Hell Angeles - Chapter 3
January 8th
With shock comes fantasy and I couldn’t get rid of the fantasy. My house would be okay. It sits on the most bucolic street in California. The road is gently sloping, rising from sea to sky. The homes are big, close together, and have short driveways flanked with lemon trees and wisteria and lavender and sweet hip rugosa rose bushes and boxwood hedges and white thistle. The air is crystal-clear most days, dry, temperate, tinged with salt water and desert wind and the scent of eucalyptus. Sunshine is habitual. To live here is to live inside a dream; the mailman waves, children ride scooters, spandex-clad e-bikers pass our driveway huffing their way up canyon trails that loop for hundreds of miles along the mountain ridge. I walk those trails endlessly. If I walk down the canyon instead to where the road dips, I can see the entire Pacific Ocean like an aquamarine tablemat spread out in every direction. I chose to live here, chose this place, anyone who visits Pacific Palisades will choose to live here if lucky enough to be given the choice of anywhere to live on earth. The natural beauty is extraordinary. The landscape surreal. The other place like it is the coast of Italy; not surprisingly the streets in my neighborhood are named San Remo, Capri, Napoli, Amalfi, Sorrento.
Beauty is a shield. I tell myself this again and again.
10:30 am Flames swallow the center our town. To watch Corpus Christi Church burn (the news keeps repeating this footage) is to stir up something in the soul. Some primitive force. Some memory. They are burning Rome again. It’s July 19, 64 AD. Nero openly desires to destroy the city. He sends out men pretending to be drunkards, they ignite the merchant shops around the chariot stadium, and the flames spread out. This turns into the Great Fire of Rome. From his palace on the hill, Nero watches the city burn while singing and playing the lyre. Other people are having this thought.
My friend J stands on Ocampo Drive, experiencing the paranormal. She is watching her house stand while both her neighbor’s houses burn. The across-the-street neighbor’s house is burning. Her house stands. She texts me:
I am furious they could not fly helicopters to get more accurate coverage because of Biden being in town. I feel like we could have made an exception.
I wonder why she’s bringing up Biden. Until now, I didn’t know Biden was in Los Angeles when the fire started.
Someone proposes a different angle. K writes:
California has the best land and the worst government in America. Gavin Newsom’s failed water and forest management policies helped turn what could be manageable fires into devastating infernos.
Staci adds:
I want to sue the city and the state
This is not ok
Amani agrees wholeheartedly.
I’m in. Newsome for crimes against humanity
100 pct emoji appears.
A concerned Liz just wants to know about her home:
Anyone know anything about the top of Lachman? 1461 Lachman?
No one responds to Liz. Lots of people are driving back into the evacuation zone right now, dodging downed power lines and exploding objects. Why? They can’t endure the waiting. They want to know which structures will stand. But apparently, no one is driving to the top of Lachman. Which is why no one responds to Liz. The lack of response, the note under the note is this: everything is burning.
Small wars are breaking out in our hotel room.
2:00 pm the day prior, we evacuated to a hotel room in Carlsbad, California 109 miles down the coast. My four kids have been cooped up in this room at the Park Hyatt Aviara for going on twenty hours. They are starting to fight. The room is claustrophobic. Foul smells emerging. Too many pancakes. Too much syrup, sugar cereal, iPads, frantic trips to the toilet, lumpy pillows and rollaway cots, sodas and sour patch kids snuck from the minibar, video games purchased without permission. They are wearing dirty school uniforms from yesterday. Backpacks lie like carcasses in the corner with forgotten schedules and forgotten homework and smushed sandwiches in tin foil. The mood is tense, the air is unstable—order has evaporated—in its place something else arrives. Some liminal state where parents can’t impose authority. Parents are losing their minds. Anything will be permitted. Even war. The kids know it. My third child, a 9-year-old boy with a blonde helmet of hair and legs the size of Q-tips has the accurate sense that if he attacks his brother now, if he knees him in the gut and grinds his head in the carpet no one will intervene…
I don’t intervene because I’m watching footage of Jimmy Carter. Dead.
And Staci is fuming on the chat thread:
Who saves the stupid smelt fish over refilling reservoirs for people!
They need to pay
Lindsay, like Liz, searches for news about her home:
Is there any hope for Glynn drive off the top of Lachman?
Nima wants to know about her safe deposit box:
Does anybody know if the bank safe deposit boxes are fireproof?
Someone responds immediately. Wells Fargo Bank does not guarantee the contents of its bank safe deposit boxes. That fact is stated explicitly in their contract. Check the contract, the person suggests. To which I think: really? That’s true? That can’t be true. I worked at a bank for fourteen years and I never knew that. What is the point of bank safe deposit boxes if a) the bank doesn’t guarantee contents and b) the contents aren’t safe? Is there a force majeure clause that frees the bank from liability or obligation in the event of a wildfire started by a meth head funded by the state wandering private property in a town where a single drop of lighter fluid and a strong gust destroys $150 billion in property damage?[1] My thoughts are running away on this one. Back on topic. Our favorite local news station, KTLA, is bored showing the church spire of Corpus Christi burn. They keep switching coverage to the Eaton Fire.
So, we all switch to CNN.
Jimmy Carter’s coffin lying in state. Yes, we’ve all secretly been wondering if Los Angeles will finally burn to the ground. For seventy years, artists have been writing songs, painting murals about Los Angeles burning. Now it’s burning. It’s finally burning. CNN is at this moment is not interested. Instead, CNN wants us to watch a President who no one can remember anything about being carried into a stone mausoleum (is that the Capitol building?). The coffin is carried by uniformed men. The coffin is draped in an American flag. Facts we forgot about Jimmy Carter are being whispered. Hyperinflation, energy shortages, an embarrassing standoff with Iran. It’s amazing how nothing changes. Oh, but he was a humble man who lived a life of service. A peanut farmer and a born-again Christian. Who sold the HSS Sequoia and replaced alcohol in the White House with pitchers of sweet tea. Remember him? No. Of course you don’t. Lillian Carter, his mother, said in a 1976 news interview in the heat of a presidential campaign, “There was really nothing outstanding about Jimmy as a boy,”[2] which pretty much sums it up.
Back to Biden. What was Biden doing in town I wonder? And Nixon. I read somewhere, though I can’t remember where, that during the 1961 Bel Air fires Richard Nixon refused evacuation orders. He played hero. The narrative states that he stayed behind at his home in Bel Air to fight flame after flame, to defend his plot of earth. But then so much about the Richard Nixon narrative is subject to change. Here’s Jimmy Carter again flashing onto the TV. The black hearse is moving down a wide, empty street in Washington DC. Are they moving him? Again? Or playing footage in reverse? Joe Biden, I learn from my phone, flew Air Force One from Washington DC to Los Angeles yesterday or the day before, to sign a proclamation that would establish a Chuckwalla National Monument south of Joshua Tree National Park. The mission was aborted after he got here. Due to wind. Not fire. Or maybe fire too. But we we’ll never know. Add that to the list of things we won’t know.
My 9-year-old sons are battling. My husband has a glazed look in his eye. He announces, he’s going back to the house.
I see on my phone a warning. There is a fire coming up rustic canyon towards the lower Riviera. Please do not walk back into the evac zone. We have what could be described as a tense conversation. I ask him if he misunderstood the warning. Silently, he pleads. Our house is going to burn down today. There’s fire raging on three sides of the canyon, running up the bottom part of our street. Like Richard Nixon, he’s going back to fight.
What is your exact plan I ask him?
Not fight flames exactly. But do the next best thing. Retrieve crap from the house.
Why not try to save a few things?
A note on me: I’m a minimalist. I delight in throwing things out. One of my favorite pieces of wisdom of all time comes from the Nobel prize winning economist Amos Tversky who said: if once a month you don’t regret something you threw out, then you’re not throwing enough out. A similar but unrelated piece of advice. McKinsey consulting firm once published a statistic that the most efficient people miss one flight a year. If you’re showing up the airport three hours early and making every flight, you’re wasting precious minutes of your life. Missing one flight a year is a sign of health.
Back to my husband, who is putting at his shoes.
I point out: this is insane.
The kids stop fighting. They are excited. They are cheering for dad. Dad is about to engage in a dangerous act of bravery, he might die or be maimed getting crap from their rooms that could be purchased on on Amazon right now. My 12-year-old grabs a red crayon and starts scribbling on a hotel notepad. The red crayon reminds me of the movie The Shining, and her jagged handwriting matches—
Stuffys
300 Leotard[3]
Babybook
Pictures
Cards
Drawings
Big sis crown
Metal
Seaglass
Clothes
Shelf stuff
“Shelf stuff” is great term, I realize, as I read her list. As a blanket term it works incredibly well. If an item made it to my shelf, it’s probably important, so just sweep it into the garbage bag and take it with you before the house burns.
My husband is nodding, listening intently to what everyone wants from their room….
My 9-year-old wants his collection of tiny, plastic NFL helmets. The other one wants his anime drawings off his bulletin board. My 14-year-old daughter wants mascara out of her bathroom, and an eyelash curler. We can buy this at CVS, I point out. There’s no need to go headlong into a 22,000-acre fire to retrieve an eyelash curler. Is anyone listening to me? No. No one in the family is listening to me.
And here’s Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on TV. Making her first appearance. Fresh back from her trip to Ghana. Refreshed, cultured and relaxed. She stands mute inside the glass door of an airport terminal, waiting for the door to open so she can go outside. Presumably, she wants to get outside because inside, there’s a reporter shouting questions at her. More than one reporter. They have questions about the dry reservoir and why so many fire trucks from Oregon and Washington were turned away and sent back to Sacramento for carbon emissions testing and why did the hydrants not work, and the water pressure disappear at a critical moment. Why weren’t more air assets called to the scene? Why? Why? Isn’t the Mayor a command-and-control position? Why is it your priority to be in Ghana when your office has issued drought and high wind and brush fire warnings? Bass takes the fifth.
Anger, blame rising…
My husband calls his friends excitedly; he’s headed back into the evacuation zone. Any tips? Someone says bring a chainsaw in case a burning tree falls across the road and blocks your way. Bring rope. A wet towel for your mouth and nose. An N-95 mask is fine too.
The images rippling into the chat thread are hard to look at.
That can’t be our town. This can’t be our situation. This can’t be happening. Make it stop.
Jimmy posts a video that looks like the opening scene of Hurt Locker where a bomb crew is stationed in Baghdad 2004 and something bad is about to happen. In Jimmy’s version, he’s driving down a street looking for his house. The landscape is bombed out, smoky, black palm fronds lie everywhere. Even the shaky, handheld camera footage matches Kathryn Bigelow’s directorial work. Jimmy adds the name of the street: DePauw.
Staci wins the frequent flier award for the chat thread. She is responding to everyone, everything, every post, video, image, comment—
I mean the taliban may as well dropped a bomb on our town because that’s what it looks like
Jimmi corrects the caption:
Sorry that was earlhame standby
He misspells the name Earlham.
Honey writes:
Can’t sue the government. They have governmental immunity. But you could vote differently.
Staci’s rotates between anger and sympathy:
Is that your house Jimmy
Then:
I vote Red all day long for years!
Scott jumps in. He’s excited by this—
If the taliban did it at least we would have federal intervention but good luck with the CA dipshits in charge
Jimmy finally finds his home. He posts a picture of it. 15263 something (De Pauw? Earlham? Or somewhere else in Via Bluffs?) on a normal day we’d be shocked about what we see. Today, at this hour, the reveal is stale. We’ve been watching people post pictures of their eviscerated homes since dawn. The picture that shows an evergreen Christmas wreath hanging merrily from the gate. A beige stone pathway leads to a pair of charred palm trees which once framed a doormat. Spoiler alert, the house isn’t there.
Jimmy receives only three heartbreak emojis.
Martin rallies to Scott’s side.
First we build the wall then we build Palisades…
Pause in the chat thread.
Silence.
That was a bridge (or wall) too far. Recall: 99.9% of people in this chat thread make Mao’s cabinet look Republican. Pacific Palisades, California is a “Vote Blue No Matter Who” town and thank you very much, we will keep it that way. Fire or no fire.
Jackie puts her foot down.
Can this chat stay informational only pls
The crowd cheers. Ten heart and thumbs up, surfer hand emojis added. Someone adds a turned-hand-pointer-finger-up emoji, which I’m not familiar with. It’s not the middle finger emoji. It’s an emoji which requires research.[4]
Karen cheers:
I agree!
Maggie reposts and rejects Staci’s comment “I vote Red all day long for years!” with:
This isn’t the place for this. Please stop!
Five heart and thumbs up emojis.
Karen writes:
We are desperate to find out about our houses.
Lindsay agrees.
Exactly. Our homes were just destroyed. Please
Staci, momentarily silenced by the liberals, still wants to post:
Jimmy- any news on Alcima?
Shannon responds:
I have a complete list of Alcima houses between las lomas and el medio
A person who named themselves with a clapping hand emoji writes—
Don’t feed the trolls, kick them out of the chat.
Staci asks:
Are they all gone?
Cut to confusion. None of us can track the fight. Has Staci flipped sides from Republican to Democrat? Red to blue? Is she asking if all the red trolls have left the chat, “are they all gone?” or is she worried about the homes on Alcima between Las Lomas and El Medio?
Impossible to know.
Shannon writes:
My cousin’s husband is fighting the fire nearby in the canton and then will move to the las lomas smaller fire
Staci writes immediately:
Do you know what houses?
Kristy adds:
Glad there are still firefighters in the palisades
Now Shannon posts a complete list of Alcima as of 4:30 pm.
15900 ok
15912 burnt shrubs in front yard and back but ok
15907 all good
15920 construction ok
15921 ok
15926 ok
15925 ok
15933 fire in backyard and side where construction. Fire truck onsite
15934 ok but stubs burning. Put out fire
15954 just put our fire in front yard close to house. House is ok
15960 ok
15964 ok
15965 contruction ok
15975 burned down
15976 ok. I met with Jay who is watching your house
15995 burned
15986 ok
16101 burned
16121 ok
16120 burned
16127 burned
16126 burned
16132 ok
16139 ok
16138 burned
16145 ok
16144 burned
16150 burned
16156 burned
16155 ok
16162 burned
16168 burned
16165 ok
16174 burned
16177 ok
16180 burned
Las Lomas fire is active and that’s what they will move to next…
Jay, who might have evacuated with his family to the same spot, who might be sitting right now in a hotel room down the hallway watching his kids make lists of everything they miss and want from their rooms, who might be waging debate with his wife about the risk benefit of driving back just stopped breathing. He writes:
Thank you for that list. We were at 16156
A brave soul writes to Jay:
I’m so sorry. It’s so terrible.