On January 7th a lethal combination of powerful winds and recent drought sent the greater Los Angeles area up in flames. A week later, the city is still burning. At least 24 people have been killed and more than 12,000 buildings have been destroyed by the fires. By the time the flames are finally extinguished – and no one is quite sure when that will be – those figures will undoubtedly be higher.
Entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble. Walking through the newly charred parts of Los Angeles feels a little bit like trespassing in a graveyard. When I look at the piles of ash and glass and twisted metal in Altadena or Pacific Palisades, it’s hard to envision these neighbourhoods whole. But the few things that the fires, miraculously, left untouched help paint a picture of what these communities used to be.
In Altadena I met a few people on the street. One woman came back to see if her house had survived the fires. It did and she collected the essentials: her pillow and her tax documents. “We bought the house in 1998,” she told me. “It was the most beautiful year of our lives.” Firefighters drove by in their trucks and raised a weary hand in greeting as they passed. A city power worker ran lines through the street to try to turn the electricity back on for the few homes that remained standing. But the neighbourhood was mostly quiet, and I felt the need to whisper.
Chimneys were all that were left on some lots. They stood tall, like headstones above the debris. Concrete stairs to nowhere showed where front doors used to be. A dining room table was surrounded by four chairs but no walls. A little toy truck and a ripped trampoline evoked scenes of after-school play. A lemon tree was untouched, its yellow fruit audaciously vibrant against the ash and smoke. In front of what used to be a megamansion was a Harris-Walz sign; November seemed so very long ago. - Aryn Braun
Even as entire neighbourhoods in Los Angeles have been reduced to rubble, the fires have occasionally left reminders of what communities such as the Pacific Palisades used to be like MORGAN LIEBERMAN / REDUX / EYEVINE
The hills burn above the Mandeville Canyon neighbourhood of Los Angeles – one of the many arid areas of California that has become more susceptible to megafires PHILIP CHEUNG / REDUX / EYEVINE
Firefighters arrive in a tranquil garden to clear it of anything that could fuel the flames STEPHEN LAM / POLARIS / EYEVINE
The scale of the destruction calls into question whether modern firefighting methods are fit-for-purpose PHILIP CHEUNG/ REDUX / EYEVINE
Somehow, this fruit tree survived the conflagration relatively unscathed MINDY SCHAUER / GETTY IMAGES
Despite the risk, some residents are not prepared to give up their homes to the flames MARK ABRAMSON / REDUX / EYEVINE
Although fire is the most obvious source of danger, smoke can also be deadly – it is linked to an increase in respiratory, heart and other diseases STEPHEN LAM / POLARIS / EYEVINE
George Wilkins, wielding a hose, fights to save the Pacific Palisades Presbyterian Church as it catches fire MARK ABRAMSON / REDUX / EYEVINE
Thousands of gallons of flame retardant have been dropped from the sky to slow the fires’ spread, blanketing surfaces with an eerie pink sheen Loren Elliott / REDUX / EYEVINE
Flame-retardant foam transforms a garden into a swamp. It will lose its pink colour with prolonged exposure to the sun LOREN ELLIOTT / REDUX / EYEVINE
Two big fires – the Eaton in northern Los Angeles county and the Palisades in the western part of the city – continue to burn KYLE GRILLOT / REDUX
A six-mile section of Sunset Boulevard, one of Los Angeles’s most famous streets, has been consumed by flames MORGAN LIEBERMAN / REDUX / EYEVINE
Exhausted firefighters take a moment to rest. The Los Angeles fire department has been severely tested by the challenge of fighting multiple blazes at once LOREN ELLIOTT / REDUX / EYEVINE
Residents of neighbourhoods like the Pacific Palisades will be unable to begin reckoning with the devastation to their homes until the fire is finally under control KYLE GRILLOT/NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE
A resident stubbornly defends his home in the Pacific Palisades on January 7th. One week on, large swathes of America’s second-largest city lie in ruins PHILIP CHEUNG / REDUX / EYEVINE
An aerial view of the Pacific Palisades shows a ghost town of burned-out houses and near-empty roads. More than 20,000 Los Angeles residents have been forced to flee from their homes JOSH EDELSON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES