Former LPGA Tour winner Mo Martin could barely believe her eyes as she stepped gingerly through the rubble and ashes of her childhood home. This was what remained after a January wildfire scorched her hometown of Altadena, California.
Only the night before this fiery hurricane arrived, she and mother Linda Martin had walked a few blocks to the local hardware store for supplies to hang Linda’s handcrafted, stained-glass windows that had taken her six months to complete.
They got one of her four windows suspended early on Tuesday evening, Jan. 7, and spent time together admiring the creation, taking a few snapshots and planning when they would finish hanging the remaining windows.
Wildfires were burning in the area, but Linda was not too concerned because fires had never threatened her neighborhood – located about three miles south of the San Gabriel Mountains. The game changer this time were the Santa Ana winds that had kicked up and suddenly placed Altadena on the fire’s path.
“Wind was ferocious that day,” said Linda, 78, who bought her Altadena home in 1985 with her late husband and spent the next 40 years there, rearing three children in the 1,000-square-foot abode. “When I opened the front door, it almost came off the hinges and the wind blew out a skylight in the attic.”
By early the next morning, thousands of burning embers were blowing horizontally across the yards in her neighborhood, igniting trees, roofs and surfaces wherever they landed. One burning ember the size of a coffee cup whizzed past Linda’s head and landed in a neighbor’s tree.
She and her son Don used garden hoses to water down their family home and lawn as fires set ablaze all around them. Meanwhile, Mo was ringing her mother’s cell phone, telling her to pack the car and head to her house in Redondo Beach as soon as possible.
“I’m normally so optimistic and calm about emergencies, but I had a very bad feeling about this fire. When I heard our nearby hardware store was gone, I had very little hope for our house. Those high winds literally made it the perfect storm in the worst way.” — Mo Martin
Linda kept thinking they would be OK, but when first responders showed up the next day at 5 a.m., and told the Martins to evacuate, they knew the time had come. They frantically packed their cars with pets and whatever they could grab and ran for their lives as flames closed in.
“When we left, we could hardly see to drive, and trees were burning and falling into the road,” said Linda, a retired nurse. “Nothing was saved. Schools, apartment buildings, banks, the sheriff’s station, the hardware store – it was just solid destruction. Everything was gone.”
Mo was at her home an hour away waiting, watching local news and monitoring Internet chatter. She believed this fire was different. And it appeared that her mother’s home began burning within an hour of her departure.
“I’m normally so optimistic and calm about emergencies, but I had a very bad feeling about this fire,” said Mo, a California native and winner of the 2014 Women’s British Open. “When I heard our nearby hardware store was gone, I had very little hope for our house. Those high winds literally made it the perfect storm in the worst way.”
Mo’s mother and brother arrived safely at her two-bedroom condo accompanied by five cats, four dogs and a few days of pet food and personal supplies. A family friend launched a GoFundMe campaign for Linda and Don, and worked with Mo to help her family file insurance claims and fill out FEMA applications.
Mo’s older sister, Linda Noesser and her son Liam, 14, who live about 1½ miles from Linda Martin, were more fortunate and dodged disaster when a neighbor hosed down embers that had set fire to a fence in their yard, extinguishing the flames. Mo and her sister checked on neighbors who had stayed in their homes in Linda Noesser’s neighborhood.
“Everybody was sad and confused,” said Mo. “One neighbor said he could hear people wailing from another street.”
And while Mo believed their family home was likely gone, she wanted proof, so she and her sister returned to their childhood Altadena neighborhood about 12 hours after her family had evacuated. They parked a mile and a half away and walked toward their mother’s house, telling first responders they were looking for a cat that was missing when her mother fled.
“I wasn’t trying to be a hero and it wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I think it was just a primal instinct that I needed to know what happened,” Mo explained. “When I got there, all that was left were chimneys, rubble and pilot lights still on in burned-out houses. There was just an eerie sound and it felt like a zombie apocalypse. It was overwhelming.”
Mo and her sister stepped over broken glass and navigated around downed power lines entangled in burning trees to reach their mother’s house. Gone were the trees, her mother’s carefully landscaped yard, the neighbors’ homes and anything recognizable.
Using her mobile-phone video, Mo recorded a panoramic view of their family home, called her mother and reported there was nothing to come back to.
“I told her it was what we expected,” she said. “The house is completely gone.”
As she stood amid the destruction, many thoughts and memories flashed through Mo’s mind. Looming in the smoky haze stood the metal frame that once suspended a hitting-cage net in the backyard where her father taught her to strike golf balls.
Gone were her father’s and grandmother’s cremated remains. Gone was the trophy she lifted as the 2014 Women’s British Open champion. Gone was the backyard where her sister was married and where her artisan mother once crafted light-catching glass.
Gone too, were the homes of a diverse community outside Los Angeles that allowed African-Americans to become homeowners before desegregation and working-class families a place to own homes, start families and peacefully share life experiences together in a tight-knit suburb.
“I had neighbors who have lived there for 45 years and now it’s a community that is devastated,” said mother Linda. “It’s hard for me to think of the future.”
And while the Martins’ Southern California hometown may take years to rebuild, both Linda and Mo find themselves clinging to that memorable evening they shared hanging her mother’s stained-glass window before the fire arrived. They had no way of knowing it would be their last night together in the family home.
“It’s so precious that I had that opportunity with my daughter to see it finished and to see the window hanging there,” said Linda, who has created about 200 custom stained-glass windows for area residents over the last 30 years.
“I know I have to just appreciate what pleasure it gave me while I had it and to remember that nothing in this world is meant to last forever,” she added. “If it lasts for years or months or a week or only a few hours, as long as it gave you pleasure for that time, you have benefited from it. That’s what I’m focusing on now.”
“We’re holding on to the joy of what we had and the love that always was there to make our house a home.” — Mo Martin
Linda likes the thought of her stained glass still hanging in homes that were not impacted by the California fires. She hopes her work will help lift spirits of others and bring color and light into many homes in spite of the surrounding devastation.
And while all of her window-making supplies were lost in the fire, she hopes someday she will have a chance to continue her artisan craft – if only to share the filtered-light beauty of the creations and to provide others with their own cherished memories.
“It was a labor of love for my mom,” said Mo. “We’re holding on to the joy of what we had and the love that always was there to make our house a home.”
And that, she added, is something even a fiery disaster can never take away.
Want to help?
Here are some of the charities helping those affected by the California wildfires.
American Red Cross of Greater LA