Devastating

“This is fire sea­son in Los Ange­les,” Joan Did­ion once wrote, relat­ing how every year “the San­ta Ana winds start blow­ing down through the pass­es, and the rel­a­tive humid­i­ty drops to fig­ures like sev­en or six or three per cent, and the bougainvil­lea starts rat­tling in the dri­ve­way, and peo­ple start watch­ing the hori­zon for…