“I saw the hill go up in flames in less than ten minutes, the houses were pulverized all around, but I saved my house”

Reportage
A deluge of fires, the most monstrous in the history of the Californian megalopolis, winds that had the force of a hurricane and are still blowing, the heavenly strongholds of Hollywood stars reduced to ashes… Entire neighborhoods of the mythical City of Angels have been turned into ghost towns since January 7.

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Mercedes, Jaguars and Teslas abandoned pell-mell in the middle of the road. Inside the cabins, a suitcase, sleeping bags, a backpack, witnesses of a prepared evacuation which turned into a frantic flight. Behind the ash-black bay windows of the villas, which were licked by the flames, Christmas trees decorated as if time had stopped. An aquarium where a solitary fish continues to circle. Sculptures of naked Venus writhing still standing amid the blackened debris. And, everywhere, chimneys as straight as steles, the only vestiges of houses that went up in smoke, bristling the charred landscape. Not a living soul. A ghost town. It feels like the burned-out world imagined by Cormac McCarthy in his post-apocalyptic novel “The Road”. We only hear an incredible silence crossed by the Santa Ana winds. These winds carried a deluge of fire, with gusts of up to 160 km/h, to the hills of Los Angeles from January 7. Enough to spread the flames at lightning speed, especially since two very rainy years had given rise to luxuriant vegetation which then dried up over the course of eight months without a drop of water.

Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Altadena… Paradise neighborhoods populated by Hollywood stars were wiped off the map in a few hours. At least twenty-five dead, thousands of houses, schools, restaurants, stores and theaters razed, 16,000 hectares pulverized, some 88,000 people evacuated who are desperately waiting to be able to return home… when this “home” still exists. A week after the first flames, we…