Part 152: Wildfire Disaster in California – Public Health and Political Climate Troubles

Published January 20, 2025.

Jan 21, 2025

Photo of lingering wildfire smoke and skyscrapers in Downtown Los Angeles on January 9 by author from the 110 Freeway (GoPro Pro Hero 11 Black).

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

The major wildfire event was seemingly over, but things were still far from normal. After a week of probably the worst air quality over the Los Angeles Basin since the 2020 Bobcat Fire, we were finally set to open the windows and let the smoke smell out of the house in Altadena. In the kitchen, I opened a trash can unthinkingly and got a fresh blast of smoke in the face without my N95 mask on. The California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer enforcing the mandatory evacuation down the block had been friendly enough, letting us in on foot but not by vehicle. There still was no power in the neighborhood, nor could the natural gas lines be turned on, and the water was still suspect. It hasn’t rained yet as the neighbors sought out conversation. They had just recently installed native plants in the front yard and were using it to keep the plants alive. The sky was a clear, sunny, windless blue, and a couple blocks to the north there was total destruction mile-after-square mile of burnt ruins from lost homes and businesses.

A collective outcry had gone out from the many displaced residents from the Eaton Fire and also the Palisades Fire further out west, closer to the Pacific Ocean. Let me go back to my property! People demanded still less than two weeks after perhaps the most damaging episode in Los Angeles County since the 2018 Woolsey Fire decked much of Malibu. The authorities seemed concerned about the allegedly epic failure to prevent the conflagrations, which have claimed at least 27 lives with 31 people still missing. Meanwhile, at least one prominent expert, climatologist Jeff Masters, estimated in Yale Climate Connections that “Because of the large population exposed to dangerous toxic smoke during last week’s fires, it is plausible that over the next few years, hundreds or thousands of Californians will die prematurely from breathing it.”

This isn’t revolutionary news. Scientists have long known that wildfire smoke is dangerous, and in comparison to past fire episodes in California, the large scale of urban destruction undoubtedly made the air more hazardous. Meanwhile across the Pacific, at least one Hawaii official was flabbergasted at the sight of people rushing back to their burnt property without personal protective equipment (PPE), as reported in Civil Beat by journalist Brittany Lyte, quoting Dr. Diana Felton, chief of the Hawai‘i State Department of Health’s Communicable Disease and Public Health Nursing Division: “It’s almost like Lahaina PTSD, seeing pictures of people going into the LA neighborhoods without any PPE.” Post-traumatic stress disorder will also undoubtedly sink as time passes and also claim lives. Developing a complete health impact assessment for an event such as this will undoubtedly take time, but it shouldn’t be discounted.

One unfortunate side-effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly a societal apathy towards public health officials. As Americans chafed at the idea of restrictions, they aired their grievances online and chafed at the idea of restrictions even in a disaster zone. The CHP officers on our block weren’t masked either, nor were the many Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies (LASD) who suffered exposure. As was reported by Los Angeles Times journalist Keri Blakinger, the department sent out an urgent message on January 16 warning, “**Attn all personnel**” adding that the air in Altadena was “hazardous, containing lead, asbestos and other harmful particulates.” LASD advised its deputies to decontaminate before returning home to their families. Some had noted that after the September 11, 2011, terrorist attacks that many first responders later suffered death from cancer—at least 6,781 people as of December 2023, to be exact. We’ve made some progress as a society since then, but have we really learned?

Many, undoubtedly, such as first responders doing their jobs, have little choice to experience this exposure. In the chaos the morning after the wind-driven fires had caused devastation, I myself had gone back masked and wearing protective glasses to guard against embers. Even N95 masks aren’t perfect, that’s the 95%, and wearing PPE perfectly even for the trained and experienced isn’t easy. Contamination is almost an inevitability, part of the inherent risk architecture of emergency decision-making. So just how bad will this get, and are we prepared for what’s next? Another wind red-flag event occurred today, and yet the LASD and the Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD) weren’t ready to hit the breaks and slow down the process. A slightly unnerving YouTube video was produced by the latter agency, featuring an unmasked Air Quality Resources Advisor, Kati Chachere, stating that “the air quality in Pasadena and Altadena are in the moderate air quality index zone,” noting that “this is kind of the benchmark right before you should start to worry about taking some precautions; the very next one is called unhealthy for senstive groups.” The truth is there’s no safe level of exposure to air pollution or wildfire smoke.

For over a generation now, those in the so-called environmental justice movement have sought to highlight an obvious scientific fact: human beings were never meant to breathe polluted air. Scientists have repeatedly found that air pollution exposure period is a cause for grave concern, with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences stating unequivocally that “public health concerns related to high air pollution exposures include cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases, diabetes mellitus, obesity, and reproductive, neurological, and immune system disorders.” The Los Angeles Times had featured in an almost tragically frustrating photojournalism session Pizza of Venice owner Sean St. John standing on top of the burnt husk of his business without any protective gear. One Reddit user reported returning to their property to find discarded pizza boxes in their burnt-out car and rubble appearing to have already been sifted; others reported a “photographer trying to sneak photos of us while we hugged and cried.”

The CHP officer and a neighbor relaying conversation had told me much the same about being deployed further down from the fire zone on our nearly abandoned block; the reason was not so much about looting as it was about managing the traffic from looky-loos and indicating that the looters would just move further away from their checkpoints. Last Monday, in announcing arrests, including in relation to the theft of an Emmy Award from an Altadena home, new District Attorney Nathan Hochman had declared: “Let me be clear: If you exploit this tragedy to prey on victims of these deadly fires, we will find you and we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.” Stealing social media content from the fire zone has become sadly as popular as actual theft of property; both are wrong and also hazardous. The sad part here in failing to manage an evacuation isn’t just that we’re going to compound our problems, as it’s that we’re failing to live together and support each other. How much relief aid will actually reach fire victims, much less evacuees who are returning to smoke-damaged homes, remains to be seen.

With a chance of rain in the forecast on top of today’s rain event, you really have to wonder about the leadership both locally and nationally. Supervisor Kathryn Barger, as described by Los Angeles Times journalist Gustavo Arellano had also not worn any PPE while touring the disaster zone, with Arellano describing how “she adjusted her sunglasses, which complemented her pearl earrings and necklace,” and joked, “I think God is testing me,” adding, “This is a challenge, but it’s not insurmountable.” Barger and Governor Gavin Newsom have both invited newly sworn into office rerun President Donald Trump to visit the disaster zone, who, in a rare act of humanity, moved his oath of office indoors to spare his followers attendance in Washington, D.C., with freezing temperatures outside. Previous Trump rallies, such as one infamously in blazing hot Coachella and another in chilly Omaha, Nebraska, have been aftermath disasters with followers stranded, requiring evacuation and medical attention. It’s not clear whether Trump will actually accept, but we can be almost sure that he will shun PPE during his visitation.

A conciliatory Governor Newsom issued a statement today by email seeking partnership, declaring, “Where our shared principles are aligned, my administration stands ready to work with the Trump-Vance administration to deliver solutions and serve the nearly 40 million Californians we jointly represent.” You have to wonder, in the age of partisan dissonance, whether we can even rally around this basic issue given the stigmatization of PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic. Comedian Jon Stewart famously told Congress in 2019 in seeking more funding for treatment of 9/11 first responders, “I would be so angry at the latest injustice that's done to these men and women and, you know, another business card thrown our way as a way of shooing us away like children trick-or-treating, rather than the heroes that they are and will always be.” Stewart described how so many had avoided facing the truth that searching through the rubble had caused their illnesses, noting that “The breathing problems started almost immediately” and that many in turn had tried to deny the causality just as many seek to disconnect climate and weather today. Where is the leadership on these basic issues?

When COVID-19 struck, we were stuck so flat-footed on PPE that we literally had to send military flights abroad to retrieve it for the protection of medical workers. Then we stigmatized people for wearing it even as over a million Americans died. Americans are still dying of a global pandemic, and they’re still dying from 9/11, undoubtedly. It’s no secret that our collective resistance to science is killing us. The Center for Disease Control doesn’t even readily feature a total number on its tracking website, but if you sift a little, you can find it: 1,216,305. The illness preys particularly on those with respitory illness and other complicating conditions, and disease in general follows disaster. Already, wildfire evacuation sites in Pasadena are experiencing a norovirus outbreak. Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Health & Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is distinctively unqualified for the position. Trump has already made highly illogical statements about what occurred leading up to the wildfires; he’s hardly a champion of science.

Yet even the owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, seems ready to entertain unscientific leadership. Citing Blakinger’s reporting on the LASD advisory and the case of 9/11 first responders he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, “I will begin the post of ‘connecting the dots’ of the data but most importantly the potential solution of a cancer vaccine which we have spent 20 years developing and tested in over 1200 cancer patients.” While long-term research in this area is promising, it’s not available today, nor is it evident that Trump or RFK Jr. understands the stakes of the anti-science, anti-public health culture that they’ve fostered around COVID-19 for political points. Soon-Shiong later posted regarding Trump’s inauguration, “Imagine if you combined Competence at every level of government from local to state to federal with common sense” and previously shared a petition demanding the resignation of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass over the Palisades Fire with “#competance matters.” Outgoing President Joe Biden recently warned about an increasing “oligarchy” in the country, and no one should imagine that Los Angeles has been or will be immune from this political progression.

It’s no mystery that Los Angeles even without wildfires has a tremendous air pollution problem. Even as he keeps coverage of his own business operations through his firm Nantworks under wrap Soon-Shiong unlike other publications hasn’t at least openly suppressed his own paper from covering climate change even if Trump doesn’t acknowledge it. Trump has already within hours of taking office pulled the country out of the Paris Accords which sought to reduce emissions on a global scale announcing his intention to promote fossil fuels and mining. Earlier today in his inaugural address Trump declared about the matter: “That’s why today I will also declare a national energy emergency” shouting “We will drill, baby, drill” echoing the punchline made famous in 2008 by former Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Is this competence or partisanship? Even as Soon-Shiong and others like real estate magnate Rick Caruso in Los Angeles point fingers like little Trump wannabes, you have to wonder if they really believe what they’re saying, or if this is all about narrative control, money, power, and politics.

Altadena was my home. I grew up in Pasadena. This brand of projection shouldn’t be welcome in Altadena, and our officials should reject this public pressure campaign and act swiftly to protect public health rather than rushing repopulation efforts. One of our neighbors is elderly, an elderly woman with a husky dog. She told me in frustration that she was “old and poor” and didn’t have anywhere else to go. She also didn’t have any water except for her dog vowing to drink Coca-Cola and declining our offer of bottled water gifted from relatives. Giving up during disasters is easy, as is forgetting it. So many others were left behind as the flames encroached our homes that I had to be a little bit worried. The CHP officer let her charge her phone from his cruiser. The power was still out. I wanted to leave water on her doorstep, but soon basic life problems intervened. The sky started getting dark and the Altadena Town & Country Club golf course was on fire. One of our cars started with mechanical uncertainty, and we had to leave it behind for the mechanic to give it another chance at repair. The air filled with metallic smoke.

The night that most of Altadena burned down I had left. There wasn’t much else I could do. We knew we couldn’t quite fight a wind-driven fire. A friend closer to the mountain later shared video from his place showing the powerful winds driving embers. The night had been dark, sirens had sounded in the distance. A firefight after awhile starts to feel like watching a close football game. We got beat that night and now we debate it like a sporting event. Weeks before I had stood looking up at the scarily dry, vegetated mountain slopes up to Mount Wilson. “I want to see what happens when that starts to burn” I told her with a slight smile belying my concern. Yes we have always had wildfires, but this is a brave new era. Even as I write this, wildfire has broken out again in Southern California not far away, will it be another in just another minor blaze as happened earlier today several times, or will we have to flee again? Despair is easy; adaptation to this new normal is harder, and personally, I think this is going to take some more time yet.

Link: Indirect death toll from the L.A. fires may end up in the thousands

Link: Hawaiʻi Official Winces As LA Residents Ignore Health Risks To Survey Ruins

Link: Deputies warned to decontaminate clothes after lead, asbestos found in air near Eaton fire

Link: 9/11's long legacy: How the attack on the World Trade Center is still claiming lives

Link: #EatonFire | Air Resource Advisor

Link: Air Pollution and Your Health

Link: The destruction of Altadena reverberates across Black Los Angeles

Link: 9 charged with looting during L.A. fires; Emmy award among items stolen

Link: Column: How L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger plans to help Altadena rebuild

Link: Attendees describe ‘absolute chaos’ after Trump’s Southern California rally

Link: Hundreds of Trump supporters stuck on freezing cold Omaha airfield after rally, 7 taken to hospitals

Link: Jon Stewart Statement to the House Judiciary Committee on the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund