LOS ANGELES

RUMOURS THAT AT least one of the recent fires may have begun in a dry reservoir during a debate about diversity are spreading around Los Angeles like – well – wild fire.

The story is that a group of diversity quota enthusiasts, on a state sponsored committee, were sitting in the dried-out reservoir, discussing whether, in the interests of diversity, all fire hydrants could ever be allowed to be usable at the same time, as that would necessarily create a uniform response to fire, when one of the gender-fluid participants slipped and fell.

“The individual – I don’t know the appropriate pronoun but I understand they were at the extreme end of fluidity – was wearing Doc Marten boots with those metal things that can be worn at the heel,” says Wata Nfernow, who insists he watched everything from his balcony. “One spark did it, man. All that uncleared brushwood left around over the years, it just exploded. Then someone’s hair caught fire – the gel, they say – and when someone else went to a nearby fire hydrant, there was an argument over whether its gender was clear enough to use it on this particular blaze … well, by the time they discovered it wasn’t working anyway, the fire was on its way.”