Current and former Westchester residents with ties to LA share firsthand experience on wildfires
Both Joanna VanTrees and Gabby Kauffman are worried about what Los Angeles is going to look like after the fires are contained.
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News 12 spoke with Westchester residents with either ties to Los Angeles or who now live there about these wildfires.
Joanna VanTrees just came back from Los Angeles on Tuesday after visiting family.
"We took off maybe two hours after the fire started," she said. "We could see these plumes of smoke."
Just a day after she returned home to Pleasantville, she found out her childhood home was destroyed in the Pacific Palisades wildfire.
"It's so weird to think that it's gone," says VanTrees. "I was thinking about those times when I would just crawl into bed, my mom would cozy up and we had a little, tiny ocean view."
VanTrees says although she hasn't lived there in years, it still breaks her heart to see the place she calls home destroyed.
"It'll just never be the same," she said.
A former Scarsdale resident who now lives in LA is also seeing the devastation firsthand.
"It's something that you can imagine from a horror movie," says Gabby Kauffman, a former Scarsdale resident who now lives in LA.
Kauffman and her family have been evacuated for the last three days. Both her home and her family's homes are OK.
"I only packed to be gone for one night so I was ill-prepared but we all made it work," says Kauffman.
Kauffman was able to see smoke outside her window, causing her to have to wear a mask outside.
"The smog and the smoke is so thick that it's covering the sun so the sun is orange," she says.
Both VanTrees and Kauffman are worried about what Los Angeles is going to look like after the fires are contained.
"It's going to be such a different cityscape," says VanTrees.
