I remember, even today and vividly so, the odors and scents wafting in the open door of the plane. It was the beginning of February, 1982 and I had made my first landing in America. I didn't realize it at the time but it was a scouting mission.
America would, a few years later, become my home. That would be in New York. This first time arrival was in Los Angeles. It was eleven at night and the air was filled with a potent mix of aviation fumes and the smell of growth, lots of it.
It was still winter back in Ireland and the waft of luxuriant vegetation, even at LAX, was intoxicating. Luckily, all that vegetation was not burning. I would stay five weeks in the City of Angels and truth be told I have no memory of rain, or at least much of it. But neither have I a memory of fires.
That would come much more recently, in particular with the aftermath of the Woolsey Fire of November, 2018.
This is what Wikipedia has to say of it in part: "The Woolsey Fire was a wildfire that started in Los Angeles County and spread north to neighboring Ventura County. The fire ignited on November 8, 2018 and was not fully contained until November 21, 2018. The fire burned 96,949 acres (39,234 hectares) of land, destroyed 1,643 structures, killed three people, and prompted the evacuation of more than 295,000 people. It was one of several fires in California that ignited on the same day, along with the nearby Hill Fire and the destructive Camp Fire in Northern California."
My friend Cormac O'Herlihy, who hosted me on that first visit in 1982, faced into that fire - literally. Along with his next door neighbor, Cormac decided to stay and defend his home in their Agoura Hills/Malibu neighborhood.
The twin defenders had one key advantage going for them. Along with the rest of the neighbors in the subdivision they had been careful to cut back vegetation from the lower parts of the hills that encircled their homes.
The fire duly arrived, charged over the hills, burned vegetation at the top and then ran out of fuel. Cormac, his neighbor, their homes, and the other houses on the street, had survived the blaze that would go down in the books as the Woolsey Fire. Many others were not so lucky.
In California these times, one escape does not guarantee another.
I have been to Los Angeles on a number of occasions down the years and never get tired of visiting. One of those visits, together with my wife, was not too long after the Woolsey Fire. You could all too easily see what it had wrought.
I don't think I could live in LA. But it does for sure provide an alluring contrast to home in New York, and just about anywhere else in the United States for that matter.
There is a family connection to LA. My late mother-in-law was born in Hollywood. Ann was never famous, but she sure was a star. Her mother, Billie, was a dancer, a member of the Fanchonettes dance troupe, LA's answer to the Rockettes of New York. "Grandma Billie" of later years knew the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and other famous types who joined the Fanchonettes on USO tours back in the 1930s and during the war.
So LA is more than just a vacation destination. It is, for sure, not a place to be idle. It is one of movement. I have driven its streets and highways, suffered through its traffic jams: The 10, the 101/Ventura Freeway, the 405, Mulholland Drive, and lots more besides. It's like being in a Michael Connelly novel.
So with all this personal investment: family, friends, and even adventures behind a steering wheel in a town where you don't really want to be behind a steering wheel - at least for too long - the last few days have been hard to take.
They have been tough from a safe distance of three thousand miles, so heaven only knows what they have been like for the tens of thousands of Angelenos who have watched their home place burn.
What we have all witnessed, one way or another, is as heartbreaking as it is frightening. The fires that have devastated huge swathes of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area are of a size and fury never seen before. And, at time of writing, they are not done; not by a long way.
Los Angeles can feel heavenly. When the fires burn it can seem like hell. Most days by far match the former description. But it only takes a few days to match the latter description. We've just had them.
When the flames are finally vanquished there will be a lot of soul searching, finger pointing, argument, accusation, investigation, stories galore in the press. Where it will all lead to is hard to guess at this point. But one thing for sure is that after this particular crucible of fire Los Angeles will never be quite the same again, no matter whether you live within its boundaries, or just visit.
The City of Angels right now needs every angel it can muster to its flame-scorched side.
