The day before it burned down, I was worried about losing my house. Not because of a looming natural disaster, but a looming professional one; I hadn’t worked in a while and prospects were grim. But I was almost finished with a new script that would end my financial worries. This is the kind of wishful thinking I often engaged in, and that extended to how I would react to that day’s events.
At about 11 a.m., my doorbell rang. It was my neighbor Alan.
“There’s a fire,” he said. I joined him on the street as we saw a plume of white smoke in the sky behind my house. Alan looked at me.
“Are you going to leave?” Alan said.
“I don’t know,” I said. Neither one of us was the decision maker in our family.
I went inside to turn on the news. There was a fire in the highlands of Pacific Palisades, and the Santa Ana winds were causing it to spread quickly. Though I lived in Pacific Palisades, I was not that worried; we lived in a small, contemporary Cape Cod style home in an area called the Alphabet Streets (streets at the base of the hills, named with the letters A-K, but no J). It was typically not prone to the danger of the seasonal fires.
In the 28 years we lived there, we’d had to evacuate only once, but our home had never been in any real danger. We’d returned from that evacuation after three days, so I assumed that was the worst case scenario.
What we did back then was take our important documents and the few valuables we had. So I matter-of-factly texted my wife Wendy, told her to come home from her job as a therapist to figure out the documents we needed, then she could go back to work. I was supposed to take my daughter Talia to the airport, but told her to take an Uber, and assured her there was nothing to worry about as I began to take our few pieces of art off the walls.
Soon we got a one text warning from the L.A. Fire Department to prepare to evacuate. Then, just as Wendy arrived home, Alan texted. “Just got a text from the fire department. Evacuate now.”
Wendy found us a hotel in Marina del Rey. She went back to work, while I went to the hotel.
It was chaotic, filled with evacuees fortunate enough to afford a hotel. I ran into a neighbor, a television executive, Johnnie. He said his fireman pal had said that this was a “100-year fire.” Johnnie could be hyperbolic, so I smiled, went to my room, and turned on the news.
It was much worse than I realized; in the hills people had abandoned their cars to escape the approaching flames; the high school was on fire, the dry cleaners, and Gelson’s grocery; the Fire Department couldn’t battle the fire because of the winds, they were just going to let it burn all night. But the online fire map told me that the fire still hadn’t reached my home.
I went back to the lobby to wait for Wendy, who was coming from work. A woman who lived behind Gelson’s asked me where I lived. I told her the Alphabet Streets.
“Oh, your house is gone.” She said a friend of hers said the “I” street was on fire (my house was on the “G” street). Her rudeness in delivering this news helped me justify not believing it.
At 8:07 p.m. a notification on my phone said my home fire alarm was going off. Vainly I tried to convince myself smoke seeping in was what set it off.
The next morning Alan sent me a video made by a neighbor who’d snuck back onto our street. Not a house remained.
Willful ignorance and wishful thinking had defined not just those 24 hours, but my life in Los Angeles. I am fortunate in that I probably could have afforded to move out of L.A., but didn’t; so as I saw our city become drier and hotter, I ignored it, and we stayed. What could happen?
Well, we’ve lost everything; most of our financial worth, all our belongings, clothes, furniture, books, photos, school projects, love notes. A house that brought memories of raising a family, hosting Passover and Thanksgiving, the joy of having a home, now gone. And still, I’m better off than most.
I’m in a hotel, wondering what’s next. I still have to finish that script.
Goodman is a screenwriter and former president of Writers Guild of America West.
