Heartbreak in Los Angeles

Terry Schwadron
5 min readJan 11, 2025

Terry H. Schwadron

Jan. 11, 2025

As distressing it is to watch the wildfire devastation across Los Angeles, it has been impossible not to remember that LA was our home for two decades of child-rearing and work.

That acknowledgment makes the video of multiple lost neighborhoods and uprooted lives on streets we know yet more heartbreaking, as does the understanding that it will take years to figure out what comes next for families and the city itself.

Like many, we seek out friends from the possible danger zones and check on their safety. We’ve noted that our own neighborhood in West LA has remained just beyond the fire boundaries but could have as easily been caught up in the windblown flames that have left block-after-block, tornado-proportions of emptiness. The place is so big that you can have both devastation and survival of large neighborhoods.

The current news recalls the feelings that came with driving on the 10 Freeway, seeing the entire western ridge aflame. It brought back heart-in-mouth anxiety in the Los Angeles Times newsroom about sending photographers and reporters into the middle of wildfires to document it all. The concept of multiple, huge wildfires in the city itself, boosted by 100 mile-per-hour winds was beyond anyone’s planning.

Still, even as fire seasons and Santa Ana winds returned every year, even as climate change has changed weather patterns and made fire season a year-long danger, we always thought the epochal event in Southern California would be the unpredicted earthquake that would trigger fissures all along the multiple faults that cut through the city.

Amid the shared shock, no one has been able even to really assess the damages to individual homes, businesses, schools, churches, synagogues libraries, stores and elements that make up community. For once, fire has been a devilish unifier in a city always torn by race and class.

Draw the Lens Back

At some point when the winds abate for firefighting to quash all the flames, the images of damage and emotion will be pushed aside for serious, practical plans about what to do about rebuilding, about fire prevention, about support for home- and business-owners and even the insurance industry that will be overwhelmed by claims of astronomical proportion.

It will be a test for local, state, and federal officials, who have showed a decidedly mixed set of reactions in these first days of total emergency response. Local and state officials have been overwhelmed with the immediate; President Joe Biden has committed the federal government — and his successor — with providing 100 percent of firefighting costs for the next six months, as well as FEMA support.

But Donald Trump and Republican allies in Congress and right-leaning media have yet to embrace this natural emergency or the ramifications for the tens of thousands left homeless. Shoving climate change aside along with years of drought and the extension of year-round fire dangers, we’re hearing blame for California Democrats about water pressure of all things, a decades-long complaint about whether to dismiss rules about endangered species, and a broadside attack on diversity and inclusion issues among L.A. firefighters. Indeed, there has been widespread criticism about a 2% cut in local fire department spending during a labor negotiation as rationale for there not being enough water pressure available to fight five simultaneous urban wildfires spreading by hurricane-force winds, leaving some hydrants unusable.

Media Matters lays out the Right’s arguments and does some fact-checking on trying to fit the fires into the anti-DEI agenda; Vox tackles Trump’s anti-regulation case over preserving the smelt.

None of the Republicans had named what The Los Angeles Times had found — that the artificial Santa Ynez reservoir in Pacific Palisades, one of a number water sources, had been emptied and not yet refilled before the fires broke out. It has prompted Gov. Gavin Newsome to order an investigation, though experts said it would not have provided enough water to maintain pressure in such a widespread conflagration. Basically, the systems were overwhelmed by the fires and wind, all worsened by climate changes.

Rather than putting the victims of natural disaster first, Trump already has turned the reaction partisan and personal, complaining that he has been boxed into having to provide federal aid to a state that has not voted for him and that will hamper his intentions to cut federal spending massively. One Republican congressman already has said he will oppose aid to Ca;ifornia unless the state adopts whatever Trump asks in policy changes.

From a public policy point of view, this kind of immediate response from the incoming administration and Republican congress members is almost as distressing as the fires themselves. What are we to make of leaders who cannot seem to absorb information about a disaster? How are we to trust to policy that may emerge?

What’s Next?

Just as in areas hit by tornados and hurricanes, there will be an almost-kneejerk desire to rebuild whole areas, however huge in this case.

Availability of home insurance already had emerged as a serious issue in California; the insurance industry has wailed loudly about being overtaxed by claims arising from wildfires and storms intensifying through climate change. It’s a sure bet that insurers will be looking to the government for the equivalent of a bailout or loan guarantees, whatever form it eventually will take.

There will be investigations about firefighting readiness and the availability of water and water pressure for the worst-hit areas. But none of it will explain away the obvious, that fighting multiple urban wildfires in hurricane-force winds in the country’s most populous and spread-out county is way beyond difficult.

The sheer number of evacuations and damage make shelter and food a problem that will go on for months or more will postpone intelligent discussion about what a rebuilding effort even will look like, to say nothing about expense and who will pay. It will be hard enough for families racing from their homes down gridlocked escape routes to persuade insurance companies to pay claims without access to their burned documents.

At the verry least, aren’t we Angelos at least due some acknowledgement of the problems at hand without the usual, disdainful, and incorrect politics about DEI and smelts? Are the rest of us not at least owed a real evaluation of where we stand on climate change issues rather than partisan disdain?

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www.terryschwadron.wordpress.com

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Terry Schwadron
Terry Schwadron

Written by Terry Schwadron

Journalist, musician, community volunteer

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