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Everything Is Terrible and All of It Hurts
My city’s on fire and something has softened in me.
I drove back from my mom’s place in Arizona on Tuesday, January 7th, the day the fires started. I knew the Pacific Palisades was on fire, but it was far enough from my condo in Tarzana, a suburb of LA in the San Fernando Valley, that I felt safe to return home.
About 90 miles out, strong winds were whipping tumbleweeds and trash across the highway. I could feel them trying to push my car into the next lane. I couldn’t avoid hitting large pieces of random debris and I worried for my car. But I kept driving.
On 210 W, just south of Sierra Madre, I saw the beginnings of the Eaton Fire, a thin ribbon of flames searing down the mountainside ahead. It looked like a crack in the earth, and the earth was angry. I thought, Wait, what? I’m nowhere near the Palisades. I checked the map. No sign of this random fire. What the hell? Another one?
After spending close to half an hour in gridlock traffic, the winds shaking the cars so violently I thought it might be an earthquake, I saw the remains of a grisly car accident. Two totaled cars, one flipped on its head. A man crying on the shoulder while an emergency responder stood close by.