“You never know when the next fire will start. All you can do is be ready to leave,” said Luke Madsen as he related his recent wildfire ordeals, fleeing from one fire zone to another in his search for safety.
Sadly, many Californians are acutely familiar with the chaos of a wildfire evacuation, but Luke endured five evacuations in three days. A Malibu resident (and beloved brother of this reporter) found himself crisscrossing Los Angeles County in search of safety from multiple relentless wildfires.
On January 7th, Luke was hiking with our brothers and me in the Hollywood Hills when we spotted a massive plume of reddish-brown smoke rising in the distance. Initially fearing that his Malibu home was under threat, Luke soon learned the fires had ignited in the Pacific Palisades. With road closures and traffic jams looming, he opted to stay with me in Pasadena until the danger subsided.
No strangers to the power of wildfires, we lost our home when the Woolsey Fire burned through western Malibu in 2018. I was 20 years old and Luke became an 11-year-old refugee living in an Oxnard motel with our mother, watching in horror as our hometown was turned to ash.
Facing that same threat again, our flight response was on high alert.
After evacuating Luke to Pasadena, we were put under new evacuation warnings due to the Eaton Fire. Roused from our sleep in the middle of the night, the Pasadena Police now came knocking at the front door with a mandatory evacuation notice. The massive fire quickly reached businesses and homes only four blocks away from the home where we were sheltering.
Luke fled with our Pasadena family to South Pasadena to stay with a friend until we were able to return home. On the morning of January 8th, our mother picked up Luke, relocating him to Coldwater Canyon to stay with another friend, hoping for a break from the chaos.
Their hopes were dashed within hours. The Sunset Fire, which had been smoldering in the Hollywood Hills for days, flared up dangerously close to their new shelter. Luke helped the Coldwater Canyon hosts pack their belongings and evacuate, yet again, moving to another friend’s house just beyond the fire’s reach.
Finally, after two days of relative calm, Luke and our mother returned to Malibu. But the homecoming didn’t provide the relief they had hoped for. Malibu remained without power, battered by high winds, and under the constant threat of new fires. That threat materialized almost immediately upon their arrival when a blaze erupted in the Leo Carrillo State Park area, allegedly started by an arsonist. Though it was quickly contained, they decided it was safer to leave voluntarily, with Luke evacuating for a fifth time to stay with another friend.
While the destruction for others is immeasurable, for nearly a week Luke endured two mandatory and three voluntary evacuations, fleeing from one wildfire danger zone to the next. Reflecting on the experience, he acknowledged the harsh reality of living in fire-prone California and was finally able to mark himself reasonably “safe.”
