As wildfires rage across Southern California, Emily Procter recently shared her grief at the prospect of losing her home.
After evacuating her home in Pacific Palisades, CSI: Miami The alum spoke of the “close feeling and community” as she wondered how she and her neighbors would move forward in the aftermath.
“Selfishly, I wanted to be here to say we loved our neighborhood, and we still do,” Proctor explained to CNN. It was a great community. We have been evacuated. I think our house is gone too. “It was news from a stranger, a very surreal experience.”
She expressed her gratitude to the local fire station and first responders. “They are as far away from our area as everyone else, and I know what they have to do now must be very difficult,” she said.
Proctor continued to open up to its close-knit community. “But what you realize is that… all of these houses are not structures, they are actually miniature models of people's lives, and we are all interacting,” she continued. “I have a neighbor who lives across the street, and she's pregnant and another is applying to college, and we have a new neighbor moving in and we were planning to drop things off, and I'm bickering back and forth with my mailman about soccer teams. It's been my life. I'm so grateful to have “I survived.”
The Tahitian Terrace was destroyed by the Palisades Fire on PCH on Wednesday, January 8, 2025 in Malibu, California. (Brian Van Der Brug/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
the West wing The alum added, “It's my home, it's my neighborhood, it's my community. And so, when you see it burning, it's not about things, you don't even think about safety. But what we're grieving about is our lives.”
“I'm just thinking, 'What's the way forward? What's the best way? How can it work? How can we make it work?'” Proctor said. “And I think that's the next question we have to answer, because we were feeling a close community, how Can we make it work?”
Procter also addressed those interested in helping, telling them: “Giving to the community is probably the greatest gift, just to let people know that you love them and that we're in this.”
Meanwhile, stars like Paris Hilton, Milo Ventimiglia, Adam Brody, Leighton Meester, and Billy Crystal lost their homes in the wildfires.
Fires broke out in Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Eaton Canyon, the Hollywood Hills and other areas around Los Angeles County amid a “life-threatening and devastating” wind storm that began Tuesday.
As of Thursday, at least six people had died in the Southern California wildfires, which have forced nearly 180,000 people to evacuate and left more than 1.5 million without power.
President Joe Biden, who extended his trip to Los Angeles on Wednesday to visit first responders and those affected, declared the fires a major disaster.
“More than 100,000 people have been ordered to evacuate communities affected by wildfires in Southern California,” Biden wrote on X. “At least two people were killed. Many more were injured – including firefighters. It's devastating. To the people of Southern California: we are with you.”
