Fires, Terrorist Attacks, and Grappling for Hope in 2025
Hello fellow creatives.
First, let me apologize for not getting as many Substack articles published in December as promised. Luckily, I was working on two projects simultaneously—one for Lifetime and one for Hallmark—so that, coupled with the holidays, left me with not enough time to sit down and really write something meaningful. As I have done in the past, I will make up those articles in upcoming months, so if you receive a slew of new posts in February or March, don’t be surprised.
Today, I really felt I needed to write. Because maybe some of you are feeling the way I am.
On New Year’s Eve, I went to an early dinner with my husband at a fantastic Italian restaurant in Redondo Beach. The food was great, the wine was excellent, and the energy of people out celebrating made me feel truly hopeful for 2025.
That night, as I lingered somewhere between lucidity and sleep, I came up with two new ideas that I want to write this year. Two! As it sometimes happens, the elements all came to me at once and I made a point to memorize every detail as it cropped up so that I wouldn’t lose them the next day.
To my delight, I woke up on the first day of January with all the pieces still there, confirming that these are two stories that were ready to be told.
Then I turned on the television and saw the news. Fifteen dead and at least thirty injured in a terrorist attack on Bourbon Street. An American man who had recently gravitated to ISIS teachings, used a pickup he’d rented in Texas to circumvent safety barricades and plow through a crowd of people who were out celebrating. It was later discovered that he had planted bombs that luckily didn’t go off, intending to increase the carnage.
As the identities of the victims were revealed, faces were given to their names and we learned that they were students, parents, brothers and sisters, all with people who loved and needed them. One was a recent high school grad who had just been accepted to nursing school. One was a freshman at the University of Alabama looking forward to a bright future as a mechanical engineer. One had gone down to Bourbon Street to pick up a pizza with his brother who was behind him and hadn’t yet stepped into the street when he witnessed his brother struck by the speeding truck. One young man, a former football player at Princeton, shoved a girl out of the way before the truck barreled over him as we now know from security footage from one of the storefronts. The final act of his life was selfless, because his true nature was nothing less than heroic.
And just like that, only hours into the shiny new year, I was filled with a deep sense of sadness. For the families who, after hearing about the attack, had been trying to reach their family members who had been on Bourbon Street, anxiety-ridden when their calls went unanswered. For the victims who didn’t deserve to lose their lives simply because they were celebrating the new year. For all of us, because the victims that were lost were going to make a difference in the world and because in that moment, evil won.
We barely had time to process the tragedy before the next disaster hit. For me personally, this one was geographically closer to home. Eight days later, what is already being hailed as the costliest, most destructive fire in Southern California’s history ignited in Pacific Palisades, an upscale enclave about twenty miles north of where I live. It was a beautiful community, home to not just celebrities but many people from all walks of life. It had a cute little farmer’s market not far from the Temescal Canyon trailhead which offered a three-and-a-half mile hike with spectacular views of the Pacific, a cute little waterfall, and educational information about the flora and fauna along the way.
(For a better sense of what was lost, check out the video of Temescal Canyon Trail on Youtube from California Through the Lens)
It's gone. The trail is gone. The animals are gone. And the homes, businesses, and schools that served the residents who had built their lives there, all gone. Five thousand three hundred structures completely decimated.
When the evacuation warnings went out, people, for the most part, heeded them. They had only minutes to collect their most treasured belongings, pack them into their cars, and get out. Many struggled to find their pets that were scared and hiding, which left no time to grab anything else. As the residents—doctors and lawyers and movie stars but also teachers and children and restaurant servers and clerks who worked at one of the two grocery stores that sat on Sunset Blvd, the Palisades’ main thoroughfare—piled into their cars and began to drive down the hill and leave their homes and everything in them behind, Pacific Coast Highway became gridlocked.
Despite being three lanes in each direction, the iconic highway simply couldn’t accommodate the thousands of people all fleeing at once. As the Santa Ana wind gusts of over 90 miles per hour pushed the blaze west, those trapped in their cars, unable to move, wondered if they were about to die. In an effort to do something to try to save their lives, at the encouragement of local officials on the scene, people abandoned their cars, took what they could carry, and rushed toward the ocean where the beach parking lot would provide a fire break. When it became clear that the abandoned cars prohibited rescue personnel from turning onto Sunset and going up the hill, fire officials bulldozed those cars to create a path for firetrucks. I’m sure you’ve seen the news footage. It was dramatic.
While many of us in the L.A. area watched this unfold on our televisions as ash and smoke spread through the air like snow, we received word that another fire had broke out in Eaton Canyon just north of Pasadena in a small community called Altadena and residents of those areas were urged to evacuate.
I harkened back to early New Years Day, before I’d heard about the terrorist attack in New Orleans, as I sat with my cup of coffee watching the Rose Parade floats grace my TV screen. People had come far and wide to watch the flower-covered floats make their five-mile trek down the parade route. There were bands from all over the world: Puebla, Mexico; Herrera, Panama; Hornbaek, Denmark; Kyoto, Japan; and of course from multiple states in the U.S. Those five miles along Orange Grove Boulevard and Colorado Boulevard were the epicenter of joy and solidarity and hope in the upcoming year. Now they were crammed with vehicles of people who were forced to leave their homes behind.
Those of us who had not been evacuated, were asked to stay home in an effort to keep streets and freeways clear for emergency vehicles and evacuees. UCLA and USC, two of the largest employers in Los Angeles canceled classes. Companies announced that those who could work from home, should. The world, it felt like, simply stopped.
As the shelters filled up, organizations in cities to the north and south began opening their doors. YMCAs and churches took in displaced residents from other cities. The humane societies saw an unprecedented number of animals brought to their doors, many of them found wandering the streets with burns, separated from their owners and in need of medical attention. People wanted to help but weren’t sure how. Posts began to crop up on Facebook by residents in the surrounding cities who weren’t under evacuation warnings offering up their guest rooms. Airbnbs and hotels quickly filled up with many offering empty homes and hotel rooms to evacuees at no cost. Lyft and Uber offered free rides to evacuees up to $40 and Metro suspended the costs of riding the subway. Food trucks began to park in front of the shelters to offer free meals to incoming evacuees and first responders. We were all doing whatever we could.
Firefighters were deployed from other parts of California, five other states, and waterbombers and night-vision helicopters were sent from Canada. But due to the gale-force winds, it was unsafe to send aircraft up. The best weapon the city had against the fire remained grounded throughout the night.
That evening, as the wind gusts slowed in the Palisades area, another fire ignited in the Hollywood Hills. Residents north of Hollywood Boulevard were told to evacuate. It felt in that moment that the tragedy would never end. And so thousands more Angelinos got into their cars and drove to friends’ houses and hotels.
My husband and I watched the news until we simply couldn’t anymore.
A final blow came when all three of the million-gallon water tanks accessible to the Palisades ran dry, fifteen hours after they were tapped into by firefighters. LAFD brought in water trucks from other parts of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, but it wasn’t close to being enough. With no containment on any of the three fires and the situation continuing to get worse, the news had nothing new to report. Just segment after segment of field reporters standing on streets watching houses and apartments and businesses burn, many with no firefighters in sight. There simply weren’t enough people and trucks and hoses to fight this many fires.
My husband said, “Now we’re just watching things burn.” With that, I turned off the TV and sat there in the dark, overwhelmed with the same hollow, depleted feeling I had in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Northridge Earthquake. The only silver lining that I found myself clinging to was the fact that this had happened in the final days of Biden’s presidency so we could count on federal aid, and despite how aggressive the fires were, no one had died.
The next morning, I woke up to find that while the first part was true—Biden had authorized federal firefighters to deploy to California and agreed to assist in recovery costs— the second wasn’t. Five people were reported dead in the Eaton fire and later in the day, bodies would be found in burned out structures from the Palisades Fire. One older man was found deceased with a garden hose in his hand, trying to save his home. His sister reported that he’d had mobility issues. At the time of this post, the death toll has risen to ten and they expect to find more bodies.
While social media and the internet had been a good source of information the previous two days, it eventually, and predictably turned toxic. Many supportive posts from friends and family were met with horrific responses like “Good! Let pedo-wood burn!” and “They deserve it—they voted for Newscum,” and “Who cares? The celebrities will just go stay in one of their other homes anyway,” and “They get what they vote for!”
Nearly all of the comments were political in nature. ‘Newscum’ is a reference to California governor Gavin Newsom and was coined by Donald Trump in 2018 when Trump claimed that California should rake leaves to avoid future fires and “pedo-wood” is a term born from a QAnon conspiracy theory that Hollywood was trafficking children to satisfy pedophiliac urges by wealthy actors and film executives.
It certainly didn’t help that on the second day of the fires, Trump inaccurately claimed at a press conference that FEMA’s budget had been depleted by Biden—the same false claim he made after Hurricane Helene—and that, “Newsom refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.”
It's human nature to try to place blame in the wake of a tragedy. Doing so strengthens our belief that if there is something or someone to blame, we can change that thing or person, and prevent the tragedy from ever happening again. Very few disasters can be simplified to that level. In the case of these fires, two years of excessive rainfall in L.A. area followed by our current year-long drought, created a situation in which there was an overabundance of dry foliage. Unprecedented Santa Ana wind gusts not only made it impossible to use our most effective firefighting tools—aerial attacks—but it spread the fire faster than any ground team could possibly put it out. There is rumored to be a video (I haven’t seen it) of the high winds downing a power line and sparking the Palisades fire—an event that was on some level preventable had the power lines been buried. But with an average cost of around $3.8 million per mile to bury underground distribution lines and $6 million per mile for transmission lines, it’s an almost impossible undertaking that would require decades to complete—and had we started that process, would we have started with Eaton Canyon and Pacific Palisades?
And then of course, theories began to float on social media that at least one, if not more of these fires could be arson. Whenever there’s a fire, the possibility of arson pops into your brain, but as of this moment, there has not been any confirmation that any of the fires were set by arsonists; the causes are still under investigation.
Next came the looting, which was also predictable as it happened recently after hundreds of residents in Palos Verdes, one of the southernmost cities in L.A. County, were forced to evacuate in September due to landslides. As homes sat red-tagged and owners forced to stay out, bands of looters broke in and stole the homeowners’ valuables. As neighborhoods in the Palisades burned leaving hollowed out structures with nothing but rubble, under the cover of night, criminals snuck in and began to steal anything of value that had miraculously survived. Police anticipated such activity and so far, twenty individuals have been taken into custody. To prevent it from continuing, a curfew in the burn areas has been set allowing police to arrest people simply for being in the area.
The comments people were making were astounding. Their inability to empathize at all with people who have lost everything—their homes, their valuables, irreplaceable photos and mementos of their past, their pets, the livelihoods, even their loved ones, is unconscionable to me. They can make themselves completely immune to understanding the pain of this incredible tragedy, just to feel superior for a moment. The level of insecurity and misery that must permeate their daily life that they can rejoice in other people’s suffering, must be unimaginable the rest of us who are deeply affected by seeing devastation even when we don’t know the victims personally. There are those of us who harbor a sense of humanity and empathy, and there are those who only feel good about themselves when they see someone suffer more than they suffer.
I had to stop reading the comments. Even though for a long time, I’ve sensed that the miserable people that hide behind fake profile pictures as they type the most insensitive of comments to and about those suffering and marginalized communities must live in constant insecurity and jealousy, it was just too much. Not now. Not when people I know have lost everything and miles and miles of my beautiful city are gone.
The blame wasn’t just from the keyboard warriors eager to repeat what their political demagogues spout off on television. Tensions between L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and LAFD Fire Chief Kristin Crowley hit an all-time high. Only a month ago, Crowley wrote to the Board of Fire Commissioners that the budget cuts imposed by Bass "have adversely affected the Department's ability to maintain core operations." Originally $17M was cut from LAFD’s budget, which represented 2% of their overall budget, with Bass citing that in the 2023-24 fiscal year, the fire department overspent by an estimated $66.6 million with unbudgeted contracts, unused sick time and overtime accounting for much of the overspending. Realistically, with better management, the approved budget, even with the 2% drop, should have been adequate. Even so, back in November, after the 2% reduction was well into effect, the city council approved a four-year $203 million contract with the firefighter's union which came from the city’s general fund, allocating money to boost wages and health benefits for staff.
Regardless of whether you agree that LAFD was properly funded to handle the recent fires or not, we can’t deny the perfect storm of events. Two years of overgrowth due to higher than normal rainfall in the canyons followed by a drought meant more kindling to fuel a fire. The three water tanks that ran dry in the Palisades were never designed to support the length of time they were in use. The Santa Ana winds made it impossible to use all of our resources and fight the fire from the effective position—the air. The limited access roads in the Palisades weren’t conducive to mass evacuations. The fact that the fire started at 10am on weekday meant that many people were already at work which caused an influx of traffic into the area early in the evacuations as people returned home to get pets and belongings. The diversion of resources to the Palisades fire reduced available resources for the Eaton fire.
Sometimes, bad things happen despite our best efforts to prevent them.
Where am I going with all of this?
Despite it being therapeutic personally to just rehash and help people understand the complexity of the situation and the level of decimation, my hope is that by reading this, you feel the need to create something. Massive destruction needs to be met with massive creation. Those that thrive on blame and misery can only be combatted with compassion and a show of solidarity.
Despite how utterly difficult it is right now, I refuse to allow terrorists and fires and cowardly keyboard warriors put a dent in my hope for 2025. This lunar new year is the year of the snake which is a time for renewal, transformation, and spiritual growth. The Palisades and Altadena are gone. Bourbon Street will bear the scar of the New Year’s Eve terrorist attack forever. But transformation is possible. Renewal is possible. We will not forget how these tragedies affected us, but we will not let them darken our perspectives. This is a time for spiritual growth for all of us. Those who have lost homes and family members will find they’re more resilient and loved than they ever could have predicted. The rest of us will support them as they rebuild and grieve and will grow spiritually as well through acts of compassion and generosity. The emotions we feel will inspire us in our creative efforts to bring good into the world through our art and stories.
Until next time.
Christine Conradt is an author/screenwriter/director and producer. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, David, and their rescued cat.