After battling the January wildfires, L.A. firefighters face the challenge of rebuilding 

Beginning Jan. 7, thousands of firefighters across Los Angeles County valiantly battled the Palisades, Eaton and other fires that ignited across the region, using everything in their power and training to quench the fires until they were 100 percent contained around Jan. 18. While we call firefighters our heroes, they are also our neighbors. Several off-duty and retired firefighters faced the harrowing reality of fighting to protect their own homes — ultimately fleeing to save their lives.

Here are the stories of some local firefighters — and how to help now.

“My house was catching on fire”

For Capt. Alek Edwards, life with his family at Tahitian Terrace in Pacific Palisades was everything. He and his wife, Becky, both avid surfers, bought their 1965 mobile home there six years ago. But on Jan. 7, their dream of affordable living with ocean views, shared by 158 homeowners in the tight-knit mobile home community, went up in flames.

Edwards, who grew up in Santa Monica, has been a Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) firefighter for 13 years, and he was recently promoted to captain. Off duty due to a schedule change, he had dropped off the couple’s 4-year-old daughter, Sierra, at her preschool and was running errands when he got a text about the fire. “I stepped out of the UPS store, and I could see this giant plume of smoke up in the hill above the Palisades,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘OK, this is not good.’”

He called Becky, who works for a nonprofit organization in Downtown Los Angeles, and told her to come home. Sierra’s preschool messaged parents to pick up their kids. In the five minutes it took for Edwards to get to the preschool’s area, he saw the plume of smoke had grown much bigger. Becky grabbed a few items and their dog, Sunny, and evacuated with Sierra to Edwards’ parents’ home in Santa Monica around 12:30 p.m. “Traditionally, the Santa Ana winds blow northwest and don’t threaten our park,” Edwards says. “I didn’t think the actual firefight was going to come down on top of us.”

Edwards stayed back with management and two groundskeepers, who were hosing down the hillside and evacuating residents. By 3:30 p.m., everyone had left the area except for Edwards, the community’s emergency response team leader, and a neighbor’s firefighter friend, who brought hoses and nozzles. Then, the wind switched. The fire was billowing towards them from two directions. The trio connected hoses to a hydrant, and engines from L.A. City Fire and Cal Fire arrived, but “the winds were crazy,” Edwards says.

“When a mobile home catches fire, it burns really hot and it burns really quick, and so it was just spreading from house to house super fast,” Edwards explains. “A couple of our neighbors’ houses were already fully cooking, and it was so painful to watch them burn to the ground.” The fire quickly spread to houses on the street above his, creating ember casts and smoke and lighting up trees. Then, Edwards’ street was on fire. 

“I knew my house was catching on fire because I could hear the smoke alarms going off inside,” he says. “My car was about to catch on fire, and I wasn’t going to be able to get out if I didn’t leave right then. So, I got in the car and gave my house a kiss goodbye.”

Since then, the Edwardses have been rebuilding with help from Los Angeles Firemen’s Relief Association, peer support and Fire Wives, which held a clothing and toy drive for them. They’ve rented an apartment in Santa Monica, and Sierra’s new routine includes walking to have breakfast at her grandparents’ home before her day at a nearby preschool that has taken in kids from her Pacific Palisades preschool, which burned down.

“For the first two weeks, I was completely devastated, [but] now I’m at a point where I just feel this huge amount of gratitude,” Edwards says. “The guys at my old station got us really nice surfboards and wetsuits and a tool set so I can rebuild the furniture we lost. So many girls have written Sierra notes. Everyone’s taking good care of us.”

His heart remains with the Tahitian Terrace community, which feels like another family. Although the Edwardses have a GoFundMe, he prefers to direct people to the Tahitian Terrace GoFundMe instead. “People think of the Palisades as being a place for wealthy celebrities, but so many people in my mobile home park were retired on fixed incomes. One of my neighbors and her son went to a shelter. There’s a lot of people that don’t have the resources that I have by the luck of being an L.A. County firefighter.”

“All this ammunition is going off”

Nothing brought retired Altadena resident George Baxter more joy than working on his home and classic cars. Yet when the Eaton fire struck, the 30-year LAFD veteran was fighting fire again, just one year after his retirement.

Though the power went out in his neighborhood and the sheriff’s department ordered an evacuation, Baxter felt compelled to stay, wielding his 100-foot high-pressure hose. He defended his neighbors’ and his own home from about 10 p.m. on Jan. 7 until 7 a.m. the next day, enduring smoke inhalation and eye damage — and dodging bullets.

“I parked my truck across the street in front of my neighbor’s house and was fighting spot fires in my yard,” Baxter says. “Then his house caught on fire. He’s a Vietnam vet with a lot of guns. And all of a sudden, all this ammunition is going off, round after round. So now I’m worried about getting hit by ammunition and my car being riddled with bullets.” While bullets flew, he retrieved his truck and parked it back on his side of the street.

Not one fire truck came to Baxter’s neighborhood situated in historically Black Altadena. By morning, every house around him was on fire. “I finally had to give up. I could barely see,” he says. He was treated at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. After he was discharged, a neighbor sent a photo with a text, “Sorry, bro, your house burned down.” So did his garage filled with his beloved classic cars.

“It’s like a nightmare,” he says. “I’d rather my house burned down than my garage. I’m not kidding, it’s just killing me.” His most prized possessions included “his baby” — a 1970 Dodge Charger RT with a Hemi engine (“worth $150,000”), plus a ‘64 Falcon, a ‘74 Galaxy and a 1972 Ford pickup. “That’s my passion, my classic cars. I lost all of them.”

Heartbreakingly, the cars were not insured, and Baxter found, like many homeowners in his incinerated Altadena neighborhood, he was underinsured. His 21-year-old daughter, Jamila, is devastated by the loss of her childhood home, he says. After first staying with his brother, at press time Baxter was living at a Hilton in Glendale, looking for a place to move, still numb from loss. The Los Angeles Firemen’s Relief Association and his GoFundMe have provided some support, he says, but what he and local firefighters who lost their homes need most is money as they try to rebuild their lives. “We need help. We’re all underinsured. That’s the bottom line. We just want to get back what we lost,” he says.

“The devil was spitting fire”

“It was fast,” says Capt. Al Hugo of the Eaton fire that destroyed his Altadena home of 20 years that he shared with his wife, Carmen, and their four dogs. “The velocity, the intensity and the speed that this fire had, and how it was burning downhill and sideways… I’ve never in my 31-year career seen anything like that.” 

Hugo, a native Angeleno and father of four, joined LAFD in 1993, working in areas such as Skid Row and South Central before moving to Metro Communications about five years ago. On Jan. 7, he was off duty, slated to go back to the office the next day. Part of a family of first responders, his identical twin brother is an engineer with L.A. County Fire, and his youngest son works for LAFD.

On their way to their credit union to pull out cash that afternoon, Hugo and Carmen saw an elderly man holding onto a fence to anchor himself from the force of the winds. “We turned around to look for him and by then he was holding onto an electrical pole,” Hugo says. They picked him up and escorted him home. By 4 p.m., the couple had lost power in their home. By evening, the fire in Eaton Canyon burned five miles away. As it moved closer, Carmen’s worries grew.

The couple continued to monitor the fire with check-ins from their sons and the Watch Duty app. At 10 p.m., Hugo got the all-call to report in immediately. He was torn, but ultimately decided he had to stay by Carmen’s side in case they needed to evacuate. 

By 3 a.m., the smell of smoke was intense. They packed their two cars with their four dogs. Then, they got the notification to evacuate. “I’m in the hallway looking at our pictures, Carmen’s dresser where she has all her jewelry and her wedding ring,” Hugo recalls. “I have some fire department memorabilia in the back office, but I didn’t think I should take these things because I thought, ‘We’ll be gone a day or two and then we’ll be back.’”

After ensuring his neighbor, Ed, was leaving (“I almost broke his window”), Hugo and Carmen made a harrowing caravan drive amid a gauntlet of thick ash and high winds. “Ash was going sideways like the devil was spitting fire.”

They made it to Hugo’s mother house in Eagle Rock, and since then, a woman who saw Hugo on the news has been hosting them at her home. He is especially grateful, since finding a rental that will accept four dogs is a major challenge.

The couple went back to their home a week after their escape. Everything was gone. The Los Angeles Firefighter’s Relief Association and the Hugos’ GoFundMe has been helpful, but echoing others, Hugo says, “All of us are underinsured, so we need help — as proud as I am and as hard as it is for me to say it.” 

Still, he believes, “God doesn’t put people in places that they can’t overcome, and I know that better things are coming, and I thank him for that. He saved my wife and dogs, and my kids and family are well. That’s what really is important in life.”

Recovery “is going to take many, many years”

Every firefighter had an important role to play, whether on the scene to heroically face down the fires or by sharing vital information with the public and those displaced or homeless from the fires that destroyed their residences.

Capt. Branden Silverman, an LAFD public information officer who has been with LAFD for nearly 24 years, was launched from his office in Downtown Los Angeles to the scene of the Palisades fire on Jan. 7. He manned the command post, which moved to Gladstones restaurant’s parking lot on Pacific Coast Highway, until the next morning, when Cal Fire took over. After that post, he moved on to representing LAFD at public press conferences and community recovery meetings. 

Since the fires, Silverman, who lives in Valencia with his wife and 4-year-old son, has been focused on aiding the recovery process. “There are firewise communities that have standards to keep a community as safe as possible from fire, especially if they’re building in a wildland interface area, and fire suppression systems that can be attached to homes,” he says. “It’s going to be an interesting process of rebuilding. I know it’s going to take many, many years.”

How to help local firefighters 

The Eaton and Palisades fire destroyed houses of five LAFD members, one retired member and two members of the Pasadena Fire Department, and displaced at least 15 LAFD families, says Chris Stine, president of the Los Angeles Firemen’s Relief Association. At least three firefighters from L.A. County Fire Department have lost their homes, according to the L.A. County Firefighters’ Benefit & Welfare Association.

Links for the aforementioned firefighters’ GoFundMe accounts: the Edwardses, the Baxters, the Hugos. Donations to support firefighters’ recovery can be made on the Los Angeles Firemen’s Relief Association’s website and on the L.A. County Firefighters’ Benefit & Welfare Association’s GoFundMe page.

Michele Raphael is a culture, lifestyle and travel writer based in Los Angeles. Find her @michelebraphael on Instagram.