ozens of Indonesians currently residing in Los Angeles in the United States were impacted by wildfires that ravaged the Californian city and surrounding regions over the past week, with many losing their homes to the fires.
The Indonesian consulate general reported that at least 97 Indonesians in the greater Los Angeles area have been affected by the fires, more than half of them were those in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood on Los Angeles’s west side. No fatalities among Indonesian nationals have been recorded so far.
Among the affected Indonesians is 55-year-old event organizer Endah Redjeki, whose house in Pasadena, a city in Los Angeles County, was damaged by the wildfire several days after it started on Jan. 7.
“We have lived in the house in LA since 2007, [and now] it is completely gone,” she told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
Endah, her husband and their six cats managed to evacuate to the house of their Indonesian friend the night before, on Jan. 8, following an emergency alert sent to their mobile phones about a possible wildfire.
Wildfires are a common occurrence in the western part of the US, including Los Angeles.
But the wildfires that started last week in Los Angeles are turning into one of the worst natural disasters in US history, with at least 24 people killed and thousands of houses destroyed as of Monday morning.
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