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'Worst fire I've ever seen': Steve Guttenberg live from California wildfires
Actor and writer Steve Guttenberg says he's helping people evacuating neighbors impacted by wildfires in California.
Actor Steve Guttenberg is among the thousands of Los Angeles County residents who don’t know whether their homes have been destroyed by the deadly wildfires raging in Southern California.
But that hasn’t stopped the "Police Academy" and "Three Men and a Baby" star from doing what so many others are doing in the wake of tragedy: helping others. In an interview with FOX 5 NY, Guttenberg said when he got back to his home to check on things, he couldn’t get to his house without abandoning his vehicle.
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"And then before I knew it, all these cars were being abandoned and the firefighters couldn't get through. So I just started jumping in cars and pulling them onto the curbs," he said.
Flames from the Palisades Fire burn a building on Sunset Boulevard amid a powerful windstorm on January 8, 2025 in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images)
"It's bad," he continued. "It's the worst fire I've ever seen in my life. At 9 o’clock yesterday morning, everything was fine. And 9:45 Sunset Boulevard was a parking lot and two miles of a parking lot on Palisades Drive. And before you knew it, the fire was just raging."
Among the people Guttenberg encountered were a man in a wheelchair who had escaped his house without the foot pads for his wheelchair, and a hysterical mother who couldn’t find her child.
"I tried to calm her down and tried to find her baby," Guttenberg recalled. And then before I knew there was another mother who had to abandon her car, but she needed help with her suitcases and she didn't even recognize me. You know, I said, Mrs. Geller, Mrs. Geller, it's me. It's me, it's Steven. And she was just so upset. She was worried about her husband, who was up there and couldn't get out.
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"And, you know, there was so many people that just … people who didn't speak English, didn't know what to do. Some of them were driving their bosses’ cars and they were trying to parallel park. And I said, look, let's just put them up on the curb. It doesn't matter."
What caused the fires?
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Palisades neighborhood wiped out from fires
The cause of the devastating Palisades Fire is currently being looked into by "arson investigators," Los Angeles City Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley said Thursday.
Officials say extreme drought conditions, combined with powerful Santa Ana winds, fueled several fires that have destroyed thousands of homes and businesses.
The exact death toll remained unclear Thursday morning – at least six people have died – but the total is expected to rise as crews begin to search the rubble.
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Roughly 380,000 people in Southern California were under evacuation orders or warnings by Thursday, while hundreds of thousands remained without power.
AccuWeather estimated $52 billion to $57 billion in preliminary damage and economic loss has occurred from the fires.
Guttenberg said he managed to get to his neighbor’s house to feed their dogs, because his neighbor was in Japan.
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"So I fed them and comforted them. They were scared to death," he said. "And my neighborhood was like Zombieland, it was empty. I helped a friend of mine who wanted his house locked up because he was concerned about looters."
The winds dropped Thursday, but the National Weather Service warned that even the reduced gusts could still spread fire rapidly and the wind is expected to strengthen again Thursday evening. Another round of strong winds may form Tuesday.
Asked whether his home was OK, Guttenberg said "I don't know."
"You know, the winds here are terrible. And they're these devil winds that I've never seen done other than in South Africa," Guttenberg said. "And they blow hot and they're 80 miles an hour. And you have a little small little circle of fire that becomes a mountain of fire within five minutes."