Melissa Rivers

The Southern California Wildfires are the only story worthy of recapping this week, and while there will surely be months (if not years) of future stories on this disaster to report, here’s what we know now about this incredibly heartbreaking tragedy.

Henry “The Fonz” Winkler took a beating online for suggesting the fires could have been started by an arsonist. Instead of backing down, he’s doubling down and spearheading an effort among his moneyed neighbors to hire private investigators to figure out what caused these fires. Despite leaning liberal, Henry isn’t viewing this from a political lens, and his common sense approach is winning over a lot of people despite the online backlash. Many neighbors have agreed to contribute to get to the bottom of what STARTED this fire.

Billionaire developer and one time Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rick Caruso has been quite vocal about casting blame on the city and the candidate who defeated him, LA Mayor Karen Bass – we just heard this. Rick is gearing up to finance a recall campaign (they’re quite expensive) to eject Karen from office, and then he plans to run in the special election to replace her. Hard to believe, but my well placed source says that the wheels of motion are already secretly spinning and the effort will be publicized after the last of the embers have been extinguished.

Speaking of politics, President-elect Donald Trump has been warned to put a diaper on his diarrhea of the mouth. No sooner did the fires break out that Trump started using immature nicknames for California Governor Newsom and making disparaging remarks about the area. My source says that Trump was warned to cool his rhetoric because although most of the affected areas of the fire skew liberal, some of his BIGGEST donors also reside there! Long story short, Trump was warned not to suggest he would withhold disaster relief from California, so for now he’s behaving.

Talented songwriter Diane Warren (she’s responsible for some of the movies’ most popular soundtracks) lost her beach home in the fires but the selfless animal lover is putting her own personal woes aside and focusing on the displaced animals. We just heard that Diane is pledging to donate $1million (or more) to make sure the all of the displaced animals will be safe in shelters until they’re reunited with their pet parents. My source says Diane has vowed to pick up the tab for emergency animal shelters, food and veterinary care.

Blast from the past Steve Guttenberg made headlines when a local news reporter interviewed him on camera and didn’t recognize him as an actor until deep into the chat. Steve came across sensible and articulate and now there’s a grassroots effort to get him to run for a local office. My source connected to Steve reveals that the Three Men and a Baby star is flattered and has agreed to consider the idea once things in his community calm down.

We previously told you how Jennifer Garner was collecting donations among her celebrity pals to make sure her less fortunate neighbors had proper shelter while they’re displaced. Well we just heard her goals have expanded and now she’s also raising funds to make sure some of the area’s mom and pop landmarks, like Moonshadows Restaurant and The Reel Inn have the proper funding to rebuild. She’s also leaning on Capital One (she has starred in many of their TV and print ads) to make a sizable donation to her latest cause).

Melissa Rivers lost her home in the fires and made the news for revealing she saved her mom, the late great Joan Rivers’ only Emmy Award which she won for her daytime talk show, “The Joan Rivers Show” in 1990. (We used to love gossiping on her show) We just heard that Melissa was rummaging through some of the items she managed to escape with and found a hummingbird broach that belonged to her mom inside of a jacket she grabbed. Melissa told a pal that she hasn’t worn that particular jacket in years and still isn’t sure why she grabbed it, but is taking it as a sign from her mom that everything will be fine.

On that note, we certainly hope so. Our beloved Los Angeles is suffering like it hasn’t in decades (or maybe ever) but we have confidence it will come back bigger and brighter.

Photo Credit: BACKGRID-USA