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| Horrifying image of the California fires from television station KTLA. |
Downtown Altadena, California is gone, as are many neighborhoods there.
So far, five people are known to have died in the fire, but unfortunately I fully expect that toll to rise. One person was found dead, garden hose in hand, after unsuccessfully trying to save his home.
So much that is familiar to local residents, and to an extent the rest of us are gone. The Reel Inn in Malibu, which had been a seafood restaurant destination for celebrities and visitors was destroyed after four decades in business.
The Palisades Charter High School, which you probably saw in movies like "Freaky Friday" and "Carrie," was also destroyed.
The unique Bunny Museum in Altadena is history, too.
The Getty Villa, home to 40,000 pieces of priceless art, was saved only because of preparation and firefighting. The grounds of the center burned, but crews had a policy of aggressively removing brush as it would try to take over the property. Since there wasn't all that much to burn, firefighters were able to keep flames out of the building.
The Pacific Palisades fire is now described as the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history, Previously the worst fire in Los Angeles County history was the Sayre fire of November, 2008, which wiped out 604 structures in Sylmar.
This one was far, far worse, with 1,000 structures gone so far. That's a preliminary estimate. The actual number is probably quite a bit higher.
Yet another fire broke out Wednesday night in Studio City and the Hollywood Hills last night, which looks like it destroyed a few more homes. Somehow, firefighters, after an intense 90-minute battle, got that fire largely contained before it could attack another large swath of Los Angeles. Most of the evacuation orders with that fire have been lifted for now, fingers crossed.
Somewhat calmer winds today are raising hopes that firefighters can begin containing some of the fires.
Hollywood has for decades cranked out more epic disaster movies and shows than anybody can count. Those movies were an escape. Now, reality is hitting us with real catastrophes that we thought just belonged on the big screen.
When it becomes real like it did this week, it's a a national gut punch.
These huge disasters keep coming, one after another, with more and more extremes and greater frequency.
I know those of us who don't live anywhere near California can't feel sorry for ourselves, given the suffering of thousands of people who have lost their homes.
But it's still distressing to everyone to watch California burn, or North Carolina wash away, or Valencia, ,Spain to scour away in unprecedented floods, and on and on it goes. It takes a toll on all of humanity, really.
CLIMATE, MEGA-DISASTERS AND RESOURCES
It's clear that climate-driven disasters like this one in California are overwhelming infrastructure designed for the climate we used to have a few decades ago, not the one we have now.
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| The remains of a Christmas tree as seen through the window of a burning home in California' this week. |
In the old climate, the Los Angeles cataclysm we just saw shouldn't have happened. Yes, there have always been destructive wildfires in the region. And yes, more people are now living in the way of those wildfires, making both fighting and fleeing the fires more difficult.
Still, this fire shouldn't have been so awful. But climate change made probably made it worse.
The two previous winters in Los Angeles were much wetter than average. That created lush growth in the steep brush lands that surround so many neighborhoods. Then, this winter, the rain failed. The lush growth turned to tinder.
The rainy season should have started by now. It didn't. So when the Santa Ana winds howled, fires started and here we are.
Emergency officials knew days in advance a dangerous situation was brewing. In Pacific Palisades, three huge tanks, each with a million gallon capacity, were filled to the brim ahead of the fires. But firefighters used so much water so quickly to fight the flames that the tanks quickly emptied. Water pressure waned. Hydrants became almost useless.
In some cases, they could only stand by and watch neighborhoods burn.
Evacuations were chaotic, to say the least. The death toll could have been much worse as people fleeing got caught up in flames on narrow roads. People fled their cars on foot, and the abandoned cars blocked roads needed by firefighters to access the flames. Bulldozers had to be called in to shove the cars out of the way.
This reminded me of the 2018 fire that destroyed virtually the entire city of Paradise, California, leveling 19,000 homes and other buildings. Eighty-five people died in that blaze, many of them trapped on winding, narrow mountain roads as they tried to flee. Homes in Paradise were in the woods, and not fire resistant.
Those rebuilding in Paradise are keeping those issues in mind, changing roads, building houses out of materials that can ward off flames to an extent. They're keeping vegetation away from homes.
That was an enormous undertaking in just one town. Imagine dealing with this in southern California given the scale of these new, ferocious fires.
It's not just California with fast-moving, out-of-season fires. On December 28, 2021, ferocious winds tore through the Boulder, Colorado area, pushing what became Colorado's worst wildfire in history. Two people died and 1,000 or so homes were destroyed.
It was another case of a strangely intense fire coming at an even stranger time of year, when Boulder is often covered in snow.
It's not just fires. Climate-driven disasters are striking places that "shouldn't" have such extreme trouble. The extraordinary floods in western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene come to mind here. Roads, neighborhoods, everything was overwhelmed by the unprecedented power of the water and floods.
They couldn't handle it. Nobody could have.
We're dealing with this here in Vermont, too. After the big floods of 2023 and 2024, we are thinking long and hard about how to deal with the inevitable next big flood, since storms seem to have gotten more intense.
Do we move people away from river valleys? Who do we move? What types of bridges, culverts and drainage can we build to withstand floods, and can we afford all that? Many of our most treasured cities, towns and villages are in flood plains. Can these communities survive? What if they can't? Will the Vermont we've gotten so used to over generations become unrecognizably different?
That's the type of thing that billions of people around the world are grappling with in the age of climate change. These thoughts, these worries, are punctuated by catastrophes like California this week. These huge disasters give us a sense of urgency, and dread and sadness.
I also hope these disasters also motivate us all into compassion and strength. We need those more than ever.
VIDEOS
Chaotic news clip from the Eaton fire as a reporter watches new fires keep breaking out everywhere around her, amid a cacophony of sirens. Click on this link to view or if you see the image below click on that:
Palisades Branch Library up in flames. Also in the video what appears to be a church and a school destroyed. Again click on this link to view or if you see image below, click on that
Remnants of burning house collapse on camera. Again, click on this link to view or if you see image below, click on that:
Footage of homes burning in one neighborhood, and people trying desperately with buckets and garden hoses trying desperately to save houses that hadn't started burning yet. No fire trucks in sight. Click on this link to view or if you see image below, click on that.
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