Dr Edith de Guzman watched the flames of the Palisades fire rolling through the Santa Monica mountains out of the windows of her University of California, Los Angeles, classroom last week.
First, on Tuesday, flames surged toward the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, the affluent community overlooking the ocean from the canyons in west LA. Then overnight, they tore through parts of Altadena, a diverse town in the city’s east that had served as a refuge for Black Angelenos.
By Wednesday evening, fires were burning in the Hollywood Hills and the San Fernando valley. Twenty-five people would lose their lives. Thousands had lost their homes. LA, and much of the United States, was asking how wildfires could rage out of control in one of the richest cities in the world – a city with a long history of dealing with fire. What could have, what should have, been done? And who was to blame?
