Edge case
Just after 5:30 pm Thursday, on a walk, with daughter strapped to me, relieved the worst is over. We round the corner to Fairfax and see Runyon Canyon on fire.
Like a volcano erupting. It looks like Vesuvius I thought, and then I realized I’d never seen Vesuvius except in illustrations. Maybe painted in the wall of an Italian restaurant? Or is that Mount Etna? Was I thinking of my dad describing Mount Etna?
I’d been on a smoking volcano in Guatemala (or was it Nicaragua? We roasted marshmallows) but had I ever seen one glowing?
The plaster casts of dead people in Pompeii, those I had seen, in National Geographic probably. I did not wish to become one. Time to pack.
The LA as I understood it as a youth in Massachusetts, the sense of LA, before I’d ever been there: convertibles palm trees swimming pools, soulless, “shallow.” Frequent natural disasters. The LA riots, the LA Lakers, both were viewed in Boston with fear, confusion, distress, upset, disquiet.
Imagine my surprise when I moved there for a job and loved it. It was like the famous story from Hockney:
The Los Angeles basin is so blessed, sunny almost every day, warm, rarely too hot. The beach, the mountains. When I arrived it was cheap, believe my rent was $900 for my own comfy place, walkable to LACMA and the tar pits and the movies, many bars and more restaurants and food stands than I could try. And the people! You could ask someone what they were up to and they’d say I’m developing.
California is on the edge, edge of the country, edge of the continent, edge of what’s acceptable, edge of politics, technology, edge of destruction. It’s all moving. You can’t expect it to stay.
The deadliest natural disasters in LA history are floods. The St Francis dam disaster, if you count that as “natural.” Six hundred some people washed to see. The 1938 flood. The river’s in that ugly concrete basin to keep floods contained. Last couple winters when the atmospheric rivers came there were many days when you could see why.
Back from my walk we watched the TV news. TV news: that’s a way to see LA and a way LA sees itself. The scale of LA first showed itself to me when I watched TV news and saw OJ’s Bronco.
Everybody’s been telling each other to stay safe. Stay safe! It’s like, ok! But what can you do? It’s like asking “how was your flight?”
Later that night I observed dense traffic on Fairfax as evacuees drove south. Though it was close to “bumper to bumper” there was no honking and it seemed like very little unpleasantness. Tension, sure, but people weren’t taking it out on each other. Reminded of Orwell’s quote: when it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic. There are scattered tales of looters and opportunistic thieves on TV, but almost everyone is looking for ways to be helpful.
What’s the play? We must watch ourselves that capitalism doesn’t zombify our humanity like a cordyseps on an ant. (Also: “almost inevitable”? bad writing and thinking. Also inaccurate LA is HUGE it’s not gonna ALL burn down).
Nithya was ahead, warning about the wind event. See here for more on the local spooky winds. There’s a whole literature. It consists of a couple lines of Chandler reprinted by Didion (LA literary history in a nutshell).
Some remarks in the news etc make me wonder if everyone comprehends the scale of Los Angeles. It’s quite vast. The Palisades Fire and the Altadena fire are about twenty five miles apart, on a straight line, for example. Here’s Massachusetts overlaid on Los Angeles:
(Is that helpful?) I guess my point is there’s like one fire that’s in like East Boston and one that’s in like Framingham. The Sunset fire, my Vesuvius, now out, would be in I dunno Newton? Very different experiences that in the news may be lumped together as “LA.” Reminded me of when Bronson of Scarsdale, NY was in Tennessee and people asked him if 9/11 affected him. Yes, but it’s not like next door.
This is a faulty comparison as almost all of both the Palisades and Eaton fires are happening in national forest/recreation area or other wildlands, not built up areas.
Three good friends have lost their homes in Palisades. I was impressed with their reactions. Stoic humor. Cool. Several friends and friendlies have lost homes in Altadena. Displacement high, anxiety high, lots of friends in hotels or friends’ houses or had to leave for a scary night and come back. Dogs in hotels, people evacuating horses. Overall disturbance and on-edge-itude are at high. On Monday the biggest problem in LA was housing. Now there are 10,000 fewer places to live and +10,000 (?) more homeless people.
Not confidence boosting. Smoke east, smoke west. Inhaling smoke from wildfires is bad for you, I’ve seen the studies. Burnt houses and cars and asbestos and drywall, melted Emmys. Imagine the horrible particulates. Walking around was giving me a small headache. But what’s the point in reading scary articles, I gotta breathe something.
You know when you light a candle? Most of the smoke and scent comes when you blow it out.
West down Melrose, towards Palisades fire.
Friends dear and distant have reached out, from Australia and Sweden and Japan and Texas, New York, Massachusetts. We’re fine for now. Resisting leaving town. That feels like abandoning ship. If we were gonna leave we would take a treasured painting of a dog, Johnathan. Taking Johnathan off the wall felt like taking down the American flag.
It keeps seeming over and people have written their eulogies, but we consider this an update from the ongoing catastrophe/circus/intermittent paradise that is LA!
Here’s one by Piranesi, from the Fantastic Ruins show :
