Containment of the Hurst fire is now 37%, California governor Gavin Newsom has said.
He posted on X that evacuation orders have “been downgraded to warnings and lifted”.
However, residents returning home are advised not to drink the water and to “observe extreme caution”.
On the ground: One daughter’s haunting account of her father’s fatal decision to stay in his home
“He was asleep in his bed, where he still is right now, as I wait on the coroner.”
The haunting words of Kimiko Nickerson stopped us in our tracks.
Her father Rodney, 82, was sure the fire wouldn’t reach his home in Altadena. He was wrong.
The inferno cut through this quiet suburb north of Los Angeles at an alarming rate, its path unpredictable.
She said: “He just didn’t want to evacuate. He’s been living here since 1968, and he’s been in Altadena my whole life.
“Like all of us on this block, in four blocks, he didn’t think it was going to be this devastating.
“It jumped whole streets, and it hit this community, but it didn’t touch the mountainside at all.”
They’re still trying to process the apocalyptic scenes here and grieving for those who did not get out.
Kimiko said: “I have no words to explain my feelings at this point in time.
“I’m just silent and numb and just mentally trying to go through the process.”
It would be impossible to exaggerate the scale of the destruction, cars burnt to a cinder, palm trees still alight, power lines strewn across roads.
So many people have lost the roof over their head but there’s one thing Kimiko says she’ll never lose – her memories.
“Every laugh, every joke he told. He was a smart man. He read the LA Times from cover to cover and walked around the Rose Bowl every day.
“He was healthy, he was ambitious… but he went to sleep and died in his bed back there,” she said.
Leave a Reply