As I sat in the pilot’s seat of a helicopter hovering off the coast of Southern California on Friday, I felt lost. I quickly looked to the right.
I thought, “Oh my God.”
It was Pacific Palisades, and the home and neighborhood fires in Los Angeles County had destroyed it. I had seen the pictures. I have seen the film. But nothing could compare to what I saw from 300 yards above the coast in an airplane.
When I looked down at the shore and saw waves crashing into the rocks just a few feet away, I felt a strange sense of contrast.
Of course, that was only one stop on the 67-minute, heartbreaking helicopter ride to see how bad the wildfires were in Los Angeles County. Rob Schumacher, a photographer for Gannett, joined me. He asked that the back door of the chopper be taken off so he could get a good picture of what was going on below. USA TODAY hired the helicopter so that a reporter and a photographer could see the damage and try to understand how bad it was.
It’s a tough point of view. More than 10,000 buildings have been destroyed, and the damage seen from above is really scary.
A 28-year-old pilot named Oleg Byelogurov met us in Burbank and gave us life jackets. He also told us that we would be flying over the Pacific Ocean.
It put out the fire right at my feet. There was an airsickness bag nearby. With headsets, we could talk over the sound of the blades as the trip began.
The well-known Hollywood sign was our first stop. It doesn’t look like there was any fire damage, even though there were pictures on social media this week that seemed to show otherwise. After, they went to the Hollywood Hills, where it looked like only empty land had been burned since the fire broke out.
As we moved toward the ocean, the clear clouds turned smoky. We had no idea what the Palisades site would be like.
He said it looked like the neighborhoods had been destroyed by a “blow torch.”
Richard Conn, an attorney I met Wednesday night, told me that he and his wife left their Palisades home on Tuesday because it was a war zone. That made me wonder if they were exaggerating until I saw it for myself.
Then Oleg flew us north toward Malibu, and I saw something I hadn’t understood: a lot of beachfront houses that had been destroyed by fire.
I couldn’t help but think about how cruel fate was. Some homes caught fire. Others did no damage that could be seen.
And that strange contrast, as boats slowly motored across the water near homes that had been torn down. Only fire trucks and police cars were on the nearby Pacific Coast Highway, which was mostly empty.
We tried to go further north, to Topanga Canyon, to see the Los Angeles County fire that was the worst at the time. Due to Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFR), we were not able to get close to the fires in Atladena or see the damage up close.
As for the safety measures, the pilot said, “There’s a good reason for those TFR.”
Safety seems to be everywhere.
During the trip, my phone sent me at least two Emergency Alerts about the need to leave the area.
We all got out of the helicopter when the blades stopped moving. I felt a little dizzy as I walked back through the hallway. Someone there told us that a new TRF had been put in place. Commercial helicopters would not be able to fly within a mile of the coast for at least two weeks.
No one would have the same horrifying view of the damage. It made me think about what a helicopter ride might be like in a year or two.
How are they going to rebuild?
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