Opinion | Los Angeles Is Still Burning. Where Are the Leaders?
We got the evacuation alert on Wednesday night.The fire came out of nowhere and threatened to sweep through Hollywood.
I pulled our son out of the bathtub.We rushed into the car and drove north, past two other fires, through smoke and sirens, gridlock and chaos, flames on the horizon in all directions.People keep saying the scenes out of Los Angeles look like something from a movie.
Except they don’t, not really.Movies need a protagonist.
Every on-screen apocalypse has a leader.So, where is ours?Fires have wiped out entire communities.
Thousands have lost their homes.Many more are displaced and looters run rampant, taking the personal property of those lucky enough to have any.
The steady stream of alerts from Watch Duty, a wildfire-tracking app, ding as I type this, new fires igniting, existing ones spreading, winds picking up again.Will the latest alert say that our neighborhood, our street or our school is next?I would love a deus ex machina to change this story-line or for the real-estate developer and would-be-mayor Rick Caruso to divert the dancing fountain at his mall, The Grove.
For now, I’d settle for some reassurance that there is a plan.That it’s going to be horrific, but that we will get through this.
Los Angeles will endure and rebuild.Together.
For someone to, you know, lead.As any screenwriter will tell you, a protagonist does not need to be perfect.We actually prefer that they be flawed, as long as they are ours.I can’t keep up with Rudy Giuliani’s criminal indictments, but after Sept.
11, America’s mayor stood at Ground Zero and assured a broken city that the terrorist attacks would only make us stronger.Will someone — anyone? — stand in the detritus of the Pacific Palisades or Pasadena and say the same about Los Angeles?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into...