“Three neighbors came and carried me out and came back and put out a little fire in the guest house and saved me,” Van Dyke revealed.
Dick Van Dyke has his neighbors to thank after narrowly escaping the wildfires that blazed through his Malibu, California neighborhood.
While speaking with a local news outlet, Van Dyke, who turns 99 on Friday, credits his neighbors for saving him.
“It was coming from the hill, you could see it,” the longtime actor said in an interview that aired on the Today show Thursday. “And oh my God, and we got out of there. I was trying to crawl to the car, I had exhausted myself, I couldn’t get up.”
Van Dyke then shared that it was his neighbors who ultimately came to his rescue.
“Three neighbors came and carried me out and came back and put out a little fire in the guest house and saved me,” The Mary Poppins star added.
Van Dyke was seen on footage taken from his own Ring Doorbell camera evacuating his property alongside his wife Arlene Silver and their pets.
In a post shared to Facebook Tuesday, Van Dyke reassured fans that he had escaped the fires and was safe, but noted that one of their pets had gone missing as they were trying to evacuate.
“Arlene and I have safely evacuated,” he wrote. “Bobo escaped as we were leaving. We’re praying he’ll be okay and that our community in Serra Retreat will survive these terrible fires.”
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Bobo too would have a happy ending, with the father-of-four revealing in a subsequent Facebook post on Thursday that the orange cat had been found.
“We found Bobo as soon as we arrived back home this morning. There was so much interest in his disappearance that Animal Control was called in to assist. But, thankfully he was easy to find and not harmed,” Van Dyke wrote alongside a love heart emoji.
The screen legend is one of tens of thousands of people who had to be evacuated from the Malibu area because of the Franklin Fire, which began on Monday, Dec. 9.
Other famous faces who have also had to leave their homes include music icon Cher, 78, and actresses Jane Seymour and Mira Sorvino, who also revealed that she evacuated in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
“All my Malibu friends and neighbors I pray that you are safe. We evacuated in the middle of the night, kids and pets all accounted for! Scary times!!” the Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion star, 57, wrote.
