Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster

At Los Angeles City Hall, where the annual precipitation is pegged at 15.3 inches, that mark has been hit only a few times in the 127-year history of measured rainfall. Indeed, only 17 percent of years approach within 25 percent of the historical average. The actual norm turns out to be seven- to twelve-year swings between dry and wet spells. The g

The Southern California landscape epitomizes the principle of nonlinearity where small changes in driving variables or inputs—magnified by feedback—can produce disproportionate, or even discontinuous, outcomes.

English terminology, specific to a humid climate, proved incapable of accurately capturing the dialectic of water and drought that shapes Mediterranean environments. By no stretch of the imagination, for example, is an arroyo merely a “glen” or “hollow”—they are the results of radically different hydrological processes.*

THE DIALECTIC OF ORDINARY DISASTER Once or twice each decade, Hawaii sends Los Angeles a big, wet kiss. Sweeping far south of its usual path,

megalopolis endured three of the ten most costly national disasters since the Civil War.

“No place on Earth offers greater security to life and greater freedom from natural disasters than Southern California.” Los Angeles Times, 1934