Aiexpress – It looked like a bomb had gone off on Sunset Boulevard by Wednesday morning.
As the terrible Palisades fire moved away from one of the city’s most famous streets, smoke and ash turned the once-beautiful scenery into something strangely lunar.
There were burned-down houses, some with minor damage and others completely destroyed. A Shell gas station that has been burned down, but the pumps and convenience store are still there; a Bank of America in a historic building that has been gutted by fire, leaving the metal frames of the ATMs out front bent from the heat.
Palisades residents begged LAPD officers to let them through a police line so they could check on their homes and get important medicines.
The Palisades fire started early Tuesday morning near Piedra Morada Drive, and strong winds whipped it around very badly. It had already burned more than 11,802 acres by Wednesday afternoon, going west into Malibu and east toward Brentwood. It had caused a lot of damage.
Tens of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes. As catastrophic fires burned in other parts of the city at the same time, authorities reported an unknown number of “significant” injuries. Two people were arrested for looting in L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, where thieves were trying to steal from wealthy areas that had been evacuated.
William Deverell, a historian and head of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, said, “Even though what has happened and is happening is very unusual, I fear we are seeing a new, terrible, cruel normal.”
On Wednesday, a lot of the homes and sites that were on Pacific Coast Highway between Will Rogers State Beach, which is just north of Santa Monica, and Carbon Beach, which is in the eastern part of Malibu, were burned down. A lot of the seaside homes that were built along the highway were destroyed by the fire and fell to the beach or into the water.
There are no longer any cozy houses or multimillion-dollar beach palaces along the coast. Also gone are well-known and loved businesses that had been around for a long time.
In Santa Monica, the emergency room at Providence Saint John’s Health Center treated people who had breathed in smoke, had their eyes irritated, or had small burns.
Dr. Ali Jamehdor told everyone to be careful during the strong winds that were throwing things into the air and told people with heart or lung problems to stay inside. The Santa Monica hospital had to postpone surgeries on Tuesday night, but they were supposed to start up again Thursday.
A lot of the “Alphabet Streets” area in the Palisades was still destroyed on Wednesday. This is a mostly flat residential grid in a U-shaped pocket just north of Sunset Boulevard.
A lot of the Palisades were blocked off, but 40-year-old James Fynes found a way to get into the area through a back stairs. He came to check on the house where his friend’s parents lived after moving in last year after three years of building.
He kept saying, “This is crazy,” as he walked through street after street of burned-out cars and houses. “I don’t believe there is no water.”
There were signs of the owners’ wealth in every burned-down block: a home gym that was almost unrecognizable, a blackened hot tub, and the husks of several cars parked in a garage.
That was pretty much all that was left on most blocks: stoves. Power lines hung over damaged streets. There were still fires in some homes.
For 56-year-old John Lightfoot, each business that burned down brought back memories. The bank he used for decades and the small café he often went to are both gone.
A few blocks away, Michael Payton, who runs the nearby Erewhon shop, came to look at the damage. The shop was still open, but everything else was gone.
“The Palisades are finished.” “The town is done,” he said. This is a total disaster.
Los Angeles was filled with fear as the Palisades and other fires burned and winds screamed. It seemed like no part of the city was completely safe.
Some people said they had to leave their homes more than once because the fire was following them to the homes of family or friends in “safe” areas. Others found out from afar that their homes had caught fire when their phones went off with a fire or security warning.
“From what I’ve seen in the past, when we talk about disasters in Southern California, in L.A. County, and especially when we talk about fire disasters, there seems to be a disconnect between those of us who live in the flats and those who live in the foothills,” researcher D.J. Waldie said.
Source: Devastation on Sunset Boulevard Massive Fire Ravages Pacific Palisades
