The New York Times asked those who lost their homes in the Palisades and Eaton fires to tell us about what they took — what objects or pets they grabbed as they evacuated. More than a month after the fires, those things that survived now hold a new meaning. Here are two evacuees, the stories of what they rescued and why it mattered. An acoustic bass guitarAdeline Quinn, 16 Altadena The power had been out for hours when Sang Yi noticed that the flames from the Eaton fire were suddenly very close. He lived with his family on a cul-de-sac and worried that if the neighbor's tree succumbed to the Santa Ana winds and fell across the road, they could be trapped. So he and his wife, Carrie Quinn, rushed around in the dark trying to wrangle their two children, two house cats and a few essentials into their Honda Accord. "We didn't pack a lot of clothes," Mr. Yi said. "At least in my mind, I thought we were coming back." Their 16-year-old daughter, Adeline, wasn't taking any risks. After putting her pet coral snake in a travel carrier and making sure she had her computer, phone, favorite stuffed dinosaur and a few necklaces, she asked her parents if there was room in the car for something else, something not exactly small — the acoustic bass guitar she had in her room that she'd been practicing on for months. The instrument wasn't hers — it had been lent to her by a music teacher at her high school in Pasadena — and she didn't feel right leaving it behind. "It's not mine," Adeline, who goes by Addie, said. "I would feel kind of bad if I left it in the fire." So they stuck the bass in the trunk with the random assortment of household items. As their terrified cats yowled, they sped away from the flames. Their house, they later learned, didn't survive. When Addie returned to school, she told her teacher she rescued the bass. "He said it's more important that I got out alive," she said. "But he's probably supposed to say that because he's a teacher." Recently, that music teacher gave his student a gift: an electric bass with an amp. — Ken Bensinger Painting suppliesNancy Spiller, 71 Pacific Palisades As she evacuated from her Palisades home, Nancy Spiller thought she would be back in a week when she grabbed clothes, medications and dog food. Ms. Spiller, a writer and artist, also tossed in her gouache paints and two jars of paintbrushes, just so she would have something to do while she and her husband waited out the fire in Oxnard, about 60 miles to the west. "I thought, I'll take this because that's something that I do," she said. "I will be painting while we wait out the end of all of this." The fire, it turned out, destroyed Ms. Spiller's home and the artwork she spent decades painting. For the past several weeks, she has struggled to paint again, grappling with the prospect of building up a new collection of work. Earlier this month, for the first time since she left home, Ms. Spiller picked up her brushes and painted. The finished work was Valentine's Day cards for her grandchildren. Despite her reluctance, she's already thinking of what she will focus on when she feels ready to create again: cut flowers. Blooms are vibrant and joyful, she said. But cut flowers also offer a lesson. "Cut flower bouquets represent the life cycle," she said. "They've been cut. They're in the vase. They're going to wilt. They're going to die. You want to capture them in that moment, in the time that they have to enhance your life and the world with their beauty." — Soumya Karlamangla
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California Today: In Huntington Beach, Politics on a Plaque
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