(CALIFORNIA) — A year ago, the deadly wildfires in Southern California left behind a trail of destruction and forced desperate families to flee for their lives.
Charred vehicles filled the streets in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood, where the flames reduced houses to ash-covered shells.
The embers are gone and the dust has settled a year later, but most of those houses are still vacant lots and families remain stuck in limbo.
“World News Tonight” anchor David Muir returned to the neighborhood to mark the anniversary of the disaster and reunited with some of the residents he met in January 2025. Many said they are still struggling to pick up the pieces and some are making the tough decision to leave their the neighborhood they once called home.
Nearly 24,000 acres burned in the Palisades fire alone, with nearly 7,000 structures — most of them homes — going up in smoke. The blaze erupted on Jan. 7, 2025, along with the Eaton fire that destroyed more than 9,000 buildings. Together, the fires claimed the lives of at least 31 people.
A year ago in Pacific Palisades, Alessandro Vigilante raced to his two boys’ school to pick them and flee the fires, while his wife stayed behind to grab their most important documents before their house burned down.
Hours later, Muir met the father of two as he returned to see what was left of his home for the first time. Vigilante and his family lost everything, but were thankful to still have each other.
“We’ll figure out the rest,” he told Muir last year.
Today, the site of Vigilante’s home is an empty grass-covered lot surrounded by a white picket fence — the only thing that remains of his old home. Speaking with Muir again, he said getting insurance money was not an easy process.
“Literally, we had the last check, like, two weeks ago,” he told Muir, nearly a year after the fires.
Pointing to the lot, Vigilante reflected on that process.
“You don’t expect to have to discuss anything. It’s a total loss,” he said. “Basically looking at every single detail that they can think of from the handles that you had on the doors to the type of countertops. And again, that was mind-blowing, because I’m like, well, when we signed the policy, that’s the moment you should have decided whether my house was worth that much or not. Now it’s too late.”
Vigilante decided to sell the lot rather than rebuild, he noted, even though he said the land is now half the value it was when he moved in four years before.
“It’s OK. It was a chapter of our life,” he said, with a sigh.
Down the street from Vigilante, Liz Jones showed Muir the empty lot where she now plans to rebuild her family’s home from the ground up.
Last year, she saw the charred remains of her daughter’s car in one of Muir’s reports. That’s when she knew her home was gone.
“Is that when reality set in?” Muir asked her last year.
“One hundred percent,” Jones said.
Jones said she and her husband were determined to rebuild, and they are among the lucky few who were able to get some insurance money. Jones continued to carry her pride for the community around her neck, with a necklace that spelled out “Palisades.”
Preston and Kelsey Hayes had just broken ground on their new home when Muir met them at the site.
A year ago, the couple, who have two children, donned protective gear and masks to survey the damage and wondered if they would ever come back.
“Were you concerned at all about the soil and what might be contaminated from the fires?” Muir asked the couple at the construction site.
“Yeah for sure,” Preston Hayes said.
“And you felt reassured by the tests?” Muir asked.
“Yes,” Kelsey Hayes said.
As they looked out across their neighborhood a year after the fires, they knew that their neighbors would not all be as fortunate.
“We want the community to be the same. I don’t think it will be, unfortunately,” Preston Hayes said.
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