I told my kids, 'don't look back.' What it was like to flee from fires in LA

A huge cloud of dark gray smoke was rising from the house across the street. It was so close to us that my son could have thrown a football and hit it.

Here is my experience. I am very used to power outages a couple of times a year. In the summer because of brownouts with extreme heat and in the winter because of high winds. On Tuesday morning, our power went out for a few hours. Then it was turned back on. And I was very lucky, because it was on when I needed to broadcast. And during the day, I was sitting outside doing a Zoom meeting with a cup of coffee in 70-degree weather. A few hours later at 5:10 pm, the power went out again. But now it’s dark.