The Palisades Fire destroyed senior living communities, but many residents are determined to return

At least 800 residents of senior facilities had to abandon essential services and social bonds, but some say returning to their homes has given them a renewed sense of possibility.

LOS ANGELES — Pacific Palisades seemed like the perfect place to start over after Victoria Escalante lost everything she owned in the horrific 2018 Camp Fire in north-central California.

Her adult daughter was raising her family in the affluent Southern California community nestled between the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Home to both celebrities and generations of families who fell in love with the quaint village, the Palisades encompassed everything Escalante, 69, wanted for her retirement: family, community and a sense of security.

Escalante never imagined that just seven years after she barely escaped with her life from a town called Paradise she would watch another neighborhood she called home turn to ash.

“I just couldn’t believe much more could happen,” she said of the Palisades Fire, which erupted on Jan. 7 and scorched more than 23,400 coastal acres between Pacific Palisades and Malibu.

The Palisades Fire was one of two infernos that consumed vast swaths of Los Angeles County in January. Combined, the Eaton and Palisades fires killed at least 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures, many of them homes.