When the Old Topanga Fire blew through Malibu in 1993, our family home of a quarter-century looked like it didn’t stand a chance.
My parents sped away with a ball of fire just yards from the old ranch house, evacuating to my place in Venice. We spent a long night, choking on foul air and fears of what would come next.
The next morning, my media credential allowed me to pass the police checkpoint on Pacific Coast Highway, then hitch a ride with a fire captain to Carbon Canyon. We rounded one bend, then a second to find a small miracle: Our home had survived, a joyous reprieve I will never forget.
In Malibu and much of California, though, there always comes the fire next time.
When the Palisades Fire blasted up the coast in January, eight months after my mom’s death, the house stood empty and unguarded. The morning after, I once again made the trek up PCH to see what the capricious wildfire gods had left behind.
After passing the checkpoint at Chautauqua Boulevard, the landmarks of my past began to rush by: The country store where we had once sold our homemade wildflower honey. The fish restaurant where my dad once asked a guy in line about an acting job. The sushi joint where my brother once bussed tables. All gone now, reduced to ash.
I kept driving up PCH, my eyes overwhelmed with the grim new images, while my heart welled with nostalgia and regret. When we moved to Carbon Canyon in 1969, Malibu was home to a lone supermarket, a couple of gas stations, and a lumberyard. No foofy boutiques, liposuctioned influencers, or over-groomed pets. No City Hall. No city, even, prior to incorporation in 1991.
I recall young women riding their horses, bareback, to pick up snacks at Market Basket. Surfers wandered the grocery aisles barefoot, sometimes shirtless. An easy, boho charm prevailed.
Our ranch house’s high windows opened onto the sagebrush hills and a bit of an ocean view. My parents, Sheila and Ford Rainey, paid less than $70,000 for it and an acre of land.
In the old days, landslides would cut us off from “town” (read: Santa Monica) and the luxuries it provided. Like clothing stores, movie theaters, and a laundromat.
Yes, a laundromat. Mom would drive into Santa Monica every few weeks to wash and fold mountains of towels, socks, and underwear at a coin-operated laundry on Montana Avenue.
We always had two or three dogs, of no breeding whatsoever. The first, and wildest, was named Zala. Every few months, under Zala’s lead, the pack would tear off into the Santa Monica Mountains. We would say the dogs had gone “deer hunting.” They’d stay in the wild for two or three days, then come limping home, covered with ticks and what seemed like satisfied smiles.
A Malibu mainstay, then and now, was Bill Stange. Bill surfed. He spearfished. He took loads of halibut and abalone off La Costa Beach. “Everybody knew everybody. And there was a kind of innocence.” Bill called that world, and the remnants of it that survive, “Old World Malibu”—more funky than fashionable.
By the time I reached Carbon Canyon Road, I felt frazzled but still hopeful. But as the hillsides unfurled before me, all the sumac, sage, and buckwheat had disappeared. The canyon looked like the inside of a very ancient barbecue.
At our old address, the space between retaining walls had been left an ashy void, the swimming pool transformed into a watery charcoal pit. Two chimneys bookended the spot like a pair of tombstones.
When I walked away from the old house a few minutes later, I had a good little cry. Not for the tired old place that had seen better days. But mostly for my parents, who had worked so hard for so many years to create a refuge from the hurly-burly of the outside world.
I learned that Bill Stange’s family home had also burned and he, too, had to make decisions about what comes next. But the old oceanfront philosopher assured me of this: The tides and the surf would abide. The graceful pelicans would soar, and sandpipers would drill for sand crabs.
Malibu is a place that “no matter what, goes back to its wildness. They can build those big ol’ houses and do whatever they want,” Bill said. “But they’ll never be able to tame Malibu. It turns out we are all just renters here.”
James Rainey ’81 is a longtime journalist whose career began in 1982; a longer version of this essay originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times, where he has spent most of that time.
