New Iberia natives lose family home in California wildfire
NEW IBERIA, La. (KLFY) -- Jake Viator recalled being home remodeling his place when his wife texted him about a possible fire in Eaton Canyon, which is just in front of his house in Altadena, California.
He said his wife and daughter were staying with family members in Arizona at the time.
Viator, who currently lives in Altadena and is a native of New Iberia, now has to rebuild completely after their home was destroyed by the fire on Jan. 7.
“When she texted me, I knew that with the high winds we were having, if there was some sort of spark in our area, it was going to mean wildfire," Viator said. "When I got the text, it was very alarming. So I walked to the top of my driveway just to take a peek and when I got to the top of the driveway, just a total black cloud of smoke engulfed our whole neighborhood.”
Already with a packed bag ready to leave in case of wildfire, Viator said he went to warn others in the neighborhood as many people live alone and are elderly.
“When I turned the corner, what I thought was just smoke was a total nightmare wall of orange" he said. "I mean, it looked like it was just an inferno."
As the fire tripled in size he tried to escape as quickly as possible.
“It was only a couple of hours later when I texted my next door neighbor and asked him if he was still there, what the situation was, and he said, 'I just left. Our yards are on fire,'" Viator said. "It's not looking good and a friend of mine went and wanted to try to save the house, and he went and thought he was going to go and try to spray down the roof and spray down the yard to try to get rid of the threat of fire but when he got there, it was just the whole neighborhood was ablaze."
Viator, thankful his wife and daughter were not there, said that was a blessing.
“So I'm just really feeling overall blessed, honestly, to be happy and healthy and that they didn't have to go through that,” he said. “A few people have sent me photos of our property and it's just obliterated. Everyone in my neighborhood for the most part has lost just everything and from the wind and how intensely the fire burned. I just don't think there's anything left. I mean, anything that we can recognize on our property from photos and videos is just totally a mangled mess.”
He described the residents of Altadena as blue-collar, middle-class and people who support the film and construction industry. He said it is really a beautiful, connected community and he is devastated by the loss of the unique sense of a small town in a big city.
“The amount of homes that were destroyed, the amount of businesses that were destroyed, the amount of displaced people is staggering," Viator said. "I mean, literally every single person I know has lost everything in Altadena. We were hoping that maybe our case was unique when we found out, you know, that, oh, you know, a few people lost their homes but it's just becoming clearer that everything is gone. The entire town has been wiped out and it's going to take years to rebuild.”
As the fires are still active and the death toll is still being counted he holds on to hope everything will be alright. The family has set up a GoFundMe account.
He described the fires as hurricanes remembering when he lived through hurricanes Andrew in 1992 and Katrina in 2005.
“I would just like people in Louisiana to know that this is very much like a major devastating hurricane," he said. "You know, it has completely wiped the town off the map, similar to, you know, like a huge storm surge or a flood might.”