Milo Ventimiglia‘s family home in Malibu has burnt down, the actor shared on Thursday night.
During an interview with CBS News, the “This Is Us” star shared that he and his wife, Jarah Mariano, who is currently nine months pregnant, evacuated their home on Tuesday, Jan. 7, and then watched the Palisades Fire take over through security cameras. (At the time of publish, the Palisades Fire has burned nearly 20,000 acres of land.)
While the couple took as many belongings as possible, they had to leave behind the items in their recently finished nursery and left everything there. On Thursday, he visited returned to the area to see where his home once stood.
“[It’s] heavy,” he said, holding back tears. “You start thinking about all the memories in different parts of the house and what not, and then you see your neighbors’ houses and everything kind of around and your heart just breaks.”
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In the video interview, he also opened up about watching it all happen from afar. “I think there’s a shock moment where you go, this is real and this is happening. Then at some point, you just turn it off… what good is it to continue watching?” he said of seeing the flames engulf his home via security footage. “We kind of accepted the loss.”
They accepted that because, he noted, the things they lost were just things. “We’ve got good friends and we got good people we’re working with and we’ll make do,” he said. “Wife and baby and dog, most important.”
This isn’t the first time Ventimiglia has had to talk about fire safety. For six seasons, he portrayed Jack Pearson on NBC’s “This Is Us.” In Season 2, Jack rescued his family from a house fire and while they all made it out, he ran back in to save the dog and a few items; he died later from a heart attack after breathing in too much smoke.
“It’s not lost on me, life imitating art,” he said during the CBS interview.
In 2018, following the house fire episode of “This Is Us,” Ventimiglia opened up to Variety about filming such a horrifying scenario.
“There was fire right in front of me. Standing feet away from it, there were moments where the hiss of the gas line of fire — it’s kind of a high-pitched whine — would be completely overtaken by the score of real fire, which is deep and booming and angry and something that I hope many, many people never have to face,” he said.
At the time, the actor partnered with Duracell to promote fire safety. Now, according to CBS, he’s already thinking of how to help others learn about wildfire safety in the future.
If affected by the Los Angeles fires, learn more about resources offered here.