Los Angeles locals with Minnesota roots share their experiences of ‘staggering’ California wildfires

Bill Loving could see the orange fireball rising less than a mile away from his home in Pasadena on Tuesday night, and decided it was time to get out.

Loving, a former Star Tribune reporter and editor who has been in Southern California since 1998 and retired five years ago, said he had seen fires in the past, but never one in his neighborhood.

“We grabbed a few things” and left, said Loving, who spent the night in a hotel with his wife, Rhonda Hillbery, in neighboring Glendale. “It got big really fast. Scary.”

Loving’s home was spared, save for a fence that was blown down by the hurricane-strength winds that have fanned the flames throughout Los Angeles County. But after returning home, he took a walk through his neighborhood and saw the destruction. He surmised that embers raining down on unlucky homes just blocks away left some of his neighbors without a place to live. One house was reduced to a smoldering flat with Christmas lights hanging along the sidewalk. Another had just a single charred wall still standing

“There was nothing to be saved,” Loving said, noting that retirement is the “good life, until something like this happens.”

The Star Tribune spoke to several Angelinos with Minnesota roots who have been impacted by the devastating fires.

Hillbery said the blaze that Cal Fire on Thursday afternoon reported had burned more than 10,000 acres and was 0% contained wiped out an entire business district and it was “staggering” to see how many people had been affected.

More than 180,000 people were evacuated in other parts of Pasadena and neighboring Altadena after the Eaton Fire broke out. More than 1,000 structures had been damaged or destroyed in the past three days, Cal Fire said.

Many displaced residents were sheltering at the Pasadena Convention Center, across the street from where Kateri Wozny lives.

“People are scared,” said Wozny, a former KSTP-TV producer from Maple Grove who moved west about 15 years ago. Though she was safe, Wozny had to deliver some bad news to her neighbor, who had asked her to go into Altadena and check on a house for her.

“Her in-laws lost their house,” said Wozny, who works for the Department of Defense and does freelance writing for a local newspaper in Pasadena. “Most of Altadena is gone.”

Fires sparked by Santa Ana winds blowing at hurricane strength have filled the skies with smoke and ash far beyond where the blazes continued to burn.

“I put on an N-95 mask and put on a shower cap, otherwise your hair will stink,” Wozny said. But she’s not leaving; instead staying to help her neighbors.

“Keep everyone in your thoughts and prayers. Los Angeles has not seen this much devastation in nearly 20 years.”

Wozny said she’s living by the California motto, “Help out your neighbor.”

Musician Neil Zumwalde, who grew up in Minnesota and was a musician in the Twin Cities before moving to Southern California, said he bolted for San Diego when the Sunset Fire sprung up near his Hollywood home.

“Too close for comfort,” he said. He plans to stay many miles to the south until things improve. The images he has seen on TV are “shocking,” he said.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz sent well wishes and prayers to California, and was grateful to “brave first responders answering the call to a dangerous situation,” he wrote in a post on X. “Minnesota stands ready to help in any way we can on the long road to recovery.”

The Minnesota Red Cross sent 11 volunteers to Los Angeles on Thursday and has others on standby ready to go, said spokeswoman Carrie Carlson-Guest. Most will be helping get people to emergency shelters, but some will help with reunifying families and getting supplies where they are needed.

And their presence won’t be short-lived. “We’re going to be there for weeks and months,” Carlson-Guest said.

Minnesotans who can’t get out to the West Coast can help by supporting relief efforts. The Red Cross is accepting financial donations at redcross.org, by phone at 800-733-2767 and by texting “redcross” to 90999. For donations sent by mail, donors can write “California Wildfires 2025″ in the memo line of a check.

Guest-Carlson said the Red Cross also accepts donations of airline miles, which can help reduce the costs of getting volunteers to disaster scenes.

Winds in Los Angeles are expected to calm down in the coming days, which could help firefighters get the blazes under control. But as long as they are still burning, Loving said he will be ready to leave again if the situation warrants.

“We have the car loaded up,” he said.