On Wednesday, a community already traumatized by a fire had to absorb another blow.
Thousands of homes were destroyed in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7, and residents are now trying to make sense of the latest revelations: federal officials’ findings about what started the fire.
For many, this is difficult to accept.
First, authorities accused Uber driver Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, of intentionally starting a fire on Jan. 1 that days later would come to life as the Palisades Fire.
Second, they learned that firefighters believed they had extinguished the fire, called the Lachman Fire, on the 1st. In fact, it was still smoldering. The winds of January 7 brought it back to life.
Rinderknecht did not enter a plea and could not be reached for comment.
“I was happy to hear it wasn’t stupid teenagers, because we thought it was fireworks,” said Matt Kunitz, who lives in Pacific Palisades. “My wife and I thought it would have destroyed (some) children’s lives… when in this case it looks like an adult arsonist.”
At the Palisades Garden Cafe, residents talked among themselves about the sadness over the fire and the recovery efforts that followed.
Kamron Zar, another resident, said the identification could help “shut down” the Palisades community for the time being.
“I think a lot of us were wondering for a while how this started, why it started, who started it,” Zar said. “If this is the person who did it, ask them to understand how and why they started.”
But while many people are still mired in recovery and reconstruction efforts, Kunitz believes others may not be satisfied with authorities’ findings.
“I mean, the trauma is over, so whether it was intentional or, you know, a fireworks accident, it’s the same thing,” Kunitz said.
Closer to the Skull Rock trailhead, near the origin of the fire, a neighborhood overlooking both wilderness and the sea is quiet, aside from the occasional machinery lying around.
The grass near the trail is dry and wheat colored but is slowly recovering in small green sections. There is an occasional jogger roaming the hilly roads, but the streets are mostly populated by bulldozers and construction trucks.
Recovery from the fires is slow but steady, said Stacy Mitchell, who lives just a mile from where the fire started.
“Things are going in the right direction, but I know a lot of people who can’t (recover and rebuild) because they don’t have money or things like that,” Mitchell said. “It’s not as easy as it should be.”
The state of the recovery could be seen on Wednesday. In the bare wooden foundations of buildings being reconstructed. In the charred ruins that look almost Roman, even though these buildings existed only a year ago. In the bustling avenues populated not by locals but by construction workers and carpenters preparing the ground for new Palisades.
Mitchell’s husband is a contractor, so she was able to move back into her home much sooner than her neighbors. Although she believes it’s a good sign that authorities have arrested a suspect, she said many are still reeling from the sudden loss of their homes.
“It doesn’t really give me closure,” Mitchell said. “I still have to go to Santa Monica to get my groceries, or I still have to wait for the post office to open. … I mean, I can’t even go out to dinner.”
As she left, Mitchell looked left and right — toward the sea and toward the trailhead — and returned to her house just past an open construction site.
Jon Brown, whose family lived in the devastated Pacific Palisades Bowl mobile home park, had his own perspective.
“I think it’s just going to infuriate people, to be honest,” Brown said. “They think they did something by finding the guy who did it, but they’re really going to fan the flames on what’s really pissing everyone off.
“Why wasn’t the fire put out on the 1st?”
Editor of the Times Tony Briscoe contributed to this report.
