Santa Monica Public Library presents Jacob Soboroff

On the morning of January 7, 2025, a message pinged on reporter Jacob Soboroff’s phone. “Big Palisades fire. We are evacuating,” his brother texted within minutes of the blaze engulfing the hillside behind the home where he and his pregnant wife were living. “Really bad.” An attached photo showed a huge black plume rising from behind the house, an umbrella of smoke towering over everything they owned. Jacob rushed to the office of the bureau chief. “I should go. I grew up in the Palisades.”

Soon he was on the front line of the blaze—his first live report of what would turn out to be weeks covering unimaginable destruction, from both the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, in Altadena. In the days to come, Soboroff appeared across the networks of NBC News as Los Angeles was ablaze, met with displaced residents and workers, and pressed Governor Gavin Newsom in an interview on Meet the Press. But no story Soboroff has covered at home or abroad—the trauma of family separation at the border, the displacement of the war in Ukraine, the collapse of order in Haiti—could have prepared him for reporting live as the hallmarks of his childhood were engulfed in flames around him while his hometown burned to the ground.

Join us as Jacob discusses his new book, Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America’s New Age of Disaster, in which he delves into the unprecedented destruction of the costliest wildfire in American history and asks the questions: What had he just witnessed? How could it have happened? And is it inevitable that something like this will happen again?

This event is presented free of charge, but books can be purchased in advance at: https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2026-03-04/jacob-soboroff-firestorm-SMLibrary. Books will also be available for purchase and signing at the event. Seating is limited and on a first arrival basis.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Santa Monica Public Library