The last time Lindsay Rupp saw her Los Angeles home, as flames from the devastating wildfires burning across the county quickly approached, her Brentwood neighbourhood looked like a war zone.
The Canadian-born mother of two, who has lived in California for over 20 years, had returned Wednesday morning to grab “anything I saw that I thought I might need or that my kids might need.” She stuffed it all into garbage bags before she knew the road in and out would be closed.
As she drove back down the hill from Mandeville Canyon, just a few kilometres north of the fire that was consuming the Pacific Palisades, “it was almost apocalyptic,” Rupp told Global News in an interview.
“The sky was black,” she said. “The flames were on the horizon, like one canyon away. So I knew time was of the essence to get out through that.”
Rupp also remembers how eerily quiet her street was.
“It was almost like a deserted town,” she said. “I almost felt like it was like the middle of the night, but it was 9 a.m. in the morning.”
Multiple fires have engulfed communities around Los Angeles, destroying thousands of structures and forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate to safety.
Rupp herself is staying with friends in California, and her kids, aged nine and seven, are with her ex-husband in a safe location nearby.
Extremely high winds have spread the flames, which have been further ignited by extreme drought conditions, making it difficult for fire crews to contain the blazes.
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Rupp says “countless friends” have lost their homes. Over the course of Wednesday alone, she learned of six neighbourhood houses that have burned down, and was receiving pictures from neighbours and friends of flames “just yards away from our house.”
“It’s been a pretty rough few days,” she said through tears.
She also has friends who live in the Palisades whose community has been “pretty much obliterated,” she said.
“I’ve had some friends who have gone back and walked through the grounds, and it’s just devastating,” she said, with homes, schools, and sports fields that her kids have played on all destroyed.
“Everything’s gone,” she said.
Dr. Martha Gulati, a cardiologist at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute from London, Ont., was evacuated from her home near Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills, lying between the Palisades fire and the massive Eaton fire to the east.
“If you can see outside my window right now, it’s not sunny Los Angeles, it’s smoky Los Angeles,” she told Global News from a hotel she’s staying in with her family.
“It’s quite frightening.”
At Vancouver International Airport on Thursday, people arriving from Los Angeles said they fled similar scenes.
“When we drove in (to Los Angeles International Airport), it was very Armageddon-ish, very dark,” said Upland, Calif., resident Dawn Marie Stager, whose son is playing hockey in Vancouver.
“The entire airport is covered in smoke,” her husband Tim Stager said. “We’ve lived there our whole life and it’s the worst we’ve ever seen.”
Ilana Gory, who was visiting California from Australia, said her family’s vacation began with “beautiful, sunny skies, and now the skies are black.”
“The lobby (of our hotel in Santa Monica) was packed,” she said. “Hundreds of people trying to escape the Palisades. They were pretty devastated and scared and worried.
“There was ash falling all over the airport. … When we took off from L.A., you could see the fires burning.”
Rupp says she’s heartened by the strength of her community and others that have supported each other, with neighbours and strangers alike providing assistance to those who have lost everything.
“Friends from school have reached out about clothing for my kids, the neighbourhood has put on a camp for the kids to go to,” she said. “Even the drug stores are offering people to fill their medication and prescriptions and stuff.
“It’s so impactful, and has really made things a little less horrific in a dark time.”
She also commended the firefighters and emergency workers who have put themselves in harm’s way to try and save as many homes as possible — including hers.
“They’ve got the hardest job,” she said. “I can’t thank them enough.”
—with additional files from Global’s Shallima Maharaj
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
