Outrage is still boiling nearly a year after the deadly Palisades fire, with the hardest-hit residents now targeting the city and state with lawsuits over what they call a “complete failure by the government on multiple levels.”
“You do whatever you can for your baby, and Rory was my miracle boy,” Shelley Sykes, who lost her 32-year-old son in the fire told The Post.
Sykes recalled that dreadful morning on January 7, 2025 as the fires started to grow and embers fell on the guest house where her son, a former childhood actor with cerebral palsy, was living.
“I came running up the drive, burnt the hair off my head, and I tried to get the hose out unravel it and try and put the the flames out, but then no water came out,” Sykes said. “I couldn’t understand why there was no water, right?”
Sykes went to the Fire Department for help but by the time they arrived back to the home it was too late.
“When I got here, there was no body, there was no nothing. It was pulverized,” She said.
Heartbreaking stories like the one from Sykes are told over and over again throughout the 16 wrongful death lawsuits that were filed in the last few weeks of December.
Arthur Simoneau was described as a loving father and adventurer who built his home in Topanga, California with his own hands. His body was found near the door to his home “indicating he had died trying to protect it,” according to the lawsuit.
Others, like Monique Lasky, lost a loved one as a result of the tragic blaze — her husband, Marc, “was physically and emotionally injured” and suffered for months after the fire, ultimately taking his own life, the lawsuit read.
“It’s a difficult anniversary coming up tomorrow for them because we all think of our home as our castle and it’s a place that hopefully we can get some peace from outside world, but, you know, when you lose a family member to a fire it’s hard to imagine a more horrific way to die than in a fire,” Alexander Robertson, an attorney representing Sykes, told The Post. “There’s a lot of trauma associated with the anniversary for those families.”
A coalition of law firms is working on behalf of the victims, alleging not only did the state and city mishandle the situation, but that the Palisades Fire could have been prevented.
“It’s a complete failure by the government on multiple levels,” Attorney Roger Behle, whose firm is representing a handful of the cases, told The Post. “The fire shouldn’t have started in the first place. That should have been something the state prevented. But once it starts, that’s where the city in its infrastructure steps in and says, all right, well, let’s at least give the firefight some water.”
Behle said they have uncovered “a lot more” evidence highlight the state’s failures as landowners and not doing its due diligence to ensure the hotspots from the Lachman Fire were completely extinguished — days later, that blaze reignited into the Palisades Fire.
“The state really had an obligation to be up there on its own property and accordance with its own protocol, inspecting its land, you know, closing the park down to make sure there were no hotspots or any of the public safety issue and they just didn’t do anything,” Behle told The Post. “They were up there for a few minutes and left and turned around, and that’s really what’s become most shocking.”
Both Behle and Robertson pointed to drone video taken on the morning of January 1, 2025 that appears to show the ground still smolderingafter firefighters left the scene and the fire was reportedly contained.
“A state park ranger was there on that location, taking photographs and didn’t tell anybody, didn’t do anything even though she admitted in her deposition under oath that she saw the ground smoldering,” Roberston said.
On February 5, the court will hear the state and city’s motion to dismiss the case.
“The good news is he’s [Rory’s] not got swollen feet, he’s not disabled, he’s in another reality now having a nice time and I just have to start again,” Sykes told The Post, adding that he she hopes the state is held accountable.
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