Poem: Paradise
LA Fires and the First Responders
I'm writing this an ocean and a continent away from where the inferno currently engulfing California is. I wasn't planning on doing a new Substack post until the middle of January (every new year, that's when I've usually got most of my bearings together and can plan ahead as needed - and, after the Christmas/New Years rush, I suspect I'm far from alone in this regard).
Seeing the fires rip through the Pacific Palisades, Malibu and elsewhere, and people evacuating from as far away as possible as the burn zone, has made me change course.
This morning I awoke to find my windows frosted over, the fields surrounding my home bleached bone-white with grist, trees standing black and leaflessly skeletal against a smoke-hued sky. The tarmac of our driveway was carpeted in frost that had hardened overnight after an evening of biting cold (we’re in the middle of a prolonged cold snap here in Ireland). Most of today has been a new-cloudless sky replete with a blinding sun that has burnt off most of last night’s frost. I've gotten up as normal, showered, got caffeinated and went to work.
Only the apocalyptic images filling up my newsfeed, showing houses, hills, trees and people fleeing their homes en masse under a reddening sky, gave me pause. At least three people I know have reported they are safe from it.
When I originally wrote this poem, it was at the height of California wildfire season. But it's a little over a week into 2025 - wildfire season typically occurs.
High winds and increasingly arid conditions are fuelling the current inferno. I won't pretend this isn't deeply worrying.
Below is a link to the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation emergency fund. Their resources have been stretched thin in the last two days alone. Donate what you can:
https://supportlafd.org/
Image: Noah Berger, National Geographic, August 2016.