The scars left behind — charred hillsides, entire neighborhoods like checkerboards of ash and rubble — reveal only a fraction of what January wildfires took from Southern California.
A month after the first signs of smoke and flame, victims are still mourning the loss of small things, a snapshot or a teacup. Communities have been robbed of the parks and libraries and churches where they used to gather.
The Times asked readers affected by the devastation to tell us about what they lost and what it meant to them. Their stories reflect a jumble of emotions that catastrophe inevitably leaves in its wake. “It causes so much disorientation,” says Claire Bidwell Smith, author of “Conscious Grieving.” “This isn’t what our lives should look like.”
Homes can be rebuilt. People can buy new televisions, cars and refrigerators.
No insurance can replace a stuffed animal that held memories of childhood. Or a quilt made from scraps of old dresses. Or a piano that had been in the family for three generations.
More than just physical possessions, these things bind us to the past, give us a sense of order and continuity. As Bidwell Smith says, “So much of what has been lost is truly irreplaceable.”
My attachment to stuff
Mostly I feel relieved that I get to start over and not buy more than I will use. Not to get attached to our stuff, but to the friends and family that have reached out in support. It’s the best part of losing almost everything. People.
Besides china, silver and crystal, I lost two paintings, painted by my father and great-grandmother. For the most part, I lost my attachment to stuff.
The sweater coat my grandmother knit
It had flair and a timeless style, and I wore it with everything when the evenings were cool in fall and winter. She also made one for herself in something of a mauve color that my sister has and which she gave to me first thing after the fire.
The pistachio green sweater coat that my grandmother knitted for my mother in the early 1960s.
Family’s livestock
I’m just really sad that my dad lost his livestock. Some of them survived, but not all of them. I used to love to feed them. My dad would take me and my brothers with him on the weekends and when I didn’t have school. We would just hang out and swim and take care of the animals.
Family’s ranch at the top of Fair Oaks Avenue with three cows, a bull and a bunch of sheep.
A hand-stitched quilt
I lived in my home for 52 years, but now it’s nothing more than a chimney. The quilt made me think about my mom and my childhood in Louisiana. I still haven’t had a good cry. The Lord blessed me enough to let myself, my son and his family out safely. But I know something good is gonna come out of all of this. I feel like Job. I know I will get more out of this than what I had before. That’s all we can hope for, and I’m glad I’m alive.
I lost a king-size quilt that my mother knit for me. It was made of bits and pieces of fabrics from some of her dresses.
Echo Mountain trails
I’m a runner, and a friend of mine up there is a runner, and we used to just run through the mountains. Normally right now, when it’s snowy, we would actually hit the trails and run up and into the snow, just because it’s such a crazy thing to be able to do in Los Angeles, of all places, to run in the snow. Being so close to the city, but then also being able to go out and be so remote so quickly, gave me a kind of daily peace. It’s all just broken hillside now; even if I wanted to, I couldn’t get up there. The trails are gone, and what that was, it won’t be for a very long time.
All of the beautiful mountain trails are just gone. All the foliage that held the mountainside together is burned away, and so there’s nothing holding the ground together anymore.
A hand-drawn Mother’s Day gift
I was mourning that I didn’t take my daughter’s pictures she painted for me and I was just bawling because clothes, shoes, dishes, they’re all replaceable, but this stuff will never be replaced. That’s killing me. My daughter’s like, ‘I’ll paint you a picture now,’ but she’s 25 – it’s not the same silly dinosaur drawing that hung in my kitchen.
All the pictures my daughter painted me. One, of her and me and our old English sheep dog that she painted in second grade, was her Mother’s Day gift.
Southern California has always been vulnerable to a lethal mix of dry brush and fierce winds.
Still, no one expects the flames to come their way.
“So many people are angry that this has happened,” says David Kessler, a Southern California grief specialist and founder of Grief.com. “They’re asking, ‘Why me?’”
Nature devoured heirlooms that had endured for generations and paintings and backyard gardens into which people had poured their hearts. Fire destroyed block after block but occasionally skipped past a particular home. There was no apparent reason or fairness to it.
The piano
My aunt and my grandmother would play it at my parents’ house. My sister and I took piano lessons – I think we were in middle school. Our teacher, Miss Anita, tried to keep things relevant for the times, teaching us the basics but also “Windy” by the Association and “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals. The irony is that my father, my aunt and my grandmother played by ear with near perfect pitch though I don’t know that any of them could even read music, and though I could, I never had it in me the way they did down through their soul.
The piano. It had been in my family for three generations — an upright of quarter sawn oak that probably hadn’t been properly tuned for years.
The Kern Weber airline chair
The chair was replete with a cigarette burn and the inventory tag from Walt Disney Productions. It was a sister chair of one I would settle into in my father’s cutting room on the mornings I drove into work with him to the studio. During the summers, I interned with the animation department as a gopher. He liked to go in early and have coffee with the other editors – the rooms were always dimly lit and I remember the faint smell of the oil from his moviola infused with the scent of freshly brewed coffee.
The Kern Weber airline chair that I snagged from a dumpster at Disney Studios back in the mid-1980s.
A collection of videotapes
These videotapes consisted of family events that held personal meaning, and historical events and moments. The archive that I wanted these to go to [required] that I catalog each tape with a log of what was recorded on them. I did not have the time nor energy to do this job on my own.
A collection of videotapes that was yet to be moved to an archive.
Prized artworks and skateboard memorabilia
The thing is no one ever really owns art. It always exists and is moved from one person to the next, whether it’s passed down or if resold. To me, it’s not about the monetary value at all. It’s that these pieces will no longer live on.
Prized artworks and sports memorabilia, including painted skateboards, as well as a novel manuscript.
Family photo albums
There’s a picture of when my grandma was 5, I think, maybe younger, and it’s her dad, her mom and a bunch of other very old people. I can’t even identify who’s who, and it’s probably one of the only pictures that they have from those days – it’s like in Armenia. And it used to be a really tiny picture, and they got it enlarged, and so the quality is awful. But it used to be above the bed that I was sleeping in. I love that picture.
We had big picture albums. For days, I didn’t want to ask my parents [if they grabbed them] because I think that would have been like rubbing salt on the wound.
Love letters
I had this whole file of letters, you know, they write you when they’re babies, “Mama, this is you and me,” and then sweet letters from my current husband, love letters, you know. I left them, so that’s what tortures me.
Letters from children and love letters.
Now that fires from Pacific Palisades to Altadena to Castaic have finally subsided, thousands upon thousands of residents are returning to a life dispossessed of its least common denominators. No nearby school for the kids. No grocery store down the street.
When daily life gets turned upside down and shattered into pieces, people are bound to feel cast adrift. Kessler saw it when attendance for his online support group swelled to 700 last month.
“I call it ‘grief brain,’” he says. “You’re literally in survival mode and in shock.”
My son’s stuffed Pooh Bear
That Pooh Bear held a special place in my heart, because looking back at it I’d remember all those times as a kid where he’d drag it around, and how we’d have to go back to retrieve it after he inevitably forgot it somewhere. Or when he needed soothing and I’d be holding him and Pooh Bear in my arms. My boy is 20 now, but having that memento close by would take me back to those special days when he still wanted me to cuddle him, and of course Pooh Bear. I’d stare up at the shelf in my office with all the memories of my son I collected over the years, that Pooh Bear was my favorite.
I lost my son’s stuffed Winnie the Pooh. He carried it with him everywhere when he was a baby.
My parents’ wedding china
Most of that original set was destroyed in the Northridge earthquake, save for a few saucers, a cream pitcher and a cup or two, which is pretty much what now survived the fire. All now jumbled together in this box with the white stuff that was their replacement set. … I can’t help but think that they had something to do with keeping those all safe as a remembrance, and a reminder that life is a continuum, rubble and all. As I told my children, we’ll always together have that house, our home, as a part of the collective memory of our lives there. A gift from the ashes that belongs only to us.
I’m breaking your rules here and adding something of what was found … what’s left of my mother’s and father’s wedding china.
The Rosebud Academy
We had just finished our school project before the electricity went out. We cut out pictures, did the poster board and everything. She was ready to present it in front of the class. Then overnight everything changed. … I always try to let her know that it’s gonna be OK and that we’re gonna be able to go home at some point. She’s used to playing with her dolls, doing homework after school and going to church on Sundays. But so much of her routine has been lost to these fires.
Granddaughter’s school, Pasadena Rosebud Academy.
Sacred Heart of Jesus statue
We had the statue at the side of our front door and every morning we’d leave, say goodbye and ask him to watch over our family. So when we first went back to what was left of the house, we were so surprised to find him still there. He was covered in ash and dirty, but he was intact. We left him there, thinking he would continue to watch over us. But someone took it. I hope whoever has it sees it as a miracle and that it helps them build their faith. We would love to get it back, but we know he served our purpose. Now, hopefully it’s protecting someone else who loves it.
Sacred Heart of Jesus statue.
My safe space, my heart
The Palisades is one of the few enclaves in Los Angeles with multigenerational native Angelenos. A small town of good people in a big city. We’ve not only lost our homes, we’ve lost our entire community in one night. We will rebuild and be stronger for it, but we’ll always long for the glory days. An Elysian dream.
I lost my childhood home, my safe space, my church, my hiking trails, my preschool, my kindergarten, my elementary school, my library, my park, my summer camp, my heart.
Early childhood home recordings
There’s one that’s so funny. It’s my brother. He’s about 1 year old and he’s on the couch with my grandma, and my grandma was making fun of him, maybe tickling him or something, I don’t remember exactly. And then my brother turns to my grandma and just sucker punches [her] – it was so funny. It was just unexpected because he was like laughing and smiling and then went completely serious. This baby just lands like a perfect punch off my grandma’s face. It’s so funny – I think that was my favorite video.
Lots of VHS tapes of things, like of me and my brother when I was a baby and up to a toddler. For years, my mom has said, “I’m gonna go digitize these.”
Disaster is a merciless teacher.
“How do we want to live going forward? What matters to us?” Bidwell Smith asks. “Grief asks these questions.”
For some, the answers can be surprising. One reader vows to focus more on relationships and less on material possessions. Another feels unexpected gratitude that even a few pieces of her parents’ wedding china survived. Bidwell Smith says: “The truth is that loss transforms us.”
What did you lose?
The Times will continue to build this community page for friends, family and fellow Angelenos to remember what we lost in the Eaton and Palisades fires.
If you are in a safe area and would like to share a memory about things you lost in the fires, please fill out the form below. Your stories and photos of what was lost will be added to this page.
Submissions will be open for several weeks. We may not be able to respond and publish all submissions, but we read every one. Multiple submissions are welcome.
