The True Cost of Recovering from the LA Wildfires, Part 1

Summary

The Wirecutter Show – "The True Cost of Recovering from the LA Wildfires, Part 1"

Date: January 7, 2026
Hosts: Christine Cyr Clisset, Caira Blackwell
Featured Guests: Michael Cohen, Gregory Hahn
Producers: Rosie Guerin, Abigail Keel

---

Episode Overview

This episode kicks off a three-part Wirecutter Show series diving into the true costs—emotional, financial, and practical—of recovering from the devastating LA wildfires of 2025. Hosts Christine Cyr Clisset and Rosie Guerin, alongside journalists Michael Cohen and Gregory Hahn, share deeply personal stories of loss, resilience, and hard-won advice. Their accounts illuminate how disaster preparedness, neighborly community, and unexpected life lessons intersect when catastrophe hits close to home. Though centered on the Eaton and Palisades fires in Altadena, California, their insights resonate for anyone facing the new reality of climate-driven disasters.

---

Main Themes

• The human and practical realities of recovering from wildfire disaster
• Lessons learned by fire survivors that extend far beyond product recommendations
• The crucial role of community in survival and recovery
• How Wirecutter’s ethos of rigorous, detail-focused advice becomes essential in emergencies
• Initial takeaways and actionable tips for personal and community disaster preparedness

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

---

1. Setting the Scene: Altadena's Transformation

• [00:31–04:30]
  • The hosts drive through post-fire Altadena, noting the stark differences between burned and untouched homes.
  • Michael Cohen reflects on returning to his old neighborhood:

    “I can't paint a picture of the negative space with my words well enough to describe. Like there's supposed to be houses and people and kids on bikes...Instead it is kind of this weird mishmash of a ghost town, a burned out shell, and then every once in a while, a stretch of houses.” (Michael Cohen, 03:55)

---

2. Why Focus on Disaster Recovery?

• [04:30–06:10]
  • With natural disasters becoming increasingly frequent and unpredictable, the Wirecutter team recognizes the need for deeper, experience-based advice.
  • The team’s guiding question: What practical steps and hard-won insights can they offer to help others prepare for the unpredictable?

---

3. Two Stories, One Neighborhood

• [07:15–13:42]

  • Gregory Hahn: A design writer who finally achieved his dream of homeownership in Altadena’s scenic, tree-filled “Meadows”—only for his new home to be polluted and unlivable for months after the fires.

  • Michael Cohen: A deals writer (and ex-New Yorker) who also found his first home in Altadena—a two-bedroom with flourishing fruit trees—only to lose it entirely to fire.

  • Both underscore what made Altadena special: diversity, enduring community, and an old-LA mix of people and ways of life.

    “The neighborhood that we found felt very much like the neighborhood I grew up in...the neighbors are immediately warm. The first month we were there, we were invited into people's backyard parties, birthday parties. We didn't know these people, but they were like, you're our neighbor now.” (Gregory Hahn, 18:58)

---

4. The Role of Community—Before, During, and After

• [13:54–19:41]
  • The sense of community is depicted as both a draw to Altadena and a lifeline during the crisis.
  • Michael and Gregory describe how neighborliness becomes a practical tool:

    “The silver linings that I remember are all the ways that different people in our community have shown up for each other...” (Michael Cohen, 32:00)

---

5. The Wildfires Erupt: Preparedness and Chaos

• [20:16–26:46]

  • The January 2025 wildfires unfold with horrifying speed, pushed by unpredictable, violent Santa Ana winds.

  • Proactive Evacuation:

    • Gregory, attuned to risk, leaves before official orders:

      “You know, everybody had asked, oh, did you leave because you were worried about fire? I was like, no, I was worried about wind.” (Gregory Hahn, 21:58)

    • His concern: one road out of his canyon neighborhood is easily blocked.

  • Communication Failures:

    • Mike and his wife, vacationing in Mexico, rely on community WhatsApp threads. Many residents, including them, do not receive formal evacuation alerts until hours after the danger.

      “If you think of disasters like a plane crash or when the subway gets stalled and they say...please wait for organized instructions from uniformed crew members—in a disaster, it’s probably happening so fast that there aren’t uniformed crew members with organized instructions. So you have to be in charge of your own survival.” (Michael Cohen, 30:29)

---

6. Devastating Loss and the Helplessness of Distance

• [27:01–29:43]

  • Mike and his wife watch from afar as their house burns, communicating through their doggy cam and doorbell camera with their friend and pet-sitter who escapes at the last minute.

    “We just watched until the whole screen just filled with smoke and black and flashes of flames...and then eventually the feed cut out.” (Michael Cohen, 29:29)

---

7. Essential Lessons: What Every Survivor Wishes They’d Known

• [30:29–32:52]
  • Top Lessons:
    • Expect that in a disaster, you may need to rely on yourself and your neighbors, rather than official help.
    • Prepare to act decisively even in the absence of guidance or instructions.
    • Knowing your neighbors and having a way to communicate is crucial; informal networks often prove more reliable than official channels.
    • The act of preparing/apprenticing yourself to “prepper” mentality is invaluable, but community ties mean even more.

      “There’s a level investment that you need to make within your own immediate community...that will become very, very valuable almost immediately in regards to knowing information because information gets cut off so quickly in a disaster.” (Gregory Hahn, 32:52)

---

8. Practical Takeaways for Listeners

• [34:07–35:11]
  • Start or join a group chat with your neighbors (WhatsApp, GroupMe, etc.).
  • Join local volunteer or preparedness organizations—these connections pay off in disasters.
  • Be prepared to help and lean on others; invest in relationships, not just kits or gadgets.

---

9. Preview: The Next Phase—The Strain of Recovery

• The episode concludes by setting up Part 2, which will cover the overwhelming challenges of rebuilding—in particular, the mind-boggling task of itemizing every possession for insurance claims.

  “They will ask you for the list. This is the list of every single thing in your home. If you were to take your home and dump it out...Most people can’t tell you everything that’s in their backpack...imagine having to do that with every single drawer in your entire home.”
  (Michael Cohen, 35:11)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the surreal loss of place:

  “There’s supposed to be houses and people and kids on bikes and people walking dogs... and instead it is kind of this weird mishmash of a ghost town, a burned out shell, and then every once in a while, a stretch of houses.” (Michael Cohen, 03:55)

• On the emotional impact of disaster:

  "We just watched until the whole screen just filled with smoke and black and flashes of flames. And then eventually the feed cut out." (Michael Cohen, 29:29)

• On the importance of community:

  "We look out for each other or we're trying because nobody else is going to do it for us. So that's really been the silver lining." (Michael Cohen, 32:00)

• On practical advice for listeners:

  "Create an easy way to communicate with your neighbors. This could be a text chain or a group chat... After the fires, Gregory joined a group to do brush cleanup. Working alongside his neighbors for hours at a time has helped deepen his connection with the people who live close to him." (Christine Cyr Clisset, 34:07)

---

Important Timestamps by Segment

| Timestamp | Segment / Subject | |-------------|------------------------------------------------------| | 00:31–01:24 | Overview of Altadena post-fire destruction | | 04:30–06:10 | Introduction to the series’ aim and scope | | 07:15–13:42 | Backstories: Mike and Gregory’s journey to Altadena | | 16:38–19:41 | Community life in Altadena pre-fire | | 20:16–22:30 | Santa Ana winds and evacuation decisions | | 24:22–26:46 | Communication breakdowns and lack of alerts | | 27:01–29:43 | Watching the home burn via camera, escape story | | 30:29–32:52 | Biggest lessons & advice for disaster preparedness | | 34:07–35:11 | Practical steps: network and volunteer locally | | 35:11–35:42 | Preview: The overwhelming “insurance list” |

---

Summary & Closing

Tone: Candid, reflective, warm, and rueful—with practical urgency.

This first episode in the series provides a raw, on-the-ground view of disaster’s unpredictable path and the aftermath many never see: displacement, loss, bureaucratic obstacles, and the quiet heroics of neighbors. The lived experiences and advice of Michael and Gregory leave listeners not with fear, but with a call to invest in practical preparedness and, most of all, in the resilience of community ties. The concluding note: disaster can happen to anyone, anywhere, and the best preparation may be the relationships you build before the emergency ever comes.

---

Find Part 2 of this series ("The True Cost of Recovering from the LA Wildfires") in your podcast feed on Friday.

Transcript

[Gregory Hahn]

Hey, it's Vaughn Vreeland from New York Times Cooking. Baking season is here.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Almost any cake can be turned into a one mole cake.

[Michael Cohen]

There's nothing better than a freshly baked croissant for my oven. Oh, my God. I could eat 5 billion of these.

[Gregory Hahn]

That is a brownie.

[Michael Cohen]

Don't be afraid.

[Gregory Hahn]

This is so forgiving.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

These are deluxe cookies.

[Gregory Hahn]

At New York Times Cooking. We've got it all. We've got tips, recipes, videos for whatever you want to bake. So come bake with [e-mail].

[Michael Cohen]

So we're coming up kind of the west side of the burn scar now, but you can also still see the difference between the mountains that are green and the mountains that are burned.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

This is my colleague Michael Cohen.

[Michael Cohen]

My name is Michael Bradley Cohen. I am a deals writer at Wirecutter. For all those who follow along over.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Black Friday, Michael goes by Mike and he used to live in the neighborhood we're driving through right now, Altadena, just outside of LA. Exactly a year ago on January 7, 2025, the Palisades and Eaton fires erupted. They would ultimately become among the most destructive in California's history, eventually burning down more than 16,000 structures, including nearly 6,000 homes in Altadena. Mike's home was one of them.

[Michael Cohen]

I lived in Altadena. It was the first home we ever bought. It has gotten so much better already. And even driving up Lincoln, like all of this was covered in ash and debris and everything. And to see all the lawns back and to see people here is all really, really exc again. We're still kind of just skirting the burn scar, but we'll turn right on Altadena Drive and then we'll head in.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

I'm Christine Cyr Clisette and this is the Wirecutter Show. Today's episode is the first in a three part series. It's an expansion of what we normally do on this show. We're going to focus on the disaster collectively known as the LA wildfires. We'll be talking about some specific pieces of advice in the context of emergency preparedness, but we're also going to hear the human side of this story. We'll talk with Mike and another colleague of ours, Gregory Hahn, who lived through the Eaton fire, about the things they've learned over the past year about the unpredictability of natural disasters and just how long arduous, emotional and expensive the road to recovery can be. You'll also hear the voices of my executive producer and co host, Rosie Guerin and producer Abigail Keel, who were on the ground with me reporting in LA in December 2025.

[Rosie Guerin]

So now things are starting to look empty.

[Michael Cohen]

Yeah. So right when we turn off Lincoln and we start getting into this, the west side of Altadena now, it's more.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Is this the house that's just being built or is that.

[Michael Cohen]

Yeah, that's. That's a. That one's going up. That one's going up. That one, it seems like survived somehow. Looks like maybe had roof damage only because the roof's two different colors.

[Rosie Guerin]

This is extraordinary. This is just right. You go after a lot after a lot of nothing.

[Michael Cohen]

Yeah. And if you put your hazards on most people, now that we're in the burn zone, nobody's here unless they want to be. Like, there's no real through traffic, so you can kind of drive as slow as you want.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

But then you have an entire block right here that's like, untouched. It looks like.

[Michael Cohen]

Like I can't paint a picture of the negative space with my words. Well enough to describe. Like there's supposed to be houses and people and kids on bikes and people walking dogs and somebody watering their lawn. And instead it is kind of this weird mishmash of a ghost town, a burned out Shel, and then every once in a while, a stretch of houses.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

We're dedicating three special episodes to this conversation because frankly, there is a lot to learn. And not just for people who live in Los Angeles or other wildfire prone areas, but for anyone who might face a natural disaster and wonder, what can I do to prepare? At Wirecutter, we they offer advice and recommend gear to prepare for natural disasters. Unfortunately, climate change is making these weather events more frequent, more intense, and more unpredictable. Just in the last year, we've seen cataclysmic floods in the Texas Hill country, deadly tornadoes in many parts of the US and increasing flash floods across the country, just to name a few. Mike and Gregory lived through a disaster. And because the wirecutter ethos runs deep, they were thinking the whole time like true wirecutter writers, people who consider the details, who take notes on the lessons they could share with others, they came through it with guidance that could apply to any natural disaster. Like what you need to understand about home insurance in case you ever really need to use it, or the ways you can invest in your home and community. Now, wherever you live, that may pay off in an emergency a lot more than you think. Through this series, we hope to highlight the hard won lessons they've learned to help you think through ways to Prepare for disasters that you might face. We'll be right back.

[Dan Barry]

I'm Dan Barry and I'm a longtime reporter with the New York Times. I've been here for 30 years and I've seen a lot of things change. I was here before there was a website. But one thing hasn't changed at all, and that's the mission of the New York Times. To follow the facts wherever they lead. And if that means publishing something a government or a leader or a celebrity doesn't want aired, that's not our concern. I've never been told to go against the facts to accommodate anyone. And if I had, I would have, quite frankly, left the building. This is the way it was when I was covering the aftermath of 9 11, and this is the way it is now as I cover the United States of today. If you believe in the importance of fact driven reporting, you can support it by becoming a New York Times subscriber. And if you already subscribe, this veteran reporter thanks you.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

About six months ago, I helped edit a series of articles for Wirecutter about emergency preparedness. We covered topics like how to build a personalized disaster prep kit, what to keep in your pantry for emergencies, and how to shop for a generator. Many Wirecutter writers and editors live in Los Angeles and experienced last year's wildfires firsthand. Although there had been a lot of coverage of the fire's destruction, our colleagues wondered if there was anything we could add to the conversation to shed some light on the complexities of surviving and moving through the aftermath. That's when our colleague Gregory Hahn reached out.

[Gregory Hahn]

I'm Gregory Hahn. I am a contributor at Wirecutter, but also a design writer and co author of three books, the latest with my wife. About trees, previously about mushrooms. I live in Altadena.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Gregory was born and raised in Los Angeles. His home is still standing, but it was severely polluted by the fire, and so he and his wife were displaced for months. We asked him to work with Mike on a story about their collective experiences in the aftermath of the fires.

[Gregory Hahn]

We started just having conversations about what we were going through.

[Michael Cohen]

Yeah, I think one of the first things that we really connected on was almost reframing the scope of the article that at one point was how to rebuild in the six months after a fire. And we both kind of chuckled because we were like, six months after the fire, you will still be mired in a thousand governmental agencies. And we were in the midst of those, not in a place or position where we could speak to with perspective what was working what wasn't working.

[Gregory Hahn]

I knew so many of my neighbors and people within the community were completely lost. We really did kind of identify the key points of, like, this is what you can do. Because so much felt like, what do we do? What can we do?

[Michael Cohen]

And so we reframed it more as, like, things we wish we had done or known better or practiced before the fire. Something everyone can read before any disaster happens. Here are some really actionable steps that you can take and we hope you never have to deal with them.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

There are many things you can and should do to prepare for a disaster, like making an evacuation plan and packing a go bag. You can read Gregory and Mike's advice in their article from July, linked in our show notes. But there are some lessons they've learned that they never could have seen coming. To understand those lessons, we need to head back in time to get to know these guys a little better, to hear how they came to live in Altadena and what they lost. Gregory and his wife Emily, never thought they'd be able to afford a home in Los Angeles. They're both freelance writers. Gregory covers design and has written for places like Dwell and Apartment Therapy. So he was always looking at beautiful houses and thinking, wow, wouldn't it be incredible if I could own my own home someday? He and his wife wanted something surrounded by trees, a true oasis.

[Gregory Hahn]

The year before we found our home, we were hiking the trail. There's a Gabrielino El Prieto Trail. And I looked up and there was a large sycamore tree branch with a fox on it. And I was looking and I was like, that's the first time I've seen a California fox out here. And then I looked to the right of the canyon and there was all these homes lining the canyon. I was like, I want to live up there one day. And we were just joking because at that time we didn't have any money.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

In 2021, Gregory's mom got sick. After she died, he was devastated. He and his sister had to navigate managing her affairs. They ended up selling her home. And suddenly it seemed he and Emily could afford a down payment on a house of their own and they started their search in Altadena. They especially loved the area of Altadena lining the canyon, a neighborhood called the Meadows. It sits in the mountains far up a winding road and overlooks the San Gabriel Valley. And it backs right up to the Angeles National Forest. One day, a house came on the market that had been owned and built by a mid century industrial designer named Nils Diffrient. It had five giant sets of glass sliding doors on one side of the house. It was dripping with mid century details. It was perfect.

[Gregory Hahn]

The first thing that I was like, oh my gosh, I made it in life. It's a circular driveway, it's a small one, and it's one that like my truck can barely navigate. But it was really the trees, the oak trees that are surrounding the neighborhood, they're mature, they're beautiful, they're just like they're part of our home.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

They placed a bid and crossed their fingers in 2022. After a lot of back and forth, they moved in.

[Gregory Hahn]

It was going to be our forever home, and hopefully it will be our forever home.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Mike and his wife Chelsea moved to LA in 2022 from the east Coast. Mike was raised in New Jersey and was used to renting tiny apartments in New York City for what felt like way too much money.

[Michael Cohen]

I think when we were living in New York, we felt like we'll never be able to buy a place that we would want to live in. And that was part of what led us to California, was how much more we could get for the money that we had.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Mike and Chelsea also came into some money for a down payment a bit unexpectedly when the company she worked for and where she had equity was sold. Mike says they bid on something like 24 homes, but kept getting priced out.

[Michael Cohen]

And then our friends introduced us to Altadena and it's this funny little funky, half hippie, half mountain folk, like tiny town on the corner of Los Angeles. And we actually went and saw the house that we ended up buying and we didn't even take a video. We just walked in, we were like, this is it, this is great. Yeah, here's all the money we could ever imagine having. And my wife got the call from our realtor later that day and she's like, they said yes. My wife dropped the phone.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

In May of 2022, they moved into a two bedroom, one bathroom bungalow built in the 1920s. Mike says it wasn't big enough to feel like a forever home, but it was a really nice start.

[Michael Cohen]

I always wanted to plant trees wherever we would end up living. And I was always planting things on the fire escape in Brooklyn. And all of a sudden I felt like I had an empty green canvas where everything could grow. So we had dozens of fruit trees, we had a lemon tree, a bear's lime tree, a pomegranate tree, apricot tree, pluo tree, apple tree, pear tree, clementine tree, a bunch of orange trees. And it felt Amazing. You guys want to come into my house?

[Dan Barry]

I'd love to.

[Rosie Guerin]

Yeah.

[Michael Cohen]

Bring out that picture so you can be reminded of what it used to look like.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

The day we visited the site of Mike's former home in December, it was warm and sunny. Most of the large trees on his block had been burned or cut down after the fire, so there wasn't a lot of shade. We could see a big dirt square in the middle of the property.

[Michael Cohen]

So this was the footprint of my house. Where these things are, Those are the corners. This was the front door. You walked right in. Fireplace was here. Had a little entryway table here. It had a. The guys drive around because there's no. There's not a lot of restaurants or anything anymore. So the few construction sites that have people going, the taco trucks go to them, which is great.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

So this is.

[Michael Cohen]

This is pretty much the whole thing. Like that little brick wall is non structural. That was just a garden wall outside of the house. And so there's this like front yard here where stuff is actually starting to grow back. The olive tree is growing back. This used to be like a big old olive tree. One of the rose bushes is growing back that. Remember the orange tree that I showed you guys? That's. That little guy is growing back. Bear's lime tree is starting to grow back. There was a persimmon tree, lemon tree.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Standing in the middle of Mike's plot. The neighborhood felt pretty empty. There were a few brand new buildings a ways off, one or two structures that had survived the fire in the surrounding blocks, and a lot of space. Even still, it was easy to see the appeal of Altadena. People's landscaping had grown back. We passed a little bench for kids to wait for school. The house numbers were still painted on the curb. I could imagine the kind of neighborhood that he told us had been here. Lots of cute little homes close together, shaded by trees. Kids running around on Mike's cul de Sac Street. It was clearly emotional for Mike to be back even almost a year later.

[Michael Cohen]

We used to walk our dog up here. There's like next to no sidewalks in Altadena, but there's also not a lot of traffic because it has this kind of funny little small town feeling. So everybody just walks their dogs on the road. And the mountains used to be like gorgeous in the morning and covered in greed.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

It sounds like for both of you, Altadena had a draw. And I'd like you to explain in your own words what that draw was for you to move to Altadena.

[Michael Cohen]

For me it was community. The community of Altadena was the people who lived on the same block, the friends who we had, who'd lived in Altadena for years, who lived walking distance. It was Farnsworth park, which was the park at the top of the hill that we would take the dog to every night. And unofficially, of course, it is not a dog park, but about 20 different other Altadena folks would show up and we'd all let our dogs run around and catch up and ask about, I don't know, the weather and who's seen the peacocks and who had a bear sleep in their backyard. And it had this kind of mix of old and new. And there were people who had been there for generations. There were people who, because it's an unincorporated town, it meant that there were like certain rules and laws that didn't apply. So there were people who owned horses and they would just take the horses walking down our streets. And that's not something that you imagine seeing when you wake up to take your dog for a walk in the morning. But I would walk my dog with a guy who walked his horse.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

The west side of Altadena, where Mike's house was and where the fire hit the hardest, had historically been a middle class black community. Many homeowners of color had been pushed into west altadena in the mid 20th century by a discriminatory bank lending practice called redlining. Nearby white neighborhoods like Pasadena used this process to keep those residents out. A disproportionate number of homes destroyed in the fire were in historically black Altadena. Over the years, these families stayed and passed down their homes. This contributed to the racial diversity of the neighborhood Mike and Gregory moved into. With many black, Asian American and Latino.

[Gregory Hahn]

Families, there's just this diversity of ways to live life that are evident across Altadena that I was always drawn to. I think also the. The neighborhood that we found felt very much like the neighborhood I grew up in in the North Valley. And I had memories of strong community, like block parties and parents having everyone on, on speed dial. And somehow that survived. In Altadena, the neighbors are immediately warm. The first month we were there, we were invited into people's backyard parties, birthday parties. We didn't know these people, but they were like, you're our neighbor now.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Gregory and Mike both felt lucky to have landed in Altadena. It's a community, they said, that looked out for each other, and that community would become an invaluable resource during and after the Eaton fire. We'll Talk about that when we come back.

[Gregory Hahn]

There's something. As somebody who's grown up, I've just always been very uneasy about their arrival.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Although many people might associate fire as the central problem of the LA wildfires, extreme wind had just as much to do with the disaster. In early January 2025, the Santa Ana winds peaked in Los Angeles. These extreme winds and dry conditions caused small fires that may have otherwise been contained to spread quickly. Joan Didion wrote about the Santa Anas in an essay first published in 1967. She wrote, quote, the violence and unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The winds show us how close to the edge we are.

[Gregory Hahn]

I was definitely on edge prior to the wind arriving, and I was aware of the severity of that possible weather situation because of a local young meteorologist who gave microclimate reports of just Altadena. And he warned people maybe a week in advance. His name is Edgar McGregor. He's an amazing human being, and he warned everybody. So I was already like, okay, the wind has arrived.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Gregory's plan was to evacuate, and he wasn't necessarily going to wait for an order. The Meadows, his neighborhood, can only be reached by one road. He knew that road could become clogged if people panicked, and he knew he could be trapped if anything were to happen to it. Once Gregory felt how strong the winds were blowing on January 6, he decided to leave.

[Gregory Hahn]

You know, everybody had asked, oh, did you leave because you were worried about fire? I was like, no, I was worried about wind. I'd grown up with the San Andrews blowing so hard, the gusts breaking windows. My childhood home, my bedroom window broke on me once and in our living room once. And I thought, we have 10 sliding door windows around the house were just encased in glass. So I was like, well, let's just be a little careful and leave.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

On the afternoon of January 6, Gregory, Emily, and their two kittens left Altadena with enough clothes for one overnight. He took a laptop and some cat food.

[Gregory Hahn]

And we thought we'd be gone for a day, maybe two days, before I realized there was a fire in our neighborhood. We could see the Palisades on fire. And then I looked at news stories and said, oh, wait, Altadena's on fire. And it was on the other side of where we live. So I was like, okay, that's scary, but I think we'll be okay. But then, as the day progressed, the fire completely changed itself direction and I became very aware that we were not going to be returning home. I knew I had to be really cautious because my wife was recovering from cancer and surgery and we had these two kittens. And I was like, I wanted to get back home. I wanted to look. You know, there's a degree of curiosity, of morbid curiosity in a disaster. You want to see, like, what's happening, even if it puts you in danger. And I had to squash that back and say, no, we're going to just hole up here, be safe, and monitor it from afar.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Gregory and Emily wouldn't move back into their home until the weekend of July 4th, almost six months later. Mike didn't have to evacuate his home in Altadena because he wasn't there. He and his wife were on vacation in Trocones, Mexico, with some family friends. They saw the news about the winds and kept a close eye on a WhatsApp thread with their neighbors that afternoon. People were talking about the weather, but no one seemed panicked yet.

[Michael Cohen]

Like, someone sent a picture of all the avocados that had fallen off of their tree because of the winds, and they were like, my backyard is made of guacamole. And then someone else, you know, sent a picture like, oh, my fence came down. Well, it was definitely time for a new fence. The Palisades fire started first, and there was, in a very guilty, weird way, a relief. Almost like, oh, a fire did happen, but it didn't happen to us. And then the fire started in Altadena and someone shared with us this app, WatchDuty. And we all downloaded it and we were all glued to it because it had the most up to date information about how big the fire was and where it had reached. And then quickly it turned into, who is going to be the first to say that they're evacuating? On text chains, on Instagram, on Facebook, WhatsApp groups, people were all kind of saying, hey, we live around here. We're thinking of evacuating. Has anybody else thought about that? And then other people would be like, oh, we live even further from the foothills. We're already evacuated.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

In an emergency. Louisiana county is responsible for sending out evacuation orders via cell phone. In Altadena, almost immediately after the Eaton fire started in the nearby foothills, an evacuation order went out to parts of Altadena. But in west Altadena, those evacuation orders didn't go out until seven hours after the fire started. And for reasons we still don't know, Mike says he and his neighbors never got the warnings.

[Michael Cohen]

Somehow, eastern Altadena did in Certain parts. And Pasadena was put on alert for, like, I think it's get ready, set, and go is like, green, yellow, red. And they were very clear in some of the instructions. Don't try to evacuate before your neighborhood needs to be evacuated, because then you might be clogging the streets for other people who do need to evacuate. Luckily, everyone on our block had evacuated, and everyone was safe. But no one had actually received any of the emergency alerts before it happened.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Happened. Mike's neighbor Jamie was staying at Mike's house to look after his dog, Una. Mike and his wife encouraged Jamie to leave in the early evening of January 7th.

[Michael Cohen]

He's a longtime Altadenian. He's a lovely old hippie gentleman who told us, he said, you guys are New Yorkers. You don't understand. This is a lot of hoopla. It's just a lot of wind. We went to bed in Mexico, surrendering to the fact that we would find out whether our house was still there and that we couldn't get our dog sitter to leave. We got woken up in the middle of the night by our neighbor who was across the street waiting in her car for her evacuation orders that never came. And she was the one who called and said, are you in the house? The lights are on. She's like, you got to get out. Your yard is on fire. Your house is on fire.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Mike's neighborhood no longer had power. His lights were on thanks to solar panels he had on his roof. But he couldn't call his dog sitter. He did have a doorbell camera and a doggy cam, and he immediately tried to log on to reach his dog sitter.

[Michael Cohen]

That way, when we tune into the doggy cam, the fire alarms are already going off. They're blaring in the house. The house is filled with smoke, and I'm shouting into my phone, wake up. The house is on fire. Jamie. I'm whistling for my dog. She actually comes into view first, and she's barking at the fact that the house is filled with smoke, and she can hear my voice coming from somewhere. Jamie wakes up, takes a look around, and says, we're safe for now, but we're leaving. We got to watch him exit that one camera and walk out the front door on the doorbell camera. He only lived about a block up the street, so they just walked up to his car, and then they eventually drove away. And then my wife and I just sat in bed and watched the feed of the house as it filled with smoke and the flames came through the windows, and the sparks just poured off the roof and the trees in the yard burned. And we felt so helpless and it felt so unreal. There's nothing we could do, no one we could call. And we just watched until the whole screen just filled with smoke and black and flashes of flames. And then eventually the feed cut out.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Mike's home was completely destroyed by the Eaton fire. His dog, his dog sitter and his neighbor who called him all survived, thankfully. But some people in his neighborhood did not. Of the 19 people that died in the Eaton fire, all but one of them were in western Altadena. If you were telling someone who'd never been through what you've been through, who's never experienced a natural disaster, who's never experienced losing their home, is there any advice you would give someone.

[Michael Cohen]

Two answers to this question on, like, a personal side of things? It would be. When you're going through a disaster like this, it tells you really quickly what is most important and what is worth packing in a bag. And that's probably a small bag. From a practical standpoint, when a natural disaster is happening, if you're looking around for the people who know what to do, they might not be there. So you have to be that person for yourself. If you think of disasters like a plane crash or when the subway gets stalled and they say, like, please wait for organized instructions from uniformed crew members in a disaster, it's probably happening so fast that there aren't uniformed crew members with organized instructions. So you have to be in charge of your own survival.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Mike says the fire was a terrifying wake up call for him and for many people in his neighborhood, that emergency services aren't always there in an emergency. But he says one big lesson has stood out to him over the last year. He is so grateful that he knows his neighbors.

[Michael Cohen]

The silver linings that I remember are all the ways that different people in our community have shown up for each other. I found out that my house was in fact a total loss because a friend that I made at the dog park drove by the next morning and sent us a video of our house still smoldering. I got introduced to a non profit that helped us get a grant because a friend of ours up the street also applied, because a friend of theirs who was their neighbor also applied. We look out for each other or we're trying because nobody else is going to do it for us. So that's really been the silver lining.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Gregory, from your experience, what, in the same way are some pieces of advice that you would give someone who maybe hasn't experienced something like this before.

[Gregory Hahn]

There's a level investment that you need to make within your own immediate community that will become very, very valuable almost immediately in regards to knowing information because information gets cut off so quickly in a disaster. Instead of expecting other people to be there for you, I think it's important to prepare to be there for other people too. And if we all operate that way, then we're all going to help each other get through it. And I think the lesson here is to become a prepper. I became a prepper in a certain regard, but what I really found out was I had so many gaps of knowledge and people I didn't know who lived across the street had knowledge. And we helped each other all, all throughout this process and we continued to help each other through this process. So that is a resource you can't buy, but it's something you can invest in by just saying hello and speaking to your neighbors and connecting in a way that may pay off in life death situation.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

This is Gregory and Mike's first big lesson a year out from the Eaton fire. Invest in your community. A good first step is to create an easy way to communicate with your neighbors. This could be a text chain or a group chat through something like WhatsApp or GroupMe. And this might naturally evolve through whatever you're doing in your daily life. Mike's neighborhood thread started as a group of local dog owners before the fire. You could also join a volunteer organization in your community. After the fires. Gregory joined a group to do brushes cleanup. Working alongside his neighbors for hours at a time has helped deepen his connection with the people who live close to him. The next lesson Gregory and Mike learned, or maybe one they're still learning, is about recovery. What do you actually need to think about and do once the immediate disaster is over in order to begin piecing your life back together? That's what we're going to talk about next time.

[Michael Cohen]

They will ask you for the list. This is the list of every single thing in your home. If you were to take your home and dump it out. Most people can't tell you everything that's in their backpack right now. If you were to dump all of it out and itemize it, imagine having to do that with every single drawer in your entire home.

[Christine Cyr Clisette]

Find part two of this series right here on Friday.

[Rosie Guerin]

This series was reported and hosted by Christine Cyrclassette. The Wirecutter show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. This series was fact checked by Cole Lewison and the audio was mixed by Katie McMurran. Engineering support from Maddie Masiello and Nick Pittman. Our interview with Gregory and Mike was recorded by Tim Moore at York Recording in Los Angeles. Original music for this series by Marian Lozano, Dan Powell, Alicia Ba Itupe, Ron Ni Misto, Katherine Anderson and Pat McCusker. Special thanks to Harry Sawyers and Jen Gushew for editing Gregory's original article, and to Daniel Ramirez from New York Times Audio. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter's deputy publisher and general manager. Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's editor in chief. We thank you so much for listening.