Grey’s beauty Caterina saves her kids from flaming hell
GREY’S Anatomy star Caterina Scorsone and her three young daughters cheated death by a mere matter of minutes as a hellish fire roared through their California home, destroying everything they own and tragically killing four beloved pets.
The 41-year-old actress, who’s played Dr. Amelia Shepherd on the hit ABC medical drama for a dozen seasons, reveals she and her daughters — Eliza, 10, Pippa, 6, who has Down syndrome and Lucky, 3 — barely managed to escape the inferno that engulfed their $2.2 million home on a wooded Pasadena slope as they prepared to turn in for the night.
“While getting my kids ready for bed and finishing bath time, smoke began to seep up through the grout around the tub,” Caterina recalls. “When I looked down the hallway, a river of thick black smoke had already formed and was filling the house.”
The smoke suddenly turned into fearsome flames and Scorsone and her kids, fathered by her ex Rob Giles, barely made it out alive.
“One thing about fires: They happen fast. I had about two minutes to get my three kids out of the house, and we escaped with less than shoes on our feet,” Caterina says. “But we got out. And for that I am eternally grateful. Heartbreakingly, we lost all four of our pets. We are still sitting with that loss, but we are lucky we got to love them at all.”
Despite the ordeal, Caterina thanked all the “incredible people that showed up, the firefighters, the investigators” and “my neighbor who answered our frantic knocks at her door.”
The tragedy taught her “the only thing that matters are the people and beings that you love. The only thing that matters is community. We would not be here without it and we are so grateful.”