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The first thing Miles Soboroff noticed Tuesday morning was the wind.
It was around 8 a.m. and he was sitting at his computer at his in-laws’ house on the west side of Pacific Palisades in the Marques Nords neighborhood. He and his pregnant wife, Shana Tavangarian Soborov, are living there temporarily while they build a house nearby.
“The trees were blowing really hard and the wind was really loud,” said Soboroff, 39, co-founder of Zab’s Datil Pepper Hot Sauce. “I was nervous about that.”
Part of Soboroff’s anxiety stemmed from an incident just a week ago. He and his wife woke up around 1:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day to a wildfire burning on a nearby ridge. It grew to eight acres before it was extinguished by the Los Angeles Fire Department.
“It was pretty scary,” he said. “And the wind wasn’t strong at all.”
However, this time an eerie wind was blowing.
Soboroff was on a Zoom call for work around 10:20 a.m. when she smelled smoke. He missed the meeting and went out to his balcony to find a fire burning in almost the same spot where the fire had been a week earlier. This time the fire was even bigger.
“I didn’t hear any sirens or anything,” he said. “It was very windy and dry and the wind was pushing in our direction.”
“I think I have to go,” Soboroff told one of her two sisters-in-law, who was also at the house, with a somber voice.
He called 911 and was told firefighters were already on their way. By the time I hung up, I could hear their sirens.
Soboroff then called the wife of a real estate agent who was meeting a client (another local) for coffee in Palisades Village. Shanna said she initially didn’t know what to make of the fire, considering it was relatively minor a week ago.
“We ignored it until my husband started taking it seriously,” she said.
Soboroff said his wife suggested they come to the house to retrieve her belongings, but Soboroff said, “No, I’m not going to do that.”
They hung up. It’s finally time to leave. But first I had to get a pet. Soboroff held her in-laws’ dog, Bambi, and her own dog, Zabu. He also scooped up the kibble, along with his laptop, car keys, and some toiletries.
“I probably could have gotten out of there within four or five minutes,” he said.
By noon, the couple had arrived at Soboroff’s parents’ home in West Los Angeles. Steve Soboroff, former chairman of the Los Angeles Police Commission, said that once his son and daughter-in-law arrived, he and his wife left for their home. in the Coachella Valley.
“We left to make room for them,” the elder Soboroff said.
Steve Soboroff, a prominent real estate executive who previously served as CEO of the Playa Vista development, said each of his five children, including NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff, had been evacuated from their Los Angeles-area homes. He said he was doing it.
“This is more than just a fire,” Steve Soboroff said. “Contain the fire, build a ring around the fire. It’s like a thousand fires. It’s impossible. It reminds me of the Great Chicago Fire. We’ve never seen anything like this here before because of the density. I don’t know anything that happened. That’s just the worst case scenario.”
Miles Soboroff and his wife needed another move. As the fire spread on Tuesday, they decided to take shelter in a friend’s house far away in Venice.
On Wednesday, Soboroff, who grew up in the Palisades, wondered what else she could have taken from her in-laws’ house if she had had more time.
He lamented the possibility of losing his wife’s wedding and engagement rings.
She left her shoes at home with her shoes off – for the first time in her life – because her hands were swollen from pregnancy, he said.
On Wednesday afternoon, Soboroff learned that her in-laws’ home had been destroyed in a fire. My sister-in-law’s property was also burnt. The fate of the new home, which has been under construction for about 15 months, was still unknown. He and his wife thought about the nursery they had built for their unborn child, due to be born in about a month, and wondered if it was still standing.
“Our whole nursery school…I don’t know,” Soboroff said.
Now, Shana’s client has even more devastating news. Her house burned down.
“Nothing is clear about the situation,” Soboroff said.
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