KTLA. Fuck.

As a former Angeleno with many friends and relatives in the area, I was glued to coverage of the fires online for much of yesterday. As usual I was watching KTLA.

I don’t know why it’s always KTLA. Maybe because they’re local and not a network affiliate so they often have more people on the ground than the other stations. Maybe it’s out of enduring admiration for Hal Fishman, who anchored their coverage for decades.

So I’m watching last night. The winds had been dying down, and the reporter is live in front of some house that’s on fire on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). There are firefighters there, and in the conversation with her are the two anchors in the studio and the weather person. The weather person is asking about the winds. None of the wind sensors in that area are working. Could they have burned up? (Stupid question, of course they could. They also might have lost power/communication.) So now it’s “what direction is the wind blowing? Has it shifted onshore?” And they need to explain to her what “onshore” means, and get into a discussion of what direction she’s facing and where the wind is blowing, and whether she can feel any humidity from the ocean, etc..

The camera zooms out and there are a few fire trucks behind the reporter. She’s looking around, trying to figure out where the wind is coming from, and discussing which way her hair is blowing or whether there’s any humidity in the air, and right behind her, on two of the fire trucks, there are large flags!

Those things that move in the wind and give you an exceptional picture of what direction the wind is blowing.

I’m screaming at the screen “LOOK AT THE FUCKING FLAGS!” And they’re talking about the humidity, and whether she’s facing north, and whether she can feel the wind in her hair and from which direction, and who knows what else because I’m screaming so loud I can’t even hear them any more, while right behind them are two flags providing the obvious answer that anybody in the studio could have seen. (It seemed to be roughly what pilots refer to as “light and variable,” suggesting that maybe there was the beginning of an onshore flow.)

But the conversation goes on, and we hear a lot about whether weather instruments might burn up in a fire, and what direction is north, but I don’t think anybody ever answered the question.

And maybe that’s why I watch KTLA. Sometimes you need some comedy amidst the chaos.

KTLA. Fuck.