From The New York Times:
It wasn’t just that the place was in flames. It was that it seemed to be in flames everywhere at once, as a barrage of separate wildfire events erupted in population centers across the region, each spawning its own constellation of spot fires from wind-driven embers. Psychically if not physically, they merged into a kind of mega-catastrophe for Southern Californians. Ash, smoke, wind and flames carried the heart-stinging realization, which spread like a contagion, that a new and less manageable landscape was on the horizon. “The only thing I can think of that would compare with this would be a massive earthquake,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, 76, who served for decades in Los Angeles as a city councilman and county supervisor. “Except that earthquakes have an epicenter.”
He paused to cough, hoarse from the smoke that has blanketed the region. “This thing is all over the place,” he said. “It’s impacting everybody who breathes the air. When I went to get the paper this morning, a big black cloud hung over the city from the Eaton fire. It was biblical.”