pan-fried leftover chicken katsu. The first friend called back, saying she was on her way after all. My executive function was overwhelmed. Our daughter had just gone back to college after a month at home. Her room was a mess. Our dear friend and guest began helping me strip the bed in the dark, piling the dirty stuff to the side if this family needed to sleep there. (This guest is the same friend who once helped me wipe toddler vomit off a Pack ‘n Play into a bathtub. I was having flashbacks, but she assured me the messy teen room was not nearly as bad as the toddler vomit).

While stripping and making the bed, my friend walked in downstairs, saw our mutual friends who had since arrived, and burst into tears. I came down the steps and hugged her, still stupidly apologizing about our house. In the end, she and her family found a better place to stay with electricity. Note to self: continue to work on not needing ducks in a row to serve and help. Before she left, I walked her to the car. Her husband came out, and I hugged him, knowing full well they could lose their house that night, and they were terrified. I waved to their daughter in the backseat, my son’s former classmate, whom we’d known since she was two years old with the big sisters in kindergarten. She was sitting like a little kid going to a sleepover with pillows and blankets surrounding her. I imagine their cat was in there somewhere too. I wondered if she would have anything left for her after the night was over.

My friend Ellie, back in Michigan, was nursing her newborn in the middle of the night when she texted me about the baby monitor I purchased for them. I told her our circumstances briefly, and she put it so well. “You’re like the innkeeper with no more room. Who would have thought that a ripped-up house used as a surgery recovery area would also become an evacuee refuge?”

Before the second family left our home, we gathered in our living room for a quick prayer for the safety and protection of the community and homes. We knew embers had been landing in their yard two hours before.

Already exhausted before this week had begun, we retired to bed early without power. Jeff made his way up our long staircase in the dark, still hobbling, five days after surgery. Once in our room, he opened the blinds so we could keep one eye on the fire all night.

Sleeping Under a Burning Mountain

For those unfamiliar with living near California wildfires, you make ask, “Why didn’t you evacuate along with your friends? Why would you go to bed under a fire?” It is an odd truth, but there are times living here when we go to bed under a wildfire in our local mountains that could, potentially, spread. It is not because we did not understand the gravity of the greater situation.

Of course, you can leave immediately and early if you have a place you prefer to be, but if the fire does not spread in your direction, chances are you will have school and work in the morning. You may also want to stay and keep your property safe from the winds, or God forbid, hose it down one last time, as we saw in many videos. It is unusual to leave the area completely before you are even in an evacuation zone unless you have particular health needs. Instead, you check the evacuation map and set your, hopefully, fully-charged phone right by your ear for notifications.

For midwestern friends, the closest comparison I can think of is if you grew up, like I did, where heavy snow is frequent and salt trucks are at work around the clock. Still, every once in a while, there is a dangerous winter storm, with winds and ice, that knocks down power lines or creates black ice on the roads. Not every fire is going to come down from the mountains and burn houses. Not every ice storm is going to result in school getting canceled due to widespread treacherous conditions. Even so, I admit, fire is probably more dangerous than ice since it leaves nothing but ashes. (Or, maybe there is a better comparison to be had with lightening storms, something I have found Angelenos to be inexperience with and fearful of).

Regardless, as you wait, you will not sleep. With every loud buzz of real-time info you lift your head, direct your bleary eyes to the blue light of your phone, and squint while zooming back over the evacuation map to clarify whether the alert was for you. If you are in the red zone, you go right away. If you are in the yellow zone, you might leave as a precaution rather than risk yellow turning to red. For us, that night, we were neither and the safest thing was to stay off the roads. People were largely evacuating to our town, not away from it, except for those homes at the highest elevation.

We could hear the winds whirling around us like a tornado all night, palm branches brushing hard against the side of the house and our window. I could not get a good stretch of sleep. I thought of my friends who had stopped by and so many others posting on Facebook, their pain and fear of what might happen.

I knew there would be debris strewn about the city in the morning. We did not know for sure that so many of our friends’ homes and an entire community were engulfed under a literal firestorm carried by nearly 90-mile-an-hour winds. Unable to sleep, I just prayed and begged God for mercy for our friends and community, that they would not have a total, unthinkable loss.