Fire and Flood

Photo courtesy of Fox11 Los Angeles

“There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon,” Joan Didion writes in her essay, “Los Angeles Notebook” (1965-67), “some unnatural stillness, some tension.  What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio Passes, blowing up sandstorms out along Route 66, drying the hills and the nerves to the flash point.”

Fifty-four years ago and dead on.  That’s Joan Didion.

It happened again this past week—the Santa Ana winds kicked up and we faced an afternoon commute with multiple fires burning in Los Angeles.  High heat, low humidity, and dried vegetation equaled a recipe for disaster.  The fire took some homes and outbuildings, threatened a lot more, but in the end, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), Los Angeles County Fire, and Los Angeles City Fire managed to get a handle on the separate blazes.  For a while, though, it was touch and go.  Residents, builders, landscapers, and Sheriff’s deputies jumped in initially with no more than garden hoses to try to keep the flames at bay until the heavy equipment arrived.  Multiple aircraft circled the areas doing water drops and spreading the distinctive red-pink retardant.

This is fire season in Los Angeles.  Although cause has yet to be determined, the blaze in what is known as the Sepulveda Recreation Area, the Sepulveda Dam, or the Sepulveda Flood Control Area—all really the same area—may have started in a homeless encampment.  How did a wilderness area behind a dam come to be in the middle of one of the most populated suburban neighborhoods in Los Angeles?  Why is this land, a little more than twenty miles from downtown and devoted to recreational use, subject to dangerous fires and flooding?

Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

Our story goes back in time to 1938.  L.A. was beset by two massive weather systems at the end of February and first of March.  In just a few days, the region had one year’s worth of rain dumped on it from the two storms.  Over one hundred people died in the flooding.  After the Second World War ended, a massive improvement project kicked in that involved a dam to be built on the flood plain in the middle of the valley in the hope of preventing catastrophic flooding from endangering life and property in the future.  The Los Angeles River was redesigned as a series of concrete channels that would direct storm runoff south into the ocean.  This was known as the Sepulveda Dam and Flood Control Area.  Today, it has become a region used by all kinds of people for sports and recreation, while specific areas became wildlife and bird sanctuaries.

Unfortunately, because of the heavy brush and trees, it also became a popular camping area for the region’s homeless population.  The danger from their campfires as well as from criminal activity, added a negative note to this wilderness oasis.  This past July, a homeless campfire erupted into a brushfire necessitating a rapid response from fire officials and police officers.  This most recent conflagration this past week almost certainly looks like another possible campfire ignition, and that has started a war of words on social media.  Los Angeles is grappling with a homeless epidemic now, and Mayor Eric Garcetti has introduced measures to fund homeless housing and has been outspoken in his desire to solve the problem.  However, several communities have refused to allow low-income residential housing to be built in their area.

Photo courtesy of Gene Blevins / Los Angeles Daily News

The great floods of 1938 were certainly not the only time residents were in jeopardy.  Twenty-five years ago, the area flooded again in what scientists came to call a 100-year flooding event.  However, over the years, systems were put in place to shut down Burbank Boulevard leading into and out of the area so cars would not become trapped.  Homeless people are evacuated, the facilities shut down, and the area fills with water behind the dam and post-storm, drains off into the concrete canals moving down south into the Pacific.  When safe from flooding, people are free to use the area’s numerous biking and pedestrian trails, dog park, cricket fields, Japanese Garden, Lake Balboa and municipal golf course.  The city also has a major sewage treatment plant in the basin.

Whatever is done, it must happen soon.  Climate change plus outrageous housing costs plus illegal camps of people living off the grid in places like the Sepulveda Basin equal disaster.  Fire and police officials must scramble to evacuate these camps when a fire breaks out or a flood threatens, and it is a difficult and delicate process.  Many times, people have their entire world of belongings in a shopping cart and for obvious reasons, they are reluctant to leave their worlds behind to escape the flames or rising water.  It is a credit to city officials that we do not have a higher death toll in these catastrophic fires and floods.  How long will we continue to be so lucky?

Photo courtesy of ABC7 Los Angeles

Practicing For The Apocalypse

Elaine Thompson / AP

If brush fires and earthquakes are to Los Angeles as tornadoes are to Oklahoma, and hurricanes are to the Gulf Coast, we need to talk about preparation.  However, is it ever possible to mitigate the damage from a disaster through practicing scenarios?  Is there a way to make sure people survive the catastrophic event?  Is an early warning—mere seconds—ahead of an earthquake capable of saving lives?  We know this much:  the Saddleridge Fire began in a “50’ by 70’ area beneath a high voltage transmission tower.,” according to the Los Angeles Fire Department website.  This means the power company knew this would be a problem and why they decided to shut off power to certain areas to avoid sparking a blaze in the recent Santa Ana winds.  The other major fire last week, the Sandalwood Fire in Calimesa, east of Los Angeles, was started by a trash truck that caught fire.  The driver told authorities he dumped his flaming contents by the side of the highway and nearby brush quickly ignited.  It did not occur to him to drop it somewhere safer.  All of this according to the Riverside County Fire Department and Cal Fire.  Were residents informed quickly enough?  If they were informed earlier, would that have saved lives?

Here in Los Angeles, we drill, drill, drill in our schools, colleges, and workplaces in the event of a fire, earthquake, and now, an active shooter.  In fact, we seem to have more active shooter drills than any other kind.  We hammer it home to our students:  in the event of an active shooter, remember to run, hide, or fight.  Run if you can, hide if you can’t, and fight if you’re are face-to-face with the shooter with no possible escape.  This we tell to primary grade students with their tiny backpacks and cartoon lunch boxes.

Is all this drilling necessary, and more important, does it save lives?  Evan Gerstmann, writing on Forbes.com, concludes we are traumatizing young people and scaring the hell out of them.  The drills create anxiety and tension no child should be exposed to on a regular basis.  I am not sure this is a sound thesis.  I agree with Gerstmann that often these drills are over the top.  He cites an article in the Atlantic where students in Florida were subjected to an intercom announcement of “Code Red” lockdown!  This is not a drill!”  Teachers received a text notice of an active shooter on campus.  Students “sobbed hysterically, others vomited or fainted, and some sent farewell notes to parents.”  Students in the cafeteria stampeded from the building and “jumped over fences to escape.”  It was later determined that this was, in fact, just a drill.

 

I remember, growing up in Los Angeles, we drilled for fire and nuclear war.  Even as young as first grade, I remember the strange bell pattern or wailing siren that would announce to the school that this was a drill.  We would quietly duck and cover, or, if it was a fire, line up and exit the classroom and move to our safe location on the school playground far from the main buildings.  I was not traumatized, and in fact, we used the occasion to whisper to our classmates, make jokes, and sometimes, misbehave in a way warranting a punishment.  We never had a real event, so the drills represented the chance for fun and games.  We tried to break each other up with laughter.  Oh, the hilarity of duck and cover!

When I became a teacher, I was responsible for my students exiting from the classroom to their proper area on the playground.  Now, we added earthquake drills to the mix, which meant the principal would come on the intercom and shout repetitively:  “EARTHQUAKE!  EARTHQUAKE!  EARTHQUAKE!  When she stopped screaming the word, the shaking was over and we could carefully exit the building.  Then, we were told that in future drills, we would be playing the role of those trapped inside the building unable to escape.  In that case, we were to “shelter in place,” because “more people are killed in an earthquake when running from the building” than if they stayed inside and crawled under a flimsy wooden desk.  This was yet another version of the drill for a nuclear attack:  duck and cover.

As a student, it was fun and chaos; as a teacher, I dreaded trying to keep thirty senior high school students in line in the hot sun.  Did it make us safer?  I think not.  One time, the high school where I was teaching had us evacuate the buildings during a purportedly real bomb threat.  I got my students out and to their assigned place on the playground.  “Mr. Martin,” one said.  He pointed to something a mere ten feet or so from us.  It was the meter and pipes caring natural gas onto the property.  We could only hope the bomb was not planted near there.  Later, when LAPD arrived, they asked the teachers to re-enter the school and look for “strange packages.”  My low-paid colleagues and I found this hilarious and it became even more so when we entered the building to find hallways and classrooms filled with backpacks left behind in the evacuation.  What exactly would constitute “a strange package?”  If one were going to bomb a school, a backpack would be the perfect way to smuggle in the device.  Thankfully, there was no bomb.

Can you prepare for fire, earthquake, flood, an active shooter, or a bomb?  At best, the preparation simply introduces a mindset.  If there should be an earthquake, we will have to improvise how to exit the building in case the stairway is down.  If there is an active shooter, those who have survived previous events demonstrated resourcefulness—piling furniture in front of the door, hiding in supply closets.  Drills put us in a frame of mind to focus on survival.  In other words, limited drilling can help students and teachers and residents prepare for a disaster.  However, when that disaster happens, we must be prepared to think on our feet.  We must also recognize that such drills may not be taken seriously, or even outright ignored.  Others may be traumatized because of them.  We need to find a common ground that allows us to introduce the idea that no one is safe anywhere, and we must pay attention to our surroundings and what people in authority—police officers, firefighters, teachers, supervisors—are saying and directing us to do.

However, these disasters are all too real and it would be naive to think it will not happen here at our school, our home, our city.  There was one time in my history of being a student where I was genuinely petrified by something introduced to make us more aware of the dangers.  One afternoon when I was in elementary school, the entire student body gathered in the auditorium for a special showing of a documentary on the Our Lady of the Angeles School Fire of December 1, 1958 in Chicago, Illinois.

AP Photo

OLA, as it was known, was a school with a student population of 1600 students from kinder through eighth grade during the heyday of Catholic education.  On that winter’s afternoon, a fire started in a basement trash bin.  The hot gases and smoke followed closely by flames leaped up the central wooden stairway and engulfed a wing of the building.  Arson investigators believe the fast-moving destruction and loss of life were due to the petroleum-based floor wax, tarred building and roofing material, as well as fire alarms that did not ring properly, and delays in summoning first responders.  Students in those second floor classrooms were soon trapped and unable to escape.  They rushed to the windows.  Some jumped the 25 feet to the cement or crushed rock below, many suffering serious injury.  Others waited to be rescued, often futilely.  One nun had her students pile books and furniture against the classroom door to seal the room from the encroaching smoke and fire; she saved numerous lives.  A locked gate prevented firefighters from reaching the upper floor, so they smashed it with a fire truck.  In many cases, as windows were smashed or doors were opened, the fire “flashed over” in an explosion, killing screaming children, many of them still in their desks.

As the first responders began to get a handle on the blaze, the death toll quickly grew.  One volunteer rescuer, a 74 year-old man, died of a stroke while trying to get kids to safety.  Of the students, 92 were killed as well as three teachers, all nuns.  Bodies were so badly charred that when firefighters carried them from the building, they broke apart.

Sun-Times Library Photo

Out of the deadly inferno, one photograph became iconic.  In it, a firefighter carries the body of ten year-old student John Jajkowski out of the charred rubble.  Jajkowski loved to play the accordion and sing in the school choir.  He wanted to become a priest.  The photo made the cover of Time and many other publications that covered the fire.

A student, ten years old at the time of the fire, years later confessed to starting the blaze but was not charged due to insufficient evidence to support his story.  The school building was demolished in 1959 and a new building was opened on the site in 1960.  The school closed when enrollment fell in 1999 and is now a charter school.  One other footnote:  the keyboardist for the rock band Journey, Jonathan Cain, was one of the student survivors of the disaster.

I was deeply traumatized by this film, and I realized that fire drills were something to take seriously.  I am sure those students at OLA had fire drills.  Did it help?  Well, in the case of the second floor classrooms, it was an untenable situation.  But the nun who had the books and furniture stacked against the doors was in the right mindset for survival.  Another nun literally rolled her students down the stairs when they were too afraid to walk through the thick black smoke and heated gases.  Staying low probably kept them alive.

In retrospect, building and safety laws were changed, and codes were enacted to keep people alive in another such event.  Unfortunately, the fire came first and then people realized what went wrong.  Drills help, but often it comes down people thinking critically in the moment, improvising, fighting to stay alive.  Here in Los Angeles, we prepare for an earthquake by stocking up on water, putting together freeze-dried and packaged food, and leaving a wrench handy to turn off the gas should a line rupture.  The rest, unfortunately, will have to be in response to what happens.  Hurricane Katrina, yearly tornadoes, and the shifting ground beneath our feet have taught us that we must think clearly and critically in these situations, and rely on our innate instinct to survive.  In the event of an apocalypse that is all we can do.