So Cal Real Estate News

(Saturday afternoon, 11/15/08) Being a second-generation native Californian, I tend to take our local disasters in stride.  Local’s joke that we really do have seasons out here in So Cal, they’re just not the traditional winter, spring, summer, & fall outsiders are used to.  Our seasons are more like flood & mudslide season, riot season, fire season, and earthquake season.  (I left off “drought,” but that’s more like a year-round thing every few years).

Trouble is, in the last few years fire season keeps getting longer.

I just flew back from a wet,  chilly, but fall-foliage beautiful two days in Nashville on Thursday night.  During the last half of my non-stop Southwest flight home the “Tea Fire” in Montecito ignited, spread, and burned several dorms and other buildings in my wife’s Alma Mater, Westmont College.  I teased my son-in-law that he needed to keep I couldn’t leave the state for two days without Barb’s college burning down.  Fortunately, injuries and loss of life was minimal, but hundreds of gorgeous acres and scores of expensive mansions were lost, along with the Tea Garden well known among Westmont students.

Fortunately, the winds died down on Friday, but when I got up this morning and saw the Santa Ana winds gusting through our Los Alamitos neighborhood, I knew the fires would be back today.  Before we even turned the TV on for the non-stop coverage I told Barb to expect at least 4 new fires and 500 homes destroyed.   Sadly, it appears that I may have underestimated.

Most of our natural disasters aren’t really that widespread in their devastation.  This week’s fires, for example, will probably devastate less than a hundredth of 1% the homes in Southern California.  That’s still hundreds of homes and millions of dollars, but most of us aren’t severely impacted.

The smoke and pollution will be felt by millions, lots of patios and cars will need to be washed off sometime early next week, but life essentially goes on.

Fire season is brought on by the infamous “Santana” winds, often mistakenly called “Santa Anas.”  The word is probably a contraction of vientos de Satan, Spanish for “winds of Satan.”   These are hot, dry offshore winds that descend from the Great Basin through the Mojave desert down into Southern California, primarily in spring and summer.  While the threat of fire is generally greater in the fall, with recent dry winters fire season has extended to include spring and, now, late fall as well.

Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.

—Joan Didion, “Los Angeles Notebook”

Ultimately, additional restrictions will be imposed on construction and additional clearance and greenbelt requirements imposed in fire prone areas.  Our wildfire challenges are actually easier to manage and less widespread than California’s earthquake risks.

To most Californians, our natural disasters are less ominous than those in so many other regions of the nation or the world.  Most of us regard them as one trade off for 360 days of temperate sunshine a year and the many other benefits of living in a dynamic, diverse land of opportunity.

While our thoughts and prayers and help will be going out to our neighbors in these days of loss, while it’s annoying to curtain outdoor activity and deal with the smoke and ash, most Californians still consider this our Golden land of opportunity, and really wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

(photos from L.A. Times’ Gallery

Living in Earthquake Country

(July 29, 2008)  I experienced my first Southern California earthquake as an infant almost two years of age.  It happened at night, and my parents rushed in to check on me.  I guess we California natives just come wired for these things:  I’m told I was perfectly calm, lying in my crib singing “Rock-a-Bye Baby!”

I’ve experienced dozens of earthquakes here in the Los Angeles basin since then.  To me, they’re kind of fun, as long as nobody gets seriously hurt.

While quite a few of those earthquakes provided a real “E-ticket” ride, only a few of them were very significant.

Perhaps most memorable for me was the 1971 San Fernando Valley quake which I rode out on the top floor of UCLA’s Rieber Hall dorm one morning.  As we swayed back and forth seven stories above the gound I quickly figured out that a bookcase over a dorm bed isn’t a real good idea in earthquake country.

We were living in Lakewood when the Norwalk quake struck nearby.  It wasn’t a big one, but it was close enough to knock a lot of things off of shelves and damage a few chimneys and walls.  It struck in the morning as I was about to go out the door for a jog.  I stood in the middle of our kitchen, pushing cabinet doors shut and trying to keep things from raining onto the floor.  Our elementary-school aged daughter did what she had been taught and stood under a doorway, and then called upon me to do likewise.

That Norwalk quake went on for a fairly long time and knocked out the power, but never got real violent.  Still, it panicked one of our friends, who ran out into the middle of her street half-naked.

Earthquake Preparedness:  No time like the present!

Ironically, I had just printed up about 500 “What to do in an Earthquake” flyers to pass out in my “farm.”  (A “listing farm” is a specific neighborhood a Realtor, known as a “farmer,” cultivates with regular flyers, gifts, and notepads.)

So, as soon as I figured out how to get into the vault-type garage when the electricity to the opener’s off, I went on my jog and passed out the flyers as I went.  Back then it took about a week to get a good flyer printed up, so folks wondered where I got the inside tip about the quake.  The response was so good that for a while I just kept an earthquake flyer ready to pass out after the next one.

Maybe “Mother Nature” provides us these modest tremblors to spur us to do the needed preparation should that legendary “Big One” ever hit close to home.  In any case, now’s a good time to check your earthquake preparedness.  Some steps are real easy, and they might not be the ones you’re thinking of, either:

• Do you have comfortable shoes, a blanket, flashlight, some first aid supplies, and an extra half gallon of two of water in the trunk of each car?  (Some granola bars aren’t a bad idea, but lack of water’s a much bigger threat for most of us than lack of food in an emergency.)
• Got a working flashlight and sturdy slippers by every bed in your house?
• Is anyone in your home sleeping next to a bookcase, heavy wall hanging, etc.?
• Does everyone know how and when to shut off the gas and is a shut-off tool or large wrench wired to your gas meter?
• Is your water heater strapping up to current standards?

Additonal Online Information:

California Dept. of Conservation on “What to Do Before, During, and After an Earthquake,” with additional links.

L.A. Fire Dept. Emergency Preparedness Guide

Los Angeles Building Dept. has an pdf file on steps to strengthen your home structurally .

Please feel free to suggest helpful links you might have found by adding your own comment at the end of this post.

How Big a Risk?

I much prefer living with earthquakes than the floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes that plague other regions of the country.  Not to mention the humidity or the cold.  A little preparation goes a long ways to minimizing the risks.

But if you’re going to worry (which is never a good idea), chloresterol, fat, and bad drivers are far bigger risks than earthquakes.  Actually, worry’s a greater threat than an earthquake!

So shake it off and get on with your life!  Right now it’s about 2 p.m. and a blamy 77 degrees with a pleasant breeze, and the Angels have beaten the Red Sox six games in a row.  Why on earth would I ever want to live any place else?