The Mayor of Los Angeles says his brother lost his home in the Palisades fire

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Thursday that her brother was among the thousands of people who lost their homes in the Palisades fire.

“The loss you are facing, I share indirectly. It hit my family too,” said Bass at the Pacific Palisades Community Council meeting. “My brother, who has lived in Malibu for 40 years, has been hit by fires many times, has been evacuated many times – this time he didn’t escape.”

Bass and other elected officials spoke to about 1,000 people who attended the volunteer organization’s Zoom meeting.

The mayor – who was attending an embassy function in Ghana when the fire started – said his brother’s house was “my family’s home where he used to go on holidays.”

Losing a home, he said, “is the kind of shock and grief that is trauma that will be with us for a long time.”

County of Los Angeles County. He said. Nathan Hochman said he also had a sibling who lost his home in Pacific Palisades.

His sister lived on Swarthmore Avenue, he said. His house was destroyed.

“It was a really bad scene as the wind was blowing, the fire was still going on,” he said. “It’s a tragedy. I thought I saw disasters back in the 1990s when we had fires, floods, earthquakes and riots, and that is nothing compared to what I saw.”

Bass and other officials told residents – who have been increasingly frustrated by their inability to access their homes in the evacuation zones – that they hope to increase access next week.

The forecast calls for light rain over the weekend. Bass issued an emergency executive order Tuesday to clear burned areas of Los Angeles that are vulnerable to mudslides and debris flows.

The coming rain, for many of the evacuees, has increased their desire to look for anything to save their destroyed houses before they are damaged by water.

During the Zoom meeting, LA City Councilmember Traci Park, who represents Pacific Palisades, said hundreds of workers were in the area, plugging broken pipes, sweeping up nails, clearing roads, removing broken tree limbs and inspecting homes.

He said he has been wanting more access to the area but everything is still “in a state of emergency.”

The areas devastated by the fire, he said, are “poisonous right now,” and the coming rains will make the situation worse.

Park became emotional when talking about his time in the devastated areas.

“Personally, if I see a clay pot or a stone statue and I can reach it, I leave it where I think your front door was,” said Park fighting back tears. “So when you come back it will be normal, not just a pile of ashes.

“I want you to know that when you come back, it will be difficult to see your home and your community,” he added. “Most are gone, and the level of loss is truly staggering. But we don’t want you to see it alone. And we don’t want you to feel unsupported.”

Park told residents that if they were allowed to return to their neighborhoods, they would see “more firefighters and city workers.”