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There’s Plenty of Blame To Go Around
But how hopeful it would be if finger-pointing weren’t the initial reaction to tragedy
I live in southern France, thousands of miles from the fires that are ravaging Southern California, but for the past two days, I’ve awakened to news coverage and vivid photography of the wildfires laying waste to large swathes of the Los Angeles area.
Parts of Pasadena, where I once worked for almost a decade have burned, thousands of residents have been evacuated, the condominium I once called home is in the Eaton Canyon evacuation area. This morning, I called friends in Los Angeles, they’re devasted, of course, but, I was relieved to learn, so far okay.
The lives of people in moneyed areas with multi-million dollar homes have been upended and so have the lives of people with condominiums like the one I once owned.
Home after home is gone. Old apartment buildings, mansions, cottages, generational homes. Gone. Community centers. Parks. Gas stations. Coffee shops. Banks. Grocery stores. They’re all gone. Washington Post
“It rocks your world,” the owner of a bakery in Topanga, told the Los Angeles Times: “What they’re showing on the news is really real — they’re not sensationalising any of this. It’s what I saw with my own eyes.”
