We recently sat down with the Pasadena Firefighters Union President, Raffy Bitchakdjian, to discuss his experience fighting the Eaton Fire.

“I started my career at fifteen as a Fire Explorer,” he began. “It’s kind of like the Boy Scouts, but for the fire department. I was a Cadet, went through the college academy, and landed a job at the Pasadena Fire Department. In my time here I’ve fought campaign fires all over the state including that terrible fire and windstorm back in 2011, and I can safely say that nothing prepared me for the chaos of what we faced with the Eaton Fire.”

“I remember January 7th like it was yesterday. The winds kicked up early. We were pinballing between calls all day: trees down, power lines down, smoke investigations. As we were returning to the station, we heard it over the radio… “brush fire in the canyon.” I remember getting chills. We knew the area, knew what it was capable of. Given the winds we’d been dealing with all day… We all immediately knew what that meant.”

“We could already see the glow in the hills.”

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“As the Engineer, I drive the rig. We turned around and headed up Altadena Drive toward the fire. You could already see the glow in the hills—a bad sign. And as we arrived on scene… It’s really hard to describe. Like if you watched the opening of a war movie after a bomb had gone off, or, like, after an apocalypse. Everything we could see in any direction was either on fire or catching fire. The 80–100 mph sustained winds blew fire and embers at us like a continuous blowtorch all night. It was like nothing I had ever seen.”

“I checked my map and continuously updated potential escape routes. The fire was moving fast and I had to make sure we didn’t get trapped. We looked for good spots to set up and fight. The way it works is that each team has a section of the map to defend. We call them divisions. My team had a full city block to protect on all sides. Everyone got to work: laying out attack lines, hosing down eaves, clearing combustibles from houses like firewood and propane: Doing everything we could to protect the houses and stop the fire.”

“It felt like I was standing in quicksand.”

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“But that wind was relentless. Every time I thought we were making progress, it would kick back up, reigniting everything we had just saved. It felt like standing in quicksand. The more we fought, the further we sunk.”

“At some point, I completely lost track of time. The constant roar of wind and crackling flames drowned out everything else. We’d make progress on one house only to turn around and find three more threatened. We just zoned into it, moving from one house to the next, one area to the next. No one even thought about quitting. There was just no option but to fight.”

“And every time we thought we had a handle on it, those winds would kick up again, and we would lose the ground we had just gained.”

“It wasn’t until the sun began to rise the next morning that we felt the first real shift. The winds finally calmed a bit. We were able to establish a supply line and got reinforced by about 25 firefighters from LA County. That’s when we finally felt the tide turning. For the first time in hours, we were making real progress.”

“From initial dispatch until they forced us to take our first break, we’d been fighting for about 37 hours straight.”

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“During the fight there’s no time to reflect or even think about what you’re going through. We just had to keep going, do the best we could, save as much as we could. It’s afterward, when you have some downtime, that you think about all the devastation, all the homes and businesses… I wish we could have done so much more, saved so much more than we did. But when I think about those winds and that fire… yeah, it’s gonna take some time to process. It’s still really hard to think about.”

“I just want people to know that we tried our best, that we never quit, and we fought with everything we had. This experience has made us more resilient. We know what we’re capable of now. We take our oaths to protect and serve this community seriously. And watching everyone come together to support those affected by the fires, the families and businesses, and the kindness shown to us as first responders—it means everything. I couldn’t be prouder to serve a community that comes together the way this one has. And I wouldn’t trade that responsibility for the world.”

Learning the details of what Raffy and his fellow firefighters experienced in January left me in awe. It’s an honor to share their story. And I want to thank every single firefighter for the commitment and care you’ve shown our community. These values are dear to me and your heroism is deeply inspiring.