A new year meant a new home for Harmon Clarke Jr., who moved into the Pacific Palisades on Jan. 6 ready to begin his next chapter. Last summer, Cedars-Sinai Hospital accepted him into a master’s program and a big two-bedroom guest house on the hill overlooking the ocean seemed perfect for his graduate studies. On top of that, the rent was fair.
But high winds consumed Los Angeles roughly a day later. Dry conditions meant concerns for wildfires. Yet the area is no stranger to such issues. So when Clarke initially saw the smoke rising from the mountains on a morning coffee run before school, he initially shrugged it off.
“I wasn’t really worried, like this stuff happens all the time – but by the time I come back out of Starbucks, this smoke has swarmed into like a storm [and] the area is starting to get dark,” he said. “People from the store come out to look up to see [and] you can smell the sulfur in the air. By the time I got on [the Pacific Coast Highway by the water], the sky was completely black.”
Related: 2026 FY City & State Budget Recap
Clarke dialed up the home’s owner to warn him about the fire. The neighborhood soon evacuated as the fire encroached. By the time Clarke could return, bulldozers were removing abandoned cars from the streets. He never managed to go back to retrieve any of his belongings.
Among Clarke’s lost possessions were musical instruments and film equipment. He lived with Crohn’s disease and his keyboard would accompany him through his numerous hospital stays. Clarke says the home was uninsured and his landlord, a Vietnam War veteran, is now also looking for a new place to rent and even offered to be his roommate.
The smoke Clarke saw came from the Palisades Fire, which ultimately burned nearly 24,000 acres and remains active (although largely contained) at press time. Multiple other fires sprung after the high wind event on Jan. 7. The concurrent Eaton Fire killed multiple people and destroyed thousands of homes in Altadena, a known bastion of Black middle-class life. Yet coverage of the Palisades Fire focused on the large number of wealthy homes burned down and a who’s-who of celebrities impacted.
“I have a big yoga community up here [with] lots of Black and Brown people [and] when I started seeing them abandoning their house and then finally seeing that their houses got destroyed, that’s when I knew it was real for me,” said Clarke. “It’s not just celebrities. This area has different homes and houses and sizes and communities. And yeah, there are a lot of high end people, but there are also a lot of regular people like myself who are now displaced, trying to get their lives back together. And it’s a real challenge.”
Still, the 41-year-old student remains positive as he balances his health delivery sciences program with the fire. Clarke says it’s been challenging but his teachers and classmates are supportive and his laptop was with him at the time of the fire – a small victory he doesn’t take lightly.
“I had this beautiful place to study, that was the thing I was most excited about. I finally had a desk and a space that I could focus [in] and within one night everything could change.”
Harmon Clarke Jr.’s GoFundMe can be found at https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-harmon-clarke-jr-reboot-after-fire
GoFundMe list for Black Angelenos impacted by the wildfires: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pK5omSsD4KGhjEHCVgcVw-rd4FZP9haoijEx1mSAm5c/htmlview?usp=sharing
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.