More than 1,100 homes, businesses and other buildings have been lost in the L.A. fires, and many more thousands of people have been displaced.
It is the first act, for Angelenos directly in the path of the fires and those watching under apocalyptic skies, in a collective trauma that will change hearts and landscapes for generations.
I’ve covered fires long enough, unfortunately, to know that what comes after the fire is a second, longer trauma of figuring out how to live when everything you’ve known is gone. That’s not just material goods. There’s a backdrop of daily life — a morning coffee spot, a view on our run, a cute neighbor with a cute dog — that sometimes we don’t appreciate until suddenly it’s not there anymore. And won’t be back.
That’s why I want to tell you Orly Israel’s escape story. In many ways, it’s similar to those thousands of others. But in one important way, it’s different.
Israel, 30, was raised in the coveted Alphabet Streets, a Pacific Palisades neighborhood originally envisioned as one of modest middle-class homes that, like so much of hillside Los Angeles, morphed into exclusivity and celebrity over the years. His parents, a TV writer and a master gardener, bought a home there when he was 10, and he recently moved back in with them for a bit.
The first Israel heard of the fire was when a friend texted him to ask if he was OK. He had no idea anything was wrong until he looked out the window and “was like ‘whoa, there is a fire really close,’” he told me.
Not long after, “when you couldn’t see the sky anymore,” his family evacuated, dogs in tow, he said. Israel grabbed what was most important to him — a crate of hard drives, notebooks and journals going back years — and started out in his own car.
Then he spotted a blond guy walking not away from the fire, but toward it. This, he quickly realized, was his friend Tanner Charles, who makes a living chasing disasters. Charles asked Israel if he wanted to explore the fire, and Israel said, “Yeah, why not? This is a super horrible idea. What could possible go wrong?”
They hiked up to a high point, a water tower past the top of Chautauqua Boulevard, and watched the fire decimate a neighborhood that has come to stand for a certain kind of refined, tasteful Hollywood success.
“It’s just moving and growing, and it’s just raging,” Israel said, trying to make sense of the vastness. “You know, the biggest fire I’ve ever seen is like a furnace or a bonfire … and then all of a sudden, it’s just like the mountain is screaming at you.”
Israel told me that he was a lonely kid and had trouble connecting with people, even his siblings. When he got older, he began to think about how he could change that, and that led him to thinking about how we communicate with one another. Often, not so well, much to our detriment. He points out that studies show loneliness can affect health as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Israel started considering communication like the skill it is, one that needs to be worked on — just like our fitness, or learning to swim, he said. You’re never going to learn to swim unless you get in the water, someone told him, and it resonated.
He broke it down to its parts, and figured out that the first step in being a good communicator is being a good listener.
So on a November day in 2011, he set up a table in the Palisades, just a foldout job with a sign that said “here to listen,” to offer a connection in a town where people are often far too busy and important to care what anyone else has to say.
And people started talking. Often, about deep, painful things.
One day turned into passion project. Israel has set up his listening table every weekend since, all over the world. At first, he journaled about every conversation he had, but stopped after 1,000. He estimates he may have talked to 1,500 people by now.
“I had incredible conversations that I wasn’t having with people in my life that I was close with,” he said. “And I just didn’t want to let it go.”
Now, he’s started speaking himself. He wants to share what he learned at his listening table, and is trying to give a speech about it 100 times in 100 days. Wednesday was Day 8.
He was at the top of Chautauqua on Tuesday, Day 7, when Charles asked him to give that speech, about the need for connection in a disconnected world. He was just at the part about communication being something you have to work at when Charles suggested, with the fire drawing ever closer, that it might be time to go.
They headed back to the Alphabet Streets and Israel’s house. The sky was black; it was garbage day, and the wind tossed the bins like leaves; coyotes were everywhere.
Israel grabbed a hose and tried to save his house. But embers dropped like the rain we are so sorely missing, swirling and churning, and no sooner would he put out one spot of fire than another ignited. His phone had died when he was up on the hill, leaving his parents with no way to know if he was OK. As a mom, I’m just going to say, seriously, Orly? Your mom deserves to give you a free smack to your head for that.
“I was faced with, ‘If I walk away from this house, I will never see it again,’” he said. “At least I know I gave it my all, if that matters at all.”
He was right. The house is gone.
By the time he realized there was nothing he could do, there was no traffic — everyone else had left. He made it down the hill and found his family. When I talked to him Wednesday, he still hadn’t slept more than a few minutes.
Just like so many other Angelenos, in shelters, on friend’s couches, in cars — stumbling into a new day and a new life that 24 hours ago was unimaginable.
In the coming days, we will be forced to begin the hard work of counting our sorrows. Many will be small and private — a burned photo, a garden turned to ash. Many will be overwhelming. Already, two have died.
But they don’t have to be endured alone. And that’s why Israel’s story is valuable.
As he puts it, “That is the difference between hope and hopelessness, community.”
Already, still in shock and processing what is happening, he is trying to focus on connections. People have been reaching out to check on him, people he’s friends with, people he hasn’t heard from in years.
“The outpouring of messages and love that I have received of people telling me that they’re there for me right now, it almost outweighs how brutal the situation is,” he said.
It’s a collective brutality we are experiencing, but it doesn’t have to be lonely. Los Angeles isn’t always a great place for community, or kindness, or even listening. But like it or not, we are going through this together.
And in coming days, our willingness to be there for each other will determine not just individual futures, but what becomes of us all.
And what becomes of this beautiful, complicated city that has long screamed, like a mountain on fire, for us to listen, to pay attention to something more than our own lives.
What else you should be reading:
The must-read: 2 dead and more than 1,000 homes, businesses, other buildings destroyed in L.A. County fires
The what’s next: Amid fears about Hollywood’s future, L.A. approves $1-billion Television City project
The L.A. Times special: Column: The California compromise — be prepared to evacuate
Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria
P.S. If you need a break from the fire news, here’s the latest piece in my series with Jessica Garrison about police interrogation techniques — the story of how two victims of the vicious kidnapper featured in Netflix’s “American Nightmare” have gone after the kidnapper and tracked down other crimes and victims.
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