ALTADENA, California – Newlyweds Ryan and Jasmine Lovell were in Fiji on their honeymoon – enjoying a romantic seafood dinner and a personalized chef-decorated dessert to mark the occasion of new nuptials – when their phones started blowing up.
Frantic text messages, neighborhood alerts, sorrowful and devastating voicemails from family members. Something really bad was happening back home – and things seemed to be getting worse by the minute.
It was Jan. 7, 2025.
Fire was eating up the bone-dry hillsides of the Pacific Palisades, and Eaton, just at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Santa Ana winds were relentless, pushing and pushing the hungry embers.
Ryan Lovell’s oldest sister was in California, watching flames licking closer and closer to the family’s Altadena home. The home where her newly married brother and sister-in-law planned to join her, live and raise a family. The same house where Ryan was brought home as an infant.
