Tonight I’m out at Dodger Stadium with the Younger Daughter.
Yeah, we’re wearing Dodger hats. When in Rome, do as the Romanians!!
Category Archives: Los Angeles
Juicy Chunks O’ Wisdom For Monday, July 14th
‘Cause I’m going to watch the Home Run Derby, that’s why.
- Say what you want about GoDaddy, but they have the best music when you’re on hold — ragtime! (And I really wasn’t even on hold that long.)
- The secret to really enjoying your “Saturday Night Safety Dance” experience, contrary to popular belief, is not to turn it all the way up loud and dance all night. No, instead keep your volume at the ready, but keep the sound in the five to six range for all of those “Eh, that song, okay, whatever” songs, then crank it up and really rattle the walls when you hear something really good coming on. Like Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” or Pet Shop Boys’ magnificent mashup “Where The Streets Have No Names (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You).” Then turn it back down, rest, and save your energy for the next set of the good stuff.
- Cloudy, humid, and something like five drops of rain on the windshield and every driver in LA decides he wants to run me off the road this morning. Oh, wait, they do that every morning, regardless of the weather…
- Is it just me, or is the senior leadership of the NIH and CDC collectively acting like a gaggle of clueless freakin’ idiots? They’re losing anthrax samples, they’re carrying deadly virus samples around in simple ziplock freezer bags, they’re finding viable samples of smallpox that should have been destroyed thirty years ago, and the management response to all of this looks more like the Three Stooges. I know that I feel better knowing they’re in charge. Them and those Congress-critters running the gummint. We’ll all be fine. Don’t worry. Watch some television. “Honey Boo-Boo” is on next.
- I had the oddest little encounter today with a jewelry store manager. (I was trying to get the battery replaced in my watch.) I can’t remember the last time anyone blatantly hit on me (trust me, as dense and naive as I am, it has to be blatant before I realize that it’s happening), but I can guarantee that this was the first time I was hit on by a guy. I wasn’t offended or repulsed so much as I was confused.
- Congratulations are in order to both Orbital Sciences and SpaceX! On back-to-back days they successfully had hardware leaving the planet, Orbital sending a Cygnus cargo ship to ISS and SpaceX launching a Falcon 9 with six communications satellites. I love it when a plan comes together!
- Along those lines, mark your calendars, one year from today the New Horizons spacecraft makes mankind’s first visit to Pluto before heading off into the Kuiper Belt to look for something else to fly by. The last of the planets to be seen up close, finally. (Don’t you dare even start with me…)
- “99 Texting Acronyms & Phrases That Every Parent Should Know” popped up as a recommendation in my Twitter feed today, and while I can see where it could be helpful to a (possibly large) number of parents who are really technophobic and naive, I see another issue. If you’re a parent (or the author) and you have to use “f***” instead of “fuck” or “sh**” instead of “shit” or “a**” instead of “ass”, you’re going to have a lot more problems communicating with your children than just not being able to understand their text messages. I understand that there are words one doesn’t say in certain company or at work or around people who might be offended, and I’m not suggesting that everyone should be spewing the Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television in every sentence. But if you’re afraid to either speak or write words that your kids are using (and I pretty much guarantee that they’re using them like sailors when they’re not around you) you’re starting a battle with one arm tied behind your back.
Remember, “I’ve only got two speeds and if you don’t like this one, you’re going to hate the other!”
Filed under Astronomy, Distracted Driving, Entertainment, Juicy Chunks, Los Angeles, Space, Weather
Odds & Sods For Wednesday, June 3rd
Item The First: Living in any big city it seems that you can see a little bit of anything. (not so much in a rural area or small town, but I could be wrong.) One thing about Los Angeles is that this phenomenon is taken to a whole new dimension at times. It can be a really odd place.
The latest demonstration of this I’ve seen is a large number of men who are shaving their heads, so they look like Telly Savalas or this Republican dude running for governor. But they find that their skin is pasty white and pale under all of that stubble, making them look more like Marine recruits on their first day of boot camp. To solve this in turn, they apparently go and get a spray tan.
Unfortunately, too often the spray tans are pretty orange-ish. That’s a good way to tell actually, you don’t get that particular shade of orange-brown by any natural method known to man. But looking silly and fake and plastic has never stopped anyone in LA, so they do it anyway.
Then they cluster together, presumably because they’re co-workers or peers of some sort. Or maybe they just belong to the same cult.
Either way, they end up looking like the love children of Oompa Loompas and Mr. Clean, in business suits.
Item The Second: In January, the US first class postal rate went from 46¢ to 49¢. Most of us don’t even realize it happened because 99% of the stamps the USPOD has sold for several years are the “Forever” stamps, good for whatever the first class rate happens to be when you use them.
The USPOD touts this as a great thing and when rates are going up they urge everyone to buy a bunch at the older, lower rate so they can have them and save the extra couple of cents until your stockpile runs out.
But that assumes that the rates are always going to go up. That’s a pretty solid assumption in general — have the rates ever gone down? But this time, the Postal Commission decreed that the increase was temporary, and in three years the rates must go back down to 46.
I wouldn’t bet on that happening, but assuming for the moment that it does, will everyone get their three cents per stamp back on all of the “Forever” stamps they have, or will the USPOD just pocket all that money?
I guess it’s only fair if they do since they’ve eaten the difference when rates have gone up. Plus, it’s not like we’re talking a ton of money. Businesses all use postage machines, it’s just the little guys like you and me who buy stamps (how archaic!), and most of us have, what? Maybe a roll of 100 stamps at most, probably just a sheet of 20 (partially used). So we’re talking 60¢ to $3.00 or so per household? Except $2.00 a household times 115,226,802 households is a $230,457,604 windfall…
My brain wonders about things like this. It’s possible that it’s broken.
Item The Third: We were watching the US vs. Turkey “friendly” soccer match this last weekend and for kicks we were watching Univision, the Spanish language network. Their announcers are much more fun to listen to when a goal is scored, regardless of who scores it. Despite our command of the language gained by twelve weeks of community college conversational Spanish last year (non-graded, one class a week, no homework, and we bailed on about a third of the classes), we weren’t picking up more than one word in a hundred, and feeling grateful for that one word.
When that got old (and discouraging) we switched over to ESPN, where they had (I think) an English announcer and an Irish announcer.
We didn’t do any better understanding them.
Item The Fourth: In baseball these days it’s a thing for everyone on the home team to have “walk-on music” which plays as they walk up to the plate to bat, or for relief pitchers as they run in from the bullpen. This practice has gotten some attention recently when some players chose some rather unconventional music samples.
Usually you will hear something rock and roll, pop, rap, or maybe country. “Enter Sandman,” “Welcome To The Jungle,” something from Led Zeppelin, “Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy,” whatever. There have been practical jokes where some players will bribe the guys running the PA system to play the “wrong” music for a teammate, using a tune from a kid’s TV show or something, but that’s a one-time thing for laughs.
Recently, Josh Reddick of the Oakland Athletics has changed his walk-on music to Wham’s “Careless Whisper.” This has gotten quite a bit of attention, as well as a bit of a cult following with the Oakland fans. It’s not so clear that it’s helped his batting — a quick perusal of today’s MLB American League stats doesn’t show him anywhere in the top forty in any batting category.
But it’s bizarre and unusual, and I like that.
Item The Fifth: When shooting pictures of the lunar eclipse in April, one thing I noticed was that many pictures were blurry due to motion of the camera when the shutter was triggered. With the simple setup I was using I’ll never get rid of that entirely, but there are steps that can be taken to minimize the worst of it.
In particular, a lot of the vibration and motion comes when you physically push down on the button on the camera to take the picture. This gets worse the longer the exposure is, because on most cameras you have to keep holding the button down for as long as you want the shutter open. Needless to say, no matter how careful and steady you try to be, your hand is wiggling and so is the camera.
On a DSLR (as opposed to a point & shoot or smartphone camera) there are other ways to trigger the shutter. I knew that there were remote controls which plug into the camera electronically, and trigger the camera via a radio transmitter. Sort of like a garage door opener, only it takes the picture instead.
Especially for astrophotography, this is extremely useful since it will eliminate all of the vibration and blur caused when you physically touch the camera while taking the picture. A good radio remote control trigger also lets you do things like set up the camera on the roof and then remotely trigger it when you hear the raccoons rampaging about up there.
I thought that these things were hundreds of dollars and I really didn’t want to spend that kind of money right now. But, catching the assumption in my calculation, I was pleased to see that they’re under $20 from China via mail order. Who knew?
That’s one of the reasons the ISS transit pictures were so steady, I’m using the new toy to trigger the exposures. Next, the raccoons!
Item The Sixth: So, what would your walk-on music be? I’ll let you know my thoughts on mine in the next “Odds & Sods”. I would love to hear your thoughts about what you would pick (and why) in the comments.
Filed under Astronomy, Critters, Los Angeles, Music, Odds & Sods, Photography, Politics, Sports
Hockey Posts Are Coming And We’re Rocking And Rolling!
What a day. Two big things to mention.
First of all, while I’ve mentioned it from time to time, I do try not to really go overboard with my hockey fanaticism here. I understand that many people aren’t hockey fans, or even sports fans, and I mainly want to use this forum to talk about astronomy, space travel, photography, writing, freakin’ idiots, music, books, movies, pets, critters, and on and on and on. I talk about sports sometimes, but I try to keep it to a dull roar.
That may be hard to do in the next week to two weeks — you may consider this to be an official warning. I’ll flag the posts, so if you couldn’t care less about hockey, there may be a day or two here or there that you can just skip reading.
Tonight, my beloved LA Kings won Game Seven of the National Hockey League’s Western Conference Finals, putting them into the Stanley Cup finals for the second time in three years. It was a hell of a game, finishing off a hell of a series, which in turn followed amazing series against the Anaheim Ducks and the San Jose Sharks. All three series went to seven games, thus making the Kings the first team in league history to get to the finals by winning three series that all went to seven games.
Earlier, the first series with the Sharks was also historic. We lost the first three games and were forced to win four in a row to advance, facing elimination with every game. We did it, becoming only the third team to ever pull that off. (Something like 90+ teams have tried before, and failed.)
Then the second series with the Ducks was the first time that two Los Angeles teams faced each other in the playoffs. The Angels and Dodgers haven’t done it, the Rams and Raiders never did it, and the Lakers and Clippers have never done it. In that series the Ducks pulled out to a three games to two lead, forcing the Kings to face two more elimination games, which they won.
Now we faced the Chicago Blackhawks, who eliminated us in the conference finals last year, going on to win the Stanley Cup. In this year’s rematch, the Kings went up three games to one, only to have the Blackhawks storm back and force a game seven. It was a close, close series, two very evenly matched teams, and a bounce or tip of the puck here or there could have made the difference either way. Tonight, of course, after an incredibly tense game where the Blackhawks went ahead 2-0, 3-2, and 4-3, only to see the Kings find a way to tie the game and force overtime.
There was a lot of screaming and yelling and blowing of the Vuvuzela Of Victory all night. When we won I blew the VOV long and loud enough to just about pass out.
It was fantastic!
I won’t be blathering on about the Kings every night, don’t worry — but I’ll be mentioning them and might have a longer piece here or there. (You’ve been warned.)
As if that wasn’t enough excitement, with about four minutes left in the third period, a 4-4 tie, edge-of-the-seat time — the seat started shaking from side to side, along with the rest of the house. We got a magnitude 4.2 earthquake with the epicenter near the intersection of the 405 Freeway and Mullholland Drive, right in the middle of the Sepulveda Pass, about ten or eleven miles away.
If that location sounds familiar, it’s because it’s almost the exact same place as the epicenter of the March 17th magnitude 4.4 earthquake we had. They’re saying that tonight’s shaker is not an aftershock of that March temblor, not quite in the same place and much shallower.
Let me tell you, when you’re already pretty wound up and barely breathing and on the edge of your seat, having the room rattle and shake for four or five seconds will not help calm you down!
Plus, as they always tell you, 5% of all earthquakes are actually “foreshocks” of bigger quakes in the next 24 to 48 hours. There wasn’t any major damage from tonight’s quake, and no injuries at all — but is there a magnitude 5.2 or magnitude 5.7 quake lurking for tonight or tomorrow morning? There’s a 95% chance that there isn’t, but a bigger quake could cause damage or injuries is still not that long of a bet.
Let’s hope it’s a quiet, non-shaken night. Ditto for tomorrow. The only earth-shaking event I want in Los Angeles is the celebration when we win the second Stanley Cup in LA Kings’ history.
In five games. Not seven. I don’t know if my blood pressure can take a fourth seven-game series.
Go, Kings! GO!!
Filed under Disasters, LA Kings, Los Angeles
Coyote Close Encounter
I took Jessie out for her “evening constitutional” after the first period of tonight’s Kings game. (“Go, Kings! GO!!”) It turned out to be more exciting than I expected.
About 99% of the time we go out into the front yard, Jessie has to be on a lead. She’s old and creaky, but given something to chase, she’s a pup again and can get curious and/or territorial. Since we often have people walking their dogs, or just walking, it’s easier for everyone involved (and our homeowner’s insurance rates) if she’s on a lead until we can see what’s around.
Normally, if the sidewalks are clear, we’ll let her off the lead to sniff, check her “pee-mail”, leave her own, find a spot to poop, check to see if there are any squirrels in the date palm, any bunnies under the bushes, and so on. She won’t take off unless something provokes her, and even at that it hasn’t happened in years.
Tonight, as we hit the sidewalk, the coast was clear and she headed toward the driveway and mailbox to pee. I reached down to unsnap the lead — at which point a very mangy, skinny, and sickly looking coyote came out from behind the car, about seven or eight feet away. I think we were both surprised to see each other.
Needless to say, I left Jessie attached to the lead and locked it down so she couldn’t take off. She still had no idea that the coyote was there since she had her head down. But as soon as she looked up, as expected, she “poofed”, let out a growl, and started to move forward. I was ready for it and stopped her and the coyote didn’t wait around, crossing the street and standing on the sidewalk over there to watch us.
For the next five minutes or so, the Jessie and the coyote kept a very close eye on one another. Jessie didn’t try to go after her again, but neither of them ever let the other out of their sight.
We see coyotes around here every now and then, but this was unusual. You almost always see them at night, never in the day. They’re way too exposed and vulnerable during the day. In addition, this critter was emaciated, really, really thin. Finally, what I had thought were patches where its fur was patchy or mangy looked more like large, open sores on its sides.
I’ve never heard of a coyote attacking an adult. They’re opportunists and bandits, but they’re cautious to the point of cowardice. They have been known to attack small dogs in people’s yards, and given a chance they’ll take out a house cat, feral or otherwise. Bunnies make a great dinner for a coyote, as would a skunk or baby raccoon. (I think one of our adult racoons, one of which is running wind sprints on the roof as I type, would kick the butt of that scrawny coyote.) But mostly they like garbage and pet food left outdoors.
I wasn’t upset or scared at any point, but given the critter’s condition, apparent injuries, and unusual activities, I was concerned that it might not be normal, possibly diseased or even rabid. That’s a level of grief I could live without.
Finally a neighbor’s sprinklers turned on and the coyote slowly backed away down the block, always keeping an eye on Jessie. Once it got to the sprinklers it started to drink from the water on the sidewalk and in the gutter. That didn’t surprise me at all, given the severe drought we’ve got going and the lack of any kind of water up in the hills away from the houses.
I did take Jessie for a short walk down the block the other way, where there are neighbors who have small dogs and small children. While a normal coyote might not attack a human adult, I thought it conceivable that a starving, diseased coyote might try taking on a toddler.
Once again, the term “urban jungle” takes on a whole new meaning. Welcome to LA, don’t pet the coyotes!
Filed under Critters, Dogs, Los Angeles
Contrails At Sunset
We’ve finally got a change in the weather coming in, an expected forty degree (F) drop between last Wednesday and next Wednesday. There’s a cut-off low headed down the coast from the northwest to bring us this change. At its forefront at sunset tonight there were layers of high, wispy, icy clouds.
With all of the fires south of here, which are fortunately dying down and getting under control with the cooler weather and calmer winds, there are health warnings all over SoCal about air quality hazards. One of the few good things from these fires is that we can get some spectacular sunsets, caused by the smoke and particulates in the atmosphere.
Between the wispy clouds and the smoke, I was hoping for a spectacular sunset.
Didn’t happen.
The smoke is generally blowing out to sea to the west of San Diego, while from our house we’re watching the sun set way over Ventura and Santa Barbara, 200 miles to the north of where the bulk of the smoke is. So, no joy on the pinks and oranges and reds. I hope the folks in Sandy Ago got a colorful sunset, even if I didn’t.
But while I was waiting, I could see that conditions above 30,000 feet must have been cold and calm, perfect for the formation of contrails from jets at cruising altitude. That part of the sky is a regular jetway for the jumbo jets heading from the Pacific Northwest down to Mexico and South America.
Several contrails looked hours old, having spread out quite a bit, but still keeping their straight line forms, almost parallel but not quite. Others were much thinner, just ten or fifteen minutes old. And like beads on a string, separated by five minutes and fifty miles or so, jets just passing by now were drawing new, razor sharp lines. All on a background of lacy, wispy swirls of clouds in a darkening sky.
It was lovely.
Filed under Flying, Los Angeles, Photography, Weather
Hell Arrives Early In SoCal This Year
Anyone who’s lived any length of time in Southern California knows that there’s a semi-official “brush fire season” from about late July through late October. This is true of many other places in the western United States (Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado all come to mind), but here in SoCal we have a LOT of houses and businesses that get in the middle of those brush fires, while many of those other places have a few houses and a lot of timber.
This year the wildfires have arrived early. It’s only early May, yet there are nine different fires burning in San Diego County and a couple more in Los Angeles County. Flip through the fifty or so pictures in that link if you want to see what Hell On Earth looks like SoCal style.
A big part of the problem is drought. California’s in an extended, extreme drought condition. Past droughts have resulted from multiple years where the rainfall amounts have been below average – but there was still rainfall. This drought has been caused by multiple years where the rainfall has been drastically below normal and many places have gotten no rain at all in two or three years or more.
Then the temperatures rise and rise a lot, much earlier in the year than they have in the past. Here in SoCal the two terms you hear repeated every year at this time are “May Grey” and “June Gloom.” Normally we’re getting a marine layer for weeks at a time, which at least keeps the humidity up a bit and will occasionally thicken enough to give you some drizzle or light rain. Not this year. The last two days have been at or above triple digits, and tomorrow’s going to be even hotter. Along with that heat we’re getting single-digit humidity (remember the crack about how “it’s a dry heat?”) and the Santa Ana winds blowing at 30 to 40 mph with gusts to 70+ mph.
Some idiot flicks a cigarette butt out of their car window…
Someone’s clearing weeds and their lawnmower blade hits a rock and sparks…
Someone’s car dies and they pull off to the side of the road, into the knee high, bone dry grass, which comes in contact with the almost red hot brakes, exhaust, and catalytic converter on the underside of their car…
…and eight hour later you have 20,000 people evacuated, 5,000 acres burned, and 100 houses gone up in smoke.
And it’s only the second week of May and it’s only going to get drier and hotter all through June, July, August, and all the way to Christmas and maybe into 2015.
One of these years it’s just going be a year-round thing, with triple digits, howling winds, constant fires, and no water.
This has been the driest and hottest year in recorded history, going back to when records first started being kept in San Francisco prior to the Civil War.
It’s almost like…like…like the climate is changing…
No, wait, that can’t be. Marco Rubio said that we’ve got it all wrong, and as a Florida lawyer he obviously knows far, far more than the 99% of climate scientists and weather researchers who…
Sorry, that’s a rant (or fifty) for another day (or fifty). (FREAKIN’ IDIOTS!)
Please keep an eye on the SoCal fire situation, today and tomorrow and the rest of the year. The people evacuating tomorrow might be you, or someone you know. Like, me.
I don’t think Marco Rubio’s going to be able to change that.
Filed under Disasters, Freakin' Idiots!, Los Angeles, Weather
Deadline, Ho!
No time, had to watch the hockey game (Go, Kings, Go!) and now there’s a writing deadline on another project. (It’s really, really hard to try to write while watching the game. It would be much easier if it were a baseball game. Slower. More pastoral. More amenable to multitasking.)
Here, have a picture of Ontario Airport, taken while on approach to LAX:
For those not familiar with the Los Angeles area, Rancho Cucamonga is at the base of those mountains in the distance on the right – that’s where the big brush fire from last week is still burning, although no houses are threatened at the moment.
Also in the mountains in the distance on the right is the Cajon Pass where I-15 goes up to the high desert and off toward Las Vegas. (I-15 is the big highway showing a big loop along the center-right edge.) The current disaster there (unrelated to the brush fire, I believe) is a fire this afternoon in all of the wood bracing an overpass under construction. Between the fire and the weakened overpass, all lanes in both directions are closed for at least a couple of days. Needless to say, this might be an excellent area to avoid for the duration.
(Image from Google Maps)
How’s tricks in your area?
GOTTA WRITE!
Filed under LA Kings, Los Angeles, Writing
Juicy Chunks O’ Wisdom For Sunday, May 4th
‘Cause I’ve got other things that I’m in the middle of writing tonight and I’m sore from catching up on some physically demanding house chores, that’s why.
- They’re running those ads for the Fiat 500L where the guys lost in the desert find P Diddy’s party and convince themselves it’s just a mirage because the Fiat has four doors. Right? It’s sort of a stupid ad (I actually though it was for Mini Coopers as I started to write this, so I guess they’ve failed the ultimate test of any ad) but that’s not what I’m wondering about. Why are they playing Pharrell’s “Happy” at P Diddy’s party? Why aren’t they playing some of P Diddy’s music?
- Is everyone else in the country getting 24/7/365 coverage of the Donald Sterling scandal thing, or are we just special here in LA? It’s already become my new “instantly change the channel to anything else” hot button item. There are so many aspects of “uber-ick” associated with so many of the players involved, digging deeper and finding more layers of slime isn’t what I’m interested in watching the press do.
- Another annoying aspect of the NBA is how it absolutely dominates the local and national sports reporting. Sorry, but WHO CARES? I understand that it’s a big draw, lots of TV ratings, lots of passion, but why does it get 90% of the coverage, with the NFL Draft getting about 8%, and the entire NHL playoffs and all of the MLB regular season fighting for scraps of the other 2%. As for anything not in this country, such as the English Premier League or the upcoming Tour de France? Fugedda bout it! Would it really be too much to ask that an hour of SportsCenter on ESPN have only 15 or 20 minutes of NBA at most, with some balanced coverage of the other sports in the remaining 40-45 minutes?
- Today was “Sheet Changing Day” at Casa Willett. This is a bigger deal than you might expect, and out of that I hope you will soon be seeing a madcap romantic comedy on the New York Times Best Seller list. At least, the Wednesday Writing Group likes where it’s going in the first draft. Remember — “Sheet Changing Day.”
- The one guy in Los Angeles who’s the happiest over the Donald Sterling thing? Frank McCourt, no longer “it” as the most hated sports owner.
Remember that in a year or two it won’t matter worth squat if your hockey or football or baseball or basketball or soccer team won the Stanley Cup or Lombardi Trophy or World Series or the O’Brien Trophy or the World Cup. (Although it might matter if your baseball team won the Stanley Cup…) In twenty-five years, only a few die hards will remember. In a hundred years, only a few statisticians (or their computers) will remember. In a thousand years, they won’t even remember that hockey, baseball, football, basketball, or soccer existed, let alone who won. In a hundred thousand years (or a hundred, YMMV) there won’t even be any humans left, only the machines wondering how in hell humans ever made it out of the trees, let alone to the moon and beyond.
Filed under Castle Willett, Juicy Chunks, Los Angeles, Sports, Writing
Yet Another LA Shaker
Eleven days ago we had a magnitude 4.4 earthquake and I wrote about it and earthquakes in general. The tl;dr version: “Earthquakes are scary and can be deadly.”
Tonight we’re shaking again, this time a little bit more “briskly”, shall we say. It probably wasn’t quite up to shaking “violently”, at least not from the reports I’ve seen yet, but it’s early. This only happened less than an hour ago.
Tonight’s preliminary reading was a magnitude 5.1 earthquake in La Habra, just south of the Los Angeles – Orange county line. (It was initially reported as a 5.4, but the instant readings usually are corrected down a bit as more data is received.) A 5.1 shake is still a long way from “The Big One” (it’s coming folks, really, really) but it’s big enough to cause some damage.
So far there are only reports of some “moderate” damage with no details on what that means, other than one report of a road being blocked by a rock slide and a local fire station that’s been damaged. All of Disneyland’s rides had their safety systems kick and and stop the rides, and now they’re shutting down the park early. A few pictures of pantries and shelves dumped on the floor are popping up. We hope that there aren’t any injuries, but a 5.1 is strong enough to potentially cause them. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if by morning there aren’t at least a few dozen homes and buildings with some significant damage.
The other bit of news that’s coming out early in this one is that the earthquake occurred right on the Puente Hills thrust fault, which is the fault that was responsible for the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake. That was a 5.9 quake that killed eight people, injured hundreds, destroyed 123 homes and over 1,000 apartments, damaged over 500 homes and 2,000 apartments, with a total of over $350 million in damage. Even more importantly, it’s the fault line that runs straight under downtown Los Angeles. The downtown with all of those really, really tall skyscrapers that have never truly had the earthquake building codes tested much out in the real world.
One might be tempted to say, “Well, so what? This wasn’t a 7.5 or an 8.5 quake on that fault and all of those buildings didn’t get tested. It was just a 5.1 in La Habra.” The thing is, it’s a known phenomenon that some earthquakes, particularly quakes in the high 4’s and 5’s, are “pre-shocks,” the opposite of aftershocks. It’s not a huge likelihood, but it’s sure enough to make the USGS, Cal Tech, the fire, police, emergency services, the city emergency command posts, and everyone else involved stay on their toes tonight. The odds drop off by the hour, and they’re sort of long to begin with. On the other hand, if it does happen, we’re all gonna be in a world of hurt.
The other thing that I’m noticing with this quake (and the one eleven days ago) is how much information is available instantly on social media, particularly Twitter. CalTech and the USGS have bots set up that you can follow (I do) which will tell you immediately the time and location and magnitude of any quake, with a link to a map. That bot has been lighting up Twitter, with over twenty aftershocks in the last hour.
I also follow the LA Times on Twitter, as well as several news reporters and stations. When something like this happens, you start finding out about it far, far faster than you ever did before. (Remember the shooting at LAX last year where the TSA agent got killed? The first news reports of that were from Twitter, particularly since there were some celebrities near the site of the shooting and they have LOTS of followers.) You need to use some common sense in interpreting the raw information and know who to trust and who to take with a grain of salt. Having said that, it’s astonishing to me to see how fast information gets out if you know who to follow and get it from.
Finally, the Angels and Dodgers were playing a pre-season, exhibition game at Dodger Stadium when the quake hit. Listen to one of the great voices of the game, Vin Scully, describe it. The man’s got a story for every occasion, and he’s always calm and comforting. I swear, he wouldn’t change that tone if the alien mothership landed in Dodger Stadium. And he would have a story that was relevant for the occasion.
Filed under Disasters, LA Angels, Los Angeles
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 