Reflections from Los Angeles: a local writer's personal account of the LA fires

Michael Webb's personal account on the 2025 Los Angeles fires

For me, the 2025 Los Angeles fires state of emergency began on January 10 at 3.48 am with four loud squarks on my iPhone and an urgent message: 'be ready to evacuate.' The Palisades fire was three days old; it was edging east and might suddenly threaten my neighbourhood. The Santa Anas were still gusting and I knew about the risk of embers carried for miles on a strong wind. I’ve lived in a hilltop apartment near UCLA for nearly 50 years; wildfires and earthquakes come with the territory, like hurricanes in Florida and tornadoes in Kansas. Though high-risk zones are several miles away, I always have a bag of clothes and essentials packed and ready to go.

It was the second alert I had received - the first was sent in error and withdrawn the previous day - so I went back to sleep, hoping for the best. I gave away my television set after 9/11, hating the repetitive sensationalism of local stations, and I refuse to watch social media, so I decided to sit tight and rely on a few official online bulletins, which were understandably vague. Better that, than bingeing on footage of destruction, inflammatory rumours, and conspiracy theories that fan the flames.

As a child I survived bombing raids on London; since then I’ve weathered two major earthquakes in southern California, edgy encounters in dark back streets, a flight on Uzbek Airlines and taxis in Teheran. A charmed life—but doubts began to grow. What if I was ordered to flee? I’m too old and creaky to relocate. A friend offered temporary refuge, but I couldn’t imagine losing my historic apartment with all its collections and memories.

For several days, the Palisades fire raged uncontrolled but without moving closer. Apprehension gave way to resignation and the odd feeling that this was happening somewhere far removed. The sky, yellow with smoke during previous conflagrations, was clear. The street was strangely still since students had been sent home and my neighbours were also waiting for news and postponing trips that might dislodge them before they were ready.

I checked up on people I knew to be at risk—mercifully they were all safe—and the owners of a landmark house sent two snapshots in response. One, taken as they beat a fast retreat, shows flames surging over neighbouring hills; another, taken two days later when they eluded a National Guard patrol to sneak back, has a clear blue sky. Anxious friends from as far away as Bologna and Tokyo called or emailed to check up on me. They had been watching the news as I had not and may have imagined the whole city was being consumed.

Gratitude for my own good fortune yielded to deep sadness thinking of wrecked lives and the loss of classic modern buildings I had once written about. I wondered about the Malibu beach house I selected for the cover of California Houses, published just a few months ago. It was harder to mourn many other houses that had disfigured the coastline, shutting off the ocean and compromising the natural beauty of the mountains. How much better if the borders of the Pacific Coast Highway had been preserved as wilderness? They would still have burned, but there would have been no loss of lives and property. It’s easy to romanticize a communion with nature but, like a cuddly bear, it can turn around and eat you.

Two weeks later, the fires are still smouldering and there are sure to be fresh outbreaks when the winds return. It's hard to imagine how Altadena and Pacific Palisades can be recreated from toxic ruins and perhaps they shouldn’t be. Ideally, LA should rezone the 70 per cent of the city reserved for single-family housing and the one-story commercial strips along major boulevards to permit a much denser urban mix of apartments and mixed-use blocks, as in other great cities, and satisfy the demand for more affordable housing. This might also allow authorities to rewild the areas that climate change and recurring droughts have made too risky to live in. A fresh start is needed.