Evacuation into Darkness

The intersection of Palisades Drive and Sunset Boulevard became clogged with cars as people tried to evacuate when the fire started shortly after 10:30 a.m.

(Editor’s note: At last week’s Hive, a 28-year-Palisades resident spoke about her evacuation on January 7.)

We live in the Highlands and were home during the fire, which broke out at 10:30 a.m. We didn’t evacuate immediately because the reports from neighbors was that traffic was already beginning to back up at Sunset and Palisades Drive by 11 a.m. Smoke was visible at a distance, blowing away from the Highlands towards the ocean, so the threat didn’t appear immediate.

Shelter in place warnings came from officials around noon, since the emergency exit road connecting the Highlands with upper Lachman Lane, known to locals as The Fire Road, became impassable because it was on fire.

Then we heard reports that people on lower Palisades Drive at Sunset started abandoning their vehicles and running away from flames on both sides of the road, with whatever personal possessions they could carry. They left their cars in the middle of street, mostly without keys. There were no reports of traffic control.

Because of cars cramming the intersection, emergency vehicles could not access Pacific Palisades. It also stopped any further evacuations from Palisades Drive and Marquez. The city eventually responded to the pile of cars by sending bulldozers, pushing cars aside, to clear Sunset and Palisades Drive.

By 4 p.m. some of the cars had been cleared, so we were told we could now evacuate. Ten cars lined up to go down the hill in a convoy. A police car led the procession, and a second police car followed the last car.  As we drove down Palisades Drive, flames were on both sides of the road. We turned right onto Sunset. The plan was to go down Pacific Coast Highway until we reached Santa Monica. My husband was in the front car and I was in the second car.

When we reached PCH, we turned left and there were flames everywhere, the mobile home parks were on fire, flames were jumping over the road to the ocean.

The police told us to turn around and drive in the other direction as fast as we could. My husband led and we all followed.

We drove past the Getty and then Sunset Mesa, the hillside and homes were on fire. The RV’s that normally park by the side of road between that turnoff and Topanga had caught fire and the RV propane tanks were exploding.

It was so dark, the black smoke had turned the day into the darkest night – there were no streetlights and no car lights. Cellphones didn’t work. I closed the air vents and put the air on recirculation. The car was so hot, from the heat of fires burning all around them.  It was so hot in the car, you could feel the heat all around you.

There were embers everywhere, and they danced and swirled down the road and on my windshield. I turned on the wipers to send embers off the front window.

We kept driving in the dark and tried not to think, would we be trapped and burned in our cars?

We drove through a corridor of darkness; as homes and structures  burned along both sides of PCH.

Then, we made it to Duke’s in Malibu. The sky was blue. We thought the worst was over, never imagining that the fire would continue its rampage through more of the Palisades and further into Malibu, taking with it our home along with thousands of others. A true living nightmare!

Then the resident’s Highlands home burned on January 8, and she wrote “it is horrifying to imagine that this may have been caused by a second point of ignition, from power lines not turned off, at the top of Trailer Canyon.”