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