Speculation among Malibu High School students began early Thursday morning. Surely school would be canceled, they told parents — perhaps based more on wish than intel. What are the odds the power was cut? What if a fire broke out?
The Santa Ana winds picked up through the afternoon. Gusts slammed into Malibu homes with force. Lights went out across town as Southern California Edison cut power. Around 5 p.m., Watch Duty notifications lit up residents’ screens: A fire had started on the other side of the mountains. The winds were blowing it toward the coast. Volunteers with the Local Brigade were staged in the parking lot of Trancas Country Market along the coast, awaiting orders from the L.A. County Fire Department. A column of thick smoke, made red by the setting sun, rose over the hillside.
In a town of fire survivors — where many have lost their home in blazes at least once, if not twice — a quiet, familiar feeling filled the neighborhoods: Here we go again.
By Friday morning, it became clear the Bryson fire was not on the verge of becoming another Woolsey or Palisades fire. It nonetheless triggered a flood of trauma and emotions. Many longtime residents have developed habits to calm their minds during these exceptional conditions — meditation, a dip in the ocean to trigger the calming mammalian dive response, support groups to talk through the pain. But each time a home is lost, or, God forbid, a loved one, it wears down even the most hardened Malibu resident a little bit more.
“It took me six years to rebuild,” Kim Devane said as she walked her dog Dino around the country market’s parking lot Friday morning. Devane lost her home in the 2018 Woolsey fire. She lost several more properties in the 2025 Palisades fire. “I mean, the idea of having to do that again …”
Strangers at the country market shared stories from the previous night. They called and texted their loved ones. They thanked firefighters from both the county and a slew of private companies hired by residents and insurance companies to keep homes standing. Further down the Pacific Coast Highway, at the Malibu Colony Plaza strip mall, a customer and a barista at the local Starbucks guessed at when the lights would come back on. Some residents took refuge in camper vans and trailers. Generators hummed on the pavement.
Few got any good sleep.
While the weather painted a chaotic picture, stories from Malibu residents were of neighbors coming together as a community in a way only the specter of disaster could prompt.
Forrest Stewart has lived through a dozen big fires over his five decades in Malibu. His 93-year-old neighbor, a retired fire chief, taught him much of what he knows about surviving fires in the Santa Monica Mountains. Stewart, who bought his home long before housing costs skyrocketed, now pays it forward. He spent Thursday night teaching the wealthy, somewhat naive families moving in around him how to keep their kids and homes safe.
Stewart, 88, practices observation meditation twice a day to help him build a healthy relationship with his emotions — watching them, not letting them control him — to deal with the stress of fires. He sat at the country market with his longtime friend and neighbor, Karly Sierka, 23. The two had connected over tennis years ago; Stewart was a professional player, and Sierka played in high school.
“I cried yesterday … it was triggering of Woolsey when we lost our childhood home in the mountains,” Sierka said. “I was in high school. I had to go to therapy every day.”
Sierka couldn’t help but think of everything that burned in the 2018 blaze. The childhood trophies and drawings. The countless mountain lions, snakes, tarantulas, birds.
One table over, Keiren Clasby, owner of the 16-acre Malibu Fig Ranch at Sterling Farms, sat with her workmate Cheri Caleb.
“The big thing is the trauma,” Clasby said. “Once you are there for each other to talk, it unravels.”
After the Palisades fire, the ranch began hosting weekly community potluck dinners for anyone who lost their home. Woolsey fire survivors began attending to help guide the Palisades survivors. They’d write down seemingly “innocent” questions — like “What do you think the fire has taught you?” — on paper. Each would pick a card to share.
“A lot of people from the Woolsey fire got up, and I think they surprised themselves with how emotional they still got,” Caleb said.
“It’s a slow death for a lot of people because the fire in Woolsey was so traumatic. I had a beautiful woman who was one of my accountants,” Clasby said. “Her husband had a construction business of 35, 40 years. He lost it all. She lost her house. She lost her animals, her dog and her cat. And she never returned.”
As essential as the emotional piece is, some admit that the real secret to staying in Malibu is just doing everything you can to make sure your home doesn’t burn down, then praying. Many who hadn’t lost a house couldn’t imagine surviving a grueling six-year fight with an insurance company for money and the city for permits — let alone twice.
“It’s devastating. It couldn’t get worse than that — your whole life, your plan, everything … one day it’s all gone,” Stewart said. “That’s why we fight like hell to keep the house.”
Part of that work is home hardening and defensible space. The basics include covering vents with mesh so embers can’t sneak in and ensuring every window and door is closed. As for the yard, residents clear dead debris and remove anything flammable near the house. But many Malibu residents acknowledge this only reduces the risk your home burns — and provides no guarantees.
“The truth is, the only way your house survives is if you stay,” Devane said.
Stewart leaves ladders by his house so any community members who stay behind can reach the roof, and Sierka credits a neighbor for keeping that house standing during Woolsey. Clasby had stayed behind and put out embers landing in trees.
It’s a practice that is illegal and heavily discouraged by fire officials who say it not only risks killing those who stay behind, but it can also force fire departments to divert resources from attacking the fire to instead saving residents. Yet, it’s commonplace in Malibu.
“There’s no denying that,” said Keegan Gibbs, co-founder and director of the Local Brigade, which had about 48 volunteers on standby Thursday. “It’s part of the DNA of our community.”
L.A. County formalized a local brigade program — which has existed in various forms as guerrilla groups of good Samaritans for decades — in 2023. With some formal firefighter training and background checks, volunteers commit to following fire officials’ orders, helping residents evacuate and putting out spot fires, while leaving the ferocious front-line flames to the professionals.
While others find peace through meditation and community dinners, Gibbs finds it through the brigade.
“The work that we’ve done with the local brigade has allowed me to be at peace with the inevitability and the reality that we’re going to have more fires,” he said, “because it gives us and the community agency … We can take part in our own fate.”
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