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| Wednesday, 19 January 2005 |
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Despite new disaster, California dreamers will be back by Marc Lavine, LOS ANGELES, (AFP) Jimmie Wallet went out to get ice cream and returned home to find his wife and three daughters dead under a mudslide. His California dream turned into a nightmare. While millions pine for the idyllic California lifestyle depicted by Hollywood, residents here brave a gauntlet of apocalyptic disasters. The mudslide in La Conchita, north of Los Angeles, killed 10 people, including Wallet's family, and about 20 people have lost their lives in severe rain and snow storms over the past week. Last year wildfires killed at least 22 people and destroyed 3,000 homes, droughts have become regular occurrences and the fear of an earthquake or a tsunami constantly haunts the population, along with pestilence and riots. The western US state is known for celebrity, glamour, innovation and prosperity. But Wallet can testify that the Golden State is far from being the magical land of comfort it plays on screen. Its residents are battle-hardened veterans of virtually every natural disaster known to man, yet are unshakeable in their determination to succeed under the California sun and to defy Mother Nature. "In the last few days we have seen the power of nature to cause damage and despair," Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told residents of La Conchita on Wednesday. "We will match that power with our own resolve. The people that live here in this community are very strong. It's something I noticed right away. One of the first things they said is, 'You know we'll be back.' I would say that I'm going to help them so they can come back here." "It's true that we have been hit by quite a few disasters," said California government worker Patti Roberts. "But Californians have a reputation of being eternally optimistic, and that's a reputation we earn. People come out west to start new lives, and you need courage and optimism to do that. "This state is the beckoning of new ideas and new lives, so when a disaster hits, we just pick up and start anew. We've done it before and we'll do it again," she said after a spate of major wildfires in 2003. Every time a fire or mudslide causes devastation, Californians rally round, donating cash, food, furniture, food, shelter and advice to help neighbours rebuild their shattered lives. In many ways, California is an unlikely location for the most populous US state and the second biggest city in North America, Los Angeles. It is criss-crossed by earthquake fault lines, traversed by mountains and hillsides that frequently collapse, receives very little rain and survives on water borrowed from neighbouring Colorado. Californians routinely stock water, food rations, flashlights and batteries as they wait for the next earthquake, perhaps even the "Big One." But they seldom dwell on the danger. An earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale has occurred roughly once every 22 years since 1857 and another devastating impact could come at any time. More than 3,000 died in 1906 when an 8.2 magnitude quake hit San Francisco. A 7.1 quake killed 63 in the same area in 1989. Another in Los Angeles killed 57 in 1994 and caused more than 40 billion dollars in damage. Wildfires that spread through the region's many canyons and valleys have caused billions of dollars of damage over the years and claimed hundreds of lives. In 1964, a tidal wave generated by an earthquake in Alaska hit the California town of Crescent City, killing 12 people. Despite the inevitability of disaster, Californians revel in living in homes that teeter atop stilts on hillsides along the notorious San Andreas fault that bisects the state. They insist on building on foothills covered with tinder-dry brush and scrub that can be ignited by the merest spark - or as in Wallet's case, sharing a home in the shadow of a mountain where the danger of collapse was known to the authorities. Officially, houses were not allowed in the part of La Conchita where Wallet's wife and daughters died. In true California fashion, however, Schwarzenegger promised that he would help the residents rebuild their devastated homes in the same place. |
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