Days before the end of winter break, two University of Colorado-Boulder students found themselves fighting to save their Pacific Palisades homes from a raging California wildfire with nothing more than pool water and a mug.
Almost everything they knew is gone, the students said. The library where they hung out in high school, the neighborhood taco stand they visited every night during breaks and the spot where they invented their trackable vape pen company, UAVA — all up in flames.
Amid a sea of wreckage, their homes are still standing.
At least 11 people have been confirmed dead in the Palisades fire, which has charred roughly 23,448 acres over the past two weeks and is 68% contained, according to California officials. At least seven people are still missing.
According to fire officials, 6,662 structures — including both homes and businesses — were destroyed. Another 890 were damaged.
“What hit me wasn’t just the loss of our town, because we will push through it,” said Emmett Reiner, a 21-year-old California native and business student at CU Boulder. “What hit me most was how we’ve lost the ability to share our childhood with our kids, with future generations.”
When the Palisades fire sparked on Jan. 7, Reiner and his Boulder classmate and business partner, 22-year-old Jackson Wootton, were sitting on the beach and planning for their last semester of college. Suddenly, Wootton spotted a plume of smoke curling into the air.
“We’d been through this a million times before,” Wootton said. “All throughout high school, living in Los Angeles, there’s constantly wildfires … but they’re never in the Palisades.”
But as Reiner headed home, reality set in.
Police barricades blocked the road and cars started flying past Reiner in the opposite direction, fleeing the now-evacuated area. He parked his car on a side street and started running.
“The entire mountain behind me was on fire,” he said. “I’m running to my house and I had to make that phone call that every SoCal native and homeowner dreads. It’s like, ‘You’ve got thirty seconds — where’s the passports, where’s the watches, where’s your jewelry? What do I do?’”
Reiner said he stuffed what he could into a bag — including a kit of firefighting gear from volunteering with the Los Angeles Fire Department — and fled the house, but traffic was already at a standstill. When a group of construction workers passed him, headed up the mountain to fight what flames they could, he put on his gear and hopped in their truck to help.
Hours later, Wootton’s family was eating dinner and watching the news when Reiner burst through the door, covered head to toe in thick, ashy soot.
“This was way more serious than any of us could have ever thought,” Wootton said.
The “post-apocalyptic” fire continued to grow and, after a sleepless night at a friend’s house outside the evacuation zone, Wootton and Reiner headed back to the Palisades to see what they could salvage. They told police officers they were freelance photographers to get past the barricades.
They stopped at Wootton’s home first, grabbing what they could and digging through bags of ski equipment for any goggles or protective gear they could use to shield their faces. Then they headed across the neighborhood.
“As kids that grew up there for the past 22 years, I could tell you where every speed bump, where every turn and twist is in the Palisades,” Reiner said. Now, driving on backstreets and navigating around debris and abandoned cars, it felt alien.
Entire sections of the neighborhood were gone, Reiner said. After swaths of empty streets, the relief was palpable in the car as they turned the corner and found Reiner’s house still standing.
The two worked quickly, grabbing clothes, Reiner’s dog’s ashes, a lifetime of camera film and their company’s first prototype. Then a fire started in the backyard.
Wootton said he frantically searched for a bowl or a glass before grabbing a ceramic graduation mug off the counter to scoop water from the outdoor pool onto the flames.
When a second fire sparked in a neighbor’s yard, Wootton jumped the fence and started throwing dirt on it with his hands. He said he didn’t know what else to do and, as he scooped up piles of dirt and ash, he kept accidentally grabbing hidden embers, burning his hands.
Embers flying through the air continued to spark fires around Reiner’s house throughout the day and overnight, at one point setting another neighbor’s roof on fire. Wootton and Reiner kicked dirt over fires on the ground and threw single-use bags of drinking water on others, which exploded as they met the flames.
During the firefight, Reiner found a pre-filled, five-gallon jug that they started using to douse the small fires.
After an exhausting three days of little to no sleep and constant anxiety over their homes burning down, the fight was suddenly cut short for the two CU Boulder students. With classes starting Monday, they were forced to hop on a plane back to Colorado and take the weekend to grieve.
“It felt like I was abandoning my town,” Wootton said. “But in another sense, what else was I supposed to do? We have to move on.”
Reiner said he wanted to drop out, but his dad forced him “to go back to school and keep on living.”
Both of their houses are still standing after the fire, but it will be a while before anyone can return home. Wootton said his dad has gone back to visit the home, but the air quality was so bad that it made him physically ill and there won’t be power or gas for weeks. Reiner said his dad won’t be allowed back into the area for up to six months.
“Everything is gone,” Reiner said. “There will be no, ‘Hey, Dad started UAVA here, Dad used to get food here before he would go camping with his friends.’ It doesn’t exist, it’s gone. It’s just ash and rubble and a photo opp.”
Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.