The Eaton Fire

On January 7 and 8, 2025, Los Angeles was hit by a series of wildfires, driven by Santa Ana windstorms with gusts of 60 mph and more. One of them, the Eaton Fire (so named because it started near Eaton Canyon), destroyed the town of Altadena, which sits between Pasadena and the San Gabriel mountains. This fire eventually consumed over 14,000 acres and destroyed 7000+ buildings—mostly homes—in this community. Among the destroyed structures were our home and my studio; the latter contained 50+ years of origami, including artwork, books, paper, design notes, equipment, and more.

Despite those losses, we consider ourselves fortunate. We escaped with our lives and our animals (two dogs, three tortoises, a snake, and a tarantula), a few origami artworks of special significance to me, and my 19 design notebooks containing notes and diagrams from age 10 onward.

At this writing (January 16, 2025), we're in a hotel, working on finding a longer-term place to live not too far away. We plan to rebuild—both the home and the studio—but that is going to be a long process (if only because there are tens of thousands of people left homeless by the Eaton and Palisades fires all trying to do the same thing). Our spirits have remained high; we lean on each other to work, research, and joke as we handle the many, many chores that now lay in front of us. My (our) attitude is perhaps best summed up by this now-famous scene from a classic movie:

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

In the first few days after the fire, I took some videos and subsequently put together a little writeup of those first crazy days of disaster and uncertainty. I've copied it below.

The Morning After

Late Tuesday afternoon, we heard about the Eaton Fire, which started over in Eaton Canyon, about 2 miles to our east and several ridges over. The initial reports were that the wind was driving the fire to the east (away from us), so we were hopeful. At about 6:30 pm, though, my neighbor texted the neighborhood group that he saw a glow over the ridge to our east, and I headed up to my studio to see. By 7:30 pm I saw the fire crest that ridge and we received the "evacuate NOW" notice, so I threw as much as I could grab into my car and headed down, while my wife did the same from our home (with the dogs, tortoises, snake, and tarantula that live with us).

We spent the next few hours driving and parking to try to watch things from a distance. Surprisingly, the evacuation zone ended just to the west of our neighborhood, so after a while, I started making my way to the edge of the zone, staying out of the way of the many emergency vehicles, and presently found a spot from which I could walk to the edge of the canyon that separated me from my studio. From there, I could see the studio; I could also see that the entire multi-thousand-foot mountainside above it was in sheets of flame. The wind was blasting through the canyons, driving 50-foot plumes of flame and embers horizontally. About 1:30 am, I saw a flare-up right at the studio, and within about 10 minutes, it was engulfed. I also realized about that time that the fire would likely take down the telephone poles (and thus, potentially live wires) along my route, so I beat a hasty retreat to my car, and before long, the authorities announced that our area was now evacuation zone. We drove down the hill to Pasadena, found a quiet neighborhood out of the smoke (and, we hoped, the path of the fire), and spent a fitful rest of the night in our cars, awaiting what the morning would bring.

In the morning, my wife stayed with the animals and I drove up the hill to see what became of our house. Major roads were blocked off, but I wove through the neighborhoods, dodging still-burning homes (though the worst was past), downed wires, downed trees, and random debris, until I could get up to my neighborhood. It was a zone of total devastation: nearly all homes burned–and definitely mine. (Actually, both of ours; we had just moved down the street, so both our old house–just moved out of–and the new house–just moved into–were leveled.) I made my way up to my studio at the top of the hill, passing street after street of nothing but smoldering ruins. When I made it up, I found something incredible: the row of houses below my studio had entirely survived! I texted their owners the good news. I could see, though, that my studio had not; I parked (debris blocked my driveway), walked up, and surveyed the destruction, took a few videos and pictures for records, then high-tailed it down the hill.

Right now, the estimates are that 7000 structures were damaged or destroyed. It looks like about 2/3 of Altadena is gone. There's a lot of snark on the internets about the rich people/celebrities/influencers in Pacific Palisades losing their houses. I haven't seen similar snark about Altadena, which is a mixed-class, mixed-race community. There are turn-of-the-century buildings, craftsman houses, bungalows, tiny starter homes, and yes, a few mansions leftover from the days when it was the summer playground of the rich. My wife grew up here; her father built their house himself in the 40s after clearing the orange groves from the parcel he bought. On the main drag downtown, the local hardware store was where you ran into your neighbors; Fox's Restaurant had been a local landmark since 1955. All that is gone.

Ironically, I had recently returned from a business trip to Dresden, Germany, which was (famously) fire-bombed and leveled in WWII. They rebuilt. So will we. But it will be a long road to recovery.

Videos

2025-01-08

Videos taken the morning after the fire (which was still burning).

2025-01-09

Videos taken two days after the fire; most fires are out, except for gas-leak-driven flames here and there.

Press