Couple on Vacation in Mexico Gets Devastating News About Their Home amid L.A. Fires: 'We Don't Know Where to Go' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Sara Smith and Shane; the remnants of their Palisades apartment building.Photo:Sara Smith

Sara Smith

Sara Smithhad just boarded her plane to Mexico with her boyfriend on Tuesday morning when she learned about the fires in Pacific Palisades, where they live.

The 26-year-old social media content creator recalls her boyfriend turning to her and asking, “Should we get off the plane?” In that moment, Smith, who grew up in Orange County, didn’t know how to respond. As a Southern California local, she was accustomed to fires happening frequently and didn’t immediately feel alarmed.

It wasn’t until an hour later, around 12 p.m., while Smith and her boyfriend, Shane, were eating lunch, that they received another video showing the stretch of Sunset Boulevard where their apartment was located. At the end of the video, in the final moments, Smith saw that her apartment was no longer standing.

“The second I saw it, I began crying and shaking,” Smith tells PEOPLE. “I just kept saying, ‘We have to go home, we have to go home.'”

“We came back up to our room, and my boyfriend, Shane, just held me while I sobbed. He began to cry too,” she adds. “I called my mom, who is my rock, and she was sobbing as well. My grandma and uncle spent most of their lives in the Palisades. My grandma got sober there. My uncle went to elementary school there, so the city has a special place in my entire family’s hearts.”

“Even in possibly one of the lowest moments of our lives, he finds a way to stay positive and lift me up. When something this crazy happens, sometimes all you can do is laugh because you feel helpless and uncomfortable,” she says.

“Our entire city is gone, and we’ve cried so much,” she adds. “But at the end of the day, we are alive, and we have each other.”

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Since posting, Smith says her community onTikTokandInstagramhas also come to her rescue, with “thousands and thousands” of people reaching out with love, support, compassion and empathy.

“People have offered accommodation, clothes, and even a random girl Venmo’d me $30… Humanity is still good,” she adds. “We see so much hate and terrible things online, but this is a testament that people are still kind.”

Sara Smith and partner learn their apartment burned down in Los Angeles while they were on vacation in Mexico.Sara Smith

As of now, the couple plans to return to the L.A. area on Friday, Jan 10. They’re going to try their best to get into the Palisades to evaluate the damage before heading to Smith’s parents in Orange County, where they will stay for the foreseeable future.

“We have never wanted to live anywhere else other than the Palisades,” she says. “That was going to be where we eventually raised a family. So now … we have no rent to pay. Do we travel and pay for an Airbnb like it is the rent we would have been paying at home? Do we move back to Orange County? We would move to Malibu but all the apartments are gone there too, so we don’t know where to go next.”

Click hereto learn more about how to help the victims of the L.A. fires.

source: people.com