Fire, Devastation, and Touchstones of Memory in Los Angeles

This is not a time to bury the lead. Myself and my octogenarian roommates (Mother and Cat) are all safe. We are not currently in harms way. The bags are still packed and near the front door.

I have not lived in The San Fernando Valley for over 30 years…until six months ago. I moved from Santa Monica to help my mom in Encino. The fact that I moved from a place that was less than two miles from evacuation orders to another city that was only three blocks from evacuation orders is something I can’t truly process. Encino has already had its fifteen minutes of fame when Frank and Moon Zappa’s 1983’s song “Valley Girl” shot up the charts. Fer’ shure we did not need any more attention. But there was our city’s name on the news in a split screen horror show, showing people leaving their homes in the hills while the firefighters kept the flames from coming down into The Valley.

By the time I submit this I hope the winds will not be a factor and the fires will be more contained. Right now, the two biggest fires are not even 50% contained. The one that is closest to me is only at 18%. As I was eating dinner another small fire popped up on the Watch Duty app.

My articles have rarely held to any of the tenets of journalism; they are creative nonfiction and that is my jam. However, right now there is so much fiction being spread; swirling garbage is financial gold for a news cycle. More sensationalized headlines = more clicks, or longer station viewing. So many (including our newly inaugurated president) are spreading their fictional opinions as facts. I don’t know why some people that we elect get to spread untruths, but please double check all the things you hear, see, or read.

A cataclysmic weather event is not the time for political chicanery. Personally, I am so offended by those that spread garbage opinions and point fingers while thousands are suffering that I’d like to see the hurricane force winds shove those who partake in that kind of intellectual and moral deficiency…well I wouldn’t be upset if the hurricane force winds sent them right over the cliffs of Malibu.

When the dust, debris and humans are allowed to settle mistakes will be identified and hopefully, as we rebuild our city, those mistakes will be remedied for future generations. Or will they? Climate change appears to have played a huge role in this catastrophe. And monetary management in a city the size of Los Angeles is a huge issue.

Human settling will be the hardest part of this tragedy. Trying to figure out how to write about an unprecedented firestorm while events are still unfolding is challenging. I wanted to start with some facts.

SOME FACTS

(No one has all the facts yet)

Who: Tens of thousands displaced by wildfires in California, at current count 26 believed to have lost their lives. That number will more than likely grow as there are people still missing. LA has experienced the largest loss of structures in any fire in the history of The United States.

What/Where: More than a half dozen fires across Southern California, the two biggest being in LA County, the Eaton fire and the Pacific Palisades fire, with a combined total of 12,000 structures destroyed and over 37,800 acres.

When: At 10:20 am on January 7, smoke is picked up on a live camera in the Pacific Palisades. At 10:30 am, CalFire reported a fire had started in the Pacific Palisades. 11:44 am voluntary evacuation notices; fifteen minutes later at 12 noon mandatory evacuation notices. This is just for the Palisades.

The Eaton fire took off so fast there was no warning from the emergency phone system or any system for that matter. People, including a colleague of mine who lost everything, rushed out of their homes unable to grab much. In the instance of my colleague, she did manage to help her 93-year-old neighbor to safety.

How: Ongoing investigations are still in progress. There seems to be some evidence that the first fire, the Palisades fire, might have been a smoldering remnant from fireworks. Fireworks are illegal in LA county. “Hydroclimate whiplash” is a term scientist are using to describe our extremely wet 2022/2023 and a record dry summer in 2024. The powers that be were aware that the hills of Los Angeles were overgrown and dried out and according to the timeline of events the fire department had stationed engines at the ready. But figuring out where? It is difficult to visually imagine a “city” like Los Angeles—it is more than sprawling and half of LA county is taken up by mountain chains. The 60 mph winds grounded the firefighting aircraft.

ON THE GROUND

All the firefighters who were local, and those who came from all over the country plus Canada and Mexico, worked tirelessly and around the clock. They were on 24 hour shifts, sleeping sitting up in their trucks. They are the most heroic humans on the planet. A very early account from a woman on the news who miraculously did not lose her home while most of her neighbors’ houses were gone, was being baited by a local news reporter to speak to where the fault lay.

From the drivers seat of her vehicle, in her burnt out neighborhood, she stated that although improvements can always be made in infrastructure, if you were not on the ground in the middle of this blaze you can’t even imagine the force of the winds—winds that felt like they were swirling in more than one direction at the same time. She said you could barely stand up in these winds.

Another gentleman who stayed behind in Malibu to fight the embers that destroyed his neighbor’s home. was quoted in an NPR piece: “If you had 6000 firefighters, it would not have been enough.” (He was successful in saving his home and thankfully he did not die in the attempt as some did.)

The LA Fire chief, Kristin Crowley, stated: “If I had a thousand engines to throw at this fire, I honestly don’t think a thousand engines at that very moment could have tapped this fire down.” Crowley herself had stated in the past that the resources and staff were below minimums needed for a city the size of Los Angeles. And every reliable news source says the same thing: would it have mattered in the case of this fire? We just don’t know. What we do know is the Eaton fire did not have water hydrant pressure issues, and their losses were swifter and had a higher percentage of structures burned.

RICH OR POOR, GONE IS GONE

The idea that one area is populated by only rich people and movie stars is another false narrative. Yes, Pacific Palisades is an affluent area. But Altadena is more diverse, and includes a working-class neighborhood. Buying a home anywhere in Los Angeles County present day can only be accomplished with a solid mid-six figure annual paycheck. The reason no area is just one demographic is because in all areas you have generational homes. People (or “their” people) have owned property in that neighborhood for many decades, because they bought while buying a home in Los Angeles was still accessible to the middle class. Altadena, after Fair Housing legislation was enacted in 1968, became a space for many black families who were finally able to afford their own homes. Unfortunately, quite a few homeowners in many areas were dropped by their insurance companies this past summer. As a result, they are either underinsured or uninsured and lost everything they and their families owned for decades.

WHAT NOW?

Home prices and rents in Los Angeles are notoriously high and we have been facing a housing shortage for years. The list of musicians who lost their homes and all their possessions, including the instruments that allow them to make a living, is so vast that a spreadsheet on Google documents is making the rounds. It also links you to the GoFundMe page for each family. When I last pulled it up there were over 350 people. The GoFundMe campaigns are fantastic and for some will truly help. For others who are perhaps less popular, older, or whose networks of financially affluent friends are not as vast may not get what they need, and that is heartbreaking.

My firsthand experience with having to step in and be my own contractor after firing a crooked builder meant that I was responsible for purchasing materials and hiring sub-contractors. I am still crawling out of that debt because of waiting for reimbursements. I can’t even imagine how people manage who live hand to mouth, their only real stability being that they owned their home. Now they must come up with thousands of dollars out of thin, smoke-filled air.

Much has been written about the collections that were lost. No matter how much one donates, and I hope there is an outpouring of people who can help, a life’s work is not replaceable. This is going to be a very, very long recovery process. Years and years. I hope those that have the least are not forgotten.

My own experience in this historic event has been its own kind of whiplash. The Palisades fire has destroyed so many of my life memories. I lived in Santa Monica for 33 years and I have emotions that are unfamiliar. I worked for years in Malibu at a school, I filmed my episode of This Is Us at the now completely gone Will Rogers estate. The last play I did was at the now burnt down Palisades Theatre. Mom and I just ate at the Reel Inn—a small quirky, fish shack. Driving up the coast was my salvation during my hyper paranoid years of Covid. I was determined even though not living with my mother at that time to not give or get the virus. I would do my grocery shopping so far up the coast buying ice cream was a no go.

It is important to acknowledge how lucky we are, that our home is just fine. We are indeed fortunate. I share my emotions here because they are universal. When the tangible remnants of your collective memories over many decades are wiped away that emptiness is so much more profound than anything I could have imagined. “You can’t imagine” a trite little saying, and yet who can actually think “what if I woke up tomorrow so much of my history will be gone.”

As we age, our memories become more sepia toned, and even unconsciously when you pass a memory marker in your day-to-day travels, those visual retrieval cues help us bring the past into the present. A major part of the dry erase board of my life has been wiped clean.

The nightmare of toxic air is so bad that the hospital that is in my old city and that is still my network hospital has opened a respiratory clinic for dealing with the ongoing issues that will affect many for years to come. Yes, the fire smoke itself has caused very bad air which had me grounded for almost a week. The everyday air quality charts can’t even detect the poison particulate that is floating about because of the common household items that were incinerated, such as electronics and plastics…the “things” that are gone turn into invisible poison. Talk about a double whammy.

As of January 21st, our red flag warnings are still here. The dry, windy conditions still prevail. I don’t feel like we can truly relax until we get some moisture. Until then, those bags will stay packed by the door. It feels alarmist and unnecessary, but nothing about this historic blaze makes any sense.

Thankfully now the fire that was our biggest threat, the Palisades fire, is at 59% containment. The people that are coming together to help each other is giving us all hope. I heard a term on the radio last night: “Cross Cultural Solidarity.” People are volunteering and traveling great distances to help strangers. Almost no one who lives in Los Angeles isn’t directly or tangentially affected by these fires. The physical history we have here is not plentiful, and losing cultural and historical landmarks is devastating.

But do not count Los Angeles out, for whatever reason. People flock here and creativity is one of our biggest exports. We will come back, and hopefully the physical and mental haze that lingers will lift.

Musicians who have been affected by the wildfires can visit www.CaliforniaJazzFoundation.org for immediate assistance.