Lifestyle
‘Everything I knew burned down around me’: A journalist looks back on LA’s fires
A firefighter works as homes burn during the Eaton fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles County, Calif., on Jan. 7, 2025.
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On New Year’s Eve 2024, journalist Jacob Soboroff was sitting around a campfire with a friend when he made an offhand comment that would come back to haunt him: The last thing he wanted to do in the new year, Soboroff said, was cover a story that would require donning a fire-safe yellow suit.
Just one week later, Soboroff was dressed in the yellow suit, reporting live from a street corner in Los Angeles as fire tore through the Pacific Palisades, the community where he was raised.
“This was a place that I could navigate with my eyes closed,” Soboroff says of the neighborhood. “Every hallmark of my childhood I was watching carbonize in front of me. … There were firefighters there and first responders and other journalists there, but it was an extremely lonely, isolating experience to be standing there as everything I knew burned down around me in real time.”
In his new book, Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America’s New Age of Disaster, Soboroff offers a minute-by-minute account of the catastrophe, told through the voices of firefighters, evacuees, scientists and political leaders. He says covering the wildfires was the most important assignment he’s ever undertaken.
“The experience of doing this is something that I don’t wish on anybody, but in a way I wish everybody could experience,” he says. “It’s given me insane reverence for our colleagues in the local news community here, who, I think, definitionally were exercising a public service in the street-level journalism that they were doing and are still doing. … It was actually beautiful to watch because they are as much a first responder on a frontline as anybody else.”
Interview highlights
On the experience of reporting from the fires
You’re choking with the smoke. And I almost feel guilty describing it from my vantage point because the firefighters would say things to me like: “My eyeballs were burning. We were laying flat on our stomach in the middle of the concrete street because it was so hot, it was the only way that we could open the hoses full bore and try to save anything that we could.” …
I could feel the heat on the back of my neck as we stood in front of these houses that I remember as the houses that cars and people would line up in front of for the annual Fourth of July parade or the road race that we would run through town. Trees were on fire behind us — we were at risk of structures falling at any given minute. It was pretty surreal because this is a place I had spent so much time as a child and going back to as an adult. … I had no choice but to just open my mouth and say what I saw to the millions of people that were watching us around the country.
On undocumented immigrants being central to rebuilding the city
These types of massive both humanitarian and natural disasters give us X-ray vision for a time into sort of the fissures that are underneath the surface in our society. And Los Angeles, in addition to being one of the most unequal cities between the rich and the poor, has more undocumented people than virtually any other city in the United States of America. Governor Newsom knew that with the policies of the incoming administration, some of the very people that would be responsible for the cleanup and the rebuilding of Los Angeles may end up in the crosshairs of national immigration policy. And I think that that was an understatement. …
Pablo Alvarado in the National Day Laborer Organizing Network said to me that often the first people into a disaster — the second responders after the first — are the day laborers. They went to Florida after Hurricane Andrew, to New Orleans after Katrina, and they’d be ready to go in Los Angeles. And I went out and I cleaned up Altadena and Pasadena with some of them in real time.
And only months later did this wide-scale immigration enforcement campaign begin … on the streets of LA as sort of the Petri dish, the guinea pig for expanding this across the country. And it’s not an exaggeration to say that the parking lots of Home Depots, where workers [were] looking to get involved in the rebuilding of Los Angeles, has been ground zero for that enforcement campaign.
On efforts to rebuild
The pace is slow and it’s sort of a hopscotch of development. And I think for people who do come back, for people who can afford to come back, it’s going to be a long road ahead. You’re going to have half the houses on your street under construction for years to come. And for people that do inhabit those homes, it’s going to an isolating experience. But there’s an effort underway to rebuild. …
There’s also a lot of for-sale signs. And that’s the sad reality of this, is that there are people who, whether it’s that they can’t afford to come back … or that they just can’t stomach it, I think, sadly, a lot people are not going to be returning to their homes.
On what the Palisades and Altadena look like today
They both look like very big construction sites in a way. There are still some facades, some ruins of the more historic buildings in the Palisades. … But mostly it’s just empty lots. And in Altadena, the same thing. If you drive by the hardware store, the outside is still there. But it’s a patchwork of empty lots. Homes now under construction. And lots and lots of workers. … There are still a handful of people who are living in both the Palisades and in Altadena, but for the most part, these are communities where you’ve got workers going in during the day and coming out at night. …
We have designed this community to be one that’s in the crosshairs of a fire just like the one we experienced and that we will certainly, certainly experience again, because nobody’s packing it up and leaving Los Angeles. People may not return to their communities after they’ve lost their homes, but the ship has sailed on living in the wildland urban interface in the second largest city in the country.
On seeing this story, personally, as his “most important assignment”
Jacob Soboroff is a correspondent for MS NOW, formerly MSNBC.
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I don’t think I realized at the time how badly I needed the connections that I made in the wake of the fire, both with the people who have lost homes and the firefighters, first responders who were out there, but also honestly with my own family, my immediate family, my wife and my kids, my mom and my dad and my siblings and myself. I think that this was a really hard year in LA, and I think in the wake of the fire, I was experiencing some level of despair as well. Then the ICE raids happened here and sort of turned our city upside down. And this book for me was just this amazing cathartic blessing of an opportunity to find community with people I don’t think I ever would have otherwise spent time with, and to reconnect with people who I hadn’t seen or heard from in forever.
Anna Bauman and Nico Wisler produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Ariana Grande arrives at the 83rd Golden Globes on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif.
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The brightest stars in TV and film kicked off the 83rd annual Golden Globes tonight in Beverly Hills, Calif. with Ariana Grande, Noah Wyle, Teyana Taylor and George Clooney are just some the names who walked the red carpet. This year’s ceremony was hosted by comedian Nikki Glaser.
Here’s a glimpse of what some of the attendees are wearing tonight.
Michael B. Jordan
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Ryan Coogler and Zinzi Evans
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Jean Smart
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Teyana Taylor
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Owen Cooper
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Sara Wells and Noah Wyle
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Claire Danes
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Stellan Skarsgård and Megan Everett-Skarsgard
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Amy Poehler
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EJAE
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Laufey
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Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons
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Macaulay Culkin and Brenda Song
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Jacob Elordi
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Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco
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Ryan Destiny
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Rose Byrne
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Kate Hudson
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Snoop Dogg
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Timothée Chalamet
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Miley Cyrus
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George Clooney and Amal Clooney
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Leonardo DiCaprio
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Michel Martin
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Steve Inskeep
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Leila Fadel
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A Martinez
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Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy
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Amanda Seyfried
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William Stanford Davis
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Emma Stone
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Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall
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Chloé Zhao
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Mark Ruffalo and Sunrise Coigney
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Hannah Einbinder
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Sheryl Lee Ralph
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Keegan-Michael Key and Elle Key
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Glen Powell
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Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis
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Minnie Driver
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Orlando Bloom
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Hudson Williams
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Wanda Sykes
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Nikki Glaser
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Queen Latifah
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2026 Golden Globes
Nikki Glaser Shouts Out Rob Reiner …
Dons ‘Spinal Tap’ Hat at Close of Show
Published
Rob Reiner wasn’t forgotten at this year’s Golden Globe awards … because host Nikki Glaser paid tribute to him just weeks after his murder.
Here’s the deal … during the sign-off for the awards show, Nikki came onstage wearing a black and white “Spinal Tap” hat — the band which serves as the subject of Reiner’s iconic 1984 mockumentary of the same name.
Worth noting … the Golden Globes do not typically air an in memoriam — so this was the only time Reiner was mentioned at the show.
As you know … Rob and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were found dead in their Los Angeles home last month. Their son Nick Reiner has been arrested for murder in connection to the case.
TMZ.com
Nick’s arraignment was scheduled for last week … but, his lawyer Alan Jackson dropped out of the case — leaving Nick with a public defender and new arraignment date set for late February.
Jackson told a gaggle of reporters outside the courthouse that Nick’s not guilty … but, he simply can’t defend him. He did not provide a reason for his withdrawal.
Our new documentary “TMZ Investigates The Reiner Murders: What Really Happened” dives into Rob and Michele’s grisly deaths … as well as Nick’s history of mental health issues and even how his weight gain set him on a dangerous path.
“TMZ Investigates The Reiner Murders: What Really Happened” is now streaming on Hulu.
On-air challenge
Today’s puzzle is called “Pet Theory.” Every answer is a familiar two-word phrase or name in which the first word start starts PE- and the second word starts T-. (Ex. What walkways at intersections carry –> PEDESTRIAN TRAFFIC)
1. Chart that lists all the chemical elements
2. Place for a partridge in “The 12 Days of Christmas”
3. Male voyeur
4. What a coach gives a team during halftime in the locker room
5. Set of questions designed to reveal your traits
6. Something combatants sign to end a war
7. Someone who works with you one-on-one with physical exercises
8. Member of the Who
9. Incisors, canines, and premolars that grow in after you’re a baby
10. Nadia Comaneci was the first gymnast to score this at the Olympics
11. What holds the fuel in a British car
Last week’s challenge
Last week’s challenge was a numerical one from Ed Pegg Jr., who runs the website mathpuzzle.com. Take the nine digits — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. You can group some of them and add arithmetic operations to get 2011 like this: 1 + 23 ÷ 4 x 5 x 67 – 8 + 9. If you do these operations in order from left to right, you get 2011. Well, 2011 was 15 years ago. Can you group some of the digits and add arithmetic symbols in a different way to make 2026? The digits from 1 to 9 need to stay in that order. I know of two different solutions, but you need to find only one of them.
Challenge answer
12 × 34 × 5 – 6 – 7 + 8 – 9 [or] 1 + 2 + 345 × 6 – 7 × 8 + 9
Winner
Daniel Abramson of Albuquerque, N.M.
This week’s challenge
This week’s challenge comes from listener Ward Hartenstein. Think of a well-known couple whose names are often said in the order of _____ & _____. Seven letters in the names in total. Combine those two names, change an E to an S, and rearrange the result to name another famous duo who are widely known as _____ & _____.
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, January 15 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.
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