‘Are you OK?’ L.A. is being inundated with messages asking if we’re safe

Questions abound around the wildfires still burning their way across Los Angeles, obliterating entire neighborhoods with an unfathomable speed and ferocity. What started the fires? Could we have avoided the carnage we’ve witnessed so far? Will we ever trust the evacuation notification system again, with all its false alerts, non-alerts and inconsistencies from phone to phone?

But there’s been one predominant question asked of us — the residents of L.A city and county: “Are you OK?”

I’ve received dozens of inquiries since the flames engulfed the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, and they continue to pop up all over the map. The notes have come from friends and family, of course, but also casual acquaintances, distant work contacts and people I’ve never even met. They’ve checked in via text, email, IMs, chats and every other way imaginable since the disaster made national and world news.

Angelenos I’ve spoken to are also receiving a multitude of check-ins. The majority are grateful for the concern, a few others find the number of inquiries overwhelming. I’m a member of the first group.

I’ve never been more grateful to receive such a preponderance of unsolicited messages, and that says a lot since speed-deletion skills are a crowning achievement of my decades-long career in journalism.

Receiving those queries means we’re lucky enough to have people in or around our lives who give a toss, like a dear old friend from South Carolina who texted, Are you ok and not in the area that is getting this? A journalist in Turkey I’d fallen out of contact with for year who reached out via WhatsApp: How are you? I’m watching the news about the fires in L.A. I’m concerned about you. I hope everything is ok.

And an East Coaster I’ve worked with but never met face-to-face who emailed: Hey, thinking of you and your family as these fires rage. I hope you are OK and staying safe.

I haven’t answered everyone yet, but I will. They need to know we’re safe and that our home is still standing.

But to claim we’re OK isn’t exactly the truth. We’re frazzled, stunned and above all, mourning the destruction around us. We live on the edge of the Eaton fire zone, and it’s been terrifying. Deafening, violent gusts of winds felt as if they were going to tear our roof off. Dark plumes of smoke engulfed our neighborhood. The eerie glow of flames as they crested multiple hills across from our house.

Conflicting evacuation alerts, none of which was coordinated across the three phones in our household (or the dozens on our block), added confusion on top of panic. We received multiple, varying messages at different times, from evacuation warnings to a “Leave Now!” order, each accompanied by that brain-piercing alarm. Then came the West Hills blaze (labeled the Kenneth fire) with an equally unclear evacuation warning/order for our elderly parents. Terror compounded. Where do you go when everyone’s home is under threat?

As for the You OK? messages, there are Angelenos who find the numerous inquiries bothersome, like those relentless text chains that feed off any sort of communal event: a death, a loud neighborhood party, the disappointment of “Squid Game Season 2.”

I get it. There’s much to process and deal with right now, particularly for those who lost their homes or loved ones, and for communities facing new fire threats. Responding beyond a “yes” or “no” requires reflection, which many of us aren’t up for yet. “Answering all the messages is like an obligation, and I just can’t right now,” one New York transplant who resides on the Westside told me. “And I’m getting more of them now than I did when the fire was raging.”

Another resident of L.A. said they feel that a lot of the concern is perfunctory, and worse, a disingenuous effort from folks they’ve purged to “weasel back into their life.” I know, it’s harsh but try to reserve judgment. We all have different ways of coping, and most of us are beyond exhausted.

Something as simple as making coffee requires five times the energy and focus when you’re transitioning from disaster-survival mode to post-disaster reality. In our house, there’s still clothing strewn across the bedroom from packing and then unpacking “go bags.” Our snail mail hasn’t been opened since Tuesday. The Christmas tree is still up.

Houses destroyed in the Palisades fire smolder along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

Terror takes a lot out of us, and we’re only just contending with the fallout. Survivors are sifting through the rubble of their homes, from smoldering apartments and bungalows off Lake Avenue to high-end properties around Sunset Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway.

Those of us who weren’t directly hit but were close enough to be evacuated are still contending with acrid thick air and charred chunks of debris on our doorsteps. And it feels wrong that some of the aftermath is deceptively pretty, like the delicate flurries of white ash accumulating on windowsills like fresh snow.

For me, the queries from concerned people have been a bright spot peeking through “unhealthy” air quality alerts. A native Angeleno from Highland Park told me that she found inspiration in the national and global response to the L.A. fires.

“The world is watching, and empathizing. It’s so hard to get anyone to agree on anything right now, but this situation has erased a lot of that division. I’m really moved by the response.”

Ditto. I’m grateful for all the check-ins and concern. I don’t care how corny or naive that might sound. When the world around you is on fire, the simple act of connecting matters.

Are we OK? Sort of. But we’re certainly better off knowing that folks out there care. Thank you.