Jimmy Kimmel tearfully returns to late night during Los Angeles wildfires
(CNN) — Jimmy Kimmel got emotional Monday night as he addressed the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles.
“As you know it has been a very scary, very stressful, very strange week here in LA, where we work, where we live, where our kids go to school,” Kimmel said with his voice shaking during his monologue. “We are back at our studio. We had to evacuate on Wednesday.”
He showed footage of how close the fire came to where “Jimmy Kimmel Live” is filmed and noted that many of the employees who work on the show had to evacuate from their residences, while some lost their homes to the fires.
“It’s been terrible,” he said emotionally. “Everyone who lives in this city knows someone – most of us multiple people – family, friends, colleagues, neighbors whose house has burned down and the truth is we don’t even know if it’s over.”
The late-night host said it’s been a “sickening, shocking, awful experience.”
“But it’s also been, in a lot of ways, a beautiful experience because, once again, we see our fellow men and women coming together to support each other,” Kimmel said. “People who lost their own homes were out volunteering in parking lots helping others who lost theirs.”
He also took President-elect Donald Trump to task for some of his comments regarding the disaster.
“Tonight, I don’t want to get into all the vile and irresponsible and stupid things our alleged future president and his gaggle of scumbags chose to say during our darkest and most terrifying hour,” Kimmel said. “The fact that they chose to attack our firefighters, who apparently aren’t white enough to be out there, risking their lives on our behalf is — it’s disgusting, but it’s not surprising. Instead, I want to focus on thanking those men and women, because that’s all we should be doing right now, and we should never stop thanking them.”
He named some firefighting from other regions, including “firefighters who came from all the way from Maine” to assist, as well as thanking “our police, our National Guard, our rescue workers, the doctors, the nurses, EMTs, the pilots working 12 hour shifts.”
“Thank God for all of you,” Kimmel said.
He also thanked local media and shared that he had “19 people and four dogs” living with him at one point as they sought shelter during evacuations.
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