A little over a week ago now, I became aware of what has become known as The Palisades Fire. To some extent, living in Southern California for any period of time will make you jaded to the development. Maybe it’s a malfunctioning coping mechanism where you remove the ramifications to feel any security. After all, how many reports can one person listen to where people more knowing than I say, “fire season is year round”? We had The Mountain Fire in November and The Franklin Fire the month after that. Joan Didion wrote about The Santa Ana Winds that plague our region with grand uncertainty 60 years ago. At some point, I’m able to push aside the anxieties that otherwise paralyze my imagination with morbid hypotheticals long enough to enjoy the rest of my life because I hate fire season. It’s been an exhausting fixture of my adulthood, reminding me consistently of how everything I love can be taken away by an act both innocent and careless.
The routine is maybe why I wasn’t quick to think that The Palisades Fire was a big deal. With respect to those in the region, there is some part of me that believed it would be minor, at most a news story updated twice an hour like the umpteen other fires I’ve seen reported in the past 15 years. It’s why my assumption was that local news would end, Jeopardy! would do its thing, and life would carry on. January 2025 has been off to a rough start already and, with a controversial presidential inauguration now a weekend away, there needs to be time to sigh with relief. The Palisades Fire, like Mountain and Franklin before, wasn’t going to consume my life.
Part of it was denial. The phenomenon was short lived as I got to the 7 PM hour and Jeopardy! was nonexistent. The local broadcast was about to pull an all-nighter reporting on not only The Palisades Fire, but The Eaton Fire. By the next night, I sat watching a conference update on the fires as it was cut short to reveal, amid complete darkness, another fire forming in The Hollywood Hills. The damage within five minutes was a horrifying sight to witness. If I didn’t believe that escapism would be difficult for the near future, receiving Facebook updates from The Pantages Theater canceling a production of Wicked brought home the severity. Unless something could be done, whole industries would disappear.
My apologies if I sound glib. It has been one of my greatest nightmares. There will be nights where I struggle to fall asleep as I imagine my evacuation methods in elaborate detail. I try to imagine what I would grab while keeping a level head. Outside of essentials, I think of the irreplaceable antiques and my pet cat who has never left the block let alone been in a carrier. Which direction would I go? Where do I hide out and watch the smoke slowly build? For as many complaints as you can lobby at the Netflix film Blonde (2022), its opening act features a perfect encapsulation of my fear of being caught up in the wildfires, driving along a trail of flames without certainty that you’d ever get beyond the overbearing heat. Maybe it stemmed from footage I saw on ABC years ago, but it has haunted my imagination ever since. As one can guess, my opinions on fireplaces is built on shared skepticism.
So yes, I do care. To me, Los Angeles County is home and has been the region I love most. For all of its flaws, the rich culture and diversity builds a landscape that is endlessly fascinating. Every door opens a hundred new stories and you get the sense of what humanity is capable of. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been eager to learn more about history that has been paved over, remodeled, or completely gutted which, in its own way, makes me romanticize the fragility.
The major difference is that most of the examples I speak of were victims of corporate greed or, as a random British woman told me once, “the place without history.” This is a region that has its iconic landmarks, but at the same time lacks the reverence to preserve every eccentricity.
That is why Lost L.A. and Huell Howser are essential and become even more-so in light of watching The Hollywood Hills catch on fire. Not only did it feel like Southern California was entering an unprecedented period of wildfires that would slowly encapsulate my hometown of Long Beach, but I would have to choke on the migrating air while listening to a reporter freak out about the impending fate of The Magic Castle. As the ashes took hold, I saw ABC report on a site dedicated to Will Rogers. While Hollywood would be mostly salvaged, the same couldn’t be said for beachside homes in Palisades. The aggressive Santa Ana Winds left them and Eaton at 0% containment for an extended period that only worsened the situation.
When you fear that everything is collapsing, it’s difficult to process everything rationally. Outside of any commendable work from firefighters and professional journalists on the ground, there wasn’t much to give you hope. Turning to websites like Bluesky was difficult because they were packed with the unnecessary vitriol of users sarcastically commenting, “looks like 2025 isn’t off to a good start.” To me, this is the moment when cynicism is least needed, and it was everywhere. The only upside is that there were people actually caring to provide updates, including knowledge of the Watch Duty app which has become the second thing I look at after my alarm clock in the morning. The updates often move at a snail’s pace but watching the air clear up and the containment numbers rise gave me the optimism I needed in between an overbearing need to keep the news on and watch as firefighters prepare to take down the impending flames.
The truth is that there’s a lot of great people in Los Angeles County and I’m happy to hear how the recovery is far less eccentric than the “2025 sucks already” crowd. There’s food donations and people doing what they can to help the handicapped escape. For as much that still fails, there’s this sense of community that comes together for a greater cause. You hear about Guitar World willing to replace instruments or Charli XCX and Ariana Grande donating make-up to teen girls wanting some sense of normalcy. In In Out has offered free food to firefighters who often enter the establishments to cheering crowds. A lot of recovery efforts are a lot less buzzy, but the outreach is beautiful and it makes you understand how right Fred Rogers was to say to “look for the helpers” when disaster strikes.
I’ve done what I could to talk with people more impacted by the fires on Bluesky in hopes of understand their very specific stress. With the loss of homes and hundreds of thousands currently displaced, there is something horrifying in seeing your worst fears happen on this massive of a scale. As the helicopters scan the Palisades region a week later, you see the buildings burnt to the frame, leaving nothing but rubble that will hopefully hide a few precious memories saved from destruction. As it stands, one of the feel good stories in all of this involved a woman finding her wedding ring in the ashes to which her husband joked that if the ring survived the fire, they could survive each other. Questions about the architectural rebuilding remain uncertain, but you pray that the people who survived still have something worth holding onto.
As the next phase of Palisades and Eaton have started, there is some relief in knowing that firefighters are making breakthroughs. Given that both rank in the top six for the biggest California wildfires, it’s insane to think that they’re happening concurrently. The air quality has been reported by the county to have been so altered by smoke that we’re likely to experience side effects for years. Even when this is over, the ramifications are likely to inform a lot of the local attitudes for a long time. It hurts me to know that this is the reality, but I can only hope that we use what we learned to come back stronger. For as much of Southern California that will be eulogized in the months to come, I hope we never forget what we have and build something positive from it.
I am still worried about where we go from here. A morbid thought I had sometime early into the Palisades coverage was being fortunate that this happened now and not in two weeks. Having memories of the incoming president initially refusing to offer federal assistance during a nasty wildfire season made me think of what was to come. In a time when he’s distracting from court rulings by doing his kooky fan fiction of Hitler’s Invasion of Poland, it’s discouraging to think how much he wants to divide everyone. Listening to Pod Save America, I also became aware that Twitter’s usual ability to be primary sources for breaking news were providing misinformation about the fire. In congress, the criticism of California has become less subtle at the suggestion of federal assistance as important figures suggest there should be stipulations.
This is all to say that as this week comes to an end, I want to share that things are getting better. Everyday I check Watch Duty and often the percentages have risen. Turning on the news, I’m seeing more human interest stories alongside the typical updates of frontline workers. For as much as the world wants to fight and be cynical, I look at what has happened to my region and try to not lose hope. Yes, a lot has been lost by innocent and careless measures. Some wounds may never heal. Instead of name calling and creating grand hypotheticals, it feels better to try and work towards a more stable future. I would love to think there’s one where we work together and support the community, recognize the value of global unity by not turning disasters into viral hoogajoob. It's been a terrible time for a lot of people, so why not try to make it better?
The reality is that California will have another wildfire before the year is out. Maybe even before this winter season ends. That’s the morbid reality of living here and one that I fear to the point of sometimes needing to ignore for the sake of my sanity. I don’t do it to be rude, but because it’s exhausting to see my home state be mocked by social media for being irresponsible or failing to do our job. It’s watching people use A.I. to make fake images of The Hollywood Sign burning in flames while people joke about it being the perfect image of So Cal. It’s watching leaders who should support people over politics create their own Mother Goose rhymes for why they’re not going to try. More than anything, it’s just the fear that it could come for me. If not the building I currently reside in, then maybe the air I breathe or the people I love who will have some life changing event happen to them.
It’s stressful to live here, and I think I needed to write this less as a journalistic exploration of a fire, but more a reason to keep going. There must be a reason to love being here and continuing to revel in such a wonderful culture. For as much that has been beaten down, watching firefighters eliminate the fires, watching volunteers hand out supplies for those stranded, watching a woman find her wedding ring in the rubble… those are all things that give me hope for something better. The idea that I’ve seen something genuine within the larger coverage gives me hope that the future won’t be swallowed whole by misinformation, that people will care and want to make a difference.
I’ll close by saying that it’s strange to have people reach out and ask if I am safe. It is rare for my region to experience a disaster worthy of making a public statement. When a British friend wrote me at 1 AM on Day 2 asking if I was safe, I knew the scope was much larger than the average fire. Since then, people have reached out and it has made me feel relieved to know that for whatever the internet wants me to believe, there are people who want to know if I’m safe. My goal as the year goes forward is to listen to them. They have some good ideas on how to get through a rough time. That feels pretty valuable if you ask me.
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