By Katherine Tinsley
12:03pm PST, Jan 21, 2025
Mallen, who lived in the Palisades with his wife and two kids, has been sharing his heartbreaking experiences on social media.
"There's a deep part of me right now that's like, it wasn't just my home that burned down and my life's work that burned down. It is the trust in the leadership and the systems that absolutely failed us," Mallen told Fox News Digital.
"There's a part of me that's just let down, disappointed, pissed off, that I was … failed by leadership in a system that I worked my whole life doing what was right to get to a point that everybody's supposed to get to," he continued.
The fires in the West Coast city caused billions of dollars worth of damage, leaving civilians displaced.
"We filled up every sink, we [got] all the towels, we put them under the doors. We pulled out the hoses. We put out the fire extinguishers," Mallen explained. "We did everything. We started getting all of the … things that would be hard to replace."
"Obviously, everything went dark, which means the flames look like h—," he recalled. "And I watched it come up the mountain and all the way up the canyon and jumped the canyon."
Professionals hoped to preserve the Palisades, but the powerful winds were too strong to control.
"Firefighters and engines dispatched there on site ready to fight — like, trained people, heroes, ready. They could not do anything," Mallen said, stressing that it "wasn't their fault."
"I just begged them. I said, 'This is my house right here. This house is here on fire. We need to stop this fire because if this fire goes, my house burns and the street burns.' … So I begged them, and they listened," Mallen revealed.
Despite feeling sad, Mallen celebrated the fire department's work.
"They took in the most inspiring, ultimate stand. You could imagine a fire crew … like movie scene. Heroism," Mallen stated. "They pulled out chainsaws."
"They cut down on a hedge line with chainsaws in between houses to remove the hedge," he continued. "They physically start pulling out trees in preparation to stop the jump. They line up the fire and the giant cannon hose in between, waiting to protect the job."
According to the podcaster, the dry climate and lack of water contributed to the problem.
"We were on limited rotating water," he explained. "So … it wasn't, like, a perpetual stream."
"There's a hydrant literally right across from my house, 20 feet. Had that hydrant had water, my house would have been saved," Mallen noted. "Had the trucks had water, the house, the street never would've caught fire. … The firefighters there, that's all they were saying the entire time."
