While the world watches the Los Angeles fire unfold, creating scenes reminiscent of a Hollywood apocalypse movie, many residents of America's second-largest city have been forced to evacuate. Fleeing the flames, many have only grabbed the bare essentials in the hope that they will soon return and life will return to normal.
Among them is Maja Jeremić, a native of Belgrade who has been living in Los Angeles for 30 years, and left that city with her children and went to San Diego, a little further south, to be safe.
She tells Voice of America that it didn't seem scary to her at first, but that things changed for the worse very quickly.
"When it started, I corresponded with someone from Serbia who asked me 'are you okay', I answered - 'this is like an earthquake, everything is ok. We are used to it, it is not a big deal'. this is happening. But when I saw that Hollywood was burning, I panicked. I've lived here for 30 years, this is my city, I feel a sense of community, and this is shocking," she said in an interview with Voice of America.
According to official data, so far 11 people have died in the fire in Los Angeles, and more than 10.000 buildings have burned down. The fire services have not yet brought the fire under control, and the authorities are worried about the weather forecast, which predicts even stronger winds.
"It's unbelievable that this is happening in a country that could be independent because of how powerful it is economically, one of the strongest in the world and in a city where we know fires happen all the time," she adds.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has called for an independent investigation into how the city's main hydrants ran out of water, reducing authorities' ability to fight the fires.
She describes that in the first hours of the fire, she could see a "huge orange flame" rising from the terrace of the family home and that the neighborhood where they live, Brentwood, was on the edge of the evacuation zone.
"My parents live in Santa Monica, so we decided to go to their place, even though we didn't have to evacuate, so we spent Tuesday night at my parents'. The fire continued to spread catastrophically, especially in Pacific Palisades. On Tuesday, my son was supposed to start the new lacrosse season, but the sports center burned down, everything burned down..." she says.
As the fire spread through the city, and the circumstances got worse, Maja says that together with her husband, she started thinking about what to do.
"My dad is in the hospital, we couldn't tell - we're going and leaving them. My husband stayed upstairs with my brother and my mom if anything needed to be helped," she says.
In addition to the spreading fire, currently one of the biggest problems in Los Angeles is the air quality, which seriously began to decline after the first day of the fire, while the wind was still blowing to the west and the water.
"We decided to come to San Diego mostly because of the polluted air, because when you go outside it smells like you walked into a fireplace. In the end, it turned out to be good that we did, because yesterday our area entered the second level of evacuation. There they tell you - 'prepare to evacuate', and in an hour or two evacuation became mandatory. And now I'm still sick, but I'm just praying that everything doesn't burn," says Maja.
Authorities have also declared a local health emergency due to poor air quality, as ash and smoke blanket the area.
"Ash fell everywhere like snow, it covered cars and streets," describes Maja.
Her family's house is standing, but she says she knows more people who are left without their homes. The question is how long it will take to rebuild those facilities, especially since the fire is still not abating, and more and more people are being evacuated to Palm Springs and the desert to the east.
"These are all our friends from kindergartens. We communicate non-stop with messages with people - both with those we haven't seen for years and with those we see all the time. I also have a friend from Serbia who immediately evacuated, but now she can't go back. They were lucky that one of the five saved houses was theirs, among dozens of houses that burned down," he says.
Maja says that what gives her great strength is that people massively and selflessly help those in need and that local communities have shown how important they are.
"I'm in love and thrilled with the people in this situation. I can't believe how much everyone has stepped up to help," she says breathlessly. "For example, my son's sports team, we haven't even met yet, the coach sent an email, if anyone needs a hotel and a place to sleep. They're going to organize a sports event for the kids afterwards, college players from UCLA are coming, psychologists, they gave us questionnaires to fill out, what we need, little bits... And that's just one small sports team, nothing serious."
As proof of the level of empathy people show, Maja describes a detail from San Diego: "We walk around, talk to sellers and when they find out we're from LA, they're shocked and immediately offer discounts, for socks, for clothing. I'm delighted with that human nature ."
Maja and her husband have two children, a twelve-year-old son and a ten-year-old daughter. He says that for now they are coping well with the traumatic situation.
"I don't know why, maybe because we are Serbs, so we are the way we are, used to disasters," he says with a smile, then continues. "On the first day, even though we told them that everything was fine and that we were going to the nanny as a precaution, the daughter was really worried about other people, as if out of empathy... And since later I was nervous myself with them, even though I try to be cool, then they comfort me and say - 'don't worry, nothing will happen here'", describes Maja.
She adds that an additional problem is that there is no school and that children have to study at home, and states that she, along with other mothers in the online parenting group, is wondering "is this like a pandemic - version 2.0."
Los Angeles city authorities have so far evacuated a total of more than 153.000 people, announcing the continuation of the operation. At the moment, no one is even thinking about when and how they will be able to return.
"Even if you can go back, toxic fumes are coming out of the ground, the air quality is bad. In the houses that didn't burn, the water and electricity are turned off. What's the point of having a roof over your head, when nothing else works," concludes Maja Jeremić.
The residents of Los Angeles are left to struggle, as they have always done throughout history, with weather and geography, or as Maja quoted the famous American writer and journalist Joan Didion: "The weather in Los Angeles is a time of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and just as the traditionally long and bitter winters define the New England lifestyle, so the violence and unpredictability of the Santa Ana winds affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, emphasizing its impermanence and instability. The wind shows us how close we are to the edge."
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