A series of wildfires has devastated swaths of Southern California, causing thousands of residents to have to flee their homes as it rapidly engulfs large parts of the Los Angeles area.
Among the more than 80,000 people displaced were celebrities, many of whom have called the area home for decades. Some, including Leighton Meester and Adam Brody, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Joshua Jackson, Anna Faris, Ricki Lake, Cary Elwes, Cameron Mathison, Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag, have lost their houses. Many others, including Tara Lipinski, Chrissy Teigen, Britney Spears and more have shared that they have evacuated as the fire continues to spread. Still others, such as Bella Hadid, Zooey Deschanel and Sarah Staudinger, shared that they had lost their childhood homes in the blazes; Tatum O’Neal wrote that her late father Ryan O’Neal’s home was gone.
The first fire started in Pacific Palisades on Tuesday, Jan. 7. Videos show devastation in the seaside community; as Pacific Palisades resident Maria Shriver wrote on Instagram, “Heartbreaking, devastating, beyond belief. Everything is gone. Our neighborhood, our restaurants. All our friends have lost everything.”
The Eaton Fire (also called the Close Fire) followed, sparking around 6:30 pm Tuesday; by late Wednesday morning, it had exploded to 10,000 acres across Pasadena and Altadena. By 6:15 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 8, the Woodley Fire was ablaze, seizing 75 acres in its wake.
Several more fires, including the Hurst Fire, Tyler Fire, and Hughes Fire, popped up in the following days and weeks. As of Monday, Jan. 27, the fires had been largely contained, with a death toll listed at 28, though more people were unaccounted for.“We lost our house in the fires, so I’ve got some things along those lines, so I don’t have any plans to work immediately,” he said. “It’s a great exercise in living day to day and staying in the moment, because the past is gone in a certain way. So you really try to just deal with every day, like a new day, moment to moment, do what you’ve got to do.”Actor Haley Joel Osment lost his home in the fires, as did his parents, according to his sister, actress Emily Osment, who shared the update on Instagram.
“It’s been an extremely difficult month. Thank you to everyone that has reached out to my family in the wake of the fires,” she wrote. “Devastated for my mother my father and my brother who lost their homes in the Altadena fire. Community is everything and I know i’m heavily leaning on mine right now-and that’s okay! So much love for my beautiful, aching city. We will rebuild. We are so strong, even stronger than we could ever imagine.”
Supermodel Tyra Banks revealed on Australian TV show Sunrise that she and her family lost a home in the fires.
“I lost my house,” she told the hosts. I haven’t really talked about it … I just didn’t want to pull a lot of attention to me, I feel that there’s a lot of people that need that attention, so I haven’t really talked about it, but I can’t sit here and not tell the truth, so yeah, we lost our house.”
She said that she and her boyfriend Louis Bélanger-Martin were at a friend’s house in Australia when she realized that her home in L.A. was gone. “I didn’t say anything to my friends. I just stayed in that moment. Then we went home and we cried. We had our moment,” she said.
Actor Chad Lowe shared that he and his family lost their home in the Palisades fire.
“Our hearts are broken, but we are comforted by all the well wishes, and offers of assistance. We are ok and will be ok. We have each other. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers,” he wrote on Instagram. “Home really is where the heart is. Hold those you love close. Take care of each other. This crazy thing called ‘life’ is so damn precious.”