Los Angeles against the Mountains, from The Control of Nature

[Art Blade]

I'm certain that many of you are interested in Los Angeles, for whatever reasons. You likely know about the recent devastating wild fires in the area with many lives lost. Those fires made room, by removing trees from the mountainside, for another devastating force: water. Water loaded with stone and soil. Water coming down the mountains, turning into a mass like wet cement, carrying boulders and trees and wrecked cars and whatnot, or it can be just a flow of mud. Recent heavy rainfalls caused destruction and again the loss of lives.

Online sources are rarely worth mentioning regarding style these days, no matter which way you look, but there are rare gems. I recommend you take the time and read that great article that isn't just another news flash but a story about and around Los Angeles, riddled with interesting background information and anecdotes. It was written in a way it could just as well have been printed and released as a novel.

Edit, Insert
Actually, it was
It's from a printed version of The New Yorker from 1988 and unfortunately, long as it is, only part 1 while part 2 is for subscribers only. Further research resulted in this: John McPhee actually published a book in 1989, The Control of Nature, which contains Los Angeles against the Mountains. From the wiki: "After its publication as a book in 1989, The Control of Nature was McPhee's second-best selling book, after Coming into the Country. It received generally positive reviews from book critics."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Control_of_Nature
Edit, end Insert


So this isn't the typical catastrophe report but a detailed description of how the region around Los Angeles was built with regards to preventing catastrophes, and describes geographic and geologic aspects. Just take a look

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1988/09/26/los-angeles-against-the-mountains-i

[PZ]

I formerly lived at the far eastern end of the LA basin in San Bernardino, and in southern California for many years. The cycles of fires and floods/slides is a recurring event that repeated itself so frequently, we became somewhat accustomed to it.  The disasters they are experiencing in recent years are the same, but much more extreme, affecting much larger areas.

I recall a trip to the Borrego desert after hurricane Kathleen in the 1970s - that storm was destructive enough to reach southern California. Driving through a wash we discovered a Ford pickup that was buried in the sand up to the window sills - it was strange standing on the ground looking down into the engine bay.

In another area was a wash with a rail bridge spanning the broad width of the gorge. In the bottom was a culvert large enough to drive my truck through, and the earthen bridge atop the culvert appeared to be several stories high. So much water has passed through this gorge that the water had washed over the top of the bridge, and twisted the rails as if a giant had played with them.

Mother nature sometimes gives the desert southwest a sound thrashing, and it is only becoming worse. I might say that it is climate change at w0#k, but those words are not allowed any longer on any governmental web site, so it will not be that long before we cannot say them at all.