An Altadena Family Escaped the L.A. Wildfires, but They Lost Almost Everything

There was, at first, not even a whisper of fire.

Aurielle Hall had heard about the blaze that had broken out in the coastal neighborhood of Pacific Palisades that morning.

But she was in Altadena, a hillside community 40 miles away and outside the eastern edge of Los Angeles.

It was Tuesday evening, and Ms. Hall, 35, figured she would head to bed early. She was exhausted, having spent an hour commuting home from her job with Los Angeles County’s probation department. And she had not gotten much sleep the night before because she was startled awake early by the winds that pounded on her walls.

She had grown accustomed to Altadena, the kind of place where residents raise goats and chickens and pride themselves on rustic living. It is also where high winds, power outages and spotty cell service are not unusual.

The community had a down-to-earth vibe, far from the glamour of Pacific Palisades where nannies driving children to elite private schools was common. Altadena was also more racially diverse. In the 1970s, it had attracted middle-class Black families who saw it as a refuge, and their children and grandchildren often stayed put. One in five households speak Spanish at home.

Just before 7 p.m., Ms. Hall texted her friend. “It’s really bad out here,” referring to the wind. Her daughter, Jade, 12, was taking a nap.

Ms. Hall plugged in her cellphone and extra battery, hoping to fully charge them in case the power went out. The lights were already flickering in her living room.

She took a shower and went to pick up her phone. By then, it was about 7:45 p.m., and she had missed a barrage of calls and texts. One included a screenshot of an Instagram post about a fire in nearby Eaton Canyon.

It had broken out about 6:20 p.m., but Ms. Hall had not smelled smoke. She had relatives in the neighborhood who were longtime locals and familiar with evacuation warnings. They seemed unperturbed.

But Ms. Hall, who had moved to the area in 2020 and never experienced an encroaching fire, felt uneasy about the wind. “Instead of it going in one direction, it was like a whirlwind, like a circle, and it made me feel like it could turn at any moment.”

An alarm went off in her head: We need to get out.

Hiding her panic, she went to Jade’s room and called out casually, “Hey, when you get up, can you pack some clothes? We’re just going to leave for a few days, it’s really windy and there’s starting to be a fire on the hiking trail.”

Then she phoned her cousin, Cheri West. Ms. Hall had always referred to her as Aunt Cheri as a sign of respect because at 64 years old, she was a mother figure.

Aunt Cheri, a retired paralegal who worked part-time at HomeGoods, lived a half-mile away and insisted on staying home. She planned to go to sleep and expected that things would wind down. Everything was going to be OK, she said.

“Honestly, Auntie, I’m tired too, but I think it’s just the safest thing to get further down the mountain,” Ms. Hall told her.

Her aunt refused. She had lived in the area for more than three decades. The fire, she believed, would not head her way. Leaving seemed like an overreaction.

“Auntie, whether you say yes or no, I’m pulling outside your house in 20 minutes,” Ms. Hall said.

Aunt Cheri was among the reasons that Ms. Hall had moved to Altadena.

Ms. Hall had spent much of her youth bouncing around communities in south Los Angeles County like Compton and Watts — areas that always felt like home but came with sharp edges. She had lost one friend to a drag racing hit-and-run and even more to shootings. After a couple years at California State University, Dominguez Hills, she dropped out because she was working several jobs to stay afloat.

Ms. Hall’s mother had died of breast cancer in 2013, and she regretted not having a longer goodbye. Four years later, Jade’s father was fatally shot.

“I just needed my daughter to be around family, I needed a village,” Ms. Hall said. “I couldn’t do everything by myself.”

Altadena, a place where her mother had grown up and where a dozen relatives lived in what had been a historically Black neighborhood, seemed the place to help them heal.

They ended up renting the lower half of a duplex on Las Flores Drive that Ms. Hall’s grandmother, a seamstress for the television show “Star Trek,” had purchased decades ago, back when homes could be had for less than $50,000. Her cousins had inherited the place and offered her affordable rent. Another cousin and her family lived in the unit above.

When the fire broke out, Ms. Hall worried in particular about Aunt Cheri who would not be able to drive in the dark because of weak eyesight.

At the same time, an uncle had decided he planned to stay. His son, not wanting to leave him behind, said he would stay as well.

Ms. Hall began packing, grabbing a crate of personal documents and stuffing clothing and toiletries into a duffel bag. Jade did the same, adding a tablet and a stuffed bear that had the recorded voice of her father. Just before leaving, Ms. Hall lingered over an array of costume jewelry and souvenirs, the only things left of her mother’s possessions.

“I just remember looking at her stuff and thinking I’m going to be back in a few days,” she recalled.

Outside, the neighborhood had been transformed. A furious wind that had already knocked down their fence and torn a wooden gate whipped up debris and dirt. Pomelos ripped from the trees littered the ground.

Ms. Hall and Jade struggled to make their way to their gray Kia Forte. The power had officially gone out and the entire neighborhood was dark, the air thickened with smoke. The cousin who lived above them appeared with her mother to check on them and retrieve belongings. They all shouted at one another over the wind, but their voices could hardly be heard.

Then Ms. Hall and Jade drove to Aunt Cheri’s house and waited in the car outside the metal gate that was always chained shut. The area was a dead spot for cell service. They prayed she would come. Twenty minutes idled by.

Finally, Aunt Cheri arrived with her purse and two bags. She left her pit bull terrier, Stanton, behind.

As they tried to drive out of the hillsides, a terrorized town revealed itself. Homes were catching on fire, trees bursting into flames. Branches had been flung onto the roads.

“It was just horrible. Everywhere you look, everything’s on fire,” Ms. Hall said. “Everything was unrecognizable.”

The roads were clogged with other cars trying to flee, and Ms. Hall could hardly see in front of her. Acrid smoke flooded across her windshield.

“Streetlights were out, all the business lights were out, gas stations were shut down — everything was completely black and dark,” she said.

“Nobody was obeying any kind of traffic laws. They were just frantically panicking.”

Every time Ms. Hall tried to get to a main thoroughfare, she would come across a police blockade and a line of cars that had been forced to turn around.

“There was no point in using a map, because no matter which way you go, you can’t go,” she said. “So we were literally zigzagging through streets we’ve never been on before, and I was like, ‘I don’t even know where we’re at.’”

Finally, after about 40 minutes of maneuvering south, they managed to get out of the region and orient themselves.

“When we looked back behind us, you can literally see the helicopters flying, trying to drop water, and a line of cars with white lights just trying to come down the mountain.”

Ms. Hall drove about 10 more miles southeast to Temple City to leave Aunt Cheri with a cousin, and then she and Jade drove down to Inglewood to stay with another relative. When they arrived, they were relieved to learn that the uncle and his son who had stayed behind had eventually evacuated. All of their family members, they would soon learn, were safe.

Early Wednesday, a cousin managed to get back up into their neighborhood. He sent Ms. Hall a video of the scene at her home.

Scorched cars. Strips of metal too deformed to decipher. Crumpled roofing. The rest, ash and rubble.

The entire neighborhood was more of the same. Including the home of Aunt Cheri. The body of Stanton, her pit bull, was among the remains.

Up until then, Ms. Hall had maintained a tough facade. But the images made her weep.

Across town, many evacuees of the Palisades fire fled to luxury hotels or to stay with friends with homes big enough for large families.

But Ms. Hall and her daughter are now sleeping on the couch at a relative’s home, anxious about what seems to be a precarious future. It will be impossible to match the rent she was paying. Her limited salary had already been tough to stretch. Which is why she kept $12,000 at her home, finding it easier to budget with cash. She had left it behind, worried about being robbed on the road.

The two have been homeless before, back when Ms. Hall left an unhealthy relationship. Jade was a toddler and they slept for a while in the closet of a friend’s mother. When they finally settled in Altadena, that sort of past seemed far behind them.

“It’s like, how many times do I have to go through rebuilding my life and starting all over?”

But Ms. Hall has also had another feeling fluttering inside of her, one of disbelief and love and gratitude. The devastation to her neighborhood illustrated the fate that she and her family members narrowly escaped. At least three people who stayed behind in the same area had died, all longtime Altadena residents, one of whom was found holding a garden hose.

When Ms. Hall’s cousin in Temple City called on FaceTime to check in, she thanked her for ferrying her mother to safety.

Aunt Cheri then appeared on camera. Ms. Hall cried at the sight of her.

“Thank you for letting me take you out of there,” she said.

She repeated the words again and then added, “Because … ” but could not finish the sentence.

Then they both cried together.

“Auntie, imagine if we didn’t leave?”