KSP x BHB: High School Student Rosa Nicely on the Eaton Fire

On February 2, 2025, Eitan Kim Levy interviewed Rosa Nicely, a 16-year-old from Los Angeles, as part of the 2024-2025 Koreatown Storytelling Program. Their discussion focused on the catastrophic Eaton Canyon fire, which unexpectedly forced Rosa and her family to evacuate their home in Altadena.

Can you walk me through what happened on the day of the fire?

It was a normal day. We had just gotten back to school after winter break, and my grandparents were visiting for New Year’s. We were all together, and we decided to go for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory on Tuesday night. We already knew the Palisades fire was happening, but obviously, it was so far from where we were. 

We got a bunch of wind advisories because there were 100-mile-per-hour winds, and we lived in a really old house [surrounded by] a bunch of old trees. My parents saw an article advising against sleeping in bedrooms near large trees, as they could fall on the house. I got into a big argument with them. ‘Ah, sorry. Like, screw that. I'm gonna sleep in my room. I don't care.’ As we were walking back to the hotel to drop off my grandparents, there was news about the Eaton Fire. My parents decided to evacuate because of the wind, not because of the fire, and we decided to stay at my grandparents’ hotel room.

I genuinely just thought, a tree is just gonna fall in my room, which is fine, because it's just a tree. The winds can't be that bad. Hours went by, and we realized the fire was getting worse. But  we still didn't think anything of the fire, which was crazy.

Every hour, we kept checking the NextDoor app, Twitter, and the news. And then we found out that the synagogue that I grew up going to completely burned down. It was 10 p.m., and we were like, ‘Oh, shoot. That's really close to where we live.’ But I still didn’t think it was going to be that bad. The embers that were flying around were random. The whole time, my parents said, ‘It's gonna be fine. Our house is gonna be fine. There's no way it's gonna burn down.’

No one slept that night. We were all sleeping in the same room. I was sleeping on the floor on random pillow cushions. We kept checking our phones, and everything was fine. But all of the fire trackers were hours behind. 

At 3 a.m. we got the official evacuation warning on our phones, but we were already evacuated. Thank god. 

Did you have any of your belongings?

My parents thought it was too dangerous for me to go back and get all of my stuff, so they just went back by themselves and got all of this stuff for us, because they thought going there would freak us out. Or that we wouldn't get out in time. 

I wasn't able to go back to my house. The last time I was at my house was the morning before I left for school, before the fire started. 

How was the next morning?

We woke up in the morning, and the fire was still going on, but we just thought, Okay, if we just make it through the night, the winds will die down. Like the fire would be gone. But I didn't realize how fast fire spreads, and so basically, my parents found out about our house being gone before my brother and I. Somehow, our neighbors went up there, and they texted my parents that our whole street was gone. 

My parents went to the bathroom to talk. My brother and I both looked at each other like, “Oh, we know our house is gone.”  They came into the room and told us. It was horrible. It was a bad, bad time. But I will say, I will say I was very thankful that my grandparents were there too, because they knew when to come into the room and when to leave, so that it was just the four of us in my family to talk about it, but they were also the ones reassuring us, like, you guys will be fine. We have money to support. You guys will have a place. So, yeah, that's basically the story. 

If you were able to take some of your belongings, what would they have been?

Definitely as many of my clothes as possible. I'm a very fashion-forward person. My whole identity is through fashion — my style and my clothes. I probably had 1000 items of clothing, some designer, some vintage, some I've had for a really long time that I just kept because, why not? I would have tried to take as many clothes as possible, but, like, I didn't. Yeah. 

How have you been affected since the fires?

Obviously, I'm living in a very different part of Los Angeles right now. It's very weird. Like, I don't really remember much of me being in my house. I remember moments that I've experienced in that house, but me specifically being in that house, I don't remember because I never really put much thought into like, ‘Oh, this is my wall.’ Or ‘this is what it feels like to be in my room.’ 

That's the one thing that has affected me most. Not being able to remember much. I will say, going through something like this kind of numbs you a little bit, where you're not super sad, and you're not necessarily happy, but you're just kind of confused. You're just like, ‘Oh, well.’ It happened, so you kind of have to live through it.

What advice would you give others about fire preparedness or recovery?

First off, just don't move into an old house. I've lived in that house for 16 years. We moved in when I was a baby. It's a very old, Spanish-style home from the 1920s or 1930s that already had really bad plumbing, bad like, everything. It was in poor condition. But we still made it work. It was fine. But I realized that a lot of the houses that were still standing, that were not completely flattened, were the newer houses. 

But you can't just move out of your house. There's not much you can do, but maybe just be more prepared, like, have stuff together where you know where everything is, so it's easy to pack things up. Not in a paranoid way, where you're always going to be worried about having to evacuate, but get yourself out first and find a place to stay, instead of having to evacuate in the middle of the night. But otherwise, there's not much you can do, because you never know when it's going to happen.

How did the fire affect your relationships with family, friends, or community?

I went back to school feeling super excited to be back in the norm. But I will say it's very challenging, which you don't really realize. I feel like I jumped into things very quickly to try and get my social life back together, but I realized that I needed to take a break. Even with school, my teachers knew that I didn't have to do a lot of assignments, but I still wanted to keep up, because it is my junior year, which is the most important. 

I'm very lucky to be at the school I'm at, where they have given me a lot of grace for all my assignments and schoolwork. But socially … I've been not knowing how to socialize very well anymore, because I'm not in the right mindset. I can't. I kept kind of trying to push myself to just be normal, and be like how I was before. But it's very … I realize it's very impossible to go back to how it was. 

You start to blame other people for why things are weird, but then you realize that it's just the mindset you're in. So yeah, I think it's also important to take breaks when you need to. You can't just jump back into everything really fast. 

Do you have fears about the future?

I feel like California will just burn down to a crisp, but I know that's not gonna happen. But it's gonna be very difficult to gain back the same mentality I had before on most things. The most difficult thing will be not to think so negatively all the time. I've been thinking very negatively while trying to stay in a positive mindset, which is hard.

How did your school or friends help you through this time?

[Friends] came over and helped me move furniture into the apartment I'm staying at right now. They helped me shop for things. They’ve also been understanding and listening when I needed to vent.

If you would like to contribute to the Nicely-Spector Family’s GoFundMe, please click here.