Y'all can flame about the politics and Trump, GOP or anyone else attempting to "politicize" the disaster. You can talk about building materials and building standards.
But this was unprecedented. We have Santa Ana winds every year. But 100 mph winds blowing out of the San Gabriels? Nobody would've imagined a firestorm consuming so much of nicely-pruned suburban neighborhoods and urban landscape.
What concerns me most at the moment is the total lack of rainfall over the last entire year, or since rainfall just "ended" last year. We're headed toward the spring and summer here. Last time I went up to Idyllwild to buy a hamburger dinner there -- last spring I think it was -- the temperature was 98F. Will there be any sort of wind blowing this summer?
People tell me my condo development on this hillside is not likely to be consumed in a firestorm. I don't know. But we're looking at serious stress in the home insurance market. I'm already paying twice what I paid the previous year.
I thought about this over the last few years -- climate change, whether I wanted to migrate to cooler wetter locations, and so forth. Not so easy for me now.
My family arrived here from central Illinois in 1958. Nobody could've imagined a huge area of northwestern LA burning to cinders in a few days. Back then, we thought we were living in paradise. Now? It does not seem so . . .
One thing I like to dream about is the weather in 1969 and early 1970. It began raining in mid-November. It continued raining, on and off and frequently. In January, our city -- the ground -- was just soaked, and the rain drooled from the sky without end.
Now, they talk about So-Cal getting more "monsoonal" weather -- when there's an El Nino. But this year, we're now in a La Nina. We're in a drought.