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By Jackie Luna and Jonathan Allen
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Before one of the most devastating fires in California history struck, the Pacific Palisades neighborhood west of Los Angeles was filled with green, well-kept landscaping and expensive homes with popular boutiques and cafes.
This week, the Palisades Fire reduced much of the area to blackened rubble. To see what’s missing, a Reuters video journalist visited the neighborhood last year to follow the trail taken by a YouTube travel influencer couple for a hiking video being made with their permission.
In May 2024, when the first video was shot under the blue skies of California, a white building in the Palisades Village shopping center on Sunset Boulevard was home to Starbucks (NASDAQ:) and Cafe Vida. It’s rainy now, pitch black, the palm trees outside are shriveled, the sky hazy and yellow.
On the surrounding residential streets, house after house collapsed in charred heaps filled with scattered shingle roof tiles that had withstood the blaze. The still-standing concrete gates opened to the ruins.
The Palisades fire has grown to more than 20,000 acres since it broke out Tuesday and was still only 11% contained Saturday, and the Palisades neighborhood remains a mandatory evacuation zone. Other fires, some nearly as large, are ravaging other parts of Los Angeles and neighboring cities and have so far killed at least 11 people and destroyed thousands of buildings.
The Palisades was almost devoid of life on Friday: a few Los Angeles firefighters here and there, and a few crows peeked in from the street before they dispersed. Outside one house, what was once a wheelchair sits on the sidewalk, everything but its metal frame melted or burned.
A scenic vantage point at Bluffs Point includes the ocean and the winding Pacific Coast Highway. Then, what remains of Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates fills the view: dozens of relatively affordable mobile homes that lean toward the beach and are now rows of rubble.
