“. Our cars are full of ashes. It’s like snowing ashes. The air is poison,” Sharon Gerstel, professor of Byzantine Art and Archeology at UCLA University, told Vima yesterday (Sunday). The flames had begun to approach UCLA, as had the Getty Museum. Suddenly, to the relief of teachers and students, the wind changed direction, “but the atmosphere remains stifling”.
The UCLA facility is located just half a kilometer from the fire front. “We almost had to evacuate,” adds Dr. Gerstel, speaking to us from her office at the University, which continues to remain on alert. After a temporary lull, the winds are expected to pick up again. “Tomorrow we may be in flames. The fact that we don’t have classes next week means the authorities are waiting for the fiery inferno to last.”
The fire that broke out last Tuesday in two different areas of Los Angeles (separated by the Hollywood Hills), on the Pacific coast (Malibu and Pacific Palisades) and inland (Altantina and Pasadena), will remain a trauma in the American collective unconscious. for years. “It is the second major trauma, two years after the coronavirus pandemic. At Palisades Beach it’s like seeing images from Gaza or Hiroshima. There is not even a wall left. Only black land, black plots,” says Dr. Gerstel. “There are no escape routes in the Palisades. On Sunset Boulevard, people abandoned their cars and ran on foot.”
No one expected such a disaster to occur in the city. Dr. Gerstel, like many other residents of Los Angeles, hosts fire victims. “We all help friends, relatives, acquaintances, strangers who have lost everything. Hotels and Airbnbs are full of “fire refugees”. There is solidarity. We are also collecting clothes and food in Pasadena where the fire was huge. “No one dares to ask yet how we will rebuild the city by 2028, when it will host the Olympic Games,” concludes Dr. Gerstel.
In Altadina, north of Pasadena, Makis Dasygenis saved his house by fighting the flames. Now he hides in it, staying awake and constantly alert for a possible resurgence. The video in which he describes how he saved his home by pumping water from the neighbor’s pool has gone viral. “This place was a true paradise. Today it looks like hell,” he told Vima.
On the morning of January 8th, one day after the wild fire started in the area and despite the evacuation order, he decided to return home and try to stop the fire. “Self-preservation instinct,” he explains. He had planned six years ago to buy a pump and pipes. “At first I was scared. But as soon as I saw that the house was in danger, my fear was gone. It was a mess. Pure hell. I was throwing water on the fire.” In addition to his own house, he saved his neighbor’s house and the six houses behind his own. “I have suffered minor damages. Opposite, everything burned.”
The neighbors of Mr. Dasygeni stay temporarily in hotels or with friends. “Because they have insured their houses, they will be compensated and rebuilt. But I don’t know if the neighborhoods can go back to the way they were, by the 2028 Olympics. And the architecture won’t be the same. Our area has 100 year old buildings. My house was built in 1923.”
It is difficult for the professor of Columbia University in New York, Stathis Gourgouris, to grasp and accept the magnitude of the fiery “Armageddon” in the city where he grew up, studied and for 15 years taught at the university (UCLA). “These neighborhoods were destroyed forever,” he tells Vima. “Historical buildings, part of the foundational history of the city, of Hollywood, etc., have been destroyed. The fire was spreading at the rate of three yards a minute. This is not Greece. The firefighters are the best in the world, they have helicopters that do night drops with huge headlights. Again, they didn’t achieve anything.”
Last Tuesday night, singer and vocal coach Kathryn Jacobs was huddled in her south Pasadena home watching the smoke billow from the burning Pasadena five miles to the north. “At midnight the power went out. We were without electricity and gas for 40 hours. Sirens were heard everywhere, while the wind was raging,” he tells Vima. Five days later, she remains confined “as we had no warning to evacuate. If I have to go out, I wear a mask. There are harmful chemicals in the air.”
Meanwhile, power outages continue. “Some for security reasons, others because cables have been damaged. Many trees fell from the wind, causing damage,” adds Jacob. “We all know people who have lost their homes. We are in shock. People and houses were burned, our nature, its wildlife and all our favorite hiking trails were destroyed. I am not sure if we will ever know the number of dead animals. Deer, bears, rabbits, coyotes, mountain lions were lost…”.
