SOUTHLAND BLAZES - Stuffing a lifetime into a suitcase - When the call to evacuate comes, there's no predicting what people see as essential.
THE decisions are made in a scary, smoky instant. A wildfire is blazing toward the front door: What to take to safety? What to leave behind? One woman in Malibu grabbed her old wedding ring and divorce papers. A Santa Clarita man showed up at an evacuation center with four suitcases but little memory of what he and his wife threw into them. "Probably not what we need," he said, clutching his pillow. An Escondido woman, her head cloudy with panic, rescued her $1,000 Christian Louboutin shoes.
Practical or sentimental, irreplaceable or as inconsequential as a carton of orange juice, the belongings that fire evacuees packed up before fleeing home speaks to the daunting task of distilling a life into a backpack, a suitcase or the trunk of a car.
In the chaos of disaster, logic doesn't always reign. Los Angeles psychologist Helen Lena Astin said there's no predicting what people see as essential in times of crisis. She remembers a friend doubling back to his house during the 1978 Mandeville Canyon fire to retrieve his tuxedo. He later explained that it was difficult to find a tuxedo that fit him well.
"That's crazy, but it's interesting," said Astin, a researcher and professor emeritus at UCLA. "Of all the things to worry about. But people make snap decisions, not always about what is practical, but what's valuable to them at the time."
Some people save photographs, but visit any of the neighborhoods threatened by fires this week and one would find evacuees loaded down with high school yearbooks, college dissertations, tax returns, concert tickets, skateboards.
After a night of watching the flames creep closer to her driveway, Alyson Dutch was told Monday morning to leave her home in Malibu's Las Flores Canyon. All she remembered was flinging open her wardrobe closet, stuffing a pair of cowboy boots and a down jacket into a bag, tossing her computer and insurance papers into a box, then corralling her yellow Lab, Sullivan, and her cat, Duck, into her Porsche.
Hours later, at her brother's house in Agoura Hills, she reached into her pocket and was surprised to find a feline-shaped piece of jade that she kept by her nightstand. In the frenzy to pack, she apparently had thought to grab a jewelry box that holds a childhood rosary, charms her mother gave her and an old postcard from her late father. "I cherish these things," she said. "If the rest burns, it's all replaceable."
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