Shamita Basu

31 people died from their injuries, and hundreds more deaths are being attributed to smoke inhalation and other conditions.

Now Jacob is out with a new book called Firestorm, The Great Los Angeles Fires and America's New Age of Disaster.

It's a harrowing real-time account of what happened, why fires like this are likely to keep happening, and why just over a year later, the work of recovery is far from over.

I started by asking Jacob how these two fires began.

Yeah.

You spoke to lots of families who were evacuated, who were at risk of losing their homes, who didn't know what the next day or the day after that would look like.

How would you describe communication for people on the ground who were actually in what were considered dangerous zones?

I remember hearing from friends in the area that they felt their best source of information at the time was an app.

I mean, what was the official guidance that people were getting from government?

And when did it come and what did people make of it?

I mean, what were the sort of kind of official channels of communication?

Yeah.

We also know that there was, for some people, reluctance to leave their homes.

Can you talk about what that decision looks like?

Jacob reported on the ground for days, wearing eye protection and masks on air, assessing the damage and trying to make sense of the loss.

He spoke to a restaurant employee he knows named Albie Fuentes at the site of the eatery where he worked for 15 years.

The cafe was reduced to rubble.

Jacob also came across two people riding bikes through the closed off streets, coming to check if their homes were still standing.

Then Jacob found his own childhood home and he stood before it with the cameras rolling.

Only a few exterior walls and the chimney remained.