Grim before and after photos show heartbreaking devastation of California wildfire

Grim before and after photos reveal just how devastating a Wednesday night California wildfire was, as up to 20 multi-million dollar mansions were reduced to rubble in just a matter of hours.

The blaze – dubbed the Coastal Fire – ignited near a water treatment facility in Aliso Woods Canyon – between Laguna Niguel and Laguna Beach in Orange County – at 2.44pm and swept up steep terrain amid strong gales.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but on Wednesday night the local electricity company revealed that there was ‘circuit activity occurring close in time to the reported time of the fire,’ as residents say power went out before the flames erupted.

The blaze quickly reached the gated community at Coronado Pointe – where properties sell for between $1million and $10million – and the 30300 block of La Vue near the Summit Trail. 

It then ripped across the area and began looming over homes on Coronado Pointe. As the first homes began to burn, the embers were cast into neighboring homes, causing a devastating domino effect.

At least 20 homes in the exclusive enclave have already been engulfed by the fire and a further 100 were potentially in the wildfire’s path, Orange County Sheriff’s Capt. Virgil Asuncion said. Nine hundred homes remained under evacuation orders Thursday morning as flames continued to ignite.

A state of emergency has now been declared, as the Coastal Fire consumed nearly 200 acres and firefighters continued to fight the flames.  There is no word on how much of the fire has already been contained.

But at least one firefighter suffered a medical emergency as he battled the flames, officials announced on Thursday, and was brought to the hospital. He is in stable condition.

Meanwhile, photos show that one seven-bedroom, eight-bathroom home, which was listed for sale on Zillow for $9.89 million was completely gutted in the aftermath.

The 10,000 square foot home at 5 Vista Court in Laguna Niguel, California had boasted its own ‘children’s wing’ with a game room and study room, as well as a two-story bedroom and a ‘wellness wing to house your meditation room, gym and very own Pilates studio with sauna and steam room.’

It also included a separate outdoor pool overlooking the California mountains and Laguna Beach, as well as a four-car garage and a home theater.

Property records show that it is currently owned by a shell corporation, which purchased the luxurious mansion for $6.275 million in September 2020.

Firefighters were seen still trying to quell the flames at the mansion early Thursday morning. 

Another $6.6 million four-bedroom, seven bathroom mansion at 35 Coronado Pointe had also lost its roof entirely to flames as firefighters battled to save the walls and neighboring properties.

Explosions were heard coming from one home – believed to be the sound of ammunition detonating.

It remains unclear exactly how many homes were destroyed as of Thursday morning, when assessment teams were entering the area. 

Smoke warnings remained in effect. 

Laguna Beach has been home over the years to famous faces including Diane Keaton, Bette Midler screenwriter and producer Ryan Murphy, and Hollywood’s Golden Age star, Bette Davis.

‘It takes your breath away,’ Julianna Shapiro, 52, told the LA Times as she watched her community burn. ‘It’s just so hard to watch, but I can’t help not watch it. It’s our neighbors losing their homes. You feel so hopeless.’ 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has now approved federal funding to combat the growing fire.

‘This support will ensure that state and local authorities have the resources they need to continue addressing this emergency to save lives and homes in our community,’ Rep. Michelle Steel tweeted on Thursday.

Hundreds of people were forced to evacuate from their homes in the area of Coronado Pointe, Vista Courte, Pacific Island Drive, Via Las Rosa, and the Ranch Golf Course and Resort at around 4pm. Sheriff’s deputies ran between each house to tell people to leave.

But Kevin Kothlow said he decided to stay, as he has fire fighting experience. He told the LA Times how he walked down a trail and watched as the fire spread.

‘It literally just ran up the hill,’ he said. ‘I saw it hit the palm trees and as soon as I saw that I knew those houses were gone. You could see the embers blowing through the air.’

Among those evacuated were Cheryl Flohr and her husband Mark, whose 48,500-square-foot home is in Palmea, the neighborhood next to the badly damaged Coronado Pointe.

‘Fred Minegar, the mayor in 2020, immediately engaged and drove up and down the streets honking letting residents know,’ Cheryl Flohr told The Orange County Register.

‘They were so ready for us. I’m proud of my community and Laguna Niguel.’ Mark Flohr told the paper he knew there was a fire when he heard aircraft overhead and then saw smoke.

Then he drove over to a vacant area overlooking the steep canyons above The Ranch resort in Laguna Beach and saw the flames. Not long after, the couple got a knock on the door asking them to evacuate.

Using a list they created more than a decade ago, they carried out what was important to them – photo albums, hard drives, devices and charging cords plus irreplaceable personal items.

‘I brought a glass doll head my mother played with 100 years ago,’ said Cheryl.

Mark brought some old engineering tools and century-old books. The couple planned to stay with friends and family on Wednesday night.

‘We came here first because we wanted to be where the information was,’ Cheryl said.

Residents near Moulton Meadows and Balbo Nyes were advised to be prepared to evacuate at a moment’s notice, but the warning was lifted before 10pm as officials said there is no immediate threat to the area.

Laguna Beach high school has been evacuated, and shelters have been set up in the area.

The fire spread quickly because wind had driven up embers into palm trees, attics and dense, dry brush on slopes and steep canyons that hadn’t burned for decades, said Britain Fennessy, chief of the Orange County Fire Authority.

Fennessy said climate change has made even small fires that once would have been easily contained into extreme threats to life and property throughout the West.

Fennessy told ABC 7 LA TV his team was trying to save as many homes as they could. ‘It’s all about defending the homes that have not already burned,’ Fennessy said from the scene.

‘The firefighters behind me are really putting on an aggressive fight.’ Fennessy said at a press conference on Wednesday night he expected winds to die down after sunset, which would help slow the spread.

He said there were no other major fires in Southern California, enabling firefighters from the area to concentrate their resources on Laguna Niguel.

The hilltop city of about 65,000 people is just inland from the coastal city of Laguna Beach about 50 miles south of Los Angeles.

Dry brush covers the surrounding hills and canyons, as California experiences historic drought. 

‘Unfortunately I think this is what we’re going to be experiencing over the next several weeks and years,’ said Fennessy. The vegetation is so dry it is not taking much for the fire to take off running and burn very quickly.’ 

Mike Garcia, the Laguna Beach fire chief, said: ‘It was a wind-driven fire. And since it started around 3pm on Wednesday it’s gone eastward.

‘It’s becoming a pretty big fire, burning several homes in the city of Laguna Niguel. I want to tell our community that the city of Laguna Beach is safe. We don’t expect any changes. 

‘But we want all of our residents to remain vigilant, be prepared, be aware.’ He said they would notify residents of any changes, but people should be prepared to ‘react quickly’.

Ground and air crews from the Orange County Fire Authority and Laguna Beach Fire Department were working to extinguish flames moving uphill through light and moderately dense vegetation.

Winds gusting up to 20 mph were fanning the flames, and relative humidity in the area was measured at 52 percent, said Mark Moede, from the National Weather Service.

‘Gusts were up to 25 mph when the fire started,’ Moede said at about 5pm. ‘It will stay breezy for the next hour or so, but should drop-off as the sun drops below the horizon.’

The last major fire in the area was the Emerald fire on February 24. The earlier fire grew to about 150 acres before it was extinguished. The first three months of 2022 have been the driest on record.  

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, responded on Tuesday by pledging to spend $100 million on a statewide advertising campaign to encourage water conservation. 

The campaign will include traditional radio and television spots while also paying people with large followings on social media to urge others to save water. 

He also promised to spend an $211 million to conserve more water in state government buildings by replacing plumbing fixtures and irrigation controls.

In Los Angeles – the second most populous city in the U.S. – Mayor Eric Garcetti said residents and businesses would have to reduce outdoor landscape watering from three days per week to two. 

Irrigation makes up 35 percent of the city’s water use.

Urban water use accounts for a relatively small percentage of California’s overall water use when compared to agriculture. But the state’s farmers have been suffering, too, as state and federal officials have reduced water allocations to zero in some places.

Demand for non-agriculture water is typically low in March, which comes near the end of the state’s rainy season. It can sometimes rain so much in March that it makes up for the rest of the year, a phenomenon officials have dubbed the ‘March miracle.’

But California got just 1 inch of precipitation in March while the temperatures were 3 degrees warmer than usual, further increasing water demand.

A series of April storms have improved things slightly since March. 

Still, most of the state’s reservoirs are well below their historic averages. 

The reservoirs depend on melted snow from the Sierra Nevada to replenish them for the dry summer months. But the statewide snowpack was at just 27 percent of its historic average as of April 1.

‘This is what we have. This is what we’re going to get. We can’t expect anything significant past this date,’ said Jeanine Jones, manager for interstate resources with the California Department of Water Resources.

State officials said 20 percent of the wells they monitor are reporting all-time low water levels, while nearly half of them have less than 10 percent of their historic averages. 

In some cases, the state is helping to haul water to small communities that don’t have access to it. State officials said they were assisting 687 households through a small community drought relief program.

Some larger communities were also in danger. Lindsay, a city of about 13,000 people in California’s Central Valley, was projected to run out of water on July 1. 

Federal officials approved an additional allocation for the city, which they now say will have enough water to last through February – provided they continue to conserve.