Palisades Lost

Days after a devastating wildfire, residents of Pacific Palisades have started sifting through the ruins, and their memories.

This weekend was supposed to be an ordinary one in Pacific Palisades. Boy Scout Troop 223 was planning a weekend camp-out at Malibu Creek. The local youth baseball tryouts were scheduled at Palisades Recreation Center’s Field of Dreams. Sunday morning was a time for the farmer’s market just off Sunset Boulevard, for picking over produce and grass-fed meat while kibitzing with neighbors.

For as long as anyone here can remember, the Palisades have been a bucolic corner of Los Angeles, its houses dotting the narrow roads that meander through the canyons that are tucked between the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Those who could afford to live in those homes were drawn by its slower pace, far enough from the freeway hamster wheel to get lost in the Technicolor sunsets over the water.

Now those neighborhoods are hardly recognizable after wind-whipped fire roared through one enclave after another, leaving in its wake homes that were burned to the ground, cars that were incinerated and lives that were shattered.

“There’s nothing left,” said Darby Woods, a local real estate agent who lost her home in the fire. “It literally looks like what you see on TV in Ukraine. It looks like we’re in a war zone and there’s no reinforcements coming. It’s just decimated.”