The helicopter blades beat through the smoldering air no more than a couple hundred feet above my head. At ground level, the scent of fire brings back memories of fire pits I’d seen at “Cement City” during the Gulf War. As the helicopter passes overhead on the way to the nearby fire, my middle son, his wife, their son and daughter, hurry to pack the car and leave their home near West Hills, California, after the outbreak of the Kenneth Fire. Neighbors pack up and move out as well. Traffic in the area is at a standstill.
And while the residents packed and fled, firefighters scrambled to give those fleeing extra time to do so even as the fierce winds whipped up the fire in a drought-stricken land, making any effort to contain it problematic at best and futile at worst. Those in LA spearheading the effort to put out half a dozen wildfires apparently diverted some of the air resources from the Palisades and Eaton fires to assist, slowing the growth of the West Hills fire which still grew from five acres to nearly 1000 acres in a matter of hours. After burning more than 1,000 homes in the San Fernando Valley since Jan. 10, the Kenneth Fire has now been 100% contained.
The day before, the Pacific Palisades fire had prompted the evacuation of my oldest son and his fiancée from their home in Santa Monica. This monstrous fire, which began Monday and reached nearly 24,000 acres by Sunday evening, had destroyed some of the most expensive and picturesque residential real estate in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As the sun set Thursday, the fire's eerie red glow and thick acrid smoke smell permeated everything from Malibu east through the Palisades and Santa Monica. Ash fell in Santa Monica which contained burned paper and rubbish and looked like snow on a cool winter night.
The Santa Monica police were in tactical mode — every officer worked 12 hours on and 12 hours off. Police and fire fighters worked around the clock, not only trying to stifle the growing conflagration but keeping watch for potential looters. I spotted one man with a hammer and a flashlight looking furtively around my son’s neighborhood. Another man approached my son’s open car when he went inside to grab more clothes. The man looked inside the car and didn’t see me standing nearby or my son when he walked out of his apartment. “Hey, what’s up?” I asked. The man stopped. My son, walking out of his apartment, captured the man’s attention. After looking at us both, he turned and walked away without saying anything.
Police in the street told me looting was quickly becoming a problem and they cautioned against staying in the area. “The atmosphere is toxic and it’s a wildfire. Right now, we have no way of knowing where it will go.”
With the Santa Ana winds reaching hurricane force, the fires that began last Monday have not only proved difficult to control but difficult to predict. It is taxing infrastructure, personnel and patience. Frustrated and angry, denizens of Los Angeles have taken to accusations and speculation about the cause of the fires and the effectiveness of the firefighting efforts.
Ross Palumbo, a former White House reporter now reporting for KCAL in LA, asked Mayor Karen Bass Thursday night during a news conference about accusations that she had bungled the efforts and calls for her to resign. She chuckled and said she would do a “deep dive” into the efforts after the fires were extinguished but was pushing forward with relief efforts in the interim.
That has not stopped idle speculation that the Palisades had been targeted by arsonists to bring down the area’s richest neighborhoods, or that angry arsonists had started all the fires. Rumors are thick and furious, with some claiming they saw undocumented immigrants with blow torches, and even President-elect Donald Trump claiming that Governor Gavin Newsom is somehow omnipotent, or an arsonist, and is responsible for the fires.
“It’s too perfect. It’s like someone’s following a script,” Tony, a baseball coach at a local community college, told me. “It’s too much of a coincidence, fires don’t just start like that spontaneously.” Actually, they can and do.
Our inability to work together will ultimately be our undoing, and the fires in Los Angeles remind us that politics as usual doesn’t fly when the flames are that high.
Officials with the Los Angeles Department of Power and Water said hurricane-force winds, combined with electric wires and swaying trees produced more than two dozen disruptions of the power grid in the Palisades last Monday when the fires began. “Never ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by reality and facts,” I was told.
No kidding. The reality is that parts of Los Angeles today look like Dresden after being bombed in World War II. It is difficult to fully understand the scope of the conflagration without driving through the affected areas (and access is severely limited) or without talking with people who’ve suffered. What you can read in the press and see on television is just a pale shadow of the reality people are facing. And the fact is that, as is often the case these days, that type of suffering is fertile ground for politicians to take advantage of and manipulate.
The numbers don’t tell the whole story — and political affiliation cannot explain it away either.
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Friday morning Donald Trump was sentenced for his conviction of 34 felonies in Manhattan. Judge Juan Merchan unconditionally discharged the case saying it was the only thing to do out of respect to the office of the President of the United States. Not the man. The office. At the same time, Trump made a rambling statement about the tiniest slap on the wrist he received by the only court to hold him accountable for any of his alleged illegal actions over a long lifetime of grifting as a case of “lawfare” against him. In rambling, typical Trump fashion, the president-elect referenced the deadly southern California fires as a reason the legal actions taken against him were ridiculous.
Many others have politicized the fires while forgetting that wildfires just don’t care what your politics are. The fire burns Republicans, Democrats, Christians, atheists, blacks, whites, members of the LGBTQ and straight community without prejudice.
As I helped my son evacuate, I thought about that; how we have more in common with each other than we realize. In times of crisis, I often think of the Trump supporters and detractors who have suffered. Nobody cares what your religion is when you’re in the foxhole. Everyone in LA is in that foxhole now.
And that brings me to last week’s funeral for former President Jimmy Carter. He was eulogized by President Joe Biden. “Now, it’s not about being perfect, because none of us are perfect. We’re all fallible. But it’s about asking ourselves: Are we striving to do things, the right things? What values? What are the values that animate our spirit? To operate from fear or hope, ego or generosity? Do we show grace? Do we keep the faith when it’s most tested?”
Biden continued: “For keeping the faith with the best of humankind and the best of America is the story, in my view, from my perspective, of Jimmy Carter’s life.”
If we were all battle-tested and kept our faith, if not in God at least in each other, you have to wonder what position we’d be in today as a nation. We certainly would not be as divided as we are now. Perhaps we’d be a little bit closer.
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The fires in LA this week have highlighted the best and the worst of us. How little do you think of yourself and other people to walk through a disaster zone and steal from people who’ve lost their homes and perhaps loved ones? Then again, you can be brought to tears watching ordinary citizens of different races, creeds, political persuasions and religions join with police and firefighters, including currently incarcerated inmates, to help people they don’t know.
Local firefighters in the Eaton Fire even helped residents, when it was obvious their homes couldn’t be saved, pack up some of their belongings and furniture. “Just to ease their pain a little,” a firefighter said. Overall I’ve seen the best of humanity far outweigh the worst in this disaster. To paraphrase Jimmy Carter, they were doing what they could with what they had for as long as they could. As the smoke plumes resembling volcanic eruptions rose to the north, east and south of the San Fernando Valley, it was painfully clear what mattered.
President Joe Biden showing up and vowing to help definitely mattered. You could tell he was moved by what he saw. His speeches didn’t matter. It was the action. Donald Trump’s speeches don’t matter. His actions will, and here is where I truly hope he learns from the past — if he is capable of doing so. I have hope, but it is tempered by reality — Donald Trump doesn’t care.
He is already manipulating the fire in a horrible political stunt and giving rise to conspiracy theorists like Mel Gibson who sounds more and more like his character Jerry Fletcher in the movie “Conspiracy Theory.” He went on Joe Rogan’s show spouting his latest brand of bad baloney and I waited for him to quote himself from the movie; “A good conspiracy is unprovable. I mean, if you can prove it, it means they screwed up somewhere along the line.”
Make no mistake; this was a natural disaster. But there is a huge human component. It wasn’t Gavin Newsom’s fault. It isn’t Joe Biden’s and it isn’t Donald Trump’s. It is the industrial revolution that led to climate change, the oligarchs who do not care if in pursuit of fistfuls of sweaty cash they rape the planet and the average person who denies the science and reality. Climate extremes which include stronger hurricanes, more intense winter and summer storms, horrifying wildfires, droughts and floods were all predicted 30 years ago by scientists. Some of the results have come later than predicted and some sooner than predicted.
There is another human component as well, one that is more sinister and gives rise to conspiracy theorists. It is represented by the looters and unfortunately by suspected arsonists. There is no need for any dark conspiracy though politicians and others who want to manipulate the events have suggested several. It is distasteful and disgusting and speaks to the worst part of humanity — but there need be no evil cabal behind it, just well-meaning bureaucrats who screwed up, ineffective infrastructure that broke down, climate change that exacerbated the weather conditions which caused the fires, people who panicked, people who kept their calm, people who wanted to take advantage of the situation and ultimately a spark that brought it all together.
Thus, the fires in Los Angeles are a harbinger of our own doom on this planet if we do not learn to work together. As it turns out humans are the existential threat to humanity. Our inability to work together will ultimately be our undoing, and the fires in Los Angeles remind us that politics as usual doesn’t fly when the flames are that high. No lives matter. The Universe doesn’t care about us. But we should care about all of us.
Look around at the devastation and witness it firsthand. Your mind might be changed. As the state motto of Kentucky reminds us: “United We Stand. Divided We Fall.”
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