Ash Falling on January

A week into the new year, the Santa Anas arrived with their hot strangeness and took January away from LA forever. Around 10 am the next morning, I looked out the window in our living room and saw the Palisades Fire plume creep out from behind the hill to the west of my apartment building. I saw the smoke expand into the sky and cover everything beneath it; a curtain pulled up by the wind, by God, or some other uncaring thing.

The rust-sunlight blared through the chalk-clouds below as people left their cars in the street in droves, some holding their dogs or cats or children, moving away. A careful, intentional gait—somewhere between jogging and a power-walk—maintaining distance between themselves and the avalanche of fire pouring down from the mountains into the streets to eat the houses and the trees and everything else. Reporters in masks hurried alongside them, sticking microphones in their faces to ask them where they were doing. Some ignored. Some tried to answer but couldn’t and kept going. One woman, with her husband and their muzzled dog, did reply.

“To the ocean,” she said flatly and sort of shrugged before walking off.

It felt primal. When there is heat, go to the water.

Bulldozers parted the abandoned cars to make way for firetrucks. I watched the smoke rom our deck until it got dark, and I could see the flames lapping up over the western hills, and behind the Sunset Strip. Flames along the mountain ridge, spiking in the scalding gusts.

“It’s the sunset,” my husband said, unconvinced the flames could be visible from Hollywood.

Then he looked out through binoculars and saw them. The winds got worse and we went inside and heard about the fire in Altadena, how fast it had spread in only an hour. We saw elderly people from a retirement home wheeled into a 7-Eleven parking lot on their beds by their nurses while their hair blew in the horror winds, the embers blowing down the mountainside into downtown Altadena. We went to sleep—our dog between us. We listened to the windows rattle and and that dreadful whistle down the empty hallway outside our door.

When we woke up we saw the fires had grown in the night; the west and east. We went into the Valley to check on my husband’s studio and climbed up on the roof with our panting dog and saw the firestorms meet to form a smoke ring around the city, along the ridge divide. It was dusk at 8 am.

We went home and stayed inside and watched the news and downloaded the WatchDuty app and waited for alerts and checked Instagram and saw the posts begin to trickle in— first scattered and then ceaseless. Friends and friends of friends who’d lost their homes or had to flee. Flickering stars across the city until Los Angeles became a constellation of pain. We saw photos of the Palisades. Neighborhood after neighborhood gutted and leveled. Abandoned cars, burnt and hollowed out, still littered the streets where they were left. They were ancient now. It had been a century since the previous day. Then it was dusk again — actual dusk — and my husband shouted for me while I was in the bathroom. I ran out to see him standing on our balcony, his jaw dropped.

“There’s a fire,” he said, and he pointed to the hill behind our building.

A fresh, roaring plume had sprouted up from the brush. Runyon Canyon had lit up red. And for a second we stood and took photos in silence — our dog watching from inside with his head cocked— and then the texts started. Friends who’d gotten alerts, asking if we were OK. Telling us to leave.

“It has a name already!” my best friend texted. “The Sunset Fire!”

We’d repurposed our earthquake bag with fresh stock the night before, and my husband immediately grabbed it.

“We’re leaving,” he said.

“Let’s just wait a second,” I said.

A part of me didn’t want to leave because then it would be real. I wanted to watch it and pretend it was far enough away, like the plume to the west. Then I heard the sirens and saw the helicopters and looked down at my dog — his tail wagging and mouth open in a desperate smile —and I looked at my husband, afraid for the first time since I’ve known him. I knew it was time to go. I grabbed my Lexapro, my Propecia and Buspar and wet wipes for our dog and a single, giant bottle of contact solution even though I don’t wear contacts anymore because I got LASIK. I followed my husband into the elevator and when it opened on the first floor, a tall gay who lives a few floors above us, whose name I don’t know and who I’ve never actually had a conversation with but have seen on Grindr and always see coming back from the gym, was standing there. He clocked our bags and sighed.

“So, you guys are just, like, leaving town?” He asked, annoyed.

We said nothing and then the doors closed. In the parking garage below our building, we saw neighbors in their cars, speeding around the corners. Before we even left the garage, still beneath the earth, the emergency alert suddenly blared on our phones. “Evacuation Order. Level 3. GO.” I wanted to find the faggot from the elevator and scream, “Yeah! We’re leaving!” at him but then I considered that I may never see him, or the ciggy lady who lives with her weird adult son who always reminds me that whenever she sees me I’m staring at my phone, or my apartment, again —the first apartment I ever lived with a boyfriend in, the boyfriend who became my husband; where our dog came to live with us and where I rotted through a pandemic in and tried quitting smoking and got addicted to eating frozen grapes instead and gained 40 pounds. That’s it, I thought.

I pictured our building collapsing into flames and the fire spreading out into Hollywood and devouring the rest of the city. I had my man, though. And my dog. And my Propecia. I would live.

On Hollywood Blvd, the traffic was already bumper to bumper, we lurched forward as more and more people holding duffle bags and backpacks, ran down into the street or into their cars, and joined the exodus. Looky-loos jammed the side streets, wanting to catch a glimpse of the burning canyon. I held my dog in my lap and rolled the window down and felt the heat from the fire, two blocks away.

We saw a car driving down the wrong side of the road to beat the caravan heading onto the 101. We drove to the Valley again, where my parents-in-laws had fled down from Laurel Canyon, and we sat with them and my brother-in-law in a restaurant in Studio City, on Ventura— people calmly ate, seemingly pretending that a Hellmouth hadn’t opened up just over the hill. We watched livestreams of the LAFD, now in helicopters since the winds had died down, crushing the Sunset Fire with water drops. Each drop, thrilling and erotic. I suddenly understood football. I swelled with pride for this city that I often despise and felt the urge to run through the restaurant with my teeth gritted, tearing my shirt off and falling to my knees while screaming. Instead I went to the restroom where it took me over a minute to piss and I felt old and certain that everyone in Los Angeles County was going to suffocate in our sleep from the smoke.

We left dinner and made our way back over the hill. The Cahuenga Pass was closed. So were parts of Mulholland. We made our way up Laurel Canyon but realized the other half of the hill was blocked off by police. So, we went West, towards the horror-inferno currently razing Malibu. We cut through Wonderland and my husband —a born Angeleno and molecularly confident at navigating the city—suddenly panicked that we were heading to an evacuation zone, right as another alert blasted our phones. I pictured us burning to death in our Volvo, trapped in a wave of Runyon fire that had somehow leapt across the West Hollywood hills. We wordlessly made our way back up to Mulholland, and back down into the Valley, finding our way back into Hollywood.

The Sunset Fire dimmed, but our apartment building was closed, so we checked into a hotel in West Hollywood—too tired to flee south or to the desert where so many friends had gone. The hotel filled up in minutes, mostly from people who’d fled the Palisades and Mali. I talked to a couple in their 60s from the west side who had been there since Tuesday and didn’t know if their house was still there and were packing up to checkout so they could try and see if they could get into their neighborhood and then saw the Sunset Fire had started and checked back in.

I watched our dog shit on the astroturf outside and I realized I’d forgotten poop bags and asked a gay couple nearby if they had them and they said “We forgot them.” Everyone forgot their shit bags. The air was burnt and horrible but still as I'd ever felt the air in LA be; tiny bits of ash fell and my dog whimpered at the shadows. Upstairs we showered and scrolled and saw a new fire had broken out where we had been earlier, in Studio City. A house had caught fire. Neighbors stood outside with KCAL, their faces lit up by the glow. There were theories of downed power lines and arson—a coordinated effort to terrorize and spread destruction, or simply firebugs taking advantage of the wind. A petition demanding the mayor to resign started popping up. So did GoFundMes. We went to sleep hearing sirens in the distance.

The next morning, the Sunset Fire was almost completely contained, and we were allowed back in our building. We decided we would stay. Maybe we were Stockholmed. I felt more connected to LA than I ever have. The bar is low. But right now it was my forever city. We watched local news and season three of Sex and the City. We got more evacuation alerts, accidentally sent to everyone across LA county, three times over the next 24 hours. Constant fretting, constant paralysis. Someone who I don’t know informed me I spread misinformation when I shared a widely circulated post on Instagram about the mayor cutting funding for the LAFD. I took the post down. I admitted that I hadn’t read up on it and should have researched before sharing it. I asked her if she lived in LA and she said she lived in Boston.

That night the Palisades Fire shifted east, heading towards the 405 like high tide. Mandeville Canyon was evacuated, then the rest of Brentwood and Encino. The Valley wasn’t safe. If it jumped the 405, it would be everywhere. It would come towards us. We could see the orange glow behind the hill again. We had become haunted lighthouse keepers, staring out at the horizon for ships in danger.

In the morning the news was better. The fire department had doused the advancing flames into submission. No forward movement. We watched the wet pockets of smoldering earth fizzle into the night; the retardant gleaming red in magic hour on the hillsides. The next 48 hours were videos of goat herds evacuating in the darkness with fire in the distance, confused mountain lions with their cubs. Dogs reuniting with sobbing owners and water and canned food drop-offs. I considered including a pack of cigarettes. Surely someone would need a smoke. They didn’t make the cut.

There’s blaming of billionaires and lesbian fire chiefs and empty reservoirs. There’s decency and giving. There are dozens dead and dozens missing. Cadaver dogs combing through charred ruins. Celebrities losing their homes. Celebrities getting yelled at for sharing GoFundMes. There is scamming and rent gouging and people dressed like firefighters robbing from still-evacuated homes in the Palisades — the homes that are still standing. There are dumpster fires in parking lots and people setting off fireworks. Last night we heard them—someone had shot them into the hillside a block from us. We went out on our balcony and waited for the smell of smoke or plume that never came. Our neighbor above us asked if we had heard the fireworks, too. Yes, we said. And then I apologized to her, realizing this was the second time in four days that she’d seen me standing on my balcony in my underwear.

We’re on high alert again as new Santa Anas are sweeping through the county; a brush fire broke out in Ventura last night. More Santa Anas are possible next week. Masks are suggested as air quality alerts continue. 9/11 air.

I cried last night for the first time since this all started. I cried for my friends who’ve lost their homes, or haven’t been able to go back to them. I cried for people I don’t know and the firefighters and the tourists still coming to our city to take photos on the Walk of Fame. I cried for the dead. I cried for the time before the fires. I cried for my husband and our dog. I cried for myself.

I’m depressed. I’m grateful. I feel like I’m having a drug comedown. My addict brain latched onto existing in intensity for days on end. There were times, although fleeting, that the calamity felt as natural as it did uncanny. Today I dropped laundry off at the laundromat. I bought a candle. I saw George Clooney and Rande Gerber on a Casamingos truck and a girl getting headshots taken against the blinding white wall of the hipster church next to my building. The sky was blue and gold and clear today. I’ve decided it’s the clearest sky I’ve ever seen in my life. I will give myself that lie as a gift. I will never read Joan Didion again.