Ellen DeGeneres Thanks Firefighters After California Wildfire Threatened Home

Ellen DeGeneres thanked the heroes who kept her home safe from California’s threatening wildfires last month during her emotional return to daytime TV Wednesday.

In her return from The Ellen DeGeneres Show‘s two-week holiday hiatus, the host took a moment to share her gratitude with the firefighters and first responders who risked their lives to keep residents safe during the area’s largest and most destructive wildfire in history.

“The fires were outrageous… There were over 8,500 firefighters that came from all over the United States. They worked 24 hour shifts on, 24 hours shifts off. Some of them didn’t sleep for three days,” DeGeneres said. “They were incredible people and I wanted to thank as many as I could.”

DeGeneres’ Santa Barbara home was among those in the line of fire during a flare-up on the western edge of the city. She said 13 firefighters drove from the San Francisco area to serve as first responders for her and wife Portia de Rossi’s community.

“Portia and I sat with them for a couple of hours and thanked them and talked to them,” she said. “They were hilarious.” In a group photo she shared, one officer posed lying down while DeGeneres hovered over him. “That guy was hilarious,” she added.

“What they do every single day — we need to thank them every time we see a firefighter,” the daytime host continued.

To offer a more concrete form of gratitude, DeGeneres invited every firefighter to her show.

“We want to get you in here and entertain you, because you — ” she said before joking that “entertain” wasn’t the right word to describe what they do in return, but instead “do wonderful things.”

DeGeneres previously told Extra’s Mario Lopez she had to evacuate her pets and leave the home to seek safety amid the growing fires in December.

“Our house… it’s there right now, but no one can get in to check on it,” she told Lopez. “We basically just had to get out and leave the gates open for the fire trucks and we’re right in it…we’re right there.”

She added that the blaze has forced her to reconsider her holiday plans, joking that she’d be heading to Lopez’s house.

“I was planning on going up to my home in Montecito but I don’t think we’re going to be going there, so what are you doing?” DeGeneres asked him. “I’m gonna come over, I think.”

Dialing back and adopting a more serious tone, she looked at the positive side of the situation amid mounting uncertainty.

“Yeah, I’ll be in town… We’ll just… we’ll just lay low and just, you know, be grateful for having our pets with us and Portia’s horses are evacuated and we’re hoping to get them someplace soon and it’s, you know, it takes something like this to just remember, you know, just how fragile life is, and how you should never take anything for granted… I’ll be counting my blessings for Christmas,” DeGeneres said.

On Wednesday’s show, DeGeneres said her home and all others in her community were kept safe by the brave firefighters and first responders who risked their lives to help.