Tag: los-angeles

Eaton Fire #16: Six Months Out

Mike Rothschild

The Eaton Fire was six months ago today, and we’re still in the early stages of rebuilding our home and replacing the decades’ worth of things we lost. If you can help at all, a subscription on Patreon would be greatly appreciated. I promise to post more exclusive content on there once I get a little more settled in a new work routine. Thank you!

Nobody can prepare you for when disaster personally strikes you. You can read up on disaster prep, you can stockpile canned goods and batteries, you can even write down your plans and practice what you’ll do and where you’ll go. But if it happens, a lot of that won’t matter. Certainly the canned goods, batteries, and cash we had did us little good as our house went up in flames. It became just more stuff to melt and clean up.

We are six months out from the Eaton Fire burning down our house, our possessions, our neighborhood, much of our town, and many of the businesses and places we went to.

How are we doing, you ask?

The short answer is…*shrug*

The longer answer is that it’s complicated. We’re doing fine. We’re doing terrible. We’re exhausted. We’re energized. We’re coming to terms with it. It’s all bunch of bullshit. It could be worse. It could DEFINITELY be better.

Certainly, it’s different now. We spent hours, then days, then weeks, driving a train with no track in front of it, and no destination other than somewhere else. Then we got somewhere else. We settled into a routine of phone calls, emails, lists, Zoom meetings, panicky freaking out, sleepless nights, remembering things we lost, and doing it all over again the next day. We went back to work, the kids went back to school, we started paying bills and making plans and trying to create some semblance of order in the somewhere else we’d landed in. We tried to make it, if not normal, then less chaotic.

It’s never going to be normal (whatever that is), but it’s not pants on fire crazy anymore.

And the rest of the world mostly moved on, as it should have and as it always does. For the hundreds of millions of Americans who didn’t lose their home in the January fires, there were more pressing concerns – work, school, political nonsense, TV, sports, going out to bars, doing whatever it is that people do and whatever it is we used to do. Eventually we even starting doing some of those things – we’ve gone to birthday parties and baseball games and I’ve even managed to watch some good TV.

But moving on? No, we’re not doing that. We are still trying to survive the fires.

Six months later the chaos and upheaval remain. Many of us are still performing the humiliating ritual of looking for a new place to live every few months. We have friends who are nearing double digits in the number of addresses they’ve lived at since January. We’re struggling to deal with insurance companies who want us to move back to unlivable homes, with landlords who have decided to abdicate any sense of responsibility or humanity, and with the vagaries and uncertainties of rebuilding. LA itself feels like it’s still in a haze of uncertainty, which isn’t being helped any by the current administration’s constant efforts to make things harder for us.

And we’re doing it with far less help than we had in the early days. The GoFundMe drives have long since ended, grants are mostly down to a trickle, and the Disaster Recovery Center that many of us spent more time in than our actual homes or workplaces is closed. Many of the agencies who staffed it are facing massive budget and personnel cuts – with an onslaught of summer weather disasters staring them down.

Meanwhile, building costs go up, ICE raids are thinning out the available pool of workers, and erratic tariffs mean it’s almost impossible to pin down how much new homes will cost – only that they will cost more than any of us were insured for. The long-term effect on our mental and physical health is just as unknown, as an entire city tries to cope and compartmentalize the trauma we’ve all gone through, just a few years removed from the trauma of COVID.

I still wake up remembering things we didn’t take when we evacuated. The grief of losing the house mingles with the grief of losing my mom, which has its own anniversary next week. I’ve lost things that were meaningful to me, books and t-shirts from college, cards from our wedding, LEGO pieces that were 40 years old and that aren’t made anymore. Some could be replaced at great expense, others never. And I still hear the shrieking siren of the emergency evacuation alert in my head. Not as much as I used to, but it’s there. I relive evacuation day all the time, I remember every aspect of it like it was yesterday, even as I struggle to remember to do basic things that have to get done, or what people’s names are. As it turns out, trauma and cognitive impairment go hand in hand. So that’s great.

But it’s not all doom and despair.

We’ve gotten closer to our community and our neighbors, as gatherings at parties and kiddo activities become impromptu group therapy and recovery sessions. Our kids have amazed us with their resilience and humor. Many of us, though certainly not all of us, are getting a chance to build brand new homes. I’m only half-joking when I say that the fire helped me with my clutter problem and stalling on upgrading my wardrobe. And I’ll never run out of things to talk about in therapy – or write about or be interviewed about.

But beyond all that, the last two years, from losing my mom in July 2023 to losing the house a year and a half later, have told me that I’m far stronger and more durable than I could have imagined. I have endured multiple life-altering losses, and I’m still here, still cranking away at my work, still deluging my kids with corny dad jokes, still rooting for the absolutely terrible White Sox, still trying to be a good husband and person and citizen. Trying to pay forward and pay back all the goodwill and generosity we’ve gotten in the last six months.

And still getting out of bed every day, doing what I can to help us rebuild. Six months is a long time, and not a long time at all. So if you feel like it, check in with me or another fire survivor. Or any trauma survivor anywhere, who is dealing with things a long time after they happened.

We would appreciate the love.

The Storm Is…….Upon Us?

Mike Rothschild1 Comment

I’m an independent journalist with an uncertain road ahead. To support my work telling the story of the Eaton Fire and its aftermath, please consider a paid monthly subscription to my Patreon page. Thank you!

A country roiled by chaos and fear. Marines and National Guard in the streets, deployed at the whim of the executive branch. Rioters marching and smashing and burning, held back only by the courage of a few patriots. And the president takes to Twitter to make his fateful announcement, the one the faithful have waited on for so long…

“My fellow Americans, the Storm is Upon Us…….”

Is it 2025 in LA, or 2017 on 4chan? Absent Trump’s tweet, which would now happen on Truth Social and be seen by almost nobody, it does sort of look like the story foretold in the early Q drops is unfolding just as Q said it would.

In response to anti-ICE protests in parts of Los Angeles County, President Trump outstripped his own authority and called up a small contingent of the California National Guard, with a Marine battalion arriving in the city on Tuesday to back them up. People are really in the streets, though the demonstrations have been mostly peaceful, with more violence inflicted by law enforcement than actual protestors. And the country does seem to be teetering on the edge of an authoritarian cliff – if not martial law, then a small taste of what it could look like.

And many QAnon promoters on social media have noticed, making more direct references to Q drops, Q deltas (the time between a Q drop and something it “predicts” taking place), and Q catchphrases than I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve long been arguing that QAnon as we knew it, with the drops and decodes, is pretty much dead, but clearly it’s not, if you spend any time on conspiracist social media.

Some of it is pretty far fetched, such as the anon who claimed Trump tripping on the 7th step up to Air Force One was a reference to a Q drop about “the enormity of what is coming will SHOCK THE WORLD,” but some of it isn’t so crazy if you use your imagination a bit.

Sure, Hillary Clinton hasn’t been arrested, but it certainly looks like a lot of stuff mentioned in the earliest Q posts of October and November 2017 is happening.

So was Q right? Is the storm upon us?

Look at drop #1 – “Expect massive riots organized in defiance and others fleeing the US to occur. US M’s will conduct the operation while NG activated.” The context and some of the details are wrong, but in general, isn’t that what’s happening?

Drop #22 would seem to be pertinent as well here, stating in part:

“Who controls the NG?
Why was the NG recently activated in select cities within the US?
Can the NG work in coordination w/ the marines?
Do conditions need to be satisfied to authorize?”

The National Guard appears to literally be working in coordination with the Marines in LA at the moment. That can’t be a coincidence, right?

And as fears rise in LA of some kind of lockdown and consolidation of power, look to drop #316 which seems to approve an anon who asks whether martial law will be declared on the 11th – which is today.

Other drops aren’t quite so specific, but give weight and heft to the idea that US soldiers are going to be deployed to take action in the streets of America against elements of the deep state, Soros-backed cabal that’s enslaved us for generations. Trump even appears to have signaled to the faithful with a typo reading “to to” in a Truth social message about how the Guard is doing a “great job” handling the “violence” in LA, unlike “(Newscum) and (Bass).”

How could “to to” be anything other than a coded reference to Drop #22?

Okay, before you all start thinking I’ve lost my mind and gone over to the QAnon side, let’s be clear that this is all total nonsense, for multiple reasons.

Yes, things are rough in LA at the moment. The National Guard, or at least several hundreds CA Guard members, have been deployed to guard federal property in downtown LA, sent without the approval of the governor and without invoking the Insurrection Act, which seems to be a pretty clear violation of the law.

But if this is “the storm” that I’ve been waiting for since October 2017, then I’d want my money back.

For one thing, so far, the Guard hasn’t actually done anything other than stand around. Trump deployed them so quickly and haphazardly that they don’t have any infrastructure and are apparently sleeping in loading docks and have no food or water.

Obviously, this could all change at a moment’s notice, and it’s still not out of the question that these men will be ordered to open fire on protestors and enforce martial law. But it hasn’t happened yet, and every hour that goes makes it a bit less likely. There have been more protests since the initial Guard deployment, and the Guard hasn’t reacted in response, with the protests almost entirely being peaceful and entirely constitutional. People in LA are mostly living their lives, walking their dogs, going to work, and not packing up a few things and heading for sanctuary. The city is not burning or under siege by antifa death squads. It’s just not happening here, nor is it happening in other cities that have seen protests.

Beyond that, as we’ve stated many times, and will continue to state, Q drops are totally nonsensical and made up.

They don’t predict anything, and anything they seem to predict is only “right” because it’s so vague. Q is so wrong so often that when Hillary Clinton’s arrest didn’t happen and there was no “antifa uprising” on the 4th of November, Q tried to sell his followers on the fact that he meant Saudi Arabia the entire time. They are gibberish meant to sound important and prophetic. They can be endlessly interpreted to mean anything, and it doesn’t have to make sense or even mesh with other things you’ve predicted. Many Q drops are dead links. Others are clearly just random characters meant to look like codes or cyphers, but are actually just someone banging on a keyboard.

The rest of Q drop #316, supposedly about “martial law on the 11th?” It reads:

What has been said about the US Military?
The speech yesterday verified and unlocked so much.
Expand your thinking.
Re-read crumbs.
Re-listen to yesterday’s speech.
Connect the ‘markers.’
News (in all forms) unlocks the map.
Expand your thinking.
The Great Awakening.

What does that mean? Anything you want it to, any time you want it to. And martial law was not declared on the 11th of any month, nor is it likely to be declared on the 11th of this month. Nation-wide martial law is not in the president’s power, nor is it enforceable at any scale. You’d sure need more than a few hundred national guard members with tweaked backs to lock down a city like LA if it happened.

Likewise, while people are justifiably freaked out about Trump’s military parade on June 14th, a few tanks and armored vehicles wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to establish any kind of military control of a city as sprawling as DC. It’s just not possible. Obviously, even an attempt to do so would be outrageous and unacceptable – but the president can’t just conjure a dictatorial police state on a whim via tweet. There aren’t enough cops, sheriffs deputies, contractors, active duty military, and reservists in the country to put massive cities on lockdown – and the harder Trump tries to squeeze his tiny little fist, the more people will slip through.

The other aspect of Trump deploying troops into major cities without provocation is that it used to be the greatest nightmare of the far right. Remember how insane everyone in conservative media over just the idea that Barack Obama might be using closed Wal-Mart stores to incarcerate patriots during the military exercise Jade Helm 15? Shouldn’t these same people – figures like Alex Jones, Roger Stone, and countless other right wing conspiracists – be up in arms about the president potentially using the military against civilians? Of course not, and it’s not just because they all worship Trump and think he’s keeping his campaign promise by getting rid of all those scary illegal nannies and construction workers.

It’s because nothing these people believe is consistent or has to make any kind of sense. They absolutely love the thing that they used to absolutely loathe, simply because they like the guy who’s doing it and they hate the people he’s doing it to. What these people want is blood – and that’s what QAnon provides. Or at least it would, if it wasn’t bullshit.

The situation in LA is scary, the president’s power grab is unprecedented, and the whole thing makes the country look like it’s on the verge of collapse. It is awful and unacceptable and a terrifying portent of what could happen in the future.

But this is a far cry from US soldiers mowing down protestors, some kind of Kim Jong Un type crackdown, or the total takeover of American society by the president. And it’s an even farther cry from Q’s dipshit 4chan drops suddenly becoming true because they happen to match up with some things that are actually happening. This is not “the storm.”

The best outcome here is still that the protests crest on the 14th, with the military parade and the No Kings protests around the country, Trump’s authoritarian power grab fizzles out after a few days as he loses focus and picks something else to get angry about, and everyone goes home.

Let’s hope that’s what happens, so we can move on to the next thing that Q definitely will also have not predicted.

Eaton Fire #15: I Don’t Live Here Anymore

Mike Rothschild3 Comments

I’m an independent journalist with an uncertain road ahead. To support my work telling the story of the Eaton Fire and its aftermath, please consider a paid monthly subscription to my Patreon page. Thank you!

It’s an overcast April day in Los Angeles, and I’m staring at the hole in the ground where my house used to be.

It burned down in the Eaton Fire of 2025, one of thousands of homes in Altadena that were destroyed by a fastmoving wildfire that overwhelmed everything around it and sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing. It once was a house full of love, the accumulation of 40+ years of stuff, of memories. The first birthday parties for the kids. Watching the Dodgers win two World Series titles. Spending months isolated during lockdown having impromptu stuffie tea parties and making convoys with toy cars that are all gone. Holidays and parties and long nights when I felt like nothing was going to work out and great days when it all worked out.

Now it’s a hole in the ground.

If one wanted to be pedantic, it’s not really a hole, per se. It’s too wide and not deep enough – only six inches below the ground, just enough to take away the topsoil rendered toxic by the polluted slurry of ash and dust the fire left behind. It’s more of an indentation, really, roughly in the shape of a foundation where a house used to be. A depression, perhaps. Not a pit, though. Nor a trench. And really, not a hole.

If there’s a technical term is for what I’m staring at, I can’t immediately think of it. It’s hard to think or feel anything.

Mostly what I’m feeling is dizzy. There’s nothing to orient myself to, nothing that serves as a marker for where things start and end other than a few fenceposts. It feels like looking at a distant and blank horizon on the water, disconcerting and unsettling. Or maybe that’s the feeling you get when you’re looking at what used to be your house and now is just…nothing.

We lived here for seven and a half years, planning to spend far longer in it. Then came the Eaton Fire, and whatever we had planned and dreamed would have to be put on hold. That blaze, when paired with the Palisades Fire in Malibu, destroyed 18,000 single family homes and apartment buildings.

18,000 depressions in the ground, full of dirt that once held up homes. 18,000 families who are on a long road of recovery and rebuilding, who are asking themselves every day how this happened and what they do next.

The ground is rough and uneven. Half the driveway is gone, cut up to ensure access to the footers of the house. It’s all beaten up from the massive excavator that the Army Corps of Engineers’ contractors used to scoop up the remains of our lives and drop it into a dump truck.

Watching the excavator a few days earlier as the debris removal began was truly one of the more bizarre moments of life since the fire. It would pick up something that was once meaningful to us – our grill, the bathtub where we bathed the kids when they were little, the dishwasher I loaded the night of the fire – then move it to the center of the debris pile, then rear back and smash it flat, like Godzilla stepping on a tank. Then the flattened piece of debris is scooped up and dropped in a plastic-wrapped flatbed for eventual disposal somewhere far away.

Eventually, it’s all gone except the dirt.

Looking at the ground, hearing the endless convoy of trucks and excavators going up and down our once-quiet street, and seeing the other cleared plots of land, I’m thinking more than anything of what it took to get from where we were three-plus months ago to where we are now. From a burned out ruin to a plot of land, in a neighborhood once full of burned out ruins that will slowly become habitable again.

Certainly, the effort to remove all of this debris was massive, requiring a huge amount of both high-level coordination and work on the ground. Most of the workers we’d spoken to hadn’t had a day off since the beginning of February. Multiple agencies had to put together a plan for how to remove the contents of both Palisades and Altadena in a way that was both safe and didn’t drag on for years. The EPA had to inspect every lot for hazardous and toxic materials. Contractors had to be hired, systems had to be designed, pathways mapped out, dump sites figured out, procedures codified. You need a lot of guys, a lot of equipment, and a lot of material – and you don’t have a lot of time to do it. And someone had to figure out who was paying for it.

It took dozens, maybe hundreds of people working madly to just get to a point where there was a plan to take our debris pile and turn it into the depression in the ground I was looking at. The process still has some creaks to it – the “72 hour call” you get from the Corps to let you know your debris removal is imminent is actually a “couple of days or two weeks” call. Ours came late on a Friday, and we didn’t get an update for another week, when we were told the walkthrough of our property might happen the next day – and it actually happened late the day after that. But it did happen.

Before the debris could be removed, it took heroic efforts by first responders to put the fires out in the first place. A level of courage that most people – i.e., me – will never have or need to summon up. And it will take an equally massive effort by thousands of other builders working for other agencies and companies to ensure that this block of Altadena full of depressions in the ground doesn’t stay looking like this. As much as we’d like our old homes back, we’d also like new ones, thank you very much.

That doesn’t just happen. It takes designers and architects, contractors and subcontractors, specialists and inspectors, countless tons of wood and metal and whatever insulation is made out of. And it will not happen quickly, or cheaply.

Then there’s what happened before the fire itself. The sequence of events that played out not just on the day of the fire, but in the decades and centuries before it. Hundreds of years of a slowly changing climate that’s not slowly changing anymore. A hundred-year-old town built from wood and full of drying out greenery, where homes were passed down through the decades but rarely brought up to code. A megacity built in a desert and stuffed into the crevices between cliffs. A land of milk and honey where the ground shakes and the sky burns. A water system stretched beyond its limits and battered by a 100 year wind storm happening for the second year in a row. Officials out of their depth and early warning systems that didn’t work and electrical lines that should have been off but weren’t.

So many failures. So much accomplishment. No wonder I’m a little dizzy.

I stepped back from the driveway onto the back patio, or what’s left of it. The pavers are loose and cracked, so I quickly stepped back off. Trucks rolled by and I worried that my car was too far from the curb because of the sandbags. The horizon was too long, too unobstructed. After a few minutes at the depression in the ground, I walked back to the car, and drove back from my scraped-up old life to the work-in-progress of my new one.

How did this happen? I thought to myself. What do we do now?

It wasn’t the first time I’d asked myself this. And it wouldn’t be the last.