Since January the Santa Monica Pacific Palisades Lions Club has been raising funds to support the Pacific Palisades fire recovery efforts. We have seen pictures of the devastation, but the story below, written by long-time Lion and Pacific Palisades resident, Kingsley Fife, shares the shock and fear that many experienced that day.
President Roosevelt once famously said that December 7 was a Day That Will Live in Infamy. Now I can say that January 7 is a new day That Will Live in Infamy. On that fateful morning a one-hundred-foot-high fire storm driven by 90 mph winds came rushing down from the Highlands and consumed our beautiful town of 30,000 people. What we have left is heartaches and rubble. As one Palisadian put it, “I looked into the swirling fire wall and saw the Devil dancing in hell.”
The day started off innocently with me enjoying the LA Times in the kitchen. My wife yelled that there’s a fire starting way over in the Palisades Highlands. We went outside and took videos of the super scooper planes dropping water, never thinking that it would ever get over to us. In fact, the smoke color was changing from black to white and we were cheering that it indicated they were putting the fire out. Friends were already calling and saying they were evacuating, and I thought “What an over-reaction.”
Then the police and fire department cars started cruising around saying “Evacuate,” and we started getting messages on the phone. I went to the back yard and started hosing down our back hill, assured that I would stay and fight the fire if it ever got near us. All the while tornado-like winds were swirling around us. Then twenty minutes later I was up in our back hallway and saw huge flames coming over at the top of our back hill. I ran and screamed to my wife that we have got to get out of here. And we scrambled around the house trying to collect what we needed – a moment of panic and desperation.
While in our cars in the street I wanted to go back and get some shoes but by then the smoke was so thick I couldn’t even see our house. I knew if I got out of my car and started breathing this air without a special smoke mask that I would destroy my lungs. We drove down the street and met nothing but gridlock. We parked by the side of the road, praying that we would have a home to return to.
By some miracle our house was one of the few that survived.
To support the Palisades fire recovery efforts please make a check to the California Lions Foundation with the designation SM-PP Lions Club – Palisades Fire Relief. Mail to Calif Lions Foundation, Attn: David Hebebrand, 20231 Valley Blvd. #E, Tehachapi, CA 93561. For online donations, go to https://californialionsfoundation.org/contact
and complete the online form.
At our next meeting on Wednesday, May 7th we have two members of the Palisades Community Council, Sue Kohl, President and John Padden, Palisades PRIDE, coming to share what the recovery efforts have entailed so far, and the future rebuilding of the Pacific Palisades. If you are interested in being our guest please RSVP to Kingsley at 310-367-2679 or smpplionsclub@gmail.com. The dinner meeting will be a DIFFERENT location, the Santa Monica YMCA, 1332 6th St, Santa Monica, CA 90401 and start at 6:00 pm.
