I live in LA. And LA is being consumed by fire. The fires are burning across every corner of the city I love, which is the most dense urban area in the United States. The sheer scale of this devastation is impossible to fathom.
For two days the fires in the Palisades and Altadena had pumped smoke into the bowl of the east side of Los Angeles. I watched dumbstruck on my phone, 1,000 miles away in Colorado, where I happened to be.
When the Sunset Fire broke out in the Hollywood Hills two nights ago, which is visible from my house, it was time.
My friend and neighbor Kevin grabbed my grandmother’s green-bound wildflower field guide from the 1960s, my social security card, and my hard drives. He took my bag of treasures, and his own, and evacuated.
The last five years of studying climate change during my PhD distilled into the throbbing oranges, yellows and reds licking across the glass screen of my phone.
Climate change related weather events will reach everyone eventually.
Outside the window, a giant icicle was suspended in midair, contorted into the spine of a snake, slithering off the roof. An unusual cold snap had brought record freezing temperatures here in the Rocky mountains.
The dissonance of the cold with the heat I held in my hands hurt. The dissonance of the fact that around 30% of firefighters are incarcerated, paid just $26.90 over a 24-hour shift, hurt (source). The dissonance of a climate change-denying incoming president and the realities of human-driven climate change weather events, hurts.
My phone was the portal into the flurry of messages from those who’d lost their homes, might, had already fled, or were trying to decide if they should. At the moment of writing, I know too many who have lost everything.
How did this happen? The Santa Ana winds were so unusually strong that firecraft could not fly during the first 24 hours to attack the flames by air. The hydrants ran out of water pressure with the demands of the blazes. LA had gotten 10% of its usual rainfall typical of this time of year, on the back of an unusually wet year, creating immense amounts of brush fuel for the fires. California long-abandoned the wisdom of Indigenous fire practices like controlled burns that have been used for centuries to prevent breakout enormous fires like this (more here).
People tried to fight the fires with garden hoses and pots of water pulled from their pools.
I saw a video of one man saving a bunny rabbit from a nearby bush in flames. The tenderness of such acts are occurring all over this city right now.
Thank you to the firefighters, thank you to good neighbors, thank you to those who check on each other. It matters, it all counts.
I am heartsick for my friends who have lost their homes, and for the beings, animals, trees, birds, deer, mountain lions and more who have also lost their homes, who have been dying during these few days of blazes.
We are still in the acute phase of this crisis with winds projected to pick up again. What is appropriate right now is deep care, compassion, sharing of resources and mutual aid. Disaster levels political divides, at least in the acute phase. As repair and reconstruction come, we will need to be ferocious about aid for Altadena at the same pace as the Palisades.
I am haunted by Octavia Butler’s prophecy in the Parable of the Sower which she wrote in Pasadena in 1993, 30 years before this week’s fires.
Feb. 1, 2025: Wildfires devastate Robledo, California.
There’s a fire…again. This time it’s big. It’s burning a lot of houses. People are running for their lives.
Did she know?
I am an environmental psychologist. I did my doctoral research partially on eco-anxiety and eco-grief. I was trained as an eco-doula to help in times exactly like this.
And yet, just like many of you, I am brokenhearted and bereft. There is a time to help and there is a time to grieve. This feels like everything, everywhere, all at once.
There will be an outpouring of psychological and emotional needs from this climate disaster. In time, I know many of us will gather and find the tools, practices, rituals and processes to honor the loss, bind together and hopefully, co-create a different way of being in better harmony with the Earth. I hope so.
For the Earth is burning, too. The planet is suffering alongside our human loss. Everything is entangled. We are bound together. Our fate is intertwined.
If you are in LA, this resource document put together by Mutual Aid Los Angeles has wonderful support listed - from info on shelters, food, animal rescues and more. Download the app Watch Duty for up-to-date fire patterns and evacuation notices.
If you are not in LA, send us all your love. And when this is over, we can talk about climate change. What caused this, what we can do differently. How we can protect the one planet we have.
My prayer and hope is that the flash of disaster will not dissipate once the crises wanes, but that the heat from these losses will galvanize community-led care for our Earth and for each other.
The stakes really are as high as they can possibly be.
Take such good care dear ones.
With love,
Lindsay