ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
One of the tens of thousands of evacuees in the Los Angeles area is Adria Kloke. She lives in Pacific Palisades, a residential neighborhood on the coast, where thousands of acres have already burned in the wildfires. She works for member station KCRW, and she sent us this voice memo describing her evacuation experience on Tuesday.
ADRIA KLOKE, BYLINE: I was working away, somewhere around 10:30 in the morning, when the fire picked up. I've lost two homes to fire in my lifetime, 1993 and 2008, so I'm deeply familiar with the process and also the anxiety around it. So as soon as there was a sign of a fire in my area, I started to go into action a little bit sooner than the rest of my neighbors - went and put some of the most precious items directly into my car, and we were watching from the windows on all sides of my building and just watched it get closer and closer.
The sky was full of ash. Almost immediately, the smoke plume was enormous overhead, and it just became unbearable. The inside of my apartment - this was maybe around noon - was completely dark. The sky outside was impenetrable - brown wall of smoke. I couldn't focus on even selecting things to take at that point. I had wrapped up items like irreplaceable photos, photos that aren't digitized. And I also packed, essentially, what I would need for three days of my own life - toiletry kit, clothes. I knew to pack shoes that you can walk through rubble with. I knew to pack a respirator - packing things that I would need if I was able to return, but if my home was destroyed.
It's really hard to think of what to take in the moment. Make a list. Be prepared for this in the future. Another thing that I know from my experience is to walk slowly around your home, videoing every room and just narrate all your possessions. Open every cabinet door. Look inside drawers. Talk about what you own. Talk about where it came from, and just get everything you can on camera. It will make your insurance process a lot easier if you have to go down that road. With my family, we've done it twice. Doing that is obviously a harrowing experience because it clashes against your instinct to have hope that you'll be returning to your home.
I'm safe. I evacuated, got into my car. As I left my condo community, there were people walking by me with their possessions in their arms, people who were walking from up the hill where they clearly had to abandon their cars, people with their pets in their arms. And the police response was incredible - so grateful for their directing traffic because people were trying to jut out of the line of cars to escape faster, and the police presence that were on foot in respirators kept them in line because it could have been really dangerous. But I was able to crawl two to five miles an hour for 15 minutes or so to get out of the immediate plume of smoke that we were totally engulfed in at that time.
I went south on PCH from Sunset. Once I got to Temescal, the traffic loosened up a bit. And my friend - my dear friend had taken a scooter from his place in Santa Monica to meet me at PCH, and I pulled over in the Jonathan Club driveway so that he could get in the car and take over the driving. And I got into the back seat and just completely fell apart at that point. And he drove us safely to my friend's condo in Marina del Rey, and that's where I am with my cat now. We slept last night, and we have our lives. And I'm just so grateful for that and for the support of my friends and my colleagues.
And I would just say that if you have the ability to pack up and get out of wherever you are early, to do it - just to get away. And if the fire maps are accurate, my building may have been spared. Another building in my condo community was definitely on fire, where a dear, dear friend lives as well. We're not sure about his home. Smoke damage can do quite a lot, even if the structure is still standing. I've seen that in my own experience. So I'm just grateful for my life. It's so true when they say nothing in your home is worth going back for. If you need to get out, just get out.
SHAPIRO: That's Adria Kloke, who evacuated her home Tuesday ahead of the wildfires. She's now staying with a friend who lives further down the coast, in Marina del Rey. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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