Writing about the fires: "Her grief rose upwards and joined the blackness of the sky"

This puts the LA fires into perspective, I think. I hadn't realized the numbers were so large:

These numbers blow my mind: Population of LA County: 9.33M Population of California: 38.97M Population of the US: 334.9M 1 out of every 36 people in the US lives in Los Angeles County. There are 22 US states with populations smaller than LA County. These fires affect all those people.

— Peggy K (@peggyk.bsky.social) January 9, 2025 at 11:56 PM

Quinn Cummings

Part One

Part Two

...we watched the TV until it was too overwhelming, at which point we’d…continue to watch it. If there was a fire in Griffith Park, the news might tell us faster than the alerts and we needed to know. Our family in the Palisades had no report on their house yet but they were starting to get the first reports of what had already been lost throughout the community. They had been happy there.

In less than a day, nearly every touchpoint had been decimated.

I thought about Hawaii, about North Carolina; I thought about how there is not a place on earth where humans have lived where the lesson of how easily peace of mind can be taken from you has not been learned.

The sun blazed orange against the black sky.

At two, my friend who lived in Altadena texted me:

It’s gone.

Quickly, I called her.

The kids were safe but the house and everything in it – her writing, her husband’s work, irreplaceable family keepsakes, the piano they’d had since before they were married – was obliterated. I had read the word “Keening” often enough and I sort of understood what that was, but I was wrong. To keen is to have the grief and the horror pulled from you, its claws dragging and scarring you every inch of the way and then you breathe in, and the tearing begins again. My friend was being torn apart alive, again and again. Her grief rose upwards and joined the blackness of the sky. I said nothing, because there was nothing to say. ...

LA Times

With firefighters stretched thin, Altadena residents battle to save homes from flames

...As the winds whipped out of the north, and embers began to rain down, almost everyone had left J.C. Matsuura’s neighborhood in Altadena.

But Matsuura had no intention of following the evacuation order issued as the Eaton fire rapidly spread Tuesday night, engulfing homes and businesses that stood in its path. Even after Matsuura’s wife left, taking the family dogs, the 65-year-old stood his ground.

Armed only with a garden hose and determination, Matsuura kept the embers and flames away from his home of 20 years. It was not until a ghastly dawn that a fire crew from the U.S. Forest Service arrived. By then, homes on two sides of Matsuura’s had caught fire.

With firefighters stretched thin, with three major fires burning in L.A. County as of Wednesday afternoon, residents such as Matsuura decided to stay and wage a battle to save their homes.

...Matsuura said he wouldn’t leave, couldn’t leave, because of everything that his modest home on New York Avenue meant. He had built a business there — repairing motorcycles of all kinds, including collectors’ Ducatis and Harley Davidsons.

“I stayed because this is my home, it’s my business. It’s a lot,” he said. “I didn’t want to lose it. I didn’t want my equipment to be burnt down. So I figured if I stayed long enough, I might be able to save it.”

...At his home on Wednesday, Matsuura remained focused on his desperate task, dressed all in black with nothing but a black bandanna to filter the noxious air. He had persisted, even as the wind ripped composite tiles from his roof and sent branches, dirt and debris whipping through the air.

His home seemed safe, but Matsuura gestured at flames that still crackled less than 50 yards away.

“That’s what I’m worried about right there,” he said. “It ain’t over yet.”

Other LA Times stories:

After evacuating Tuesday night, Denise Norden and her husband, Greg, arrived to find several fires burning around their Altadena home before dawn Wednesday.

Seeing no firefighters on their street, the couple — along with other residents — grabbed garden hoses, buckets and shovels. They hosed down their roofs and those of their neighbors. They soaked the plants and front yards as embers set off small fires around the neighborhood.

“We realized if we did not make a stand we would lose it all,” Denise Norden said.

Early Wednesday morning, Steve Salinas called his neighbor Jimmy Orlandini to say Orlandini’s front yard was on fire. Orlandini evacuated his family to Rancho Cucamonga but arrived back home in the early morning darkness to find other neighbors dousing homes.

When a home two doors down from Orlandini’s house caught fire, he and another neighbor climbed onto the roof to spray it down.

The heat and smoke rolled into Orlandini’s face. He sprayed his head with water and covered his face with his shirt.

“If the fire department would just get here, they could save it all,” said one woman, who declined to give her name.

About 8:30 a.m. a Los Angeles County fire engine appeared down the street. Exhausted neighbors cheered. One woman sobbed and ran to the corner pointing, crying out, “Please, save our homes.”

Firefighters were able to save the home where Orlandini and Salinas had made their stand. The side of the home was damaged, but it remained upright.

I am also reminded of a brilliant thread that Tern wrote in October, about how the COVID epidemic crazed so many people because our society no longer has experience in handling with grace the random viscousness of nature. 

I think Tern's analysis applies to terrible situations like the California fires also, where one evening people are having a nice supper on their patio and 12 hours later they are running for their lives:

Five hundred years ago, people didn't have control over their lives. You lived at the whim of the weather and the latest disease that passed through and the mad king and the quality of your water supply.

— tern (@1goodtern) October 14, 2024

Lifespans bloom.
And the illusion of control starts to weave its effects.

— tern (@1goodtern) October 14, 2024

But when that illusion of control is shattered by a lockdown, suddenly the axis of the world changes.

— tern (@1goodtern) October 14, 2024

The whole thread is worth reading. 

And this:

View on Threads

View on Threads

View on Threads