Los Angeles wildfire horror: CAROLINE GRAHAM appears on the multi-million-pound houses of the wealthy and well-known which have been diminished to rubble

The skeletal remains of the building stood outlined against the early morning sun, ashes still smouldering in the rubble, the once gleaming white walls now scorched with black burn marks.

This was the historic 100-year-old building that housed Starbucks in Pacific Palisades, the wealthy enclave of Los Angeles that was wiped out during the devastating wildfires.

Just six weeks ago, I sat outside this very same spot in ‘the Village’, as locals such as Ben Affleck, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford affectionately call it, and watched as former Batman star Michael Keaton ordered a latte and not a single person paid him any attention.

Yesterday, as the acrid smell of smoke hung in the air and ash continued to rain down like snow, it felt surreal. For Los Angeles is a tale of two cities.

Leaving my home in the Hollywood Hills shortly after 5am yesterday – just a 20-minute drive down the iconic Sunset Boulevard from Pacific Palisades – I watched people making their way to work; the air was clear and all seemed ‘normal’.

Four police roadblocks later, photographer Rupert Thorpe and I entered Pacific Palisades and drove into what felt eerily like the set of a Hollywood horror film.

Some of the city’s most recognisable residents, including Sir Anthony Hopkins, John Goodman, Anna Faris, Billy Crystal and Paris Hilton, have all lost their homes.

It still seems unbelievable that this destruction could take place in my adopted home of Los Angeles, America’s second biggest city and, even more incredibly, that Pacific Palisades – one of the richest and most chi-chi suburbs – could be wiped out in hours.

Gusting Santa Ana winds combined with a disastrous decision by California Governor Gavin Newsom not to bring down fresh snowfall water from the mountains meant that when the fire tore through this place the fire hydrants were empty within an hour.

One fireman told me yesterday: ‘We were outside these homes, with people begging us to help them, and our hoses ran dry.’

Rows and rows of multi-million-dollar homes were eviscerated. I began by heading to Starbucks in the heart of the village. Downed power cables sparking with electricity crisscrossed the streets. A small fire smouldered in the coffee shop’s ruins. Next door, two Bank of America ATM machines were barely recognisable, having melted in the intense heat.

Across the street a Gelson’s supermarket lay in ruins, the metal shopping carts soldered together. Then there was the Episcopalian church, nothing left but a single stone wall.

A tattered American flag flew forlornly from the side of one gate. Behind it lay what looked like a mangled metal junkyard but was, in reality, someone’s home. Apart from police, firemen and city workers, the place was silent. Burned-out Teslas lined the streets.

I came across Bob Bronstein, walking solemnly up Monument Street, one of the main residential thoroughfares where house prices started at $3 million (£2.4 million) and went up to $20 million (£16 million). 

He told me his home had escaped the worst of the flames. But he was here today to check on a property belonging to old friends. We walked in silence until we turned the corner: ‘Oh my God,’ he whispered.

There was nothing there. The house his friends had lived in for ten years was obliterated. Bob, too overwhelmed to speak, took some pictures and then quietly left to find mobile-phone service to call his friends and tell them they were homeless. On the ground, the police told me that evacuees would not be allowed back until the town had been secured, power lines turned off and all fires extinguished.

But we came across Maura Grace, a therapist who had her nine-year-old son and six-year-old daughter in the back of her car.

Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, she made a fresh start in what she called her ‘dream home’ just a month ago.

‘I only finished decorating it two nights before the fire,’ she said. ‘I travelled the world a lot before I had kids and I sat there with my children, in our new home, explaining all the artwork I’d collected, telling them the stories behind each piece.

‘I felt calm, serene. This was supposed to be a fresh start for me and my family. I pulled out my son’s baby blanket, something I’d not looked at in years.’

Treasured possessions that were soon to become ash. ‘There was no warning,’ she said. ‘I took the children to school on Tuesday morning and came home. Suddenly, I heard the alarms and then the messages on the phone to evacuate immediately. I ran round collecting a few pieces and then saw the flames outside the window. It hit me: ‘Do I want to get more stuff or do I need to make sure I get out of here OK so my kids still have a mum?’ ‘

Her eyes fill with tears. ‘We have lost everything but I have all that matters. Those two little people sitting in the back of my car.’

Walking around the streets of Pacific Palisades, one has to wonder how many years it will take to rebuild.

This is already being called the most expensive wildfire in history, with $5 billion worth of damage estimated in this area alone. Nothing is standing except the odd stone fireplace and, bizarrely, I saw an outdoor pizza oven looking immaculate, its blue tiles gleaming in the morning sun.

Los Angeles architect David Applebaum, 66, lost his $1 million ocean-view home. ‘One minute there was smoke in the air, the next I had ocean in front of me and fire on three sides. I didn’t know if I’d make it out alive. I put my heart and soul into designing that house. There’s nothing left.

‘I spent my last few minutes there helping neighbours in their 90s to evacuate, and suddenly the fire was on us and I had no time to grab anything of my own.’ He wept remembering the neighbour’s cat he could not coax out from its home and was forced to leave behind, presumably to perish. ‘I’m angry that [LA mayor] Karen Bass cut $17 million from the firefighting budget to help the homeless. That’s great, but what about helping taxpayers when their homes are threatened?

‘Why not have a fire truck on every corner? I’m devastated. I have to start my life over again. All I have left are my relationships and trust.’

It is the sense that if this could happen in Pacific Palisades, home to people with remarkable wealth and privilege who pay some of the highest taxes in the US, it could happen anywhere. In 2010, I reported from the Haiti earthquake. Five years before, I was the first journalist into the Superdome stadium that was sheltering thousands of evacuees after the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

But here in Pacific Palisades, overlooking the waters of the Pacific, home to yogurt shops and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop store, surely you should feel safe?

This week’s events have revealed that to be cosy illusion.

When I asked where residents have sought shelter, I was told most have gone to stay in five-star hotels where rooms are now selling for $1,000 a night. There are rumours that bespoke doctors services are offering to deliver the weight-loss drug Ozempic to displaced dieters who had to flee their homes without their injectable slimming drugs.

The death toll stands at five but is expected to rise considerably once rescue workers start to comb through the rubble. As of last night, 20 people have been arrested for looting (although what they looted remains a mystery as I saw nothing even vaguely recognisable in the ashes).

More than 180,000 people remain under an evacuation order as five wildfires continue to rage. The two largest cover 27,000 acres and are ‘zero per cent contained’.

At least 2,000 structures have been destroyed.

I meet a man who gives his name only as ‘James’. He is a developer who was building his dream home and was two weeks off completion when the fire razed it.

‘We will start again. I am sure we will. This is America and it’s the American way,’ he says.

‘But at the moment I feel sick. Armageddon happened here and I don’t know if I want to come back and rebuild.

‘I don’t know what I’m thinking. I’m in shock. We all are. Please pray for us.’