L.A. residents ask,  “Where do you start when you lose everything?”

Photos: Avraham Hendeles

In parts of L.A., the scene is apocalyptic. “Where do you start when you lose everything?” asks Nechama Diskin of the Chabad of Palisades, one of the many residents whose home is gone

Californians are not strangers to natural disasters.

The state has suffered from several major earthquakes, and for decades, and increasingly in recent years, wildfires have laid waste to hundreds of miles of land and property and have taken lives. But while previous fires have been contained to rural areas, last week things escalated drastically with a series of out-of-control blazes that wreaked destruction in suburban sections of Los Angeles, leaving some neighborhoods in charred ruins.

As of this writing, many of the fires are still burning, preventing evacuees from returning to their homes, or in many cases, what little is left of them.

Adding fuel to the embers is a politically charged blame game, with varying degrees of truth and distortion being played on all sides. California took a hard left turn under Governor Gavin Newsom, often diverting attention and funding toward progressive causes célèbres and away from what many see as core governance responsibilities. At the same time, increasingly hot and dry summers have made the fire-prone state ever more dangerous, and many doubt the confluence of factors that resulted in the present inferno could have been stopped from the state house.

From Sparks to Inferno

The fires burning in corners of northern Los Angeles began to wreak havoc on Tuesday afternoon, January 7. Californians, used to wildfire threats, kept an eye on developments, but few understood the severity of the danger until blazes had advanced close to their homes. By midday, entire neighborhoods were in flames spread by unusually strong winds.

That Tuesday night, Rabbi Chaim Hanoka, executive director of the Chabad of Pasadena, heard howling winds outside his house. While there was originally just a small fire in the Eaton Canyon, he says, because of the winds, it exploded. “In a matter of minutes, fires started in houses and businesses. It was all over the place.”

The Eaton fire, the second-largest conflagration in the Los Angeles area, burned over 14,100 acres and over 7,000 homes and other buildings. The largest fire, in the Palisades, burned over 23,700 acres and several thousand buildings, including many mansions in the upscale oceanside neighborhood. Two other major fires consumed around 1,000 acres. As this week started, most were still burning, with high winds, an unusually dry winter, and a lack of resources posing challenges to containment.

“I was in Pasadena, and the winds were so strong that firemen blasting water from hoses couldn’t get it to blast forward,” says Malkiel Gradon, director of Misaskim’s Los Angeles division. “It hasn’t rained once this winter. Between the wind and dryness, with a fire you end up in a very bad situation very quickly.”

As of Monday, more than 105,000 people were under evacuation orders and 24 deaths were confirmed, with the grim expectation that the numbers will rise as officials gain more access to fire zones.

Last Wednesday, Rabbi Hanoka visited the affected area to make sure members of his community had been able to escape.

“It was like walking into an apocalyptic scene, with row after row of burned houses,” he says, his voice still hoarse from smoke. “There were still a lot of houses burning, and the heat, even with the car windows closed, was very intense.”

Rabbi Hanoka got to see the firsthand impact of the shortages of manpower and water.

“There were very few firefighters, they’re just stretched too thin. And in our area, the water was turned off, so people couldn’t even use their own hoses to put out small fires,” he says. “We went to the house of a widow we know. The garage had small flames burning in it, and there was no water, but we smothered the fire with dirt and saved the house.”

Safe Zone

Hancock Park, Pico-Robertson, and the Valley, areas where Los Angeles’s Orthodox populations are concentrated, were spared from direct contact with the fires.

Last Wednesday night marked the closest flames came to the Fairfax-Hancock Park area, with evacuation orders ending only blocks away.

“The closest it got was something like three miles,” says Mr. Gradon. “It’s definitely scary to hear about what’s going on and see the flames, but there was never a realistic chance the fire would be able to cross through streets and get to frum neighborhoods.”

Still, with an abundance of difficult news spreading and so much remaining unknown, many took precautions.

“A lot of people packed bags and made plans to go somewhere else,” says Dr. Irving Lebovics, California director for the Agudath Israel of America. “There wasn’t panic, but there was concern that we should be prepared to go.”

Some communities further out did receive precautionary evacuation orders, including Calabasas, home to a yeshivah, but ultimately no damage occurred in those areas.

Still, the sky blanketed in smoke didn’t allow the residents in central Jewish communities to escape reminders of the disaster. People were cautioned not to spend time outside unnecessarily. Last week, residents awoke each day to find their cars and homes covered by a thin layer of ash.

Starting on Wednesday night, the fires were clearly visible in the distance.

“It was a bit of a pachad,” says Hancock Park resident Avraham Hendeles. “Thursday morning, the sky was as dark as night until around 10:30. There was this intense, thick cloud of smoke and a glow where the sun was supposed to be. After that, it died down a bit, but if you went up on a roof, you could see the fires for a few days afterward.”

Total Loss

The most horrific images are emerging from the Palisades neighborhood, which has been almost totally destroyed.

“Where do you start when you lose everything?” asks Nechama Diskin of the Chabad of Palisades, one of the many residents whose home is gone.

On Tuesday afternoon, when the fires began in earnest, Mrs. Diskin was on her way back from an appointment when she got her first hint that trouble was imminent. A teacher in the school she helps run called to say that winds were getting dangerously high and that she thought an alternative plan should be made for that day’s classes. Soon after, her husband called saying that there was smoke near the school and their home, and they had to evacuate.

“By the time I got there, there was tons of smoke, and parents were rushing to get their kids from the preschool,” says Mrs. Diskin. “It got chaotic quickly. Some people had to leave their cars and walk to get their children.”

Having grown up in California, she was not unused to the threat of wildfires, but she took precautions.

“I went home to gather our passports, some papers, my kesubah, some jewelry, and two sets of clothes,” she says. “Then I put the kids in the car and headed to Pico. We didn’t have any real plan.”

Mrs. Diskin’s father, Rabbi Zusha Cunin, began doing outreach work in Palisades over 30 years ago, and family members have since joined the effort. As the situation grew more serious, they removed the sifrei Torah and some other items from the Chabad house and headed to safer areas.

As news became increasingly grave, the Diskins went to a relative’s home in Pico-Robertson for supper, and then spent the night in a hotel.

“No one could sleep,” says Mrs. Diskin. “We were all watching everything unfold and doing what we could to help people.”

Her brother spent much of the night texting a deaf, immobile 88-year-old woman to calm her as first responders helped her evacuate.

“People kept on getting texts that their houses were gone,” says Mrs. Diskin. “The hotel was full of evacuees and people were just crying and hugging each other.”

The next day Mrs. Diskin herself received a text message from a parent in her son’s preschool class with a video clip and the word “sorry.” The video showed her apartment going up in flames.

“All our stuff is gone,” she says. “We were lucky to get our birth certificates and things, a lot of people didn’t have a chance to get that.”

She praises stores and organizations that have pitched in to help her and others begin to replace basics. She shares a sobering statistic: Over 90 percent of the residents connected to Chabad of Palisades have lost their homes.

“It’s a real nightmare, but the community’s chesed is keeping us going,” she says.

Against the backdrop of utter destruction, she doesn’t have anything to say when asked about long-term plans.

“How do you rebuild without stores or power?” she asks.

First Aid

With thousands bereft of their homes and over 100,000 displaced, the need for relief efforts developed quickly.

Out of around 350 people connected to the Pasadena Chabad, Rabbi Hanoka estimated that 40 to 50 lost their homes. As his home and the Chabad center sit about six blocks away from the evacuation zone and remained unaffected, he was quick to offer both as safe spaces.

“I had a bunch of people staying in my house until after Shabbos, and now they’ve moved on to places out of town, or hotels,” he says. “A few people lower on the socioeconomic scale are housed on cots in the convention center. The Chabad house became an ir miklat. We served meals all day, and the Emek Hebrew Academy, some restaurants, and others pitched in. We’re trying to give people blankets, clothes, toiletries, whatever we can.”

On Shabbos, around 100 people ate at Pasadena Chabad.

“Some of them can’t go home yet, and a lot have no homes to go to,” says Rabbi Hanoka. “It’s a chizuk for them just to have company.”

Los Angeles’s chesed organizations sprang into action to help those in need.

“The kosher food pantry got meals to evacuation centers and YMCAs that are housing people,” says Dr. Lebovics. “This morning, I was at an organization in Pico called Big Kitchen that was full of volunteers making meals to be sent out to people who need them.”

Hatzalah members and other volunteers helped evacuate several nursing homes. In one instance, by moving residents out before evacuation orders became official, beds in other facilities were found for all the frail evacuees. Their foresight paid off, as the next day, finding beds for such residents proved to be a huge challenge.

Most of those directly impacted are getting by day to day.

“People are walking around with this aimless look, not knowing what to do now,” says Rabbi Hanoka. “How do you think about rebuilding? Right now, they have immediate needs like getting food and clothes.”

With schools closed in the most severely affected areas, Chabad of Pasadena plans to open a temporary camp to give children and parents more structure to their day. They also arranged for insurance experts to advise on filing claims and avoiding the growing number of scams, as well as bringing in mental health counselors for adults and children.

“It’s very hard to see this churban,” said Rabbi Hanoka. “So many people have lost everything.”

The Blame Game

One of the few items not in short supply in southern California was blame.

President-elect Donald Trump wrote in a social media post, “The fires are still raging in L.A. The incompetent pols have no idea how to put them out. Thousands of magnificent houses are gone, and many more will soon be lost. There is death all over the place. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our country. They just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?”

To make optics worse, when the fires began, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass was in Ghana for the inauguration of the African nation’s new president.

Some tragic failures, like a lack of water in hydrants and seeming competency problems in Los Angeles’s fire department fed skepticism about the city’s response. In an interview, Governor Newsom himself was critical.

“To be candid, I wasn’t getting straight answers,” he said. “We had my team start talking to local leaders: ‘What’s going on?’ I was getting different answers. When you start getting different answers, then I’m not getting the actual story.”

Governor Newsom has won praise and scorn for making California a model of ultraprogressive policies during his term, and some feel he bears responsibility for the disaster, blaming his heavy focus on beating back climate change as a factor in cutting water supplies to Los Angeles and otherwise slowing efforts to fight the fires.

A Wall Street Journal editorial noted that even as wildfires cause more damage to the state each summer, under Governor Newsom, California spent only $2.6 billion on fire “resilience,” while spending $14.7 billion on clean energy transition. Another $100 billion went toward building a new train system and offshore wind turbines.

Governor Newsom and his allies have pushed back against those linking prior policies to the present fires, accusing them of politicizing the disaster and calling out some assertions as false. An accusation made by Mr. Trump about water diversion, his team said, was patently inaccurate.

Another criticism was that budget cuts to the Los Angeles Fire Department hurt response efforts. But others countered that the cuts were minor and focused on areas unlikely to affect emergency response.

Other critics of Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass said that their promotion of progressive ideas and prioritizing DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) in hiring and policy-making left first-responders ill-prepared to deal with the emergency.

“DEI means people DIE,” wrote Elon Musk in a recent social media post.

In Mr. Hendeles’s opinion, while both Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass’s past policy decisions were deserving of reproach, there was likely little that could be done to be prepared for the present fires.

“People rightly have criticisms,” he says. “But would they have been able to stop fires of this severity otherwise? Absolutely not. Hashem sent a makkah on L.A. You think Karen Bass or Gavin Newsom could have stopped that? They could have alleviated it better, they could have responded quicker, maybe been better prepared. But prevent it? No.”

Memories Obliterated

By Jake Turx

F

or years, I visited Malibu, California, hiking down from the cliffs to the private beaches below, watching the sun rise above the mountains in the east and set beyond the Pacific to the west. It was the spot where my friends would gather for late-morning baseball, and my family would arrange afternoon picnics. But in 2007, a wildfire swept through the area like an Etch-a-Sketch shaken in an earthquake, erasing the landscape I knew and cherished. The mountainside was left barren, its meandering trails obliterated.

On our next visits, my little brothers and I turned the scarred terrain into our playground, running down the ash-covered slopes where trails once guided us. Slowly, nature began to heal. Lush greenery replaced the charred remains, and new hiking paths emerged, weaving through the skeletons of the old ones. Homes worth tens of millions sprang up where other homes, just as opulent, had stood before the flames. Rows of houses were rebuilt at the same time, with structures designed to withstand every conceivable threat — earthquakes, mudslides, even tsunamis. By the end of the decade, Malibu seemed reborn.

But in 2018, disaster struck again. The Woolsey Fire tore through Malibu, becoming the largest wildfire in its history. Nearly 100,000 acres were consumed. Homes, vegetation, wildlife — everything was reduced to ash. Once again, the mountainsides were stripped bare.

Other favorite haunts of mine were the hiking trails of Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills; an uphill trek of just over a mile offered a breathtaking panorama of Los Angeles. On clear days, you could see all the way to the Pacific Ocean. But the Hollywood Hills, too, were vulnerable. Fires that erupted there were visible from nearly anywhere in the city.

“I

t’s darker than the eclipse,” my father told me when I called to check in on him Tuesday last week. “Winds as high as 70 miles per hour are blowing garbage cans down the street.”

These hurricane-like Santa Ana winds compounded the devastation, transforming the region into a tinderbox. Firefighting planes and helicopters were grounded, unable to operate safely in the intense gusts.

The conditions alone made for a perfect storm, but it would get worse. Los Angeles had experienced record rainfall over the previous two seasons before this winter’s dry spell, which is actually not a good thing. The rains had spurred an explosion of weeds and vegetation, which would create an endless reserve of fuel for the blaze. Water rationing regulations left landscaping drier than usual, adding to the risk. Depleted reservoirs and sputtering hydrants completed the recipe for disaster.

Mismanagement, nature’s fury, and a series of unfortunate events collided to create an unstoppable force.

Eyewitnesses described to me scenes of firefighters sitting idly by empty fire hydrants, visibly overwhelmed and unsure of how to proceed. With resources stretched thin and hydrants running dry, many could do little more than watch as the flames consumed homes and neighborhoods. Arson added to the chaos, with gangs reportedly lighting new fires to expand evacuation zones. These fires were intentionally set to create new evacuation zones, enabling the arsonists to loot those abandoned homes and businesses.

On the Pacific Coast Highway, gridlock caused by abandoned vehicles created yet another obstacle. Firefighters found themselves unable to maneuver their equipment through the lone road that snakes all the way up the coast, delaying response times and leaving some areas entirely defenseless against the advancing flames.

For Yitzi I., a lawyer suing Toyota over hydrogen vehicles, the wildfires revealed a systemic failure with deadly implications. He explained that California’s promotion of hydrogen cars, championed by Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration, left residents vulnerable. The state funded hydrogen fueling stations, but these stations frequently broke down within a year, stranding drivers reliant on them. Three of Yitzi’s clients, under mandatory evacuation orders, were unable to leave. Their hydrogen-powered cars lacked fuel, and the nearest stations were out of service. These vehicles, marketed as eco-friendly alternatives, had become liabilities in a crisis.

For Kevin, the thought of losing his home was unbearable. When the evacuation orders came, he stayed behind, determined to fight. Armed with a garden hose, he battled the embers landing around his property as best as he could. But the flames proved more resilient than the water supply, so he turned to his swimming pool, hauling buckets of water, one at a time, in a valiant attempt to stave off the advancing fire.

In the chaos, two young men, Moshe U. and Uri G., appeared. Uri, a firefighter trainee, got them past the first police checkpoint, and sweet talking and back alleys took care of the rest.

The scene around them was apocalyptic. Entire streets were ablaze. Trees stood like massive torches, and embers floated ominously in the smoky night sky. The heat was intense enough to melt metal mailboxes and fences. The fire’s power was overwhelming, and the winds made the situation unpredictable. When they encountered Kevin, they decided to pull over and offer whatever help they could.

Once Moshe and Uri returned to their neighborhood, well beyond the fire zone, Uri realized he had left his tefillin behind in Kevin’s house. Fearing the worst, they decided to return. Navigating through checkpoints and weaving through alleyways, they made their way back into the fire zone.

The journey was tense. Helicopters hovered above, sucking water from swimming pools to douse flames, their presence both comforting and surreal. As Moshe and Uri approached Kevin’s property, they encountered a group consisting of a half dozen Spanish-speaking motorbike riders, their suspicious stares adding to the stress. Both groups eyed each other warily, unsure what to make of one another. The presence of law enforcement at the other end of the street sent the bikers scurrying in the opposite direction.

To their immense relief, Kevin’s home stood intact, a symbol of hope amid devastation. The trio’s relentless efforts had paid off, even as entire blocks around them lay in ruins. Curiously, some homes had been spared while others were obliterated, a testament to the erratic nature of the winds and the fire’s unpredictable path.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1045)