Help Rebuild After Eaton Canyon Fire Loss

Good Morning everyone. Thank you all for the messages, texts and calls in this horrific time. We can’t even tell you how much it means to us. We have a truly amazing group of friends, family and colleagues and we are so grateful for you all.

As you’ve probably read from Kelly’s social media posts sometime between Tues night and Weds morning our block of East Pine (between Santa Rosa and Lake) was completely destroyed by the Eaton Canyon Fire. Our little home and everything we own was burned to the ground. I’ll put the full, crazy story below, since I’m sure many are curious (I would be) but the bottom line is: we are probably going to use this “opportunity” to move on to other pastures outside of California and start rebuilding our life. Many of you have graciously asked how you can help so this will be a chance to do so if you are inclined. We have started a GoFundMe to help with all the myriad of costs that will be involved. We were just notified that because we have a small renter’s insurance policy (that won’t even cover everything we lost), we are inelligible for FEMA funds :(

So if you have the means and interest (no pressure- we know you all probably know MANY people in similar situations and resources are limited…) we would be grateful for anything people care to give. We won’t judge you if you don’t. But we would be silly to pretend that we aren’t very much in need right now. We are absolutely devastated for our lovely home of Altadena. So much wonderful history, architecture and community burned to the ground. We still can’t even safely get up to see the damage, and we are loathing the prospect of seeing it in person. I have lived in half a dozen different parts of Los Angeles and they all had different charm, vibe and story, but Altadena was really unique. It is heartbreaking to see such a great place almost-entirely erased. Our hearts go out to all of our fellow neighbors who are in similar circumstances.

— CRAZY STORYTIME:

As any of you who have lived in foothill communities knows, Santa Ana winds are no freaking joke. When they come you are guaranteed several hours or even several days of 40-80 mph winds ripping up your yard, downing power lines and potentially starting a fire nearby. We knew we had a bad storm coming and were quite leery. We made the very wise decision to keep two of our cats inside all day on Tuesday, knowing that once the winds kicked in it would probably be almost impossible to get them inside. So Tuesday was spent with Jamie and Mommy Cat constantly whining because of the wind and agony of being stuck inside. We were all very much on edge. Around dinner time the winds started to die down and it was looking like we could finqally settle down and watch some tv while the cats would hopefully start to relax. We got word that there was a fire in Eaton Canyon, but many times fires in that area don’t make it over to us because Lake Ave serves as a fairly good fire-break with the fire department having easy access, water etc. Only a few years ago a fire got all the way to Mt. Wilson but was stopped only a ridge or two away from us. That is not unusual for life in Altadena, so we figured we would monitor the situation online but likely wouldn’t have to evacuate.

But the winds started getting fierce and were shaking our house pretty bad, freaking the cats out even more. Only about twenty minutes later we heard knocking on one of our neighbors door. A couple minutes later the knocks were on our door. I opened the door and a woman who we didn’t recognize yelled “the fire is getting close you need to get out now!” We were slightly skeptical and thought maybe she was exaggerating. Buit when we stepped out into our driveway we looked and saw flames all along the ridge closest to us. I walked down to the street for a better look and the whole ridge was on fire. Smoke and ash were everywhere in the whippinmg winds. FUCK. I turned to Kelly and said “Oh shit, I think we need to go now.” We grabbed our pet crates and started corralling the cats. They were absolutely petrified but we somehow managed to get them all in our carriers. As we took them to our car, all of our neghbors were scrambling and packing their cars and trying to help each other. I told Kelly to go get our important documents and I would move the car down to the street so we wouldn’t get stuck in our driveway in a bottle-neck of cars. I ran back up to our place, grabbed our water bottles, a jacket and my lightest guitar (Kelly’s suggestion) and we literally ran to the car. Kelly had texted a friend who told us we were welcome to crash at her place. The drive down to Pasadena was like driving through a war zone with downed trees, traffic lights out, cars everywhere, smoke, ash and embers everywhere and vicious winds unlike anything I have ever encountered. But we made to our destination safe and effectively collapsed. We didn’t get much sleep that night, or any night since.