‘There’s literally nothing’: surrounded by destruction, Los Angeles begins to process scale of loss

Ricky Gordon and her son Alex Pack in Pacific Palisades. ‘It’s not just about your own house – it’s about the loss of your community.’ Photograph: Gabrielle Canon/The Guardian

Wildfires had crept close to the Pacific Palisades before.

Just in 2018, the catastrophic Woolsey fire wreaked havoc in nearby Malibu. There’d been other close calls: evacuations because of a brush fire in 2019. A blaze chewing through steep remote terrain nearby the following year.