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MSNBC Host Shares Gut-Wrenching Stories As She Tours Her Childhood Neighborhood Destroyed By LA Wildfires

[Screenshot/MSNBC]

MSNBC host Katy Tur toured her childhood neighborhood in Pacific Palisades, California, in the aftermath of the destructive wildfires in a gut-wrenching segment Thursday.

The five wildfires have spread across areas of Los Angeles, causing at least 5 deaths and over 100,000 home evacuations since the fires began. Tur, who grew up in Pacific Palisades, traveled to her old neighborhood and local downtown area that had almost completely perished after it had been set ablaze by the flames and heavy winds.

“[The town] is completely gone,” Tur said. “I mean, what I’m standing in front of right now I think was a barber shop when I grew up. There was a barber shop, a little jewelry shop, there was a boutique clothing store to the left here. The Chamber of Commerce which held all the historical information about this historic town, this very old town, is completely gone … The elementary school by the way that I went is over 100 years old, stood for over 100 years is now partially demolished. There were pictures of it in that Chamber of Commerce.”

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The entire downtown area is currently in shambles and has very few remains, likely leading many of its residents unlikely to return. The inside of a building constructed in 1924, that contained one of the first Starbucks and a Bank of America, had been completely demolished by the fires.

Many of Tur’s previous childhood houses and her peers’ homes have perished in the natural disaster, she said. Not a single one of the houses she or her childhood friends lived in have survived the fires, and the neighborhoods she once knew are now in ashes and unrecognizable, the host said.

“Even if your house is still standing, there’s really nothing to come back to. There’s no community left. The schools are burned down, a lot of the schools, the elementary school is heavily damaged, I don’t know when they’re gonna get back there. But the high school, the private schools around here, it’s just, you can come back, but you’re not gonna go to a grocery store. You’re not gonna go to the post office.”

Law enforcement officials are highly concerned about looters and have made “several arrests” of trespassers and those that have reportedly attempted to “take advantage of the situation,” Tur said.

More than 1,000 homes in the Palisades have been lost as a result of the fire, and that same number of residences have been destroyed in the Eaton Canyon fire, according to the LA Times.  Officials have recorded a total of five deaths as of Thursday, but say the death toll is likely higher.

EATON FIRE: Additional footage from today #California | #Altadena | #CaliforniaWildfires pic.twitter.com/FNUBvJMkm0

— Hailey Grace Gomez (@haileyggomez) January 9, 2025

The fires began in Eaton Canyon, which rapidly spread from the 70 mph winds, leading residents to suddenly evacuate their homes as the flames approached near their properties. Residents told the Daily Caller News Foundation Wednesday that they were ordered by officials to evacuate their homes without warning and unexpectedly returned to find their homes burned to the ground.

Several neighborhoods have completely perished with only chimneys still standing, leading some residents and families to lose all of their possessions.