When you move to Southern California, unfortunately there is no “How to Live in Los Angeles” manual.

Growing up on the East Coast, you hear of things like earthquakes, mudslides, and wildfires but you don’t actually know the true experience of being caught in the middle of those types of natural disasters.   

I remember when I first moved to Los Angeles to be a television correspondent in 2014. For a region that never sees rain, it rained for the first full week I arrived. Jimmy Kimmel roasted every single local television station about the rain coverage. It was a big joke — that’s how much it actually rains in LA. It wasn’t long after that I started living the joke. My life as a television correspondent quickly became covering mudslides and wildfires — the cycle of drought.

I’ve been on the ground of some of the worst wildfires in American history, from California to Washington state. I’ve seen communities decimated. I’ve slept in my car overnight. I’ve chased flames along highways and I’ve seen situations where firefighters had to inflate their safety tents to escape flames. However, it never hits the same until it happens to your community. 

I’ve been blessed. My home is still standing but I have friends and neighbors who lost everything in the matter of minutes. That’s how quickly flames can destroy everything you’ve spent your life building. My phone is full of text messages and phone calls from family and friends pleading with me to leave. I saw the plumes of smoke over the hill getting closer but I didn’t make a move.

How do you measure what’s most important to you besides your life? What do you take, what do you leave, how can you leave when you’re unsure if you’ll ever return?

It’s a stressful enough drill to go through for one day, but imagine a week or months of having to prepare to flee. The level of anxiety and anger that builds up is overwhelming. I never imagined I’d have a “go bag” for fires and a separate one for earthquakes . . . but, there they sit right by door.

There was a lot made of which LA communities perished, but whether you’re a millionaire or living paycheck to paycheck, losing everything and seeing your life in flames is devastating. Some will rebuild with no problem, still many Californians don’t even have insurance because of this cycle of weather. The Pacific Palisades and Altadena will never be the same again. It will be months before the areas are even cleaned up and there’s no telling how many people will return to these areas.

There are many things to take away from the recent LA wildfires and one thing is very clear to me — our world is changing. Natural disasters are just that — disasters. We have to pay attention to climate change, we have to pay attention to greed. Did you know that 1 in 8 homeowners in the United States do not have insurance according to the U.S. Census Bureau?

Pray for California. Pray for the lives that were lost and pray that we figure out a safe way to live in one of the greatest places in the world.