The lobby of Shutters on the Beach, the luxury oceanfront hotel in Santa Monica usually buzzing with tourists and entertainment professionals, was transformed Thursday into a sanctuary for Los Angeles residents displaced by the raging wildfires that have destroyed thousands of acres and have been razed to the ground. burn entire neighborhoods to ashes.
In the center of a table was something that has probably never been in the Shutters lobby before: a portable plastic goldfish tank. “It's my daughter's,” said Kevin Fossee, 48. Mr. Fossee and his wife, Olivia Barth, 45, had evacuated to the hotel Tuesday evening, shortly after the Los Angeles Pacific Palisades-area fire broke out near their home in Malibu. .
Suddenly an evacuation alarm came in. Every phone in the lobby rang at once, frightening young children who began to cry inconsolably. People put their phones away a second later when they realized it was a false alarm.
Similar scenes have unfolded at other Los Angeles hotels as fires spread and the number of people under evacuation orders rose above 100,000. IHG, which includes the Intercontinental, Regent and Holiday Inn chains, said 19 of its hotels in the Los Angeles and Pasadena areas are housing evacuees.
The Palisades fire, which has been raging since Tuesday and has become the most destructive in Los Angeles history, affected neighborhoods full of mansions owned by the wealthy, as well as the homes of middle-class families who had owned them for generations . Now they all need a place to stay.
Many evacuees turned to a Palisades WhatsApp group that has grown from a few hundred to more than 1,000 members in just a few days. Photos, news, tips on where to evacuate, hotel discount codes and pet policies were posted at an increasing rate as the fires spread.
At the mid-century modern Beverly Hilton hotel, which overlooks the lawns and gardens of Beverly Hills, seven miles away and a world away from the ash-strewn Pacific Palisades, parking ran out Wednesday as evacuees poured in. Guests had to park in a different parking lot. one mile south and take a shuttle back.
In the hotel lobby, which regularly hosts glamorous events such as the recent Golden Globe Awards, guests in sportswear struggled with children, pets and hastily packed roll-aboards.
Many of the guests already knew each other from their neighborhoods and there was a resigned intimacy as they exchanged stories. “You can immediately tell if someone is a fire evacuee by whether he or she is wearing sweatpants or has a dog with them,” says photographer Sasha Young, 34. “Everyone I've talked to says the same thing: We didn't take enough.”
Hotel June, a boutique hotel with a 1950s hipster vibe located a mile north of Los Angeles International Airport, offered rooms to evacuees for $125 a night.
“We were on our way home from the airport to the Palisades when we heard about the evacuations,” said Julia Morandi, 73, a retired science educator who lives in the Palisades Highlands neighborhood. “When we checked in, they could tell we were stressed, so the manager gave us drink tickets and said, 'We take care of our neighbors.'”
Hotels are also helping tourists caught up in the chaos, helping them make arrangements to fly home (as of Friday, the airport was operating normally) and waiving cancellation fees. A Shutters spokeswoman said the guests included domestic and international tourists, but few were seen among displaced Angelenos on Thursday. The heated outdoor pool that overlooks the ocean and is usually surrounded by sun worshipers was completely deserted due to the dangerous air quality.
“I think I'm one of the few tourists here,” said Pavel Francouz, 34, a hockey scout who came to Los Angeles from the Czech Republic on Tuesday for a meeting before the fires.
“It's weird being a tourist,” he said, describing the eerily empty beaches and hotel lobby full of crying children, families, dogs and suitcases. “I can't imagine what it would feel like to be these people,” he said, adding, “I'm ready to go home.”
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