The sister of the California man who died while protecting his family home with a garden hose from the Eaton Fire recalled her final moments with her brother as she tried to get him to leave the dangerous area.
Victor Shaw, 66, was sleeping inside the Altadena bungalow he shared with his younger sister on Monterosa Drive when the blaze made its way down the nearby mountain and onto the cul-de-sac.
“Victor, we have to get out!” Shari Shaw recalled yelling at her brother, the LA Times reported. “We have to get out of here!”
The elder Shaw – who suffered from diabetes and chronic kidney disease making it difficult for him to move around – did not wake up to his younger sister’s frantic yelling and shaking.
“Victor, the fire is coming close,” she said kicking him in the foot. “It’s not safe to stay.”
The kick was enough to wake Victor but he was not ready to abandon his home.
“OK, let me just sit here for a few minutes,” he said.
Shari, who had been rushing some of her belongings to her car, urged her brother to get up as the fire was fast approaching but didn’t budge as he said he wanted to stay back and protect his home.
Shari called out to her brother again but didn’t get a response.
She fled back outside to the car, turning around to watch the home burst into flames.
“I had to get out because the embers were so big and flying like a firestorm that I had to save myself,” she told KTLA Wednesday night.
Victor’s body was later found by a family friend on the side of the road still grasping the garden hose in an apparent attempt to save the home he has lived in since 1965.
When she arrived back at the burned-down home, Shari couldn’t imagine what her brother went through in his final moments.
“I couldn’t be here, I couldn’t be here to save him. I couldn’t be here, that’s what hurts the most,” she told ABC News.
Victor’s cause of death was ruled as smoke inhalation and thermal injuries, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner announced.
Stay up to date with the NYP’s coverage of the terrifying LA-area fires
The Eaton Fire has claimed at least 6 lives since it broke out Tuesday afternoon, three miles southeast of where the Shaws lived.
It has burned over 14,000 acres and is only three percent contained, officials announced Friday night.
The Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades west of Los Angeles, which has burned over 21,000 acres and is only eight percent contained, has been blamed for at least five other deaths.
The two large fires have destroyed over 10,000 structures.
Annette Rossilli, 85, was identified as one of the victims in the Palisades Fire after she refused to leave her home with a caregiver instead choosing to remain behind with her pets, which included a dog, canary, two parrots and turtle, CNN reported.
Rossilli, a mother of two, received in-home care three days a week.
She was found inside her car by firefighters on Wednesday.
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