It's Like a War Zone Down Here

                                                                                     Be

Better Days, Santa Monica towards Palisades, painting by Danny Alonzo

    Monday morning, nearly a week after fires had devasted most of Palisades and Altadena, I drove to a scenic overlook above Culver City. I wanted to see which way the smoke was headed. 

     My Mar Vista home is only three or four miles south of Brentwood, not far when the winds are blowing 40-to-50 miles per hour. I tapped into Spotify and out came Randy California’s voice, the lead singer of the 1960’s band Spirit, “It’s nature’s way of telling you/ something’s wrong.” Prophetic, and something of a mantra in the 1960's, like Steven Stills reminder, “Something’s happening here/ What is it ain’t exactly clear.” Has our arrogance, maybe even hubris, gotten the better of us? "Something is happening here/ But you don't know what it is/ Do you, Mr. Jones."

    Fortunately, it’s a clear day, no smoke anywhere, and barely a whisp of wind. I can see the San Gabriel Mountains to the east, a little hazy but clear. Scanning west, the Hollywood sign comes into view then the Santa Monica Mountains and the entire L.A. basin to the Pacific. It’s eerie. 

     Though the sky is blue, I know the Palisades’ fire, which threatened Brentwood, down to parts of West L.A., is only 11% contained, which means it must be heading north, or west, looking for something else to burn. Last Tuesday, I stood here at the same spot. The Santa Ana’s were blowing at a fair clip. I saw a guy with a camera on a tripod. Beyond him I saw it, a billow of smoke rising between two mountains, down in one of the canyons. The guy with the camera turned to me. I said, “Is that smoke?” He said, “Yean, it is.” 

     As a native of L.A.’s westside community, I have seen the worst of L.A.’s Santa Monica Mountain fires, going back to the 1961 Bel-Air fire that destroyed nearly 500 homes. It started as a small flame from a trash heap, but once the Santa Ana’s picked up the embers, the fire spread from house to house.

     Living in the flatlands, we never felt threatened by the fires in the hills, even if they were only a few miles away. I remember, in the early 1990s, early evening, and I looked out a window of the Santa Monica Hospital as my newly born grandson cried. The hills in the Palisades were ablaze, bright violet and orange hues filling the night sky. We expected fires in October through December.

     I said to the man with the camera, “Oh, no. That’s not good.” 

     “No,” he answered. “It isn’t.” 

     If the winds were whipping up down here, in the lowlands, they’d be gusting much more up there in the mountains and canyons, where I’d spent many afternoons hiking, some canyon gorges deep and narrow, four-to-five hundred feet, solid rock cliffs, in some places, impossible to fight a fire on foot. 

    As the cameraman and I stood there, we could watch the fire spread. In no time, we could see the flames. I said, “That looks like it's around the Palisades.” The guy nodded, agreeing. 

     I walked around the crest of the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, the rest of the basin appearing sublime, the sky a deep blue, the winds moving the tops of the pines. When I arrived home, I told my wife what I’d seen, a fire in the mountains and the winds blowing. 

    We turned on the television. The reporters said the winds in the mountains were pushing sixty-miles-per-hour, with gusts of up to one-hundred MPH, too hard air support. The firefighting crews arrived on the scene. They turned on their hoses. The flames were huge. I wasn't sure I could believe my eyes, the flames moving from house to house, the winds toying with the spay shooting from the hoses. Tall palm trees caught fire and shot flaming palm fronds in all directions, setting fire to homes blocks away, so many houses on ablaze, firefighters unsure where to go. 

     It seemed like no more than a couple of hours, the firefighters were saying their hoses had run dry. When questioned, one firefighter explained how neighborhood water hydrants were designed to carry enough water to fight a house fire, maybe two, not entire blocks of houses in 100 MPH wind gusts. To make matters worse, in the Palisades highlands, the water had to travel uphill, pushed by electricity and generators, unless there were reservoirs or water tanks above and moved downhill by gravity to replenish the water supply. That was all news to me, and probably to many people in L.A., watching on television. I had always imagined an infinite supply of water in each fire hydrant. 

     Besides that, many homes in the Palisades, Topanga, and Malibu weren’t the 1940’s 1000 to 1500 square-feet tract homes, like ours in Mar Vista and the flatlands. In the Santa Monica Mountain communities, like the Palisades and Mandeville Canyon, since the 1970s, developers bulldozed many of the more modest ranch homes and built mansions, anywhere from five to ten, to fifteen thousand square feet, three-four stories, huge outdoor estates, surrounded by decorative shrubs, trees, hedges, plants, and flowers, much of it growing right up against the walls, plenty of tinder for a raging fire, already fed on chapparal and scrub oak. It seems to me it would take a gang of firefighters to tackle a fire in, even, one home the size of nearly a city block.

     That night, it was reported fire had broken out in Eaton Canyon, Malibu, Calabasas, Sylmar, and the Hollywood hills, just above Hollywood boulevard, apartments and homes standing side by side. From where I sat, L.A.’s perimeter was aflame. It was hard to believe, first watching flames engulf the homes, but then seeing them destroy the downtown areas, like the Palisades’ village, the community’s civic center and main shopping areas then, later, Altadena's downtown area. 

     My stomach turned, a sick feeling, like listening to Neil Young’s wail, “Helpless, helpless, helpless, helpless.” 

     Outside, ashes fell on our cars and homes. The air was a muddy grey. Man was no match for nature. All aircraft, the muscle in any fire fight, was grounded. The gusts too violent. I thought, depending on the shifting winds, the embers could go anywhere, across Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards, into the flatlands, Santa Monica, Venice, West L.A., and Culver City, vegetation-rich communities, Palm trees and tall eucalyptus, maples, pines, sycamores, oak, and so many others, everywhere, homes constructed on tract lots, sometimes separated only by feet. 

     For nearly three days, the winds had their way with the mountain fires, including a large fire, that blew up overnight, Tuesday, in Eaton Canyon, and by Wednesday afternoon had decimated many middle-class neighborhoods in Altadena. By Friday, the winds had subsided enough for the air power, first the water-dropping helicopters then super scoopers sucking ocean water into their bellies and dropping them on the fires, and finally the converted passenger jets, carrying fire retardant, to keep the fires from spreading. “It’s like a war zone down there,” I heard over and over from people on the ground. 

     The heaviness I felt inside wasn’t fear but more like a deep sadness, a punch to the gut, when you see there isn’t a thing you can do, but you know your neighbors, and some friends, are in danger. It was very much like a war zone. However, what I think most people were describing were the consequences, the destruction like scenes from a WWII documentary, Dresden or Nagasaki, the burned-out and destroyed building. For me, the idea of a war zone was in the midst of battle, not so much the destruction afterwards. 

     I was with a brigade-size unit in Vietnam, easy to move from one place to another, whether in a convoy, on ships, or in planes. In fact, the media referred to us as nomads and firefighters, ironically, moving to wherever we were needed, wherever a new fire erupted. 

     Once the brigade established a center of operations, helicopters would ferry the infantry and artillery into the field. Huey gunships would drop the infantry down into a valley, where they’d begin the mission, usually what the army called, “Search and destroy,” much like firefighters on-foot, heading into the blaze. Chinooks would ferry the artillery, often to a mountaintop, to cut down brush and set up a firebase, and wait for the infantry to call, if needed. 

     More than not, the infantry carried out their mission smoothly, making sure the enemy had evacuated the area. Sometimes, we’d hear gunshots in the valley, the distinct sounds of M-16's and AK-47's. We knew the infantry had made contact, kind of like firefighters confronting the conflagration, mostly under control, except when the wind blew, or, in our case, the infantry ran into heavy resistance, something the intelligence people had missed, in which case, they'd call in artillery to soften a target, keep the enemy at bay, or, when desperate, stop the enemy from closing in and overrunning their position and spreading the fight further into the jungle, like a fire out of control. 

     When it got bad, we’d hear grenade launchers, mortars, and rockets. We'd get ready and wait for the call, “Fire Mission.” It wasn’t just the infantry fighting down in those valleys. Many of those guys were close friends and acquaintances we’d party with during our off-hours in the rear area, where we’d get sloshed, share stories about family and girlfriends, about our hopes and dreams, not unlike the people in the Palisades, kids I’d known in high school, or friends I’d met who now lived in Altadena. We had a connection, so we empathized. 

     When the call came for artillery support, the battery would work as one unit. One or two-gun sections facing in the right direction would respond and, hopefully, send enough artillery into the valley to quell the opposition, the same way firefighters go up to burning homes or buildings and douse the flames with water from their hoses. The infantry carried their own equipment and weapons but a limited supply, never enough for a long, sustained battle. If it was a large enemy force, the battle took more time, hours, sometimes all day, and needed more firepower, like fighting a fire in abnormal conditions, like in high winds, and water wasn't enough. 

     At times, the battle was overwhelming, and the infantry needed more than artillery, so they called in Huey gunships to lay down a steady stream of machine gun fire, just like firefighters calling in helicopters to drop thousands of gallons of water on a dangerous fire. At our fire base, we knew it was bad, and that dreaded feeling would crawl into our guts, helpless to do anything but hold our positions, wait, and pray the enemy forces didn't come our way to quiet our howitzers.

     In extreme conditions, the infantry might call in Puff the Magic Dragon, a Douglas AC-47 transport plane mounted with an enormous machine gun pointing out one door and roar as it spit thousands upon thousands of rounds of deadly fire on a hot target. A few times, the battle was beyond both gunships and Puff. If the weather was favorable, an Air Force Thunderchief or a Navy F-4 Phantom jet would come, dip into a canyon, so close to our firebase, we could see the pilot’s face inside his helmet. The jet's explosions echoed through the valley and over the mountaintops, much like those super scoopers dropping tons of water on wildfire, or the converted transport jets unleashing pounds of fire retardant to keep the blazes from spreading. 

     Yet, in war, as in a fire, everything depends on the weather and the environment. For us, if it was overcast or raining, we were in trouble, like firefighters battling the wind. The infantry, often, had to fend for itself, just like the firefighters in the Palisades and Altadena, fighting the fire without any air support, the wind whipping the water in all directions as flames consumed, not just one home, but entire neighborhoods, so much like a “war zone.”

     Now, I remember the unsettling feeling in my stomach, a helpless sensation. It was what I felt for a year, long ago, in another time and place, fear for my friends and that, in the heat of battle, there wasn't a thing I could do, a thing any of us could do.

     All Friday, through Saturday, and Sunday, the winds had finally subsided, and like the rest of the world, I was glued to the television watching the airpower, the converted jets dropping fire retardant across the mountains. One chopper after another and a line of super scoopers keep up their relentless water drops on the fire. Firefighters climbed across dangerous terrain to reach homes built along mountainsides and in canyons, hauling their hoses, picks, and shovels, everyone hoping, the winds continue to cooperate. 

     How can we not question nature, in this environment, beautiful but wild? Should we be building homes and communities here, in the wilderness, or, maybe, we should listen to Randy California warning about nature's way of telling us something’s wrong.