South Shore Press Reporter Robert Chartuk has hit the road. He filed this from California.
Dispatch, Topanga—The last time l was here, the blue Pacific sparkled as the backdrop for one of the most famous coastal communities in the world. Mansions of the rich and famous were perched on the hills leading down to the beach, and lush vegetation filled the countryside. Now it’s all gone.
The smell of burnt rubble hung in the air as l headed north on the Pacific Coast Highway. Soldiers with rifles manned checkpoints along the way. My South Shore Press credentials, all the way from New York, get me through. The road is restricted to workers, and crews were busy rebuilding the electric grid, the first step of a restoration that will probably take a generation to complete.
I find myself alone down a side street staring at devastation beyond belief. Chimneys are the only things left standing at what used to be stately homes. Trees were burned to stumps, and cars were rendered unrecognizable. Concrete was incinerated to dust; metal melted to indistinguishable blobs.
Santa Ana Winds gusting through Topanga Canyon fanned the flames to an unheard-of ferocity. Miles of homes along Malibu Beach were obliterated. Yet, among the destruction, here and there, structures were spared as if protected by a divine fate.
Seeking solace from a disrupted life, a man is fishing from the rocks that cascade down to the sea. He says he’s lucky to be alive. “I was on my roof with a hose putting out the embers,” said the Topanga native. “When the flames got too close, l knew l had to get out of there.” He showed me a video of his daring escape. Flames towered up on either side of the road, so close that if he weren’t moving, he would have been burned alive. “The wind was holding the flames back just enough for me to get to the bottom of the hill. If it switched,” he told me, “l would not have made it. I thought l was going to die.”
The man hailed his county supervisor as a savior. “There were no firefighters here; we were totally on our own. We flooded her with desperate calls and texts; we needed help. And then all of a sudden planes and helicopters appeared and started dumping water. It gave us a chance to escape.” Days later, when he was allowed to return, he found that his home was spared. His yard was covered in red fire retardant. “It looked like the surface of Mars.”
The man was awed by the spirit of his neighbors fighting the flames together with hoses from his spigots, and disgust for looters who came in the wake of the tragedy. After staying in temporary housing for a month, he received a $5,000 bill from the Los Angeles County Water District.