A gut-wrenching video posted by actor Cameron Mathison illustrates the devastation experienced by Los Angeles residents affected by the California wildfires.
The actor, who is mostly known for his work in soap operas like “General Hospital” and “All My Children,” captured footage of himself driving through his neighborhood in Altadena as it’s being engulfed in flames.
Although Mathison initially posted the footage in an Instagram Story, it’s without audio. When he later shared the video with CNN, however, the network aired the audio — which includes a distressed Mathison whimpering and wailing as he films the heartbreaking scene from his car.
“I’ve actually never heard those sort of sounds come out of me before,” Mathison told CNN’s Laura Coates after rewatching his footage on air. “So it was very odd. It was just such a, um, kind of a guttural pain, and disbelief, and shock and fear as I was approaching my property and not seeing the house.”
The actor told “Good Morning America” on Thursday that he was heading out to dinner in Pasadena on Tuesday when he first noticed the Eaton Fire in the distance, which at the time Mathison described as just a “little bright spot.”
“I think I saw that Eaton Canyon fire begin,” Mathison told GMA. “I mean, it was just a little blip. And I thought, ‘Well, that’s not good.’”
Despite seeing the flames, Mathison decided to go out to dinner, and while he was at the restaurant, his phone began “blowing up” because the smaller fire he saw earlier had “caught and spread so quickly.”
“I raced back home and I put a bag together with what I’m wearing … and I left to come and stay at an apartment here in Pasadena with my daughter and her mom and then as we’re watching the news, I realize this could be bad,” Mathison recalled.
He noted to CNN that he was especially concerned when he recognized his neighbors’ houses on the news.
“I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I got in the car,” Mathison told CNN.
He told “GMA” that he then drove back to his home for a second time, and as he did, he decided to record the terrifying scene.
Despite the onslaught of flames and smoke, he managed to get back into his home to gather “passports and birth certificates and whatever photo albums I could get.”
Mathison also decided to share another video on Instagram that shows the damage to his own home. In the caption, he wrote:
“This is what’s left of our beautiful home. Our home where our kids were raised and where they wanted to raise their own someday.”
Mathison told CNN that his block in Altadena was “totally decimated.”
“It looked like, in many cases, like houses were never built there,” he told CNN.
Although Mathison looked traumatized in both his interviews with CNN and “GMA,” he told the latter that it pains him that many others are experiencing the same level of pain.
“It’s so outrageous. So, so many people with so much loss,” he told “GMA.” “It is still very unsettling and so surreal — and again, thinking about the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that are going through the same thing, it’s just … devastating.”