On Tuesday, January 7, 2025, a brush fire – dubbed the Palisades Fire since it started along Palisades Drive – broke out in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, just a few miles from my home. This wasn't a unique occurrence; brush fires happen around Los Angeles every year, and there have been small fires in Pacific Palisades before. But conditions conspired to grow the Palisades Fire in a way I've never seen in the nearly 25 years I have lived in the area.

Within a few hours, another fire, dubbed the Eaton Fire, had erupted in the Altadena area. Now two communities on opposite sides of the city were threatened. Worse yet, unusually strong Santa Ana winds that were gusting at up to 80 mph (roughly 130 kph) made fighting the fires basically impossible.

Side note: The work firefighters – from all over the world – have done in Los Angeles County through all of this is nothing short of heroic. There are no words to describe the depth of our gratitude.

Due to the high winds, the fires spread quickly. The Palisades Fire's reach became so huge that my husband and I quickly realized even our location, in what we jokingly call "the Slums of Brentwood," might be at risk. Within fewer hours than I care to think about, both the Palisades and Eaton Fires had spread to unprecedented proportions.

We watched news coverage in horror as most of Pacific Palisades – my favorite neighborhood in the city – literally went up in flames, along with large swathes of Altadena. Tens of thousands of people were ordered to evacuate their homes. Many of them were people we knew – friends, colleagues, clients.

My husband and I started packing, so we could be ready to evacuate on a moment's notice if necessary. We wandered our condominium trying to evaluate how much we could fit in the car, what was irreplaceable and had to come with us, and what we could afford to let go. We tried not to obsess but found ourselves constantly refreshing the evacuation maps to see if we needed to leave. Each time we turned on the news, we saw more devastation. We watched the homes of friends, colleagues, and clients burn on television.

The one comfort was that everyone we knew had evacuated safely with their animals. Some had gone to hotels, some to friend's homes, some to second homes. I added that to a list of blessings I was now reciting on a regular basis: Our home is still intact. We have a place to go if we need to evacuate. The people and animals we care about are safe.

Not everyone was as lucky.

The day-to-day stress of the situation was enormous. Our indoor air smelled faintly of smoke despite closed windows, wet towels under the door, and a powerful air filter running full blast. Evacuation orders and warnings quickly got within a mile of us, and ultimately within half a mile of us. We lived in constant dread of the winds picking up or shifting direction.

Each subsequent day brought more bad news. The Palisades and Eaton Fires continued to grow. New brush fires popped up. More and more homes were destroyed.

Through it all, we were physically safe, but the emotional and mental toll was huge. What we experienced was nothing compared to what many others went through – having to evacuate, with no idea of what they might return to, in some cases with only the clothes on their back. Yes, what we experienced was nothing compared to that, but it was mental anguish nonetheless.

As the days wore on, the cumulative stress increasingly weighed on us. My husband and I both had trouble sleeping. I found it more and more difficult to concentrate. Each time there was a Watch Duty alert on my phone, I stopped whatever I was doing to check if the evacuation zones had reached us or not. I could only work in short spurts. I got behind on e-mail and was only barely able to keep up with other work tasks.

The timing was not great. I was in the last week of my Fenzi Dog Sports Academy (FDSA) course on counterconditioning and desensitization, and I couldn't be the instructor I strive to be. My students posted amazing videos and asked interesting questions. Their posts were inspiring, and I was excited to reply, but my focus and memory were devastated by the stress. I was having trouble coming up with the right words to say what I wanted. I had to stop and collect myself multiple times during each reply.

It was a lot to deal with. And we're not done yet.

In the past few days, the winds have died down (temporarily). Firefighters have taken advantage of the respite to get the fires as much under control as possible. But the winds are kicking up again soon. And that's scary. Is it all going to start over again? It's hard to wait and see after what we've already seen.

We feel for you, Irith, but why is this personal essay on the FDSA website? What does this all have to do with me and my companion animals?

In Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Richard Bach wrote, "There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts."

Living where I do – in the "Slums of Brentwood," far from open brushland – I certainly didn't seek out wildfires as a problem. But I think I may have found the gift:

This is what life is like for many of the non-human animals with whom we share our homes.

A few days into these fires, I realized that I was experiencing some of the same challenges as many companion animals. Like them, I was not actually in immediate danger. Yet the lack of immediate danger did not mean that I could relax or feel calm. Things felt out of control. And the lack of control was making it harder and harder for me to stay in a healthy cognitive state where I could make good decisions.

There are constant triggers in my environment these days. Ever since the winds died down, there's been a regular sound of aircraft – air support for the firefighting efforts – in my area. I know these aircraft are an important part for fighting the fire, and the sound should make me happy. In a way it does. But each time I hear an engine overhead, that is also a reminder of how close we are to disaster. The result? My stress rises.

I can't help but think of this as similar to what reactive dogs experience as they walk around a neighborhood where they occasionally run into triggers. For example, they might see the fence line of a house with barking dogs and experience relief when those barking dogs happen to be indoors that day, but the fence itself is a reminder of what could go wrong.

Triggers come up when I least expect them, too. I was recently listening to a Peter Gabriel album that includes a song titled "Biko." The song is about Bantu Stephen Biko, an anti-apartheid activist who was killed while in South African police custody in 1977 (I will leave Biko's story there, since you can find out more on the web or at a library). The song includes a line about activism that goes as follows: "You can blow out a candle/But you can't blow out a fire/Once the flames begin to catch/The wind will blow it higher."

In the past, I have found that line brilliant and inspiring. This week, hearing that line kicked me into a stress response. That line was no longer just a metaphor. I now knew all too well that where forest fires and wildfires are concerned, the winds indeed blow the fires higher.

Do our companion animals, like me, go through life enjoying things until something dreadful happens to change their view? Once that happens, is that past source of joy lost to them forever? After enough of those experiences, do they start to worry that every source of joy hides terrifying things that may happen any time? Does life turn into one big emotional minefield?

13 days into this, I am starting to feel more like myself. Yet I can still feel the anxiety waiting in the wings, ready to re-emerge. I don't know what will trigger my next stress response. Things are better, but they are far from OK.

I very literally don't have control. I can't control the wind. I can't control how effective the firefighters' efforts are. I can't control what some compulsive arsonist with a match or a blowtorch might do.

The events since January 7, 2025, are conspiring to take away my broader sense of control, my agency. I worry that I may never feel like I have control again. I worry that I may always experience outsize stress when the Santa Ana winds blow. I worry that with fire season in Southern California basically lasting all year these days, I will never truly feel safe again.

All this is happening even though I am one of the lucky ones. I did not lose my home. I did not have to evacuate (my brain is urging me to add "yet"). I'm OK. My loved ones are OK. So what's the big deal?

A friend I spoke with this past week reminded me that trauma is trauma. While some sources of trauma seem obvious, trauma is more complex than that. Trauma isn't just about how a situation looks from the outside. It's about how the animal experiences the situation. This human animal has been experiencing trauma – even though I'm one of the lucky ones, even though nothing physically bad happened to me.

How very much like our non-human animal companions I seem to myself right now!

I have spent a lot of time trying to put myself in the shoes (paws, hooves, talons) of the non-human animals I encounter. Now more than ever, I believe I understand some of what they are going through. They live in a world where they have very little control, where triggers can come out of nowhere. Often, they can't even choose to walk away from or avoid those triggers. Talk about disempowering, stressful, scary… no wonder they overreact to so many things!

I've also devoted many years to helping people find ways to increase control and improve agency for the non-human animals who share their lives. Today, the tables are turned. Now I need to find a way to do that for myself.

Postscript

Last year – long before the fires started – FDSA staff and I decided that my course for February would be BH170, which focuses on choice and habit. I hope that delving into that material in depth with students this term will help me find the solutions I myself need after all that has happened in the past 13 days.