Palisades fire refugees band together over breakfast

Staff Writer

Jan. 14, 2025 3 AM PT

Far Farshad’s favorite part of the day is breakfast — and it has nothing to do with the food.

Since he and his sister Mitra fled the Palisades fire last week with little more than the clothes on their back, Far has been in a fog. He thinks the house where he and Mitra have lived for 47 years, at the end of a cul-de-sac that backs into a hill, is still standing. He even has post-fire pictures.

However, a wall of flame was barreling down that hill when last he saw his home, so he says he can’t be sure what became of it until police allow residents back into their neighborhoods. And no one can tell him when that will happen.

So each morning, the Farshads, who have checked in and out of two hotels in the last week, gather with other fire refugees in the dining room of a Residence Inn in the shadow of LAX. They share news, knock down rumors and, mostly, commiserate in a way only those experiencing the same tragedy and trauma can.

“Even though you don’t know them, you don’t look at them as strangers,” said Far, who calls the group the Palisades diaspora. “There’s that look, ‘these guys are evacuees.’ There is a communal feeling.”

Among the diaspora is Larry Allen, who fled his house in Sherman Oaks when the fire roared over the top of the Santa Monica Mountains. And Peggy Saab, who lived east of the Village in the Palisades before fleeing to the Residence Inn with two elderly parents, two dogs and a daughter.

“The talk is good. You have to let the steam out,” said Mitra, 78, who has cried frequently over the last week.

“Each one of us have our own way of dealing with it. You can’t say, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ You can’t say that. So you feel for them. You feel the pain they feel.”

The Farshads also share information and updates with other evacuees through a chat group made up of people from the cul-de-sac.

“Initially, it was trying to show compassion and everything,” said Far, 75, a retired electrical engineer. “Then gradually it becomes, ‘Let’s get this thing organized.’ After that, ‘Where do we get information?’ And somebody says, ‘OK, my friend has a clothing store. They’re gonna give out clothes.’

“So they try to be helpful, as far as getting aid and dealing with the solutions.”

Joe Iacopino, the Farshads’ next-door neighbor, said he originally turned to social media for updates, only to find that much of that information was false. So now he relies on the neighborhood chat group as well as another chat group made up of his pickleball friends.

One story that’s been celebrated in the chat groups involved a neighbor who refused to leave her home, only to have a Good Samaritan show up, bundle the woman in his car and take her down the hill to a shelter. She survived, but her home didn’t.

“The most pressing thing that everyone has going on, especially the ones whose homes survived, is we really want to get up there,” Iacopino said. “That is a critical thing. I need my computer. I’m an attorney; I need my work files. All of our medications.”

Two women embrace while a man walks into a doorway.

Police have told residents that, because of concerns about looting, they won’t allow anyone to return to their homes without an escort. But as long as there are fires still burning, they don’t have the resources to provide escorts.

“It’s maddening,” Iacopino said.

On Monday, a visitor to the cul-de-sac found a lemon tree in the Farshads’ backyard heavy with fruit and their home untouched by fire. Iacopino’s house next door was unscathed as well. But the home on the other side — and the one next to it, and the one next to that and the one next to that one — are all gone, with little more than brick chimneys or the torched lump of metal from what used to be a car left behind.

“There is this duality of feeling,” Iacopino said. “On the one hand we’re feeling lucky and blessed and fortunate and we want to celebrate. But we’re so heartbroken for our neighbors. None of us had anything to do with any of this and it was just we were lucky, they weren’t.”

The capriciousness seemed inexplicable. But Mitra tried to explain it anyway.

“It’s the divine miracle,” she said. “I’m not a religious person. But I do believe that maybe our mom up there and dad were watching over us.”

In the chat groups and in the dining room of the Residence Inn, the discussion often turns to what comes next. Is rebuilding worth it? And for those whose houses survived, can they bear to wake up each morning only to stare at what used to be their neighbor’s house?

“That’s why I was crying,” Mitra said. “How can we start over? We don’t have anybody. We don’t have children.”

But they do have a new community of friends to meet with at breakfast every morning, a tradition that could continue awhile since the Farshads, who have no idea when they can go home again, have booked a room near the elevator on the fourth floor of the Residence Inn through early February.

“It will just make people come closer together,” Mitra said of the breakfast meetings.

“Memories, nobody can take from you,” she added. “But the tears will give you energy to start all over again.”