Families, firefighters in shock as California wildfires continue | 60 Minutes

tonight Bill Whitaker is covering the historic La wildfires from the air and from the ground starting in Altadena California the story will continue in a moment the eaten fire burst out of the San Gabriel mountains above Altadena Tuesday night it has since devoured more than 7,000 homes and structures in this tight-knit diverse Community making it one of the most Savage firestorms in Los Angeles County's history the death toll is rising wildfires are a fact of life here but nothing prepared people for Destruction on this scale rows of chimneys now stand like tombstones towering palm trees

like burned match sticks we found fire Crews still working to contain The Inferno and a dazed Calvin family sifting through the ruins of their homes and their lives this is unreal oh my God houseu zier Calvin and his family have called outad Dina home for three generations just wonder if anything's left the rocking chair for the baby I literally just built all of this Calvin a high school football coach has lived on this block his whole life he has seen a number of wildfires flare up in the Foothills but never in his 47 years had

he seen anything like The Firestorm that swept off the mountain this past Tuesday and out of nowhere you see the fire appear across Lake Street and you can see it going up the mountain on our side within an hour for it to move that quickly and that rapidly and for it to shift paths that fast was insane Dina gone bro it's over his son Jamir told us the winds kicked up and power went down across the neighborhood it was like a hurricane just fire no water but like 80 mph plus it felt surreal was the

fire like racing down the hill at that point yeah that's what's scary about this it just was shooting like a blowtorch like a blowtorch it was literally just shooting off of the mountain it felt like you're being attacked by a storm yeah my brother as the fire bore down on them zire put his wife baby and mother into the car jir grabbed what he could I'm lucky to even have the little bag of clothes that I have left but as far as trophies memories diplomas everything else just went up in Flames my mom just said

it to me she's like everything's gone you mean the books that we have like nothing I'm just like Mom it's all gone all of it every memory all those things are gone we have whatever's left in our heads to rebuild with all of us gone this fire in Altadena was just one of eight destructive wildfires that lay Siege to Los Angeles this past week with almost no rain for 8 months hillsides and backyards were bone dry Prime to burn investigators are still trying to determine how the fire started but whipped by ferocious Santa Ana winds

those blazes roared down city streets and spread like a deadly virus no place seemed immune neighborhoods not engulfed in flames were blanketed by smoke and Ash wealth and Status offered no protection affluent Pacific Palisades was first to fall thousands of structures were destroyed thousands of people were forced to flee the conditions that night were unbearable it was a devil wind that came out you know that extreme Santa Ana wind condition Anthony is chief of the LA County Fire Department one of the officials overseeing the firefight he told us the devil winds hurled Embers far ahead

of the fire like snowfall from Hell Embers like this are transported in the Smoke column and and P down wind or bigger so this is being blown by the winds thousands and thousands of burning embers this size and bigger being transported by that wind and that smoke column Chief says fires normally run uphill but with these winds was pushed downhill into these neighborhoods and sending these Embers right blocks if not miles ahead and and the Embers were being generated not only by the brush on the hillsides but by the homes that are burning when the

life-threatening winds started building told us he called up extra Crews and engines but the fires grew too big too fast demand for water overburdened the system water pressure dropped and fire hoses ran dry while the fires raged we hear that people were complaining that there wasn't enough water or wasn't enough water pressure MH was that a a factor so the water system was stretched Metropolitan water systems are not designed to sustain a firefight like this your viewers can't expect a Municipal Water System to supply enough firefighting water to to extinguish every one of these houses

that's unrealistic did you have enough resources did you have enough firefighters did you have enough fire engines no and there's there's not enough fire engines for this ordinarily for one house like this you might have three or four three or four fire engines we we we think we've lost 8,000 structures so times three fire engines each that that requires 26,000 fire engines I don't think the state of California has 26,000 fire that could be at one place right now you your your firefighters your resources everything overwhelmed absolutely overwhelmed Mother Nature owned us owned us those

two days neighboring Orange County fire chief Brian fennessy has been fighting wildfires for almost five decades he dispatched hundreds of firefighters to help Chief and baguer Crews across la one of the most powerful Tools in their Arsenal this Fleet of Hightech choppers that can fight fires 24/7 dropping up to 3,000 gallons of water each pass but with Santa Ana winds gusting near 100 mph the Choppers were grounded during crucial early hours the fires that they experienced this week were Unstoppable Unstoppable Unstoppable what's it like for you firefighter to have to say words like that makes

me feel bad right I mean that's not in our nature I mean we're we're fixers that is the mindset we're going to put our lives on the line we're going to give a lot to save a lot so when you have a fire like you say that's Unstoppable man that is it's uncomfortable it's very uncomfortable and after an uncomfortable 27-hour delay the Choppers were able to get back into the fight when the winds died down drop on it thank you Thursday Chief fennessy let us join a reconnaissance flight so we could see the destruction from

above Air Attack cter 76 on air tactics we Flew Over the fire zones we have active fire line all the way up towards the communication towers and saw an ashen checkerboard of Devastation stretched below us for miles at Pacific Palisades when we flew over Altadena where Chief fennessy grew up he found it hard to get his bearings oh my goodness it really wiped it out man oh wow holy crap so the rose Bull's just down yeah kind of Orient you you kind of see the rose bow from here I had no idea it extended this

far you can see charred buildings warehouses everything gone gone yeah in the early morning hours after the Altadena fire erupted Chief fennessy couldn't reach his brother although it was out of his jurisdiction he drove up from Orange County here's Tony's [Music] house little nightmare when he learned his brother was safe he went to check on his longtime friend Tony Goss and this is what he found I'm so sorry Tony oh my god brother this place was glowing it was completely hot there was a gas man over here that was venting and so it was like

a jet engine it was pretty loud Tony's still his pajamas he looks like a firefighter his face is you know black from all the suit and um he's walking around you know I don't know if you remember this you walk around kind of talking to yourself Goss had tried to save his home armed with just a garden hose but the fire was too fierce when we met him he was still in disbelief that he'd been forced to walk away from his family home of more than 60 years but this was gone on I knew it

was time to leave so I pulled out and all my neighbors are right there I said no it's time it's I I don't need to die today Chief fennessy then went down the road to his brother's house the block was in Flames he discovered the gas meter at the house next door was surrounded by fire and about to ignite and he said there was no water so I needed to cool this down so fenasy got creative I ended up forcing entry Tre into through the front door and uh went through the house you know into

the kitchen looking for bottled water anything that that I could use and so I ended up finding a carton of milk and I think there were a couple beers or sodas whatever the heck they were and and came out here and really literally had to kind of go in there under the heat wet it and then get out because it was just this house was just burning and and um had to do that a few times till it was done and bet you've never saved your house with milk before no to do nothing means the

home is going to be lost yeah and in this case yeah you know a little bit of milk and and a couple beers really save the day the houses he fought to save are the only two left standing on the Block the devil winds are forecast to intensify again tomorrow through Wednesday evacuation orders have been expanded the city remains on edge these fires are going to be an impact you know to the community families people for many many years to come this is one of those fires if not the fire that they're going to be

telling their grandchildren about this is just Rubble what is this in the chaos of evacuating his baby and elderly mother to safety zier Calvin got separated from his sister Evelyn she lived next door everybody's yelling get out I'm thinking that she's getting out and the next day after the storm um I come back and her car is still there so at that point in my brain my soul is shaking he and his cousin found Evelyn's remains in the rubble Evelyn why don't you leave zier's grief is shared five Calvin family members lived on this block

four lost their houses but they're trying to hold on to the hope that they can rebuild their Beloved Community everyone's in the same boat like everybody you would depend on everybody you would go to they're all homeless also they just lost everything they've lost all the memories all the joy everything that we've built together in this neighborhood we all lost together and I hate it I hate it cuz I love aladen