Natalie Kurlander can’t turn away from TV updates of the wildfires raging in the Los Angeles area.

“It’s just so devastating,” said Kurlander, 57, who lived in the city for more than 25 years. She now lives in Pittsburgh’s Murdoch Farms with her husband, Carl, who is director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Pitt in LA: The American Film Industry program.

Carl Kurlander, a filmmaker who was a writer and producer in Hollywood for over 20 years, said the couple used to live in a house above Sunset Boulevard at 1359 Londonderry Place — down the street from David Schwimmer, who portrayed Ross in the hit TV sitcom “Friends.”

“We were less than a mile from Beverly Hills,” he said. “If you went down my house a block and then turned right and kept driving, you would drive through Beverly Hills and then you’d be at Pacific Palisades — the heart of the fire.”

The couple had plans to move back to Los Angeles eventually. On Thursday, they joined other Western Pennsylvania residents connected to Los Angeles in expressing shock over the devastating fire.

“Now, it looks like there’s going to be no way I can ever move back there,” Natalie Kurlander said, citing how the rental market will be in shambles. “It’s just so devastating. I needed out of Pittsburgh, and now I feel like I’m so lucky — I have a house.”

The Pitt program in Los Angeles gives students interested in the entertainment industry a chance to be exposed to the film and TV industry each summer. Carl Kurlander wonders whether the program will continue.

Hollywood — touted as a place where dreams come true — is now so helpless, he said.

‘Rebuilding’s going to take forever’

Jim Naughton moved out of his townhouse in Santa Monica, Calif., in June after living there for 12 years. It is 4 miles away from the fires burning at Pacific Palisades. Before living in Santa Monica, he lived in Pittsburgh’s Highland Park neighborhood for years. He and his wife moved back to Shadyside after his daughter, who lives here, had a baby.

“If you don’t know the area, you have no idea of the enormity of this,” said Naughton, 68, of the California fires. “A lot of the places I know and love — they’re cinders now. It’s unbelievable.”

He’s been texting and calling people he knows in Los Angeles to check in. No one he knows has lost a home, but one family he knows has taken another family in.

Retired from NFL Media in California, Naughton said many people in the Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica areas are around his age and live in apartments that are rent-controlled, which will become an issue as the city rebuilds.

“I never thought it would happen to the Palisades,” Naughton said. “There’s a lot of money floating around there. I thought they would be really good with controlling the brush around the homes.”

The winds coming out of Runyon Canyon, he said, made the wildfires worse, damaging thousands of structures, including schools, theaters, homes, stores, churches and more.

“That’s a big part of West LA that is going to be damaged and destroyed,” Naughton said, which will have a lasting economic impact. “It’s going to take a long time to clean that up — rebuilding’s going to take forever.”

Maria C. Palmer, an author and grant writer who was born and raised in Pittsburgh, used to live a little over a mile away from Runyon Canyon — her running route — at the iconic Art Deco Apartments at the corner of Ogden and Hollywood Boulevard.

“It kind of hit us close to nostalgic home,” said Palmer, 43, who now lives Kinnelon, N.J. “It’s not going to be the same after this for sure.”

She trained in Runyon Canyon for the Los Angeles Marathon and lived in the Los Angeles area for eight years. Now, she visits Pittsburgh once a month from her home in New Jersey.

“The areas where it is, most of them are very picturesque but also densely populated … iconic homes,” Palmer said of the devastation. “Whenever I look at the pictures, I’m just astounded. … It looks a lot different than the LA that we saw when we were (visiting) in July.”

Palmer said three people she knows have evacuated, and they’re waiting to hear about the status of their houses.

“Honestly, I’m just sad for a lot of my friends who are still there,” she said. “I can’t imagine what that feels like — it’s just horrible.”

Fire season in California

Though Naughton said fire season is a “normal part” of life in California, he’s never witnessed anything like this.

“It’s far worse than it’s depicted on television; you have no idea until you’ve seen it,” Naughton said.

Natalie Kurlander said she’s witnessed several bad fires in her time living in Los Angeles.

“I stood and watched many a fire just overtake the hills of Malibu.” she said. “We have gone pumpkin patch picking in the holiday of October and watched the hillside burn while coming out to pick pumpkins — these are manageable things that happen.”

Natalie Kurlander said she was waiting for the 0% containment status of the wildfires to change throughout the day on Wednesday.

“I kept thinking this is going to get managed,” she said. “When we lived out there, we prepared for the earthquakes. … I don’t think anybody ever made a plan for a fire. We didn’t ever think it was going to be that bad.”

The scope of the wildfires’ disaster is unable to be captured, Naughton said.

“It’s far from over. Who knows what’s going to happen next?” he said of the disaster. “The fire doesn’t care. It’s going to burn anything that’s in the path.”

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