A Pacific Palisades man has shared heartbreaking video of the moment he realized his childhood home had been destroyed in the Palisades fire.
Henri Yonnet shot the video the morning after the fire broke out amid unrelenting Santa Ana storms and spread through neighborhoods near the Los Angeles County coast. Yonet recorded the harrowing drive to the area where she grew up, a community of about 23,000 people.
I hear Yonet describe the nightmarish scene.
“I was totally on adrenaline at that point,” Yonet told NBCLA.
His video showed houses in his neighborhood, including his first love’s corner house. These were milestones on a years-long journey to adulthood that were destroyed in minutes in one of California’s most destructive wildfires on record.
Yonet said there was still a small glimmer of hope as she headed to Via Livorno, but her hopes were dashed the moment she saw the burning rubble of her childhood home. As the overwhelming reality hits, I hear Yonet-san’s sobs.
“Once I saw it, I really… felt a sense of loss and was very sad,” Yonet said.
Yonet said she shared a video of the fire’s destruction to document what was lost.
His family purchased this house in the 1970s. Until last week, it was my 90-year-old father’s favorite place to work in his garden or sit in his wooden folding chair in the front yard.
“The kids were riding skateboards, we were riding dirt bikes, going into the canyon and riding bikes,” Yonet said.
Yonet has not returned to the area he evacuated to since then. He is one of many homeowners in the area who are still under evacuation orders more than a week after the fire started.
The Palisades Fire damaged an estimated 600 buildings and destroyed approximately 3,500. The fire, which had 31% containment, has burned more than 23,700 acres.
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