From the day I moved to Los Angeles nearly 15 years ago, friends and family back in New York would take note of some crisis afflicting the region and send notes of concern, envisioning me fighting off flames or mudslides from my front stoop. Their reaction reflected a misunderstanding some people (myself included, before I got here) had about Los Angeles. It's so immense that the calamities capturing national attention might as well have been taking place in another state. It was just another sunny, blue-sky day where I was. And for the first hours after the fires broke out in Pacific Palisades and Eaton, I responded to similar emails of concern the same way: We live in Hollywood, and those fires are miles away. Another world. I was intensely concerned about what was taking place there, but, like many people I know out of state, I was mainly following events on the news. Until one night last week, when I looked up the street and saw the hillside of Runyon Canyon, a few blocks from my home, swept by a wall of fire. We evacuated (no need to wait for the inevitable "get out now" order). In our case, since the winds had died down, the Fire Department was able to deploy helicopters to contain the blaze overnight. We were back the next day. We were lucky. But I realized that night — as I sent my friends and family the "ignore previous email" message — that, at least until it rained, few parts of Los Angeles would be immune from the threat of fires. This is a very different world — and different city — we are living in.
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