In the valley of fire

I woke up on Tuesday, January 7, feeling like I was near the top of the world.

After a week of solitude on the Pacific ocean, it was my first day back to work and reality. I love the sea. It’s my escape. I can truly disappear. I love the fact that the phones don’t ring. I love the fresh, unpolluted air. I climbed off the boat feeling I’d banked a few months of inner calm that would withstand whatever storm 2005 had in store.

By nightfall, the calm was all gone.

A raging fire was tearing through the city of Angels. Los Angeles was not just fighting a fire. We were fighting a monstrous wind. They call it the Santa Ana winds but I’ve always thought of it as the devil’s wind. And that was in good times. The wind speaks and the fire howls. The fire burns and the wind carries the embers for a few miles, ravaging properties that were safe only a blink of an eye before. The evil wind kept fire-fighting planes away so the fire can wreak maximum damaged.

Nothing compares to this. Not even COVID. COVID was terminal. That was a battle between life and death. This is what my high school English teacher would have called “present continuous”. This was a battle between life and ruination. Even the sun seemed scared, peeking at Los Angeles through the hazy clouds in an orange glow.

Calls and texts trickle in. Friends. Colleagues. Family. Some near, some a world away. People checking up on you. Neighbors fleeing and letting you know. Friends looking for temporary accommodations because theirs are under immediate threat. Friends letting you know their homes are open should you need a place to stay. Text showing you escape routes from the fire.

The center for the battle was the Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood almost twenty miles to my west. I was safe. Valiant fire fighters stood between me and the fire. But my friends in that part of the town were not. I spoke with some as they fled the fire. I watched what they were fleeing on the television.

It doesn’t break your heart. It kills it. I’ve spent parts of my life in these neighborhoods, creating beautiful memories and now it was going before my eyes, mansions turned into rubbles, schools where the joyful voices of children once rang down the halls now a sizzling rubble, a beach club I love now perilously close to the furious flames.

Then another fire starts a mere seven miles away from me. Then another less than ten miles away. I am trapped within a triangle of fast-moving fire. I am not safe anymore.

Flee or stay? I diagrammed the fires on an app, calculated the distance of the fires to me by driving distances – twenty-four minutes, eleven minutes and seven minutes.

I make a quick call and arrange temporary accommodation about seventy miles away from the city. The phone rings. It’s one of my producers. She’d tracked all my projects and moved the hard drives into secured storage. We wish each other good luck and hang up.

I gathered my family and considered our options. My wife took a quick stock of her pantry, decides quickly that we have enough food to last a while. I decide we will stay for the night and monitor the fire. Traffic was looking dicey. If the fire got closer, we would flee in the middle of the night. We gathered around the television set, watching the news until we all fell under the spell of sleep.

We woke up to our phones buzzing. An alert from the city. YOU’RE UNDER EVACUATION WARNING, the text screamed. It tells you to get ready to leave, to leave your home because the coming fire is racing towards you like it’s on steroids.

At moments like this, you expect your heart to race with fear. But mine didn’t. It was eerily calm. I walked around the house, looking at my home not sure if I’m ever going to see it again. I looked out my backyard window, saw the smoke and fire beyond the trees and hills.

I stepped outside to the thick smell of smoke. A policewoman drove up and down the street, ready to blare her siren and pound on doors , if necessary, when the time comes to flee. Fire trucks, police cars and ambulances race up the freeway and the streets. I pause for a moment to say a prayer for these fire fighters, police officers and first responders racing towards a danger just to save our lives. Now I know the meaning of a hero.

Power was out. WIFI was off. I need to be in touch with the world. I jump in the car and chase WIFI signal. Half a mile down the road, I pick up a signal. Texts and voicemail flooded into my phone. I park on the side of the road to get up to date.

In the few hours that I slept the fires had come closer, my neighbors a mile down the road have been asked to evacuate, the bustling neighborhood I drove through only 24 hours ago was now a ghost town.

I drive back home under a drizzle of ashes. People were dousing their houses with water from the pool and hydrants to keep them wet. Old folks who had lived here for decades stood on their porches in a daze. A trickle of cars pull away from homes not knowing if they will return to it or its ruins.

This didn’t look like Los Angeles, the city of angels. The city of dreams. The richest city in the richest state in the richest country in the world. It feels like I went to sleep and woke up in a macabre movie. Once bustling neighborhoods stand like a zombie apocalypse.

You return home to hear the voice of your wife yelling like a field Marshall at war.

“Everyone get a carry-on bag and put what you need in it!”

But what do you pack? How do you fit a life into a 20-inch bag.

At moments like this, you realize the vanity of life. My kids took a few clothes, dumped their tablets and computers in their bags. No games, no designer clothes or sneakers. My wife packed her computer, tablets and a few clothes. No jewelry. I packed up our passports, cards, a few hard drives and a few clothes.

Four lifetimes in four bags!

Oyamendan is a filmmaker based in Hollywood.