MSNBC host Katy Tur and long-time friend Jacob Soboroff grew up in the Pacific Palisades and she grew emotional after she revealed that the fires destroyed her school and grocery store on her Wednesday show.
The fire began in a residential area around 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, as strong Santa Ana winds fueled sparks. This contradicted an assertion from President-elect Donald Trump that the fire was caused by forests not being raked.
"The scale of the devastation and the disruption in the Palisades. It really is hard to overstate," Tur said, as her voice faltered. "Even if you had something to come back to, and that is still a big if right now, there's not anything to come back for. No surfaces, no supplies, no education, no people, no neighbors, no community."
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She noted that when she worked on local news in Los Angeles, she covered many fires but had never seen anything like what was happening.
After Soboroff's update, she showed a video a friend sent her: CBS News reporter Jonathan Vigliotti, who drove down Swarthmore Ave., which she called "the main drag."
Tur pointed out burned-down buildings and described them. One of the first Starbucks opened in the 1990s. She also pointed out a Chinese restaurant and a diner.
Then she noted her elementary school was gone. Across the street was the Methodist church, where she sang in the choir and learned to play the bells.
The high school, Chamber of Commerce and over 1,000 other structures have been destroyed. In a later interview with a childhood friend, Tur said she was trying to crack jokes to keep from crying.
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