The Story Behind Our Special LA Fires Issue

The sun may be shining in LA today, but some 90 days ago the devastating wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena darkened the skies and scorched the city. Over an unprecedented 24 days of conflagration and loss, the Palisades and Eaton fires erased so many lives, so much culture and history, and so many homes and businesses, from the humble to the iconic, depriving thousands of Los Angelenos of their refuge, their heirlooms, their livelihood. The damage, both physical and emotional, is incalculable. It’s a nightmare we will never forget. In those early horrible days, the staff at Sunset reacted in the way so many Angelenos did: despite our own losses and displacement, we rallied and we did what we could do to help. And what we do at Sunset is tell stories, so we produced a special issue that is on the newsstands starting April 8th and that we’re rolling out digitally over the coming days. It honors those affected, memorializes what we lost, and provides the beginnings of a blueprint for rebuilding anew.

Painting: © Alex Israel. Photo: Thomas J. Story; Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian

Our mission at Sunset is to chronicle what’s happening in the West and provide ideas and inspiration for living well, even in times of disaster. And so in the immediate aftermath of the fires we interviewed those impacted by them: residents, first responders, designers, architects, artists, restaurateurs, real estate agents, public officials, non-profit heads, fire fighters, taco truck operators, landscape designers, historians, preservationists, and other Angelenos and Californians who hold this place dear, live and work here, and are wholeheartedly invested in rebuilding and preserving the California Dream. You’ll hear firsthand from Angelenos about the disaster itself, grief, loss, heroism, and grit, and you’ll learn practical steps for building safer, more intelligent homes and preserving the cultural and architectural treasures we now know are so fragile. It’s these doers, thinkers, creators, artists, architects, preservationists, and public officials who give new meaning to the phrase “The City of Angels.” For the cover we reached out to Alex Israel, the contemporary artist whose work grapples with the idea of the dream of Los Angeles, to create artwork to capture this pivot point between disaster and renewal. His striking painting of the city captures the ineffable romance of this city that’s faced challenges before to only rise stronger than before.

And as a magazine we’ve been here before: Disaster. Resilience. Rebuilding. When the fires struck Los Angeles, here at Sunset we immediately thought of the seminal edition of the magazine published immediately following the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake. An illustration by the great Western artist Maynard Dixon entitled “Spirit of the City,” featuring a woman boldly rising above the city on fire, graces its cover. Despite the fact that their offices were destroyed, much of the city leveled, and one-sixth of it further destroyed by fire, the editors took it upon themselves to publish a slim eight-page pamphlet.

Illustration by Maynard Dixon

Illustration by Maynard Dixon

Over the coming year, the editors went on to champion the reconstruction, celebrate the heroes, mourn the losses, and suggest best practices for building a better West in another three issues. This edition is a hybrid of the first two issues: It captures the immediate emotional aftermath with first-hand accounts from survivors, thinkers, and first responders in the early days of their reckoning with the destruction. It also gathers the early learnings from architects, landscape designers, and policy makers who are going to spearhead the recovery, more emboldened and focused than ever before. May we all learn from each other at this moment, live in gratitude for what’s so wonderful about LA, and remain evermore vigilant about preserving and defending the California Dream, which is ultimately the dream of the West. 

Illustration by Edward Cucuel