Home news How the Palisades fire reduced a bustling community to ‘heart-wrenching’ ashes |...

How the Palisades fire reduced a bustling community to ‘heart-wrenching’ ashes | California wildfires

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The Palisades are gone.

In Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood, street after street is laden with carnage that tells part of the story of the ferocious firestorm that swept through the area over the last two days.

Buckled trees and telephone poles are strewn across roads, their piled branches and hanging wires a testimony to the winds that whipped the flames. Intersections are flooded with water, even after the loss of water pressure hampered efforts during the harrowing firefight. Mansions lining the yellow beaches hollowed out, homes in the neighborhoods’ canyons reduced to dust.

As the most active flank of the fire had moved beyond the community by Thursday morning, teams of firefighters worked through the day to douse spot fires in the smouldering neighborhoods where homes, businesses, schools and churches once stood.

Officials said they estimated, based on aerial surveys conducted the day before, that at least 5,300 structures had been destroyed in the blaze.

Though the chaos here is now quiet, the disaster is still unfolding. The buzz from planes and helicopters involved in the firefight pierces the silence that hangs over the vacated neighborhoods, otherwise only punctuated by spurting water and the chatter of small birds occupying the skeleton trees. Christmas decorations are still clinging to steps that now lead only to smoking debris and green lawns glare through a sea of black and grey.

The firefighters still at work in the Palisade’s heavily damaged neighborhoods are hoping they can at least keep the homes left standing safe from fire that can quickly pick up again as the winds continue to blow.

“It’s heart wrenching,” said Jacob Ruano, a firefighter who is part of a crew with the US Forest Service based near Lake Tahoe. Ruano and his team have barely taken a break from battling the fires and he described the difficulty they have faced to access areas with narrow winding roads blocked by abandoned cars, as fierce gusts fanned the flames toward them.

While these battles have been difficult physically, they also take an emotional toll. In the rubble he spotted a spring toy left by a child. “What if this was my house? What if this was my childhood home?” he said. “I have a daughter and it’s devastating. We at least want to secure what’s already been saved.”

For many residents of this once vibrant village, there will be little left to return to.

A satellite picture shows burned homes in Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Photograph: Satellite image ©2025 Maxar Technologies/AFP/Getty Images

Daniel Clive McCallum knew his home would be taken by the flames when he finally made his way out of the canyon around 9pm on Tuesday. But returning Thursday by bike with bags in hand to collect any belongings that could be salvaged from the ashes, he marveled at the full scope of the devastation was on full display.

McCallum and his wife moved to this neighborhood out of Topanga Canyon to start a family. They didn’t want to subject their kids to fire evacuations and the terror that came with them.

“Now I have two kids and I have to explain to them that they can’t come home,” he said, staring into the footprint where their home once was.

He and others have described the Palisades as a haven for families, a slice of sprawling Los Angeles that had a small-town feel. Close-knit ties were forged here, where kids could walk to schools, with shops around the corner and an abundance of events, safe places to play and areas to congregate.

Now, McCallum said, his kids’ pediatrician’s office is gone. The playground is gone. The movie theater, the cafes – and most of all – the neighborhood is all gone.

“If our house had stood we would still have to move,” he said. “We can’t raise kids in a war zone.”

In the final hours before he knew he had to leave, McCallum threw buckets of water at his home and moved vegetation away from it. He put one houseplant outside, thinking perhaps it would survive even if the house didn’t.

A home burns in the Palisades fire in Pacific Palisades, California. Photograph: Agustin Paullier/AFP/Getty Images

As he assessed what’s been a complete loss – even the silverware melted – he picked up the pot carrying the singed plant and decided he’d give it a soak. Maybe something can be salvaged yet.

But for now, McCallum is just trying to process what’s happened. His kids will not have their childhoods in this picturesque place, a spot he called a sanctuary. The couple in their 90s whose home up the block was among the first to burn probably will not see it rebuilt. And then there are the striking moments that colored this event.

“The craziest thing about 8.30 at night, there was a Christmas tree about 12 ft tall in the middle of the street and it had caught ablaze,” McCallum said, recalling the moment of pause before he knew he had to leave. “The wind was pushing it down the center of our street and it was the most mesmerizingly beautiful thing I had ever seen and terrifying at the same time.

“It was like a giant spear, lit on fire, and it just shot right down our street – these are things you’ll never get out of your memory.”

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