1 person killed in house fire after fireworks explode in garage: Police
Emergency crews responded midday Thursday to a fire at the home in Simi Valley, located in Ventura County in the greater Los Angeles area.
MORE: 7 missing after massive explosion and fire at California warehouse filled with fireworks: Officials
Explosions were reported inside the garage, according to police.
"The explosions were determined to be fireworks, which resulted in the death of one person," the Simi Valley Police Department said in a statement. "The fire spread from the garage to the attic and into the house."
MORE: Madre Fire in California explodes to more than 35,000 acres overnight, evacuation orders issued
Police did not release any details on the victim.
Authorities urged people to avoid the area as fire crews worked to put out the blaze.
This incident remains under investigation.
#EdmundIncident – VCFD Firefighters are on scene of a structure fire in the 1600 block of Edmund St. in Simi Valley. Crews responded to reports of an explosion in the garage, possibly caused by fireworks. The fire extended from the garage into the attic and main areas of the… pic.twitter.com/8I1tGUwbRd
— VCFD PIO (@VCFD_PIO) July 3, 2025
Thomas Kudlick, who lives across the street from the residence, told ABC Los Angeles station KABC that he came outside his home after hearing a "big explosion."
"I could see the garage had collapsed," he told the station. "Within just minutes, there was more explosions and more smoke and fire."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gizmodo
43 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
Illegal Price-Gouging Runs Rampant After Disasters. The LA Fires Proved It
Last January, a series of massive wildfires broke out across the Los Angeles area, fueled by high winds and dry temperatures. The fires raged for weeks, incinerating entire neighborhoods in the wealthy Pacific Palisades and in middle-class Altadena. They killed at least 30 people and destroyed at least 10,000 homes. As the embers cooled, thousands of displaced Angelenos scrambled to find new housing in a rental market that was already among the nation's toughest. They scoured Zillow and Airbnb for units they could afford on short notice. What they found were sky-high prices gouged by property owners and real estate agents rushing to capitalize on the surge in demand. Dawn Smith and her family had rented in Altadena for nine years. After their home burned in the Eaton Fire, she combed through online listings for a similar alternative. But options were $10,000 a month or more, triple what she had been paying before the fire. Eventually, she found a smaller place in Sherman Oaks, more than an hour away, for a still-astonishing $7,800. Her renter's insurance would cover the difference for a few months, but not for the whole term of the lease. Now, as her insurance comes close to expiring, she and her husband are trying to figure out where to go next. 'The prices were insane,' she told Grist, 'but because we had to find somewhere, we rented.' Controversies over price-gouging play out all over the country in the wake of natural disasters as victims scramble for essential goods. Officials in New Jersey went after price-gouging gas stations after Hurricane Sandy; officials in North Carolina went after scam contractors after Hurricane Florence; and Florida prosecutors said they received more than 100 complaints after last year's Hurricane Milton. Most states have laws that prohibit such behavior, but they are difficult to enforce in the chaos of disaster, and some economists contend that they can backfire and cause shortages or hoarding. But housing is a special case. Overpaying for water or gasoline might be difficult, but overpaying for a rental apartment is a long-term commitment that can lead to bankruptcy or eviction down the road. Concerns about price-gouging of rental apartments have appeared after numerous recent wildfires, including the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise and the 2021 Marshall Fire in Boulder. But prosecutors and public officials have largely failed to deter or punish this illegal behavior. Two days after wildfires broke out in Los Angeles last January, tech founder Edward Kushins and real estate agent Willie Baronet-Israel allegedly hiked the price of a home they were renting out in the waterfront city of Hermosa Beach by 36 percent, likely an increase of more than $1,000. The city is about 15 miles from the Palisades burn zone. A month later, California attorney general Rob Bonta sued the two, citing a state law that makes it a crime to raise prices for food and shelter during an emergency by more than 10 percent. If found guilty, Kushins and Baronet-Israel would face fines of up to $10,000 and as much as a year in prison. But the Hermosa Beach listing was just one of thousands that were spiking in price. According to a Washington Post analysis of listings data from the firm RentCast, the average rent in the L.A. area rose by 20 percent in the two weeks after the fire — double the maximum allowable increase under California law. The home-rental company Airbnb also allowed users to raise prices above legal limits on more than 2,000 properties, despite its assurances that it would block such behavior, according to prosecutors. This lack of enforcement is common after disasters. But this time, it triggered an unprecedented campaign for stricter regulation of housing prices — and one that got results. 'The minimal enforcement that has happened has totally sent a signal,' said Chelsea Kirk, a tenant advocate who organized against price-gouging after the L.A. wildfires. 'Landlords expect that enforcement does not exist.' Three dozen states and the District of Columbia have laws that prohibit merchants from price-gouging during an emergency, but unlike California, which prohibits hikes of more than 10 percent, many of these laws are vague, prohibiting 'excessive' or 'unconscionable' increases without specifying what that means or what goods are covered. 'The laws are all over the place,' said Teresa Murray, the lead consumer advocate at the Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit that focuses on consumer protection. Furthermore, enforcement of these laws is minimal — the government can't be everywhere all at once after a hurricane or flood, and most disaster victims aren't aware of their rights and don't track or call out violators. The stakes are even higher when it comes to housing, which is already in shortage across the country. Around half the nation's tenants are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Wildfires and hurricanes often destroy thousands of homes in quick succession, exacerbating supply crunch in local housing stock. Research from across the country shows that landlords often hike prices after major fires and floods. Asking prices for rental apartments increased by 25 percent after the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, for instance, and by 44 percent in Lahaina following the 2023 Maui wildfires in Hawaiʻi. The increases even hit existing renters: More than a quarter of renters in Boulder said they saw hikes of more than 10 percent after the 2021 Marshall Fire, and a study of multiple flood events found that inexpensive apartments see hikes of 5 percent on average after a flood. These hikes hit low-income households hardest, forcing them to relocate or cut down on other expenses. This same dynamic was on display in Los Angeles earlier this year following the Palisades and Eaton Fires. One of the people who tested this market was Blanca, a woman who lived in an apartment building in Altadena, and who declined to give her last name because of her immigration status. The Eaton Fire destroyed her business and caused significant damage to the apartment complex where she and her husband lived. Even though their unit was intact, the building lacked water, gas, and electricity. Blanca and her husband looked for other apartments, but all the available units they found were far too expensive, some thousands of dollars above what they had paid in Altadena for the same amount of space. They couldn't afford anything like what landlords were asking, so after a few weeks, they moved back to their unit in the damaged complex and lived there paying rent in unsafe conditions for months. 'The place has not even been inspected, and many people have returned since February,' said Blanca in Spanish. 'But there was nowhere else to go.' In the first days after the fire, California attorney general Bonta trumpeted the state's price-gouging ban several times — not only could landlords not raise prices by more than 10 percent, they also couldn't list new units for more than 160 percent of typical market value. But property owners seemed either not to know about the law, or not to care. Bonta has sent more than 750 warning letters since the fire to property owners who may have price gouged, but has initiated only four lawsuits, and so far not obtained a conviction. The city attorney of Los Angeles has filed a few of its own lawsuits, including against Airbnb, but the district attorney for much larger Los Angeles County has not filed a single price-gouging case. Legal nonprofits say they can't pick up the slack because they need a named victim in order to sue a landlord, and most disaster victims don't have the knowledge or resources to pursue litigation. 'We have been a little bit disappointed, I will say,' said Rodney Leggett, the director of litigation at the Housing Rights Center in Los Angeles, which has sued a few property owners over the post-fire price gouging, including the company that owns the historic Villa Carlotta apartments in Hollywood. 'We have gotten complaints of people seeing price gouging, [but] we have gotten relatively few … people saying, 'I am actively being price gouged.' I think a big part of that is it's really hard for people to track and to know the sort of price changes that have occurred.' But the epidemic of price-gouging in L.A. after the fires has also triggered new progress on the difficult issue of enforcement. As Zillow flooded with overpriced homes, a group of tenant advocates began an unprecedented crowdsourcing campaign to track and shame price-gougers. Kirk, a policy advocate at the progressive nonprofit Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, was seeing numerous instances of price hikes, but she knew that Bonta's office and local prosecutors lacked the capacity to track and sue every landlord who was posting high-priced units. Kirk partnered with Lauren Harper, a data analyst and fellow tenant advocate, and together they took enforcement into their own hands. Forming a new organization called The Rent Brigade, they created a spreadsheet that scraped Zillow for apartment listings that violated the price-gouging laws, and also encouraged fire victims and volunteers to submit proof of gouging. In the first few weeks after the fire, volunteers submitted more than 1500 examples. Mike Nemeth, the head of communications for the California Apartment Association, the state's biggest landlord lobby, told Grist that most landlords tried their best to comply with the law. 'The California Apartment Association takes seriously the legal and ethical obligations of rental housing providers during declared emergencies,' he said. 'Most housing providers want to do the right thing, and our role is to help them navigate complex rules when it matters most.' Thanks in part to the Rent Brigade's pressure, local officials in Los Angeles are now trying to step up enforcement. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted in July to create a new system for penalizing price spike activity. Instead of waiting for a prosecutor or a legal nonprofit to file a court complaint against a landlord, the local government could slap the landlord with an administrative fine, the same way it would punish a restaurant with cockroaches in its kitchen or a driver who parked near a fire hydrant. The fines could reach up to $1,000 per day, with an additional $500 per day for failing to cooperate with county investigations. Jamie Court, president of the advocacy firm Consumer Watchdog, said this kind of ordinance could be a model for how to enforce price-gouging laws. 'This is desperately needed as a deterrent and to let people know that price gouging is not up to prosecutorial discretion,' he told Grist. 'People need to know every violation could result in a fine, not just the few prosecutors choose to prosecute.' Los Angeles County's price-gouging ban will lapse at the end of August, so the new rules will only apply the next time California declares an emergency for a fire, flood, or other calamity. But during the last months of the ban, Kirk and other advocates noticed something unexpected — and concerning. The rush of new housing demand from the fire had ended, but many landlords were still listing new units well above fair market rate. The L.A. housing supply, Kirk and Harper concluded, was so limited that price gouging had become a normal part of the market. Even in the absence of a major shock like the fire, landlords were still asking for exorbitant rents, and tenants were still paying them. The emergency declaration was only going to last for an arbitrary period of a few months, but the overall housing picture was as bad as ever. 'When the fire started, we were seeing a lot of these units coming online for absurd prices from people who don't usually rent, maybe knowing that people coming from the Palisades would be able to afford those kinds of things,' said Harper. 'But the further that we get from the fires … I think it's reflective of just high rents.' This article originally appeared in Grist at Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Bloomberg
Ukraine Claims Attack on Hub for Major Russian Oil Pipelines
Ukraine claimed a strike on a Russian oil-pumping station in Unecha, a hub for the country's network of crude-exporting pipelines. The attack caused damage and a large-scale fire in the area of the facility in Russia's Bryansk region, near the border with Ukraine and Belarus, the General Staff in Kyiv said in a Facebook post. Explosions were heard in the storage area and where the main and support pumps are located, according to the statement.
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
Aaron Donald was one of the NFL's toughest players. A stalker left him living in fear
Retired Rams defensive lineman Aaron Donald received a brief email in March from the Los Angeles-based head of people and culture for a healthcare technology startup. 'Hi Hubby!' Janelle Anwar wrote. 'Please save. Love you!' She attached a copy of her annual performance review, which was filled with glowing comments from the company's chief executive officer. Advertisement What appeared to be a routine email from a significant other was part of something much darker. Donald is not Anwar's husband. The two have never even met. For years, she has sent him increasingly unsettling emails, chats and voice memos in addition to repeated phone calls, according to court records. She tracked down his brother, sending him numerous emails, and attempted to have packages and balloons delivered to Donald's children. She traveled to Pittsburgh for his football camp, where she claimed to have encountered his daughter. Even though Donald is married, Anwar filed two baseless divorce petitions, seeking millions of dollars. Two weeks before the emailed performance review, Anwar sent a series of Google Chat messages that Donald took as threats against his 3-year-old son: 'So make sure you pay for (him) to live … Cause that's what it will be … You will have to pay for his life now and everyone will get a cut …' Donald wrote in a declaration filed with an application for a restraining order in April: 'I am fearful for my safety and the safety of my wife and children, and the safety of my brother.' Though most stalking victims are women, the issue remains deeply problematic for all athletes. Donald is a future Pro Football Hall of Famer and one of the most dominant defenders in NFL history, a 6-foot-1, 280-pound lineman known for his strength and toughness. In 10 seasons, he missed only nine regular-season games. But five years of intensifying harassment from Anwar left Donald exasperated, uncertain and afraid. His ordeal provides an unusually detailed look inside the pervasive and prolonged toll that can come from being targeted by a fixated stranger. 'One of the things that a lot of stalking survivors talk about, famous or otherwise, is the constant state of worry they had about what the person may or may not do, where they may or may not show up,' said Carlos Cuevas, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University. 'The unpredictability is a big concern and … the content of what they're saying. Some of it might be just more uncomfortable and some of it can be straight-up scary.' During his playing days and into retirement, Donald has been active on social media, posting about vacations, birthday celebrations, playing basketball with his wife. While experts say social media can lead fixated strangers to believe they're connected to celebrities in a way they're not, it's unclear what role it played for Anwar. In a court filing, she said she had a 'virtual connection' with Donald, and acknowledged following him on social media since 2023. Advertisement Donald wrote in a court filing that threatening and harassing emails and calls from Anwar began in 2020. He blocked the addresses and phone numbers, but the messages continued, as Anwar used at least nine email addresses. Experts say public figure stalkers have often experienced some kind of significant setback like the death of a loved one or loss of a job to go along with a psychiatric disorder. They can fixate on a public figure through something as innocuous as the person signing an autograph or wearing a certain outfit to which a would-be stalker attaches a specific, personal meaning. 'The underlying mental health issues or personality issues have to be there already. Well-adjusted people don't do this, obviously,' retired FBI profiler Eugene Rugala said of strangers stalking public figures. 'They can have a true belief that they're in some kind of relationship and they want to walk into the sunset with the individual. That, to me, is the ultimate endgame.' Anwar joined a digital health company as vice president of people operations in 2021. The 48-year-old's biography touted her 'professional brand values of accountability, communication, engagement, and process …' She joined her most recent company, a healthcare technology startup, in November 2023. Former colleagues didn't recall her mentioning Donald in workplace conversations. That fall, Anwar wrote in a court filing, she attended several football games. Her pursuit of Donald expanded, too. A delivery from a local florist for Donald's daughter arrived at the family's former home the day before the Rams played the Seattle Seahawks in November 2023. Nine blue, gold and pink balloons, three confetti balloons and a large mylar dolphin. The invoice instructed the driver to 'Ask for Aaron Donald at gate.' The same day, a stack of Amazon packages for the daughter and one of Donald's sons were delivered. More packages for the daughter and son appeared a week later. Advertisement All of it came from Anwar. A month later, Anwar smiled and clasped her hands in her lap as she sat in the front row of her company's staff picture. She looked like just another employee. Two weeks before Donald announced his retirement from the Rams in March 2024, another package from Anwar arrived at his former home. The following month, he received $5 from her on Zelle with a brief message: 'I love you.' A series of unusual posts appeared a few weeks later on a Twitter account with the same 'Red Barry' pseudonym Anwar used in several court filings and emails. The phrasing, details and themes in posts mirrored her messages. 'I love Aaron Donald.' 'I accidentally married Aaron Donald.' 'Aaron and I married confidentially in May of 2024.' Posts from the account, which has been deleted, mentioned the Los Angeles County community where Donald and his family moved in 2022, made baseless allegations about crimes involving celebrities, accused a high-profile figure of paying $1 million for a copy of her marriage certificate and claimed the author was 'telepathic and psychic.' One study found that 52 percent of celebrity stalkers it examined wanted a relationship — affectional or sexual — with the victim. Significant mental disorders were a problem for a majority of the subjects, too. 'They will start talking about their relationship with the person and, on the surface, you think, 'Well, they obviously do know this person,'' said J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist who consults on public figure stalking cases and works with law enforcement. 'And then it typically gets more and more bizarre and you realize … you are now within their delusion and they're communicating to you this psychotic belief.' While court documents don't offer an underlying motivation for Anwar's alleged behavior, they show increasingly direct approaches to Donald. In June 2024, Anwar traveled to Pittsburgh for his youth football camp, according to a court filing. She wrote that she watched him in front of the stadium 'where he briskly passed by her to acknowledge her presence with a smile and non-verbal greeting …' and she crossed paths with his daughter at a snack bar. Advertisement The 'Red Barry' Twitter posts about being married to Donald continued — 'you are well aware I am Aaron's legal wife' — among mentions of Donald's real wife, witchcraft and a reality television star. Then Anwar filed for divorce. In a November petition in L.A. County Superior Court, she claimed to have married Donald on May 25, 2024 — in reality, he was celebrating his birthday with his wife and family in Pittsburgh that day — and they now had 'irreconcilable differences.' She wanted a lump-sum payment of $3.8 million within 60 days of the divorce being finalized. Her handwritten name appeared five times in the document: 'Janelle Anwar aka Red Barry.' Up to this point, Anwar hadn't been accused of violence. But the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department cited her for misdemeanor battery on Jan. 17. The department refused to provide details about what happened and denied two public records requests. Anwar didn't respond to questions from The Athletic about the incident. A month and a half later, the messages peppering Donald grew more frequent and worrisome. They included Anwar's pledge on Google Chat that he would have to pay for the life of his young son. Experts say that victims, regardless of stature, can be reluctant to go to law enforcement for a variety of reasons, including fear that it might escalate the stalker's behavior. A report to Congress by the attorney general in 2022 found that less than a third of stalking victims involved authorities. 'Stalking is challenging to police effectively as it is a pattern-based, rather than an incident-based crime,' the report said. 'Responding to stalking cases often necessitates specialized knowledge and is a significant investigative effort.' Three days after the alarming messages about Donald's young son, Anwar filed another divorce petition against the former player. She again used the 'Red Barry' pseudonym and sought $6.5 million. The petition was mailed to the NFL — care of Commissioner Roger Goodell — in a certified letter without a return address. Advertisement Donald received another flurry of Google Chat messages from Anwar the same day: 'You're done … FBI report coming … I will start reporting all of your bodies … And I will use my real name … And I will state I am your wife currently … Today is my day bitch.' He was copied on an email Anwar sent to a disc jockey on March 18. The disc jockey had no connection to either of them. Donald's current address was in the subject line. She knew where he lived. Six hours later, Donald got the email with Anwar's annual performance review. Donald received another email from Anwar the same night. His L.A.-based attorney called her the next day. 'Ms. Anwar informed me that she had known my client for some time and had gotten married to Petitioner online,' Peter Lauzon wrote in a declaration. 'Ms. Anwar spoke in a very erratic and confused manner and claimed that Petitioner's current wife and Petitioner were not married. Ms. Anwar further stated that Petitioner's children have gone missing and that Petitioner should 'be careful' and 'to watch out.'' The following evening, Anwar attempted to send a DoorDash delivery to Donald's current home, but security at the gated community refused it. Donald's application for a restraining order in April didn't appear to give Anwar pause. Her responsive declaration filed a few days later sought to subpoena 50 NFL players — the suggested queries included whether they knew of her as a 'Spiritual Guru' — in addition to DNA testing for the Donald children. She wanted a handwriting expert to examine Donald's signature on the application. She suggested Rams players broke into her southwest L.A. home as a prank and left a sock belonging to coach Sean McVay — she wanted it tested for DNA, too. A judge granted a five-year restraining order against Anwar in May. She didn't attend the hearing. But two days later, she emailed Donald's legal team. The email claimed that 'the marriage/divorce is not a sham,' mentioned a psychic reading she purportedly conducted and positioned herself as a victim. She wrote that she was 'perfectly OK with the restraining order …' Advertisement The order requires her to stay 100 yards from Donald, his wife, his four children and brother, as well as their homes, schools, vehicles and workplaces. It also prohibits her from contacting them directly or indirectly. Cuevas laments how much of the burden of protection falls on stalking victims. They have to get a restraining order. They have to make it permanent. They have to hope the stalker respects it — or, if the order is violated, that it will provide grounds for law enforcement to get involved and arrest the perpetrator. 'That's a lot to go through as a victim just to have some sense of protection and safety,' he said. Donald and his attorney didn't respond to requests for comment. But Donald's words linger from the restraining order declaration: '(Anwar) is delusional and I fear that (Anwar's) delusions will lead to her attempting to harm me, my wife, my children, and my brother' and 'My wife … has also expressed fear for the safety of our entire family due to (Anwar's) actions.' Anwar, who has not been criminally charged in connection with the case, pleaded no contest to the battery charge in Las Vegas. The conditions include eight hours of impulse control counseling. According to her LinkedIn page, her employment at the healthcare startup ended in July. Anwar mentioned Donald several times in emails to The Athletic in June and July: 'Seems like I have a problem with men bragging about being married to me and or some sort of intimate/personal relationship …' She listed several men, including McVay and Donald. She wrote that she 'decided to take action' with Donald and the ensuing situation is 'quite amusing to me, hilarious to be frank …' The correspondence included bizarre claims about celebrities such as Dave East, Kim Kardashian and Kris Jenner. She wrote: 'You can tell people I am delusional. I don't care. … I won't win the media battle, not elite enough.' Advertisement On Saturday, Anwar sent an email to Donald's attorney claiming that an anonymous source informed her that Donald and a former teammate had recently entered her backyard and that her 'instinct is to appeal the restraining order.' (Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
