Early this week, the National Weather Service began sending out alerts in Los Angeles for a “life-threatening and devastating” wind storm scheduled to begin Tuesday afternoon. The threat of fires was implied, and conditions were good for them, as they often are in the area. The Palisades Fire started as an intense blaze Tuesday morning. By the end of the day, its area was rapidly approaching three thousand acres. Even if you were far away from the flames, you couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable. The wind was blowing violently all day. I kept my plans to meet my parents for dinner. While driving, I saw palm fronds sliding across the road, and lawn furniture falling. We met at 6:30 at a German beer bar in Highland Park, and before we could order drinks, he got an alert on his phone about the Eaton Fire, which broke out shortly after six. evening In the San Gabriel Mountains above the city of Altadena, where my brother lives. My parents were staying with him. They decided to evacuate, and my father booked a hotel room on his phone. It was not long before the electricity was cut off from the restaurant. When I returned home to Mount Washington, I could see flames making their way down the sides of the San Gabriel Mountains. A strong wind blew, and then a tree fell in the yard. About ten-thirty that night, another fire, the Hurst, broke out near Sylmar.
By the next morning, my breathing was like trying to inhale a campfire. In downtown Los Angeles, which was shrouded in smoke, local government officials gathered for an update in the Kenneth Hahn Administration Hall. The good news is that there have been no confirmed deaths linked to the fire in Palisades. But there were two linked to the Eaton fire. This number will later increase to five. As of eight o’clock on Wednesday morning, four fires had broken out, covering more than seven thousand acres. A thousand buildings in the palisades had been destroyed the night before. Damage in Altadena reached 100 buildings and counting. (By the next morning, the official estimate had risen to more than a thousand there as well.) More than seventy thousand Los Angeles County residents were ordered to evacuate their homes, and tens of thousands more were warned to be ready to follow them. . More than four hundred thousand people were without electricity.
Firefighters’ ability to respond was limited by the number, size, and location of the fires, and by the unusual intensity of the Santa Ana winds, which the previous night had reached seventy miles per hour in some places. “There are not enough firefighters in Los Angeles County to handle four separate fires of this size,” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said. “The Los Angeles County Fire Department was prepared for one or two major wildfires, but not four, especially with the persistent winds and low humidity.” The fire department, which also handles emergency services for the county, was in “pull-out” mode — and so was everyone who could be called into action. The wind grounded firefighting aircraft for most of the night. In the Palisades area, water pressure was lost by 3 a.m., as additional stress on the system temporarily drained three critical storage tanks. Firefighters from other California counties and states were gathering to help. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was still on her way back to California from a diplomatic trip to Ghana. Many schools were closed. Employees with respiratory issues were encouraged to stay home, and officials suggested avoiding the West Side altogether. Also closed: Griffith Park (and access to the Hollywood sign), Runyon Canyon, and the LA Zoo.
Meanwhile, online hyperbole, conspiracy theories, and posturing about Los Angeles were generating their own weather system. In reality, social media reactions seemed cowardly and self-interested, which reminds us of the dissonance between the two realities. In Zuma Beach, Malibu, emergency workers set up a command center to coordinate the response to the Palisades Fire. To get there, I took a back road, which takes you up Highway 101 through the San Fernando Valley and then across the Santa Monica Mountains to the beach. During what is usually a breathtaking drive over the mountains, the car shook in the gusts of wind, and when I caught my first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean it was teeming with a blanket of white. In Zuma, the command center was set up outside the rescue station; It was previously located at Will Rogers State Beach, but the area has been smoked. A map of the county was placed on the wall of a large garage, and uniformed members of state and local agencies gathered next to surfboards and kayaks to discuss the next phase of evacuation plans. Thomas Schutz, spokesman Fire calThe state firefighting agency told me planes were flying again, but it was still unpredictable where the fire might go next.
“These winds are erratic,” he said. “It’s not like they’re just blowing in one direction. We know the Santa Ana winds, we have a northeasterly flow, but there’s really no part of this fire that can be put out.”
I continued south on the Pacific Coast Highway, past the green lawns of Pepperdine University and the deserted parking lots of Malibu Country Mart, the Palisades Fire visible in the distance as a billowing cloud. I saw the first beach house on fire near Carbon Beach. In Los Angeles, houses in the hills have been known to sometimes burn down; Danger comes with the territory. But this was different — not only was the house facing the ocean, it was several miles from the heart of the Palisades fire and was supposedly set on fire by embers carried by the wind. Behind him, more homes were engulfed in flames, and the Pacific Coast Highway ebbed south in a mysterious haze of smoke and bright lights. I parked my car on the side of the street that wasn’t on fire. Except for first responders, the area was mostly evacuated, but two people, longtime Malibu residents, were standing in civilian clothes.
“We’ve been through some, but this is the worst of all,” said Janice Burns, a real estate professional who has lived in Malibu since 1978. “Ever, ever, ever in fifty years.”
“It’s there,” agrees Thomas Hirsch, a dentist who has been in Malibu since 1965 and lost his home in the 2018 Woolsey fire.
They waved to a man walking down the sidewalk. It turns out that this is Jefferson Wagner, the two-time former mayor of Malibu and owner of Zuma Jay Surfboards, who has been in business for fifty years. Wagner also lost his home in the Woolsey fire, and is living in an apartment while its replacement is under construction. I asked him how this fire compared to other fires he had seen.
“This is worse than the Woolsey Fire,” he said. “In 1993, that was three hundred and sixty-five homes. “This is much more than that.”
Fire engines passed by us. Wagner identified someone who traveled all the way from the Bay Area city of Piedmont. We looked across the street at the burned-out property, which, like many homes on the Pacific Coast Highway, was set back from the road and hidden behind gates. The long white wooden fences were now half gone and still tainted by low fire; All that was left of the building behind them was a tangle of metal. “This is David Geffen’s old house,” Burns said. (The music mogul sold it for $85 million in 2017.) The conversation turned to risk calculations.
“You’re in a fire zone, and you know it’s a risk,” Hirsch said.
“Or you live in Kansas and you’re going to get hit by a tornado,” Burns said.
“Or you live in Florida and you have a hurricane,” Wagner added.
“It’s the price you pay for that view,” Burns said, looking out at the ocean.
In Santa Monica, I passed an evacuation center, where a steady stream of residents arrived carrying water bottles or diapers. At the Brentwood Country Mart, on the edge of the mandatory evacuation zone on San Vicente Avenue, I stopped for coffee, then watched the wing doors of the black Tesla open and Harrison Ford step out — it was still about 1 p.m. in Los Angeles. My family called to tell me that my brother’s house in Altadena, which he started renting out in 2020, had burned down. I left the West Side and made the usual trip there to meet him in the neighborhood. Pacific Palisades is an affluent area with modern architecture and waterfront homes. Although Altadena, which you can see lined up in a grid as you drive toward the San Gabriel Mountains, has developed in recent years, it has traditionally been a middle-class suburb near Pasadena. Previous residents include science fiction novelist Octavia Butler and physicist Richard Feynman.
As I turned east on Lincoln Avenue, I saw that the devastation was immediate and continuous. The toxic air smelled of burnt plastic. A small number of residents stood outside their destroyed homes, trying to put out the latest flames with garden hoses. (Earlier that day, at the news conference, a Department of Public Works official had said wearily that customers needed to “understand that it’s really pointless to fight fires with water hoses in your house.”) Other homes were still burning in flames. I went out and spoke with a couple, Detra Moses and Ben Lieberson, who were standing in front of the ruins of their home. Around 4 a.m., they woke up to an evacuation order to a smoke-filled house. They have lived in Altadena since 1999. “It was perfect when I came from London,” said Lieberson, who is British. “Quiet, I have a big yard full of trees; Quiet, nice people, such a mixed community of people – just quiet, you know?
Now, groups of television photographers dressed in yellow fire gear roam the streets. I met my brother, and we drove up the hill, toward the foot of the mountains. Block after block of the city was burned. The place we knew has simply disappeared. In the ruins of homes, only the occasional recognizable thing remained: some trash cans melted on one side, like marshmallows in a s’mores candy; Santa’s sleigh that is not yet stored for the season; My niece’s bike tire in what used to be my brother’s garage. The wind had died down by then, and was almost completely still, at least in Altadena. ♦