Los Angeles braces for dangerously high winds as fires continue to burn – live updates

Gabriela Pomeroy
Live reporter

Harriet
Glaser, 85, played the piano every day at her home in Pacific Palisades – now her piano has been incinerated, along with everything else in her home.

Her son Sam tells me the piano was a central feature in their lives. “The piano was a gathering place. My
grandmother, my mother, myself, and my daughter are all classically trained
pianists… I
grew up with a houseful of regular guests, with weekly jam sessions, and we would gather round the piano on occasions like 4 July.”

His father played the trumpet and French horn, which were also lost.

Harriet was also an artist who painted watercolours and oil paintings. She had 50 paintings in the house, which were destroyed in the fire, Sam says. When she evacuated her home, she left with clothes for a few nights and didn’t think to take anything else with her.

But Sam says that now his mother’s paintings are gone “she wants to paint again”.