Right now, only five miles from where I live in Santa Monica, there’s a fire raging in Pacific Palisades. The black cloud — painted by flashes of orange — reaches high into the sky, and can be seen for miles and miles. It’s a product of some kind of (currently unknown) ignition source coupled with intense Santa Ana Winds that have been punishing the LA Area all day. As crews work to contain the fire, one difficulty is actually getting first responders down roads blocked by abandoned cars, and making sure roads are clear for evacuations; this video shows a bulldozer with no choice but to shove those abandoned cars to the side.
Right away, I want to make clear that, though this article is about cars, and thus relevant to us as a car website, these vehicles don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Yes, we love automobiles and we hate seeing them damaged, but this Pacific Palisades fire is 1,200 acres in size [Update 3:16 AM Eastern: Now it’s over 2,900 acres], and has led to an order of evacuation for 30,000 people, per the New York Times. The people are what matter.
It’s terrifying, and as someone who saw this on my way to work today, I pray for the people in the Pacific Palisades community:
After I returned from work, I saw the flames from Santa Monica:
Anyway, the clip I’m referencing in the headline is this one from local news outlet KTLA:
KTLA’s @GeneKangTV reports from the perimeter of the #PalisadesFire where crews needed to clear vehicles using a bulldozer to make access for firefighters. Live coverage: https://t.co/ZEEfGXODEx pic.twitter.com/ziOctuFD7X
— KTLA (@KTLA) January 7, 2025
As KTLA reports, an actor named Steve Guttenburg used his platform to warn drivers not to take their keys with them when they feel they have to abandon their cars:
He told KTLA 5’s Gene Kang that he’s urging people who have left their cars on Palisades Drive to leave their keys behind so they can move the cars to make room for incoming fire trucks.
“What’s happening is people take their keys with them as if they’re in a parking lot. This is not a parking lot. We really need people to move their cars,” the “Police Academy” actor explained. “If you leave your car behind, leave the key in there so a guy like me can move your car so that these fire trucks can get up there.”
Palisades Drive.
“There are people stuck up there. So we’re trying to clear Palisades Drive and I’m walking up there as far as I can moving cars,” he revealed, pointing up to the hill where traffic was slowly making its way down.
Because I live under a rock, I don’t know who Steve Guttenburg is, but I can tell you one thing: I like the cut of his jib. What a badass!
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Anyway, far too many people failed to do what Guttenburg has been advising, and as a result, with no way to move the cars, officials had to bulldoze those vehicles out the way to clear a path for evacuations and emergency crews. Per KTLA:
Multiple drivers did not take that advice, however, and officials used a massive bulldozer to push stopped cars to the side of the road on Palisades Drive and create a path for emergency vehicles.
“If this is your car, unfortunately, it’s an emergency situation, and this is what they have to do,” KTLA’s Gene Kang explained from the scene.
The sound of that creaking metal in that smoke-filled video is pretty shocking. You can see multiple Teslas, a Mercedes EV, a Camry (which is getting crushed) , and lots of other fairly new cars, plus there’s an old Ford F-150 work-truck and an older Prius. The reporter says the cars line the street as far as his eyes can see, all just sitting there about to be plowed like a deep snow.
Here’s to hoping the drivers are OK, and that at this road gets cleared so fire crews can do their jobs and folks can escape as needed.
Update (3:16 A.M. ET): New footage from NBCLA includes an interview of a man named Adam Handler, whose Audi you can watch get absolutely crushed by Dozer Team 5:
Update (7:39 A.M. ET): According to KTLA, here’s what some of the cars look like now, so moving them with a bulldozer was both clearly necessary and not ultimately significant in terms of damage:
Top Image: NBCLA (YouTube)
“not ultimately significant in terms of damage” IS the understatement of the year. So far. At least two people have perished so far. I hope there aren’t more.
Guttenberg immediately chiming in with that PSA on leaving your car is pretty cool of him: https://bsky.app/profile/vintagevirgo.bsky.social/post/3lf6lg26qhk23
I’m not surprised that Steve Guttenburg is helping people out and maintaining order. These are skills that he learned in Police Academy. Meanwhile, number five (bulldozer) is there disassembling.
The Insurance Agent in me just cringes at all the loss, knowing it’s going to drive rates up even more. Obviously lives are the most important thing, but the property waste is just incredible. More mitigation and prevention please. Forest Management costs way less the rebuilding. We used to understand that. And climate change is umm, kind of a real thing with actual costs. I’m somewhat surprised the insurance industry has lobbied for a massive increase in prevention. The terrible secret is that because insurance is a percentage business, there’s actually very little incentive when the execs make more money from losses and rates going up. Ugh.
Think of it this way; If rates double, your agent only has to write half the policies to make the same. If she keeps most of those clients, she gets a new boat. Sure, some carriers lose out at different times, but because everyone simply has to buy insurance, as the premium numbers grow, so do the percentage cuts. It’s a profit driven massive industry, not a public service and the people in it are there to make an income. The only way it shrinks is when there are less overall losses. I despise being a navel gazer, but I think it’s going to get much worse before we find ways to make it better. To tie it back to cars, Trimflation and higher interest rates only make things worse.
One obvious solution is to cut the rate paid in commissions as premiums go up. Just like in the housing market the rate paid for commissions should go down a bit as home prices rise.
That would be nice, but it’s way harder to do than you might think. Everything else being equal, every single insurance agent on Earth is going to sell the policy that pays better every single time and you would too. That’s just one of the intractable issues. There are about ten others. No, I don’t know the answers.
I don’t buy that. All it takes is one willing to sell for less, and the customers will come because they want to pay less. Most agents are also trapped by their company, so they have to take what the company offers. This is similar to salespeople who get their area cut so they’ll go out and sell to smaller accounts they used to skip over.
You may not have understood what I said. If two policies cost and are otherwise identical, but one pays the agent $1.00 while the other pays $1.10, which one do you think the agent is going to sell? The agent is not a bad actor in that scenario, merely not a foolish one.
In that case yes, but why would one company be willing to spend more to get the account, they could probably get more accounts by offering a bigger discount to the customer over a bigger bonus to the salesman.
So many competing forces are at play here. If, as a carrier, you make 4% net on each policy, but another carrier makes 5% net, do you want two of the 4% policies or a single 5% one? The two policies cost more to write and service than the 5% ones, so which is better? Next, agents exist to make a living, not perform societal financial improvement, so how are you going to convince them to intentionally make less? Remember, the more accounts you have the more it costs to service them…
This is not an easy problem and there are no simple solutions. And that’s just one of the problem. Each step in the food chain introduces new complications. Smarter people than I have tried and failed for ages now.
Our costs haven’t gone down – So why should we engage in a race to the bottom?
Who is ‘our’ and what costs?
Real Estate Agents & Insurance Agents.
Our costs of doing business and our costs of living.
Inflation affects us too.
Wildfires are extremely dangerous and unpredictable, especially when fanned by high winds. We had a very serious one here in the Denver/Boulder metro area a few years ago (Marshall fire – 6200 acres, destroyed 1100 homes and business) that actually jumped a 6-lane highway and burned down suburban neighborhoods nowhere near the foothills that are accustomed to dealing with the threat of wildfire.
Forest fires suuuuuuuuuck. Stay safe out there!
David,
I grew up with my dad fighting wildfires all across the country as part of his job with the US Forest Service. 36 hours on the fire line, 12-24 off, depending on how bad it was. One major problem California has (and the rest of the country will have if the fire is bad crowd gets their way) is too much underbrush in the forests. Prescribed fire (controlled burns of the underbrush) eliminate the fuel that allows these fires to spread. Between budget cuts, lack of manpower, and misinformed anti-fire crowds, the ability to properly manage the woodlands of the country has been greatly diminished over the last couple decades.
Be prepared to evacuate, get upwind of the fire, or put several miles between you and the fire.
OK, I have questions. When people abandoned their cars where did the people go to? If the fire is too dangerous to drive through, wouldn’t it be too dangerous to run through?
And, when they did abandon their cars, why didn’t they pull them over to the side of the road?
Down the road. On foot they could get from point A to B.
At that point, they could run through the smoke before the flames get to them vs waiting in their car and hoping that the fire didn’t reach them before the traffic started moving again. Back when Maui burned, some people died in their cars either because they didn’t have anywhere to run to or the fire overtook them before they realized it.
The road was filled bumper to bumper across all lanes. If there was still a lane open and moving, they would have been able to get out of there.
Thank you. I wasn’t thinking, might’ve been pre-coffee. Of course I understand now the car log jammed, and there was no place to go except to run. Thank you for the clarification. I hope everyone is safe.
I agree – the fire is crazy and the people are what’s important. However, can we find out more about that red Mazda truck with the near-mint bed decals? Who’s driving that survivor? is it for sale? Will it dog? (whoops, wrong site…)
Seriously, I’d buy that in a heartbeat.