The Burn Scars of Altadena

As one chapter of Los Angeles ends, another has yet to be written

 From  Sierra 

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These winds were different. 

Shuddering, whistling, howling: Hurricane-force gusts, 60, 70, 80 miles per hour. They kicked up—fierce—early morning, January 6. They wailed like a ghost train, lost control. They rattled and hissed. Kept me from sleep. They didn’t let up. 

An Angeleno, born and raised, I know all too well to be prepared for nature's unexpected—especially the extremes. But those roaring winds that raked across Southern California and the quick, ravenous fires that tore across the rugged landscape were distinct. An altogether different terror, opening a new uneasy chapter in our relationship with nature here in Southern California. The Eaton Fire, which destroyed 9,418 structures (6,000 homes) and spread 14,000 acres across the San Gabriel Valley, is now being categorized as the most expensive natural disaster in US history, unseating New Orleans’s devastating Hurricane Katrina. 

I live in Northwest Pasadena, a chockablock mix of urban and wild, backyard chickens and auto body shops, bobcats and blue-light smoke shops. I’ve been here for more than 20 years. Longer than anywhere else I have lived in LA County. Our neighborhood, considered part of the San Gabriel Mountains’ foothill community, is a designation that I think about only when the heaviest rains (finally) arrive, or when the temperature dips near freezing in the winter.