Former South Africans now living in Los Angeles (LA) and caught up in the fire disaster this week described the horror of watching helplessly as the inferno approached their homes. To date, the fires have killed at least 11 people and destroyed more than 10,000 houses and other buildings in a tragedy reminiscent of the 2017 Knysna fires — except on a much bigger scale.
Ann Peacock, a former Cape Town resident who emigrated to the US in the 1990s, was forced to watch the drama unfold from Pringle Bay where she was holidaying when one of the multiple LA fires erupted in the hills close to home on Belair Ridge.
She and her family cut short their South African holiday upon hearing that other families are evacuating from their suburb.
“We are in Pringle and watching helplessly as the catastrophe unfolds,” said Peacock, an award-winning screenwriter whose work includes The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
“We are in the path of the fire if it jumps the major freeway separating us from it. Our neighborhood is under evacuation alert although many people have already left anyway.”
“We were due to go home on Thursday next week but are flying back today after getting news the fire has edged closer to us,” Peacock said shortly before her departure on Saturday.
She said she had asked a family member to retrieve their important documents. “That’s all we could pre-emptively do. Many friends and colleagues have either lost their homes or are in danger of it. It’s kind of apocalyptic. The west side of LA has been spared these fires for the most part, but now everywhere is fair game.”
Glynn Hulley, a research scientist with Nasa who now lives in LA, was one of many forced to flee and take refuge elsewhere in the city.
“We are all safe and hunkering down in a hotel in Long Beach for a few days,” he told his South African family in response to their queries.
“Luckily, our house is still standing, but we won’t be able to return until the air quality improves. [It was a] very scary sight last night, as we saw huge flames approaching in up to 140km/h wind gusts, with homes burning down in less than 30 minutes. I’ve heard of four work colleagues already who [have] lost their homes.”
It was reported yesterday that the largest of the raging wildfires had shifted direction, triggering more evacuation orders and posing a new challenge to exhausted firefighters.
Six simultaneous blazes have ripped across Los Angeles County neighbourhoods since Tuesday. The death toll is expected to mount when firefighters are able to conduct house-to-house searches.
“The Palisades fire has got a new significant flare-up [in] the eastern portion and continues to northeast,” the LA Fire Department’s Captain Erik Scott told local station KTLA, according to a report on the LA Times website.
They’re not going to give you the value of your house ... if you want it, you will really have to fight for it
— Kay Young, Altadena resident
The fire, the most destructive in the history of Los Angeles, has razed whole neighbourhoods to the ground, leaving just the smouldering ruins of what had been people’s homes and possessions.
Before the latest flare-up, firefighters had reported progress in subduing the Palisades fire and the Eaton fire in the foothills east of the metropolis, after they had burned out of control for days. On Friday night, the Palisades fire was 8% contained and the Eaton one 3%, state agency Cal Fire said.
About 153,000 people remained under evacuation orders and another 166,800 faced evacuation warnings, with a curfew in place for all evacuation zones, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said.
In the close-knit Los Angeles suburb of Altadena, where rows of neat bungalows once nestled in the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains, smouldering ruins and the skeletal frames of burnt-out cars now lie.
While the fires that have devastated celebrity neighbourhoods near Malibu have caught the world’s attention, a similar-sized blaze in Eaton Canyon, north of Los Angeles, has ravaged Altadena, a racially and economically diverse community.
Black and Latino families have lived in Altadena for generations, and the suburb is also popular with younger artists and engineers working at the nearby Nasa rocket lab, who were attracted by the area’s small-town vibe and access to nature.
Many residents said they were concerned government resources would be channelled towards high-profile areas popular with A-listers, while insurance companies might short-change less affluent households without the financial means to contest fire claims.
“They’re not going to give you the value of your house ... if you want it, you will really have to fight for it,” said Kay Young, 63, her eyes welling up with tears as she stared at a mass of smoking rubble, the remnants of a home that had been in her family for generations.
Inez Moore, 40, whose family home in Altadena was destroyed by the fire, said communities such as theirs would probably suffer more financially than wealthier suburbs, because many residents there did not have the resources or the experience to navigate complex bureaucratic systems.
“You’re going to have some folks who are not going to get as much as they deserve, and some folks who may get more than they actually need,” said Moore, a lecturer at California State University.
The Eaton fire has killed at least five people.
As late as 1960, Altadena was almost entirely white. But as new highways built in urban renewal projects tore Los Angeles neighbourhoods apart, African-American families began buying homes in what remained for decades a reasonably affordable community.
By 1990, nearly 40% of the area’s residents were black. Today, about 18% are black, 49% are white, and 27% are Hispanic or Latino, according to the US Census Bureau.
Despite the widespread destruction, many locals were upbeat about the community rising from the ashes. They shared tales of narrow escapes and memories of decades spent growing up together with neighbours now affected by the disaster.
“There are rows of us that went to school together,” said Young, gesturing to a vast stretch of scorched foundations.
Michael McCarthy, 68, a clerk in the City of Los Angeles, said his home had been saved by a neighbour who had risked his life by staying behind after everyone else had fled and using a hose to spray water on the roofs of houses.
“I know this community will rebuild. Everybody knows everybody here, and everybody loves everybody,” said McCarthy.
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