It's Like a War Zone Down Here

                                                                                     

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 it is ain’t exactly clear.” 

     My generation questioned everything but didn't find many answers in anything. Did our arrogance, maybe even hubris, get the better of us? Everywhere, people look to place blame for the destruction the fires caused. Bob Dylan knew, "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. 

     The Tuesday before last, I stood here at the same spot. The Santa Ana’s were blowing at a fair clip. I saw a guy with a camera and 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, “Yeah, 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 L.A.'s westside 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 and November, not into December and January, like now.

     I knew some canyons were inaccessible and 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 at much higher speeds 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. The thick brush up there hasn't had rain in eight or nine months.

    The cameraman and I watched the fire spread. In no time, we could see the flames, which meant from this distance, those flames had to be thirty to forty-feet high, maybe more. 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 for air support, the real muscle in any battle. 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 rapidly 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 ablaze, firefighters working on one home as others around them burned. 

     It seemed like no more than a couple of hours, the firefighters were saying their hoses had run dry. When questioned by a reporter, 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 to reach the hydrants, 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. I'll never look at a water hydrant the same after this.

     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, Mandeville Canyon, Brentwood, Bel-Air, and the Hollywood Hills, since the 1970s, developers had 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 and estate, in some cases, the size of 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, it appeared we were all surrounded by fire. 

     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, total dread, like Neil Young wailing, “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. Evacuation orders and warnings came quickly. 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 unsettled feeling in my stomach wasn’t fear but more a dread, something that comes when you see there isn’t a thing you can do, but you know your neighbors, friends, and relatives are in danger. It was very much like a war zone. 

     However, what I think most people were describing when they used the term were the consequences, the destruction after the fighting, like scenes from a WWII documentary, Dresden or Nagasaki, the burned-out and destroyed building. For me, and I assume many combat veterans, the idea of a war zone is real, the struggle in the midst of battle, not so much the destruction afterwards, especially in jungle fighting. 

     I was with a brigade-size unit in Vietnam, with competent coordination, easy to move from one place to another, whether in a convoy, on ships, or in planes. 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. Double-propped 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 personal connections. 

     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. Some of us would man "outposts," anticipating an enemy attack on the firebase. 

     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, the casualties on both sides mounting, and more firepower needed, like fighting a fire in abnormal conditions, high winds, and not enough water. 

     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 firebase, we knew it was bad, and that dreaded feeling would crawl into our guts, helpless to do anything but hold our positions, wait, and watch for enemy forces that came our way to quiet our howitzers.

     If the battle raged on, 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, a scene Oliver Stone captured at the end of his movie, Platoon, enormous explosions then silence.

     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 but to wait and see who emerged at the end, once we returned to the rear area.

     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.