California Wildfires

Man shares heartbreaking video of moment he realized childhood home burned in California wildfires

Henri Yonet drove back into Pacific Palisades the morning after the Palisades Fire started and documented gut-wrenching scenes from the neighborhood where he grew up.

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A Pacific Palisades resident documented his heartbreaking return to his childhood home that was destroyed by the raging Palisades Fire. Karma Dickerson reports for the NBCLA News at 5 p.m. on January 17, 2025. 

A California man shared heartbreaking video of the moment he realized the wildfire in Pacific Palisades destroyed his childhood home.

Henri Yonet took the video the morning after the fire started in an unrelenting Santa Ana windstorm, which fanned flames into neighborhoods near the Los Angeles County coast. Yonet recorded his harrowing drive into the neighborhood where he grew up in the community of about 23,000 people.

Yonet can be heard narrating the nightmarish scene.

"At that point it was total adrenaline," Yonet told NBCLA.

His video showed neighbors' houses, including the corner home of his first crush. They are milestones on the years-long road to adulthood that were destroyed by one of California's most destructive wildfires on record in a matter of minutes.

As he turned on to Livorno Drive, Yonet said there was still a small glimmer of hope, but that was dashed the moment he saw burning rubble where his childhood home once stood. Yonet can be heard sobbing as the crushing reality set in.

"Once I saw it, it was really… lost and profoundly sad," Yonet said.

Yonet said he shared video of the fire's destruction to help document what was lost.

His family bought the home in the 1970s. Until last week, it was the place his 90-year-old father still loved to work in the garden and sit in his wooden folding chairs in the front yard.

"It was kids on skateboards, we had our dirt bikes, we would go into the canyon and ride," Yonet said.

Yonet has not been back to the evacuated neighborhood since. He is among many homeowners in neighborhoods that remain under evacuation orders more than a week after the fire started.

The Palisades Fire has damaged an estimated 600 structures and destroyed about 3,500. The fire at 31% containment has burned more than 23,700 acres.

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