See Pacific Palisades before and after the devastating Los Angeles fires via Reuters
Written by Jackie Luna and Jonathan Allen
Los Angeles – Before the most devastating fire in California history, the Pacific Palisades neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles was filled with expensive homes in front of green, well-maintained lots and trendy shops and restaurants.
This week, the Palisades Fire has reduced most of it to black debris. To see what was lost, a Reuters video reporter visited the neighborhood on Friday to retrace the path taken by a YouTube hiking couple who made a video last year of a walking tour, reproduced with their permission.
In May 2024, when the original video was recorded under a blue California sky, the white building with ionic columns on Sunset Boulevard in the Palisades Village shopping center was home to Starbucks (NASDAQ: ) and Cafe Vida. It has been transformed, it is black with soot, the palm trees outside are faded, the sky is black and yellow.
In the surrounding residential streets, home after home has collapsed in charred heaps filled with fire-resistant terracotta roof tiles. Standing concrete doors open to the ruins.
The Palisades Fire has grown to more than 20,000 acres since it broke out Tuesday and was only 11% contained Saturday, and the Palisades area remains a mandatory evacuation zone. Other fires, some almost as large, are ravaging parts of Los Angeles and neighboring cities, killing at least 11 people so far and destroying thousands of buildings.
The Palisades was almost devoid of life on Friday: a few Los Angeles firefighters here and there, and a few crows watching from the street before dispersing. Except for another house, a wheelchair was sitting on the side of the road, everything melted or burned except for its metal frame.
The scenic view from Point at the Bluffs includes the ocean and the curved Pacific Coast Highway. From there, what’s left of the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates fills the view: dozens of affordable mobile homes that ran down the beach are now rows of trash.
