“It was apocalyptic”: Students from LA County grapple with wildfire devastation back home

, and | News Editors and Managing News Editor

View of the Palisades Fire from the Sepulveda Pass in West Los Angeles on Jan. 8. (Photo courtesy of Asher Schwartz)

As students settle into the spring semester, many WashU community members are thinking about their families 2,000 miles away, in and around Los Angeles, where a series of devastating wildfires have scorched parts of the city they call home.

Eight wildfires have affected LA in the past couple of weeks, with the two largest wildfires, Palisades and Eaton, remaining active today. The fires have caused catastrophic destruction in the city: more than 40,000 acres burned, over 15,000 structures were destroyed, almost 200,000 people were under evacuation orders at one point, and at least 27 lives were lost.

According to Ryan Croft, the Associate University Registrar, 2.4% of WashU’s undergraduate and graduate student body is “associated with the LA area.”

Senior Sara Goldstein, who is from West Hills, remembers walking through Topanga with a friend who had come to visit and looking at her favorite shops and cafes the day before the fires started. 

“We walked around and saw the different community events, and just had the loveliest day together,” Goldstein said. “Nothing has been confirmed, but I’m pretty sure it’s all gone now. So that was tough to be saying goodbye, but not even knowing I was saying goodbye.” 

When the Kenneth Fire broke out near the west side of the Topanga valley, close to Goldstein’s house, she was driving home and saw at least six fire trucks driving down her street.

“I got home and I immediately packed everything,” she said. “I helped my devastated 17-year old-sister pack her belongings, which was just really hard.”

Right as her family was leaving, with their belongings packed into their car, they got an evacuation notice. Goldstein and her family rushed to pick up her grandfather from the hospital, as he had just had surgery. They were figuring out where to go when they received another notification saying that the original evacuation alert was a mistake. 

“There were two sections of West Hills. Half of it was told to evacuate. Half of it, where I live, was told to stay,” she said. “We stayed in the house, but were very cautious, really kept our eyes on the maps.” 

First-year Evan Guyer is from Pasadena, where his family chose to evacuate their home due to its proximity to the Eaton Fire and the heavy smoke nearby, though they were not under a mandatory evacuation order. He said watching the fires grow larger from afar was difficult.

“It’s kind of a terrible feeling waking up every morning to check the fire progress maps to see if my house had burned down, especially when there were houses burning less than two miles from my house,” he said. 

Senior Katrina Sorochinsky, hailing from Malibu and Pacific Palisades, said that she had to evacuate her home, along with many of her family members and friends, which caused them significant stress.

“It was apocalyptic in Malibu and around that area, and [my family and I] were bickering at each other and picking fights with each other because we’re all in just these heightened states,” she said. “You turn inward or turn outward at the people you love, because they are your support system. They’re not going anywhere.”

While the fires have been extremely stressful for Sorochinsky, she has also become somewhat numb to their presence in the LA area. 

“Fires are not new to me,” she said. “I’ve had other childhood homes burned down from [them]. Two weeks prior to the Palisades Fire, my mom’s house almost burned down from another fire.”

Senior Asher Schwartz is from West LA, in a hilly and fire-prone area. While his immediate family did not have to evacuate, members of his extended family and many friends who live nearby lost their homes. Like Sorochinsky, Shwartz had previously been affected by wildfires, including in 2017 when two houses on his street burned down in the Skirball Fire.

“When we evacuated [in 2017], we thought that would be the last time we would see our home, and we were out of it for a while because of smoke and other damage,” he said. 

Schwartz said that his family is often on high alert about the risk of wildfires in the area. 

“Whenever the Santa Ana winds get particularly bad, I can visibly see how it affects my parents. Everyone gets extra ready,” he said. “For us to see the evacuation notices, and hear about it from people — it’s definitely a very familiar feeling I guess, but that doesn’t make it any less scary.”

Schwartz said that his family has spent a lot of time on the Watch Duty fire-tracking app and watching local news for evacuation updates.

“Especially in the thick of it, most nights we would stay up late all together, all in the same room, bags packed, just kind of watching the news and hoping [the fires] wouldn’t get worse or any closer to us,” he said.

One of the major issues Schwartz identified within his community was a lack of insurance coverage. According to a CBS article published this week, State Farm, Allstate, Farmers Insurance, and other private insurers dropped thousands of policies in LA neighborhoods in fire-prone areas in July.

Schwartz said that his family lost their fire insurance a couple years ago. They are now on a plan provided by the California state government, but many people in the state just don’t have access to the coverage they need.

Meanwhile, other LA residents and people across the country have found ways to help those who have lost everything. Guyer said he was grateful that he was able to help his younger sister distribute donations to individuals who had lost their homes in the fires.

“Eventually, when we got all [these donations] from the community, we ended up putting them in this storefront so that people could come and take the donated clothes. It was really amazing,” he said.

Coming back to school, Schwartz felt supported by the WashU community. On Jan. 8, the administration sent an email to Southern California students, offering support and encouraging them to utilize WashU’s counseling and psychological services if they needed mental health support.

“For me, the most supportive thing that [WashU] can do is to be [here] and be the experience that I know and love,” Schwartz said. “I’m sure that everyone appreciated seeing some kind of communication making sure that students were all ok.”

For some of his friends from LA who were more severely impacted by the fires, Schwartz said that he could see how returning to school would be challenging.

“They know that their parents would want them to go back to school and not have to worry about whatever’s going on at home, but I definitely think for people who are in a more unfortunate situation … it’s for sure a very stressful experience to not be there with their parents,” Schwartz said.

For Goldstein, the magnitude of the fires was difficult on both a personal and political level.

“I have a number of friends that have completely lost their homes,” she said. “I will say, on a much, much broader scale, I care really deeply about all of these huge climate change issues, and this is just another one of those natural disasters that we’re seeing as a result of climate change.”

Sorochinsky emphasized that because the fires are directly related to climate change and environmental destruction, more are likely to ignite in the LA area in the near future.

“Just because some of the fires are contained now doesn’t mean that more aren’t going to start,” she said. “Winds are going to pick up again this upcoming week, and they’re shutting off power again in Malibu. So this is not the end of fires. This is not the end of environmental devastation at the hands of humans.”

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