Flashback 1999: Devastation of home lights fire under couple

      So what happens once the fires are finally out? To the thousands and thousands of people whose homes were destroyed in the Los Angeles inferno, who now have to start their lives over? A task in many ways more daunting than fleeing the flames. To return and rebuild or, more likely, begin anew somewhere else.
     I was rooting around in what I've written about Los Angeles fires — this is the worst, but it's not the first. I found this from more than 25 years ago, looking at what one couple did after they were burned out of their home. Afterward, I'll give an update.

     What would you grab, rushing out of your house as it burned down?
     A classic dilemma that raises a tingle, rolling over in the mind. Imagine. You wake up, the place in flames, you can grab something. What is it?
     Myself, I settled that question years ago: pants.
     I decided this after covering a fire at the Drake Hotel.
     None of the guests was ever in danger — the fire was in an electrical vault under the sidewalk — but a few nevertheless decided to flee wearing their fluffy white Drake Hotel robes.      And nothing else.
     They were a sight, lounging in the small park north of the hotel, waiting to be allowed back in. After that I resolved that, unless I was myself aflame, I would take the five seconds to grab pants, which I keep conveniently crumpled on the floor, ready, in case of emergency. Pants; then kids; then wife; then, if time permits, cats, then out the door.
     A mild fright to think about. But Megan Edwards actually confronted the awful reality six years ago, when the Altadena fire storm burned 1,000 homes near Los Angeles, including hers.
     She had a few minutes to get out. She grabbed her red underwear and a keepsake Indian arrowhead. She didn't bother with anything else.
     That was odd enough. But then something really unusual happened. When she returned, with her husband Mark Sedenquist, to the charred rubble of their home (the only thing standing was a shower stall) she had a revelation. Amidst the ruins, Edwards decided: They wouldn't rebuild. They would buy a big motorhome and crisscross the country, which is what they have been doing for the last five years. She has written a book, "Roads from the Ashes," about the experience.
     Though Edwards is from the Chicago area — an Army brat, she was born in the hospital at Great Lakes Naval Base — she is obviously a Californian now. In her book, she is practically ecstatic as she sifts through the smoky remains of her home.
     "There's nothing here, nothing at all. We can do anything we want," she bubbles to her husband. "Anything. Do you know what that means? We can go anywhere, do anything, start over again. Whatever. I think we should think of this as an opportunity. I think it just could be the most amazing thing."
     "Shut up," her husband says — and I murmured a hearty "Amen."
     Still, I was interested in talking to her, to see if she could possibly have been that pleased about everything she owned going up in smoke.
     "I was in shock," she said, in the couple's motor home, parked in front of the Sun-Times. But not unhappy? What about family photos?
     "I'm not that big a photograph person," she said, displaying the impenetrability of the enlightened, a wall I was determined to breach.
     "What about your books?" I asked, surveying the spartan interior of the motor home. She is, after all, a writer. Here I came a little closer to cracking through her shell of chirpy California karma.
     "I do miss my books," she said, as if she meant it.
     Then there was the question of money. In the book, practical matters — which demand so much time and effort from us nonspiritual folk — have a way of ironing themselves out. Things just appear. For instance, after the fire, use of a guest house on a secluded estate in San Gabriel "materialized magically," and they lived there for five months. They have a slick Web site —www.roadtripamerica.com — but not one with advertisements. Who pays for everything?
     "We decided we would always do our own thing and the money would be there," said Edwards.
     "Most people have these fears; if you quit your job, what's the worst that can happen?" said her husband. "That can happen anyway. In half an hour, it can all disappear. It frees you up to be more risky."
     Very nice, but who's paying? The insurance company never settled on the house. They didn't have a big bankroll. Call it the practical Midwesterner in me, but I was curious. Edwards said they had investors.
     "What are they investing in?" I asked. "Where are their returns coming from?" She said they were investing in her writing, hoping to reap profits from some as-yet-uncertain enterprise down the road. A movie maybe.
     I eventually gave up. They don't miss their stuff, and the money comes from somewhere. I would have to take it on faith.
     Walking back to the material world, I glanced back at the mobile home.
     "What would YOU do if all your stuff went up in smoke?" is written on its side, in big letters. Despite its surface anti-materialism, there was something very late 1990s America going on here, the seizing of a moment of personal disaster and spooling it into a career, almost into a brand. The stuff might have burned up, but the moment was preserved forever in this bit of wandering performance art.
     It seemed a tough way to make a living: Sure, you see the nation. But I've never taken a vacation in my life where, two weeks into it, I wasn't itching to get home. "What would YOU do if all your stuff went up in smoke?" I'd cry like a baby.
       — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 29, 1999

Megan Edwards finally settled in Las Vegas, and has written four more books.