LOS ANGELES _ When she left her house about 6 a.m., Carmen Solano didn't know a brush fire had erupted near the neighborhood where she worked. So she left for her job, with coffee and pan in hand.
She'd filled her red backpack with tortillas, bananas, water and lunch for the day before heading to a home she cleaned weekly on Robinwood Drive. When Solano arrived, via a taxi shared with other housekeepers, the hillside neighborhood lined with multimillion-dollar homes was already choked with debris from the Getty fire.
"There's a lot of smoke," the driver observed, as he dropped off the Guatemalan immigrant. Normally, Solano works at the home on Wednesday, but the owner needed to switch and asked her to come on Monday.
Dressed in a pink sweater and pink sweatpants, she rang the doorbell over and over, hoping someone was inside. By her feet, a jack-o'-lantern grinned. As she waited at the front door, she realized she'd either left her phone on her dresser at home or in the taxi.
She was stranded. Ash rained down on her, speckling her braided hair white.
I was the one who informed her that the neighborhood was under a mandatory evacuation and offered her a ride. Before we left, I pressed the doorbell, part of a smart home system that connected to the resident's cellphone. Solano hadn't known what it was.
"Esta quemando todo," the owner said in halting Spanish to Solano through the ringer. "Everything is burning."
Police had ordered them to evacuate at 3 a.m., he told her.
The streets were mostly empty throughout the neighborhood. Outside homes, residents had decorated with graves, pumpkins and fake spiders for Halloween. Cobwebs decorated manicured lawns. Garage doors were left open as residents hurried to leave. Luxury cars _ a black Porsche, a red Mercedes Benz and a Tesla _ were left behind.
Solano asked her employer what she should do.
"I'm scared to be alone," she said, ash smudged above an eyebrow.
He asked if she had a ride home, and I explained to him that I had offered to help: I would drive her to a main intersection and order an Uber to take her home. He thanked me and said to Solano: "Lo siento, gracias por venir" (I'm sorry, thanks for coming.)
He told her he'd call and let her know if she should come back to work on Wednesday.
As I drove Solano down the street, she told me she'd worked for the family for a month and a half, after the woman who lives there had an eye operation.
She fretted over the loss of a day's wages. Solano arrived from Guatemala 27 years ago and received asylum. She doesn't drive and doesn't speak English. She'd immigrated to the United States in the hopes of making enough money to bring her family, a feat she hasn't been able to manage.
We talked as we waited for her Uber. The first one canceled the ride request because the roads were closed and he didn't want to try to navigate it.
"Usted fue mi angel de mi guarda," she said, calling me her guardian angel.
As I called another Uber, Solano and I parked and walked down Bundy Drive toward San Vincente Boulevard _ hoping that that would be open to traffic. On the way, we bumped into Marcela Aquino, who was heading in the opposite direction, hoping to reach the house she cleans Monday through Friday. She'd taken the bus that morning and learned about the fire when she arrived.
As Aquino was making her way to the neighborhood to work, her boss called to say they had evacuated and she couldn't get in.
"Then where do I go?" Aquino said. "No one told me not to come."
Her boss always tells her what's happening, she said. During a previous fire, her boss had let her know to meet her at a different house.
"Pobrecitos," she said, expressing sympathy toward her boss, who has two kids. I offered her the Uber with Solano, which she declined at first.
"I don't want to miss work," Aquino said. "They already gave me a week off."
She asked if I'd talk to her boss, who doesn't speak Spanish well. She tried to call a couple of times, but no one answered.
"I should just go home," Aquino said. Aquino had seen two other housekeepers also walking to work that morning.
"They didn't tell us," she said. "They need to tell us not to come."
On our walk to meet the Uber, we bumped into a construction worker who'd also made it all the way up to where he worked. There, he saw the fire and decided to leave. Across the street, a baby sitter covered her face with a paper towel, trying to shield herself from the ash.
After a hug from Solano, I put the two women in the Uber and headed back up Bundy Drive to my car.
Ana Martinez, 38, also arrived on Monday to the house she'd cleaned for a month. The residents were evacuating and told her they wouldn't need her.
She was going to text her employer, she said, "but I figured if she hadn't texted me I should come," Martinez said. "With the rush and packing everything up, she forgot to text me."
Before she left, her bosses gave her a mask.
As I paused to write, I spotted a man cutting grass in the front of a nearby home as residents fled the neighborhood in their cars.
Chon Ortiz, 50, knew about the fire. He was stuck in traffic on his way into the neighborhood. The owners hadn't forced him to come, he said, but he had three homes along this route that he needed to visit.
"If they say I have to evacuate, I will," he said in Spanish. "But I need to work."
