Survivors of wildfires like those burning across Los Angeles can experience mental health issues long after a blaze is out.
Jane Brown watched on television Tuesday night as a large condominium complex in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles went up in flames. It was her 92-year-old mother’s home.
By Wednesday morning, Ms. Brown, 63, saw that the building was “completely just not there at all.”
Iris Kameny, Ms. Brown’s mother, had evacuated to Chino, Calif., ahead of the fire, but precious family photos and artwork were lost, as was furniture Mrs. Kameny purchased around the time she got married, in 1959.
The Palisades fire and the Eaton fire, which have burned homes and entire neighborhoods as they have torn through the Los Angeles area this week, are thought to be among the most destructive fires ever to hit the city. And experts warn that the fires have put many residents, particularly those like Mrs. Kameny who have lost their homes, at risk of deep, long-lasting mental health ramifications.
“The loss of a home, the displacement you experience, the difficulty of rebuilding, living with the anxiety that this might happen to you again — all that combines to create, for many people, lasting psychological harm,” said Dr. David P. Eisenman, a primary care physician and director of the U.C.L.A. Center for Public Health and Disasters. Studies suggest that even those who do not lose homes can have anxiety, depression or psychological distress for years after a wildfire dies out.
Since 2020, California’s most destructive wildfires have destroyed more than 10,000 homes, businesses and other buildings, according to data from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
For some people who lost homes in previous California wildfires, the current disaster in Los Angeles has caused renewed anxiety.