“The entire Pacific Palisades looks like, unfortunately, Gaza, or one of these war-torn countries where awful things have happened,” remarked Los Angeles local and Oscar-winning actor Jamie Lee Curtis at a recent event for her new movie “The Last Showgirl.” Her now-viral comment has sparked controversy, but Curtis is far from alone in drawing comparisons between devastated L.A. neighborhoods and conflict zones. L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said that the city, or at least the most affected parts of it, “looks like a war zone,” adding: “You can go blocks where there are no homes.” These analogies are certainly provocative. And although the comparison falls short in some ways, it is also illuminating.
The most obvious way in which Los Angeles does not compare to a war zone is, fortunately, the number of fatalities. At least 28 people have died in the Los Angeles wildfires. In contrast, political scientists generally consider an armed conflict to achieve the status of “war” when the conflict crosses the threshold of 1,000 battle-related deaths. The magnitude of fatalities common in war — with thousands or tens of thousands dead — reminds us of how lucky we are that so many people evacuated safely.
The lesson points in the other direction too. Any loss of civilian life is unacceptable, whether it’s one person or 1,000. As powerfully portrayed in recent obituaries of the people who lost their lives to the wildfire, each individual is a blessing. All people have wondrous stories and lives. It makes the scale of death during wars all the more tragic and makes it all the more imperative that we do everything in our power to ensure that disasters, like the L.A. fires, do not take a similar toll.
The war analogy may spring to mind for observers such as Curtis and Barger not only because of the charred landscape but also because of the indiscriminate nature of wildfire, an echo of some types of warfare. In fact, the weapons of indiscriminate violence, ranging from village burning to aerial bombardment, are designed to replicate the exact effects of the Los Angeles fires against civilian populations. The very aim of brutality in war is to displace communities, destroy infrastructure and break the human spirit.
The devastation in Southern California is far-reaching: more than 40,000 acres burned, 15,700 structures destroyed and at one point nearly 200,000 people under evacuation orders. Those numbers can’t convey the harms to the communities flung apart and the potential generational wealth loss among Black and Latino families in Altadena especially. The fires underscore both the destructive power of our changing climate and, when one hears the “war zone” comparison, the cruel consequences of deploying weapons in this manner.
The war analogy also offers us lessons about what we are to expect about the aftermath of the present emergency in Los Angeles. If the academic scholarship on legacies of violence teaches us anything, it is that violent threats change us as people and may even rewire our psychology. When people feel uncertain about and threatened by their environment, they tend to show higher support for conservatism. Liberal lawmakers in California, already in the hot seat, should work to address constituents’ existential fears to avoid losing power to political hardliners who would tend to undermine our already fragile environmental policies.
There is a silver lining in the aftermath of traumatic events such as wars and wildfires. Researchers studying post-conflict societies have found that some communities emerge stronger, more resilient and more politically active. Facing a shared threat and working together to meet it inspires deeper in-group ties. Even after the threat dissipates, these community bonds inspire individuals to be more involved in their communities and to be more engaged in political activities, including voting. These effects are historically persistent and can last across multiple generations.
To realize this potential legacy of engagement and resilience, it is incumbent on all Angelenos to be there for one another and to rebuild the social foundation for our communities with altruism. Now is not the time for greed or finger-pointing but rather the time to show up for one another, to provide mutual aid. So many Angelenos have already sprung into action in ways never seen before, with pop-up donation drives, fundraising for affected families’ GoFundMe pages and free meal services.
In the face of an emergency so destructive that it recalls war, we also must empathize with those who have grappled with armed conflict and heed their lessons well beyond our current crisis.
Katherine Irajpanah, a PhD candidate in the department of government at Harvard University, is a fellow with the United States Institute of Peace and the Department of Defense’s Minerva Research Initiative.
