The sky over the Pacific Palisades had turned the color of rust, with the thick smoke blocking the late afternoon sun. When I arrived just a couple of hours after the first reports of the Palisades fire had come in, multimillion-dollar homes and the hills above them were already on fire as I turned off Sunset Boulevard and entered a residential neighborhood in the Pacific Palisades. The roads leading out of the hills were filled with evacuation traffic that clogged the winding streets. In contrast, others had abandoned their cars altogether, shouldering backpacks, pets, and whatever they could carry…
