L.A. Woman: Jamie Lee Curtis Leads Rebuilding Efforts After Devastating Pacific Palisades Fire

Yahoo

09-03-2025

"Where I live is on fire right now,' Jamie Lee Curtis said, her voice shaking, as she sat down on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in New York City on the night of Jan. 7 for a prescheduled taping.She had left L.A. that morning, and on the flight, messages began flying in from her 'many, many, many friends' whose houses in her tightknit Westside neighborhood had been incinerated in a blaze fueled by hurricane-force Santa Ana winds — leaving homes and businesses reduced to ash. Her husband, filmmaker and actor Christopher Guest, and their rescue dog, Runi, were among the throngs forced to flee toward the Pacific Coast Highway under mandatory evacuation orders that afternoon.
'Literally, the entire city of Pacific Palisades is burning,' Curtis said on television through tears. 'It's fucking gnarly, you guys. It's just a catastrophe.' Then, the producer, actor, American Red Cross ambassador and lifelong 'Angelena,' as she's quick to call herself, swallowed hard and urged viewers to 'do anything you can in your community to help people.'Curtis immediately took action and promised $1 million through her family's foundation, My Hand In Yours, aimed at fire relief efforts — funding that has already bolstered the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation, which is the nonprofit arm of the LAFD; the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank; the California Community Foundation Wildfire Recovery Fund; and the American Red Cross Los Angeles Region.Her home was not among the 6,831 structures devoured by flames, or the more than 12,317 seriously damaged in the deadly Palisades Fire that left a dozen people dead. But her community was decimated: The church where she got sober. Her daughters' schools. Grocery stores and small business. All gone. Curtis and many others in the ravaged burn zones of the Palisades and neighboring Malibu are determined to breathe new life into what was lost.'Greater minds than mine are going to need to come together to rebuild,' Curtis tells Los Angeles. 'We have passion, and we have creativity. We need to put our money where our mouths are and help those who need it most.'In a strange twist of irony, Curtis has spent years understanding the aftermath of a disastrous wildfire. After reading the riveting 2021 book, Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire by Lizzie Johnson, she teamed up with producer Jason Blum to option it. This year, their film The Lost Bus, starring Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera, will be released — centered on the harrowing true story of a bus driver and a teacher who navigated a school bus full of children through the 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County that killed 85 people.When they began filming, of course Curtis had no idea that she would soon be witnessing similar acts of bravery from her very own neighbors, who started a neighborhood watch that acted like a small fire brigade looking for smoldering embers, and held fundraisers — acts of unfettered kindness that will be critical as they start to rebuild.One month after the fires, the 2023 Oscar winner posted a message for her six million Instagram followers: 'Be very gentle with people as you make your way through the world because you have no idea what they have been through and what they are carrying in their hearts and I mean that about everything everywhere all at once.'