Disaster In Paradise - Pacific Palisades Fire
Millionaires Sleep Next To Homeless And Everyone In Between While Accounting For Loves Ones
Tonight, I slept in a Red Cross shelter in Red Cross cots next to with millionaires and homeless alike, and all walks of life in between. All are refugees from the devastating Pacific Palisades fire. This morning, I was up early at 5 AM writing this article, later I was in Santa Monica at the key fire suppression command center, a good three hours before the President of the United States. Now with the light of day, my assessment has given us a glimpse of the damage, and it is devasting.
My Co-Host of many Live Streams, Peter Duke’s apartment, in total ruins.
The complete devastation in wide swaths of the Palisades is mind-numbing, and those residents who stayed the longest after the start of the fire to help in their neighborhood were the ones without hotel rooms, next to me on Red Cross cots.
On
with myself, Peter Duke explained how the St. Ynez reservoir was left completely empty at the height of the fire season, leaving Palisades with almost no water to fight the fires.
The next day, in the Los Angeles Times, the lead story was the St Ynez reservoir had been left empty, confirming our reporting.
I am afraid I got too close to the fire in my reporting, and I am still under the weather from smoke inhalation, but the redness in my eyes has subsided. But we were able to get the truth out first to the American people, so I was well worth temporary discomfort.
After writing most of this piece, I worked my way up to the Pacific Coast Highway to assess the fire hotspots where Peter Duke and I had held several learning charrette events and made many videos in the past together.
In the fire refugee shelter, I met a host of people who wanted information about the status of their homes in the Palisades. Some already knew they lost everything.
As of 7:15 AM, a CalFire officer told me that Air Force One had been grounded and couldn’t get fire-fighting air assets up over the fire all evening. I lead the coffee gathering in a round of applause for Officer Barboza before making my way up the PCH to the fire’s hot zones.
As of 7:25 AM this Wednesday morning, the skies appeared worse than ever over Santa Monica after I woke with bleary eyes and needing a shave. Behind the door over my shoulder slept one hundred souls spread out over two gymnasium floors in Army cots.
This Red Cross Shelter was set up in a high school gym near the 405 Freeway, which I could already hear droning behind me at 5 AM. Nothing, not even once in a generation fire, can stop Los Angeles traffic.
I interviewed a KTLA newsman who had two fires and two properties to contend with from the Altadena fire tonight, while he was working the night shift with me for the Palisades fire.
I ended up at the fire shelter with KTLA News covering how other journalists were trying to survive and evacuate with their belongings - like Peter and Jessica Duke of The Duke Report.
The Duke’s story is just one of thousands on this horrific night of fire.
A lone woman walks past me now with a swaddle of her own blankets, and I watch her leave the shelter in a BMW. A twenty-three-year-old male named Mikey earlier told of his parent’s extensive estate home going up in flames, his only clothes now being on his back. I got to the scene late in search of my friend Peter Duke and his wife, the unsinkable Lady Jessica.
Peter made a video of their hurried evacuation as they packed their SUV, which was full of their most valuable possessions. Duke, an internationally famous photographer with thousands of model photo shoots to his credit, has his lifetime’s work on negative spools in the Duke household. There are images of a young Sharon Stone sitting next to hundreds of other models. In addition to the hundreds of rolls of negatives, dozens of irreplaceable prints were left in his home that he couldn’t get out in time.
Peter shot some of the first early footage of the fire in the afternoon yesterday when he believed the fire would be contained. Then, gale force winds of up to 100 miles per hour unleashed their fury on the hillside, ravaging everything in its path.
I didn’t catch up with the Dukes until late in the evening last night at a Santa Monica restaurant, acting as a makeshift waystation for people looking to find accommodations. Peter decided to stay close to the fire until he knew his daughter, with his ex-wife living even higher up in the canyon, was out safely.
I watched Peter’s eyes dart around the CalFire fire map, looking for an exit route for his daughter. In the background, we heard updates from the television where other fire refugees had gathered for visual updates of the fire’s wrath.
Peter and Lady Jessica seemed to have positioned themselves as far away from the television as possible, as reporters recounted landmark after landmark where I had recorded past live streams with Peter going up in flames and spiraling embers.
I was with Peter and Lady Jessica as they made the last few of their impassioned phone calls and texts to try to reach his daughter. After twenty-one attempts, we received word that she was safely out of the Canyon, where $100,000 sports cars were bulldozed to make way for emergency vehicles. I had procured one of the last hotel rooms available in the area as local hotels had filled up much earlier in the evening. I gave my hotel room to the Dukes because they had not even considered a hotel while making the emergency calls to get his daughter out of the canyon. And that is how I ended up here at the shelter on an Army cot for the evening.
But even with dogs yapping all night and one guy snoring so loud the dust seemed to fall from the rafters, I got through the night with the wealthy of Pacific Palisades and the most destitute, sleeping side by side.
Now comes the denouement, assessing the damage. Peter will go back in a few hours to see if a lifetime of achievement is still there or if it is a charred mess.
Peter and I have made many videos looking down his majestic canyon. The television reports show that the hillside is all burning embers now. We are waiting to return to assess what is left. Unfortunately, I wrote this before I knew Peter’s house was completely destroyed. Also destroyed was the site of many of our Learning Man news gathering events we call “Charrettes” at the top of the cliff in Pacific Palisades.
Our thoughts and prayers are with all the families that lost so much, but at the time of this writing, I have not heard of a death from the fire.