Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass has revealed that her brother was among the thousands of Californians that lost their homes in the devastating Pacific Palisades fires.
Speaking at a Pacific Palisades Community Council meeting on Thursday, the mayor said the loss of the property was a “trauma that will be with us for a long time.”
More than 50,000 acres of southern Californian land have been torched since the Palisades wildfire broke out on January 7, taking 28 lives, destroying thousands of homes, and causing hundreds of billions of dollars of economic loss in the state.
“The loss that you’re going through, I share indirectly. It’s hit my family too,” Bass said, per the Los Angeles Times. “My brother, who has lived in Malibu for 40 years, been through many fires, evacuated many times, this time didn’t get away.”
The property “was my family home where we went on the holidays” the mayor said, adding that its loss was “a type of shock and grief that is trauma that will be with us for a long time.”
Bass has received criticism for being out of the country in Ghana when the deadly Palisades and Eaton fires broke out. She was there for the inauguration of the country’s new president after Joe Biden selected her as one of his four-member presidential delegation to attend the event.
Recently elected LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman also revealed that he too had a sibling who lost a home in Pacific Palisades.
“It was truly an apocalyptic scene as the winds were blowing, the fires were still going on,” he said. “It’s a disaster. I thought I saw disasters back in the ’90s when we got hit with fires, floods, an earthquake and riots, and that pales in comparison to what I was seeing.”
Bass and other officials have promised frustrated residents that they will be granted more access to their homes next week.
The mayor has issued a number of emergency executive orders to shore up Los Angeles burn areas that are vulnerable to mudslides and debris flow and protect waterways from toxic runoff from burn areas.
According to the latest figures from Cal Fire, approximately 50,683 acres have been burned across southern California – almost double the area of Paris – since the fires began.
The Palisades (23,400 acres burned), Eaton (14,000 acres burned) and Hughes (10,400 acres burned) fires continue to rage, as firefighters continue efforts to contain the blazes. As of Friday, nine fires were still raging.
Donald Trump is expected to visit impacted areas to survey the damage on Friday as part of his first presidential trip to the state since taking office.
