WE FLED AS MALIBU BURNED
Fair City star Victor Burke reveals how he and his family escaped US inferno terror – and the horror he found on his return
‘It looks like a nuclear bomb has gone off’
LAST Friday started like any other for Victor Burke and his family. His children Cameron, 15, and 13-year-old Isabelle were getting ready to go to school, while Victor and his Templeogue-born wife Fiona were gearing up for another work day. The family were planning a visit to Utah National Park over the weekend so, as fate would have it, the biggest rental jeep that Inchicore-born Victor could find was already sitting in his driveway in the starry Californian enclave of Malibu, ready for a road trip.
That jeep would come in very handy just hours later, when the Burkes were forced to flee their rented home of three years amid devastating wildfires in the area, among them the deadly Woolsey fire, which ignited on November 8.
At 6am, a neighbouring family called to their home, having recently evacuated their own house, along with their children and pets.
‘At around 8am, they panicked and left again,’ recalls Victor, best known to TV fans as Fair City’s Wayne Molloy. ‘We said we’d wait — until I saw the flames and then was like, “let’s run”. I remember when we were driving away and we were stuck in traffic and thinking, “if this turns nasty, I’ll have to go over the mountains”. We live near Zuma Beach — if the worst came to the worst we could have jumped in the ocean.
‘We literally ran out of the house. I’d never seen a fire like it. The flames must have been 100 feet high, and it was seriously racing down the mountain. The wind was so high, it was almost as though there was a force in front of the flames, whatever sort of power it was bringing the flames down.’
The town is still grappling hugely with the fallout from the wildfires.
‘My daughter said to me today that eight kids in her class have lost their homes,’ says Victor. ‘Everyone is in hotels for now.’
Days after the wildfires ravaged the area, Victor returned to Malibu to try to ascertain the damage to his house. ‘It’s just snapped trees, snapped electric poles everywhere,’ he says. ‘I went around trying to put out even small fires with any kind of water.
‘My mate was out saving animals in the area, so I helped him, pulled a few horses, pigs and lambs out of the Malibu area.
‘It’s a really surreal experience. It’s all been a bit terrifying. It looks like a nuclear bomb has gone off there. Hundreds of houses have just gone down to ash.’
The ocean-front hotspot is beloved of several A-listers, and many of them — including Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Neil Young and Gerard Butler — have also had to flee their homes in recent days. Around 75,000 properties are thought to be impacted, and the fire has forced the evacuation of more than 265,000 people.
‘To be honest, I didn’t really believe it until we saw it,’ Victor admits. ‘I honestly thought people were exaggerating; people have a tendency to do that sometimes in this town.
‘The thing is, there are fires all of the time in California, in some place or another. It’s not that unusual, it’s a huge state.
‘Where we are in Malibu, think of it a bit like Greystones — geographically, you have the ocean and a huge mountain range behind the village that take a half an hour to drive through. So no one really thought the fires would make it that far.’
Uncertainty still looms large for everyone. ‘It’s not real at the moment,’ reflects Victor. ‘They just can’t seem to put manners on this fire, and honestly, they don’t know when the fires will be fully contained. We’ll figure it out once we get back into the house, or what’s left of it. The kids don’t know when they will be back to school.
‘There’s a great rural community here in Malibu — that real bond that has people pulling together. And the Irish community have been really good at reaching out, dropping down bags with bits for the kids.’
For now, the Burke family is living temporarily in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Beverly Hills, in accommodation arranged by Medicine X, the Australian company that Fiona works for. Speaking on the phone days after he was forced to flee his home, Victor is staying upbeat and philosophical, although is still clearly reeling from events.
‘The poor dog, he must be the only Cavan dog to stay in the Waldorf,’ he says, attempting to wrench some lightness from the situation.
‘I guess there’s not much point in complaining.
‘We’re not wealthy, but there are people who are worried about losing expensive things. We aren’t. We have each other. My father passed in March, so you realise pretty quickly that we haven’t lost anything that we can’t buy.’