Los Angeles wildfires: Happy endings amid fight to save animals from inferno
A Los Angeles couple reached out to a team of reporters asking them to break into their house before it burned down and save their three dogs. See the video.
United States
Don't miss out on the headlines from United States. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Miraculous stories of Californians being reunited with their lost pets following the LA hellfires have emerged.
US journalists Jonathan Vigliotti and his producer Christian Duran were reporting on the Los Angeles fires when a couple who were not at home messaged them on social media — asking them to please break into their home and save their three dogs.
The CBS News team was able to go to the house, break in, and save all three dogs and reunite them with their family, whose house burned down just hours later, leaving no question that the puppies would be dead if CBS had not intervened.
Other emotional visions shared on Instagram has revealed the touching moment a dog owner was reunited with his beloved furbaby five days after he went missing.
The man contacted the Animal Hope and Wellness Centre (AHWC) and a member of the organisation had picked him up to search the fire zone, eventually being reunited.
“Los Angeles really does come together in tragedy and despair. Thank you to all who have helped in any way possible,” the Centre posted on Instagram.
Annie Harvilicz, founder of the ANWC, says she has hardly slept a wink all week.
As the fire spread through the upmarket Pacific Palisades, Harvilicz posted on Facebook that she was happy to take in animals.
The post “exploded,” she said, and dogs, cats and even a rabbit began arriving.
With flames still raging out of control, the calls for help have not stopped.
But, she thinks, even when the firefighters have quelled the blaze, the slow-motion tragedy will roll on.
“There’s gonna be more pets found, more pets injured, with smoke inhalation and burns that we’re gonna start to discover as some of the fire recedes,” she said.
“This is just the beginning.”
Across the Los Angeles sprawl there are activists, veterinarians and volunteers working to rescue and care for animals made homeless in the tragedy, including some that were injured.
The Pasadena Humane Society received about 400 animals from Altadena, where the flames have already consumed more than 5600 hectares.
One of their patients is a five-day-old puppy that was found in the ruins of a building, its ears burned.
“We brought her straight to our ICU, where we found burns on her tiny ears. She is safe and resting in an incubator. She will be heading to her foster home immediately,” the society posted on Instagram.
It comes after a stable manager revealed the ordeal she encountered corralling 25 horses and other animals as she was trying to vacate her property as wildfires roared closer.
While some people just got in their cars and drove out of the danger zone, Janell Gruss had to wrangle more than two dozen frightened horses as embers swirled in 160km/h winds.
“The last horse we had to get out of the barn … it was pretty bad,” Gruss told AFP at the Los Angeles Equestrian Centre, where hundreds of animals have been brought this week.
“It was very smoky. It was dark. I couldn’t see where I was,” she said. “Both the horse and I were tripping over things, branches, whatever was on the ground.”
Gruss said corralling the animals was so challenging, she feared at one point she might not make it out alive.
“I thought I might have been one of those casualties,” she said, as tears rolled down her face.
“You hear about the person that goes in to get the last horse and doesn’t come out.”
More than 200,000 people have been forced from their homes by the huge blazes tearing through the city in a tragedy that has killed at least 24 people and changed the face of Los Angeles forever.
With so many people ordered to get out of the way of the advancing wildfires and needing to take their animals with them, capacity is strained.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Jennie Nevin, director of communications for the Los Angeles Equestrian Centre.
“The first night was very busy and chaotic. Lots of people coming from all over.”
Dozens of people milled around the barns Saturday at the equestrian centre, where donkeys, pigs and ponies have also found shelter.
Tarah Paige, a professional stuntwoman, had brought her three-year-old daughter to visit their pony Truffles and her miniature cow Cuddles – a TV star in her own right who has appeared on several programs.
“It’s been a whirlwind,” said Paige, for whom the equestrian centre has been an oasis in the midst of an unimaginable catastrophe.
Nevin says there has been an outpouring of support and people offering their services to help care for the menagerie.
“It really takes a village,” she said. “It takes the community.”
— With AFP
More Coverage
Originally published as Los Angeles wildfires: Happy endings amid fight to save animals from inferno
Chinese app triggers panic: DeepSeek explained
The release of the latest DeepSeek model received limited attention but on the weekend it became the most downloaded free app triggering a tech sell-off. See why it’s such a big deal.
Trump team not in touch with Kremlin: Russia
Russia says there has yet to be an approach by the White House to set up talks between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as Volodymyr Zelensky made a plea to the new US President.