Hello Fire, My Old Friend

I’ve come to talk with you again [*]

The Author greets New Year 2024, on top a ridge later burnt in the 2025 Palisades Fire.

I see your hair is burning,

Hills are filled with fire.

If they said I never loved you,

You know they are a liar.

- Jim Morrison

Born, raised, and living most of my life in or near the Santa Monica Mountains, I am no stranger to fire. While the Palisades and Eaton fires may be marked by unusual intensity due to Climate Change, there is nothing new about fires in the Santa Monica Mountains. There always have been, and there always will be, fire in those hills. Fire is not our enemy — we are our own worst enemies when it comes to the destruction wrought by these fires.

The infamous Bel-Air Fire of 1961 started just a few hundred feet from my childhood home (not in Bel-Air). Giant plumes of dark smoke filled the sky when I went outside to wait for the bus to school that morning. I ran inside to tell my parents, but they did not believe me — probably thought I was just making an excuse to get out of school — and sent me back outside. Through the bus window I witnessed some of my neighbor’s houses burn, while other neighbors were on the roof with hoses, attempting to keep the fire from jumping to their house. While I was in school, the wind…