592 Landslides Recorded In City Of Los Angeles Alone In One Week Of Torrential Rain

[hatrack]

Last edited Thu Feb 22, 2024, 08:18 PM - Edit history (1)

Ed. - The future is here, and it looks . . .. muddy and dangerous.

Picture the minute hand at about eight past the hour. That’s the slope of Viet’s backyard in southern Los Angeles County. It’s a bit too aggressive for a slip-and-slide. In fact, Viet doesn’t even let his 7-year-old daughter play on the family’s small back patio. “I don’t need her falling down that hill,” he said. When Viet and his wife bought their house-on-a-hill five years ago, it was a win, their piece of “the Hollywood Riviera,” as real estate agents like to call the area. (A self-employed marketer in his 40s, Viet asked that his last name not be used to protect his family’s privacy.)

Viet’s street runs horizontally across a huge incline that begins the Palos Verdes Peninsula, a marvel of steep cliffs and Mediterranean-style homes at the south hook of Santa Monica Bay. If you squint, it could be the terraced hills of Tuscany or, indeed, a stretch of the Côte d’Azur. The address was a solid investment and housing insurance not a problem, even though parts of the peninsula have been known to shape-shift, cracking roads and knocking houses off foundations. But not every day. The family enjoyed some easy SoCal years on their perch with its great views and gentle, dry climate.

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In 1975, a USGS geologist named Russell Campbell submitted a research paper addressing “Soil Slips, Debris Flows and Rainstorms” in Southern California. He’d spent years studying the deadliest regional landslides of the ’60s, trying to figure out a pattern, some threshold of conditions that might serve as a warning device. Landslides often felt so arbitrary, set off by all kinds of unpredictable SoCal things, from earthquakes to a leak in a pool. But he knew one thing for sure: “Debris flows generated by soil slips during rainstorms present a greater risk of death and injury to southern California residents than all other kinds of slope failure combined.” Excessive precipitation events were the big-danger zone.

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Nearly 50 years later, Campbell’s rule has largely held up, according to California State Geologist Jeremy Lancaster. He referenced it as he watched the atmospheric river storms travel downstate and plant themselves over the hilly and cavernous neighborhoods of the Santa Monica mountains starting that first weekend in February, dropping 14 inches in some places. “We went over 10 inches, and bam, we started seeing a lot of landslides,” he said. Lancaster’s team, which maintains a map of reported landslides, documented 252 slides state-wide after the storm. “But we’re not first responders, so we don’t have boots on the ground,” he noted, and he wasn’t shocked when L.A. Mayor Karen Bass announced that the Department of Public Works counted 592 mudslides in the city limits alone. And the rainy season is not nearly over.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20022024/california-mudslide-city/

[Old Crank]

1. Just a mess

Now people at the top are sending their water down to lower levels. It is going to take billions to protect properties. There are a lot of places in NorCal with similar issues but they aren't as built up.