LOS ANGELES — It was eerily similar to 2018, when the Woolsey fire ripped through Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Rams right tackle Rob Havenstein heard a teammate point out a new cloud of smoke on the horizon, and his heart dropped at the thought of another blaze in the community.
Then, as he stared to the west, a new, horrible thought crossed his mind.
“You’re like, wait a second, I live over there,” Havenstein said.
Such was the state of things at the Rams facility in Woodland Hills Thursday as the Kenneth fire broke out. Head coach Sean McVay called the team together and asked them to take a knee and informed them what was happening in the West Hills, where many players and coaches, himself among them, lived. He told everyone that if they needed to take care of their families, to do so.
Havenstein exited the field, crossed through the locker room and into the parking lot, cleats still on, cell phone in hand as he tried to call his father. But service is always spotty at his home, and with power out there was no other way to reach him. He knew his wife was away from the house, and he needed to be sure his father and animals were safe. So he got in his car to drive home.
“I can’t reach him, I’m getting voicemail, voicemail, Find My Friends thing, that’s not working because there’s no service up there,” Havenstein said. “So just kind of made a split decision that it’s just something that I couldn’t leave to chance.”
But when his wife called and said she was on her way to the house, he was able to return to practice and try to prepare for a postseason game.
Changing course
Rams president Kevin Demoff entered Thursday optimistic that Monday’s playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings could still be played at SoFi Stadium. If air quality stayed at current levels in Inglewood and fires died down enough to provide relief to first responders, and make enough available to staff the game, then he hoped the Rams could provide some respite and catharsis to the region, just as the Monday night game against the Chiefs in 2018 had done.
But as he sat on a call with public safety officials Thursday afternoon, it became clear that the current path was not sustainable. There were the spoken doubts about relinquishing resources to secure the facility amidst the ongoing Palisades and Eaton fires, and there was also the unspoken strain in their voices, the pain on their faces from the toll this last week has taken.
Soon after, Demoff spoke with NFL officials and recommended they activate the contingency plan to move the game to State Farm Stadium in Arizona.
“The first thing that came to mind was we’re holding 500 rooms for the Minnesota Vikings and NFL officials and our team for the game. That room can go to evacuees if you make this decision now,” Demoff said on Friday. “We owe this to our community to make sure that this game can be played safely and not be a distraction. And heaven forbid a single home or car or God forbid a human life was lost because some asset was diverted to SoFi Stadium, or that a firefighter who’s been working non-stop for 10 days had to stay on the frontline to cover for a firefighter who had to go to SoFi Stadium. Or heaven forbid a fire breaks out during the game and people get an evacuation notice on their phone and have to leave.”
Demoff had a list of people who needed to be informed of the decision before an announcement was made. Players and team personnel. The Vikings. And the team’s season ticket department, so they could begin strategizing how to communicate the change to fans who already had tickets to Monday’s game.
But 15 minutes after delivering that news, the Agora Hills office where the season ticket team worked, along with many other parts of the organization, was ordered to evacuate due to the Kenneth fire.
In addition to the Agora Hills offices, at least 30 coaches, players and staff members had their homes evacuated because of that blaze. Many of them not knowing where else to go, drove to the Rams’ practice facility. Among them was McVay’s wife, Veronika, and their 1-year-old son Jordan.
“As soon as I got off the practice field and because of where they were, I saw them right away. That was all I needed,” McVay said. “When you can start to see it physically as the smoke rose up yesterday, there was a lot of guys that live in proximity that that hits home in a different way.”
Meanwhile, the operations department, headed up by Sophie Harlan, found hotels for evacuated families, paid for by owner Stan Kroenke and his family. Players like Tyler Higbee, fortunate enough to be out of the evacuation zone, invited teammates and their families to their homes to relax or even stay the night if they wanted.
And the organization as a whole watched aerial support try to control the fire like it was the Falcons-Commanders game in Week 17 that clinched the team’s NFC West division title.
“You’re cheering at every second for what was happening. Because that was going to be the difference between this organization being able to play a game and not play a game,” Demoff said. “If that fire had spread, I don’t think we could have played this week. It would have been really hard just emotionally.”
Moving forward
Somehow, the Rams must play a football game on Monday, just as many Angelenos must somehow return to their lives in the coming weeks in the wake of destruction.
Thursday night, all players and their families had a Zoom call in which the team outlined the plan for the coming days. The team would fly to Arizona on Friday instead of the usual departure the day before a game. All family members would be welcome to travel with the group, in an effort to minimize players’ concerns about their wellbeing while they tried to prepare for a playoff game.
“I think [VP of football and business administration] Tony Pastoors put it best: Hope is not a strategy,” Demoff said. “We can’t take away the stress of the fires, we can’t take away the stress of the evacuations. What we can do is say, ‘You’re safe, your family is safe, we’re all together and we can begin to focus on the game the best way that we know how.’ This team has been resilient in a lot of ways, this organization over the years has been resilient. This will be another chapter but our fear was even if everything was going right, we’ve seen in the past week that anything can change in 10 minutes.”
The Friday travel party would include 335 people, as well as six cats and two dogs. Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill provided his plane to help bring everyone over. Everyone will stay together at the same hotel in rooms secured by the NFL as part of the contingency plan.
“Our ops team, this organization, what they’ve been able to do to make this happen, to bring everybody together, even take care of the families, animals,” Higbee said. “I made a joke earlier, we got Noah’s arc going over to Arizona today.”
The Rams will try to make State Farm Stadium their home for a weekend. The field of their division foe will be painted with Rams logos and colors. On Sunday, another plane will fly out with the team’s cheerleaders, the mascot Rampage and SoFi Stadium voice Sam Lagana.
Tickets to Monday’s game in Arizona went on sale first to Rams season ticket holders, who purchased 25,000 tickets in the first hour. The Rams will provide 15 buses for 750 season ticket holders to leave SoFi Stadium on Monday and drive to Arizona for the game. The in-stadium entertainment will be the typical content from Rams home games.
“We’re going as fast as we can, we’re going to make mistakes,” Demoff said. “And I think you just have the grace and space to say that if something doesn’t happen the right way in Arizona, it’s ok. And we’ll do the best that we can as an organization. But let’s just go support our players, our families, our staff in the best way that we can.”
On Friday, McVay brought a paperweight with him to the team meeting. Inside, was a message that said, “Built for this.” It made the team think of the adversity it had gone through all year, from the near-crippling injuries in September to a 1-4 record going into the bye week.
But they overcame them as a group. And now they will have to overcome again, as a group.
“It’s not something that we cannot overcome,” safety Quentin Lake said. “For him to show that message was very empowering. Knowing that, I know the guys are going to be ready to go come Monday night.”