Man describes harrowing escape from scorching Palisades Fire: "You could feel the heat"
Aaron Samson and his 83-year-old father-in-law, who has Parkinson's disease, made a harrowing escape from the Palisades Fire. The Los Angeles-area wildfires, which have killed at least five people, have forced more than 100,000 people out of their homes.
"This feels like bigger than I've ever been a part of," Samson said in an interview with "CBS Mornings." "I can't put it into words how big it is and how much it affected my family and me personally."
Samson explained he got an alert on his phone saying that there was a wildfire in his area, but it did not say he needed to evacuate.
"For the next hour or so, we were figuring out, 'Do we go? Do we go?' We got another ping through the phone, and at that point, I went outside. I saw smoke and fire near my father-in-law's house and realized we needed to go."
But Samson said there was no car at their home at the time. He tried calling 911 and Uber to get his father-in-law to safety.
It was a neighbor named Jeff who Samson had never met, who ended up helping to save their lives by giving them a ride until the flames surrounded them.
"As we're driving down, there's fires on both sides of the car," Samson said. "We're driving. We're suddenly seeing fires. You could feel the heat … and then the fires were getting closer and closer. We were completely stuck in traffic and the fire jumped about 15 feet from the car on the right."
At that moment, Samson said police started yelling for people to get out of their cars.
So Samson said he got his father-in-law out of the car they were riding in and the duo were able to escape the flames.
In a video that Samson recorded, you could hear him say, "Come on dad, turn around, we got this, we got this, keep walking down the hill ... We got it dad, we got it."
"I was just trying to pump him up. My father-in-law has Parkinson's. He can barely move. This was a heroic effort on his part," he said.
Samson said he sat his father-in-law down on the walker he was using and started wheeling him to safety.
"We're alive, so that's the most important thing. We're doing OK."