Billy Crystal recounts harrowing moment his $9M Pacific Palisades home was incinerated in LA wildfires: 'We were running for our lives'

Billy Crystal has laid bare the shattering experience of fleeing his Pacific Palisades home and then learning it was lost to the Los Angeles fires of 2025. The 78-year-old funnyman bought the property for $435,000 with his wife Janice in 1979, two years after his breakthrough on the sitcom Soap. They raised their daughters Jenny, 53, and Lindsay, 48, in the home, where they lived until it became one of the thousands of structures incinerated in the Palisades Fire . Now, the When Harry Met Sally... star has offered a harrowing blow-by-blow account of the day he left the $9 million house for the last time, January 7, 2025. He and Janice 'were awakened early with low-flying helicopters, and then a lot of fire trucks, sirens, and there’s already a lot of smoke in the sky and then turning on the TV and seeing friends abandoning their cars and running for their lives,' he told People . 'Then it became really real, and you think: "It went from 20 acres to 200 acres in 15 minutes. Let’s get out of here." Then the alert went off,' he said. Billy Crystal has laid bare the shattering experience of fleeing his Pacific Palisades home and then learning it was lost to the Los Angeles fires of 2025; pictured in June ‹ Slide me › The property, which Crystal and his wife Janice bought in 1979, is pictured (left) in 1994 and (right) after being incinerated in the catastrophic blaze 'We never heard that sound before. We took photo albums, wedding albums, photographs of our parents’ weddings. So that’s what we had and the clothes we were wearing, thinking we’ll be back in a day.' Crystal is preparing for the October 21 opening of his new one-man show 860, which is named after the address of the house he lost on Chautauqua Blvd. Read More Rob Reiner's wife Michele's sister reveals harrowing moment she learned of their murders but says she cannot rule out reconnecting with his 'killer' son Nick: 'I'm not sure I can answer' Booked at the Imperial Theater, a Broadway house on 45th Street, the play will see Crystal delve into the loss of his home of nearly half a century. When he and Janice were evacuated, they decamped to their daughter Jenny's residence but continued monitoring the state of their own property via its security footage, where 'all you could see were the flying embers,' Crystal recalled. Ultimately, the fires disabled the cameras and the Crystals were reduced to gleaning what information they could from news coverage. 'And your life there, for 46 years, the stores, where you eat, pick up your prescriptions, it’s disappearing. Oh boy, it’s blocks from the house. Then you sort of know: you’re doomed,' remembered the Forget Paris actor. He was able to find a 'beautiful' element of the situation, which was 'being with my daughters and their husbands, my grandchildren, my brother and sister-in-law and everyone else around the country who we’re related to, texting, watching. It was a vigil, just trying to get us through the night.' Returning to the scene reminded Crystal of 'an episode of The Walking Dead, like this thing had just come through and wiped out everything' 'Words cannot describe the enormity of the devastation we are witnessing and experiencing,' Crystal and his wife said in a statement at the time Upon waking up the next day, they were unaware their house had burned down but saw 'that the National Guard had moved in, and it was a war zone. Then our neighbor called, hysterically crying to say: "It’s gone."' Returning to the scene reminded Crystal of 'an episode of The Walking Dead, like this thing had just come through and wiped out everything.' He recalled: 'All you could see were skeletons of trees and chimneys, the ones that hadn’t fallen, stuff blowing in the streets, nobody around.' One of the items Crystal was able to retrieve from the wreckage was a decorative garden rock inscribed with the word: 'Laughter,' a piece that reminded him of his coping mechanism at 15 years old after he lost his father to a heart attack. Billy and Janice Crystal are pictured attending the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar Party, which was held nearly two months after the fires deprived them of their home of nearly half a century 'When I was 15, being there with a grieving mother and watching her put her life back together at 49, my job was to keep her laughing,' said Crystal. 'That word made my life possible. So the fact that was the first thing [we found], we’ll be okay.' Crystal was among a string of celebrities who lost their homes to the Palisades Fire, including Paris Hilton, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Anthony Hopkins, Jeff Bridges, Anna Faris and Rosie O'Donnell, as well as Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag . 'Words cannot describe the enormity of the devastation we are witnessing and experiencing,' Crystal and his wife said in a statement at the time. 'We ache for our friends and neighbors who have also lost their homes and businesses in this tragedy,' they told the Hollywood Reporter . The Crystals, who co-served as honorary mayors of the Pacific Palisades from 2018 to 2021, insisted that their 'resilient' neighborhood would 'rise again.'