Rams Announcer Sam Laganà on Staying to Fight the Fires

It is no exaggeration to call Sam Laganà a pillar of the Palisades community. He’s been anointed as a Hometown Hero by the local CBS affiliate and a Neighborhood Hero by the Los Angeles City Council, but he’s best known for his voice. A Hall of Fame announcer of beach volleyball in its heyday, Laganà is the beloved public address announcer for the Los Angeles Rams, and he’s been the emcee of the Pacific Palisades Fourth of July Parade for 40 years and counting. He was at home when the Palisades Fire broke out on Jan. 7, 2025. Within days of the fires, Sam was back on the mic announcing that Rams home playoff game against Minnesota, which had been moved to Arizona. The Rams won.

I was preparing for the Minnesota game when I first smelled it. At 10:37 a.m., I took a picture of the fire up the hill from me. There are 1,400 homes up there, and everyone is trying to come down three little “no outlet” streets that converge right in front of me. So I got my car loaded, backed it into the driveway—just going through the drill we’d gone through a million times before. Then I was trying to help direct traffic and get people out. No one who left thought they weren’t coming back.

The fire was attacking vegetation, and embers were blowing in off Palisades Drive. Canadian water-dropping planes came in, flying right over my house, maybe 75 yards up.

There’s a fire off the front of my house. There’s fire to my west. There’s fire to my north, to my south, probably 500 yards. Then it’s 300 yards, 200 hundred yards. The winds were blowing, and we were just dealing with the spot fires. This is all up through, you know, 4:00, 5:00. One of my neighbors had a spot fire in his yard. I got that. Then we were carrying buckets from my Jacuzzi up to other people’s houses to put water on their little spot fires in the front of their houses.

I linked my hoses and grabbed other people’s hoses. I was hosing down the school, hosing down the eucalyptus on the hillside. I wore a mask and goggles.

I carried buckets up. Some neighbors and some people from Councilwoman Traci Park’s office were helping. They totally showed up. The wind was blowing 80, maybe 100 miles per hour, and I set in my mind, if the school catches on fire, then I’m out of there. At 11:22 p.m., I saw a tornado of fire coming down the street. When it hit the portable classrooms, that’s when I shut it down.

The next day, I borrowed bikes from a friend in Santa Monica, and my neighbor and I rode up to our house to check things out. The fire had come back around. It was blowing into our community at 60 miles per hour, toward my house and my neighbors’ houses. It had burned probably 70 homes on my street. When I left the night before, they were all still there.

Thomas J. Story

My little house was still standing. A couple of neighbors were already defending it because my next-door neighbor’s house was catching fire, and that fire was blowing at my house. I stayed until I felt my house was safe, which was at about 8 p.m. that night.

I’ve lived in the Palisades my whole life. My mom and dad had a house. We moved to another house when my dad died. Then my wife and I bought a condo, and we bought the house 20 years ago. It was built during World War II. The houses were like 1,200, 1,400, 1,800 square feet. Mostly defense workers and schoolteachers back in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. A lot of those people never moved. My neighbor recently passed away, but he was 98 years old. My neighbor across the street, she’s in her late 80s.

There are 80 lots on my street alone, and eight are possibly going to be able to stand. I don’t know if mine is going to have to be gutted with all of the toxic smoke and ash that’s in it. We have no power, no power lines. I can’t live in it for probably a year or so.

One friend called about her cat when I happened to be there. This is somebody I’ve been friends with for 40 years. I got into her house. No cat. Then I remembered the day before, a fireman had stopped me and asked about how to get to a particular address on her street. It was one digit off her address. And so they’d got it, and she found her cat. They’d gotten the cat. Those are little wins, right? They’re little wins.