The devastating Eaton Fire became personal for one member of the KNX News team, who returned from a long night covering the blaze to find out that it had consumed her childhood home.
A family friend created a GoFundMe to help Nataly and her family rebuild - click here to donate.
“I have not slept all night,” Nataly Tavidian said. “I was covering this until about two in the morning and had to leave. Every single street here in Upper Hastings Ranch on the east side of Pasadena was filled with cops saying get out, and all people could do, all everybody was telling me was, ’Let's hope that our home is here in the morning.’”
Around 5 a.m., a friend called Tavidian to break the news that her family’s home, where her mother and brother still lived, had burned down.
“My dad bought this home in 1998,” Tavidian said. “He was in his twenties and he looked at the backyard and he looked at the mountains and he said, ‘I'll take it.’ And he loved this home and he built this home and it's just, it's surreal.”
Tavidian said her family was safe, but her mother was “hysterical” after hearing the news, especially given that Taavidian’s father passed away a couple years ago.
“She's just broken because it was losing her husband first and now the home that they built together,” she said.
Tavidian said the experience has changed her perspective on covering other people’s tragedies as a reporter.
“I think I pride myself in always having empathy, but there's a very big difference between having empathy enough to tell somebody's story and to truly feel the story,” she said. “I’m not just telling the story. I am feeling it in every cell of my body right now.”
As of 1 p.m. Wednesday, up to 500 structures had been destroyed by the Eaton Fire.
Follow KNX News 97.1 FM
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok