We got an evacuation warning Wednesday night. The fire came out of nowhere and threatened to sweep Hollywood. I took our son out of the tub. We ran into the car and headed north, past two more fires, through smoke and sirens, gridlock and chaos, flames on the horizon in all directions.
People keep saying that the scenes in Los Angeles look like something from a movie. Unless they don’t, of course. Movies need character. Every apocalypse on screen has a leader. So, where is ours?
The fires destroyed all the communities. Thousands have lost their homes. Many others are removed and looters take the property of those lucky enough to have it. Continuous warnings from Watch Duty, the wildfire tracking app, as I write this, new fires are burning, existing ones are spreading, winds are rising again. Will the latest warning mean that our neighborhood, our street or our school is next?
I’d love for a deus ex machina to turn this story line around or for real estate developer and would-be mayor Rick Caruso to divert the dancing fountain from his shopping complex, The Grove. In the meantime, I will make sure there is a plan. That it will be bad, 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, the main character doesn’t have to be perfect. We actually prefer them to be flawed, as long as they are ours.
I can’t go along with Rudy Giuliani’s criminal charges, but after September 11, America’s mayor stood at Ground Zero and assured a broken city that a terrorist attack would make us stronger. Is someone – who? – stand in the Pacific Palisades or Pasadena area and say the same about Los Angeles?
In 2005, after widespread criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina, Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré took over in New Orleans. At that time Mayor C. Ray Nagin called Honoré, “John Wayne’s man,” who “came out of the doggon chopper and started booing and people started moving.”
In those dark first months of Covid, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York did not bring good things. (I’m not sure how he would know.) But his daily information was invaluable. That is, before Mr. Cuomo resigned amid allegations he downplayed Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes and engaged in sexual misconduct, which he has not denied.
It’s not that Los Angeles doesn’t have championships. The city has stepped up where elected officials have not. From the firefighters and first responders to everyone who opened their homes, volunteered and logged on to GoFundMe pages, I have never seen such unity. But if leadership is a Churchillian combination of confident words and decisive action, Los Angeles has seen nothing.
When Mayor Karen Bass returned from a planned trip to Ghana, she held a brief, defensive news conference and told residents they could find emergency services at “URL.” He had to quiet a public dispute with his fire chief, telling reporters at a joint news conference Saturday that he and Chief Kristin M. Crowley were “locked in.”
On Saturday, he told X, “We’re going to get through this, together.” On Sunday, during a press conference, Ms. Bass vowed to “make sure that Los Angeles comes out of this city the best it can be.”
Will these efforts make Angelenos comfortable? On Sunday, the request to remember Mrs. Bass “because of his failure to lead in this unprecedented crisis” had more than 100,000 signatures.
In a video that went viral, Gov. California’s Gavin Newsom, wearing aviator sunglasses, looked to me like he couldn’t wait to get back to his idling car as a worried Angeleno told him his community had been destroyed and pleaded with him to help. He made time to do a long interview with “Pod Save America,” where he defended his record and his responses to the crisis, explaining that he was “not getting straight answers” from local officials. How about iPod Save Los Angeles first?
President-elect Donald Trump, on the other hand, took the fight to the schoolyard, calling the governor of California “Gavin Newscum” and blaming the damage done in Los Angeles on the policies of the Democratic Alliance.
Despite what X would have us think, history shows that Americans are very forgiving in the face of adversity. We are willing to make sacrifices and ignore mistakes as long as we feel that someone is directly giving them to us. But we do not find poetry or prose. Our city is being reduced to ashes and we are ruled by puerile social media posts and maybe President Biden, but honestly, who knows?
I watched all this with anger, but also without myself. Why can’t the city that gave us Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Will Smith (OK, there was The Slap but he still saved the world) find the best character to try to save us from this disaster? This state loves the action hero so much that it gave birth to the political work of The Terminator.
California has always been a beast to govern, with nearly 40 million people and interests ranging from farmers in the Central Valley to billionaires in Silicon Valley. The state has chosen strong leaders in the past. Love them or hate them, you can’t say that Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown didn’t take over. But the dominance of one political party in recent years has brought down many struggling civil servants.
At the time, Los Angeles, a multi-ethnic conglomerate filled with diverse neighborhoods, was not known for city-wide community involvement. City dwellers are interested in hyperlocal issues such as zoning and often consider issues affecting the greater LA area. Beverly Hills and other wealthy neighborhoods operate as municipalities and cannot vote for city leaders.
Unlike New York City, where politicians must use the art of retail politics, the city of Los Angeles is so large – 503 square kilometers – that local officials communicate with many people through TV and radio. They are not named in the daily crucible of the tabloid press like the leaders of New York City, who are used to taking daily hits and putting their eyebrows on. Los Angeles elected officials, by contrast, are working on Bubble Wrap. Many seem to run the risk of sounding like a Yankees fan, soft.
I’m not calling a bully, but people who successfully lead major disasters are puppets of the despot. I suspect Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, known as Stormin’ Norman, who led with a whiteboard and authority during the Persian Gulf war, could make his students cry. That’s right. We don’t need to hug. We were shocked.
Every day we watch our city, our communities, our lives burn. About 24 people have died and an estimated 12,000 buildings have been destroyed. Apart from leadership, we try to get reliable information from WhatsApp chats and neighboring Facebook pages. (I told you, it’s dark.)
At this point I don’t care who did or didn’t cut off water or fire services or whether the smell is something or the wind ate your homework. We are saddened, suffocating in the poisonous atmosphere and crushed under the weight of inaction.
I want someone to come in who cares more about saving the city than saving their jobs. We need someone to stand with authority in front of the white board and tell us the plan. I’ll take Arnold Schwarzenegger appearing in front of the Eaton fire and taking over. He actually told us that he would come back. At this point, I’d even take Cuomo.
Amy Chozick, a screenwriter and executive producer based in Los Angeles, is the author of the book “Chasing Hillary,” which she adapted into Max’s series, “The Girls on the Bus.”
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