We're All At Risk.
Fires in LA worry me all the way from NYC.
This is a short post. Last week I had joked with a friend that I really hoped 2025 wouldn’t start off with some sort of political fire, or an actual fire. Cue the news coming out of Los Angeles this week.
Here’s a question I’ve seen online—isn’t Southern California prone to wildfires and used to combating them? Why is this different?
A lot of Southern California is experiencing drought conditions according to data from the U.S. Drought Monitor. Especially dry conditions allows wildfires to spread faster. That is combined with the low humidity and the strong Santa Ana winds that are spreading embers and fanning the flames.
Some of the flames are about 50 percent contained. Meanwhile the fire in the Palisades is only about 11 percent contained, NBC Los Angeles has reported. Some families have lost everything.
Why am I worried from NYC as someone who has only been to Los Angeles once in my life? First because I am a person with empathy and my heart breaks for people who have lost pets, homes, and sentimental items.
I’m also worried because places like Los Angeles are no stranger to issues like fire, drought, and earthquakes. It’s terrifying to see first responders and communities caught off-guard. It has been heartbreaking to see lifelong or longtime city residents grappling with this disaster.
The images and videos of California reminds me of the summer of 2023 (which now feels like a decade ago). I have lived in NYC my entire life, I have never been exposed to wildfire smoke or have seen an orange sunrise or sunset like I did that summer. I had never been exposed to that amount of smoke for several days. I joked with neighbors that the city smelled like a BBQ gone wrong, but for that entire week I was just scared. And that was without the risk of my home burning down and without the risk of having to evacuate.
Los Angeles is thousands of miles away from me. But any extreme event is never far away, irregardless of where we are on this planet.
If you want to help those affected, this link has a lot of great ideas.
No weekly report for this post except to say that I’m working on a quick guide for how to organize important things before a climate-related disaster. Every disaster makes me ask myself (and the people around me) if I would know what to grab at a moment’s notice. I figured the more we have in some articles, the easier it will be for all of us to prepare and to think of next steps.