Los Angeles Thread #11: Let's Save Vincente Minnelli's House

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/tropical-storm-hilary-expected-deluge-southern-california-heavy-rains-rcna100302

The first tropical threat to the U.S. this season isn’t on the East Coast or in the Gulf of Mexico — it’s in Southern California.

Tropical Storm Hilary formed Wednesday morning along Mexico’s western coast and is forecast to bring intense rain to Southern California early next week. If it makes landfall, it would become only the fourth storm of at least tropical storm strength to hit the area.

i have read some articles speculating this system would bring 2-3 years worth of precipitation to some areas. i take that kind of speculation with a big grain of salt, but after the shockingly intense deluges we had earlier this year, i'm also not necessarily dismissing it out of hand.

will the rain potentially help with low water levels?
(I know nothing about LA but remember the recent drought being in the news)

The lakes will benefit, but so much precipitation just runs off into the ocean.

The reservoirs are largely full now, so no help on that front. Tulare Lake may get even bigger, which is good for the aquifers but bad for farmers.

apparently the rotation means east of the mountains is going to get it much worse.

Regardless of intensity, the most dangerous aspect of #Hilary will be the rainfall, and that will be most severe in the deserts east of the Peninsular Ranges. Many areas there will see 4-8 inches of rain, with local amounts of a foot or more. That's 2-3 years worth of rain! #CAwx pic.twitter.com/DuuG4MWxb1

— Craig Ceecee, Ph.D. (@CC_StormWatch) August 18, 2023

Model average + NWS forecast has 4" of rain in Imperial, CA over the next 3-4 days.

That'd be more rain than Imperial's seen in the last 4 years combined (3.59"). #CAwx #Hilary pic.twitter.com/Q6Kb5kVKG8

— Chris Bianchi (@BianchiWeather) August 18, 2023

Some good analysis as of right now: https://weatherwest.com/archives/29462

Basically, anywhere along route 86 along the west side of the Salton Sea seems like a very bad place to be. There's cool places in Imperial County, though I grimly think of that water tank in El Centro that has "Sea Level" like 80 feet over your head. Fingers crossed for the folks out in Slab City.

I keep thinking of that chapter in Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry Of The Future, where a megastorm washes all of Sierra Madre over the 210 and into the LA basin. OTOH, we got 7" of rain here in the heaviest of the January storms. Our prep = charging everything up, putting whatever cardboard boxes we have on the garage floor either on a table or stacked in a plastic bin to keep the moisture out, and getting an extra bag of charcoal for the grill.

I was in Baja California (~750 miles south of San Diego) for Hurricane Odile and that sucked. Similar energy as this one. 4-6" of rain and 100+mph winds.

5 deaths, total damage amounted to MXN$16.6 billion (US$1.25 billion)

The house we were staying at (and evacuated from) was heavily damaged, as was the airport which made getting home a bit of a challenge. The Red Cross helped us with evacuations as roads were flooded/washed out, <3 to those folks.

In typical modern myopia, it was less than 9 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Odile

It's been raining steadily here in the canyons since before 8:00 am. Not particularly heavy, but steady.

5.0 near Ojai...

Is that why we got an alert here in L.A.?

No noticeable tremors here.

we felt it in Westwood. just a short sharp shock. I thought my daughter had jumped on to the sofa where I was lying.

I'm in Benedict Canyon, I thought the alert was a prank.

Didn't feel a thing in the SGV

our apartment wobbled a bit, it threw me for a loop

Earthquake after a long rain was the scenario for a landslide in the Canary (or Azore) Islands that would cause a huge tsunami to hit the Southeast US. Nova TV show, I believe.

Raining harder here now. Can confirm that it's miserable pissy rain

It's not raining in BH/Century City.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-09-30/la-golondrina-cafe-historic-olvera-street-mexican-restaurant-back-rent?

sad to hear about this

Damn...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMsz03YCtZc

yeah i had seen that story. it's absolutely crazy out there with some of the smash and grab robberies, following the recent follow-home robbery trend, and this seems to be a really extreme case of both.

my understanding is they were chasing this guy on the freeway and if anyone is familiar w/that stretch, it's extremely busy at that time.

kudos to that dude who was filming them doing that, totally without fear (i don't know that i would have done that.) i hope that car wasn't stolen, those plates are very clear.

Storybook GTA mission

opening scene of heat, except that spot is no good. 405 is 7 minutes, and the 110 is a parking lot and 4 minutes away.

here come those santa ana winds again

And again!

Found out today that the house insurance has been cancelled. We're a mile away from the state defined Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone border (hell, we're closer to the 210 freeway than we are to the hillside) but nevertheless...

i didnt know that that could happen? jeez

Background to all this from Sept. 2021: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-09-26/california-fire-insurance-moratorium-expire

A California moratorium guaranteeing insurance in wildfire-threatened areas lapsed Saturday, putting 347,000 homes in Pasadena and other Los Angeles foothills communities at the mercy of the market.

As many as 2.4 million homes are at risk of losing protection in 2021 as yearlong grace periods expire — though new disasters may extend their shields. In all, 18% of the state’s households could effectively lose protection, the largest single group since the moratorium law took effect three years ago.

“We’re going to pay the bill for climate change one way or the other, and it’s just a question of how we divvy up that cost,” said David Russell, co-director of the Center for Risk Management and Insurance at Cal State Northridge. “What California politicians are trying to do is tinker with how we do that. They’re buying time, hoping they get a break.”

Climate change has been rough on the world’s fifth-biggest economy: Wildfires torched nearly 4 million acres last year and more than 2 million so far this year; the Dixie and Caldor fires, two of the biggest, still aren’t entirely contained.

Fires in 2017 and 2018 alone wiped out more than a quarter-century of underwriting profits for the California insurance market, according to Milliman Inc., a risk assessment company. As insurers rushed to recalibrate risks, consumers were shocked by canceled policies and soaring rates.

In 2018, after the Camp fire destroyed more than 18,000 buildings, lawmakers in Sacramento prevented insurance companies from canceling homeowner policies in or adjacent to wildfire areas for 12 months after the day of an emergency declaration. The idea was to protect consumers after traumatic episodes and to give them time to make their homes more fire resistant. That, ideally, would prevent higher rates or cancellations.

“Even when these moratoriums end, they have given people time to make their homes safer,” California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, said in a statement to Bloomberg, an argument he has made on numerous occasions. “I expect insurance companies to take that into account.”

It’s hard to tell whether this is wishful thinking or effective policy. Even before the law was enacted, California’s highly regulated market was seeing insurers quit the state or refuse to write new policies. In 2019, the last period for which information was available, the state saw a 31% uptick in non-renewals. Over the same period there was a 36% increase in homeowners using the California FAIR Plan, the state’s bare-bones alternative for those who can’t get insurance in the traditional market.

ugh. for what it's worth, i owned an extremely difficult-to-insure LA house until a couple years ago, and i got my insurance through a small local brokerage, prodigy insurance, who were incredibly easy to work with and who went above and beyond repeatedly on my behalf, and i'd recommend them highly to anyone.

I wonder how many homes have been destroyed in California over, say, the past decade?

I suppose wildfires have been prevalent enough that a) our friend's aunt died in the Camp Fire, b) a wonderful Airbnb farm we stayed at was destroyed and all the animals lost, and c) a restaurant we went to on our honeymoon was destroyed.

Adding up the yearly statistics at https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/ I get 57,751 structures destroyed since 2013.

A college friend who used to live in the hills above Santa Cruz told me that instead of resolutions, he and his wife began every new year by asking themselves "is this the year our house is going to burn down and destroy everything we own?" Eventually that did happen when the CZU Complex fire not just burned down their house but most of their town too. They got out with what they could throw in their car.

Maybe move

The ironic punch line to this is that California isn't even in the top ten of most expensive states to insure a house. It's mostly all the tornado alley states + Florida.

(an acquaintance who moved to Texas for the usual "Southern California is too expensive, shitty, etc. etc." reasons arrived in Texas just in time for the 2021 deep freeze that wrecked their house's plumbing. their home insurance is four times what they were paying in SoCal and now they're having regrets from moving in the first place)

I'm presently at the edge of a fire hazard zone, so feel pretty okay about that. But I'm in a "liquefaction" zone.

Long-timers here like to bring up "every chimmney in your neighborhood collapsed after the 1991 quake" *sigh*

Long, but worthwhile read on Long Beach's attempts to redevelop and gentrify the gravesite of Acres Of Books

https://forthe.org/perspectives/gentrification-broadway-block/

w.r.t. the killings off of the 395 - I recently listened to the Dreamtown podcast. It's a long one about Adelanto and its attempts at being one of the first legal weed grow cities. In short, it's a clusterfuck... I don't feel particularly great about saying that Inland Empire corruption is an obvious background for modern noir stories because real people are involved here, but hfs

https://crooked.com/podcast-series/dreamtown-the-story-of-adelanto/

i think what a lot of people who aren't from California don't quite get is the sense of overwhelming bleakness that can be found in some parts of the state, and the sense of lawlessness.

the above murders were enough to make Borderland Beat as a news story -- they almost exclusively cover what's been occurring in Mexico w/r/t drug violence but this could have ties to a larger cartel though nothing was concrete or pinpointed.

https://www.borderlandbeat.com/2024/01/5-arrests-made-for-6-shot-dead-in.html

some authorities are blaming marijuana legalization(!) which seems like a bad area to lay blame.

The sheriff blames illicit marijuana, which seems more reasonable. Although you could blame U.S. drug policy in general.

i suppose i err on the side of law enforcement making a dumb argument, he could however be arguing that the prop was a half-measure when a full legalization would be better.

not really related, i'm a bit astonished by crime around here and how it's covered sometimes, when i witnessed a drive-by shooting near downtown L.A. i never even found out if the guy survived, nor was it ever reported by a single news source. LAPD didn't tell me a single thing when i called them up. it never even appeared on the official crime map.

a murder that occurred one block away from me a couple years before that was reported by The Eastsider LA and seemingly just buried elsewhere (all i could determine is the guy was a drug dealer.) it makes me wonder what we never ever hear about.

A week ago there was a big raid on a storefront on E Colorado that used to be an illegal weed dispensary but something was going on that warranted a dozen police cars most of whom were unmarked. Zero news anywhere other than one person on Citizen

In other news, fuck this guy
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/fred-rosen-battle-bel-air-subway-1235807662/

In mundane news, I have been visiting relatives who live in Hermosa Beach, they've been here almost 30 years. Wanted to see music tonight, but got out-voted and we went to a comedy club here. Some funny ones. May do some tourist stuff and museums in the rain tomorrow.

Everyone stay safe & dry out there

Made it up to Griffith Observatory before rain got too heavy. Had lunch at Gualaguezta , a Oaxacan Mexican restaurant touted long ago by Jonathan Gold, then saw Joni Mitchell’s old Laurel Canyon house, and the Laurel Canyon Country Store. Rain was coming down hard on our way back to Hermosa Beach. Decided to stay in tonight

I'm putting on a c00l show if u like old punks for FREE at Canters on Thursday

https://i.imgur.com/tXsY6H5.png

That looks fun but we will be down in San Diego Thursday. Some old DC punks are doing west coast shows this week- Hammered Hulls with singer Alec Mackaye.