Pacific Palisades is no stranger to fire concerns – or California's home insurance problem
When fast-moving fires plagued neighboring communities in Los Angeles County years ago, a school in Pacific Palisades served as an evacuation center. After this week's disastrous fires on the Westside, that will no longer be an option.
On Tuesday, flames tore through Palisades Charter High School, which reports show was previously used to offer shelter to people escaping Southern California wildfires like the 1977 Topanga fire and the 2018 Woolsey fire.
The school itself and the neighborhood as a whole have long sat within the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone of Los Angeles, prompting longtime fears of what could happen in a crisis like the Palisades fire.
“There are only two main routes of ingress and egress to and from the Palisades as a whole" to the Pacific Coast Highway, the Pacific Palisades Community Council wrote in a 2020 letter to city officials in Los Angeles.
The letter said that some of the neighborhood's streets were "substandard," adding, "We have experienced serious problems with congestion during wildfire evacuations (most recently during the serious Palisades & Getty fires in fall 2019)."
The Pacific Palisades Community Council had already been planning to talk during their regularly scheduled meeting Thursday about finding time to schedule a fire safety fair in the neighborhood and how community input could be submitted to the upcoming Los Angeles Community Wildfire Protection Plan from MySafe:LA, a nonprofit group.
The wildfire protection plan in question was not expected to be finished until later this year. In a phone interview with ABC News Wednesday evening, Cpt. Chris Nevil of MySafe:LA described the plan as an evolving "living document" and said that because so many people are involved in its creation, it has taken longer than expected to complete.
An executive summary of the plan that was previously released mentioned Pacific Palisades by name, noting that "strong winds, notably the Santa Ana winds, can swiftly spread flames, posing threats to nearby communities like Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Woodland Hills."
This week's fires in Los Angeles County also come amid continued concerns over homeowners insurance in coastal and mountainous communities throughout California.
Between 2020 and 2022, over half a million fire insurance policies were not renewed in Los Angeles County, according to an analysis of California Department of Insurance records by the ABC Owned Television Stations data journalism team.
In Pacific Palisades, 732 fire insurance policies were not renewed in 2022 alone, accounting for 11 percent of such policies in the neighborhood.
A 2021 report by nonprofit Climate Resolve found that after the Woolsey Fire, "we learned that homes were chronically underinsured, having been assessed at the time of purchase—perhaps decades ago—and not realistically reappraised since," adding that "insurance is crucially important and little understood by homeowners."
J.P. Morgan Insurance issued an alert Wednesday that estimated preliminarily that "insured losses from this fire could approach $10 billion."
ABC Owned Television Stations' Ryann Jones and Jill Castellano contributed to this report.
