L.A. Burns

Apocalyptic scenes in the City of Angels

Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner
Sometimes I feel like my only friend
Is the city I live in, The City of Angels
Lonely as I am together we cry

Song: Anthony Kiedis, Chad Smith, Flea, John Frusciante.

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A home is engulfed in flames during the Eaton fire in the Altadena area. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images.

America’s second-largest city is burning out of control. Multiple wildfires engulf Los Angeles from the ocean-side luxury of Malibu to the west, right around to the north of the tinder-dry city that has seen little rain for months as if a pincer movement.

Apocalyptic scenes, perhaps a harbinger of times to come, with a president-elect who opposes efforts to address climate change, even as its effects become plain to see.

The numbers will no doubt continue to rise, but overnight, Thursday morning in L.A., there had been five deaths confirmed, up to two hundred thousand people evacuated, hundreds of thousands without power, and tens of thousands of buildings have been affected. The estimate for the damage is already over fifty billion US dollars.

Beachfront homes destroyed by the Palisades fire. Photograph: Mark J Terrill/AP

More than a thousand homes have been destroyed - incinerated before the eyes of helpless owners and emergency services as strong winds fan the flames, leaving the landscape shattered as if by an atomic bomb, with houses turned to dust, only chimneys remaining.

This is the current map of the fires:

Image: BBC.

As of this morning, five fires are far from being contained and continue to burn:

• Palisades fire: The largest active fire is burning between Santa Monica and Malibu. Burnt area: more than 17,000 acres. At least 30,000 people evacuated.

• Eaton fire: Second largest fire burning north of Pasadena. Burnt area: more than 10,000 acres. At least five deaths have been reported.

• Hurst fire: To the northeast of the city. Burnt area: 850 acres.

• Lidia fire: Reported in the hills north of Los Angeles. Burnt area: 350 acres.

• Sunset fire: Reported in the historic Hollywood Hills area near many famous landmarks, including the Hollywood sign. Burnt area: 50 acres.

The following before-and-after images show the extent of the destruction caused by the Eaton fire in the neighbourhood of Altadena.

What we see seems somehow worse because we’re so familiar with the street names, landmarks and the suburbs, even if we’ve never been there. Locations that are ever present in the culture we consume. The songs, movies and television programmes set in those places we see being destroyed so terrifyingly.

Los Angeles, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

As a kid, it meant Disneyland, the magical kingdom far across the Pacific through that famous arrival point. I certainly remember the song that played back then - L.A. International Airport; it came out the year I was born.

Then later the music. The bands who made it big there, even if they came from elsewhere. Legendary parties in the hills, sex, drugs, and songwriters capturing it on classic rock albums. Bands that I grew up with in the eighties, hair metal decadence, born on the Sunset Strip.

A who’s who of rock royalty from the surfin’ sounds of the Beach Boys and the jangle of the Byrds, through those hairy rockers Guns n’ Roses and Metallica, to the more alternative Jane’s Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers to the boys from Pasadena - Van Halen who cut their teeth playing at high school parties.

Nobody spoke of Los Angeles like they did about New York or San Francisco. Those colder cities were home to so much invention and art, created by people who took themselves rather more seriously than the crass cesspit of L.A.

But whatever those other places could offer, there was only one Hollywood, and young Americans from places like the Midwest arrived on Greyhound buses to seek stardom in the city of the brightest of lights.

Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Sign

From the great movie moguls producing classics with the big screen stars to mass-produced daytime television, they showed the rest of the nation and the world how good life was in Los Angeles.

We learned the places used in the movie sets: the streets, grand houses, and the windy cliff-top chicanes. People toured the suburbs in tour buses to see the homes and the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

I was 20 when the LA Riot happened, a watermark transitioning from the smiling faces of Ponch and Jon with the highway patrol to police officers viciously beating Rodney King at a time that was pre-the internet and smartphones.

And now we see it again in flames; the images of a dystopian future, become present.

Malibu. Photo: The Guardian.

As Jeremy posted on my page, “What's happening in LA is both horrifying and tragic. Climate change is hitting hard, and we can expect to see similar things happening in Australia and parts of Europe. But Shane Jones will still say 'mine, mine,' and Simeon Brown will want roads and more roads, along with relaxed speed limits.”

Chris said, “I’m just stunned. We were there last July and are heading back this July. It will be a different experience. It's so sad. Losing one’s home is frightening. I also hope that all the homeless on the streets escaped.”

That Palisades fire, the largest of them and the worst in the history of L.A., is enormous, with as many as 10,000 buildings affected. For context, here is that one fire overlaid on maps of New York City and London:

How does the Palisades fire compare in size with NY and London? Image: BBC.

My friend Robin, who is not easily given to hyperbole, said, “Jesus, Nick Rockel. With that, American politics, what’s happening in Gaza, and social media, I feel we are watching the demise of society. Surely there will be a reset?”

But there won’t be. We see this every year: the fires in the hills above Los Angeles, the bushfires in Australia, or the ones down in Canterbury.

Each year, they get worse, and we shake our heads and say it never used to be like that because we remember when we were kids, and things like this happened less often and on a smaller scale.

And we… ask for thoughts and prayers.

Then, a few months pass, and the rains come—the storms and cyclones. They are more frequent now, with devastating consequences everywhere. We shake our heads again and recall when a once-in-a-hundred-year flood was much rarer.

And we do nothing.

Donald Trump gets involved

We have seen how Donald Trump has responded to crises in the past. The advice to inject bleach to fight a global pandemic, the tossing of paper towels to victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. So, what did he have to offer in California?

Well, he blamed the Democrats and Environmentalism. Isn’t that helpful at the time of a crisis? Apportioning blame to your political opposition and pointing fingers at efforts to address issues.

It’s all the other guys' fault, and don’t do anything about climate change because it’s the greenies and scientists who are responsible for any lack of water, even though that accusation is patently absurd.

It’s right up there with a suggestion Trump made some years back that California wouldn’t have forest fires if they only raked their paths a bit better.

“There is no relationship between federal and state water management and the intensity of these fires or the ability of people to fight these fires,” said Jeffrey Mount from the Public Policy Institute of California, saying that a lack of rain and severe winds had created dangerous conditions.

“Right now, Southern California has ample water supplies, and their reservoirs are full — they’re well above historical averages. They do a very good job of managing water. There is no water shortage in Southern California; that’s just not true,” Mount added.

Some fire hydrants ran dry due to prolonged drought combined with a large amount of water being used for agriculture, even during a shortage. Sound familiar?

A fire hydrant burns during the Eaton fire in Altadena.Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

Of course, I could be talking about Aotearoa.

A government that swept aside the meagre efforts of the last administration to address Climate change, a propensity to point fingers and blame rather than just get on with things, and a coalition that decided to cancel the fund set up by the last government to respond to and recover from such climate-related emergencies.

You would like to think that in the wake of an event like this, people would finally say enough is enough, and we have to take Climate change seriously, or it will kill millions of us.

Just like a school shooting in the US. Everyone decries the horror of what has happened and intones that it must never happen again. Then, the politicians point their fingers elsewhere, repeating that this is not the time for action and nothing ever happens.

Under this government, we seem to get more like America every day.

Take care, all you lovely people, especially those with friends or family in L.A.

There’s only one song choice today, even with all the other ones that have been written about L.A.