Cauffiel: Fire, Wind, and Incompetence Destroyed More Than Brick and Mortar in Los Angeles

It’s been a rough week for we survivors of the deadly Pacific Palisades and Los Angeles County fires. Exactly one year ago it was rougher still.

The greatest loss exacted by the firestorm that tore through my Palisades neighborhood on January 7, 2025, was not the buildings and possessions the flames consumed; it was something far more important.

Yes, we had 12 deaths in the Palisades and 31 overall from other fires in the county, authorities say.

But there was something else, something lost to those of us who escaped, only to wake up a couple days later and be confronted with what was the real meaning of that often-overused word community.

I didn’t need an “After Action” report from Los Angeles authorities to tell me what went wrong January 7. I knew within the first hour of that day that we were all in for what we used to call in my former hometown of Detroit “a full-on shit show.”

It was somewhere around 10 a.m. that one of the residents knocked on my door in my apartment house off Sunset Boulevard where I’d lived for more than twenty years to work in film and television.

“Hey, there’s some smoke up in the hills,” he said.

A half dozen of us there stepped outside and gazed across Sunset at the single column of grey smoke coming from the state land above what is called the Highlands at a 1,500-foot elevation about a mile away.

Minutes later, it turned to black smoke.

“That means a house or building is burning,” somebody said.

What happened in ensuing minutes and hours would present a narrative of inexplicable failures of city government that I would personally experience.

What happened in the days that followed revealed an impact I never anticipated, even after covering disasters in more youthful years as a reporter for a daily newspaper in Detroit or the tornado that heavily damaged my home and studio some 25 years ago.

Not long after we saw a distant home consumed with flames and a demonic black cloud of smoke floating our way, my first call went to my friend Carol. She lived with her small dog Lilly a half mile away off Sunset.

Carol had no idea an evacuation order had since been issued, though it was coming in by text on my phone. Her car was in the shop, so I told her I’d soon be right over to pick her and the dog up – I thought.

Sunset Boulevard was packed with hundreds of barely moving cars and trucks. So, I picked her up on a side street, and soon we joined the rest of the cars on Sunset heading east but making no progress, the air conditioner in my car on recirculate. Toxic smoke now was enveloping the iconic boulevard that linked the west side to the sea.

I turned on a local affiliate on my phone stuck to my dash. Gavin Newsom and members of the city council now were on nearby Will Rogers Beach, surrounded by police and preparing to do a news conference.

I called 911 to request some help from those police.

“I think you need to get some traffic control out here in the Palisades for the evacuation,” I told the operator. “We’re all at a standstill on Sunset, and we are all about to be taken out by smoke inhalation unless you can get it moving.”

“There’s no evacuation order in the Palisades,” the 911 operator said.

She laughed — and then hung up.

I looked at Carol then back at the phone. Governor Newsom now was speaking, bragging that California was without equal in handling wildfires.

He was followed by speeches by what I recall a half dozen city council members getting their five minutes of political fame before the cameras. One shamed anyone who wasn’t evacuating.

“What the hell do they think we’re trying to do?” I told Carol.

When embers started flying above us, I did a U-turn.

“If we’re going to get torched,” I told Carol. “Maybe the best place for us is in my building’s swimming pool.”

I’d just had a contractor put in new fencing around the pool where some residents took their laptops and worked, kids took swimming lessons and senior residents lounged in the Southern Californian sun.

Indeed, the property I’d lived in was exceptional, though also affordable. Pacific Gardens Apartments, built in 1952, overlooked the Pacific from a bluff about 300 feet above sea level. My favorite surf spot was below.

I’d been managing the 47-unit mid-century modern building for eight years, a great gig that gave me extra income to carrying me through the lulls between writing novels or pitching TV shows.

Now, I wanted to confirm all my residents had evacuated, though I still never expected the flames to breach Sunset. No fire had ever done before.

So, when we made our next attempt to leave, I left 13 guitars, two vintage amplifiers, a professional library, and more importantly, videos of my two kids growing up and 40 years of writing from newspapers and magazines.

I took a backup drive from my computer and birth certificates just in case. But I thought I’d be back in a day or two at the most.

After trying to drive west this time in this attempt to get to Pacific Coast Highway only a mile away and finding even a worse backup, we saw flames licking the boulevard and terrified residents abandoning their cars on the pavement and running away on foot.

I did another U-turn.

The wind speeds were increasing. I saw fire was raging in the hills.

What I didn’t see were airships dropping water or retardant. I didn’t see fire trucks either. I was told later they were boxed out by gridlock caused by lack of coordination between the fire and police departments.

Mayor Karen Bass was in Africa. The deputy mayor in charge of that job also wasn’t in city hall. I would report months later for Breitbart News that Dep. Mayor Brian K. Williams was on suspension, being investigated by the FBI for calling in a fake bomb threat to get out of a zoom meeting.

It was just another one of the more than a half dozen components of that “shit show” I mentioned earlier.

But I digress, the beachy news conference over, and with Gavin Newsom’s slicked back hair still in place, the police finally showed up more than 90 minutes into the fire and traffic began to move.

Two hours later I was at my son John’s apartment in Burbank watching developments on the local affiliates. The high winds and the fire now were like something out of World War II bombing run, the blaze out of control and looking for its next residential block of fuel.

And that’s when it became clear how my life was about to completely change.

One of the most troubling bits of news came from one of my residents at the building, a Vietnam veteran who braved the smoke to get his possession and medals from the war, I was told.

Three fire trucks had parked in the cul de sac in front of our building, the fireman telling him it was great a staging area. They had pumpers, fire hoses, and 12 firefighters ready to douse the flames if they jumped Sunset Boulevard.

“We’ll save your building,” one said.

The fire jumped. They turned on the fire hydrant. Nothing came out.

I saw the flames raging inside the picture window of my apartment in a news report.

But there was a worse piece of news. I got a text that night from my friend Scott.

It simple stated. “The theater is on fire.”

That meant Theater Palisades, a performing arts playhouse, near the town’s business district was burning. That meant the historic Palisades Woman’s Club right near it would also burn.

But what hit me like a body blow wasn’t the building. It was what went on there.

Every day for four years at 7 a.m. I’d gone to the playhouse to meet with a group of men who helped each other recover from alcoholism and live a robust, principled life. I even dedicated my last crime novel to the group.

In fact, just about every church and building where the many 12-step meetings were held in the Palisades would burn or be shuttered.

Where were the men at my meeting? Where would we meet? Where would we establish what our friend Bobby Kennedy Jr. often called the healing power of “a recovery community.”

Especially now.

The theater fire hit me harder than the blaze at my own residence.

One day later, I used some old media credentials from Detroit to get though police check points and back to the Palisades to survey the damage.

I saw tracks of row houses leveled and a landscape that looked like it was imported from the the aftermath of Hiroshima or the Dresden World War II firestorm.

My bank, two supermarkets, restaurants, the village’s small businesses – all incinerated.

When I got to my apartment building three stories were nothing more than a single story of smoking rubble. Everything in all the 47 apartments, except a child’s bike on a deck, was ash, melted metal and twisted steel.

One item survived in my apartment —  a broken coffee cup  from the historic home in Akron, Ohio of Dr. Bob Smith, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935.

Then the realization began.

What about the stock boys at Ralph’s supermarket and my favorite cashier Lucy at the self-checkout I always chatted with? What about Daniella at the bakery? And Michele at the bank? What about Steven who delivered pizzas? What about Harold the locksmith or the guy who owned the shoe repair?

Or, in my building: Mr. Pick, the music manager who used to rep the Osmonds or Courtney the breathwork healer or Luis my maintenance guy? What about Wade, who owned two laundromats or his wife Kelsey, an ocean lifeguard?

None I would define as close friends. But they were an integral part of a daily montage that defined my life.

Later I would learn the building’s owner would not rebuild. He couldn’t make it work with the millions it would cost to replace and still offer reasonable apartment rents.

In 24 hours, because of a city unprepared, because of brush-ridden state land not maintained, because of a previous fire left smoldering, because of thoroughly reported negligence and incompetence, all these people had disappeared, scattered to who knows where like the embers driven by the wind.

This was the greatest loss, I decided. This is where I found heartbreak.

This is where I’ve since found out the real meaning of community and its value in American life. It’s  not connections based on IQ or talent or politics or one’s station in life.

It’s those brief daily moments with people that I never knew I would miss — until they disappeared.

I’ve vowed from now on to savor any new ones I can cultivate. But they won’t be the Pacific Palisades. Those people are gone.

And that community can’t be rebuilt with wood and cement.

Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more. He still lives in Los Angeles.