Fire in L.A.

Satan Laughing Spreads His Wings...

Thomas Fire in Ojai, 2018

Jesus: My sister, 17-year-old nephew and brother-in-law almost had to evacuate last night in Westlake Village. I was texting with them. The fire was growing and the Santa Ana winds weren’t helping and Calabasas areas were getting the high-alert EVAC orders, but then the orders were going up and down, on and off, applied and then lifted.

As of last night (1/9/25) the fire had destroyed 9,000 homes and five people were “officially” dead, with outlets like Los Angeles Times and New York Times saying the number of dead was likely much higher. (How could it not be?)

Armageddon, man. End Times. And some assholes on Elon’s “X” mocking LA, saying they deserved it, that the “woke” mayor—Karen Bass—had done this to the city by cutting resources for the fire department. I’d only vaguely heard of Bass but when I Googled her I discovered that she is, indeed, a Woke Black Woman, elected in 2022, when Woke still had life and claws, and I knew immediately that she was and is royally fucked. Residents aren’t going to stand for it. Recall. And there should be. She was in Africa and was slow to return and she did cut LAFD resources and her goals do seem more “social justice” concerned, and all this during a time of violent cultural backlash to progressive extremism and a national vote claiming Trump as our president, not Kamala Harris.

All this aside: My sister and brother-in-law and 17-year-old nephew (who knew multiple people from school who over the past 48 hours have lost their homes) did not, in the end, evacuate. They’re in privileged Westlake Village. People online saying, Well, we don’t feel sorry for the rich and famous, the celebrities, the people with means; they all surely have resources and fire insurance…so fuck em, right?

This is a form of beleaguered, misguided class rage even though there are many, many apartment buildings in LA, even in Pacific Palisades. In fact our extremely close friend—who I’ve known all my life—and who worked for the Santa Monica PD for decades, and is not white, barely escaped from her Pacific Palisades apartment (the same apartment she’s literally lived in for 60 years, from age 25 to 85, now) before it fully burned down. This was one full day ago. A church friend picked her up. She has early signs of dementia and has almost no friends. She’s profoundly lucky she made it.

And then there’s my ex-hippie, novelist 76-year-old uncle (a man who changed my life as a teen and I was very close with until a few years after I got sober) who lives with his partner—another woman who’s been a family friend for eons, since the early 1960s and I’ve known all my life—in their tiny, rent-controlled apartment which they’ve been in for 45, 50 years in Santa Monica. All three of these people I mentioned barely scrape by, subsisting on social security, disability and a miniscule pension. These are not rich people. They’re not even middle-class.

But fuck you anyway: Even if they were rich; that doesn’t make it ok to not feel compassion for fellow human beings. That is rotten to the core, man. That is truly vile, sick, corrupt.

Looking at the videos of the fire on X, NYT, LA Times: It appears haunted, deathly, ghostly, apocalyptic, surreal, manic, chaotic, frantic and devilish. Like Satan played a trick on mankind, or on God, or both. The charred black remains of homes lining the beach along Pacific Coast Highway, the snaking, twisting, beautiful road along the ocean I’ve driven down all my life, first to see my uncle and his partner back in the day and then to see my paternal grandfather in their palatial house up in the hills of Malibu above PCH. A long, charred string of dead, ashen homes now, ashes floating into the gray water and into the crushed quartz of the beach.

How many bodies are buried under rubble? How many beloved animals have gone?

It reminds me, of course, of the 2018 Thomas Fire which hit Ojai, where I grew up and where my parents still lived at this time. I was traveling in Mexico City when it happened. My mom was texting me day and night, sending me videos and photos of the mad devastation. They were sure they’d lose their home, surrounded by wilderness, deep in the East End of town, near where Highway 33 and Highway 150 split off, one way going into their country neighborhood and the other snaking up along the windy hills of 150, passing epic, elegant vistas and views of the whole Ojai Valley, eventually leading you out to Santa Paula.

There was an iconic photo of the green light-fringed Highway 33 sign totally ablaze, as if the devil himself had lit the thing; orange-red flames ripped and popped off the sign and it looked beyond surreal.

My parents had had to split up, each taking a different car. Mom took the two dogs. They fled, but soon they hit bumper-to-bumper traffic along 150 heading out of Ojai. Highway 33 leading to the freeway and Ventura and Highway 101 was closed; the fire had raged onto the road. Only way out was 150, and it was narrow and winding and backed up.

People were frantic but polite, my mom told me back then. But it was terrifying, of course. Hot as hell with the Santa Ana winds but you couldn’t roll a window down or even use your A/C because the air was filthy with ash and dangerous chemicals and intoxicants. Slow, slow, slow, hours and hours later, inch by dumb, scary inch, the cars moved, then sped up a little, and then thinned out, and they made it to Highway 101 in Carpinteria, where 150 dumps you out—which reminds me softly of my teenage surfing days and my pre-teen beach days—and then they headed north to stay with another close family friend and her husband in Santa Barbara.

And now, here we are, 2024, January, and it’s happening again. Makes you want to leave California, doesn’t it, I asked my mom; and she, to her credit, said yes. Many are already leaving California anyway due to the exorbitant cost of living, the rise in crime, Woke DA’s who’ve made living in certain areas unfeasible.

Why would the mayor of Los Angeles cut the budget for the fire department?

Now? When climate change is making all of this worse year by year? Now, when fires nationally are growing wilder, bigger, harder, faster? What possible excuse for this could there be? It doesn’t make literally any sense.

A lot of people hate LA, of course. Or they think they do. Or they feel they’re supposed to. It’s too “Woke,” they say. Or, as a friend recently said, given that it’s a desert and “steals” water from the Owens Valley (see the classic film Chinatown), LA is a disaster waiting to happen when it comes to fire; the city never should have been built in that location in the first place.

Or, of course: Well, it’s all rich and famous people, so who really cares. Capitalism: They’re getting what they deserve.

Or maybe from the religious perspective: Hollywood sinners had it coming; this is the rageful, righteous Hand of God doing what it should have done 50 years ago. Blasphemers, all of them. Sodom and Gomorrah.

You know: Pick your poison.

Either way: We’re talking about human fucking beings here, several of whom happen to be a part of my own personal family. This isn’t a game, this is real life. This isn’t the internet; it’s not TikTok. It’s hard, cold, gritty reality. Or maybe we should call it “Hot Reality,” due to the hot, deadly flames.

What’s that Black Sabbath line: “Satan laughing spreads his wings.”

Yeah.