How one teenager is processing life after the Palisades fire

Kiley Hoiles doesn’t want to keep talking about the Palisades fire.

She is 15. And it’s been nearly a year since the blaze incinerated her family’s cozy little house on Edgar Street in Pacific Palisades. And her entire neighborhood. And her old elementary school, Marquez Charter. And the dojo where she trained three times a week.

Kiley is a now a freshman at a charter school in West Los Angeles, where she knows of just one other student from the Palisades whose home burned on Jan. 7. It’s been a lonely year, in that regard. None of her friends, as kind and supportive as they’ve been, really understand, because how could they?

“It was more than a town,” Kiley said of the Palisades. “Everyone was so close, and everyone knew each other, and it was all I knew. It was my childhood, like my everything. And it’s kind of too hard for them” — her friends — “to wrap their heads around. So I don’t want to try to emotionally dump everything that happened on them.”

After two of the most destructive fires in the state’s history, The Times takes a critical look at the past year and the steps taken — or not taken — to prevent this from happening again in all future fires.

She told everyone about it, at first. But now?

“I don’t like talking about the fires because people only relate me to the fires,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Oh, that’s the girl whose house burned down.’ I’m more than just what happened.”

She is, for example, an aspiring actress. She is about to earn her black belt in karate. She is learning to sing at the School of Rock. And she loves the BLT sandwiches with avocado and an Arnold Palmer at one of her favorite Palisades cafes.

Kiley is poised. She’s optimistic. But she is changed.

The Palisades and Eaton fires have inflicted a traumatic toll on teenagers, many of whom already had their childhoods upended by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is a time of “intense identity building” for people transitioning from children to adults, said Gregory Leskin, a psychologist and program director with the National Child Traumatic Stress Network at UCLA. Fire victims experienced something of such magnitude, they might believe, that it overshadows other, carefully honed parts of their identity — such as being a good friend or student or athlete, Leskin said.

“It’s important to give teenagers their chance to develop boundaries about talking about it,” so they can realize that “it’s a big part of their story, but not the only part of their story,” he said.

On a foggy Sunday morning in November, Kiley was quiet as she visited her family’s cleared lot. It looks so small, she said, without the three-bedroom house she shared with her parents and grandparents.

Kiley is normally a bubbly girl with long brown hair and a self-assured smile, but as she kept raising her phone to take a photo, then stopping, her eyes saddened.

Across the street, there was once a home where twin girls played violin for their neighbors. Now it was an empty lot. She had friends on the next street over, which was now perfectly visible without houses blocking the sight line.

Kiley Hoiles holds her grandfather’s abalone shell, which was displayed at her family’s home in Pacific Palisades before it burned.

“It’s really hard looking at it,” Kiley said. “I’m so used to seeing what it used to be.”

Her mom and dad grew up in Pacific Palisades and still adored the place. She figured she, too, would spend her whole life in this neighborhood, where she — an Independence Day baby — got to spend each birthday marching in the huge Fourth of July Parade.

On Jan. 7, Kiley and her mom, Lilly Garcia, were home alone. Her dad, Elton Hoiles, had joined his parents and brother a few days earlier on a trip to Portugal, where he endured his own personal hell of being away when the worst happened.

Garcia told Kiley, then 14, to pack an overnight bag and some pajamas, assuming they would be back the next day. They collected no mementos. And they are haunted by that, Garcia said.

They grabbed the cat and dog. And they drove out, quickly hitting traffic gridlock that made them get out of their car and start walking — until they became too frightened, returned to their vehicle, and eventually made it to a hotel in Santa Monica.

“I’m doing a lot better,” Kiley said in November. “The first few months were super hard. I felt like my whole life was stripped away. I didn’t know what I was going to do; I didn’t know where I was going to live. I hate change … I was always going to stay in the Palisades.”

When Kiley returned to school in West L.A., she spoke at a school assembly, hoping to be a shining example of empathy. But she grew weary of reliving that trauma, day in and day out.

Her parents marveled at her composure. But at the same time, they both said, they knew she was holding it together for her family — that she was just a kid, worrying too much about them, trying to console them in the midst of everything.

“She’s a kid,” Garcia said. “I don’t want to take for granted how strong and resilient and level-headed she is. Because she’s still a person and she still has the right to grieve and go through it.”

Elton Hoiles said, “We’re doing our best. Kiley? She’s our rock.”

“It’s jarring, coming back and everything you’re familiar with is gone,” he added. “I’m heartbroken that my daughter had to experience this.”

The family found a small home in Mar Vista, closer to Kiley’s school, where they’ve been settling into new routines. They don’t often return to their old address.

Kiley said she talks about the fire with her parents. This fall, she started talking with a life coach from the Palisades, processing her grief — but, she emphasized, talking about happier things, too.