Pacific Palisades Fire Destroyed Four in Five Structures in January 2025

Pacific Palisades, a coastal community in Southern California, was largely destroyed by a wildfire that began on January 7, 2025. The fire started in Temescal Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains before spreading downslope into residential areas. CBS News national correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti covered the event from the ground during the initial days and later wrote about the response and recovery in his book "Torched," scheduled for publication on May 12.

m. from a vegetation fire in an area previously burned by fireworks one week earlier. Fire crews did not arrive in time to establish a containment line in the hills. The fire then moved into streets including Floresta Place, Bienveneda Avenue, and La Puerta del Sol, which the Los Angeles Fire Department had previously identified as non-defensible.

Residents began self-evacuating without official guidance as Sunset Boulevard became gridlocked. A radio transmission stated, "Civilians abandoning cars are impeding firefighting operations. " Some residents who remained used garden hoses to defend against flames reaching 40 feet in height.

By nightfall, winds reached 100 miles per hour in the canyons. The fire burned at a rate of five football fields per minute at its peak and continued through the town for three days before additional resources contained it in the hills. When the smoke cleared, four in five structures in the affected area had been destroyed.

The community was established in the early 1900s on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Developers promoted it as an escape from Los Angeles, reachable at the time only by an all-day journey on dirt roads. Over the decades it attracted Hollywood studios, Methodist settlers in the 1920s, European intellectuals fleeing the Nazis in the 1940s, and later entertainment industry executives who replaced earlier bungalows with large estates.

Vigliotti reported that officials attributed the fire's spread to wind and drought while it was still burning. The correspondent stated that he observed delays in resource deployment and other response issues during the first four days. His account describes the rebuilding process as fast-tracked and notes that political figures involved in recovery decisions prioritized other considerations over long-term safety changes.

It states that nearly half of American houses were built before 1980, prior to the current era of larger wildfires. Vigliotti writes that preventive actions could have been taken and that lessons from this event could help other areas reduce future risks.