Written By: Liz Voosen
“I’ll take the cats to the embassy”
Was not part of our evacuation plan when the hills above our home burst into flames during the wildfires that hit Los Angeles hard in January 2025. But neighbors pull together, and our eccentric neighborhood in LA was no exception.
The morning of Wednesday, January 8, began for us with dark grey smoke covering the skies from California’s wildfires. The Pacific Palisades, home to Hollywood multi-millionaires, and Eaton Canyon, home to many long-time Angelenos, had been burning for 24 hours.
The annual dry desert winds called the Santa Anas, locally known as devil winds, combined with a lack of rainfall in the previous year created dangerous conditions. The smallest spark, from a cigarette, an engine, or a downed power line from the wind storm could set off raging wildfires.
We lived miles from the Palisades and Eaton Canyon, but the weather conditions that started those fires were ongoing and threatened our little hillside with the same fate. At 2pm, neighbors on my street gathered in an emergency meeting. We discussed possible evacuation plans, checked in on those that might need assistance, and created a Whatsapp group to share information. I thought it was nice, and proactive, but I wasn’t too concerned.
But at 6:03pm I heard a siren and a single helicopter overhead. I opened the front door to look.
A neighbor was standing in the street already and looking at the hillside. Deep orange flames reached high and smoke barreled towards us. We both shouted a word not fit to print here and ran back in, hollering at our families that they had 3 minutes to grab stuff and go.
What would you grab if you had just a few minutes to get out and no “go bag” packed?
Admittedly, Pleasure-Way owners might be slightly better prepared as, if you are like me, you take frequent trips and have a packing routine. Still, though, my mind was disorganized and stressed in this unique situation. We grabbed computers first (it’s how everyone in my family makes a living and does schoolwork), then legal documents, a handful of clothes including warm coats, random food from the fridge, and a bottle of water.
As I “packed” (I don’t know if what I did could properly be called packing), I called my mom who lives just a few blocks from us and told her to evacuate and meet up with us at a mall a few miles away, in the opposite direction of the fire.
I ran next door to check on our elderly neighbors. At the meeting, they confessed that they did not have a plan of where to go in an evacuation. They agreed to meet up with us at the mall.
My husband, myself, and our 22 year old son piled armloads of stuff in our Pleasure-Way. We leashed up Lila, the family dog. Our teen was safely out of town this week. After a quick look up the street to check the fire progress, my husband ran back in the house to make a 30 second video of the house for insurance purposes, in case the fire came through our neighborhood.
As we stood on the street for one last look at the fire, our house, and the neighbors all loading up and hollering back and forth to check on each other, I felt the love and the magic that our neighborhood provides. In this hollering, we learned our newest neighbors needed help with evacuation. They had moved to LA from Europe just a few weeks ago and did not have a car. They were planning to walk with a baby, a stroller filled with important possessions, and two cats in carriers several miles south to their embassy (where he worked).
Our block captain was looking for someone with space in their cars for them. We had space to take them. We also had an extra car. So we gave them the keys so they could all ride together and install the child seat, and my husband took the cats in his car. (Our extra car is driven by my son and he’s got terrible asthma to cats.) They would meet up with us at the mall too.
The traffic getting out was nuts. People from the hills streamed south. It was rush hour, so there was heavy cross-town traffic. And further on, there were looky-loos stepping off the curbs trying to get a better view and take pictures of the fire. And drivers were already stressed from the 24 hours of fire the city had endured.
I was thankful our Pleasure-Way OnTour is narrow enough to navigate all the little side streets I took to get out of the area as quickly as possible, avoiding the main roads and gridlock.
We arrived at the mall. Our tall van was easy to spot and made the gathering hub for everyone. And I knew if we were all stuck there for a while, that we had seating, heat, water, and power to share.To say it was an upsetting, stressful time is an understatement. Also, though, it was a time to be grateful. All of us got out. No one was left behind or alone to figure things out. We knew we had a community we could count on.
Away from the imminent threat of the wildfires, we had the space and time to make phone calls and figure out next steps. Hotels were already full, due to the Palisades and Eaton fires. And all of us had friends who had already evacuated. It became a question of finding somewhere not in the path of fire or potential fire, that was south of us. The neighbors we met up with eventually all found places to go for the night.
We ended up loaning our extra car to our new neighbors for several days. This allowed them to get to the embassy where they’d get the assistance they needed and have a car for anything urgent they needed to do.
But the cats were riding in my husband’s car. As they made plans to meet up, my husband got to say the once-in-a-lifetime sentence, “I’ll take the cats to the embassy.”- Which I think sums up the cinematic Armageddon-like surrealness of our reality.
Los Angeles, famous for Hollywood sets, sometimes gets a reputation for being shallow and not so friendly. But this has not been my experience in the years I’ve lived here, and this past week confirms it. Our little neighborhood street stuck together and looked out for one another. Many people helped.
At closing time at the mall, security came around to check on us. When they heard our story, they brought free parking vouchers and said their 24 hour security would keep an eye on us. The owner stopped by personally to drop off food and check on us. His family had also been evacuated.
My family ultimately chose to stay the night at the mall parking lot in our Pleasure-Way, minus my 22 year old. He went on to stay with friends an hour south. We were far from ready to sleep, so my husband and I walked around the empty yet beautiful outdoor shops with our dog. Lila was a little uncertain of the plan, but the walk did us good. We also went up to the top of the parking garage and caught a humbling and awe-inspiring view of the 20,000+ acre Pacific Palisades fire 15 miles away.
Finally, we got ready for bed.
In the midst of this chaos, I felt reassured being in the familiar, homey space of our Pleasure-Way.
I keep bedding and all my basic supplies in it year-round. We keep the water tank filled and fresh. It was ready to go. In fact, we have considered it for years to be our “earthquake kit.” I didn’t anticipate using it to escape a wildfire, but it works well for that too, I can tell you now.
My husband, my mom, the dog and I all fit on the bed in the van. It was a little squished compared to our usual set-up, but we did it. The dog might have gotten the most space.
And we ran our air filter all night, the one I picked up traveling through forest fires in Wyoming, Montana and Washington last summer. It’s small and USB powered and is perfect for putting by the bed. Amazon has a selection of them.
Luckily for us, the weather shifted that night, and the wind was calm enough for the water-tankers to drop water on the hills near our house. The fire was contained enough for us to return home in the morning.
*My heart goes out to all the people in Los Angeles who have suffered in this wildfire. It has been truly horrific, and while we had to evacuate, and our situation was precarious for a while, we were able to return to our home and an intact neighborhood. Not everyone was this lucky.*
Stay tuned for part 2, as we left shortly after returning home for a trip to the beach town of Carpinteria to escape the continuing smoke from the wildfires.