CBS News reporter Jonathan Vigliotti rescued three dogs stuck in a Pacific Palisades as wildfires grew closer and neighborhood roads became impassable due to the powerful, unrelenting flames.
Andrea Pasinetti was in San Francisco for work and his wife, Sixuan, was overseas when news of the Wildfires in Los Angeles went bankrupt on January 7. The dog sitter the couple hired was unable to get to her home on Lachman Lane to rescue the animals.
Pasinetti told CBS News that he took a flight back to Los Angeles immediately and tried to return home to save his dogs Alma, Archie and Hugo. He said his friend picked him up from the airport and they rushed to the Palisades with fire retardants and blankets to save his pets.
Once they arrived near the family home, they had difficulty finding a way into the neighborhood because the police were at most intersections and would not let anyone pass.
“It’s this feeling of helplessness and devastation, but also this feeling of the unknown,” he recalls. “Wanting to maintain hope, but also to prepare for the worst.”
Pasinetti called his wife to discuss what they should do. They decided he could either continue looking for a way to their house or find someone who was already in the neighborhood. That’s when they saw CBS News’ Vigliotti reporting near Palisades Charter High School, which was minutes from their home.
They began doing research to see if they knew anyone who could connect with the journalist and send him messages on social media. Eventually, they found a friend who was a colleague of Vigliotti’s and were able to get a message to the journalist and his team.
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CBS News producer Christian Duran made the connection and sent Vigliotti and his cameraman to the house to rescue the dogs.
“We knew it was a big challenge to get the three dogs out of the house,” Pasinetti said. “Obviously Jonathan didn’t have the key to the house, so I told him to break all the windows he could and he managed to get into the house.”
All three of Pasinetti’s pets are rescue dogs and he explained that they were already “pre-wired with a lot of anxiety,” so he gave Vigliotti their favorite hiding spots around the house.
“The circumstances probably couldn’t have been more dramatic,” Pasinetti said. “The house was surrounded by flames. I think it burned a few hours after he was able to get the puppies.
Vigliotti managed to break the glass of the front door to enter the house and found the three dogs in different areas of the house.
“They managed to argue (Alma) somehow and I think they threw a blanket over her and kind of covered her up and then they moved on to the second puppy, Archie” , he said. “I guess they must have lifted the bed in the master bedroom and pulled Hugo out.”
Vigliotti was able to load the three dogs into his vehicle with his crew and reunite the animals with their owner.
“Jonathan called and said, ‘We have the dogs,’” Pasinetti recalled. “And my first reaction was, ‘All three? I have never felt this mixture of joy, relief, exhaustion, despair and gratitude towards someone.
He added: “Three dogs who were probably, you know, scared and confronted by people they had never seen. And they handled the situation with incredible skill and courage. The generosity and the kindness and the risk that they took to get the dogs was really… I don’t know, I think it’s the best that humanity has to offer.
With the dogs safe and sound, the Pasinetti family now faces the devastation of losing their family home. The Palisades fire is already the most destructive in Los Angeles history, with at least 1,000 structures burned in the coastal Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
—With files from The Associated Press
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