Ember Duke | layout editor

California’s been burning for over a week now, and I don’t think we can be hopefully optimistic about the climate crisis anymore. It’s not just hypothetical polar bears on shrinking ice caps — the ones we felt kind of ambiguously sad for, but removed from, like they only existed in the documentaries and were fine after the cameras stopped rolling. Wildfires are natural, even necessary to the function of a lot of ecosystems, but not like this. The climate crisis, and effectively this series of wildfires, is a match struck by human hands.

Roughly 23,000 acres of Los Angeles and surrounding areas have been burned in several different blazes. The largest destroyed areas being from the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire. The death toll rose to 25, but is expected to keep ticking up as the rubble cools enough to exhume more. Upwards of 200,000 citizens across Southern California have been told to evacuate.

The fires roar through one of the richest areas of the country and are adversely affecting the upper and the lower classes, but not in the same ways.

Big names like Paris Hilton, Eugene Levy and Lakers Head Coach J.J. Reddick are among the famous who have lost their homes.

While celebrities also grapple with disasters they shouldn’t have to, neighborhoods like Altadena, which has historically been cohabitated by blue and white collar workers alike, also burn. In a Los Angeles Daily News article, some of these residents fear for what the future holds and wonder if it is financially viable to rebuild in the area; will there be a new wave of gentrification that will stifle the previous community?

Marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by natural disasters, according to a study published in the journal PLOS One. A lot of this comes down to the false perception that affluent neighborhoods bear the brunt of wildfires, said the study’s lead author Ian Davies, in an article by The Nature Conservancy.

Funding for LA’s fire department was cut by $17.6 million. The city’s fire chief warned just weeks ago that the budget cuts were impeding the department’s ability to respond to emergencies.

When you’re rich, you have a cushion to fall on — which is not to compare the emotional toll of disaster. For those without that security in the bank, it’s near impossible to get back to the position they were in before.

An article by NPR follows survivors of the Carr Fire in Northern California in 2018 and highlights how the economic disparity has long-term and even sometimes permanent effects. People who once considered themselves financially stable had their livelihoods and income sources destroyed, leaving them in the lurch.

Imagine having to rebuild your life literally from the soil up while still managing all the daily stuff. I saw a video on Instagram a few days ago of farm workers still working against a smoky, orange sky and high winds. They probably can’t afford a day off.

Approximately 24,000 people have already applied for FEMA aid to rebuild after these fires, according to NPR. With the increased cost of everything these days, that money is not likely to repair most of what people have lost.

In 2023, major insurance companies including Allstate, American Family, Nationwide, Erie Insurance Group and Berkshire Hathaway have stopped writing natural disaster coverage into their policies, citing climate change as a reason why. So, even if you can afford insurance, which many lower income people may not, you aren’t always promised protection.

Compounding this, in the wake of disaster, vulturous people look to turn it to their benefit through price gouging of rent and hotel rates. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law which would make price gouging illegal, stating that places could only raise prices up to 10% in an attempt to curb this behavior.

The average person is one major disaster away from being homeless, according to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.

I’d love to get on my soapbox and scream about how the fires concern us for the dignity and plight of our fellow humans (which god it should and if it doesn’t, maybe reassess your values) but it’s also a matter of survival and self-preservation. Right now, it’s people on your phone burning, it’s people you know losing homes or maybe two people removed from you – until it isn’t, until it’s you scrambling to fit the necessities into a go bag, round up your pets and your family and flee into the terrifying uncertainty of displacement.

Naturally, while citizens — celebrities and normal folk — face the inevitable climate fallout spurred largely by corporate greed and government inaction, those in power positions are more concerned with the partisan showboating that is American politics. Biden’s more concerned with the birth of his great-grandson, Newsom’s more concerned with bragging that he stood next to Biden at a press briefing and Trump, in his fashion, took to X to deflect attention away from the victims and onto vague accusations about Newsom’s response to the fires – something about a smelt fish.

They’re all just chasing their tails. We’re left watching as they warm their hands on the flames while we wait for the next spark. I just hope the next one is a real change, because these disasters aren’t isolated incidents anymore, they are a symptom of a larger disease that is getting more fatal.