Yearly fires part of LA culture
Remember Prometheus?
He stole fire from the gods and gave the gift to mankind. As a result, he was sentenced to the grisly fate of having his liver eaten by a bird every day while chained to a lonely rock.
It must have been hard for the poor guy to watch his own guts be chewed up day in and day out.
It’s probably similar to the feeling that evacuees from the California wildfires felt this past week. Not only are they displaced from their homes, they get to see, breathe and smell all the evidence from their temporary high-school-turned-shelter bases.
My parents live on the mountain opposite Angeles National Forest, the origin of Station fire. On a weekend visit home, driving down the Glendale Freeway North was like descending into hell: a narrow passage lined with smoke that smelled like smouldering charcoal. Raging flames traveled down the dark valley in a V formation.
Such smoke goes through the seemingly impermeable walls of home and childhood memories, and even the moon glows orange with alarm and the sun red with disappointment during fire season.
The vapors reduce people to mucus-leaking messes and yet some cyclists still insisted on their regular route Sunday morning.
Contrary to the alarm seen on headlines and on the radio, a fire up close is quiet, even anticlimactic — there are no close-up shots or crackling noises as zealous TV reporters form puns from the field, preying on poor, panicked residents donning facemasks. It’s not my first fire; I remember as a young girl packing clothes in anticipation of evacuating right around Christmas, peeking out the window to look at the firefighters parked on the street.
In this wildfire, there was just the unassuming hum of small planes and helicopters playing voyeur, dropping water and releasing clouds of red powder to no avail.
It becomes more real when you can see it not from the window of the TV or translated onto newsprint, but rather through your bedroom window.
This is no rote public service announcement played between after-school specials with cuddly bears. It’s not something you think about when the city posts fire warnings and spends money on cleaning up brush — the efforts seem almost comical with its friendly graphics. Growing up, I grew used to the sight of mountain goats annually making an appearance on my hillside to graze on the shrubs that had grown comfortable along the undeveloped ledges.
Their ears tagged with yellow plastic and RV-driving shepherd felt almost humorous, a county joke – like some city employee got dared to spend tax money on something that involved goats and a dusty old trailer.
These efforts are reserved for the hills because it is here in these hills we Angelenos covet houses — as if they were seats in the pantheon of the gods, sucking electricity and water out of the valleys to fuel custom home entertainment systems and to fill saltwater infinity pools. These are the houses on the front of mass-produced realtor handouts, peeking above the smog.
Angelenos play with fire everyday — we breathe in it as we drive everywhere, and we manipulate it to warm us, keep us entertained, keep us fed. But we forget the punishment Prometheus endured for rubbing two sticks together.
Mountains surround Los Angeles, and when they are on fire they send signals to everyone else — warnings that they might be next. It’s a cyclical, natural and all-too-depressing reminder that Angelenos don’t have full power to control the smoke.
Everyone in Los Angeles must experience fire. It’s an annual preoccupation that occurs both in the city and in the wilderness, though some may have trouble seeing the difference. Destruction is still the end result.
We embrace fire with a dual mentality — either with a sense of perseverance or one of recklessness. It’s a communal and seasonal event that demands fear and respect — a humbling experience that reminds us proud hill dwellers that no matter how nice the car in the garage is, no amount of freeway lanes can harness the rage of heat and dry brush.
In Pasadena, Altadena or my parents’ suburban street in Glendale, people parked haplessly to stop and look at the spectacle rising in the distance, cameras in hand.
We all still watch, with open mouths. In Los Angeles, fire simply is a matter of taking turns.
Armageddon seems to happen every year. We, like Prometheus, dread feeling the horror in our own neighborhood after another part of the city has rebuilt itself — but we keep our houses on the hills and stubbornly stay behind, battling flames with mere garden hoses.
It is our chosen fate: to continue another chapter in Los Angeles mythology.
Clare Sayas is a junior majoring in public relations. Her column, “Lost & Found,” runs Thursdays.