LOS ANGELES — Pacific Palisades seemed like the perfect place to start over after Victoria Escalante lost everything she owned in the horrific 2018 Camp Fire in north-central California.
Her adult daughter was raising her family in the affluent Southern California community nestled between the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Home to both celebrities and generations of families who fell in love with the quaint village, the Palisades encompassed everything Escalante, 69, wanted for her retirement: family, community and a sense of security.
Escalante never imagined that just seven years after she barely escaped with her life from a town called Paradise she would watch another neighborhood she called home turn to ash.
“I just couldn’t believe much more could happen,” she said of the Palisades Fire, which erupted on Jan. 7 and scorched more than 23,400 coastal acres between Pacific Palisades and Malibu.
The Palisades Fire was one of two infernos that consumed vast swaths of Los Angeles County in January. Combined, the Eaton and Palisades fires killed at least 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures, many of them homes.
Among the most affected places were assisted living facilities and retirement communities where older adults planned to spend their final years.
According to the California Department of Public Health, more than 800 patients and residents of nursing homes, group homes and assisted living facilities were evacuated during the fires, separating them from essential services, enrichment activities and social bonds. Residents of these communities say returning to their homes has given them a renewed sense of possibility.
“My soul is in the Palisades,” said Alison Rockwell, 69, who grew up in the nearby community of Sunset Mesa. She is now Escalante’s neighbor at the Casa Gateway housing complex for seniors about a mile away from her childhood home.
Rockwell and Escalante were both forced to flee their units when the Palisades Fire made its deadly march across the surrounding mountains. Casa Gateway sustained smoke damage from its close proximity to the fire’s origin. About a month later, mudslides flooded much of the tree-filled campus.
Both women have since returned to their first-floor units, but a late-December storm brought another deluge into the recently renovated apartment building. On Friday, Escalante said she was mopping up water off her newly installed flooring.
Rebuilding has been slow across the Pacific Palisades burn scar. According to Mayor Karen Bass’ office, nearly 400 homes are actively being built in the Palisades, with plans approved for some 750 addresses.
That’s just a fraction of the nearly 7,000 buildings burned, but Bass has said even slow progress should inspire hope.
“The Palisades community has been through an unimaginable year, and my heart breaks for every family that won’t be able to be home this holiday season,” Bass said in a previous statement.
Casa Gateway reopened in the fall, but only a third of all residents in the 68-unit building have returned, said Rockwell, board president of Casa Gateway’s homeowners association.
Rockwell said that despite the cool winter months, she has mosquitoes circling her unit because of standing water that permeated the walls.
Sandbags still line the outside of the building and a new lobby betrays the destruction of both flood and smoke. Rockwell said the mudflow was so thick in her apartment that she couldn’t open her front door.
Seven months of remediation at Casa Gateway has included removing and replacing insulation, installing new floors in hallways and the lobby, and painting halls and community spaces. The city removed about 6 inches of mud from the slides. The process also required irrigation repairs and external wall and tile replacement.
Now that she is back home after waiting nearly seven months for repairs, Rockwell said her beloved neighborhood is eerie. Thousands of empty lots and storefronts line the once bustling Palisades village, which had been filled with boutiques, restaurants, schools and a movie theater.
“It’s just so dark,” she said.
Escalante’s adult daughter, Elisa Garrett, sees things differently. Empty lots are filling up with construction equipment, and the few businesses that survived are reopening.
“I see signs of life everywhere,” she said.
Escalante moved to Hermosa Beach, a small city in L.A. County about 20 miles south of the Palisades, to be near her daughter’s family after their own home, located about a mile from Escalante’s apartment, was destroyed. Impatient to return to the Palisades, Garrett, her husband and their son are moving into a rental house near Escalante as they begin the arduous process of rebuilding their house.
During the first days after the fire, Garrett said she leaned on her mother’s experience in Paradise to help her navigate the dizzying world of insurance and FEMA. She recalls going to pick up donations and getting lost in a fog of sleeplessness and sorrow.
“My mom held my hand and reminded me why we were there,” she said.
On the day of the fire, mother and daughter climbed onto the roof of Garrett’s house and watched as smoke, ash and eventually flames rushed down the mountains toward their neighborhood.
It wasn’t until Escalante saw homes lighting up in flames that she began to feel the all too familiar symptoms of post-traumatic stress lingering from the 2018 Camp Fire.
Escalante had retired from a career in public health just two days before a historic inferno wiped out all of Paradise. She can still recall black smoke obscuring the sky and pushing abandoned cars with her truck to clear the only road out of town.
Escalante remembers seeing a woman’s pant leg catch fire as she helped others evacuate, and recalls frantically wondering whether her adult son and his two daughters made it to safety. She remembers hugging her friend, a passenger in her truck, and saying goodbye in case they didn’t make it out alive.
The Palisades Fire was nothing like that, Escalante said. Her family united within minutes of seeing smoke and evacuated together — seven cars, seven people and three dogs all rushed to the same hotel. They watched together on her daughter’s Ring camera as the window of Garrett’s home shattered from the crushing heat. They were just grateful to be together.
Despite years of rebuilding ahead, Escalante is comforted by having her family back in Pacific Palisades. She never once considered permanently relocating to another part of L.A. even after surviving a second life-altering disaster.
“I believe it’s going to be good again,” Escalante said of the Palisades. “I couldn’t say that about Paradise.”
