Said Marika Erdley, who had to evacuate, quoted in "Watching Your House Burn on a Ring Camera" (New York Magazine).
The article concentrates on the experience of... well, the headline says it: watching your house burn on a Ring camera.
But I was struck by the strange and poetic decision to save ashes from a fire. First, why are you saving all those ashes: dad, mom, dogs, Ed. Was there no plan to disperse them... eventually...? The ocean is right there.
But here is a fire, come to claim its own — ashes. Wouldn't you see it as fitting that the fire consume the ashes as it reduces everything that was yours, that was not yet ash, to ashes? Ashes to ashes.
Everything that was yours... except what you grabbed in a rush to find meaning in your things. The expensive suits. The Wyland watercolor. Wondering what really matters, you are in Why Land. Why are Dad and Mom gone? Why the dogs? Why Ed? But take the shoes and those suits because — crazy as it all feels — you're still thinking about going back into work.
Posts
75 comments:
That's an interesting read. Thanks for finding it. I hope she goes back to good news, but then will have to deal with survivors' guilt, I suppose, if her house is the only one standing.
Long ago, I was in the office of a grad student in tears because her neighborhood back in CA burned. But a wildfire is a capricious thing, and for whatever reason, her folks' house was spared. You just never know to it's all over.
I got my art on my walls. It's about 60 paintings. I would take them. And I got a lot of important stuff on my computer. My art and my computer. And my dog would take one of her bones.
Ashes used to go in the ground, in a cemetery. (An urn of cremains is freakin' heavy. This person hefted . . . three?) Now they sit about the house on mantlepieces or in cabinets. We want to respect our loved ones, yet we carry them about instead of laying them to rest. Even to the point, as Althouse so brilliantly summarizes, of moving ashes out of a house of ashes.
I don't criticize what people try to retain when faced with losing all their possessions, unless they lose their life in the process of retaining them. I see stories like this from various disasters, and I do think the best things to grab are the things that absolutely can't be replaced, such as the "curio cabinet of memories". Smart to get clothes too, because you'll need them. Otherwise, the thing that sucks is the next day when you realize all that was lost and some of the guilt that you might have saved such and such item. That's why I don't criticize. If you could have saved it all, then it wouldn't be a disaster.
I'm reminded of Sun Zi's famous quote from The Art Of War, "An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes if it means maintaining control.”
In this instance it has meaning at both a local and a meta level. On the meta level you have people like Biden, Gavin "Bateman" Newsom, and Karen Bass who are clearly engaged in the actions described by Master Sun. On the local level, it is becoming increasingly likely some of these fires - maybe a majority - might be the direct cause of arson. From high to low, lots of people just want to watch the world burn, and now they can using their ring cameras.
Things to deal with… just wait until all these folks have to deal with the state/local government and are still waiting 3 years later for the permits required to rebuild. They voted for these assholes and now they’ll finally discover what it’s like to deal with them.
Why it’s almost like chickens coming home… TO ROOST!
I would say your wallet is the most important thing to take along with any cash you may have laying around. You can buy new stuff on your credit cards and get a hotel/apartment pretty quickly. Your car is important as well.
ABC7 Los Angeles: “113 LAFD firefighters removed from duty without pay for failing to meet city's vaccination mandate”
City News Service
Monday, December 6, 2021
If you live in a fire area you need a go bag: cash, papers, meds, clothes, etc. The time you get the evac order is not the time to be deciding what to take.
Agree, criticism isn’t warranted. Grab memories as well as something for tomorrow bc life goes on. I try to keep a “go bag” for weather emergencies but I’m not sure what I’d take. Me, wife, and two big dogs take up most of the space in a car.
I hear that Biden is planning to send each fire victim $700 like they did for Hurricane Helene victims, so they'll be fine.
I had a friend whose father had a major impact via controls engineering irrigation projects in the Central Valley of Cali. In looking for details of his work I came across this history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_Project
A review of this well documented history shows that there have been legions of evil people wrangling, ala Chinatown, through the ages.
I like how the fire chiefs bio said that she *will* increase diversity and "strive" which means "try," to do her actual job.
My brother lives in Altadena in a 5 million dollar house. His garage burned down yesterday, but otherwise he's ok for now.
LA is gonna have a big one, on par with an earthquake, that's going to burn down all of the valley one day. All the way to the sea. You can't do anything against 100 mph winds.
Exactly. I have one living in NJ for hurricanes and I get advance notice for them. I have planned evacuations many times, and have yet to HAVE to, but I am ready. I am also what some call a prepper. I had no problem during covid, because I had ample supplies to carry us through until the stores restocked. I didn't empty the stores out when they were low on supplies.
Some say the end is near
Some say we'll see Armageddon soon
I certainly hope we will
I sure could use a vacation from this
Bullshit three-ring
Circus sideshow of Freaks
Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call L.A.
The only way to fix it is to flush it all away
Any fucking time, any fucking day
Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona bay
Fret for your figure and
Fret for your latte and
Fret for your lawsuit and
Fret for your hairpiece and
Fret for your Prozac and
Fret for your pilot and
Fret for your contract and
Fret for your car
Some say a comet will fall from the sky
Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves
Followed by fault lines that cannot sit still
Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits
One great big festering neon distraction
I've a suggestion to keep you all occupied
Learn to swim, learn to swim, learn to swim
'Cause Mom's gonna fix it all soon
Mom's comin' 'round to put it back the way it ought to be
Learn to swim, learn to swim
Learn to swim, learn to swim
Learn to swim, learn to swim
Learn to swim, learn to swim
Fuck L. Ron Hubbard and
Fuck all his clones
Fuck all these gun-toting
Hip gangster wannabes
Fuck retro anything
Fuck your tattoos
Fuck all you junkies and
Fuck your short memories
Yeah, fuck smiley glad-hands
With hidden agendas
Fuck these dysfunctional
Insecure actresses
'Cause I'm praying for rain
I'm praying for tidal waves
I wanna see the ground give way
I wanna watch it all go down
Mom, please flush it all away
I wanna see it go right in and down
I wanna watch it go right in
Watch you flush it all away
Yeah, time to bring it down again
Yeah, don't just call me pessimist
Try and read between the lines
I can't imagine why you wouldn't
Welcome any change, my friend
I wanna see it come down
Put it down
Suck it down
Flush it down
- Maynard Keenan, TOOL - Aenema (1996)
I thought it was a Wyland watercooler and thought that must be real fancy. Then I looked at the Wyland art. I'm sorry that's the best art she had.
"You can't do anything against 100 mph winds".... Well.... except for managing the tinder loads on the ground, maintaining your electrical infrastructure, tackling the homeless and prosecuting crimes like arson, and making sure there's adequate water, instead of being steadfast in the opposite direction on all of those issues.
It takes time and effort to get a properly tailored suit made, well, maybe not in LA, but still, and if you have one you like, it makes sense to take it. Ditto the shoes if they are high quality. The watercolor? Sure, the curios? Nah.
Saving ashes from the fire caught my attention too. But I can understand it--my in-laws were cremated and we have the ashes. My wife and her sister made plans to disburse them but in the end the time and place didn't seem right. So we still have them and they still have vague plans to do something with them.
But while they may be ambivalent about their parent's final resting place, they don't want some random disaster to make the decision for them.
Yesterday, many LA fire hydrants were dry, water-main water-pressure too low for fire hose-operation, and uncontrolled water-flow discharges from destroyed PVC plumbing pipe in destroyed buildings causing more water-pressure drops in street mains. LA fire department understaffed, under-equipped, and under-funded, losing $17 million in budget dollars last year. Pacific Palisades council woman Traci Park was interviewed yesterday; she stated that LA "is short of 62 needed fire-houses". This is enormous tragedy compounded but absolutely incompetent governance: Mayor Karen Bass, DEI lady fire chief, and Gov Newsom all pilloried.
If LA and Hollywood fell into the ocean, I hold a party.
“You can't do anything against 100 mph winds.”
You can do what the judge told my friend (18 years old at the time) who was caught with an open container in the backseat of a Plymouth Superbird clocked at 140 mph by the CHP at 3:15am on the 91 freeway:
Friend: “your honor… what could I do?”
Judge: “You could pray, son.”
I am picturing the fire scene in the movie "Paint" with Owen Wilson.
A friend mused she might cash out her profit from selling her home and live on a boat. I scoffed. However the idea of living on a house boat doesn't seem so bad in view of this turn of events. The homeless™ can't build encampments nearby either. California must have some magical property that makes people want to live there no matter what the conditions are. That's the only explanation I can see because many of these people with their income and their skills they could live anywhere.
"I don't criticize what people try to retain when faced with losing all their possessions..."
I hope that you are not perceiving me as criticizing. I didn't.
You can build a concrete house w/fireproof roof, fire buffer around its perimeter, metal fire-shutters on windows, interior fire sprinklers. Too expensive for a working-class homeowner's budget, but anyone with can afford a million-dollar house could afford a fireproof million-dollar house.
There are some houses in fire zones that have survived, probably for these reasons.
"But I was struck by the strange and poetic decision to save ashes from a fire. First, why are you saving all those ashes: dad, mom, dogs, Ed. Was there no plan to disperse them... eventually...? The ocean is right there."
There are a lot of federal and state laws restricting the spreading of ashes. Consult your local laws. And I would expect simply dumping them in the ocean in your back yard would be a no-no.
And how many people who get cremated want their ashes scattered around anyway?
We have a couple of small tasteful boxes on the mantel that contain the cremains of a couple of deceased pets. We would have buried them in the family pet cemetery out in the country, but the area is known for scavengers who have been observed digging up pets for a meal. We plan to have their cremains buried with us when we go. And we may be cremated ourselves to save on burial costs.
"But here is a fire, come to claim its own — ashes. Wouldn't you see it as fitting that the fire consume the ashes as it reduces everything that was yours, that was not yet ash, to ashes? Ashes to ashes."
No.
"Everything that was yours... except what you grabbed in a rush to find meaning in your things."
There was also the constraint that everything grabbed had to fit in the "car". Even a big SUV like hers.
"The Wyland watercolor."
I followed the link. The Wylands seem nice. I might even pay $30 for a print. But obviously it meant a lot more to her.
In Downton Abbey, Lord Grantham observed that he did not merely "own" the estate; he was the caretaker of it and its tenants entrusted to make sure it could carry on into the future. And expensive art follows the same dynamic.
"Why are Dad and Mom gone? Why the dogs? Why Ed?"
Why are we here?
Because we're here, roll the bones, roll the bones
Why does it happen?
Because it happens, roll the bones, roll the bones
- Neal Peart
"But take the shoes and those suits because — crazy as it all feels — you're still thinking about going back into work."
Yes, that's what being a Professional means.
And the assumption here is that she is a member of the professional "laptop class", which seems reasonable. If she was a mechanic or a trash collector, she would have made different choices.
As the panicky ape that I am, I expect to drop a ring or my watch into the toilet as the fire hits the house. I will then reach down and grab it, but be emotionally unable to let go in the fashion of a monkey paw trap or Gollum in Lord of the Rings.
I will burn to ashes and save money on a formal cremation. It's my dream.
Kate said...
"An urn of cremains is freakin' heavy. This person hefted . . . three?"
Most of that weight is probably in the urn itself. The ashes are just of the bones; everything else burns away. The person's ashes typically weight about 4-9 pounds.
Batten down the windmills.
Many Floridians live on boats. Southern Cal might have sea lions' encampments though.
I'd be taking a hard drive, except it's already backed up daily on Idrive offsite. So I'm good to go.
^^ The Los Angeles blazes would have never happened if the residents had raked the forest floor like Trump told them to.
Diamonds are flammable.
Many LA homeowners whose homes are destroyed this week probably had no perception of eventual probability of Santa Ana-fueled enormous wildfires, nor magnitude of gross incompetence and longstanding corruption of local and state government agencies they think are responsible for life-safety, fire-protection, and general welfare of LA homeowners. These same homeowners probably virtue-signal voted for Karen Bass and Newsom, cheered appointment of fire chief with no personal fire-fighting experience who believes DEI advocacy is her primary role.
I am no real estate expert so I cannot see how these people can get any kind of financing for their homes, especially homes of that cost, that are uninsurable. Anybody know?
I don't know how things are done in LA, but if you don't have a plan to disperse the ashes and tell the funeral director about it, you may get the ashes in a sealed container. It can be put into a niche in a memorial wall (columbarium), but it has to be taken apart to scatter the ashes. If you don't have family and friends wanting the ashes scattered after the funeral, you may figure that they don't want to show up for a later dispersal.
You can't do anything against 100 mph winds.
Tell that to Dick Cheney and the Halliburton hurricane machine.
Biden's team used it against North Carolina just last year.
Wait until they try to get a permit to rebuild in California even if they have the money.
Many of those homes are:
A) Not financed
B) If they are financed probably have boutique covenants that permit a minimum level of insurance that doesn't include fire (unlikely)
C) Had fire coverage and recently lost it (as many CA residents have) but have enough equity to exist in a limbo region while banks and insurers figure things out
D) Their owners are wealthy enough to possibly self-insure
My two cents.
Walk along the lonely street of dreams. Pictures.
https://thedukereport.substack.com/p/pacicic-palisades-village-devestation
A modest house in the Palisades would be $3-5M. Larger homes with larger lots and/or views can easily go over $10m.
Many would have been bought with cash, and many would be self insured. The property value destroyed will be much larger than insurable losses.
A large part is land for sure, but remember a lot of these homes are 4000-5000 sqft (or more) of high end construction. Sometimes on difficult to access lots where the terrain is quite hilly and steep. Probably somewhere in the ballpark of $1000/sqft to rebuild so a larger home could easily have $4-5m of structural value in addition to the land.
And that's not even counting the contents — many of these homeowners will have millions of dollars worth of artwork, furniture, designer clothes, etc.
This guys nails it.
Remember too - democrats take NO responsibility. NONE. Such leadership! They are precious.
I thought it was a Wyland watercooler and thought that must be real fancy.
Not like those plebian Sparkletts numbers.
Human ashes are desecrated remains. They appall and disgust me, especially the grinding up of the bones. No, they don't fall apart by themselves! People who keep them in their homes curse their homes. Put them in the ground!
As California burns under Biden, consider the fact that there hasn't been a major fire under a Republican president in over four years.
Without sounding too obnoxious about it maybe the "burned-outs" should count their blessings? At the Lahaina fire in Hawaii the police actually blocked the only road getting out of town & didn't bulldoze a path for people to escape on foot. Those fleeing the fire could either abandon their cars and run into the sea or stay in their cars and burn alive. However at least the authorities did something. So I guess my bottom line with this comment is: "Don't follow leaders watch the parking meters" or in this case have a go-bag already prepared and a feasible plan to get out, or perhaps simply don't live in such a dangerous location in the first damn place. Just saying.
LA gave away surplus fire fighting equipment to Ukraine in 2022. Probably should have held on to it, since it was inevitable that with the wildfires every year in California, that they may need them more.
Without reading other comments - I mean, presumably one would have to go back to work eventually, and clothes are expensive, especially (I would guess) when you're waiting on insurance and disaster relief.
That said, I suppose I now have only about 5 months to gather our most necessary and precious items before it's hurricane season again...
Dont care about a bunch of millionaries who got rich sitting in their house. They basically won the lottery and fires are nothing new in SoCal. As for taking the ashes of your parents, whats the point of keeping them in the first place? Would you keep your mothers skeleton in your attic?
And I always love how people vote for the same clowns over and over again, no matter what. And then are all shocked and amazed when their beloved elected clowns do something that hurts them. Whether its big city crime, Calf and Maui fire failures, or whatever.
All these people in SoCal dont give a rap them zillions of migrants pour into Calf or the other parts of the USA. To them it just meant cheap nannies and sky high real estate. Now, I'm supposed to care that their Governor Newsome was lax in giving them enough water, and their DEI Fire Chief is incompetent. So bad, so sad.
I've dumped cremains in the ocean by request of the deceased. If there's no one else there -- there wasn't -- what can happen?
Kakistocracy said...
"The Los Angeles blazes would have never happened if the residents had raked the forest floor like Trump told them to."
In general, brush raking will reduce the chance of forest fires, but never completely eliminate it. If it was not done properly here that's another failure of California governance to go along with their other, more relevant management failures here.
As a 50 year resident of Los Angeles, I read comments expressing glee at its current troubles with a grain of salt. If you say you hate the city, I think what you really hate is its incompetent, corrupt political leadership, or an aspect or aspects of the city that have become caricatures. There are plenty of good and sensible people who stay because they love the place. They work hard, many have deep economic and social roots in the city, and their fates are intertwined with the unfortunate circumstance that they are a seemingly permanent political minority. Conservatives in places like Ann Arbor, Madison, NYC, Chicago, Boston and a host of other places go through many of the same indignities. The solution isn't to herd together in red enclaves. Let's hope that these terrible events push LA toward a solution.
Can't understand taking the dogs' ashes. But then again, I don't get my pets cremated. Ed - yeah, I'd probably take him. He's just a friend, but *I* was the one who got his ashes? I'm guessing I was the only person in Ed's life, so I would probably feel eternal guilt if I, like everyone else in his life, finally abandoned him. And of course I'd take mom and dad.
I have a child in an urn, and if I suddenly found my house engulfed in flames, she would be the first thing I'd grab once I got my living children out of the house. Doesn't matter that she's already dead. There's connection there.
The widespread use of cremation in the US is recent. I suspect that its increasing use has something to do with people's detachment from religious notions that the dead will rise at the end of time. Have we developed social norms for the handling and disposition of the cremains? If we had, where would such norms be published? I don't know what norms there are, apart from generalities like "show respect for the dead".
“All these assholes voted for Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom, so they get what they get.”
—— Adam Carolla
In that podcast, he was wrong to say that they'll "never vote Democrat again". Of course they will!
Anything you really can't easily replace should be in a box that you can load at a second's notice if you live in home where a quick evacuation might be a survival issue.
Can you explain your reasoning?
You can build a concrete house w/fireproof roof...
Built to Burn
You might want to take your "reasoning" to the Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese Buddhists, who cremate their deceased family members. In Taiwan those remains are often kept in special temples meant to venerate ancestors.
Your claim of desecration would thus be met with bewilderment.
So I'm with ampersand: can you explain your reasoning?
So essentially, RCOCEAN II's attitude toward people who have lost everything is:
"PFFT. Fuck'em"
Got it.
Community Notes takes down a climatista on X for proposing that the lack of water in the LA fires is due to climate change:
Peg Aloi @themediawitch
Her post:
" The reason there is "no water" available in fire hydrants in LA is because the water lines have been broken or burned by the fire, so there is no water pressure, in addition to low water pressure due to 8 months of drought. Resist politicized accusations and conspiracy theories."
Community Notes:
"This post is incorrect. According to officials from California Department of Water and Power, “the water infrastructure is not designed to handle the demand of wildfires.”
Californias infrastructure budget is the responsibility of the state government.
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/04/02/governor-newsom-unveils-water-plan-to-capture-more-water-and-defend-against-extreme-weather/"
Look on the bright side. Think of it as an opportunity to downsize and de-clutter.
So, I looked up Wyland. If the painting isn't a 5-story tall full-sized picture of a whale, throw it on the fire. The rest are almost as bad as stills from 'Finding Nemo.'
My parent's ashes are in a special place in the Sierras. When my time comes, I will join them along with my dogs that I've said goodbye to over the years.
So, when the fires are out, and the rubble cleared away, will LA eject the homeless and their derelict RV's, campers, etc that will show up the minute there is a place to park, as they do along the PCH?
I just saw on Facebook that a high school friend of mine lost his house to the fire. He seems in remarkably good spirits, joking about a GoFundMe to restock his liquor cabinet.
The Los Angeles blazes would have never happened if the residents had raked the forest floor like Trump told them to.
Proper forest management - like removing undergrowth, as Trump suggested - doesn't remove the threat of fire. It minimizes the threat of catastrophic ones.
Are you deliberately obtuse or does it come naturally?
Maynard Keenan, TOOL - Aenema (1996)
That's Maynard JAMES Keenan. :) Wife and I flew down to see them shortly after The Nokia opened in December, 2007.
There are plenty of good and sensible people who stay because they love the place. They work hard, many have deep economic and social roots in the city, and their fates are intertwined with the unfortunate circumstance that they are a seemingly permanent political minority.
Indeed. I have several, life-long friends from high school who live in and around LA. They're not in danger. This time. But have been in the past and will be again in the future.
Living in arguably the bluest area of the bluest state, I have no room to criticize their choices. It's also why I will never rely upon my state or local government when the shit goes down. We're on our own.
Post a Comment