LA fires

This is Part 2 of a two-part series examining the way people are treating wealthy wildfire victims — and why it’s a problem. Part 1 disproved the assumption that only rich people have lost their homes.

Rich people aren’t less deserving of comfort and compassion.

Apparently, this is a controversial take.

A distressingly large portion of the internet refuses to feel bad for rich wildfire victims because, as one X user so eloquently put it, “I care about the loss to the real people … Screw the rich.”

While I’m disappointed that the some on the internet don’t believe rich people are, in fact, real people, I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s become culturally normal for people to determine another person’s humanity based on external factors like wealth, skin color and education.

The calculus goes something like this: the better off you are at birth, the less you deserve comfort, sympathy or assistance when something bad happens to you.

Measuring “privilege” is a notoriously fickle science, made more imprecise by the fact that most of the people doing the measuring get their facts from social media. Case in point: A distressing number of social media users believe LA fire victims are rich because they live in wealthy zip codes.

As the Daily Citizen demonstrated in Part 1, this assumption is false.

The subjective nature of “privilege” is but one of many problems with using external factors to determine how cushy a person’s life is and, subsequently, how to treat them. One of the others is the incorrect conflation of suffering and facing material obstacles.

Most of the social media comments pooh-poohing the losses of rich fire victims are predicated on the idea that the rich people will recover faster. One X comment sarcastically sympathizes:

It’s true, wealthy people will likely face fewer obstacles following the fire than poor people. They will likely have more opportunities to seek temporary shelter. Many will be able to rebuild faster.

But facing fewer material obstacles does not make rich people immune from suffering.

Suffering is defined as “enduring death, pain or distress” or “sustaining loss or damage.” These feelings and experiences transcend the ease money can buy. In John 16:33, Jesus promises that everyone will experience it.

Natural disasters are perhaps the most equal distributors of suffering. Alisa Wolfson, a mom, journalist and Palisade native, told Business Insider of losing her home:

Money didn’t insulate Wolfson from the pain of losing home videos of her deceased father, whom her children never knew. Nor did money make it easier to mourn the family heirlooms and keepsakes lost in her mom’s house, which also burned down.

“People say, ‘You still have plenty of years left to start collecting,’” Wolfson remarks, “but it’s not the same as having your grandmother’s silver that was used at all of the family get togethers and celebrations.”

Wolfson’s well-aware of the vitriol wealthy people are receiving online. She responds with admirable magnanimity:

But that’s the problem — the Bible doesn’t demand believers treat people they “relate to” with compassion. We are to treat everyone suffering person with the same kindness God extends to us. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 reads:

Romans 12:15 commands:

Galatians 6:2 instructs:

Suffering is universal. Our tender regard for other people’s suffering should be similarly universal, regardless of who they are and, in this case, how easy we perceive their lives to be.

Please pray peace and protections over all impacted by the LA fires and other natural disasters.

Additional Articles and Resources

California Wildfires: On Conditional Compassion…

California Wildfires and Our Search for God When Disaster Strikes

California Fires: Heartbreak, Questions and Few Good Answers

This is Part 1 of a two-part series examining the way wealthy LA fire victims are being treated — and why it’s a problem. To read Part 2, click here.

Los Angeles is on fire amidst a worst-case-scenario convergence of dry brush, Santa Ana winds, a failing electrical grid and the occasional blow torch-wielding civilian.

The ballooning disaster exposed infrastructural and bureaucratic crises in the City of Angels. On the internet, it’s revealed a crisis of morality.  

Internet users generally feel compassion for the 10,000-some people who have lost homes and businesses in the Palisades and Eaton fires — as they should.

Unless, of course, the victims are rich. Then, according to many on social media, they can take a walk

“Awwww poor rich people,” one Facebook user commented under a BBC News post about the Palisades fire.

“What a great view of the sunset,” an X user remarked on a video showing the charred remains of beach-front homes in Malibu.

The sentiment isn’t relegated to internet radicals or a single political party. Some commentors implied rich, “exploitative” fire victims got what was coming to them. A Facebook comment captured by Metro reads,“Meh, hard to feel sympathy for those who create and benefit from the policies that result in these kinds of disasters.”

A self-proclaimed right-wing pundit castigated rich people for “whining about their mansions” while poor victims of Hurricane Irma are “still out there freezing.”

The amount of money in a person’s pocket shouldn’t determine whether they deserve comfort and compassion (more on that later). But even if it did, comments like the ones above are based on the faulty assumption that only “wealthy” areas are burning.

News outlets spread this assumption far and wide, particularly during the fires’ genesis and rapid expansion. In one article, Reuters described the Pacific Palisades as “one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the U.S., home to Hollywood A-Listers and multimillion dollar mansions.”

But Pacific Palisades isn’t an exclusively wealthy enclave. Fox News contributor and Palisades homeowner Lindsey Kennedy explains:

Low-income families choose to pay the expensive property taxes, says Kennedy, so their children can attend better-performing public schools. Real estate websites like this one list public education as one of the Palisade’s best assets.

One Palisade neighborhood completely decimated by the fire was a mobile home park. Lynda Park lived in one of almost 200 destroyed trailers with her mother, husband and three sons. She told The New York Times,

Park and her family couldn’t afford pricy fire insurance. They have next to nothing left.

Similar stories abound across fire-ravaged neighborhoods. Though the median household income in Altadena is more than $129,000, according to the latest census data, 81-year-old Willie Jackson never paid a premium to live in the area.

“In those days [in the 1970’s],” Jackson told the Times, “the homes were costing $50,000. Now they’re over a million, $2 million.”

Jackson’s long-time neighbor, Victor Shaw, died trying to protect the home he inherited from his father and grandfather. Jackson escaped with his life — but his home of fifty years has been reduced to ashes.

If internet users choose to cast aspersions based on wealth, they should at least bother to make their valuations accurate. Geographical location is only one of countless factors that can indicate a family’s wealth.

But, in this case, accuracy is beside the point. Feeling confident enough to minimizing an entire neighborhood’s suffering based on limited knowledge of zip code you have never visited betrays a level of hubris I hope none of us will ever relate to.

To their credit, some on social media are waking up to what Metro calls the “eat the rich” response to LA’s destruction.

“People have been telling out-of-state firefighters not to come to LA to save ‘rich people,’” one popular X comment reads, continuing,

Another user added:

But that’s the problem: These fire-specific foibles stem from years of measuring people’s humanity based on external characteristics like wealth.

More on that morally bankrupt practice in Part II.

Additional Articles and Resources

California Wildfires and Our Search for God When Disaster Strikes

California Fires: Heartbreak, Questions and Few Good Answers