NBC News reporter Jacob Soboroff didn't know what to expect when he turned his SUV onto the Pacific Palisades street where he grew up. What he found on Wednesday were smoldering ruins where his childhood home had stood. Only the remnants of a chimney and brick wall remained. It was among the countless number of buildings destroyed in the Los Angeles-area wildfires, where Soboroff is one of many journalists covering the story — and living it. His own tale, told across several NBC News platforms Wednesday and Thursday, broke the so-called "fourth wall" and gave viewers an intimate experience of what the tragedy felt like. "I'm not going to pretend that I'm not a human without my own thoughts and feelings," Soboroff said in an interview on Thursday. "It would almost be a disservice to hide the emotions about what I've seen." At first, the camera caught him staring blankly and trying to process. "This is the first time I've seen the house I grew up in and I really don't know what to say," he told viewers. Getting out of the vehicle, he pulled out his phone to FaceTime his mother about what had become of the house that he and four siblings lived in until he was 10. Even if it came as a surprise to Soboroff, it probably wasn't to viewers as they had watched him drive through the community, devastation all around him. "What I've seen here is what I would have expected from an earthquake," he said in the interview. "This is what the Big One would have looked like. Not a fire. We've had fires before." Soboroff, 41, lives now in a house near Dodger Stadium with his wife and two children. Everyone is safe, and the house is untouched, he said. Some journalists weren't so lucky. Ryan Pearson, an entertainment video manager at The Associated Press,... Read More