#News Los Angeles

[tierras]

the mutual aid los angeles network (malan) has put together a spreadsheet with valuable resources for people affected by the ongoing los angeles wildfires and wind storm. the sheet is constantly being updated with resources such as shelter info, animal boarding info, addresses for distribution centers, volunteer opportunities and so much more.

please share this spreadsheet widely

[politijohn]

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Historic wildfires blaze through LA months after the Democratically-run city cut fire service funds.

News headlines rhetorically ask us to consider what happens when CA inmates - working as firefighters for roughly $6 per day - cannot contain unprecedented fires.

Billionaires drain the already water-starved state of its supply as hydrants dry up when needed most.

This system has to go.

[seccamsla]

3 Suspects Arrested in Retail Theft With Sledgehammers in Santa Monica

SANTA MONICA, Calif.—Two men and a woman were taken into custody for allegedly stealing more than $23,000 in merchandise during an organized retail theft in Southern California, police said April 12.

The robbery was reported around 4 a.m. March 23 at an Ulta beauty store in the 1200 block of Wilshire Boulevard, according to Santa Monica Police Department spokeswoman Lt. Erika Aklufi.

The suspects, six in total, were all wearing face masks and allegedly used sledgehammers to destroy several glass display cases that contained high-end perfumes, stealing more than $23,000 in merchandise before fleeing the area in two dark-colored vehicles.

“Based on evidence recovered during the warrant, detectives believe the individuals who burglarized the Santa Monica Ulta store are part of a larger organized retail theft crime ring that may have gang connections,” Ms. Aklufi said in a statement.

SMPD detectives, with the assistance of LAPD Organized Retail Crime Taskforce personnel, executed a search warrant Thursday in the 1200 block of 90th Place in Los Angeles and arrested and booked 24-year-old Jamari Caleed Mouton, 21-year-old Christine Eelayia Walker and 22-year-old Taveon Mekhai Ray on suspicion of burglary, police said.

The arrested individuals were then released from custody with citations as per the L.A. County bail schedule, Ms. Aklufi said.

[guldaastan]

[theonion]

[reasonsforhope]

As relentless rains pounded LA, the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000 households for a year.

Earlier this month, the future fell on Los Angeles. A long band of moisture in the sky, known as an atmospheric river, dumped 9 inches of rain on the city over three days—over half of what the city typically gets in a year. It’s the kind of extreme rainfall that’ll get ever more extreme as the planet warms.

The city’s water managers, though, were ready and waiting. Like other urban areas around the world, in recent years LA has been transforming into a “sponge city,” replacing impermeable surfaces, like concrete, with permeable ones, like dirt and plants. It has also built out “spreading grounds,” where water accumulates and soaks into the earth.

With traditional dams and all that newfangled spongy infrastructure, between February 4 and 7 the metropolis captured 8.6 billion gallons of stormwater, enough to provide water to 106,000 households for a year. For the rainy season in total, LA has accumulated 14.7 billion gallons.

Long reliant on snowmelt and river water piped in from afar, LA is on a quest to produce as much water as it can locally. “There's going to be a lot more rain and a lot less snow, which is going to alter the way we capture snowmelt and the aqueduct water,” says Art Castro, manager of watershed management at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “Dams and spreading grounds are the workhorses of local stormwater capture for either flood protection or water supply.”

Centuries of urban-planning dogma dictates using gutters, sewers, and other infrastructure to funnel rainwater out of a metropolis as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. Given the increasingly catastrophic urban flooding seen around the world, though, that clearly isn’t working anymore, so now planners are finding clever ways to capture stormwater, treating it as an asset instead of a liability. “The problem of urban hydrology is caused by a thousand small cuts,” says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley. “No one driveway or roof in and of itself causes massive alteration of the hydrologic cycle. But combine millions of them in one area and it does. Maybe we can solve that problem with a thousand Band-Aids.”

Or in this case, sponges. The trick to making a city more absorbent is to add more gardens and other green spaces that allow water to percolate into underlying aquifers—porous subterranean materials that can hold water—which a city can then draw from in times of need. Engineers are also greening up medians and roadside areas to soak up the water that’d normally rush off streets, into sewers, and eventually out to sea...

To exploit all that free water falling from the sky, the LADWP has carved out big patches of brown in the concrete jungle. Stormwater is piped into these spreading grounds and accumulates in dirt basins. That allows it to slowly soak into the underlying aquifer, which acts as a sort of natural underground tank that can hold 28 billion gallons of water.

During a storm, the city is also gathering water in dams, some of which it diverts into the spreading grounds. “After the storm comes by, and it's a bright sunny day, you’ll still see water being released into a channel and diverted into the spreading grounds,” says Castro. That way, water moves from a reservoir where it’s exposed to sunlight and evaporation, into an aquifer where it’s banked safely underground.

On a smaller scale, LADWP has been experimenting with turning parks into mini spreading grounds, diverting stormwater there to soak into subterranean cisterns or chambers. It’s also deploying green spaces along roadways, which have the additional benefit of mitigating flooding in a neighborhood: The less concrete and the more dirt and plants, the more the built environment can soak up stormwater like the actual environment naturally does.

As an added benefit, deploying more of these green spaces, along with urban gardens, improves the mental health of residents. Plants here also “sweat,” cooling the area and beating back the urban heat island effect—the tendency for concrete to absorb solar energy and slowly release it at night. By reducing summer temperatures, you improve the physical health of residents. “The more trees, the more shade, the less heat island effect,” says Castro. “Sometimes when it’s 90 degrees in the middle of summer, it could get up to 110 underneath a bus stop.”

LA’s far from alone in going spongy. Pittsburgh is also deploying more rain gardens, and where they absolutely must have a hard surface—sidewalks, parking lots, etc.—they’re using special concrete bricks that allow water to seep through. And a growing number of municipalities are scrutinizing properties and charging owners fees if they have excessive impermeable surfaces like pavement, thus incentivizing the switch to permeable surfaces like plots of native plants or urban gardens for producing more food locally.

So the old way of stormwater management isn’t just increasingly dangerous and ineffective as the planet warms and storms get more intense—it stands in the way of a more beautiful, less sweltering, more sustainable urban landscape. LA, of all places, is showing the world there’s a better way.

-via Wired, February 19, 2024

[thosemotivationalquotes]

List of cities in the U.S. that are suspected to have ICE raids in the next week

Chicago

Los Angeles

Denver

New York

Miami

Boston

Washington DC

San Antonio

Dallas

Phoenix

Seattle

Detroit

Newark

That being said, make sure to know and exercise your rights. This post outlines what is needed to detain someone, and what to do if you are detained by ICE.

Raids are suspected to continue in large metropolitan cities, with a focus on cities that are considered ‘sanctuary cities’, I will update the list if more places are suspected to be raided. Stay safe everyone

ACLU guide to immigrant rights

[reality-detective]

The explosion over downtown LA? 🤔

[tiktoks-repost]

snolonely on instagram

[mysharona1987]

[mahrahpalestine]

"One Year After the Al-Aqsa Flood: Revolution Until Victory"

@ibtisams @paper-mario-wiki @turian @butchniqabi @buttercuparry @anneemay

[politijohn]

Source

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Canada's emergency preparedness minister says Canadian military personnel, their equipment and another 250 firefighters stand "ready to support our American neighbours" as wildfires devastate parts of Southern California.  Harjit Sajjan says in a social media post that "Team Canada, with Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta, is ready to deploy 250 firefighters, aircraft equipment, and other resources as early as" Thursday night.  Sajjan's pledge comes as the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre said Thursday that the U.S. National Interagency Fire Centre asked for two of its CL-415 Skimmer Airtankers to join the fight against the fires. "The request is being actioned but the delivery timeline is currently unavailable," the agency said in an email to The Canadian Press. "We are also proactively working to identify potential resource availability, should more requests come in.

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[twixnmix]

New York Dolls photographed by Bob Gruen in Los Angeles, 1973.

[petersong3]

Baseball time...⚾️🍟

Tiempo de béisbol...⚾🍟

#MLB #ArizonaDiamondbacks #AtlantaBraves #BaltimoreOrioles #BostonRedSox #ChicagoCubs #ChicagoWhiteSox #CincinnatiReds #ClevelandGuardians #ColoradoRockies #DetroitTigers #HoustonAstros #KansasCityRoyals

#LosAngelesAngels #LosAngelesDodgers #MiamiMarlins #MilwaukeeBrewers #MinnesotaTwins #NewYorkMets #NewYorkYankees #OaklandAthletics

#PhiladelphiaPhillies #PittsburghPirates #SanDiegoPadres #SanFranciscoGiants #SeattleMariners #StLouisCardinals #TampaBayRays #TexasRangers TorontoBlueJays #WashingtonNationals