LOS ANGELES—In the still-smoldering neighborhoods of Altadena, where fires destroyed more than 2,700 structures, about 80 people have defied orders to evacuate, staying behind to protect what is left of their properties from looters and more fires after losing faith in authorities.
Residents patrol streets and interrogate strangers, living in a Hobbesian world without electricity or clean drinking water. Some are armed. They are hemmed in by yellow caution tape at neighborhood entrances flanked by National Guard troops, Los Angeles County Sheriff deputies and California Highway Patrol officers.
"We do feel like we're in the Wild West," said Aaron Lubeley, a 53-year-old lawyer who is one of the holdouts and serves as an unofficial emissary with police and fire representatives.
If Lubeley and the others try to leave, they risk being unable to return. On Monday, one of Lubeley's friends, Janely Sandoval, delivered essentials. The real-estate broker drove her white Mercedes SUV up to the neighborhood checkpoint and stacked supplies for Lubeley and others at the makeshift border: water, bagels, bananas, grain-free tortilla chips and other staples.
"Can you guys hurry up?" one officer told Sandoval as she finished. "We just got an order not to allow any supplies through."
Before Sandoval departed, Lubeley asked, "Can I hug my friend?"
The officer nodded, and Lubeley and Sandoval embraced across the yellow caution tape.
Farther west, residents of the Pacific Palisades, much of it in ruins, engage in their own standoff with public-safety officials.
Police and fire officials say they are keeping residents from returning to burned neighborhoods because of such hazards as downed power lines and precarious fire-weakened trees. “Do not go back in there. Do not sneak in there,” said Brian Rice, president of the California Professional Firefighters union. “It’s not worth losing your life over.”
The message isn’t getting across to everyone.
Pacific Palisades resident Ross Gerber, president of a wealth-management firm, is among those who have been sneaking past police to check on his house, official edicts be damned. “I have no patience for any of them,” he said. “After you survive this, you don’t care what they say.”
On Tuesday morning, Gerber, 53, was thwarted. “I’m trying to sneak in right now and it’s super hard,” he said by phone, his voice winded as he walked briskly, looking for an opening. Police had entry points “tight as hell,” he said. “They are everywhere now.”
Using a map, Gerber said he tried stairs and alleyways to slip past authorities until finally deciding to retreat. “There are literally so many police,” he said. “North Korea is easier.”
Gerber’s house sits in a neighborhood shaded by towering eucalyptus trees. It is set back from some of the hardest-hit areas of the Palisades, where opulent homes perched high above the Pacific Ocean now make up a landscape of smoking, gutted properties.
Houses still standing, including Gerber’s, have no electricity or safe drinking water. He has decamped with his family to the Ritz Carlton in the oceanfront Marina del Rey neighborhood.
Gerber joined with neighbors to hire a private water truck and driver to sit by their empty homes in case of another fire outbreak. The water truck was initially blocked from entering the neighborhood by law-enforcement officers.
“So we called somebody who was very important who called Gavin Newsom and told him to let our water truck into our neighborhood,” Gerber said.
Gov. Newsom’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Rebel force
Gerber, the Pacific Palisades resident, managed to check his house on Thursday and Friday last week without interference by authorities. He carried a firearm, he said, and walked around local streets with neighbors, questioning anyone the group didn’t recognize. “The whole neighborhood banded together,” he said.
Many residents waited hours for police escorts to their property. Officers led small groups of cars to their properties, warning residents they had only a few minutes to gather valuables and essential belongings. Gerber said he was able to navigate his way past authorities alone.
On Sunday, officials ended those home checks. “People are saying: ‘I just want to go to my house and see what’s left,’” Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said Monday at a news conference. “We know that, but we have people literally looking for the remains of your neighbors.”
“I get that they’ll say this is ‘the rule,’ but it’s our land and our neighborhood and as much as I respect the authorities, we’re much more competent than them,” Gerber said. “Let us in to defend our neighborhood.”
Gerber and his neighbors have turned to their community WhatsApp, which had been used largely to air minor gripes about traffic and such. Now, it is an organizing tool, he said, “better than any government.”
He had long been skeptical of the system, he said, but the fires further showed him that communities need to be prepared to fend for themselves.
After this disaster is over, Gerber said, he hopes the neighborhood will build “our own fire-like militia.”
