According to Neal Flesner, the weather on the morning of January 7 had a strange feel to it. He had been a resident of Los Angeles for close to twenty-five years, but he had never before encountered winds that were so strong and packed with dust.
Flesner was able to see smoke and flames filling the hills close to his home in Pacific Palisades, California, by the time he left the gym in Venice Beach at approximately eleven o’clock in the morning local time.
It was already beginning to be prepared for an evacuation when his wife, Carmen, whose family had lived in Los Angeles for generations, started making preparations.
Flesner stated that the couple had, over the course of their years of residence in the Mandeville Canyon neighborhood close to the Palisades, been forced to evacuate their home due to at least half a dozen wildfires.
On the other hand, according to Flesner, in the Alphabet Streets neighborhood of the Palisades, where they lived, there was always a feeling that they were sufficiently removed from rural areas that were characterized by dry brush. They were protected from the flames by the fires.
“It was life. The probability of fire was always high,” Flesner stated.
When Flesner got back to his house, which was around twenty-four hours after he had fled, he discovered that this was not the case. Flesner, who was 48 years old at the time, made the decision to travel four and a half miles back into the area from Santa Monica with a man he had just met on the street. This decision was made while the Palisades fire was raging and devouring enormous tracts of land.
On the other hand, he stated that he was driven by a “burning desire” to witness personally the destruction that the fire had caused to his and Carmen’s “happy place.”
“That was where we lived. That’s where we wanted to live for the rest of our lives. That’s where we put all our effort and building that home,” Flesner stated. “And I need to see that firsthand.”
The whole area around Alphabet Streets was in ruins when Flesner arrived. His garage was the sole building that remained, nearly undisturbed.
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All that remained of his and his wife’s lives was contained therein. Some family pictures, a few bottles of wine, and a valuable fountainhead that had belonged to his wife’s father, who died over ten years ago.
Residents of Palisades and Malibu, California, waited on Saturday for the chance to be escorted by police into the Palisades Fire burn zone at crossroads along the Pacific Coast Highway, including Temescal Canyon and Channel Road.
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51-year-old Joel Kleinman waited for a ride to his family’s house in the Alphabet Streets neighborhood for fifteen minutes. When he realized how the fire had devastated his home, he became quite emotional.
He had a sympathetic arm from his police escort, a Los Angeles Port officer. Although Kleinman was unable to rescue much from his house, he was able to drive his car despite the headlights being melted.
Others have already started discussing reconstruction.
