The Global Rivers Project

California Burning

Fires are burning all over Southern California.

People are watching local television as fire after fire breaks out from San Diego to north of Los Angeles.

Friends watched the television coverage of their weekend property burn near Lake Arrowhead. 

Beryl is driving north from La Jolla where he was issued a mask to drive up Interstate 5 past the fire threatening Salono beach. He must also pass through Irvine that also has a major fire.

I will pass these burned areas when I drive to the AVID Summit this weekend. 

Firefighters are battling the wind whipped flames as homeowners use garden hoses to protect their property.

Planes scoop water from Lake Arrowhead to drop on burning hillsides.  Malibu is scooping reclaimed water from a reservoir on the Pepperdine University Campus.  The winds make scooping from the ocean treacherous.

The LA River: what not to do with your river

Oct 19

Arroyo Seco

Yari and I started our exploration of the Los Angeles River with a visit to the San Gabriel Mission.  The Mission founded in 1771 was one of the most prosperous of the series of missions founded by the Spanish invaders along the California coast.

Missions, presidios (military) and pueblos (towns) were founded with a keen sense of the availability of water by people who came from the water challenged Iberian Peninsula.

For thousands of years the Tongva people lived along what is now the Los Angeles River which they called (according to their dialect) the Pahite, the Otcho’o or the Wenoot. (Linton, 5).

The Spanish arrived August 1, 1769.

Los Angeles is Burning

Today the Santa Ana winds are blowing, the air is starting to smell of the smoke from fires whipped by the winds.

Los Angeles is like a centipede living in a garden, life can seem gentle and easy, but we are always waiting for the next shoe to drop. 

Earthquakes; fires; hot, dusty, dirty winds and floods... well there used to be floods when we had a river running through Los Angeles, but now it is a concrete lined flood control channel...

Perhaps the city fathers were overwhelmed by the challenges, and the river was something that could be "controlled"...