This was the view from my place when I decided to evacuate. Climate change impacts all of us, and this catastrophe in Los Angeles just hit a lot of us really, really hard. There’s so much information out there about what just happened. I don’t imagine you need another news report, but I thought it might be useful to share my own experience so far. We were driving home from dinner out. On the way driving north to our house, we saw red flames on the hillside a bit to the east. We thought, “Uh oh.” We had already gone through the Station Fire in 2009, and the Bobcat fire in 2020. We knew what to expect: air quality would grow untenable in the midst of smoke and ash, and the danger of fires encroaching on the homes positioned where the chaparral meets the city. We also got through the Pasadena windstorm of 2011, which had bursts over 100 miles per hour, which downed lines and trees all over town, with schools closed for days. We were a bit anxious to realize that these fires coincided with the timing of a windstorm that was projected to be as possibly as big as the one from 2011. In addition to basic emergency supplies, we’ve kept a few items at hand in the case of wildfires: a batch of N-95 masks, and two box fans with several 20x20 high grade filters to purify indoor air. Oddly enough, essential equipment for living in wildfire smoke is also is also useful for surviving a pandemic. It turns out that these items weren’t at home with us. I had moved them to a rental apartment a few days earlier, along with a bunch of clothes, some kitchen stuff, camping gear, and assorted stuff from our attic and basement. It turns out we have were starting to move out of our house, because we’re doing some renovations and additions that aren’t compatible with living on site for several months. This rental is six blocks to the south of our house. As the winds and the fire picked up over the next hour, our home was classified into “Zone 2” - be prepared to evacuate. Several blocks to the north of us, on the other side of Woodbury, a mandatory evacuation zone was established. This was quite a shock to us because that’s really deep into the city. We’re used to people who aren’t locals asking us if our house is at wildfire risk. After all, you look out from the back of the house and there’s the San Gabriel National Monument filling up much of the view. I was told in Physical Geology that this mountain range has the highest average angle inclination of any mountain range in North America. These are steep and impressive mountains. But we’re not actually right next to them. We’re deep into the burbs, a few miles of urban matrix between us and the folks who are on the windy roads that press up against the foothills. I mean, I made a point of choosing this place because it was accessible to the mountains but did not have fire risk. So we tell visitors that, no, we’re not at much risk, and if a fire ever does come close to even threatening our house, then they’d hear about it because it would be a burn on the scale would be a world-news making apocalypse. We weren’t wrong about that. With the evacuation to the north of us, a quick check of social media showed that lots of friends were packing up and heading over to family, friends, their offices, just somewhere to spend the night while the risk would pass. While we were only on evacuation watch, out of an abundance of precaution, we loaded up our produce that was on the edge of expiration, laptops, a couple changes of clothes, chargers, and headed down to our rental apartment. It literally was a one-minute drive, just six blocks, that took us out of the evacuation zone. It made sense to camp out in this mostly-empty place because that’s where our fans and air filters were, as well as sleeping bags already. Keeping the windows closed doesn’t keep the smoke out of these 120 year old houses. Moreover, our essential paperwork like birth and marriage certificates, insurance policies, photo albums, etc, already had made the move to our new place. All of our furniture was several blocks away, but we could be comfy enough for one evening while getting out of the evacuation warning zone. Then the texts stared coming in and the facebook posts were coming in. It seems the situation north of us in Altadena was getting dire. We were only in our rental for an hour or two when we decided that it was best to get a few more miles south, to friends of ours. They had a two spare beds, with the other one occupied by other friends who evacuated a couple hours before us. We packed a couple days of clothes and headed down to their house, arriving at 11pm. Chatting with our fellow evacuees, we were having that kind of conversation you have when you’re trying to figure things out in the middle of a big event and are a little stunned. They had been logging into a live stream of a camera mounted on their house. They were trying to figure out if the house across the street was on fire, or if it the house beyond that house, the image wasn’t the clearest. We worriedly fidgeted with our phones, replied to inquiries about our safety to reassure our safety. Then, we settled in to a cozy Murphy bed, and I managed to get in maybe six or so restless hours of sleep. We had the Watch Duty app providing updates on the fire throughout the evening, dinging along the side of our bed. I managed to get some fitful sleep. I eventually stirred at five-something after the great weight of messages from friends from everywhere were checking in on us. If I’m getting messages from three continents asking about my safety, I realized that this was big news. Then I looked at the app and saw that the street of our house was classified as a mandatory evacuation zone a few hours earlier. A friend of ours who decided to stick it out at their house had police cars going through the streets on loudspeakers clearing people out at about 6am. That morning was mostly a blur. Someone made oatmeal, we were clearing the debris of fallen trees, the news was on, we were looking at social media and messaging with and about people close to us about where people had evacuated, how they were handling aging parents in their care. And the extent of the damages. The fires weren’t over but I got the picture that pretty much most of Altadena had had fires go through. Then it took some hours to understand that it wasn’t just fires touching most of Altadena, but fires had eliminated most of Altadena. Lists were compiling of all the businesses that had gone up in smoke. You want to be wary of misinformation in this kind of context, so I digested these accounts with a proper dose of skepticism, but as more information came in, the more obvious it became how horrible this is. Just one day earlier, I posted on facebook that I was planning to deactivate from the platform (because of growing toxicity and the proliferation of misinformation and the removal of fact-checking). But then I was seeing how this was a tether me to friends who I’ve known for two decades, and a way how we all can learn about one another quickly and simply in an emergency in a rapid period of time, and coordinate mutual aid. I was hearing from and about friends who were learning they lost their homes. The number of friends of friends who lost their homes is simply beyond counting. On many stretches, most or all houses simply burnt down. In other parts of town, there was a mosaic of houses on fire and houses not on fire. Not much you can do when there are 60+ mile-per-hour winds showering embers in, in an area carpeted in thick black smoke. Our fellow evacuees went back into the fray to check on their house, as they heard from a neighbor that their house was still standing some hours earlier, but a bunch of neighboring structures had disappeared, with just the chimney standing. They also evacuated one of their dad from a retirement community into a local shelter, and it was so fast that they didn't have a chance or foresight to grab essential medicines. So they worked their way back in, trying to circumvent the police and to be able to get the medicines. Getting these prescriptions re-issued was apparently not possible with a combination of emergency closures and bureaucracy, but that was the same thing preventing them from getting it from their their dad’s apartment. It then occurred to me that we have a little doorbell camera (not from any of the oligarch corporations) that we could see on our phone. It’s very weird that it didn’t immediately occur to me when I was with other folks looking at their house cameras remotely. So it took me about half a day to figure this out, but turning on the camera, I saw the front of our house. It was there. There’s a planter of jade on our porch that takes up some of the view. It wasn’t visible in the camera, but behind the jade is a ginormous ceramic pot that my spouse converted into a fountain for my birthday. In the camera, I could hear the gentle trickle of the water pump. And then birds chirping. I think I heard sparrows, towhees, titmice, and crows. The chattering of squirrels. The sky was dim and everything was covered with ash, and this little fountain was a resource for all of these lil’ guys. I was reassured that my house was not engulfed in flames, but these songs provided real hope. I keep looking at this feed, not to see what’s going on, but to hear who might be rinsing off their feathers. You probably have heard names of the many celebrities who have lost their homes in the Palisades fire. That’s not who was impacted by the Eaton fire. I feel a bit weird writing about this with you about my home not being burned away, because I realize even the phrase “my house” speaks to so much financial and social privilege, especially in Los Angeles where newly hired Assistant Professors can’t even afford to buy a new home anywhere in the region. To experience the loss of your house, you have to have a house to lose, and we’re in a region with an extraordinary number of unhoused people, who currently are living outdoors in the midst of astronomical AQI hazard. So much of this is unconscionable, not just the random hazard of having your home taken from you, but also the structurally designed hazard that prevents people from having any home at all. Many of the structures that burned in the Eaton fire were single family dwellings that were beyond the financial accessibility of many Angelenos, because having any kind of home here is simply beyond reach. That said, the folks in our community are working-class and are here because they’ve been here for years. Middle school teachers, accountants, engineers, bank tellers, IT specialists, professors, working artists, contractors, bus drivers, yoga teachers, baristas, lawyers, paralegals, writers, nonprofit staff, librarians, gardeners. They could be you, and it could have been me, to have lost our homes. I realize that some people think of Pasadena as hoity-toity, exclusive, and wealthy. Yeah there are some parts of town and some people who fit that description, but the place is economically and ethnically diverse. The public schools receive Title I funding, and it’s more like a little microcosm of Los Angeles as a whole. We just have really nice street trees. It turns out the part of town that got hit the worst by the fire, in the northwest, is a historically black region with multi-generational homes full of working-class families. (Arguably the two most famous people from Pasadena were Black: Jackie Robinson and Octavia Butler. I rank them above Van Halen but I understand that everybody gets to decide who they think is most famous. Oh, and Michael Dorn up there too.) This doesn’t seem to be much in the conversation about the nature of the catastrophe while we are fresh in the aftermath, but the disparities in the areas that ended up being burnt are rather glaring. Folks will point out that the rich folks affected by the Palisade fire got more support, but also, that fire started earlier and a lot of units were directed on the scene there before the Eaton fire broke out. But nonetheless, if you look at the outcome even within Pasadena alone, was the Black part of town hit disproportionately, and if so, why? The answers to those questions involves many variables, including windspeed, wind direction, and fire behavior, and I’m not equipped to answer. I think it’s one we need to ask and I think it’s reasonable to expect our authorities and elected officials to investigate. The next day, as it was clear that the fire was no longer spreading into urbanized areas in Pasadena, I headed back up into the neighborhood to check on the house, and grab a few items. The air quality wasn’t much worse than where I was staying, but there was more ash. My neighbor across the street was cleaning up debris from the windstorm. I was pulling leaves and ash out of the fountain, inadvertently chasing the oak titmice who have always been a bit sketchy of me. A few potential looters were cruising the neighborhood, but my neighbor chose to not evacuate and was keeping an eye out along the block. For this I was thankful, and also hoped that if there was any clear risk to himself from the fire that he would get clear, and he definitely said he would err on the side of caution. As I drove away, I went a bit closer up through the neighborhood to see how close the fire actually got. The closest house that burned down was about a 10-minute walk, maybe 6 or so blocks, across the street from my son’s middle school English teacher and several houses up from a poker buddy. One more block to the north, the police (with cars from every jurisdiction you might imagine from the LA basin) were preventing access. It was clear that from that point on, many to most houses were charred to the ground. I turned around and came home, or rather, to my friend’s house that is a couple miles south of the devastation. We made pasta e fagioli for dinner, fretted away at our cell phones for a few hours, reassuring friends near and far about our whereabouts and safety, and tucked in for the night. Sleep was more restless knowing the full scope of what happened. The next morning, our fellow evacuees had cleared out early. They were driving south to Orange County, to a retirement facility where the dad was temporarily relocated. Fortunately the retirement community in the fire zone did not burn down, though structures on all four sides did. I imagine in the next week or two, he’ll be able to move back. In the meantime, they found a nurse who was experienced and strategic with the bureaucracy of prescriptions and managed to get a full set of their dad’s medications, thank goodness. At this writing, they went back home, which is still technically in evacuation but lots of folks are moving back as the danger seems to have subsided. In theory smoldering buildings might fling up embers under new gusts of wind, but the general vibe seems to be that all that has burnt in town is what has burnt. We’re still staying away for one last evening. It was my spouse’s birthday, and better to spend it with friends Somehow my family and I have managed to escape from this disaster on a low difficulty level compared to many friends who happened to live a little to the east or the west or the north. Tomorrow we’ll recover our fans and air filters, put on our masks, clean away the debris, and figure out next steps. People who have lived in this area for several thousand years have been managing the landscape using regular burning. Once colonizers from Europe took the land, we changed the management regime in a way that fostered the eruption of massive firestorms. The mass release of fossil fuels causing global warming exacerbates this all the more, and there’s no doubt that climate change is a major cause of this catastrophe. At this moment this is happening, and in the moments of recovery to come, it’s up to us to build the narratives that will help contribute to positive change in the future. What is the story here? It’s about my family, and friends, and my broader community, climate change, and that fountain under the oak tree in front of my house that served as a refuge during the storm. Where do we go from here? That’s a complex question and we all will need to find our own answers. The work that we’re doing on our house is to increase housing density in the region, putting solar panels on the house, removing the natural gas and installing heat pumps. We’re working on positive change, and I hope that as the people of Altadena and Pasadena recover, we are creating a vision of mutual support that will create a more sustainable community. You’re currently a free subscriber to Science For Everyone. Thanks for your support! If you wish to support this work more, then you could pay for a subscription.
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Friday, 10 January 2025
A report from the 2025 Los Angeles fire apocalypse
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