The Brief

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about how an unstoppable fire could easily blow through Topanga Canyon, potentially in just a handful of hours, trapping motorists and residents, leading to a Paradise like situation.

In short, strong winds, steep hills, narrow roads and huge amounts of long unburned vegetation, make building a home there quite dangerous. Throughout most of the canyon you'll find typical, vulnerable wood frame houses tucked in between the laurel sumac.

But while I was reporting for my wildfire podcast The Big Burn, I came across a structure like no other, that seemed to disappear into the hillside around it. And, once I spoke with the builder, I found out that embedding the home under a mountain of dirt was done, in part, to make his place resistant to even the worst wildfires that might blow through Topanga.

Even if you frequent the main road through the area, odds are that you probably haven't even noticed it, because from the backside, the property looks just like any other dirt hill dotted with chaparral.

But turn down a driveway the front of the house reveals itself.

The balcony is made of glass and metal, and the combustible furniture could be put away on a high risk fire day.

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Because the shell of the home is a curved dome, the walls inside are curved as well.

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All you'll see are windows surrounded by large white walls, with concrete and gravel at the base.

There are no eaves to burn, no mass of material (like mulch) pressed right up against the structure that could carry a flame and melt windows and no fence to catch on fire.

Instead of wood siding, there’s smooth white stucco.

You can see where they buried the concrete dome, which serves as the shell of the home, underground.

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The biggest problem area might be the small piece of roof sticking up from the dirt. And it wouldn't be a bad move to trim some of the larger plants back from the front of the structure. But kept free of vegetation and mulch, and it seems like the house would probably do fine.

The building process

The body of the home is made of a four-plus-inch thick reinforced concrete shell, designed by the company Formworks, out of Colorado.

After the hillside was excavated, builders put up a big steel frame, filled it with foam, and blasted it with layer upon layer of concrete. They then pulled out the foam, covered the shell up with tons of dirt, and built up the interior like any other house.

A very difficult process

You can see the process documented above by the guy who was responsible for building the house, stuntman Eddie Conna, who has 140 different credits to his name, including Natural Born Killers, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and the Fast & Furious franchise.

All of the light in the living room and kitchen comes from the one side of the home facing away from the hill.

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“I had a friend of mine who I grew up with who told me, ‘What I find interesting about you is you do some of the craziest s..t, but you do it in the safest way possible.’ And that was kind of always my mindset,” Conna told me last year, when I spoke with him for the podcast.

He first came across the idea of an in-ground dome home back in the early 2000s, when he wanted to build a multi-story house in Chatsworth, another L.A. location with high fire risk.

A thick concrete shell buried in the ground was initially attractive to him because of its promising insulation.

“I saw where utility bills were going. It started with the energy efficiency,” Conna said. “Then as I did more research, it was, 'oh, geez, I'm building something that is also resistant to fires'.”

It took him about three years to finish the project, and when a fire tore through the area, threatening homes, it survived unscathed.

“I mean, there was a piece of me that was like, you're gonna be okay, because three sides of the house are buried, and the amount of exposure you have to a fire is minimal,” he said.

Conna was so inspired by the resilience of the house that he thought it’d be a perfect choice for building in Topanga.

The backside of the house looks like any other hill in the canyon.

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Though, things didn’t go nearly as smoothly as they did with his first spot.

While Chatsworth took three years, the Topanga home took 13 year, and cost him $1.1 million to build, double what he first budgeted.

The whole time he struggled with permitting and construction issues, in part, he thinks, because his approach to building a home was so different from what anyone was used to.

“By the end of the process, I wasn't sleeping, I was talking to my therapist at least a couple times a day. I was depressed,” he said.

Ultimately, he sold the residence to recoup his costs.

Is this a realistic alternative? 

Alternative approaches to housing are popping up in California. For instance, in the shadow of the deadly 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people in the northern California town of Paradise, some people built homes made of steel, hoping for more fire resilience.

But how safe would Conna's home actually be in a fire? It's tough to say. We looked into it for the podcast, and the closest comparable situation we found was a concrete home that survived a wildfire in Washington State in 2015.

We won’t know how the Topanga house will perform until a fire shows up.

Get prepped

Even if you can’t build your own concrete dome home, check out what a little bit of home prep, like enclosing eaves and removing mulch, can do.

The demonstration home on the right had enclosed eaves, fireproof cladding, a tempered glass window, and most importantly, a five foot noncombustible perimeter. The house on the left was surrounded by mulch, which smoldered, eventually ignited the wooden fence and then the structure itself.

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President Donald Trump launched a military strike against Venezuela overnight, resulting in the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

In a news conference this morning, Trump said the U.S. is going to "run" that country, until a proper transition is in place.

California lawmakers are reacting to the attacks.

"Nicolás Maduro was a thug and an illegitimate leader of Venezuela, terrorizing and oppressing its people for far too long and forcing many to leave the country. But starting a war to remove Maduro doesn’t just continue Donald Trump’s trampling of the Constitution, it further erodes America’s standing on the world stage and risks our adversaries mirroring this brazen illegal escalation," says Sen. Adam Schiff, a democrat.

Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, who represents areas including Murrieta and the Temecula Valley, says President Trump, "has taken strong action to protect America’s homeland from neighboring threats of narcoterrorism and the scourge of deadly narcotics. The Trump administration has my full support."

Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla says, "Let’s be absolutely clear: Trump’s military action in Venezuela is unlawful without approval from Congress."

California Governor Gavin Newsom did not directly response to the attacks. He zeroed in on a comment Trump made about the L.A. fires during the news conference.

"Unless Trump is finally delivering the federal aid survivors need to rebuild after the horrific fires — nearly a year after California first requested it — he should keep Los Angeles out of his mouth," Newsom's office says on social.

Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, face a raft of charges in the United States following President Trump's announcement early Saturday that the U.S. attacked Caracas and took them into custody.

Maduro, Flores and senior Venezuelan officials face charges related to alleged "drug trafficking and narco-terrorism conspiracies," according to an unsealed indictment posted on social media Saturday by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The indictment alleges that, starting in 1999, the defendants partnered with international drug trafficking organizations to ultimately transport thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States.

Maduro and his wife "will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts," Bondi wrote in an earlier post on X.

The new indictment adds to charges from the first Trump administration, when the U.S. Justice Department announced a federal indictment against Maduro in March 2020.

That indictment alleged that Maduro was the leader of the Cartel de los Soles, and that he and other defendants took part in a narco-terrorism conspiracy with the Colombian guerrilla group known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Prosecutors said that the Cartel de los Soles was made up of high-ranking Venezuelan officials who abused the Venezuelan people and corrupted the nation's institutions to import large quantities of cocaine into the United States.

According to the 2020 indictment, Maduro helped manage and ultimately lead the Cartel de los Soles, which sought to get rich and flood the U.S. with cocaine, allegedly using the drug as a weapon against the United States.

Prosecutors said that Maduro helped negotiate multi-ton shipments of cocaine, and directed the Cartel de los Soles to provide military-grade weapons to FARC.

He also allegedly coordinated foreign affairs with Honduras and others to facilitate large-scale drug trafficking.

The current Trump administration has ramped up the pressure over the past year. In November 2025, the U.S. designated the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization.

The new indictment released Saturday reiterates these charges and also alleges that Maduro "partnered" with organizations including the Sinaloa Cartel, the Zetas and Tren de Aragua.

Separately, the International Criminal Court has been investigating the Venezuelan government for alleged torture, sexual violence and arbitrary detentions.

This is a developing story, which may be updated.

The impact of the Trump administration's stunning airstrikes and "capture" of Nicolás Maduro already are being felt well beyond Venezuela's borders — the most significant U.S. intervention in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama.

President Gustavo Petro in neighboring Colombia announced that security forces were deployed along the border to prepare for a possible refugee influx. Colombia hosts the largest Venezuelan diaspora.

Petro confirmed multiple strikes in Caracas, including a military airbase, other installations and the legislative building. He condemned the attack as an aggression against Venezuela and Latin America, urging de-escalation.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva condemned the U.S. attack on neighboring Venezuela and the seizure of Maduro, saying the strikes "crossed an unacceptable line" and set a "dangerous precedent."

Lula said the action evoked "the worst moments of interference" in Latin America and threatened the region's status as a zone of peace. Despite his past alliance with Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chávez, relations have cooled since Brazil refused to recognize Maduro's disputed 2024 election victory, widely dismissed as fraudulent.

Other regional powers, including Chile and Mexico, echoed strong condemnation. Mexico called the strikes a violation of the U.N. Charter and urged an immediate halt to acts of aggression. In a Fox News interview Saturday, President Donald Trump said Mexico was run by drug cartels, adding, "Something is gonna have to be done with Mexico."

Cuba and Nicaragua — two of Venezuela's closest allies — are closely monitoring the crisis. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel labeled the U.S. action "state terrorism" and called for urgent international intervention.

Cuba, facing its most severe economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, relies heavily on Venezuelan oil. Any disruption could worsen an already dire situation, and the government in Havana — which has been in power since 1959 — has been watching the unfolding situation closely.

What's next: The global stage

Close allies China and Russia also have reacted. Russia condemned the strikes, reaffirming solidarity with the Venezuelan people. In a statement, Russia's Foreign Ministry called the Trump administration's pretext for attacking Venezuela unfounded and said if the reports of Maduro's capture were true, the U.S. action marked an "unacceptable assault" on Venezuela's sovereignty.

Despite such expressions of support, Moscow has stopped short of challenging the U.S. more forcefully amid a months-long pressure campaign by the Trump administration against the Venezuelan leadership.

China said it strongly opposed the U.S. action, condemning the move as a violation of international law. In a statement, the foreign ministry said Beijing was "deeply shocked" by what it called Washington's "blatant use of force" against a sovereign state, arguing it infringed on Venezuela's sovereignty and threatened peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the E.U. supports "a peaceful and democratic transition" in Venezuela. But she stopped short of criticizing the U.S. attack.

"We stand by the Venezuelan people and support a peaceful and democratic transition," she said, adding that any solution must respect international law and the U.N. Charter.

Venezuela has called for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, raising questions about the legality of the U.S. operation. In a statement, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was "deeply alarmed" by the overnight developments, expressing concern "that international law hasn't been respected."

Updated January 03, 2026 at 12:01 PM ET

This is a developing story.

President Trump said the U.S. will run Venezuela until a "proper transition can take place," as he defended Saturday's military strikes that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

"We're there now, but we're going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place," Trump told reporters from Mar a Lago. "So we're going to stay until such time as we're going to run it, essentially, until such time as a proper transition can take place."

Trump's remarks cap a dramatic few hours that began with reports of explosions in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, the scale of which became apparent only when the president said Maduro and his wife had been captured. Trump later told Fox & Friends that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were being brought by boat to New York where they'd stand trial.

He said U.S. oil companies would head to Venezuela to operate in their oil reserves, and the military is set to attack again if necessary to secure the effort.

"We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country, and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so," he said.

Watch President Trump's remarks

Trump said there were some U.S. injuries sustained during the operation to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, but no fatalities.

"This is something that gee, I don't know, is amazing and to have a few injuries but no death on our side was really amazing," Trump told Fox and Friends ahead of his Mar-a-Lago address.

Trump told Fox that he watched the "extremely complex" operation unfold "like I was watching a television show."

Trump defended the operation, telling the network, "You know what, we did a great job with stopping drugs from coming into this country, and nobody's been able to do it until we came along. But they should say, 'great job.' They could say, 'Oh, gee, maybe it's not constitutional.' You know, the same old stuff that we've been hearing for years and years and years."

He was asked by Fox about China's concerns about control of the oil and responded that he has a good relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

"There's not going to be a problem, and they're going to get oil. We're going to allow people to have oil, but we can't take a chance after having done this incredible thing last night of letting somebody else take over, where we have to do it again," he said.

Trump did not outline clear next steps for regime change, but noted Venezuela does have a sitting vice president and sent a warning to anyone who might continue supporting Maduro.

"Well, if they stay loyal, the future is really bad, and really bad for them. If they convert, there's a conversion factor. I would say most of them have converted. He's had very little loyalty," he said.

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