Nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air..."
One thing you can be sure of is the boys of summer will return. Human beings are incredibly resilient.
As for Pacific Palisades?
That's another matter.
So it's akin to lockdown, but instead of arguments over vaccines, it's over California. Was the dreaded left coast bastion of liberal excess asleep at the wheel, or was this an act of God, or maybe more accurately man, as in climate change.
That was my first reaction, that's what my instincts tell me, but it doesn't matter, America doesn't have the political will to address the problem head-on. Either it doesn't exist, or like a teenager the finger is pointed at other countries not doing their part. Ain't that America, all people can do is complain and nothing gets done. Best to demonize someone rather than look at the root causes of the problem and try to fix it.
So we're living in suspended animation. We don't know where it's going to light up next. As the reality of Tuesday night was being metabolized on Wednesday, just when so many felt lucky, it started to blaze in Runyon Canyon. And although all the press was about the fire crawling down from the hills and invading Hollywood, the true fear was the wind would blow the embers west, and burn everything from Hollywood to Beverly Hills to Bel Air and down the other side of Mulholland all the way to Ventura Boulevard, taking everything from Studio City to Sherman Oaks. And then would the embers cross the 405 and burn up Encino and then Tarzana and...
It's hard to believe that fire wasn't set. In the middle of nowhere, a park. Then again, I thought Richard Jewell was guilty and he turned out to be innocent.
But they think the Kenneth fire just over the border in Ventura County was arson...
As for those few houses that burned up in Studio City... Even the assistant fire chief on TV doubted whether the embers could fly all the way from Runyon. Then again, fires do happen everywhere on a regular basis, isn't that why we've got the fire department to begin with?
And you wouldn't catch me doing that job, putting myself in harm's way. I'm not saying I wouldn't volunteer, do my part if called upon, but it's a special breed of people who join the fire department. And it's not quite like crabbing in the waters off Alaska, but it's pretty damn dangerous.
But humanity cannot always triumph over nature. What do they keep telling us, Silicon Valley will solve the climate change problem? What, when they can't even put out fires?
So people have been contacting me from all over the world. How am I?
Well, I'd be lying if I told you Wednesday night I wasn't shook up when it started to burn in Runyon.
And then last night there was that notice to evacuate, which made no sense and then turned out to be false.
And if the Runyon fire had spread as per above, it would have truly wiped out Los Angeles. A city decimated, period. Because most of the power in Los Angeles lives in these hills.
Then again, living in the flats is no longer an insurance policy protecting you from devastation. South of Sunset was wiped out. Taking the houses of...
Very close friends.
This is when relationships count, they already got a new apartment in Westwood. Is everybody else this networked?
And my shrink's house was wiped out. I thought he'd want to cancel our virtual session on Thursday, but he said it was business as usual. He's out in his house in the desert, he's got his laptop and...it's just stuff.
But what he really lamented was the loss of community. He and his wife had become best friends with their next door neighbors, that's toast. I mean it's one thing to be connected via the smartphone, quite another to be just twenty feet away in real life.
Some of these people have second homes.
A lot of them don't.
Where are they going to go?
Where did all the evacuated go?
No one is untouched by this disaster, everybody knows someone who lost their home.
And not everybody was rich.
So now what... You've got NOTHING! You're starting all over, from your toothbrush on up.
And then this morning Felice started to remark about the housekeepers and the gardeners and...their business has been wiped out.
And yes, a lot of those workers are undocumented. Because you can't find citizens to do this work. Meaning the government safety net might elude them.
And it's going to start blowing again.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has been excoriating the state. This guy doesn't realize people are turning against him. But he's addicted to the attention, if not the power.
And it's interesting to see the media's response...
The "Los Angeles Times" has been stripped to the point that its coverage is no better than the "New York Times," which today published a picture of exactly which houses have been lost:
"Mapping the Damage So Far From the Palisades Fire"
Free link: shorturl.at/0OxHZ
When it comes to natural disasters, it's about boots on the ground. And if you're running a lean operation... It's like the public living paycheck to paycheck, you're not prepared for a disaster.
And then I'm getting e-mails telling me I can't go on with my regular life, I can't write about anything but this disaster. Then again, maybe regular life is paused, I had a pneumonia vaccine canceled at the last minute by CVS this afternoon, that's a first.
And my exercise of choice was hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains, exactly where Palisades fire was. But the air is too bad to exercise outside anyway.
Ergo, the feeling of lockdown.
And you can donate all the money you've got and it still won't solve the problem. The losses are in the billions.
I can't wrap my head around it, if you don't live here...
You see the view from 30,000 feet.
But on the ground the whole city is in shock.
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