Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi forced to flee $50 million home
Ellen DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi have been forced to flee their $50 million Montecito estate, after mudslides devastated areas of California.
The couple’s home remarkably remained unscathed, but others in her neighbourhood were not so lucky with 100 homes destroyed and many more damaged.
“Usually, we’re grateful for rain, especially in California, but not after the largest fire in the history of California,” the talk show host said, fighting back tears.
“So again, we evacuated because they feared mudslides. After everything we’ve been through, I think a lot of people thought they were just being overly cautious but exactly what they feared happened.
“The rain triggered massive mudslides. Massive.”
The talk show host couldn’t hide her emotions when she described the way the mudslides had wreaked havoc through the area, which she considers to be home.
“If you’ve never been there, Montecito is a small town,” she said.
“It’s less than 10,000 people, it has two public schools, family-owned businesses. It’s a tight-knit community so everyone kind of knows everyone.
“I work in LA, but I consider Montecito my home.”
She added: “It’s not just a wealthy community, it’s filled with a lot of different types of people from all backgrounds.
“And there are families missing, there are people who are missing family members.
“They’re finding people and bodies and I mean, you hear the word mudslide and you have no idea the impact that it has, but after the largest fire in California history, it’s catastrophic. It is beyond recognisable.”
During her program, DeGeneres spoke to Oprah Winfrey on Facetime, who lives nearby and bore witness to the destruction of people’s livelihood firsthand.
“All of my neighbours’ homes are gutted,” Winfrey said.
“I’m standing right now still in a lot of mud but not as much as yesterday.
“I walked out back, you know, where we share a fence line and the neighbours out back their houses are gone. It’s as devastating as can be.
She added: “You know what’s devastating is that we’ve lost so many lives and it’s a tiny little community and nobody would’ve expected, certainly, I did not, that after we survived the fires and the rain came.
Our thoughts are with everyone caught up in this disaster.