Returning to his neighborhood in Palisades, a resident was overwhelmed with emotions as he found his home unaffected by the LA wildfires.
In a video, architect Farhad Ashofteh was seen biking through the heavily impacted Haverford Avenue in Pacific Palisades, one of the hardest-hit areas by the fires.
It comes as residents have tried to return to their homes, evading police road blocks, to assess the damage and to gather any belongings that remain.
To his surprise, upon reaching his house, Mr. Ashofteh was amazed to see that his residence had been spared from the flames, a testament to the hard work of the firefighters who fought to contain the blaze.
Visibly overwhelmed, Mr Ashofteh tells ITV News: ‘I don’t understand how this didn’t burn, that burnt, this didn’t burn.’
Mr Ashofteh is then introduced to some of the firefighters who worked to protect his home. He gives them each a hug and thanks them.
‘It feels good,’ Mr Ashofteh added. ‘But what is a house without a neighborhood. There’s no neighbors, there’s no friends.’
At least 24 people have died and 23 others are missing in the Eaton and Palisades fire zones, while around 150,000 people remain under an evacuation warning.
More than 120,000 structures have been destroyed in the fires, with A-list celebrities including Mel Gibson and Paris Hilton among those who have lost their homes.
Despite this heartwarming moment, Farhad’s neighbour, Paul Blyumkin, was not so fortunate. His house had been burnt to ashes alongside many others on Haverford Avenue.
Standing in the rubble of his home, Paul said ‘the true loss’ for him was not the possessions inside his home but of ‘connections and community’.
He told ITV News it ‘used to be paradise’, now it’s ‘truly paradise lost’.
It comes as the National Weather Service issued a fourth ‘particularly dangerous situation’ warning to take effect 4am Tuesday, cautioning that winds of up to 70mph will last through noon Wednesday.
Huge swathes of the bone-dry city are under the new warning from Ventura across much of the San Fernando Valley, while areas from San Diego to San Bernadino remain under conventional red flag warnings.
The fourth warning comes after the previous three this fire season brought havoc to the densely populated area, including the ongoing Palisades and Eaton fires that have become among the deadliest in California history.
Much of the area around Malibu and the Pacific Palisades are also under the new warning, where at least 24 people have died and over 12,000 buildings have been destroyed in multiple fires.
Meteorologists warn that unseasonable drought-like conditions have turned the city into potential kindling as high winds set in.
The last significant rainfall in downtown Los Angeles came in May 2024, and since October 1 just 0.16 inches of rain has fallen – compared to a historical average of 5.34 inches by this time, reports the LA Times.
Climatologist Bill Patzert told the outlet that ‘the past nine months has been one of the driest in the historical record going back to 1900. During my career, I’ve never seen punishing Santa Ana events so overwhelm the normal winter rain season.’
In each of the three previous instances of ‘particularly dangerous situation’ fire warnings being issued this season, the resulting blazes brought devastation to the area.
The first in November, the Mountain Fire in Ventura County, burned almost 20,000 acres and razed over 240 buildings.
The next month the Franklin fire hit Malibu and destroyed 20 buildings, before the Palisades and Eaton fires this month came and marked the most dangerous and destructive yet.
According to the LA Times, the ‘particularly dangerous situation’ alert was traditionally only used by the National Weather Service for particularly devastating tornadoes.
