(NewsNation) — Laura Nativo lost nearly everything in the Pacific Palisades fire. When the flames first started, she grabbed her dog, Delilah, and her laptop, leaving behind her home, vehicle and precious keepsakes.
That includes a recently-received scrapbook of her mother, who died when she was 6-years-old, and the handprints and footprints of the son she lost.
Some of those precious memories are in a fireproof lockbox — which she hopes “by some miracle, could be in the rubble.”
Nativo is one of the many thousands forced to leave behind their homes as wildfires scorch the Los Angeles area. The fires continued Sunday, with the Palisades blaze, Eaton Fire and more spreading across more than 38,000 acres of Southern California.
Nativo said that, while the Pacific Palisades is often conflated as a mega-rich neighborhood, the people who lived in her building were hard-working, middle-class people, not just “millionaires and celebrities.”
“I’m very blessed. I have this friend who’s given me her guest house as a retreat for now, but I think about how many people are displaced, and how many people are in shelters and just are left with nothing?” Nativo told NewsNation.
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A firefighter battles the Palisades Fire in Mandeville Canyon on Saturday, Jan. 11, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) -
A person walks down a street in the aftermath of the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, on Saturday, Jan. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/John Locher) -
The devastation of the Palisades Fire is seen in the early morning in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, Friday, Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/John Locher) -
A home is engulfed in flames during the Eaton fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles County, California on January 8, 2025. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON / AFP)
Parents separated from children during fire
As Natalie Mitchell escaped the fire in Pacific Palisades, her children were at school, spread out across Los Angeles County.
“That night, there was a moment where I thought, ‘I don’t know if we’re going to make it out of here,'” Mitchell told NewsNation.
Within minutes of seeing the spark of fire on a hill, Mitchell and her husband watched it grow rapidly — and decided to leave.
“We took whatever we could, we jumped in the car, we started going down the hill,” Mitchell said. “There was no one else on the road. It was pitch black, and the visibility at one point was, I couldn’t, we couldn’t see.”
Watching the homes around them burn, the couple realized that, if anything were to happen, their children would lose them both.
“And we thought, what do we do?” Mitchell said. Maneuvering around firetrucks, the pair made it down the mountain and to safety.
Her children — separated themselves at first — were picked up by members of Mitchell’s “wonderful community.”
“We’re happy to be together. We’re happy to be safe, and that’s the most important part,” she added. “It’s really, really hard. I feel like, every hour, I get a new update on a friend that’s lost their home.”
Couple loses Altadena home in fire
Jason Rhodes and Alina Kiessling knew the wind would be an issue.
“But we didn’t really anticipate the devastation that was to come,” Kiessling said. The couple, along with their nearly 4-year-old daughter, lived in Altadena — where the Eaton Fire raged.
Kiessling said she grew more unnerved and anxious as the night went on, leading the trio to evacuate overnight on Wednesday before any orders had been passed down.
“By 5 a.m., our burglar alarms started going off. And later when we checked, every single alarm in our house tripped within four minutes. So we think, ‘Wow, took four minutes for our house to go up.'”
‘It was a complete inferno’
Alec Gellis stayed behind in Malibu to try and save his girlfriend’s home but was forced to flee as the flames grew.
“It was a total loss. It was complete inferno, a hellscape … I barely made it to my car,” Gellis said, describing the smoky air as having “zero oxygen.”
“I mean, there was so much embers going, it was like a blizzard of murder hornets that were on fire,” he described. “And honestly, it was just so beyond. It’s just like being out of a scene of up from hell.”
He said he’d gone back to visit the house to find only rubble where it stood.
“It’s a complete loss for a lot of people,” Gellis said. “A lot of them are underinsured.”
Gellis said his girlfriend is one of those underinsured people, now facing the long road for permitting and rebuilding — finances pending. The couple has a GoFundMe.
