I took the above screenshot yesterday morning when I woke up in Glendale after smelling smoke in my sleep the entire night. For context, a reading above 150 qualifies as very unhealthy and means everyone should stay indoors. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a reading this high before. It got above 400 at one point but I think by that time I was so focused on getting out that I didn’t take a screenshot. As someone who suffers very badly from environmental allergies this is kind of my worst nightmare.

I thought it was flurrying outside but it was ash falling from the sky. The view outside was a yellow and gray haze. When I went out to my car the smell of smoke was overpowering even through my mask. My car was covered in a thin film of ash and when I opened the door it puffed up all around me.

I spent today inside, in Long Beach, where the air quality was just bad instead of horrible. The few times I went outside (wearing a mask) it smelled like when your blender overheats. In a suitcase I have my computer and hard drives, my roommate’s computer and hard drives, and my boss’s computer and hard drives which he asked me to take with me when we were forced to leave work due to evacuation warnings yesterday. For a composer, giving someone your drives is kind of like entrusting them with your cat. So I have three people’s life’s work in my possession.

Almost everyone I know has evacuated one way or another, either due to city ordinance or by choice to get away from the smoke. There’s really nowhere good to be in LA right now. The wind is swirling things around and it’s hard to predict where the smoke will blow next. Depending on how things look tomorrow I might spend the weekend down in San Diego to get away from it - assuming there are any rooms available. I tried to book a hotel in Long Island for tonight or tomorrow but there is nothing available until Sunday.

I’ve seen girls doing pirouettes and taking selfies in front of the apocalyptic sunset, and I watched a couple throw an entire wastebasket worth of trash out of their car windows while ahead of me at an In-N-Out drive thru. On the highways, people are driving scared at 40 mph or weaving through the lanes at suicidal speeds. Nothing in between.

It really does feel like the apocalypse, strange behavior and all.

I’ve had a pit in my stomach since this started and it’s hard to think of much else. When I close my eyes I still see the air quality maps and fire boundaries imprinted. That might speak more to my obsessive checking of the conditions than to anything else, but I’m sure I’m not the only one.

I have coworkers who lost their houses. Half the people in my industry lost their houses, it feels like. I’m just grateful my apartment is unharmed (as of now) and that I have some options for places to stay and wait this out. And that I have a car with a full tank of gas in case I need to travel long distances.

I’m worried it’s going to get worse over night, worried we’re going to wake up under a blanket of smoke, worried everyone is going to panic and the freeways will be unusable. The Palisades fire is being labelled the most destructive natural disaster in the history of LA. What a way to start off the year.

I made a donation to the LAFD below because I’ve never been so close to something like this, I’ve never been more afraid of an element, and I’ve never had more respect for the firefighters who are out there risking their lives while I quake in my boots and write about it on Substack. You can donate too if it feels right to you. I made a button below:

Donate LAFD

The Palisades fire is apparently 6% contained right now which seems like a big deal given that for almost 72 hours that number was 0. I’m not sure what it means exactly but “contained” sounds good.

Tomorrow I will head back to Santa Monica to check on my apartment and see what the air is like. Depending on how things stand I will stay there or (more likely) pack up again and drive as far as I can to cleaner air for the weekend.