In the days since devastating fires began sweeping through Los Angeles, vast swaths of neighborhoods like Altadena and the Pacific Palisades are likely all but lost. Dozens of people have died; more than 12,000 structures have been destroyed. As of Monday, January 13, many of the fires are still raging, and 150,000 residents have been forced to evacuate.
“I’m almost certain the apocalypse in LA right now will be one of the worst things I see or experience in my life,” wrote AD100 designer Mark D. Sikes in an Instagram post. Calling the catastrophe “a complete tragedy,” Sikes noted, thankfully, that his own home near the Hollywood Hills was spared. “Our team is safe.”
Sadly, not all were so lucky. Word of the impact on the city’s vibrant architecture and design communities came quickly and mostly online. On Wednesday, designer Suzanne Tucker posted a photo of a client’s house in ruins. “I finished [it] a few months ago,” she wrote. “They are safe. The house is completely gone. And there will be thousands of photos like this of unfathomable loss and utter heartbreak.” She was right: Over the course of the next day, numerous designers, including Leanne Ford, shared their own tragedies. “Three weeks ago we got keys to our new LA place in Rustic Canyon. It was a place to write, to create. Three days ago we lost it,” Ford wrote. “We are the lucky ones. Still, to be affected by fires is shocking. I’ve been praying hard for ‘the peace that passes understanding’ through this—for everyone.”
While the conflagrations are unprecedented, they are not unimaginable in an area plagued by recurring wildfires. Last week, the design writer Gregory Han and his wife went through their 1963 Altadena foothills home inch by inch, preparing for the worst. (Han even wrote a Wirecutter article on protecting homes in high-risk zones, publishing it the day the fires arrived.) But little can stop 100 mile-per-hour winds. “Our home is currently in a Schrödinger’s state, with firefighters still on the adjacent hillside hardening the [land] and dropping water to keep our neighborhood from adding to the toll,” he wrote to me on Friday. “For now the house is still standing. Not knowing has been a very challenging part of the situation, all the while learning this friend or that acquaintance has lost their home. There’s an element of survivor’s guilt and gratitude battling incessantly.”
As Han and thousands more wait and see, the tally of confirmed losses increases. Dozens of historic landmarks are gone, including Altadena’s Bunny Museum, the Brutalist Robert Bridges House above Sunset Boulevard in the Palisades, and William Randolph Hearst’s Topanga Ranch Motel. Some are still in danger, including Case Study House #8 (the Eames House), and are being closely monitored.
Retail shops have not been spared: Amber Lewis posted that her Shoppe Amber Interiors store in the Palisades is gone. “Our company values are deeply rooted in our love and appreciation for all things ‘home’ and we are absolutely devastated for all those who have lost theirs,” she posted. JJ Martin’s forthcoming DoubleJ store was also destroyed. “This was doublej’s very first shop in the United States, a labor of love, enthusiasm and total joy, conceived and painstakingly designed by our team over the last 9 months. We are unfathomably heartbroken,” she wrote on Instagram. “It has been excruciating watching the homes on Enchanted Way where I grew up burn to the ground, including our childhood home, the Gundershaugs down the street, seeing videos of family friends driving through walls of flame.”
