An Australian man has died in the Californian wildfires, his “totally heartbroken” mother has confirmed.
The British-born Australian citizen Rory Sykes, 32, died after flames engulfed his self-contained cottage on a family property near Malibu, his mother, Shelley Sykes, said in a post on X.
Sykes said her son was born blind, lived with cerebral palsy and had difficulty walking.
“He overcame so much with surgeries and therapies to regain his sight and to be able to learn to walk,” she said.
“Despite the pain, he still enthused about travelling the world with me from Africa to Antarctica.”
In an interview with Channel Nine on Sunday, Shelley Sykes said her son fell ill with the heat of the fires.
“Rory’s feet with the heat had started to swell, and he couldn’t walk very well. And he also had problems with his tummy. So he didn’t want to be far away from the bathroom,” Shelley Sykes said.
“So he said, ‘Mum, you go, I’m staying’. Well, there’s no way I could leave.
“So I stayed in the main property with my two peacocks in a bathroom because it was hard to breathe. Sitting on the floor with bottled water and trying to keep wet.”
Sykes told ABC TV that Rory had locked the door and was refusing to come out.
Sykes said she saw embers flying onto the roof of her son’s cottage, but her efforts to extinguish them failed because there was no water coming from her hose.
Shelley Sykes said she drove several hundred metres to the nearby fire station to raise the alarm but was told there were no water reserves in local fire hydrants.
“[The firefighters] said ‘What are you doing? You’re not supposed to be here’. And I said ‘Please help Rory. His cottage has got flames on it and I’ve got no water’.
“They said ‘Shelley, we’ve got no water either’.”
Firefighters drove Sykes back to their property only to discover her son’s cottage had burned to the ground, she said. There was “nothing we could do”.
“When I got there, the three cottages were down to the ground and just black ash.
“My house was fine, the big main house, but there were embers flying everywhere and it was hard to breathe.”
Shelley Sykes described her son as a “true humanitarian”. “I’m totally heartbroken,” she said on X.
Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, said the government’s “thoughts are with the family of Australian man Rory Sykes at this tragic time”.
“We continue to engage with Los Angeles authorities, who are working to confirm his death. Dfat is in close contact with his family and is providing consular assistance to them.”
