I have a good friend who was evacuated from Alta Dena yesterday. We had some tense hours when she was out of contact, but then I was able to contact her, she is fine, but house likely destroyed. I went to grad school in the area and lived in northern Pasadena for 6 years, and no several of the churches and schools there that seem to have been destroyed.
I grew up near Sylmar (Hurst Fire) and have siblings and other family members who still live in that area. They are not evacuated, but are very scared and emotionally exhausted. My family chat has been constantly active since like 3:00 yesterday morning, with a lot of SoCal talk about what routes to take if necessary to evacuate safely, but mostly with family members just trying to get their heads around what is happening, and the surreal feeling that the City of Los Angeles is on fire, which is so beyond the usual wildfire risk areas.
Spent so much of my youth on beaches of Malibu and up and down the PCH; local landmarks, Gelsons; we had a family reunion at a restaurant there last year, which now appears to be in ashes.
I currently live in a rural mountain community in Northern California which is under constant fire threat and have lived through multiple evacuations; as bad as that has been, we who live here look around and accept that, yeah, when you decide to live in a forest you are going to have to deal with the threat of fire. But to see this happening in the second largest urban area in the US is unreal. Hoping all here in SoCal or who have friends/family there are safe.