For two weeks, Leslie Miller was desperate to recover only one thing: the urn that held the ashes of her daughter who died in early adulthood. She wondered for days if it had survived the blaze that destroyed much of Altadena, Calif. What if, she feared, she couldn’t get back into her home before the … Read more
Firefighters north of Los Angeles were racing on Thursday morning to contain a brush fire that had exploded the day before, quickly burning more than 10,000 acres and forcing the temporary closure of parts of Interstate 5. Red flag warnings, indicating dangerous fire weather conditions, were in effect for much of Southern California on Thursday. … Read more
A 20-acre brush fire was spreading on Thursday morning in a part of Los Angeles that is near Interstate 5, the Getty Museum and the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Fire Department issued an evacuation order after the blaze broke out late Wednesday night, saying that it was burning … Read more
As the Hughes fire exploded in size on Wednesday, people living around Castaic Lake in northern Los Angeles County weighed the question of whether to stay or go. The danger felt all the more real because of the deadly Eaton and Palisades fires that have been ravaging other parts of the county. Greg Wolf, 64, … Read more
I kept clicking refresh, looking for the house on Revello Drive. I scanned the Los Angeles County recovery website for a week for any word about whether a house in Pacific Palisades might have survived the fires. I searched online for nearby landmarks — ones that survived, ones that succumbed — to convince myself the … Read more
As the first embers of the Eaton fire began showering homes in Pasadena and Altadena, Calif., this month, evacuation orders went out within minutes. But one neighborhood did not get the order to leave for hours, well after some homes there had already caught fire. The consequences appear to have been fatal. Of the 17 … Read more
To truly take in the enormity, it helps to get up close. The Palisades and Eaton fires are roughly 30 miles from each other. I drove to the center of both last week, trying to make sense of how Los Angeles was suddenly transformed. I’ve lived and reported here for more than a decade, and … Read more
Three brush fires broke out early Tuesday in the San Diego area, forcing new evacuation orders as Southern California continued to grapple with dangerous fire conditions. The Lilac fire, which broke out south of Pala Mesa, Calif., near Old Highway 395 and Lilac Road around 1:20 a.m. Pacific, prompted a mandatory evacuation order and warnings … Read more
Dozens of vehicles sit abandoned, covered in ash, along a stretch of Palisades Drive near Sunset Boulevard in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. There’s a pair of black boots beside a gray Subaru Crosstrek. Down the street, a pink backpack with the name Sonya on it has been left in a Tesla Model … Read more
One of my favorite things about making reporting trips to Los Angeles is that I always get to visit my uncle and his family at their condo in Pacific Palisades. Last week was different. They are new evacuees, bouncing between a friend’s apartment and a relative’s house in the suburbs, traveling across the city with … Read more