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On Monday, Jan. 6, my best friend left on a road trip to Texas. As he later told me, he had a strange, intrusive thought as he locked the door and turned to leave: "I'd be OK if all this burned to the ground."
The next day, entire swaths of Los Angeles did exactly that. Fueled by unusually high winds and a fatally dry winter, a fire broke out in the coastal neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, causing mass evacuations and a billowing cloud of noxious smoke that made daytime look like dusk. Later that evening, across the city, flames erupted in Altadena, a serene neighborhood nestled at the base of the mountains. Embers from these fires sparked a number of smaller blazes that perforated the city like a spreading rash. Evacuation warnings began to whine on people's phones, seconded only by the distressed text messages we began receiving from family and friends. The energy felt suddenly, terribly, off.
Like many Angelenos, I left the city on the night of Jan. 7. My house in Highland Park, though not in an evacuation zone, was choked with smoke. Ash and debris pelted my windows, catapulted from miles away by the raging winds. Nearby in Altadena, friends' homes were beginning to burn. When my dad's apartment in Pasadena was placed under an evacuation warning, I decided I wasn't going to stick around and see what happened to mine. I found a motel in Orange County, packed a bag, loaded my dad and cat in my car, and got out. As I drove, flames engulfed the city. By morning, we would wake up to a different L.A.
Around 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 8, I went back to my house to collect a few things. The sun was a violent, rageful red, glowing like a stop sign through the murky haze. Toxic ash rained down, blanketing the pathway to my house like snow. Even through my N95, the smoke was overpowering. With a pang, I realized I was inhaling the remains of other people's homes. Their Christmas decorations, their favorite mugs, the walls on which they hung their family photos -- it was now all hanging, confused, in the air. I tried to hold my breath as I fumbled for my keys, but the impulse for oxygen prevailed. I inhaled. The sharpness of the air singed my throat.
Over a week later, the air in L.A. feels still like a knife. You feel it enter and push deeper into your body, leaving the lining of your nose, sinuses, throat, and lungs alive with irritation. Your tongue feels swollen. Your eyes feel radioactive. A metallic taste lingers in your mouth. Your body cries out in protest -- why are you breathing this? But your eyes see something different. Outside, the sky is blue. The day is clear. There are stars at night. In most places, it doesn't smell like smoke. It doesn't smell like anything at all. On apps like Watch Duty and PurpleAir, little green circles hover over neighborhoods, boasting healthy-seeming numbers like "18" and "27." The air quality is "good."
But the air quality is not good. Standard air quality meters don't read for the kinds of materials released during structural fires. They're not calibrated to measure the Jurassic, often condemned materials used to construct suburban areas. They quantify things -- much smaller things -- that are ordinarily present in urban environments, such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, particulate matter, dust, and humidity. What they don't measure is asbestos, lead, hydrogen cyanide gas, aerosolized phthalates, hydrochloric acid, dioxins, furans, and a host of unknowable materials released from burning cars, insulation, couches, and machinery that can cause cancer, asthma, respiratory issues, headaches, cognitive impairment, heart problems, birth defects, and other serious health problems. They don't measure the poisonous ash that settles on the ground, below the meters, where dogs, cats, and other animals sniff and roll as if none of this ever happened. During a Zoom call last night hosted by Coalition for Clean Air, it was estimated that it will take a minimum of two years to clean up this dust and ash. In the meantime, the water supply is likely to be affected, the soil will be contaminated, and it's unclear whether local produce will be safe to eat.
It's for this reason that in L.A., the fires aren't "over." The flames may have subsided (at least in some urban areas; at least for now), but the long-term effects of the fire on our health, mental well-being, sense of safety, economy, and community are just beginning. For now, this week, I'm just figuring out how to breathe.
As I write this, I have a HEPA air purifier sitting 2 feet away. I can still feel the sinuses in my forehead and the tubes in my lungs swell and burn. My lips sting, and my brain feels like sludge. I wring my hands constantly about the effects of this air -- not just on my health, but on my home. My home is L.A. My house is in Highland Park. What if neither is safe anymore? What if the place I rely on for safety, identity, and community is no longer livable?
Every time I ask myself these questions, I feel ashamed. At least I have a home to worry about. At least I have the means and privilege to leave. Right now, tens of thousands of adults, children, and animals do not.
For those of us who are staying, I worry about our air. But for many people, this is simply not an issue they can worry about. Maybe, as was the case with COVID, they're uninterested in succumbing to fear. Maybe they can't see or smell chemicals in the air, so they believe they're not there. They walk outside, mask-free. They drive with the windows down. They're going to live their lives. They have to live their lives.
But I know the consequences could be dire. My own mother was diagnosed with breast cancer last year after surviving the Marshall fire in Superior, Colorado, in 2022. She has no genetic predisposition to cancer. She lives a healthy lifestyle. She exercises. She doesn't smoke or drink (except for the occasional glass of wine -- or, I'm told, a pomegranate martini). Nothing in her environment would predispose her to cancer, except for being in close proximity to the fires. Sure, it's impossible to definitively prove the causation, but during an appointment with one of her cancer doctors, he remarked that he'd "never seen so much breast cancer in young women" as he had in the year or two after the fire. Two recent studies about the Marshall fire -- both of which focused on the lingering carcinogens and contaminants it released into the surrounding neighborhoods -- confirm as much.
And that risk isn't the only one. Nearly every person I've spoken with who survived the Marshall fire has symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder that worsen when the winds pick up. When they're really strong, my mom has a trauma response. Sometimes, she shakes, her heart rate skyrockets, and she feels faint. Her cortisol goes through the roof. Memories of the fire come flooding back as if they happened yesterday. She puts her go-bag near the door. She starts planning and checking the news. She's looking for a way to gain control over the uncontrollable; to feel safe amid a seemingly unending threat. The fire itself died out two years ago. The feeling of it is just as fresh as ever.
"You take snapshots of things your brain has never seen before," she told me. "Fire has a mind of its own. It eats things at its own pace and its own intensity. There is no language to deal with it. All you can do is run."
One image in particular sticks in her mind -- of the fire morphing into an actual being. "When you see it for the first time, and you realize you have no power over it, and you see it consume houses, animals, and trees in such a quick and thoughtless way, it looks like an animal," she remarked. Even just mentioning fire is enough to reawaken the beast.
Even years after a traumatic event, bodies still feel devastation and loss -- even if it wasn't their own. My mom's house is still standing, but she can easily imagine what it would feel like to lose it. "It's a completely unique experience that lives inside of you forever," she told me. Travis, another friend of mine who survived the Marshall fire, told me what happens to him when the winds increase. "I start smelling the air for smoke, looking on the horizon for smoke, and checking local news for any breaking fire updates," he said. "If I smell a firepit or woodstove or chimney that I don't know where it is coming from, I get concerned and start thinking about what I need to do if I need to evacuate. As long as it is dry, windy, or any kind of fire weather, these feelings are now a persistent part of my mental state. I go into a hypervigilance mode that I never experienced before." Even with years between him and the fire, Travis spends an inordinate amount of time considering how to fire-proof his house, and what he'd take and leave if he had to run.
Serena, a friend of mine who survived Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Florida, in 2022, has similar feelings whenever hurricanes start roiling in the Atlantic. "It was very surreal driving around and surveying the damage after," she explained. "The thrill and fear and anxiety 'action' sort of fades into depression as rebuilding slowly starts and the news cycle forgets about you within moments. You realize the insurance nightmare everyone is dealing with. The loss of life and property sinks in. That's hard to come back from." Unlike many people, Serena and her husband didn't lose everything -- his childhood house just flooded under 6 feet of water. It was devastating, but they recovered faster than those who lost everything. For those people, the shock of having a home -- and then suddenly having only a key -- is unlikely to fade away.
Another friend of mine in L.A., who I'll call "Jen," wonders what all this means for the city itself. L.A.'s film industry is already slowly dying, and housing prices have driven scores of people away. "I feel like this place is already on its last legs," she said to me the other night as we looked out of my living room window at the city lights twinkling in the distance. "And this disaster stuff -- it's probably going to keep happening. We're due for a huge earthquake. There will probably be more fires. What'll be left?"
We were silent for a moment before she spoke again. "I love it here," she said. "It's so fucking beautiful." Jen lives eight blocks away from me. Too afraid of the air, she'd driven to my house. We said goodbye, joking that maybe soon -- months? years? -- she'd be able to walk home without a mask.
The problem is that the whole point of living in L.A. is to go outside. Yes, we know it's a vast and unknowable tangle of strip malls and highways. We know it's commercial. We know that the plastic veneer of Hollywood gives parts of the city, and aspects of life here, a certain superficiality. But the people who live here also know that L.A. is a lush and perennially vibrant paradise in close proximity to every terrain and environment a person could want (minus icebergs). Do you want desert? Do you want mountains? Do you want ocean? Stars? Tropical plants? National parks? Endless expanses of shady parks where families picnic with frolicking dogs? Fields of poppies that bloom in the spring? You can have it. It's all within a two-hour drive.
We move here for the weather, the sun, the hiking trails, the outdoor movies, the swimming pools, the taco stands, and the patios that you rarely need more than a sweater to enjoy. During COVID lockdowns, we nearly kissed the ground knowing that while most of the country was cooped up inside during long, cold winters, we were outside, together. We had Thanksgiving dinners and birthday parties outside. We felt safe breathing the air. Right now, that's not the case. In the span of a few days, L.A. has become an interior city. It's closed windows, shuttered doors, and a fear of the things that drew us here in the first place. Every breath feels like one you might regret.
Yet, most of us will stay. This is our home. This is where we grew up, fell in love, drove down Sunset with the windows down, watched the fireworks explode over Dodger Stadium. This place is in our cells -- it's who we are. And we won't give that up so easily.
Nilo, a friend of mine who lives about half a mile away from me in Highland Park -- and who sheltered in place during the worst of the Eaton fire -- wouldn't dream of leaving. Yes, her job is here, and no, she can't work from home, but to her, leaving the city -- even briefly, for some fresh air -- is to admit defeat. "I'm not going to let the fire win," she told me defiantly. "L.A. is who I am." Chelsea, her wife, agreed. "I'll die here if I have to," she said, half joking -- half not.