Scaling Hills and Climbing Fences

Palisadian Native Madi Rindge Recounts the Day She Returned to the Palisades to See Her Home After the Fire

By LILY TINOCO | Assistant Editor

Pacific Palisades native Madi Rindge hiked to her neighborhood days after the Palisades fire broke out, hoping to find that her home withstood the flames.

For Rindge, the Palisades held a timeline of memories: from befriending her neighbors at a young age and exchanging toys, to enjoying the annual Fourth of July parade and watching the fireworks at Stadium by the Sea.

Rindge—a singer, songwriter and producer—also said that her neighborhood was the backdrop for a handful of her music videos.

“I am 31, I’ll be 32 soon … I grew up there,” Rindge said to the Palisadian-Post. “I walked to school every day, learned to bike ride in my cul-de-sac. [The Palisades] was my home for my whole life.”

Though Rindge eventually moved to East Hollywood, her brother, Remy, and father, Charlie, stayed in the Marquez Knolls home—which Rindge described as a “revolving door kind of house.”

“In the best way,” Rindge said. “We had so many people over all the time, and hosted friends and family from out of town.”

When the Palisades fire began on Tuesday, January 7, Rindge—a recording studio manager—said she was at work.

“At first, I thought it was no big deal … we grew up with fires all the time,” Rindge said to the Post. “And then I had all these people texting and calling me, asking, ‘Where are you? Are you safe?’ … and then I realized the gravity of the situation.”

She called her father and couldn’t get a hold of him. She called her neighbor Archie—who she grew up with—and said she could hear water spraying. Archie was putting out fires from his deck.

“That’s when I realized, ‘Oh, my God, it’s in our backyard,’” Rindge said. “I started getting really, really concerned … I didn’t really know what to do.”

Rindge said she became worried that her father wouldn’t make it out in time and had to leave work.

She heard back from her father at 6:30 p.m. He said, “I got out, I’m OK, but I have nowhere to go.” She invited him to stay with her in East Hollywood.

Rindge said her father wasn’t able to pack very much upon evacuating—he grabbed his violin, computer and passport, as well as some items for her brother.

“My dad really thought [and] felt really strongly that he was going to come back the next day,” Rindge said. “He was so focused on watering the grounds and making sure everything was soaking wet, so there would be little change of the fire encroaching on the house. He thought, ‘I’ll just come back tomorrow. No big deal.’”

Rindge, her father and boyfriend set out to the Palisades on Thursday, January 9—walking 10 miles from Santa Monica, scaling hills and climbing fences, to see what remained of the house and neighborhood.

“We got blisters on our feet and it was definitely super dangerous,” Rindge said of the trek. “I didn’t realize how dangerous it was to do that, but we were honestly so desperate. I had this gut feeling that my house was fine, mine would be fine … It was shocking to be so wrong.”

Rindge said her childhood home was completely gone, and nothing was retrievable from the fire.

“There was nothing standing … It was really, really, really hard to see that in real life,” she said.

While she was there with her father and boyfriend, she said they saw a nearby house catch on fire and watched it burn. Rindge described the scene as an “apocalyptic war zone,” and that she had never seen anything like it.

“Sadly, and really, really tragically, all of my childhood friends lost their homes,” Rindge said. “The places I used to go over for dinner, have sleepovers, build things or make forts in the living room … All those places are just gone, all of them. There’s no town. There’s no houses. You can’t go back. It’s so weird.”

Of returning to the Palisades in the future, Rindge said there is an interest to rebuild and return, but “it just depends.”

“My parents bought that house 30 years ago, and it’s not like they can buy a new house at market value,” she explained. “If they were to just restart … I don’t know how they would do that.”