A line of vehicles stretching two or three miles snaked along PCH Tuesday as motorists inched into a parking lot for permits to drive into the burn zone.

Evacuated residents are waiting in their cars for hours to get permission to return to Los Angeles neighborhoods devastated by the Palisades Fire, which has been burning for three weeks and destroyed thousands of homes and other structures.

City officials allowed hundreds of residents displaced from the Palisades Fire to return to their homes to assess the aftermath of the deadly fires.

Only residents with proper ID are allowed back into the Palisades Fire areas, with the question of how and if to rebuild a top concern.