The Los Angeles fires will eventually be extinguished, but the losses will remain.

My niece and I walked to the end of the Venice Pier in Los Angeles last Tuesday to watch the bright orange flames creeping up the Santa Monica Mountains in the Pacific Palisades area. Clouds of smoke loomed over the ocean as they pushed them… Strong winds offshore, blowing sand in our faces.

Last Thursday, I drove to Palisades with my friend Chris Coté, who owns a modest house near the cliffs overlooking the ocean, where his children grew up, but which he now rents to a couple with three young girls.

The authorities prevented entry to the affected areas at checkpoints along Sunset Boulevard, and only approved media, emergency vehicles, and work trucks were allowed to pass. Chris and I passed through two lines of police, before a strict officer on Allenford Street refused to allow Chris. By passing by.

I left it next to Paul Revere Charter Middle School and continued walking along the curves of Sunset Boulevard, the commercial heart of Pacific Palisades. Parts of the famous street appeared to have been destroyed, and they emerged in this state following a firebombing. .

The streets are empty

The streets were mostly empty of any pedestrians, except for a number of official vehicles, electrical wires and burned and fallen trees littered the roads, a few residents surveyed the damage here and there, and teenage boys roamed the streets on scooters.

The contrast seemed stark between the fire that swept through the city two days ago, and the calm that left it. The fire consisted of orange flames, flying embers, heat, smoke, and terror, but what followed was calm and depressing, as adrenaline gives way to intense sadness, loss, and depression.

The fire, driven by winds that reached speeds of about 100 miles per hour, was irrational, making irrational choices about what to destroy and what to avoid, but the result was enormous, and some buildings and homes seemed untouched, as if they were protected by the wings of an angel, and they evaporated. Other buildings and houses are simply in hell.

Much of the once vibrant and green Palisades is now monochromatic, as if the scene was taken from a fairy tale. Brick chimneys rise from the rubble, one of the few signs that houses once lined the sides. The streets of these suburbs have now turned into hell.

Darkness over everything

I turned left from the Sunset area onto Via de la Paz, and passed shops, some of which were destroyed, others like a resistant brick building still intact. I parked my car on North Beirut Street, which is a street made up of three streets and ends at Via de las Olas, the winding road that runs along the cliffs above the Pacific Coast Highway. Normally from here, the view of Santa Monica Bay is as picture-perfect as if it were on a postcard, but here… Today, as the fires continued inside the city, a thick fog hung over the scene, making everything dark.

When I got out of my car, I inhaled the sharp, acrid smell like fire blowing in my face. Ashes scattered in the air like icicles, but they were toxic. Threads of smoke rose from piles of charred rubble. The devastation was massive. I wrote these words last Friday morning, and the four fires are still burning. The city center surrounding Los Angeles is on fire. At least 10 people have been killed, an estimated 10,000 buildings have been destroyed, and damage has reached… Billions, and the National Guard was deployed to protect the evacuated neighborhoods from thieves.

Thousands of people, each with their own tragic story, were displaced from their homes, and schools were closed. My friend, Jeanne De Long, who teaches first-grade students at the Palisades school that burned, told me that one of her students, whose family had lost their home, was particularly upset by Losing his toys.

Fire season

Indeed, this catastrophe will force us to make civil calculations, which in fact have begun from now, and we no longer have a fire season at a specific time, but rather we have fires expected throughout the year, and you can call it climate change or pretend that it is something else, it does not matter, as our world It is getting hotter, and the weather patterns are more extreme, and none of this is good news for the state of California, which oscillates between years of rain and drought that has struck the state for several years in a row, affecting many plants, crops, and life as a whole.

Extreme drought conditions, coupled with some of the strongest Santa Ana winds we’ve ever seen, led to the devastation. Hydrants dried up and firefighters were exhausted.

And the political finger-pointing begins at the perfect time: Does it really matter that Mayor Karen Bass wasn’t in Los Angeles the day the fire broke out? She was in constant contact with employees and fire officials, which is quite common in our hyper-connected age, and last year BAS cut its fire budget significantly.

President-elect Donald Trump, who never misses an opportunity, blamed his Democratic opponent, California Governor Gavin Yosom, for failing to transfer enough water from northern California to the south, which is mismanagement of the state’s water system.

Conservative politicians, of course, blamed the city’s “diversity, equity and inclusion” measures, but the fire department, with its high-paying jobs and very generous retirement benefits, has been under pressure to diversify its overwhelmingly white male ranks for decades, and rightfully so.

For the first time in our history, the city’s fire chief became a woman, which greatly angered the “Make America Great Again” crowds, and the words ran out when talking about the billionaire and member of Trump’s governing team, Elon Musk, who wrote “X” on his platform, on Wednesday. The past, he says: “Diversity, equality and inclusion mean the death of people.”

Meanwhile, in Pacific Palisades, I finally found out about the house that belonged to my friend Chris, and all that remained standing was the chimney, the iron balcony railing, and other unknown things, after it had been extensively burned.

As I was driving back along Chautauqua Street, I saw a young man walking toward the beach, carrying a crumpled football he had pulled from the ashes, and I could only imagine what he had lost. *Robin Abkarian *Opinion writer for the Los Angeles Times About the Los Angeles Times

. Trump blamed California Governor Gavin Yosom for failing to divert water from Northern California to the South.

. Extreme drought conditions, coupled with winds, led to such devastation, hydrants ran dry, and firefighters became exhausted.