‘It Was All Very Sudden’: Harvard Affiliates Displaced by L.A. Fires

After watching “big plumes of smoke” rise on the Los Angeles horizon on Jan. 7, Beckett T. O’Brien ’28 and his family decided to evacuate their home, located between the Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica.

As Harvard students return to Cambridge this week, some from Los Angeles will leave behind a city still recovering from vicious wildfires. In interviews with The Crimson, Harvard affiliates said the fires caught them off guard, but expressed gratitude for their continued safety.

Multiple fires — propagated by a fierce wind — have ravaged the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, Altadena, and other locations across Los Angeles in the last two weeks, forcing more than 170,000 people to evacuate the area. The Eaton and Palisades fires are only partially contained, and fire crews are preparing for another onslaught of gusty winds early this week.

Though wildfires in Southern California are a regular occurrence, some Angelenos said that the severity and ubiquity of these fires set them apart. Both the Eaton and Palisades fires rank among the five most destructive in the state’s history.

O’Brien also said he initially “wasn’t that surprised” to hear about the fires — but with the Palisades fire less than 50 percent contained on Wednesday, O’Brien and his family had yet to move back into their home.

“We’re really, really fortunate to be able to get a hotel room to stay in because I know a lot of people were evacuated, and it got hard to do that,” he said.

Some residents — like Samantha A. Ettus ’94, who evacuated her Palisades home with her family last Tuesday — left their homes for what they assumed would be a brief evacuation, only bringing clothes or necessities.

“We didn’t leave with any valuables,” she said. “We just didn’t think it was going to be a seismic event for our possessions or our home.”

The next day, Ettus learned her house had burned down.

“I think worse than that has been the loss of everything else around it,” she said. “My children’s childhood school is gone. Their best friends’ homes are all gone. Their community is gone.”

“Losing all those memories has just been gut-wrenching for us,” Ettus added.

Connor M. Lee ’26 — who lives in La Cañada Flintridge, a city near the Eaton fire — received an evacuation alert on the morning of Jan. 8.

Lee had packed up his valuables and initially evacuated to his aunt’s house. He later moved to a hotel that was also placed under an evacuation order as the fire spread.

“It was all very sudden,” Lee said, adding that he returned to his house two days later.

Sungjoo Yoon ’27 — who lives in Burbank, a few miles north of downtown Los Angeles — said that he is “not that much of a stranger to fires” and is “generally always expecting a fire.”

“What was really different about this fire was that it was everywhere,” he said. “I walked outside one day and no matter what direction you looked in, the sky — it was all different colors and they were all shades of bright orange.”

“I don’t think I’d ever experienced anything like that,” Yoon added.

Some students said their neighborhoods have banded together to host friends, fundraise for lost possessions, and donate items of need.

“The people of L.A. are super supportive of each other,” said Daniel Zhao ’28, who attended high school in La Cañada Flintridge.

Though Zhao was not personally impacted by the fires, he said many of his high school friends’ homes in Altadena were destroyed in the Eaton fire. Zhao helped create a GoFundMe page to support one friend who lost his home. As of Saturday, the effort had raised more than $13,000.

Other students who did not receive an evacuation warning like Hugo C. Chiasson ’28 — a resident of the San Fernando Valley and a Crimson News Editor — have offered their homes to friends and families affected by the fires.

“My brother’s friend had to evacuate, and ended up evacuating to our house where he and his father stayed the night,” Chiasson said.

Chiasson — who compiled and circulated documents with GoFundMe links and fundraisers for evacuated families and first responders — pointed to the importance of supporting relief efforts for working class areas in the aftermath of the crisis.

“There’s a lot of people who aren’t going to be able to rebuild,” Chiasson said. “It’s absolutely devastating to these incredibly working class communities.”

“It’s devastation like I’ve never seen in my lifetime,” he added.

—Staff writer Hiral M. Chavre can be reached at hiral.chavre@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Darcy G Lin can be reached at darcy.lin@thecrimson.com.