The sister of a California man who died protecting his family from the Eaton Fire with a garden hose recalled her last moments with her brother as she tried to evacuate him from a dangerous area.
Victor Shaw, 66, was sleeping in the Altadena bungalow he shared with his sister on Monte Rosa Drive when the fire spread down a nearby mountain and into a cul-de-sac.
“Victor, we have to get out!” Shari Shaw recalled yelling to her brother. The LA Times reported. “I have to get out of here!”
Shaw, who suffers from diabetes and chronic kidney disease and has difficulty getting around, did not wake up to his sister's frantic cries and tremors.
“Victor, the fire is coming,” she said, kicking his leg. “It's not safe as it is.”
The kick was enough to wake Victor, but he wasn't ready to abandon home.
“Okay, let me sit here for a few minutes,” he said.
Shari, who was rushing some of her belongings to the car, urged her brother to stand up as the fire was approaching, but he remained unmoved, saying he wanted to stay back and protect the house.
Shari called out to her brother again, but there was no answer.
She ran outside to her car and turned around to see the house go up in flames.
“I had to go outside because the embers were so big that it came flying like a firestorm and I had to save myself,” she said. told KTLA Wednesday night.
Victor's body was later found by a family friend on the side of the road, still clutching a garden hose, as he tried to save the home he had lived in since 1965.
When Shari returned to the burnt-out house, she couldn't imagine what her brother had gone through in his final moments.
“I couldn't be here, I couldn't be here to save him. I couldn't be here, and that's what hurts the most,” she said. he told ABC News.
The Los Angeles County coroner announced that Victor's cause of death was ruled to be smoke inhalation and burns.
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The Eaton Fire has claimed at least six lives since it broke out Tuesday afternoon about three miles southeast of where the Shaws lived.
More than 14,000 acres have burned, but only 3% of the fire is contained, authorities said Friday night.
The Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades west of Los Angeles has burned more than 21,000 acres and is only 8 percent contained, but at least five people are believed to have died.
Two major fires destroyed more than 10,000 buildings.
Annette Rossilli, 85, was among the victims of the Palisades fire because she refused to leave her home with a caregiver and chose to remain with her pets, which included a dog, a canary, two parrots, and a turtle. was identified as one of the CNN reported.
Rossilli, a mother of two, received home care three days a week.
She was found in her car by firefighters on Wednesday.
