As a fire blew across parts of Los Angeles yesterday, the actor James Woods looked back at what he had fled: a column of flames reaching over the lip of his deck. He could watch this from miles away, through the screen of his iPhone, which showed footage from his security system. Just before midnight, he got the bad news, again through an app on his phone: Every smoke alarm in his house was going off simultaneously. His neighbor, the reality TV star Spencer Pratt, was also spending the night “watching our house burn down on the security cameras,” he said on Snapchat. Marta Mae Freedman, an entrepreneur who lived along the ocean, asked on Instagram, “Have AirTags ever made you cry?” Hers were both at home, but they dropped offline at 6:14 p.m. and 7:31 p.m. Back in New York City, the publisher Zibby Owens watched flames reach over an infinity pool and plumes of smoke and embers blast toward the Google Nest cam overlooking the back of her house in the Palisades. It went offline shortly after, and her husband, Kyle Owens, told CBS News today, “We basically lost contact with our house.”
Americans are now able to watch in real time, and up close, as natural disasters engulf their homes with the help of home-security technology. It’s a particular kind of torture to witness the exact moment when your home is no more. The idea of monitoring a fire this way is still so strange that at first, it didn’t occur to Marika Erdely, who for 14 years has lived in a 1960s house on the hills just east of the Getty Villa.
Tell me about where you live.
This is such a neighborhood. This is the kind of neighborhood you don’t leave unless you die or divorce. One of my best friends lives across the street, and she’s lived there almost 40 years. Almost every house has a view of the ocean. If it doesn’t, it’s like, you walk next door, and that house has a view of the ocean. It’s a bunch of old people that haven’t moved, and a bunch of nice new families coming in with little kids. I moved there when I was in my 50s, but it’s a neighborhood built in the early ’60s, and it’s just like this incredible mid-century architecture.
When did you know you had to evacuate?
I was getting ready to go to a meeting in Universal City, giving myself that hour you need to drive anywhere in L.A. It’s 10:50 a.m. I get up from my home-office desk, which is facing the Santa Monica Mountains, and I go talk to my cousin who’s visiting from Budapest, and he’s sitting eating breakfast. I have an incredible view of the ocean, and the sky is bright orange, a really weird orange. I’m like, What’s going on? So we get up and we step outside and we look to the left and there’s just this giant smoke plume. That’s all the Pacific Palisades there. And while I’m standing there, my daughter calls saying that the preschool where her daughter, my granddaughter, has to evacuate. So I immediately got in my car, went and picked her up. The chaos was just starting at the preschool. And after that, I got home really quickly, and my phone was blowing up with notifications to evacuate.
I have a big car. It’s an SUV. But I have a sick cousin staying with me, a 2-year-old, and a big black Labrador. So I’m like, Okay, what do we take? I have a curio cabinet of memories, and I just emptied all of that into a laundry basket and got some clothes. I took all the ashes — my dad, my mom, my dogs, my best friend Ed. And I went through some of my expensive suits and grabbed those and the shoes because I work, and I grabbed my laptop and my Wyland watercolor. That’s about all that could fit in the car. I sprayed the whole area down. Then we left.
Was the drive terrifying?
The chaos had started, but the disaster of what happened at Sunset and the Pacific Coast Highway I think happened an hour after. Still, it was packed with people going north to get home. Even as I was driving southbound, there were first responders in my lane trying to get north. It was crazy: sirens, people driving chaotically. But we ended up at my daughter’s house in Santa Monica, thank God.
When did you think to check your cameras?
I forgot they were on. I think I was just in shock by the whole thing. I did check at one point around 2 p.m., but they didn’t show anything. And we forgot about it. We were watching TV news instead. But around 5:45 p.m., my daughter said, “Let’s check the Ring cameras.” They showed my ficus tree was on fire and my hot-tub cover was on fire and the patio furniture — I had moved it all to the grass — was on fire. So you can see the cushions blowing around. The embers were flying right at my sliding doors on the back of my house. My neighbor one house over — his house was under construction, and it looked like his was burning. So I was able to let him know. He was hysterical. The cameras died by like 5:55. They went offline. But during that ten minutes, we saw a lot.
How did you feel watching this?
This is usually on television. It’s not your stuff. It’s not your home. But to actually see flames in my yard was very scary and very surreal. Like, Wow. My house is gonna be gone. I’m in my 60s and I had been trying to get to a place of having more time and working less, and now I’ll have to deal with all of this. I’m a contractor. I do retrofits to make buildings more energy efficient. But the thought of having to rebuild my own house — the effort and all of that — is overwhelming. And where am I gonna live? Thirty thousand people have evacuated, so what kind of rental opportunities are gonna be in this area?
Have you been able to get any more news about your house since you saw the video?
Well, Channel 4 news was in my neighborhood and went right in front of my house. My house was in the background, and it was still standing. My 7-year-old grandson was screaming at the TV. He recognized it.
That’s incredible. I had assumed your cameras went off because they caught on fire, along with the house. Does this mean the power just went out?
I’m a sustainability consultant. I have solar and I have two Tesla power walls. So even two weeks ago, when the Franklin fire happened and the neighborhood lost power, I still had Christmas lights on and everything. My house was still operating.
I should have power now, but my Tesla power walls are not operating. They might have melted, or maybe there’s something in the Ring system that maybe they don’t want you to see your house burn down, so it turns off? I don’t know.
Wow, you seem very prepared for disasters like this.
Yes. When I got a new roof eight years ago, I bought the most expensive, fire-retardant roof. I had all these fruit trees and my boyfriend said recently, “You know, it’s really dry. Let’s clean it up.” He sawed everything down and on Monday we finished trimming. So none of the brush was on the side of my house. That might have saved us.
Did you buy your camera to watch for stuff like this?
It was more for protection. I had gone through a divorce, and I was living alone. So my neighbor helped me set up these ring cameras. I had one, two, three cameras, plus the doorbell.
Do any of your neighbors have cameras pointed to your house?
All of them have gone offline. For a while, one neighbor could still see her house — the back of her house was burning, where she has planters. But then her camera died too, so she didn’t get anything else.
Do you think you’ll be able to go back soon?
No, because there’s still houses in my neighborhood that are on fire, just down the street. I can see it on Channel 4 and I know the house. So who knows.
Do you regret having the cameras and having to see this over and over again?
No, because at least I knew something versus nothing, you know.
I think I hear your granddaughter in the background.
Yep. She wants a bagel.
The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.