Pacific Palisades evacuee reflects on her home, filled with family heirlooms: “It’s gone”

With no time to pack, Janet Davis drove away from her house in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on Wednesday morning with just the clothes she was wearing and her purse.

She went to an appointment in Santa Monica. But then traffic was too thick to go back to her house when it was time to evacuate, Davis recalled.

“I just thought, ‘Well, I Iive on a street with sidewalks. There’s a fire hydrant two houses down, so what’s the problem?’” she told CNN’s Sara Sidner. “You live in the city and have all this normal city stuff.”

Still, Davis continued, “it didn’t make any difference.”

Now, “it’s gone,” she said of her home, citing video she’s seen of the destruction.

“We built our house pretty much from the ground up and filled it with family furniture and mementos, so it’s hard to realize that whole house full of family antiques and things are gone,” she said. “But they are.”

It’s “disheartening” and “unnerving” to hear firefighters went dry trying to battle the flames, Davis said.

Now, the first step will likely be to clear the lot where her home once stood “and then just keep moving,” she said.

“All I can do is just treat this as an adventure and see what I can do with it.”