The Fire This Time

A bad night in Los Angeles

It’s a very strange day here in Los Angeles: the air is very still and lightly smoky, but feels charged, as if something is about to happen. Or maybe that’s just the natural reaction to the events of the last twenty-four hours. I can best compare it to how I feel after I’ve had a migraine. I’m ok, but I’m battered, and my head feels like a piñata, intact but vulnerable at any moment to be busted open.

We followed the news of the fire in real time, because even though the first three outbreaks were quite far from our house, any fire in California feels like a wicked Whack-a-Mole, ready to pop up somewhere new whenever you’ve smacked it down. This is partly science, because embers really do fly miles from their origin, and they do light new fires far from where they were first set ablaze. But also, despite the perception from afar that Los Angeles is just a disconnected jumble of small cities, this place does exist as a cohesive entity, and a fire in Altadena registers with me here in the Hollywood Hills as a fire in my city.

By mid-afternoon yesterday we had already heard of several friends whose houses, in the Palisades, had been vaporized; all that remained was their chimneys, poking out of the rubble like blackened goosenecks. We were stunned, and then roused ourselves to start walking around the house preparing in case we had to leave. We didn’t really do anything; it was more a mental exercise to keep ourselves busy as we constantly refreshed the fire department app and stared dry-eyed at the local television news channel. We worried about our dogs, especially our elderly Welsh springer spaniel, and we worried about our house, which is built entirely of wood and probably would light up like a lantern and be gone in an instant. Our house is landmarked, so besides being our home, it is a piece of Los Angeles history that could never be replaced.

But during that time when the fires were in the Palisades and in Pasadena, many miles away, this seemed academic. And then a fire started up the street. Our phones rang simultaneously, with an emergency alert from the city telling us to prepare to evacuate. By then we had packed dog food and our prescription medications and a change of underwear, just as a precaution. The phones rang again, and the robot voice told us that we were now in a mandatory evacuation zone. We started to scramble.

I’ve often played the mental game of wondering what I would grab if I only had a few minutes to leave my house, and I’ve always been stumped. I start with the box that contains jewelry I inherited from my mom, and then I just can’t think of what I’d take next. Everything seems important and nothing seems essential. I’ve always thought if the moment really arose, I’d snap to it and immediately know what I’d take, but here I was, in the moment, and I blanked out. I packed pajamas, a warm sweater that I don’t really like, and a shirt that I do. Then I couldn’t make my brain work. I always thought I would stuff all my favorite clothes in my bag, or my other jewelry, or a few decorative objects that are sentimental, but I couldn’t do it; I was numb. I grabbed my iPad in the last minute, and my husband got our passports and birth certificates. My son, who is still home for the holiday break, packed all sorts of respirators and emergency equipment and a six-pack of hard cider. We loaded the dogs in the car and drove a few miles to the home of friends well outside the evacuation zone.

We huddled around their computer watching the news, each of us scrolling the fire department app, while my husband checked our Ring camera to see if our house was still standing. Then the wind shifted, pushing that nearby fire back down the hill, away from our house. We breathed. Then another fire broke out near our friends’ house, and we faced the prospect of having to evacuate with them to somewhere else. They started packing. None of us had raised the question of where, exactly, we were going. We paused and watched the news together, and saw that this new outbreak nearby had been contained, and we were likely fine staying there. We ordered Thai food and spent the next few hours watching the news unspool, a slow-motion train wreck of destruction.

We’re home now, but none of us is ready to unpack our bags. It’s that tension in the air, the other shoe dangling before the drop, that has us on edge.

Thanks to everyone who reached out with concern. I’m grateful.