The five men were meditating off a trail near Skull Rock in the hills above the Palisades on the morning of Jan. 7.
With their eyes closed, they spoke about how they were feeling, what they were sensing.
One said, “I feel my breath slowing down.” Another said, “I feel gravity increasing.”
Then, all at once, four of them said the same thing: “I smell fire.”
The five men, including Beni Oren, a 24-year-old who runs a glamping business, were the first to spot the Palisades fire in its earliest stages, around 10:15 a.m., sources told The Times. Video recorded by the trail runners shows them dashing down the hillside away from the flames and smoke.
But what started as a traumatic, near-death experience turned into what he said was a longer-term nightmare after Oren posted his video of the experience on social media.
With so little information about the origin of the deadly fires that are still burning in Los Angeles, people on the internet began casting suspicion on the men who were so close to the ignition point of the fire.
“I’ve been feeling a mix of emotions. It’s definitely kind of infuriating that people are blaming us,” Oren said in an interview with The Times. “Also it’s scary. Just knowing as a matter of fact of our experience that we didn’t do it but then seeing the amount of people that have different theories is overwhelming.”
The Palisades fire has burned more than 23,000 acres as of Tuesday morning. It is 17% contained. At least eight people have been killed.
Oren said he and his friends decided to go for a trail run that morning and summited Skull Rock around 10 a.m. before going off trail to meditate on another nearby rock. When they smelled smoke, the men opened their eyes and saw flames cresting over the ridge of the mountain. Oren said he could not see exactly where the fire started, just that it was coming over the ridge. The flames seemed about 10 feet high. The fire was about 100 feet away.
“We quickly went into emergency mode,” Oren recalled.
The group had to run uphill, almost toward the fire, in order to get back to the main trail that could take them away from the fire. They caught the main trail and ran as fast as they could away from the fire, which was growing rapidly.
“Once we ran out of there and made it down past skull rock we felt we had dodged death,” he said. “It was a thrilling experience making it out close like that.”
The group also ran into two older women further down the mountain, he said.
Over the course of the day last Tuesday, Oren said his shock grew as the cloud of smoke billowed and he realized the scope of the fire.
The next day he posted the videos on X and Tik Tok. They quickly went viral and over the next few days, Oren and his friends became the targets of internet detectives who found it suspicious that the men carrying backpacks were so close to the origin of the fire.
“Investigate these kids who were right near the fires starting point,” wrote one X user, whose post got nearly 5,000 likes. The actor Rob Schneider quoted the post and wrote “PLEASE HELP IDENTIFY,” including stills of the men from the video. Schneider did not immediately respond to a request for comment through his manager.
After a few days, Oren said, he deleted his X account because he was afraid of all the people claiming he and his friends might have something to do with the fire.
“I knew people would interpret that as suspicious,” he said. “Keeping the video up just felt kind of dangerous at the time.”
It was especially frustrating for Oren because he is from Malibu. One of the houses he grew up in burned down, though he no longer lives there. His brother’s best friend’s house burned down.
“I literally grew up in Malibu. Why would I start this fire?” he said. “If we did it why would we post it? It really doesn’t line up once you know all the details.”
Oren said that authorities have not reached out to him. But sources told The Times that investigators are aware of the video.
All the questions that have been asked of Oren and his friends has made it hard for him to start to process how close they came to one of the worst fires in Los Angeles history.
“We actually almost died and it was fairly traumatic. Going through that and then have people try to blame us pretty ruthlessly. It sucks,” he said.
