In Los Angeles there is a growing feeling that “historic” time is becoming normal

LOS ANGELES – Californians have long joked that their state has three seasons: fires, earthquakes and floods.

But when to atmospheric river parked above Los Angeles this week, cutting power and draining record rainfalla serious showdown took place.

“The weather seems more extreme on every level,” Fred Rosen, a retired entertainment executive, said Monday, crouching in the lobby of the nearby Hotel Bel-Air as mudslides threatened his neighborhood.

“But where are you going?”

The relentless weather system has been hitting Southern California from Santa Barbara to San Bernardino since Sunday, and authorities have so far reported some 475 runs of the Earth only in Los Angeles.

Rescuers pulled dozens of people from the raging waters and homeless people filled shelters.

It always rains during the winter in Los Angeles, no matter what song says otherwise.

But a succession of extreme weather events — a wave of storms a year ago, Tropical Storm Hilary in August and now this marathon of atmospheric rivers — has led Los Angeles residents to think that these events “historical” perhaps they won’t be so much so in the era of climate change.

In the Baldwin Hills neighborhood, mud spilled onto a road, trapping several cars and blocking traffic after they overtook a barrier a resident had installed in a vain attempt to repel nature.

Nearby there was a mountain of earth Through the wall of a bedroom, a disturbing scene that Mayor Karen Bass herself examined.

Last winter, a similar landslide occurred during a storm, Loratious Presley said as she surveyed the neighborhood’s damage under a red umbrella.

This left him with a valuable lesson:

Park in a new place.

His car was saved, but others weren’t so lucky.

“There has been nothing like this in the last two years,” Presley said.

West Los Angeles Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky agrees.

In some parts of his district, the rain on Sunday and Monday was on par with a normal year.

“People say this is the new normal, but, like the rest of the world, it has changed here,” said Yaroslavsky, whose district covers about 260,000 Los Angeles residents.

“I don’t even know what to call it. The new ‘new normal’? What does ‘normal’ mean anymore?”

Another catastrophe

Inside the Beverly Glen Deli, nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains, Paul Mudra, 58, called the storm “a little worrying,” but nothing terrible for someone used to living under the threat of fires and earthquakes .

“In a way, the rains are another natural disaster that we have to deal with,” added her husband, Thilo Huebner, 50.

Laurence Homolka, 79, a retired violin teacher who has lived for 20 years in the landslide-prone Pacific Palisades neighborhood, wondered over coffee at Starbucks whether the increased attention paid to climate change had meant that Californians had “a more catastrophic mentality.”

When he was 4, he said, it once rained for days and “no one thought anything about it.”

“Today we have a lot of terminology that we have developed.

“Let’s say it’s catastrophic, which, I think, sometimes it is,” he said.

“We are unable to agree with what is actually happening.”

Last week, Los Angeles officials and National Weather Service meteorologists warned residents in stern language to stay off the roads if possible and to evacuate when told to do so.

Los Angeles officials marveled at this Tuesday no one was dead yet in the city.

As the storm moved into Southern California on Sunday, the entertainment world was waiting for the film to be delivered Grandmother in downtown Los Angeles, no matter how dire Bass’ warnings to stay home were.

At the Crypto.com Arena, the only indication that time was an issue was when Miley Cyruswith his hair slightly disheveled, he said he almost missed the award for best pop solo performance because traffic was stuck in the rain.

However, much of Los Angeles became a mud bath.

In the San Fernando Valley, more than 100 homeless people were evacuated from a tiny housing community.

In Studio Cityon Lockridge Road, a road wedged at the base of a steep hill, residents caught in flip-flops wandered in the water on streets covered in wet dirt and boulders.

Household objects peeked out of the earth: bedding, pieces of plastic, lost shoes.

In many ways, the same storm had more brutal effects in Northern California, due to intense winds hundreds of trees felledkilled six people and cut power to more than 800,000 homes.

In Southern California, where three more deaths were confirmed Tuesday, the vast geography may exempt entire tracts from the worst of the extreme storm.

A moment considered dangerous and potentially deadly can be experienced differently depending on where we are.

On Monday morning, Cecily Kim Oh, 51, received urgent warnings to stay off the roads, but saw that they didn’t match the smooth route to her children’s school in North Hollywood promised on Google Maps.

There were no major traffic jams on Highway 101, nor any intersections reported as closed.

Oh has lived in Los Angeles for 15 years and doesn’t complain about the rain.

“Even though it’s cold, I’m still barefoot,” she said, laughing, taking her foot off the pedal of her Jeep as she waited outside Walter Reed Middle School.

More than 100 kilometers south, in a canyon in Orange County, a similar sensation was experienced at the Trabuco General Store, in an area under a voluntary evacuation notice.

Zac Schraff, a 28-year-old office worker who grew up in the area and went to school across the street, greeted customers.

The weather conditions had apparently gotten worse over the years, but he said he welcomed the storm.

“Rain can only be a good thing for us. We’re in a drought. I’m more afraid of fires,” Schraff said.

But think often about the terrible cycle in which rain feeds vegetation that could become fuel for future fires.

Outside the store, Eliceo Marchesa, 58, pointed to a meter-high water leak and scoffed:

“It’s nothing,” he said.

He recalled a storm ten years ago in which the water rose much higher.

Marquisa, a Trabuco Canyon resident for 15 years, said she had gotten used to the bad weather and had never thought about leaving.

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The rain made both rich and poor vulnerable to devastation.

Some of the hardest hit neighborhoods were in the rich, saturated Santa Monica Mountains and Hollywood Hills.

In Bel Air, an intensely private enclave in West Los Angeles whose residents include Lady Gaga and Ronald Reaganseveral people said the storm was a rude awakening.

Late Monday afternoon, multi-million dollar homesbraced by massive retaining walls and surrounded by safety hedges, it had been drenched by a staggering 11.68 inches of rain, according to the weather service.

At the Bel-Air Hotel, the Swan Lake grotto, a well-known wedding location, was one brown water river.

“It was an absolute disaster,” said Mahin White, 78, who has lived in Bel Air for 43 years and said he was living in the hotel while his home was being renovated.

“There were no swans in it, thank God.”

Kyle Armantrout, 51, said when the ground outside his five-bedroom home started rumbling Sunday, he thought it was an earthquake.

Then he checked the security cameras, he said, and realized that the hillside in front of him had collapsed. on your backyard and that of his neighbor.

Debris had further damaged his neighbor’s house, shattering a fence and breaking his garage door, Armantrout said.

But there is something inexorable about the event that has left him disconcerted.

“We had almost a foot of rain in 24 hours,” he said.

“You’d think it would be torrential, but it’s been so constant. Constant. That’s the part that makes you think, ‘What if it doesn’t stop?'”

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