84-year-old woman avoiding patrols, hiding out inside home within Palisade Fire evacuation zone

By Tom Wait, Dean Fioresi

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    California (KCAL/KCBS) — Thousands of people still remain under evacuation order from the Palisades Fire more than a week after the destructive inferno was first reported. While they’re desperately waiting to return home, one woman has been hiding out after sneaking past patrols last week.

The Pacific Palisades are currently under a nightly curfew, which has drawn a continuous contingent of local and federal law enforcement in order to prevent looting and people hoping to sneak back to their homes.

Judy Jensen did just that, however, taking matters into her own hands when the worst of the fire seemed to have passed, sneaking by a checkpoint and patrols with her vast and decades-old knowledge of neighborhood paths and side streets — all with her two dogs in tow.

“I’m 84-years-old, I’ve been around for a while but this is one of the worst things that’s ever happened,” Jensen said.

Though her home is located in the Santa Monica Canyon, which was largely untouched by flames from last week’s devastating inferno, it’s still within an evacuation zone and thus without power or drinkable water.

Currently, the area is a ghost town, but she’s making do with the bare minimum.

“I was able to get into my neighbor’s house. She told me, ‘Get in! Take whatever you want,'” Jensen said. “So, I was able to get more food for the dogs, because I was afraid I was gonna run out of that.”

As far as her own food, Jensen’s home is still receiving gas so she can cook whenever she needs to.

She’s worried that she’ll be forced to leave, so she’s trying her best to stay invisible as she slinks between houses to use her neighbor’s generator.

“I’ve been going over there every day — sneaking over there every day — and charging my phone,” she said.

Jensen believes that she’s got enough food and water to last for a while, but being constantly alone is taking an emotional toll. She’s powering through on the thought that just last week, the house she has lived in since the 1970s might’ve been lost to the flames.

“I thought, Tuesday and Wednesday, I thought to myself, ‘What will I do if we don’t have the house? The place where we live. Where will we go?”

While she continues her quest, it may take much longer for authorities to allow everyone else back home that is still displaced by the fire’s aftermath. They say that a number of processes are taking place, including testing the toxicity of the air and soil in the area, removing debris from the roadways and conducting search efforts for possible victims.

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