Naz Sykes
Appearances
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
I mean, so, you know, Steve was ahead of me. He was like, I'm just going to run. He's like, I can't, I can't, you know, I need to see, I need to see. So he's ahead of me. We turned a corner and I see smoke and I'm thinking maybe our house is fine because there is like a little smoke coming and he's ahead of me and he's running. And the next thing I know he stops and he's just emotional.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
You know, he is, he's holding his head. And so then I knew it was gone. It was almost like an out-of-body experience. So many little pieces of our identity to see it in ashes. My first thought was, how am I going to explain to my children because I can't even understand what I'm seeing in front of me right now? How is this possible? And in such a short amount of time,
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
I mean, literally less than 24 hours from the time that we had left. An entire town was burnt.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
I will miss every time I opened my door and I walked in and the way the sun would shine into the room, right? When you walked in and I would have my little flowers from Trader Joe's on my vase and try to make the house look pretty for the girls and everything.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
looking at their little rooms every day, making their bed, every day as I would make the bed, I literally would thank God and say, thank you for giving them this space. It was almost like I had proved something to myself, that I can do this and I can do it for my kids, that I was able to give it to them.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
You know what? I am angry. I'm angry because there was no surprise to this. They knew that this weather system is coming in. They knew that things are dry. We haven't had any rain. But it seems like nobody was proactively taking care of anything, right? Even the number of fire trucks, you would expect more. Or number of planes dropping water, you would expect more.
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
And if we can't have planes, then what's the other option? Even the most basic is, do we have water? It's not the fire department's fault. It's not the police officers. They're doing what they need to do. But how can a place like Los Angeles, Pacific Palisades, the amount of money, the amount of resources, the amount of taxes that we pay, you run out of water?
The Daily
Could the L.A. Fires Have Been Stopped Sooner?
Definitely nobody was prepared for this. And I think that it didn't need to go to the extent that it did. I think 50% of the loss could have been prevented.