A walk-in shower, its blue tiles shimmering in the sun. A washing machine, charred. Christmas ornaments hanging from a tree.
On Tuesday, a week after a fire started blazing through Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, incinerating homes and upending lives, a few objects offered proof of what was.
Also, the chimneys. Oh, the chimneys.
Rising up like headstones from plots of blackened debris, they stood sentry over streets strewn with ash, now the tallest structures that remained on block after block. At one home on Bestor Boulevard, the wind blew a twisted piece of metal against the chimney’s bricks, clanging like the toll of a church bell.
One week ago, residents of this wealthy neighborhood were fleeing for their lives, panicking in traffic on Sunset Boulevard and taking off down the hillside with whatever they could gather in their arms.
Now, the neighborhood is in ruins. Residents are still not being allowed to enter, and National Guard members patrol a series of checkpoints. The police and sheriff’s deputies keep watch along streets lined with orange trees and burned-out cars, while private security guards stand outside several businesses and homes in the Palisades.
The Palisades fire killed at least eight people and leveled thousands of structures, including houses, cars and landmarks that had come to represent a neighborhood home to dozens of celebrities.
Among them was what had become known as the Robert Bridges house, a Brutalist home that once hovered above Sunset Boulevard and was named after the architect who designed it and lived there. All that remained of the home on Tuesday were its large concrete support columns and floors, the interior and redwood siding having been gutted by flames.
Not far away, Palisades Village, an upscale outdoor shopping center owned by the billionaire developer and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso, was still intact, a monument to the protection provided by private firefighters during the blaze and now, a week later, by security guards. Nearby, volunteers handed out food and water to emergency workers.
Higher into the neighborhood, one could see the ocean sparkle through a thicket of burned-up trees. Hillsides once full of luxurious homes now teemed with the detritus of the blaze. On side streets, the cars that did survive were coated in a thin layer of ash.
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