Life after Woolsey: Local native details wildfire destruction

The Old West set at Paramount Ranch, located outside Los Angeles, was almost totally leveled by the Woolsey Fire. (Michele Fitzwilliam photo)

As she drove down the quarter-mile entrance to Paramount Ranch Park in the Santa Monica Mountains last Friday, Michele Fitzwilliam looked on with a mix of amazement and horror at the sheer devastation that nature had wrought.

On a stretch of roadway where hundreds of trees once stood, there was “nothing but black and silver ash on the ground and leafless, charred sagebrush and manzanita” — vivid and painful reminders of the massive Woolsey wildfire that swept through southern California recently across a wide swath of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

“The impressive valley oak trees around the property were charred up to 30 feet, but many were still standing,” Fitzwilliam relayed in an email to the Citizen. “Whether they recover from the fire remains to be seen; these trees are not necessarily expected to continue to grow in this area due to climate change and extended drought over the past two decades. It’s a huge loss for the landscape if they do not recover.”

Granted media access for a scheduled press conference at the iconic Western film set-turned-national park attraction, Fitzwilliam had gone to document and photograph the near-total destruction of the site, partly out of personal curiosity and concern but also to see what she could learn as she formulates a plan with her wife, Stephanie, to best provide assistance to the people and places most severely impacted by the fire.

For while she grew up thousands of miles away on the opposite coast in Canton, Massachusetts, this area is now home for Fitzwilliam, a marketing and communications consultant based in greater Los Angeles. After graduating from Canton High in 2000 and attending college on the East Coast, she headed west to LA in 2007 and now resides with her family in Woodland Hills, a small community on the western edge of the San Fernando Valley.

“Just up the road are the Santa Monica Mountains, which contain so much more than celebrity houses you have probably seen on the news — yes, Kim and Kanye do live here,” she said. “Malibu and the surrounding areas were home to horse ranches long before the celebrities moved in, and there are smaller, working-class housing and mobile home parks as well. The range also contains a huge swath (slightly more than 100,000 acres) of beautiful state forest land. It isn’t what you’d picture when you think of Los Angeles.”

Flames can be seen in the distance from Michele Fitzwilliam’s home in Woodland Hills.

While her own home and neighborhood were spared from the flames, thousands of others in the region, including many celebrities, were not nearly as fortunate. By the latest count, the Woolsey Fire had burned nearly 97,000 acres of land (an area roughly the size of Denver) while destroying 1,500 structures, killing three people, and forcing the evacuation of nearly 300,000 residents. Although not as devastating as the ongoing Camp Fire in northern California — which wiped out an entire town and is now the deadliest in state history with 79 fatalities and hundreds still unaccounted for — the Woolsey Fire has since surpassed the Nuns Fire of 2017 as the eighth most destructive in modern California history.

Still burning as of Monday, the Woolsey Fire was expected to be 100 percent contained by Thanksgiving Day, although it will be months before homes are rebuilt and years before the areas affected are fully recovered.

Fitzwilliam, who was visiting family in Canton when she got the alert on her phone to evacuate, had to rely on news reports and eyewitness accounts from friends over the next three days before finally flying back to LA on Sunday, November 11.

“Over the next few hours and days there were several new fires popping up and a lot of quickly changing information,” she recalled. “The fire had hit communities just about one to one and a half miles west of us. Flames were visible from our house — our dog sitter sent photos and got things together to evacuate — and the flames were moving quickly with high winds. We got lucky; our immediate area was unscathed.”

Still, Fitzwilliam said she and her wife “expected the worst” upon returning home, and in the areas that were hit, that is precisely what they saw.

“[It was] complete devastation,” she said. “Beautiful rolling hills that go from green to gold during the season are now covered in char. And 100-plus-year-old oak trees are nothing more than exploded, charred tinder. Power lines are laying burned on the hillsides just off the 101 freeway and across the narrow canyon roads. It’s a mess.”

“A favorite state park, Malibu Creek, is destroyed,” she continued. “We had our wedding photos taken there and now it’s gone. A lovely little community called Malibu Lake, a place where we often hike with the dogs, is gone — several homes are burned to the ground and others have massive smoke and ash damage.”

Michele Fitzwilliam and her bride, Stephanie, at Malibu Creek state park. (Josh Reiss photo)

While visiting Paramount Ranch on Friday, Fitzwilliam said she felt the “stark, raw realization of the effects of the fire.”

“It’s one thing to see these images on the news, but another entirely to experience it in person,” she said.

Built in 1927 by Paramount Pictures, the ranch has been featured in dozens of popular movies and television shows, including HBO’s Westworld, and remains a popular destination for tourists and locals. The park’s permanent Old West set, consisting of a “Main Street” with several blocks of buildings, now lies in ruins.

“Black, ash-covered nails populate the dirt on the edges of where the buildings stood, which are now just lumpy mounds of ashes and blackened wood,” Fitzwilliam reported. “The air is still hazy, and the air tastes and smells like ash. A lone fireman was still putting out hot spots nearby on a hill.”

At the press conference, Fitzwilliam said park and city authorities acknowledged the devastation but did their best to convey a “unique sense of hope and positivity for the future.”

“The biggest takeaway from speaking to the authorities of both the park and city is that everyone is filled with gratitude that the damage was not worse,” she said. “In that same sentiment, each and every one expressed their condolences to those family members and friends who did not survive and to those who lost their houses.”

She said authorities reassured those present that the ranch will “absolutely be rebuilt” and expressed confidence that both public and private groups will step up to fund the effort with the goal of reopening within 24 months.

For Fitzwilliam, the “best news of the day” came when she learned that almost all of the wildcats who call the Santa Monica Mountains and Malibu State Park home have pinged their trackers and now show movement outside of the burn areas. “The park is home to 13 known mountain lions and five bobcats,” she said. “The park rangers are hopeful about their survival and will study how this fire will affect their behavior and relocation to new homes.”

A self-described animal lover who is passionate about wildlife conservation, Fitzwilliam said she was thrilled to see the squirrels and birds back in the area, noting how “eerily quiet” it was in the first few days after the fire came through.

She and Stephanie are also eager to help neighbors locate their missing pets, and they have already volunteered with a local rescue organization that needed “hands on deck” to help clean and organize donations. They also recently volunteered to restock the feed buckets at one of the evacuation centers at nearby Pierce College, and they have signed up to help sift home remains with families who have requested volunteers.

A firefighter leads a group of inmates into a burn area in the Malibu Creek area. (Michele Fitzwilliam photo)

Their main goal, said Fitzwilliam, is just to help in any way they can, although a part of the challenge is gaining access to the areas most affected by the fires. “The roads are still closed as they allow residents to get in certain areas and as the first responders clear other areas,” she said. “So we are in a holding pattern until those volunteers are needed.”

Fitzwilliam said it has been heartwarming to see a community pull together in the wake of this devastation, and she had nothing but praise for the hundreds of first responders who have worked to contain the fire while also providing much needed support to the residents.

“The firefighters have done a fantastic job of preventing more devastation, because believe it or not this could have been a lot worse,” she said. “Malibu, Agoura, Oak Park, all these little communities will need a lot of support in the months to come as they rebuild. And we’re not even there yet — the roads are just starting to reopen today and nine days into this event there are people who still do not know the condition of their homes.”

“The amount of coordination and communication required to secure multiple communities across 100,000 acres of steep terrain, forested area and tucked away communities is mind-blowing,” she added. “We’re talking about a handful of towns involved and tens of thousands of people. The first responders have done a job that is beyond incredible.”

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Posted by Jay Turner on Nov 22 2018. Filed under Features. Both comments and pings are currently closed.