During the first week of the fires, I would go up to my building's roof once a day. I'd look at the Los Angeles skyline at whatever shade of yellow-orange-brown muck the fires had delivered that day and take a photo, and then I'd scurry back inside. Against my better judgment, one time I took my mask off for one second and immediately felt ill. The entire city smelled like a funeral pyre.
Local TV news and its updates became the soundtrack of my days, complete with its bright graphics, specific music, and the parade of weary-but-pulling-through-it anchors tossing to extremely awake but often harried live reporters. It was from local TV where I learned where to donate supplies for those who lost everything in the fires.
It's just as telling what I didn't hear from local TV news. I didn't hear conspiracy theories blaming the fires on programs to encourage diversity in the workforce. I never heard that the Hollywood sign was on fire (because it never was) or that Gov. Gavin Newsom refused to let water into Southern California for firefighting purposes, which was a lie posted on Truth Social.
When every single phone in Los Angeles screamed an evacuation warning alert, I was skeptical. This was not because I, as a former Floridian plenty familiar with the perils of defying an evacuation order, wanted to tough it out. It was because I'd been watching local news and knew exactly what fire the alert was.
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