After fixing a kitchen cabinet in his California home, Jake Viator checked his phone and saw a text message from his wife warning of fires in his area of Altadena, California. The report would eventually culminate in the Eaton Fire that devastated Viator’s community and the home he had spent years trying to renovate. 

“She texted me and my heart sank,” Viator said. “I went to the driveway and looked at the mountains and there was a black cloud just filling up the whole sky.”

The New Iberia native, who purchased the house located in Altadena in 2022, said that even without the signs of smoke he could have seen the danger in the high winds outside, and would soon be proven right with the fires that consumed the city along with other parts of Los Angeles last week.

After looking around his neighborhood, Viator described the neighboring homes as sleepy, and decided to warn his neighbors that a fire was coming. 

On his third lap around the neighborhood, the fire had doubled or tripled in size. Viator said it looked like a “fire hurricane” barreling towards the place he had come to call home. 

A 2005 graduate of New Iberia Senior High, Viator moved to the Los Angeles area in 2008 with a career of audio engineering in mind. After years of touring with bands and a history of work in radio, he had secured a successful career for himself in an industry notoriously hard to make it in. 

He had also found a second home. In 2022, he purchased the house he was renting in Altadena and had spent the past few months renovating it so that his wife and child could move in. 

“I had been living there and kind of camping alone,” he said. “We were right in the middle of renovations, we ordered appliances on Black Friday, waiting for new doors to be installed, had a new roof and new cabinets.”

Viator said it was a blessing that his wife and child were safe in Arizona while the fires that consumed parts of California were happening. Unlike a Louisiana hurricane where residents have plenty of time to prepare, a wildfire can happen in “just minutes” and decisions have to be made quickly. 

While driving back to his family, a friend had tried to put out the fire that consumed Viator’s home and he got to see pictures while in transit. 

“He called me in tears and said your house is gone, the whole neighborhood is flattened,” he said. 

Viator said Altadena had become a home for him largely because of the local community there. The blue collar town reminded him of New Iberia, and said he could go to a hardware store and run into friends. 

“This is a really beautiful community,” he said. “It’s not what people think of when they hear LA. It’s not ice coffees, it’s blue collar through and through. It felt like home to me.”

With the devastation of the fires still ongoing, Viator said he has tried his best to stay in touch with friends while in Arizona. News has poured in every other day about people who have had their homes and lives upended as a result of the fires. 

But even with the loss of his home, Viator said he is determined to go back. 

“For someone (like me) with no connections it’s almost impossible to survive in LA,” he said. “I managed to dig a little hole and stay in it and I don’t want to give up. There’s a lot of small towns in California, it’s not all the things people think, we’re a small  blue collar town who are grieving a shared loss”

Those interested in donating to the Viator family can find their Gofund me page at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-the-viator-familys-recovery-effort?attribution_id=sl:1f6afb79-5e03-41ba-934c-9c2becd7017e&utm_campaign=fp_sharesheet&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=sms.