Mel Gibson told the world on Thursday that the Los Angeles wildfires destroyed his home in Malibu. He was in Austin, Texas, at Joe Rogan’s famous studio recording a podcast interview at the time.
Gibson said that his girlfriend and young son were leaving their home to escape the Palisades fire while he was recording an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. During the show, he predicted the end of civilization and blamed California Gov. Gavin Newsom for not stopping the disaster that destroyed thousands of homes in the Los Angeles area.
“I believe that all of our tax money was spent on Gavin’s hair gel,” Gibson told Rogan on the Thursday show. “It’s sad.” It’s on fire there.
He told Rogan that he was waiting to hear if his house had been destroyed while he was recording the show. The Hollywood Reporter and the Daily Beast say that he later confirmed that it had been lost in a phone interview with NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas Reports. Early this week, the “Braveheart” actor joked with Vargas that every time he leaves town, a fire starts. He had flown to Austin as the strong Santa Ana winds were picking up.
In the hills above the affluent Los Angeles neighborhood, the Palisades fire was initially reported on Tuesday morning. With the help of winds, the fire swiftly spread into a destructive conflagration that raged through neighborhoods and headed west toward Malibu, only ceasing when it reached the Pacific Ocean’s shores. Over 20,000 acres had been burned by the fire as of Friday, and over 5,000 residences, businesses, and local landmarks had been destroyed.
Mel Gibson says home burned down in LA wildfire
While recording the Rogan podcast, Gibson told Vargas that he was “ill at ease” “because I knew my neighborhood was on fire, so I thought, I wonder if my place is still there.”
At first attempting to sound positive, the father of nine told Vargas, “When I got home, sure enough, it wasn’t there.” “At least I don’t have any of those annoying plumbing issues anymore,” I told myself when I got home.
However, the “Mad Max” star also talked about the “devastating” experience of losing the house he and his girlfriend, Rosalind Ross, and their 7-year-old son, Lars, had occupied for over 14 years.
It’s obviously quite devastating. It’s sentimental,” Gibson remarked. You had all of your belongings and lived there for a long time. My belongings were there, and now that they are all in cinders, I feel as though I have been relieved of their weight.
While Gibson was speaking, NewsNation displayed the remnants of his $14.5 million house, according to the Daily Beast: A pile of burned bricks and other debris, a low stone wall, two chimneys and their fireplaces, and a few haphazard metal framing supports. Gibson described the area as “completely toasted,” saying he had never seen a place “so perfectly burnt.”
Gibson also said that his chickens stayed alive through the fire, but nothing else did. When asked what personal items he had lost, Gibson replied, “A lot of different things.” Photographs, files, and other personal items I had gathered over the years, along with clothes and other cool things, can all be replaced.
Gibson told the crowd, “The good news is that my family and the people I love are all safe, healthy, and happy. That’s all I can really care about.”
Gibson and the host of Rogan’s show talked about the wildfires that broke out this week across the region, including the Eaton fire in Altadena and Pasadena. Ten people have been killed and more than 9,000 buildings have been damaged as of Friday morning.
Gibson and Rogan both agreed with President-elect Trump that Newsom wasn’t ready to handle such a large-scale disaster. They said that California spent billions of dollars from taxpayers on programs to keep people from being homeless but not a dime on what it could have done to stop the wildfires.
“I believe Newsom promised in 2019 to take care of the forest, keep it in good shape, and do other things like that,” Gibson said. “He didn’t do something.”
Gibson also thought about whether the wildfires were a sign of something even worse.
Gibson told Rogan, “All of those signs, the signs of a collapse, are present in our time.” He used Jared Diamond’s 2011 book “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” to say that a civilization will fall apart “not for long.”
Vargas, on the other hand, seemed less likely to blame a single cause when Gibson was talking to him.
“Those winds were something else,” Gibson said, referring to the strong winds that made the fires spread quickly. “The water didn’t do what it was supposed to.” It’s not like the forests were cut down as they should have been. I don’t know. It is the ideal firestorm.