Pacific Palisades – 1/12/25
Tori and Gabe (my wife and eldest son) were able to get back to my home today after our urgent evacuation on Tuesday in the path of the Palisades Fire.
The skylight had blown off, some ash in the house and strong smoke odors, but everything else, unlike the situation of tens of thousands in my community, is fine. 🙏
There will be a fair amount of cleaning required for me to move back in and we are not anticipating that we will be able to go there and start that until Wednesday now. The National Guard and local police have all the evacuation areas tightly cordoned off and there is no power in the evacuation zone.
The risk of the fire spreading back to where we live is, currently, very low and will remain so unless the wind changes direction and goes mad again.
Most of the vegetation, homes, and fuel between us and the mountains is fully consumed so we now have a dead, scorched-earth buffer zone.
I am very active in the local environmental group Resilient Palisades – and every single member of the leadership team and most other members have lost their homes and all their belongings.
The Palisades Fire (there are others causing similar destruction) has changed course and is heading north and east away from my home but toward more homes, more brush, and other key LA institutions like the Getty Museum.
The scale and scope of destruction is stunning and apocalyptic but, for those who understand the science of climate change, not shocking or unanticipated. It requires a tragic convergence of many factors to cause a catastrophe of this magnitude, but the science showing that a human-caused hotter, overall drier climate impacting all weather patterns as a contributory element is irrefutable.
The whiplash of emotions is often overwhelming as I get absorbed in some mundane task and then am slammed again with the realization of what has been lost by so many beloved friends and family; the impact on local animals, ecosystems, and treasured hiking trails; the health implications of the poisonous air we are breathing as the pernicious components of modern life like furniture, computers, vehicles, and homes become atomized by fire and airborne; the enormity and toxicity of cleanup; people trying to rebuild lives and what events like this portend for the planet and other communities like mine, my children’s, and future generations’ unless we change course as regards the consumption of fossil fuels that continue to bake our planet, the way we think about and manage fire, and where and how we live and consume our precious planet’s diminished remaining resources.
Take care,
David