For one young Iowa woman forced to flee a Malibu fire just last month, the recent rash of Southern California fires is a case of Deja vu. For another once-local woman, it is unlike anything she has ever seen before.

“We looked out and could just see the Country Mart and all of the land on fire,” said Allexa Larson, from the living room of her parents’ West Des Moines home.

It was roughly a month ago that the 21-year-old was forced to make a last-minute escape from the burning hills of Malibu, California.

“We definitely got the brunt of it, which was very scary,” she told WHO-13’s Katie Kaplan.

During the second week of December the Pepperdine University senior was studying for Fall semester finals in the school’s library when the fire broke out nearby. Before she knew it, classes were canceled and the university was locked down as flames approached and black smoke enveloped the campus.

 “The president was there in the library with us and we were sheltering in place too,” she said. “It was really hard to see everything around starting to go up in flames and we didn’t know if it was buildings, or if it was like shrubs and trees.”

Larson was eventually allowed to leave to catch a last-minute plane ride home to Des Moines. She packed up a car and then picked up three freshmen who had been left stranded without a ride and headed to the airport.

“It was nice to get out of there as fast as we could,” she said.

Larson said they made their exit from the area only ten minutes before the local roadways were closed down. Once she landed back in the metro she was coughing and wheezing so badly that she had to seek medical care.

“It was a little scary to have to actually go to the doctor to get it figured out,” she said. “I was just put on some medication to help get the smoke and the substance out of my lungs and my sinuses and everything.”

The Franklin Fire destroyed structures, forced thousands of residents to evacuate, and burned more than 4,000 acres leaving a burn scar that could be seen from outer space, according to NASA. 

A month later, Larson is still home in the Metro for Christmas break, but she has been watching from afar as the situation unfolds yet again. The images coming out of Southern California look unreal- as if they are scenes out of a Hollywood apocalyptic blockbuster. As of Sunday night, the Palisades Fire had burned 300 structures and more than 17,000 acres with “extreme fire activity” continuing, according to Cal Fire.

“It’s kind of like felt like being in a tornado, you know?,” said Emilee Richardson, who drove home through the damaging winds that are making fire conditions so severe. “The whole night just was watching the news, watching social media, checking in with friends and family to see how everyone is doing.”

Richardson may have likened the weather to a Midwest twister but she said it was unlike anything she ever experienced growing up in the heartland. The once Des Moines resident and former Science Center of Iowa employee was working from her Los Angeles home on Wednesday afternoon after NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labratory where now she works, was evacuated.

“We’re keeping watch. It is really, really scary to see on the maps those those alerts getting closer and closer to JPL,” she said.

She was impacted by the Eaton Fire near the San Gabriel Valley, which on Wednesday night had claimed two lives, burned numerous structures and charred more than 10,000 acres, according to Cal Fire. On Wednesday afternoon, operations for The Deep Space Network, which is operated out of JPL and runs 24-seven to support spacecraft missions throughout the solar system and around the globe, was moved to a backup location for the first time since it opened in 1967, she said.

Although it smells like a campfire, Richardson said her home, which is roughly 10 miles away from the nearest fire, is safe for now. However, she had an emergency grab bag for her, and her cat “Hank”, packed and ready to go by the front door.