Source : Perth Now news
An Australian man is among those confirmed dead in the wildfires raging across Southern California.
The mother of British-born Rory Callum Sykes, who went to school in Sydney, confirmed his death in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
“It is with great sadness that I have to announce the death of my beautiful son @Rorysykes to the Malibu fires yesterday. I’m totally heartbroken,” Shelley Sykes wrote on Saturday (AEDT).
Sykes, who was living in the US, was born blind with cerebral palsy, his mother said.
Shelley Sykes said her 32-year-old son also had difficulty walking.
“He overcame so much with surgeries and therapies to regain his sight and to be able to learn to walk. Despite the pain, he still enthused about traveling the world with me from Africa to Antarctica,” Shelley said in her post.
She said her son was on their Malibu estate when the fire ripped through.
“He had his own cottage on our 17 acre Mount Malibu TV Studio estate, decked out with all the latest Apple gadgets, which burnt down yesterday … I couldn’t put out the cinders on his roof with a hose because the water was switched off … Even the 50 brave fire fighters had no water all day,” Shelley Sykes wrote.
She said her son was an author and sought-after motivational speaker, and “true humanitarian”.
He is among eleven people confirmed dead in the fires that have been raging since Tuesday.
The true death toll is not known, authorities said, as fires destroyed entire streets and more than 12,000 structures.
The Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire already rank as the most destructive in Los Angeles history, consuming more than 13,750 ha — some 137 sq km or two-and-a-half times the land area of Manhattan — and turning entire neighbourhoods to ash.
One rapidly growing blaze that broke out on Thursday near Calabasas, a wealthy enclave home to numerous celebrities and gated communities, was 35 per cent under control by early Friday, fire officials said. The so-called Kenneth Fire had expanded to 388 hectares in a matter of hours.
A Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson confirmed that an arson suspect was being held but would not comment on which fire was involved. Local media is reporting it is the Kenneth Fire.
Anthony Hopkins, Adam Brody, Leighton Meester, Anna Farris, Paris Hilton, Mandy Moore and Billy Crystal are among a growing list of celebrities who have lost their homes or been affected by the Los Angeles fires.
On Friday Moore shared pictures of the smoldering ruins of her home in Altadena saying the main part of the house was still standing but that it was “not liveable”.
“We lost our garage and back house. Everyone we know lost everything. Every house on our street is gone,” she wrote on Instagram.
She later shared a GoFundMe for her brother-in-law and sister-in-law Griff and Kit Goldsmith and was subject to a wave of online criticism.
