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Erin Burnett Outfront
6 Now Dead In L.A. Fires, Expected To Rise, Scenes Still "Chaotic". Aired 7-8p ET
Aired January 09, 2025 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[19:00:34]
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: And good evening. I'm Erin Burnett with the breaking news. We are live tonight from Pacific Palisades, California, one of the hardest hit and most devastated neighborhoods right now in California as the fires are raging so far uncontained at this hour.
The Pacific Palisades Fire zero percent contained, we understand right now and in this neighborhood house after house, as far as the eye can see, the schools, the churches, homes, just completely and utterly destroyed.
Winds set to pick up again in these next few hours. And as we anticipate that a new fire has also broken out that we are aware of right now, none of them right now, of the five major fires that we understand are under control at this point, they're trying to start to contain them, as these winds pick up. There are six deaths so far reported. We don't yet know the full extent of what the death toll will be. It's impossible to even know that in these moments that we are in.
But this is what this residential neighborhood looked like just a few days ago. One of the most beautiful neighborhoods and this entire country, frankly, Pacific Palisades, California. There's a look at a basketball hoop -- just a normal, normal part of daily life.
That basketball hoop is actually just behind where we are now, looking like something destroyed as part of a war zone strike. White wall with a mailbox that's just across the street from where we are. Just days ago, pristine, perfect, now, utterly destroyed.
Part of this hellscape, and that's really what it is. And, you know, as we were flying in today, just we could see the smoke. You actually, it's a beautiful sunny day, absolutely beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky, perfect blue skies.
And then just in the distance, it starts to get hazy. That red, smoky air, you see the billowing smoke. And even in a Boeing 767, cabin starts to fill with that acrid smell of smoke, which we are here and I don't know over this hour, you'll see some of the ash coming down. Just -- just big chunks of ash coming down the air, smelling of chemicals, of plastics, of all of the things that have burned to the ground here of modern life. And the economic toll, we understand could be the greatest of any
wildfires in U.S. history, even as we have no idea of the extent of the damage. As these winds are picking up again, and firefighters are trying to assess how big this is and to try to get control and containment of these fires.
Nick Watt is OUTFRONT with me, and he is in a different section of Pacific Palisades. So the same destruction, the same smells.
Nick, how worried right now are officials from what you've been hearing about these winds that are expected to pick up in these next few hours and really potentially last over the next day?
NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Well, Erin, they have taken advantage of this lull in the wind to try and get some sort of containment around these blazes because it has been very difficult with those high winds to get a handle on these fires, to get planes in the air to help with the fight. The fear, Erin, as you just said, is this is just a lull and we're going to have more the winds are going to pick up, then were going to have another Santa Ana event next week.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, there's the red plane swooping in to save us.
WATT (voice-over): Sadly, a little too late for this fleeing family. This morning, we found what's left of their home. Nothing.
Thousands of homes have been lost across the county, plus businesses and more than $50 billion worth of damage. But the winds finally eased. So now they can attack these flames from the air. All last night we heard the planes are reassuring sound in a fire, but winds will pick up again, blow through Friday night and get stronger again next week.
More than 6,000 personnel now fighting the worst fires in the history of this great city.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sewer, water, your power system and the transportation system have all been significantly damaged.
WATT: We know the depth of the devastation. We can see it, the death toll. Well, it's just too early to tell.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At one point, well be able to do a more thorough search of these impacted areas. Some of them look like a bomb was dropped in them, where we will be able to bring in canines and other things to help us. Hopefully not discover too many fatalities. That's our prayer.
WATT: Forty-three acres burned in Hollywood last night.
[19:05:02]
Hollywood, chaos in such a tight urban environment. In Santa Monica, a sunset to sunrise curfew kicked in last night as the Palisades Fire threatens. So far across L.A., 20 alleged looters arrested, accused of preying on houses left standing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shame on those who are preying on our residents during this time of crisis.
Here in Pacific Palisades, where entire neighborhoods are just gone, arson investigators are today on the ground and the post-mortem is already underway. Did the L.A. mayor's cuts to the Fire Department budget hamper the effort?
MAYOR KAREN BASS (D), LOS ANGELES: There were no reductions that were made that would have impacted the situation.
WATT: And that loss of water in the hydrants here in the Palisades at the peak of the blaze, Governor Gavin Newsom visited again today.
REPORTER: Why was there no water in the hydrants, Governor?
GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D), CALIFORNIA: It's all literally --
REPORTER: Is it going to be different next time?
NEWSOM: It has to be.
WATT: But for neighborhoods like this and the people who once lived here, now what?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WATT (on camera): Now, as we've been walking around, we've noticed that the only houses still standing. This is anecdotal, not scientific. The very few houses still standing seem to be newer builds, but that's not always the case. I spoke to a guy earlier who just built his house two or three years ago, and it is gone. I've also met people who have walked the 2 or 3 miles into the evacuation zone to see if there's anything left of their home. It's rarely good news -- Erin.
BURNETT: All right. Nick, thank you very much.
Also, here in Pacific Palisades, you can hear above me a chopper. We've seen a couple of those. And also, every once in a while, some -- some water fighting planes have been flying overhead.
All right. I'm joined now by three fire chiefs who have been in charge, really, of what we're seeing here on the ground. Chief Robert Garcia obviously spoke to you last night, fire chief of L.A. National Forest, Lori Moore-Merrell, U.S. Fire Administration. I know you come from the federal government -- and Shane Littlefield, chief from Cal Fire.
So you have been touring these fires. You have been in this in this brief lull of the winds, which are anticipated to pick up. Getting a sense of how things are.
Chief Garcia, how -- is there any containment anywhere?
ROBERT GARCIA, FIRE CHIEF, ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST: Thanks, Erin. It's good to be with you again.
You know, this lull is helping us get focused some resources on perimeter control, getting containment around the fire has given us an opportunity to deal with that. But the scope and scale is so immense. We talked a little bit about that last night, getting the right resources in the right place and then also dealing with new emerging fires that that we continue to have to respond to. We're still at zero containment on most of the large fires. We'll start to see that change over the next 24 hours.
BURNETT: Including one, the Palisades Fire where we're standing.
GARCIA: Indeed. Yes.
BURNETT: So. Chief Littlefield, what -- when you hear this, you hear winds are picking up again. You hear zero percent containment. These massive fires, it completely now defines the landscape. It defines when you fly into here, how much worse could this get as you see it?
SHANE LITTLEFIELD, UNIT CHIEF, CAL FIRE: So as we keep approaching the critical fire weather and the fuels are already dry and they continue to get drier over the next week with the predicted weather, and so the concerns that we get a new fire and we can have more disastrous fires. So, currently, all the agencies are bringing in additional resources from across the United States to try and help mitigate any new starts. Our number one priority right now is new starts. The new starts locally, were going to throw everything we can have at it so we don't have new large fires.
BURNETT: And, Chief Merrell, I don't know if people can hear watching some of those alerts that are going off on the phone. Sometimes they all go off simultaneously. Some of those are evacuation orders.
LORI MOORE-MERRELL, U.S. FIRE ADMINISTRATOR: Yes.
BURNETT: And I assume you anticipate there's going to continue to be quite a few of those.
MOORE-MERRELL: Absolutely. Especially as the chief said, if there are new ignitions, these are going to continue. So the alerts and warnings that are happening are about the active scenes, the active fires that are going on right now. So by no stretch of the imagination is any of this over.
Unfortunately, as you pointed out, we have winds that may be rising up again. So we do have a window of opportunity for firefighters to make great progress. So that's what we're hoping for, controlling that perimeter and doing as much fuels mitigation as they can to give some defensible space and contain these fires within some smaller perimeter.
And there are multiple fires. I mean, were at one here right now, but there are others around L.A., L.A. County that are just as active and just as devastated with the same fuel loads, the same exact wind impact, the same groups of firefighters and the interagency collaboration between all these groups is monumental, and they're all boots on the ground, making as much as effort as they can, while the window of opportunity is here.
BURNETT: And yet, it's -- you have zero percent containment, Chief. You've got firefighters who are working around the clock, literally around the clock, 24 hours, 36 hours, 48 hour shifts. We've heard about this.
[19:10:01]
How long can they continue to do that, even with the resources that you're coming -- that are coming in?
LITTLEFIELD: So, over the last day and a half, we've been able to allow to get most of the firefighters off the line, get them down for at least 12 hours as we get the resources in.
Our number one priority is public safety, but then firefighter safety. And so the rest is number one. And so we do work 24 hour shifts for some of the agencies. And we ensure that they get their 24 hours down. But as more incidents happen, that stretches us thinner and thinner. And as the new resources come in, we start plugging them in and immediately using them.
BURNETT: There have been -- even on this street, I was talking to a man who grew up here. He was coming back to his house, you know, he had said one of his pets had died in the fire. His parents and his other pets were able to get out.
But this is just utter devastation. They had chief incredible frustration at what they saw. They said they looked up this hill. They saw the fire start and it came down house after house after house. Their view of it is that they did not get any help, that at least the fire -- fire station here did not come to their aid.
Do you know at this point anything about what went wrong, what could have gone differently? I mean, this is -- this is an annihilation of an entire historic neighborhood.
MOORE-MERRELL: Yes. So I won't speak to the exact response, but what I will say is that you can look around in any of these communities and see very heavy fuel loads, the close proximity of these homes, the vegetation that is heavy here, they're in drought. We had winds that we knew were coming. And so that's why the red flag warnings are so important.
And then when you have an ignition and you get vegetation or wherever the initial ignition was, and you get structure to structure fire spread, now we have a conflagration. This is totally different than a vegetative fire.
Once you have structures involved. Now the fuel load is even heavier because it's not the structure itself, it's the contents of that structure that feed this fuel. And so this fuel is heavy, so it's fast. All of this is fast fuel.
So yes, they saw it fast. Was it rent driven? Yes. Was it horizontal fire? Yes. Firefighters -- there's no firefighters in the nation in the world who
get in front of that. And so the fire departments here threw everything they had. They had pre-positioned. In fact, FEMA had awarded what we call fire mitigation assistance grants. And so, we knew that FEMA had had enabled these departments to pre-position to get in place and to move as quickly as possible. So every resource that was available was unveiled on this issue.
BURNETT: And, Chief, let me ask you before we go, one thing we see on the ground, we see a lot of running water behind me. We see you can actually see in multiple of these houses. It's almost like from whether it was sinks or showers and the water just keeps flowing.
But yet we also know that there were times we understand here in the Palisades, where there was no water in the hydrants initially, in some parts of the Palisades. What is the water situation?
GARCIA: Yeah. I can't speak specifically to this local part of the -- of the incident. You know, there's challenges on the initial onset with the -- with the demands for water, fire apparatus, pulling water from systems just in general.
And then there's the infrastructure. What were seeing on the surface is damage. There's -- there's damaged infrastructure far and wide beyond what's just on the surface of what we see here. So, so, so the complexities around that are pretty vast.
BURNETT: All right. Well, Chiefs, I very much appreciate your time. I know that you haven't slept as well. I know you're going out to continue in the hours here before those red flag warnings are anticipated to all come back on with those winds. Thank you all so very much.
And as we are standing in front of this house, I did just mention that water behind me with the smoke and it looks as if it was coming from some sort of a faucet of some sort, unclear of what room that would have been.
Lonnie Wittenberg would know, because this devastation and this heartache is her heartache. It is her home. She lived here for 41 years, as these fires began.
Lonnie is with me now. I know your daughter was here along with her dogs. And I know, Lonnie, you haven't had a chance to come back.
So, you know, it's hard for me to stand here and know I'm standing in front of your home, which is -- which is gone. Are you able to see any of it? I mean, how -- how are you even able to process what is happening right now?
LONNIE WITTENBERG, HOME DESTROYED BY L.A. FIRES: Well, I mean, the magnitude of this fire is just, like, so overwhelming that it's hard to wrap your head around. I mean, not only is our home or our homes gone.
But our entire community is gone, and our markets and our banks and our gas stations and our yogurt shops or restaurants, our schools, I mean, everything, everything is just gone. And like, it's in -- you can't even imagine the magnitude of the devastation. And it's such a tight community. And it's -- it's just its all gone. It's -- it's just not like it's unthinkable.
BURNETT: Yeah. It's unthinkable. I mean, standing amidst it. Lonnie, it is like being in a war zone. It's as if your home could have been hit by rockets. We're showing images of it right now, and I know we had tried to share some with you just before we came to air so that you could see it.
But you may be seeing some of this for the first time, and it makes -- yes, this is your home.
[19:15:05]
I talk about that faucet or the chimney or the structure. You lived here for 41 years. You raised four children here. I mean, tell us about this home.
WITTENBERG: Well, I mean, it was a home. Well, I mean, it was a wonderful home. Every day, I felt like I was so lucky that I got to live in the Palisades. I can't imagine a better place to live in Los Angeles and to raise children. And it was their home.
It's just -- the people are wonderful. The place was wonderful. We had mountains, we had oceans. We had a village that you could walk to.
I mean, it was just a really exceptional place and just -- it's just -- I mean, I haven't seen that yet, and just like looking at that, that that was my home. It's just -- it's just not believable.
But, and I know I'm not alone. I know so many people know.
BURNETT: I'm sorry, no.
WITTENBERG: And, you know, we're all calling each other, is your home there? Is your home there? Is your home there? And it's no, gone, gone, gone. Everybody's homes are gone. And it's -- it's -- it's just not.
The telephone pole is still there.
BURNETT: Lonnie, I know your daughter was here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, your daughter was here. I know, and I'm sorry if there's any break in the transmission. It is very hard to get communications where we are.
As you know, you're -- you're right here on the top of the hill. You're home.
Do you -- did -- was she able to get out the things that matter the most? I mean, your prized possessions, whatever they might have been for you, Lonnie, whether it was photos or something else?
WITTENBERG: No, unfortunately, we didn't get the photos. So that's, you know, one of the things that, like, upsets us all that much because it's my children's history, their lives in that house, and we don't have the photos there, we don't have their diplomas, we don't have, you know, anything.
And, you know, my mother had recently passed away in April and I had some of her things now at my house. And that's all gone. That's all gone now. Now, too.
And it's like I just can't sleep at night just thinking about everything. So -- and I know I'm not alone. So it's --
BURNETT: No, you are not alone. But, I know that is perhaps some solace, but just such incredible empty -- just such an empty feeling.
You know, when you say those things are all here, the photos and the diplomas and that they are all here now, I'm just looking here, Lonnie. I can see to try to get a feel. I know were showing pictures before and after, but I can't even see those, so I'm just seeing what's here now.
I -- the chimneys are here. The places that you would have, I can tell. You know what would have been your, I believe your kitchen where you probably would have had so many gatherings and so many special times over the years with your children.
Have you even tried to or thought in those hours that you're not sleeping of what you even do now?
WITTENBERG: You know, it's -- it's just the next steps. The first step is just feeling okay and existing and then really, like, where are we going to live? Where do we go? How do we set about rebuilding? Because I know the Palisades will come back because it's such an exceptional place.
And so, you know, it will -- it will come back and we will -- we'll rebuild and it'll be vibrant again. You know, it's just going to take a while. So it's just -- I know those steps are going to be very painstaking, very painstaking. But you know, just four weeks ago I had friends who had evacuated from the Malibu fire staying with me for four days, and luckily their house was okay that time.
And the night before the fire, they called me and said, you know, the winds are going to come up. We don't have a good, you know, feeling about this fire. If we have to evacuate Malibu again, can we come and stay with you? And I'm like, of course. And we never envisioned that the Palisades would just be gone. I mean, it's an urban environment. It's like houses, you know, and so it's -- it's just -- it's just unthinkable. I don't -- I don't know what else to say.
BURNETT: Lonnie, I am so sorry. I -- I guess I can only say I'm grateful because we come here and we see this devastation, and we just wanted to find who you were, right, who lived here. So that people can understand that there -- there was such life here. And raising your children here and everything to show what was and not and not just what now is. So thank you so much for being willing to talk to me and to take our call and to look at this with us, because I truly can't imagine how hard it is. Thank you.
WITTENBERG: And as we're speaking, we're getting an alert at my daughter's house. So --
BURNETT: Yes, our phones are going off as well. I know those can be evacuation orders.
WITTENBERG: Right.
BURNETT: Well, please stay safe, Lonnie, and your daughter as well. Thank you so very much for being willing to share this with us.
WITTENBERG: Sure. You be safe also out there and thank you.
BURNETT: And I and Lonnie mentioned her friends in Malibu and that they had said they didn't have a good feeling about this, that she had, you know, they had sought refuge here when there were fire warnings there. Of course, Malibu also now, in the midst of this and our Bill Weir is obviously nearby on the beach in Malibu, as you hear all these phones going off.
Bill, I'm sure you're hearing the same things. These evacuation alerts.
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: It is the soundtrack of our times out here in southern California. And this scene here along Pacific Coast Highway, I had been where you were yesterday. This is just as bad, uh, this iconic strip of real estate between the Pacific Ocean and Pacific Coast Highway, some of the most unique real estate in the world.
We have some drone pictures of you now on a five mile stretch between Topanga and Carbon Canyon. I estimate 75 percent of the oceanfront homes are turned to ash and rubble. It is absolutely devastating. And it's not just the homes here. Some of the most iconic restaurants in southern California, Gladstone's, Moonshadows, Reel Inn, these places that where people were proposed to and, and brought their families to and employed folks along the coast who love these waters here in Malibu, devastating, gone.
It was about five years ago. The Woolsey Fire lit up the other side of Malibu, the west side, and went into the hills that way. And that was the worst thing to happen in southern California until now. But this area, I'm telling you, billion -- multi-billion dollars just in this part of this one fire.
So who knows what the coastal commission, the way it is in this state, what is the future of this place? But right now, your heart breaks for just one of the sort of signature spots in California, which has been changed in ways that you just would not have recognized today.
BURNETT: No, no. Absolutely not. And as in this, even in these areas where the fires aren't contained, but you have all this ash, just the ash still coming down of the destruction and the loss raining down these -- I don't know if you can see them, but these sort of giant chunks that are coming down everywhere, which is why we keep putting these masks back up every moment we can.
Well, next we're going to talk to a man who was watching live television when he saw his home burned down and actually had to sit there and watch it happen live. He's going to be my guest right after this. We'll be right back live from Pacific Palisades, California.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:27:02]
BURNETT: And welcome back here in Pacific Palisades, California.
The fire here not contained, zero percent contained, as is the case with now these six fires raging. They're worried more coming. The winds anticipated to pick up over these next few hours. And red flag warnings coming -- coming out.
Kyung Lah is in Altadena, which has also been completely destroyed.
And, Kyung, as you've been able to walk around there and just look at this complete scene of annihilation, what have you seen?
KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, just to kind of help our viewers understand where I am. Where you are is very far west into Los Angeles County. I'm much further east. I'm inland, near the mountains.
And I just want you to get a sense of what we've been seeing, as you said, Erin, as we walk around here, this is a very typical community, and this is what's left of Altadena, a middle class, working class community. A lot of single family homes. And these are smaller homes -- these are three bedroom homes.
And this entire street was all of these, you know, very similar three bedroom homes that all burned down. And a lot of these families who have been here for a really long time are wondering what they're going to do.
I'm standing here at Robert Lara's house, and he said, come on in and take a look. He's a general contractor. That's his front doorway. And then you walk into his living room. His kitchen is completely destroyed. And then if you turn this way, this is how you get through his house. You can see a washer dryer, what's left of it.
And so as Robert's walking around here and into his backyard, he sees the swimming pool that he had just redone that he worked so hard on himself because he's a contractor.
All of this is impossible to comprehend. He had rushed here hoping to find some of his grandmother's jewelry, which -- which he kept in a fireproof safe and had completely been annihilated. Everything was just ash. And so where do they go from here? That is really the struggle. What we've seen throughout the day in Altadena are these families coming home to this -- 4,000 to 5,000 structures we are now learning from the county have burned down here in Altadena as they try to figure out how many more people may have been lost if, if any, if the death toll will indeed climb, Erin. BURNETT: Yeah. Yeah, there's just so much unknown. And it's an
incredible moment of uncertainty right now as these fires are still raging and so much fear about reigniting or new fires starting as these winds pick up in the coming hours.
Kyung, thank you very much.
Here in Pacific Palisades, Jeff Dixon joins me.
And, Jeff, we're here on the top of the hill. You just came from just a little bit down. We can see it here from where you lived right over there.
JEFF DIXON, HOME DESTROYED BY L.A. FIRES: It's right there.
BURNETT: And tell me what happened. So you fled and then you're watching on television and you see your condo go up in flames.
[19:30:06]
DIXON: Yeah, yeah, it was on multiple channels, just -- it was a very surreal feeling to just literally look at the TV and see the place that you'd lived in almost 17 years and just flames coming out of the windows, and you're just watching it, and there's nothing you can do.
BURNETT: I mean, were you and your wife just frozen? How -- how do you even process that, that what you're looking at is you -- is your life?
DIXON: I still haven't processed it. I mean, it's the most -- surreal doesn't even begin to describe it. It just feels like -- I mean, we're in the land of movies. And it felt like beyond a movie, like it just felt like I was watching something that wasn't real. And it still doesn't feel that way. I mean, looking down there right now, I still think, oh, its going to be right there. It's not.
BURNETT: No, I mean, you keep looking through. Yeah, right. And of course, you wouldn't have been able to see it from here a few days ago because there would have been a house.
DIXON: No, it's even weirder.
BURNETT: But you raised your children there.
DIXON: Yep. Both. Both girls. Yeah.
We -- we watched basically their history burn up. Last night. We watched Paoli Elementary, which is where both of them went to school. We watched that burn live on TV, Paoli High, where they both went. They -- we watched that. Theater Palisades, where they both did their plays, and I built sets at.
You know, basically their entire history. We watched burn live on TV.
BURNETT: We're showing it now, not that you want to relive it, but so you know what's on our screen. But I mean, just those none of that goes away and yet it's gone. I mean, does this. It's impossible to imagine what's going to happen at this point. I mean, this is -- this is -- this is a hellscape. I mean, it's -- yeah.
DIXON: Yeah. I mean, you see the pictures and the video, but until you actually see it with your own eyes, it doesn't even ring true.
BURNETT: And when there -- there are so many questions about what happened, what went wrong, what could have gone differently. We don't know the answers to any of those things yet, of course, but what you're dealing with right now is you don't have a home. It's gone, and you're still supposed to pay a mortgage and you're still supposed to play a homeowner monthly.
DIXON: Yeah, that's -- that's the craziest part is, you know, there's -- there's a lot of beautiful homes. A lot of my friends lost their homes, but there's a whole lot of us that owned condos and a lot of condo complexes and places like that. We have to pay HOA.
And now, we're paying a mortgage on a place that doesn't exist, and we're still on the hook, contracted to pay our HOA fees, almost a thousand bucks a month, almost a thousand bucks a month. In addition, and now mortgage HOA for services that I don't know what they're serving because it's gone. And now also I have to find rent on top of that. So I don't know how people do this.
I really don't -- I mean, I literally am just trying to figure out day by day.
BURNETT: And I mean, in terms of work or I mean, you just you just in a state now of complete shock and limbo, I would imagine.
DIXON: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm a writer, so I can use some of this maybe, but, no, it's just -- it's just bonkers. I mean, there's a lot of just -- I don't know, disbelief. Just you just kind of freeze mentally, emotionally, sometimes, physically. But --
BURNETT: Yeah. Well, thank you very much for being willing to tell everybody that and share that, and so raw and open wounds. So thank you.
DIXON: Yeah, for sure. Thanks.
BURNETT: Jeff Dixon, as I said, lived just over the hill from where we are. We can see it, of course, because there's not a house blocking the way anymore. Now that these fires have -- have ripped through here and so many of the fires still going in many of these houses, you can see the heat shimmering up.
We're going to take a brief break, on the other side of it. We're going to speak to a man who had seven gold medals, seven gold medals, Olympic medals in his house, had to flee and leave them. They're gone. Just that -- the parts of life -- I mean, in that case, certainly an extraordinarily successful life, but so much of life now just gone for so many people.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:38:07]
BURNETT: This is the Pacific Palisades neighborhood where were broadcasting tonight. And this is just house after house of utter devastation. This one that we were talking to, Lonnie Wittenberg, who lived here -- I mean, this is just utter destruction. And you see the smoke, and we've been seeing house after house, this smoke that is coming up from parts, sometimes it's even shimmering and you can just feel the heat radiating up there, still open flames.
Of course, they say this fire is zero percent contained, but what's amazing here is just this utter devastation, like a war zone. You think about Ukraine, where rockets would have hit houses or the burned -- burned out caboose that we saw in Israel. This is what this looks like, vegetation in some places, untouched. It was an orange tree where the oranges were burnt to a crisp, but you could still tell what they were.
And yet the houses completely melted in this eerie reality, the smoke there going in front of that chimney looks like perhaps that was a second floor fireplace, but the chimneys in house after house, in so many cases are the only thing left standing.
We go across the street here, you can see there is water coming down. And by the way, we do see water in the houses, some of which you can tell was actually coming from a faucet, maybe in a bathroom or a sink. So that water just continues to flow. And then just these burnout cars, burnout cars everywhere you look.
And actually here, frank and I will walk down a little bit and you can see all this detritus. Stairway to nowhere, I know that I was talking to a man who lived in one of these houses. He was coming back to retrieve some things, and he was saying that on that day they actually watched the fire come down this hill, house to house, to the point where they finally said, we have to leave. And they fled. It's just that house right down there.
They say one of their cats died. They were able to get two of them out. We still don't really know the death toll of what is going to be found in all of these houses. As these fires continue to rage, zero percent containment, even on this one, as we said.
[19:40:08]
But this is -- this is what it's like house after house after house. A hellscape is what it looks like a complete and utter hellscape. As frank is panning around and showing you what these entrances to these houses would have looked like, and these chimneys, and then this light just shining through the smoke, the ash and the smoke coming down the air is horrific.
And you're not just smelling burning wood. Frankly, that's not what it smells like. You're smelling burning metal and burning plastic and burning chemicals and everything that would have been just the parts of daily life. Garbage cans are some of the few things, oddly, that you can see
melted. But still, even with all of that plastic, person who lived here said this, this entire community, obviously as wealthy as it was, its just completely obliterated, he said. Completely annihilated and obliterated. And that is what it looks like.
And Gary Hall, Jr. is an Olympic, an Olympic medalist, ten Olympic medals, five Olympic golds here from the Pacific Palisades fire fleeing. And as I just described it just came down so quickly as people have described it to us, that when they made the decision to go, it was a split second decision.
And in Gary Hall's case, he left and he left with his dog and a couple of personal items, not those gold medals, left those behind and those -- that split second. And Gary Hall joins me now.
Gary, I really appreciate your time standing here in Palisades, your home and to see what it has become. I can only imagine how you feel and how you are handling this right now. Tell me what happened in those split second when you only have time with fire coming at you to leave with a dog and a couple of items, how do you even make that choice?
GARY HALL JR., OLYMPIC MEDALIST'S HOME DESTROYED BY L.A. FIRES: You know, I thought I had more time. I saw the fire charging down the hill, and I knew that I had to get out of there. I opened up the back of my SUV. I loaded a painting.
One other object, by the time I was going back in from that run, hot embers were raining down from the sky, and I knew at that point that I just didn't have much time. I could see the embers hitting the roofs of the houses around me, and, made that decision. It's time to go.
And the medals were in a closet in my bedroom, uh, 70ft away. I didn't have time to go get them. From the time that I saw the first plume of smoke at the top of the hill, I live on Lachman Lane. I had about three minutes between then, and, when it came charging towards me, and it wasn't easy, you know, to leave that behind.
I worked a lifetime to achieve that. And the memories remain, but the souvenir is gone.
BURNETT: It's hard to even imagine. I mean, when you're talking about. They're 70 feet away, but you were in such dire straits that it wasn't worth running and sprinting the 70 feet to get them. I mean, I think that just maybe gives some perspective for all of us who weren't there in that -- in that moment.
And then, Gary, how did you did you get away? Were you I mean, did you run? Were you able to literally jump in your car and get away that way?
HALL: Yeah. So I grabbed my dog, and the embers were raining down. As I got into the car, I drove down the hill. I stopped at the bluffs down by the PCH, looked up at the hill, wild eyed, after having just witnessed what had happened, and there were people standing around kind of filming it on their phones, unaware of the impending danger.
And, as I saw the fire coming down closer to Sunset Boulevard, I realized that I was not in a safe space and that I needed to move. I was able to get past Temescal Canyon before the high school went up in flames and made it to the Palisades Village before the fire did.
I was one of the first kind of hill evacuees to make it into the village. There was one other car of a person that had fled in the parking lot in the park there, surrounded by five preschool, elementary school, kindergartens and school was still in session and you could see it went from an idyllic, peaceful Palisades Village to -- descending into a mayhem and panic.
And there were people screaming. There were cars driving up on the sidewalk. Imagine the desperation of a parent trying to get to their child in time to get to get them from the school and to safety.
[19:45:01]
So you had cars blowing through stop signs, red lights, crashes happening, and people just running in every direction.
There was no police officers that I saw at that time that were helping to direct traffic or the silent the sirens went off and, it just -- it just got worse and worse from --
BURNETT: Well, Gary, thank you very much. Thank goodness that, you know, you're okay that you got out, maybe when you go back, who knows what -- what -- what you find there amidst all of this can only hope. Perhaps those metals in some form are there. But my goodness, thank you so very much.
HALL: Yeah. You know, I just want to give a shout out to all the families. I've got a swim school and teach two-year-old to six-year- olds how to swim. And so through the years, I've gotten to know all these families and they're all reaching out and connecting with one another from hotel rooms across the city.
And it's hard enough to, as an adult, wrap my arms around what has just happened and the loss and the devastation. But trying to explain this to a four-year-old or a five-year-old, that all of their toys and everything that they've known their school, their whole life is gone. I really -- I really feel bad for those friends, and of the community and just want to send out my sympathy to them.
BURNETT: Thank you, Gary.
And, you know, with that utter devastation that Gary's talking about, the lives transformed, lives lost, lives demolished, there is already even though we are waiting for red flags and winds to pick back up and possibly more fires and all of this, and even as nothing is contained, there is already a real focus on the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, and what could have been done differently, Whether this unbelievable tragedy was avoidable or not.
And we're going to take a look at what we know right now about what was done, what wasn't done, and what her role in it was right after this.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:51:18]
BURNETT: Breaking news here from Pacific Palisades, California. We've been getting all these alerts going off on our phones. They're very loud, and they've been going off throughout Los Angeles, basically warning people of impending evacuations.
It turns out some of these have been mistakes. And our Nick Watt is saying that a lot of people have been incredibly worried and then afraid about it has created even more chaos, on top of all the confusion out here.
And so much of this confusion now has started to focus on intense scrutiny of Mayor Karen Bass here in Los Angeles and what she did and didn't do, whether this devastation had to happen the way it already has and is continuing over these next hours.
Jason Carroll is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As Los Angeles battles its worst wildfire in history.
RACHEL DARVISH, PACIFIC PALISADES, CA RESIDENT: I'm definitely critical of the mayor. She was in West Africa while West Los Angeles was burning.
CARROLL: The city's top elected official, Mayor Karen Bass, is facing criticism on a number of fronts.
REPORTER: Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes were burning?
Do you regret cutting the fire department budget by millions of dollars, Madam Mayor?
CARROLL: A Sky News reporter --
REPORTER: Madam Mayor, let me ask you just again --
CARROLL: -- grilling Bass after she landed in Los Angeles Wednesday, returning from a diplomatic trip to Ghana.
Bass left on Saturday, the National Weather Service issued warnings last Thursday and again on Sunday about extreme fire weather conditions Monday.
Bass posted on X: There is an expected destructive and potentially life threatening wind storm. By Tuesday, according to the city, Bass was already flying home as the
Palisades fire was quickly spreading. Since being back on the ground, the mayor has been on defense over her absence.
BASS: I've been in constant contact with our fire commanders, with county, state and federal officials. I took the fastest route back, which included being on a military plane, which facilitated our communications.
CARROLL: Another complaint some residents say there wasn't enough water where and when it was needed.
JOSE OLVERA, ALTADENA, CA RESIDENT: It started with the wind, everything, and I started waiting -- all the -- all the floor, the roof, the pressure of the water is going away. So I started filling up buckets, the trash cans with water.
DARVISH: There's not water in the fire hydrants. I paid for it, didn't I?
CARROLL: Did some hydrants run low? The short answer is yes.
Some more context. According to the Department of Water and Power, all 114 water storage facilities were filled, but heavy use of fire hydrants depleted the supply.
The extreme conditions, compounded by high winds keeping firefighting aircraft grounded.
BASS: We all know that this has been an unprecedented event. We also know that fire hydrants are not constructed to deal with this type of massive devastation, and that the number one problem, especially on Wednesday, was the fact that we weren't able to do the air support because of the winds.
CARROLL: Bass now also having to defend the decision to reduce the Fire Department's 2024, 2025 budget. Last summer, she approved cutting more than $17 million from it.
Last month, L.A.'s fire chief raised concerns with the mayor and city council, saying in a memo, these budgetary reductions have adversely affected the department's ability to maintain core operations.
Bass says the cuts did not impact fighting these fires.
BASS: There were no reductions that were made that would have impacted the situation that we were dealing with over the last couple of days.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[19:55:05]
CARROLL (on camera): And, Erin, the total budget for the Los Angeles Fire Department is a little more than 800 million, Bass has said in the past that that budget included money for things like hiring new firefighters. But again, her critics and there are many of them on the ground there
being very vocal, saying that her judgment is in question -- Erin.
BURNETT: All right. Jason Carroll, thank you very much. The beginning, the beginning of getting to the bottom of this horror that we are all witnessing now. We'll take a very brief break.
Nick Watt and I will be back right after that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BURNETT: Breaking news, you're looking at pictures, people with their suitcases right now fleeing a fire that is now dangerously close to homes. The Kenneth Fire, one of the newer fires out here in these hours of Thursday evening, begins.
I'm here with Nick Watt.
And, Nick, you know, your family had to evacuate. You were standing here. We met on the phone speaking to Lonnie. This is her home.
WATT: Yeah.
BURNETT: And, you know, so many, so many friends who have just lost, who live on streets like this. And this is now what it looks like.
WATT: And that's the thing. What people are wondering, it's what happens next. Like all of your friends, their homes have been destroyed. All the restaurants you used to go to, the schools your kids used to go to, they're all destroyed.
You know, the other thing? Its still winter break for Pali High. So a lot of people are still on vacation. So I've been FaceTiming with people who are in Australia, showing them that there's nothing left of their home. And they're like, no, we're not. That doesn't look like our house. Are you sure?
And I'm having to break it to these people that that is their house, because, you know, this is all still the evacuation zone. So people can't get in to check on their homes. So kids, now, I just heard from a friend of mine, there are some kids charging people a couple of bucks. Kids will go on their bikes, they'll check out your house, and then they give those dollars to charity. They gave the dollar to charity.
BURNETT: We have seen people biking through and people who have managed to come in talking about, you know, their, their homes. But now you've got this, this kind of fire and people are fleeing with their suitcases, as we've been hearing people did from here, right there watching that fire. It started up that hill, came down around this, this curve house to house.
WATT: Yeah.
BURNETT: That split second. And now people grabbing those suitcases and fleeing. WATT: So, last night we got back into our house. Then we were going to
evacuate again to Hollywood. But then a fire broke out in Hollywood. So we thought, okay, let's just stay in our house. My sons and I just and we stayed in our house and hope for the best. And we're totally fine.
This, I mean --
BURNETT: But these new alerts that have come out, but it turns out some of them are --
WATT: Yeah.
BURNETT: -- not real.
WATT: Yeah.
BURNETT: Have caused real fear.
WATT: Totally. So I've been getting texts in the past hour from Santa Monica. People are packing up their cars, getting ready to leave because they all got these alerts. And so and no alert went out to at least Santa Monica to say this was a -- are packing up their cars, getting are packing up their cars, getting ready to leave because they all got these alerts.
And so -- and no alert went out to at least Santa Monica to say this was a mistake. So people are freaking out. People are on edge.
BURNETT: Yeah, for sure. And of course, the winds are anticipated to pick up.
WATT: Yeah.
BURNETT: Nick Watt, thank you very much.
Let's hand it off now to Anderson Cooper, also here in Los Angeles.
