I was evacuated from my home on Callon Drive on Jan. 7, 2025 along with most of my neighbors when the wind changed and the Palisades Fire began moving in our direction.
The evacuation lasted 11 days and was a frightening time. I was lucky enough to have a place to stay, with my good friend Leslie in Porter Ranch, so I didn’t have to drive around in the dark hoping to find an unoccupied hotel room or to sleep in my car. Still, like most people in L.A., I was anxious and scared as I watched—and smelled—our city burning. It was predictable but still somehow unbelievable.
I worried about my friends and neighbors and about people I didn’t know who had been caught in the fires or who had made miraculous escapes, about families who had lost everything. And, of course, I worried about my house in Topanga. Would it be there when I returned? Would our beloved neighborhood of hippies and writers, musicians and film people, teachers and therapists, Buddhists and Hindus and eccentrics of all kinds and all our lovely children and dogs and wildlife still be there? Or would we return to the devastating 1945 Hiroshima landscape of our neighboring city, Pacific Palisades, only a mile or so away?
But everyone didn’t leave Topanga when the evacuation order was given. Some brave (or crazy) souls stayed behind to try and save their homes or neighborhoods. Two of those people live across the street from me.
Bill is a neighborhood icon who has a beautiful property called “the Mermaid” where he hosts events for the community. Sergio lives on the property with his family and works for Bill. I’ve known them for 30 years and they are both exceptional men. I often introduce Sergio to people as my “adopted son”. I know that Sergio saved my house during the fire.
When most of the neighborhood fled the fire on Jan. 7, Bill and Sergio remained. Bill’s property has large rainbird sprinklers on the roofs and large water tanks as well as an Olympic-size pool that can be used in case of fire. A few years ago Sergio talked me into getting a rooftop sprinkler and two water tanks for my property.
For over a week those two brave men fought the approaching fire. They wore hazmat suits and raced around the area clearing brush, keeping everything wet and constantly scouring the area for embers. Sergio spent a lot of time on the roof, monitoring the direction of the wind and the distance of the fire and taking photos of the dystopian scene as it came ever closer.
Sergio is my contractor as well as my neighbor and friend. He has worked on my house for 30 years and has practically rebuilt it. He has always been protective of me, his adopted “mom” and of my house. While the fires raged nearby, he kept running across the street to my house to hose it down and also hose the surrounding properties and he also checked for looters.
Bill, Sergio’s boss, is in his mid 70s and is also a pretty amazing person. When the fire was only a block or so from Callon Drive there were fire engines parked in front of almost every house and structure. The firefighters had been working pretty much nonstop for over a week and were exhausted. Bill let them take shifts sleeping in his large house with multiple bedrooms. They could also take showers. And he had several deliveries of food catered from Brent’s Deli, ready when they arrived. The firefighters said they had never received this kind of treatment while fighting a fire before.
I know that the actions of the brave firefighters saved our community, but so did the actions of Bill and Sergio. They are probably two unlikely heroes to most people, Bill, a rich, 77 year old man who loves his home and community, and Sergio, a 58 year old Mexican immigrant with a third grade education who could have fled the fire with his family but stayed to protect our neighborhood and to help his “adopted mom”. They are both heroes to me.
A Poem Submission by Emma Farkas
I Plead Guilty
It all happened so fast— a somber sleep steady and safe.
The wind stirred, forcing fierceness into the faces of the innocent.
I tried to fight it at first, but red-hot rage consumed me.
Every flicker, every flame, fed me.
Power was poison, fear was ferocious.
I enjoyed it. Blindly.
The landscape was my stage—front and center I performed.
Directed by the wind, I was played like a puppet.
As the curtains closed, I took my final bow.
The blinding lights dimmed as I finally faced my audience.
Scarred and scared they stared up with tear-stained ash-stricken faces filled with sorrow and disbelief.
Their eyes welled with water, drops of despair that I inflicted.
It was me, unstoppable I uprooted thousands of lives.
Dinner tables once gathered around with laughter and life now reduced to rubble—reduced to nothing.
Homes now dust.
Beloved restaurants where everyone knows your name now a memory soon forgotten—names once said with a smile now tales that trigger tears.
As the black darkness settled to a silent gray scene, I drank up my death with gratitude.
Wind whistled in the distance as I prayed someone would stop me.
Stop me, please.
Stop me from hurting you, from hurting your family, from destroying the only life you’ve ever known—Stop me.
I know it’s too late, I wish I could have stopped.
I stand on the stage alone, the strings have been cut, the cruel twisted puppet show is over.
Everything, is over.
Emma Farkas is a 17-year-old Topanga resident and a junior in high school.
