Fumes and plumes

Woke up this morning to another yellow sky and black billowing smoke coming from the apartment complex where I used to live. Disturbing on so many levels.

In Spring of 2018 we had to evacuate the building because a moron on the ninth floor rented out their space illegally on Airbnb. Whoever the tenant was that week left the water running, or had a mishap with the washing machine, so that the eight floors below, including ours, suffered tons of water damage. At first I was thankful because the damage was inside the walls. None of our belongings were ruined.

But then the maintenance people called in a panic, telling us we needed to leave immediately. In order to clean up the mess, they had to get into the walls. Because the building was more than thirty-five years old, that meant the inside was covered with asbestos.

I had a frantic phone call with my insurance company and a discussion about where we could stay, keeping in mind we had a cat who also had to come with us. The only place in our neighborhood that allowed pets was The Ritz Carlton. Surprisingly, the insurance company agreed to this.

I somehow managed to get Bowie cat to sit still just long enough to snap this photo from or hotel balcony. I look like an eccentric director.

Calling out the apartment complex's negligence in allowing Airbnb rentals (something that's not illegal for a complex like this in Los Angeles but also a violation of their own terms of service) ensured we could break the lease without penalty. I didn't even have to raise my voice when I walked into the leasing office. They were already for us to leave, probably hoping to avoid a class action lawsuit that one of the other tenants was already putting together.

On the other hand, it was a lovely eight days at the Ritz and I will forever love that hotel for its service. We checked on with our suitcase, my wife's huge computer monitor, and our cat which was probably the lease weird thing they've ever seen. I mean Lindsay Lohan stayed there and had to be revived by paramedics because of  "exhaustion."

I have never booked a moving van and packed so fast in my life, let alone found a new place to live in so short a time. I was going to say I hoped that was my first and last spite move, but the family has grown so sour on California's poor state and local leadership, fire mismanagement and the raid rise in crime and homelessness that was already a major problem that I'm fairly certain there will be one more spite move.

We lived in the bigger building behind where the smoke is coming from. The smaller buildings which you can't see behind the new development are older, which means they definitely have asbestos. I was under the mistaken impression that we'd gotten rid of it all by now, especially out here, but apparently the way it works is it's safer not to disturb it and that they only remove it if they are tearing the building down or having to fix it, like in our case.

Today seems like a good day to not go outside.