Even for those lucky enough to get out in time, or stay outside evacuation zones, there was no escaping the fires in the Los Angeles area this week.
There is no high place in the city where flames or smoke can't be seen, where the smell of burning memories can't linger.
And on our screens – in every channel and social media feed and text thread and WhatsApp group – an endless carousel of images documenting the level of fear, loss and grief that felt unimaginable here as recently as Tuesday morning.
Even in places of physical safety, many in Los Angeles find it difficult to look away from the worst online corruption.
“For me, it's much easier to scroll through the tragedy than to sit and wait,” said Clara Sterling, who left her home on Wednesday. “I'd rather know exactly where the fire is going and where it's going than not knowing anything.”
A writer and comedian, Sterling is – by his own admission – online a lot. But the nature of this week's fires makes it more difficult to ignore the news and social media, experts say.
First, there's a noticeable difference between scrolling through pictures of a disaster from afar and staying informed about a disaster happening in your area, says Casey Fiesler, an associate professor of technology at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“It's weird to even think of it as a 'doomsday scroll,'” he said. “When you're in it, you're looking for important information that can be difficult to find.”
If you share your identity with victims of a traumatic event, it is very possible both seeking media coverage of the experience and feeling pressured by the media you see, says Roxane Cohen Silverdistinguished professor of psychology at UC Irvine.
For Los Angeles residents, this week's fires affect the people closest to us: family, friends and community members. They used places and landmarks that stand out in fond memories and familiar routes.
The ubiquitous images also evoke painful memories for those who have experienced similar tragedies — a group whose numbers have increased as California's wildfires surge, Silver said.
He knows this firsthand: He left the Laguna Beach fire in 1993, and began a long-term study of survivors days after his return.
“All over California, all over the West, in all the communities that have experienced the wildfires, we are very interested and informed about those stories,” he said. And the more we focus on those issues, the more likely we are to experience depression.
Being absorbed in these images of fire and ash can cause trauma of its own, said Jyoti Mishra, an associate professor of psychology at UC San Diego who has studied the long-term mental health of survivors of the 2018 Camp fire.
The team identified persistent symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety both among survivors who experienced fire-related injuries such as injury or property loss, and – to a lesser but significant degree – among those who experienced indirect trauma as witnesses.
“If you testify [trauma] in the media, what's happening on the streets you've lived on and walked on, and you can put yourself in that place, then it can have an impact,” said Mishra, who is also the director of UC Climate Change. Mental Health Council. “Psychology and neuroscience research has shown that images and videos that generate a sense of personal meaning can have a profound emotional impact.”
The emotional pull of videos and pictures on social media makes it hard to look away, as many find information that is too hard to trust.
Like many others, Sterling spent a lot of time online during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, Sterling said, the social media landscape felt very different.
“This time I think I feel I have little information about what is happening because there was a big push not to check verified accounts,” he said.
The rise of AI-generated images and footage has added another troubling kink, as Sterling highlights in video was posted on TikTok early Thursday.
“The Hollywood sign was on fire last night. Any video or pictures you've seen of the Hollywood sign on fire were amazing. They are built with AI,” he said, posting to a hotel in San Diego after checking out.
Hunter Ditchproducer and voice actor in Lake Balboa, expressed similar concerns about the lack of accurate information. Some of the social media content he came across appeared to be “highly divisive” or political, and some exaggerated the scale of the disaster or featured fictional elements, such as that burning Hollywood sign.
The spread of false information has added another layer of pressure, he said. This week, it started turning to other types of apps — like the disaster mapping app, Task Watch — to track spreading fires and change evacuation zones.
But that made him wonder: “If I have to check every other app to get accurate information, what about social media?”
