L.A. is a city of paradise, with tons of great natural beauty from the ocean to beautiful beaches to the mountains, but on the flip side of that it is also home to lots of potential natural disasters, including earthquakes, mud slides, drought conditions, and the one that hits really close to home (and for some people, unfortunately, literally hit their home), wildfires. It started innocently Tuesday morning when I saw on facebook (bad habit of mine, to check facebook early in the morning while my mind is fresh) when someone checked in as safe due to the St. Thomas Fire as a late night fire had spread through the city of Ventura. , I checked instinctively to make sure my parents' home in Camarillo was OK (I was, we got lucky), then almost as quickly dismissed it as just another fire, but then those concerns get reignited later that morning when there were reports of another fire near the 118, then early this morning (Wednesday) there was footage of fires burning near the Getty Center and making the I-405 seem like barbecue pit, that's when it really hit home. Fires are apparently especially dangerous this time due to the strong Santa Ana winds and have shut down even major highways, making it very scary for humans, but especially deadly for homes. Gotta imagine the houses, if they could speak, would be lamenting that the humans and animals get to just get up and run out but the houses themselves are sitting ducks for the spreading fire.
Lots of lessons to be learned from this round of fire disasters, the big one being: 1.) Check for fire insurance when buying a home (as well as earthquake insurance, other natural disaster insurance), but also 2.) fires are no joke. People are losing their homes and everything they ever owned, and it could have been my home or my parents' home that got caught in the damage, or me that woke up to our neighborhood being burned down and having to quickly grab everything and take video while we hurriedly rushed out to escape the disaster.
Stats: 96 square miles!
More than 50,000 Ventura County residents were evacuated from 15,000 homes.
But what really stuck out was the Getty Center indicating that it was keeping its priceless art in the museum despite the fires, indicating that the fires had spread close to its walls. It really looks like a scene straight out of an end-of-world armageddon movie where chaos reigns in city centers and everything we thought was safe is torn apart.
I've lived through a lot of natural disasters of various varieties growing in Chicago (blizzards, excessive heat, tornados, flash floods, etc.) but never really got caught in anything serious, in fact I've only benefited from them through school closings like snow days, where everyone gets excited about having a special day and it seems more like a holiday, but as an adult these disasters seem much more ominous and capable of causing massive damage, and it's humbling knowing one cannot control their own fate, that these things can happen without warning and that we're right in the way of these natural disasters.
At least SoCal doesn't have tsunamis.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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