Nancy Walecki

Jan 16, 2025 | theatlantic.com | Nancy Walecki

When my family woke up last Thursday, we learned that our friend Arthur Simoneau was missing. The day before, when the Palisades Fire was heading toward the neighborhood where I grew up and where he still lived, my mom had texted his ex-wife, Jill, to ask if she knew where he was—he’d stayed behind to defend our road from fire before. Jill thought he was out of town, at a hot spring. But the next morning, she called to tell us that he’d raced back to his house, and no one had heard from him since.

Jan 10, 2025 | theatlantic.com | Nancy Walecki

In my neighborhood—a mobile-home park on the western side of Malibu—the power and gas have been out for days, and cell service is intermittent at best. If I drive to the right vantage points, I can see the Palisades Fire and Kenneth Fire—two of the five major fires blazing across Los Angeles—but they are still far. My home is not in a mandatory evacuation zone, or even a warning zone. It is, or is supposed to be, safe.

Jan 8, 2025 | theatlantic.com | Nancy Walecki

We knew to expect winds. When they came on Tuesday morning, sounding like a tsunami crashing over my family’s home in western Malibu, the utility company shut off our power. We knew the chance of fire was high. I had arrived home for the holidays in early December, and had already been greeted by the Franklin Fire, which had burned the hills black. Now, when my dad and I went in search of electricity, a great plume of smoke was rising above those burned hills.

Oct 10, 2024 | theatlantic.com | Nancy Walecki

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here. Hurricane Milton’s wind and rain lashed Florida overnight—flooding streets, spawning tornadoes, and sending sheets of a fiberglass stadium roof billowing like tissue paper. As they did just weeks before, people in the Southeast have cycled through another round of evacuations, storm surges, and waking up to survey the damage.

Apr 1, 2024 | theatlantic.com | Nancy Walecki

A man comes to Northwell Health’s hospital on Staten Island with a sprained ankle. Any allergies? the doctor asks. How many alcoholic drinks do you have each week? Do you have access to firearms inside or outside the home? When the patient answers yes to that last question, someone from his care team explains that locking up the firearm can make his home safer. She offers him a gun lock and a pamphlet with information on secure storage and firearm-safety classes.