Kim Kardashian Defends Hiring Private Firefighters To Protect Her Mansion, Donates Money To The Cause
Kim Kardashian appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Wednesday to talk about the Woolsey fire, which recently ripped through her Hidden Hills neighborhood. During the show, she defended her decision to hire private firefighters to battle the blaze, saying that she wasn’t just thinking of her own home, but those around her as well.
“I feel like we were really blessed to have the help of the firefighters that we did. Our house is right on the end of a big park, so the whole park had caught fire and so if our house went, then every other house would go,” said the reality TV star.
Kardashian and her husband Kanye West were forced to evacuate their home last week as the flames crept within feet of the property. The couple hired a private firefighting team to tackle the blaze, a move that has prompted some to point out the ways in which economic disparity impacts people in the United States.
“Rich people don’t get their own ‘better’ firefighters, or at least they aren’t supposed to,” said Amy Greenberg to the Atlantic.
Kardashian says that she knows she is fortunate to be able to have the luxury of hiring her own firefighting team. She also explained that many people use the service after witnessing the devastation of a Santa Barbara fire.
“We were fortunate enough and blessed enough, and I know that not everyone has this luxury available to them, but we were able to get private firefighters — a company that you can hire that friends of mine that lost their home in a Santa Barbara fire, all their neighbors used this company,” she told DeGeneres.
The 38-year-old beauty mogul also told the host that she wasn’t just thinking of her own home when she hired the firefighting team. Us Magazine reports that because her home sits on the edge of a field, if it had burned, the houses beyond her home would have been at risk as well.
“They saved our home and saved our neighborhood. I had them just make sure that they controlled every house on the edge, so it wasn’t just my home that I said, ‘Just take care of our home,” she said on the show. “Take care of everything because once they go, once ours starts, the whole neighborhood can go. I don’t take that for granted and that was such a blessing that we were able to do that.”
Photos show just how close the blaze came to the $60 million home.
KIM & KANYE'S HOUSE PHOTO MAKES IT CLEAR … Private Firefighting Team Saved Neighborhood https://t.co/N3JlQF0ffp What do you think of this?
— Harvey Levin (@HarveyLevinTMZ) November 19, 2018
The couple also announced that they would be donating money to relief efforts for victims of the fire. West, Yeezy, and Adidas donated $200,000 to both the California Fire Foundation and to the California Community Foundation’s Wildfire Relief Fund.
Shortly after the fire, West posted on Twitter that he wanted to build a “fireproof community,” though he hasn’t released any further details.
