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In a decimated Los Angeles neighborhood, a handful of Pacific Palisades residents still live in the town that has been reduced to rubble.
“Almost like a death of someone in your life, they [Palisades residents] are finding with the death of their home… it’s the little-by-little things that you keep realizing are gone,” said Palisades resident Jimmy Dunne.
Among blocks of charred, leveled homes lay holdout structures that miraculously survived one of California’s most destructive wildfires.
Dunne, 70, calls one of those remaining structures home.
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An aerial image shows homes damaged and destroyed by the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. (PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
“It isn’t a ghost town,” he told Digital.
Yet the physical destruction tells a different story.
From churches and schools to grocery stores and restaurants – an entire town was wiped out in days. More than 23,000 acres were burned and roughly 6,800 structures destroyed, according to Cal Fire.
“With all of that burning, that didn’t burn the town,” Dunne said. “The town is the hearts of the people that are in this place.”
A 40-year resident, Dunne moved back to the Palisades three weeks ago after being relocated in Marina del Rey, a popular refuge for families displaced by the fire.
One year later, he says the coastal Los Angeles suburb is slowly coming back, though it will “never be the same.”
“There already are 6,000 people back here in the Palisades. It’s just that things are more scattered out,” said Dunne.
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Forty-year Pacific Palisades resident Jimmy Dunne told Digital about life inside the decimated Los Angeles neighborhood one year after it was ravaged by fire. ( Digital)
Thirty-five land parcels are selling each month in Pacific Palisades, according to a report by Anthony Marguleas at Amalfi Estates.
“Sales are now consistently exceeding new listings, pushing sell-through above equilibrium and tightening inventory,” Marguleas said.
Though sales and rebuilding strides over the last year don’t expunge the deep emotional scar of losing everything.
“It’s not just losing their homes… it’s losing belonging, belonging to their church communities, and their kids’ schools and belonging to the local clubs,” he told Digital.
With churches and schools destroyed, the connective tissue holding the Palisades community together is gone. Dunne says the town is still missing its once vibrant sense of neighborhood.
“All those things that create belonging in the town, most of them aren’t back yet,” he explained. “That’s what people miss.”
For Dunne, the Palisades wasn’t defined by its buildings, but rather its people.
“Home is defined by who’s in it with you, who’s in the soup,” he said. “And that’s your neighbors. The wonderful thing is the Palisades is coming back. It’s going to roar back.”
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Left, a building along Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades before the fires. Right, same building after the fires. (Left (Google Maps), Right (Jay L. Clendenin/Getty Images))
But the loss of meaningful material items, like photos and family memorabilia, still strikes a painful chord.
“It’s not just the stuff you lost… you lost a part of the story of your life in the things that went with the fire,” Dunne said.
His daughter Kaitlyn Little’s home burned to the ground, displacing her husband and then two-year-old child.
“Everything she ever had in her life, every diary, everything, every ring… everything was gone,” he said. “Her life has been erased in terms of anything materialistically that she ever had. That’s really hard.”
It’s a weight Pacific Palisades and Altadena residents continue to bear.
Reflecting on the one-year anniversary of the deadly blaze, Dunne told Digital about the fateful day of Jan. 7, 2025.
Flames from the Palisades Fire burn a building on Sunset Boulevard amid a powerful windstorm on January 8, 2025 in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. (Apu Gomes/Getty Images)
“The assumption was we [Palisades residents] can leave because Daddy is going to save us. The fireman is going to come and put out the fires, and we’re going to be taken care of,” he said.”
“Daddy didn’t show up.”
What followed, Dunne says, felt like “betrayal,” as the fire fiercely ravaged the town.
“So many buildings, so many schools, churches. Methodist, the first building that was in the town burned to the ground,” Dunne explained. “So many homes around town were burnt the second and third day. That’s unforgivable.”
Dunne told Fox he witnessed fires all over that could have “easily” been extinguished, but there were no fire trucks.
It took firefighters 24 days to fully contain the fire that claimed 12 lives.
A firefighter battles the Palisades Fire as it burns during a windstorm on the west side of Los Angeles, Calif., on Jan. 7, 2025. (Ringo Chiu/Reuters/TPX Images of the Day)
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Dunne says the fire’s anniversary has prompted reflection and resolve.
“How does everybody deal with this grief and this bitterness about how the city and how the state behaved?,” he asked. “How do we keep the values, and the personality and the heartbeat of this town? How do we save that?”
Dunne vows the “magical” coastal neighborhood will come back.
“I know it’s going to re-blossom and be something even more wonderful… It’s just going to take some time,” he said.
