At 5 a.m. on Jan. 15, residents in Echo Park, Los Angeles, awakened suddenly to flames outside. They grabbed car keys, pets and passports and fled their apartment buildings. LA Fire contained it within two hours, but the smoke-filled air and frightening memories will long persist.
This new fire ignited eight days after hurricane-strength Santa Ana winds,[1] in a completely dry “wet season” and urban sprawl, caused the worst wildfires in California history. Nearly 180,000 people were evacuated from their homes; 12,000 buildings—including 200 schools—are uninhabitable or totaled. Continuing emotional and mental trauma is barely glimpsed in videos of devastation indistinguishable from pictures of Gaza.
IN THE INFERNO, TRUE HEROES AND SHE-ROES
Meanwhile thousands of LA residents and other volunteers set up and stocked multiple shelters and donation centers. They collected and distributed aid and comfort with a human touch to the 88,000 people still displaced all over the damaged area.
In an opposite, topsy-turvy world, Donald Trump and the far Right whipped themselves up in a gleeful orgy of scapegoating. They blamed DEI—the fact that the fire chief is a Lesbian and the mayor is a Black woman—for the damage caused by the fires. They blamed environmental protection that was actually hundreds of miles away. They blamed immigrants for supposedly receiving relief funds. They blamed unrelated donations to Ukraine, but did not mention that Ukraine offered to send firefighters to LA. Alex Jones and Elon Musk even lied that the fires were raging “by design” in a “globalist plot to wage economic warfare.” The point is to distract us from the huge part played by global heating in enabling these massive fires, to distract us from the fact that these same ideologues and the fossil fuel industry that funds them have obstructed action to counter the climate crisis, to distract us from the way capitalism is at the root of that obstruction and has been driving climate change for 200 years.
LA Fire is tasked to protect life and property in urban fires. Under the dry, windy conditions, no plan or preparation would have been adequate. Four major brush blazes hit; the winds carried sparks for miles. Despite firefighters from eight states, Mexico and Canada, plus nearly 1,000 incarcerated workers reinforcing exhausted LA responders, unpredictable flare-ups continued in toxic air over the whole area. As of this writing, the Palisades fire is only half contained. Its casualties will likely far exceed the current death toll of 27.
‘EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE’
Healthcare, never adequate except for the wealthy, is almost inaccessible, even as thousands suffer respiratory illness from toxic smoke and fire retardants. Mental healthcare too has just acquired a massive new caseload. The outpouring of community—and national—support helps mitigate the trauma of massive loss by creating space for people to share experiences with other fire survivors.
A record hot summer, nine months with no rain, 100-mile-an-hour winds, too few firefighters and broken-down vehicles, delayed responses; hydrants that ran out of water, evacuation gridlock—all contributed to the perfect firestorm. Less easily recognized and often denied are a century of historic land and water mismanagement and fossil fuel use that generate global warming.
CRITICAL NEEDS AND NEEDED CRITIQUES
Debris removal is essential for people to return to their homes—or to their home sites. But everything is contaminated: burned plastics and synthetic building materials create toxic waste. How much and for how long will toxicity remain in the soil and groundwater? Will front-line workers, immigrants and incarcerated laborers, received protective gear, a living wage,[2] healthcare? When debris is taken away, where is “away”?
“Restoring” the water supply. Even before repairs begin, all water lines, damaged buildings and burn sites must be inspected. Will inspectors even be safe in such a toxic environment? Before returning, the water itself must be certified for washing and drinking at all points of the system, for rebuilding to be truly safe.
Reforestation should begin in both urban and wild lands as soon as the areas are safe. Plants prevent erosion, deadly mudslides of bare burned soil and even hotter weather. Certain plants remove toxins from soil. In wild land, informed reforestation is the only way to preserve the soil and water that are also critical for urban environments.
RETHINK LA’S SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE: CREATE A SUSTAINABLE CITY NOW!
For California Gov. Gavin Newsom to promise deregulation to speed rebuilding is insanity! It ignores lingering air pollution and completely unknown levels of toxins in soil and in the water supply. Worse, rebuilding in the same locations along the same traffic-snarling roads only sets the stage for a repeat performance. Most important—and most unpopular—is ending urban sprawl into the surrounding wildlands that are vital to the environmental health of the entire region.
Managing scarce water throughout the Southwest, amid a growing population and agricultural pressures, underlies successful community re-creation. Without reforestation and sustainable land management, scarcity will increase. Regionwide cooperation is needed to develop new water and fire management systems that are fair to all.
It is time for leaders to support science-based radical climate practices and new regulations: to limit synthetic building material and fire retardants that becomes toxic when burned; to require xeriscapes—landscapes for dry climates—around buildings; and to restrict fireworks to public displays.
Even now, we can build on the spontaneous cooperation among Angelenos that has emerged in the immediate crisis. We can refuse ruling class divisive politics separating workers, immigrants, women, and the homeless. We need to call out and resist “solutions” that only benefit developers, real estate interests and industries hell-bent on further accelerating climate change. A global vision and humane principles in organizing ourselves are fundamental to a sustainable future.
[1] Santa Ana winds blew from the hot dry inland desert down the mountains east of Los Angeles, igniting dry brush that in a normal January is dampened by fall and winter rains. That did not materialize last year.
[2] Incarcerated laborer firefighters received $5.80-$10.24 per day and promises of future benefit.