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00:02This documentary shows actions undertaken in extreme circumstances.
00:06If you're at risk from wildfire, please seek local emergency advice.
00:10Police!
00:13Lord help us.
00:14The building's on fire, man. We gotta go.
00:15I went outside and I could see the entire sky was lit up.
00:19Bulldozers literally bulldozing cars out of the road. It's like a zombie apocalypse.
00:23The combined fury of the Palisades and Eaton fires overwhelms firefighters and brings Los Angeles to its knees.
00:32I had no idea what I was getting into.
00:34Neighbors house on fire.
00:36When we turned on the news, David looked at me and he said, we have to go back.
00:42Those who battle the costliest fires in human history.
00:45It was like a fellows that was something out of hell.
00:48Now face an even greater fear.
00:50Dispatch says, we've got nothing. You're on your own.
00:54Can they survive the night?
00:56Oh, the embers are up here now, look.
00:59Oh, gonna get through it, okay?
01:01And will dawn bring relief or even greater devastation?
01:05Our father who art heaven, how is it like him? Like him and come.
01:16The rapid fire spread in Pacific Palisades and Malibu is a clear wake-up call for Los Angeles.
01:23But due to power blackouts, some in Altadena were not even aware of the danger.
01:31January 7th was an important day because it's my husband's birthday.
01:35There was no electricity, so we put on some candles.
01:37We still have, you know, gas, so I'll make a nice dinner.
01:40We had a wonderful dinner.
01:42It was better than when we had electricity because it was almost like a candlelight dinner.
01:48So we really enjoyed it.
01:51We went to the golf course and we looked out and we saw the mountains far beyond with a fire
01:57gradually actually starting, not raging at that point.
02:00Never in a million years thought that this fire was going to come into the neighborhood.
02:06I crossed the golf course, never.
02:09We thought, you know, we were safe.
02:11We eventually went to bed.
02:14Ironically, the fire wake-up call is heard loud and clear in Spain.
02:20My phone started ringing and it was my sister calling and she was saying,
02:25I think your house is on fire.
02:27I think your neighborhood is burning.
02:29I don't know that I've ever received a more shocking phone call.
02:33My mother lives with us.
02:34She's my next door neighbor.
02:36I'm in the bedroom and my daughter calls from Austin.
02:40She said, Mom, how are you?
02:42And I said, I'm fine.
02:43And I said, there's no power, but I'm going to go to bed.
02:47And I look out my kitchen window and it looked like it was burning right across the golf course, like
02:54very close.
02:55And I thought, oh my God, how could it get that close so fast?
03:00So I said, cops, we're out of here.
03:02And we went out the kitchen door and my daughter calls back from Austin.
03:06What's the plan, Mom?
03:07I said, the plan is to get away from the fire.
03:10And she said, she kept saying, you've got to have a plan.
03:13Where are you going?
03:14I said, away from the fire, Kate.
03:17That's my plan.
03:19With a morning work shift ahead, California Highway Patrol mechanic Felipe Carrillo has a very different plan.
03:26Sleep.
03:27I went to sleep and about one o'clock in the morning, I hear the sheriff's car saying evacuate.
03:34This is the sheriff's department.
03:37Evacuate now.
03:39The fire is coming.
03:41I opened the door and everything was red.
03:45And I was just like, if I leave, it's going to catch.
03:48So I figured, okay, I'm just going to try to soak the house.
03:51And I ran around the house and wet it.
03:53It was go, go, go, go.
03:5530 miles to the west on a hilltop in Malibu, Alec Gellis is face to face with fire and the
04:04harsh reality that it brings.
04:06By the time the fire got to where I was in Malibu, it was so big, it was so strong,
04:12it was so hot, there was nothing that could have stopped it.
04:15And it's like, I'm here with this hose.
04:16The mask isn't doing anything.
04:18It got to a point where the smoke was so thick, every breath that I took in had no oxygen.
04:25And I know I have to drop the hose and evacuate.
04:32We want to protect the things that we care about.
04:36And it's just a really bad feeling.
05:02So now it's time to move up to the next canyon and get prepared for it to come back to
05:07where I am, my house.
05:11Above all to Dina at Zorthian Ranch, Thomas and his flock face the inferno with an eerie sense of calm.
05:20The kitchen's right next to that.
05:21I don't see the kitchen got lit up yet.
05:24But that's just adjacent to it.
05:26So I imagine it's going to have a...
05:30The landscape was burning because manure burns and I didn't know that.
05:34I was like, you're kidding me.
05:35You're going to die from your own manures?
05:38At first, they knew I was their leader.
05:40I cared for them.
05:41I was calm the whole time.
05:42And I was keeping the animals calm.
05:45I'm just okay here with these guys.
05:48And tragic.
05:51But we're here protecting life.
05:53But you know what?
05:54This cleans the slate.
05:55I will tell you that.
05:58As they leave Zorthian Ranch, Alan and Andres cannot believe what they are seeing.
06:04We start making our way down off the private road.
06:08And the whole city was on fire.
06:10There wasn't a house that wasn't burning in our eyes.
06:13Everything was just kind of going at that point.
06:15I was just astonished that the rest of Altadena was completely in flames.
06:30It was shocking.
06:32I've never been to war, but it was just like...
06:35It was like a movie.
06:38Mondana and Alan awake to a battle they never expected to fight.
06:43At about 4 o'clock in the morning, our smoke alarms went off.
06:48You could see smoke in our bedroom.
06:51I opened the curtain and I see these winds that are filled with ember just swirling around our home.
06:58And I'm thinking, no way.
06:59No way are we going to survive this.
07:00Most would run for the hills.
07:03Mondana prepares for battle.
07:06I thought to myself very clearly that I need to be dressed warmly because this thing out there is a
07:13monster and I should be prepared for it.
07:15I come down and he's downstairs, again dressed, and he goes out the front door and I go out the
07:21back door.
07:22You know, after so many years of memory, we don't even need to think about it.
07:26We just do it.
07:27And as I run out to the front yard, I can feel the embers hitting my body.
07:34They're everywhere.
07:36I grab the hose and I start to hose down embers that are everywhere in our yard.
07:42My neighbor, Harry's house, his front yard was on fire.
07:46I look to my left and I see my husband is in our neighbor's home with a hose that he's
07:52taken from our home.
07:53And I start banging on their doors.
07:56And I look around, there's nobody there.
07:58It dawns on me suddenly that there's no one in this neighborhood.
08:02It's just Alan and I.
08:05In Malibu, Alec Gellis races to reach his home ahead of the flames.
08:10I'm driving down the hill, there's fire in the road, bushes are on fire, fire's up against my car.
08:16I'm watching the fire come closer to my neighborhood.
08:20I'm with a couple other guys from the neighborhood and we're just like, alright, round two, let's go.
08:26And it hits the burn line from the Franklin fire and just...
08:32...fizzles out.
08:34Ends.
08:34Guess what?
08:36The Franklin and the Woosley fire, the burnout of that fuel, stopped the fire from decimating Malibu.
08:50It's a blessing that the Franklin fire wasn't worse.
08:55But if that didn't happen, the Palisades fire could have taken and leveled all of Malibu.
09:01I have so much adrenaline running through my blood.
09:04I'm up, driving around, seeing if there's anything I can do to keep the fire from spreading further.
09:09There's fire going across the highway, there's houses on the beach on fire, there's houses on the hill on fire.
09:15Everywhere you look is on fire.
09:17A house that sold for $110 million, toast.
09:20My girlfriend at the time's house, leveled.
09:25In Altadena, Mandana sees that their roof is being bombarded by embers.
09:31I ran upstairs to the third floor.
09:34We have a hose bib on our third floor, which is very lucky.
09:37I just put it on and I look out.
09:45Our neighbor's homes were on fire.
09:48Everything was on fire.
09:50It was just horrible.
09:53I mean, I knew the people whose homes were on fire on Meadowbrook.
09:57Fires everywhere.
09:59Explosions everywhere.
10:01Hissing sound and this wind.
10:07These are our neighbors.
10:09They lost everything.
10:20In Altadena, Mandana Najafavadi cannot believe her eyes.
10:26I took my phone out of my pocket and I decided to take a video of this.
10:31And I'm glad I did.
10:34Because this is a neighborhood we walked every day.
10:38It's from our rooftop.
10:40A couple of neighbors' homes are running down.
10:44The fire department anywhere.
10:47Because the amber was so hot.
10:49When you come back, the fire came back again.
10:52So you had to do several times in order to really put on the fire.
10:57There was no time to be scared.
10:59My husband is putting out a fire underneath a tree across the street from our home.
11:06The hose was not long enough.
11:09So I had to get two buckets, one hand each.
11:12And I grabbed water from my swimming pool and then put it on fire.
11:16If these two trees that are massive would have caught fire,
11:20our neighbor's home would have caught fire.
11:21Our home would have caught fire.
11:23And he has bad knees.
11:26But, you know, not for one minute did I think that I would leave.
11:29That's the bottom line.
11:30We're trying to survive.
11:31We're trying to prevent the fire from spreading from one house to another house.
11:36There was always this fear, for sure, that something might happen to us.
11:39A fear that, you know, we might lose this battle.
11:43The Franco family has evacuated to nearby Pasadena,
11:47where they watch live updates on TV.
11:50I just kept praying for those people, those poor people,
11:56not ever realizing that in just a few short hours,
12:01the winds would shift and it would be my neighborhood.
12:06Courage Escamilla decides it is better to act than watch.
12:10All I could think about was that I needed to be up there.
12:12I had to find out, was my house still there?
12:15Was my street still there?
12:17So I'm going up there now.
12:22There were downed power lines all over the place,
12:24and people couldn't really get through.
12:26But I had my motorcycle so I could just weave in and around.
12:29I had to ride very carefully because I knew that everyone was panic driving.
12:33The whole time I was just riding past houses and seeing one on fire,
12:38and then another one reduced to rubble,
12:40then another one smoldering.
12:42That is what upset me the most because I knew that I was seeing a life that had been destroyed.
12:49In a lot of ways, it felt like watching corpses pass me by.
12:53I finally got to my street.
12:56Every single house on the south side of my street was gone.
13:00While on my side, there was like this strange mist almost that was like covering my house,
13:06almost like it was a ghost or something.
13:08And there's no fire, there's no flames anywhere.
13:11There's some smoldering branches, but that's about it.
13:16On Rich Snyder Street, four fire engines are providing much-needed relief and a chance to reflect.
13:23I called my neighbor and said,
13:25Alec, your house did not burn.
13:28He says, do you need me to come?
13:29And I said, yes.
13:30And he came back and joined the fight for the rest of the night.
13:33His neighbor comes over and he gives both of us a big hug.
13:37He just moved in.
13:38All his nice furniture is just trashed in his front door.
13:41And I made a joke, I said, I'm so sorry about your door, I'll buy you a new lock.
13:45He couldn't have been more grateful.
13:47And I grabbed a bottle of bourbon, 15-year-old bourbon, and we took a shot of whiskey.
13:53Fire's pretty much out.
13:54Winds are where they need to be.
13:57I know my neighbor now better than I know people that I've known for 10 years.
14:02We've got this bond that is forged in fire.
14:07But as dawn breaks, it leaves no doubt that many battles are just beginning.
14:13In the morning, a text message from a neighbor said,
14:17there's a fire behind your house, we're leaving now.
14:20I ran to the room and woke up my husband, and I said, we're burning.
14:25Immediately, we didn't even talk about it.
14:27He jumped up, we put our shoes on, and we just left.
14:31But driving back to Altadena on the morning of January 8th was complete horror.
14:51Oh no, the White House, oh no, it's gone.
14:56There was active smoke, just the thick, black smoke.
15:02And we were driving right into it.
15:06It's incredible.
15:07Three houses in a row.
15:09Wow.
15:09It's gone, huh?
15:11Oh, that one's going to go.
15:12Four houses in a row.
15:15This is the Mayfield family.
15:17Look at these houses are gone.
15:22No, this was such a...
15:25Oh no, this beautiful home is gone.
15:30This was the house I wanted to buy.
15:32Look, it's gone.
15:34I'm seeing these houses as we're getting closer to our house, just on fire.
15:39And I'm like, oh man.
15:41This is our corner.
15:43This is our corner.
15:44We're approaching the middle of the block, and I see a fire in the middle of the block.
15:48And my chest just kind of caves in, and I'm like, oh man, this is it.
15:54As we drove closer, we realized it was our neighbor, two houses from us, that was already gone.
16:03And when we pulled up to our home, it was our lawn that was burning.
16:10Our manzanitas were on fire.
16:14I can't believe this Oscar worked so hard to get his manzanitas to grow after 10 years of being on
16:20Deltadina.
16:22But you know what?
16:23If that's all it is, we'll take it.
16:24We'll take the manzanitas.
16:26Please save our house.
16:27I jump out of the car, go for the water hose, not a drip comes out.
16:34He didn't skip a beat, and he ran straight to the back and came out with two shovels.
16:39Hand one over to my wife, and I'm starting to dig and putting it on the grass.
16:45We were there the entire day, putting out these hot spots.
16:48It was like whack-a-mole.
16:49Another wind gust comes up, and you turn back around.
16:53They're on again.
16:56In Tuna Canyon, Nicholas Walker saved three homes.
17:00What concerns him most are the animals he could not evacuate.
17:05I asked God to protect them, and an answer to prayer was the following day.
17:13Sovereignty was there.
17:14I couldn't believe it.
17:17You could see the impact of the fire on him.
17:20He felt terror, I think.
17:23Our next-door neighbor, Kalena, is a very good horse, young woman.
17:28She said, we need to get him out of here.
17:30And she's a teenager, so she's unstoppable and fearless.
17:36So she mounted him and rode him out of the canyon.
17:48He was a little freaked because there was smoke everywhere, there's telephone poles.
17:54And you see a little bit of avoidance, sensing danger, hopping around.
18:02That's all him communicating, I'm terrified.
18:06She was able to communicate, I'm here to help you, but you've got to trust me.
18:12And she was able to communicate leadership enough for him to trust her lead.
18:25When Sovereignty reached L.A. Pierce College, the first thing that happens is a lot of neighing.
18:31They start sending out, hey, you're here.
18:36Is it you?
18:38Are you okay?
18:38All of that is happening.
18:40It's literally all of them running to him.
18:42They all sniff him.
18:44They want to make sure he's okay.
18:46They smell smoke.
18:48They smell his fears, sweat.
18:51They're highly sensitive beings.
18:54They really are.
18:56That's why I love them.
18:58Sovereignty is now safe.
19:01And at Zorthian Ranch, Thomas Messina and his flock can finally breathe easier.
19:07The crowd was all burned up and we're all kind of like looking at each other like, okay, we're going
19:12to stand here all day.
19:13You know, like, what do you do?
19:14So you're just kind of like, okay, guys, it's been fun, but I'm out, you know.
19:19And I was grateful that the livestock was alive, grateful that I was okay.
19:25And I was devastated because everything else was just gone.
19:34I make it back to the top and we start to see that, yeah, there's things still burning.
19:41It was devastating to see the ranch the way it was, to see the community the way it was.
19:47It was the only thing that I had as childhood memories was Altadena.
19:52Just that was kind of the bottom line there.
19:56My whole life I've seen fires around us, approach us, and they never hit us the way this one did.
20:05My dad's art was all destroyed.
20:08You see how vulnerable it is and how ephemeral it is.
20:14I'm glad my father wasn't here to see what he built destroyed.
20:19But I don't think he would want us to stop, and so we're not going to.
20:31As daylight broke, we could then see the extent of this catastrophe.
20:37Three homes right in front of us had burned to the ground by this point.
20:41I called 911 and it was busy.
20:44It was surreal to me that there was nobody on these streets putting out any of these fires.
20:50No one coming to rescue anyone.
20:53Hopefully, people would come.
20:55Fire engines would come.
20:57Somebody would come to try to see what is going on and address this devastation.
21:12After a few hours of much-needed sleep, Caleb Servan Lawler heads back to the Palisades
21:18for another day of doing everything he can to help.
21:22I got through because I have my EMT license.
21:25The houses are still on fire.
21:27We still need to evacuate.
21:28Just the evacuation area just moved over a mile.
21:33Everyone just started burning just a mile to the left.
21:35So instead of driving up the hill, now it's helping people on the coastline
21:38that are getting their houses burned into the ocean.
21:40Oh, it's a pickleball truck.
21:42Pickleball?
21:43Yeah, I know.
21:44Not anymore.
21:45There are one fire truck and one hose line and five firefighters
21:49trying to put out this $5 million home that is four stories.
21:53I can't do anything.
21:54Hey, do you want to trust me?
21:56No, it's a mail bomb.
21:57The one thing that I do think about this is I really don't think
22:00it would have ever been physically possible to stop this.
22:03The only way I really could have thought that it could have been handled
22:07is if there was like 200 freaking fire trucks at the bottom of the hill ready to go.
22:12And they all just went straight to the top and everyone took a house, house, house, house,
22:16which is impossible.
22:17It's like the wind and the trash and the location and everything was just impossible.
22:22I don't see how this could have been done any other way.
22:27High above the palisades, Andy Tanglin has a commanding view of the destruction.
22:35The morning of the 8th, the whole sky was black and dark.
22:39It was just devastation.
22:42I think we're good once it blows over.
22:49We're able to save the house.
22:51Woohoo!
22:52We did our job by saving what we could throughout the night.
22:57I'm going to die down up here, so we're good.
23:01We saved it.
23:02It was time to go eat breakfast, so I had an omelet and hash browns, coffee.
23:10It was pretty weird eating breakfast, just looking at everyone, thinking, man, you guys
23:16don't have a clue of me and my buddy.
23:18It just experienced.
23:20I mean, it was just unbelievable.
23:24The fire department actually thanked us for staying.
23:27They called us heroes for saving that house.
23:30They only had two engines on that whole hill.
23:33They actually said that if the fire didn't stop where we were, it would have took out another
23:40whole area of neighborhoods in the palisades.
23:44Thanks to an all-night effort, the Getty Villa has also survived the firestorm.
23:50There were lots of flare-ups, but they weren't necessarily next to the buildings.
23:54And I was pretty tired.
23:56I was pretty knocked out.
23:57I said, all right, I'm going to just kind of walk around and take some pictures.
24:00Being able to tell the leadership, et cetera, that it's fine, picture says a thousand words.
24:08The Getty was fine.
24:10The Villa was fine.
24:12Smoke damage.
24:13There was soot everywhere.
24:16We've had some staff members that lost their homes.
24:20And one of them said, you know, I wish we'd made a list of the things we most wanted out
24:26of the house.
24:27And the other person said, I had a list, but my husband forgot where it was.
24:36Across Altadena, people who evacuated, like the Francos and Courage,
24:40returned to try and save their streets.
24:44I saw about two neighbors just down the street.
24:47They had the idea of using buckets from their neighbor's swimming pool.
24:52And then we started like putting out the spot fires that were still on our street.
24:56And before I knew it, there was about seven, eight, nine of us that were all using whatever
25:01we could to put out whatever fires we could find on our side of the street, because we
25:04didn't want our side of the street to have the same fate as the other side.
25:09We would go get water from his pool and put out another hot spot.
25:14I'm not a firefighter, but we were making a difference.
25:17We were fighting.
25:18Our shoes underneath were melted because all day we were standing on this hot ash or whatever
25:25it was.
25:27I pretty much used my motorcycle as like a scouting device and scout out the area within
25:31three blocks.
25:32I would come back like every few minutes and say like, hey, this house is on fire.
25:35This house looks manageable.
25:37This house I'm worried about because there's a big tree next to it.
25:41It's like this war zone where, you know, people are just kind of coming out of the debris.
25:46They came to us and they said, do you need help?
25:49I had a young man who was 16.
25:52I said, why do you come?
25:53I said, because I don't want fire go to my street to burn my house.
26:00And I said, oh, that's great.
26:01Come, let's do it together.
26:04They were so sweet.
26:05They were so eager.
26:06As the hours went on, there were a legion of young people.
26:10I was very glad that Alan could ease up a little bit on what he was doing because he
26:15was exhausted.
26:16The water was very heavy, especially after you go back and forth so many times.
26:23I'm eternally grateful to whoever came to help us.
26:27And that's when we began that bucket brigade, physically carrying buckets of water up to the
26:33next person and then making my way back.
26:36The fact that our neighborhood was saved by a bucket brigade is almost incomprehensible
26:42to me.
26:43But what I think about more is the ingenuity that it took to recognize what a resource
26:50that backyard pool could be.
26:53I thank God that we didn't get that evacuation order because had we got that order, we would
26:58have left and our home would have burned and many more of our neighbors' homes would have
27:03burned.
27:04Every single person in my neighborhood knows that what Alan and Mondana did saved all of
27:10us.
27:12When you look down below, like a bird's eye view of my street, you'll see a small pocket of
27:17homes, 14 in fact, that all survived.
27:20And that was because my neighbors and I worked together to save those homes.
27:25As she drives back, Tarika Roberts hopes she will be one of the lucky ones.
27:31Everything was still on fire.
27:33Firefighters were everywhere.
27:35It was still chaos.
27:37And when I got to my neighborhood, I could see a lot of the structures had already burned
27:42down.
27:43And as soon as I got to my block, I made a left, and the entire block was gone.
27:54Everything.
28:06Oh, my God.
28:37It hit us pretty tough.
28:39My oldest son, he just stood there in shock.
28:47Across the street, I could hear things blowing up, so I told my son we had to go.
28:54We stood there for maybe two minutes, taking it in, and we got out of there.
29:01In Pacific Palisades, the Price family expect a similar fate.
29:07When we were driving in, there wasn't a house standing on either side.
29:13We were absolutely shocked to see everything leveled.
29:19Everything had burned to the ground.
29:22Chimneys were standing, metal frames, structures were there, but there was nothing.
29:28It was rubble.
29:28I was driving to my empty lot, is where I was headed.
29:33And as we round our corner, we look up, and we can see our roof line.
29:39Our house was there.
29:41And our neighbor's house was there.
29:43The only two houses in an eight-block radius that was standing.
29:48And we were in absolute disbelief.
29:52It was still so smoky inside, and covered in drifts of thick ash and soot.
30:01Our firefighting efforts are what saved our home.
30:05No one was coming.
30:07Nobody was going to do it for you.
30:08It was up to you and you alone.
30:13Coming up, those who lost homes, and those who did not, come together to reset, renew, and rebuild.
30:22We want to do everything we can to demonstrate our gratitude, our love for, our commitment to the people and
30:31the place.
30:44In Pacific Palisades, Tanner and Orly retraced the path they took when the fires were raging.
30:53We were literally right up on this ridge.
31:02Watching it.
31:05When I came up here to document the fires and everything, it was all green and lush, and now it's
31:10just, everything's turned to ash up here.
31:14It's just super eerie.
31:22I've been in towns destroyed by tornadoes, but this was, it was like, it was different.
31:30Everything was just gone.
31:31It was just burned to a crisp.
31:36This is the house that we originally came across and tried to save.
31:42We were literally right here putting water down.
31:53This is my house.
31:56Welcome.
31:57Welcome.
31:59Orly didn't want to come because it was just too hard for him.
32:02But we went up there and even from, like, a far off distance, I could tell that it just, yeah,
32:10just didn't make it.
32:12The front door was here.
32:16The house was a pile of ashes and steel beams.
32:22Oh, my skateboard.
32:24Oh, my skateboard.
32:24Wait, no way.
32:25Well, a wheel.
32:28I think that I want to feel something.
32:32And you just don't.
32:32The thing is, I really don't.
32:34I feel like laughing, but I also feel like crying.
32:39And in the middle, I don't really feel like anything at all.
32:42The plants that I doused with water, look at this.
32:45They're all still here.
32:46Look at that.
32:48So right now, you're probably in my parents' bedroom, right by a couch.
32:53Even though it brought my family together and we stayed close and we're supporting each other, my parents are supporting
32:58me incredibly, and I'm trying to support them.
33:01Because we don't have this central house, location, gathering place, it separates us.
33:09Now we rebuild, I guess.
33:14Nani Nam hopes that she and her four dogs still have a home to return to.
33:19I didn't think that my house was going to be destroyed because everything was drenched.
33:23I drenched the roof, the patios, and I locked all the windows.
33:27And then when I did go back, it was almost as if my house was cremated.
33:42I walked down that house for 16 years.
33:45I filled it with everything I loved.
33:47Everything that I loved.
33:51And it's kind of weird to say this, but I never got a chance to say goodbye to my house.
33:59It's a really unique experience to walk through a tragedy like this amongst all of your friends.
34:07I just remember a group of eight of my friends, I think six out of eight of them, one by
34:13one, their parents' homes were being lost.
34:16To experience tragedy and loss in a communal way, I mean, you just knew that you could always reach out
34:24to somebody who knew exactly what to say or to just listen.
34:34The closest I can come to describing it is for those who are old enough to remember the twilight zone,
34:40one minute you were living your normal life, your everyday happy, normal life.
34:45And the next day, I felt like I was living in an alternate reality.
34:57It was only when we were back in Southern California that we started to learn these incredible heroic stories of
35:04so many of our neighbors who stayed to fight and defend our whole block.
35:09We needed to see our neighborhood with our own eyes, and we walked up that hill stopping to pay respects
35:17and to cry together at each home.
35:22And we stopped in front of what had been my neighbor, Fred's house.
35:30There was no sign that it had ever been there, except that in the middle of this debris field, there
35:37was this absolutely spectacular fireplace and hearth.
35:42And it was covered in beautiful early 20th century handmade tiles, and those kiln-fired tiles survived because they were
35:55born of fire.
35:57Eric's response is to create a unique non-profit to help those who lost homes.
36:04Paltadena was built by craftsmen who really valued those kinds of handmade arts and crafts.
36:10Our Save the Tiles project started with my daughter, Lucy.
36:15She said, Dad, we have to save it.
36:18In that moment, it became very clear that small, simple gesture, trying to rescue the fireplace of our neighbors, could
36:29be the model for the way we come back as a community.
36:32And so every day, a team of now hundreds of volunteer Altadenas are working together to try to save everything
36:43before it's lost forever.
36:47Across Los Angeles, people who've been watching in horror respond from the heart.
36:53There were several sites where there were so many donations that they were overwhelmed.
37:01They came to just give back, to give whatever they had, whatever extra food they had. A lot of people
37:06went out and bought stuff, too.
37:08There were lines with hundreds of cars open, just donating everything to all the survivors, everyone that needed help. I
37:14thought it was really cool.
37:15To see Los Angeles just coming out like this is super encouraging.
37:1920 or 30 people that just show up, which is crazy.
37:22So it's really cool and encouraging to see everyone just coming out, helping everyone out.
37:27So please help yourself, folks, with Chick-fil-A sandwiches.
37:30That is absolutely the spirit of the community that we know.
37:35I went to the World Central Kitchen site in Pasadena and this very cheerful woman rushes up to me with
37:45a box of bagels and she says,
37:47Oh, are you okay? Would you like some bagels? And that was movie star Jennifer Garner.
37:54Someone texted me and said, I've never met you, but you live on my street and I'm having a dinner
38:01and I'd like you to be there.
38:02And that's how we get through this.
38:05An event like this brings out the very best in people.
38:10You know, you really see what people are made of.
38:14The outpouring of assistance is inspirational.
38:18But what Erin Kyle wants more than charity are answers.
38:23I appreciate every effort from every firefighter and they are not to blame in any way, shape or form.
38:29They did the best they could under horrible circumstances.
38:32When I talk to a fireman at Station 69, to hear from the fireman's mouth, we had no water.
38:41We couldn't help people.
38:43It gives me chills because that's how you know how bad this really was.
38:48This is not social media stories.
38:50This is not people with a political agenda.
38:52This is a real fireman standing in front of me in tears saying, I had no water.
38:59I could only do so much.
39:01That's a problem.
39:13Los Angeles, California is well known as a hotbed for wildfires.
39:19We live in a fire ecosystem.
39:21It's been here a lot longer than we have.
39:23When you move into that ecosystem, you have to adapt to it.
39:28There's going to come a time when Mother Nature is going to say, I don't care what you did.
39:31I'm coming through, particularly when houses are built so close together.
39:35One house on fire in the middle of a neighborhood turns into five houses on fire, which turns into a
39:40block on fire.
39:43The environment that we live in now has changed, and we are going to have to do more.
39:52Towns that never had to worry about this before, suddenly this is a daily fear and concern.
40:02We have fire trucks that are of the last century.
40:07Fire stations being put to rest.
40:11We need to really understand that fire is here to stay.
40:18The reservoir up in the highlands had been drained in February of 2024 because it had a tear in the
40:26cover.
40:27Our community went the entire fire season with no water in the reservoir.
40:36I wish they told us there's no water in the reservoir, the fire hydrants don't work, the fire's just going
40:42to destroy your home.
40:44Get out now.
40:45No one told us that.
40:47Your first inkling is, oh, the reservoir run out.
40:49Well, no, that wasn't really fundamentally the issue.
40:51The issue was so many homes went up in flames so quickly that all the water lines broke.
40:55Metal has a threshold.
40:57Look at all the pictures of all the I-beams.
41:01If it's hot enough to melt I-beams, it's hot enough to melt water pipes.
41:06Infrastructure should all be underground.
41:09Bro, we gotta go.
41:11We can't do this.
41:12I think a really big thing that people can do to help mitigate is literally just prepping your house for
41:19it.
41:21That's super dangerous.
41:23We saw many homes that were destroyed where they had neglected to trim their landscape.
41:31Going forward, we're going to be looking at California native plants.
41:38Those varieties seem to be less flammable and better resilient to regrow quickly.
41:45I'm building back.
41:47I'm praying that most of my neighbors build back.
41:49But if they can't and if they don't, it's definitely understandable because it's a big job.
42:00People always say, you know, why are you not so depressed?
42:03You've lost your house and you've lost this and you've lost that.
42:05And I'm like, I didn't lose my cello.
42:13I didn't lose my instrument.
42:14I didn't lose my bow.
42:16I didn't lose any family members.
42:18I called my building contractor at 6 o'clock the day of the fire and said, put me first in
42:24line for rebuilding.
42:30I'm going to rebuild, but make it 100% fireproof, bulletproof.
42:34I am rebuilding.
42:35I don't think that we can live in fear.
42:38And this is home.
42:41How wonderful.
42:43Every building my father built was unique.
42:46He loved what Frank Lloyd Wright had said when someone asked him what his greatest building was.
42:51And Frank Lloyd Wright answered, the next one, my friend, the next one.
42:57The heroes of this story are the people who lost everything and every day they wake up and they think
43:05about rebuilding.
43:06Those are the people I really admire.
43:12The only things I care about, really, are my kids.
43:16I might have cared about a few more things before that I really, I don't care about anymore.
43:21I think the experience has, has humbled us and made us see that it was just a house and that
43:29home is wherever we are.
43:31Smile.
43:34I think the Palisades can come back.
43:36The more time I spend up there, the brighter the sun is outside, the greener everything gets, the more hope
43:43I have that it can return.
43:45The flowers are in bloom again, the birds are out and you just kind of feel like, um, it's going
43:52to be okay.
43:54.
44:07Thirty-one people lost their lives during the Palisades and Eton fires.
44:12Over 16,000 homes and buildings were destroyed.
44:18The combined cost could exceed 250 billion dollars.
44:24The impacts of the fires will be felt for decades.
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