PASADENA, Calif. – Flames and pillars of smoke rose from both sides of the road and a woman yelled in panic as firefighters ushered a crowd of fleeing residents along. Aaron Samson positioned his 83-year-old father-in-law behind his blue walker, and they began shuffling down the sidewalk.
“My father-in-law was saying, ‘Aaron, if we are ever in a position where the flames are right there, you just run and leave me here,’” Samson recounted Wednesday.
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It didn’t get to that point. For the second time in a matter of hours, a good Samaritan picked them up, then drove them to safety in Santa Monica.
Their escape came as thousands of people fled wildfires in the Los Angeles area that turned picturesque neighborhoods into smoldering wasteland, with chimneys or wrought-iron staircases about all that remained of homes. Driven by powerful Santa Ana winds, the flames obliterated more than 1,000 structures, scorched landmarks made famous by Hollywood and killed at least five people. One of the fires was the most destructive in the modern history of the city of LA.
The escapes were perhaps the most harrowing from a disaster that Los Angeles has ever seen. People abandoned their cars and fled on foot as tree limbs crashed down and howling winds sent flames flying in every direction. Others flagged down rides from friends or strangers. With so many cars abandoned in the middle of Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades, authorities had a bulldozer push the vehicles out of the way to clear a path for emergency vehicles.
Hard-hit Altadena produced one of the most heart-wrenching scenes: As flames closed in, about 100 elderly residents at senior care facilities were hurried out in hospital beds and wheelchairs. Many were wearing flimsy bedclothes in the chilly night air as they were wheeled to a parking lot about a block away. As wind-whipped embers swirled around them in the smoky air, they waited for help to arrive. Eventually all were taken to a shelter.
More evacuations were ordered late Wednesday after a new fire broke out in the Hollywood Hills.
Losing a childhood home of 30 years
Hundreds of evacuees wound up at the Pasadena Convention Center, many of them older residents of assisted living facilities. They sat wheelchair to wheelchair or lay on green cots, and some family members tearfully reunited there Wednesday as ash rained outside.
EJ Soto described leaving her childhood Altadena home of 30 years with her mother, two nieces, sister and husband at 3:25 a.m. after staying up overnight and watching the flames creep closer.
“We had already decided, we’re not going to sleep,” Soto said.
She instructed her family to pack their bags with two days of clothing and put them in the car, along with food and supplies for their cat, Callie. They drove to the Rose Bowl stadium and waited for two hours, then returned to check on their neighborhood.
They saw three homes on their block burning — and finally their own, engulfed in flames two stories high.
Saved by strangers — twice
Samson, 48, was in Pacific Palisades at his father-in-law's home caring for him when the time came to flee Tuesday. They had no car, however, and were unable to secure a ride through Uber or by calling 911. Samson flagged down a neighbor, who agreed to give them and their two bags a lift.
After a little more than half an hour in traffic, the flames closed in. The tops of palm trees burned like giant sparklers in the incessant wind.
With vehicles at a standstill, police ordered people to get out and flee on foot. Samson and his father-in-law left their bags and made their way to the sidewalk. The father-in-law, who is recovering from a medical procedure, steadied himself against a utility pole as Samson retrieved his walker and recorded the ordeal on his cellphone.
“We got it, Dad, we got it,” Samson said.
They walked for about 15 minutes before another good Samaritan saw them struggling, stopped and told them to get in his vehicle.
By Wednesday afternoon, Samson did not know if the home survived. But he said they were indebted to the two strangers.
“They saved us,” he said. “They really stepped up.”
Ready to seek safety in a pool
Another Pacific Palisades resident, Sheriece Wallace, didn't know about the fire until her sister called — just as a helicopter made a water drop over Wallace's house.
“I was like, ‘It’s raining,’” Wallace said. “She’s like, ‘No, it’s not raining. Your neighborhood is on fire. You need to get out.’”
She opened her door and saw the hillside behind her home was ablaze. The street below was choked with abandoned cars and boulders that had tumbled down the canyon. She thought she might have to jump into a pool to save herself, but instead walked to a street corner and lucked upon a neighbor who offered her a ride.
“There was no other way for me to get out,” Wallace said. “And if it had not been for the grace of God, my neighbor’s son coming to get their mother and me going to the corner to just try to flag someone down ...”
Losing family heirlooms and a community
Altadena resident Eddie Aparicio was dumbstruck as he and his partner evacuated Tuesday evening, inching through bumper-to-bumper traffic as nearly hurricane-force winds howled around them.
“Limbs were falling everywhere. Massive trees were on top of cars,” Aparicio said. “Seeing the embers and flames jump off the mountain, skip 30 blocks and land on a house — it’s insane.”
They finally reached the home of his partner’s mother. The next morning a neighbor sent a video showing that his house — like so many others on his block — had burned down. The chimney alone was still standing.
While they lost some family mementos, such as paintings by Aparicio’s grandmother and father, the saddest part was the loss of a beloved community.
“It makes me feel very existential,” Aparicio said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”
A beloved beachside seafood shack, gone
Among the landmarks devoured by the flames was the historic ranch house that belonged to Hollywood legend Will Rogers and the Topanga Ranch Motel, built by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst in 1929.
The Reel Inn, an iconic Malibu seafood shack across the Pacific Coast Highway from Topanga Beach, a famous surf spot, also burned. Restaurants had operated in that location since the 1940s; the Reel Inn — where surf boards dating back almost a century hung from the rafters — opened in 1986.
Owner Teddy Leonard said she and her husband, Andy, watched it burn on television Tuesday evening from their home a few miles away. They then drove their Kawasaki Mule — a four-wheel utility vehicle that looks like a souped-up golf cart — to the top of a ridge that overlooks the ocean. The sky was bright red, and the winds were so strong that she felt she was about to be blown out of the vehicle.
“You could see sparks of fires,” Leonard said. “At one point there’s the whole ridge burning.”
Far to the left, she spotted another fire, and then to the right, a flare-up.
“You realize that the wind is picking up the embers and dropping them in different spots, that there’s no way that those firemen could fight this fire,” Leonard said.
The couple evacuated to an Airbnb that her son rented after his apartment in Malibu burned. Leonard did not yet know if their home survived, but they were grateful to be alive and to have each other and their family.
“You’re in this disaster, and it’s nature,” she said. “There’s no controlling what’s happening.”
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Dupuy reported from New York; Hollingsworth from Mission, Kansas; Johnson from Seattle; and Rush from Portland, Oregon.