​Our City in Ruins

There is London’s fire of 1666. It burned for four days.
Chicago’s Fire of 1871 burned for two days (remember Mrs. O’Leary’s infamous cow?)
Boston’s Cocoanut Grove Fire on Thanksgiving weekend of 1942 burned for only one night (But 492 people were burnt alive, my mother’s cousin Mae being one of them. File this one under family trauma).
The burn times were getting shorter. 
 
Furthermore, since we no longer build wooden houses and have fire planes and flame retardant, I thought that modern technology somehow kept us safe from these kinds of fires. When/if they occurred, I believed we could easily put them out.
Boy, was I wrong.
Sadly, Los Angeles 2025 joins the notorious ranks of worst fire ever. It is still burning, 11 days so far. But what is astonishing is how few lives have been lost, considering the massive scope of the burn. For that we can thank technology. The city, however, is forever changed. 

Since we’ve all seen and read about these fires, what follows are moments. Back in NM, most feel utterly disconnected from the fires. This is an attempt to personalize them.
 
CLUELESS
Tuesday morning, January 7, at 6 AM, my husband texts me an advisory about the Santa Ana winds in Los Angeles. I am set to fly out to LA in a few hours for three days of meetings, and am bringing our daughter Lillie Grace. The Santa Anas are nothing new to me, nor are challenging LA “situations”. I had moved to LA exactly 17 days before the Northridge Earthquake. I left LA in the middle of the quarantined COVID pandemic. Suffice it to say, bookended in my 26 years there, I had seen a lot.
 
But nothing like this.
 
En route to the airport, I hear about a fire in the Palisades. Some of my closest friends live in that area, and I visit them every time I go to LA. But I'm not concerned.
 
In 2018, it seemed we had constant fires, and, like most Angelenos, I had grown “accustomed” to them.  On those days when the air quality index climbed to around 150, I would email our teachers, ccing our inept principal (who is no longer there) and state that my children should not go outside at lunch time. About 20 minutes later, said principal would take the hint and declare that no one should run around in the unhealthy air.
 
I assume this is another brush fire. We have masks for the plane, and will wear them if/when the air quality gets unhealthy.
 
Then, half-way through the flight, the pilot makes an interesting speech. While carefully avoiding the word “fire”, he lets us know that there are “high winds from the East” that will necessitate us putting away electronics 45 minutes before we reach Los Angeles. He orders all seats and trays upright too. The plane takes on an eerie quality as everyone is silently glued to their windows.
 
When we see the fire, I immediately realize that this is no ordinary brush fire.

​Upon landing, I text my friends Janine and Shelley, right in the eye of the storm. Both text back: they have received evacuation notices.

The view on Tuesday afternoon Jan 7th from Shelley's backyard.

​SANTA ANAS ON STEROIDS

​These winds, I notice, don’t feel like the Santa Anas I know. They are later categorized as “Hurricane Category Two”. When we arrive at our friends Lory, Mike and Caroline’s in Playa del Rey, the winds are so fierce that Lory has us move away from her glass walls, fearing that they will implode. We watch the fires both on TV and from her window.

Lillie took this somewhat impressionistic photo on Tuesday night from Lory's home.

LA’s iconic palm trees are matches. Dry palm fronds are ripping off the trees, igniting and sending the fire up to half a mile away. We listen to the wind howl and watch Armageddon on TV, referencing the view from Lory's window. Another fire has joined the Palisades, in the artsy middle-class area of Altadena, which is Pasadena adjacent. It’s where I shot my student film.
 
That night, everyone is sleepless in the midst of this firestorm. I toss and turn as additional friends with homes in the Palisades and Altadena come to mind: Dayle and Joe, Pam, Vicki, Lisa, Lauren and Austin, Jill, Robert, Clare.
 
THE ABSURDITY
Surreal is the word that best describes the experience. The next day, the crazy wind subsides around noon, and half the city is in the throes of evacuated trauma as the fires rage on. The other half of the city does not know what to do but carry on, business as usual. Everyone is distracted knowing that we are in the throes of destruction. What can we do?

During our stay, Lillie and I will share bursts of relative normalcy with her Godfather, beloved second grade teacher, former neighbors, class and camp mates. Likewise, on Day 2 of the fires,  I attend a literary meeting (that we had flown out for) at my friend Nancy’s in Westwood with seven dynamic women and a NY author. We know the city is on fire, but we discuss literature. We can see and smell the smoke, and are in a kind of shock and denial. We gather in solidarity, trying to grasp that the city we love is falling into ruins as we sit together.

​New fires start popping up all over, like bad acne on the city’s once beautiful face: the Lidia Fire, the Sunset Fire, the Woodley Fire, the Hurst Fire…
This absurdity of complacently living alongside fires would burn every day of our stay, no matter where we are or what we do.
 
WATCH DUTY PARTY
Our Wednesday evening dinner party is transformed into an evacuation party. My friends Lauren and Lexi have flown to Tennessee, believing their home in Palisades Highlands is gone.  My friends Andi and Madi, who were hosting the dinner, are now hosting several friends who have had to evacuate.
 
The evening reminds me of September 2001, when I had traveled to New York City to visit my brother and his wife. There were no strangers, only comrades and friends united in shock and trauma. This dinner carries that same sense of solidarity.  
Everyone at the party has their cell phones out and keeps glancing at the app “Watch Duty”, as it updates where the fires are and the (still 0) percentage at which they are contained. This app became ubiquitous throughout the city.
 
Another common topic everyone is discussing is their “go bag”. The zone/neighborhood next to us in Santa Monica is “on alert to evacuate”. Everyone is making a list for their “go bag”: the things they will take if ordered to evacuate. What would you take?  It is interesting to think about this in an abstract way, but hard to believe people are actually doing this just a few miles away, and terrifying to imagine how it would feel to leave our homes for possibly the last time.  
 
THE GUESTS WHO NEVER LEAVE
Lillie Grace and I had planned to stay with four friends over our four nights. However, our friends Martha and Jeff (Wednesday night) have evacuated their home in Brentwood, and Janine and Henry (Friday night) have evacuated their home in Santa Monica Canyon. Thursday, we had planned to stay with Carolyn, Dale and Amy in Westchester, but their guest room is now occupied by Carolyn’s stepmother, who fled Pasadena.
Lory, Mike and Caroline are incredibly gracious, as Lillie and I are the guests who come for one night and… just stay. Due to the dire need for water, we only shower once in the four days we’re there.
 
NO END IN SIGHT
When my meetings on Thursday and Friday are canceled, my husband Jory suggests we come home early. Instead, we hook up with friends and volunteer at our old YMCA, organizing the plethora of donations that have already come pouring in.

Scores of Angelenos flock to volunteer their time to give and get donations to those who need them.  As Mr. Rogers said, "As my mom used to say, when the news is scary, look for the helpers."

We also want to meet with friends who have evacuated. We visit Lisa who is staying with her husband and dog at a friend’s home. Her home seems safe, though she cannot return. Likewise, Janine’s home has miraculously survived, and like Lisa she is at a friend’s home with her husband and dog.
They are unsure if they will have gas, power, no usable water….however, both are lucky, and they know it.

When we meet Janine and her dog Charlie in Beverly Hills for coffee, I give her the hostess gift I had brought for a stay that we would have had at her home in an alternate universe: a scented candle.  A candle…SMH.
 
As we are saying goodbye, everyone’s phone explodes with loud blaring. Technology has synched every owner's phone to our locations, and an emergency alert system is activated in case of danger. We must evacuate our area. Yet another new fire? PTSD: It looks like Janine must evacuate her safe place.  For a city on edge, this is sending people over.

​Having seen images of Hollywood gridlocked in evacuation the day before, Lillie and I jump in the car and drive.
 
Five minutes later, it turns out it was a false alarm, sent all over the city.
“Someone needs to lose their job!!” I text Janine from the car. She responds, “Right?!  A mistake?? SHIT!”
 
SNOW IN LA
The next day we meet Shelley and her two dogs in Santa Monica at Urth Café. She and her husband have evacuated to his office, because it has a kitchenette and the dogs have space.
 
The strangest thing about these fires is how completely capricious they are. They give new meaning to the term, “Blown by the wind”. On one street, one house is burned to the ground, but the house next to it is standing. No rhyme or reason.

Shelley's house is literally one street away from the fire. The red on Watch Duty means burned. The pink means in imminent danger.

Shelley is incredibly grateful and lucky, but realizes that, like Janine, much of 2025 will be dealing with the shape her home is in. Friends who survived Katrina advise that after a week with no power, one should wrap duct tape around one’s fridge/freezer and toss it (due to the mold alone). If water is puddling from the freezer for days, it means floors may need repair. Then there’s the air quality, and air ducts – and yet she feels lucky to have these problems.
 
As we are talking on the patio, ash is falling all around us, swirling like snow. This ash, I realize, is people’s dreams. This ash is literally their past, their memories, their refuge, their shelter. It is the destruction of what they thought their future would be.

Ash on our rental car.

IT HITS HOME – LITERALLY
​
The most painful moment last week came in the form of a short and simple text from my friend Dayle to the rest of our book group on Wednesday: “My house is gone. We’re devastated.”
 
Dayle and her husband Joe had bought their Palisades home in 1992. It was beautiful. I have been there on numerous occasions. [In fact, Janine reminds me that when my son Tyler was born, I brought him to Dayle’s home and the book group celebrated with a baby shower for him].
 
For those of you who feel detached from the fires, you are now connected. Joe and Dayle are ardent readers of this blog, and Joe usually takes time to comment. I never imagined I would be writing about them in this context.
 
The night before we are to leave LA, Lillie Grace and I stop by their daughter Danielle’s home, where they are staying. We bring them some essentials, and just sit with them. Joe tells us that he had been checking their home on Watch Duty, and got concerned because it suddenly looked “red”. At that exact moment, their neighbor, who had managed to sneak onto their street, texted him a video. It was Dresden. Total carnage. Everything gone.
 
Now in their 80s, Joe and Dayle are clearly and understandably in shock, but graciously happy to see Lillie and me. Danielle tells us that when her parents received the notice to evacuate, it took them two hours before they did so. She worried about them taking too long, but those two hours were crucial, as (unbeknownst to all) it was the last time they would be in their home, amongst their things. Dayle recalls that she grabbed an orange binder, full of three years of carefully curated gourmet recipes from Rita Leinwand’s weekly cooking class that she had taken 50 years ago at the Rustic Canyon Recreation Center.  She laments that she had forgotten so many other things, things she wanted to pass on to her daughters, to her grandchildren.
 
In evacuating, Dayle and Joe believed that they would return. They had to believe that. It’s what everyone believed. To think otherwise was too traumatic.  
 
Yet the day after learning that his home and possessions were gone, Joe showed up to teach his UCLA Extension class, to give to others. It’s who Joe is.
 
Danielle recalls, “I loved that house like it was a feeling…or a soul…This is all so insane…We are all trying to stay positive: ‘Dad is no longer a pack rat! Mom has no more items to purge!’ We are on a path, just putting one foot in front of the other.”
 
If you would like to help Joe and Dayle, here is the gofundme that family set up for them.

Everyone in LA is traumatized with a list of friends who have lost their homes. For me, in addition, to Dayle and Joe, I learn that Vicki lost her home (I spent countless hours there tutoring), as did our friend Essie’s daughter. In the Eaton fires, Jory’s friend Robert lost his home, and my colleague Clare. Lauren’s home in the Palisades Highlands miraculously survived, though five other homes on her street burned.

We left on Day 5 of the fire. Here is the view from Lory's house on that morning of the Palisades Fire. Day 5.

We moved away from Los Angeles in 2020, middle-class residents who could no longer afford our home (with its insurance and mortgage interest rates) or schools for the kids. Now, 5 years later, I fear many middle-class residents will be following us, as opportunistic landlords are jacking up prices despite city ordinances. [Despite loose regulations, in 2016, our landlord raised our rent $1000/month, from $3,500 to $4, 500.  This has always made us uneasy about renting.]
 
As one of my favorite writers Liz Gilbert recently said, just this week: “Earth school is a serious curriculum, and as long as you’re still here, lessons are going to keep coming.”  

Needless to say, we would all rather have skipped the LA Fire Class 2025, and yet here we all are, in various levels of it. It has changed lives, will change the city, will change insurance across America, will change things we are not even yet aware of…

All we can do is accept. Challenging, yes. But it is what it is.
 
The questions we are left with are: What can we learn? About ourselves, our neighbors, our city, our country? Our relationship to our stuff?
 
How can we show up? How can we help? How can we keep putting one foot in front of the other?

The sunset on our last night in LA. 
"Though the heart is breaking, happiness can exist in a moment, also. And because the moment in which we live is all the time there really is, we can keep going." —Zora Neale Hurston