Any time it rains in Los Angeles, even if it’s a couple of drops, the local TV channels go nuts. STORM WATCH ’17. After all, this town is not built for clouds, much less rain. When buying a car, windshield wipers are an option like racing stripes.
But local channels scramble to report the showers with
team coverage. Field reporters are dispatched to outlying intersections where there are large puddles. We’re told to stay inside until May. And that’s fine until…
We REALLY have a storm.
Like we experienced last Friday. Holy shit! A five-year drought ended in five hours. This was an Irwin Allen disaster movie. The rain was torrential, the winds were howling. And the field reporters were getting drenched.
Poor Eric Spillman of Channel 5 has been doing these reports for fifteen years. He must say “
this is Eric Spillman Channel 5 News” every time he steps into a shower.
The other stations just send out their Barbie doll reporters. So poor Heather and Amber and Ambyr have big make-up crises. But those are the kinds of sacrifices you must make to be considered a serious journalist.
The big problem in Southern California is we have terrible drainage, especially in the suburbs. Housing tracts sprung up like weeds in the early ‘50s and proper drainage was not taken into consideration. Geologists rarely were consulted so many canyon homes were built on topsoil. My aunt’s home slid into their swimming pool during the downpour of ’62.
Beachfront homes offered little protection against high tides and angry oceans so to this day you see major celebrities filling sandbags to buttress their glass palaces against the raging sea and storm.
And then there are the mudslides – that effectively cuts off travel along the Pacific Coast Highway and the canyons. Poor Barbra Streisand can’t go anywhere!
Trees always seem to get uprooted. And this hits close to home. Behold our next door neighbor’s tree a few years ago. Yes… YIKES.
Power is out for much of the city because it seems the entire metropolis gets its electricity from one power line. So if a tree takes it down we’re blacked out from the future Mexican wall to Santa Barbara.
And everyone’s house leaks. Roofers will be busy for the next three years.
Then there are those pesky sinkholes. Two cars fell into this one Friday night.
We came through the storm fine. Thank you to those who expressed concern. The next time there’s rain (probably later this week) unless cars are floating by my TV screen I don’t want to see the graphic STORM WATCH ’17. And let Eric Spillman cover something that's indoors, willya?