Sports
Plaschke: The unbearable guilt of losing nothing — and everything — in the Altadena wildfire
I lost nothing. I lost everything.
I am lucky beyond all imagination. I am haunted beyond all reason.
I am spared. Nobody is spared.
I am rounding the sharp turn that enters my leafy Altadena cul-de-sac, my home for the last dozen years, and I am loudly pleading.
“Hail Mary, full of grace …”
It is a Wednesday morning, several hours after the Eaton fire began tearing apart thousands of lives, there are still flames shooting up from burning destruction. On every block, the air is still dark with smoke and the streets are still clogged with trees, but my fiancée, Roxana, and I had just endured a night of sleepless terror. We had to come here. We had to see.
The burned carcass of a Volkswagen rests in the rubble of a home destroyed in the Eaton fire in Altadena on Wednesday.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Did we lose this most evil of lotteries? Did we take a direct hit from the hand of hell?
I’m shouting and shaking as the bravely determined Roxana spins the car through flames and foliage onto a scarred and sooted street where we see a bit of fence, and a bit of white, and, then, there it is, standing strong amid the ruins of my beloved neighborhood.
Our house. It survived. It survived?
“The Lord is with thee …”
I begin crying, awash in gratitude and relief, until I look around at the barren smoldering landscape and my heart almost instantly drops into a much deeper emotion.
Guilt.
I was here, but where was everybody else? Where were my neighbors? Where were my friends? Why was I still standing and they were not?
My next-door neighbor lived in a sprawling old house that was always full of life. It was gone, burned to nothing, a portrait of death. How did those flames miss me?
Directly across the street was the tidy home of the kindly elderly professor who lived behind a bevy of beautiful trees. No more. No more beauty. No more privacy. No more house. The bones of her refuge lay crushed and stacked and still flickering with flames. Why was she so cursed when I was so blessed?
Next to her lived a wonderful attorney who never complained when cars from my house were parked in front of her beautifully remodeled home. All gone. Total carnage. Her proud accomplishment had been reduced to rubble. Why did I not lose everything instead?
Times columnist Bill Plaschke stands outside his Altadena home on Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. It was one of the few homes in his neighborhood that did not burn down during the wildfires.
(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)
Of eight houses in my cul-de-sac, four remained standing, three of those absorbed some damage, and mine was the only one that appeared untouched. There was no reason for it. There was no logic behind it. My neighbor Phil Barela said he stayed late the previous night and doused a small fire at the back of our property line, and I’ll credit him forever for saving the structure, but this was surely much more than that.
The fire that surrounded our house on all sides did not consume it. There had to be a reason. What was that reason?
During that frantic Wednesday morning visit, we made a quick dash through the house as flames flickered on the streets below. We were enveloped by the smell of smoke, but everything else felt normal. Everything was just as we left it. Surrounding a brown prickly Christmas tree were old magazines, throw blankets, hurriedly discarded socks, all the trappings of an ordinary life.
A life that, like that of thousands of grateful Angelenos whose houses had survived, had nonetheless changed forever.
Our house will have to be stripped and scrubbed and basically gutted down to the drywall and insulation because of smoke damage, and we were the lucky ones.
We could lose all of our furniture, and we were the lucky ones.
Once we’re allowed to live in the house again, which could be months considering all the water and power issues, we will spend the next two years living in the middle of a construction zone, and we were the lucky ones.
If you hear guilt in those statements, you hear right, a guilt as oppressive as a flame. Why did so many others lose priceless photo albums while we get to keep ours? Why must so many others rebuild their daily steps from scratch while our basic floor plan remains the same?
A couple of years ago I wrote a book about the resilient Paradise High football team, which played a nearly undefeated season months after their town was leveled by the 2018 Camp fire. It was called “Paradise Found,” and its central character was a tough head coach, Rick Prinz, whose house amazingly did not burn down.
I contacted Prinz this week to ask about survivor’s guilt. He said it is real. He said he felt it immediately.
Firefighters try to keep a fire from engulfing an adjacent home during the Eaton fire in Altadena on Jan. 8.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“When we found out our home did not burn it was very emotional, we were so thankful and amazed,” he said. “We also felt guilt at the loss of so many others. We did not share our joy with others and kept it to ourselves. I would try not to mention that our house survived to those who had lost so much.”
Prinz admitted the darkest thoughts wrought by survivors’ guilt — “Yes, there were times when we thought it may have been better if our home had burned,” he said.
But he acknowledged that it was so difficult to get his house working again, his focus turned to that. — “Living in a burn scar, rising insurance costs, constant construction, terrible road conditions … the survivor’s guilt begins to wane,” he said.
That guilt is still going strong here. I will not complain. I cannot complain. I don’t deserve to complain.
Even one minute spent in that house is better than the horrible fate that awaited so many who were never given that time.
From this moment forward, every day in that house will be a monument to pure luck and good wind and Phil Barela and, certainly, I had nothing to do with any of it, and how do I live up to that?
There are many of us in Los Angeles in similar situations, houses intact but lives uprooted, forced nomads who may never get home until spring, folks facing a road so long and complicated surely some of them, like Prinz, may already wish their homes were instead destroyed so they could have just started the rebuild from scratch.
You know who you are, those of you whose homes were saved as their guilt threatens to destroy them. You know who you are, and so seemingly does everybody else.
At one of the recent hotels that we’ve been surfing while waiting to be allowed back home, I was approached by someone walking a big dog down a narrow hotel hallway, a common sight these days.
“Good morning, are you an evacuee?” she asked brightly.
“I am,” I said.
“I lost everything,” she said.
“I did not,” I said.
End of conversation. She abruptly spun and headed in the other direction. I was a pariah. I was not worthy of discussing a loss that could not be quantified. I wasn’t a true survivor.
Gusts send burning embers into the air, fueling the Eaton fire on Jan. 8 in Altadena.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
It was then that I realized, no, we’re all survivors, we’ve all been touched even if we still live in pristine neighborhoods with power and water and life. We were all burned. We will all be scarred.
Just because your house is standing doesn’t mean you are standing with it.
At the moment, I’m trying to stand, but I’m not quite there yet. I am blessed but hobbled. I have learned in the past few days that intangible losses, while no match for the tangible ones, can nonetheless stick deeply in the throat. Those of us with intact houses in burned areas can’t publicly admit it, nor should we, but it’s true.
I’m a creature of habit, a slave to routine, I begged for the same press box seat during the Dodgers postseason run, I drive the same weird route to USC football games, I wear the same basic black uniform to every game of every sport.
And now, even though my house is there, everything else is gone, my traditions, my habits, my normalcy.
I used to drive down a pretty Altadena street toward work. That street is now one long junkyard. I used to stop at a corner Chevron Station every day to buy snacks and talk Lakers with the owner. That place has become a blackened shell.
My favorite hamburger joint, gone. One of my favorite breakfast places, gone. A dive bar that helped keep the neighborhood together, gone. Pizza joint, gone. The hardware store that just sold me air filters last week, gone.
From Altadena to Pacific Palisades, you all have stories like this. You lost your favorite watering hole, your favorite grocery store, a part of your city that had become your anchor, your strength, your best friend. All of Los Angeles has stories like this. Our daily lives have been mangled beyond recognition. There have been deaths, there has been destruction, everybody, everywhere, nobody is keeping score, it’s all bad and it all requires a resilience that was on full powerful display everywhere last week, including in my little burned-out block.
During the brief visit to our house the day after the fire, my neighbor Brian Pires was standing in the middle of the street waxing in amazement that his house had also survived when flames shot up from his corner lot. It was his garage. It was suddenly on fire. He had no water, no hose, no chance, yet he refused to give up. He jumped in his car and raced back to the main road and returned moments later with two firetrucks in tow. He had somehow found the firemen himself and led them to the flames which they quickly doused.
At that moment, he wasn’t just a chiropractor protecting his home, he was all of Los Angeles fighting to breathe again with an unreal courage that transcends all tragedy.
Many of us may never get over the guilt of having a house that is still standing. But, damn it, we owe it to those who lost everything to keep them standing.
Trump says there’s ‘no time frame’ to secure Iran deal
Republican Minnesota Senate candidate Tom Weiler joins ‘Fox & Friends’ to discuss President Donald Trump’s blockade in the Strait of Hormuz as the U.S.-Iranian conflict continues and react to Gov. Tim Walz’s, D-Minn., criticism of the president.
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Saudi Arabia was among the countries seeing missiles fly into their airspace as a conflict broke out in the Middle East between the U.S. and Iran.
The prospect of Iran targeting its Middle Eastern neighbors like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates put some sporting events on hold and questioned others. Formula 1 races in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain were canceled and rumors swirled around whether future WWE events could be held in the kingdom.
Roman Reigns celebrates his win during WWE’s Royal Rumble at Riyadh Season Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Jan. 31, 2026. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE)
As the Trump administration brokered a ceasefire with Iran, WWE announced on Thursday that its Night of Champions premium live event will be held in Riyadh on June 27.
“We are proud to welcome Night of Champions back to Riyadh and look forward to delivering another unforgettable night of WWE action for fans in the Kingdom and around the world,” General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki Al-Sheikh said in a news release.
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Sami Zayn makes his entrance during Night of Champions at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on June 28, 2025. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE)
The release touted that WrestleMania 43 will still be held in Riyadh in 2027. It will be the first time that WrestleMania is held outside the U.S.
WWE president Nick Khan was adamant before WrestleMania 42 that the event will still take place in Saudi Arabia despite the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
“We’re doing WrestleMania next year in Saudi,” he said at a Sports Business Journal event, via The Sporting Tribune. “First time ever, WrestleMania will be outside the United States or Canada. And we’ve had a big, fruitful partnership with them.”
John Cena wrestles CM Punk during Night of Champions at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on June 28, 2025. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE)
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He added that those complaining about WrestleMania being held in Saudi Arabia were a “vocal minority.”
Thousand-dollar tickets and hundreds of dollars in fees shocked some hopeful Olympic fans this month, but they did not keep LA28 from boasting strong sales in the committee’s first ticket drop.
LA28 announced Thursday that it sold more than 4 million Olympic tickets during the first ticket drop. The private organizing committee will have a second ticket drop in August with “refreshed inventory across all Olympic sports at a range of price points.”
But after the popularity of the first purchasing period, many of the lower-priced tickets have already been scooped up.
LA28 said roughly half of the total 1 million $28 tickets were sold during the locals presale, which was limited to people living near venue cities in Southern California and Oklahoma City.
The average price per Olympic ticket is less than $200, which includes a mandatory 24% service fee, and LA28 said about 75% of all tickets, including final events, will be under $400. The premier seats at high-demand events command more than $1,000 per ticket, but the highest priced categories make up about 5% of the total ticket inventory.
Artistic gymnastics sold out the quickest in Drop 1. Four new Olympic sports — flag football, lacrosse, softball and squash — sold all their available inventory for the first drop. After five days of local presale, global ticket sales opened and drew fans from 85 countries and all 50 states and U.S. territories. The largest international sales came from the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico and Japan.
For the first female-majority Olympic Games, LA28 reported that women’s Olympic sessions outsold men’s 93% to 88% during the first drop.
“The response to our initial on-sale was nothing short of historic. Fans from near and far have spoken: the world wants to be part of the LA28 Games,” LA28 chief executive officer Reynold Hoover said in a statement. “The success of Drop 1 is about more than momentum — it reflects LA28’s commitment to delivering a fiscally responsible Games that create a lasting legacy for Los Angeles and its communities.”
Drop 2, which will begin in August, will have additional tickets across all Olympic sports, including those that may have sold out during the first purchasing windows. The registration period for Drop 2 opened Thursday and will continue until July 22. Fans who registered for the first drop of tickets but did not receive a time slot and fans who did not buy their maximum 12 general ticket allotment will automatically be entered into the random lottery Drop 2. The new registration period is only required for anybody who did not sign up for the initial drop.
Fans are still limited to 12 Olympic tickets and up to 12 soccer tickets that don’t count toward the general maximum. There is a four ticket per ceremony limit for the opening and closing ceremony that count toward the 12-ticket maximum, which is cumulative across all LA28 presales and ticket drops.
LA28 will have multiple ticket drops with assigned purchasing time slots before ticket sales move to a first-come, first-served format closer to the Games, which open on July 14, 2028. LA28 began its ticketing process earlier than most other Olympic Games with tickets going on sale more than two years in advance of the opening ceremony. The early timeline has created excitement for the first Summer Olympics in the United States since Atlanta 1996, but also prompted concerns about scheduling. Fans clamored for tickets with little information about which teams or athletes would be competing in most sessions.
Tickets are not refundable, but fans can opt for verified resale when LA28 launches its official resale system in 2027. AXS and Eventim is the official secondary ticket marketplace of the LA28 Games and Ticketmaster and Sports Illustrated Tickets have also signed on as additional verified resale platforms.
LA28 will have 14 million tickets available for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which would eclipse the record of 12 million tickets sold for the Paris Games. Paris 2024 sold an about 9.5 million tickets for the Olympics, but used a different ticket system than LA28. For Paris, 3.5 million tickets were sold during the first phase, during which fans were required to buy tickets to at least three different sports instead of the option for single-event tickets available during LA28’s Drop 1 process.
Tickets for the 2028 Paralympics, which will be the first in L.A.’s history, will go on sale in 2027. Ticket sales and hospitality are expected to cover about $2.5 billion of LA28’s expected $7.1 billion budget for the first Games in L.A. in more than 40 years.
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An envoy for President Donald Trump has reportedly asked FIFA to replace Iran with Italy in the 2026 World Cup this summer.
The Financial Times reported the plan is an effort to repair the relationship between Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, which soured after the former’s comments against Pope Leo XIV regarding the war with Iran.
United States special envoy Paolo Zampolli suggested the idea to FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
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President Donald Trump receives the FIFA Peace Prize from FIFA President Gianni Infantino during the FIFA World Cup 2026 Official Draw at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 5, 2025. (Emilee Chinn/FIFA)
“I confirm I have suggested to Trump and Infantino that Italy replace Iran at the World Cup. I’m an Italian native, and it would be a dream to see the Azzurri at a U.S.-hosted tournament,” Zampolli told the outlet. “With four titles, they have the pedigree to justify inclusion.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Fox News Digital.
Italy had a chance to be in the World Cup already, but it lost in a penalty shootout to Bosnia and Herzegovina in a qualifying playoff final.
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Italy became the first World Cup-winning team to miss three consecutive tournaments after the 4-1 penalty shootout loss earlier this month.
“We still don’t believe it that we’re out and that it happened in this manner,” Italy’s Leonardo Spinazzola told reporters at the time, according to the New York Post.
“It’s upsetting for everyone. For us, for our families and for all the kids who have never seen Italy at a World Cup.”
While Zampolli told Infantino about his proposed plan, FIFA’s president said Iran “for sure” will play in the World Cup despite the conflict involving the U.S.
Mehdi Taremi of Iran celebrates after scoring a goal during a 2026 FIFA World Cup Asian Qualifiers Group A game against Uzbekistan at Azadi Stadium in Tehran March 25, 2025. (Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu)
“The Iranian team is coming, for sure,” Infantino said during the CNBC Invest in America Forum earlier this month in Washington, D.C.
“We hope that, by then, of course, the situation will be a peaceful situation. That would definitely help. But Iran has to come, of course. They represent their people. They have qualified. The players want to play.”
Infantino visited the Iranian national team in Turkey, which is where it has its training camp.
All three of Iran’s group stage games are scheduled to be played in the U.S. That remains the case after Iranian government officials suggested to FIFA that their games be moved to Mexico because they could not travel to the U.S.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum revealed FIFA’s rejection of Iran’s request, and it is insisting Iran play where it’s scheduled — SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, and Lumen Field in Seattle. Iran said earlier this month it would only decide on its team’s participation once it heard from FIFA regarding its relocation request.
Iran is scheduled to play at SoFi Stadium against New Zealand June 16 to begin its tournament. It will also play Belgium at the stadium before finishing group play against Mo Salah and Egypt in Seattle June 26.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino attends an international friendly between Mexico and Portugal at Banorte Stadium in Mexico City March 28, 2026. (Antonio Torres/FIFA/Getty Images)
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Trump wrote in a Truth Social post last month that Iran would be welcome to compete in the World Cup as scheduled, though it might not be “appropriate” considering the conflict.
“The Iran National Soccer Team is welcome to The World Cup, but I really don’t believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety,” he wrote.
Trump also told Politico, “I really don’t care,” when asked about Iran’s participation in the tournament. Infantino, who has a strong relationship with Trump, said Trump has “reiterated” to him that the U.S. welcomes Iran’s team to compete.
Fox News’ Paulina Dedaj and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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