Escaping The LA Wildfires

When the fires closed in, I made soup.

My husband woke me up with the words “We should start packing bags.” I didn’t understand what he was talking about. “For what?” I said, half asleep.

A black haze covered the entire sky. It looked as if it were night, save a small blue pocket to the east showing that the sun had risen. Was the fire about to envelop us or miles away? Looking out the window, we had no idea.

This week I learned that in a fire, I wouldn’t remember to grab my wedding dress but I would take a The Hobbit t-shirt I got at the Silverlake flea market. I wouldn’t think to pack the polaroids from my childhood hanging on the wall or the cash in my “travel jar” — I would, however, bring hard drives containing short films from 10 years ago that are already on YouTube.

As smoke from the Eaton fire filled the air, it became clear that the threat wasn’t immediate. We were in a “red flag zone,” not an evacuation zone. We debated whether to leave or stay. The Slacks from our work-from-home jobs rang with demands. Our air pu…