In the Palisades, an Evacuation Disaster Was Years in the Making In the Palisades, an Evacuation Disaster Was Years in the Making

Some Pacific Palisades residents said the community had long asked for more detailed fire preparation plans. When a fire raged through the community this week, gridlock ensued.

Flames were roaring near the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles when Marcia Horowitz and her husband rushed to their car, hoping for a quick escape eastward out of the fire zone.

But a police officer along the route directed them to head west along Sunset Boulevard, where the couple found themselves stuck in gridlock. The road was so clogged with panicked residents that traffic was barely moving, Ms. Horowitz said, and an emergency responder told everyone to abandon their vehicles and flee toward the beach on foot.

“Nobody would’ve gotten out of their car if they hadn’t been told, ‘You’ve got to get out, now,’” said Ms. Horowitz, 79, who fled without even her purse when the official warned people not to spend time gathering their belongings.

The abandoned cars near Pacific Palisades — many dented and broken when a bulldozer had to plow through them to make way for emergency crews — became a symbol of Los Angeles’s desperate attempt to mobilize against what is shaping up to be the most destructive fire in its history.

The chaotic scene was one years in the making. As in other areas of the towering, fire-prone hillside neighborhoods that ring the Los Angeles basin, Pacific Palisades residents had long pleaded for more attention to preparing for the fires that are striking the region with ever-greater frequency and ferocity. As recently as 2019, two fires that burned near parts of Pacific Palisades had shown the challenges of moving thousands of people through the area’s few escape routes.

Those fires, in October 2019, threatened homes in the area and led to traffic jams as people moved to evacuate.