Couple displaced by California fires finds refuge on Vashon

It was 6 p.m. on Jan. 7 when Vicky Seewaldt’s phone rang. On the other end, a friend’s frantic voice: “The hill is on fire.”

Thus began a two-day journey with husband Eric Dietze — driving nearly nonstop to their Vashon home, sneaking six chickens into a hotel room and coming to grips with the reality that their beloved house in Altadena, California, had burned to the ground.

The day had started like any other: Their daughter, Erin Seewaldt-Dietze, was visiting. They had dinner at one of their favorite Thai restaurants, Miya’s—a mom-and-pop shop miraculously spared by the fires. Later, as Seewaldt crocheted with her daughter, Dietze read a book about Chernobyl.

Then the call came.

“We drove to an overlook near Eaton Park, where it’s a series of canyons,” Seewaldt said. “It was a very beautiful place. But now it’s all torched.”

They watched a “wall of fire” advance toward their neighborhood.

“We hightailed it back to the house and started packing up,” she said. “If I could go back to those moments, there are different things I would pick, additional things I would bring … We thought — we’ll evacuate, they’ll stop the fire, and we’ll be back in the morning. We didn’t think our house would be destroyed.”

When they left, the winds were blowing east. Their home sat to the west. But in the middle of the night, the winds shifted, howling up to 80 miles per hour.

By the morning of Jan. 8, a friend sent a picture. Their house was engulfed in flames.

“There were no fire trucks, no nothing,” Seewaldt said. “It just burned.”

Staying at a friend’s house that night in Glendora, this text of their home confirmed their worst fear — all of Los Angeles was seemingly on fire and their home had burned with it. With chickens in tow, extended traveling would not be easy — so returning to their Vashon home became the obvious choice.

They loaded the birds into crates, secured them with bungee cords and drove north. The couple stopped overnight at a hotel in Medford, Oregon, successfully smuggling their chickens into the room with them. By the next day, Jan. 9, they’d arrived on Vashon.

“It was a beautiful day,” Seewaldt said. “The sun was shining. This beautiful island welcomed us home.”

Return to Vashon

The couple first discovered Vashon in 1989 while studying at the University of Washington. Seewaldt was completing her residency at UW and Harborview, then a fellowship in oncology, while Dietze pursued a postdoctoral fellowship in medicinal chemistry, also at UW.

“We loved Seattle with all our heart and souls,” Seewaldt said. “But the thing we loved even more was Vashon Island.”

After about ten years in Seattle, Seewaldt accepted a professor position at Duke University in North Carolina, where they lived until 2015. After raising their daughter, they returned to the West Coast when she took a new job at City of Hope, a cancer treatment and research center in Los Angeles.

When the opportunity arose in 2015 to buy land on Vashon, they took it. Though work kept them anchored elsewhere, the island remained a constant in their lives, and the couple spent years building relationships on the island — frequenting Café Luna, chatting at the farmers market, and reconnecting with old friends.

After losing everything in the fire, Vashon became an escape in a literal sense, too.

When heartbreaking photos and videos of their home engulfed in flames reached them, Seewaldt and Dietze were flooded with offers of shelter from friends in Los Angeles. But more than anything, they longed for a sense of home — and a safe, suitable place for their chickens. There was never any doubt about where they should go.

“There was no other place we wanted to be,” Seewaldt said. “We had no home to go back to in LA … and Vashon was home.”

Recuperating on the island, Seewaldt and Dietze found solace in the familiar. Neighbors arrived with pumpkin scones, meals and dog crates for the displaced chickens. Seewaldt was comforted by conversations with people at Thriftway and Caffe Vino Olio.

“It’s coming home to what is familiar, to the community we know,” Seewaldt said. “Most people don’t have this.”

Even the feathered members of their household have some adjusting to do. For now, their six chickens — all of whom the couple saved from the fires —reside in the basement of their island home until a new coop arrives.

Five of the six chickens owned by Seewaldt and Dietze roam in and out of a makeshift coop — a dog crate provided by a neighbor. Their original chicken coop burned down in the Altadena fire, and the chickens are temporarily staying in the basement of the couple’s Vashon home. (Courtesy photo)

Days later, Seewaldt found the strength to return to Altadena. She walked through the ruins of her home, where steel pots had melted and fire-fused china lay in shards.

She was greeted by a raven she had befriended, a familiar companion from her time working outside at her home.

“The raven came by, and he started calling out to me to say hello,” she said. “There’s a sort of clicking sound that they make to their babies and to their family … he was making the clicking sound that he would make to welcome me home and tell me that he missed me and he was so glad I was okay.”

Their old home had been a sanctuary, with succulents, orange trees and flowering plants lining the porch.

“The garden looks like it’s salvageable,” she said. “But the house is ash.”

Rebuilding

The Los Angeles flames had two major burn zones: the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, the latter of which encompassed much of Altadena. According to CNN, an estimated 16,200 structures were damaged or destroyed across these areas, with approximately 7,900 in Altadena alone.

Most homes in the Eaton Fire’s path were reduced to ash.

Seewaldt and Dietze’s focus has now turned to rebuilding their Altadena home — replacing it with a smaller, fire-resistant house constructed with cement blocks and fitted with rooftop sprinklers.

They plan to retire to Vashon permanently one day, but for now, they are traveling back and forth for work and the early stages of rebuilding.

The experience left the couple with some hard-earned wisdom on fire safety. Seewaldt recommends making a list of everything you need to grab in the event of a fire, because in her experience, “you won’t think straight.” She also recommends documenting and photographing everything in your house in advance for insurance purposes.

After a few days on Vashon, Vicky Seewaldt returned to her Altadena home to survey the fire’s destruction—this used to be their living room. (Courtesy photo)

The loss is still fresh.

While Vashon has given the couple a place to heal, Seewaldt spent some nights unable to sleep and had all the brush around her Vashon home cleared for peace of mind.

There are things Seewaldt wishes she had taken—hand-carved bowls from Hawaii, her grandfather’s furniture, a small glass keepsake from her husband’s grandmother. But “we were just so sure we’d come back the next day,” she said.

“I can deal with the monetary loss. I can deal with the displacement,” Seewaldt said. “But it was sort of the last link we had with people who died … We had things from them in our house — pieces of furniture, little things … It’s like our link with them is severed forever.”

As she settles into island life, she is already looking forward to one new tradition.

“I’m getting a witch hat,” she said. “And I’m going paddling.”

Aspen Anderson is a contributing journalist to The Beachcomber.