A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
People who fled the Los Angeles wildfires had to make choices, what to take with them and what to leave behind.
GARY HALL JR: My name is Gary Hall Jr. I competed in three Olympic games. I live in Pacific Palisades, California, and operate a swim school teaching little kids how to swim.
CHRISSY CARR: My name is Chrissy Carr. I'm a librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HALL: It was a late morning. I looked out the front window, saw a plume of smoke.
CARR: Went to the end of the driveway, and I could see the orange glowing down the street.
HALL: Another minute and I saw flames, houses going up just up the road. I had one trip out to the car, and already embers were raining down on top of me.
CARR: So I said, well, that's close enough.
HALL: So I grabbed my dog. I have Type 1 diabetes so need insulin to live, grabbed that out of the refrigerator. And that was all I had time to do.
CARR: Three days' worth of clothes, my iPad, my phone. And then I left thinking I'll be back.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HALL: I have 10 Olympic medals, five gold, three silver, two bronze. And the thought definitely crossed my mind. Do I have time to get them? I did not.
CARR: I didn't take my laptop, for Christ's sake. There's a family history book I could've grabbed.
HALL: There was no planning. It wasn't like, OK, here's the checklist of things. I didn't take my birth certificate. I didn't have time to get any of those things.
CARR: My grandmother's sewing machine, I've been sewing on it for 50 years. It was beautiful. It was black. A sweater I got in Canada. You know, it's just something that you love, and it's comfy.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CARR: I went with someone so I wasn't alone, and we hiked up through. Man, stuff is still actively burning. There's downed power lines, gutted out cars. My place was still smoking.
HALL: I have not back to the property. I do know that my neighbor's house burned. Maybe there's something that's salvageable. I don't know if the medals are melted into one chunk or not.
CARR: The filing cabinets took it like a trooper, I'm telling you. I pulled out pictures of both sets of my grandparents, and they just, like, came out of the fricking ashes. It was so bizarre.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODINGTON BEAR'S "LIGHT TOUCH")
MARTÍNEZ: That's Chrissy Carr of Altadena and Gary Hall Jr. of Pacific Palisades. After we spoke, Hall learned his home was gone. The International Olympic Committee said it would give him replicas of his medals.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODINGTON BEAR'S "LIGHT TOUCH") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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