The unprecedented scale of the destruction in Pacific Palisades came into horrifying focus Thursday from a fire that flattened a large swath of the community, rendering it unrecognizable.
As the smoke began to clear after two days of intense fire, Pacific Palisades appeared more like a moonscape of destruction than an upscale neighborhood known for its ocean views, beautiful vistas and celebrity denizens. Entire swaths of the residential district, from its quaint village to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, were completely gone, the architectural whimsy and lush landscaping reduced to burned-out ruins with white smoke still billowing from the wreckage.
It is a level of loss a Los Angeles community has not endured in recent memory — if ever — despite earthquakes, fires, floods and civil unrest. The devastation extended for miles. Some of the structures that survived — shopping centers, office buildings, a church, a school building, apartments, an occasional house — rose out of an otherwise featureless, battered and gray landscape. The scene was equally grim on Pacific Coast Highway, where row after row of prized homes backing up onto the sand were incinerated and exposing direct views of the ocean to the road.
And even as the skies cleared and the winds calmed a bit, more properties continued to catch fire.
Officials, still struggling to calculate all the damage, estimated structure losses in the Palisades to be more than 5,300 based on aerial infrared technology. They stressed it was a preliminary number. Officials estimated at least 4,000 structures were damaged or destroyed in the Eaton fire burning in the Altadena area. These numbers would make this week’s disaster among the worst ever in terms of property losses.
“This has the potential to be, at least collectively, the costliest wildfire disaster in American history,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said.
Firefighters scrambled to corral a fast-moving wildfire in the Los Angeles hillsides dotted with celebrity homes as a “life-threatening, destructive” windstorm hit Southern California, fanning the blaze seen for miles while roads were clogged with cars as residents tried to flee.
On Thursday morning, actor and writer Steve Guttenberg drove around his Pacific Palisades neighborhood, surveying the wreckage.
“It looks like Berlin — or it looks like some part of World War II,” he said. “Everything is burned down. It’s just terrible.”
For days, Palisades residents who fled with minutes to spare have watched cataclysmic video of homes leveled by fire. A place that was once so familiar— and felt so safe — is now completely upended.
“I think the biggest challenge right now is the community can’t pull together because there is no community. It’s so utterly devastated. People are scattered,” said resident Darrin Hurwitz, who fled from the blaze with his wife and two children Tuesday.
Firefighters worked into a third day to try to beat back the expanse of the Palisades fire, which had charred nearly 20,000 acres — about 31 square miles — and keep control of the Eaton fire in the Altadena area, which had burned roughly 13,600 acres. Both fires took off days earlier amid dangerous red flag conditions.
Though winds diminished slightly on Thursday, much of Los Angeles County remained under a red flag warning, with forecasters cautioning against critical fire weather through Friday night. Out-of-state resources continued to roll into fire zones Thursday.
Hurwitz, who had suspected his house was among those destroyed early in the fire, got confirmation from a photograph published by the New York Times that showed his home overtaken by flames.
“I knew it was going to be horrific and I knew the early damage estimates were going to be wrong, but I didn’t see it taking out almost the entire Palisades,” he said. “There’s nowhere that seems to have really escaped it.”
Taking refuge at a family member’s home in Ventura, Hurwitz said he’s not sure what’s next for him, his wife and two children. His kids’ elementary school was destroyed in the fire, and questions of whether to rebuild their home or what to do in the meantime are too overwhelming.
“I absolutely love the Palisades,” he said. “It was the perfect place — a combination of urban, wild land, out of the city. But it won’t ever be restored to what it was. It just won’t be the same place.”
The Palisades fire has burned more than 17,000 acres and 1,000 structures, including many homes, while five people have died in the Eaton fire. At least 130,000 residents are under evacuation orders.
Growth of the Eaton fire had been “significantly stopped,” L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said Thursday morning. But officials say crews are still struggling with the Palisades fire, with firefighters facing punishing 60-mph winds overnight paired with dry brush and low humidity.
“This is absolutely an unprecedented, historic firestorm,” Mayor Karen Bass said. “But we are all hands on deck.”
Amid the challenges of the last several days, Los Angeles caught a break Wednesday night, with firefighters able to limit the Sunset fire, which broke out near Runyon Canyon above Hollywood. Crews were also able to keep a house fire in Studio City from spreading.
Unlike during the catastrophic conditions on Tuesday night, when wind gusts of up to 100 mph were recorded, on Wednesday night aircraft were able to make water drops on the Sunset fire. Officials initially ordered a mandatory evacuation of a swath of Hollywood north of Hollywood Boulevard but lifted the orders Thursday morning.
Los Angeles faces another tense night as the Palisades fire moved northeast, prompting new mandatory evacuations.
Still, thousands of residents across Los Angeles County remain evacuated and officials are urging people to stay vigilant. L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna said at least 20 people have been arrested on suspicion of looting homes in evacuation zones. He issued a stern warning for those thinking about venturing into evacuated neighborhoods to steal: “We’re not going to tolerate that kind of activity.”
The National Weather Service has said Los Angeles residents should be prepared for a succession of sustained high-wind events that could intensify fire risk. Humidity levels remain low and no rain is in the forecast in the coming days.
In Malibu, where homes were also destroyed in the Palisades fire, residents are grappling with similar emotions — and recounting their own harrowing escapes.
Linda Stelzner lives alone, doesn’t have a cellphone and doesn’t drive at night. And she is 88. So when the Palisades fire roared toward her Malibu neighborhood as dusk approached Tuesday afternoon, she had few options for escape.
Standing in her frontyard, Stelzner could see flames emanating from the bottom of the streetlights lining the road. It was eerie. Embers flew all around her. Soon, a firetruck arrived on her street, and firefighters began tending to the blazes coming from the streetlights. One of them spotted her, Stelzner said, “and took me and put me in the fire engine and took me out towards the highway.”
Her journey was only beginning. After being transferred to four different police cars, she landed at a shelter inside the Westwood Recreation Center, where staff managed to help her connect with a relative who was driving down from San Francisco to retrieve her.
They planned to visit Stelzner’s street once it was safe and see if her home survived. Stelzner said that she and her late husband had spent years making their contemporary residence “very manicured.” An avid gardener, she filled the property with orchids.
Now she wondered what had become of the delicate flowers.
Times staff writers Jenny Jarvie, Rong-Gong Lin II, Connor Sheets, Richard Winton and Terry Castleman contributed to this report.
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