South, Midwest and Northeast brace for yet another storm
ABC News
(NEW YORK) — A winter storm has left tornado damage along the Gulf Coast and piles of snow in the Plains and the Midwest — and residents are now preparing for a new storm moving in this weekend.
This latest storm has dropped over 11 inches of snow in Iowa, 10 inches in Illinois and 7.5 inches in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
On the southern end of the storm, at least two tornadoes were reported in Alabama and Mississippi on Wednesday as winds gusted near 60 mph.
(LOS ANGELES, Calif.) — Nearly a full week has passed since Alex Shekarchian and Moogega Cooper hastily packed a few belongings and fled from the second natural disaster to upturn their lives in three months.
In October, the couple survived Hurricane Milton, which slammed the Florida coast. Now, they are among thousands of residents to lose their homes in the unprecedented firestorm continuing to burn across Los Angeles County.
“We’ve seen weather events get more and more extreme. That Category 5 [hurricane] was unprecedented,” Cooper told ABC News of experiencing back-to-back natural disasters on both coasts. “This firestorm was unprecedented.”
Shekarchian recalled driving home last Tuesday evening and seeing a “lightning strike of fire” in the hills near their home in Altadena. He said that when he got to his house, there was no electricity and he found Cooper sitting inside next to candles “like the candles we had from when we survived Hurricane Milton.”
Fueled by hurricane-strength winds, the Eaton Fire ravaged the communities of Altadena and Pasadena, destroying at least 7,000 structures, including homes and businesses, officials said. As of Monday, the fire was 33% contained after consuming more than 14,000 acres.
The Eaton Fire is one of several blazes to break during Tuesday and Wednesday’s Santa Ana windstorm, which struck during a severe drought, authorities said. At one point, seven wildfires were burning all at once across a 45-square-mile area of Los Angeles County.
The Palisades Fire in the oceanside community of Pacific Palisades remains the largest of the fires. The Palisades Fire has destroyed more than 5,000 homes and scorched nearly 24,000 acres. The inferno was 14% contained Monday as firefighters braced for a new Santa Ana wind event forecast to buffet the area through Wednesday.
At least 24 fire-related deaths occurred in the Eaton and Palisades fires, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Offices confirmed. Nearly two dozen people remain unaccounted for, according to the Los Angeles County sheriff. Many of those who died in the fires were elderly or disabled, officials said.
A third major fire, the Hurst Fire near Sylmar in the San Fernando Valley, was stopped by firefighters at 799 acres and was 95% contained on Monday.
Planning to rebuild
Cooper said the blaze that destroyed her home swarmed her neighborhood with incredible speed.
“I actually didn’t realize I was going to lose my home until we saw the news of the fire spreading far beyond where mentally I was prepared for them even to go,” Cooper told ABC News.
Even after evacuating, Cooper said she believed they would find their home still intact only to learn she and Shekarchian suffered a complete loss.
The couple said that unlike a lot of homeowners, they have home insurance to rebuild and have already decided to do so.
“I think of it as not necessarily losing a physical structure, but we lost a home, we temporarily lost that sense of community,” Cooper said. “And that’s why I want to rebuild.”
Shekarchian added, “It was an easy decision when we knew that we wanted to be part of that rebuild with restaurants we lost, the stores we lost.”
On top of everything, Shekarchian said he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer just days before the fires struck.
Shekarchian, an entertainment lawyer, said the movie “Wicked” is helping him get through the horror, which he said was choreographed by one of his clients, Christopher Scott.
“We’re just dancing through life kind of,” Shekarchian said of how he and Cooper are trying to maintain a positive attitude. “Dancing through cancer, dancing through homelessness.”
‘It was a nightmare’
Jeffrey and Cheryl Ku also of Altadena told ABC News they believe they were among the first people to see the Eaton Fire ignite at the base of an electrical transmission tower in the hills near their home at 6:19 p.m. on Tuesday.
“My husband had come home from work, and he ran in the house and just started screaming, ‘There’s a fire on the hill. We need to get out,'” Cheryl Ku said. “I ran out back, saw the fire at the poles and I immediately called 911.”
A Ring doorbell camera on their home captured the scary moments after the couple spotted the fire charging into their neighborhood. The Ring video recorded Jeffrey frantically hosing down the exterior of his home while constantly trying to keep an eye on flames advancing toward him.
“It was a nightmare,” Jeffrey Ku said. “And I think the worst part was every time I checked on the fire, it got worse.”
The couple said their home was left standing.
Neighbors of the couple told ABC News they also saw the Eaton Fire apparently ignite near the transmission tower and rapidly explode.
“There was no other fire, no flames anywhere around,” said neighbor Pedro Rojas, who recorded video of the flames near the transmission tower at 6:24 p.m. on Tuesday. “Because it was so dark that if there were flames in any other places we would have noticed it.”
Fire officials trying to determine the cause of the Eaton Fire and the other blazes told ABC News they were aware of the videos showing flames near the transmission tower at the onset of the firestorm.
The Southern California Edison company issued a statement to ABC News, saying that while the Eaton Fire started in its service area, a preliminary analysis shows “no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start of the fire.” The utility company also said no fire agency has suggested its equipment caused the Eaton Fire to ignite.
But Pedro Pizarro, president and CEO of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison, told ABC News on Monday that the company cannot yet rule out the possibility that its energy infrastructure played a role in sparking the wildfires.
‘My guardian angel’
After losing their Altadena home of 25 years in the Eaton Fire, Ivan and Robyn Migel said the only thing to survive was a ceramic angel they had in their garden.
“That was my guardian angel in my garden,” Robyn Migel told ABC News.
She said that while her stove, refrigerator and furniture “vaporized” along with their house, the angel survived without even cracking.
“It was just marked by smoke from the flames. I thought that was a beautiful sign,” Robyn Migel said.
Ivan Migel said that when he saw the angel amid the rubble, he burst into tears.
“It also just gave me hope to move forward and to rebuild from this experience,” Ivan Migel said.
The Migels said their daughter was injured while evacuating their home when an ember fell from the sky and hit her in the face.
Robyn Migel said she now regrets not grabbing more family heirlooms and photos in the half-hour they were given to evacuate.
“I’ve just had to let go of that sadness of what we didn’t do in those moments because my family and my pets got out safely and that was the most important,” Robyn Migel said.
Learning his home and business were lost
Mike Geller of Pacific Palisades told ABC News that he not only lost his home, but also the jewelry store his family has owned in Palisades Village for almost three generations.
Now at age 48, Geller said he has to start over.
“Thank God I was able to retrieve my birth certificate. But every possession my children have accumulated … gone, decimated,” Geller said. “I’m in shock. I’m not even sure how I’m talking to you. I’m absolutely in shock. I’m just going through the motions. It hasn’t really set in yet.”
Geller said he has filed a personal insurance claim, but doesn’t know when it will be processed. He said he and many of his neighbors, especially older residents who bought their homes decades ago for $50,000 to $75,000, will not have the means to rebuild.
“Those people will not be able to come back. And if they do and they have insurance, will they rebuild?” Geller said. “Look, if I’m 75, 80 years old, you know, how much time do I have?”
Geller said he and his wife are considering not rebuilding.
“It’s about quality of life,” he said. “If it takes me three years to rebuild, how much time do I actually have left at that point?”
(LOS ANGELES, Calif.) — Across the Pacific Palisades, where the current Los Angeles wildfires began on Jan. 7, homes and buildings have been reduced to rubble, the once-bucolic neighborhood left ashen and desolate.
But standing tall among the wreckage — almost entirely unscathed — remains Palisades Village, the outdoor mall owned by Rick Caruso, billionaire real estate developer and former Republican mayoral candidate.
To protect the high-end shopping center, several private water tankers, equipped with 3,000 gallons of water in each, were brought in to fend off the encroaching blaze, ABC News has reported.
“Our property is standing,” Caruso told The New York Times on Wednesday. “Everything around us is gone. It is like a war zone.”
Caruso did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News. On Sunday, he posted on X that he was committing $5 million to the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation.
Amid the devastation of the fires, in which thousands of Californians have lost their homes, private firefighting companies have provoked controversy and ire, a symbol of the gaping disparity between the lives of the city’s wealthiest residents and those left struggling to rebuild.
The majority of private firefighters don’t actually work to serve individual customers, experts told ABC News. In most cases, they’re contracted by the government, aiding local firefighting crews, or by insurance companies, typically working to avert damage.
But some private firefighters offer their services to individuals, a practice that has shocked and infuriated many as its existence has entered the public eye. In 2018, so-called “concierge” firefighters saved Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s Hidden Hills mansion — along with several neighbors’ homes — during the Woolsey wildfire, according to reports at the time.
On Tuesday, real estate investor Keith Wasserman sparked widespread anger after posting to X about it.
“Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home? Need to act fast here. All neighbors houses burning. Will pay any amount,” he wrote in a now-deleted post.
Wasserman’s post inspired backlash, with users slamming the businessman as out of touch. He later deleted his account. Wasserman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Due to the private nature of these services, it’s not yet clear how widespread the use of private firefighters has been in battling the Los Angeles fires. Prices are not openly listed, and can vary widely, likely costing several thousand a day, The New York Times reported.
“I’ll be honest with you, we get a lot of calls in circumstances like this from private landowners who are interested in hiring some private resources to help mitigate fire risk,” Deborah Miley, executive director of National Wildfire Suppression Association, an organization representing over 300 private firefighting companies, told ABC News.
Though most private firefighting companies focus solely on work for the government and insurance companies, some openly offer their services to individual customers. Allied Disaster Defense, which the Los Angeles Times reported had sent staff to fight the recent fires, has a page on its website advertising “private client services.” The company offers to sign non-disclosure agreements for providing their services, which they recommend for “high-net worth individuals, and even celebrities.”
Aside from public backlash, the employment of private firefighters during such serious wildfires can be “extremely dangerous,” Cal Fire battalion chief David Acuña told ABC News.
“Where it becomes a problem is they don’t fall under our chain of command. We don’t know what personal protective equipment they have, and we don’t have radio contact,” Acuña said.
Acuña said he has no problems with private firefighters working in advance to prevent fire damage — but during a disaster like the one that’s ongoing, they can get in the way of official firefighters doing their jobs.
“All of those people are folks that we are going to have to come in and rescue if they stay in the area too long, and that takes away from us being able to attack the fire,” he said.
As the wildfires continue their brutal rampage, Acuña emphasized that local fire departments will remain on the ground working to battle the flames.
“We have a responsibility to the public — not to a customer,” he said.
Erik Menendez, left, and is brother Lyle, in front of their Beverly Hills home, Nov. 30, 1989 Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(LOS ANGELES, Calif.) — Erik and Lyle Menendez’s infamous case was back in front of a judge Monday, with their aunts appealing to the judge on their behalf, during a status hearing regarding the brothers’ habeas corpus petition, which was filed last year for a review of new evidence not presented at trial.
The hearing was delayed 40 minutes due to challenges with trying to get Lyle and Erik Menendez to be available in court via video. After several attempts, the brothers were able to listen to the proceedings on the phone.
A lottery drawing was held for 16 public seats in the courtroom. Dozens of members of the public arrived early in the morning to wait for a chance to witness the hearing.
Judge Michael Jesic allowed testimony Monday from two of the brothers’ aunts — their mother’s sister, Joan VanderMolen, and their father’s sister, Terry Baralt — due to health concerns.
The aunts “both made impassioned pleas with the judge to send the brothers home,” defense attorney Mark Geragos told reporters after the hearing, calling it a “moving experience.”
The aunts testified about “all of the good things” the brothers have done in prison, Geragos said.
Jesic pushed back another scheduled hearing regarding the brothers’ resentencing recommendation from Dec. 11 to Jan. 30 and Jan. 31.
Jesic said he needs time to go through 17 boxes of files on the case and said he wants to give the newly elected Los Angeles district attorney ample time to get up to speed.
“By Jan. 30 or 31, we’re hoping that by the end of that, or sometime sooner, that we will, in fact, get the brothers released,” Geragos said.
Two new pieces of evidence are at the center of the brothers’ habeas corpus petition.
One is allegations from a former member of the boy band Menudo, who revealed last year that he was raped by the brothers’ father, Jose Menendez.
The second piece is a letter Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin eight months before the murders detailing his alleged abuse from his father. The cousin testified about the alleged abuse at trial, but the letter — which would have corroborated the cousin’s testimony — wasn’t found until several years ago, according to the brothers’ attorney.
The case began in 1989, when Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18, fatally shot their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in the family’s Beverly Hills home. The defense claimed the brothers acted in self-defense after enduring years of sexual abuse by their father, but prosecutors alleged they killed for money.
The first trial, which had separate juries for each brother, ended in mistrials. In 1996, after the second trial — during which the judge barred much of the sex abuse evidence — the brothers were convicted and both sentenced to two consecutive terms of life without parole.
As the habeas corpus petition moves through the courts, the brothers have two other potential paths to freedom.
One path is through resentencing. Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced last month he was recommending the brothers’ sentence of life without the possibility of parole be removed, and they should instead be sentenced for murder, which would be a sentence of 50 years to life. Because both brothers were under 26 at the time of the crimes, they would be eligible for parole immediately with the new sentence.
The DA’s office said its resentencing recommendations take into account many factors, including rehabilitation in prison, and abuse or trauma that contributed to the crime. Gascón praised the work Lyle and Erik Menendez did behind bars to rehabilitate themselves and help other inmates.
Shortly after Gascón’s announcement, he lost his race for reelection to Nathan Hochman. The incoming DA, who is set to take office on Dec. 2, said he plans to read through the evidence — including confidential prison files and interviews with family, lawyers and law enforcement — before showing his support for resentencing.
The other possible path to freedom is the brothers’ request for clemency, which they’ve submitted to California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Last week, Newsom said he’ll defer to Hochman’s “review and analysis of the Menendez case prior to making any clemency decisions.”
ABC News’ Alex Stone, Matt Gutman and Ashley Riegle contributed to this report.
