By Wednesday morning, it looked like a bomb had gone off on the Sunset Strip.
As the catastrophic Palisades Fire receded from one of the city’s iconic thoroughfares, smoke and ash turned the once picturesque landscape into a strange moonscape.
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There were charred buildings, some slightly damaged and some completely destroyed. The water pump of the burned-out Shell gas station was intact, but the convenience store was missing; the Bank of America is located in a historical building that was gutted by the fire, and the metal frame of the ATM machine on the left in front was distorted by the high temperature.
During a police lockdown, Palisades residents begged Los Angeles Police Department officials to allow them to inspect their homes and pick up essential medications.
Glenn Watson, left, and his brother Wes return to the Pacific Palisades community to view fire damage on Wednesday. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
The Palisades Fire broke out near Piedra Morada Drive Tuesday morning and was brutally battered by high winds. As of Wednesday afternoon, the fire had burned more than 11,802 acres and caused widespread damage as it snaked west into Malibu and east into Brentwood.
Tens of thousands of residents were forced from their homes. Authorities reported an unspecified number of “serious” injuries due to simultaneous catastrophic fires in other parts of the city. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department tallied two arrests in connection with robberies as thieves tried to rob an affluent neighborhood that had been evacuated.
“Despite the extraordinary nature of what has happened and is happening now, I fear we are seeing a new, terrifying and tragic normal,” said historian and director of the Huntington-USC California and the West Institute William Deverell said.
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Much of the Pacific Coast Highway and its homes and landmarks between Will Rogers State Beach north of Santa Monica and Carbon Beach east of Malibu were reduced to rubble Wednesday. Vast tracts of coastal homes along the highway were reduced to smoldering rubble, crumbling onto the beach and falling into the sea.
Gone are the cozy homes and multi-million dollar beach palaces that once lined the shoreline. A beloved icon of a long-standing business and local classic — was also wiped out.
In Santa Monica, emergency department doctors at Providence St. John’s Health Center treated patients with smoke inhalation, eye irritation and minor burns.
Dr. Ali Jamedo urged people with heart or respiratory conditions to stay indoors and asked everyone to be cautious amid high winds that can send debris flying into the air. Surgery at Santa Monica Hospital had been postponed Tuesday night and was expected to resume Thursday.
A woman runs along Sunset Boulevard as the Palisades Fire burns on Tuesday. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
On Wednesday, the Palisades’ “Alphabet Street” neighborhood, a U-shaped pocket just north of Sunset Boulevard, was mostly a flat grid of homes, with much of what was left covered in black rubble and dust.
Despite much of the fence being cordoned off, James Fynes, 40, was able to find a back staircase leading to the area. He came to see a friend’s parents’ house, which they moved into last year after three years of construction.
“This is crazy,” he repeated as he walked from street to street filled with charred cars and houses reduced to rubble. “I can’t believe there’s no water.”
In each burned-out block was a reminder of the owners’ opulence: a home gym burned almost beyond recognition, then a black hot tub, then the husks of multiple cars parked in a garage.
In most neighborhoods, the only thing that remains is the fireplace. Electrical wires hung down to the dilapidated streets. Some houses are still on fire.
For John Lightfoot, 56, each business that burned was accompanied by memories: The bank where he had deposited money for decades, the little coffee shop he frequented, were gone.
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A few blocks away, Michael Payton, manager of the nearby Erewhon store, came to survey the damage. The business survived, but much else disappeared.
“The whole fence is done. The whole town is done,” he said. “It’s a total devastation.”
As the Palisade Fire and other fires rage, winds howl, and fear grips Los Angeles, no corner of the city seems entirely out of danger.
Some residents reported evacuating more than once as the fire followed them to the homes of friends or family members in “safe” areas. Others learned from a distance that their homes had burned to the ground through fire alarms or security alerts on their cellphones.
“Historically, and in my experience, when we talk about disasters in Southern California, in Los Angeles County, and especially when we talk about fires, there seems to be a disconnect between those of us who live in apartments away from the foothills,” says historian DJ Waldie.
A house on Bowdoin Street in Pacific Palisades was completely engulfed in flames on Tuesday. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Vardy said that from the apartment, the high-altitude flames seemed distant, like “someone else’s Los Angeles where things are burning all the time.”
But that pattern was upended on Tuesday night, when an evacuation warning was issued for a large swath of Santa Monica’s lower elevations.
Panting through smoke and gusting to 40 mph winds, distraught Santa Monica residents dragged pets and suitcases to their cars midday Wednesday to escape the mandatory evacuation zone north of San Vicente. Two blocks away, however, on Margarita Avenue near Ocean Avenue, a group of construction workers were calmly working on an apartment building.
“We have to survive, that’s why we’re still here,” said Josue Curiel, who lives in Inglewood but is originally from Jalisco, Mexico. Each of his six crew members was also born south of the border.
“If you’re a worker, you’re going to starve, so that’s that.”
They tied ladders to the building to help stabilize it in high winds and worked to repair water-damaged balconies — notwithstanding the natural disasters raging around them.
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“I was going to take a day off,” Courier said with a shrug while watching the news last night, but he woke up to find work was still going on. “A lot of people are still working.”
Mike Flannigan, a professor who studies wildfires at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, said there’s a simple formula that works for California’s fires: vegetation, ignition and favorable weather, usually hot, dry winds.
“If you have all three, you’re going to have wildfire,” he said.
These factors helped the Palisades Fire spread quickly, sweeping through communities along canyons and hillsides.
Along the east-west corridor through downtown Los Angeles, brown palm fronds — queen palms, fan palms and other varieties — litter the streets and sidewalks like carrion. No one stood a chance against the strong wind.
Driving west from the Miracle Mile area, eerie smoke drifting in the morning sun bathes the landscape in amber and ocher. The plume darkened the sky so dark that photocell lights illuminated streets and residential areas—humanity’s technology was tricked as hell.
West Los Angeles resident and former Police Commission Chairman Steve Soboroff said his five children, all of whom live in the Los Angeles area, have been evacuated from their homes.
“This is not just a fire,” Soboroff said. “You have to contain the fire and build a ring around it. It’s like a thousand fires. It’s impossible. I think back to the Chicago Fire. I don’t know that anything here has ever been like this because it’s so dense. Just the worst case scenario.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
