City of Burned Angels

 Man - those poor bastards in LA -- today has been nearly a week since historically awful wildfires have turned a lot of that beautiful part of our country into a hellscape. For me, Southern Cal is where my family's modern history began, and I always feel an affinity with the place -- bolstered by my probably close to 20 visits there over the years, most recently just a few months ago.

Fire season has passed, but terrible Santa Ana winds have fueled the worst devastation ever. I think of beautiful Malibu, and a day I spent there when I was 40 -- Paul and I and his now late friend Frank walking the beach when a soccer ball rolled by. I picked it up to return it to the beautiful blonde Mom who was playing with her kids, and she thanked me in an Aussie accent. Frank pointed out it was Olivia Newton-John. Frank also pointed out Johnny Carson's house. After, we had lunch at Geoffrey's, a famous restaurant. I saw immediately why the rich and famous were drawn to that beach town. Sadly, a lot of it is now rubble.

The fire has also shown, again, why journalism in the US is now a laughingstock. When you read the stories in lefty papers, like the NYT, the focus is how climate change is to blame -- we've brought this upon ourselves by driving cars and flying jets. The righty papers, like the NY Post, emphasize that the real blame is incompetent Democratic government in Cali and Southern California. Indeed, the mayor seems clownish -- she was at a state inauguration in Ghana when the fire started, and seems to be leading less efficiently than a pre school teacher with no control over her kids.

Probably both takes are correct.

The closest person to us is Amanda, and her new husband Daniel, whose wedding we attended with D2 and Jonathan. Fortunately, they're fine, although there will be long term consequences. Probably any attempts to buy a house in the coming years will be over -- there's a mad scramble to buy whatever hasn't been turned to ash, and apparently rental rates for available apartments are also through the roof. Jonathan's family in LA is fine, too, though I think one Tia had to evacuate.  A huge mess...

My nephew is there, too, but he lives far from the center of the problems -- near Downtown. He's fine, too.

Miami has hurricanes, of course, but they're MUCH less scary than fires and earthquakes. We have plenty of notice they're coming -- someone once noted that waiting for a bad storm to hit in Miami is like being stalked by a tortoise.

Andrew taught us how serious they are, of course -- essentially culling out most of our stuff along with our poorly built house. Fortunately, insurance then was truly easy to navigate -- we made a LOT of profit from Andrew -- paid off the mortgage and ended up with a rental house to boot. I also paid off my student loans.

Now, of course, the insurance party is over -- I can't even buy hurricane insurance anymore unless I replace my still watertight roof. I'm sure buying fire coverage in California is about to become impossible, too -- the entire casualty industry is going to have to change.

The other good news about hurricanes is they typically move west to east or vice versa -- so we can pack up 3 SUVs and decamp north to like Orlando if a storm threatens. An exception was Irma, in 2017, which came up the Florida peninsula like a bowling ball in a lane -- so escape was much tougher -- crazy traffic. We fled to Atlanta -- the usual 11 hour trip took closer to 20.

We thought about getting a whole house generator -- probably for D2 and Jonathan's house -- to have one refuge -- but I thought about it, and would rather just spend the money on a nice refugee vacation for the family, if needed.

Part of me is spooked by Norman's experience in Irma -- had a state of the art, whole house job, and it went on the Fritz on day 2 of no power, I think. And no one was coming out to repair it in the days right after the storm hit.

Yeah -- wildfires are far scarier, and I feel for LA. But they'll rebuild -- maybe this time even fix an infrastructure that left the hydrants dry.

Ironically, we're in my favorite part of the Miami climate year -- cool out -- haven't turned on the AC in weeks.

Today D2 and Jonathan are returning from Islamorada and yet another friends' wedding -- taking the 97 pound Betsy home. D1 and Joey are bringing their kids over -- pizza, wings, and maybe a cocktail or two.

I ended my dry January Friday night -- a FaceTime martini with Paul, and a second while Wifey sipped some seltzer. The buzz was nice. It was great to feel "up" to adult beverages again -- I always think about the Dean Martin line about feeling bad for those who do NOT drink. "When you wake up in the am -- that's the best you're going to feel all day!"

If we do toast today, one will be for the poor folks in LA. May they endure and rebuild.