January's Workshop 20 Minute Warm-up Writing - Wildfire Report by Elizabeth Obadina

credit: Los Angeles Times

 Saturday 11^th January 2025

The Los Angeles wildfires have been burning for three days now with no signs of letting up. The city of brash sparkle, neon glitter and gaudy fashion is now shrouded in a night-time red glow as the inferno rages and spreads.

Morning brings little respite in the areas where the fires have been quenched. Green* lawns and trees have been replaced by grey scenes of dust and devastation. It is as if in some weird time-travel shift Los Angeles has been replaced by the blitzed cities of Hiroshima, Nagasaki or Dresden when only chimney stacks survived the 1945 bombings.  It seems perhaps that LA has been transported to present day Gaza or eastern Ukraine such is the destruction.

Steely bright morning light illuminates the debris of everyday life: the scorched frame of a child’s tricycle, china cups shattered by the explosion of bar-b-que gas canisters. Throughout the suburbs ash falls like soft snow. There is optimistic official talk of rebuilding, a new dawn, a new birthday for LA. But in the meantime, LA citizens stare blank-eyed and unseeing at the wreckage of their homes, overwhelmed at the task ahead.

* word-maze random words

credit: John Joyce, Los Angeles Times