Six wildfires are currently raging across Los Angeles county. The largest and most devastating so far have been the Palisades fire, at 15,832 acres, and Eaton fire, at 10,600 acres, but other blazes – particularly the growing Hurst fire and Hollywood Hills-based Sunset fire – are continuing to worry Los Angeles residents. Approximately 100,000 people are under evacuation order, though the number continues to shift, and 1,500 structures have been destroyed. Five fatalities have been reported.
i haven’t seen any posts about this yet on my dash so im sharing this article. many articles about the situation are being continually updated but some of them are behind paywalls so i tried grabbing some without.
i know many people think los angeles is only occupied by celebrities, and while it is true that Pacific Palisades and Malibu are affluent areas and many celebrities have in fact lost their homes or had to evacuate, please keep in mind that currently the largest fire, the Eaton fire, is affecting everyday people and spreading to the high desert. five of the fatalities are in the eaton fire, primarily because it is so rural that many locations have only a single road in and out of the neighborhoods. in a panic, many people were stuck in gridlock traffic so long they abandoned their cars, which then had to be bulldozed down to let emergency services through.
tens of thousands are experiencing rolling blackouts (including me) or complete loss of power. entire school districts are closed, even those outside the immediate fire zones due to the poor air quality. i took miss xena outside for 10 minutes to go potty while wearing a n95 (as usual, but now dual purpose) and my head is still killing me 5 hours later. xena has been kept inside the rest of the time. even though the sky where i am looked clear and blue at the time, the air is still thick with pollution. this is the Smoke & Haze forecast:
while it’s not necessarily “good” that it’s going out toward the ocean, it is a silver lining that millions of people and animals won’t be breathing it in instead. if you notice, it spreads as far south as the tip of baja california in mexico and itself is about the size of the entire state of California.
the worst part is that it’s been pretty much impossible to contain the fires at all due to the “unprecedented” windstorm, which is also partially why the fires are so bad. it’s a “perfect storm” of factors – high winds with gusts up to 100mph, humidity in single digits, drought / low rainfall, increased brush – and firefighters are stretched thin across over 100 miles, now 200 with the addition of the ventura fire. fire hydrants are empty, and the winds have been so strong that water drops from tanker planes weren’t even possible until this afternoon once the winds died down.
i know how people feel about California and los angeles on here so im just reminding that if you hear about these fires and go “lol good fuck those rich people”, like yeah i get it but also they’re not the ones being set back by this the most. they have multiple homes or can afford new ones. working class people who were forced to evacuate coming back to their home to see it smoldering lost literally everything. even if it was just the rich people, the smoke, embers, and particulates created by this insane thousand acre burn threatens the rest of us and we can’t do anything about it.
there are millions of people who live in this area across all different class disparities and races, not to mention our millions of homeless residents who have nowhere to go. many are now newly homeless, as their homes burned down. businesses, schools, and even museums have been burnt to the ground. please extend some grace to those of us affected, as the fires are still ongoing at the time of this writing (January 8th 2025, 9pm Pacific time).
amhrancas 