Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) criticized residents of the Pacific Palisades who had returned to their homes without authorization, telling a telephone town hall on Wednesday that they had “ruined” things for other local residents.
Sherman was providing information about federal relief funds and fielding questions about when people would be allowed to return to their homes — whether to remove any remaining belongings, or simply to grieve the ruins.
The Los Angeles Police Department and the National Guard are currently denying entry to residents in the evacuation zones, and have said that anyone caught violating a 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. curfew in the area will be arrested.
He said that while police escorts had been provided for some residents for several days (Jan. 9-11), they had been suspended — and he blamed the fact that some people had tried to return to their homes, often successfully.
You’re gonna say, “Well, why not at least let me in to check out my own house?” Um, they were doing that for a while, they didn’t have the resources. And then there’s another problem that I hesitate to mention and that is some people were taken in to look and they stayed, they “de-evacuated” themselves, they walked in their front door and locked it behind them, and, uh, they were not arrested. And so, uh, they kind of ruined it for other people. Of course the research commitment is also very high to, to, to escort people back in. So they’ve got to deal with the toxic chemicals, they’ve got to deal with the safety of the utilities, in order to, uh, uh, I, in order to let people into the fire area. I’m sure we’ll get more questions on that.
Sherman’s comments triggered outrage among some residents, who are worried about looting and who have, in some cases, hired private security companies to protect their neighborhoods, or have slipped past police and the National Guard.
There are a few residents who have refused to evacuate, preferring to live secretly in their surviving homes without electricity, power, gas, or water rather than to leave. One homeless man, “Eric,” lives openly in the burn zone.
Eric, the homeless guitarist who plays at Sunset/Temescal, has resisted efforts to evacuate him. Law enforcement has decided to leave him alone but have politely asked him to stop trying to fight fires on his own. I guess we’re all homeless now for a while, anyway. #PalisadesFire pic.twitter.com/xSxkKKDO25
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) January 15, 2025
Police allowed residents of two neighborhoods, the Riviera and Santa Monica Canyon, which were relatively untouched by the fire, to begin returning home at midday on Friday. Other residents have no timeline for return yet.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
