How I Process(ed) the Ongoing Pali Fire Disaster

Stories and Photos by: STEVE PESCE

An angry policeman told me to get off the road! Walk on the side! With a smile, I pointed out that if I did, I would be set on fire and he’d be stuck sweeping up my ashes. He leaped from the squad car and snarled, “What’re you, a comedian?” I shrugged, “Yes, I’m a comedian.”

Having a sense of humor in a horrible disaster like the Palisades Fire is not always appreciated, but I still honestly believe, as I posted in a WhatsApp chat back in January, “If you don’t laugh, this will drive you insane.”

Also possibly insane was walking back up into the height of the blaze to save our family’s cats. After doing that, I would not want to be anywhere near another fire. Firemen do that every day. They’re superheroes! But the city leadership’s response was more like Marvel Comics villains.

Let’s recap: They told firemen to leave the January 1st Lachman fire burning; emptied the reservoir; didn’t stage additional trucks or firemen despite high wind warnings and months of dry weather; didn’t reach out to other fire departments until the fire was raging out of control; and then moved all their firemen to the perimeter of the blaze, leaving the houses to burn. (Insert maniacal cackling of the Marvel Comic book villain of your choice.)

I wasn’t home when the evacuation warning was issued, and by the time I reached the intersection of PCH and Sunset Boulevard  in the early afternoon, the cops weren’t allowing cars to go up any farther into Pacific Palisades.

So, I parked by the Pali Equinox down by the coast and walked up Sunset toward Marquez Knolls. As I staggered in a daze along the shoulder of the road, a fox bolted past me at lightning speed, literally hightailing it out of there, which I probably should have done. I trudged alongside the jammed lanes of cars full of residents trying to evacuate, but at a dead stop. Many of those cars were later bulldozed off the road. I didn’t know it yet, but despite walking right by that standstill, I would eventually drive into it myself — and get stuck. I’m funny, but not always bright.

Equally not so bright was breathing the black smoke and flying embers pelting my face, which I’m guessing were not great air quality. I asked a fellow intrepid wanderer in the thick Cormac McCarthy apocalyptic haze if he had an extra facemask. He did. I didn’t bother checking if it was filthy or not as he dredged it out of his pants pocket. I’m normally quite picky, but in this case I’d have also taken his eyeglasses and baseball cap, not to mention stained underwear, if he’d offered.

By the time I arrived on foot to my house, the flames were thirty feet high all around it. I didn’t think I was going to even make it to the door. Was there even oxygen in all that black smoke pouring into my slightly used, yellow-brownish, cloth mask? But the cats needed saving, so I put my forearms up to shield my face and kept walking. When I got inside, I could only find two of our three cats. I threw them loose into an old Porsche we were restoring, which distinctly smelled like gasoline. The car might catch fire in another minute, but I couldn’t carry the cats out of there loose in my arms, so stinky car it was!

 

 

 

I had managed to secure two cats, but the third one hid a bit too successfully. As the flames encroached like something out of Dante’s Inferno, I mentally told Coco, the reluctant feline, to take cover and pray for her nine lives to hold out.

I made a run for it and left my kitty and my house in the protection, I believed, of the fire department. What I didn’t know was that in Pali, you get “hosed” by not getting hosed. The fire department was ultimately ordered to pull back to the perimeter of the fire as city officials decided to abandon us.

Getting stuck in that same traffic jam I’d already walked past was not too swift. And when I attempted to make a U-turn across Sunset Boulevard, some of my fellow fleeing Palisadians seemed to think I was being both unwise and mildly rude to jack the wheel and stick my nose across lanes Sunset Blvd. My assertions that they had no chance of getting out in that direction went unheeded.

It may be that those folks were less scared than I was by the thirty-foot walls of fire on both sides of Sunset. It’s also possible they believed the city evacuation plan would get them out safely – or that an evacuation plan existed. There was no plan. Regardless, they should have joined me in an illegal U-turn.

That night, as we deposited our tired and disoriented behinds into a hotel in Beverly Hills, my wife was dismayed that I hadn’t saved Coco and wanted to return to the house immediately. But having seen what it was like up there with my own eyes, I wasn’t going anywhere near that conflagration. I told her, “Not stoned, tied up, or on a bet am I going back up there tonight.”

The next day, I tried to walk up to Pali from Santa Monica through hails of black ash and under an equally black sky like some post-apocalypse streaming series on Hulu, only to be turned away by firemen who wouldn’t let me walk up Sunset from PCH because of some lame excuse like “You’re going to die!”

It wasn’t until January ninth that my wife and I were able to hike in via the Bel-Air Bay Club road, which the LAPD had not yet blocked — probably because they hadn’t realized it was a way into the Palisades.

This sunny morning was the first time I saw the full devastation in daylight. Nearly everything between PCH and our house in Marquez Knolls had been reduced to rubble. It was horrifying. We passed what were once the homes of family after family we knew, now completely gone.

When we neared the bend in the road where we’d be able to see our house, we stopped, fearing that our home, our third kitty, and all our possessions had been reduced to a toxic burn scar. My suggestion that Coco might be running around with a bucket of water and paw-stamping out burning embers was not particularly consoling.  But miraculously, the house was there. As was Coco! A quick trip to the vet and lots of medication would get her back to normal in about a week. We now call her Miracle Cat!

While at our house, we watered outside for a full hour, including hot spots in tangled roots.  It seemed silly, but we were there, so why not?

Walking out awkwardly carrying Coco in a cat carrier, we were confronted by an angry policeman who screamed at me to get off the road, expletives deleted (in case children or wildly immature adults like me are reading this). I pointed out that the side of the road was ON FIRE, that I would burn to a crisp if I walked over there, and he’d be stuck sweeping up my ashes. The officer jumped out of his patrol cruiser and snarled at me, “What’re you, a comedian?” I shrugged back, “Yes, I’m a comedian!”

The police by now had discovered our little-known entry route into The Palisades and closed it off with a squad car and two officers. Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t get back to our house for nearly two weeks. When we finally did return, I saw that a huge portion of my fence had since burned, but the hedge behind it had not.  So, if I had not wet everything down, we might have lost our house. So much for Zone Zero wanting us to purge our hedges!

I didn’t yet know that not losing your house still meant losing everything you own. Only instead of the Army removing your worldly goods as ash, you packed it all out and trucked it away to the city dump. Everyone in Pali with a house standing has been finding that out the hard way, along with the discovery that very few of us had anything close to what is commonly thought to be “insurance.”

Smoke, we soon learned, has nothing to do with fire. This violates the old adage, “where there’s smoke there’s fire,” as well as the other old saw that “where there’s insurance there’s a payout.”

While we all made different decisions, every path was fraught with difficulties. Some haven’t begun remediating and some never will come back to Pali. I have a friend who still hasn’t set foot in Pali. But for my sanity, I needed to get right to work fixing my house. Even if the Unfair Plan wasn’t going to pay, I had to start.  Just like my attempts at humor, fixing the house was therapy for me.

Admittedly, it remains a zero plus level of risk even after five sets of environmental testing and massive waves of remediations on a scale not seen since the Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe.

Pulling out drywall, throwing out beds, couches, refrigerators, insulation, HVAC system, the yard… but we’re back! Even with power outages, internet outages, mail not delivered, FedEx not delivered, garbage not picked up, empty lots everywhere, and looters on the prowl… it’s good to be home! And to all you alarmist writers at the New York Times – Sorry, we former New Yorkers will not give up and scurry back to Manhattan, tail between legs. PALISADES WILL RISE AGAIN!

 

DISASTER JOKES:

Below are some jokes I dropped in the WhatsApp Chats between January and April 2025 to help myself and others deal with the insanity of our ongoing disaster. Most of my neighbors really loved the gallows humor, but there were also a few boo birds. There will always be hecklers! It’s also possible some of the jokes just weren’t all that funny.

Here are, hopefully, some funny ones:

“In addition to the ORANGE resident pass and the BLUE contractor pass, they are now issuing the GREEN looter pass.”

 “One reason to move back to Pali right away: It’s a rare chance to learn the ancient Zen art of dodging lethal dioxins.” 

 “Our Industrial Hygienist testing found no asbestos nor lead, but did find dangerously high levels of sarcasm and political skepticism.”

“Mayor Bass is setting aside two million dollars to provide proper PPE for all looters who want to enter The Palisades.”

 “A little advice for other cities from what we learned in Pali: Don’t copy your evacuation plan from a Marx Brother’s movie.”

“I’m not very worried about looters, but for now I’m leaving my pet velociraptor chained up in the yard.”

 “Rick Caruso weighed in on the Pali fires today, stating that, “Mayor Bass should have ordered the rain BEFORE the fire. Not after, when it causes mudslides! Willful incompetence!”

“Mayor Bass just announced that for safety reasons the LA Olympics will be held in Ghana.”

 “What do you get when you cross the California Fair Plan with a natural disaster?”
“You get Nothing!”

 “A piece of advice for future fire preparedness: Maybe next time don’t let homeless people with blowtorches run wild in hills covered in dry kindling.”

“What do you get when cold rainwater washes our Mayor’s debris removal plans into the ocean?”
“Chilean sea Bass.”

“The National Guard is adding 100 drone aircraft for surveillance. Not to stop looting, but to catch DWP workers skinny-dipping in residents’ pools.” 

“I saw a sign: ‘Wildfire Support Center.’ Apparently some crazy lunatics support the wildfire!”

“LAPD is assessing a one-dollar toll per entry at checkpoints. The proceeds will go to the Reelect Karen Bass Campaign.”

“Today I applied for an R.O.E. for the Army to demolish Karen’s Bass’ house.”

BREAKING NEWS: “Caruso has a plan to keep more police stationed in Pali. It involves putting an additional donut shop in the mall.”

 “In order to receive fast track permit approval, all new construction must include an ADU for the homeless, with a looter accessible rear entrance.”

“What musical instrument do you play on the rubble of Pacific Palisades?”“A Recall Bassoon!”

“Why are so many people removing their healthy trees? It’s the only way to get rid of that annoying Lorax.” 

“One important benefit of being back home is you can occupy your house so looters and squatters don’t.”

 “I was quite reassured reading a recent study that showed ‘Heavy Metal contamination’ is actually just an 80s grunge band.”

 “If you wondered why the debris clearance going so slowly: California has banned the use of plastic bags. Clearing properties keeps exposing tunnels used by Hamas. Karen Bass places a homeless encampment on each cleared lot. And the Army Corp of Engineers’ BLUE PASS expired!”

 Three firemen walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Shouldn’t you be fighting the fire?” The first fireman says he would but there’s no water. The second one says he would but they don’t have enough trucks. The bartender asks the third firemen what’s his excuse. The third one says, “Actually, I’m here because your bar is on fire.”

BUT THIS NOT A JOKE! 

As I wrote in the WhatsApp chat in March of 2025: “We are going to navigate the challenges and pull through this. Our community will come back stronger than ever. The love we put into this endeavor is going to be epic. I’m praying for everyone here. There are many hurdles ahead, but we’re going to look back on this as a watershed moment in all of our lives. Love y’all. Peace.”