A few days ago, before the blaze began, the National Weather Service in Los Angeles warned us to “be prepared for strong winds and fire danger.” In preparation, LA Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley has pre-deployed firepersons and emergency vehicles across the city, at the ready by 8 AM; it is the morning of January 7th, the day historic Santa Ana winds are forecasted to blow. About two hours later, with the emergency equipment and personnel in place, a live camera from ALERTCalifornia, the UC San Diego wildfire and disaster monitoring program, spots smoke. This, they say, is the first sight of the “Palisades Fire” (what became possibly the most monetarily destructive fire in US history, one of many that broke out across LA County shortly after the New Year). 

LA has hundreds of brushfires every year — the average is 618 per year, according to the LA County Fire Department — and normally these are rapidly extinguished. This proves to be impossible in the Palisades, even with brilliantly prepositioned fire equipment. Newscasters marvel at the overhead shots of flaming stumps. Images from space show the plumes of smoke streaming offshore, guided by sustained gusts over 100 miles per hour. My own first experience of the fires this morning comes when I spot smoke and flames pouring out of the screen atop the pump at my local gas station. Concurrently with every other media source, the gas pump is oinking out danger while urging residents not to panic, causing Los Angeles to seem more of an uncanny and creepy illusion than normal, our city already being the world capital of creepy illusions. This makes many of us edgy with the feeling that something is up. 

At 11:44 AM the first evacuation warnings — voluntary notices to leave — are issued for the Palisades area. My wife and I, like most of LA, like most of our neighbors, still assume this is a standard LA brushfire, and brushfires in LA, even big ones, are common, and, as previously mentioned, are usually rapidly put out. Precautionary evacuations, while not quite so common, are not unheard of. Our phones continue to buzz, but we have yet to hear a single siren.

At noon the situation becomes more unusual when mandatory evacuation orders are issued for the Pacific Palisades. Media coverage first shows long lines of stalled traffic within the blaze, then the abandoned cars of fleeing residents being ’dozed off the Pacific Coast Highway by earthmoving equipment — clearing the way for the prepositioned firefighting equipment to respond. Malibu is completely shrouded by pillars of smoke, some of which are from David Geffen’s former beach house, one of a string of celebrity homes along Malibu’s beachfront that are quickly reduced to embers. California Governor Gavin Newsom issues an emergency tweet: “I’ve proclaimed a state of emergency to support the communities impacted by the #PalisadesFire.”

At 6:18 PM, the “Eaton Fire” breaks out in Altadena, not far from Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Strangely, like the Palisades Fire, the Eaton Fire was later declared to likely be the most destructive fire in LA County history.) At 7:30, Chief Crowley announces all firefighting aircraft are grounded due to high winds. At 10:29, the “Hurst Fire” starts, out by Sylmar. One can only imagine how terrible the destruction might have been, had the city’s Chief Crowley not known to preposition the fire response.

January 8 

At 6:15 AM, the “Woodley Fire” starts in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, (formerly a noted trysting area for neighboring gays), where I usually walk Poppy-the-Dog. By 10:45 AM, Mayor Karen Bass announces that firefighting air operations have resumed, and LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone informs the public that two people have died in the Eaton Fire. The City of Pasadena warns residents not to drink the water “due to damage to water reservoirs, tanks, and pumping stations.” There are still no sirens. With smoke from a half-dozen fires blanketing the city, an “air quality alert” is issued “for parts of LA County.” 

At 2:07 PM, the “Lidia Fire” breaks out in Acton, followed at 5:57 PM by the widely reported “Sunset Fire” in Hollywood Hills, which prompts mandatory evacuations, despite being an ultimately wimpy fire. Some positive news comes at 8:07 PM, with media reporting that the Woodley Fire had been “fully contained” — much as if it were a traditional LA brushfire. That evening, Governor Gavin Newsom tells us more than 7,500 firefighting personnel are “on the ground to respond to California’s historic wildfires.” He later calls for “on the ground” investigations into dry fire hydrants and empty reservoirs.

January 9

At 3:34 PM, the “Kenneth Fire” breaks out in West Hills, prompting more evacuations. Governor Newsom approves a request for National Guard troops from LA County to patrol burned out and evacuated areas for looters and arsonists. The Palisades Fire has already burned 17,000 acres and the Eaton Fire over 10,000 acres — both remaining at zero percent containment.

Then, at 4 PM, the entire city of Los Angeles is ordered to prepare to evacuate immediately. The news is delivered to every cell phone in the county via the Emergency Alert System: either the WEA (Wireless Emergency Alerts) or the IPAWS (Integrated Public Alert and Warning System). I am at the keyboard, in my office, typing, when I receive the blinking, buzzing emergency notification, this one alerting me to PREPARE FOR IMMEDIATE MANDATORY EVACUATION. I continue my typing.

Not that I doubt the legitimacy of the message, necessarily, but one is deeply skeptical of all mediated information. I know it is “real” in terms of Los Angeles values of “real,” but I am hardly alarmed since the fires have been heavily foreshadowed by the media. To me, they seem to be, in some unclear fashion, connected to a concrete social and economic objective. These are salad days for both cynics and utopian dreamers. 

A few minutes after the first alert, while still considering whether to let my wife know about the warning, she appears in my office doorway having received her own alarm. “Why aren’t you packing?” 

I don’t really have a good reason. Fortunately, before I can respond, a second alert begins to buzz, this one apologizing for the first, explaining that evacuation orders affect only a few areas, not the whole city. Not yet. 

The second warning is too late for my wife; she has already loaded her car. Having been warned, and having taken that warning seriously, she is not to be easily unwarned. (LA County later acknowledges the false-alert incident as “a serious breach of public trust” — a presumed rebuke to the office of LA Mayor Karen Bass, where the alert supposedly originated.) At any rate, the State Office of Emergency Services says they’ll take over all further public alerts. 

It now seems to me that the media and “the authorities” are doing all they can to encourage panic. I say nothing of this to my wife, so as not to encourage panic. My wife, like any normal person, is more likely to believe that I’m insane than that we’re all caught in a fiery California real-estate redevelopment scheme. 

Socks, underwear… I pack a few things, close my suitcase, and announce I am ready. My wife has by now downloaded the Watch Duty app, available to anyone whose city is burning down from both Google Play and the Apple Store. 

Radio talk-show hosts, the Nextdoor neighborhood website, Facebook, and other social-media platforms spread the Watch Duty word, and most of us get the fire-tracking software. We can all see and smell the smoke. Now, with the app, we can tell where that smoke might be coming from. 

By nightfall, a 6 PM to 6 AM curfew is imposed, to discourage looters, the media says, from rampaging through evacuation zones. Rumors abound. Media reports have different numbers of arsonists arrested, sometimes said to be homeless, or gangsters, or in possession of demonic powers. Some people said there were US Special Forces in the areas proximate to the burning, authorized to spot looters through night-vision goggles or forward-looking infrared cameras, and to blast looters dead.

My wife is trying to decide which baby pictures and childhood memorabilia to take. Her large car already being fully stuffed with previous choices, late additions will have to ride on the passenger seat. I am to evacuate separately, if at all, being responsible for Poppy-the-Dog and whatever else I want to save from the impending inferno in my smaller car. Our next-door neighbors, Earl the lawyer and his wife, have already loaded up and bugged out. We eventually lay down and I fall asleep; my wife, however, unable to sleep, wakes me to say, “I can’t stand it. I’m going to James’s house.” (Our son, James, lives five minutes away.) 

“You know, when it’s time to go, fire marshals and cops drive through the neighborhood screaming, ‘GTFO! Mandatory Evacuation!’ through a bullhorn, right?” I vainly suggest. “We can always leave then.” 

“You probably wouldn’t,” retorts my wife, who then takes our other two dogs (Coal Blossom and Pugger) and our two parrots (Lola and Oiseaux, RIP), their respective requisites, and the carload of childhood souvenirs to our son’s place. Poppy-the-Dog and I elect to stay home, and plan to remain here, at least until we see flames, which we don’t anticipate seeing. So, we soon fall back to sleep. 

Ten minutes later, my wife returns: “I was driving down Beverly Glen and I called James to let him know I was on the way and he said ‘Don’t come.’” I don’t know what James said, exactly, only that whatever it was it had a deeply calming effect, helping my wife to sleep. There are still no sirens. 

January 10

By morning, the Palisades Fire had already consumed 20,000 acres with only six percent containment; the Eaton Fire “nearly 14,000 acres with zero percent containment.” At 11:24 AM, the “Archer Fire” starts in Granada Hills, prompting more evacuations. About 1 PM, my friend “Basil” calls. Basil’s pseudonym derives from an Evelyn Waugh character, Basil Seal. Basil had been standing watch at his largely evacuated West Hills community. After chasing three or four groups of suspicious characters off the property, Basil encountered four men who wouldn’t leave, he said, and who made gestures of obscene defiance from a white Econoline van full of somebody else’s furniture. Basil fired a warning shot over their heads, he said, and they fled the scene.

Later, during a chance encounter with Sheriff’s deputies at a West Hills gas station, Basil recounted his brush up with the suspected looters, omitting the warning shot. A Sheriff asked if Basil had a gun and when he said yes, the Sheriff asked to see it. After carefully inspecting the piece, the Sheriff handed it back to him and, according to Basil, warned him not to hunt looters but, should they come on his premises, if he was the type that could handle it, he should “fucking blast them.” Basil assured them he was the type who could handle it, even though the “warning shot” was the first he had ever fired, other than a test shot to “be sure the gun worked” some years ago. 

That evening, Basil (and I hear this later) stands lonely watch over his condo, the fires still raging around him, when his phone rings. It’s a wealthy couple of Basil’s acquaintance, currently out of town and worried about their cat: Would Basil be a sweetie and do them a big favor and visit their 30-million dollar hillside estate and check on the cat? No problem, Basil replies, noting the necessary gate codes and the location of the keys. “They told me,” Basil recounts with definite resentment, “I was welcome to evacuate there with my family. I’m divorced, as you know, and my boys were out of town, so I gathered up a few people from around here (the condos) with nowhere to go and we went over.”

Apparently, Basil’s “few people” were “Hollywood Entertainers” (i.e., hookers) and they were “enjoying a swim and maybe dancing, but look, I didn’t invite myself,” said Basil. When the owners called, having witnessed all of this over their security cam network: “They kinda lost it on me. When I told them that the cat ran away, they became verbally abusive.” Booted from the fireproof hillside estate, now a double evacuee, Basil returned to his gated condo community and resumed his lonely watch. 

January 11

The Palisades Fire reaches 21,000 acres, with 11 percent containment; the Eaton Fire remains at 14,000 acres and a mere 15 percent containment. How do they calculate these precise percentages? I do not know, nor why there are still no sirens. On the news, Governor Newsom announces that a task force, led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, composed of “local state and federal partners designed [sic] to investigate the cause of these fires and see if there is any connection between them.” Newsome then doubles the National Guard complement. 

January 12

At 7:40 AM, the Lidia Fire, north of LA, in Acton, is 100 percent contained, and by 8:41 AM the Archer Fire, in Granada Hills, is fully contained as well. We don’t say a fire is “put out” anymore. “Contained” has more of a “don’t argue with me, I’m a spokesperson” vibe. There have now been, according to the LA County Medical Examiner, at least 24 deaths in the fires: 8 in the Palisades fire and 16 in the Eaton Fire. At 7:48 AM, the Kenneth Fire, which menaced Basil in West Hills, is 100 percent contained. LA Mayor Karen Bass, a veteran pol who led the Venceremos brigades cutting cane in Cuba back in the SDS days, tells us that the California Wildfire Recovery Fund collected six million dollars from 13,000 people “across the country and around the globe donating to the fund.” Can you dig it?

January 13

“More than 15,000 firefighting personnel have been deployed ahead of the latest fire threat,” says Governor Newsom, before warning of more “Hurricane-force winds” to come. No question the fires are a disaster, a gubernatorially declared disaster, which unleashes federal funds to pay for 100 percent of the disaster relief for the first six months of recovery. There are still no sirens. Steve Soboroff, a local real-estate developer, is picked to be head of reconstruction planning. 

By now, rumors about what that redevelopment might be have taken on a conspiratorial tenor; the Palisades — where, by media account, some 5,300 structures have so far burned — will be home to the bizarre post-singularity dream of a psychopathic realtor, or so the rumors go. Sustainable electric spaceports, Soviet-style “15-minute cities,” and pods for aliens are often mentioned.

January 14

At 6:27 PM, the Hurst Fire is 97 percent contained after 800 acres burned. At 9:25 PM, the “Auto Fire” breaks out in Ventura, “prompting evacuations.” More fire deaths are reported from the Palisades and Eaton Fires, bringing total fatalities to 25.

January 15 

Despite the National Weather Service “red flag” wind warning in effect this afternoon, the promised hurricane-force winds fail to materialize.

January 16 

Some evacuees are allowed back into their homes as the fires continue to burn. 

January 31

The Palisades Fire is 100 percent contained, or put out, after burning 23,707 acres and 6,837 structures. Much of coastal Malibu has burned, along with most of the Pacific Palisades. Twelve people died in the flames. The Eaton Fire also reached 100 percent containment, having burned 14,021 acres and 9,418 structures. The town of Altadena burned nearly in its entirety. Seventeen people died in the flames.

Altogether these were strange fires, even if you consider all fires strange, as I do. After containment, the majority of corporate media moved on to the mysterious DC plane crash and Taylor Swift being booed at the Superbowl, meaning much of the remaining coverage was left to corporate media outliers, meaning websites hopping with viruses, trackers, and clickbait stories about Michelle Obama being a man. On more than one of these sites, Robert Brame, “forensic arborist,” is featured. Brame cites “evidence” (photographs of the burned areas of both the LA fires and Northern California’s Paradise Fire) to support his opinion that the fires were deliberately set by “directed-energy weapons” — an advanced “beam weapon” technology scoffed at by many, at least until the US Navy published a picture of one they were testing in January (name: HELIOS, or High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance).

Brame cites oak trees burned from the inside outward, as well as plastic children’s toys and garden hoses left untouched beside the ashes of burned homes. He also points to several pools of coagulated molten metals that should not melt at forest-fire temperatures. 

Photographs of burned trees and slag puddles aren’t really evidence in a legal sense, but they appear to show some of the things cited by Brame. Still, his theories would seem far-fetched, had past atrocities not been perpetrated by Los Angeles developers and public officials before, like in Chavez Ravine — a community bull-dozed in the dead of night, with residents beaten and arrested to clear the land for the construction of Dodger Stadium. Many people know about the California water wars in Owens Valley, as masterfully depicted by the late Robert Towne in the film Chinatown. 

People in the neighborhood don’t talk much about the fires anymore, not because of the “Forget it, Jake. It’s California” aspect, but because of something much larger. Whether we believe Robert Brame and others like him or not, most of us sense there’s something uncanny at work that we are unable to name. Not just here in LA, and not just with the fires, but throughout the entire infrastructure of our civilization.