A New Zealander caught in the Los Angeles wildfires has revealed what it has been like, describing smoke surrounding the city. Video / Isabella Rolston
Survivors of wildfires like those burning across Los Angeles can experience mental health issues long after a blaze is out.
Jane Brown watched on television Tuesday night as a large condominium complex in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles went up in flames. It was her 92-year-old mother’s home.
By Wednesday morning, Brown, 63, saw that the building was “completely just not there at all”.
Iris Kameny, Brown’s mother, had evacuated to Chino, California, before the fire, but precious family photos and artwork were lost, as was furniture Kameny purchased around the time she got married, in 1959.
The Palisades fire and the Eaton fire, which have burned homes and entire neighbourhoods as they have torn through the Los Angeles area this week, are thought to be among the most destructive fires ever to hit the city. And experts warn that the fires have put many residents, particularly those like Kameny who have lost their homes, at risk of deep, long-lasting mental health ramifications.
“The loss of a home, the displacement you experience, the difficulty of rebuilding, living with the anxiety that this might happen to you again – all that combines to create, for many people, lasting psychological harm,” said Dr David P. Eisenman, a primary care physician and director of the UCLA Centre for Public Health and Disasters. Studies suggest that even those who do not lose homes can have anxiety, depression or psychological distress for years after a wildfire dies out.
A home in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles engulfed in flames. Photo / Mark Abramson, The New York Times
Since 2020, California’s most destructive wildfires have destroyed more than 10,000 homes, businesses and other buildings, according to data from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
For some people who lost homes in previous California wildfires, the current disaster in Los Angeles has caused renewed anxiety.
Eric Reinbold, police chief of Paradise, California, said he never thought he would live in the town again after the devastating Camp fire reduced his home and many others to “a heap of ash” in 2018. Nearly 14,000 residences were destroyed and 86 people were killed by that fire.
Reinbold, his wife and their three children evacuated to nearby Chico and lived there for five years before deciding to rebuild in Paradise.
“It was hard to make that decision, to come back to a town where we lost everything,” he said.
He said he was limiting his exposure to news of the wildfires around Los Angeles to avoid dredging up the anxiety and grief he still sometimes experiences thinking about the home his family lost and the scars to his community.
Studies have shown that wildfires can have both short-term and long-term effects on the mental health of survivors. In a paper published last year, researchers found an increase in emergency room visits for anxiety disorders after wildfire events in California and other parts of the Western United States.
Another study in Fort McMurray, a town in Alberta, Canada, that was evacuated during a 2016 wildfire, found that about a third of residents were dealing with depression, anxiety, a substance-use disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder a year after the event. And researchers who followed those affected by a bush fire in Victoria, Australia, found that about 4% of the people were still suffering psychological distress a decade later.
It’s not just the loss of life or property that people mourn. Survivors of wildfires can suffer a collective sense of loss from damage to the natural environment, Eisenman said. He and his wife experienced the feeling themselves this week as they watched the Palisades fire consume beloved hiking trails.
A burned car on East Las Flores Drive amid the Eaton fire in Altadena, California, on Thursday, January 9, 2025. Photo / Philip Cheung, The New York Times
In some cases, living in a damaged home can be more difficult than a complete loss, said Jonathan Sury, a public health researcher at the National Centre for Disaster Preparedness at the Columbia Climate School. Sury and his colleagues studied the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the mental health of New Jersey residents and found that even those whose homes sustained minor damage experienced anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder after the storm.
For residents who have fled the Los Angeles area and don’t yet know the fate of their homes, the uncertainty can be traumatic, Sury added.
Shabnam Melwani, another resident of Pacific Palisades, fled her home Tuesday after firefighters told people to evacuate. Before leaving, she grabbed a statue of Ganesh, a Hindu god known as the remover of obstacles, and placed it outside her front door.
Melwani, 55, spent the evening at her cousin’s home in Santa Monica, overwhelmed with fear. Five years ago, she packed her bags and left her community in Singapore behind in search of a new life in California for her family. Melwani feared she would lose her home again.
But Wednesday morning she received a message from a neighbour who said that her house had withstood the blazes so far and most likely had only sustained damage from smoke and soot.
For Brown, watching her mother’s home go up in flames left her “shell-shocked,” she said – but at least knowing what had happened was a “saving grace”.
“There is no question whether it might still be standing or not,” she said.
