Written by Jackie Luna and Jonathan Allen
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Before one of the most devastating fires in California history, the Pacific Palisades neighborhood on Los Angeles' west side was filled with expensive homes fronted by green landscaping and popular shops and cafes.
This week, the Palisades Fire leveled much of it into black rubble. To see what was lost, a Reuters video journalist visited the neighborhood on Friday to retrace the route taken by a pair of YouTube travel influencers who filmed a video last year of a walking tour, which is reproduced with their permission.
In May 2024, when the original video was recorded under a blue California sky, the white, Ionic-columned building on Sunset Boulevard in the Palisades Village shopping complex was home to Starbucks (NASDAQ:) and Vida Café. It was now tattered, dark with soot, the palm trees outside were bare, and the sky was hazy and yellowing.
In the surrounding residential streets, house after house collapsed into charred heaps, topped with clay roof tiles that had withstood the fire. The existing concrete entrances remain open on the rubble.
The Palisades Fire has grown to more than 20,000 acres since it broke out Tuesday and was only 11% contained Saturday, with the Palisades neighborhood still a mandatory evacuation zone. Other fires, some just as large, are devastating other parts of Los Angeles and nearby towns, killing at least 11 people so far and destroying thousands of buildings.
The Palisades area was almost devoid of life on Friday: a few Los Angeles firefighters here and there, and a few crows watching from the road before dispersing. Outside one house, a wheelchair sat on the sidewalk, everything melted or burned except its steel frame.
The scenic lookout area from Point at the Bluffs includes the ocean and the Pacific Coast Highway. From there, what's left of Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates fills the scene: dozens of relatively affordable mobile homes that cascaded toward the beach are now rows of rubble.
