Pacific Palisades residents return, discover ‘our whole world got taken from us’

Ben Jacobs had just moved to a home in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 1, with his wife and 10-month-old daughter.

They had lived in Venice for more than three years and planned on embarking on a new chapter living on the Alphabet Streets.They had just spent the last week unpacking, organizing and getting settled in their new home. On Tuesday around 10:45 a.m., Jacobs was at work when he saw there was a large smoke cloud in his backyard.

He called his nanny and told her to evacuate their home with their daughter and meet them in Santa Monica at a Whole Foods parking lot. The family evacuated with nothing except for the clothes on their backs.They then learned from a neighbor, who had taken a video of their home burning to the ground, that they had lost everything.

Jacob’s wife lost her wedding dress and a bracelet she got from her great-grandmother. He lost items from his grandfather who was in the military in World War II.

They lost art and wine they’d collected over the years.

“Just basic things you come to love because they’re your own and now they’re gone,” he added.

The couple had been excited to move to the Palisades, because it had a “neighborhood feel.” There were kids playing on the streets, schools and parks and everything was walkable.

“Our whole world got taken from us in a couple days,” Jacobs said. “That neighborhood won’t be the same for another five to10 years, if not ever. It’s hard to think of where in L.A. we can live in the future that could replicate that feeling.”

Friday was a day of heartbreak in the fire zone, where residents tried to see what was left of their town.

Sunset Boulevard was more like a ghost town with the homes and businesses in their final state of ruin, no longer smoldering. The sky had cleared for the first time since the fire erupted and the obliterated streets and car husks were made even jarring by their bright blue backdrop.

There were few signs of the residents who called the neighborhood home — many of who were frantically trying to get in at the checkpoint a mile away.

But the area was still cordoned off with law enforcement keeping a tight grip on who could enter.

One couple said they’d managed to get in on foot from Santa Monica, but for the most part, the destroyed streets were barren. Only first responders and news crews moved up and down the main thoroughfare.

Worried Palisades residents lined up at the foot of Chautauqua Boulevard on Friday afternoon waiting for their first look at their homes since the fire had devastated their neighborhood.

Residents are still not allowed into the area on their own. But a police car was slowly escorting residents, a few at a time, into their homes. Some had no idea what awaited them.

Others knew their homes had been destroyed and just wanted to see what they could salvage.

“We’re going through the rubble and see if there’s anything left — any mementos,” said Whitney Farrer, 28, who grew up in the Palisades.

She said her parents had fled without anything sentimental, thinking they would be able to return the next day.

Her fiance, Kyle Warner, who also grew up in the Palisades, said his family had done the same. He’d seen photos of the home he was about to look at. It looked like a Buddah statue was all that remained. He was hopeful some heirlooms would be there too.

Evan Bishton, 29, had been standing in line for an hour and a half waiting to go up to his family’s home to get medication for his 78-year-old father.

He, too, had a sense of what he would see there. It seemed like the family home he grew up, which he could spot from the roadside, “was in good shape.“

“The smoke is clear enough to where I can get these little glimpses from a distance,” he said.

But he already knew the apartment building he lived in was gone after being sent photos from a journalist friend.

“Obviously it sucks, but like I feel like I lost less compared to these people,” Bishton said, gesturing to the line of people. “So I feel for them more than anything.”