Pacific Palisades

Last night, we learned of the Pacific Palisades fire not long after the residents of Pacific Palisades itself.  That is the nature of today’s instant communication. world wide.  As I write, the city sounds as if it has essentially been destroyed.  At moments like this, one feels helpless, whether on the scene or far away.

Yes, fires are common, and floods, and on and on.  We tend to treat them as routine.  They are not.

The first thing I did last night was to fix, for myself, where Pacific Palisades was.  I knew it was part of Los Angeles metro, which is immense. Here is the Los Angeles Times reports which I presume will be updated often.  Thanks to on-line maps, here is the city and environs.

I actually know very few people in California, our nations most populous state with near 40 million people.  It is easy to say, “not my problem”.

We are all part of a greater community which is the entire planet.  Not only are we part, but we are all interconnected to an extent one could have not imagined even 50 years ago.

Today, it is a massive fire in Pacific Palisades, California.  A short while ago it was another massive fire in Lahaina, Hawaii; catastrophic hurricane damage in the east, especially North Carolina; last year Canada, on and on and on, everywhere.  We are not alone.  We are among 340,000,000 Americans and 8.2 billion on planet earth.  This is where community expands from individual, to town, to state, to nation, to world.  We’re all in this together wherever we live and we need the infrastructure locally available to help our neighbors in need, wherever they happen to be.  After all, we could be next.

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Important note:

Beginning tomorrow morning, and especially for the rest of the month of January, I will have frequent and generally brief posts relating to current events.  First will be on the occasion of President Carter’s service Thursday morning.  I will not be doing the usual notification to the mailing list.  The daily posts for each month are accessible here.  For posts by month go to the archive space at the right on this page.  Jan 3 & 6 are previous posts in January, 2025.

COMMENTS (more at end)

from Ed:  The Eaton Canyon fire in Altadena CA is burning out of control in our old neighborhood. We lived in Altadena from 1972 to 2002 until we moved to MN when I was hired as the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Metro State. All our old CA neighbors have been evacuated and one of the schools has burnt to the ground. This is an unusual time for the fire season, which usually occurs in October and November.

We are lucky in MN, just cold weather and some snow.

from Brian:  Good points!  I grew up in the Houston/Galveston area, and we had our hurricanes!   I’d watch trees blow over.


from Michael: Yes just unbelievable and surreal. All The local TV stations, all Last night of them, have coverage of what’s happening as of course I see on Fox News. They cover it quite a bit, so I’m sure some readers are seeing some of the craziness on TV nationally.

For perspective to anyone who might read this, I live in Redlands California, which is I imagine about 35 miles from downtown LA on the 10 freeway. I do have a daughter who lives in Los Angeles off of Sunset Boulevard. I was speaking to her last night and they were packing things to evacuate, but felt That it probably wouldn’t happen. We both were wondering how much the winds were going to kick up as they were predicting last night, they were supposed to get stronger at 10 o’clock at night and of course they did so we knew it would get worse but I felt and still do kind of feel that they’re going to be OK as they are just a little bit away from Pacific Palisades.
Anyways, I am certainly safe and OK as I am 30 miles from all that but the winds here in Redlands are pretty strong. They were 60 miles an hour just west of us last night and today I have a few trees that were in barrels if you can imagine that actually blew over so I could very well understand if a fire started anywhere, how dangrrous these winds really can be that they could spread a fire in an instant
I haven’t heard from my daughter this morning, but I am assuming that she is OK.
Whole neighborhoods burning to the ground certainly hard to watch. My goodness!! So very sad.
And you are going to hear about the lack of homeowners insurance here as it has gotten so expensive and many companies wouldn’t even give you a policy—much like auto here—-so people forced to get some kind of state insurance which is very limited in coverage. I keep thinking now about after the fires are out. This is just going to be a devastating cost, and because of those insurance concerns some of these people are not going to be able to rebuild.
Anyway, will hope for the best, thank you for your concern. Hello to the group

from Dick, Friday morning Jan. 10:  Today at my usual coffee, the ‘church guys’ were conversing at the next table.  I wasn’t eaves-dropping, but the course of conversation in general terms seemed to be talking about dilemmas of things like insurance coverage, a perfectly reasonable item of conversation.

As usual, I left early for my daily walk around the indoor soccer field.  A are-haired lady came in about the same time as I did, and we shared the usual good-morning.  We don’t know each other.

Very briefly, as she began to walk, she said “I just moved here from LA, and I have friends who lost everything”.  It was totally unexpected, and impossible to address as she was walking away at a faster pace than I.  I could identify her by her coat collar – it was chilly inside as usual – so I thought I’d see her a round or two later.  I stopped and fished out a piece of scrap paper and wrote a note to give her when she passed me by.  Here it is:
I never did see her. which only means she may have been there for only a single round or two.  And of course, I don’t know her.  Such is how life is.  We all make assumptions about our unknown neighbor.  The chance encounter was a learning opportunity.  The note goes into my wallet in the off-chance that I’ll see her again, and sort of recognize her….