What we lost in the fires

Los Angeles Times

07-02-2025

The scars left behind — charred hillsides, entire neighborhoods like checkerboards of ash and rubble — reveal only a fraction of what January wildfires took from Southern California.
A month after the first signs of smoke and flame, victims are still mourning the loss of small things, a snapshot or a teacup. Communities have been robbed of the parks and libraries and churches where they used to gather.
The Times asked readers affected by the devastation to tell us about what they lost and what it meant to them. Their stories reflect a jumble of emotions that catastrophe inevitably leaves in its wake. 'It causes so much disorientation,' says Claire Bidwell Smith, author of 'Conscious Grieving.' 'This isn't what our lives should look like.'
Homes can be rebuilt. People can buy new televisions, cars and refrigerators.
No insurance can replace a stuffed animal that held memories of childhood. Or a quilt made from scraps of old dresses. Or a piano that had been in the family for three generations.
More than just physical possessions, these things bind us to the past, give us a sense of order and continuity. As Bidwell Smith says, 'So much of what has been lost is truly irreplaceable.'
Southern California has always been vulnerable to a lethal mix of dry brush and fierce winds.
Still, no one expects the flames to come their way.
'So many people are angry that this has happened,' says David Kessler, a Southern California grief specialist and founder of Grief.com. 'They're asking, 'Why me?''
Nature devoured heirlooms that had endured for generations and paintings and backyard gardens into which people had poured their hearts. Fire destroyed block after block but occasionally skipped past a particular home. There was no apparent reason or fairness to it.
Now that fires from Pacific Palisades to Altadena to Castaic have finally subsided, thousands upon thousands of residents are returning to a life dispossessed of its least common denominators. No nearby school for the kids. No grocery store down the street.
When daily life gets turned upside down and shattered into pieces, people are bound to feel cast adrift. Kessler saw it when attendance for his online support group swelled to 700 last month.
'I call it 'grief brain,'' he says. 'You're literally in survival mode and in shock.'
Disaster is a merciless teacher.
'How do we want to live going forward? What matters to us?' Bidwell Smith asks. 'Grief asks these questions.'
For some, the answers can be surprising. One reader vows to focus more on relationships and less on material possessions. Another feels unexpected gratitude that even a few pieces of her parents' wedding china survived. Bidwell Smith says: 'The truth is that loss transforms us.'
The Times will continue to build this community page for friends, family and fellow Angelenos to remember what we lost in the Eaton and Palisades fires.
If you are in a safe area and would like to share a memory about things you lost in the fires, please fill out the form below. Your stories and photos of what was lost will be added to this page.
Submissions will be open for several weeks. We may not be able to respond and publish all submissions, but we read every one. Multiple submissions are welcome.