LA Fires... Listening to KTLA.... Watching Palisades, Malibu Burning. Fires Spread Across LA County

All the weather people are up at 4 AM. Because we know that until the winds die down there can be no handle on the fires. And, what we don't know is how many people may have died from this truly apocalyptic tragedy that bookends the floods in the mountains of Western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene. People in Miami would ask me how I could live in LA with earthquakes and I'd say big ones happen less often than hurricanes and every where you go there's something that can rip up your world. But, in truth we worried when we heard there would be Santa Ana Wind conditions knowing fire could erupt, flare up and explode as chaparrel explodes and flings fires far away to a new location that explodes and it goes on and on until the winds die down.

Checked on my local snow forecast.

Then I checked on the fires.

LA is burning, one fire at a time.

I woke up at 3 AM checked my phone and well you know the way that goes. So I sit here listening to KTLA Live trying to follow or just keep up with the fires burning in the LA Basin and it's associated canyons and basically anywhere a spark from one fire has landed onto another starting a new fire.  I spent years of my life getting my news from KTLA and it's my go to sources for LA news especially when there's breaking news.

It's complicated. Fires have jumped Topanga Canyon and are moving into Malibu as well as further North up into the hills, all of the hills it seems. There are fires in the Valley and far to the East just North of Pasadena. A single burning ember can travel way more than a mile in wild, whipped up winds near hurricane force and immediately land on dry chapparel starting a new fire. It's hard to comprehend as it's not your regular forest fire. 

You can't really understand how bad this is unless you know and if you know you know.

1) If you have lived there you know.

2) You need to understand topography.

3) You need to understand the geography.

4) You need to understand botany and how chaparrel explodes in a fire and gets caught in the wind!

5) You need to understand meteorolog.

The list goes on and on ... as it's very complicated.

Power lines are down and people are unable to get calls out to 911 when they call to report a new fire. Fire dances along power lines, did you know that? Well sometimes and video of that earlier this evening dances in my mind.

This is very much like what happened in Western NC except this was fire and that was flooding. Either way the fires follow the brush and ride the canyons up and down beginning new fires that cannot be put out in winds of over 70  MPH and gusting as high as a 100 MPH if reports are accurate. Homes up in the mountains are beautiful, but a worst case scenario in fires or floods. And, in the case of LA proper there are and will be more fires far from the canyons or the Palisades that sit regally above parts of Santa Monica; an architectual treasure trove of Mid Century Modern homes that teeter at the edge and have or had views of the Pacific Ocean you can't imagine. Hard to fight a fire if you can't go up and drop water onto it as you cannot fly in these winds nor these conditions. Winds are not expected to die down until Wednesday late in the day and by then we may have a realistic damage report as well as how many people may have died while trapped in burning buildings or on the roads trying to escape.

Much tests our souls.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said "in the real dark night of the soul, it is always 3 in the morning" and in this dark night of the soul the fores are raging on and on as fires burn out of control in LA County. I lived in LA and there were so many fires, then again I lived there during a strong El Nino that whipped the fires in the hills that leapt from one town to the next, jumping from rooftop to rooftop as well as raging in the hills near Studio City as my husband and I drove past a new fire that had just begun to engulf the hillside along the Ventura Freeway watching in real time. The air inside the car was hot and the fire crews had not gotten there yet to try and put it out as we drove back into West Hollywood from the Valley where my in-laws lived. Seeing fire like that on a windy, evening in LA is humbling, there isn't much to say or do but pray.

Miami has it's hurricanes and LA has Santa Ana Winds and fires, though you can add in homes falling down the hillside after the fires destroy all the vegetation and occasional earthquakes. People ask me if the Death Card and the Tower Card predict tragedy and bad times and I tell them "only if they show up together in one reading" and once I was turning the cards for a friend and saw both in the spread and thought "darn, that's not good" and that's what I am saying about what's going on in LA in the middle of the night in their time, but a few hours from dawn in my time zone. Throwing cards can be therapeutic more than actually telling the future which no one can do or people would have evacuated last Sunday from the Pacific Palisades. But.......watches and warnings were out and the red flags were flying as this was heavily forecast!

Going back to sleep if I can.

I'll think on the fires tomorrow and I'll be obsessing on my chances of snow in Raleigh. 

Prayers for LA. Not everyone in LA County is a movie star but every person there tonight has a story to tell and a novel that could be written about them and what they are going through as they face the reality of a changed world, charred and changed beyond imagination when they woke up on Monday morning to start their first full week of 2025!

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on X