Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass shared during a Thursday virtual community council meeting that her brother was among the thousands who lost their homes in the Southern California Palisades Fire.
“The loss that you’re going through, I share indirectly. It’s hit my family too,” Bass said. “My brother, who has lived in Malibu for 40 years, been through many fires, evacuated many times — this time didn’t get away.”
The meeting, attended by nearly 1,000 people via Zoom, included Bass and other public officials addressing the community.
Bass shared that the house lost in the fire “was my family home where we went on the holidays” and described the experience as “a type of shock and grief that is trauma that will be with us for a long time.”
According to CAL FIRE, the Palisades Fire is 77 percent contained as of Friday afternoon. The other major blaze in the area, the Eaton Fire, is 95 percent contained. The two fires have torched over 37,000 acres in total.
Bass is not the only official who lost a house to the fires. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman shared that his sibling also lost a home in the Pacific Palisades Fire. Hochman said his sister’s house on Swarthmore Avenue was completely destroyed.
“It was truly an apocalyptic scene as the winds were blowing, the fires were still going on,” Hochman said. “It’s a disaster. I thought I saw disasters back in the ’90s when we got hit with fires, floods, earthquakes, and riots, but that pales in comparison to what I was seeing.”
Many residents are growing increasingly frustrated about being unable to access their homes in areas designated for mandatory evacuation. Bass and other officials assured the community that they aim to increase access to the affected areas in the coming week.
The weather forecast predicts light rain over the weekend. In response, the mayor issued an emergency executive order on Tuesday to protect burned areas that may be vulnerable to debris flow and mudslides. For many evacuees, the incoming rain only heightens their urgency to recover what they can from their homes before further damage occurs from the water.
Hundreds of workers have been deployed to the Pacific Palisades area, shutting off broken pipes, removing fallen tree limbs, clearing roadways, and inspecting homes, according to City Councilwoman Traci Park, who also spoke during the meeting.
Park acknowledged the challenges of granting access to the area, noting that it is “still in emergency mode” and that the anticipated rainfall will only complicate matters in what she described as “currently a toxic mess” across the five neighborhoods ravaged by the fire.
Park shared her experiences visiting the destroyed communities.
“Personally, if I see a clay pot or a stone figurine and I can reach it, I’m leaving it where I think your front door was,” said Park. “So when you come back, there will be something familiar, not just a pile of ash.
“I want you to know when you do come back, it is going to be hard to see your home and your community. It’s mostly gone, and the scale of the loss is certainly staggering. But we don’t want you to see it alone. And we don’t want you to feel unsupported.”
