L.A. fires

On Jan. 7, the day the Eaton fire began to burn in Southern California, 42-year-old Shai McCall did not think much of it, at first. She’s lived in her family’s Altadena home all her life, and it’s not unusual to see fires burning in the San Gabriel Mountains.

As the rapidly spreading Eaton wildfire in Los Angeles crept closer to the home he’d lived in for nearly six decades, Rodney Nickerson, 83, wasn’t going to panic. Despite the pleas of his worried daughter and anxious neighbors, he was staying put.