LA fires: ‘It’s an apocalypse’ – families return to homes reduced to ruins
More than 20,000 people who evacuated the Pacific Palisades on Tuesday have watched on TV for three days as their neighbourhood has burned without respite.
They have heard the statistics – about more than 50% of the buildings here being reduced to rubble. But it is not sufficient preparation for what they will see in real life.
“I’ve been telling everyone to brace themselves for this moment,” says Rachel Darvish, a lawyer who has lived in Pacific Palisades her whole life.
My team and I ride in a car with her as she returns for the first time since wildfire ripped through this community.
LA fires latest: Number of dead doubles as a blaze is investigated as possible arson
Water is dropped by helicopter on the Kenneth Fire in the West Hills section of Los Angeles (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
The destruction left behind by the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles., California. Pic: AP
The first place we stop is her modest childhood home where she lived until she was nine. It’s now a mound of dust and twisted metal, only a gate on to the pavement still standing.
“People think the Palisades are full of celebrities,” she says. “But this is where hardworking families come so that the kids can be by the beach and have a good life.”
She points across the road to another house which is now contorted by fire and covered in ash.
“That’s where I would spend July 4th at my neighbour’s,” she says. “We would go round to use their pool. I have the best memories here.”
As Rachel is talking she is interrupted by a deafening alarm from her phone. “It’s another emergency evacuation order,” she says. “This time for Malibu.”
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Progress of LA Kenneth fire ‘stopped’
Even though the winds have subsided, the threat of new blazes remains and each new evacuation order or warning causes renewed panic among local people.
Next up on the misery tour is Rachel’s three-year-old daughter’s nursery school. There is nothing left of the main building.
“It’s an apocalypse,” she says. “This is just so devastating. And somehow we are supposed to come back and rebuild.”
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‘Everything we love has gone’
As we are driving away from the school, she spots a familiar face next to a black SUV with tinted windows. “Is that Gavin Newsom?” she asks. “It is, it’s the governor,” she says, slapping the back of the car seat before jumping out to speak to him.
“Mr governor,” she says, chasing him down the street as Newsom holds a phone to his ear.
“Please, tell me what you’re going to do,” she says. Newsom replies that he is on the phone to President Biden.
“Can I hear? Can I hear your call? Because I don’t believe it,” she responds.
Newsom points to his phone, claiming he has poor phone service and was unable to reach the president.
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Biden on LA fires: ‘We’ll help you’
Rachel then asks him why there was “no water in the hydrants?”
As firefighters battled a raging inferno on Tuesday, fire hydrants ran dry because of the huge demands.
Residents are demanding answers about whether there are wider vulnerabilities in city water supply systems and whether they are adequate to tackle wildfires on this scale.
“It has to be different next time round,” Rachel says.
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As estimated losses surge there is still zero containment of the Palisades fire. Officials say they don’t know the death toll and that dogs will be brought in to search the rubble for fatalities.
On the Pacific coast highway in Pacific Palisades, Geoffrey Axelrod and his partner Nicole hug each other tightly as they return to the ruins that are their home. Every one of the houses in this enclave has been destroyed.
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Satellite images show fire destruction
“This is just a little beach community,” says Geoffrey, who has lived here since 2015.
“I know everyone here and it’s all gone.
“My dearest friend Galene, who I’ve known for my whole life lived here,” he says, pointing to the wreckage next door.
“I taught my daughter to ride her bike on this street, how to swim in the pool. It’s so sad.”
Together Geoffrey and Nicole sift through the dust, trying to retrieve any belongings that have survived the fire.
In a plastic box they place everything they can find. There are a couple of turtle figurines, a garden gnome and a house name plaque.
It’s very little, but in a place where the loss is so huge, it means so much.
US
Donald Trump says Vladimir Putin wants to meet – and that he and Barack Obama ‘probably’ like each other
Donald Trump says a meeting is being set up between himself and Vladimir Putin – and that he and Barack Obama “probably” like each other.
Republican US president-elect Mr Trump spoke to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Thursday, saying Russian president Mr Putin “wants to meet, and we are setting it up”.
“He has said that even publicly and we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess,” Mr Trump said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday there was a “mutual desire” to set up a meeting – but added no details had been confirmed yet and that there may be progress once Mr Trump is inaugurated on 20 January.
“Moscow has repeatedly declared its openness to contacts with international leaders, including the US president, including Donald Trump,” Mr Peskov added.
“What is required is a mutual desire and political will to conduct dialogue and resolve existing problems through dialogue. We see that Mr Trump also declares his readiness to resolve problems through dialogue. We welcome this. There are still no specifics, we proceed from the mutual readiness for the meeting.”
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in July 2017. Pic: AP
Trump on Obama: ‘We just got along’
Mr Trump also made some lighter remarks regarding a viral exchange between himself and former Democrat President Barack Obama at Jimmy Carter’s funeral on Thursday.
The pair sat together for the late president’s service in Washington DC on Thursday, and could be seen speaking for several minutes as the remaining mourners filed in before it began.
Mr Obama was seen nodding as his successor spoke before breaking into a grin.
Asked about the exchange, Mr Trump said: “I didn’t realise how friendly it looked.
“I said, ‘boy, they look like two people that like each other’. And we probably do.
“We have a little different philosophies, right? But we probably do. I don’t know. We just got along. But I got along with just about everybody.”
The amicable exchange comes after years of criticising each other in the public eye; it was Mr Trump who spread the so-called “birther” conspiracy theory about Mr Obama in 2011, falsely asserting that he was not born in the United States.
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Insults continued for years, with Mr Obama famously dedicating much of his final White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech in 2016 to jokes at his political rival’s expense.
Mr Trump has repeatedly attacked the Obamas, saying the former president was “ineffective” and “terrible” and calling former first lady Michelle Obama “nasty” as recently as October last year.
On Kamala Harris’s campaign trail last year, Mr Obama said Mr Trump was a “78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago”, while the former first lady said that “the consequences of him ever being president again are brutally serious.”
“He was asleep in his bed, where he still is right now, as I wait on the coroner.”
The haunting words of Kimiko Nickerson stopped us in our tracks.
Her father Rodney, 82, was sure the fire wouldn’t reach his home in Altadena. He was wrong.
The inferno cut through this quiet suburb north of Los Angeles at an alarming rate, its path unpredictable.
California wildfires latest – new evacuation order issued
She said: “He just didn’t want to evacuate. He’s been living here since 1968, and he’s been in Altadena my whole life.
“Like all of us on this block, in four blocks, he didn’t think it was going to be this devastating.
“It jumped whole streets, and it hit this community, but it didn’t touch the mountainside at all.”
They’re still trying to process the apocalyptic scenes here and grieving for those who did not get out.
Kimiko said: “I have no words to explain my feelings at this point in time.
“I’m just silent and numb and just mentally trying to go through the process.”
Rodney Nickerson decided not to leave his Altadena home.
Pic: Kimiko Nickerson
‘Truly apocalyptic scenes’ as flames swallow homes in LA wildfires evacuation zone
It would be impossible to exaggerate the scale of the destruction, cars burnt to a cinder, palm trees still alight, powerlines strewn across roads.
So many people have lost the roof over their head but there’s one thing Kimiko says she’ll never lose – her memories.
“Every laugh, every joke he told.
“He was a smart man. He read the LA Times from cover to cover and walked around the Rose Bowl every day.
“He was healthy, he was ambitious… but he went to sleep and died in his bed back there.”
The US Supreme Court has rejected a last-ditch attempt by Donald Trump to delay sentencing in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.
The president-elect was convicted on 34 counts last May in New York of falsifying business records relating to payments made to Ms Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
Prosecutors claimed he had paid her $130,000 (£105,300) in hush money to not reveal details of what Ms Daniels said was a sexual relationship in 2006.
Mr Trump has denied any liaison with Ms Daniels or any wrongdoing.
By a majority, the Supreme Court found his sentencing would not be an insurmountable burden during the presidential transition since the presiding judge, Juan M Merchan, has indicated he will not give Mr Trump jail time, fines or probation.
Mr Trump’s attorneys argued that evidence used in the Manhattan trial violated last summer’s Supreme Court ruling giving Mr Trump broad immunity from prosecution over acts he took as president.
At the least, they said, the sentencing should be delayed while their appeals play out to avoid distracting Mr Trump during the presidential transition.
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Stormy Daniels. Pic: AP
Mr Trump’s attorneys went to the justices after New York courts refused to postpone sentencing.
Judges in New York found that the convictions related to personal matters rather than Mr Trump’s official acts as president.
Mr Trump’s attorneys called the case politically motivated, and they said sentencing him now would be a “grave injustice” that threatens to disrupt the presidential transition as the Republican prepares to return to the White House.
Mr Trump has said he will appeal again: “I respect the court’s opinion – I think it was actually a very good opinion for us because you saw what they said, but they invited the appeal and the appeal is on the bigger issue. So, we’ll see how it works out,” he said at a dinner with Republican governors at his private club in Florida.
Because the New York case was a state, rather than federal crime, Mr Trump will not be able to pardon himself when he takes office on 20 January.
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