In Los Angeles, winter is when it rains. During the preceding two winters, it rained a lot, making the whole area greener than normal. However, in January 2025 it had not rained for over nine months and all the vegetation had dried up. Moreover, in this area, strong winds called Santa Ana are quite common during this time of the year. During the winter of 2025, they came in unusually strong, with wind gusts up to 90 miles per hour. Combine dryness with fierce winds presented a deadly combination for fire. Any spark in a wrong place could have created a conflagration and there were many such sparks.
The worst one was the Palisades Fire which burned the town of Pacific Palisades and a part of Malibu. The other was Eaton Fire, which started in the Eaton Canyon and quickly destroyed the town of Altadena and a part of Pasadena.
We, living in Pasadena, experienced the Eaton fire first hand. Fortunately, we live in the southern part of the city and escaped destruction. Except for several false alarms for evacuation (we abided by the first one and ignored the rest), and foul air, we escaped the destruction caused by the fire.
Nevertheless, this incidence taught me many lessons. Here are six of the most important lessons we learned.
1. Life is a crap shoot
Totally. When you read about plane crashes you wonder why a group of people had to die while most others are able to fly in comfort. Similarly, we continued to enjoy an almost normal life while people just a few miles away lost everything. For no fault of their own, except being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps we experienced “survivor guilt”.
2. Our material possessions are fragile
Our friends who lost their houses had everything under the sun a few days ago, and in a moment, all was gone. How fragile are our material possessions?
As one of my friends said, “To quote Adi Shankaracharya from his immensely popular Bhaja Govindam: मा कुरुधनजनयौवनगर्वम्। हरति निमेषात् कालः सर्वम्। Don’t be proud of your wealth, people and youth; time snatches it all away in a flash.”
3. Certain items are worth preserving
In spite of the fragility of our material possessions, we have to make an attempt to preserve certain items if we have a warning of an impending catastrophe. Even those who lost their houses were able to scoop up some items before they had to flee. So, the lesson we learned is that there is a need to prioritize and make hard decisions regarding what is worth preserving and what can be sacrificed.
In this day and age, where almost every bit of information is on our laptops or iPhones, they are the most important items that need to be saved Next are hard discs and camera chips that contain records and photographs. Several paper documents are also worth saving (passports, house deed, birth certificates, social security cards, naturalization certificates and so on). In addition, jewelry is important to save, more sentimental value than anything else. Finally, old photographs, travelogues, professional records, memorabilia are worth preserving, even though you may have electronic records of many of these items.
4. People are good hearted and caring
The outpouring of support by citizens for people affected by a calamity such as this is heartwarming. Food, clothing and water is available for those who need them, and various Go Fund sites have opened up to raise money. There is no Republican or Democrat divide, nor is there any consideration for race of people.
Even for us, we got text message, emails and calls from around the world, even from people we had met only once a long time ago. They were all concerned. We got offer for housing from people living in this area, if we needed. It was amazing.
5. The media provides a more horrific view than reality
These fires have been horrible. They have burnt to ashes some 3000 houses. Streets are desolate and people are evacuated. Some have perished in the fire. That is what most people, including us, have seen on television and social media. Horrible as that is, one needs to remember the destroyed area is just a tiny fraction of this vast metropolis. Almost everywhere you look, the life is almost normal, except for the area that were unfortunately in the path of the fire.
These normal life areas don’t get mentioned on TV because that type of news does not attract viewers. So, for friends and relatives living outside LA, the image is that of total destruction, more so than what is happening in reality. We got so many messages and calls from our friends and family worried that the whole city was burning. That was not the case.
6. Climate change is here.
To quote an article from NY Times (1/10/2025), “With temperatures rising around the globe and the oceans unusually warm, scientists are warning that the world has entered a dangerous new era of chaotic floods, storms and fires made worse by human-caused climate change.” “Wildfires are burning hotter and moving faster. Storms are getting bigger and carrying more moisture. And soaring temperatures worldwide are leading to heat waves and drought, which can be devastating on their own and leave communities vulnerable to dangers like mudslides when heavy rains return.”
What we got is a taste of what is happening around the world. Instead of doing something about it, our country is going to head in the wrong direction under the reign of a despot who has promised to increase drilling and abandon most of the environmental protection.
Looking in the future, I wonder how habitable will be parts of our world due to the effects of climate change?
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