The media concentrates on the human tragedy of the here and now. The big,  obvious, unspoken fact  is permanent change. There can be no going back to  the past of only a few days prior, when LA residents  lived in stressed disharmony with nature. In LA, the hostility of the planet manifests in all four of the ancient elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Far below lie earthquake faults;  on the surface,  red shale cliffs formed of incompletely metamorphosed clay and vulnerable to water; above, wind and fire,  preceded by atmospheric rivers.

No one  is calling   this a hundred year event; it’s the new normal. Some migration will occur, slowed by the national shortage of housing stock.  Some rebuilding will be attempted, with houses constructed of nonflammable materials, such as concrete,cinder block, and steel or tile roofs. Homeowners will still have to evacuate.

This doesn’t answer the bigger  question: How can the core city be protected from mass conflagration exceeding the great urban fires of the 19th century? If the current event was juxtaposed with a major earthquake that disrupted the water supply, millions could die.

Los Angeles is the only city in the world — in the broad sense of Los Angeles County — divided by a mountain range, the Santa Monica Mountains.  Vegetation is required to hold the land in place, land where people have chosen to build.  Vegetation burns. Walking along the unpaved portion of Muholland Drive in early fall, one is struck at how simple a thing as a dropped match could cause a conflagration. In an environment  where vigilance is required of everyone, all the time, bad things happen. The Griffith Peak blaze was caused by a sleepy bum with a cigarette.

We can take a lesson from the Mound Builders of pre-Columbian   America.  Although most mounds appear to have been built for cultural reasons, some of the earliest seem to have been  artificial islands, refuges from Mississippi floods. Los Angeles needs islands of habitability,  walkable sub-cities, constructed of nonflammable materials, with carefully minimal vegetation.

The requisite size of these mini-Manhattans is determined by their function as fire breaks: broader than an ember can travel. They don’t have to be ugly. Embrace nature at the risk of your life, or distance, living safely in hopefully attractive artifice. One of these is manifestly disharmonious, the other tolerable.

If this sounds like an unpleasant dream, you won’t have to wait a hundred  years for a repetition. Fire season beckons. There will be a natural demand for fire-proof communities.

You can still experience  the striking natural beauty of LA. You just can’t nestle  in its embrace.

***Koyaanisqatsi***