{"id":388,"date":"2025-12-03T16:40:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T16:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/?p=388"},"modified":"2025-12-03T16:40:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T16:40:13","slug":"the-beginning-of-the-end-emotional-story-off-our-writer-christopher-nyerges-in-the-great-la-fires-epictactical-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/?p=388","title":{"rendered":"THE BEGINNING OF THE END \u2013 Emotional story off our writer Christopher Nyerges in the Great LA Fires. \u2013 EpicTactical"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I had the opportunity to speak with our writer Christopher Nyerges who lives next to Altadena, CA about surviving through the catastrophic Southern California fires. Here is his first account and we will publish more as he is comfortable writing about it!<\/p>\n

THE BEGINNING OF THE END<\/p>\n

A personal account of the Great Fire of 2025<\/p>\n

Christopher Nyerges<\/p>\n

On January 7, 2025, a Tuesday, I was in Highland Park (northeast Los Angeles) to operate the weekly farmer\u2019s market, as I have done for years.\u00a0 It was windy, but tolerable, and I hoped that the winds would die down so the canopies that the farmers used would not be blown away.\u00a0 Apparently, winds were heavy in other areas, and about a third of our vendors did not arrive.<\/p>\n

The modified market proceeded, and the wind seemed to gradually increase.\u00a0 Yes, there had been predictions of high winds in the news, and I assumed, as I usually do, that those highest winds would be high in the mountains and deep in the canyons, such as the Interstate 5 corridor.<\/p>\n

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By 4 p.m., steady winds made the market challenging to operate. By 6 p.m., my wife called me, telling me to try to get home as quickly as possible. \u201cThe winds are horrendous,\u201d she told me, and she could see smoke and the red glare of fire to our home\u2019s east and north.\u00a0 Our home is right on the Altadena-Pasadena border, just a few short blocks from Eaton Canyon, where apparently the high winds knocked down a power line and started a fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fire doesn\u2019t look good,\u201d she added, \u201cand we have no power.\u00a0 Try to get home quickly.\u00a0 You might not be able to get back because they are telling people to evacuate.\u201d\u00a0 I could tell that this was serious, more serious than I had imagined.\u00a0 Meanwhile, I had to stay at least another hour to close down the market, as winds increased and closing up the farmers\u2019 canopies became very difficult. \u00a0I finally drove back amidst increasing winds, with branches and tree limbs blocking some roads.\u00a0 I drove up Lake Avenue and realized we were in a serious emergency status.\u00a0 As I freely drove north into Altadena, there was a line of car headlights heading south, as the exodus was continuing.\u00a0 Some street lights were out, and people were driving more recklessly.<\/p>\n

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I could feel a sense of panic developing. \u00a0I managed to get into my neighborhood without any barricades, a darkened neighborhood where most neighbors were clearly already gone.\u00a0 This was about 8 p.m.\u00a0 \u00a0High winds buffeted everything, and I as parked, I could see the orange sky to our east and north, as black smoke billowed into the sky.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know that then, but I was seeing the burning of the Jewish synagogue on Altadena Drive and the Palm Villa rest home occupied by senior citizens.\u00a0 It had already been evacuated by the time I got home.<\/p>\n

My wife and I quickly put a few key items into our cars, such as clothes, toiletries, some photos, and computer.\u00a0 \u00a0While my wife continued to collect a few necessities, I watered the outside.\u00a0 Sparks flew down from time to time in the high winds, which made me realize that we might never return to our small and humble home.\u00a0 But it wasn\u2019t the time to think about things \u2013 we were operating on automatic pilot.<\/p>\n

We finally drove off, not sure where we were going, but we headed down to Colorado Blvd, in Pasadena, home of the annual Rose Parade, to the hotel row area.\u00a0 The first hotel we saw had a long line of cars trying to get in, and a crowd in the lobby so we drove on.\u00a0 My wife found a smaller place down the road which had one room left, which we booked for the night.<\/p>\n

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We spent a fitful night, and I did my best to relax and sleep, though it was hard.\u00a0 We talked through what steps we\u2019d take if everything we had got burned to the ground.<\/p>\n

During the days that followed, we did hear from many of our friends who lost everything.\u00a0 My childhood friend Joe Sierra told me how he looked out and saw his neighbor\u2019s house burning across the street from his Marengo home.\u00a0 He knew there were high winds, but had no idea the firestorm would get right next to his home.\u00a0 He grabbed his cat and jumped in his truck and took off as the neighborhood burned down.\u00a0 \u201cI wish I had grabbed at least a spare pair of pants,\u201d Joe told me.<\/p>\n

In the morning, we were able to return to our home, still standing.\u00a0 We were on the fringe, and the still-raging fires were already well to the east and northwest of our neighborhood.<\/p>\n

MORE TO COME<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had the opportunity to speak with our writer Christopher Nyerges who lives next to Altadena, CA about surviving through the catastrophic Southern California fires. Here is his first account and we will publish more as he is comfortable writing about it! THE BEGINNING OF THE END A personal account of the Great Fire of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-388","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":389,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}