Hell Angeles - Chapter 1
January 9th
Two days ago, on January 7th, 2025, the angriest fire in American history ripped through my hometown[i] of Pacific Palisades, California. I will qualify that statement in time— by showing you the cutting room floor of the movie. Both beauty and terror alike. It is beyond my skills as a writer to tell you what these images and stories mean. Except to say: they mean something. What we’re witnessing now as black sky and mountain meet in orange flame and as populations of 50,000 are evacuated at a clip and entire towns are wiped out and as 747 planes fly in the night spraying red retardant on the earth— as Los Angeles teeters, as my house teeters—what we’re watching unfold in this California, the capital of ego, the locust of extreme wealth, the massif central of media and technology and a government so broken and backwardated by its riches—yes say it, say the unsayable—there’s schadenfreude in watching it burn—this, today, is our ingress. It’s new, fresh and ugly. Paranoia released. A war on ourselves. Destruction pornography.
Two days into this, my town looks like a nuke was dropped.
Everyone I know is scattered.
Some of us have our passports and a few pairs of underwear, a toothbrush we grabbed before the flames jumped the canyon. Medication. Credit cards and car keys. Maybe not the car. We have our phones, which contain universes of suffering.
What I’ve tried to do here is record, record, record. Because my tentacles run deep in this community, because I live in the furthest east canyon of the Pacific Palisades between Wil Rogers State Park, Sullivan Canyon and Mandeville Canyon, because I spent a thousand sane hours in those hills hiking, exploring, because I have children at three different schools in this community and neighbors who touch every aspect of life in this town, because my world is at the baseball park and Caffé Luxxe coffee shop and Gelson’s grocery store and all the roads that run in between—because it’s embers, all of it embers—because the fire is still raging and people are gutted, spilling their insides, on the verge of nervous breakdown, hallucinating their way into a new reality—because the looters are out—because I can make no sense of the time warp except to say that I’m in it and it’s bizarre, surreal—because of this I am in the business of recording. Recording is what I can do. Recording is what I can handle.
A note on what is here.
My chat threads contain images and videos that are hard to process, to understand, unless and until you know the human at the center. This, too, I am trying to get down on paper. The humans are changing rapidly, and this is part of the story.
Also, know this.
For me, the surprise of this fire was profound. I grew up in the frozen tundra of Maine and Massachusetts where mountains are hills, oceans never bring tidal waves and the ground never shakes. My ancestors were wise not to come west. This place is extreme in every sense of the word: I’m not the first to say it. What started two days ago—this inferno—is known in this state but it’s not known to me. In a strange hall of mirrors way, I was one block away from the trade towers on September 11th, 2001. I was working that morning from the Brown Brothers Harriman Building on Wall Street, and I watched everything. I watched airplane and building collide, humans jump from burning windows, sky and earth turn to ash. I was unlucky to be there but lucky to stay alive. Now, as I clock the surprise of watching flames I’ve seen before (albeit, swallowing an entirely different landscape) it is impossible not to wonder if threads exist between catastrophes. This I will explore…
One more note before I begin.
My aim is to get everything down. The precipice has never been further. There’s a phantasmagoria of anecdote and image and plot beat to work though; people are calling me breaking apart, our home is surrounded by fires still raging in two canyons, we’re getting burglary alerts by the hour, my kids are out of school and my husband, a stoic figure, is walking a psychic tightrope that just might snap. Every person I’ve ever known has reached out to ask if I’m okay. If I’m okay, it’s because I sit here writing at a time when writing feels like a crime. So, for all of you reading this, if you don’t hear from me these next few months it's because I’m recording. I start with my own story and go outwards.
So, it begins.
January 7th
Day One
Joan Didion wrote, “The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion real live here in only the most temporary way.” I believe children are the exception to this rule. My children were living happily in a world that was very real to them—as real as anything— that morning of January 7th, 2025. I will begin there. 7:25 am. My 12-year-old daughter, Eloise, stands in her school uniform, a blue-and-white plaid skirt and white polo shirt, blue zip-up fleece, sky blue Jansport backpack on her back, hard plastic clarinet case on the ground. She is at the end of our driveway, which is also the bus stop for our neighborhood. Alongside her are twin kindergarteners, a third-grade boy and a sixth-grade boy also in uniform. Some other kids. The kids are chattering. The skies are clear. The sun is out. Wisps of clouds skid by overhead. The winds are approximately 30 mph. On our bucolic street, gently sloping from sea to sky, with short driveways where you can see into people’s yards, there is foliage is blown everywhere. Lawn furniture knocked over. Today, the recycling bins have minds of their own. The blue bins are rolling up and down the street with the wind. Wind, wind, wind. This will feature prominently in our story.[1] The kids are laughing now. The school bus arrives and Edwin, the driver, waves. My daughter boards the bus. She is off to school.
11:44 am. Messages ripple onto the “6th Girls” parent chat. “Stay safe!” someone says before posting a video of soft grey smoke billowing into the sky.
Oh no where is that?
Yikes - is that the Highlands?
Yes – and blowing right over school.
The winds are so intense.
KW says piedro morada
I’ve been watching as the flames and clouds grow rapidly…first responders on it now
Another video is posted. In this video, a bird cruises across the screen in front of great spires of grey smoke. Everything in California is big—sun, sky, mountain and ocean—so there’s always a moment of pause, wonder, about whether what you’re viewing is in fact big enough to be relevant. But now we start getting notifications from the school. So, either the size or the location of the fire, is of concern. Dear Families, we are aware of the fire on the 1100 block of Piedra Morada Drive in the Palisades. All students are evacuating to the Meadow. Please DO NOT come to campus or call at this time. Please standby for additional updates. These notifications get progressively worse. Dear Families, due to the fire, all families, please come to campus to pick up your children. If you are having another family come pick up your child please email us. Another one: ATTENTION: Due to the growing fire, please come to campus to pick up your children. If you are having another family pick up your child please email attendance@stmatthewparishschool.com.
The last notification in this series contains typos. Whoever is writing these emergency notifications is writing fast and is in a panic. Notification from St. MatthewJs Parish School. UPDATE: All students, staff and faculty….
Noon. Roads gridlocked. Traffic to make you sweat. The major thoroughfares in Pacific Palisades are impassable. My husband left his office at 401 Wilshire in Santa Monica to pick up Eloise from St. Matthew’s Parish School (children are standing on the meadow waiting to be evacuated) but he can’t get anywhere and eventually he gives up. In a panic he calls me, and I call another family with children at the school. They have a home in the Bluffs neighborhood on a road called Via De La Paz, all of which will burn in a few hours. They don’t know that yet. Neither do we. I’m trading back and forth between calls, at my desk, frantically checking chat threads because a) we’re inexperienced in evacuations, b) local firefighters are telling people that after a fire exceeds 200 acres the thing goes parabolic, c) even the people who have lived here the longest, say, since the 1979 fire, are losing their composure. It’s all over the news and on my phone. The people who are trying to stay optimistic, to send upbeat messages, are quickly conquered.
We got this
Absolutely
Firetrucks all up our street
The wind is so intense
These flames are too much—I’m going
This is from our house. It’s so bad.
We can see flames from our yard
Right here, someone asks for help. They can’t pick up their children because of traffic coming west. Another person writes encouragingly, “It’s okay. Take your time,” which is ironic because at that moment, the clock stops.
The chat goes blank for five hours.
Everyone is evacuating.
During this time, KTLA local reporters are doing yeoman’s work recording the chaos. They stand at the bottom of Palisades Drive wearing yellow jackets with reflective gear, pointing to bulldozers pushing parked cars aside. People are fleeing on foot, leaving their cars and possessions behind (at the advice of policemen.) A bulldozer moves into frame. The road is cleared for firetrucks, though we don’t see any firetrucks emerge. A palm tree is burning. Actors whose names we can’t recall (i.e. Steve Guttenberg from Three Men and a Baby, Cocoon) are jogging down the street with a glisten of sweat, a shine of purpose, happy to find a camera pointed their direction, imploring residents to “leave your car keys inside your car, so we can move your car!” as if this public service announcement is obvious and would occur to anyone who just went through the motions of packing their car with valuables, evacuating their house, then evacuating their car full of valuables. The reporter interviews a Rabbi in front of Starbucks, whose wife is afraid to leave the car. The Rabbi has soot on his polo shirt but is calm. Tranquil even. He’s talking about what a wonderful community this is and how long they’ve lived in Pacific Palisades and where his condominium is located. He points up the hill (past the palm tree still burning) and in the background, we see Calvary Christian School which the news reporter understands, is under threat. Or maybe it isn’t. We’re getting conflicting reports. The news reporter holds her earpiece to listen. Apparently, earlier, the roof of the nursery school caught sparks. They evacuated the children in a calm, orderly manner. The Catholic toddlers are safe. The Rabbi sighs relief. The news reporter moves to another interviewee; this is a woman clutching her small dog to her chest and here enters the zeitgeist of cats, dogs, and fire.
But first a baby.
Sometime during those hours of evacuation, my friend Courtney (her entire family lives in Pacific Palisades and has since 1990), wrote this:
My sister just drove the wrong way up Palisades Drive. She was in the village doing errands, at the store, etc. Husband was at work. Her 6-month-old baby was at home with the babysitter who smelled the smoke and heard they needed to evacuate but couldn’t figure out how to get the baby strapped in the car seat. So, the babysitter just decided to stay behind in the house. Obviously, my sister was losing her mind. But the road was blocked and no way back up the canyon to her house. Until she switched lanes and just went up the wrong way… didn’t listen to police or anyone… got the baby…
Back to dogs.
This is from a parent in my son’s 3rd grade class.
I made the news. Running up a burning canyon to get our dog. I evacuated my son and his friend from school and dropped them off. Tried to get back to my house but deserted my car, which is now gone, most likely along with my store and house – I ran about two miles to the bottom of palisades drive ad sunset and then walked a mile and a half up the burning canyon road with deserted cars everywhere. Fire truck came down and made a U-turn and asked if I needed a ride down. I said, no, I needed to go up and go get G’s dog. He already lost a dog during the house break in last year – I’m not having him lose another dog. Made it to my house and couldn’t get in- the car had the garage clicker and my front door key didn’t work. So I had to climb up to the second level of the town house and kick in the bathroom windows to grab the dog and a couple of bags. And started walking down the hill. Got a ride halfway before my ride freaked out and wanted to turn around, so I walked the rest of the way and ran into a news crew.
Babies, dogs, cats, and now spies.
In a further is-this-really-happening moment, the woman above called me to talk. We got talking. She is a great talker. She spent the afternoon (post action sequence above) riding around in the car of a friend, watching houses burn. That friend of hers, the man who drove the car, was not sure if his house was on fire because he was stuck in a meeting with the FBI all day. Why? Oh, because he’s being investigated. Why is being investigated? Because he claims to be a CIA spy. Is that a crime? If you’re not a CIA spy you can’t claim to be a CIA spy. This same man rented a $30 million dollar house in Pacific Palisades and never paid rent, then when the owner confronted him, he reacted by selling all the furniture and every bottle of wine in the wine cellar. And he’s a huge political donor. And a story just ran on him in the Financial Times about how he helped a Geneva commodities trader trade billions of dollars of oil with Russia despite severe sanctions. This man, who contain universes, who belongs in the “only in LA” file wanted her to drive with him up a road with no outlet so he could see if his house was burning—and I never heard the answer— because the call dropped. I will circle back to this story when I have time, because it’s too good to abandon. But the fire is spreading too fast…
Every breathing soul in Pacific Palisades without a fire hose is evacuated.
6:21 pm. I know someone who is still there. She is a resident of Ocampo Drive in the Huntington Palisades, located in the flat section of town. It’s very flat, and very far from Temescal canyon, the last place we heard the fire was spreading. There’s an entire small metropolis—hundreds of buildings, the high school, the post office, several elementary schools, the library, clothing and jewelry and grocery stores, hardware store, nail salon, strip mall, taco trucks, skateboard outfitter, hair salon, car wash and gas station, Palisades Recreation Center with its flag football field and playground and sand pit and jungle gym and bocce court and pickleball and basketball gym and tennis courts and baseball diamonds with stadium lights—a galaxy, a galaxy— between her and where you’d expect the firemen to stop the fire. But alas, the sky over her street in Huntington Palisades is black turning bright orange. There’s a 40-foot poplar tree, waving, blowing side to side. Other trees on the street still wear their Christmas lights. She is there.
The houses are big but they are close.
Here’s the first video she sent me. This video is the first of hundreds like it that I will receive in the coming 24 hours. She drives slowly, maybe 10 mph, filming out her windshield. The kids and dogs are in the car. The dog is panting. The kids are rumbling around excitedly, knowing this is a once in your childhood type event. She’s about to take the right turn from Pampas Ricas Boulevard onto Ocampo Drive, but then she slows the car. “Shitballs! That’s the—Oh no, oh no…” Her kid yelps “our house is going to catch on fire!” and she corrects them, no, no, because while there are flames, it’s not yet clear that her house which hosts the largest Halloween gathering in Huntington Palisades won’t be able to host it next year. Maybe the tricker-treaters can still get their Kit Kats and glow necklaces, and the parents can take tequila shots in her driveway while wearing pink bunny costumes. Come October 2025, maybe her house will stand. In a follow up video she says, “Wait, wait, wait, nobody talk! Oh my god. We are getting out of here…” then the video cuts.
7:23 pm. The gates of hell are open but we’re all sitting on our ass watching it on a screen. All of us. All the residents of Pacific Palisades plus the rest of the world. Anderson Cooper hasn’t shown up yet (CNN hasn’t jumped into action) so we’re relying on local news reporters, KTLA men and women, and they’re doing a great job. They’re on it. The flames have pushed them down the wide 4-lane road that cuts through Temescal Canyon that connects to the Pacific Coast Highway. A year ago in this spot, a confused and marijuana-addled driver (these are common on PCH) veered out of his lane into oncoming traffic and killed innocent people. But that’s ancient history. Now we’re focused on the “Palisades” for which the town is named—a line of bold cliffs hanging over the ocean—and though the ocean isn’t on fire yet, the bathroom at Wil Rogers State Beach is exploding in flames. The scrub grass on the interior side of the PCH is neon orange. We wonder what’s happening to homes right above. The cameramen are careful to keep our eyes on the news reporters, who sees valor in the face of the fireman. The reporter asks the fireman a string of meaningless questions, “What do you think of this fire?” “Have you ever seen anything like it?” as the hill burns in background. The fireman looks like he just arrived for his shift. We’re going on the tenth or eleventh hour of news coverage—early days, though we don’t know it yet—and the script is already repeating. We gaze down at our phones. We know the chat threads are about to turn dark, very dark, when we see this:
Thinking of you all and sending love.
Sending you all {heart emoji heart emoji}
Love you all. Praying for everyone.
Will do
That last person must have responded to the wrong thread, or else they thought the line above was a call to prayer. There should be a call to prayer. Because the next thing that happens is that no one says anything, but we all know what’s happening. The Pacific Palisades fire we thought would stop didn’t stop. Every neighborhood between 11900 Piedra Morada Drive where the “vegetation fire” started at 10:30 am to where the news reporter stands here at 10:00 pm on the shoulder of the highway (is the public bathroom behind her still burning? Why is no one putting out the fire? There are plenty of firemen giving interviews) everywhere, everything, earth and sky is burning—
Now it becomes personal.
Our house is gone
I’m so sorry, M. My heart goes out to you. To everyone.
Your life is more important.
Ours is gone as well
Oh L, I’m so sorry.
L, I’m so [despair emoji]
Our entire bluff is gone. Every house on Via and surrounding streets.
Oh god, S. Yours too? It’s so devastating and horrifying.
Sending you all so much love.
[Heart emoji]. We will all literally hold each other up.
Our neighborhood was burning all day and night, we watched until the power went around 8. Feeling lost.
10 pm – Midnight. Lost is a feeling I would welcome. Instead, I’m feeling as suffocated, tethered and anchored to a specific spot on the earth as I ever have. My home. My home as I mentioned is in the Riviera section of Pacific Palisades, as far east as you can get before you hit Mandeville Canyon and the edge of Brentwood and Santa Monica. We live far. Mercifully far from the raging inferno at the center of town. By all accounts, I shouldn’t have to worry. But here we go. This fire which has successfully torn through entire swaths of wilderness and hopped thousands of feet of elevation, and leveled neighborhoods, one after the other, this fire is growing, gaining fuel, as it climbs the side of our canyon. The power hasn’t cut off yet. Out my ring camera, I can see Dante’s inferno. The sky is hell red. I’m calling neighbors. I shouldn’t be calling neighbors. My best friend up the road. Her porch is in flames. They just received the permit for the retaining wall, there is no retaining wall yet, and there never will be. The flames are in their living room. The homeowner next door is sending a better angle of their house in flames—is there a such a thing? A good angle of your home burning? Our alarm is going off.
At one point I turn off my phone.
My back is seizing.
My lungs won’t fill.
I’m no stranger to this earth; plenty of calamity marks my past. I take an eccentric interest in war, genocide, coordinated attack. But this I didn’t see coming. My house. My house. The flames popping and exploding in the air over my driveway, the driveway where at 7:35 am that morning—a lifetime away—my 12-year-old daughter Eloise stood in her school uniform, a blue-and-white plaid skirt and white polo shirt, blue zip-up fleece, sky blue Jansport backpack on her back, hard plastic clarinet case on the ground. Alongside her are twin kindergarteners, a third-grade boy and a sixth-grade boy also in uniform. Some other kids. The kids are chattering. The skies are clear. The sun is out. Wisps of clouds skid by overhead. The winds are approximately 30 mph. There is foliage is blown everywhere. Lawn furniture knocked over. The blue bins are rolling up and down the street with the wind. There is no fire in this picture yet.
No fire…