On Wednesday, a community already traumatized by fire had to absorb another hit.<\/p>\n
Thousands of homes were lost in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7, and residents are now trying to take in the latest reveal, federal officials\u2019 finding as to what started the blaze.<\/p>\n
For many, it\u2019s hard to come to terms with.<\/p>\n
First, authorities charged Uber driver Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, with intentionally setting a fire on Jan. 1 that, days later, would roar to life as the Palisades fire.<\/p>\n
Second, they learned that fire crews thought they had extinguished the blaze, called the Lachman fire, on the 1st. In fact, it was still smoldering. Winds on Jan. 7 brought it back to life.<\/p>\n
Rinderknecht has not entered a plea and could not be reached for comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was happy to hear it wasn\u2019t some dumb teenagers, because we thought that it was fireworks,\u201d said Matt Kunitz, who lives in Pacific Palisades. \u201cMy wife and I thought that would\u2019ve destroyed [some] kid\u2019s life \u2026 whereas, in this case, it sounds like an adult arsonist.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the Palisades Garden Cafe, residents spoke among themselves about the sorrow surrounding the fire and subsequent recovery effort.<\/p>\n
Kamron Zar, another resident, said the identification might help to bring some \u201cclosure\u201d to the Palisades community for the time being.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that a lot of us were just wondering for a while how it started, why it started, who started it,\u201d Zar said. \u201cIf this is the person who did it, have them figure out how and why he started it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But with many still mired in recovery and reconstruction efforts, Kunitz believes others may not be satisfied with the findings from authorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, the trauma is done, so whether it was intentional or, you know, a fireworks accident, that\u2019s the same,\u201d Kunitz said.<\/p>\n
Closer to Skull Rock Trailhead, near the origin of the fire, a neighborhood overlooking both the wilderness and the sea is quiet, aside from the occasional trudging machinery.<\/p>\n
The grass near the trail is dry and wheat-colored but slowly recovering in small, verdant sections. There is an occasional jogger coasting down the hilly roads, but the streets are most populated by bulldozers and construction trucks.<\/p>\n
Recovery from the fires is slow but ongoing, said Stacy Mitchell, who lives just a mile from the fire\u2019s ignition point.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings are going in the right direction, but there are a lot of people I know who can\u2019t [recover and rebuild] because they don\u2019t have money or things like that,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cIt\u2019s not as easy as it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The state of recovery could be seen Wednesday in the bare wooden foundations of buildings in the process of reconstruction. In the charred ruins that look almost Roman, yet these buildings stood only a year ago. On the busy avenues populated not by residents but by construction workers and carpenters laying the groundwork for a new Palisades.<\/p>\n
Mitchell\u2019s husband is a contractor, so she was able to move back into her home much sooner than her neighbors. Though she believes it is a good sign that authorities have arrested a suspect, she said that many were still reeling from the sudden loss of their homes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not really bringing any closure to me,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cI still have to go to Santa Monica to get groceries, or I still have to wait for the post office to open. \u2026 I mean I can\u2019t even go out to dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n
As she left, Mitchell looked to her left and right \u2014 at the sea and to the trailhead \u2014 and walked back to her house just past an open construction site.<\/p>\n
Jon Brown, whose family lived at the devastated Pacific Palisades Bowl mobile home park, had his own view.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is only going to infuriate people, to be honest,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThey think that they have done something by finding the guy who did it, but they\u2019re really going to fan the flames on what everybody is really pissed about.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy wasn\u2019t the fire put out on the 1st?\u201d<\/p>\n
Tony Briscoe contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Wednesday, a community already traumatized by fire had to absorb another hit. Thousands of homes were lost…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":287802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[13257,9102,1582,276,4415,5025,316,34873,2961,2252,224,5337,147989,6278,147990,1558,11449,147988,17823,15613],"class_list":{"0":"post-287801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-authority","9":"tag-building","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-closure","13":"tag-fire","14":"tag-home","15":"tag-jan","16":"tag-la","17":"tag-life","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-matt-kunitz","21":"tag-pacific-palisades","22":"tag-reconstruction-effort","23":"tag-recovery","24":"tag-resident","25":"tag-stacy-mitchell","26":"tag-thing","27":"tag-wednesday"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115341270989430541","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}