Category Archives: Disasters

January 25, 2025 · 23:52

Cascading Failure Modes

We get three & four years of severe drought. Water rationing. Extreme limits on watering the lawn (unless you’re a golf course owned by a billionaire). Lawn, open areas, trees, all get brown and dry and ready to burn. We get brush fires.

Then we have two years of above-average rain. Good, now we can water the dirt in our yards. Everything out in the wildlife areas gets green and lush.

Another year of drought. All of that new green growth gets brown and dry and extremely flammable. We burn again, tens of thousands of acres in four major and a dozen-plus minor fires all over the city and county and Ventura County, Orange County, Riverside County, San Bernardino County, San Diego County… An area the size of New England is on extreme fire watch for weeks, THOUSANDS of homes and businesses are gone.

Mind you, because they’re not in the news every night, most people think those fires are out and done. They’re not. They’re just more or less contained and not threatening any more structures and homes. But as of right now the 23,448 acre Palisades fire is still only 85% contained. The 14,021 acre Eaton fire is at 95% containment.

Oh, good, here comes a few days of rain. That will help put out the fires.

Well, yes, it will, but…

This will be a “good” rain in that it should be mild, less than an inch of rain total over three days combined, with relatively little chance of any big downpours or thunderstorms with lightning, which could start new fires.

But we now have something on the order of 50,000 acres locally that’s newly burned, most of it in canyons and steep hillsides, and any hard rain will start to cause mudslides and flooding. Barren hillsides will erode like crazy with nothing left in the way of brush and trees to hold the topsoil together. It’s time for the next disaster in the chain!

On the other hand, listening to the rain in the night and smelling the petrichor is wonderful.

Leave a comment

Filed under Critters, Disasters, Los Angeles, Photography, Video, Weather

January 22, 2025 · 23:08

Smoke & LAPD

The two are unrelated, so far as I know.

Another large fire broke out this morning, 25+ miles north of us up by Castaic and Lake Hughes. Again, we’re safe, but this time the winds, still blowing STRONG from the north, are blowing the smoke over us. Not chokingly thick, no ash falling, just brown clouds overhead. (The two bars of white lights are not the UFO mothership come to take me away and probe me, more’s the pity. I would love to get away… Nope, reflections from my office ceiling lights, that’s all. The horizontal streaks are the dirt and bird shit that’s been deposited and streaked everywhere with the few minutes of light showers we had two months ago.)

I went outside and walked to the corner to get a different view without the glare and reflections off the office window glass. In addition to the brown clouds off on the left, on the other side of the street on the left the entire block is the new training facility and corporate headquarters for the LA Rams.

Then, about 4:15, we started getting buzzed by an LAPD helicopter. He was orbiting above, barely clearing the 20-ish story office buildings across the street, and in a TIGHT circle. (Dodging more alien motherships, obviously!)

The problem was directly across the street from us, where there were 6+ LAPD cruisers with someone pulled over in the parking lot outside of the BofA branch and Ruth’s Chris Steak House there. Lots of lights, sirens, a fire truck and ambulance showed up, and the police were pulling folks from a car, putting them on the ground, and handcuffing them.

Tough to get finished up and out the door at the end of the day when there’s a free show going on outside!

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Critters, Disasters, Los Angeles, Photography

September 30, 2024 · 23:37

Modern Day Catherdrals

With some of the most magnificent modern architecture in the world being on display with our sports stadiums, I’ve heard it said that they are our modern-day cathedrals, the equivalent of Notre Dame in Paris and St. Paul’s in London.

Given the way we worship our sports teams and players, that might be more true on a couple of different levels.

SoFi Stadium is covered with this translucent film to keep everything dry, but it’s open at the ends and sides, so if we really get a storm it might be dry-ish.

Still, it’s gorgeous and geometrically intricate and amazing. That’s a LOT of steel and concrete in very delicate balance, fighting off gravity.

The pillars, the curves of the structure, seemingly defying gravity. A much different vibe than Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. Much more sterile and cold.

Hovering up near the top, I couldn’t help but wonder how many calculations were done and what their models and assumptions were regarding earthquakes. The Newport-Inglewood Fault system runs all over this area, from the Newport Beach area up along the coast to the UCLA – Century City area. It’s now believed to be capable of delivering an earthquake in the M7.5 range, which is massive. Aside from all of the other damage that would cause to houses, businesses, utilities, highways, and highrise office buildings, I was wondering where the breaking point is here – in the roof structure or in one of those massive columns?

I don’t want to be anywhere near here if and when we find out. In fact, when that day comes, I wouldn’t complain if I’m in Kansas City or points east.

Leave a comment

Filed under Disasters, KC Chiefs, Los Angeles, Photography

September 12, 2024 · 20:42

The All-Natural SoCal Alarm Clock

It’s a total bitch to set, it’s wildly inaccurate, goes off whenever it wants to, and in general is about 99.99999% useless.

But boy, let me tell you… When it DOES decide to go off, it’s effective as all get out.

This morning’s epicenter was only about 13 miles from our house, so we got a pretty good jolt.

What’s really bizarre is that I heard it coming before I felt it and before the alarms went off on the phone and Apple watches. (Being so close to the epicenter, the emergency alert and the shaking arrived pretty much simultaneously, leading to the inevitable “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!” screams of terror.) It sounded to me a lot like a very low flying helicopter. We get helicopters screaminging over all the time (we’re at the very top of a decent-sized hill) and it sounded like a police or fire/rescue helicopter going like a bat out of Hell. A local brush fire starting up and there’s a water drop incoming? Someone fall and break their leg (again?!) over on Castle Peak? Another police chase on the freeway and the news helicopters are racing to intercept?

Nope. About three seconds later the first jolt hit, the windows rattled, the dresser drawers threatened to dump their content, and the local electronics started wailing their warnings.

That’s okay, I wasn’t going to sleep in later anyway.

Leave a comment

Filed under Disasters, Los Angeles, Paul

August 21, 2024 · 23:32

Don’t Assume

No, I did NOT fall again. Never left my feet, no damage done, no gym equipment revenge needing to be plotted.

However, while doing one of my quick laps around the sidewalk in the back yard, in the dark, I found that one of the local orb weavers had unexpectedly built a large web straight across the path at face heighth. The subsequent “spider web dance” and convulsions were apparently generating enough centrifugal energy and G-forces on my wrist as I swung my arms around to set off the alarm. So, again, I got to stop mid-crisis and tell my watch to chill, I was not in need of a 9-1-1 call. I was dealing with a garden spider, not Shelob. (I was busy re-inventing break dancing perhaps, but I’m no Samwise Gamgee.)

I’m going to have to start carrying a flashlight. Or I will break something. With my luck I would break something badly, die, end up at the Pearly Gates, tell St. Peter what happened, and while laughing riotously they would send me to Hell “just because!”

Leave a comment

Filed under Critters, Disasters

August 6, 2024 · 23:35

Earthquake Alert

In parts of the world (think, Japan, other parts of Asia) where they have even more dangerous earthquakes than we do, they’ve for years had warning systems that detected earthquakes starting and send out alerts to peoples’ phones and computers. While the energy from an earthquake spreads out from the epicenter quickly, communications systems are even faster. If you’re on the epicenter or just a couple miles away, you’re screwed. But if you’re twenty miles away and it takes a minute or two for the shaking to start and the system can trigger your phone in ten seconds, then you have fifty seconds to pull your car over to the side of the road, to get away from the windows and under the desk in your office, to have surgeons pause their operations, to have elevators stop and let people off.

We’re starting to implement those systems here in the US, but in all of the five or six years that I remember them being active here in SoCal, I don’t recall them ever going off before the shaking starts for me, or if they do go off, it’s been for a false alarm, telling me about something too small and/or too far away to be felt by me.

Until tonight.

Buzzing, shaking, that’s an alert that I hadn’t seen before and it definitely got my immediate attention! But there was no shaking. I had enough time to think, “Another false alarm?”

The watch went off a few seconds later, but still no shaking. I figured it’s different alert systems all tied into the same network. False alarm? By now it’s been maybe thirty seconds and my brain is thinking through the “how big?” and “how far away?” math…

And then the shaking started. The quake was 100 miles away or so, so by the time the energy got here we were swaying back and forth like being in a boat when a barge had gone by and the wake was making us bob around. That’s actually an excellent analogy, except instead of water it’s rock that’s transmitting the waves and energy.

While things were swaying around, multiple more alerts came in. Our shaking lasted for 20-30 seconds and never got particularly violent or energetic, but it was very, VERY noticeable. Even if we hadn’t gotten an alert it wasn’t like we would have overlooked it. If it’s small enough and/or far enough away, you only know there was an earthquake when you see a news report about it. This would not have been one of those.

So, the system worked! I’m sure they got a lot of good data on how to make it better for the next time, but I sure felt better given that 30-second warning. Especially if we have some higher confidence that the system works, when it goes off next time (and there will always be a next time) I’ll pay attention immediately. It’s not like hurricane warnings that are out there a week before the storm hits, or even tornado alerts that go out a few hours early. If sixty seconds is possible, I’ll take it!

Leave a comment

Filed under Deep Thoughts, Disasters, Photography

January 1, 2024 · 23:49

New Year’s Day 2024

So it’s going to be like THAT, eh, 2024?

We got woken up early when the LA Shake earthquake warning app went off and told us to expect possible shaking any second.

That will get your attention. We got ready for a rumble. Which never came.

A minute or two later I started checking social media and found that there had, in fact, been a fairly good shaker. A M4.3 earthquake in the ocean off of Palos Verdes, about half way between Long Beach and Catalina Island.

Good that the system works, I guess. Good that there was little or no actual damage that I’ve heard of. Good that it wasn’t a false alarm. Somewhat less good that we started the year by being woken from a sound sleep and having the crap scared out of us.

I’ve spent the last few minutes posting a warning on all of my social media outlets, so I’ll repeat it here.

Heads up, y’all! All of a sudden this afternoon I had the following showing up in my email spam filter…
These REEK of being a phishing or malware scam. Yes, I know all of these folks, but some only very, very remotely, and I seriously doubt that any of them would be sending me e-greeting cards for New Years.
If you see these in your email, I STRONGLY suggest you delete them without opening them.
The evil bastards seem to be out in force with the new year. Be careful.

1 Comment

Filed under Disasters, Los Angeles

May 8, 2023 · 23:43

When The Day Starts With An Earthquake

The good news is that it was a little one. M3.4 with the epicenter about ten miles from us. At 08:05 I was at that point in waking up where I was trying to get just enough brain cells functional to figure out if I could go back to sleep for ten minutes or not. Then the room moved.

Sort of like a small fender bender. Two tiny shakes, enough to make the bed wiggle and the house creak, enough to know what it was. And then it was done.

It’s been a few years since I’ve felt one. This was just a reminder, something to reinvigorate the brain cells that remember that night over twenty-nine years ago when I was trying to scramble in the dark as everything flew and moved and swayed and tipped, trying to get back to the house to my kids’ bedrooms. Would there be another shake, then another? Was this a foreshock of something big?

Nope. Just a reminder.

Duly noted.

I’m reminded.

Back to dealing with Monday. The internet’s out at the office.  My office computer’s down. I’ve got reports that were due Friday-ish and they really, REALLY need to be done today.

Blah.

Blah.

Blah.

No horrible death and destruction. No multi-billion dollar disaster. No world-class metropolitan area reduced to rubble.

Not today.

Leave a comment

Filed under Disasters

January 17, 2023 · 23:31

And The Flip Side Of That Is…

Yesterday I talked about “once in a lifetime experiences” and how I thought that some things that are fun and exciting (my example was hot air ballooning) shouldn’t necessarily be done just once. I thought that perhaps we should re-examine things we’ve done in the past as a “life list” thing (or “bucket list” to some) and maybe go do some of the really good ones again.

First thing this morning, serendipity reared its ugly head and I saw the flip side of that argument.

Twenty-nine years ago today, at 4:31 AM on the morning of of January 17, 1994, the Northridge earthquake ripped through the San Fernando Valley and beyond at a magnitude 6.7. There were 57 fatalities (72 if you count the heart attacks) and over $25B in damages. Our house was 5.88 miles from the epicenter. We got rocked pretty good, had shelves & things knocked over, were without power and water for a few days, but otherwise came through it okay.

(Image: Google Earth)

It was, I most sincerely hope, a “once in a lifetime” experience. I know, living in SoCal, that there could be one as bad or worse at any second, and there have been dozens and dozens of noticable but much smaller earthquakes that I’ve felt here, but the odds say that’s probably as bad as it gets.

Probably.

So “once in a lifetime” experience has a flip side. Ask anyone who’s had their life scrambled for a couple of days to a couple of years (or more) by a hurricane, tornado, brush fire, flood, earthquake, landslide, or any of a dozen other life-changing forces of nature that can just jump up and slap you at any time.

Hot air ballooning, trip to Asia, solar eclipses (thanks to Jemima Pett for that suggestion!), flying in a B-25 – all GREAT things that I’ve gotten to do once and can’t wait to try again!

Major earthquakes or other natural disasters? Thanks, once is enough.

Leave a comment

Filed under Disasters, Paul

September 23, 2021 · 23:56

High-Altitude Smoke

California’s been burning, a LOT. Most of the fires have been up in the Sierras and in Northern and Central California, and I’m sure many if not most of you have heard about Lake Tahoe coming within a hair’s breadth of burning to the ground. A lot of that smoke has ended up Colorado, Utah, and points east, as far as Chicago and Pittsburgh.

But very little has hit the Los Angeles area.

Today that changed, rather suddenly.

Most of the smoke is up at high altitude, so we’re not doing any choking. You can’t smell anything on the ground.

But it sure is orange.

It’s supposed to blow out of here again over the weekend. Say hello to Sheboygan!

1 Comment

Filed under Disasters, Los Angeles, Photography