Flying south through smoky skies along the famous Malibu Coast, the burned-out villas are initially the exception – lonely wrecks smoldering between rows of intact, shiny beach villas.

However, as you approach Pacific Palisades, ground zero for the devastating Los Angeles fires, the small burned ruins become scattered clusters and eventually endless rows of charred, crumbling houses.

From the air, the extent of the devastation wrought by the Palisades Fire in these two neighborhoods slowly becomes clearer: entire streets lie in ruins, the remains of once-fabulous homes now nothing but ashes and memories.

Access to this completely devastated area has been largely closed to the public and even evacuated residents since the fire broke out on Tuesday.

The inferno is the largest among several fires to hit Los Angeles and has now covered over 19,000 acres (7,700 hectares) in the Pacific Palisades and Malibu.

A preliminary estimate of the number of buildings destroyed was “in the thousands,” Kristin Crowley, chief of the city’s fire department, said at Thursday’s conference.

There have been at least two separate reports of human remains being found in this fire alone, but the death toll has yet to be confirmed by authorities.

“It is safe to say that the Palisades Fire is one of the most destructive natural disasters in Los Angeles history,” Crowley said.

It was hard to disagree with that view for AFP reporters who viewed the scenes from a helicopter on Thursday.

On some of these coveted, celebrity-loved coastal Malibu properties, skeletons of buildings hinted at the lavish scale of the destruction.

Other multimillion-dollar mansions have disappeared entirely, seemingly swept into the Pacific Ocean by the force of the Palisades Fire.

And above Malibu, a narrow strip of luxurious waterfront property, looms Pacific Palisades itself – an affluent plateau of expensive real estate that is now abandoned.

Not the entire hilltop is blackened. Several magnificent houses remained intact. Some streets were completely spared.

But at the southern end of the Palisades, street networks that until Tuesday were lined with stunning homes now resemble makeshift cemeteries.

Where rows of single-family homes once stood, only a few chimneys, blackened tree stumps and charred wood remain.

At a news conference Thursday, Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman described the walk through Pacific Palisades to the remains of his sister’s home as “apocalyptic.”

“I have not experienced such a disaster here in our city since the 1990s, when Los Angeles was ravaged by fires, floods, earthquakes and riots,” he said.

“This is crazy,” agreed Albert Azouz, a helicopter pilot who has flown these skies for nearly a decade, as he watched the destruction from above on Thursday.

“All these houses are gone.”

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