Your house burned down in a wildfire — now what?
I was 15 years old when we lost our home in the 2007 Witch Creek fire in San Diego County. The night before I went to sleep on October 21, 2007, I had no idea how much my life was going to change just a few hours later. Around 4:00am on October 22, my mom woke me up and told me that we had to evacuate — she got a call from a family friend who lived close to us and had just received mandatory evacuation orders.
I got up, changed, and started packing. For some reason, I thought I could only pack my most precious items — even though I had about 20 minutes and had room to pack more. My parents were both outside — my mom, hosing down the house, and my dad, driving to the nearest lookout point to try and locate the fire. I went into my sister’s room to grab anything for her, and through the window, saw the embers flying from across the freeway onto our property — and rapidly moving in the 80mph Santa Ana winds towards our house. I knew it was go-time, and ran around the house looking for my parents, and soaking in the last moments I would have in my childhood home.
Luckily, my dad got back home in time to run inside, grab his laptop, and get into the car. My mom packed our baby videos, albums, and important documents, and reminded me to bring my school bag. Before leaving, we stood in the driveway, watching the flames clip loudly, swallowing the palm trees around our home. The sky was bright orange, embers flying everywhere — we were surrounded by flames. We lived down a single driveway off a cul-de-sac that led to only our home, sitting atop 4 acres of dry brush land. The air was so hot, so dry, and we couldn’t stand outside anymore. We jumped into the car, and drove up the driveway covered in flames on both sides. By some miracle, we made it out — with no formal fire department notice to leave, and evacuated to a family friends house by the coast. We knew our home was gone when we left, but we got confirmation when my family drove by to check from the freeway the next day — our home was still not on any reported lists since it was the only home in its location.
There is so much more to our evacuation story, but I want this to be more focused on what happened next. What the series of the next few days, months, and years looked like. Losing your home, especially in a wildfire “firestorm” is a specific traumatic experience that no one really understands unless they went through it. It is so public — there is so much news and reporting around your home, your community, and the visibility is helpful but you may also wish that people would just let you grieve in peace. Being part of a mass wildfire draws in a lot of opinions on your grief and subsequent actions, and somehow, in the midst of so much pain, you are judged on how you choose to rebuild your life. You feel the need to caveat that you know a home is just “stuff” and a life is not replaceable, but it really isn’t just stuff. It is your comfort, your safe haven, the story of your life. All of a sudden, you have to start from scratch — you have to buy literally every single item you need to live your life again, you have to somehow recall every item you had in your home (where it’s from, how much it cost), and you have to find a new place to live. If you so choose, you will have to sort through the smokey debris and rubble, using sifting trays and shovels, praying that you find something of value in the room that once held your greatest comforts. All the while tending with your own grief and trauma.
In the immediate few days and weeks after, your community will really show up for you. People will want to help, brands will set up special events, the Red Cross centers near your home will have all the basic toiletries, donated clothes, and materials to sift through the debris of your home. In my experience, this helped us just get started and connected to FEMA, who immediately gave my parents a small amount of cash to get started before the insurance conversations began and the FEMA card for us to use everywhere we went. Reporters will want to talk to you and capture your raw emotion for the benefit of their publications. I’ll never forget when my sister and I were looking at Halloween socks in a donation bin at our local Red Cross pop-up. We were laughing and teasing each other about the socks, and a reporter asked us to look more like our house just burned down — we looked too joyful. The first time we went back to see our home, I was interviewed by Anderson Cooper on my street, and the interview was supposed to only be with me — they pre-interviewed me and went through the expected questions. Right before the interview started, my mom was crying heavily with our neighbor off to the side, and I wasn’t shedding a tear — I was numb for two weeks after the fires. At the last minute, they pulled her into the shot with me, so we could have the balance of my words with her emotion.
Rebuilding my life was described as something that could be fun — unlimited shopping! That would have been a dream for me at 15, if it hadn’t been born out of absolute necessity. All I wanted was to be back in my purple room, to sit in my backyard, to curl up in our living room we had just redone. Instead, I had to buy everything I could possibly need — for weeks. It’s an odd feeling, rebuilding your life and constantly asking yourself “is this a want or a need?”. I was specifically surprised at how often I went back to purchase more underwear and “home clothes”. I felt so uncomfortable wearing my new, stiff clothes for school — I didn’t want those, I wanted the clothes I looked at when we evacuated and said bye to, the ones I regretted not piling into the car. Items are replaceable, but in that moment, you want the specific things that surrounded you for years and brought you comfort, and you can’t replace that. You can’t replace the feeling of life before fire.
People were really there for me — asking me if I needed anything, how they can help, etc. What we don’t talk about is that this will eventually die off, and people have to go back to living in their reality — it’s nothing to fault them on, but the truth is only you and your community who went through this together will continue to be there for each other throughout the entire process. Only you will know the experience of how this lives on in your psyche and your spirit. People will try to make you see the bright side: “don’t worry, everything can be replaced, at least you are safe”, “now you can build a bigger, even nicer home!”, “it’s so cool that you are getting all this free stuff”.
What they don’t know is exactly how quickly you would trade all of that for this to never have happened. You can’t know how much the fires will haunt your dreams, or how much you’ll be triggered by future fires to come. They don’t know how much the never ending tasks ahead of you like insurance conversations, deciding whether to sell or rebuild, talking to contractors, sourcing supplies, will weigh on you and change your entire life dynamic. No matter how much money and resources you have, this experience will be a core part of you for your life — or so I assume, 17 years in.
Every Christmas I still remember the fire, missing the ornaments we collected throughout my childhood and the decorations we opened up every year. In planning my wedding, I was so sad to think about my mom’s dupatta from her wedding that I wouldn’t be able to wear or honor. When my grandfather passed away, I felt so much sadness and guilt knowing the ring he gave my mom when she was young, and she then gave to me, was lost in the fire in my closet. I will never forget scanning my bedroom before leaving, telling myself to remember every element as best I could.
The years following the fire are a bit of a blur to me, and everyone’s experience will be very different. I was in my Sophomore year of highschool and have a bit of a trauma block for the 2 years before and after the fire. It was a series of solo nights and weekends while my parents worked with our insurance company and contractors, fighting for what we deserved. It got more exciting once we started rebuilding and our life surrounded around the new house. We moved in during my Senior year of high school, and while I cherished living there as much as possible, I felt guilty that I couldn’t enjoy this big, new, custom home as much as I did our original home that was lost.
Losing your home in a fire will challenge the concept that “home is where the heart is”. Ironically, or beautifully, our home was on Corazon Place. In Spanish, Corazon means heart — so our home really was where the heart is. But that was our physical home, and ultimately, the practical stuff was replaced. We don’t even own that home anymore, but look back on it fondly. The memories, the specific life momentos and family heirlooms absolutely can’t be replaced and I miss them with a deep pain that will never be fully healed. My definition of home changed after this experience, having some small feeling that home will always be seen as temporary. The people in my life, especially those who went through this experience with me, are the ones who created home and heart when we didn’t have a home to call our own.
My heart aches for everyone who has to go through this experience, and who will wear the identity of a fire survivor for the rest of their lives. The people who will be met with wide eyes and silence when they share their home was lost in a fire, and who play the mental game of weighing if it’s worth the awkward pause and need to reassure the other person that you’re ok. The people whose experience will be looped in with the numbers associated with a massive wildfire — the acres burned, the lives lost, the structures destroyed, the financial toll. The people who will forever be triggered by the smell or smoke or the rain of ashes, and who will always remember what they left behind or lost in the fire. I wish I could hug every single person and tell them they aren’t alone. I hope this reaches some people who may need it, or resonate with having gone through this as well. The firefighters, first responders, and everyone working to stop this madness are the true heroes and angels who deserve the world. Thank you for reading, lots of love and blessings.