The Flame Killer

The day before the Palisades wildfires erupted, Allen Sarlo got a call. The 66-year-old Malibu local was in Hawaii, doing what he’s done most of his life: surfing. “Get on the next flight home,” his longtime friend Andy Lyon warned. “Tomorrow they’re predicting 90 mph Santa Anas.”

Hours after his plane landed, Sarlo was in his yard wearing a respirator and snowboard goggles while fighting the encroaching flames with a hose. Twenty-four sleepless hours later, his house was the last one standing on the street.

“It was horrific,” he says about fighting the fire. “It was like World War III.”

On April 4, 2025, three months after the fires that killed 31 people and turned 16,000 structures to ash, Sarlo picked me up in Santa Monica to drive the charred 21-mile stretch of coast to Malibu. As we turned onto Pacific Coast Highway, we were stopped at a checkpoint by a young man in camouflage holding an assault rifle. Sarlo flashed the National Guard sentry a red piece of paper that proved his residence, and we drove past a line of military Humvees parked at Will Rogers State Beach.

Directly inland from Will Rogers is the Palisades, a neighborhood that now resembles the post-apocalypse. More than 100,000 Palisades residents were under evacuation orders. Escape routes became bottlenecked as Santa Anas spun flames down the canyon, combusting palm trees, sagebrush, and chaparral. At the direction of police, drivers fled their cars on the gridlocked PCH and ran to the water. The abandoned vehicles blocked fire trucks from entering. A bulldozer cleared a path for them by plowing through the cars like snow.

We continued up the coast to Topanga. It was Friday afternoon, and although dreamy little waves crumbled down the cobblestone point on the cloudless spring day, not a single surfer was out. When Sarlo first surfed Topanga, in the ’60s, the wave was private, and a row of houses blocked the entrance. But the late Jay Adams, Sarlo’s friend and fellow Z-Boy, knew a homeowner, and the two kids wheedled their way into the community to enjoy the uncrowded break. In the 1970s, California State Parks took ownership of the point, removed the homes, and opened the beach to the public.

Coastal access along PCH has always been contentious. Before the fires, much of the stretch between Santa Monica and Malibu was lined by beach houses blocking access to the shore. The fire has erased many of them. On one property, all that remained was a spiral staircase, eerily leading to nowhere. When I squinted, PCH almost looked like a throwback to the 1950s, long stretches of open coast with a few homes dotted here and there. Sarlo tapped rhythmically on his steering wheel, then pointed to a rock outcropping previously blocked by homes.

“I’ve lived here my whole life,” he said. 

“I never knew those rocks existed.”

A mile or so before we reached Malibu Beach, Sarlo turned up a steep driveway and we parked at his house, marked by a Spanish blue-tile roof, squat palm trees, a carved tiki man, and a melted surfboard at the far end of his yard.

“I worked my ass off for this house,”he said, underscoring multiple times that it was not bequeathed to him. “I wasn’t gonna let it burn.”

He opened his garage, and we walked into a museum of surf history. “This was the original Wave Killer,” he said, pointing to a brightly colored surfboard with those words painted across the top. In 1974, at age 16, Sarlo took first place at the Malibu 4-A contest. That same year, he won the West Coast Junior Championships. By 1977, Sarlo himself was known as “Wave Killer,” for his aggressive style at the pointbreak. On the wall was a black-and-white photo of him and Adams skateboarding on a downhill course, low to the pavement, with classic styles that would define the era.

When asked what he would take if he were forced to evacuate, he said, “For sure the Wave Killer and that photo of Jay and me.” 

He paused. “And, you know, my family.”

Sarlo and I got back in his car and drove to Malibu, the original perfect wave.

Three months later, PCH would reopen to the public. The famed beach would be back to its old self: hipsters riding single-fins and wearing bomber jackets, beginners flailing around on Gerry Lopez Costco soft tops, and tourists snapping selfies.

But there was that brief flash after the destruction when Sarlo and a few residents enjoyed their local break by themselves. Parking was easy. Unridden waves peeled down the point like it was 1950. On that Friday in April, Sarlo scratched the back of his neck and gave a sheepish grin. 

“We’ve actually had some pretty good souths lately,” he said.

[Feature image by William Parr]