LA fires up close and personal
The LA firestorm that started on January 7 has claimed the lives of 27 people and destroyed over 10,000 structures. Matt Ragghianti is a screenwriter, creative director and journalist who lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two teenage sons. In an exclusive essay for North & South, Ragghianti gives a personal view of the disaster. Right now, he says, “For those of us who don’t live in the burn area, life is completely back to normal. For those who do … the nightmare is just beginning. Two parallel universes.”
By Matt Ragghiant
Each day, as the news tracked the firestorm’s path, I began to recognise street names and overhead helicopter shots, and knew I had friends whose homes were gone. It didn’t seem possible. I had just spent a glorious night at my friend Joe’s on New Year’s Eve, drinking, laughing and rocking our way through his dazzling vinyl collection while our wives and sons frolicked nearby.
Days later, that home and every single thing in it was wiped from the Earth. Everyone in Los Angeles has a version of this story. Everyone. I felt sick and helpless and even guilty. So much so that, when my sons and I returned to Los Angeles on January 10th to find both our house and our mum/wife still standing, I burst into tears.
Later that same night, I couldn’t sleep. I got out of bed and walked through our house, suddenly more aware of – and grateful for – every bit of it than I was before.
I recalled those early days, 20 years ago, when Michelle and I bought it. Most of it was falling apart in one way or another, but we couldn’t have been happier, or more proud.
I remembered how hard we both laughed when a cupboard door fell off in my hand as I opened it, its hinges finally succumbing to decades of repetitive motion.
I remembered Christmas mornings in front of the fireplace when the boys were small, the dogs were young and both were full of mischief and wonder. And I remembered the stress and the thrill of spending every penny we’d saved over the years to finally transform that wonderful, crumbling mess into our dream house during the Covid years, and the hope for all the future memories we would go on to create here.
Every house holds these memories. Big, small, mud or marble. Because a house is so much more than wood and tile and plaster. It’s a living vessel of dreams and fears and joy and tears and everything in between we share with the ones we love more than anything.
This, then, is the alchemy that transforms a house into a home. And then, one day… for no other reason than because the wind blew with terrible force at exactly the wrong time, in exactly the wrong place, your entire world goes up in flames.
Dozens are dead. Thousands more nearly joined them. Joe and his family had exactly six minutes to escape with their lives. Six. And this still isn’t over.
Los Angeles will never be the same. And whatever it becomes next waits at the top of a very steep climb that the rest of the United States and the world will watch with great and not-always-supportive interest. That’s just the way life is.
We are scheduled to host the World Cup in 2026, the Super Bowl in 2027, and the Olympic Games in 2028. Events which are viewed today through the tragic lens that only the perspective of shared trauma can provide.
These are all celebrations. In a city that doesn’t feel much like celebrating.
But we’re still here. And we’re not going down without a fight. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 30 years. Longer than I’ve lived anywhere else in my life, and it was all an accident that just sort of… happened.
But, this whole time, if you ever asked me where I’m from I would give the following answer: “I live in Los Angeles, but I’m FROM San Francisco.” That always made perfect sense to me.
But today, as I navigate this still-burning city and feel both the collective grief of the staggering loss that remains nowhere close to being finished… and the pride in the heroic firefighters and police officers still in the fight… and the friends and neighbors – most of whom (like me) came from somewhere else to discover a life in this extraordinary place – already working in a dozen different ways to try and help the victims they don’t know and will never meet… I feel a solemn pride inside me, and have come to realise something for the very first time.
My name is Matt Ragghianti. And I’m from Los Angeles.