California Woman Flees Palisades Home 21 Years After Grandparents Lost Their Home in Wildfire (Exclusive)

A lifelong California resident who fled her Pacific Palisades apartment amid the devastating Los Angeles wildfires says this is the second time she's been closely touched by a natural disaster, as her grandparents' home burned down 21 years ago.

Tabitha Snavely tells PEOPLE she woke up on Tuesday to an evacuation alert and initially "wasn't too concerned."

"I just took a screenshot and I sent it to my mom, and a few minutes later, she called me and said, 'Hey, isn't Palisades Drive like, 400 feet from your apartment?', and that's when I kind of realized how close it was to me," Snavely says. "So I just as soon as I heard that it was, you know, a block away, I started throwing as as many clothes as I could in a suitcase to get out of there."

Snavely quickly fed her dog and packed her bag with just moments to spare.

"By the time I did all that, there was an emergency, immediate evacuation order that came through. And I started smelling the smoke in my room, in my apartment, and I was like, 'Oh, I need to go now,' " she adds.

A video posted on Snavely's TikTok shows her leaving her apartment amid heavy smoke and heavy traffic, as countless others also receive their evacuation orders.

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"As soon as I exited the parking garage of my building, I saw hundreds of cars on West Sunset," she says.

While she has family in San Diego, Snavely ultimately opted to travel "as far as possible" from the fires, which have jumped and spread over wide swaths of Los Angeles, in some cases burning down entire neighborhoods.

At 22 years old, Snavely has lived in California her entire life.

"I was born and raised here," she says, adding: "I'm pretty familiar with fires. My grandparents' house burnt down 21 years ago [in the] San Bernardino fire. So I been around the block with this kind of situation, unfortunately."

And while fires are nothing new for a Californian, the sheer size and scale of the devastation of the ongoing fires are something else entirely.

"My grandparents' house was the only house that burnt down in that fire [21 years ago], in like a five mile radius ... But this one, it's so widespread," she says.

In the days since she left her apartment, Snavely has remained updated via the Watch Duty app, which tracks wildfires and updates its maps in real time.

Just one hour before speaking to PEOPLE, she says she checked the app to find that her apartment was in a "bright red area" of the map, adding: "I got an email from my building saying that there's either smoke damage, water damage or fire damage. So I'm not really 100% sure if everything I have is on fire or not."

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As she awaits more news, Snavely is doing her best to remain calm and keep up-to-date with others via social media.

"I've been really lucky," she says of sharing her situation on TikTok. "I've received majority positive comments of people sending well wishes and hoping that I was able to get out and everything."

Still, she adds, there have been some comments that demostrate "a lack of empathy."

"I've been getting a lot of comments of people saying, 'Oh, the Palisades is just rich. Everyone can afford to rebuild,' " she says. "I personally can't. I work multiple minimum wage jobs. The building I live in is super blue collar ... I know people who have lived there 40, 50, 60 years, who bought their homes when it was affordable, but now, if their home burns down, they can't afford to rebuild. They're retired, they don't have any income, and all of their memories are gone."

Click here to learn more about how to help the victims of the L.A. fires.

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