On Wednesday, walking through the abandoned Palisades village with tables and tall metal heaters tossed about by the wind like children’s toys, a female voice eerily sounds over a loudspeaker: “A fire has been detected. Please leave the Village immediately.” A not-unpleasant bell sounds several times before she repeats the announcement.
I feel certain I’ve seen this before – in a movie.
The upscale outdoor Village mall with everything from Lululemon to Yves St Laurent to Erewhon market — where you can get a pressed juice for a mere $16 – is half intact. YSL is fine. But across the street another unidentifiable store is a blackened hulk. The Italian restaurant Porta Via seems fine, but Serena & Lily next door is burned.
This is where much of the Hollywood community lives, and spends leisure time, an idyllic suburban paradise perched high above the Pacific. Directors like Steven Spielberg. Actors like Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson. Producers, lawyers, creative execs, writers. Developer Rick Caruso launched this upscale playground in 2018 and it has been a hub ever since.
In 24 hours, it’s mostly gone.
Much of the Palisades commercial center and many many houses are burned to the ground. The Ralph’s supermarket, Starbucks, the yogurt shop. The fancy Elyse Walker retail store. The non-fancy car wash. The gas station. Casa Nostra, a large Italian restaurant is a single wall standing with its tattered outdoor canopy remaining.
By midday on Wednesday, many apartment buildings were still burning. Ash fell from the blackened sky. Firefighters seemed to have stopped any further active measures, because there was little to salvage. All of the houses directly across from the Village mall were burned, most down to their foundations. A single charred child’s swing clung to a tree branch in front of a blackened lot. Next door a brick chimney was all that remained of the former house. A set of concrete steps leading to nothing but ash.
Along the broad Temescal Canyon Road that connects Sunset Boulevard to the beach, the Pierson Playhouse is gone, burned except for a few metal steel beams. The Palisades high school still has its main buildings, but fire trucks were working on extinguishing fires still burning in a building near the football field.
Driving through Santa Monica, massive branches were swept to the side of the road, looking like Nature’s refuse. The wind buffeted cars as large hunks of leaves droped like oversized rain. An eerie sunlight filtered through the smoke.
The streets were abandoned, and most of the parking spots on my normally full street were empty. Garbage bins were blown over and massive Palm fronds littered the street.
Driving toward the Palisades, it got ever smokier. By the time you get to San Vicente, the smoke was thick and the smell of ash and smoke strong.
At San Vicente and 7th Street, a massive tree had been blown over, uprooted by the wind.
The streets are abandoned down near the beach in Santa Monica except a few people walking on their own. One man walked in the middle of the street, wheeling a suitcase.
Astonishing.
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