Home, the Sanctuary of the Soul: On the Los Angeles Fires
TL;DR
The Search for Home and Its Loss: The author shares their lifelong struggle to find a true sense of home, compounded by an abusive childhood and periods of transience before finally settling in Los Angeles, only to face potential loss due to the devastating Eaton Fire.
Fire Evacuation and Trauma: The fire forced the author to evacuate, turning their carefully curated sanctuary into a source of anxiety. They grappled with anger and fear while reflecting on the suffering of fire victims who lost homes filled with cherished memories, family heirlooms, and pieces of their identity — an unimaginable trauma that left lasting scars on the community.
Community, Loss, and Global Support: Despite witnessing immense destruction, the author observed global and local efforts to support affected communities, from international aid to volunteer-driven donations and fire relief initiatives.
Home as a Sanctuary of Love and Resilience: Reflecting on the ancient symbolism of the hearth, the author emphasizes that home extends beyond physical structures to represent love, restoration, and enduring connection — a sentiment that survives even in loss.
It has been a lifelong search for me to find my home. I’ve lived in places with walls and addresses, yet “home” was this twisting, amorphous mass that I could never grab onto with both hands. As a child growing up in an abusive home, the mere sight of my house filled me with dread. Safety, security, belonging — homeness — constantly eluded me.
Recently, I was forced to leave my house in a hurry to escape further abuse. With only a suitcase of belongings, I moved from the East Coast to Los Angeles to be with family. For nine months, I shifted from one AirBnB to another, some infested with ants, others without hot water. The jarring change in climate, vegetation, and monetary expenses exacerbated my homesickness. I felt more than ever like a plant with no roots.
Eventually, we secured a house in a neighborhood nestled by the San Gabriel mountains. It is a beautiful community, with an unrivaled sense of connectedness. There is a plethora of activities for everyone of all ages. During Christmas, the firefighters decorated the tallest tree with ornaments and a star. Then, they drove their festively adorned truck with Santa Claus seated on top around for all the children in the neighborhood to see.
Living here, I felt loved by strangers.
After a year and a half, I began to settle in. By the new year, I finally embraced the universe’s promise that it would be a new start.
Then, we saw the fires.
Violent winds preceded the flames in the mountains. The heat and internet cut out, so we never received any wildfire alerts. Panicked, we called a friend — how would we know if we should evacuate? “The police will come through with a loudspeaker,” she said. The house got colder, the internet sputtered, neighbors were loading their cars, flames danced on the mountain just over the hill. An hour past midnight, we decided to leave.
Packing my suitcase, I was overcome with anger. This was supposed to be a new start. I took a quick beat to glance around my house, taking in the carefully selected pieces of furniture, my finished project of turning my bed into a canopy with fairy lights strung around, my sanctuary. I memorized it, unsure if I would ever see it again.
As we drove south, the mountains that greeted us daily, a sight familiar to any Los Angeles resident, now had a jagged line of blazing orange cutting down its length. The fear began to settle in. Other cars joined us, evacuating from the hills. Entire streets were completely dark. Fallen trees crushed parked cars. Police cars and fire trucks rushed north towards the flames. At one intersection, alarms blared from a single, empty building. It felt like an apocalypse.
We were rejected by hotel after hotel, all filled to the brim with evacuees. Losing hope, we prepared to return home and sleep in the cold, hoping the police would wake us up if the fire got too close. Then, a single stroke of luck: a vacant hotel room. We parked our ash-streaked car beside others filled with toys, boxes, household items and suitcases and shuffled into our room at four in the morning. We smelled of smoke and our clothes were dusted with flecks of ash. I closed the curtains of a window with the sky aglow in red and went to sleep.
It wasn’t until the next day that I fully understood our luck and the scale of destruction.
With most restaurants closed due to hazardous air quality, we could only eat at the hotel bar. Television screens displayed nonstop news of the fires. I learned we fled the Eaton fire, and just a few miles away, it was ravaging half of Altadena. The hotel guests seated around me watched the scenes in horror. As they recounted each block and street by name, it struck me that they were all from Altadena. They knew their home by heart. Now, they watched its destruction through a television screen.
I quickly signed up for every emergency alert I could find. Through a fire watch app, I checked on my house. It was only seven houses away from the county-issued mandatory evacuation zone, a deep red area littered with danger marks. Every few hours, the fire perimeter expanded. I feared it would trickle down and swallow the single gray box with my address. I had nightmares for days of finding my home burned to the ground.
It didn’t. Later, I would learn that our community was lucky only because of the direction of the wind. Yet, where I was spared, others brutally weren’t. Just a few miles away, people lived through my worst fears. Before I even knew of the fire, they were fleeing in terror during the windstorm, away from the homes they lived in for fifty years, where they grew up, homes passed down from their parents that should have been passed down to their children. They lost their schools, parks, neighborhoods, businesses, pets, photo albums, generational wealth, childhood memories, heirlooms, priceless jewelry, and everything else they loved. Fixtures of their neighborhood — their favorite coffee shops, libraries, museums — were all vaporized. The trauma is incalculable, intangible, immeasurable. The mass loss of home is a wound on souls upon souls.
It is a human thing to love our home. We decorate it, leave evidence of our existence in the spaces, mark it with our soul prints. We make our homes a part of ourselves, a spiritual sanctuary, a place of well being and sacredness. Home is a place where we raise our children, fill our bellies, reunite with family, share joy with friends, and return tired after long days. When we lose it, we lose a piece of our identity.
The fires have taken more than can be imagined. They have scarred the earth and changed our community forever. Yet, this pain is known all around the world. Decimated by bombs and war, by flooding rivers fueled by climate change, by parasitic and careless policies that create the houseless populations subsisting in our cities, it is not uncommon for people to know the devastation of being displaced, rootless, homeless. Yet it’s a unique pain, one that cannot be described as anything other than a diminishment of dignity, harmony, stability and identity.
When I was finally able to return to my house, I was filled with relief and joy. Still, it was difficult for things to return to how they were before. The mountains that tower over our house used to be a grounding presence. Now, they only spelled danger. We were still under fire watch warnings, a week after Eaton. I dreaded waking up to more alerts, new fires, new worries. Sure enough, they came through. Whatever safety I felt before this chaos was gone.
Despite this, I regularly saw fire trucks with county names I didn’t recognize. I later learned they were from across the entire western United States, from Colorado, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho. Some were from Canada and Mexico. I read reports of donations from Japan, offers of assistance from Ukraine and Iran. The entire country and the world’s eyes were on us, ready to help.
I remember our hotel lobby put out free water bottles and snacks for the firefighters that came in and out on their breaks. Local restaurants offered free food to the fire-affected and first responders. Donation centers popped up across the county, followed by free meal distributions, pet rehabilitation centers, evacuation shelters, and an influx of volunteers and donations so massive that most places were at capacity in less than a week.
People posted old wedding and baby photographs on social media. The firestorm had blown photos into their homes and they wanted to return them to their owners. Others rescued escaped pets and wild animals suffering from burns. Some developed guides on how to turn box fans into air purifiers, which were in extreme shortage due to the widespread hazardous air. Everywhere I looked, people asked, “How can I help? ”
Despite it all, there are things beyond the house that make a home. This can be home, still.
I remember a story of the Greek goddess Hestia, whose domain is the hearth and the home. The hearth — the central fire — was a common fixture in ancient houses. It provided warmth, food, light, a place for a family to gather around. Like its derivative word “heart”, the hearth and home are life giving, life sustaining entities. The home is not just a space, but a heartbeat. It is hope, strength, restoration, and resilience.
It is love. If you loved your home, it loved you back. And love can never be erased.