On Thursday, January 9, massive wildfires from the east and west continued to ravage Los Angeles, leaving Californians who had experienced a heart-pounding day of evacuation with lingering fear. A storm chaser shared a video on social media, describing the process of attempting to extinguish the fires and then evacuate with friends as “the battle of a lifetime.”
The Palisades fire between Santa Monica and Malibu on the west side of Los Angeles and the Eaton fire near Pasadena are the two most destructive fires in Los Angeles history, having consumed nearly 28,000 acres of land, an area larger than Disneyland. At least five people have died, and thousands of structures have been destroyed.
According to the California Department of Forestry, these two fires are part of the clamp-shaped fire surrounding Los Angeles, with such a vast extent that it can be seen from space. As of Thursday morning at 6:30 local time, these two fires were still not fully under control.
Tanner Charles and his friend Orly Israel, storm chasers, had their house engulfed by the Los Angeles wildfires, describing the feeling of escaping from the burning homes. Israel’s house was consumed by the Palisades fire.
Charles shared a video on X (click here), showing the two attempting to flee the house as the fire raged in the backyard and on the streets. This video has been widely circulated online.
“Every time I watch this video, I have to watch myself escape from the battle of a lifetime,” Israel said. “Watching this video over and over can be maddening.”
Israel mentioned that they barely had time to grab anything. “We just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible because all that stuff is nonsense, man,” he told CNN.
The two friends stated that initially, they tried to extinguish the fire at home but eventually decided to evacuate. “We gave it our all, and we were there longer than anyone else, but we still lost,” Israel said. “I feel like we fought a battle we were destined to lose, but we persisted, and I’m grateful we survived.”
Charles told CNN that although it was a terrifying moment, he was glad to be in the right place at the right time to help friends in need during the natural disaster.
Kevin Williams, from an evacuation center in Pasadena, said that when gas tanks at a neighbor’s house started exploding in the high temperatures, he knew it was time to flee. “The wind started blowing, the fire reached 30 or 40 feet high, you could hear ‘bang, bang, bang.’ It sounded like a battlefield,” he said.