My Escape From the Palisades Fires
Tara Roth works in Los Angeles as a philanthropic executive. She lives in the Palisades with her 13-year-old son Dane. This is her account, as told to writer Claire Hoffman, of fleeing the Palisades fires on Jan. 7.
The night before, I wasn’t feeling well. A fever and a cold. I was sort of out of it. We get high wind alerts a lot, so I wasn’t really attuned to anything that was particularly unique about the situation.
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Dane caught his bus to school at 7 a.m. on Tuesday morning. It was windy, but not so windy. I slept until 11 or 12. I got up to get some food and medicine. I had been hearing things when I was sleeping, fire engines. But I was so sick I was just grateful to be sleeping.
I first noticed the light outside my window, which was very eerily orange, and very smoky. I thought, “Oh, gosh, there’s a fire.” I went upstairs and immediately everything was bathed in this orange light. I looked out my window, and I could see that there were cars stopped and lined up and down Palisades Drive. I turned on my phone and it’s suddenly all these alerts, calls from family members and friends. Lots of text alerts to evacuate.
I was in my bathrobe and I went out to the front door. The winds were gusting everything, the garbage cans were toppled over, all the plants were toppled over. I saw rats running around and I was like, “I didn’t realize we had rats.” I had an eye-contact moment with one of the rats where we sort of looked at each other and were like, “Oh, shit, we need to scramble out.” We shared an animalistic fear for a millisecond. I felt deeply connected to this poor rat. And then I was like, “Get over it. I need to go.” There were two fire engines right behind my parked car, which was so new it didn’t have a license plate. Outside my house, there was a group of firemen who were putting out a fire. I said, “Excuse me, should I be leaving?” And they were like, “Uh, yes.”
So I raced back in, threw off my robe, and I just put on a blazer and my shoes. I grabbed some berries from the refrigerator, I grabbed my computer, but no charger. I was thinking to myself, “You should have a charger, you should bring an extra pair of clothes, you should bring a toothbrush.” But all I want to do is get out. I’m definitely late to be getting out. I left my house. The firefighters asked me to leave my house unlocked. So I went back and unlocked my house.
I get in my car and start pulling out of my driveway but it’s gridlock. To get to Sunset from my house is less than a mile. If I had been feeling better, I would have grabbed my son’s scooter and just ridden that. It’s hard to be thinking super-clearly in the moment. But I pulled out of the driveway and realized it was sort of a no-win situation. A few people didn’t let me in, which I was like, “Wow, this is interesting human behavior.”
We were just all stopped. I saw a car parked in the median. I saw people parking their cars and getting out and walking. There’s smoke in the air. There’s debris flying in the air. After a while, I realized I’d moved probably only 20 feet or so. I looked over and I saw that at the Calvary school, there was brush on fire, and the hills above Calvary were on fire. The hills behind my house were on fire. I debated, “Do I just turn back around and park my car in my complex and run down the hill?”
Then I looked ahead and I saw one of the palm trees was on fire. I saw there was a truck on fire and no one was attending to it. No one really seemed to know what they were supposed to do other than get out. But there was no one directing traffic and it wasn’t moving at all. I thought, “Are we just all going to be sitting here and dying of smoke inhalation?” So I turn and park my car on the side of the road.
I got out and ran. I ran down Palisades Drive and I saw people had parked on sidewalks. I made it down running so much faster than people who waited. My neighbor’s daughter found me, Anna. She’s a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin and home for the break. I got into her car. She was terrified because her cat was in the house. They tried later to get the cat out but they couldn’t.
We waited in stopped traffic for a long time and saw more and more people walking down to PCH with roller bags. I remember thinking this looks like a poster for a refugee crisis, like people fleeing their countries and all they have is one bag.
They couldn’t get the fire trucks up to Palisades Drive because of all the traffic and abandoned cars. I was getting alerts from my son’s school, Paul Revere Charter Middle School, which has like 2,000 kids. They were evacuating to Westwood, to University High.
A little bit farther south on PCH, we started seeing the planes. Two huge planes, a kind I had never seen before, camel-colored. They almost looked like World War II relics or something. And they were crossing so near each other and so low — it was almost like an air show. And we’re all just watching in this semi-stunned state of mind.
We made our way down the PCH, and a little bit beyond Temescal [Canyon Road], suddenly you couldn’t see any smoke and it seemed like sparkling blue skies, normal air, no indication that there was a catastrophe right behind you. It was just that dividing line of what’s normal and what’s clearly not normal that you could feel as we got on the 10. I don’t even know how long it took. Hours.
My son was taken by a bus from his school. We kept communicating on the phone about where his bus was. At first, he was scared. But I was just like, “Focus on getting out of there.” He accepted that. He sent images that he was seeing from friends and on the news. Once they got into the high school gymnasium, I think they were just a little stunned and maybe even bored.
Anna, the girl who was driving me, dropped me and left me in line to get Dane in Westwood. The lines were around the block. The police were there. The staff had printouts of the kids’ names, they were checking parents’ IDs. The scene in line was relatively calm. There was a dad who was a firefighter who said the fire wasn’t even one percent contained and a mother who said she had lost her home in the Lahaina [Hawaii] fires last year.
I got Dane and we gave each other a hug, but it was very matter-of-fact at this stage. We had our phones out and weren’t talking to each other. I was inundated with phone calls and texts, from his dad, his brother, my mom, and friends. I had so many people offering to [have us] stay with them. But I was not feeling well. I wanted to go to the fastest place. And also, since I’m sick, I didn’t want to infect other people. Anna picked us up and drove us to her dad’s apartment. From there, we Lyfted to my friend’s house which was empty in Marina del Rey.
We walked in and got something to drink and then called Domino’s. I said, “I’m taking NyQuil and going to bed.” I told Dane, who had his backpack, “You can go ahead and have your fun,” like 13-year-old teenage [fun] with the iPhone. Calling your friends and watching TV and whatever else you need. There was no fire nearby. The traffic was a little heavier than normal but restaurants were open, stores were open. It seemed suddenly normal.
I woke up again at 10:30 at night and Dane was still on the phone and lights were still on in the house. I wasn’t checking my phone. Dane was like, “Can I go hang out with my friend tomorrow?” I was like, “No, we may not have a house. We may not have a car.”
He was living in an alternate reality. I was delighted he was. And I guess in some ways I am, too, because I’m just in my NyQuil zone. I’m barely able to function and talk. My house may be gone. My car may be gone. But I can’t think about that right now. There’s just a helplessness. Like a little disassociation, thinking about images or movie scenes or things where it’s like, “This is maybe not happening to me. This is not happening.” It seems surreal. I mean, if I don’t have a house, I will not be as calm as I am right now. But if I don’t have a house, I have to just deal and figure it out.
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