Burning Down the House

Well fuck man. That’s about all I can say after the last several days. Absorbing all the information, looking at fire maps, seeing the videos, hearing the stories, listening to the blame game. I’m numb.

We were told a life-threatening wind event was going to happen beginning Tuesday afternoon. I knew this, and I think a lot of folks knew the winds were going to be bad. We’ve all lived through bad wind events. Seeing the Palisades Fire sparking up that day at work was bad but wasn’t a surprise. But fuck man. We never expected it to be this bad.

By the time I got home Tuesday evening, the Eaton Fire had already started out in Altadena. But without the aerial visuals on the news due to helicopters being grounded because of the winds, I tuned out for most of the evening. When I caught up with the news as I was going to bed Tuesday night, I saw that the evacuation warning zone for the Eaton Fire stretched all the way out to Arcadia — my office was a mile away from it. Fuck. I get in contact with other accounting managers and decide that we will be working from home. It became a scramble to get a hold of everyone to let them know not to go into the office.

This is the closest I’ve ever had any wildfire come to affecting me, and really this was nothing compared to what others are suffering through. As I’m sitting here in my Downtown LA apartment, I keep thinking about just how bad this has been. Fast-spreading wildfires and Santa Ana winds are nothing new to the Southland. I remember 1993, 2007, 2008, 2011. They were awful, and I was riveted to the news coverage, but they didn’t freak me out like this.

Actually the only other fire that really freaked me out was the Thomas Fire in 2017. Just like the Eaton Fire, this fire didn’t just stay up in the hills of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. The fire actually came down into the neighborhoods and burned houses. Not rich folks homes. Normal working class homes that were nowhere near brush or the hills. And seeing the homes torched in Altadena and Pasadena fucked me up.

Anyhow, those were some thoughts I had about these fires. The winds are supposed to pick up again in a couple of days, so let’s see what happens.