The New Yorker Radio Hour - Returning to a Home Consumed by the Wildfires

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

The staff writer Dana Goodyear has reported on California extensively: the entertainment industry; a deadly crime spree in Malibu; Kamala Harris’s rise in politics; and the ever more fragile environment. She covered the destructive Woolsey Fire, in Los Angeles, in 2018. Recently, Goodyear found her own life very much in the center of the story. Living in Pacific Palisades, she had to evacuate early this month, and she documented her return days later to a scene of devastation in this audio story. “The house just is an idea of a house, or the aftermath of a house,” she said. “You can walk through the arched door at the front and the back, but there’s just pretty much nothing in between.”  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Staff writer Dana Goodyear has reported on California, the entertainment industry, a deadly crime spree in Malibu, Kamala Harris's rise in politics, and the ever more fragile environment in the state. Dana has lived for a long time in Los Angeles in the neighborhood of the Pacific Palisades. And recently, she and her family found their lives very much at the center of the story. about a week after the house burned down, I drove up Pacific Coast Highway and I stopped at a command post basically right underneath my neighborhood at the beach. If you drive up about 1,200 feet, you're in the Palisades. I knew that I wanted to go back up there and they weren't letting residents in. They had no problem with me going in. as a journalist. So you have a press pass and you're trying to get up there? I guess my question to you is what's your ultimate goal today?

I have combined goals. So I write for the New Yorker magazine. It's long-form non-fiction journalism. Okay. And I need to be seeing things that all the heroic emergency operations people are doing. And I also need to figure out what the hell is going on at my house because we haven't been able to see it. Okay.

And I know it's gone, but more than that. Yeah, I'm sorry for that. Well, I mean, the thing that's so weird for me is that I've reported on so many fires, and I just can't believe that... It happened to you. I can't believe it. The beautiful palisades.

It's just... Unreal. I'm driving up Chautauqua, and I have an absolute pit in my stomach. I know. I'm about to see the neighborhood, but this is the road that I drove up every day. And I'm glad a lot of these houses are standing on Chautauqua, so the fire didn't rip down through this little stream so much.

But I'm just so scared because I'm about to actually finally see it. We've been imagining it for a week. And when I was here with Brad, it was like fire everywhere, smoke in the air, emergency vehicles. Just now it's pretty much dead calm. Dead calm. No cars. No fire trucks. They're broken lives.

Okay. Here we go. Here we go. There is literally no one anywhere in this neighborhood. It's. so strange. It's so quiet. The wind is blowing lightly. The doves are back on the wires behind the house. I'm looking into this pit of plaster and rebar and kind of understanding how my house was made. there's the fireplace that I really loved in our family room with the kind of I forgot the name

of that shape but it's I think it's maybe a kiva shape the sort of almond shape half an almond shape opening in the fireplace and the tiles on one side are still there then there's sort of a tangled mass and there are all of our roots. roof tiles scattered everywhere. There's like shampoo bottles that are completely intact that were by the outdoor shower. The garage, it looks like Monday afternoon in my garage. The pillows are on the couch. My daughter's jar of homemade slime is sitting there intact on the edge.

on the counter, all my books are in the shelves. Everything looks completely fine. And then the house just is an idea of a house, or the aftermath of the house, I guess. You can walk through the arched door at the front and the back, but there's just pretty much nothing in between. I wish I knew how it caught and why and if there's anything we could have done to change this outcome and why is our garage

still standing i wish i knew how to know what its narrative was at this particular house like where the ember went in what caught what's that splatter all over the back wall of the house The part that's still standing is just looks like someone took a paint brush with black paint and flicked it, flung it all over the house. Did something explode there? What's so weird is just we had so much stuff. We had so many possessions, so many stupid possessions and so many really specials. special possessions. And you can't see any of that here.

It's almost like what it all comes down to is nails, plaster and nails. Our world was really little tiny pieces of metal holding it together. Dana Goodyear in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles. More in a moment. So Dana, you've been documenting the loss. of your home while you're reporting on the effects of this immense catastrophe in Los Angeles. And that's got to be beyond difficult. You told me you went back to the house again a few days later. So what did you find there? Yeah. So I went back and I was just wandering around when some

law enforcement emergency personnel saw me and everyone was really super friendly. You know, do you need water? Do you need a snack? Are you okay? And I said, yeah, I'm, just, you know, they said, we'll come walk to your house with you. And so I went, finished the walk, got to my house. And I said, you know, the thing that I've been really wondering about is this fireproof safe. It was a 400 pound safe that I had just installed in October and feeling very pleased with myself. I got all of my important documents out of storage in downtown LA and put them in the fireproof safe, along with a small box of jewelry. And when I went back, I've kind of had, I think my eyes had adjusted to the new layout of my home, you might say. And I had figured out

where my office was, because it was in a closet in my office. And I saw this kind of listing four-file high, totally black. It used to be bathed. piece of metal. And I was like, that's got to be it. And this incredibly helpful person with steel-toed boots said, you know what? I'm going to go in there and see if I can get it for you. I was like, are you serious? Because I thought I was going to have to wait until FEMA cleared the site. Was it in the top drawer? You think? I don't think so. I think it was in the second, third, or fourth. And then he goes, wait a minute, here's a little metal box. Blue box.

Okay. Oh, that might have a gold ring in it. And I was thinking, oh my God, my mom had given my daughter her school ring. Oh, my God, it's my mom's school ring. We started sifting through the dust using the piece of metal that had held the top of one of the files, you know, those little hanging files thing, using that, and found the stone from my engagement ring. That's my ring. That's my wedding ring.

It looks like the diamonds melted out or something. Oh, my God. The feeling of being able to have a happy story to tell not just my kids who are so anxious about what it all means, but also all the people who want our lives to be okay. Like it weirdly has meant so much to them that I found this thing. It feels like, okay, this family's going to be okay, even though, you know, it's just a symbol. But I'm super happy to have this stone.

It just feels like crises, they either strengthen you as a family or break you down. And I feel like this strengthens us and the stone is kind of a symbol of that, of unity. Well, Dana, all I can say is I send my love to you, love from Esther and to Billy and to the whole family. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Dana Goodyear is covering this year's wildfires in Los Angeles for the New Yorker. I'm David Remnick. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for this week, and thanks for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow,

Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer. And we had special assistance this week from Jonathan Mitchell. with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccat. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.