Before I joined the New York Times last year, I never covered a fire. But I knew a lot about another kind of disaster: Hurricanes.
My first full -time job was on Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss. I started in 2020, during one of the most active record hurricane. As the storm approached, I stood in the rain to talk to people who filled the sand bags. After the worst ended, I was wearing Galoshes to talk to the inhabitants of desperately exhausting flood water from their houses.
When you go to an area that is hit by a hurricane, there are hints of what lies before you see devastation: shot down trees and electrical lines, water association where it should not, distorted by fast food brands.
That’s why I was expecting some warnings for the first time in Altadena last month before I achieved the complete destruction caused by Eaton Fire.
Instead, I looked left to turn around and suddenly saw the black twisted ruins where the house was supposed to be. Next to and across the street were houses that looked perfectly untouched. The wind of the hurricane accidentally powered the coals and sparkled the fires of the house that firefighters could not stop. The result was a terrible contrast that only increased the feeling of shock.
It wasn’t a hurricane. The hurricane can quickly collect strength or change the direction just before Landfall, but usually comes with a warning. It follows the way and often weakens over time. Eaton’s fire seemed to have watched his own wind road, but grew faster than many people could prepare for, and then persist weeks. Hurricanes are slow, colossal animals. Wildfires can also be colossal animals, but fast and average. Hurricanes amaze the structures, but often leave them behind; The fires consume them.
Hurricanes also smelled differently. After last year’s Hurricane Helene in the Tampa area, I visited families that clean mud from their homes and distribute photos to dry in the sun. The air smelled like salt, waste water and traces of molds. In Altadena, two weeks after the fire, the weak smell of smoke remained over the ashes and dust.
When I talked to the residents of Altadena who chose the ruins of their life, I thought about Trey Camardelle.
The house where Mr. Camardelle lived was destroyed in 2020 in Hurricane Zeta. The storm was not as destructive as the fire of Eaton, but damaged the roofs, shot down the electric lines, and knocked down the house of their parents right from his 18-foot ashtray of the Pilings block.
The day after the storm, Governor Mississippi met Mr. Camardelle and then started a press conference. While the governor spoke to the reporters’ assembly, Mr. Camardelle was in the distance, walking around mixing wood and insulation, the beaten house sat outside Kilter above. The way he told me was “all my life, just gone”.
In Altadena the disaster was different, but the loss was almost the same.
