Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Thursday that her brother was among the thousands of people left homeless in the Palisades fire.
“I indirectly share the loss you are experiencing. My family has been affected,” Bass said at a Pacific Palisades Community Council meeting. “My brother, who has lived in Malibu for 40 years, has been through many fires and evacuated many times, but this time he couldn’t escape.”
Bass and other elected officials spoke via Zoom to about 1,000 people who attended the volunteer organization’s meeting.
The mayor, who was attending a cocktail party at the Ghanaian embassy when the fire broke out, said his brother’s house was “my parents’ house, where I often go on holidays.”
Losing a home is “a kind of shock and sadness that will stay with us for a long time,” she says.
Los Angeles Township Atty. Nathan Hockman said he also has a brother who lost his home in the Pacific Palisades.
His sister lived on Swarthmore Street, he said. Her house was destroyed.
“The wind was blowing, the fire was still burning, it was just an apocalyptic scene,” he said. “It’s a disaster. I thought I saw a disaster in the ’90s with fires, floods, earthquakes and riots, but it pales in comparison to what I was seeing.”
Bass and other officials said they hope to increase access next week for residents who are increasingly frustrated with not being able to access their homes inside the mandatory evacuation zone.
Light rain is forecast for the weekend. Governor Bass issued an emergency executive order Tuesday to shore up burned-out areas of Los Angeles that are vulnerable to landslides and debris flows.
For many evacuees, the coming rains will only increase their desire to search their abandoned homes for anything they can salvage before they are flooded.
During a Zoom call, Los Angeles City Council member Tracy Park, who represents the Pacific Palisades, said hundreds of workers had entered the area to shut off broken pipes, clean up nails, maintain roads and remove broken trees. The branch was removed and the house was inspected, he said.
She has been calling for increased access to the area, but said everything is “still in emergency mode.”
She said fire-ravaged areas were “currently in toxic chaos” and future rains would further complicate the situation.
Park became emotional as she described her time in the devastated area.
“Personally, if I can find an earthenware pot or stone figurine and can reach it, I will leave it where I think the entrance would have been,” Park said, holding back tears. “So when you come back, you’ll see something familiar and not just a pile of ash.
“We want them to know that when they come back, it will be difficult to see their homes and communities,” she added. “Most are gone and the scale of the loss is certainly staggering. But we don’t want you to go through it alone. And we don’t want you to feel unsupported. there is no.”
Park told residents they would see “a lot of firefighters and city workers” if they were allowed to return to their neighborhoods.
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