Ivy Spruell was looking forward to celebrating her 17th birthday last week with friends. Her grandfather mailed her a card, which she tucked away to open the morning of her birthday, Jan. 10. And her boyfriend planned to come over to her Altadena home for a low-key party that evening.
Instead, Ms. Spruell’s life was turned upside down by the Eaton fire that swept through her neighborhood on Jan. 7.
Among blocks of devastation, her home still stands, but she and her mother cannot get to it. The one time they made it into the evacuated zone last week, before law enforcement cut off access, they piled some clothes and other necessities into trash bags. Since then, they have moved from place to place, staying with friends or at hotels, the smell of smoke seeping from Ms. Spruell’s rescued belongings, an unsettling reminder of the disaster.
“It’s this constant, looming smoke that reminds you of home, which is, for me, personally, a really sad thing,” she said. “It’s hard that I don’t necessarily know where I’m going to be sleeping tomorrow or the day after, at this point.”
More than a week after two major wildfires displaced tens of thousands of Los Angeles residents and leveled thousands of homes, evacuees said they felt stuck in a sort of post-disaster purgatory, shuttling among friends’ couches, shelters and hotel rooms, and getting turned away at cordoned-off areas. Those with homes still standing have been desperate to get back to check on pets, retrieve documents and medication, and assess whether their properties are still livable. And people whose houses burned want a sense of closure and a chance to sift through the rubble.
“It’s the limbo of not having access to our things or our home,” said Julie Weingarten, 48, Ms. Spruell’s mother. “And then also the fear and anxiety around what it’s going to look like when we go back — I don’t know which is worse.”
Roads leading to Altadena and Pacific Palisades, the two areas that suffered the most destruction, remained blocked by members of the National Guard and local police departments on Thursday. There is no timeline for reopening the hardest-hit areas.
Evacuated residents in some neighborhoods near the Palisades fire but less damaged by the flames, including Encino, were allowed to return to their homes on Thursday afternoon.
Officials have said they are still working to make sure the ravaged neighborhoods are safe and accessible, putting out hot spots, clearing blocked roads, fixing power lines and removing toxic ash and other dangers. Cadaver dogs are being used to search through the wreckage for human remains. And police have so far arrested nearly 100 people in evacuated zones, charging some with looting or trespassing.
“We cannot allow residents to continually be frustrated every day without a timeline,” Kathryn Barger, the chair of the county’s board of supervisors, said on Thursday at a news conference, where officials said it could take another week or more for residents to return. “They deserve these answers, and I am pushing the unified command to be swift and clear with the community.”
Frustration has been mounting daily. Cars line up at checkpoints, and residents beg law enforcement officials to allow them back into their homes, sometimes growing argumentative when they are turned back. They have beseeched journalists, who are allowed into evacuated areas under California law, to sneak them past barricades. The most desperate have found ways to slink in on foot.
For Alexandra Clark, a Palisades resident, the disasters keep snowballing. Ms. Clark, 43, said she had time to pack nearly all of her family’s documents, valuables, clothing and sentimental items into their car before leaving the neighborhood and seeking refuge with a friend in Westwood.
Then, as they were eating dinner in Westwood a few days ago, someone stole everything from their car: credit cards, jewelry, even her children’s baby books. Since then, while Ms. Clark and her family have been staying in a hotel and trying to figure out where to go next, they have also been in contact with the police and batting back fraudulent charges.
“You can’t make it up,” Ms. Clark said. “Yesterday, I just couldn’t stop shaking — it’s just a very violating feeling.”
The experience, she said, left her feeling at a loss and “just numb.”
“People are saying, ‘What are you going to do next?” Ms. Clark said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t even know what I’m doing in an hour.’”
Gigi Vorgan-Small, 66, and her husband, Gary Small, 73, have been getting up daily at 6 a.m. and driving to the Palisades, hoping to get through a checkpoint, only to be turned away each time. Ms. Vorgan-Small got in once, last Thursday, with a police escort, but had just enough time to grab a few items and see that her yard was burned but her home was still standing before she had to leave. She said she forgot a migraine medication she has been desperate for.
“We’re uncertain, not just about our house: our neighbors, our neighborhood, our future, our finances,” she said. “It’s all up in the air.”
Dr. Small, the chair of psychiatry at the Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, described the past week as an “emotional roller coaster.”
“There will be moments where you’re strong and you can see a pathway forward,” he said, “and then there will be moments where you feel the loss, the helplessness and uncertainty and feeling overwhelmed at times.”
Even when the evacuation orders are lifted, many families have no home to go back to.
Nearly every day for the last nine days, Raymond Sarkis, 32, has tried to get back into the Altadena neighborhood to see what’s left of the home he and his wife purchased in 2021, after nearly a decade of saving up. They spent months making repairs, pouring “sweat and tears” into it and got married in the backyard that same year.
An insurance agent and a neighbor have told Mr. Sarkis that the house burned to the ground, and even showed him a couple of photos. But he wants to see for himself.
“I need to just stand there and take it in,” he said. “To look myself, to find something.”
He added: “I would take half of a kid’s toy. I would take a necklace. I would take anything you can think of that would just remind us, just to have like a keepsake of, ‘Wow, this happened.’”
So far, he has not been able to get that.
“I have gone to every goddamn street corner, every street opening — there are no less than two police officers and a military vehicle, sometimes two,” he said.
Eric Escott, 62, has been able to sneak back into the charred wreckage of Altadena twice since being evacuated. His house is still standing, and he was able to leave with some essential items. But those two times he returned, he has been leaving food for his cat, Rosie.
Mr. Escott has not seen Rosie since he evacuated, but the wet food he left out on Thursday was gone when he returned on his last visit on Sunday.
Rosie, a feral cat his wife adopted and slowly coaxed into trusting her, was skittish and unfriendly, and rarely interacted with Mr. Escott. He said there was no way she would have shown up when he was there or allowed herself to be taken away from the neighborhood.
But his wife, Jessica, died several years ago, and he said he now views Rosie as a link to her. “It’s been two and a half years of her kind of coming around to me,” he said. “She’s kind of a little joke, but we all love her in a way.”
Residents say there have been small moments of gratitude and relief during this chaotic period. Neighbors and friends have bonded, donated supplies and checked in on each other.
A church service on Thursday morning was uplifting, said Ms. Clark, the victim of the theft in Westwood, and a group of mothers from her children’s school helped the family get new clothes and other items. Maggie Rothschild, 72, who had to evacuate the Brentwood neighborhood, near the Palisades fire, said she was grateful for the friends who had “taken me in with such hospitality.”
“My dogs are safe and I’m safe,” said Ms. Rothschild. “You can’t complain. You have to feel sad for everyone else. You have to feel lucky and blessed.”
Late last week, Ms. Spruell, whose birthday card from her grandfather is still waiting in her empty home, and her mother needed an escape from the hazy skies and reminders of loss, so they went to stay with some friends in the desert in Palm Springs, east of Los Angeles. When they arrived, there was a surprise awaiting Ms. Spruell: balloons and a birthday cake. She teared up.
“It was reminiscent,” Ms. Spruell recalled, “of the community that Altadena is at its heart and soul: truly caring for others.”
Amy Graff and Kate Selig contributed reporting.
