A Little Bit Off
“I’m a little bit off today, something down inside me’s different
Woke up a little off today, I could tell that something’s wrong
I’m a little thrown off today, there’s something going on inside me
I’m a little bit off today, a little bit off today
I had to say good bye today to someone that I love
I couldn’t even cry today, I think my heart is finally broken
Didn’t need a reason why today, don’t need a reason why today”
‘A Little Bit Off’, Five Finger Death Punch
*****
On the morning of Tuesday, January 8, as the Santa Ana winds started to kick into hurricane speeds, I was reviewing my email messages when a curious announcement landed in my in-box from PBS.
Frontline communications informed me that my local PBS station would be presenting “Tonight on PBS: Maui’s Deadly Firestorm” at 10:00 pm. Intrigued, I opened the message and scanned the first paragraph which said: “In August 2023, the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century reduced much of the Hawaiian town of Lahaina to ashes, killing more than 100 people and displacing thousands.” Little did I realize how that tale would be repeated in my own town in just a few brief hours.
By sundown the wind gusts reached 80 miles an hour in my neighborhood of Pasadena with speeds recorded at nearly 100 miles an hour in Altadena. What transpired next was a blur as it streamed so quickly that my mind couldn’t process the information. At 6:43 pm my nephew called but I missed it because I was outside assessing the damage at our townhome complex. The first of two 50 foot trees had fallen, crushing a parked pick-up in our parking lot. I returned his call right away as I watched other trees on our property sway at 45 degree angles. His voice was cold and distant, like someone in shock, “We are being evacuated right now. We have to leave but we can’t move grandpa because he is in his chair.”
At 6:23 pm that evening the Eaton Fire had broken out a few blocks away from their house in Eaton Canyon.
With the hurricane force winds it spread insatiably jumping out of the canyon and into the residential neighborhoods adjacent in a matter of minutes. “Could you come help us move grandpa out of his chair and into the car? We have to leave!” In an effort to combat the spread of wildfires Southern California Edison had cut power to their block at 2:00 pm. The chair that his 97-year-old grandfather was siting in, however, was an electric recliner, so there was no way to bring it into an upright position to lift him out of the chair without power.
My house is at least 10-15 minutes away from theirs, so even without gale force winds and an out of control fire there was no way I could make it there in time. And the tree that had fallen on my property effectively blocked the exit. My nephew said that they would figure something out and we hung up. By the time I spoke to him again, seven minutes later, an LA County Sheriff’s deputy had helped lift Grandpa out of his chair and into the waiting car in the driveway. We then discussed where to take a 97-year-old to shelter. I wondered how they would even drive safely in those winds. My mother’s house was the most logical choice, so I called her to ask if the family could shelter there. She said ‘of course’, so Grandpa was taken to her house and unloaded in those blistering winds.
The challenge for evacuation is never straightforward, especially with only minutes to escape an extremely fast moving firestorm.
Imagine, however, attempting that exit in a walker or a wheelchair, or being a caregiver to someone in that condition. When seconds count consider the stress of a recliner that won’t move, or of an elder who doesn’t understand that the fire’s flames are about to engulf the neighborhood.
Within an hour of securing shelter for Grandpa another tree fell on our property, completely destroying the townhome of one of my neighbors. Miraculously, she was downstairs, otherwise she would have been crushed. Other neighbors rushed to her aid and she exited her unit unscathed, but her home is now uninhabitable.
Those of us who live in the back of the complex were now effectively trapped as the back gate was locked and only the Pasadena Fire Department had a key. So the lock had to be cut. Who knows why he was delivering packages in a wind storm, but fortunately the buff Amazon driver who was trapped with us was strong enough to use bolt cutters to snap the lock in half. As I gazed through the open gate I could see the billowing smoke and towering flames from the Eaton fire. I glanced at my cell phone to check for new messages and the time – it was 10:00 pm. I wondered if the local PBS station KCET was still going to broadcast the documentary film ‘Maui’s Deadly Firestorm’. It felt like a malicious joke if they did.
Before I could worry about KCET’s prescient programming choices, a phone alert notified me that our neighborhood was now an evacuation warning area.
With towering trees crackling in the howling winds above my bedroom and the specter of the firestorm blistering across Altadena and the upper neighborhoods of Pasadena I realized that it was time to leave. A quick search informed me that all of the hotels in Pasadena were filled to capacity, so we opted for the Hilton in Glendale. At around 11:30 pm the line for check-in was fifty families long; all refugees from the Eaton Fire’s devastation.
As I stood in line surrounded by weary faces we struck up conversations with fellow evacuees. What neighborhood are you from? How close was the fire? Do you think you lost your home? How is the rest of your family? What about your neighbors? Our common experience created a brief moment of shared humanity that carried into the elevators where our conversations continued as we rose to our rooms. Homes burned to the ground, family members scattered across L.A., concerns about pets, questions about where they will live for some and questions about when they can go back for others. For a brief moment we were all one community in shared misery.
So how did we reach this place of repeated raging out of control infernos that ravage neighborhoods and adjacent nature?
Why have Paradise, Lahaina and now Palisades/Eaton fires become so commonplace that we accept that another fire will burn out of control every year? And how is it that the ‘fire season’ in Los Angeles is now year-round? Why aren’t we doing more to prevent these fires and the global warming that causes them?
In conversations with my uncles and mother (who are all in their 80’s) the past couple of days all of them agree that they have never seen such conflagrations in Southern California. Yes, a brush fire here and there, but never a wildfire the size of Palisades. And rarely did these previous fires scorch the city’s neighborhoods and leave thousands without a home.
For some, there is still hope and opportunity for humanity to stop the horrific consequences of climate change.
In a recent article the co-writer of the film ‘Don’t Look Up’, David Sirota, states that we have the power to avoid a complete climate meltdown, but we have to act urgently and quickly. As was done with COVID vaccine development, it will take a unified, committed and aggressive approach to shifting course away from disaster. As Sirota observes:
“We need to stop denying and start acknowledging the real fire, flood, and hurricane risks we face and then adjust accordingly. That means a D-Day style mass mobilization, implementing everything from rational zoning to better building codes to smarter forest management to new investments in hardening homes, businesses, and communities. All of these efforts are absolutely possible and would create jobs to boot.”
If these massive fires are not the wake-up call that Angelenos need to decide to live differently, then there will be more tragedy and devastation.
On one hand, do we keep adapting and attempting to manage climate driven disasters? Or do we actually shift our priorities and implement the technological, scientific and social solutions that we have at our fingertips?
Recent Altadena resident and NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus puts it this way in an article this week in The Guardian, “Humanity already has the technology to quickly transition away from fossil fuels; solar has been the cheapest way to produce electricity for half a decade now.” Kalmus moved away from Altadena two years ago because as a climate scientist he knew that Los Angeles was no longer safe from climate disasters. After the Bobcat Fire he realized that there would be future infernos that would repeatedly threaten his family, so he moved to North Carolina.
Not all of us have the ability to be climate refugees, nevertheless more and more Southern Californians will have to make that choice. The problem is, where do you go? North Carolina, notes Kalmus, was safe until it was hit by a mammoth hurricane last year. Maui was considered safe until the Lahaina Fire. Paradise was, well, paradise. Where do we go when the entire planet is an ‘evacuation warning zone’?
Not even four days after the Eaton Fire sparked I received another email message from PBS’s Frontline.
The title was listed in capital bold letters ‘IN CASE YOU MISSED IT’: Now Streaming – ‘Maui’s Deadly Firestorm’. PBS had updated its description though to include this information: “As devastating wildfires rage in the Los Angeles area, watch an investigation into the missed warning signs that made the August 2023 Lahaina fire so unstoppable.”
Maybe its time we all watched it.
*****
For those in the Altadena / Pasadena are:
Polytechnic School Community Donation Drive
More Resources/Information:
https://cires.colorado.edu/news/how-mitigate-post-fire-smoke-impacts-your-home
