What the Fire Left Behind: Scenes From Los Angeles

The weather was beautiful in Los Angeles on Sunday. The sky was blue, the temperature mild, the wind calm, and smoke from the fires wafting into the sea. Life has finally returned to the weather-battered city. Cafes, bars and restaurants were open, people were walking their dogs, and drivers were cruising the main roads.

But in the wreckage areas, the epic devastation of the wildfires was on full display.

While I was in the Los Angeles area to cover a story about fires and the insurance industry scheduled to be published later this week, I was able to spend a few hours at the northern end of the restricted zone on the Pacific Coast Highway. It was a horrific, surreal scene from just south of Malibu to just north of Santa Monica, along a stretch that until a few days ago contained some of the most valuable real estate in North America.

When I was a child and young adult, my grandmother, who lived in the San Fernando Valley, would take me to Gladstone’s, a wonderful seafood restaurant on the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Sunset Boulevard. We would drive through the valleys from the canyon, turn right onto Sunset Boulevard, drive through the Palisades, and finally park in the parking lot adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. After lunch on Gladstone’s deck overlooking the ocean, we would then walk down to the beach, take off our shoes, and walk along the sand for half an hour. It was one of the great rituals of my youth.

Last week, the barriers were destroyed by fire. Gladstone somehow survived. But almost every other business and home along this stretch of PCH has been obliterated. All that remains is ash, plus piles of twisted metal and strange, misplaced traces of the people who lived there.

In the piles of debris of everyday personal items left behind by the fires, one can imagine all the dreams and homes that were destroyed, and one can see ghostly hints of what once was. There was the burned and mangled exercise bike, now crouched awkwardly against the destroyed walls. There were mailboxes left intact outside the homes that were destroyed, and street number signs plastered on what were now skeletons on the front walls. There was the washer and dryer staring into the sunset like two eyes open, the laundry room that once surrounded them now in ashes. There were melted down cars and barbecue grills still stubbornly present. Above all, there was the young couple, walking south side by side along the sand of the beach where my grandmother and I used to walk decades ago; To their right is the glorious ocean, the sun setting over its waters, and to their left is unbridled devastation.

I am confident that these scenes will remain in my mind for the rest of my life.

Except for watching the Twin Towers in Manhattan burn and fall in 2001, I can’t remember seeing anything that quite literally left me shocked in the way that those miles of devastation did.

After leaving the restricted area, I continued driving south, and suddenly as I entered the fire zone, I exited. The world around me seemed as normal as it had been before the fires and the ferocious Santa Ana winds sweeping across the hills and coast to the north. However, for those who lost their homes, I doubt their lives will ever be the same again.