Apocalypse Weather

We’re fine. We’re safe.

That’s what I’ve been telling people for a week now. Family, friends, colleagues, people who like my books and are just concerned. They’ve all seen the news and the Facebook posts and the Instagram videos.

We were never less than five miles from the Palisades fire, which was the closest to us. The evacuation warnings never included our neighborhood, despite a few false alarms. I kept making the same joke: “If the fires cross that much concrete to get to us, then the whole city is in trouble.”

We still packed a go-bag with our vital documents, our wedding album, and a box of baby pictures that I still haven’t gotten around to scanning and uploading to the cloud. The first night, when the Santa Anas reached 100 mph in some places, our house shook harder than it did in the last earthquake. When the wind shifted, flakes of ash fell on our house like snow. I’ve spent most of the week on my phone, shifting between three fire-monitoring apps and then social-media accounts to see which of my friends had been forced to flee.

We were lucky. My family is not among the tens of thousands who lost their homes or had to abandon them with a few minutes warning. The number of people displaced by the fires is larger than the population of the city where I grew up. My kids have at least a dozen classmates apiece whose homes are ashes and memories now.

And this is a tragedy that’s being repeated thousands and thousands of times for people all over LA. It’s easy to forget sometimes that this city has within its borders more people than the population of most U.S. states. There is so much that has been lost.

I admit, I thought it would be more romantic to live inside a Joan Didion essay. 

Los Angeles is a city made of stories. We manufacture them here, and we inhabit the ones told by the people who came here before us. LA exists because of the narratives constructed around it by everyone from Harrison Gray Otis to the latest influencers. People still come here looking for the golden life.

That’s why I moved here. But paradise has always been built on the edge of a cliff.

In Stephen Markley’s massive novel The Deluge, there is a sequence where all of Los Angeles, dried out by global warming and drought, burns to the ground in a citywide firestorm. It was science fiction until last week. But then the evacuation warnings reached the flats of Santa Monica, something that has literally never happened before.

In my time in LA, I have seen wildfires, earthquakes, floods, landslides, riots, a pandemic, and an actual hurricane.

Reading that list, there are people who would say that it’s probably time for me to move. That’s not a new idea.

But no place is really safe.

In the past few years, I have made the same calls and emails myself to friends and family in Idaho, Hawaii, Colorado, Oregon, Iowa, and Florida as they’ve faced down their own apocalypses.

Everyplace else is becoming more like California, or maybe it always was.

As much as we’d like to believe that nothing bad will ever happen to any of us, there are no guarantees. I know it is comforting to have the go-bag, the emergency supplies, the home insurance, and all the other Doomsday Prep gear.

You can even try to escape by picking an entirely new place to live, and it won’t work. North Carolina was considered a climate refuge before Hurricane Helene. I thought Seattle was going to be our safety zone, and then I learned about the giant faultline waiting to swallow the entire coast.

As hard as this might be to hear: nobody is really special. Nobody is ever prepared enough, or smart enough, to escape when the worst comes down.

That’s why I am so grateful for all the people who have reached out to us to offer a place to stay, or assistance, or just a kind word. People from all over LA are cramming donation centers with everything they can offer. People from all over the world are donating to charities and foundations and GoFundMes to help people rebuild.

That’s the only way we survive any of the disasters coming at us every day. We help each other. Because despite all our divisions, all we have is each other.

That’s the lesson, every time the world burns. I hope we learn it again.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

I know there are a lot of demands for your money, your attention, and your time. But if you’re looking for some places where you can contribute, and you have the means, here’s a list of reputable charities.

• WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN has been feeding firefighters and evacuees since the blazes started.

• LOS ANGELES FIRE DEPARTMENT FOUNDATION. This is a way to to show support and appreciation for the men and women who have been working around the clock to fight the fires.

• LOS ANGELES FOOD BANK. Losing your house, or being forced away from it, means you’re also cut off from your kitchen and your meals. A lot of people are hungry right now. The food bank is there to help.

• THE CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION. A century-old foundation dedicated to helping Californians. This link is to donate to their wildfire recovery fund.

• DIRECT RELIEF INTERNATIONAL. Does what it says. Provides direct relief to people in need in the wake of the fire, especially people in poverty.

• 211LA. A helpline dedicated to giving individuals the information they need to get assistance and relief.

All of these are rated four stars by Charity Navigator. All of them are places I’ve donated myself. I don’t want to steer you wrong.

I hope you are all safe and well. Thank you again for your kind words and your concern.

And as always, thank you for reading.