3 weeks ago
Last Updated:January 12, 2025, 10:09 IST
Los Angeles wildfires: The area once had expensive homes and popular cafes but all of it now is darkened with soot and blackened into rubble.
Firefighters survey the remains of homes following the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, US. (IMAGE: REUTERS)
The Pacific Palisades neighborhood on Los Angeles’ west side was once filled with expensive homes fronted by green, well-tended landscaping and popular boutiques and cafes but that was before one of the most destructive fires in California history swept through.
The Palisades Fire, which satellites from space captured, leveled much of the affluent neighborhood into blackened rubble. Reuters visited the neighborhood this week to retrace the path taken by a YouTube travel influencer couple who made a video last year of a walking tour and reproduced their video while making the before-and-after video.
The original video is from May 2024 and shows a California blue sky, a white building with ionic columns on Sunset Boulevard at the Palisades Village shopping complex was home to a Starbucks and Cafe Vida. The video captured by Reuters shows the landscape which is now gutted, darkened with soot, the palm trees outside denuded, the sky hazy and yellowed.
On the surrounding residential streets, home after home has collapsed in charred piles topped with a scattering of terracotta roofing tiles that withstood the blaze. Still-standing concrete doorways open onto ruins.
The Palisades Fire has grown to more than 20,000 acres since breaking out on Tuesday and was still only 11% contained on Saturday, and the Palisades neighborhood remains a mandatory evacuation zone. Other fires, some nearly as vast, are destroying other parts of Los Angeles and neighboring towns, 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 ravens watched from a road before scattering. Outside one home, what was once a wheelchair sat on the sidewalk, everything melted or burned except for its steel frame.
A scenic lookout spot from the Point at the Bluffs encompasses the ocean and curving Pacific Coast Highway. From there, what remains of the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates fills the view: dozens of relatively affordable mobile homes that sloped down towards the beach are now rows of rubble.
(with inputs from Reuters)
Location :Los Angeles, United States of America (USA)
First Published:January 12, 2025, 10:09 IST
News world Before-And-After Video Shows How Los Angeles Fires Levelled Pacific Palisades Into Blackened Rubble
