They Escaped the Wildfires. Now, They’re Facing Personal Costs

Evacuating a disaster is often the lifesaving choice, but it comes with short-term costs to address immediate needs and incalculable personal and financial tolls in the future.

Roya Lavasani spent nearly 30 years building a home and business for her family on a Malibu street just off the Pacific Coast Highway. She and her husband, Majid Amirani, owned a four-unit condo, living in one unit and renting out the other three furnished spaces for a total of about $150,000 a year.

The building had a shock of pink flowers outside the entrance, orchids potted inside and out, and a mix of fruiting trees around the property, including apple, loquat, nectarine, peach, and avocado surrounding the building that Ms. Lavasani was known to climb and prune.

Years of careful attention and consistent income were lost last week when the Palisades fire burned down their property. The fire, now among the most destructive in California history, was one of multiple blazes that have swept through communities across Los Angeles County over the past week, putting nearly 200,000 people under evacuation orders.

Many other residents have chosen to leave, chased out by the ash-clogged air or the fear that their homes, even beyond the evacuation zones, were no longer safe. Each evacuee had to make a calculation, weighing physical safety with the financial hits that can come with leaving — and potentially losing — a home.

Some losses are incalculable. For Ms. Lavasani, it’s the photo albums of her two daughters, Xena and Rezvon, both now grown, that she mourns the most. She had hoped to save them as the fire drew nearer.

“I was so scared of losing those memories,” Ms. Lavasani, 57, said. “All memories — gone.”