For over 20 years, Carla Bowman-Smith has taught photography, AP 2D studio art, digital design and yearbook at Malibu High School. In 2017, she was one of six teachers given a Malibu Optimist Club ‘Excellence in Education’ award. Stan Smith does property management (including tenants on their own property); their son, Stephen, was in seventh grade at the time of the fire. Both Carla and Stan have deep family roots in Malibu going back to the 1940s, and enough family history to be a story in itself.
On the morning of the fire, Carla said, “We got the first evacuation notice at 4:00 am, but then got a text saying school was cancelled because of smoke. I went back to sleep and turned off the alarm because I wanted to sleep in. I woke up around 8:00 and saw the smoke was still over the hill.
“We’ve been through so many fires in the past where I packed way too much, that I thought, ‘I’m not going to pack so much this time,’” Carla said. “Previously, a couple of fires did make it to our doorstep, but the house never burned down before – so we didn’t save too much, just things like tax papers.
“I gave my son a box to fill up, and he packed his Xbox and tennis shoes. Then I called our tenants: they’d previously been in a fire up north and had lost everything, so they began packing up more seriously than we did. I stupidly assumed that there would be fire trucks because they had always shown up in the past. Not this time,” she lamented.
“The smoke started to get a lot worse around 10:00 am. Then we got the mandatory evacuation text, which was about the last communication we had. Power and cell service went out after that, so we left.” she said. “We went down to Zuma Beach with our dog, our tortoise, and two cars.
“At first, we were near Guernsey Avenue (at the western end of the beach). The whole time we were at Zuma Beach, it felt like the Malibu I grew up with – with everyone helping each other and concerned for one another. After teaching for 20 years at Malibu High School, I’ve taught about 2,000 students – and a lot of the alumni were there on the beach with us.
“Then we saw the flames all around Malibu West across the street, climbing up the hills into the Trancas Highlands neighborhood. I’ve never seen flames so high before – 60, 80, 100 feet tall. The heat and smoke got so bad that we finally decided to evacuate down the coast.
“Traffic was barely moving. By the time we made it to Point Dume (just east of Zuma Beach), the fire was at Zumirez Drive and had already gone through Cavalleri. The smoke was like a huge nuclear plume. It didn’t make sense that anything could’ve survived that.
“We finally ended up at the Ralph’s shopping center (in mid-Malibu), which seemed like a meeting point. That’s where we saw other teachers who (we found out later) had also lost their homes. We looked up across the street and saw all of the smoke at Pepperdine University – so it felt like the fire was chasing us out of town.
“Cell service in that area was still working, so we called friends down the coast in Pacific Palisades and decided to go there. The fire continued to come in our direction, so it made no sense to go back.
“We started hearing from some people who told us that our house was gone, but then others called to say it was still there. Those neighbors who had stayed behind still had no cell service, so there was no way for them to contact us.
“The next day, Stan knew the back roads so he avoided the Sheriff’s roadblocks and we were able to get back into town. Once we got to Kanan Road (one of the main routes across the mountains), the view was just one shade of dark gray with downed power poles all over the place and hundreds of Edison trucks and an army of workers scrambling to replace it all. You had to drive over and under poles and downed wires.
“90 percent of what we’d heard before going back was rumor and incorrect. It was such a relief to finally find out for sure that the house had in fact burned, along with the tenants’ trailer. He’s a musician with the Kenneth Brian Band; and he and his wife help out at the Malibu Boys & Girls Club.
“We drove around the neighborhood for a while putting out spot fires in the Malibu Park area (above Zuma Beach), but there were no serious flare-ups. We did find water and gas lines that needed to be turned off, so we took care of those. The neighbors asked me to leave food out for their cat.
“We ran into two groups with big horse trailers, and they asked if we could help them rescue some horses. Their plan was to bring food onto a property where people had stayed with their homes, then bring the horses out in the trailers. We went in with the food, but then the Sheriffs’ deputies wouldn’t let us take the horses out.
“It took three or four days before we could finally go back to the house and look through the rubble. One rule we learned: after four to five days without power, ‘Don’t open that fridge unless you’re ready to run!’
“What’s really troubling is that our son, Stephen, has been quick to snap at us and quick to anger, and he wasn’t like that at all before the fire. He’s had some nightmares,” Carla observed. But then she added, “It’s continued to be heartwarming with the outpouring of love we’ve had, with items and donations and people helping us sift through the ashes. The home across the street from us was completely intact and didn’t have a single burn area anywhere on their seven acres. The couple that owns it only visits occasionally, so they offered their house to us.
“We’re not the type of people who wear name-brand clothing, so Stephen is having trouble wearing all the brand-name things that wonderful people have donated to us, like Abercrombie & Fitch. We’re the opposite of flashy, and that’s how he is. The donated stuff is really nice, but we’re Kirkland/Costco people.”
