Last updated 12:31pm Thursday Jan 9 2025. This isn't an article and not going on my website, this is just a the fast way to share longer thoughts. Unedited.
Note from 4pm 1/10/24: This is now getting shared more widely. I wrote this earlier in the crisis to help my folks who don't know LA to put these fires in context and understand what it means for us on the ground. If this resonates and would save you energy, please feel free to share the link with anyone you like <3
Thanks for checking in on me! It means the world. <3 I apologize for answering your personal text with this link, but in the last 36 hours it's been increasingly challenging to answer the question "how are you doing over there?" in a text message. "We're safe" no longer seems adequate.
In short:
- my body, partner, dog, home, and belongings are all safe
- the air is not currently safe to breath outside our home (and across all of central LA, though the valley seems to be ok for now)
- it is still extremely unlikely that our home will catch fire. For that to happen, most of the city of LA would have to be on fire and millions would be trying to flee. Very unlikely, but the chances are many times higher than they ever have been before, so unlike any previous fire, it's a scenario we're actively planning for.
- We have close friends who fled their home (where I've been many times and have so many happy memories) as the flames approached over the hill, grabbing their dogs and what little they could in a panic. They are safe but their home and entire neighborhood burned to the ground.
- We have many more friends who have had to evacuate. And several of them have evacuated twice. Meaning the place they evacuated to—the place that was supposed to be a refuge—was also in danger. I can only imagine this is an extra layer of trauma.
- The best source of information I've found so far is the Watch Duty app, which is deservedly going viral.
It can be hard to tell, from the outside, how large the scale of an emergency is based on the news. You can find a dramatic photo of any fire, no matter how localized. So in the past when I get messages about fires or earthquakes I've generally said something like "it's really bad for the people affected but it's small and far away and I'm fine."
But I want you to know that this is an event that is deeply rattling the entire LA metro area. Assumptions about where fires can reach us are changing overnight. The closest analogy I can think of is what it was like to be in NYC for Superstorm Sandy. Subway tunnels flooding was unthinkable, subway service entirely out for days/weeks was unthinkable, half of Manhattan being without power for days was unthinkable. I had cab drivers demand illegal bribes because they knew there was no other way to get around the city. I watched fights break out in the gas lines that snaked around the block 24/7 for many weeks.
I know this sounds silly, but after 15+ years of living there I never really thought of the city as existing in nature. Sure, there is a six-foot snowstorm every ten years. But even that never touched the subways. Other places had hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and other things that could reshape a city with one touch. It never occurred to me that level of disruption of the very fabric of New York was possible. And once you see that it's possible, you can't unsee it.
And that's what's happening now. For the first time I'm seeing my friends who grew up in Southern California—who have been trained since childhood how to pack and evacuate for fires—shocked and frightened. The entire towns of Pacific Palisades and Altadena appear to have mostly been erased in a single day. And it's unclear when those fires will be stopped and how far they will go. Tomorrow? Next week?
And this is all happening during what is supposed to be our rainy season.
Another thing that's hard to understand from outside the region: the specific moment that really unsettled folks in west and central LA is 1/8 in the afternoon, when they expanded the evacuation zones in the flats of Santa Monica. The hills burning is one thing—after all, we tell ourselves, there's lots of flammable vegetation there, but the city is mostly concrete. But houses are made of wood, and with these winds, and the firefighters already stretched thin...if it hits the flats of the city, would it ever stop? And we couldn't all evacuate in time, because the roads can barely handle rush hour.
So when the Sunset fire broke out in the hills over Hollywood, many many folks I know there immediately left, even outside the evacuation zones. I can't emphasize enough how that wouldn't have happened if the Sunset fire were the first to break out. Watching our friends' houses burn and the Santa Monica evacuation zones expand has changed our calculus.
My heart goes out to those who lost loved ones and/or everything they own and their communities, ripped up and tossed to the winds. There will be time to talk about global warming, where we can collectively live on this planet going forward, how none of us are safe anymore, home prices, insurance markets, etc, but that day is not today. This emergency is not over yet and we are not ok.