Wednesday, January 7, 2026

1-year anniversary of LA Fires (1/7)

First anniversary commemoration of the Eaton Fire starts at 4:30 pm, Wednesday eve.
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Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America’s New Age of Disaster

Firestorm (Jacob Soboroff)
This hardcover -- released January 6, 2026 -- by victim and author Jacob Soboroff has 3.0 out of 5 stars (with 4 reviews) yet is somehow already a #1 Best Seller in Natural Disasters on Amazon.

Why? [It is] A "gripping, unshakeable firsthand account" (San Francisco Chronicle) of the firestorm that consumed Los Angeles, from the MS NOW reporter and New York Times bestselling author of Separated, who covered the fires on the ground as an LA native.

"Read[s] like a sci-fi thriller.” — Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles reporter Jacob Soboroff
[One year ago,] on the morning of January 7, 2025, a message pinged the phone of Jacob Soboroff, a national reporter for MS NOW. “Big Palisades fire. We are evacuating,” his brother texted within minutes of the blaze engulfing the hillside behind the home where he and his pregnant wife were living.

“Really bad.” An attached photo showed a huge black plume rising from behind the house, an umbrella of smoke towering over everything they owned. Jacob rushed to the office of the bureau chief. “I should go. I grew up in the Palisades.”

Pacific Palisades: 'They let us burn!' protest

Grocery Outlet of Altadena has been a hub for events since the Eaton Fire
Future PP Mayor Spencer Pratt
Soon he was on the front line of the blaze—his first live report of what would turn out to be weeks covering unimaginable destruction, from both the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, in Altadena.

In the days to come, Soboroff appeared across the networks of NBC News as Los Angeles was ablaze, met with displaced residents and workers, and pressed California Gov. Gavin Newsom in an interview on Meet the Press.

But no story Soboroff has covered at home or abroad—the trauma of family separation at the border, the displacement of [NATO's] war in Ukraine, the [CIA's] collapse of order in Haiti—could have prepared him for reporting live as the hallmarks of his childhood were engulfed in flames around him while his hometown burned to the ground.

But for Soboroff, questions remained after the fires were controlled:
  • What had he just witnessed?
  • How could it have happened?
  • Is it inevitable something like it will happen again?

This photo is very misleading because two LA fire departments stood down and let it burn.
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New date and location: Jan 11, 2026
This set Soboroff off on months of reporting—with firefighters, fire victims, political leaders, academics, earth scientists, wildlife biologists, meteorologists, and more—that made him keenly aware of how the misfortune of seeing his past carbonize was also a form of time travel into the dystopian world his children will inhabit.
  • Eaton Fire Candlelight Vigil
  • Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, 6:30 pm
  • Altadena Town & Country Club
  • 2290 Country Club Dr., Altadena, CA 91001

Plans changed. See correct info above.
This is because the 2025 LA Fires were not an isolated tragedy, but rather they are a harbinger—"the fire of the future," in the words of one senior emergency—management official.

Firestorm is the story of the costliest wildfire in American history, the people it affected, and the deeply personal connection to one journalist covering it.

Eaton Fire burned LA foothills
It is a love letter to Los Angeles, a yearning to understand the fires, and why America’s new age of disaster we are living through portends that—without a reckoning of how Los Angeles burned—there is more yet, and worse, to come. More
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