Looking at news video and still images, it’s sometimes hard to get a clear fix on the fires and where they sit in relation to what everyone thinks is Los Angeles.
The first and most fundamental difference between Los Angeles and almost any other city on earth is that it is much, much bigger than anything you’re familiar with.
In truth, Los Angeles is a cluster of cities together, and getting from one side to the other can be a two or three-hour drive.
To the city’s north is a vast wilderness – much of which is now burning – and zig-zagging through the city are a series of undeveloped canyons, which are now also a fire risk.
Pacific Palisades, where the major fire front is located, sits next to Topanga State Park and Will Rogers State Historic Park, much like Sydney sits next to the Royal National Park or Melbourne sits next to Dandenong Ranges National Park.
The Palisades itself is a wealthy neighbourhood.
Not the kind of money that puts you in Bel Air or Beverly Park, but there are many celebrities who live there: Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson, actor Miles Teller and his model wife Keleigh Sperry, and comedy actor Eugene Levy and his wife production executive Deborah Divine.
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The x-factor in any California wildfire is the wind. Though the city is famous for blue skies, sunny weather, and it rarely rains, it is a windy city.
The Santa Anas are dry, warm winds that originate from California’s deserts and blow across the city towards the coastline. Those winds are the twist in the tail of a wildfire that can turn a long distance into a short one, in very little time, and one inferno into four.
There are already reports of fires in Pasadena and Altadena, which are inland from Pacific Palisades, but are noted for similar demographics: beautiful homes, and wealthy or high-profile residents.
Pasadena is more of a traditional “suburbia”, but it is home to people like actresses Kristen Wiig and Meryl Streep, and rocker David Lee Roth.
Pasadena is also home to a palatial estate, on San Rafael Avenue, that was used as the exterior of Wayne Manor in the 1960s-era Batman television series.
