In Car-Loving L.A. After the Wildfires, the Charred Remains of Vehicles Cut Deep

Dozens of vehicles sit abandoned, covered in ash, along a stretch of Palisades Drive near Sunset Boulevard in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. There’s a pair of black boots beside a gray Subaru Crosstrek. Down the street, a pink backpack with the name Sonya on it has been left in a Tesla Model X. Nearby, a box of family photos remains in a partly melted red Lexus UX.

Farther east, in Altadena, dozens more sit in ruins.

Exactly how many vehicles were damaged or destroyed this month by the Palisades and Eaton fires is still unclear. For many residents, though, that facet of the devastation is deeply personal.

The lost vehicles were more than just a means of transportation in a sprawling city where a set of wheels is all but a necessity. In Los Angeles, where cars are embedded in the culture, a vehicle is also an extension of one’s home. A place to store a backup pair of sneakers. Somewhere to eat during a lunch break. A phone booth to call a friend while stuck in gridlock.

Liliana Baqueiro, 18, lost her 2012 Honda Civic. It was her first car. The Eaton fire also razed her home in Altadena and two of her grandfather’s cars.

Ms. Baqueiro and her family left their home before evacuation orders were issued the night the fire broke out, thinking they were doing so only as a precaution and would be back the next day. All Ms. Baqueiro took with her were her pajamas, her passport, her birth certificate, two dogs — Baby and Ángel — and her parrot, Milo.

Two days after the fire swept through Altadena, Ms. Baqueiro was able to view the rubble of her home. Seeing that her car had also been destroyed was an added blow.

“It felt almost like a second loss,” Ms. Baqueiro said. Her Civic had been a gift from her grandfather, who had promised her for years that he would buy her a car when she graduated from high school.

She had just started to get comfortable behind the wheel of that car. She has a learner’s permit, and had scheduled a driving test for this week. Because her permit was burned and lost in the fire, though, she has postponed the test. “Not my top priority right now,” she said.

For others, losing a vehicle meant losing work.

Pablin Arevalo didn’t pack much more than a change of clothes before he evacuated, because he thought his house in Altadena was safe from the flames there. The home, where he lived with his wife and two children, was also the headquarters of his landscaping business.

Now, his house and tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of tools are gone, and lining the property are charred work vehicles: two Ford Transit vans, three old pickup trucks and a Hino dump truck.

“The six burned completely,” Mr. Arevalo, 53, said in Spanish. “There’s nothing left — with all the equipment they had inside.”

He lost rakes, leaf blowers, line trimmers, lawn mowers, power drills, jackhammers and a long list of other tools that he had slowly acquired as his business expanded.

Luckily for Mr. Arevalo, most of his clients were not in Altadena. With 10 men in his employ and plenty of work to go around, he quickly procured a mix of donated and cheap used vehicles and tools from friends to hold him over. He drove all the way to Las Vegas to buy a truck from one friend.

Within a week of his house burning down, Mr. Arevalo had made sure he and his crew were back working.

“They’re part of my family, and they have people to provide for,” Mr. Arevalo said in Spanish.

In a neighborhood of Malibu that was ravaged by the Palisades fire, one vehicle, a blue and white 1977 Volkswagen Type 2 van, was somehow spared.

Nearly everything around it is gone. Homes have been burned down to their foundation. On some lots, only the chimneys remain.

The van’s owner, Megan Krystle Weinraub, 29, evacuated the day the Palisades fire broke out. She left in haste in another vehicle, taking with her just her dog and some clothes. The van stayed behind.

“I thought it was a goner,” Ms. Weinraub said.

Ms. Weinraub’s apartment survived the fire, and she was surprised a few days later to learn from a neighbor that the van, parked a few streets away, was OK as well.

“I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said.

Ms. Weinraub had bought the van recently from Preston Martin, 24, a friend and business partner. He, too, was relieved that it was intact, in part because he had a special connection to it: It was his home during his senior year of college, allowing for escapes on the Pacific Coast Highway.

“Whenever I was having a really bad day, all I had to do was turn the van from house mode into drive mode, take it for a drive up the P.C.H. and whatever problem I was having that day disappeared,” he said. “That’s the magic of this van.”