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The Palisades Fire: An update from Los Angeles and its Impact on Music

Patrick O’Heffernan, Los Angeles.

I have been covering the fires in LA both for the newspaper I edit in Mexico (my side gig) and because I lived in the Pacific Palisades before moving to Mexico. I wanted to know how my former home, my old neighborhood and the many people I knew there and the many musicians who lived there did.  The answer is “not well”.  My old neighborhood is gone along with my old house, Many friends are also now homeless when the other 50 homes in my neighborhood were burned down.

The impact on music – and the response of the music community – has been equally large. Many bands and artists lived in the Palisades, including the Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine and his wife Behati Prinsloo, Brad Paisley, John Mayer, Stevie Nicks, Randy Newman, and Mandy Moore and her husband Taylor Goldsmith (of the band Dawes) lost their home studio.  Joe Bonamassa, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, and The Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave drummer Brad Wilk had to evacuate.

These are the big names. There are dozens of mid-range and upcoming artists who lived in Altadena and other fire areas who also lost studios and homes, and who lost work because they were studio bands or did fill in work for stars who were evacuated or lost their studios. Among those told to prepare for evacuation was Dona Oxford, former Albert Lee sidewoman and leader of the Dona Oxford Blues band.

The response of the music community has been nothing but overwhelmingly generous.

Beyoncé has pledged $2.5 million through her non-profit organization BeyGOOD to support families affected by the Los Angeles fire in the Altadena and Pasadena communities where many emerging and mid-range artists lived.

The Recording Academy and MusiCares launched the Los Angeles Fire Relief Effort with a joint $1 million donation.  Warner Music’s Social Justice Fund pledged an initial $1 million, We Are Moving the Needle launched a Microgrants Wildfire Relief Fund for early and mid-career producers, engineers, and creators, Entertainment Community Fund is offering emergency financial assistance to eligible performing arts professionals and the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund is accepting donations and applications to support affected musicians.

Guitar Center Music Foundation is providing one-time grants to replace instruments lost or damaged in the fires and Good Boy Records opened their studio doors to musicians who lost recording spaces.  The LA Phil set up the Los Angeles Music Fund to aid members of the LA music community who lost homes. Metallica’s All Within My Hands foundation has made a large donation. Several Latin artists have made donations to the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation, including Alejandro Fernández, Peso Pluma, and Maná

That is the rundown on the current know damage to music and the response. Here are my observations from on the scene.  But first, for those of you who have never visited Los Angles, a few comparisons might be helpful. Los Angeles county is 4,083 square miles – larger than the states of Rhode Island or Connecticut.  The fires have consumed 63 square miles  an  area is larger than the city of Paris .  The Palisades Fire, t has scorched approximately 37 square miles and has killed at eight people as of today. It is   larger than the areas consumed by the San Francisco earthquake fire of 1906 or the Chicago fire of 1871.  

So what is it like?

When you walk out of the LAX airport  the sky is a bit hazy and  there is no smokey smell. But there is a kind of gritty feeling to the air that after a while makes your throat itch.  Many people are wearing masks left over from Covid.

As you drive north on Lincoln toward the Mariana del Rey, when you crest the hill at 83rd. street the full scale of the disaster begins to emerge. Across the Marina and Santa Monica valley there  is nothing but a huge, swirling brown cloud, 2.5 miles  tall with spots of flames that  stretches from below the Getty Museum to the ocean, a little over 4 miles as the crow flies (the museum is not threatened;). And the smell of smoke is now prevalent. 

As you get closer you see the firefighting “superscooper planes” and helicopters flying through the smoke like insects to drop their loads of fire suppressant. With the smoke , the aircraft and the incessant buzzing of emergency alerts on everyone’s cellphone, it feels like a scene out of “Apocalypse Now.”  This is the Palisade fire.

The Pacific Coast Highway and Sunset Blvd, the two pathways into the Palisades community, are closed.  Only emergency vehicles and local television media are allowed in.  What they confront – and show us on TV, is a path of smoking destruction almost as far as the eye can see. Block after block of streets separating steaming lots, some with only chimneys standing, most with nothing left but rubble, burned out cars and flaming trees, the result of a fire spread by winds of up to 90 miles an hour.   

The devastation moves from the beach east into the neighborhoods and the commercial district. The hardware store where local residents like Tom Hanks and Richard Gere shopped are ruins. The Shell station, the two  banks, the Chinese restaurant, Ralphs and Gelson’s Markets, are all smoking hulks.  “Pali” High School (Pacific Palisades Charter High School) was damaged but still standing.  Not standing  is the grammar school and the 60-year old Pearson Theater.

 Essentially the entire downtown is gone.  

The destruction, while vast, is being fickle. In some blocks, every home but one or two was reduced to ash. In the reporter’s old neighborhood, every one of the 50 homes in the neighborhood was destroyed except three.    

The fire also destroyed a rare working class paradise, Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates, a mobile-home park that offered a lost  cost beachfront life in the heart of a wealthy westside enclave.  The very affordable 170 manufactured homes in the park are now piles of smoking rubble, and the fate of their residents is unknown.

As of Friday, the LAFD reports that over 12,000 “structures”  including homes,  commercial and public buildings, and cars have been destroyed or damaged  in the Palisades Fire, and since the fire is only 14% contained, the Department estimates at least  11,000 more are threatened in the Palisades, Santa Monica and Malibu.    

Water problems

Firefighters reported that at times their hoses ran dry in Pacific Palisades, or were reduced to a dribble. Janisse Quiñones, CEO of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said the multiple fires and hundreds of pieces of equipment put immense strain on the system, at times reducing pressure in fire hydrants to almost nothing. The system was built for double the current  population and to handle two fires at once, but the pipes and pumps were simply not large enough to move water at pressure to over 500 fire trucks at once although there was water in the reservoirs. Fire department officials said the scale of the fires in Los Angles was beyond anything in their projections.

“We pushed the system to the extreme,” Quiñones said during a Wednesday news conference. “Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight,” adding that  the problem was one of pressure not a lack of water.  

Looting and crime.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna confirmed that as of Thursday, January 9, 2025, law enforcement had arrested over 50 individuals who were caught attempting to steal from evacuated homes and properties or trespassing in fire areas. Local media have shown video of National Guard patrolling evacuated neighborhoods.  Two people were arrested for copycat arson, but not of the major fires and they were stopped almost immediately.

Another law enforcement problem has been amateur drones which have been flying without permission over the fire areas. An amateur drone struck  a CL-415 “Super Scooper” firefighting aircraft on loan from Canada as it was battling the Palisades Fire. The collision caused a “fist-sized hole” in the leading edge of the plane’s wing, forcing it to be grounded for repairs. The collision caused the grounding of all firefighting planes and helicopters until the area was free of drones. Law enforcement has announced that anyone flying a drone in the fire areas will be arrested and prosecuted and are using drone serial numbers and DNA from drone parts to find the owner.

Media coverage

Local television stations are working closely with the authorities, broadcasting fire locations evacuation maps, emergency numbers, shelter locations, and the daily press conferences of Mayor Bass and police and fire department leaders. They are using satellite photography to give the public an overview of the multiple fires ongoing while media trucks on the ground give them a closeup of the damage.  Some regrettable incidents marred the otherwise great coverage; hosts at the FOX network tried to blame the fires on President  Biden and Governor Gavin Newsom, DEI, and LA’s female fire chief, of for starting the fires. Forner President  Trumps said FEMA was broke – it had $27 billion in its budget for wildfires-  and  claimed Governor Newsom falsely prioritized water supplies to fish instead of  fires- a legal and physical impossibility. All  lies were repeated by conservative media even after they had been debunked. An online  and the online feed of FOX  broadcast a badly done fake video of the Hollywood sign burning (it wasn’t) with a guest claiming it was god’s retribution of Hollywood liberals. Hollywood hills residents had to be reassured their homes were not in danger.

Insurance coverage 

State Farm cancelled  1,200 homeowners policies in the Palisades before the current fire, forcing them in the state’s costly “last resort “FAIR” program .. In response, California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has issued a one-year moratorium on insurance non-renewals and cancellations in affected areas and implemented new regulations to encourage insurers to expand coverage in high-risk. However, major battles loom between homeowners and insurance companies, and the state and insurance industries.  Already, Lara has warned homeowners in the Palisades that insurance company adjusters are lowballing offers and to wait to accept any deals.

Other fires

As of today Los Angeles County was grappling with four other  major wildfires besides the Palisades Fire ( now over 23,000 acres) burning across regions of the county, from the Pacific ocean to the Antelope Valley: the Eaton Fire (14,117 acres) 33% contained, Hurst Fire (771 acres) 97% contained,  the Kenneth Fire (1,000 acres), the Sunset and Woodly Fires , and the Lidia Fire (nearly 400 acres) are 100% contained.. Additionally, the Sunset Fire had recently erupted in the Hollywood Hills.. Collectively, they have burned over 40,000 acres,  destroyed or damaged over 12,000 structures, claimed at least 25 lives, and forced the evacuation of approximately 205, 000 people.  

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Patrick O’Heffernan, PhD., is a music journalist and radio broadcaster based in Los Angeles, California, with a global following. His two weekly radio programs, MusicFridayLive! and MusicaFusionLA are heard nationwide and in the UK. He focuses on two music specialties: emerging bands in all genres, and the growing LA-based ALM genre (American Latino Music) that combines rock and rap, blues and jazz and pop with music from Latin America like cumbia, banda, jarocho and mariachi. He also likes to watch his friend drag race.

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