I lost nothing. I lost everything.

I am lucky beyond all imagination. I am haunted beyond all reason.

I am spared. Nobody is spared.

I am rounding the sharp turn that enters my leafy Altadena cul-de-sac, my home for the last dozen years, and I am loudly pleading.

“Hail Mary, full of grace …”

It is a Wednesday morning, several hours after the Eaton fire began tearing apart thousands of lives, there are still flames shooting up from burning destruction. On every block, the air is still dark with smoke and the streets are still clogged with trees, but my fiancée, Roxana, and I had just endured a night of sleepless terror. We had to come here. We had to see.

Did we lose this most evil of lotteries? Did we take a direct hit from the hand of hell?

I’m shouting and shaking as the bravely determined Roxana spins the car through flames and foliage onto a scarred and sooted street where we see a bit of fence, and a bit of white, and, then, there it is, standing strong amid the ruins of my beloved neighborhood.

Our house. It survived. It survived?

“The Lord is with thee …”

I begin crying, awash in gratitude and relief, until I look around at the barren smoldering landscape and my heart almost instantly drops into a much deeper emotion.

Guilt.

I was here, but where was everybody else? Where were my neighbors? Where were my friends? Why was I still standing and they were not?

My next-door neighbor lived in a sprawling old house that was always full of life. It was gone, burned to nothing, a portrait of death. How did those flames miss me?

Directly across the street was the tidy home of the kindly elderly professor who lived behind a bevy of beautiful trees. No more. No more beauty. No more privacy. No more house. The bones of her refuge lay crushed and stacked and still flickering with flames. Why was she so cursed when I was so blessed?

Next to her lived a wonderful attorney who never complained when cars from my house were parked in front of her beautifully remodeled home. All gone. Total carnage. Her proud accomplishment had been reduced to rubble. Why did I not lose everything instead?

Times columnist Bill Plaschke stands outside his Altadena home on Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. It was one of the few homes in his neighborhood that did not burn down during the wildfires.

(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)

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Of eight houses in my cul-de-sac, four remained standing, three of those absorbed some damage, and mine was the only one that appeared untouched. There was no reason for it. There was no logic behind it. My neighbor Phil Barela said he stayed late the previous night and doused a small fire at the back of our property line, and I’ll credit him forever for saving the structure, but this was surely much more than that.

The fire that surrounded our house on all sides did not consume it. There had to be a reason. What was that reason?

During that frantic Wednesday morning visit, we made a quick dash through the house as flames flickered on the streets below. We were enveloped by the smell of smoke, but everything else felt normal. Everything was just as we left it. Surrounding a brown prickly Christmas tree were old magazines, throw blankets, hurriedly discarded socks, all the trappings of an ordinary life.

A life that, like that of thousands of grateful Angelenos whose houses had survived, had nonetheless changed forever.

Our house will have to be stripped and scrubbed and basically gutted down to the drywall and insulation because of smoke damage, and we were the lucky ones.

We could lose all of our furniture, and we were the lucky ones.

Once we’re allowed to live in the house again, which could be months considering all the water and power issues, we will spend the next two years living in the middle of a construction zone, and we were the lucky ones.

If you hear guilt in those statements, you hear right, a guilt as oppressive as a flame. Why did so many others lose priceless photo albums while we get to keep ours? Why must so many others rebuild their daily steps from scratch while our basic floor plan remains the same?

A couple of years ago I wrote a book about the resilient Paradise High football team, which played a nearly undefeated season months after their town was leveled by the 2018 Camp fire. It was called “Paradise Found,” and its central character was a tough head coach, Rick Prinz, whose house amazingly did not burn down.

I contacted Prinz this week to ask about survivor’s guilt. He said it is real. He said he felt it immediately.

Firefighters try to keep a fire from engulfing an adjacent home during the Eaton fire in Altadena on Jan. 8.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

“When we found out our home did not burn it was very emotional, we were so thankful and amazed,” he said. “We also felt guilt at the loss of so many others. We did not share our joy with others and kept it to ourselves. I would try not to mention that our house survived to those who had lost so much.”

Prinz admitted the darkest thoughts wrought by survivors’ guilt — “Yes, there were times when we thought it may have been better if our home had burned,” he said.

But he acknowledged that it was so difficult to get his house working again, his focus turned to that. — “Living in a burn scar, rising insurance costs, constant construction, terrible road conditions … the survivor’s guilt begins to wane,” he said.

That guilt is still going strong here. I will not complain. I cannot complain. I don’t deserve to complain.

Even one minute spent in that house is better than the horrible fate that awaited so many who were never given that time.

From this moment forward, every day in that house will be a monument to pure luck and good wind and Phil Barela and, certainly, I had nothing to do with any of it, and how do I live up to that?

There are many of us in Los Angeles in similar situations, houses intact but lives uprooted, forced nomads who may never get home until spring, folks facing a road so long and complicated surely some of them, like Prinz, may already wish their homes were instead destroyed so they could have just started the rebuild from scratch.

You know who you are, those of you whose homes were saved as their guilt threatens to destroy them. You know who you are, and so seemingly does everybody else.

At one of the recent hotels that we’ve been surfing while waiting to be allowed back home, I was approached by someone walking a big dog down a narrow hotel hallway, a common sight these days.

“Good morning, are you an evacuee?” she asked brightly.

“I am,” I said.

“I lost everything,” she said.

“I did not,” I said.

End of conversation. She abruptly spun and headed in the other direction. I was a pariah. I was not worthy of discussing a loss that could not be quantified. I wasn’t a true survivor.

Gusts send burning embers into the air, fueling the Eaton fire on Jan. 8 in Altadena.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

It was then that I realized, no, we’re all survivors, we’ve all been touched even if we still live in pristine neighborhoods with power and water and life. We were all burned. We will all be scarred.

Just because your house is standing doesn’t mean you are standing with it.

At the moment, I’m trying to stand, but I’m not quite there yet. I am blessed but hobbled. I have learned in the past few days that intangible losses, while no match for the tangible ones, can nonetheless stick deeply in the throat. Those of us with intact houses in burned areas can’t publicly admit it, nor should we, but it’s true.

I’m a creature of habit, a slave to routine, I begged for the same press box seat during the Dodgers postseason run, I drive the same weird route to USC football games, I wear the same basic black uniform to every game of every sport.

And now, even though my house is there, everything else is gone, my traditions, my habits, my normalcy.

I used to drive down a pretty Altadena street toward work. That street is now one long junkyard. I used to stop at a corner Chevron Station every day to buy snacks and talk Lakers with the owner. That place has become a blackened shell.

My favorite hamburger joint, gone. One of my favorite breakfast places, gone. A dive bar that helped keep the neighborhood together, gone. Pizza joint, gone. The hardware store that just sold me air filters last week, gone.

From Altadena to Pacific Palisades, you all have stories like this. You lost your favorite watering hole, your favorite grocery store, a part of your city that had become your anchor, your strength, your best friend. All of Los Angeles has stories like this. Our daily lives have been mangled beyond recognition. There have been deaths, there has been destruction, everybody, everywhere, nobody is keeping score, it’s all bad and it all requires a resilience that was on full powerful display everywhere last week, including in my little burned-out block.

During the brief visit to our house the day after the fire, my neighbor Brian Pires was standing in the middle of the street waxing in amazement that his house had also survived when flames shot up from his corner lot. It was his garage. It was suddenly on fire. He had no water, no hose, no chance, yet he refused to give up. He jumped in his car and raced back to the main road and returned moments later with two firetrucks in tow. He had somehow found the firemen himself and led them to the flames which they quickly doused.

At that moment, he wasn’t just a chiropractor protecting his home, he was all of Los Angeles fighting to breathe again with an unreal courage that transcends all tragedy.

Many of us may never get over the guilt of having a house that is still standing. But, damn it, we owe it to those who lost everything to keep them standing.

MELBOURNE, Australia — For Naomi Osaka, this journey to the other side of the world is starting to become a rollercoaster ride for the ages.

The new year had all started so right, with a run to the final in Auckland, New Zealand. But then, a set up and with her first tournament title since becoming a mother in sight, she had to pull out against Clara Tauson with an injury.

The scans were “not great” in her words, a suboptimal development just a few days before the start of the Australian Open.

A few days later, the fires in Los Angeles arrived. The flames came within a few blocks of her home. She called a friend and asked her to collect her daughter’s birth certificate.

Monday night in Melbourne, back at her favorite Grand Slam, brought a tight, hard-fought win over Caroline Garcia of France, who had knocked her out in the first round here last year. Osaka had been up, then down, then somehow up at the end.

Then came Wednesday afternoon against Karolina Muchova, a microcosm of the whole journey, and another sweet ending.

Just when Osaka’s second or perhaps third tennis act looked set to take another frustrating and all-too familiar turn, she stormed back to beat Muchova, 1-6, 6-1, 6-3 in her biggest win since she became a mother in the summer of 2023. It means she will play her first third-round match at a Grand Slam since the 2022 Australian Open.

Muchova, the No. 20 seed in Melbourne, is an ascendant and gifted star who rose when Osaka was on the sidelines. She has the kind of all-court game that has become increasingly vital at the top of women’s tennis. Osaka, with her power baseline attack, hadn’t been able to solve it. At the U.S. Open in August, Muchova sliced and volleyed Osaka onto the next flight home from New York.

“She crushed me when I had my best outfit ever,” Osaka said on court. “She’s one of the best players out there.”

Osaka appears to have plenty going for her a year and a half on from giving birth to her daughter, Shai. A new and accomplished coach sitting courtside, in Patrick Moratoglou. A new dose of confidence from her first appearance in a final in nearly two years, and then Monday’s win over Garcia. The fist pumps and slaps of the left thigh between points have fresh vigour. She has shown flashes of her past self as a four-time Grand Slam champion in flickering moments, but now she has the luminous quality of a player honed for the present and for what is to come.

“With every match, she’s better,” Muchova said of Osaka.

“She’s played great matches here in Australia. I played even better at the start. I didn’t let her play the game. Then it switched.”

On day four of the first major of 2025, Osaka struggled to find answers for Muchova’s all-court attack from the start. She was down 5-0 after about 20 minutes, despite getting her chances to break Muchova’s serve in a couple of games. The set was gone after half an hour.

When the set ended, Osaka told herself to believe. In her best years, she had a distinct superpower. She played her best tennis at the most crucial moment. She always seemed to come up with a huge serve down the T, a torrid forehand within inches of the baseline or a backhand screeching down the sideline when she needed them most.

That has mostly been missing during the 13 months of this comeback. For stretches she has seemed like she can hang with the best players of this new, post-Serena Williams era. Then the big moment comes, and she can’t.

Osaka said after her first match that she has struggled with losing her focus during matches. She is not a confrontational person, she said, but her job is to fight other people, like a boxer but without the punching.

“It takes a lot of energy for me to know that I’m going to go fight against somebody,” she said.

“For me, that’s what my focus is. Obviously once it’s there, like, I say c’mon a lot and I’m yelling. It’s almost like I’m a different person. Up until it gets to that point, I overthink a little bit.

The fires have only made focusing more challenging.

“I’m not there, so I don’t know how bad it is or how bad it’s going to get,” she said.

For long enough on Wednesday afternoon, she was able to clear her mind and rediscover that essential superpower. She knew the score was ugly but she told herself she’d been just a few points away from making it close.

“I told myself, ‘Okay, you’re kind of on your way out, but you’re going to try to put your foot in the door,’” she said.

“I told myself to just swing, because that’s my game. I can’t be hesitant and allow her to push me around the court. I also tried to think that way with my serve, as well.”

Osaka got her teeth into the match early in the second set, lacing a series of deep, down-the-line backhands that sent Muchova sideways and backwards while finding the kind of groove on her first serve that sends every player’s spirits rising.

Naomi Osaka roared again and again on Wednesday in Melbourne. (Hannah Peters / Getty Images)

The power kept Muchova in the back of the court, unable to float forward and stick point-ending volleys as she does better than anyone in the game. Here was Osaka, the bully of old, sending her opponent scrambling every which way, stretching for serves, overmatched and unable to breathe.

Onto the third set they went. Now it was Muchova’s turn to try to lift her game to Osaka’s level, or maybe a click higher. She couldn’t.

Osaka got the decisive break points in the fifth game with a one-two punch from the title-winning years: a ripped cross-court forehand and then a backhand pass down the line. On the crucial point, she produced a deep backhand that Muchova could only block back wide.

Four games later, Osaka once more bullied her way to three match points. Muchova blasted away return winners to save two of them, but on the third Osaka dug the ball out with a looping lob that floated — perhaps with a little bit of fortune — onto the baseline. Muchova tried an over-her-head lob that went wide and Osaka bounced with joy.

The win gave her just what she was looking for. She has said she wants to play more this year than she did in 2024, but she also isn’t going to hang around if, as she put it earlier in her comeback, the results aren’t resulting. Belinda Bencic, another player returning to the WTA Tour after giving birth, is next.

“I have a lot of respect for all the players on tour, but the point of my life that I’m at right now, if I’m not above a certain ranking, I don’t see myself playing for a while,” she told reporters during the ASB Classic.

“I’d rather spend time with my daughter if I’m not where I think I should be and where I feel like I can be.”

Last year Osaka’s goal was to climb back into the top 20, or at the very least, the top 32, so she would be seeded at Grand Slams and not have to face the top players in the early rounds. She finished last year at No. 58, well below both goals, and she had to cut short her season after retiring from the China Open when locked at 1-1 against Coco Gauff.

She started this season strong, and could have looked at her time in the Australian summer as progress even if she had lost to Muchova again. Osaka was better than Garcia, who was playing her first match after a three-month mental health break. She wasn’t better than her here a year ago.

Muchova is as talented as anyone, able to beat any top player on any given day. There would have been no shame in losing to her after a run of horrible draws at Grand Slams, including a rising Emma Navarro at Wimbledon and Iga Swiatek at the French Open.

But there is the old Bill Parcells line that basically every athlete who grows up in America is well familiar with. According to the former New York Giants coach, “you are what your record says you are.”

She’s been nearly unbeatable since the start of the season. That’s what her record says she is.

(Top photo: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake / Associated Press)

Ohio State has looked dominant throughout the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff. 

After knocking out the top-seeded Oregon Ducks in the quarterfinals, the Buckeyes defeated the Texas Longhorns in the semifinal to advance to Monday’s championship game. But one member of the Buckeyes, who rose to prominence largely due to his social media presence, will not make the trip to Atlanta for the national title game. 

Caden Davis, a former walk-on, has been dismissed from the team, Ohio State Sports Information Director Jerry Emig confirmed to The Lantern.  

The sophomore defensive end never recorded a tackle during his brief stint as an Ohio State student-athlete. Davis has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers across popular social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.

University officials did not immediately provide details on what led to Davis’ dismissal.

(David Rosenblum/Icon Sportswire/File)

At times, Davis’ online content would provide followers with behind-the-scenes content of the Ohio State football team and athletic facilities. He would also document his life as a student on the Columbus, Ohio, campus.

As of Wednesday, at least one of Davis’ social media bios read, “Ohio State football #61,” while other accounts feature references to the football program.

An Ohio State football helmet (Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images/File)

In a since-deleted Instagram post, Davis suggested he was traveling to the Dallas area with the Buckeyes for the semifinal matchup with Texas in the Cotton Bowl. It was later determined that the photos Davis shared were from last season’s Cotton Bowl game. Missouri defeated Ohio State in that game.  

Ohio State last hoisted the national championship trophy in 2014, which was the inaugural College Football Playoff Championship.

Notre Dame punched its ticket to the national title game by defeating the Georgia Bulldogs in the quarterfinals before eliminating Penn State in the semifinal. The championship game kicks off at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Jan. 20 at 7:30 p.m. ET.

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