The Los Angeles megafire, now nicknamed El Demonio after folks got a gander at the eerie image of a demonic face formed by the smoke cloud, began as four separate fires, but grew due to mismanagement by firefighters in the Hollywood Hills. Wealthy residents employed private firefighting companies to protect their homes. They coated the houses in Phos-Chek, a Monsanto-developed chemical retardant, and tapped the public hydrants to beat back embers and spot fires. A company called Transpen Fire Services had engaged in a pitched battle with another called Firestop for water and staging areas. The result was that the hydrants went dry, and the fire leaped from unprotected home to unprotected home until entire neighborhoods went up, and the firefighters were forced to retreat. The flames eventually joined up with the Wisdom Tree Fire and were carried eastward by abrupt shifts in the wind. There was a link to a video in the report, cell phone footage of Route 101 near the Hollywood Bowl, cars inching along in traffic, and within seconds fire came barreling down the side of the highway, trees candling, flames blowing sideways across six lanes. As the video went on, the smoke became a dark blanket and you could see people in their cars panicking, screaming, a few trying to get out and run, but soon they were all engulfed.
Another link took him to a video of the “firenado” in Beverly Hills. It was actually called a fire whirl but the effect was basically the same: a red-hot cyclone of smoke, dust, and flame eating its way across Coldwater Canyon, and he could hear drunk people gabbing from a rooftop deck. Then the firenado picked up a landscaping truck, whipped it in a spiral, and sent it crashing through the side of a building.
Ash wrote that he’d been in contact with the US Naval Research Lab, and its models were predicting that no amount of airpower would put this out, and only containment was possible. Abruptly, Ash’s paper detoured to his sister’s work as an economist of climate disaster, which then jumped to a description of their relationship. Apparently, they’d grown quite close over the last few years ever since she married his best friend. The whole report culminated in a scene at his sister’s wedding, in which they had a traditional Islamic ceremony on a Friday night and a standard American on Saturday.
“You’re one weird fuck, Hasan.”
Descending into California, the pilot warned they’d be in for a bumpy ride as the Santa Anas blew hot. They could all hear loose chunks of soil pelting the hull. To the north, there was no sun, just an impregnable wall of smoke like a fortress erected to guard the horizon.
Climbing down from the plane, his particulate mask on, overnight bag slung across his shoulder, the first thing Tony registered was the heat: 103 degrees was different. He futilely unbuttoned the top two buttons on his shirt as sweat soaked his back and stomach. The air smelled of a region-wide campfire.
A man, dirty, sweating, hands dark with grime, stood holding a handwritten sign with Tony’s name. Hasan must have put all this together while Tony was on the plane, and for a moment he was humbled and felt guilty for how much Hasan had done for him.
“Hank Magdolin with Cal Fire.” He shook Tony’s hand while he crumpled the piece of paper with the other. His mask clutched a thick gray beard, and he was humming with adrenaline. “You’re the crazy son of a gun who wants to drive into LA in the middle of the book of Revelation, I take it? Look,” he said without waiting for a reply, bounding across the asphalt toward the airport gate. “I don’t condone this, but I got a call from some muckety-muck Fed asking if I can get this guy a car and a clear shot into the city. You know much about wildfire?”
Tony half shrugged a shoulder. “More than the average prole, I guess, but I’m not taking a test on it.”
“Wow. Huh. Well, let me warn you, fella, this thing is a real kettle of fish. We’ve got lightning and Santa Ana winds, which is not supposed to be possible. Fire’s burning so hot it’s making its own weather. It came outta the Angeles Forest this afternoon, taking houses down to the frames in a minute, going through a thousand acres an hour. Fire-line construction’s been impossible. Too much fuel, and it’s moving too fast.”
Inside the blessed air-conditioning of the terminal, Tony sucked in a welcome breath of cool oxygen. None of the businesses were open. The entire airport had been converted into an emergency command center. Hank Magdolin tore his mask off, revealing a ring of soot around his beard.
“No smokejumpers available at first—everyone was busy in other states. Wind too strong to deploy aircraft anyway. You can’t fly in ’em. Updrafts are a nightmare and when they collapse, it’s like the devil breathing on the city. Water, electricity, and cell signals are all failing. Hydrants are dry.” They made their way back outside and into the parking structure. Magdolin took the stairs two at a time. “We’ve got you set up with a Suburban from DHS. Obviously, don’t use the self-driving mode. You’re going to take the 210, then cut down on the 710 once you get near Pasadena.”
“Why?”
Magdolin looked back at him, cocking one twitchy gray eyebrow. “Pasadena’s burning down, fella.”
He took out a paper map and slapped it on the hood of the SUV. “This son of a gun’s not going to sleep tonight. It’ll be hunting for fuel. Where exactly are you headed?” Tony gave him the street address and neighborhood. “Phewww. Doc. Okay. You sure about this?”
“My daughter’s there,” he said.
Magdolin nodded knowingly. “Yeah. Okay.” He folded the map and handed it to him. “I’d say we could try to get a fire crew in there, but the whole city’s spilling out. No way of knowing how long it would take. You gotta hustle. The crews are going to drop back to Highway 10 and use that wide strip of concrete as a fuel break. Try to make a stand there and save the other half of the city.” He handed Tony a walkie-talkie-looking device with a screen. “Sat-nav. Sorry, you’ll have to learn it on the fly, your cell definitely won’t work.”
“Thank you,” said Tony.
He dropped the car’s fob in Tony’s hand. “Once you get there, if your kid’s gone, don’t dawdle. Be safe. This thing is alive, angry, and a total F-E-A-R fire.”
Tony smirked, sensing good jargon. “And what’s that stand for?”
Magdolin spit on the concrete. “Fuck Everything and Run, of course.”
Tony drove faster than felt safe as gales tore across the freeway. Choppers clattered low where they could still fly. Bucket drops and slurry tanker runs. It had the feel of a military campaign. He watched one of them dump red fire retardant on a ridge, only to have the load blown sideways, vaporizing, then vanishing.
He shared the road only with LA County Fire convoys and other emergency vehicles, lighting up the tangerine haze with their reds and blues. White ash fell like snow. To the north, the peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains thrust upward like the backs of wild beasts, and every few moments he’d catch flashes from the corner of his eye, lightning in those massive clouds, somehow battling the Santa Anas. As night fell, and he neared the city, the full scope of the refugee flow became clear. The 210 was bumper to bumper in all twelve lanes. There were cars in ditches or pulled to the side of the road, out of gas or charge. People vehicularly trampling each other. In a subdivision adjacent to the freeway, he saw them carrying cardboard boxes, TVs, and VR sets, piling suitcases into their cars or strapping them tight to rooftops. The wind had blown over most of the trash and recycling bins, so cans and glass jars and plastic milk jugs crunched and exploded under escaping tires. He saw a man in a bulldozer plowing into a house, destroying the vinyl-sided one-story, probably to clear fuel around his own home. Perhaps it was foreclosed, or maybe the neighbors had just fled.