Billy Crystal lost his family home to the California wildfires in January 2025.
Billy Crystal’s neighbourhood resembled something out of “The Walking Dead” after the California wildfires ravaged Pacific Palisades.
The comedian was confronted with the post-apocalyptic scene when he, his 77-year-old wife, film producer Janice, and their daughters, actress Jenny, 53, and film producer Lindsay, 48, returned a week after the January 2025 travesty, which reduced the family home to rubble.
Billy, 78, told the new issue of PEOPLE magazine: “All you could see were skeletons of trees and chimneys, the ones that hadn’t fallen, stuff blowing in the streets, nobody around.
“It was like an episode of The Walking Dead, like this thing had just come through and wiped out everything.”
The When Harry Met Sally… actor recalled the terrifying moment he and Janice awoke as wildfires ripped through California on January 7, 2025.
Billy shared: “We were awakened early with low-flying helicopters, and then a lot of fire trucks, sirens, and there’s already a lot of smoke in the sky, and then turning on the TV and seeing friends abandoning their cars and running for their lives.
“Then it became really real, and you think, ‘It went from 20 acres to 200 acres in 15 minutes. Let’s get out of here.’
“Then the alert went off. We never heard that sound before.”
The couple salvaged their “photo albums, wedding albums” and “photographs of our parents’ weddings” before they sought refuge at Jenny’s house.
Billy and his family watched in distress as the wildfires devastated Pacific Palisades, the Los Angeles neighbourhood they had lived in for 46 years.
He remembered: “Our security cameras, all you could see were the flying embers. Then the cameras went out, and we started watching the [news] coverage from the Palisades.
“And your life there, for 46 years, the stores, where you eat, pick up your prescriptions, it’s disappearing. Oh boy, it’s blocks from the house. Then you sort of know: you’re doomed.”
The devastating events brought the Monsters, Inc. star and his loved ones together as they supported each other amid the ordeal.
Billy said: “The beautiful part was being with my daughters and their husbands, my grandchildren, my brother and sister-in-law, and everyone else around the country who we’re related to, texting, watching.
“It was a vigil, just trying to get us through the night.”
He and Janice were clueless about how badly the wildfires had damaged their home, which they bought in 1979 to raise Jenny and Lindsay, until their neighbour called them “hysterically crying” to say “it’s gone”.
One week after the wildfires, the family returned to Pacific Palisades to assess the damage, and Lindsay found a rock from their garden, which has “laughter” engraved on it.
And Billy credits humour for helping him cope with the heartbreak of losing his family’s home to the wildfires.
He said: “When I was 15, being there with a grieving mother and watching her put her life back together at 49, my job was to keep her laughing. That word made my life possible.
“So the fact that was the first thing [we found], we’ll be OK.”
Billy Crystal says Pacific Palisades resembled a post-apocalyptic scene after the wildfires.
