From Angels to Ashes
The Los Angeles "Ring of Fire"
First, for anyone who’s not quite familiar with the geography of Southern California, we’re fine. We’re roughly 60-65 miles north-northwest of the major fires. Though we’ve had our fair share of nature’s bluster, it’s nothing compared to what the L.A. basin and surrounding areas have experienced. (Knock on wood. Another Santa Ana event is predicted to hit Southern California late Monday into Tuesday morning.)
I woke Tuesday night to the sound of our trash barrels knocking around and got them righted only after most of our trash had scattered itself up and down our street. (It’s still a trip watching objects fly uphill, seemingly against gravity.) Most of Santa Paula’s power was out, due in large part to SoCal Edison’s preemptive “Public Safety Power Shutoffs.” Our veterinary appointment was relocated to Ventura due to the outage, Laird’s Butcher Shop closed for the day, and the local Vons grocery store was dark but kinda-sorta open. A clerk stood at the main entrance, letting in only a few shoppers at a time. In East Ventura, residents packed into our favorite diner, Cafe 126, and waited in line to get a table. With power out across much of the valley, no one could prepare their own breakfasts.
The winds subsided by Wednesday night but have since washed across Heritage Valley in noisy waves, raging at 30+ mph for an hour or three, then ebbing back toward the deserts.
In contrast, what’s happened in Los Angeles is nothing short of apocalyptic. The Santa Ana winds slalomed over the mountains, drawing energy as they spilled over the foothills, and slammed into the L.A. basin at hurricane-force speeds of 80-100 mph. Combined with dense, tinder-dry fuels, which haven’t seen significant rainfall since last March, and an infrastructure ill-equipped to deal with an emergency of this size, it was a perfect—perfectly disastrous—storm.
Between the Eaton fire in Altadena/Pasadena and the Palisades fire along the coast, it’s estimated that between 5,000 to 10,000 structures—homes, businesses, schools, churches, restaurants and pubs, cultural centers, entire neighborhoods—have been razed. Those neighborhoods now resemble war zones, with chimneys often the only things left standing. Several schoolchildren will have to be bussed to other schools; theirs have either been damaged or have burned to the foundations. Family homes dating back to the 1950s, heirlooms and keepsakes, photographs and memories—effectively erased from existence.
Between the Eaton fire in Altadena/Pasadena and the Palisades fire along the coast, it’s estimated that between 5,000 to 10,000 structures—homes, businesses, schools, churches, restaurants and pubs, cultural centers, entire neighborhoods—have been razed.
The Los Angeles basin is now blanketed in thick smoke; outdoor activities have been canceled and residents are encouraged to remain indoors. Schools are closed, and those who can are working from home.
Residents are scared. It doesn’t help that the Emergency Management office has accidentally sent out bogus notifications telling all of L.A. county to evacuate. (Can you imagine roughly 13,000,000 people trying to evacuate at once?? You think rush hour is bad??)
Though conservative commentators are trying to put a political spin on this, blaming DEI hiring practices in local fire departments (of all things) for the devastation, what this and other recent disasters suggest is that we have reached an existential tipping point: The resources we have are insufficient to meet the demands of the moment. Water systems and reservoirs were never built to support firefighters having to draw millions of gallons at once. The most effective firefighting equipment we have—aircraft—can’t navigate through hurricane-force winds. Choppers and fixed-wings are often grounded overnight until the winds subside and most of the major damage has already been done. The electrical grid is largely outdated—and often implicated in wildfire ignitions.
Continuing to shut off power to millions of customers—including businesses and those relying on medical equipment—is simply not sustainable. Wildfires often do their worst overnight, when winds are the strongest. With the power out, evacuees are forced to stumble blindly through the dark to escape. Vital communications—through cell service, radio, and TV—are cut off. And how many millions or billions of dollars do businesses lose to power outages, even when they’re not directly affected by a wildfire?
Back in the late 1960s, my mother worked for a company that manufactured the insulation for electrical wires. At the time, there was a push to bury electrical lines underground, and the insulation was manufactured with that in mind.
At some point, though, the initiative was abandoned. I’m guessing utility companies and public utility commissions decided that above-ground lines were less expensive and less labor-intensive than underground wires, which would necessitate hours of arduous digging. This approach, however, did not mitigate costs. It only shifted the cost burden from the utilities to the consumers, who often stand to lose everything in a wildfire.
There has to be a better way.
I lived in the Los Angeles area for thirteen years, most of them in Midtown, some in Culver City, and the last two years in Pasadena. Like most L.A. relationships, my relationship with the area was complicated. I loved it, I cursed it, it forced me to work through my issues and grow the eff up, sometimes it even shot at me. During my first year at USC, I worked swing shifts at a subtitling company that had moved from the Miracle Mile/Wilshire Blvd. to Culver City. Shortly after the move, a stray bullet blasted through one of our windows and whizzed past me and my co-worker. The bullet was later found lodged near our workstations. No one was harmed.
Los Angeles is a hard place to live in. It’s expensive, congested, and enervating. There seemed to be a constant background buzz, a humming-thrumming life, that induced chronic insomnia until I acclimated to it. Traffic’s horrible, and the endless tangle of freeways was intimidating. And while the city invites the starry-eyed and ambitious to pursue fame and fortune, it’s often far easier to go missing and forgotten. Simply put, the city gives no shits about you. It’s up to you to figure out how to survive.
And yet.
And yet, I find myself mourning the loss of the neighborhoods I came to know. My friends and I once cruised all the way out Sunset Drive to the Palisades, where beads of golden-hour glow glinted off the Pacific. One night, we braved the tortuous Mulholland Drive and stood marveling at the L.A. basin, encrusted with shimmering lights. It often felt surreal, walking to and from the Pasadena train stations beneath the graceful arches of the oak trees.
It’s horrifying to think that the Los Angeles I knew, the one that felt sheltered from the wind and wildfires, has since succumbed. I worry about classmates and colleagues still living in the area. I worry that none of us is prepared for what happens next.
Tids and Bits:
Meteorologists have confirmed that we are indeed in a La Niña weather pattern. The cooling waters in the Pacific can alter weather patterns across the U.S., resulting in soggy winters in the Pacific Northwest and cool, dry conditions in Southern California. La Niña is not expected to GTFO until around March or April.
Add to that a stubborn ridge of high pressure over the Pacific, known as the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, that keeps deflecting rainstorms northward like some kind of deranged Captain America shield. The Pacific Northwest is all but drowning, while we’re seeing the onset of drought.
This is supposed to be Southern California’s rainy season, when we typically see 4 to 5 inches of rain. Since last spring, we’ve managed less than 10 percent of our normal.
As an aside, if you want to know what’s what with weather patterns, check out the bees—the honeybees, the humble bumbles, and all the rest in between. Last year, locals reported aggressive bees defending water sources and attacking anyone who messed with them. Many of us have decided to give the little stingers what they need and have set out water stations for them to use. (Just make sure to position the stations far enough away from your house.) That seems to cool them out. But I think they knew long before we did that drought was coming.
The Palisades fire has now been mapped at over 21,000 acres, according to the Watch Duty app. To put that in perspective, the island of Manhattan is just over 14,000 acres.
I strongly encourage anyone living in wildfire territory to download and use the Watch Duty app. It’s free to use, but paid subscription and donation options are available. It’s the best resource for up-to-date information, including evacuation warnings and orders. It’s more reliable than TV or radio news, which tends to obsess over calamity and personal loss instead of keeping their facts current.
Stay safe out there. And if anyone knows of a “try before you buy” program for the New Year, let me know. I think 2025 is defective and needs to be returned.