Jacob Soboroff

Tens of thousands of people, which is what led to the crush of humanity on the streets.

Bulldozers having to push aside cars to get people out.

down to Pacific Coast Highway, literally get to the ocean in order to try to avoid the flames.

I think many people, once they lost power, obviously were not watching television.

People got in their cars and were listening to the radio.

It's reminiscent to me of 9-11.

I was here in New York as an NYU freshman, and this feeling was triggered in me during the fires of...

Walking down a side street in New York and having people gather around a car, an automobile, listening to the radio turned up all the way to understand what was happening in lower Manhattan.

And it felt a lot like that to me, that it didn't feel like there was one way to look or one thing to do in order to understand what was happening in the moment.

I think that there's two things that people were weighing.

And I think my brother and my sister-in-law and her family with whom they were living are a good example of this.

It's like, is this really happening?

And if it is, and when they realize it really is, sometimes it's too late to feel like you have time to get anything out or do anything really other than try to stay and be a last line of defense.

The idea that we needed to evacuate or the idea that our entire community was at risk of burning to the ground, of carbonizing.

It's a hard thing to wrap your head around that it's possible.

And that was sort of the thing I heard from both the Palisades and then Altadena.

I think everybody made their own calculation whether or not they got those evacuation alerts.

This is the Palisades Public Library.

It's still on fire.

I brought my kids here.