"How unprepared you can be": a Norte Fire evacuee's scramble on KTLA
Ryan Zimmerly's account sits inside a broadcast that moves from burned houses in San Juan Capistrano to Camp Pendleton and Malibu.
KTLA 5
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 522,441 views a day, 16 times a normal first day on this channel (33,724).
Several wildfires burning in Southern California on Saturday
Things we can learn from the video
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- 0:46Kirk Hawkins outlines red flag warnings, strong winds and unusually warm temperatures across the region.
- 1:50Erin Myers reports the Norte Fire at 570 acres and 0% contained, amid destroyed houses.
- 3:11OCFA's Kevin Fetterman says the continuing threat matters more than the containment percentage.
- 6:37Evacuee Ryan Zimmerly describes leaving work, collecting pets and evacuating with his father.
- 8:57The Henderson Fire at Camp Pendleton passes 2,000 acres and temporarily closes the 5 Freeway.
- 9:27The Bryson Fire in Malibu stands at 147 acres and 39% contained, with road and school closures.
Ryan Zimmerly was at work when a phone call set his evacuation in motion. He went home, gathered his pets and a few essentials, and left with his father as the Norte Fire moved toward their community.
"It was pretty surprising how unprepared you can be for this," he tells KTLA's Carlos Herrera outside the evacuation shelter at the Boys and Girls Club in San Juan Capistrano.
His story is one stop in a ten-minute morning broadcast that tries to keep track of several fires at once. Erin Myers reports from a San Juan Capistrano neighborhood where houses have burned to the ground, with the Norte Fire at 570 acres and no containment yet. Orange County Fire Authority incident commander Kevin Fetterman explains why that percentage is not the whole picture: "It has less to do with the containment percentage and more to do with the continuing threat."
The report then widens. Kirk Hawkins covers the Henderson Fire at Camp Pendleton, which burned more than 2,000 acres and briefly shut the 5 Freeway, and Megan Telles updates the Bryson Fire in Malibu, where crews have made progress but roads and schools are closed. Red flag warnings and Santa Ana heat frame all of it.
The broadcast is on course for more than half a million views in its first day, many times a usual KTLA start, and a separate report on the homes lost in San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano is running far ahead of usual too. Its comment section is filling several times faster than normal, much of it thanks for firefighters and air crews.
For a station that spent the previous week covering Rachel's surf in Long Beach, the coast has handed over to the hills.
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- Channel
- KTLA 5
- Subscribers
- 1,510,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 21,954,578
- Channel views, pace per day
- 2,112,562 (on a normal day: 2,486,352)
- Video published
- October 17, 2026
- Video views so far
- 388,364 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 522,441
The numbers
Two Norte Fire reports posted the same day are both running far ahead of the station's usual first-day audience.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which birds are famously associated with Mission San Juan Capistrano?
The mission is celebrated for the cliff swallows said to return each spring, a tradition marked around St. Joseph's Day in March.