Category Archives: Los Angeles

March 18, 2014 · 22:56

Yesterday’s Little LA Shaker

If you’ve been watching the news and have gotten past the missing Malaysian airliner and Chris Brown being in jail (give me a freakin’ break, since when is this “news”?) you may have heard that we had a little earthquake here in Los Angeles yesterday.

It made a lot of news for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is that it’s been a while since Los Angeles per se has had a significant earthquake. I heard one radio news station saying that it was the biggest one in the city of Los Angeles since the Northridge earthquake of 1994. The italics are important, since there have been plenty of other large (even fatal) earthquakes near Los Angeles in that time, but they’ve all been out in the desert past Palm Springs.

For those of you who don’t know from earthquakes, one of the things you learn about them is how to judge size and distance away from you. In short, if you’re near the epicenter, there’s a lot of shaking, often violent. (This is what you see in the movies.) But if you’re further away, the energy of the earthquake has spread out and damped down, much like the ring of waves surrounding a small stone dropped into a small pool. Literally, the earth is rippling up and down and back and forth like that. But if you’re away from the epicenter you get smaller, less violent, longer wavelength movement.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco area (often known as the World Series quake) was something like 400 miles from Los Angeles, yet many people here, myself included, felt it. In my case I was in a 4th floor office in a six-story building, and the mini-blinds started swaying and knocking, bookshelves banging slowly against the walls, the office door rocking back and forth. It felt more like the room was haunted than an earthquake. But it went on for three or four minutes, enough time for me to get on the phone and call home, where they (on solid ground) couldn’t feel it at all. I knew right away that there had been a really, really big earthquake but that it was far, far away.

Similarly, the “twin quakes” that hit out in the desert in 1992 were magnitude 7.3 and magnitude 6.5, with epicenters about 75 miles away from our house. The shaking here was more than enough to get us out of bed and into the hallway, but again, it was a long, slow rolling, so we knew it was something fairly big, but not near.

Yesterday, it was only a magnitude 4.4 shaker — but just eleven miles away as the crow flies. The first movement we had was “jittery” for about a second or two, then a very strong lateral movement. After that we had about eight to ten seconds of shaking back and forth, not terribly violent, but more than enough to let you know there was an earthquake going on, and fairly loud as the house creaked and moaned. Then it quickly faded away and quieted down.

If it’s your first earthquake, that’s a huge wake-up call, and not always a pleasant one. We all take for granted that the earth beneath our feet is immobile and solid. Until you live out here for a few years and you realize that the Universe has been lying to you about that in order to lull you into a false sense of security.

If it’s not your first earthquake, especially if you’ve lived through one of the magnitude 6.7, 6.9, or 7.2 shakers, is to hold on and immediately start wondering if it’s going to stop or if this is just the start. Often in those huge, killer, city destroying quakes, it shakes like that for the first five or ten seconds, and then totally cuts loose and the whole world turns upside down and the house falls down and the city burns and the freeways collapse and a lot of people die and the rest of us have no power or water or gas or phones for days and we’re picking up debris and rebuilding for months and we’re squeezing around closures and detours for years.

So for those first ten seconds or so, you’re really, really anxious about what the next ten seconds will bring.

Yesterday that next ten seconds brought about relief, a quick check of the house, and getting on Twitter and Facebook to tell everyone about it with a little nervous laugh. (Adrenaline will do that.) And then it’s time to start making fun of the local news anchors who were live on the air.

Because that’s the second big reason that yesterday’s relatively small shaker make national headlines. It happened while every single local Los Angeles station was in their morning news. The footage from each of them can be found online, and the late night comedians had a field day. Some are bizarre, some are scary, and at least one (the one I was watching live, KTLA Channel 5) was hilarious.

It was hilarious because of Chris Schauble’s shocked look, the way he held up his hand to cut off co-anchor Megan Henderson, and the way that they both immediately dove under their desk. Freeze frame pictures of Schauble and video of the desk diving went viral. I’ll admit (and so did they, on this morning’s news) some of it was pretty funny.

But here’s what to keep in mind while you’re laughing. If you’ve ever seen a television studio, they’re sitting there with dozens and dozens of large lights just above them out of camera view. When an earthquake hits, if it’s a magnitude 4.4, those lights sway and rock and make really scary rattling noises. If it’s a magnitude 7.4, those heavy, hot, electrified lights are going to drop on their heads in that “next ten seconds” and if they’re still broadcasting live you’ll see them get crushed, killed, and electrocuted.

From before you spend your first day in kindergarten here in earthquake country, you’re taught to get under something solid if you can when the shakers hit. A desk. A table. A chair. A countertop. On the side of the bed or a couch. If the building comes down, and you don’t know if it’s going to or not, but if it does, you want something solid and expendable above you.

We can laugh at the desk diving news anchors, because the only damage that I’ve seen was three or four bottles of hair products that fell off of a shelf in Encino and one cracked window. But next time, they might be the ones to live and be broadcasting the news afterward, while the guys who ignore it and soldier on will be a part of the statistics that the desk divers will be reporting.

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Filed under Disasters, Los Angeles

December 16, 2013 · 20:48

Sightseeing In Los Angeles – Olvera Street

It’s true of many of us (ourselves included) that we’ll visit another city and see all of the “tourist” sites in a week or a weekend, but we’ll live in a big city for thirty or forty years and still not see half of them. There’s always time — we’ll get around to it.

Then friends or relatives come to town and they want to see these tourist spots and landmarks, so then we go see them with them.

So it was, with the Long-Suffering Sister-In-Law in town that we ended up on the subway to downtown Los Angeles to visit Olvera Street. (Yes, Los Angeles actually has a subway and mass transit, but that’s a rant for another day.)

IMG_8862 smallIt was a gorgeous 81F and a sky that went on forever. We had the convertible to drive to North Hollywood, then got on the subway. That was a first for the Long-Suffering Wife as well as her sister. We took the Red Line from end to end, a most pleasant and interesting ride to Union Station.

IMG_8867 smallUnion Station is a landmark and a movie star in its own right. It’s been used as a location in dozens of films, including “Blade Runner”, “Silver Streak”, “Pearl Harbor”, “Gable & Lombard”, “The Hustler”, “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid”, “The Dark Knight Rises”, “Under The Rainbow”, “The Way We Were”, and of course, 1950’s “Union Station”. Not to mention countless commercials and television shows. If you want noir and/or 1930’s Art Deco, you film at Union Station.

IMG_8823 smallWhen you first come up from the subways toward the main station, you see this wonderful glass dome over your head.

IMG_8826 smallYou can see why it gets used for all of that filming!

IMG_8873 smallTake the train into LA just to see this place!

IMG_8857 smallDirectly across the street from Union Station is Olvera Street and the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument. This is the site where Los Angeles was founded in 1781. A pueblo was started with forty-four people in eleven families. This exact location was where the church, the center of activity in the pueblo, was built.

IMG_8853 smallOlvera Street itself is a bustling, touristy street (an alley, actually, only about two blocks long) with restaurants and open air shops galore. This is where the annual “Blessing Of The Animals” takes place — the Los Angeles Cathedral is only three blocks away. Most of the buildings on Olvera Street actually date from the 1850’s, but they include the oldest standing building in the city. The shops are a great place to get souvenirs representing Los Angeles’ Spanish and Mexican heritage. In particular we saw a lot of items related to Dia de Muertos, Day of the Dead.

All in all, a most enjoyable day, sightseeing in our own city. Subway, Union Station, Olvera Street! See them on your next visit to Los Angeles!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography

December 10, 2013 · 22:04

Wind In Los Angeles

I’ve recently written about how Los Angeles residents respond to rain (badly) and cold (not much better), so let’s talk about a much more common weather affliction — wind.

For those unfamiliar with the Los Angeles area, we have a thing here called “Santa Ana Winds“. The short version is that high pressure builds up to our northeast, which causes winds from that direction. But those winds get funneled through a whole slew of mountain passes. They get compressed, speed up, and then vent out into the valleys blowing a gale. It’s not uncommon for there to be sustained thirty to forty knot winds with gusts to seventy or eighty. And better yet, it can go on like that for days.

In the summer, when it’s already pushing 90F or higher, the Santa Anas will heat things up even more (adiabatic heating), dry things out even more, and take any tiny spark out in the mountains or desert and turn it into a 10,000 acre brush fire. The folks who fight wildfires hate the Santa Anas.

In the winter, when it gets unseasonably cold and the temperatures drop down close to freezing at night and only into the low 50’s during the day (like it has been for the last week), the Santa Anas can blow, but they don’t bring any relief from the cold. I don’t know why, it seems they would, but they don’t. Ask Fritz Coleman or Doctor George. What they do is take the wind chill down into the teens at night, which makes the cold all the worse.

Houses in Los Angeles aren’t built like houses in a normal city where you actually have four seasons. Houses here are built to stay cool, because 90% of the year it’s hot, or at least warm. We have almost no insulation at all, and while we typically have great air-conditioning, our furnaces are almost an afterthought.

When it gets cold and the Santa Anas blow, it’s like living in one of those ice castles in Finland or China.

We also get most of the other wind related problems that are simply associated with forty knot sustained winds with gusts to eighty knots. Semis and campers get blown off the road. Trees come down. Power goes out. Roofs lose shingles. Patio furniture ends up in the pool or in the neighbor’s yard.

It also makes it hard to sleep, at least for me. We have several orange trees in the back yard and the oranges are just getting big and ripe and tasty. One of these trees is right on the other side of our bedroom wall. When the Santa Anas start blowing in the middle of the night, I find out about it with dozens of oranges bashing and smashing into the wall for hours.

I’ve also gotten to fly in these winds. It’s…exciting. At Whiteman in Pacoima where I normally fly, the usual runway is Runway 12 (pointing southeast). When the Santa Anas blow you switch around (always take off and land into the wind) so you’re on Runway 30. Not only do you get to deal with the wind and some nasty turbulence, but you’re also getting a sight picture and traffic pattern that you see only every now and then. If you’ve never flown pattern work in a Cessna 172 when the Santa Anas are blowing, you’ve missed a real “E Ticket” ride.

Finally, as with everything else in Los Angeles, our local news can blow everything out of proportion at the drop of a hat. When we get 0.2″ of rain, we’re on “STORM WATCH 2013”! When the Santa Anas blow, you’ll get a news van taking pictures and doing live shots from every downed tree in the county. The bigger, the better. If lanes are blocked or a car gets crushed, you’ll have seven or eight news vans.

The weather patterns are shifting again. By Thursday we’re supposed to be back to “Sunny & 75” for a few days. The Chamber of Commerce will taunt everyone in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago who have a foot of snow and sub-zero temperatures.  The Rose Parade committee will get back to building floats and putting up grandstands for our annual New Year’s Day taunt advertising parade and football game. The surfers will get back to surfing and the snowboarders will get back to snowboarding.

And we’ll all start waiting for the next “natural disaster” — the one that’s just known as “weather” in the rest of the world.

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Filed under Los Angeles, Weather