Temperamental Fit

Exhibitionism, rampant in many of the denizens of Southern California, sometimes seems to be part of the very air and soil. The warm earth that produces the biggest trees, the most abundant fruits in the U. S., can also shake as it did in 1933. The mild and sunny climate is, like a serenely lovely movie star, also capable of temperamental fits. Any disturbances are naturally more horrifying in what seems in times of calm to be a terrestrial paradise, but last week the capital of Southern California had a climactic climatic experience that would have been shocking even in the Mississippi basin.

Amazing in a city whose annual rain fall is 15.2 in., a steady, soaking rain fell in Southern California, recording eleven inches in five days. As unprepared for such an event as Los Angeles' citizens, Los Angeles' terrain failed to absorb the water. From the San Bernardino hills behind the city, the mountains behind the hills, it sluiced down across the narrow coastal plain on which the city and its scattered suburbs sprawl over 482 square miles. Three days of storm filled the shallow arroyos which are dry most of the year; four sent the water pouring over streets and into houses, crashed bridges, washed out hillsides. The rain continued. When it finally stopped after five appalling days, Los Angeles had had the worst flood in its history, the most drastic outbreak of geographical temperament since the earthquake. Total property damage covering 30,000 square miles was guessed at $50,000,000 compared to the earthquake's $45,000,000. Twenty thousand people were homeless. And in its sudden rage the flood had taken probably 200 lives--ten in the collapse of a pedestrian bridge across the Los Angeles River.

Centre of the damage was the Santa Ana River, a gravel-filled gulley which usually dribbles placidly through the Santa Ana Mountains, 35 miles southeast of the city, across 20 miles of farming country to the sea just south of Long Beach. Last week the Santa Ana burst a dam at Fairmont Lake, roared five feet deep through the streets of Riverside. On the flatland it became a muddy torrent whose waters spread out ten miles wide, turning orchards, farms and villages into a churning sea in which 15 people drowned.

In Los Angeles County 30 people died and the city went through a two-day nightmare, in which rail, telephone and mail service broke down almost completely. For one afternoon the city's means of communication with the outside world was by radio, which was swamped with more messages than it could handle. At Pasadena the Rose Bowl was threatened when a torrential overflow from Devil's Gate Dam was turned aside with sandbags. Sixty miles north of the city a sudden landslide crashed on and nearly buried a bus whose 26 passengers amazingly escaped injury. At Glendale, floodwaters and mud wrecked a $1,000,000 Government flood control project. Meanwhile, the Red Cross took charge of relief work. At the flood's height 10,000 refugees were being fed & sheltered in or near the city. Focus of operations was the San Bernardino Auditorium which served as an improvised shelter for 1,000.

In Hollywood all studios except Twentieth Century-Fox stopped work to fight the water. Victor McLaglen suffered a $20,000 loss when his sports stadium was virtually swept away by floodwaters. In her basement Lucille Ball found her wire-haired terrier swimming in four feet of water. Marooned at his Chatsworth Ranch, Robert Taylor had to ride a horse two miles to reach a highway. Shirley Temple and her mother spent the night at her studio. Milton Berle's car stalled in three feet of water over a manhole. Before the car could be started the manhole cover blew out and wrecked it.

Los Angeles' reaction to its flood last week was naturally somewhat like that of a cinema producer whose top-price star creates public scandal: a desire to minimize it as far as possible. Fifth day of the storm an emergency hookup was arranged so that Mayor Frank L. Shaw could send a message by short wave to San Francisco where it was rebroadcast to the alarmed nation over the Columbia network. Said Mayor Shaw: "We have not suffered a major disaster in any sense of the word . . . regret . . . unfounded reports to the contrary. . . . The sun is shining over Southern California today and . . . Los Angeles is still smiling. . . ."

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