By Jackie Luna and Jonathan Allen
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Before one of the most devastating wildfires in California history swept through, the Pacific neighborhood on Los Angeles’ west side was filled with luxury homes, green, manicured landscaping and popular boutiques and cafes.
The Palisades Fire reduced much of it to blackened rubble this week. To see what’s been lost, a Reuters video journalist visited the neighborhood on Friday to walk the path of a YouTube travel influencer couple who filmed a walking tour video last year, which is reproduced with their permission.
In May 2024, when the original video was recorded under the California sky, a white building with ionic columns on Sunset Boulevard in the Palisades Village shopping complex was home to Starbucks (NASDAQ: ) and Cafe Vida. Now it is ruined, darkened with soot, the palm trees outside bare, the sky hazy and yellow.
In the surrounding residential streets, house after house collapsed in charred heaps, topped with terracotta roofing tiles that had withstood the fire. The still-standing concrete doors open onto the rubble.
The Palisade Fire has grown to more than 20,000 acres since it broke out Tuesday and was still only 11% contained Saturday, and the Palisade neighborhood remains a mandatory evacuation zone. Other fires, some nearly as large, are ravaging other parts of Los Angeles and neighboring cities, killing at least 11 people and destroying thousands of buildings.
On Friday, the Palisades were almost devoid of life: a few Los Angeles firefighters here and there and a few ravens watching the dispersal from the road. Outside one house, what was once a wheelchair sat on the sidewalk, all but the steel frame melted or burned.
Scenic views from Point Bluffs include the ocean and Pacific Coast Highway. From there, what’s left of the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates fills the view: Dozens of relatively affordable mobile homes that lined the beach are now rows of rubble.