Flooding of the Concrete Jungle

     The city of Los Angeles is well known for its city streets, skyscrapers, and freeways. This concrete jungle is home to nearly 4 million residents. Although there is a large portion that may be homeless, there is larger portion of residents that really on public transportation. Whether it's to school, work, or visiting friends and family, transportation is a large part of our daily lives. Los Angeles is located west of a desert, so, in relation, the weather here is typical warm or hot. Rain is a luxury the residents to get to enjoy often, however, in recent years L.A has to a barrage of storms. This has led to several flooding within the city and resulted in streets and entire freeways being closed off. 

Car stuck in water on the southbound 110 freeway

    A newspaper article from 2017 states " Since October 1, downtown L.A. has received more than 13 inches of rain -- 216% of normal rainfall for this period, which the National Weather Service said was 6.26 inches."(Hamilton LATimes)  The result is a mild inconvenience but these conditions prove to be hazardous and even deadly. The 110 Parkway Drive is one of the most notorious freeways for accidents because of its sharp turns at high velocities and its on ramps off ramps give drivers very limited times to slow down or speed up.

How has this affected me personally?

This problem has affected me personally because it's a route a take daily to work and school. There has been a hand full of time where I have almost crashed due to my tires hydroplaning on large puddles across the freeway. There have also been some stories my family members told me about being submerged in water, almost getting rear ended because the car didn't have time to break. ADC7 reported "A spring storm system dumped heavy rain across Southern California Saturday and left several people in dangerous situations, including a dramatic water rescue and a frightening crash."(Powell ADB7) The thought of knowing one of my family members possibly being involved in an accident due to the flooding infrastructure.  

Graph of rainfall from www.laalmanac.com

 

    I have asked some residents about the situation and their opinions on the matter. Faith Smith says, "I believe rain isn't necessarily the issue but the fact that the Los Angeles infrastructure hasn't adapted to the climate. It's a scary situation for me, especially when I drive down the street in the rain because of the lack of visibility. I cant even see the traffic lines!" The second person I questioned was my brother, Nathan Ruelas who is currently working on obtaining his license. He claims "Yeah its really hard for me to imagine driving in the rain. Ive seen a bunch of videos TikTok about people getting into accidents. I don't know how you do it."

    The flood of our infrastructure is a crucial issue. As the Earth's climate continues to change our communities will be unprepared for the large quantities of rainfall and could result in far more damages in the near future. The last thing I would want to hear is a close friend, family member or I become of victim of an issue that the city could've taken step to prevent.

Faith Smith

Nathan Ruelas

Resouces

Heavy rain causes dangerous road conditions across SoCal. ABC7 Los Angeles. (2024, March 31).                    https://abc7.com/heavy-rain-causes-dangerous-road-conditions-across-socal-crashes-and-                       water-rescues- reported/14595797/

Los Angeles Times. (2017, January 23). Widespread flooding, mudslides, evacuations as biggest storm in years batters California. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-new-storm-california-floods-muslides-snow-20170121-story.html

Season rainfall (precipitation) 2023-2024. Current Season Rainfall Totals for Downtown Los Angeles, California. (n.d.). https://laalmanac.com/weather/we13a.php