My sister AK has lived in Malibu California for about 25 years now, in an area called LaCosta. Their house sits about halfway up the mountain and has a grand view of the Pacific Ocean, Santa Catalina on a clear day, Malibu Pier, and daily sunsets. Great view, but I would not say this is an easy place to live. It's extremely hilly and designed without consideration for pedestrians, so just going for a walk is not a casual decision. Forget about riding a bike here, unless you're at the level of Lance Armstrong. The infrastructure isn't great. Houses are on septic, and the electricity periodically goes out. The city is sliced by a major high-speed state highway, locally known as PCH. If you want to get to the beach, it must be crossed, just like Caesar crossed the Rubicon. And it would help to have the Roman Army to escort you safely across, because you have about a 50-50 chance of coming out alive.
Periodic brush fires damage or destroy parts of the city, the boundaries of which stretch about 28 miles east-west. Fire in one end of the city might not be much noticed by those in another area. Floods generated by heavy rains cause trouble, especially after a bad fire season has burned off the root system that holds soil in place.
On January 7th 2025 the worst happened. About 10:30 a.m. a fire erupted in Pacific Palisades, east of Malibu, on a day when the devil winds--the Santa Anas--were screaming off the desert (and they really do scream). By 2:30 p.m. AK's family saw the writing on the wall and left for safety. For several days they knew nothing of their house or neighborhood until a helicopter's video showed up on the news. From a distant camera shot they could see their house still stood.
A "happy" ending for them was not shared by thousands of other homeowners. On January 23 AK's family was allowed back in to the neighborhood check on their house. Miraculously there was no damage to the structure. The fire burned around all four sides of the house. The house close to them next door burned to the ground. All of the patio furniture on their back porch was incinerated. Yet there is virtually no ash or soot inside. Utilities are fried so they won't move back in until the infrastructure is repaired, or rebuilt. Six of the 10 houses on their street are gone, as are most on adjacent streets.
I stole the following map from the website www.ktla.com, which is a long-time Los Angeles area news station. The map was created and distributed by the LA County Fire Department. It covers the entire area of the Palisades and Altadena fires, and the portion below is centered just on my sister's area of LaCosta in Malibu. Each of the marks represent a structure, and if you were looking at this online, you could click on each and a pop-up window will give you a few details plus some photographs of what each structure looks like since the fire. Fire investigators have done a fascinating on-the-ground investigation.
| Damaged or Destroyed Structures |
This screenshot shows AK's neighborhood area in Malibu. The houses right along the beach in the lower part of the pic [the red row] were almost entirely obliterated. In the center of the row is a black square representing their beach club, which survived.
The beach club exterior is stucco (a concrete coating) and the roof is tile; AK's house is also built od those materials. Those 2 elements may be a common denominator in structures that survived. Someone will surely do a scientific study of exactly what saved one structure and not another. Then surely, Malibu will adjust it's building codes accordingly. Surely. Sure they will. Sorry, in my observation Malibu is not proactive in enhancing or protecting the lives of its citizens whether it be pedestrians attempting to cross the 4-lane-death-trap PCH, or in providing reliable utilities, etc.
The above map zeros in on AK's immediate area. Her house is the black square slightly above center, right above the a-r in the words Calle del Barco. The devastation is profound; most of her neighbor's houses are gone. Will the area ever return to its pre-fire self? Will people rebuild or sell out and leave? 25 years ago AK said, "I know my house will burn someday," because that is a fact of life in Malibu. Well, her house survived the 93 fire and now the Palisades Fire.
One more map, this one showing the devastation further east in Pacific Palisades. Neighborhoods are denser here so the results of the fire are horrendous. Not only are entire streets wiped out, but entire sections of neighborhood. So many questions. What to do? Where to start? How to repair? Who will pay? How long will it take? All of those questions will have answers, eventually. But the biggest question cannot be answered: When will the next conflagration hit?
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