Eaton Fire: How One Firefighter Family Saved Their Home and Neighborhood

In episode 54 of the Fire Family Collective podcast, Amanda speaks with Stephanie and Dan Lievense about their experiences during the Eaton Fire in January 2025. Dan is a Los Angeles Fire Department firefighter; Stephanie is a marriage and family therapist. The conversation delves into the emotional and practical challenges faced by firefighters and their families during emergencies, the importance of community support, and the lessons learned about trust and preparedness in fire families. The guests share their personal stories of fear, resilience, and the critical role of support systems in navigating the aftermath of the fire. Chris Stine, President of the Los Angeles Firemen's Relief Association also talks about their efforts to support LA fire families during and after devasting LA Fires in January 2025.

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Transcript

Amanda (00:00.855)
All right, welcome to the Fire Family Collective. This is an exciting episode we have here. We have three special guests with us today. We have Chris, Stephanie, and Dan. And I'm so honored to be speaking with them. So I'm going to let them introduce themselves and then we'll dive in. So Chris, do you want to introduce yourself first, please?

Chris Stine (00:21.644)
Sure, thank you. My name is Chris Stein. I'm currently the president of the Los Angeles Firemen's Relief Association and the Widows, Orphans, and Disabled Firefighters Fund.

Amanda (00:31.472)
Thanks for being here, Stephanie.

Stephenie Lievense (00:33.791)
Hi, my name's Stephanie Levens. I am married to Dan Levens, who is a fire captain for the LA City Fire Department. I'm also a mom and a therapist.

Amanda (00:45.327)
Great. Thank you, Stephanie and Dan.

Dan (00:48.622)
Dan Nevins, captain with the Los Angeles City Fire Department.

Amanda (00:54.379)
Thank you for being here. So I know for myself as being a fire wife and having the experience of my firefighter go off and fight fires, I'm not always connected to what's really happening because I need to dissociate a little bit to protect myself. So I'm excited to have this conversation to talk about the realities of actually when the fire hits home and what that looks like in our community and our neighborhood.

and hear it firsthand from your perspective with the Eaton Fire that took place in January of 2025 this year. So who wants to share first a little bit about that experience from your perspective? So any of you?

Dan (01:36.686)
I can jump in and tell you my personal experience of on the night of January 7th, was actually at work with the Los Angeles Fire Department. I was in contact with my family telling them that, hey, I probably won't be coming home because the Palisades fire was burning. Later on that night, five o'clock or six o'clock, I got a text from my son that said, hey, dad, there's a fire around our neighborhood. He sent me a couple of pictures.

Amanda (01:38.201)
Great.

Dan (02:06.272)
I wasn't too concerned. looked like it was three or four miles from where I live, but it was up in the mountains. So I just sort of played it off like I do. was like, it can't come to my neighborhood. It's not going to happen to me. And then as the night wore on, I actually got deployed to another fire called the Hearst fire. So when I was out there fighting that fire, my son was giving me updates. I was talking to my wife and I was like, Hey,

It still looks like it's not coming towards our neighborhood. had not heard that any homes were burning in Altadena, but I did hear that a lot of homes up in the Palisades were burning. So I knew that I wasn't going to be able to get relieved. And then it just so happened that about four o'clock in the morning, my son sends me a little picture and tells me, dad, I think there's a house on fire up the street.

And when you hear that and you're not able to actually be there, it's pretty hard to take because now I'm scrambling to try to figure out, okay, what's next? I mean, I've talked to my wife about evacuation. We've talked about how I deal with the public, but I've never actually had to have my family evacuate. So it was really hard.

Stephenie Lievense (03:27.188)
Mm.

Amanda (03:30.147)
Yeah, that's for me, like I just relate totally different, but I try not to think about all this stuff. And we have a group wives text and they texted me a few months ago about fire happening. I have no idea what's going on. And the fear that set in just from this text, you know, I can't imagine if it was actually a house on my street. So your son told you a house on your street was burning and

you're thinking how do I protect my family and Stephanie, what do we do next? I'm on duty.

Dan (04:01.646)
Yeah, it's uh, when you hear that and then you see the the smoke conditions outside you're like, uh-oh It's bad and I told my son. Hey hang up with me Call 911. He does and basically the 911 operator said You need to evacuate Um, so he calls me right back and says dad they're not sending anybody we need to evacuate And I guess at around the same time a police

Sheriff came down our street just over the loudspeaker saying, hey, it's time to go. So I had to tell my son and then my wife like, okay, that's it. You guys got to go. And I think I got to commend my wife for the tremendous job she did. I have a younger son waking him up. She got my younger son, got our pets. My mom who lives next door to me, both my older son, they went over and got her and her pets and

Basically, I think they just drove away not being able to see the other side of the street because of the smoke conditions and probably realizing that might be the last time we see our house. And for me, was just, there was nothing I could do. I was stuck on another fire and I felt, you know, just bad because I wasn't there.

Amanda (05:21.965)
Right, so you're calling to protect people you love in our community and then it's happening at home and you're helpless for your closest people. So Stephanie, what was that like from your perspective with you at home with your boys and knowing your mother-in-law is next door?

Dan (05:31.566)
Yeah.

Stephenie Lievense (05:41.479)
Well, our, our son James is 20 and he wants to be a firefighter. So he's, that's his goal. And he, and we were kind of taking a wait and see approach. And, how was it? It was scary. It was scary. I had, like Dan, we, seemed so far away. It seemed like there's no way it's going to get to our neighborhood.

and, I took a nap and woke up and realized, we got to get out of here. but you know, I think being the wife of a firefighter, as you probably know, Amanda, like you, you do get kind of used to being on your own to handling things because your husband isn't around because they're doing such good work. But,

Amanda (06:19.673)
Wow.

Stephenie Lievense (06:41.053)
So it felt, I felt embarrassed that I had waited so long. At the same time, I was really glad that my son James had been hosing down our house and my mother-in-law's house. I think that made a huge difference in the fact that they didn't burn down, honestly. So he was kind of on it with Dan's guidance. And when it was time to go, we went.

And it was, that was stressful. It was stressful. My mother-in-law is older. It was scary, especially for her. She has a dog and two cats. We have a dog and a cat getting those animals who are already a little bit scared into the car with something. And I mean, I don't know if we've talked about this at all, but my son, James, who's 20, wanted to stay because my

brother-in-law, Matt Levens, who's also a firefighter for the LA city fire department, was coming from San Dimas to help, because it's his mom's house and his brother's house. So leaving my 20 year old son there, as I saw palm trees flaming through the air, was probably the hardest part of the whole thing.

Amanda (08:04.397)
I cannot imagine that.

Stephenie Lievense (08:08.322)
And also he is so trustworthy. I knew he wouldn't let himself be in an unsafe situation. So I could, I could trust him and I had a good feeling that he wouldn't stick around if he was unsafe.

It ended up being probably something that saved our house that he was still there.

Amanda (08:31.289)
Right, yeah. Were any of your other neighbors still staying behind?

Stephenie Lievense (08:39.831)
Not at that point, I don't think. I think everybody had left at that point except for James. yeah, it was not my favorite moment.

Amanda (08:46.009)
Wow.

Amanda (08:50.253)
Yeah, so how long was he by himself and you were like, what's going to happen?

Stephenie Lievense (08:56.829)
I was on the phone with him for, for a good part of that. He, when the house across the street caught on fire across the street from our house, or sometime near that as this fire moved down the street, he got in his car, which was running and headed south. So he did drive away for a while and probably within 10 minutes and Dan, can correct me if I'm wrong, but my brother-in-law, Matt got there.

So then together they came back. And I talked to Matt too during that time and told him, I love my brother-in-law. He's amazing human being. But I was like, it's my boy. It's on you. yeah, yes. 100 % let it burn. And make use of James, but.

Amanda (09:40.941)
Right. Yeah, keep my baby safe. My house isn't as important as my baby.

Stephenie Lievense (09:54.521)
It's on you now, Matt. And Matt was so great. He was like, he said, I hear you. I got you. I'm not going to let anything happen to him.

Amanda (10:02.915)
That's amazing. That's like a two and a half, three hour drive for your brother-in-law to come up from San Diego and Sandy miss. Okay.

Stephenie Lievense (10:08.545)
San Dimas, but the traffic was horrendous. He has great stories about maybe some off-roading to get to us quickly. It all happened very, very fast. It went from seeming very far away to on our street in a very short amount of time.

Amanda (10:17.089)
Yeah.

Dan (10:17.742)
Thank

Amanda (10:30.713)
Well, and like you said, we had the Palisades fires going on here as well. So there was just a lot of resources being utilized in different ways. And it just, it was chaos for Southern California.

Stephenie Lievense (10:35.749)
Yeah.

Stephenie Lievense (10:40.72)
Mm-hmm.

Stephenie Lievense (10:44.223)
It was chaos.

Amanda (10:48.239)
Wow. So now fast forward a little bit. What ended up happening? Dan, did you get to come home? Were you relieved that morning? Were you still on shift?

Dan (11:01.184)
Yeah, so luckily like Steph was saying, we're talking what for me seemed like an eternity, but in reality, it was probably about an hour, maybe an hour and a half of, hey, you guys got to go to, I called my battalion chief and said, hey, I have my relief coming in. I need to make relief. I need to get home. And so,

My brother and James were here for probably about a half hour before I was able to get home. And just with our knowledge and somehow we made a couple of right decisions to go up to the local fire station, LA County, and borrow some hose from them. We knew we had a fire hydrant right across the street. And then it was like, okay, we're going to protect my house and we're going to protect my mom's house. But.

We got a couple more neighbors. Let's protect those houses. Okay. Let's cut it off at the end of this street. And so we fought fire for probably 24 to 36 straight hours without any fire engines or trucks, which is something that as a member of the Los Angeles fire department, I never thought would happen that I'm going to fight this amount of fire for this long and not see any help come. So

It was a little overwhelming. the same time, I was grateful to have my brother and my son there. like Steph was saying the whole time, I'm worried like if something happens to James, I'm never going to live it down. And if something happens to my brother also. constantly worrying about them. And then just doing great work of putting the fire out and then making sure everybody's okay.

using what we had, the hose that we were able to secure from the local fire station. My brother had a couple fittings, so we were able to maneuver stuff around and it worked out good.

Amanda (13:03.001)
That's amazing. And now from your perspective, Stephanie, Dan's gotten off shift. You add someone else you love and care about that's in the midst of all this. And where are you at with that?

Stephenie Lievense (13:14.751)
complete relief. I mean, I don't know if it's not the right thing to do, but I knew once Dan was there that everybody would be okay. I felt complete relief. Like finally, I knew he wouldn't, I knew he'd handle it well. He'd know what to do and he'd make sure everybody stayed safe. So, and I was at a, I was at my son's apartment in Long Beach. He goes to school there with, with my other son, William. we were just.

sort of waiting to figure out if we could be useful or not. And I will say this, I mean, I think you heard the emotion in Dan's voice just there a little bit, and he is not an emotional person in general. So, and I'll not forget around, maybe it was like around five, 3 p.m., three to 5 p.m., he said, would you guys come back? Would you come back? And I knew,

he was tired or, well, I don't know exactly what it was, honey, but that's not like him. He'd normally say, no, no, I got it. We're fine. You stay out there, but he said, would you come back? And so we did. We came back and I think that was the right thing to do. I'm still super smoky, but we were glad to all be together.

Amanda (14:37.879)
Yeah. So at this point, yeah. So at this point, you weren't worried about the safety of the fire with the houses and you just were like, we need to be together as a family.

Stephenie Lievense (14:45.937)
No.

Stephenie Lievense (14:49.324)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amanda (14:53.645)
That's just unbelievable. And I didn't realize that there weren't any resources from the county department that is, you know, supposed to have that area for their coverage. So that's just even more mind blowing to me. I can't imagine.

Stephenie Lievense (15:14.478)
But I mean, Dan, you could speak to this more than me. I don't think they weren't doing anything. The whole place was on fire. There aren't enough fire engines or firefighters. They were protecting and serving. They just couldn't be everywhere all at once. So at least that's how I hold it in mind. I don't know, Dan.

Amanda (15:23.822)
Yeah.

Amanda (15:35.182)
Right.

Amanda (15:40.217)
Yeah.

Dan (15:41.632)
Yeah, as a firefighter, they were around. I mean, just to give you a perspective of like our house, our block is 20 houses and 16 of them completely burned down. So only four houses on my street survived. So we are sort of right in the middle of all the chaos and we live two blocks from a major street and

Amanda (15:55.353)
my gosh.

Dan (16:09.984)
A lot of the fire resources were over there fighting big commercial fires. Would I have liked to see a fire engine pull down my street? Yeah, but it just didn't happen. But I also felt confident with my brother, my son, that we may not need them. We can handle this. We've already, the main fire front blew through, so I think we'll be okay.

It wasn't like I was going to go out there and wave them down. It was just like, they didn't come. They were doing other things. They were in the neighborhood. They were just fighting other fighters.

Amanda (16:49.261)
Right. Right. Well, those are, you know, parts of the unique challenges that you can understand from a different perspective. And yeah, so that's, I just, only four houses survived. I can't believe that your brave 20 year old son, your brother driving up, you getting off shift, racing home, that just so many layers to the craziness. And I just, I, I just truly can't imagine.

Stephenie Lievense (16:49.366)
Mm-hmm.

Amanda (17:18.263)
So I'm so glad that you're all safe and that a few of your neighbors were able to also save their homes. And looking back on this experience, what perspective might have changed for you as a couple and what you're going to do maybe differently in the future? Or how would you share with us and our community as Ms. Fire Family Collective?

Stephenie Lievense (17:38.828)
Hmm.

Amanda (17:43.413)
what we might be able to do to prepare ourselves. Hopefully this doesn't happen, but we can't be naive and think that it won't.

Stephenie Lievense (17:54.765)
I can start. I think our family is one where we really trust each other. And I don't know how you get through something like this or other hard things without having great, great trust in one another. And I think we definitely had that, even in our 20 year old son. And we do in our 18 year old son as well.

younger. but yeah, trusting one another to make good choices and that we're all in our own right, able to take care of ourselves and rely on each other at the same time. So, I mean, I think that's something that was helpful for us. I think in the future, I would not have gone to sleep. I would have stayed awake and, and been back up to my 20 year old keeping watch.

just because maybe we would have left a little sooner.

But maybe not, to be honest. I think the fact that we stayed longer helped save our house and my mother-in-law's house and other people's houses. So I don't know.

Amanda (19:11.364)
Yeah.

Stephenie Lievense (19:13.749)
Dan, what do you think,

Dan (19:16.426)
yeah, I like the trust each other. I also know that in the way I look at it for the, the firefighters aspect of, to not become complacent. mean, I can't tell you that I didn't think this would ever happen to me. And I've been to plenty of brush fires. I've been to, you know, we always talk about the big earthquake and then, mean, wherever you guys are, if you live by the ocean.

You need to think about like, okay, if I'm not here, how is my wife and my kids going to handle this situation? it's a lot easier if I would have been there to make those critical decisions, but there's a good chance that we are not going to be able to be there. And so the, the strength and the tremendous love and compassion and trust you have in your wife and your kids to do, to make those decisions when you're not there.

Stephenie Lievense (20:03.915)
Thank you.

Dan (20:15.103)
you have to instill nothing but positivity for them to be able to have a positive outcome.

Amanda (20:22.595)
think that's huge and both of you touched on it, right? Like we, as the partners are home alone a lot and making these decisions as solo parents with you in mind, right? What we've already talked about in our relationship and to feel empowered in the moment of something stressful where we can't shoot you a quick text or a phone call and know like, you know, Dan has complete trust in me, Stephanie has complete trust in me and I'm making this decision knowing that.

you know, this is what's best for our family in this moment. It's just another aspect, right, of being a fire family. it doesn't, it's in so many parts of our lives. It's just there. So I wanted to ask Chris, so what does this look like now from your side of things and what, you know, you're helping with after the fact?

Stephenie Lievense (21:02.964)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Stine (21:17.71)
Yeah, so after this whole thing, we've learned a great deal about how to support our folks as our our main role is to support widows, orphans, disabled firefighters. But this was a new or an area that we don't normally do all the time. And we serve our people, but it's usually for someone who's sick, somebody who's been injured for our dependents, our surviving spouses of fallen firefighters. But.

This is something a little bit different. think the last time we've dealt with this would be the Northridge earthquake was the last big incident we had where we had folks that were affected. one of the things that we did early on to help us in getting aid out to the Levens family and a lot of the other families that were in Eaton is we had a map built about six months before this happened. It was built by our GS mapping for the city.

And then what they did is they plotted on that map every member of our association and where they lived in the whole United States. And so what they did is they overlaid the Eaton fire and the Palisades fire on this map. And I had that map within about, I'd say six hours of the incident, about eight hours of the incident happening. So that morning, like when Dan was talking about at 4 a.m., I was coming into work that morning at 5 a.m. and drove right past it, because our office is only about five or 10 minutes from Eaton.

Stephenie Lievense (22:17.193)
Wow.

Chris Stine (22:38.017)
And so I got on the computer, we started plotting these addresses and figuring out which firefighters were in that impact area. And then we were able to start calling and figuring out which firefighters had lost their homes, which firefighters were staying and defending their homes and which ones were displaced. so that enabled us to start to get aid out the door. And with the Levens family, with Dan specifically, I was able to get into Eaton with another firefighter who lives in the area.

city firefighter and we were driving around to each one of these addresses checking on on houses and I happened to pull up to Dan's house. I think it was like was that day two Dan? I pulled up and so I went to his street because I knew that that street had several firefighters on it and him and his son were out front like it looked like they've been fighting fire for 36 hours away they looked and but they were you know at that point you know the main part was was already done the fire had come through and they were

Dan (23:17.987)
Yeah.

Chris Stine (23:37.088)
obviously in a lot better place at that point. yeah, so we drove around house to house looking for what we could do and figuring out how can we support these families for the next days, weeks, months to come.

Amanda (23:53.807)
That's an incredible resource. just, can't even picture this cool map, like you said, and just being able to have that information to go and drive out and face to face see your people and ask that question. Like, what do you need? How can we help? mean, that is huge. And that is for me, like one of the big visions of this fire family collective, right? Is to be able to have resources like that where we can tap into and just get

the help that people need, give them the resources and work with each other in the ways that we can to support this greater network that we have of the people that matter most to us. So that's amazing to me. And I'm so glad you guys just coincidentally made that map, like you said, a few months before and had that to be able to utilize in this tragic crisis.

Chris Stine (24:48.972)
Yeah, it was amazing that we had a crew that was actually delivering supplies out to the area. So Dan wanted to stay, obviously protect his home because of all the aftermath of the fire. So we were able to deliver some supplies to the Lievens family. So we were able to get them some basic needs that they needed to be able to stay there without, you know, they didn't have any power. There was no services. All those things were not up and running. So

We threw some, you know, some of our resources and logistical folks were able to get supplies out to them and other firefighting families too that needed that support. it, we learned a lot though, and we'll hopefully be sharing that, you know, with other organizations to try and better support, not only the firefighters, but like Dan was saying, most of the time we're probably not going to be there. That's just the way it works out normally. Right. So, but.

What we wanna do is establish a volunteer group of people that can go out and help some of these families. Probably retired firefighters would be a great resource to send out to a community to help support them as we probably will be committed to doing the work that we need to do just like everyone else.

Amanda (26:05.359)
Right? And that's huge because you're like Dan and I were talking before we actually started recording, right? He's in over 20 years of his career. And once he does get to retirement, that doesn't just leave who he is as a person. So being able to know maybe he's going to be a part of this like volunteer resource that you said, but still matters, makes an impact, gives him this purpose that still is really near and dear and grained in who he is.

Those are the types of things like I know I really think my husband will still need in his life when we get to that phase because you guys, this is part of you. You're a whole person, but this is very much who you are. And so that's a really great idea to involve retirees and have them be a resource when your other frontline personnel are on the front lines. So I love that idea.

Amanda (27:01.079)
Well, I am just in awe. I am going to digest all of this. And I think our listeners will be really grateful to hear the stories that you all have shared, the resources that are coming out of it, the different just, you know, ways that we show up for one another here in the fire family. And I'm grateful for all of you taking the time to chat with me. Does anybody want to say anything else before we head out?

Dan (27:27.8)
would like to say, you know, thank Chris and the Relief Association because the long-term recovery, it's hard. It's when you're looking across the street and you're hearing trucks back up and, you know, take out all the burned down lots and then you realize the amount of smoke damage my house did suffer and everything to be able to have a organization.

Stephenie Lievense (27:39.015)
Mm-hmm.

Dan (27:56.162)
that is willing to stand there. Like two days after the fire, Steph and my younger son were evacuated when the National Guard came in. And basically the relief was able to give us a little bit of money that helped us out with Airbnb, that helped us out with her going and buying clothes and buying food until we can try to get all of the insurance to balance out and the checks to make sense. And then

I was just a huge relief off of my shoulders that I can sit here and stay at my house. like Chris was saying, saying he brought out a Starlink. So we were able to have a Starlink to have internet connection. So I was able to have contact with my wife. were able to get fuel so I could run a generator, not just for my house, but for my neighbor's house. One of them had a koi pond. So the organization, the relief association did a tremendous job in supporting us financially, which I think

enabled me to get through it a lot better than if I didn't have that organization. So thanks to the relief for that.

Stephenie Lievense (29:03.943)
I second and third all of that. You're never alone when you're a part of a firefighting family. And that was super evident after this. It was very hard the weeks after when we couldn't come back and Dan was on his own with no water, no power, no gas, no nothing. It was like camping. and Chris, it means so much that you actually came. Like that's a really big deal. And that's, and that's what.

firefighters do, right? They show up on scene, but that's a really big deal. It was a lonely time for Dan and James and some of, were like two other neighbors that stayed, but just thank you for that.

Amanda (29:47.663)
And I think that's huge.

Chris Stine (29:48.157)
And...

Yeah, not a problem to do. It's out of all the work I think we do, firefighting is great work. This work of taking care of each other, think rises to a higher level than the actual work does, just taking care of each other to make sure we get to the end of the line and we get to reach that retirement. It takes everyone to supporting each other in order for us to get there successfully.

Stephenie Lievense (30:14.928)
Well, sign me up if you have any retired wives that you need help with. I'll...

Chris Stine (30:17.354)
I always need we always need room for volunteers. You're in. I'll just tell you right now. I got a spot for you.

Amanda (30:25.135)
I'm

Stephenie Lievense (30:25.68)
Okay, I'll make a casserole.

Chris Stine (30:28.745)
All right.

Amanda (30:30.645)
We are so grateful. I am just so in awe. Thank you, Chris and Stephanie and Dan for taking time to be with the Fire Family Collective today and just really appreciate you and an honor. They got to spend time with you. Thank you for your bravery and sharing your stories and we will talk more. I know it. So thank you again.

Dan (30:52.014)
Thank you.

Chris Stine (30:52.714)
Thank you. Thank you.

Stephenie Lievense (30:53.03)
Thank you, Amanda. Thank you.