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John's avatar

I'm in Eagle Rock, just south of the evacuation zones. It's Thursday and I'm still not unpacked. Yesterday morning, we were ready to leave, put the cats and dogs in the back of one car, everything else in the Vanagon. But the red glow and the embers never came over the hill. So we're OK. Not so the uncomfortably many friends and connections who are suddenly homeless. So next step is to figure out how best to help. The white ash dots the backyard, along with oak branches and debris from the winds. The air is still thick. The sunlight is eery mustard yellow. Maybe I'll unpack now. But Mt. Wilson is still burning...

Local TV (antenna, cable, web, or YT) has been a godsend. Kudos for catching the Soboroff broadcast; I'm speechless/wordless... Quibble about some of the coverage and the tone, but they've been on the air around the clock. They broke the Runyon fire last night and the Studio City flareup and were looking down from their choppers as both fires got doused. They were on Sunset in the Palisades as the Chase bank burned in real time over the course of an hour. Blah Blah local talking heads no more: these familiar faces have been on the front lines and backing it up in-studio for the last 72 hours. It's heroic. There should be one big special Pulitzer for all of them together.

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Elinor's avatar

I feel ditto. I was not going to get reliable info from my normal online resources & the LA times is awful in a crisis, so at first I was in despair for our information ecosystem. But I figured out, for the first time, how to stream the local news & they were outstanding (extra props to KCAL). And Watch Duty (culled from local & federal govt & infrastructure resources, I assume) has been a literal lifesaver. It may be too early to make this assessment, but I also feel very good about how our govt has communicated with us & how organized the evacuation alerts have been. I'm not even mad I got a boil water alert in error from the LAFD.

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