It’s really not every day that two notices of catastrophic and life-threatening natural events appear on the cell phone at the same time as the residents of Los Angeles did on Sunday afternoon: Earthquake measuring 5.1 in Ojai, about 150 northwest of downtown LA Plus several smaller vibrators, which are always here as a harbinger the one be interpreted, according to experts long overdue mega-quake. As a second clue was described by a member of the Ojai Fire Department: “We’re preparing for the first tropical cyclone in 84 years, and then the earth is actually starting to shake.”
Hurricane was approaching from the southeast Hilary. It cut a path of devastation through Baja California, the Mexican peninsula in the Pacific Ocean, on Friday and made landfall in California on Sunday afternoon – no longer the category four hurricane it was on Friday, but a tropical cyclone nonetheless. And that’s exactly what the residents were afraid of at least as much as they were of winds with more than 150 km/h. Due to drought, forest fires and also minor earthquakes, the soil in California is brittle in many places, the worst that can happen then: heavy rain like in Montecito at the beginning of 2018. Because of the landslides, 23 people died and 163 were injured. Property damage was more than $200 million.
A huge eucalyptus tree landed on two cars – the owners in the house next to it were not injured.
(Photo: Dean Musgrove/AP)
Flooded streets after Tropical Storm Hilary in Los Angeles.
(Photo: Mario Anzuoni /Reuters)
So Californians braced themselves for, according to the social media hashtag, “Hurriquake,” and early images confirmed fears. The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball club’s stadium on a hill in downtown looked like an island in a post-apocalyptic movie. The otherwise dry canal of the Los Angeles River, known from the chase in “Terminator 2”, was completely filled, cars were washed away. In some places there was no water or electricity for several hours, more than 500 trees had fallen in Los Angeles alone, the fire department spoke of more than 20 landslides in the LA area Also in other areas such as San Diego, the Coachella Valley with the towns of Palm Springs and Indian Wells and even in the Nevada desert and thus Las Vegas, there were severe floods.
The National Weather Service reported Monday that the hurricane “not just broke, it pulverized, pretty much every rain record.” The Hollywood Reservoir in the Hollywood Hills, for example, usually gets about 30 centimeters of rain per square meter throughout the year, it usually never rains there in August; within 48 hours there was now about 13 centimeters of rain because of the hurricane. In Palm Springs, the record for rain in a day was 5.15 centimeters, measured on August 1, 1930; on Sunday it was more than eight centimeters. Death Valley National Park, known for its heat and drought, recently measuring 54 degrees Celsius in the shade, was closed until Tuesday morning due to the risk of landslides due to rain.
Good news: Apparently no one died
On Monday afternoon there was at least a partial all-clear: Yes, it had rained heavily, the damage is likely to be in the high double-digit million range – but the “Hurriquake” was not as bad as feared. “People took it seriously and prepared accordingly,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. “It could have been worse, but as of now we have no fatalities.”
The Californians are known for being quite relaxed about the fact that this paradise on the Pacific is constantly threatened by natural disasters of all kinds. That’s why the reaction of the residents to the fact that everything turned out more lightly than feared is typically Californian. They make LA jokes about it, like, “You might be a category four in your hometown, but when you get to LA it’s a one at most.” Or: “Hilary is typical LA: announces his arrival big, promises that it will be violent – but then cancels at the last moment.”