Burn, Hollywood, Burn?
Image by Nick Roney.
“LA is vast. It is a city and a county. It is a global place, a Pacific Rim space, a “Third World” metropolis. It has all the contradictions of the world and all the world is condensed in it. The homes of rich, poor, middle class, Black, white, Asian, Latino have burned. Fire is coming for all of us.” – Viet Thanh Nguyen
As I sit at my desk to write, the light shining through my office window is a distinct orange, and the sky outside is a murky, polluted shade of brown. The air quality is horrendous, and my eyes are dry and itchy. My throat is sore. Two major fires are still raging out of control in Los Angeles, the city I love, with little to no containment. Another has just erupted in Woodland Hills. Fortunately, we’re in a safe zone away from the infernos. Many more are not so lucky.
Scrolling through the latest fire updates on social media, I quickly find commenters who are cheering on the flames as if they’ve been ignited to smoke out the wealthy elites from their mansions. They are gleeful. Conspiracists I come across believe this is all a planned land grab (by whom I’m unsure), while others spread lies that the shadowy Deep State, the ones behind weather-altering chemtrails, is somehow responsible.
I gather that most of these folks don’t live in Los Angeles (or the real world?), and I’m sure very few could point out the location of Eagle Rock on a map. Yet, here they are, experts on fire ecology and the history of Los Angeles.
I see, as per usual during a big L.A. fire, that a few are passing around Mike Davis’s fantastic essay, “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn,” not because of Davis’s thesis that the poor, by capitalist design, suffer most during a natural disaster but because they seem to believe he was some kind of schadenfreude. It’s a shameful disservice to his legacy and a twisted misreading of Davis’s important work.
A fervent critic of the conditions that lead to inequality, Mike Davis was not one to celebrate misery. He would have had nothing but empathy for those impacted by these flames (okay, maybe not James Wood). As I think about Mike, his daughter Róisín messages me. Her childhood home and school have burned to the ground.
Another friend posts a short video of a smoldering foundation, remnants of his garage/art studio. He’s lost everything, years of work. His family was lucky to escape. A GoFundMe pops up; a friend of a friend needs help. The place they rent is gone.
I get it, though. Many people do not empathize with Los Angeles or those of us who live here, even though L.A. is one of the country’s most culturally significant, diverse, and fascinating cities. It’s become a natural reaction to hate this place. The city has been relentlessly portrayed in the media, magazines, film, and television as vapid – a bastion of rich, self-obsessed Hollywood liberals, freeways, and smog. It’s an easy city to despise if you are afraid of what you do not know, and no single person knows everything about Los Angeles.
L.A. is endlessly complicated, and the reality of what’s behind these fires, which will forever reshape its battered landscape and charred souls, is no different.
The totality of the destruction of these flames is impossible to comprehend. They’ve destroyed museums, schools, mobile home parks, senior centers, stores, restaurants, encampments, apartment buildings, fire stations, countless homes, and many historical and cultural landmarks. It’s nearly impossible to keep track of what’s gone. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced. The historic Black community of Altadena has been decimated. People have died, animals have suffocated, and families across the economic spectrum have lost everything.
Yes, Mike Davis and others predicted much of this, but never at this scale or with this ferocity. Like much of the West, Southern California has long been shaped by wildfires. We know the extremes of these disasters could have been mitigated had the city instituted stricter building codes decades ago, restricting the development of homes in the more fire-prone areas of Topanga, Malibu canyons, and the foothills of the San Gabriels. And yes, as Mike Davis rightly pointed out, native California plants adapted to the region’s wildfire were replaced by invasive grasses brought along by European settlers looking to “green” the browning landscape, only to increase fire risk. These fires, in part, are colonial blowback.
Of course, this is essential to understanding what’s happening, but it doesn’t explain everything.
What caused these flames is still unknown. Arson is suspected, and there are worries that downed powerlines initiated the first spark, more casualties of California’s faltering electric grid. However, what is known is that these fires, Eaton and Palisades, are the worst the city has witnessed in terms of size and damage. We also know that the prime culprit, which mainstream media almost universally refuses to address, is our rapidly warming climate.
Los Angeles has had no significant rainfall in over eight months, and the plants and soil are excruciatingly dry and ripe to burn. This is all part of turbulent weather patterns that none of us can escape. Four of the driest ten years since the city began keeping tabs in 1877 have occurred in the last decade. The summer of 2024 was the hottest ever; eight of the warmest summers on record have happened since 2014. We live amidst the most radical climate upheaval in human history, full of fury and unpredictability.
The normal fire season in Los Angeles typically ends in November. When the warm Santa Ana winds kick up at this time of year, as they do, they don’t usually cause much fuss, as we’ve usually had enough rain to temper the risks that accompany them. This year, however, dry, hurricane-level Santa Anas blowing from the Great Basin were the strongest we’ve experienced in over a decade, exceeding 100 mph. Of course, fire loves wind, and wind spreads fire. While these winds may not be linked directly to climate change (there is some debate), they are now occurring well into the winter, prolonging and intensifying Southern California’s already worsening fire threats.
To say these flames are unprecedented in the modern era would be an understatement. On its own, the Eaton fire is the worst Los Angeles has ever experienced; combined with the fire in the Palisades, it is all unfathomable. Over 5,000 structures have burned in the Palisades alone. The number of homes destroyed in Altadena and Pasadena remains unknown, but 8,000 are still at risk. Combined, these fires are the most costly in U.S. history.
One thing is for sure: L.A. was utterly unprepared for the mayhem, and Mayor Karen Bass, with her cutting over $17 million from the Fire Dept. budget, must absorb some blame. But the saga is much larger than Bass’s flagrant missteps. Like so many cities across the country, Los Angeles was not ready for this singular climate calamity (water running out?), of which we know many more are to come. Will lessons be learned, or will mistakes be repeated? My money is on the latter.
Once the ashes cool, the smoke recedes, and the sun shines, Los Angeles will again look to rebuild what has been lost, as has followed many other disasters. I fear there will be little debate, and when these fires strike again, internet trolls will contend that L.A. deserves its fate while failing to expose the fossil fuel cartel for fanning the flames.
I understand it’s easier to blame Angelenos than face the truth that our world is forever changing, but please, for the sake of the fire’s victims (and my social media feed), leave the collective punishment rationale to those committing genocide in Gaza.
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