Los Angeles — Beervana

Growing up, I came to understand the past as a land of horrors: deadly disease, genocidal wars, incredible poverty, and the violence of an uncontrolled natural environment, with “great” floods and fires taking center stage. It used to be common for cities to burn to the ground. In an era of lax regulation and cheap construction, fires could rip through a city in hours. As people packed into ever more dense tenements, the factors conspired to make deadly fires inevitable. Yet all that was a before-times affliction, something we had fixed with planning and regulation.

That makes watching the news about the fires in Los Angeles literally unbelievable. It isn’t just that an old problem is cropping up unexpectedly—it’s the scale of the disaster. Most of those old “great” fires had burn areas measured in blocks. The most destructive by far was the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which burned a staggering 3.3 miles of the city. Los Angeles has already massively outpaced that figure, however, with around sixty square miles burned. The vindictive Santa Ana winds, which acted as a bellows with their hurricane-force gusts to start this conflagration, are set to return today.

I don’t know much about LA and I’ve only visited a few times in my life. Yet like New York, its neighborhoods and streets sound familiar as I hear them—Altadena and Pasadena, Pacific Palisades, La Cienega and El Segundo. In very real ways, we all grew up in the scrubby hills, sun-washed streets, and sandy beaches of LA because we spent so much time inhabiting them through our screens. Not that familiarity matters—we should have the capacity for empathy and compassion whether we know a place or not. Still, the LA fires strike many of us as at least distantly personal, even if we’ve never visited the city.

To fully understand the scale of this fire, consider these historical examples:

Great Chicago Fire (1871): 17,000 structures destroyed; 3.3 square miles burned; a hundred thousand people displaced; and 300 killed.
San Francisco Earthquake and Fires (1906): 25,000 buildings destroyed; around 500 blocks burned; fire deaths unknown (3,000 deaths overall).
Great Atlanta Fire (1917): 1,900 buildings destroyed; 300 acres burned; 10,000 people displaced; one death.
Great Fire of 1901 (Jacksonville, FL): 2,367 buildings destroyed; 146 city blocks burned; 10,000 displaced; seven deaths.
Great Baltimore Fire (1904): 1,545 buildings destroyed; 140 acres burned; no deaths.

The Los Angeles fires, which are by no means controlled, have already burned 40,000 acres. Forty people are dead (24) or missing (16), a number that is sure to rise. Twelve thousand structures have been destroyed, and 150,000 people are under evacuation orders. Today, winds of over 50 miles an hour are forecast to return. If the fires went out today, this would rank as the worst or second-worst fire in American history—and unfortunately, they will keep burning.

We in the West are used to fires. Our dry summers make our wildlands vulnerable to wildfires—a dynamic thousands of years in the making. But wildfires that become city fires is something new. Two weeks ago, even Angelenos, where fires have been closer and more regular than anywhere else, would have found this situation hard to believe. Yet urban fires—remember Boulder and Maui—are now a reality. It won’t be long before they start moving east, as well.

I suppose there’s a beer angle to this story. I tried to find out how many breweries might be affected, but I don’t know the city well enough to do a thorough search. Trying to view a tragedy at this scale through the tiny window of one affected industry seems short-sighted, anyway. When the fires are finally extinguished, local breweries will report back. It’s a collegial and supportive industry, and we can expect breweries to be visible in helping people get through the aftermath. We can elevate those efforts and offer our help then.

For now, though, all we can do is hold our breath and pray that the winds aren’t too bad, that the firefighters get matters under control, that the fires flicker out. Hang in there, Los Angeles—our hearts are breaking and we’re thinking of you.