At a community meeting held in Santa Monica on Tuesday, sheriff’s department officials assured those gathered they would begin providing emergency supplies to friends and neighbors who stayed behind in Malibu to fight off flames from the Woolsey Fire. Those who didn’t leave became cut off from sources of food, clean water, fuel and other necessities. But Malibu residents who stuck it out were not waiting for assistance.
That morning, about a dozen Paradise Cove residents waded into the water next to the pier and caught hold of an inflatable dingy crashing into the shore. Within seconds, boxes of granola bars were being handed, bucket-brigade style, back up the sand.
According to longtime Paradise Cove resident Simeon Sturges, this supply chain had been bringing much-needed resources into the neighborhood, on-and-off, for two days.
“Yesterday, it was massive,” Sturges said. “Yesterday was awesome.”
Once news got out about shipments coming in to Paradise Cove, though, law enforcement closed the neighborhood, cutting off the supply chain to Point Dume.
“They shut it down. They don’t want looters coming in on boats, that’s the main thing,” Sturges said. “At some point, this stuff’s going to get to the people who need it.”
On Monday, the community of Point Dume—located just a couple miles west on Pacific Coast Highway—came together to distribute supplies, which had been delivered by their volunteers from the much smaller neighborhood next door, Paradise Cove. By later in the day Tuesday, the deliveries—almost all from chartered vessels and fishing boats—culminated in a shipment from a yacht, which brought a much-needed influx of supplies.
When asked if the city or law enforcement have been discouraging boats coming in, Sturges shrugged off the question.
“We’re not thinking of anything except what’s happening now,” Sturges said. “Since it started, we’re not worrying about anything except—let’s be honest, it’s armageddon, there’s no protocol for this”
For now, residents were working on gathering necessary items.
“When they start letting people in, or when people start coming down from the mountain that really need stuff, I hope we have everything ready,” Sturges said. “We do. We do.”
