180,000 people were under evacuation orders and another 200,000 under evacuation warnings Thursday as high winds continued to drive five separate wildfires burning in and around Los Angeles. Among those who've been impacted is a woman who grew up in Lakewood and Fairview, who now calls LA home.
In a conversation with Ideastream Public Media Thursday, Vanda Ungureanu said her home had been spared. The fires had not gotten close. Not yet.
"You never know,” said Ungureanu. “None of us feel 100% safe where we live. I am not in immediate danger. I live in Koreatown. The nearest fire to me was the one in the Hollywood Hills. The Palisades are probably about 12 to 14 miles away from me.”
Ungureanu has lived in LA for about seven years. Her workplace is closer to the fires currently burning.
"A street and a half away are under evacuation," Ungureanu said. “And, I mean, you can cut the smoke with a knife. The air quality, like, you can't breathe. There is just ash flying in the air all over the city.”
Wildfires have destroyed more than 2,000 structures around LA, according to NPR News. At least five people have died as of Thursday afternoon.
"It just makes you cry," Ungureanu said.
“People are losing their homes, their livelihoods, their memories, their animals."Vanda Ungureanu
Ungureanu said she is concerned that local authorities don't have the resources and manpower to handle the growing fires. And she's worried it could get worse.
“The funding keeps getting cut for these first responders and they can't maintain it," she said. “I just saw helicopters and stuff from Canada coming to help out.”
She says some people are packing up, preparing for the worst. But not her, not yet.
" I guess being somewhere where I can have the mountains, the ocean, the beautiful scenery all the time comes with a high price, high cost of living and, you know, these natural disasters that we're constantly exposed to,” she said.
Ungureanu said the people and businesses have been uniting to help each other during the wildfire. That's another reason she said she has no plans to reconsider her life in LA. Plus, “I don't have to shovel snow every winter.”
