(Reuters) – In one image, two people hug each other tightly, wrapped in comforting each other as two houses burn behind them. In another, the Stars and Stripes on the mast – dirty but still fluttering in the blue sky – remain standing amid a pile of ruined wall. It reminds of the pictures taken in New York after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Reuters photographers and videographers were on the ground in Los Angeles capturing images showing the scale of the fires that exploded on Tuesday, fueled by gusts of Santa Ana winds, and are the most destructive in the city’s history. Many are veterans who have covered multiple wildfires, but say they have never witnessed anything like it.
“I’ve been in California for 24 years and this is by far the worst I’ve seen,” said photographer Mike Blake. “The wind is so strong you can’t stand. And we haven’t had any rain.”
Blake and colleagues took several photos Wednesday night on the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu, lined with multimillion-dollar beach houses — too dangerous to even approach on Tuesday. When they arrived at sunset, almost all the homes were gone. Some flames still licked around the buildings, their orange color the same shade as the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean.
Not all those affected lived in wealthy neighborhoods. Ringo Chiu filmed a small, unassuming house in the Palisades area completely engulfed in flames, sparks flying into the night. Videographer Jorge Garcia spoke with the man, who gave himself only as Curtis, who returned to his mobile home park, also in Palisades, on Wednesday to find nothing.
“It was just raw emotion,” Garcia said. – He felt really helpless. Garcia saw people from different backgrounds come together and try to help each other, he said.
The fire seems to be erratic in its path. “One house is on fire, while the house next to it is intact,” said photographer Dave Swanson. “There is no rhyme or reason.”
Swanson snapped a photo of a man carefully lowering and folding an American flag from the front yard of his cousin’s home in Altadena. Behind him, the interior of the house glows an infernal orange, and smoke billows into the sky.
As the fire burned down, parts of the buildings remained. In some places, the hearth and the chimney are the only recognizable parts. In others, the stairs lead nowhere.
“I shot a charred staircase hanging in the air on what was left of the foundation of the house,” said Daniel Cole. “Even though the house was on the beach side of the road, the fire consumed it anyway.”
Cole’s photo was taken on the Pacific Coast Highway, a long-time favorite of locals and visitors alike, and a place that, Garcia says, is associated with “pleasant memories as you go to take it in the breeze.”
“And now those memories will be changed forever,” he said.
