Days of Oblivion

Incredibly present tense thoughts in the midst of multiple blazing fires

I mentioned a while back that my upcoming graphic novel West Hollywood Monster Squad was inspired by the silly goose thought of “what would I look like if my fabulous ass got thrust unawares into an apocalypse of sorts?”

Well, yesterday I came headfirst with the answer.

For those who are not aware (or folks reading this weeks or months in the future when they’re discovering my substack for the first time), Los Angeles county was ravaged by two big fires- one in the pacific palisades, and one in the Pasadena area due to crazy winds. On Tuesday afternoon, a friend who lived about a mile away asked me what I was going to do in terms of dealing with the situation. I texted her “until my phone does the beeping alert telling me to get the hell out, I'm gonna live like it’s business as usual?” I was at my part-time job, and people were coming in and shopping, so everyone wasn’t stressing.

I spent my Tuesday night hoping that when I woke up, the worst of it would be over, and that my little neighborhood would remain safe from the devastation. There was a minute where I debated doing some laundry, just to be safe. Instead I decided to give myself whatever time I needed to get rest and have one less thing on my mind. While I didn’t sleep easily, I did manage to sleep through the night. I’d occasionally wake up to look out the window, see the sky hadn’t become an inferno, and go back to bed.

When I woke up in the morning, I felt alright. I answered a few texts letting people know I was fine. I looked around my apartment. There was a gray stillness throughout that didn’t feel right. The power’s out, I surmised. When I glanced back at my phone, it let me know none of my outgoing texts were sent. None of my lights turned on. Looking out my window, I saw people wearing face masks, carrying bins and bags into their cars. Did I miss the evacuation notice? Do you still get an evacuation notice if your service is shitty and your power is out? I put on some clothes that felt comfortable/ versatile (shout out to my 20 year old Prada sunglasses my college bf got me for being the LARGEST and covering my eyes from the wind/ soot). My go bag was at my door, and I decided to go for a walk…

The sky was a scary hue. The street was quiet because the power was out everywhere, as two blocks up a branch had fully flown into a power line, and knocked the entire thing down onto the crosswalk. I could sort of make outgoing calls… barely. It took three call drops before my mother and I came up with a back-up plan B (she lives close to the palisades fire and was going to come to me). As I started to feel the uneasy truth that I should grab my go bag and not wait to be told to leave, something occurred to me… my gas tank had hit E the last time I drove it.

The only thing I’d done when I was nervous the night prior was take a thorough shower, and put my passport in my envelope of paper things (photos, notes) I never want to live without. For anyone reading thinking about what they can do to be prepared for crazy situation: don’t wait on the little things. Always fill up your car, always grab extra waters, always shower and shave, just do all that little stuff.

The rest of my day was a weird mixture of do I stay or do I go? The fire in the palisades reached close enough to my mother that I demanded she drive to a friend’s in Long Beach so if things got worse, she wouldn’t be stuck in gridlocked traffic. If I didn’t have to worry about her, it would make my own decision-making a lot easier. At one point in the day, when the power came back on in my building (latergram: it’s only my building and the neighboring building’s that have power… the blocks around us still don’t have power), I thought to myself “okay, we’re out of the woods. The winds will die down, and firefighters will start working to contain the fires, and this will all be one awful day and we can focus on rebuilding and recovery. There was even a moment, where before I went back to work a closing shift (!!), I had a glass of wine with a neighbor and started reading a new book. Normalcy!?!?

Then the Hollywood hills fire aka the Sunset Fire started.

My reception was cruddy at work (we didn’t have internet and were using credit card machines meant for external events). A manager said “if I can smell smoke, we shouldn’t be here,” and flipped the door sign to CLOSED. As I got into another co-worker’s car for a ride home, I asked how bad the Sunset Fire was. Seeing his phone’s map of the spread inching towards Thai Town (one neighborhood away from mine), I was done with the back-and-forth anxiety I had all day. It was go time. I couldn’t spend any more time not doing anything besides fretting, so I grabbed my go bag, and some sacks of personal belongings just in case, and left.

Once I got around the downed power line, I made my way out of Los Angeles and towards the Palm Springs outskirts, where my friend Matt graciously offered to host me. I was so so so grateful to do a load of laundry, write back to friends, and sleep without the anxiety of wondering if I’ll have to wake up to any alerts or new disasters.

My neighbor Helen told me this morning that the Sunset Fire has been contained, but that the power’s still down around us and ash is falling freely from the sky. I am going to stay here for a minute.

I don’t have it as bad as others (duh). I’m here to say that it is in fact that bad. My friends are posting photos of ashen squares where their homes used to be. My competing high school I grew up with Pali High is literally gone. If you see a GoFundMe, support it. Donate to the Red Cross. Be patient with people who maybe aren’t replying to you… there’s a lot of active thinking happening because evacuations can occur at the drop of a hat.

Stay safe, cherish the moments of normalcy. I’m currently distracting myself by looking at lettering proofs for Shazam #20, and managed to chuckle at a line I wrote several months ago. I could possibly be breaking some DC Comics rules by showing you this image, but I think it’s worth the risk.