Jim Miller, The Jumping-Off Place & SD350 Board Member
Article by The Jumping Off Place
More than a year after the Palisades fire, the drive down Pacific Coast Highway in Los Angeles on a sunny summer day is still jarring. From Santa Monica to Zuma Beach, the cars continue to jam the lots and the side of the road as people from all over the city stream to the beaches, but the scars from that catastrophic event remain starkly evident. Indeed, the buildings along the stretch near the intersection of Highway 1 and Topanga Canyon where I used to go to the beach as a young man are almost completely gone, giving the coast the look of a war zone.
During a visit there in July, one of my old high school friends, a doctor, gave me a tour of the ruins of his neighborhood, including the scorched lot that was his home. His family lost everything they had in the fire, but they survived and have navigated the trauma admirably. As we rolled through the barren landscape, I surveyed the extent of the devastation and wondered if it would ever be the same. It was a stunning reminder of how we live now as we have adapted to the permanent reality of climate disasters, whether they come via storms, floods, extreme heat or fires.
Just after my visit to Los Angeles, I was relieved to see that my son, who was traveling in Europe, left Spain safely right before it was hit by an unprecedented firestorm in the midst of a deadly heatwave that killed thousands of people. There and in France, the populations were shocked by the ferocity of the disaster that overwhelmed the capacity of firefighters to adequately respond as the blazes transformed whole swaths of the landscapes into wastelands.
Now, as I write this, Big Sur is burning as another large fire has shut down Highway 1 and is threatening Julia Pfeiffer State Park, the Henry Miller Library, Deetjens, Nepenthe, and other irreplaceable treasures. If they survive this fire, what about the inevitable next one? How many more things that we love will be lost?
It is only going to get worse, particularly with data centers and AI driving global carbon emissions higher, despite industry claims to the contrary. So, get used to fires like the ones we saw in France and Spain.
Read the full article HERE.