In January 2025, devastating wildfires tore through California, destroying thousands of homes and forcing mass evacuations across the state. Fanned by unusually high winter temperatures, prolonged drought conditions, and fierce Santa Ana winds, the blazes became some of the most destructive early-year wildfires in California history. Communities from Southern California up through wine country were ravaged, with tens of thousands displaced and billions of dollars in property losses reported.
Among the countless individuals affected was Primus guitarist Larry “Ler” LaLonde, whose home — and nearly all of his prized musical gear — was reduced to ashes. In a candid conversation with Guitar World, LaLonde revealed the scale of his loss.
“That’s been one of the craziest components… I haven’t gotten a full count yet. The last I looked, I was up to, like, 58 guitars. So yeah, tons. My whole studio of recording stuff… and here’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life: I had this hard drive, a 12-gig hard drive, just sitting around on the desk. It was just for these situations, and I probably ran past it 20 times while pulling stuff out of the house and into the car.
I never thought to grab that hard drive. It was just the dumbest thing in the world. I don’t know where that mental block came from because that’s what it was for. So, that’s kind of a bummer. But yeah, that was the craziest thing.”
The loss included an extensive collection of guitars built up over decades, much of it irreplaceable. Thankfully, the guitar community rallied to help. Paul Reed Smith personally reached out to LaLonde, sending him two “amazing” PRS guitars after learning that only one of his PRSs survived the fire.
When asked about the most sentimental items he lost, LaLonde pointed to one guitar in particular: “There’s one Strat that I had on all the first Primus records, like on Sailing the Seas of Cheese. That’s the guitar I’m holding in that picture. I had that guitar since high school, and that one was in there [the fire].”
Still, LaLonde did manage to save a few precious items before fleeing the flames — including a unique double-neck guitar gifted to him by Rush legend Alex Lifeson.
“The first thing that I grabbed when I was like, ‘We’ve got to get the hell out of here,’ was the double-neck that Alex Lifeson gave me. So, there’s some stuff that made it out of the house, but a lot that didn’t. But one that comes to mind that didn’t was that Strat, which I used up until I started playing the PRS.”
For LaLonde, the tragedy is deeply personal — but it’s also part of a much larger disaster that affected countless Californians. The January 2025 wildfires were a sobering reminder that even in the middle of winter, California’s wildfire season can strike with little warning and leave devastation in its wake.
In January 2025, a series of catastrophic wildfires in Southern California – most notably the Eaton Fire in Altadena (≈14,021 acres) and the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades (≈23,448 acres)—claimed at least 29 lives, evacuated over 200,000 residents, and razed more than 18,000 structures, including over 9,400 in Eaton and nearly 6,800 in Palisades.
The economic toll was staggering: estimates place total damages from property loss, business disruption, and regional economic impact at anywhere from $95 billion to over $250 billion, potentially making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
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