As the fire continued to burn, sadness spread. Many people lost everything. The rest of us mourn with them a life shaped by routines of mortgages and rent checks, housework and gardening, meals and pets. To this day, smoke, flames and barricades obscure the scale of the disaster. Then comes that terrible reckoning.
The house will rise anew. The rigid web of urban and suburban infrastructure will be replaced. But we have to do more than just replicate what was there. Don’t just limit yourself to structures and power lines. Many other threads of the complex web that connects us and provides meaning and foundation to our daily lives are missing. Rebuilding soft infrastructure, the networks of social connections that bind communities of people, must be as much a priority as wire, wood, and steel.
As panic grows, evacuation orders create a response pattern. Please catch the dog. Pack your prescriptions and laptop. Find deeds, deeds, passports and credit cards. If you have the time and space, try shooting an album. If they leave, history will burn out. We have already seen family photos being sent far from places that are meaningful to people. But it was always only a few people, and the rest were all burned in the fire.
The fire took away our home and what held us together outside the home. I live in Pasadena. My neighbors in Altadena, just north of my home, have lost their churches, mosques, and temples. Firestorm operates with agnostic efficiency.
Context went up in flames and our common bond with a shared past disappeared. We hear it in the chronology that accompanies their loss. First it was a World War I-era grocery store, then a hardware store that was open for 80 years. A local parish that had been active since before World War II. A popular restaurant locally known for its “Noah’s Ark” breakfast, which combines two eggs, two pancakes, and two slices of bacon. Its history dates back to the mid-1950s. A quirky museum dedicated to rabbits, founded 25 years ago. Among the ashes of the Palisades fire was a century-old bungalow known as the Haute Court, as well as a ranch house and stables built by Will Rogers in the 1920s.
We can repair and replace roads and water pipes. Fill the reservoir. Repair energy and communication networks. Help people build permanent shelter. But it also reweaves the burnt-out civic fabric, the places of everyday life that make vast cities meaningful and manageable: businesses, public parks, places of worship, schools, libraries, and so on. The work of reconstruction must include marking and memory, an attempt to retie the threads that connect us to history and place.
When it is ready, this will come from the devastated and burned people of the region. But those of us outside the flight and fire zone can also help. Mark where beloved local institutions once stood. To find meaningful ways to remind people of what once was, to remember, and to honor by remembering it. Eventually, once the pain subsides to some degree, we will tell the story of what happened, interview friends and neighbors who went through it all, and create an archival space to protect those memories. Local authorities and charities can help support people at the grassroots. Shared history is powerful. it can be recovered. Those of us who are saved have a special obligation to serve.
Here in Southern California, we have an example to follow. In the Chinese Massacre of 1871, a mob of 500 Angelenos murdered 18 Chinese men and boys in a horrific bout of racial violence. For too long forgotten except for mandatory sidewalk plaques, this site is now the site of a collective commemoration effort that marks the site of the violent act with solemn sculptural beauty and didactic interpretation. It is the focus. This joint effort ensures that no victim is forgotten, even anonymously. What is even more promising is that perspectives gained from historical pain offer the possibility of social repair.
The Civic Memory Working Group, which recently promoted this effort, left the city with a list of other historic obligations that remain unfulfilled and unresolved challenges from the region’s past.
And the list is now one task longer.
The past is behind us. History is not like that. What Lincoln called “the mystical chords of memory” will help connect affected areas with their neighbors, and over time will help to connect connections beyond roads, pipes, and power grids.
This should be a priority before the fire starts again. Our obligations to communities, places, and histories should not be bounded by geography or disaster.
William Deverell is a historian at the University of Southern California and co-director of the Huntington USC California and Western Institute.
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