Stories of survival and rebuilding after the 2025 Palisades fire
- Share via
Disaster victims. Climate refugees. Survivors. Simple labels don’t begin to describe people who, before the fire, made Pacific Palisades their home and place of work. Nearly a year later, many are still reconstructing their lives. One lives on a boat. A teenager is helping her parents cope. A housekeeper struggles to find work. All are hopeful for brighter days ahead.
-
Kiley Hoiles, 15, lost her home, her neighborhood and her school in the Palisades fire. She appears stoic and poised now, but says she is forever changed.
-
‘It’s a building zone. And I love it,’ says Allison Holdorff Polhill. She and her family are rebuilding their lost home, and much of their neighborhood is coming back too.
-
Amalia Atayde, who worked as a housekeeper in the Palisades, is now struggling to find work. But she sees hope in rebuilt homes that could again need her cleaning services.
-
Rashi Kaslow lost his mobile home in the Palisades fire. Now he’s living in a houseboat, trying to figure out how to keep afloat, emotionally and financially.
-
Sensei Gerry Blanck has resumed karate lessons after his home and his dojo in Pacific Palisades burned. Students and parents see it as a refuge.
-
Robert Lempert, a RAND researcher who lost his home in the Palisades fire, hopes to use computer simulations, and his neighbors’ ideas, to design a fire-resilient community.
