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.
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.
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 am struck today not only by the CA fire(s), ignited cinder by flying cinder in fierce winds, but by President’s Carter’s legacy, including the positive initiation of FEMA, and, contrarily, the mess we are in as a planet and nation. To make matters worse, I watched a Reuter’s video of MT Greene, US representative from Georgia, defame a testifier in a house committee and get away with it on a party-line vote. My biggest hope/prayer: that the fires of goodness (what is righteous–not politically but morally/ethically) spread with positive cinders from each of us and become a passionate, peaceful, successful force of change in our country and world. I hope others are joining me in that hope/prayer. Patsy
Keep the info coming.
I’m a resident of California – but in the fully irrigated agricultural flat Central Valley area. Wildfires happen – it is going to be either sooner or later that that nice wooded hike that you take or the brush-land/chaparral hill ides that you overlook is going to be susceptible to fire. Just takes a spark – with 50 mile an hour winds I don’t care how much water you have or airplanes you have or firefighters you have – your house is gone. It’s a fact of life of California. Sometimes the area affected is populated, sometimes that area has celebrities and is celebrated in the song in movies, or sometimes that area is just a complete, isolated, wooded wilderness – fire doesn’t care.
Extremely tragic for so many people to live through but luckily almost all have survived. Yes, we all might or have lived through such disasters, and one can only pray that we as a people support our fellow neighbors. President Biden will of course help all fellow Americans. Let’s hope the next president will too; however, he does not have a good track record for disasters – especially in CA. His solution for Ca wildfires was to rake the forests and water them. Good grief.
Thanks for sharing Dick. Yes, we are all in this together. Look outside today, dreary, cloudy & yet thinking of all those folks with no homes, a few loved ones passed, furry friends out there, etc.etc. We lived in San Clemente, CA 1993-1996 during earthquakes & fires. Steve commuted to & from the 3M plants along these cities. Luckily in our area the Santa Ana Winds fires that occurred were always put out before extreme damage. The Winds, the heat, ambers falling from the skies for weeks was sureal. Can’t imagine these folks going through all this. Let’s all send positive thoughts & prayers to all those affected & help in any way we can.