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At least 11 people have died in the wildfires surging across the Los Angeles area. As local law enforcement scramble to identify victims and inform their families, details are emerging about six of the Los Angeles residents killed in some of the worst wildfires to hit the western city in its history.
On Friday, officials attributed five deaths to the Palisades fire and six to the Eaton fire.
Annette Rossilli, 85, died in the Palisades fire, the home health company caring for her told CNN.
A caregiver as well as neighbors urged Rossilli to evacuate, but she wanted to stay with her pets, including a dog, canary, two parrots and a turtle, Fay Vahdani, president of Luxe Homecare, told the news outlet. On Wednesday, firefighters discovered Rossilli’s body in her car.
Rossilli ran a long-standing plumbing business in Pacific Palisades and was well liked by neighbors, the company said. She is survived by a daughter and son.
The others who were publicly identified were all killed in the Eaton fire, a 13,690-acre blaze that ravaged the neighborhood of Altadena – a diverse residential community near Pasadena that is home to working- and middle-class families, including many Black residents who have lived there for generations.
Victor Shaw, 66, was the first of the fatalities to be named, after he died in the Eaton fire raging to the north-east of LA while attempting to extinguish flames at his home of 55 years in Altadena.
His younger sister Shari Shaw reportedly tried to get him to evacuate as the Eaton fire spread through their neighborhood, but she was forced to leave him behind when he refused to come with her. She fled just as the blaze engulfed their home.
“When I went back in and yelled out his name, he didn’t reply back, and I had to get out because the embers were so big and flying like a firestorm – I had to save myself,” she told the local TV station KTLA.
Victor’s badly burned body was discovered by a family friend the next day lying on the road next to his home, still clutching a garden hose in his hand. “It looks like he was trying to save the home that his parents had for almost 55 years,” the friend, Al Tanner, told KTLA.
When his sister Shari heard the news, she said, “I fell to the ground, and I didn’t know – I didn’t want to look at him. They just told me that he was lying on the ground and that he looked serene, as if he was at peace,” she told KTLA.
“I’ll miss talking to him, joking about, traveling with him and I’ll just miss him to death,” she added, to CBS. “I just hate that he had to go out like that.”
The death toll rose to 11 on Friday afternoon, according to the Los Angeles county medical examiner’s department, after the first fire in a series across LA county erupted on Tuesday in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of the city of Los Angeles.
The agency said that identifying the victims might take weeks because the huge Eaton and Palisades blazes are still raging and there are extreme safety concerns. The department added that traditional means of identification such as fingerprinting or visual identification may not be available.
Anthony Mitchell, 67, who was an amputee, and his son Justin, who had cerebral palsy, were identified as two of the wildfire victims in Altadena. They died as they were waiting for an ambulance, according to Mitchell’s daughter, Hajime White.
“They didn’t make it out,” said White, the Associated Press reported.
“He was not going to leave his son behind. No matter what,” added White, who lives in Arkansas.
She said authorities told the family Mitchell was found by the side of his son’s bed. The Washington Post reported the family believes Mitchell was trying to save his son, who was in his early 20s.
Another son, also in his 20s, lived with the pair but was in the hospital, and no caregivers were on hand, White said, adding: “It’s very hard. It’s like a ton of bricks just fell on me.” Mitchell was a father of four, grandfather of 11 and great-grandfather of 10.
Rodney Nickerson, 82, also of Altadena, died in his home, according to his daughter, Kimiko Nickerson, who said he thought he would be OK waiting the fire out in his house after living through several fires in his 57 years in the home.
“He was gathering some things, packing up his car a bit and he said that he was going to gather up his stuff, but he said he was going to stay here too … he said that he felt this was going to pass over and that he would be here,” Kimiko told KTLA.
Kimiko said her father purchased the house with a $5 downpayment in 1968. The last thing her father said to her was “I’ll be here tomorrow”, she told CBS. She confirmed to the outlet that she had found her father’s body in the wreckage.
Erliene Kelley, a retired pharmacy technician in Altadena who lived very close to Shaw and Nickerson, also died at home in the Eaton fire, the New York Times reported, citing relatives.
Rita and Terry Pyburn, who lived on the same block as Kelley, described her to the newspaper as an angel, saying the longtime resident in the close community had been “so, so, so sweet”.
Terry Pyburn said he had often had brief chats with Kelley about gardening and local news, and often left small Christmas gifts for her and other neighbors in the tight-knit community.
They described a frenzy as residents thought they had dodged the fire until it suddenly descended on the neighborhood and people fled under possibly belated emergency alerts and evacuation orders, without a chance to check on others.
As it appeared Kelley might be among the dead, her granddaughter Briana Navarro told the Los Angeles Times Kelley had been “adamant” she did not want to evacuate. Kelley and her late husband had purchased their home in the late 1960s and fires had never reached it before.
The Palisades fire has been described as the worst in the city’s history, beginning a catastrophe that is one of the most destructive ever witnessed in southern California as several other huge and fierce wildfires ignited across LA county, the most populous county in the US, fanned by hurricane-strength dry winds.
With evacuation orders in place for about 180,000 people across the region, about 10,000 homes and buildings gutted by fire so far and emergency services stretched to the limit, the names of those who have died will be slow to emerge.
The largest fires are burning about 25 miles west and north of downtown Los Angeles, plunging the second-largest city in the US into shock and fear.
The Associated Press contributed reporting