The Los Angeles Fires and Human Resilience
A place where I lived for many hears.
Irreparable losses, but human resilience is boundless as long as life remains. I think about those who survived the Valencia floods, and about the Palestinians and the Ukrainians.
By Gioconda Belli (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – When the Pacific Palisades fire broke out in Los Angeles, I called an old and very dear friend to ask how he was doing. “I’m in the process of leaving right now. We’ve been ordered to evacuate,” he told me. When we spoke the next day, he still didn’t know if his house was intact, but two homes on his street were burning, and he imagined the worst. A little while later, I received his message on WhatsApp: “There’s nothing left. It burned.”
I lived in Los Angeles for many years. I knew B’s house very well, from the time he moved to that peaceful neighborhood. He had a pizza oven in his kitchen and groups of friends often gathered around that oven to eat pizza and talk. He’s a contemporary of me and my husband, and a gregarious and hospitable man. Looking at the photos of what’s been left of his neighborhood, I can imagine how it feels to return to this scenario and see everything he owns turned to ashes.
It’s not hard for me to identify with his sensation of loss. At an age when rebuilding the life that resided in the house where you’ve lived for many years is impossible, the grief is unconsolable. My family faced the vengeful flames of the tyrannical Ortega-Murillo duo in Nicaragua, who stripped us of a house my husband and I bought in 1987. I know, then, what it means to lose the place that held your memories, your life, and that of your children. When I left on a trip in 2021, I never thought I’d be banned, not only from returning to my home but from my country.
I lived in Los Angeles for many years, during the nineties and part of the 2000’s.
It’s an immense city and for that very reason, each neighborhood resembles a small, self-contained town. The zones that are closest to the ocean are the most sought-after, because of the wide beach here. The immensity of the Pacific Ocean is a magnet. The coastal highway is beautiful, lined with parks and houses that range from small chalets – dating from the years of the city’s youth, when people traveled to the ocean’s edge in the summer – to enormous mansions.
The Santa Monica mountains border the coast. They’re covered in coastal scrub but offer magnificent ocean views. For that reason, residential neighborhoods were built along these slopes, neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades and Malibu. On the flatlands, the city extends along the valley to the San Gabirel mountains.
Fires are nothing new to California. Southern California, where Los Angeles is situated, is especially prone to them, because it’s dry – really a kind of desert whose vegetation consists of shallow-rooted bushes that are extremely combustible. The green spaces and gardens of Los Angeles are the products of irrigation and the work of excellent gardeners, most of them Mexican immigrants. You see the houses with their gorgeous gardens, the avenues lined with erect palm trees, the abundance of eucalyptus, ficas plants and oaks, and forget they hide the fact that Los Angeles is a city that suffers constant water crises, because it almost never rains.
Climate change, the global warming that this year surpassed all previous records, has increased the dangers of that reality. Tragically, the demands of the last week exceeded the supply of water. Many hydrants had nothing left to give in the face of the raging fire. They were left without water pressure. The usual alternative used to compensate for this shortage at the beginning of the frequent fires is waterbombing – the use of fire-fighting aircraft whose tanks are filled with sea water they later release to douse the flames. However, in this case, the velocity of the Santa Ana winds – hot winds that come from the Mojave desert – reached hurricane strength. The airplanes weren’t able to load the ocean water.
I remember well those days of Santa Ana winds. They brought days of a hot, suffocating summer in the middle of winter, the desert sirocco. Any spark could ignite the brush and spread. It’s something that occurs nearly every year.
The constructive philosophy of many Angelinos led them to avoid the mountainous part of the city. Malibu, for example, was in the fire hazard zone. The flat zones were considered much less vulnerable. This time, though, that theory was dismantled. From the highlands of Pacific Palisades, the wildfire advanced into the “Flats,” that are now the tragic scene of a land laid waste.
In contrast to my friend who lost everything, I know that my house is still there, where it was. Abandoned, it’s being devoured by the surrounding vegetation, but as luck would have it, before they confiscated us, seeing that we couldn’t return to the country, we rented it. We left the furniture to the tenant, but we moved the books and objects we wanted to preserve to a storage facility. Via a complicated and secret operation, we later managed to get these belongings to Madrid. By fortune, a fundamental part of my surroundings accompanies me now in my exile.
For over two years, though, I thought this would be impossible. I remember that sensation of absolute loss. When I was writing or preparing for a conference, I’d recall the exact place where the books I would have consulted were located. I recalled the clothing I would have worn, the shoes, the pillows, my bed, my reading chair, the sound of the curtains in the wind, the hummingbirds that crowded around the flowers in my garden, the view of Managua from my window in the afternoons.
Paradoxically, the life I’ve lived has kept me from developing too much attachment to my things. I’d already had to chalk up everything as lost a number of times: in that other exile in 1975; the Managua earthquake of 1972; and in the Los Angeles earthquake of 1994. Nevertheless, at all those moments, I was able to salvage some of my belongings. A fire, in contrast, brings absolute destruction.
Several of my friends in Los Angeles will find nothing left but ashes when they return; ravaged earth, or maybe some piece of a surviving object. They’ll spend months applying for insurance compensation. Some will rebuild.
Human resilience is boundless when life remains. I think of the survivors of the devastating Valencia floods; of the Palestinians and Ukrainians. I think about the 17% of the world’s population who will be affected by the 1.5 degrees of global warming we’ve already reached.
While imagining the human drama of losing everything, I reflect how we need to measure and calibrate our attachment to the things we accumulate in our lives. I think how important it is to realize that the only accumulation that endures, is that which we build within ourselves. The experiences that leave memories, the unforgettable loves, the friendships, the bonds with others, what we read and take pleasure in, everything that remains in the face of catastrophes and that only death can take from us.
Published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.