pacific palisades neighborhood. we can speak now to someone who has had to evacuate from their home, maryam zar. she lives in the pacific palisades and serves as chair of the pacific palisades community councilm redondo beach, california, which is about 25 miles south of the pacific palisades. pacific palisades community council. thank you forjoining us. give us a sense of how you and your family are doing and what do you know about your home at this point. you know about your home at this point-— this point. thank you for havin: this point. thank you for having me _ this point. thank you for having me on. _ this point. thank you for having me on. let- this point. thank you for having me on. let me i this point. thank you for - having me on. let me clarify, on the past chair of the pacific palisades council. we have a current chair sue cole that has been speaking to the media as have others in the palisades. this is really in extraordinary event even for us and we live in a high fire zone for that we always have fire on the mind but this is extraordinary. i'm doing 0k. the mind but this is extraordinary. i'm doing ok. my family and i were able to evacuate. you can see the remnants of our eva

president of the pacific palisades community council.uation notice which means they may have to plead with just the clothes on their back. what happens to those who have lost everything? where do they go? 0ur correspondentjohn sudworth has been to one area near beverly hills and has been speaking to some people who were evacuated. this particular evacuation centre has catering provided by the salvation army and, of course, for lots of those people having seen their homes burned, there is nowhere else to turn. 0ne homes burned, there is nowhere else to turn. one of those people is marina. she arrived from ukraine as part of a programme that has brought thousands of people from ukraine to america. marina, what happened to you yesterday? i left from my home to work and i left from my home to work and i saw a little smoke near my home, but i do not think that it was something that would be big, so when i tried to come home afterfive hours, i thought that the roads were closed and too many fire department and police cars, and i started to wor

sue cole, president of the pacific palisades community council told me how they are going.ow they are anoin. . council told me how they are oiiin _ ., ., council told me how they are oiiin_ ., ., , ., going. i have not spoken to anybody — going. i have not spoken to anybody who _ going. i have not spoken to anybody who has _ going. i have not spoken to anybody who has not - going. i have not spoken to anybody who has not lost i going. i have not spoken to i anybody who has not lost their home. the place where i live, usually safe from fires, has been completely wiped off the map. the fire did start in the hills where they usually start, but typically the firefighters get on it fast enough to put out the flames. this time we had 80 mile an hour winds and low water pressure and they did not have a chance. it didn't matter how good they are, how many hours they worked, those poor firefighters did everything they could and yet they could not really save much. the speed at which the fire has moved through the palisades area caught everyone by surprise. reports say 96% of propert

she lives in the pacific palisades and previously served as vice—chair of the pacific palisades community councilndo beach, california, which is about 25 miles south of the pacific palisades. it is unbelievable. so today is the first full day where people are waking up to the reality, my phone and i assume the telephones of many people have been a light, with sharing information, gathering what they can, sharing with the network and it goes from there. there is no good news, some people have been able to drive into the whether it's remains standing, whether it's in our commercial district which we called the village, the palisades village which is an adorable little sweet little old town. that's historic and sweet at the same time, it's sweet at the same time, its modern and historic at the same time, there is almost nothing there. people's homes have been down, people have been sharing pictures, snapshots with nothing but the skeleton standing. there are famous trees, not so famous trees, neighbourhoods that we know people or historic and have significant and they all just done. significant and

sue cole, who evacuated from pacific palisades where they're dealing with another fire, the palisades fire. she is also the president of the pacific palisades community council. sue, thanks for being with us. can you just tell us a little bit about what it was like evacuating and what the status is right now of your neighborhood? >> well, the status of my neighborhood is that it's pretty much all gone. i live in the village in an area called the alphabet streets, and from the videos and reports that i've had, it's all gone. um, typically these fires start in the hills and the fire department gets on it and they usually get it contained and and usually the flatlands down below consider themselves pretty safe. in this case. what they're dealing with now, the biggest enemy are these huge, you know, 50 to 80 mile an hour winds. and no matter how many firemen you have, no matter how many people are battling these fires, there's nothing you can do about that. so the embers and the fire, um, traveled all over town to all of the bluffs, to every single neighborhood imaginable. and we evacuated yesterday as soon as we could, as soon as we got the the notification and

with me now is sue cole, a longtime resident, i should say, and president of the pacific palisades community councilsue, i just want to ask you how you're doing this morning. >> you know, it's up and down every hour, but i'm trying to keep a very positive attitude. so i guess i'd say i'm doing fine. everybody's healthy 30 years you've lived in the palisades, you know. >> what's it been like for you to see the devastation? >> well, it's been for me and for everyone else. absolutely devastating. i mean, most people know the status of their homes by now, but a lot of people really don't know. and i've been to a couple different services this week where it was an opportunity for people to just come together, not in the palisades, obviously, because there's really nowhere to go there. um, but, you know, um, for everyone who's lost their home, i mean, people like me lost everything. not only the home, but every single thing in it. so it's it's confusing sometimes during the day because you think about, oh, i got to get this or i got to do this. oh, yeah. no, i don't have that anymore. i can't get that. yo

she's the immediate past chair of the pacific palisades community council, and was also forced to evacuateher home. miriam, thank you so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us or your morning, i should say, out in the west coast. how are you holding up right now? >> hi. well, i'm holding up okay. my phone is in my hand. as you can probably tell from my neck bobbing up and down, because as i think most palestinians are doing, we're all texting each other and trying to share information to the extent that we can get it from either our fire department or lapd or the council office, we're trying to collect that information. i'm on the phone now with our school board elected rep, who's going to drive through and see what happened to the schools. but we're all holding up by just exchanging sort of well wishes and information and trying to figure out what's going on. obviously, the news is also informing us and what we see and hear on tv and on the radio is disheartening. >> sure. >> i wonder what the process was like when you had to evacuate. i understand that you've had to move a secon

pacific palisades. tracy park represents pacific palisades on the los angeles city council. >> what happened was not unpredictable. we already know when there is a wildfire event. our communicationsdown. we know we have traffic bottlenecks. to see the same issues repeat in what has now become the most devastating natural disaster in los angeles history is incredibly frustrating. reporter: park says the fire department's budget is inadequate for today's needs. >> we have about the same number of firefighters and fire stations in los angeles that we did 60 years ago but our demands for service have tripled. there are 4 million people in los angeles. we have about 100 fire engines and ambulances out of service sitting in a maintenance yard because there are not enough mechanics. and in the city we need at least 62 new fire stations to meet average daily demands in our city. 62. i hope this is a wake-up call for all of the leadership in the city of los angeles that this chronic underinvestment in critical infrastructure and public safety cannot continue. this has to be our number one priority. reporter: with more than 150 thousand people still under evacuation orders robert loomis sa

pacific palisades. >> tracy mark represent pacific palisades in the los angeles city council. >> what happened in the palisades over the last several days was not predictable. we already know when there's a wildfire event. our communicationtems go down. we know when evacuation process we have bottlenecks. and to see those same issues repeat in what has become the most devastating national disaster is incredibly frustrating. >> parks says the l.a. fire department's budget is inadequate for today's needs. >> we have about the same number of firefighters and fire stations in the city of los angeles that we had 60 years ago. but our demands for service have tripled. >> there's four million people. >> there's four million people in the city of los angeles. be have about 100 fire engines and ambulance out of service sitting in the maintenance yards -- >> why is in the case? >> because they don't have enough mechanics. and here in the city of los angeles we need at least 62 new fire stations to meet average daily demand in our city, not five, not 10, not 25. 62. i hope that this is a wake-up call to all the leadership in the city of los angeles that this chronic underinvestment in critical infrastructure and public safety canno