On January 8, 2025 24-year-old Imena Sotomayor lost her home in the Eaton Fire in California. Below, she shares her story as told to Elizabeth Gulino.
The Sotomayor family is currently living in a hotel in Burbank, CA. Their GoFundMe is linked here.
The day my family’s house burned down in the Eaton Canyon fire started off just like any other. I was supposed to get matcha with my friend that morning, but we ended up postponing because the wind was so harsh. It’s normal for us to experience big winds once or twice a year, so I felt like the wind was nothing new. In the morning, I even went for a job interview. Then, my best friend’s power went out. We didn’t really live in a fire zone, and the fires never really got close to us. Until my family saw the fire blazing on the mountain, nobody thought it was going to come over to us — but it did.
My best friend left her place before we did — she lives higher up the mountain. Then my Uncle Dennis and my cousin had to evacuate, but they also lived a bit closer to Eaton Canyon. We live on different gridlocks, so their power shut off maybe three hours before ours. Once ours did, my dad said it was time to leave. We didn’t get an announcement from the police or anything like that, telling us to evacuate. I don’t think there were enough troops or firefighters to help.
I lived in my house in Altadena, California [in Los Angeles County] for 23 years with my parents and my younger brother, who’s 20. My home was a place of safety — for all of my friends, too. We would have a lot of family events and gatherings there. Everything was always at our house, and all of my closest friends lived no more than a block away from me. It was the only home I’ve ever known. That’s where I became a big sister. I had so many birthdays and celebrations there, and that’s where all of our accomplishments were held.
When disaster hits, you’d think you’d grab the most important things, like family heirlooms and pictures. But in the moment you take whatever’s closest to you. In my head, I thought to grab this lamp that I really wanted that my boyfriend, Micah, had just gotten me. I was trying to gather more things and my brother was like ‘we have to go, we have to go, we have to go.’
My dad and my mom grabbed more of the paperwork, the safes, and the responsible things in a backpack and a couple of shopping bags. They only packed one outfit to go and nothing else for themselves. My brother packed maybe two outfits in a backpack. I felt guilty just because I ended up grabbing the most stuff. I had just done laundry so I took my laundry bag. I went on a solo trip to Europe two years ago, and I grabbed a lot of those dresses because that was my memorabilia from the trip. I took my dog and some of her toys, and that was really it. We packed as if we were coming back the next day.
We decided to go to my Uncle Ricky’s house in San Gabriel, which is about half an hour south, to stay the night. My mom and dad drove to get my grandma — she lives in La Crescenta and she’s blind. I got in my car and my brother drove my dad’s car. As we were driving, I could see the fire. The smoke was everywhere. It was hard to breathe. The wind was shaking my car and trees were falling down. I couldn’t really see and there were embers flying everywhere. I’ve never been the best with directions and I didn’t have WiFi, so I had to tail my brother.
I slept in my car that night outside of my Uncle’s house because of my dog Nova. She’s really timid because she’s a rescue, and they didn’t allow dogs in the house because they have a cat. Our other two dogs were in the pool house, and I didn’t want to leave her by herself.
The next morning, on January 8, my boyfriend sent me a picture of our house, or what was left of it. His house had also burned down. At first I didn’t even know what he had sent. It was nothing. We had just gotten it remodeled, redone the driveway, and put in a big iron fence so the dogs could look out. And just the fence was left. I showed my mom, who was sitting next to me. She raised us there. That’s their only home that they’ve ever bought, and we just lost everything. She was bawling her eyes out.
The following day my family and I ended up going back to see the house. At that point, the cops were blocking people from going into the area because it was still an active fire. We went up the long way. We went deeper in the mountains towards Loma Alta park and made our way down Fair Oaks to where I live. There’s this ride at Universal Studios called the Universal Studios Tour, and there’s one part of it where you watch a disaster happen on a working movie set, with floods and fires and power lines falling down. That’s how it felt. It felt fake. As we were pulling up, I got a lump in my throat. Seeing our home and seeing what was left… It’s crazy because it looks so small. You have this whole house, you have all of these memories, your whole life was there and now, it’s just a pile of rubble and dirt.
We were trying to show all of our friends [photos] because we were all in disbelief. No one believes their house is gone until they actually see it. We went to one of my friend’s houses further up the mountain. Seeing her house gone made me cry because we had so many memories there. But now nothing’s left.
We saw the most random things survive from the fires. A whole block would be gone and then there’d be one house still standing, or everything’s burned and there’s one tree. We had this gorgeous garden with banana trees and dragon fruit, so I thought maybe at least one of those survived. But no. There were no plants left. We had a tortoise and we weren’t able to dig him up before we left because he buried himself for the winter. We’ve had him my whole entire life. My mom and dad found him when we went back. We think that he suffocated because of the fire. My parents ended up burying him in the backyard.
We had a garage that had all of our most important stuff. My dad gave me a sandwich maker when I was like four. That was my favorite gift ever and now it’s gone. I had all of the OG Littlest Pet Shops. That was the only thing that I really, really enjoyed as a child and kept all of these years and they’re gone. I had a whole box of brand new things for when I was ready to move out.
I turned 24 in December. I was hoping that this would be the year that I could start looking for places on my own, but now I don’t even want to. How could I leave my family? We all went through this traumatic thing and at this point I would feel so nervous and have so much more anxiety if I’m like, where are they, what’re they doing, are they okay?
I wish I would’ve taken the time to save the actual important things. I had all my baby stuff in my room. I kept every single card from every birthday, every congratulations, every thank you card. I spent a lifetime collecting things. I had a coin collection, I collected crystals, and I grabbed a fucking laundry bag. It’s all the little things. It’s just lip gloss to somebody, but it’s an outing I made with my best friend. Even though we’re getting these new things from nice places, like the Altadena Girls, that’s not the bag or the outfit I saved up for. It feels like your pride is gone because now, we’re going through people’s second hand things to try to find something we can use.
I ended up accidentally grabbing a photo album that I made of my parents when I was younger and it brought my mom to tears. It was just so sad. It was pictures of them and their childhood. We were a house of pictures. We had my friends’ pictures, my prom pictures, and now all we have is that one little photo album.
The number one priority at the moment is for us to find a place until we can rebuild. A lot of the places renting either raised all of their prices or are not in our budget. We have three big dogs, so we were having a hard time finding a place [to stay]. We ended up finding a hotel in Burbank. I feel like a lot of people that also lost their homes have been over here because it’s one of the only places you can bring dogs. I hope we don’t have to stay in the hotel but even then, at least we have a hotel. Some people are sleeping in their cars.
I don’t know how we would’ve made it without everyone pitching in. There’s a friend I hadn’t spoken to in years, and she’s been helping me and has been the first person to offer me things. Girls I played softball with when I was 12 are bringing me stuff to help us out. It’s been really meaningful. I was telling my friends that while I hate that we’re all going through this together, at least we’ve all been friends for long enough to know what we’re talking about if we mention a random part of our homes or a random picture or plant, because we grew up together in those homes.
I get scared that [the] help is just going to last for a month tops because it’s the new disaster. But then what if everything stops? It’s not like in a month we’re going to be good. We’ll still probably be in the hotel. I don’t know if we’ll be able to find a place that fast. My family didn’t even pay off the house yet. We’ll never leave the dogs, but it does make it 1,000 times harder to find something.
It means so much that people are sharing our GoFundMe. It hurts you having to ask for help. You had something, you built something, and now it’s gone and now you have to ask and look for other people’s kindness. That’s hard on a lot of people, I know it was hard for me.
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