STORIES OF SOLIDARITY IN BLAZING CALIFORNIA

Ben spent his afternoon on a boat ferrying supplies up from Marina Del Rey to Malibu and came back with this report: “Let me start by telling you that I don’t care for boats. Being a city kid, I’m not much of a swimmer and often get seasick. But this vessel traveling to Malibu and stocked with supplies for stranded locals was a yacht. A 143-foot yacht with a helipad, spacious living quarters and a jacuzzi, to be exact. “It is worth tens of millions of dollars and belongs to Howard Leight, a billionaire entrepreneur who owns the Malibu Rocky Oaks winery with his son. He spent Friday and Saturday fending off blazes at the winery and his other property in L.A. The fire destroyed much of his vineyard. ‘All I could think about is that I didn’t want to lose my houses,’ Leight said. “All morning, Malibu residents and friends of Leight loaded the vessel with supplies. Smaller boats were tied behind to help offload supplies when we arrived at Paradise Cove. “The crew had just come off a diving trip and was eager to get going. While aboard, I met Jerardo Bautista and his five-person landscaping crew. Since 1985, Bautista has been doing landscaping at some of Malibu’s most luxurious homes. Bautista’s crew spent Friday going from home to home cutting back brush and putting out fires. “I saved Anthony Hopkins’ house,” Bautista said proudly. “My whole life has been here. I’m really trying to help people with their homes.” When the Leight Star neared the Paradise Cove coast, surfers and kayakers paddled out. That’s when the bougiest bucket brigade began. Large pallets of bottled water went first, as surfers braved the relatively choppy waters. One surfer, Leo Harrington, a Point Dume resident, wore a visor with the logo from the TV show ‘Survivor’ and helped coordinate the loading of water. Along with a couple of other guys and a female surfer named Skylar Caputo — a Pepperdine student — they made at least two dozen trips to shore as the yacht hovered in the cove. “‘What can you take?’ someone aboard asked. “‘Whatever you need. I’ll keep it dry,’ one tanned kayaker said. “This procession rolled on for more than an hour as a sheriff’s boat watched closely. ‘If we’re not letting people in by land, we’re not letting them in by sea,’ a deputy said. “At one point a woman boarded a kayak and made a mad dash for land. She was cut off by law enforcement authorities and forced back on the yacht. But eventually all the supplies from the yacht made it to land. That provoked cheers and selfies as people celebrated on the yacht with beer and wine. There was finger food as well. But Bautista was nowhere to be found. He had hopped off the boat and was heading to help people with their homes.” Los Angeles Times

Volunteers hand off bottled water to surfers headed to Malibu’s Paradise Cove to offer relief to those affected by the Woolsey fire. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

The politics and reality of California’s fires President Trump took to Twitter to blame bad forest management. Gov. Jerry Brown pointed to climate change. Both leaders are in a sense promoting their political agendas. But as is often with political rhetoric, reality is far more complicated. The Trump-Brown exchange ignores what many experts consider core reasons for fire’s escalating toll: Humans keep sparking them, and Californians keep building in high-risk fire zones prone to the fierce winds that inevitably drive the state’s most calamitous blazes. Los Angeles Times The Chico Enterprise-Record has a message: “Want to make amends, Mr. President? We have thousands of people who are suddenly homeless in an area where it was already close to impossible to find a place to rent.” Chico Enterprise-Record The carnage Paradise was once a place to escape to. Located in the western foothills of the Sierra, the rural enclave and the surrounding communities were getaways from the Sacramento Valley and the cities of Chico and Orville. But what drew residents to Paradise — a place to disappear amid winding roads and the hills and ravines above the Feather River and Butte Creek — has made the job of reconnecting with friends and relatives in the aftermath of the devastating Camp fire all the more challenging. Message boards put up at shelters, evacuation centers and churches listing the names of the missing are crowded with plaintive appeals, reminiscent of the postings found in Manhattan after 9/11. Meanwhile, the death toll has risen to 48. Los Angeles Times — The stories of the victims of California’s firestorms. Los Angeles Times — A dramatic visualization of how the Woolsey fire devoured parts of Ventura County and Malibu. Los Angeles Times — It wasn’t just rich people who lost their homes in Malibu. Los Angeles Times — A stunning loss: 83% of federal parkland in the Santa Monica Mountains has burned. Los Angeles Times — The grim discovery as searchers reach a burned-out mobile home park in Paradise. Sacramento Bee — “It was so windy it was hard to stand up,” says the man who first spotted the Camp fire. Mercury News A story of survivors In the week since the shooting at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, a group of survivors has stuck together — moving in a loose band between memorials and one another’s homes, holding impromptu ceremonies and visiting the relatives of the friends they lost. Los Angeles Times