I don't live in LA, so contra Joshua Frank of Counterpunch, who I guess has moved there from Montana (why?), I won't be scarred by the Palisades Fire. In fact, given the people who live in Topanga Canyon, and their contributions to carbon emissions that fuel climate change? As long as no people are hurt, I say "burn baby burn."
As for Frank's lament?
Beyond Mike Davis’s provocative title to his classic essay, “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn,” is the thesis that resources and attention are disproportionately allocated to save the rich and their property at the expense of the poor. While this is historically the case in Los Angeles, the raging fires here are far worse than even the great Mike Davis could have foreseen.
Schools are burning, libraries, restaurants, stores, churches, state parks, mobile homes, apartment complexes, horses, mountain lions. People will die. Lives are being destroyed.
Mountain lions almost certainly escaped. Ditto any blacktail deer, which Frank didn't mention. Let's not go all Bambi fire scene, Josh.
I was going to talk about the earliest reported deaths here, but I'm pulling that for a separate post.Mobile homes? Maybe at the other two fires? But, show me a picture of a mobile home in Malibu in general or Topanga Canyon in particular. (The demographics for the ZIP code that include the area are $118K household income with average home value of $928K. Neighboring ZIPS run $91-$158K. So, no, not Rodeo Drive, but even by SoCal standards, a cut above average.) Churches? What? Nobody prayed away the fire? Yes, we're in snark territory. Oh, if there's churches paying taxes, might be more money to fight these wildfires. State parks? Goddamit, Josh, you've seen Yellowstone in the first years and decades after 1988. These places needed to burn.
As for people a cut below rich celebs and such? You chose to move there — to a place that's sensitive to mudslides as well as wildfires, and to a place with only one exit.
I've hiked in parts of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and what I believe is county parkland where MASH and other TV shows were shot. Eaton Canyon, where one of the other fires is, looks like a nice area. Sure would be nice to have the money to live there. It would be nicer yet to respect the urban-wildland interface. It's happening up in your native Montana, too, Joshua, in places like Gallatin County.
Anyway, whether it's you there yourself, you staying with a friend, or just a general plaint? I guess your fire ox is being gored. But it sounds like you there in general in person, whether in Topanga Canyon or not.
As for the Palisades fire and homes? As of Thursday night, burned homes included those of Paris Hilton and Billy Crystal. I'm crushed. I'm more than crushed that Mandy Moore (whoever the fuck she is), worth $14 million, started a GoFundMe for burned-out in-laws, then bitched when called out. Even if it's not as bad as it looks? You lie down with fleas, Josh ...
And, with the Sunset Fire breaking out in Hollywood Hills Thursday night, I saw "private firefighters" mentioned on Shitter. But, I'm sure ox-goring is OK with that, too, though not too much capitalism-goring. That said, as I said there and elsewhere, where's the prison firefighters, including the female prison firefighters that Kamala is a Cop couldn't get enough of as Cal AG? As I then joked, Gov. Nuisance needs to get more private prisons in California, to help out both the rich and the neoliberals with private (prison) firefighters. More here on "convict leasing" of inmates as firefighters and the practice in general, still legal at the state level in 43 states.
If you meant to write primarily about the other fires, where there probably are a few people with mobile homes (the main ZIP for Altadena is at $88K household income and house value of $550K, and Sylmar area is about the same), you should have started there. But, even then? City-Data says poverty levels are low in Altadena, tho about California state average in the unincorporated Sylmar; incorporated San Fernando is a bit below average.
As for the non-rich? We should do the same thing that Dear Leader should have done after the Great Recession with people in places like Phoenix and Las Vegas, instead of his HAMP and HARP and other alphabet soup on homes and mortgages. Flat buy out the mortgages — but ONLY give relief to lenders if they don't replace the old houses with new ones — while paying the homeowners to move to Cleveland, St. Louis and Des Moines, where the water is.
==
Glad I waited until now to write. Frank, who clearly is somewhere in LA now, if not Pacific Palisades, pens a part two, in part pushing back against schadenfreude of some. My writings above don't have schadenfreude, IMO, but they do call out Frank's various wrongnesses. Nor do I promote "collective guilt" about this.
One new wrongness is noting the weather that produced this is unprecedented in modern times. Yeah? Depending on how you define "modern," the drought across the Southwest is unprecedented in modern times, but did happen to the Anasazi 800 years ago. Anthropogenic climate change is also unprecedented in modern times. You admit the "fossil fuel cartel" has responsibility for that. To flip your airing of grievances on its head, Josh, did eXXXon, as I spell it, force you to move?
I also "like" that Frank said:
The historic Black community of Altadena has been decimated.
You live there yourself, Joshua? First piece looked focused awfully much on the Palisades, as I said.
One final note is that Frank has apparently abandoned Shitter, too.
==
As for "should have known about this," if, like Frank, you're a recent move to the Southland in general, and specifically, to one of its more vulnerable areas? Capital and Main nails it:
In Pasadena, a California city on the edge of a major fire burning through Eaton Canyon, where researchers have collected data on precipitation since 1893, they recorded that half of its 20 rainiest days ever occurred since 2000. That includes one day last February when nearly 5 inches of rain fell.
Yet not a single drop has fallen in Pasadena and much of Los Angeles County since early May, according to data from the National Centers for Environmental Information. All the vegetation that grew during the rains in the first half of the year dried out when the rains stopped, transforming Southern California into a vast landscape of tinder that exploded this week.
The intensity of extreme precipitation will continue rising through the century, according to Cal-Adapt, a data analysis initiative sponsored by the California Energy Commission. The state also forecast longer periods of drought exacerbated by rising heat, according to its Fourth Climate Assessment summary report, released in 2018 and currently being updated. These two factors will likely increase the wet-dry cycle, fueling more intense and erratic wildfires, say climate experts. In 2021, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that drier air due to climate change was the “dominant” cause of variations in wildfire behavior in the West.
This is even more true at a place like Counterpunch, where you're supposed to be leftists of some sort on climate change, or rather the climate crisis. And, even if Frank moved there before 2019 (see below) he surely moved long after 2000. It's called "Cadillac Desert."
So, to further turn Frank on his head? I can feel sympathy for Altadena, but none for the rich people whose carbon emissions made their own small contributions to the Palisades fire, and also feel none to people like Frank who are relatively recent moves there.
Also, and if I'm sticking the shiv in, I'm sticking it in all the way, if Joshua Frank can afford to live in, or near, Topanga Canyon, then Counterpunch sure as hell doesn't need donations from me.
==
Counterpunch's head honcho, Jeff St. Clair (I guess the publisher's position remains permanently vacant in memoriam Alexander Cockburn) triangulates off Frank in last Friday's Roaming Charges. After noting that even in a place like the Palisades, poorer minorities get hit harder than rich whites, he does note LA had a couple of days of prep for the current round of Santa Ana winds. And, there's the past:
In 2019, Eric Garcetti, then the mayor of Los Angeles, told David Wallace-Wells: “There’s no number of helicopters or trucks that we can buy, no number of firefighters that we can have, no amount of brush that we can clear that will stop this. The only thing that will stop this is when the Earth, probably long after we’re gone, relaxes into a more predictable weather state.”
Joshua, did you move there after 2019? Actually, he appears to have moved there earlier, as his Wiki page shows he was writing for the OC Weekly (along with "Ask a Mexican" Gustavo Arellano) in 2016. But, nothing has prevented him from moving back out, oh, since the Paradise Fire. Or the Dixie Fire.
St. Clair's piece also includes a video clip of mountain lions fleeing one of the fires, presumably successfully. What about white-tailed antelope squirrels or other critters that aren't charismatic megafauna?
==
Related to all of this? Readers will note the "new blogroll coming soon" that I've started populating. The XML hacks I used on the old one to get it to show all, rather than the latest 10, pieces, won't let me add new or delete old. And, I'd like to add a couple of common Substacks. And, I also am planning on getting rid of some shit, and Counterpunch was already on my possible hit list before this.
==
Update: At Pro Publica, Tim Golden, who grew up in the Palisades a full generation, it seems, before Frank moved there or anywhere near there, says the neighborhood was already becoming "rico" 40 years ago or something close to that.
