Fires change nothing, everything

Without the hot Santa Ana winds pushing the blaze, crews have been able to surround the fires and have them now almost 95% contained in the Los Angeles area and 65% contained in the San Diego area.

Cooler weather helped the firefighters, but word in the weather world is that the dry, hot winds are going to return in the next few days, meaning that fighting fires in the Southwest may become just as difficult and dangerous as it was five days ago.

The fires will affect the city, and travel to the city, for some time. The fires did not and probably will not threaten many of the popular travel destinations in central Los Angeles, but they represent another shock and drain on resources that normally would have gone to the down and out on skid row or the homeless centers in Inglewood instead of those whose houses were taken and lives were altered by a sudden shift in the winds and monumentally bad luck.

Disasters change the perspective of a city and change the character of a place, even if it’s just temporarily. For some, the fires mean little disruption of daily life at all. The freeways through town were never shut down; Disneyland is still standing. Your trip to Los Angeles will probably not be affected. But for a growing number of residents, the end of the wildfires means that the work begins again. At Los Angeles Logue, our thoughts are with them.