This will be brief. If you are in Los Angeles and the vicinity I am so terribly sorry. What you are experiencing must be at the absolute limit of or beyond your capabilities.
I too have family and extended family in LA, Pacific Palisades, and Malibu. I am so grateful they are all safe, however, a house has been lost. I’m not going to say anything more. I won’t list sites for donations, as that information has been widely shared. Nor will I jump into the current political arguments about what caused it all. Inexcusable. You either believe the world is undergoing climate change or you do not and don’t use my state to bolster your resentment of environmental policy or hatred of DEI policies.
But, in light of what is called the “discourse” on social media, and having read emerging “takes,” I do ask something of you, my friends. Help the country understand that they probably don’t understand California if they haven’t spent time here, especially if they–understandably–don’t follow our state’s political/economic history.
Here are a couple of points you might drop into any conversation that starts out, “All those rich people in their million dollar houses,” especially if it shows signs of escalating to glee at tragedy:
- California’s weather used to be temperate, compared to anywhere else in the country and maybe the world. The land itself is beautiful. From the Pacific Ocean to the Sierras, or other mountains, it’s only a four hour drive. The curve of the gold hills in summertime.
- Long ago California set up an excellent state university system, and a companion crew of affordable two-year colleges and community colleges.
- Stanford’s founder, one of the strongest private universities in the world, wanted it to feature a working farm. This is simply to say that we began as did many states on the East Coast and in the Midwest.
- All of the above drew the dreamers, the driven and the highly intelligent. To San Francisco and the Bay Area for tech, to Los Angeles for entertainment and, you may not know, military equipment.
- Many of these new arrivals, in the American way, made a lot of money. Sometimes people who came here with money from family, sometimes people who came with $11 and a suitcase.
- With wealth came increased housing prices.
- With the spread of housing came a desire to protect the environment. We began environmental protection work back in the 60s or 70s, which often meant strict zoning laws against residential construction.
- Facing rapidly rising property taxes, we passed a law regulating the increases on the property you owned, meaning nobody moved for a long time, especially the older people.
- All of this means that we have a dire housing shortage, and the housing we do have is priced way above most of the rest of the country.
- We’re working to fix the shortage, but communities object and it takes time. We’re trying.
So the next time someone starts railing about million dollar houses, send them to Zillow. Have them take a look at what a million dollar house gets you in Los Angeles and watch the dawning realization that we are they, and they are us.
The constant demonizing of The Other, states and people, is killing us all.
Dear Texas, Florida, North Carolina, some of the most creative, big-hearted people I know live in you. I wish your states well. I ask, wish us all too. We are not your symbol of political division. Meanwhile, I wish everyone a weekend with a home, and those who no longer have theirs, I wish you the help of your neighbors and our fellow dang Americans.
44 Responses
Thank you for this, Lisa. I grew up in the Palisades and raised my son nearby. It’s heartbreaking to see my former home and the homes of family and friends, my village, reduced to rubble. While most see the area as a refuge for the wealthy, for many of us who were raised there in the 60s and 70s, it was solidly middle class. And, it was idyllic.
While many residents have the financial and personal resources to rebuild, so many clerks, retail owners, gardeners, nannies and housekeepers have lost their jobs and my heart aches for them. My 95 yo mother lost her home but is comfortable and safe. Her housekeeper has lost 3 jobs. My aunt lost her house, and her housekeeper lost all of her jobs. It goes on and on.
My eyes should never have been shut to all you say here, but you have opened them, and I have a wider perspective now thanks to your painful experience, and that of those so near and dear to you. I found myself repeating your same words to someone today. I wish I could do something more than thank you.
I am so sorry for the losses of your family, their network, and the entire community. Thank you for the reminder of how the Palisades was back when, and of how many people from those days have stayed and now lost their whole life history. I’m glad your mom is safe.
Aside from climate change, LA is built on top of a grassland ecosystem that is naturally meant to burn regularly. It’s burned many times before and though this was the biggest wildfire in a long time, it won’t be the last. I agree with the Newsweek writer who said it doesn’t matter who you blame, this was inevitable.
I don’t watch Joe Rogan, but a segment of a podcast he did last year has come to light in the media. He recalled a conversation he’d had with an LA firefighter who predicted exactly what just happened. He said that in the past, they were always lucky that the wind blew from a direction that gave them a better chance of controlling the fires. He knew the day was coming when the wind would blow from a direction that would make the fires too overwhelming to control … and that LA would burn from the mountains to the ocean. When you have thousands of acres on fire in all directions and 40 MPH wind gusts that pick up the fire and rain it down on houses and landscaping, there isn’t much you can do.
I found all the stories of people losing their houses and family possessions very sad. I wish that if they build back, that there is a way to fireproof the buildings. Metal roofs? Cement siding? I dunno.
… they just got and stayed mostly lucky for… *checks notes on entire absence of an event of this magnitude occurring in LA within recorded fire history* at least 150 years, and yet this was Inevitable and someone’s on the air getting famous for saying it was only a matter of time (presumably without mentioning the drought and heat effects on California of climate change; I do agree that if you dry and heat an area enough, more things do become inevitable).
The “originally grasslands which typically burned off every few years” argument would also apply to the bulk of the midwest [see: Little House on the Prairie], and yet somehow 1. cities built since then do not tend to *burn down* and 2. no one is presently making a large public argument that it’s inevitable that, say, large portions of Kansas or Nebraska or Oklahoma will burn down [unless there are some people pointing out that climate change has made a *lot* of areas of the US more flammable, which is possible but unlikely to be featured on Joe Rogan].
I do hope they can build more fire-resistant communities, however!
But: inevitable because of what it was built on top of, instead of inevitable because of relatively recent changes to the flammability of the locale? Really???
California is #1 in wildfires in the U.S. – https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/wildfires-by-state
It was an LA firefighter (who presumably is knowledgeable about fires there) who said it was inevitable. Rogan merely repeated what the firefighter told him. He said it was partly why he relocated – he had to evacuate his LA house three times because of wildfires.
I also listened to a geologist explain LA wildfires and how the climate and terrain create circular wind patterns that bring in very dry air because of the mountain ranges. It’s a unique situation to begin with and no one said the drought wasn’t a factor. I would imagine the firefighter meant that it was inevitable that all the right conditions would come together.
The midwest grassland areas aren’t surrounded by mountains and the prevalence of wildfires there are drastically lower than California.
I think what I will ask of the community here is that we don’t talk about complex problems as though we KNOW the answer unless we have relevant first-hand, long-term expertise. This issue at the heart of the debates now raging over these fires is the same as that now dividing America. Do we place the responsibility with corporate America and call for more government regulation, because welisten to the majority of the climate scientists who say that human fuel-burning has altered our ecosystems, or do we think it’s all the government’s fault (departmental, city, county, state, federal, whatever.) Because where we locate the cause we will focus the action.
I did not place responsibility with anybody. In fact I said it didn’t matter who you blamed, considering the ecosystem.
I was referring to this piece in Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/l-will-keep-having-catastrophic-fires-no-matter-who-you-blame-opinion-2012844
Never guessed some people would be so touchy about discussing the difficulty of the ecosystem there. Oh well.
Ah. Usually I have heard people say something was “inevitable” and they have implied [and often gone on to state] that 1. those who are harmed should have known better (should have lived somewhere else, usually; even for Helene flood victims who have been living there for decades and never seen a hint of a flood!) and 2. we have no responsibility (in terms of helping relief efforts or in terms of working to reduce climate change or in terms of trying to improve other things which could mitigate disasters like this in the future).
I do get super-bristly about both of those things (the first more so when something of the specific scale in that location hasn’t occurred before). There is sometimes a human inclination to do mental gymnastics, when there is an Unacceptably Bad Thing, to decide why it couldn’t happen to you [why you are Definitely Exempt from those things you think are Unacceptably Bad], and then sometimes also to figure out why you don’t have any responsibility as a fellow human being to help, but: those inclinations are to be resisted.
But even when a natural disaster *is* something that regular non-specialist residents could plausibly expect/anticipate to happen within, say, 10 years (vs. the 27 years between the publication of the book in which this LA fire was predicted vs. when it happened)… In the town we’ve lived in for over a decade, those who don’t have enough money but who need to live here due to jobs/family… well, they live in the flood plains. Because it’s so much cheaper that they can afford to live there and they can’t afford to live somewhere else. And it is that much cheaper because every so often – increasingly often – they get water in their houses, some household goods are destroyed, they have to live somewhere else until the water goes down and then do cleanup and deal with mold and all that. So there’s a cycle where there is a set of people who can’t afford to live somewhere safer, but those people *also* lose more whenever there’s a flood, and *also* have a bonus layer of health challenges from living with mold. There are people with power and money who are treating this as inevitable – and not seeking solutions, because if something is inevitable, then usually *shrug* – and there are people who are treating it as a definite big problem that we have a collective responsibility to try to solve or mitigate – can we change anything about the drainage situation to make the floods less frequent or severe? can we improve low-income housing options so the poorest people don’t get hit and lose even more each time there’s a natural disaster? can we address climate change so that the frequency of these events doesn’t increase further? can we at least set aside something to help people out each time there is a flood? can we figure out a way to have better notice of flooding and safe places people can store their things while their homes are likely to be flooded? And, due to resources, these are things that will likely need financial contributions from those who *aren’t* personally at risk, who are less likely to contribute time and money if they shrug and say “this is just the way it is. Inevitable.”
So “inevitable” makes me bristle, because it has typically indicated a shuffling-off of any communal or individual responsibility to help with a problem. (sure, it’s better than blaming the wrong people for something, but still…) With the increasing frequency of large-scale events, we need to do some hard work on national natural disaster stuff, where we help our neighbors in need and shore up resources, and “inevitable” seems less likely to be a source of creative solutions (and ‘inevitable’ is also sometimes how we weasel out of contributing to personally or financially costly solutions). But that doesn’t mean that was how you were using the word! Sorry for potentially getting inappropriately bristly.
Fire mitigation in urban and even non urban areas has been addressed and regulated ( much to the consternations of homeowners – it’s expensive) in California for years- the sheer magnitude of this disaster will require a new playbook but still indefensible when it comes to Mother Nature, and climate disasters –
Sadly 40 of our great states have a smaller population than the county of Los Angeles and people have no idea his long and costly it will take to rebuild –
A new playbook is definitely in order.
Hi Lisa, I’m glad to hear your family are OK, and am so sorry for the loss of their house. Yes, yes, yes, to everything you’ve said here.
Thank you Sue. I’m glad you’re safe where you are too. To be very clear, and not appropriate trauma, the lost is the loss of a partner’s extended family, but they have said we are family and I am saying it back to them.
What a terrible situation. My heart goes out to all those who are affected. I can only hope that we can work together to deal with the new reality of our climate, no matter where we live.
Such a fervent prayer, and so much money and sheer contrarian desire against us.
I am a fourth generation Floridian and my heart goes out to all Californians. I know too well how nature and decades of growth can be a lethal combination.
Florida faces the same high-level problem, including insurance coverage. Nature and decades of growth. What a succinct way to put it.
Fourth gen Floridian here too. We’ve lived with hurricanes forever. In my youth: “School’s out, hoorayyy!” But now in my senior adulthood, we live directly on the Atlantic Coast, where every evacuation only comes about as a dire potential circumstance, like: Get out, landfall is predicted, GO!
On our most recent evac, my husband and I had finished boarding/taping/etc, and were walking together toward our cars when he said [in earnest] “Where do you want to live next?”
I want to go to CA with vanloads of Alprazolam for every single soul trying to live through the minutes of daily mental angst, and misery of what will tomorrow bring, where will we live, how will we manage? God bless them.
Much love to you and your family, Lisa, and especially to your family members who lost their house. I know exactly how that feels. I’m so glad to hear they’re safe. And Leslie, my heart goes out to your mother and aunt and their friends who are now struggling. Thinking of them and wishing for comfort and recovery… and for the wounds of our nation to heal.
Thank you. So sorry you know the feeling. I too hope the nation’s wound may heal, but it’s going to be hard as injury upon injury piles up.
I agree with everything you wrote here, Lisa, and I am very sorry for your family’s losses. I grew up in Northern California, in what was a modest suburb of San Francisco. It is now part of the Silicon Valley homes reality. The small, very small—1362 square feet—home my parents bought for $10K in 1960, is now listed on Redfin and Zillow for $1.67M, which IMO is insane, but if the house went on the market, I know it would sell immediately. The California housing situation you describe is very real. A friend of mine who lives in Alameda and owns a hair salon in San Francisco describes our surreal housing and property situation by pretending to be a game show host and yelling, “You have won a million dollars!” while all of us watching think of how little a million dollars pays for in California. Climate change is real. All the forecasts and warnings that began years ago, definitely by the 1970s, are now true or on their way to becoming true. The situation is dire and we are ignoring it for profits. World temperatures were the hottest on record last year. Los Angeles is in a drought, but there have been rains that have supported the growth of vegetation that has then dried in the drought, and is now kindling. The Santa Ana winds are potentially altered by the climate change realities. (I think they are definitely altered, but the careful scientific community is still examining this.) The Los Angeles fires are devastating to hear about from a distance. My heart goes out to anyone affected by these fires. As I write this the Palisades and Eaton fires are 11% and 15% contained, and the Santa Anas are forecast to come up again today. We are not out of the woods on any of this in Los Angeles. I agree that fires are an inevitable part of the Los Angeles reality. I’d also observe that no matter where you look in the U.S. from the East Coast to the Florida coasts to the Midwest to the South to Texas, there are homes built on land that will be adversely affected by disasters. Los Angeles is not unique in this respect. If we are a California community and a nation community, which would be in our best interest, we would care about each other, and try to work to make the necessary immediate and long term changes that maximize a good life for all of us. We did that recently in response to Hurricane Helene in South Carolina. Before that we rallied as a nation in response to Hurricane Harvey in Houston and Southeast Texas. People in Los Angeles contributed to those efforts. I will continue to work toward the betterment of all in a time when I am less hopeful than I have been about our ability to live our lives with generous goodwill toward the greater good. The President Jimmy Carter model, as it were. That our incoming president discounts reality and wishes people ill because it serves his purposes is a dismal thing to confront, one of many. A culture built on a foundation of admiration for ungenerous billionaires, and hope of becoming one, is not a solid foundation. It is a fact that if we live in a world where the misfortune of others is celebrated, we are not in a good world. If it is not us currently who is adversely affected by events, it will be us soon.
I agree, Lisa, and it is scary!
It is. Many scary things right now.
Katherine, thank you so much for your generous sharing.
Would that we as a species could move from fighting and amassing to sharing and comforting.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose everything all at once. And I can’t understand why anyone would not sympathize. It’s not a matter of being rich or poor. It’s just devastating. So sorry to hear that your family was directly affected.
Thank you. Not to take too much trauma recognition, the house loss was in essentially an in-law family. But they’ve told us we’re family so I feel for them.
Lisa, this impassioned essay of yours should be published. Three readings isn’t nearly enough, but I’ve learned a lot I never knew.
How you’ve found words in the midst of the direct hit your family has taken from this disaster, I’ll never know. I’m all the way across the USA from California, and am having to dig hard past my own shock and distress just to find a way to say thank you.
xo
I hate untruths, and I hate injustice, and the reaction to these fires has been full of both. Of course, there’s also been a lot of community drawing together, but my anger flares quickly in those situations.
And deep thanks to the Mexican and Canadian firefighters sent by their respective governments to help!
Thoughts with all the people suffering and the wildlife and pets.
Your essay is so beautifully written.
Thank you to Oregon and Washington and Canada and Mexico! So much help so freely given. And all the animals. Thank you.
Thank you so much for the thought and care you gave to your post today, and thanks, too, to all of the very thoughtful replies. Like so many of your readers, I’ve grown up in Northern California. My parents and grandparents were born in Utah, and the families moved to SF in the 1920s. Many of us have gone through the Oakland Hills fire and the Wine Country fires, and we have lessons about the impact of our weather and climate conditions every night on the news.
Everyone in Southern California is affected, whether directly by the fire, or by all of the smoke (and debris) that results. One of my best friends is in San Marino, 1.5 miles from the Pasadena fire. Two days ago, he said the air quality index (AQI) was 520. People look out their windows to a ridge-line of fire. And if they’re lucky, they are able to evacuate with their families and some of their belongings.
It is so heartening to read about all of the people who are trying to help, from firefighters to animal rescue, and all those who are supporting and comforting people who are now shelter-less, and those of us who can only support from afar. Thank you to everyone.
Hello, fellow Californian. Your family has been here for so long! Yes to the Oakland Hills and the Wine Country fires. I think the Oakland Hills fire, which I think was in 1990, was the first time in my memory we had a big wildfire fire close in the Bay Area. Now if a year goes by without one, I feel lucky. It is heartening reading and seeing the photos of people helping each other. The AQI affects everyone.
Lisa, I appreciate all the history of the Palisades, and growth of all of L.A. that you captured so magnificently. I’m a native Californian and I grew up in Burbank and left at the age of 17 to attend the University of Santa Barbara. My children are all here, two of them live within 40 miles from me. They regularly back pack, hike, ride bikes, and camp and ski in our nearby mountains with their children. I regularly took the family to the Sierra in the summer to enjoy the beautiful mountains.
I just hired a new cleaning lady who was recommended by a friend. She lost two jobs when
the Camarillo fire of a few months ago ravaged that area, burning down 2 houses where she was employed. Yes, we live in Paradise here on the coast below Santa Barbara, but there are still dangers from our changing weather patterns.
And Santa Barbara has suffered, too, with fires in the mountains and mudslides. I hope your family has been safe. What a beautiful place to grow up. I’m not surprised your children have settled nearby. There’s just so much to do and the land is so gorgeous. I’m really sorry that your cleaning lady has been so affected.
Lisa,
As a Texan, I think your explanation about what California is about and how it got where it is should be published widely. Your state is beautiful and dreamlike. We are watching all the reports of the fires and have nothing but empathy for those who have lost so much and sadness for the loss of life. Your post is very thoughtful. I hope those who read it will better understand your state.
Thank you. I love Texas, and some of my favorite people are Texans. But to hear our leaders talk, well, you’d never know it.
Thank you Lisa for your wise and kind words. As residents of Santa Barbara we are well aware and experienced when it comes to fire and flood disasters – as such, mitigation efforts continue to necessitate new playbooks as these disasters increase in magnitude and destruction. So many of our friends from camp days and boarding school and college have been affected and it’s heart breaking to watch let alone hear critiques and those who mirror their words assess blame rather than offer a helping hand – I’m normally very patient and closed mouth but today I can’t help but wish them a special place in hell for being so ignorant and insensitive –
I totally understand. And I’m so sorry your friends have been hard hit. I remember what Santa Barbara went through. I hope Montecito has fully recovered. Even the patient among us fray after this kind of tragedy.
Lisa I am so sorry for your family home loss. I so appreciate this piece. It’s the best I have seen about California- and the unique culture and people we have. More people need to understand how much we do care and work on this issue and how much things have changed.
Thank you. I feel like maybe we Californians have been letting it roll off our back, because we are so fortunate, but maybe the time has come for us all to speak out. I know you do.
The destruction from this lethal California fire are horrific. My heart goes out to the hundreds of people experiencing this tragedy. Firefighters are working around the clock trying desperately to control the flames. The winds seem relentless and fueling the fire continues. So many homes are lost to fire. Sadly, lives are forever changed. The world is watching as the tragedy unfolds.
Thank you. It has been so hard. I think of the people in New Orleans after Katrina, North Carolina after Helene. and in Houston after Harvey, and I wish I had understood better what these tragedies are like and the way they change your feeling in the world ,
Amen!
Amen.