A large chunk of Griffith Park is aflame at the moment. No homes are threatened. No one has been injured (yet) besides someone the news reporters were calling an "arson suspect" an hour ago, but he now seems to have turned into a "person of interest." The park has been evacuated and they're talking about what to do about all the animals up in the L.A. Zoo, just in case. Awful news.
It looked even scarier about an hour ago when I was trapped in a traffic snarl on Los Feliz Boulevard. Between the park evacuees and the emergency vehicles and the people stopping to look, cars were moving at about the speed of a tortoise on valium. The view from my car looked a lot like the above news photo and I don't have to tell you how much more chilling that can be in person.
Hundreds of fire fighters are on the scene. Most of them seem to be giving interviews to local news crews. There also seem to be around thirty helicopters up there. Two are doing water drops and the other twenty-eight are getting live shots of those water drops.
Well, at least that's how it seems.
The other day here, I wrote about the Rodney King Riots of fifteen years ago in L.A. I just remembered one moment from it that I will always treasure. The fires had all been knocked down. The riot was, for all intents and purposes, over though we weren't yet certain it wouldn't erupt again.
There was a hillside and one of the newsmen in a chopper showed it to us and said that fire fighters, most of whom had been putting out conflagrations for a day or two without sleep, were laying out tarps and lying down to nap. Back in the studio, the anchorman said to him, "We can't see them…can you swoop down and give us a better look?" The copter reporter said, as respectfully as he could, "We could…but we're afraid that if we go any lower, the sound of our copter will wake them up. And if anyone deserves a rest, it's these guys."
The anchorman hastily withdrew his request and the copter went no lower. I liked that. I love news coverage but I also like the idea of them getting out of the way of people who have work to do in a time of crisis. Or even naps to take after it's over.