Good morning from Los Angeles.
The sky above Sunset Boulevard is black, blending into the bright orange band on the horizon. “It looks like the cover of Hotel California,” says a guy at a local coffee shop.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass fought fires in Africa as part of the Biden delegation that attended the inauguration of Ghana's president.
The smoke is likely from the 2,227-acre Eaton Fire in the northeast, which is raging through Altadena and Pasadena.
Or it could be the 75-acre Woodley Fire to the northwest, or the numerous smaller fires that have started since Tuesday morning.
matt heims
family home destroyed
I was with my two kids (my eldest went back to boarding school on Monday morning; my wife is in New York on a business trip) to a friend's house in West Hollywood, just off the legendary Sunset Strip. I'm here. We arrived here yesterday fleeing the Pacific Palisades fires.
My friend and I take a short drive through Mulholland to take in the beautiful views of the Hollywood Hills. Gardeners are out with their leaf blowers.
My mother-in-law called from Venice. In Venice, she, her father-in-law, and her sister-in-law and her young child are staying with her brother-in-law. The house they bought in 1976 and where they raised their five children burned down.
unprecedented tragedy
Decades ago, my father-in-law stood on the roof with a hose, waiting to put out the embers. That's when I was reminded (no doubt unintentionally) of the famous photograph of Richard Nixon on the roof of his home during the 1961 Brentwood Bell Air Fire.
This fire is even worse. He and my sister and in-law managed to make it home last night, but there was so much smoke we couldn't see or breathe.
“Aggie may not be here anymore,” my mother-in-law says of her cat.
Also destroyed was much of the nearby village of Palisades, which called the small town center the village of Palisades.
The local Starbucks, located in one of the center's few “historic” buildings, was completely destroyed. It was early one morning about 15 years ago when a gravelly, vaguely threatening voice jolted me out of my pre-coffee stupor.
In memory of Ray
“Oh, she's beautiful!'' I turned to see the late Ray Liotta admiring his then-toddler daughter in a Baby Bjorn strapped to his chest.
It's not uncommon to run into famous people around here. Steve Guttenberg, actor of “Police Academy'' and “Three Men and a Baby,'' is a longtime resident. This summer, he served as grand marshal for the town's Fourth of July parade.
Mega/Getty Images
Yesterday, he helped first responders remove a vehicle abandoned by panicked residents fleeing their hilltop homes.
When I met Liotta, we had recently moved from New York and were staying with my in-laws. We ended up staying for a year and a half, during which time various other brothers came and went with their own crises.
It was such a house. That's the kind of family we are.
We ended up buying our own house about a mile west, on a quiet cul-de-sac that was perfect for learning how to ride a bike. I still don't know if our house is safe. Many friends lost their things.
Roughly halfway between these two homes is the Episcopal school that my wife and all of her siblings attended. My mother-in-law taught Latin there. My youngest son still goes there (his sister also went there, but is now in high school).
The church famously burned down in the 1980s, but was rebuilt. Since then, with the influx of wealthy and famous people to the area, the campus has undergone some notable upgrades while retaining its idyllic charm. It is not uncommon to see deer on the hill near the principal's office.
I heard that part of it was burnt down.
Climate Change Rebuke
Most of my information comes from social media. We thanked CBS News reporter Jonathan Vigliotti for his reporting, who posted footage of the devastation to X this morning.
He lost me when he turned it into a “call to action” to fight climate change.
What is energizing me now is the call to action in my immediate surroundings. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass fought fires in Africa as part of the Biden delegation that attended the inauguration of Ghana's president. She should be back in town any minute now.
Gov. Gavin Newsom posed for a few photos (there's no way he didn't look creepy and smug) but said nothing reassuring or helpful.
Like most wildfires here, this one was probably man-made, probably started by drug-addicted, mentally ill vagrants who just wanted to watch things burn. .
priorities are wrong
The failure of California's homelessness policy, an endless cash grab by cynical professional advocates for the “houseless,” combined with years of poor forest management and woefully inadequate fire prevention, has led to this avoidance. This caused an unavoidable disaster.
Two years ago, the Los Angeles Fire Department made the much-hyped decision to hire its first “female and LGBTQ” fire chief. In her official bio, she says her priority is to “create, support, and promote a culture of diversity, inclusion, and equity.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of firefighters are risking life and limb to save what they can, but the hydrants are empty.
I have been visiting this beautiful town since 2003. I made this my home in 2009. This place always struck me as a small-town haven in the vast heart of a famous industrial complex.
A T-shirt displayed in a local barber shop reads, “If you're rich, you live in Beverly Hills. If you're famous, you live in Hollywood. If you're lucky, you live in the Palisades.”
Yes, I think we are really lucky, in fact, blessed.
We hope to find out why in the coming months, as common sense and good old community spirit prevail in the long and arduous effort to rebuild.
Please pray for our success. In doing so, we will stimulate a long overdue reckoning with those whose reckless management brought this beautiful state to the brink of destruction.
