An unbearable amount of Ventura county in southern California, where I was born and raised, is simply gone. And as I hear about site after site from my childhood simply disappearing into scorched earth, I am realizing that climate change is not only erasing the present, it is also destroying the physical touchstones to my own past.

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Victim to hot temperatures and high winds, some 90,000 acres have burned, hundreds of structures have been destroyed, and tens of thousands of people have been evacuated or lost power in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

But it is coastal Ventura, where I was born, that has driven home so personally what climate change looks like.

I was, of course, relieved that my relatives were all accounted for, and that my brother, sister-in-law and nephew evacuated safely on Monday night. (Their house survived, though the fire came just a couple of blocks from it.) My sister, north of Santa Barbara, has been taking in friends and family who have evacuated.



But it is heartbreaking to see the photos of the aftermath and to take stock of all that has been lost – both the things that can be be replaced, and the things that can’t.

Hundreds of schools in Oxnard, Ventura, and Los Angeles have been closed all week. This massive loss of education time – not to mention the economic precariousness for families deprived of childcare – is yet another impact of climate change.

When I was trying (in vain) to fall asleep on Wednesday night, I read journalist John Sepulvado’s tweets from Ojai, in which he said he was “able to separate my emotions from the story until I hear a coyote wail in pain or see cats scurry. Meanwhile, sirens ring and ash falls.”



I found myself thinking about the fire jumping rural Highway 33, where I learned to drive, and thought about the bird-filled cages of an old sanctuary I visited just off that road in my youth. And about those howling coyotes. And of all the horses stabled out that way.

🐝John Sepulvado🐝 (@JohnLGC) I'm able to separate my emotions from the story until I hear a coyote wail in pain or see cats scurry. Meanwhile, sirens ring and ash falls

I wondered if these animals were escaping, or if they were being cooked alive.

They, too, are the victims of climate change.

I am hearing from friends and family that the air is simply too bad to do much of anything physical outdoors. And yet, I saw that photo of farmworkers out in the fields, still doing the work while breathing air which will make them sick. Strawberry fields are toxic worksites filled with deadly chemicals even when they are not on fire.

I am terribly worried about the economic suffering these fires are causing. An entire apartment complex destroyed in Ventura contained some of the only affordable housing in the city: will what replaces it also be made affordable and available to the displaced, or will disaster capitalism replace it with multimillion-dollar condos?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Some of the apartments and homes lost were rental units occupied by poor people who likely didn’t have insurance and will have lost everything.’ Photograph: Mike Nelson/EPA

I think people look at Ventura County – and, noting it sits on the Pacific Ocean between Malibu to the south and Santa Barbara County to the north – think it is a rich place. It is not. There are a lot of poor people in Ventura County, many of whom work at one of its two military bases, in agriculture, or in service jobs.

But while the wages for many of these jobs are low, housing is very expensive. Some of the apartments and homes lost were rental units occupied by poor people who likely didn’t have insurance and will have lost everything, and will have no other affordable housing options in the county.

They, too, are victims of climate change. And while Ventura County residents are coming together to help each other, the increasingly cruel federal government is neither providing an adequate response to climate change nor an adequate social safety net even in the best of times.

In 2012, I got to see what climate change looked like wet, when the city of my adult life, New York, was deluged by Hurricane Sandy. But at least I got to help a bit with recovery efforts.

Five years later, I am watching powerlessly from afar a very different manifestation of climate change – one that is made worse by a terrible lack of water in my hometown.

They’re two side of our climate crisis, and neither is pretty.