Our Story
Timeline of the Woolsey Fire
November 9th 2018 | Changed our Lives
at 2:14 AM
November 9, 2018
The Woolsey Fire ignited 17.31 miles from our home in Woolsey Canyon on the Santa Susana Field Laboratory property in the Santa Susana Mountains above the Simi Valley near the boundary between Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Earlier that day, the Hill Fire ignited in Ventura County much closer to us. That was the one that the media reported as being the big worry. Our friends on Deer Creek were evacuated and called early that evening asking if they could come to our place, but ended up with relatives. The Hill Fire quickly diminished, and their house would end up being fine. Good thing they made other plans
at 5:19 AM
November 9, 2018
Various Twitter feeds told us that the Woolsey Fire has jumped the 101 near Cheseboro. The City of Malibu Disaster Notification System contacted us to tell us to prepare to evacuate. At that point, we had been up most of the night, watching the news. There was a strong smell of smoke, the wind had weakened, and the fire was still very far away. We were watchful, but not yet worried for our home. This was hardly our first fire rodeo, and we’d seen it come much closer and been fine.
The Woosley Fire has jumped the 101 Freeway at Chesebro Road near Calabasas.
at 6:45 AM
November 9, 2018
The City of Malibu’s emergency alert system notified us a MANDATORY EVACUATION was now in effect for entire area south of 101 Fwy from Ventura County line to Las Virgenes / Malibu Cyn, southward to the ocean, including all of City of Malibu. We were told residents should use PCH to evacuate and avoid canyon roads.
The power went off.
We stayed connected to the outside world via a land line that supplied us with a phone and DSL internet, and a battery back up for our laptops. We started our usual fire drill of packing some basics – like computers, hard drives, photos, etc. The wind was fairly still, and the fire was far. Our biggest concern was getting our son and our dogs out of the smokey air, knowing that structures had burned and that the fire had started at or near the toxic Santa Susana site.
at 8:15 AM
November 9, 2018
Diane left the house with our son and dogs. We did not pack as much as we usually would in a fire, given the distance and lack of wind. We would come to learn this was a common story among long time veterans of Malibu disasters. Most of us thought we’d be home soon. Diane and co. headed south to be with her mother in Eastern Malibu who had come home a day or two ago from being hospitalized. She was the first car to be turned around on the way and required to go north toward Ventura instead of south on PCH. While disappointing at the time, it was a good thing because the evacuation in the other direction reportedly took many frustrating and frightening hours.
Our Canyon covered in layers of smoke (9:30am November 9th)
View towards Decker Canyon from our Neighbors Home (9:58 am November 9th)
at 10:30* AM
*just learned! I used the German isch!
November 9, 2018
Diane, not knowing where else to go besides getting out of the eerie and ominous smoke cloud, had parked at the Whole Foods in Oxnard to charge the Chevy Volt. She and Matthias were checking in as regularly as possible. This was around the time, things took a turn for the worse. Diane had seen on a Twitter feed that the LA County Fire Department Chief’s call for 70 or so strike units, or Trancas would burn within two hours, was going nowhere. Trancas is 5+ miles from our house, but we have a lot of friends there, and it’s close enough to us to be a concern. Matthias’ report at this time was also the first one in which he said things looked bad. Diane’s heart sank to hear it. She asked what he thought the chances are. Matthias said 50-50. That was not the answer she wanted to hear. The smoke cloud was getting closer to Oxnard, and she took off further north to escape it. She tried to remain cheerful and confident for our son. Let’s head to the beach at the Harbor! Why waste a beautiful morning?
The Ridgeline towards Decker Canyon is on fire, flames more than 100 feet tall moving over the ridge line (11:40am November 9th)
at 12:30 AM
November 9, 2018
at 1:30 AM
November 9, 2018
We made our way to the Whole Foods in Oxnard as a meeting place. Matthias noticed a line of several fire trucks from San Diego (according to the signs on their trucks) standing still on the overpass at Las Posas Rd, while the surrounding area burned. There would turn out to be many stories of fire trucks not responding to the fire that day in various parts of the region. The reasons are hopefully being figured out by the authorities taking a hard look at what happened over the course of the fire, so we can learn the right lessons. By about 2 PM, we all reunited, joined by our beloved neighbors who were pretty sure their house on Decker was gone. So much for the expensive roof sprinkler system installed after they burned in a previous fire, one of them mused sardonically. Sure there was nothing else he could do for his own house, he had stopped by our house to see if he could help, but Matthias had just left.
He got the last photo of our house before it burned – that photo on the home page of this website with the fire behind the house, about to swallow it. We were deeply moved by his generosity. We bought him lunch. We sprung for the bar, instead of the buffet. It was the least we could do. At that point, they and Matthias talked hopefully that the winds had been blowing in the right direction, and that our house may well make it. They toasted their beers and ate heartily, despite it all. Diane could barely touch her roasted cauliflower and chicken. And when the young woman at the check out ask how her day was going, Diane told her not very well, and that she should not ask that question of customers that day, as she watched several lost and stunned looking evacuees wander the aisles.
at 4 PM ish
November 9, 2018
There was no hope of getting to Diane’s mother’s house or anywhere else in Malibu for the night, so we had to make a Plan B. Our cousins in West LA confirmed they could take us in. The 101 and PCH were closed. We would have to go way north on the 118 and hope for the best. The drive was apocalyptic. Spot fires dotted the highway. The sky was a cauldron of smoke, ash, and orange-red glow. It took a few hours to reach Brentwood. It was a great comfort to enter the tranquility of my cousins’ home. It is a house that Diane grew up visiting, and the touchstones of family were a balm at a beleaguered moment. The calm was soon shattered by a call from our neighbor across the street. A longtime local whose crew of 10 had worked around the clock and risked their lives to save another neighbor’s house had called to report that while they had succeeded in saving the one main structure on that property, the rest of the canyon had burned. All of it. Diane hung up and started to come unglued. Matthias gently tugged her outside to a more private space, where we collapsed in each others’ arms, fearful and bereft. We pulled ourselves together and went inside to have a long, soulful talk with our son. He had just come to live with us in May after growing up in foster care. We had remodeled our home to be able to care for him. Now this. Tears were punctuated with laughter and love, as we digested the pain together. It would be a long night. We stopped watching the news. What else is there to see, now that our whole neighborhood is gone? We thought of the lyric “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” As we lay on the guest mattress, longing for our familiar room, we took comfort in each other and our dogs, realizing this was the essence of home. We were also sheltered by family heirlooms in our midst, including a towering poster of the Santa Monica Mountains and photo of Diane’s uncle Marvin Braude, one of the great champions of conserving the Santa Monicas, that looked over us poetically. Diane’s last words to Matthias before going through the motions of going to sleep that she knew would not come were, “We never really could get our bedroom closet doors to work…”
sometime in the afternoon
November 10, 2018
One of our neighbors across the street from our property was able to make it back up to survey the damage. He sent us our first pictures – taken from his property – and the first onsite report. A miracle – our beautiful stone guesthouse was still standing! And the pictures showed green trees! Distressed, but green. Green-ish anyway. Our trees were almost more important to us than the structures. After all, structures can be rebuilt. Many of those trees would take lifetimes or centuries to regrow. Seeing our main house under the canopy of trees was not possible. But hope sprung! We were not the blackened, leveled parking lot we had been bracing ourselves for. How could the trees be green and the house be gone? Could it be? Could we really still have a house, too?
sometime in the afternoon
November 11, 2018
The air is still smokey. We and our cousins were up early that morning, ready to try to get into Malibu somehow. But we were discouraged by reports from our neighbors that the authorities blocking our road were tightening control. And the wonderful friends who stayed with my mother, so she could shelter in place with a generator and HEPA air filters – as evacuation would have been so very stressful on her fragile body at that time – told us that the checkpoints to get into Eastern Malibu were also many and difficult. They were having difficulty even getting caregivers and nurses with medication in, with hours of cajoling authorities, dealing with police escorts, and other challenges at every turn. We decided to stay put and rest. And get basics, like clean socks and underwear. We had left with not much more clothing than was on our backs. In the Target parking lot, Diane got a text from a family friend who had been able to get into Malibu with a finagled media pass and was going around saving animals and putting out spot fires. He had been to our property. He took pictures. The main house was gone. The guesthouse was still standing with beds made. We would later learn there was smoke damage, but the study in contrast at the time was surreal. There were still spotfires smoldering on our property that he did his best to put out. We might have lost everything if he did not go. Diane learned what it is like to have an out-of-body experience in Target. While trying to find plain cotton underwear for women, which turned out to be almost possible, except for some hearts and stars. Our son quietly said when we got back to the car that he realized this was big for us. He said he thought it would be like Malibu’s Katrina.
Evening
November 13, 2018
November 16, 2018
After a week that felt both endless and fleeting to us all, we were finally able to return to eastern Malibu to the street where Diane’s mother lives. By that time, the smoke in West LA had diminished, although the air quality back in Malibu, even on the eastern end which had hardly burned, was still not clear.
We had to wear masks to walk the dogs on the first mornings. Nonetheless, the relief to reunite with Malibu was enormous. A family friend blessed us with an invitation to stay in her home down the road from Diane’s mother’s house where Diane was born and raised. We could barely walk a minute without a lifelong friend of Diane’s showering us with caring concern. It was a reminder that the people of Malibu are a tight tribe. We were exhausted, but we knew we were loved.
November 28, 2018
A lot happened in the weeks before this date, including the amazing Operation Recovery effort organized by the Yorks. In the weeks following the fire to this date, we tried many times unsuccessfully to access the road to our property that remained on hard closure. Law enforcement and Public Works said SCE was keeping it closed to repair the downed poles. SCE’s fire recovery person told us Public Works was keeping it closed and making it hard for them to get in. What was a definite fact was rain was coming, and our calls for help from government authorities for protection were not panning out, despite some very appreciated effort on the part of Supervisor Kuehl’s staff, so we needed to get up to our property to save it from further destruction by mudslide.
We consulted conservation experts from Ojai to Austria, who guided us on what would and would not work. They advised against hydro-seeding, although some neighbors remained convinced that this route could help, and suggested we put in silt fencing to divert the flow, plus some sandbagging and straw waddling, as needed – but not too much of the latter because it could inhibit new growth that is needed to contain erosion. A couple days before the first rain, Diane decided it was time to stop taking no for an answer and to find “the guy” – or the “gal” – because there always is one, who makes the decision. In this case, the decision was who gets to have access to our road. After many calls, she found him. He was an amazing sheriff volunteer who had been there from day one of the fire and made me swear not to share his name (and I swear we only did so to a few neighbors who were as desperate as we were, and then to the officials who we thought should know what a gem he was). He escorted us in.
