Friends rally for Boonton native routed by LA wildfires: ‘My whole town was on fire’

An online fundraiser for a Boonton native and her family has raised $79,000 after their home and belongings were lost in the LA wildfires.

Melissa Viator, her husband Jake and their 2-year-old child are safe after losing their home to the most destructive wildfires in Southern California history.

By a stroke of luck, Viator and daughter Camellia, were already staying with family in Arizona when the Eaton Fire, one of several deadly blazes still burning in the Los Angeles area, broke out on Jan. 7.

But her husband, Jake, was still home, overseeing a major renovation of their home in Altadena, about 14 miles north of downtown LA.

Advised by a friend about early reports of fires breaking out in the Eaton Canyon near their home, Melissa texted her husband to warn him. With portions of the house under construction, Jake at the time “was camping out in a bedroom,” he told the Daily Record on Thursday.

“I walked to the top of my driveway and saw this huge plume of smoke over the mountain,” Jake Viator said. “There was no time, no emergency warning. So I grabbed a bag, got in my car and started leaving the neighborhood. When I turned the corner, I just saw a wall of orange, just a huge inferno in front of me.”

Within hours, “My whole town was on fire,” he said.

After spotting the flames, Viator said he drove back into his neighborhood, honking his horn, shouting “fire!’ and even knocking on the door of a close friend to make sure he evacuated. But after circling the streets three times, “thinking about getting stuck in traffic and all the chaos, I just drove straight to Scottsdale” to join his wife and daughter.

“They had been staying there with her family since Thanksgiving while I went back to start the renovation,” he said. “That was one of the few silver linings to all this. They didn’t have to experience that evacuation.”

Melissa Viator, a professional photographer and digital marketer, graduated from Boonton High School in 2005. In an Instagram post, she mourned her home on East Loma Alta Drive and the rest of Altadena, a town the couple had come to love.

“The living room is gone. The bedrooms are gone. The kitchen – with the big picture window where we baked Christmas cookies and entertained friends – is gone. It’s all gone,” she wrote.

“I know it will get better, one day at a time. We will rebuild eventually. It is heartbreaking yet somehow comforting to know that we’re not the only ones dealing with this. Altadena has always been driven by community and small town sentiment and I know we can figure it out.”

Twenty-foot flames

The Viator family had experienced wildfire alerts in the past, and had even evacuated once before while living in another neighborhood. But Jake said he had never seen anything like he did the night he was forced to leave − or the night before, when the winds began to howl.

“We had been having the craziest winds I’ve ever seen in LA,” he recalled. “I’m originally from Louisiana so I grew up with hurricanes. It very much reminded me of that power of wind, shingles flying off the roof and all that. I had some plastic on my windows [for the renovation] and it all got sucked off in the middle of the night.”

After Jake made his escape, a contractor friend later confirmed his worst fears. “He went to my house and tried to wet the roof, wet the grass. But it was too late,’ Jake said. “When he got there, it was like hell on earth. Every house was on fire, 20-foot flames, embers flying everywhere.”

The National Guard is still blocking access to his neighborhood, but a government website dedicated to documenting the destruction, address by address, was recently updated to show all that is left on his property “is a chimney.”

“We know how it goes, but this was beyond comprehension,” Jake recalled. “Beyond anything we could have possibly anticipated. Every person we know in town has lost their house and everything inside of it is gone. Every business that we went to is gone. It’s just a total disaster.”

Since then the historic wildfires have reduced entire neighborhoods along the Pacific Coast and inland near the San Gabriel Mountains to ash and rubble. As of Thursday, at least 25 people had died in the fires; more than 12,000 homes, businesses and other structures have been damaged or destroyed.

The Palisades and Eaton fires − along with several smaller blazes − have burned nearly 40,000 acres in Los Angeles County, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Relatively light winds late Wednesday and Thursday helped bring some relief, aiding the efforts of firefighters, Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley said.

A generous response to fundraiser

Jake Viator said he and his wife are still “a little numb,” and considering their options. The family has a strong desire to rebuild their home as well as their community.

Their hopes and spirits have been lifted by an extraordinary response to an online fundraiser launched by his brother, Ryan, which has raised almost $80,000 in just over a week. Insurance will cover some of the losses, but Jake said they face mounting challenges including the high cost of new construction in California.

“It’s just weird to feel so blessed and loved when you’re dealing with so much catastrophe in your life,” he said. “I’m hearing from a lot of people I had not heard from for a long time.”

Treasured family photos are safely stored “on the cloud,” Jake said, thanking his wife, a professional photographer. But most of their possessions are gone, from furniture and valuables to expensive gear he uses in his profession as a sound engineer, as well as an “irreplaceable” collection of rare records.

Love for Altadena

If and when they can rebuild, however, the loss of their dream home and the community they loved will linger on.

“We saved our whole lives to be able to do this,” he said “We never dreamed we’d be able to afford a house in LA, but Altadena made that dream come true.”

Surrounded by some of the priciest real estate in the nation, Jake described Altadena as a close-knit blue-collar town with many generational homes “that have been handed down for decades.”

“It was the first town in LA where Black Californians could buy a house because of redlining by banks,” he said. “It’s where a lot of artists and creative people live because it’s sort of the last affordable place to live in LA.”

More: ‘What America should look like:’ loss in the Altadena fires, and a hard road to recovery

There was also a sense of community in Altadena that drew friends to local downtown destinations like Altadena Hardware “where you could see everybody you know and chat for a few hours.”

“It was a beautiful little business district,” Jake said. “Now, it’s gone. But we’re looking forward and feeling positive. We want to recapture some semblance of what was there, rebuild the community and be part of it again.”

William Westhoven is a local reporter for DailyRecord.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: wwesthoven@dailyrecord.com 

Twitter/X: @wwesthoven

This article originally appeared on Morristown Daily Record: Fundraiser helps Boonton native, family who lost home to LA wildfires

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