The fires that tore through Los Angeles County in January were at once both shocking and predictable.
The shock: The Palisades and Eaton fires combined to kill at least 29 people and destroy more than 14,000 houses, businesses and other structures. It’s a bigger collective blow, in terms of damage to communities, than any fire or cluster of fires to hit this fire-prone region in a century.
But on the foreseeable side, there’s this: On Jan. 7, the day both fires began, a combination of weather conditions – eight months of drought plus turbocharged (up to 90 mph) Santa Ana winds – left the land so ripe for burning that the National Weather Service issued red flag warnings for much of Southern California.
Still, whether shocking or predictable or both, the fires meant much more than statistics or news accounts; they’ve taken lives, destroyed homes, turned communities into ash.
With that in mind, here’s a real-time look at how some experienced the fires. Their stories start roughly 36 hours before the first puffs of smoke appear to nearly two weeks later, as they ponder rebuilding – or not – from sometimes distant spots.
5:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 5, Vittorio Ristorante & Pizzeria, Pacific Palisades
The last full day at Vittorio’s – ever – is a good one.
Summer is always slower, with much of the Palisades community jetting off to vacation homes or Europe or wherever. But winter is different, the town’s stores and streets thick with locals. And on this winter Sunday, Vittorio’s, off Marquez Avenue, is bustling. People are coming in, sometimes 40 at a time, for a slice or a glass of red. Like always.
For Vanessa and Sabrina Pellegrini, sisters and co-owners of Vittorio’s, this local hangout – owned by their family for decades – is the center of their lives.
And, in 2025, they have big plans for their restaurant; a refurbished payment system, a remodel.
“This,” Vanessa tells Sabrina, “is gonna be our year.”
7:50 a.m., Tuesday, Jan. 7, St. Matthew’s Parish School, Pacific Palisades
It’s the first day back from Christmas break and Grayson Heydenrich, 9, is dressed smartly in the uniform required of all students at St. Matthew’s Parish – crisp khaki pants and a blue polo. He’s even wearing his beloved Sketchers.
He wasn’t thrilled earlier, when the sun rose and his mother, Adele, started nudging him out of bed. But now? As he and Adele walk up what she calls “Loop Road” to reach the drop-off point at St. Matthew’s? He’s excited.
They barely notice the wind.
As she hands off Grayson before heading to work, Adele greets Alexandra Michaelson, St. Matthew’s head of school, saying:
“Blustery day.”
8 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 7, El Sol Avenue, Altadena
Briefly removed from a Cape Cod trip to visit her in-laws, Alisha Cathirell-Tanzer and her husband, John Tanzer, awake to find that the power is out in the Altadena home they share with her father. That doesn’t stop them from discussing plans for an upcoming birthday party for their soon-to-be 3-year-old son. Family and friends, including many Altadena neighbors, are to attend.
Alisha and 15-year-old daughter, Jade, then hop in the car to head to Hermosa Beach, where Jade has a hair appointment. As Jade struggles to close the door, Alisha takes note of the high winds.
10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 7, The Gray Dragon Toy Store, Pacific Palisades
The morning has been busy. Heydenrich’s store is reopening for the first time since Christmas, and her one employee is sitting in a third-grade classroom.
She dreamed for decades of owning her own business, and launched her own toy store, The Gray Dragon, in November 2023. It was named for Grayson, and built for him, too. She’s a single mother and wants to do her best to set him up. So she hired her boy; even issued him a W-2.
But today Heydenrich is by herself. She packs up the store’s Christmas decorations, vacuums floors, folds clothes and eventually opens her doors. Then, at 10:47 a.m., her phone pings with a text alert from St. Matthew’s:
“We are aware of the fire on the 1100 block of Piedra Morada in the Palisades.”
Twelve minutes later she gets a second ping:
“Due to the fire, all families, please come to campus to pick up your children.”
Heydenrich steps outside and looks at the hills beyond St. Matthew’s, just a mile up Bienveneda Avenue.
A thick cloud of smoke sits in the sky.
11 a.m., Tuesday, Jan. 7, Palisades Highlands
Normally, Steven Schneider hears sirens in the Highlands. Not today.
But he doesn’t need a siren to tell him what’s wrong. As he looks out from his balcony, off Palisades Drive, he can see flames erupting across the hills, dancing toward the ocean.
For Schneider, 82, the simple act of moving is a chore. He’s got a cyst on his spinal cord, called a syrinx, which makes it hard to walk without a cane. Today, though, he will walk some, if only indoors. Over the next few hours, he meanders from his balcony to his suitcase to his television, which keeps showing flames moving through the brush of Palisades hillsides.
But he packs for a wedding, not an evacuation. He’s supposed to attend some engagement parties this week, for a family member’s niece, so Schneider chooses items accordingly: Two pairs of shoes. Two ties – one blue-and-gold, one silver. A dress shirt.
In another part of the house, in Schneider’s office, file cabinets hold thousands of pieces of fishing gear: Knobs. Stems. Spindles. Bearings. Maybe $40,000 worth of nuts and bolts. He’s run his fishing-gear company, Reel Power Handles, out of his home for more than 20 years. And, despite the cyst, he’s always run it by himself.
11:15 a.m., Tuesday, Jan. 7, Bienvenida Avenue, Pacific Palisades
As his mother picks him up, Grayson’s lower lip starts to quiver and tears bubble in the corners of his 9-year-old eyes.
“It’s fine!” Heydenrich tells him, as a mother does.
Quietly, she prays she won’t see him cry. It’ll wreck her.
She’s picking up a tiny crowd: her son and one of his third-grade friends, as well as his friend’s kindergarten-age sister. The other parents can’t get back in time from work, so the grownups have hatched a plan. She’ll drop all the kids off at the friend’s parents’ home, in Brentwood, and return to her home in the Highlands to get what she can.
Thousands of others, though, have hatched their own plans.
St. Matthew’s isn’t the only school evacuating right now, and the nearby streets are starting to snarl. A civilian is trying to direct traffic at the intersection of Bienvenida and Sunset. And across from the school, parents are simply wheeling their cars over a curb, hopping out and sprinting up the road, the same unspoken panic written on their faces:
I need to get to my kid.
Outwardly, Heydenrich remains calm. But her heart is pounding. She is stuck, in a fire, with three children in the backseat of an Audi SUV. And as she glances in her rear-view, she sees smoke billowing into the sky.
Noon, Tuesday, Jan. 7, Vittorio Ristorante & Pizzeria
Vanessa Pellegrini isn’t yet at Vittorio’s. After picking up her daughter and a friend’s kids from their school in Woodland Hills, Pellegrini calls the restaurant and asks for an assessment of the situation.
A server, Maria, offers simple counsel.
“Don’t come down here.”
Initially, Pellegrini tells Maria to keep the place open as long as possible. Often, the Palisades has power outages. Often, it leads the community into Vittorio’s.
But Maria says black smoke is everywhere, and the city has told them to evacuate. So Pellegrini tells Maria to close. Then she calls a pair of cooks still working inside the restaurant.
“Get out of there,” she says.
They refuse.
They’re making the day’s sauces, they say. Leaving now will ruin their work. They’re not in the business of wasting food.
1:15 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 7, Marquez Avenue, Pacific Palisades
Heydenrich rushes back to The Gray Dragon.
After dropping off Grayson and the other kids, traffic on Sunset became impassable. Police eventually tell Heydenrich and others to abandon their cars and leave the keys inside. So she makes the last part of the journey, down Marquez, on foot.
Now, as she gets inside her toy store, smoke invades her lungs. She needs a face covering and grabs her son’s red karate robe, running water over it so it’ll work as a filter.
As she holds the jacket around her face, she locks The Gray Dragon for the last time.
It is a 2-mile walk from the store to their house, on Highlands, and Heydenrich’s eyes are screaming.
But she’s got to make one more rescue – a 3-pound Chihuahua named Mr. Fluffsalot.
Her relationship with the dog, she will admit, is love-hate. The dog’s name could be Mr. Peesalot.
But as she walks, Heydenrich imagines coming home to Grayson empty-handed and telling him, “Sorry, Buddy. He didn’t make it.”
So she marches up Sunset Boulevard and onto Palisades Drive. She passes a burning palm tree. She passes abandoned cars, one sitting with its lights blinking and no driver. She passes firefighters turning a hose on a housing complex behind a Starbucks; the water vanishing before it even hits the flames.
Heydenrich even learns, as she walks, the sound a home makes when it collapses into itself. It is a pop. And it is unbearable.
She inserts a pair of AirPods, blasting Imagine Dragons. And a mother with a red karate jacket around her mouth embarks on a quest to rescue a loose-bladdered Chihuahua from a town on fire.
1:30 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 7., Vittorio Ristorante & Pizzeria
Pellegrini calls her cooks, again. Three times. Four times.
“Just get out of there,” she urges. “Forget the sauce.”
Eventually, they get out of there. They forget the sauce.
2:30 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 7, Heydenrich’s home
Heydenrich has hitched a ride up Palisades Drive in a fire truck, telling the crew that she’ll walk the rest of the way if they don’t drop her at her home.
Once inside, she grabs a roller suitcase and stuffs it with a couple outfits for Grayson, his Christmas pajamas, a binder full of Pokemon cards. Then she heads downstairs and puts Mr. Fluffsalot into a carrier bag, grabbing some of his food and chew toys.
At no point does she survey her home and wonder if it’ll be the last time she’ll see it.
6:30 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 7, Canon Avenue, Sierra Madre
Nancy Mitchell Gebhardt and her husband, Jack Gebhardt, watch the second-to-last episode of “The Mentalist.” She’s on the couch, he’s on a recliner.
They hear there’s a fire, somewhere, but they don’t budge. Since 1980, when they moved into this historic house near the Mt. Wilson trailhead, they’ve evacuated for at least three other fires. So far, no home in their neighborhood has been touched.
Besides, the show they’ve been binging, “The Mentalist,” aired for seven seasons – 151 episodes – and they’re down to the last two. They watch the finale, a two-hour end-of-series wrap-up. It’s OK.
Then they check their texts.
The fire, they learn, is big and getting bigger. Soon, their daughter, Annie, calls to tell them that they should come to her house in Claremont.
So they pack. They fill two cars with photos and documents and four or five days’ worth of clothes and clean underwear. Nancy, a retired puppeteer and ventriloquist and former “Gong Show” winner – and second cousin of late President Richard Nixon – chooses to save family photos over the dolls she used in the ventriloquist act.
From their driveway, they can see flames eating up a distant hill.
Finally, about 15 minutes after a policeman uses a loudspeaker to tell the neighborhood that evacuation was mandatory, not voluntary, Nancy and Jack start the cars.
As she pulls out, Nancy speaks out loud to the house she still loves.
“Take care of yourself.”
7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 7, El Sol Avenue, Altadena
Alisha Cathirell-Tanzer and Jade try to transfer data and photos to new iPhones, which they purchased on the way back from Hermosa Beach. But the power is out yet again and the internet is down, too. The transfer will have to wait.
Alisha gets texts from friends. “Altadena is on fire,” one reads. She looks up information.
“Oh, it’s in Eaton Canyon, that happens,” she replies. It’s 4 miles away.
Alisha’s father, Dartanion Cathirell, opens a back door and calls for his daughter. Together they see flames in the distant hills.
Ten minutes later, Alisha’s sister-in-law arrives with her kids and pets, a tortoise and a dog. Alisha’s senses, for the first time, are heightened.
They set out to find her brother, Dartanion Cathirell II, amid the dark smoke, and find him. They all return to the home for the night.
6:30 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 8, El Sol Avenue, Altadena
As the family wakes, Alisha’s nose tells her smoke has invaded her house. She looks outside to see a sky that’s pitch black. Plans to go to Disneyland that day are canceled.
Alisha’s father and brother set out to check on the nearby homes of her brother, who lives near Altadena Golf Course, her grandmother and an uncle.
Soon after they leave, she gets a frantic call from her father.
“It’s like a war zone,” he says. “There are cars on fire, houses on fire. Everything above the cemetery is burning.”
Dartanion II makes a mad dash to try to put water on his and surrounding homes. Meanwhile, a deputy arrives at Alisha’s home.
“You need to get out.”
Alisha checks on a neighbor and then grabs their still-packed duffle bags and tosses them into the family SUV and Prius. Next, she adds a safe filled with important documents, a photo of her mother and an urn containing her mother’s ashes. Finally, she gathers the family dog, Nugget, a corgi who isn’t fond of car rides. She puts him in the car anyway.
Then, with the family and her father in the vehicle, they try to drive off to evacuate.
But the car won’t start.
“This,” Alisha thinks, “is like a disaster movie.” But Dad has a jump-start and, soon, they’re driving to an uncle’s house.
He lives in Hollywood Hills.
4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 8, Palisades Highlands
Schneider is still home, but conditions are changing.
Earlier today he and his partner – who declined to be referenced for this story – drove to the top of Palisades Drive and spoke with some firefighters and saw some scorched houses. It was, they decided, time to leave.
They pack their Toyota Prius full. Schneider’s partner has saved a large picture of her three children. But Schneider is gripped by indecision.
A dozen fishing rods sit in their garage, each with its own story. Schneider could take them. Or he could take some of the trays of fishing parts. In the end, he chooses nothing. The houses on either end of us will protect us, he thinks, his fear giving way to blind optimism.
He holds his partner’s hand. The most important thing to save, he thinks, is the two of them.
As they drive down the hill, still holding hands, the Oh my Gods hit them in waves.
On Sunset, they pass rows of abandoned cars.
“Oh my God,” they say.
Near Palisades Village they pass what once was a row of houses. Schneider counts six chimneys left standing.
“Oh my God,” they say.
They pass the Alphabet Streets, a popular neighborhood, and blocks of homes are gone.
“Oh my God.”
His partner sobs uncontrollably. Schneider does not know what to say, or how to comfort her. Maybe, in the middle of a town that looks like a war zone, there is no comfort.
5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 8, Hollywood Hills
Cathirell-Tanzer is seated at a table in her uncle’s home as her brother and father return from surveying the damage in Altadena.
She sees the harrowing videos they captured. Her grandmother’s house is gone. Another uncle’s house is gone.
But something catches her eye; a Smart Car off to the side of her grandmother’s house. It belongs to her aunt, Evelyn McClendon.
At that point, Alisha knows Evelyn didn’t make it. Relatives would confirm days later after finding a skull and other remains among the rubble of the house.
But she barely has time to grieve – a new alert hits her phone. The Sunset fire is endangering this neighborhood, too.
For the second time this day, they pack their cars and evacuate.
They head to Orange, where a friend of Alisha’s owns a cottage. Later, as she settles in, she makes a mental map of Altadena streets, noting which of her family and friends have almost certainly lost their homes.
She doesn’t even realize she still smells of smoke until her husband says something.
“Take a shower,” he says. “You’ll feel better.”
10 a.m., Thursday, Jan. 9, DoubleTree Hotel, Del Mar
“Are you OK?” Grayson asks.
It’s a couple days since Heydenrich picked her boy up at school. They stayed, at first, at a hotel in Universal City. Then Heydenrich woke up Wednesday morning to learn about the fire in Hollywood Hills, and they made the decision to simply leave Los Angeles for Del Mar.
She learned a day ago, from a social media post, that their home in the Highlands is gone. So, too, is The Gray Dragon, their shared life.
She is not OK. But she has to be, for her son.
But, today, she has to tell him a hard truth.
“Hey, Buddy, it’s all gone.”
He offers little reaction.
“What do you mean, it’s gone?” he asks her. They couldn’t stop the fires, Heydenrich tries to explain, but it doesn’t register.
A couple days later, as they’re driving somewhere, Grayson bursts into tears.
“All my art,” he says, sobbing, referring to his sketchbooks.
“Does that mean all my art is gone?”
11:45 a.m. Friday, Jan. 10, Vittorio Ristorante & Pizzeria
A news crew from CNN is putting together a story on Vanessa Pellegrini’s family and Vittorio. This Friday, they shuttle Pellegrini, her husband and her mother to see what’s left of Marquez Avenue.
On Tuesday, Pellegrini didn’t sleep; she couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink. On Wednesday, when she saw a video of Vittorio in flames, she cried, inconsolable.
Now, as she exits a car to see the remains of Vittorio with her own eyes, she collapses.
For a moment – just a moment – she feels she might die right there.
2 p.m., Friday, Jan. 10, Canon Avenue, Sierra Madre
Nancy Mitchell Gebhardt and her daughter Annie have flashed IDs to drive into the neighborhood, but they don’t know what they’ll find. Only a few houses have burned in Sierra Madre; most of the damage is in Altadena. Still, Nancy thinks her house might be gone.
And fire is still burning; close enough that the air is thick with smoke. Both women put on mouth covers and goggles, but Nancy can’t do both, saying her breath makes the goggles fog up. “You have to choose your poison,” she says. She opts to take off the goggles so she can see.
And one of the things she sees, today, is her home. It’s smoke-damaged but upright. She’ll take that, for now.
1 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 21, El Sol Avenue, Altadena
For the first time in weeks, Alisha, John and her father Dartanion arrive back at their Altadena home. The back porch is singed. The garage door shows wind damage. Inside, the smoke is still so heavy they can smell it through their masks.
But even in the eerie silence, they sense their fortune. They have a home.
4 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 21, Pono Burger, Santa Monica
As Schneider sits for a late lunch, a car on a nearby street honks. It’s a soft sound, but Schneider jumps.
“This is death,” he says, later. “I don’t like being here. How could you like it? It’s an emotional torture.”
A day earlier they’d returned to their home, escorted by police. They found their address, printed on a piece of stucco, but almost nothing else.
His partner picked at their rubble, finding a couple animal ceramics and a couple pieces of metal her father had crafted, while Schneider waited. They had spent decades traveling together: Machu Picchu, Mexico, Africa. Now they were staying, individually, with siblings.
He wonders: What do I have left?
He is one of many, still, dedicated to rebuilding what they had in the Palisades. Slowly, insurance companies are calling residents. Temporary homes are being secured.
And Schneider makes a decision. Hunched over in a restaurant booth, picking at a fried chicken salad, he resolves to restart Reel Power Handles.
“If I don’t, or (I don’t) do something else, I’m dead.”