Gregory Hahn

I'd grown up with the Santa Ana's blowing so hard, the gusts breaking windows.

My childhood home, my bedroom window broke on me once and in our living room once.

And I thought we have 10 sliding door windows around the house.

We're just encased in glass.

So I was like, well, let's just be a little careful and leave.

And we thought we'd be gone for a day, maybe two days.

Before I realized there was a fire in our neighborhood, we could see the Palisades on fire.

And then I looked at news stories and said, oh wait, all the Dean's on fire.

And it was on the other side of where we live.

So I was like, okay, that's scary, but I think we'll be okay.

But then as the day progressed, the fire completely changed its direction.

And I became very aware that we were not going to be returning home.

I knew I had to be really cautious because my wife was recovering from cancer and surgery and we had these two kittens and I was like, I wanted to get back home.

I wanted to look.

You know, there's a degree of curiosity, of morbid curiosity in a disaster.

You want to see, like, what's happening, even if it puts you in danger.

And I had to squash that back and say, no, we're going to just hole up here, be safe, and monitor it from afar.

There's a level investment that you need to make within your own immediate community that will become very, very valuable almost immediately in regards to knowing information because information gets cut off so quickly in a disaster.

Instead of expecting other people to be there for you, I think it's important to prepare to be there for other people too.

And if we all operate that way, then we're all going to help each other get through it.