Los Angeles has never seen this level of destruction: ‘Everything is burned down’

The unprecedented scale of the destruction in Pacific Palisades came into horrifying focus Thursday from a fire that flattened a large swath of the community, rendering it unrecognizable.

As the smoke began to clear after two days of intense fire, Pacific Palisades appeared more like a moonscape of destruction than an upscale neighborhood known for its ocean views, beautiful vistas and celebrity denizens. Entire swaths of the residential district, from its quaint village to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, were completely gone, the architectural whimsy and lush landscaping reduced to burned-out ruins with white smoke still billowing from the wreckage.

It is a level of loss a Los Angeles community has not endured in recent memory — if ever — despite earthquakes, fires, floods and civil unrest. The devastation extended for miles. Some of the structures that survived — shopping centers, office buildings, a church, a school building, apartments, an occasional house — rose out of an otherwise featureless, battered and gray landscape. The scene was equally grim on Pacific Coast Highway, where row after row of prized homes backing up onto the sand were incinerated and exposing direct views of the ocean to the road.

And even as the skies cleared and the winds calmed a bit, more properties continued to catch fire.

Officials, still struggling to calculate all the damage, estimated structure losses in the Palisades to be more than 5,300 based on aerial infrared technology. They stressed it was a preliminary number. Officials estimated at least 4,000 structures were damaged or destroyed in the Eaton fire burning in the Altadena area. These numbers would make this week’s disaster among the worst ever in terms of property losses.

“This has the potential to be, at least collectively, the costliest wildfire disaster in American history,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said.