“Fight or flight mode”
Ebtessam Binsilim, Tarzana
In the Tarzana neighborhood, located in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, Ebtessam Binsilim was in a state of shock as she received updates about the rapidly spreading wildfires.
Her husband, a Southern California native, had told her fires were very common in the state. But in the four years since she moved here from Houston, she hadn’t seen anything like the Palisades and Eaton fires engulfing the region.
“I was so terrified of the ‘big earthquake’ that everyone talks about that I never thought about the fires,” she told NBC News.
Through the anxiety, she kept her friends and family updated with texts, as well as direct messages and her “Close Friends” story on Instagram.
“As the days progressed, people were checking in again, and that’s when I was like, ‘OK we’re evacuating,’” she said.
“Things were changing so quickly, by the hour,” she added. “Someone could check in an hour before, and the next hour, we’re like, ‘Yep, we’re in the car.’”
By Wednesday, she and her husband had packed their go bags and cat and left to go to her in-laws’ place in Rancho Cucamonga, about 60 miles east. They were not in a mandatory evacuation zone, but it felt like the safest option.
“Cant catch any breaks around here,” she wrote to a friend in an Instagram DM, later adding: “I think we’re all still in a fight or flight mode and haven’t been able to sit with the reality of what’’s happening and what the aftermath will look like.”
On Sunday, when the winds had died down, they returned to their home.
“I’ve had a lot of reflection on what I may place value on,” she said. “When you’re packing your evacuation bag, you’re like, what am I packing so that I know I have my core items, and everything else is — if I come back and it’s not here, it’s not here. … I’m OK as long as my husband is good, our cat is OK, and we have our documents. I don’t care about anything else, really. It put things into perspective.”
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