Wit and Wisdom
by Beth Broderick
I moved home to my native California two years ago. I was born and raised in Orange County but have lived in Los Angeles for the better part of my life. I have tried other places. Spent time in New York City and Austin, Texas, but L.A. has always called me home.
Two weeks ago, on the last day of 2024, I moved into a new place in Beachwood Canyon. It is an old Hollywood community full of bungalows and small, beautifully crafted houses, like the kind you see in storybooks. It is a ten-minute drive to Paramount Studios, where I worked for five of the six years. I was on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. This area is redolent with memories, each block a reminder of times past.
Several nights ago, most of my neighbors evacuated as what has been dubbed the Sunset fire raged nearby. I was lucky. The brave, amazing men and women of the Los Angeles Fire Department somehow got our fire under control.
My neighbors to the west were not as lucky. Over a hundred thousand have lost not only their homes, but their communities. The park where their kids used to play ... gone. The school where they learned their ABC’s … ashes. People have lost their beloved pets and, in some cases, friends and neighbors who succumbed to the flames. Tens of thousands have lost their livelihoods.
There are a lot of folks around the country weighing in on this situation and trying to turn this tragedy into some kind of political argument.
Don’t. Just don’t.
100-mile-an-hour winds have no political affiliation. Embers that float for thousands of miles hold no ideology. The catastrophic fires that had burned in Texas, Canada, Germany and, most horribly, Tokyo were not born of a belief system.
CAUGHT IN A GUST.
These devastating fires in California are a weather event. This is a weather event. One that is endemic to the region, and which has been exacerbated by drought. Period. End of story. We will learn how to better prepare and respond in the future, but this could not have been prevented. There is no politician or policy you can name that can stop the wind from blowing.
The gusts will be high again tonight and blow furiously for two more days. The sky above me is blue for now, but every time a helicopter flies overhead or I hear a siren in the distance, my stomach will drop, my shoulders stiffen. One ember, one half-crushed cigarette, one burning car crash, and it could all begin again.
We are weary and heartbroken, but we are not done in. We Californians are no strangers to disaster. We have seen tidal waves, mudslides, torrential rains, massive earthquakes, and yes, terrible fires. In spite of all of that, we have grown to be the fourth largest economy in the world. Los Angeles county is home to more citizens than many of the 50 states that make up this great nation. We know how to grow things, how to code things and how to create the content that keeps you entertained.
We will survive and we will thrive, because we are California strong, and that’s a whole different kind of strong.
To all of my fellow Angelenos: My heart is with you as we await the fate of the next few days, and my prayers will be with you as we work to rebuild and restore what we have lost.
To those who are offering opinions about people that you don’t know, who are coping with a situation that you clearly do not understand—well I offer this, something, my grandmother Edna used to say,
“Screw you and the horse you rode in on … well, not the horse.”
On we go …
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