Hi,
Right now the power is out, so I’m just relying on the laptop battery and tethering to my phone’s 5G which is dropping in and out.
We’ll see how we go.
First up — I’m fine. I can’t see any flames out the window. I live in the greater Hollywood area of Los Angeles, which I’ve demonstrated below with a melting face emoji.
That image is from “Watch Duty”, one of the many apps we can use to track the current hellscape of life on planet earth. As you can see, it does feel like I’m getting boxed in with a variety of wildfires.
That said, California is big, and there’s a lot of space in there. The city is usually safe — too much concrete — but my neighbors tell me this is the most oppressive it’s felt during their decades here.
Things kicked off with the Palisades fire (bottom left of the fire map), starting in the Pacific Palisades before quickly heading towards Malibu. As I write this, two people are confirmed dead and around 1000 buildings destroyed.
A video from a friend (found at the top of this Webworm) really sets that scene. Credit to Rob Narci, whose voice you hear in the video.
Things started to feel a little unhinged for me last night. The whole day had been incredibly windy. There were trees strewn across roads and footpaths (LA trees are weak) and things felt on edge.
In my mind the fires were deep in the west, so when a friend asked me to help her pick up a harp (yes, a harp) she was renting in Pasadena, I figured it would be fine (East! Safe!)
As we drove we noticed the sky on our left glowing bright red. That was a new fire — the Eaton fire — that started about an hour earlier. By the time we got to harp spot, the air was thick with smoke, helicopters, and sirens.
Our phones all started blaring that emergency sound we’ve all heard at some point.
Harp acquired, we headed back to the car. The sky was a deep, dark red. A fire engine blasted by. Residents were out on the street, yelling at each other about whether they needed to evacuate. “The winds carry sparks” said a woman in a dressing gown.
We got in our car and we drove.
A post office box had blown into the street. Tree branches had turned into obstacles. Cars were driving erratically, overtaking and impatient.
I thought that humans, so obsessed with order and routine, and always mere moments away from descending into chaos.
As I write this at 10am on a Wednesday, the Eaton fire has burned through 1,000 acres and a bunch of homes in Altadena and Pasadena.
This morning, the sky near my place is a sort of hazy orange.
I got some water and a mask, and made the hour-long hike up to the top of Griffith Park. It was a quiet walk that only I appeared to be making.
From the top, the thick, oppressive smoke of the Palisade fire was clear.
To the east, the effects of the Eaton fire were also visible.
Wildfires are nothing new to California. They are constantly threatening to take the land back from human development.
To me, fires are like the coyotes you see padding the streets at 11pm: Little reminders that, perhaps, we’re not meant to be here.
“Many of California’s native ecosystems evolved to burn. Modern fire suppression creates fuels that lead to catastrophic fires. So why do people insist on rebuilding in the firebelt?” writes Mike Davis in ‘The Case for Letting Malibu Burn’.
From the top of Griffith — about two minutes before park rangers told me they’d just shut the park down and I needed to leave — I took a few more photos of a city that felt hemmed in.
Back down on the streets, a five minute walk from my one bedroom apartment, the winds were continuing to wreak their havoc.
2025 is off to what we could only expect from 2025, I guess.
The thing I am finding a little difficult to figure out (and I am going to explain this clunkily) is exactly what to be concerned about. There is a certain sense of unrealness to the world at the moment. Ideas feel hard to grip, somehow.
Putting it another way, there is too much to be concerned about, and it makes my brain hurt.
It’s hard to grasp why a genocide in Palestine is just happening and most of the world is absolutely fine with it. Keep killing babies and kids they deserve it they brought it upon themselves don’t worry they’re not actually human.
It’s hard to grasp why the richest people I can think of right now — Elon Musk and Nick Mowbray — are still happily tweeting support of one of the UK’s most racist men.
It’s hard to grasp how the worst humans are still screaming about free speech, while meaning anything but. Mark Zuckerberg is the latest, Taylor Lorenz noting, “Meta doesn’t actually care about protecting free speech or free expression, they care about pandering to conservatives who might seek to regulate them.” It all just echoes what I’ve written about on Webworm time and time again.
I find it hard to grasp that Amazon just paid $40 million for a hagiography about Melania Trump. Or, as my friend texted me:
40 million dollars. Just to just ride the dicks of those who oppress us.
It’s hard to grasp why Los Angeles cut funding for firefighters to fund the LAPD.
In my mind all of this shit just blurs in with the emotions I feel about the fire.
It’s real but it’s not.
I can see the smoke, but how close is the danger?
All I can really think to do, as always, is write about it. To talk about it with you. To figure out together.
Thanks for being here. It means a lot.
I hope wherever you are, you are safe. Let’s check in with each other in the comments.
David.
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