Returning to a Home Consumed by the Wildfires

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Speaker 6 This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Speaker 6 Staff writer Dana Goodyear has reported on California, the entertainment industry, a deadly crime spree in Malibu, Kamala Harris's rise in politics, and the ever more fragile environment in the state.

Speaker 6 Dana has lived for a long time in Los Angeles in the neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. And recently, she and her family found their lives very much at the center of the story.

Speaker 2 About a week after the house burned down, I drove up Pacific Coast Highway and I stopped at a command post basically right underneath my neighborhood at the beach.

Speaker 2 If you drive up about 1,200 feet, you're in the Palisades.

Speaker 2 I knew that I wanted to go back up there, and they weren't letting residents in.

Speaker 2 had no problem with me going in as a journalist.

Speaker 9 And so you have a press pass and you're trying to get up there. Is that what I guess my question to you is what's your ultimate goal today?

Speaker 10 I have combined goals.

Speaker 10 So I write for the New Yorker magazine. It's long-form non-fiction journalism.
Okay.

Speaker 10 And I need to be seeing things that all the heroic emergency operations people are doing. And I also need to figure out what in the hell is going on at my house because we haven't been able to see it.

Speaker 10 Okay, and I know it's gone, but more than that, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry for that.

Speaker 10 Well, I mean, the thing that's so weird for me is that I've reported on so many fires, and I just can't believe that it happened to you.

Speaker 2 I can't believe it.

Speaker 10 The beautiful palisades, it's just

Speaker 11 unreal.

Speaker 12 I'm driving up Chautauqua and I have an absolute pit in my stomach.

Speaker 12 I know I am about to see the neighborhood, but this is the road that I drove up

Speaker 12 every day.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 I'm glad a lot of these houses are standing on Chautauqua.

Speaker 12 So the fire didn't rip down through this

Speaker 12 little street so much.

Speaker 12 But

Speaker 12 I'm just so scared because I'm about to actually finally see it. I've been imagining it for a week.
And

Speaker 12 when I was here with Brad, it was like

Speaker 12 fire everywhere, smoke in the air, emergency vehicles. Just now it's pretty much dead calm.

Speaker 12 Dead calm, no cars, no fire trucks.

Speaker 12 Just like a lot of broken lives

Speaker 12 Here we go

Speaker 12 Here we go

Speaker 13 There is literally no one anywhere in this neighborhood

Speaker 13 It's

Speaker 13 so strange

Speaker 14 It's so quiet

Speaker 13 The wind is blowing lightly. The doves are back on the wires behind the house.

Speaker 14 I'm looking

Speaker 13 into this

Speaker 14 pit of

Speaker 13 plaster and

Speaker 13 rebar and kind of understanding how my house was made.

Speaker 14 There's the fireplace that I really loved in our family room with the

Speaker 13 kind of, I forgot the name of that shape, but it's, I think it's maybe a kiva shape, the

Speaker 13 sort of

Speaker 13 almond shape, half an almond shape opening in

Speaker 13 the fireplace, and the tiles on one side are still there.

Speaker 13 Then there's sort of a tangled mass and there are all of our roof tiles scattered everywhere.

Speaker 13 Pizza oven.

Speaker 8 There's like shampoo bottles that are completely intact that were by the outdoor shower.

Speaker 8 The garage, it looks like

Speaker 8 Monday afternoon in my garage. The pillows are on the couch.
My

Speaker 13 daughter's jar of homemade slime is sitting there intact on the on the counter.

Speaker 8 All my books are in the shelves.

Speaker 13 Everything looks completely fine.

Speaker 13 And then

Speaker 8 the house just

Speaker 8 is an idea of a house or the aftermath of the house, I guess.

Speaker 13 You can walk through the arched door at the front and the back, but there's just pretty much nothing in between.

Speaker 11 I wish I knew how it caught

Speaker 13 and why and if there's anything we could have done to change this outcome

Speaker 11 and why is our garage

Speaker 13 still standing

Speaker 8 I wish I knew how to know what its narrative was at this particular house like where

Speaker 11 the ember went in,

Speaker 8 what caught, what's that splatter all over the back

Speaker 8 wall of the house? The part that's still standing is just looks like someone took a paintbrush with black paint and flicked it, flung it all over the house.

Speaker 8 Did something explode there?

Speaker 8 What's so weird is just we had so much

Speaker 13 stuff.

Speaker 13 We had so many possessions, so many stupid possessions, and so many really

Speaker 8 special possessions.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 8 you can't see any of that here.

Speaker 8 It's almost like what it all comes down to is

Speaker 8 nails, plaster, and nails.

Speaker 8 Our world was really little tiny pieces of metal holding it together.

Speaker 6 Dane a good year in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles.

Speaker 5 More in a moment.

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Speaker 6 So, Danny, you've been documenting the loss of your home while you're reporting on the effects of this immense catastrophe in Los Angeles. And that's got to be beyond difficult.

Speaker 6 You told me you went back to the house again a few days later. So what did you find there?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I went back and

Speaker 2 I was just wandering around when some

Speaker 2 law enforcement emergency personnel saw me and everyone was really super friendly. You know, do you need water? Do you need a snack? Are you okay?

Speaker 2 And I said, yeah, I'm just, you know, they said, we'll come walk to your house with you. And so I went, finished the walk, got to my house.
And I said, you know, the thing that I've been

Speaker 2 really wondering about is this fireproof safe.

Speaker 2 It was a 400-pound safe that I had just installed in October. And

Speaker 2 feeling very pleased with myself, I got all of my important documents out of storage in downtown LA and put them in the fireproof safe

Speaker 2 along with

Speaker 2 a small box of jewelry. And when I went back, I've kind of had, I think my eyes had adjusted to the new layout of my home, you might say.
And I

Speaker 2 had figured out where my office was because it was in a closet in my office. And I saw this.
this kind of listing four file high

Speaker 2 totally black it used to be beige piece of metal. And I was like, that's got to be it.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 this incredibly helpful person with steel-toed boots said, You know what? I'm going to go in there and see if I can get it for you. I was like, Are you serious?

Speaker 2 Because I thought I was going to have to wait until FEMA cleared the site.

Speaker 6 Was it in the top drawer, you think?

Speaker 10 I don't think so. I think it was in the second, third, or fourth.

Speaker 2 And then he goes, Wait a minute. Here's a little metal box.

Speaker 3 Little box.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 3 Oh, that might have a gold ring in it.

Speaker 2 And I was thinking, oh my God, my mom had given my daughter her school ring.

Speaker 13 Oh, my God, it's my mom's school ring.

Speaker 2 We started sifting through

Speaker 2 the dust using the piece of metal that had held the top of one of the files, you know, those little hanging files thing, using that.

Speaker 2 found the stone from my engagement ring.

Speaker 11 Oh, that's my ring. That's my wedding ring.

Speaker 3 Yes, so wow.

Speaker 2 It looks like the diamonds melted out or something.

Speaker 11 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 The feeling of being able to have a happy story to tell

Speaker 2 not just my kids who are so anxious about

Speaker 2 what it all means,

Speaker 2 but also all the people who want our lives to be okay,

Speaker 2 like it weirdly has meant so much to them that I found this thing. It feels like, okay, this family is going to be okay, even though, you know, it's just a symbol.

Speaker 2 But I'm super happy to have this stone. It just feels like

Speaker 2 crises, they either strengthen you as a family or break you down.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 2 I feel like this strengthens us, and

Speaker 2 the stone is kind of a symbol of that,

Speaker 2 of unity.

Speaker 6 Well, Dana, all I can say is I send my love to you. Love from Esther and to Billy and to the whole family.

Speaker 2 Thank you. I appreciate it.

Speaker 6 Dana Goodyear is covering this year's wildfires in Los Angeles for the New Yorker. I'm David Remnick.

Speaker 6 That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for this weekend. Thanks for listening.
See you next time.

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