Thanks. You recalled correctly.
As mentioned in the post I just wrote above, I'm up at school, but my mom, stepdad, and brother live in LA where a mandatory evacuation was issued before dawn yesterday morning due to the Skirball fire.
They went to sleep with concerns not for themselves but for the tens of thousands who live out in the Valley where there had already been catastrophic devastation due to the raging wildfires. The smoke had been very brutal on Tuesday, with ashes raining down and coating everything, like a grim transposal of the vision the jacaranda trees create in the spring when the purple petals are everywhere. Our neighbor had to be rushed to the emergency room due to the smoke exacerbating her COPD to the extent she couldn't breathe. But they didn't think our house was in an area that would be directly endangered. My dog sensed that something was amiss in the middle of the night and started barking, and my parents decided to go ahead and get dressed and ready. The notification that a mandatory evacuation was being issued came out before dawn. It could have been a chaotic and frightening ordeal but there was calm efficiency from the emergency crews who shepherded everyone to safely.
They are close to the Getty, which has this incredibly awesome system that is able protect all the art. The 405 was closed for part of the day!
It looked like scenes from a movie about the aftermaths of an apocalypse.
My family now in Malibu, where hopefully they'll be safe, but it feels like no place really is in LA right now.
In 2007 neighbors in Malibu had gone to sleep feeling reasonably at peace, only to be awakened and ordered to evacuate because the fires were encroaching at lightening speed. A family friend had been a minister at Malibu Pres, and in what he'd thought was an abundance of caution had gone there in the middle of the night to pack up computers and irreplaceable valuables. He'd texted coworkers to ask for help, and so they all trotted out and sort of mocked themselves as being "Nervous Nellies" since at that time there was no known risk of the fires coming their way. Then the winds shifted. It was coming right towards them. Thankfully, by that point, they were almost finishing loading up their cars. The firefighters didn't have enough manpower to combat it all, so they had to make a call about either saving the church, which had no one there but the employees who were already set to leave, or the residential areas filled with houses that had sleeping people inside. So of course, they did what was right and they let the church burn. The community pulled together then to help one another. The daycare of a nearby synagogue took in all the children from Malibu Pres; other churches lent their sanctuaries and fellowship halls; there were widely attended fundraisers. I think it will pull together again now, but it's sort of overwhelming with the fires continuing to rage. I was supposed to be flying back to LA tonight to sing at a concert this weekend, but it's been canceled. My brother's school, as well as many within the LAUSD, is closed for the rest of the week (no complaints from him about that, though), and my mom will be working from home.
I hope the fires and the choking smoke do not make their way to you, or to the others from LA here.