A federal grand jury subpoena has been served on the Los Angeles Fire Department for firefighters’ text messages and other communications about smoke or hot spots in the area of the Jan. 1 Lachman brushfire, which reignited six days later into the massive Palisades fire, according to an internal department memo.
The Times reported last week that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to pack up their hoses and leave the burn area the day after the Lachman fire, even though they complained that the ground was still smoldering and rocks were hot to the touch. In the memo, the department notified its employees of the subpoena, which it said was issued by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
“The subpoena seeks any and all communications, including text messages, related to reports of fire, smoke, or hotspots received between” 10 p.m. on New Year’s Eve and 10 a.m. on Jan. 7, said the memo, which was dated Tuesday.
A spokesperson with the U.S. attorney’s office declined to confirm that a subpoena was issued and otherwise did not comment. The memo did not include a copy of the subpoena.
The memo said the subpoena was issued in connection with an “ongoing criminal investigation” conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
It is unclear from the memo whether the subpoena is directly related to the case against Rinderknecht, who has pleaded not guilty.
During the Rinderknecht investigation, ATF agents concluded that the fire smoldered and burned for days underground “within the root structure of dense vegetation,” until heavy winds caused it to spark the Palisades inferno, according to an affidavit attached to the criminal complaint against Rinderknecht.
The Palisades fire, the most destructive in the city’s history, killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes, businesses and other structures.
Last week, The Times cited text messages among firefighters in reporting that crews mopping up the Lachman fire had warned the battalion chief that remnants of the blaze were still smoldering.
The battalion chief listed as being on duty the day firefighters were ordered to leave the Lachman fire, Mario Garcia, has not responded to requests for comment.
In one text message, a firefighter who was at the scene on Jan. 2 wrote that the battalion chief had been told it was a “bad idea” to leave because of the visible signs of smoking terrain, which crews feared could start a new fire if left unprotected.
“And the rest is history,” the firefighter wrote in recent weeks.
A second firefighter was told that tree stumps were still hot at the location when the crew packed up and left, according to the texts. And a third firefighter said this month that crew members were upset when told to pack up and leave but that they could not ignore orders, according to the texts. The third firefighter also wrote that he and his colleagues knew immediately that the Palisades fire was a rekindle of the Jan. 1 blaze.
The Fire Department has not answered questions about the firefighter accounts in the text messages but has previously said that officials did everything they could to ensure that the Lachman fire was fully extinguished. The department has not provided dispatch records of all firefighting and mop-up activity before Jan. 7.
After The Times published the story, Mayor Karen Bass directed interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva to launch an investigation into the matter, while critics of her administration have asked for an independent inquiry.
Israeli forces have carried out air strikes on the areas of Mahmoudiyeh and Jarmak, in southern Lebanon. The strikes are the latest in near-daily Israeli violations of the US-brokered ceasefire involving Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah that began in November.
We’ve read quite a bit about President Trump’s “hot mic” comment, during a meeting with European leaders about the Russian war against Ukraine, that Vladimir Putin “wants to make a deal for me, as crazy as it sounds.”
Pundits debated whether this was an embarrassment for Trump; they wondered why he would say such an important thing in a whisper to French President Emmanuel Macron — as if Trump’s verbal goulash were something new. Headlines were full of the word “deal” for a while, including three days later, when they were reporting that Trump said Putin might not want “to make a deal.” And, of course, there is no deal.
The press coverage of the meeting in Alaska said there were lots of “constructive” conversations. Putin spoke about “neighborly” talks and the “constructive atmosphere of mutual respect” in his conversations with Trump. There were reports about agreements “in principle” on various things under discussion, although there were no details about what they might be.
I covered more than a few superpower summits, first as a reporter for the Associated Press and later for the New York Times. Although that was more than 30 years ago, the smoke and mirrors nonsense usually produced by meetings like these has not changed. Verbal gas is abundant and facts almost nonexistent. Trump’s comments were worth about as much as anything else he has said on the subject, which is almost nothing. And yet, they were reported and parsed endlessly as if they had the same meaning as other presidents’ words had in the past.
I had a powerful sense of deja vu from a five-day trip to Afghanistan in January 1987. The Kremlin had finally agreed to let a group of Western journalists visit Kabul and Jalalabad to witness the “cease-fire” that had been announced a few days before we arrived. The visit was billed as an Afghan government tour, which nobody — especially the Afghan government — believed.
We saw no fighting, although we could see artillery fire in the hills at night. Some of the “specials,” as we wire service correspondents called the major media then, reported that we were fired on. We were not.
Mostly, we shopped for rugs and drank cold Heinekens, which were unavailable in Moscow but mysteriously well stocked at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul. We were ushered to various peace and unity events between the Afghan and Russian peoples and toured the huge Soviet military camps just outside Kabul with a U.S. official (allegedly a diplomat from the Embassy, but we knew from experience that this person was from the Central Intelligence Agency).
On Jan. 19, we were taken (each reporter in an individual government car with a minder) to a news conference by Mohammad Najib, the Afghan leader whose name had been Najibullah until he changed it to make it sound less religious for his Bolshevik friends. Najib said that Afghanistan and the Soviet Union had agreed “in principle” on a “timetable for withdrawal” of Soviet occupation forces.
At that point, the Reuters correspondent, who was fairly new to Moscow still, bolted from the room and raced back to our hotel, where there was one Telex machine for us all to send our stories back to Moscow. He filed a bulletin on the announcement. When the rest of us made our leisurely return, we were greeted with messages from our home offices demanding to know about the big deal to end the war in Afghanistan.
We wrote our stories, which were about a business-as-usual press conference that yielded no real news. We each appended a message to explain why the Reuters report was just plain wrong. Talk of Soviet withdrawal was common, and always wrong. The very idea that the puppet government in Kabul had something to say about it or was a party to any serious discussions about ending the war was absurd. The most pithy comment came from the Agence France-Presse reporter, who told her editors that the Reuters story was “merde.” The Soviet military did not withdraw until February 1989, more than two years later, following its own schedule.
Much of the recent coverage about Russia and Ukraine reminds me of that Afghan news flash in 1987. The Kremlin has never been, was not then and is not now interested in negotiation or compromise. Under Soviet communism and under Putin, diplomacy is a zero-sum game whose only goal is to restore Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe. And yet, for some reason, the American media and the country’s diplomats seem as oblivious today as they always were. After the summit, they announced breathlessly that there was no peace deal out of the summit, although they all knew going in that there was no deal on the table and there never was going to be one.
But of course Putin wants a “deal” on Ukraine. It’s the same deal he has wanted since he violated international law (not for the first time) and invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. He wants to redraw the boundaries of Ukraine to give him even more territory than he has already seized, and he wants to be sure Ukraine remains out of NATO and under Moscow’s military thumb as he has done with other former Soviet regions, like Georgia, which he invaded in 2008 as soon as the country dared to suggest it might be interested in NATO membership. His latest nonsense was to demand that Russia be part of any postwar security arrangements. He wants the NATO allies to stop treating him like the war criminal that he is and to be seen as an equal actor on the international stage with NATO and especially the United States.
That he got, in abundance, from Trump in Alaska, starting with the location. Trump invited Putin to the United States during a period of travel bans to and from Russia, immediately giving the Russian dictator a huge PR win. It also, conveniently, put him in the only NATO country where he is not wanted on charges of crimes against humanity.
As for peace talks, check the headlines from Ukraine before, during and after the Alaska summit: The Russians have stepped up their killing and destruction in Ukraine with new ferocity and have been grabbing as much land in eastern Ukraine as they can. Every square inch of that land — and more the Kremlin has not yet occupied — will be part of any “deal” that Putin will accept. Trump himself has been talking about “land swaps” (as he has from the start of the war, by the way) — a nonsensical idea when you consider the land Ukraine holds is its sovereign territory and the land Russian holds was stolen.
The brilliant M. Gessen, perhaps the leading authority on dictatorship, published an essay in the New York Review, “Autocracy: Rules for Survival,” shortly after the 2016 election. “Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality,” they wrote.
A U.S. president and a Russian leader sitting down to talk and emerging with bluster about progress seems normal enough, perhaps encouraging when American-Russian relations have been at a historic low. Just remember that coming from these two men, the comments signify nothing — or, worse, make us wonder what Trump has given away to Putin with his talk of land swaps.
Andrew Rosenthal, a former reporter, editor and columnist, was Moscow bureau chief for the Associated Press and Washington editor and later editorial page editor for the New York Times.
Blazes across several Canadian provinces and territories pose health risks to Canadians and their southern neighbours.
Smoke from wildfires burning in Canada has triggered air quality alerts over the border in the United States.
Several blazes continued to rage across Canada on Saturday, sending smoke wafting over several states in the US Midwest and bringing warnings of unhealthy air for at least the third day.
Air quality alerts were in effect in the US states of Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as eastern Nebraska and parts of Indiana and Illinois.
Conditions were especially dire in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with the Switzerland-based air quality monitoring database IQAir reporting that the US city had some of the worst air pollution in the world since Friday.
The Air Quality Index (AQI), a system used to communicate how much pollution is in the air, is expected to reach the red or unhealthy category in a large swath of Minnesota, and will likely remain so through Saturday.
“We’ve sort of been dealing with this, day in and day out, where you walk outside and you can taste the smoke, you can smell it,” said Joe Strus, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area.
Forecasters warned that smoky skies would remain across the Midwest for much of Saturday, but could start to dissipate before spreading as far south as Tennessee and Missouri.
The poor air quality poses particular risks for people with lung and heart conditions, as well as children, the elderly and pregnant women.
This is not the first time that Canadian wildfires have prompted air quality alerts in the US and further afield. In 2023, a record early wildfire season sent smoke across the Atlantic into northern Europe.
On Saturday, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre reported “out-of-control” blazes in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, as well as in Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
The centre said that 717 fires were active across the country.
Environment Canada also said “extremely high” levels of air pollution were present in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and the Northwest Territories, according to a report by The Canadian Press news agency.
Areas in British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec were also under air-quality watch, though risks to health were reportedly lower.
Environment Canada said reduced visibility and poor air quality would persist into Sunday.
About 50 residents had to be evacuated as the fires ripped through the countryside. Madrid Security and Emergency Agency described the blazes as of “maximum concern”
The blaze broke out on Thursday(Image: AP)
An out-of-control wildfire broke out near Madrid on Thursday, sending a massive plume of smoke over the Spanish capital and forcing people out of their homes.
About 50 residents had to be evacuated as the fires ripped through the countryside. Madrid Security and Emergency Agency described the blazes as of “maximum concern” as extreme levels of forest fires are reported throughout the region, and 40mph winds threaten to push them further and faster.
The blaze began in the town of Méntrida, located in the Castile-La Mancha region about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of Madrid. Local authorities advised residents to remain indoors and keep their windows closed due to poor air quality.
By late evening, officials reported that the fire had scorched around 3,000 hectares (approximately 7,400 acres). Firefighters on the ground and in the air were working to contain the flames, which ignited around 3 p.m.
Residents had to be evacuated (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Strong winds carried the smoke over Madrid, turning the skies orange and filling the air with haze throughout the afternoon. Much of Spain remains under heat and wildfire alerts, with temperatures in Madrid reaching 37°C (100°F) on Thursday.
Europe is warming faster than any other continent, with average temperatures rising at twice the global rate since the 1980s, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Experts warn that climate change is intensifying the frequency and severity of heatwaves and droughts, increasing the risk of wildfires across the region.
This summer so far has been a particularly bad one for wildfires across Europe, with many countries in the south of the Continent becoming tinder-box dry after months of intense heat.
“Extreme heat is no longer a rare event — it has become the new normal,” declared U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres via Twitter from Seville, Spain, earlier this summer. Echoing his oft-repeated plea for dramatic measures to curb climate change, Guterres proclaimed: “The planet is getting hotter & more dangerous — no country is immune.”
The extreme heat poses a significant threat to life. In 2023, a record-breaking heatwave in Europe claimed 61,000 lives. According to William Spencer, climate and first aid product manager at the British Red Cross, “Heatwaves are becoming more frequent and getting worse because of climate change.
“Sadly, we have seen cases already this year of the tragic impact high temperatures can have on human life. High temperatures make it harder for the body to cool itself and we all need to take care to manage the health risks of heat. If you are travelling to a country experiencing extreme heat, there are several steps you can take to keep yourself and others safe.”
As mercury levels soar, the newly launched early warning system, Forecaster.health, is set to be a game-changer. This pioneering pan-European platform offers real-time predictions on the mortality risks associated with temperature changes, tailored for various demographics.
Holidaymakers worried about the scorching weather can now assess their personal health risks before jetting off. Before you pack your bags for that much-needed getaway, be sure to check the weather forecast to stay ahead of any potential heat hazards.
Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who can’t stand the heat outside, but can tolerate it onscreen.
The eerie and bizarre story of John Orr, a Southern California arson investigator who authorities say moonlighted as a serial arsonist suspected of setting some 2,000 fires in the 1980s and 1990s, has been chronicled in the 2021 podcast “Firebug” and, earlier this year, received the deep-dive treatment from L.A. Times writer Christopher Goffard. Now, there’s a new Apple TV+ series, “Smoke,” loosely inspired by the true crime case. Author and screenwriter Dennis Lehane, who created the new drama, stopped by Guest Spot to discuss it.
Also in this week’s Screen Gab, TV critic Robert Lloyd reminds us that Bravo used to dabble in scripted programming, recommending “Odd Mom Out,” the short-lived comedy about a stay-at-home mother and her experiences navigating the bizarre and outrageous world of Manhattan’s elite; and film reporter Josh Rottenberg suggests finding time to watch a hybrid documentary-biopic film about the ‘90s indie band Pavement.
ICYMI
Must-read stories you might have missed
Jerry Bruckheimer, whose new movie “F1” hits screens this week, poses for a portrait in his Santa Monica office.
‘Countdown’ makes Los Angeles a prominent character — and it’s in danger: The Prime Video action series follows a task force consisting of members from various law enforcement agencies that are brought together after the murder of a Department of Homeland Security agent. But it’s Los Angeles that is in serious danger.
Turn on
Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times
Jill Kargman as Jill and Andy Buckley as Andy in “Odd Mom Out.”
(Barbara Nitke / Bravo )
“Odd Mom Out” (Peacock)
In my review of the new season of “The Bear” this week, I neglected to mention Abby Elliott, who plays Sugar, the level-headed sister of Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy (or to mention Sugar’s new baby, the most adorable infant I have ever seen on screen); ironically, it was because, laboring to express how great she is in it, I had set that bit aside — as it turned out, permanently. Happily, I was already planning to use this space to recommend her earlier series, Jill Kargman’s very funny “Odd Mom Out,” Bravo’s brief experiment (2015-17) in scripted comedy, giving me this chance to self-correct. In “Mom,” whose three seasons stream on Peacock, Kargman, a very talented amateur, stars as a version of herself in a series based on her 2007 book “Momzillas,” about competitive parenting among Upper East Side New Yorkers, a war her boho-punk mother of three character declines to enter. (She is what most of us would call rich, but not obscenely so, and has good values.) Elliott, in a whimsical comic turn, plays Brooke, the pregnant and thin wife (later ex-wife) of her brother-in-law, whose charities include providing “prophylactic gastric bypasses for at-risk kids with morbidly obese parents” and sending bouncy castles to Africa. — Robert Lloyd
Stephen Malkmus in “Pavements.”
(Utopia)
“Pavements” (available on various VOD platforms)
If you were young and vaguely disaffected in the ’90s, Pavement was either your favorite band or the band your favorite band wanted to be — a group whose slanted (and enchanted) songs defined slacker cool, mixing lo-fi chaos, shaggy pop hooks and a shrugging disinterest in “career, career, career,” as they put it in their semi-hit “Cut Your Hair.” So it’s only fitting that Alex Ross Perry’s drolly funny anti-rock-doc ditches the usual mythology-building formula in favor of something far weirder. Blending real tour footage, a faux biopic, a tongue-in-cheek jukebox musical and a museum filled with half-fake relics, the film is part tribute, part Gen X time capsule, part absurdist prank. “Stranger Things” star Joe Keery is the film’s unexpected MVP, playing himself with deadpan commitment as he fixates on nailing lead singer Stephen Malkmus’ Stockton accent — right down to requesting a photo of his tongue for research. By the end, “Pavements” becomes both a joke about the band’s legacy and a surprisingly sincere celebration of it. — Josh Rottenberg
Guest spot
A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching
Taron Egerton in Apple TV+’s “Smoke.”
(Apple TV+)
He spent his days as a fire captain and arson investigator in Southern California, but authorities say John Orr lived a secret life as a prolific arsonist responsible for a string of fires that terrorized the region in the ‘80s and ‘90s. An unpublished novel he wrote, “Points of Origin,” detailed an arson spree that mirrored real-life incidents and helped authorities secure enough evidence to arrest him. The firefighting veteran was eventually convicted on 20 counts of arson and 4 counts of murder and is serving life in prison. Orr continues to maintain his innocence. This true story, chronicled in the 2021 podcast “Firebug,” is the basis for Apple TV+’s new nine-episode crime drama “Smoke.” Created by Dennis Lehane (“Black Bird”), the series follows arson investigator Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton) and Detective Michelle Calderone (Jurnee Smollett) as they pursue two serial arsonists. The first two episodes are available to stream, with the remaining seven releasing weekly every Friday until Aug. 15. Lehane stopped by Guest Spot to discuss the show’s gnarly fire sequences and getting Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke to provide the show’s theme song. — Yvonne Villarreal
You’ve authored several well-known novels, including “Gone, Baby, Gone,” “Mystic River” and “Shutter Island,” and you’re familiar with exploring moral ambiguity. What stood out to you when you first listened to “Firebug”? And what about it made it a story you wanted to tell for the screen?
What really stood out for me with “Firebug” was John Orr’s myopic duality. He clung to the identity of a hero arson investigator even as he was running around lighting up Glendale and surrounding areas, resulting in several deaths. On top of that, he was writing a book about an arson investigator chasing a serial arsonist. And the book was quite bad. I found that kinda delicious. I was also intrigued by his methods for setting the fires and was taken by the fact that he’d once nearly died in a fire when he mistook his reflection for another firefighter and ran deeper into a burning house.
Everything else in the show is pure fiction. I didn’t want to tell a story about John Orr in 1980s California; I wanted to tell a story about our culture now, about people who feel so unmoored they’d rather cling to the fiction of themselves over the fact.
Tell me about the planning and work that went into crafting the fire sequences in the series — how you decided when to use special effects or real fire, and the precautions that needed to be in place for the latter. And is there a fire sequence in the series that stands out for you?
The moments that stand out most are the first fire — Dave’s dream — and the last — the sawmill fire. The first of these was 100% real. It was shot on a burn stage with pipes blasting flame all around the room as Taron — not a stunt man — walked through it. It looks so impressive because a) we planned really hard; and b) Sam McCurdy, our director of photography, is a painter with light and reflection. Our sawmill fire and the subsequent car ride thru the burning forest was the opposite — it was predominantly CGI, but we’d realized by then that the key was to shoot as much real fire as we could (which, in this case, wasn’t terribly much), so the CGI wizards had real flame to compare their work to.
How did you get Thom Yorke to write a song (“Dialing In”) for the show’s theme?
Our music supervisor, Mary Ramos, had heard that Thom was a fan of “Black Bird” [Lehane’s previous Apple TV+ series that also starred Egerton and featured much of the same creative team]. We reached out to see if he had any interest in writing a song for our credit sequence. And he actually called us back. He and I spoke about the underlying themes of the show and he read a bunch of the scripts. Then he went off and wrote the song. He sent it back to us and someone, I think it was Mary, said, “Now you have to give him notes.” And I was like, Um … no, no, I don’t. He’s Thom Yorke. Giving him notes on music would be like telling Scorsese where to put the camera. I passed along this note:”Thank you.”
What have you watched recently that you’re recommending to everyone you know? (Please explain)
“Dept. Q” [Netflix]. Scott Frank, as always, crushes it as both a writer and a director. It’s got one of the best pilots I’ve ever seen, and the cast, led by Matthew Goode and Kate Dickie, is impeccable. It’s so rich in character and atmosphere that I wanted to fly to Edinburgh to simply hang out with every character after I finished watching.
What’s your go-to comfort watch, the film or TV show you return to again and again? (Please explain)
“Midnight Run” [Netflix] is my cinematic chicken soup for the soul. It’s smart, hilarious, infinitely quotable, sports one of the greatest casts ever assembled, and it’s non-stop, breakneck fun from the first shot to the last. I’ve probably seen it 30 times.
When Alijah Arenas opened his eyes, minutes after his Tesla Cybertruck struck a tree one morning this past April, the five-star Chatsworth High hoops phenom wasn’t sure where he was or how he’d gotten there. His initial, disoriented thought was that he’d woken up at home. But as he regained consciousness, Arena felt the seat belt wrapped tightly around his waist. He noticed the Life360 app on his phone, beeping. Outside the car, he could hear crackling sounds, like a campfire.
Then he felt the heat like a sauna cranked to its highest setting. The passenger side of the dashboard, Arenas could see, was already engulfed in flames. Smoke was filling the car’s front cabin. He could no longer see out of the windows.
Arenas reached for his iPhone, intent on using his digital key to escape, only to find the Tesla app had locked him out. Panic started to set in.
“I tried to open the door,” Arenas said, “and the door isn’t opening.”
A crumbled Telsa Cybertruck rests adjacent to a tree following a crash involving top USC basketball recruit Alijah Arenas.
(Handout)
He tore off his seat belt and moved to the back seat, away from the smoke, scanning the car desperately for an exit strategy. His heart was pounding. The heat was becoming unbearable. Then, he passed out.
No more than 10 minutes earlier — and less than two miles up Corbin Avenue — Arenas had just wrapped up a predawn workout at the DSTRKT, a gym in Chatsworth, where he’d been working his way up to 10,000 shots that week.
One of the top hoops prospects in Southern California, Arenas was weeks away from graduating from Chatsworth High after three years with the intention of joining USC a year early in 2025. He was doing everything he could to prepare for that extraordinary leap.
Alijah Arenas describes for the first time publicly how the steering wheel of his Tesla Cybertruck locked up and led to his fiery April wreck in Reseda.
He was on his way home from the gym, driving south on Corbin as he had so many times before, when Arenas noticed that the Cybertruck — which is registered to his father, former NBA star Gilbert Arenas — was acting strangely. The car wasn’t reading that he left the gym. The keypad kept flickering on and off.
After stopping at one red light, he tried to switch lanes, only to notice that “the wheel wasn’t moving as easily as it should.” Drifting into the right lane, he realized that he “can’t get back to the left.”
“So then a car is coming towards me, and I think that I’ll just pull over,” he said. “So I speed up to pull over to the right in a neighborhood because there are cars parked on the street I’m on to the right. But when I’m speeding up to turn, I can’t stop. The wheel wasn’t responding to me — as if I wasn’t in the car.”
The Cybertruck careened instead into a fire hydrant, then a tree, before bursting into flames.
Minutes felt like hours as he tried to escape the smoldering car. Drifting in and out of consciousness, Arenas did whatever he could to stay alert. He bit his lip as hard as he could and clenched his nails into his skin. He doused himself with water from a water bottle to cool his body down. He tried to make as much noise as possible, yelling and banging on the glass. But the flames were getting hotter, the smoke getting thicker.
“I’m panicking,” Arenas said. “I was fighting time.”
He set out to break a window, knowing Cybertruck windows are meant to be “unbreakable.” When his hands ached from punching the glass, he started using his feet. Then he passed out again.
USC freshman Alijah Arenas, who survived a Cybertruck crash earlier this year, talks with reporters on Tuesday.
(Ryan Kartje / Los Angeles Times)
When he woke up, “I realized my whole right side had caught on fire,” he said.
But as he tore off his clothes and doused himself in water again, he heard a thud outside the car window. Sirens wailed in the distance. Just keep going, he told himself.
He kicked at the driver’s-side window with everything he had. Eventually, he spotted a crack. He kept kicking, drifting briefly out of consciousness, before the window fell away and hands began pulling him from the vehicle by his legs.
The next thing he remembers feeling was a cold rush, as if he’d jumped in a freezing river. A video of the crash scene obtained by TMZ shows Arenas lying face down in the street in a few inches of water, while the broken hydrant continues to spray into the air, after a group of good Samaritans had come to his rescue.
In all, Arenas spent at least 10 minutes in the burning car before people who happened to hear the accident eventually helped pull him to safety. It’s not lost on him how lucky he was.
“There are amazing people in this world that are willing to help and risk their own bodies for you,” Arenas said. “For me, it was like, I don’t ever want to think about me ever again.”
Alijah Arenas, of Chatsworth High, drives to the basket.
(Nick Koza)
The next hours and days are still hazy for Arenas, who was whisked away to a nearby hospital, then another. He was put into a medically induced coma, a common approach for dealing with extreme smoke inhalation.
When he finally awoke, Arenas still couldn’t speak. But right away, panic set in. He wondered if his car had hit another, or if anyone else had been hurt.
Months later, he still can’t bring himself to place any blame elsewhere for what happened. Even though there are no indications that Arenas was at fault for his steering wheel locking up.
“Honestly, I take full responsibility,” Arenas said. “Whether it was me, another car, a malfunction. I don’t really want to put anyone else in this situation — whoever made the car, anything. I want to take full responsibility for what I do. If I would’ve hurt somebody, that would have really taken a toll on me.”
Arenas spent six days in the hospital after the accident but suffered no major long-term injuries. In the weeks that followed, he took walks through his family’s neighborhood to regain his strength. Along the way, neighbors showered him with flowers and well wishes. Last month, the family welcomed the men who saved Arenas into their home to share their gratitude.
He’s still working his way toward joining USC for its summer hoops practices, with some preliminary classwork still remaining before his transition is complete. But after officially enrolling at USC last week, Arenas stood on the practice court sideline on Tuesday morning, high-fiving teammates and calling out assignments, looking every bit the part of a five-star freshman who’s ready to step in from Day One.
“His perspective is really unique,” USC coach Eric Musselman said. “Even before the accident, when you talk to Alijah, it’s a unique thought process on how he views life and views the game of basketball and how he views his teammates.”
But there’s no mistaking, in Arenas’ mind, how fortunate he is to have survived — and how many things had to go right for that to be the case. He’s convinced he was spared to help someone else in the same way he was helped.
“It taught me a lot,” Arenas said. “I’m very lucky — and not even just to be here. Just in general, in life.”
The easyJet flight from Cyprus to Bristol was forced to land in Turkey due to the smell of smoke on the aircraft, with one passenger revealing the ‘mayhem’ it caused on board
Passengers panicked when their easyJet flight was forced into an emergency landing, with some screaming ‘we’re going to die’(Image: Boarding1Now via Getty Images)
A passenger on an easyJet flight, which was forced to make an emergency landing due to the smell of smoke, has recounted his harrowing ordeal, revealing that he and his fellow travellers “thought that they were going to die.”
The easyJet service, flying from Paphos, Cyprus, to Bristol Airport on Saturday (June 14), had to make an unscheduled descent into Izmir, Turkey, just an hour and 20 minutes after takeoff.
Jamie Shorland, returning from a trip to see his grandfather in Cyprus with a friend, was aboard when the smoke alarms went off. He described how the crew’s lack of communication likely added to the ensuing chaos.
The 21-year-old Exeter resident detailed that the plane, already behind schedule by half an hour, finally left the ground at 10:30 p.m. It was while soaring over the Turkish coast that Jamie sensed trouble brewing. Jamie said: “The air cabin crew were told to put away the catering trolleys, whilst we were told no information at all, then we were told to brace for an emergency landing.”
Passengers were shockingly told to ‘buy a lottery ticket’ after surviving the ordeal(Image: Jozsef Soos via Getty Images)
He continued: “We were above the water so we thought we’d crash into the sea, there was pure panic and none of the crew were helpful. I thought to myself ‘this is how it ends’, people were screaming ‘we are going to die!'”.
“One father rushed up the plane to hug his kids and the airline staff told him to go back to his seat. He told them to ‘f**k off, if I am going to die I am going to be with my kids.'”
Speaking to BristolLive, Jamie described the terrifying moment their aircraft suddenly veered off course, executing a gut-wrenching 180-degree turn towards Turkey, with passengers experiencing the sensation of the plane flying sideways before it dramatically dropped 15,000ft.
“I saw cabin crew crying at the back of the plane thinking they were going to die, however the plane flew into Izmir and landed at the airport,” Jamie said. “It was a traumatic experience, I genuinely thought I was going to die. I was trying to think happy thoughts of my family as we fell through the sky.”
He recounted the disorder that ensued: “It was a load of mayhem, the plane had no lights and it was a scary time.”
Jamie Shorland, 21, was on a terrifying flight from Cyprus that passengers thought would crash into the sea (Image: Jamie Shorland)
Passengers made to wait half an hour as firefighters stormed plane
Further tension followed after the emergency landing as passengers were made to wait onboard for half an hour amidst confusion, while firefighters swarmed the aircraft.
In the midst of uncertainty after landing, Jamie watched as emergency crews accompanied the plane until it came to a full stop, resulting in firefighters storming the laneway.
Passengers remained in limbo, confined within the aircraft without sufficient information. After a tense 20 minutes, they gradually learned that the ordeal might be linked to a fault with the cooling system.
Following the incident, EasyJet confirmed that accommodations were arranged for all affected travellers, spreading them across three hotels. Jamie was briefed on the arrangements, being told he could remain at the hotel until 6pm on Sunday in anticipation of the rescheduled 10pm flight.
Jamie recounted the mayhem that ensued at their hotel, with all guests being asked to leave suddenly at noon, resulting in a prolonged wait at the airport for a flight that was further delayed until 11pm.
Reflecting on his ordeal, Jamie expressed his apprehension about flying again: “I did not want to leave Izmir, I thought ‘I might not make it’.”
Airline criticised over lack of response
Jamie said he never wanted to get on a plane again after his ordeal(Image: Ashley Cooper via Getty Images)
EasyJet was heavily criticised for their poor communication during the disruption.
Jamie reported difficulty in getting information from easyJet, saying the airline wasn’t helpful: “They’ve been no help at all, the pilot [of the initial flight] even made a joke after landing telling everyone to buy a lottery ticket because ‘we got lucky’, I couldn’t believe it.”
After the delayed take-off, the flight landed at Bristol Airport at 12.30am on Monday, with Jamie arriving in Exeter just before 3am.
He described the ordeal’s impact on his companion, stating: “It was my friend’s first time flying in 12 years. We will never get on a plane again, I’ve never been so scared of flying, it was the worst experience of my life.”
EasyJet released an official statement on Saturday, June 15: “We can confirm that flight EZY2902 from Paphos to Bristol diverted to Izmir due to a technical issue which resulted in a smoke smell onboard.
“The aircraft landed safely in Izmir and was met by emergency services as a routine and precautionary measure only.
“All passengers disembarked as normal into the terminal and were provided with hotel accommodation and meals where required. Passengers will continue to Bristol on a replacement aircraft later today.”
The carrier emphasised its commitment to safety: “The safety of our customers and crew is easyJet’s highest priority and easyJet operates its fleet of aircraft in strict compliance with all manufacturers’ guidelines.
“We would like to thank customers for their understanding and apologise for the inconvenience caused.”
HOPLAND, Calif. — On a sun-kissed hillside in remote Northern California, I watched in awe as a crackling fire I’d helped ignite engulfed a hillside covered in tall, golden grass. Then the wind shifted slightly, and the dense gray smoke that had been billowing harmlessly up the slope turned and engulfed me.
Within seconds, I was blind and coughing. The most intense heat I’d ever felt seemed like it would sear the only exposed skin on my body: my face. As the flames inched closer, to within a few feet, I backed up until I was trapped against a tall fence with nowhere left to go.
Alone in that situation, I would have panicked. But I was with Len Nielson, chief of prescribed burns for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, who stayed as cool as the other side of the pillow.
Like a pilot calmly instructing passengers to fasten their seat belts, Nielson suggested I wrap the fire-resistant “shroud” hanging from my bright yellow helmet around my face. Then he told me to take a few steps to the left.
And, just like that, we were out of the choking smoke and into the gentle morning sunlight. The temperature seemed to have dropped a few hundred degrees.
“It became uncomfortable, but it was tolerable, right?” Nielson asked with a reassuring grin. “Prescribed fires are a lot about trust.”
Dripping gasoline onto dry grass and deliberately setting it ablaze in the California countryside felt wildly reckless, especially for someone whose job involves interviewing survivors of the state’s all too frequent, catastrophic wildfires. But “good fire,” as Nielson called it, is essential for reducing the fuel available for bad fire, the kind that makes the headlines. The principle is as ancient as it is simple.
Before European settlers arrived in California and insisted on suppressing fire at every turn, the landscape burned regularly. Sometimes lightning ignited the flames; sometimes it was Indigenous people using fire as an obvious, and remarkably effective, tool to clear unwanted vegetation from their fields. Whatever the cause, it was common for much of the land in California to burn about once a decade.
“So it was relatively calm,” Nielson said, as the flames we’d set danced and swirled just a few feet behind him. “There wasn’t this big fuel load, so there wasn’t a chance of it becoming really intense.”
With that in mind, the state set an ambitious goal in the early 2020s to deliberately burn at least 400,000 acres of wilderness each year. The majority of that would have to be managed by the federal government, since agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service own nearly half of the state’s total land. And they own more than half of the state’s forests.
Cal Fire crew members set a prescribed burn near Hopland in Mendocino County.
(Josh Edelson / For The Times)
But California officials worry their ambitious goals are likely to be thwarted by deep cuts to those federal agencies by Elon Musk’s budget-whacking White House advisory team, dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. In recent months, the Forest Service has lost about 10% of its workforce to mass layoffs and firings. While firefighters were exempt from the DOGE-ordered staffing cuts, employees who handle the logistics and clear the myriad regulatory hurdles to secure permission for prescribed burns were not.
“To me, it’s an objective fact that these cuts mean California will be less safe from wildfire,” said Wade Crowfoot, California’s secretary of natural resources. He recalled how President Trump, in his first term, erroneously blamed the state’s wildfires on state officials who, Trump said, had failed to adequately “rake” the forests.
“Fifty-seven percent of our forests are owned and managed by the federal government,” Crowfoot said. If anybody failed, it was the president, he argued.
Larry Moore, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, said the job cuts won’t affect the agency’s fire prevention efforts.
The Forest Service “continues to ensure it has the strongest and most prepared wildland firefighting force in the world,” Moore wrote in an email. The agency’s leaders are “committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.”
Cal Fire crew members plot out the direction and scope of a prescribed burn in Mendocino County.
(Josh Edelson / For The Times)
Nevertheless, last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom added $72 million to the state’s forest management budget to bridge some of the gap expected to be left by federal agencies. But wildfire experts say that’s just a drop in the bucket. Doing prescribed burns safely takes a lot of boots on the ground and behind-the-scenes cajoling to make sure local residents, and regulators, are on board.
Because people get pretty testy when you accidentally smoke out an elementary school or old folks home, burn plans have to clear substantial hurdles presented by the California Environmental Quality Act and air quality regulators.
It took three years to get all the required permissions for the 50-acre Hopland burn in Mendocino County, where vineyard owners worried their world-class grapes might get a little too “smoky” for most wine lovers. When the big day finally arrived in early June, more than 60 firefighters showed up with multiple fire engines, at least one bulldozer and a firefighting helicopter on standby in case anything went wrong.
But this was no school project. A fire that began in the surrounding hills a couple of years ago threatened to trap people in the center, so the area being burned was along the only two roads that could be used to escape.
“We’re trying to create a buffer to get out, if we need to,” said John Bailey, the center’s director. “But we’re also trying to create a buffer to prevent wildfire from coming into the center.”
Smoke emanates from a prescribed burn in Mendocino County.(Josh Edelson / For The Times)
As the firefighters pulled on their protective yellow jackets and pants, and filled their drip torches with a mixture of diesel and gasoline, Nielson bent down and grabbed a fistful of the yellow grass. Running it through his fingers, he showed it to his deputies and they all shook their heads in disappointment — too moist.
Thick marine-layer clouds filled the sky at 7 a.m, keeping the relative humidity too high for a good scorching. In many years of covering wildfires, it was the first time I had seen firefighters looking bored and disappointed because nothing would burn.
By 8:45 a.m., the clouds cleared, the sun came out, and the grass in Nielson’s fist began to crinkle and snap. It was time to go to work.
The fire that would fill the sky and drift north that afternoon, blanketing the town of Ukiah with the familiar orange haze of fire season, began with a single firefighter walking along the edge of a cleared dirt path. As he moved, he made little dots of flame with his drip torch, drawing a line like a kid working the edges of a picture in a coloring book.
Additional firefighters worked the other edges of the field until it was encircled by strips of burned black grass. That way, no matter which direction the fire went when they set the center of the field alight, the flames would not — in most circumstances — escape the relatively small test patch.
On the uphill edge of the patch, along the top of a ridge, firefighters in full protective gear leaned against a wooden fence with their backs to the smoke and flames climbing the hill behind them. They’d all done this before, and they trusted those black strips of pre-burned grass to stop the fire before it got to them.
Their job was to keep their eyes on the downward slope on the other side of the ridge, which wasn’t supposed to burn. If they saw any embers drift past them into the “green” zone, they would immediately move to extinguish those flames.
Nielson and I were standing along the fence, too. In addition to the circle of pre-burned grass protecting us, we were on a dirt path about four feet wide. For someone with experience, that was an enormous buffer. I was the only one who even flinched when the smoke and flames came our way.
Afterward, when I confessed how panicked I had felt, Nielson said it happens to a lot of people the first time they are engulfed in smoke. It’s particularly dangerous in grass fires, because they move so fast. People can get completely disoriented, run the wrong way and “get cooked,” he said.
Grass fires are particularly dangerous, because they move so fast, says Cal Fire Staff Chief Len Nielson. People can get disoriented in the smoke, run the wrong way and “get cooked.”
(Josh Edelson / For The Times)
But that test patch was just the warmup act. Nielson and his crew were checking to make sure the fire would behave the way they expected — pushed in the right direction by the gentle breeze and following the slope uphill.
“If you’re wondering where fire will go and how fast it will move, think of water,” he said. Water barely moves on flat ground, but it picks up speed when it goes downhill. If it gets into a steep section, where the walls close in like a funnel, it becomes a waterfall.
“Fire does the same thing, but it’s a gas, so it goes the opposite direction,” Nielson said.
With that and a few other pointers — we watched as three guys drew a line of fire around the base of a big, beautiful oak tree in the middle of the hillside to shield it from what was about to happen — Nielson led me to the bottom of the hill and handed me a drip torch.
Once everybody was in position, and all of the safety measures had been put in place, he wanted me to help set the “head fire,” a 6-foot wall of flame that would roar up the hill and consume dozens of acres in a matter of minutes.
“It’s gonna get a little warm right here,” Nielson said, “but it’s gonna get warm for only a second.”
As I leaned in with the torch and set the grass ablaze, the heat was overwhelming. While everyone else working the fire seemed nonchalant, I was tentative and terrified. My right hand stretched forward to make the dots and dashes where Nielson instructed, but my butt was sticking as far back into the road as it could get.
I asked Nielson how hot he thought the flames in front of us were. “I used to know that,” he said with a shrug. “I want to say it’s probably between 800 and 1,200 degrees.”
With the hillside still burning, I peeled off all of the protective gear, hopped in a car and followed the smoke north along the 101 Freeway. By lunchtime, Ukiah, a town of 16,000 that bills itself as the gateway to the redwoods, was shrouded in haze.
Everybody smelled the smoke, but prescribed burns are becoming so common in the region, nobody seemed alarmed.
“Do it!” said Judy Hyler, as she and two friends walked out of Stan’s Maple Cafe. A veteran of the rampant destruction of wildfires from years past, she didn’t hesitate when asked how she felt about the effort. “I would rather it be prescribed, controlled and managed than what we’ve seen before.”
Games are being played at the Estadio Antonio Coimbra da Mota – a 5,000-capacity ground in Estoril – but it was transformed for the World Sevens.
From 20:30 BST on Saturday, following Estoril men’s 4-0 win over Estrela, stands were built, TV cameras put in place and large screens put up.
The match schedule was shuffled after United’s men reached the Europa League final – which they lost 1-0 to Tottenham on Wednesday – so Skinner’s side played earlier at the World Sevens to avoid a clash.
Fans initially came in slowly, with little more than 100 watching City’s win over Rosengard, but alcoholic drinks were flowing as more came throughout the night, filling a stand on the far side before Paris St-Germain’s 2-1 win over Benfica.
“It is interesting. It is something different. The stadium looks nice,” said City fan Leanne Woodall, who travelled out to Estoril.
Fan Charlotte Wilkins added: “I play seven-a-side football so I was really excited to see how the professional players did it and the tactics they used.
“We couldn’t find where we needed to go when we first got here, but now we’re in, it’s really good and there’s good vibes so far. It’s exciting.”
Organisers hope to fill the arena on Friday when the semi-finals and final will be played and more fans fly out to Portugal in anticipation of Saturday’s Champions League final between Barcelona and Arsenal (17:00 BST).
But first impressions from the players were certainly positive.
“It was so nice, I was really sad it was only one game today, I could play all day like this,” said Roma’s Hawa Cissoko.
“I think we took the game a bit more seriously at the beginning than Manchester United, they arrived on the pitch really [relaxed].
“Them doing this made me think ‘we are here to have fun’. We were doing this when we were kids. It makes me feel a bit like [I did] 10 years ago. That’s so nice.”
Manchester City interim manager Nick Cushing said the style of football was how they “believe the game should be played”.
Brazil forward Kerolin added: “I liked a lot the music. In Portugal the weather is really nice so everyone is like ‘OK, we like these vibes’.
“Of course we want to win and get some money! But it’s a little bit Brazilian I think. I like the ginga [an informal Brazilian term for expression of creativity with agility and trickery].
“I want to get back those things and be a little bit brave. Today I was a little bit unsure – but it will come.”
