‘Like if the entire South Hill was on fire’: Gonzaga grads turned film stars face threat of Los Angeles blaze sweeping county

As Gonzaga University alumna Mandi Price sat in her Los Angeles condo on Tuesday, she watched bulldozers head up Sunset Boulevard to plow cars from the roadway.

The cars, scooped up and scraped aside to make way for firefighters, were abandoned as people ran for safety from multiple massive wildfires razing entire neighborhoods.

The Palisades fire, burning near Malibu, has destroyed nearly 16,000 acres and hundreds of homes. The Eaton fire, located north of downtown L.A. and near the base of the Angeles National Forest, has burned more than 10,000 acres and claimed homes in Altadena and Pasadena, according to the Los Angeles Times. Five people have died.

Price grew up in Nine Mile Falls and graduated from Shadle Park High School. She went on to help produce award-winning shows like “Daisy Jones and the Six” and “Little Fires Everywhere.” But from her time in Spokane, surrounded by large Ponderosa Pines and an endless supply of nature, she’s learned a few things about wildfires – like always have a bag ready to go if you are forced to evacuate.

Price, who lives mere blocks from the Palisades fire evacuation zone, has been watching the plume of smoke and red glow of the flames from the fire out of the window in her condo in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was already evacuated once on Tuesday, but came back because her home wasn’t in immediate danger.

“It’s very scary,” she said. “It’s like if the entire South Hill was on fire.”

Around 30 miles northeast of Price’s home sits that of Eric Edelstein, Gonzaga University alumnus and actor.

“Nobody thought it would end up like this,” he said Wednesday.

Edelstein, who has played parts in well-known television shows like “Shameless,” voiced characters in other shows like “American Dad” and starred in the 2015 film “Green Room,” is currently staying in Albuquerque while he films an upcoming Netflix show. His colleagues working on the show with him also have ties to Los Angeles. But his wife, who is at their Glasser Park home with their dogs, is preparing to leave at a moment’s notice.

Edelstein began reading the fire warnings from the National Weather Service on Tuesday. As the danger grew, so did his worry. He felt awful he couldn’t be with his wife to help. But if she has to leave, Edelstein will make every attempt to get to her, he said.

“Right now, we are OK. My wife has her bag ready to go,” Edelstein said. “But I feel very helpless being in Albuquerque. We all feel helpless here.”

Glasser Park is located slightly north of Los Angeles, and between two fires. It’s some 7 to 10 miles west of the evacuation zone of the Eaton fire and located east of the Palisades fire.

On Wednesday, the local fire chief said the manpower of first responders competing with high winds and traveling embers is simply not enough to contain the blaze, the L.A. Times reported.

Edelstein hopes his neighbors will look out for his wife while he anxiously waits to fly back to Los Angeles on Thursday. They’re lucky, he said, because some of his friends have had to evacuate. Three other friends who live about 11 minutes away from him lost their homes already, Edelstein said. He believes the devastation will only get worse, and the aftermath will be devastating.

“We are not prepared like we should be. You don’t think of it,” he said. “You don’t think the threat will be that close, and then it is.”

Price got no rest on Tuesday. Anxious, she moved rooms where she was sleeping, and was constantly checking evacuation updates while listening to the sound of sirens go back and forth down her street through all hours of the night. High winds made her windows creak.

When she left her home, she was met with the 100 mph wind gusts spreading the fire more quickly across the county.

“I’ve been through all of it, and it felt like a hurricane,” Price said.

Her view changes every hour or so as the sky shifts color and the fire moves across the county.

“You’ll see blue sky and white smoke,” Price said. “As soon as they start putting out some of these houses, it’ll get dark. Then you see black.”

If Price is evacuated, she has weeks worth of clothing, her laptop, her chargers, solar chargers, first aid kits and equipment if she needs to be towed out of a dangerous situation. She also has enough groceries to last her a while, Price said, because she just returned from visiting her parents in the Spokane area and had made a trip to the grocery store this week. If she must go, Price said, she will have to leave behind beloved picture frames with photos of her friends and family.

As for her friends, some have abandoned their homes, while others have lost them.

“It’s devastating,” she said. “It’s truly devastating.”

In the high-stress moment of potential evacuations, Edelstein said his mind was racing while trying to tell his wife what to pack for him. “Do I really need this?” He thought. His wife grabbed his baseball card collection. He also made sure to tell her to grab his White’s – high-quality boots exclusively made in Spokane and, oddly enough, also made for firefighters.

Edelstein often likes to take drives down the Pacific Coast Highway in the Pacific Palisades area because it “makes him happy,” he said. But after the Palisades fire took over the multimillion-dollar homes on the beachfront, it’s now a pile of ash and rubble.

“With the embers traveling miles, it’s hard to feel safe now,” he said. “But people in the West … They are always resilient.”