CITY OF ANGELS: CHARRED MEMORIES

I was able to drive through roadblocks thanks to my press pass and up to Mulholland Drive from the San Fernando Valley side of the Santa Monica Mountains. I parked in an evacuated neighborhood as flames marched up Mandeville Canyon from the south. I had seen smoke from a distance, and this seemed to be a good location to hike in from. At the base of a fire road a policeman waved me over to his cruiser. After checking my credential, he recorded me on his bodycam, explaining that I was about to enter an area with potentially lethal consequences. This surprised me: I had been covering the fires since they broke out on January 7 in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Altadena, and this was the first time I had been issued such a direct, ominous warning.

Dawn still had not broken as I started on foot up the dirt fire road, with a hill blocking the view to the conflagration just on the other side of it. Twenty minutes later, an unobstructed vantage point gave me a clear picture—except for areas obscured by smoke and flames—of what was taking place in the mountain range that separates what we Angelenos simply refer to as the City as distinct from the Valley.

Large tracks of land to my west had already been scarred by the Palisades Fire, but the flames were putting up a serious assault on Mandeville Canyon. Still, they seemed far enough down the canyon that continuing my hike to an area in “the black” (a sector that’s already been burned), where firefighters were staged and taking the offensive with backfires and brush clearing, seemed relatively safe. In another twenty minutes or so I made it there and started documenting the countermeasures. With the sunrise came planes and helicopters joining the fight by dropping fire retardant and water.

Half an hour into my coverage, I was approached by Captain Chris Brossard of CalFire, asking, not reproachfully, how I got in. I briefly explained, then he told me they had lost a truck to the fire the day before, and that there was a real possibility that the flames would soon be jumping the same road I had hiked in on. After recording more images onto my CF card, I figured I had what I needed and told myself to heed the captain’s advice and hike out, though I didn’t feel in immediate danger. I was wrong.

Within seconds of my decision to leave, I received an up-close and way too personal education about the power and speed of fire. Flames overtook the fire road directly in front of me. I stopped in my tracks and took a few photos, but almost immediately realized that I was in a potentially deadly situation. Captain Brossard yelled for me to get back to and in his truck. Once on board, he immediately tried backing up deeper into “the black.” But the flames reached out to us from three sides. We were blocked from moving up further on the narrow road due to other firefighting vehicles that had taken refuge in the same area. Meanwhile, I alternated between taking videos and stills of scorching scenes that I will never forget. Finally, the fire burned its way completely over to the east side of the fire road, freeing us to make our way out of the danger zone through the smoldering landscape.

That afternoon, I documented other heroes in action, this time in the air, dropping fire retardant and water from airplanes and helicopters. These real-life top guns had to bring their aircraft in perilously low, skirting just above dense smoke and high-tension wires, and do it repeatedly for hours on end under the most trying and exhausting circumstances. In the weeks after the final flames had been extinguished, I took to the skies myself in a helicopter to record the massive scenes of devastation for global distribution through ZUMA Press. Only from this heightened perspective can one fully take in the immense scale of this unprecedented disaster.

I spoke with numerous survivors in the aftermath of the fires, shifting my focus to recovery efforts, which included going out with cadaver dog teams. I also returned to areas in which I had photographed fires engulfing entire neighborhoods. In one of them, a mobile home park above the Pacific Coast Highway, I met two employees of the property sitting in a pickup truck. Even though all of the structures had been destroyed, they faithfully arrived each day to make sure that only residents, emergency workers and media entered the area. They told me about their experiences on the day the fires started, which included rescuing several people. They also recounted how one person refused to leave the complex—and paid the ultimate price for that decision.

While photographing the unbelievable destruction in the wake of the fires, I came across a number of mementos left behind by fleeing homeowners and renters, but not close to the scale I had seen in other disasters, both natural and man-made. After the March 11, 2011 tsunami in Japan, I photographed countless photo albums, stuffed animals and other personal items that were stark indicators of lives disrupted or destroyed. This was not the case in the rubble of the Palisades and Eaton Fires: Each had burned so hot that few keepsakes remained for survivors to cling to. Yet the few items I did discover and document spoke loud and evocatively. Like a charred and broken statuette of Muhammad Ali in his iconic victory pose, found in the debris field of a mobile home park, his combative spirit still intact. Even more surprising was a partially burned page from a book or catalog with a photo of French Surrealist painter Yves Tanguy and Peggy Guggenheim on their way, according to the still-legible caption, “to London for the artist’s exhibition at Guggenheim Jeune in July 1938.” Surreal indeed.

I also witnessed countless acts of heroism throughout the course of my coverage, as well as people rising to the occasion to help others. In several instances, I was able to also lend a hand. I’ve always believed that we are humans first, and whatever we do as a career second. If it’s a choice between saving someone or going for an award-winning photograph, I will always take the former. In March of this year at the Xposure photo festival in the United Arab Emirates, Jim Nachtwey, one of the greatest conflict photographers in our medium’s history, said in essence the same thing in an onstage discussion with another one of my heroes, Sir Don McCullin.

While I didn’t have to make any life-or-death decisions concerning others (as has happened in the past), I was able to bring some relief to people in need. On the second morning of the fire, a man who had lost his house in Pacific Palisades managed to get past several police lines on a borrowed bicycle along Pacific Coast Highway. His goal was to retrieve the car he had abandoned the day before on Sunset Boulevard as the flames approached and traffic was gridlocked. I overheard him explain the situation to a policeman at the intersection of PCH and Sunset. The latter was sympathetic, but couldn’t break protocol and let the distraught gentleman enter an area with so many fires still raging.

I offered to help if I came across the car, although it seemed doubtful that it would be operable. I had just been in the area and seen that most of the cars were either destroyed by fire or pushed to the side by bulldozers clearing the path for fire trucks and other emergency equipment. The man described his Land Rover to me, and with the policeman’s consent, handed me the keys. Thirty minutes later, I spotted his car, almost completely boxed in by damaged and destroyed vehicles, and in the shadow of a burning apartment complex. With some effort, I was eventually able to extricate it. When I drove it up to the checkpoint, the guy greeted me with a bear hug and tears. It was obvious that recovering his treasured wheels meant so much more than simply having a mode of transportation.

There were so many fires raging simultaneously during the first two days that most were left to burn on their own. As I photographed a fully engulfed apartment complex on the south side of Sunset, a reporter from a Latin American news outlet showed up. He pointed to an adjacent apartment building and said, “That one is going to go as well.” I had no reason to doubt his prediction, so I ran over to see if there were animals in any of the apartments that I might see through the windows or hear inside. As far as I could tell, there weren’t. However, burning embers were falling into the courtyard and starting fires. Spotting a fire extinguisher hanging on the side of the building, I broke the glass, pulled it out and started putting out the fires. It seemed like an act of futility, but I was the only one there. As I put out the last of the fires in the courtyard, the reporter ran in and told me that a fire had started next to my car. I quickly exited and dealt with that. To my surprise, the apartment complex was still intact the next day.

Flames aren’t the only danger in a fire. Exposure to smoke, soot and ash that may contain hazardous materials like lead, arsenic and heavy metals can be just as deadly. As the authorities in Los Angeles County pivoted from fighting the fires to restoring our communities, I’ve been impressed by how methodically recovery plans have been implemented. Before initiating debris removal, for example, cadaver dog teams were tasked with ensuring that missing people were accounted for.

I joined one team to document this difficult but important work, which consists of two main phases. Phase 1, the removal of household hazardous debris, is managed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Phase 2—which will continue for the foreseeable future—is the removal of the remaining fire debris, with property owners having the option to opt-in for free cleanup by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, or opt-out and pay an approved contractor to remove, transport and dispose of the remaining fire debris. Prior to this, most homeowners and renters returned in hazmat suits or other protective gear to salvage what they could, which in most cases is very little if the flames reached their domiciles.

In Altadena, I photographed a couple digging through rubble where their home once stood. Unfortunately, they found little outside of some charred cutlery that could connect them to the past. I witnessed a variation of the same theme with a father and son I met on the other side of town in Pacific Palisades. In both cases, they were thankful that no family members were lost, acknowledging the simple truth that while many items can be replaced, lives lost are gone forever.

To date, thirty people are known to have died in the January Southern California wildfires, and more than 18,000 structures have been destroyed. While the latter can be rebuilt, those who perished, including countless domestic animals and wildlife, cannot. Hopefully, the lessons learned from this catastrophe will be used to prevent similar future tragedies. Otherwise, Spanish philosopher George Santayana’s truism will continue to ring true: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Addendum

Mark’s assignments have taken him to more than 100 countries. His latest books are The Way of the Japanese Bath 4th ed. and The People of the Forest. See more of his work at Instagram.com/MarkEdwardHarrisPhoto.