(CALIFORNIA) — Voices were full of panic when 911 operators began answering the urgent calls for help that started flowing into the emergency line on the evening of Jan. 7.
“There’s houses on fire. There’s no [expletive] anybody here,” one caller told the woman answering for the Sierra Madre Police Department in the suburbs of Los Angeles County. The caller was begging for firefighters. “Get them here now!”
The caller had spotted what would become known as the Eaton Fire, one of the most destructive infernos in California history.
ABC News and affiliate KABC-TV obtained a recording of the woman’s call, along with multiple other conversations between residents and Sierra Madre dispatchers under the California Public Records Act.
The recordings shine new light on the initial confusion and subsequent fear faced by residents who saw the initial flames during January’s deadly wildfires.
“I don’t know if anyone has called yet, but we noticed that there is an extremely large fire to the northwest of Grand View,” another caller said. “It looks like it’s in the neighborhood. Like, we’re starting to think we need to evacuate and we need Sierra Madre to start getting on this.”
The dispatcher responded that the fire was in neighboring Pasadena at the time, not in the caller’s area.
“No, no, no, not Pasadena,” the caller responded, explaining his location. “We just walked outside. We’re panicking to evacuate.”
One by one, the calls poured in from Sierra Madre and surrounding areas. A third caller told a dispatcher that he was not home at the time, but could see flames from a surveillance camera on his property.
“There’s homes on fire on Ranch Top in Hastings Ranch,” a fourth caller said. “There’s no fire truck out here. Not one.”
Over the next 24 days, the Eaton Fire would spread across 14,000 acres in the San Gabriel Mountains, Altadena, Pasadena and Sierra Madre, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. More than 9,000 structures were destroyed and 17 people died.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
The Eaton Fire started more than seven hours after the Palisades Fire broke out on the other side of Los Angeles County, near the Pacific Ocean.
Multiple agencies, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles Police Department, have declined requests to provide ABC News with audio files associated with the Palisades Fire.
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