In the aftermath, many claimed that they received no warning to evacuate, saw no first responders battling the blazes, and had little interaction with official personnel. Most were simply left to fend for themselves.
Making matters worse, while no place is “good” for a wildfire, Altadena was especially vulnerable. It was densely packed with 100-year-old wooden homes, many of which were decades behind on the code upgrades that would have better protected them. It was full of trees and other plants that had dried out during the rain-free winter. Few residents or officials were prepared for the seemingly remote possibility that the fires that often broke out in the mountains nearby would jump into town. As a result, resources were strained to the breaking point, and many homes simply burned freely.
So the people packed into the room that morning had a lot to be angry about. They unloaded their own personal ordeals, the traumas their community had experienced, and even catastrophes they’d heard about secondhand. Each was like a dagger to the heart, met with head-nods and “uh-huhs” from people all going through the same thing.
LA County left us to die because we couldn’t get alerts!
I’m sleeping in my car because I was a renter and have no insurance coverage!
Millions of dollars in aid were raised for us, and we haven’t gotten anything!
Developers are buying up Altadena and pricing out the Black families who made this place!
The firefighting planes were grounded on purpose by Joe Biden so he could fly around LA!
One of these things was definitely not like the others. And I knew why.
Two trains collide
It’s something of a familiar cycle by now: Tragedy hits; rampant misinformation and conspiracy theories follow. Think of the deluge of “false flag” and “staged gun grab” conspiracy theories after mass shootings, or the rampant disinformation around covid-19 and the 2020 election. It’s often even more acute in the case of a natural disaster, when conspiracy theories about what “really” caused the calamity run right into culture-war-driven climate change denialism. Put together, these theories obscure real causes while elevating fake ones, with both sides battling it out on social media and TV.
I’ve studied these ideas extensively, having spent the last 10 years writing about conspiracy theories and disinformation as a journalist and researcher. I’ve covered everything from the rise of QAnon to whether Donald Trump faked his assassination attempt to the alarming rises in antisemitism, antivaccine conspiracism, and obsession with human trafficking. I’ve written three books, testified to Congress, and even written a report for the January 6th Committee. So this has been my life for quite a while.
Still, I’d never lived it. Not until the Eaton Fire.
For a long time, I’d been able to talk about the conspiracy theories without letting them in. Now the disinformation was in the room with me, and it was about my life.
My house, a cottage built in 1925, was one of those that burned back in January. Our only official notification to flee had come at 3:25 a.m., nine hours after the fires started. We grabbed what we could in 10 minutes, I locked our front door, and six hours later, it was all gone. We could have died. Eighteen Altadena residents did die—and all but one were in the area that was warned too late.
Previously in my professional life, I’d always been able to look at the survivors of a tragedy, crying on TV about how they’d lost everything, and think sympathetically but distantly, Oh, those poor people. And soon enough, the conspiracy theories I was following about the incident for work would die down, and then it was no longer in my official purview—I could move on to the next disaster and whatever mess came with it.
Now I was one of those poor people. The Eaton Fire had changed everything about my life. Would it change everything about my work as well? It felt as though two trains I’d managed to keep on parallel tracks had collided.
For a long time, I’d been able to talk about the conspiracy theories without letting them in. Now the disinformation was in the room with me, and it was about my life. And I wondered: Did I have a duty to journalism to push back on the wild thinking—or on this particular idea that Biden was responsible?
Or did I have a duty to myself and my sanity to just stay quiet?
Just true enough
In the days following the Eaton Fire, which coincided with another devastating fire in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood, the Biden plane storyline was just one of countless rumors, false claims, hoaxes, and accusations about what had happened and who was behind them.
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