‘Are u OK?’: Angelenos share their text exchanges amid wildfire devastation

A photo of flames on the horizon, taken outside a Pasadena home. 

A frantic “Are u OK?” Instagram message from a concerned friend who’s watching the news from out of state.

A “This is so scary” refrain, sent from one friend to another across town.

As wildfires have erupted across Los Angeles in the last week and a half, phones have been buzzing nonstop with frantic messages — including the above — between loved ones, friends and acquaintances.

The fires, which are being described as one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, have killed at least 27 people, swept through 40,000 acres in greater Los Angeles and destroyed more than 12,300 structures.

The devastation and fear has been widespread among those in L.A., and many have relied on text updates to navigate what’s been an unprecedented time in the region’s history. NBC News spoke with several people across different parts of the L.A. area who shared snippets of conversations they’ve been having about sleepless nights, lingering anxiety and general sadness about the fire’s toll on the overall community.

In their messages, they gave each other tips on what to pack in their go bags, discussed evacuation plans and provided updates on their whereabouts. Some exchanged screenshots of maps from the Watch Duty app, which has served as a go-to for fire updates. Others snapped photos of the smoke they spotted in the L.A. sky, shocked by how fast it had made its way to them.

The texts offer a window into a chaotic and devastating time for L.A. and its millions of residents.

"We are preparing to leave"

Jennifer Lee, Pasadena

“Eaton is on fire!”  

That was the first WhatsApp message about the massive Eaton Fire that Jennifer Lee received in her women’s running group chat at 6:37 p.m. local time last Tuesday.

Moments later, the view from outside Lee’s Pasadena home confirmed the worst: The blaze was approaching her street. Quickly. Her husband and their 5-year-old were on their way back from the grocery store, so Lee began packing.

“I just stood in my house and looked around: If I lost all this, what can I survive with? What’s important?” she told NBC News, tearing up. “It was like, what is replaceable? It’s technically all replaceable, but in that moment I was just starting to pack and just trying to be calm.”

An hour later, after her husband and kid got home, she updated the group thread: “We are preparing to leave. Not sure what our plan is yet.”

Her friends quickly responded, offering her a place to stay, reminding everyone to turn on air purifiers if they have them and repeating their collective shock.

Lee and her family ended up going to a hotel in Rosemead, about 30 minutes away. She couldn’t sleep that night and woke up to news from several friends that their homes had been destroyed.

They briefly returned to Pasadena — which was not yet an evacuation zone — and saw their home was spared. “Just in case” the winds blew back toward their neighborhood, they documented everything in sight for any future insurance claims.

They left once more, unsure if they’d see their home again. But as the week went on, the house remained intact, though it is now covered in ash. As of Wednesday, eight days after the fires first began, Lee and her family were not back home yet. She said she’s optimistic they can return this weekend.

“We’ll probably never be the same unfortunately,” she said of the city, but added that at least “there’s solidarity in our trauma.”

"Just wanna make a plan to have peace of mind"

Allie Mason, Venice

When the fires erupted last week, Canadian Allie Mason had no car or plan in place. The marketing professional, who lives in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, was working remotely from her boyfriend’s place in nearby Santa Monica.

“I was texting with my friend when the Sunset Fire broke out, and in the middle of our convo we both got the Watch Duty notification and she had to pack and leave,” she told NBC News. “On the day it broke out, I was really scared I would get trapped.”

That day, her boyfriend had gone to the office in Beverly Hills, several miles east. As she raced through her potential evacuation options, she reached out to a person who had once offered her help any time she needed it: her neighbor.

“I don’t have many other friends in the area … just wanna make a plan to have peace of mind,” she wrote to him.

“Listen NEVER hesitate to call me for what you need ok," he wrote back.

While she’s been devastated to see so many people lose their homes, she said the community solidarity among Angelenos has been heartening. She likened it to when she lived in New York during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“New Yorkers get the bad rep of being mean; people in L.A. get a reputation of being fake,” she said. “I don’t think either of those reputations are true. Those are spread by people who haven’t spent enough time who haven’t gotten to know people in the city.”

The same people being labeled as fake are also the ones “stepping up and putting effort into rebuilding their community,” she added.

When she first moved, Mason said, she joked to her friends about the rainy 2023 winter.

“I was complaining and everyone was like, ‘Just wait. You are going to experience a fire season soon, and you’re going to be grateful for this rain,’” she said, adding that now she’d “take seven days straight of pouring rain over this any time.”

"It feels dystopian"

Kyrena Dudley, Santa Monica

As a Houston native, Kyrena Dudley is no stranger to natural disasters. She’s been prepared for hurricanes her whole life. But wildfires? Not so much.

For the six years she’s lived in Los Angeles, where she works in marketing at a gym and as an actor, people have warned her of the risks. She even remembers seeing images from the September 2020 Bobcat Fire in L.A. County and being alarmed from afar.

So, in the hours after the Palisades Fire broke out last Tuesday, Dudley didn’t think she had much to worry about. A Santa Monica resident, she felt far enough away from the flames. That night, she and her friends went to see a movie at the Century City mall, near Beverly Hills and L.A.’s Westwood neighborhood.

When they got out, the text messages began pouring in — from her friends in other parts of the country, from her mom in Houston, from her sister in New York and from her group chat with other L.A. friends, nicknamed the “Loony Goons.”

“We ended up going back to my apartment, grabbing a couple of things and then staying at my friend’s in Mid City,” she told NBC News. “We stayed there for a day, glued to the news screen. We couldn’t really wrap our minds around what was going on. It was simply so insane how quickly everything progressed.”

Since then, the texts and calls have felt endless.

“Stay safe”

“Make any decisions?”

“Repacking my bag”

“It feels dystopian”

Dudley said she ended up riding out much of last week at her boyfriend’s place in Orange County, where there was still poor air quality and wind to worry about but less of an evacuation threat.

She came back when the evacuation orders were lifted. Ultimately, she said, the past week has made her feel like she’s “ill-prepared.”

“I realized I was a little disappointed in myself for my lack of preparation for any sort of event like this,” she said. “I don’t know if I would survive in a zombie apocalypse. I don’t know that I’d want to, but that was my prevailing thought.”

“I don’t even have Neosporin here,” she added.

"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.”