“Victor, let’s go!” Shari Shaw screamed as orange flames and thick smoke rushed toward the Altadena house that belonged to her older brother and was built in the 1960s. “Let’s leave this place!”
Victor Shaw, 66, who used to be a courier driver and has diabetes and chronic kidney disease, didn’t move.
He didn’t answer when she shook him. He felt a soft kick in the feet.
Vic, the fire is getting close, she told him. “Don’t stay there.”
He said, “Okay, I’ll just sit here for a while.”
“Don’t waste time sitting here!” Shari begged. “Let’s leave!”
As sparks flew at her SUV, she ran away.
Shari lived, but her brother died.
There were fires this week that destroyed big parts of Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and nearby communities. At least 10 people were killed, according to officials. But that number is likely to go up a lot as police search through the wreckage of thousands of homes that were damaged or destroyed.
“I’m afraid the number of deaths will go up,” said Robert Luna, sheriff of Los Angeles County.
In Altadena on Thursday, chain saws were used by emergency workers to cut down burnt trees that had fallen over. Homicide detectives walked on the burned remains of a house that had been destroyed by the Eaton fire and looked for bodies.
A county medical examiner van was parked on Monterosa Drive about a mile to the east. It was a sad reminder that the official count wasn’t over yet.
A few miles away, on the shore of Malibu, police searched a burned-out foundation next to Pacific Coast Highway for more bodies.
A lot of people had to leave their homes because of the Palisades and Eaton fires. As people tried to escape down streets that quickly got crowded, some had to leave their cars behind as fire trucks went toward the flames.
Soon after the Eaton fire started, people were told to leave Pasadena and Altadena, but the strong winds made the fire quickly get out of hand and prevented crews from using air support to fight it.
Someone from Pasadena told The Times that when the order to leave came out, it took them thirty minutes to drive ten blocks because everyone was “desperately trying to get out.”
Now, areas that were burned down are being searched for people who never made it out.
Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said, “Our firefighters are out putting out the remains of the fires in these buildings when they come across these victims.”
Making sure people got out of the building in time was especially hard because of how fast the fire was spreading. But Marrone said there are other problems, like people not hearing or listening to warnings.
“Some people choose not to follow the order to leave, so they’re staying,” he said. “Then some people don’t get the order to leave. Some people need help getting out of the building because they have disabilities or trouble moving around.
Chief Medical Examiner for Los Angeles County, Dr. Odey Ukpo, said that tooth records or DNA will be used to find out who died in the wildfires. Most of the people who died in the fire are “for lack of a better word, charred,” Ukpo told The Times.
Identifiers like fingerprints or parts of the face are lost.
We will learn more about how the people died over the next few days and weeks.
Shari Shaw said she is still thinking about the last thing she did with her brother.
She is a graphic artist from Pasadena who is 62 years old. On Tuesday at 7:30 pm, she drove to Victor’s house to try to get him to safety and help pack up some of their family’s things.
Victor had been having trouble with his balance and seeing. He lived in a tract home on Monterosa Drive that their parents bought in the 1960s.
He was getting more and more angry as he watched video of fires spreading across Los Angeles on the local news. She said he took a seizure drug that made him feel better, but he woke up feeling sleepy.
Shari watched the news while Victor fell asleep and packed their parents’ wedding photos, important papers, Victor’s medicine, and his overnight kit.
But when she went outside to load her SUV around 2 a.m., she saw mostly orange smoke and flames on the hillside. A house about a block away began to burn down. Embers fell on the cul-de-sac.
She sprinted back to the house and banged on the front door.
She yelled, “We need to leave this place!” She didn’t hear him move. Fire was falling on her SUV. She thought that they would both die if she didn’t get out of there.
When Shari got in her SUV and drove to the end of the street, she saw a police officer driving around the area. He was nearby, so she waved and asked him to help her brother get out.
“Don’t go up there,” the police officer told her, but she was turned down.
Shari chose to try to wake up her brother one more time after the police officer drove off.
She only got half way up the street, though, because the smoke was so thick.
She said, “I couldn’t do it.” “I just prayed that he got out at that point.”
She called his cell phone all night, but all of her calls went to voicemail.
A friend texted her on Wednesday morning, saying, “There’s nothing left.”
Shari checked to see if her brother’s car was still in the garage. Yes was the answer.
Around 11 a.m., Shari and a friend went back to her family’s house.
She finally got through after pleading with police to let her through their barriers. As she drove by the downed power lines, she couldn’t recognize her area.
“It was all destruction, just like Armageddon.” “Everything was evened out,” she said. “Every house had been destroyed except for one.” Other than that, though, everything was still on fire. Cars and trees were on fire, and only buildings were left standing. It was terrible.
The simple house that had been in their family for over fifty years was no longer there.
The son of her friend heard about her brother and went walking into the wreckage. Victor’s body was on the path outside the front door.
He had a garden hose in his hand.
Shari saw the dead body of her brother but couldn’t get any closer. His green shorts were easy for her to spot.
To this day, she still doesn’t know what happened after she left.
The woman said, “He might have thought he was doing the right thing by putting out the fire.” “I’m not sure if he really thought he could, but I know he did his best.”
Victor had been having trouble breathing, and she wonders if the thick smoke could have killed him. She thinks he might have lost his balance and fallen.
Shari said, “I hear it in my head.” “Would it have made a difference if I could go back or stay fifth longer?”
She keeps thinking about the different options and wondering if maybe things could have gone differently.
“Maybe I could have gone with him,” she asked. “Perhaps some superpower hero power would have worn me down—an adrenaline rush or something?”
Shari did say that she was glad she and her brother had become closer since their mother died in 2020.
Vic loved taking the highway to visit different places in the U.S. He was especially interested in Route 66. They went on short trips to Reno, Lake Tahoe, San Diego, and Palm Springs every weekend. They liked being with each other.
Shari said, “You know, when you’re younger, you don’t really value your sibling.” “Our relationship grew stronger as we got older.” He was a good person.
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