the mythical winds of santa ana (that actually COULD affect you this time)

The last thing anyone wants to do when meeting new people is talk about the weather. On the first day of my brand new job, a job I believed was destined to change my life, I looked up and saw that the sky was intensely blue. The wind stirred around me, whipping a few sand spurs into my hair. I noticed a black cloud outside of my peripheral. What for a split second was gratitude for a sunny day in January, turned into brushed-off concern. Bad omen, I thought to myself jokingly. 

The thought I tried to push aside kept rising up in conversation. The power’s out. There’s a fire in the Highlands. As an LA native, none of this is alarming. Fires happen in Malibu, in Topanga, in the Highlands…The risk is very well known, and if you live there, well, you reap what you sow. Plus…they’re all millionaires. It’s probably a vacation home. It’s our callous justification. It’s the Santa Ana winds. This happens every year. 

The Santa Ana winds have a mythical element to them. They appear every winter with their gusts enveloping the entirety of Southern California. With the sun in Los Angeles shining 300 days a year, it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between the seasons, but every year, intuitively, we know the winds have arrived. For a moment, we are temporarily humbled, forced to face the dust and debris the Santa Ana winds spit out at us as we exit our cars. And every year, little fires spark. A few people are affected far away, and we are mildly inconvenienced by a splinter stuck in one eye. 

This year, I am honored to be a part of the statistics.

LA’s Worst Fire In History. 130,000 Forced To Evacuate. Tens Of Thousands Displaced. 10,000 Lost Their Homes. My mom (Virgo) evacuated with nothing but our dogs and documents. My dad (Leo) told her she should just leave her car, go get some lunch, and that when she’d be back the fires would be under control. He’d put the embers out himself (Leo!!!). The fire was three miles away, which was the closest it had ever been to us. When the east side of the mountain ranges running through Pacific Palisades started being licked with flames, pedestrians were still looking around at the blue sky, taking pictures with blank faces. It took my mother five hours to evacuate. Two of those hours were spent just getting the car down to Sunset (one block). There was a literal split in the sky: one half was a stoic shade of blue, and the other was a mushrooming cloud of black and red. This split emulated how we processed the situation in real-time. 

When another fire traveled over 20 miles east to Altadena, concern started to grow. This was truly surreal. It was unlike anything anyone could imagine. Two massive fires that we watched from sporadically updated, poorly animated 2-D maps. If you were in a zone colored dark red and orange, you should really leave! There was no way to check on your property, with the current number of acres burning. In the Palisades, 800 acres quickly became 17,000 acres, then 23,713 acres. The Eaton fire was 65% contained at 14,117 acres. Both towns absolutely decimated. Not to mention the Sunset fire, then Kenneth–wait no, that was a false alarm! The news felt relentless. Transplants were leaving town, and it felt like those of us who were displaced had decided–or had no choice, really–to stay close. The moments of silence woke me up during a nap. Maybe the wind has stopped…

While the majority of us knew our homes were most likely gone, there’s always that small voice that thinks you’ll be the exception. We, as a species, are akin to hope. We accumulate trauma and as we’re surviving, we hope. Even after a 43 second phone call with my mother where she softened the blunt truth as gently as she could with, “Yeah, it’s gone,” I hoped there was something left. In a day, our entire imprint on this earth was completely wiped clean. The only thing left on the entire property was a bright green eucalyptus tree.

This is a classic story of Man vs Nature that those climate activists who threw cake at the Mona Lisa were trying to warn us about! I’m not special. My story is one of thousands. My mom lamented why us, and my dad deflected with and twenty thousand others. On a human level, my heart hurts for my parents, who spent 20 years in a two-bedroom, 800-square-foot apartment with three kids to save up for a house in the Palisades. A house that was two weeks away from a complete remodel. 

My heart hurts for the people in Altadena, one of the largest historically Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, with 40,000 residents, many of whom live in generational homes going back to the 1970s. To give context, Altadena’s history is incredibly integrated and irreplaceable with its inhabitants; when the majority of white residents fled due to the thickening layer of smog coating the San Gabriel mountains in the 60s and 70s, people of color began to move in. The middle class rose in Altadena, an area of LA that gradually remained affordable over the past 50 years. The scale of this event is devastating across all of Los Angeles. I’m in complete denial still that these two places are uninhabitable, and will be for (x amount of time). I can’t even bring myself to write ‘years’ in the same sentence. 

When devastation occurs, it can be completely debilitating. And the way we communicate with each other shouldn’t be taken personally. Some people will cry because their spouse’s high school burned down, right in front of you. Other people haven’t cried yet because they need to take care of their children or their aging parents. Some people will send you a blue heart after you post on Instagram (note to self: get off Instagram) and say ‘Oh no! So sad!’ Others won’t even ask if you were affected. And there will definitely be a cheeky slide-in from an ex ‘checking if you’re okay.’ Things won’t be better for a long time, and facing the battle with bureaucracy, logistics, and hindrances, which will inevitably come to feel more hopeless than fighting against the Santa Ana winds. But there is kindness creeping in–when the parking lot guy lets you out for free. Or when that stranger in line (dressed impeccably well by the way) tells you their story of how they lost everything, including their pets, and they give YOU a hug. Or when you find a book in a free makeshift library that happens to be a brand new copy of something you lost in the fire. We will intrinsically look for something to hold onto, even if it’s fleeting. I encourage you to let yourself hold it.  

My Dad’s excavation to find the remains of my mom’s jewelry. Second to left was her engagement ring, to the right of it her wedding ring.  A little sign of everlasting love.

Robert Frost’s Nothing Gold Can Stay:

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Valentina lives in Los Angeles, working as a director’s assistant in Hollywood. She graduated from NYU and completed her masters in directing at University of the Arts London. Her latest work, MADONNA MIA, is currently in its initial festival run. In her free time she enjoys visiting her family back in Italy, hosting supper clubs, and watching Italian cinema. If you want to find her on the internet, her instagram is @heyitsvalpal.