Pt. Dume: Day 1 after the Apocalypse

It stormed up and over the mountains like an invasion from a hostile enemy...like ground troops, relentless, and on a mission to destroy.

I was in Manhattan when I heard the news that my family was evacuating from Pt dume. There was nothing I could do in the hours before my flight to LA.

After arriving at LAX I headed to La Canada to where my family was staying with a friend. I borrowed a friends bike the next morning and my daughter and me headed out to Sunset and PCH. I took out the bike and, noticing the heavily restricted checkpoint, I descended to the beach at Gladstone’s where I carried the bike about 100 yards until I felt safe coming back onto the highway. Another roadblock met me at Topanga Canyon and another coy diversion to the beach to avoid the restriction. One lone surfer at Topanga caught my eye (surfers gotta surf). I was back on PCH where I would be able to pedal freely past support vehicles until I reached malibu canyon road. It was surreal. There was no one on the streets. Surfrider hadn’t been this empty on a sunny 1-2 foot day for probably a half century or more.

At Malibu canyon I was yet again turned away and my retreat was now to Bluffs Park where I could clandestinely walk through the dry vegetation for another stretch only to emerge on the highway just south of Tyler. It was just west of Pepperdine that I noticed the first evidence of what had happened the harrowing night before. No structural damage noted as of yet but as I descended down PCH toward Malibu Seafoods I could see the vast footprint of a raging fire. It was like an eating machine had devoured every spec of vegetation, like the stories I read about how flying armies of locusts would destroy miles of crops. The mountains were like a hairless cat; it would look like this all the way to Trancas. Somehow the iconic Seafood restaurant was spared.

As I trekked up the hill to Latigo I came across a man in a black pick up with a mountain bike in the back parked on the highway. I asked him if he wouldn’t mind driving me to Heathercliff. He said “sure”. His name was Tim and he had a couple of gold front teeth from what I could see. He told me how his house was miraculously saved though he left it while it was starting to catch fire. He had prepared his kids for total loss as he drove away with his smoking house in the rear view mirror.

He dropped me and my bike at Heathercliff and we said our “goodbye’s” and “good lucks”. I was here, where I had wanted to be since that moment when I was standing on Park Ave and 50th Street. I started to peddle with my head down towards where my house (was supposed to be) so I could only see a foot or two ahead of me. I didn’t want any foreshadowing to the fate that awaited me. It was my coping mechanism. I was determined to keep my head down until I knew I had biked right in front of it. As my eyes lifted.....joy!!! Victory! I called my daughter who was back at the car and she started crying. A turn of the head revealed three houses down the street that were all now smoldering ashes. I walked over and stood on the gray, smoking rubble where three proud houses once stood and looked out at the ocean from what must have been a patio. In all the gutted houses I saw on this day there was one thing in common. In no case did I see anything discernible. Everything was reduced to gray ash. I couldn’t tell if I was looking at a tennis racket or a once glorious wedding gown, a pantry full of food or a closet full of Prada and Dolce Gabbana. A raging fire is a great democratizer; it’s destructive power leaves a Rolls Royce virtually industinguishable from an old, beat up Buick. It plays no favorites. It’s a nihilist. It has no agenda and it takes no prisoners.

Wandermere Rd., which borders a canyon that cuts through the Point, looked as bad as anything I saw. It looked about 2/3 lost, at least. Dume Dr. from Heathercliff to Greyfox was comparably damaged though Wandermere was the clear loser.

Looking across the canyon I saw skeletons of homes that had fire torches coming from an open gas line. They acted as continuous reminders to the fresh destruction, like memorials to the death of a dream.

It was all so quiet and breathtakingly peaceful. The sun was out and this stretch of formerly inhabited land was empty. It hadn’t been this void of humans for a century or more. The benign ocean waves were a reminder of the continuum of time. This indifferent ocean, and it’s waves, had borne silent witness to this devastating act as they have been witnesses for centuries and millennia. They were equally as indifferent when Cabrillo sailed the first ship past Pt. Dume in 1542.

As I stood at the corner of Westward and Birdview I looked away from the charred and smoking remains and towards the blue ocean and perfectly paved sand. There wasn’t a trace of destruction on that beach. The ocean laughs at fire. There was not a human in sight on this beautiful day. The ocean didn’t care. It never cares.

The beach will soon enough be packed with people, children, boogie boards and colored buckets to collect sand....but, not on this day.

On the way out of town I came across a person who seemed to personify West Malibu. Kim LeDoux was smiling when I saw her as I pulled into the gas station at Las Flores. She just lost her home on Decker Canyon to the greedy flames but her resilience was palpable. She was undaunted, and ready to continue rolling along, just like the waves at Malibu.

“Well, some are going to knock you.

And some'll try to clock you

You know it's really hard to talk sense to you

Trouble child

Breaking like the waves at Malibu“

-Joni M. “Trouble Child”