I was actually driving E/B on Sunset, immediately adjacent to the west side of ground-zero, when the rupture broke.
Traffic had slowed to a crawl in a strange spot for that time of the day. I began to notice a massive, rapidly-growing puddle on the north side of the road - first thought in my mind was that DWP must be trying to flush something out - but definitely the wrong time for that, and - hey - the cars ahead of me are starting to turn every which way. Doesn't look like a coned-pattern to me.
And then I see a wall of water advance towards me. I was stuck in a spot where I could still turn south onto campus at Westwood - so I went for it, taking the Sunset parallel (Circle Drive, Young Drive?) E/B.
Remember those scenes in Sharknado (ok - I've got a teenage son) where the water breaks over the soundwalls on the 405... that's what it looked like - water coming over the hedges, flooding the roadway up to the running boards of my truck. I began to worry that I might actually be washed towards the little elementary school. Dumb - for all the times I've done the right thing with urban flooding and flash floods in the desert, none of that kicked in under a clear-blue sky in Westwood. Current doesn't seem to be tooo bad, I think I'll make it (yeah, yeah, I know - not what I ought to be thinking).
Oh look at that - a wall of water shooting up vertically from different points along a ribbon to the left behind the hedges, not a monolithic column like you'd get from a hydrant. Reminds me of Peterhoff. Gravity fed? Oh crud, it must be a supply pipe from Stone Canyon (remembering the Ventura Blvd flood back in the 90's).
...
Of all the days not to have an HT with me. Well, no matter. It was pretty clear that there were no contingency plans for an event like this. You plan for earthquakes, storms and fires - no one thinks about that 35" supply line, gravity fed from a reservoir in the hills and the fact that a whole lot of your real-estate is below a section of that line that has been subjected to a very large amount of abuse over a long period of time. Hmmm --- that tunnel-ish dip south of me on Westwood really doesn't look so smart now, and hey - ever notice the complete lack of run-off control for water coming off the hill? Probably a good thing they didn't have to wait for a big quake to put this all on the table.
It actually took quite a while to get the first official alerts through the campus system. It was probably about 4:30 when the first emails and texts started to go out. I think the lesson here is that, if resources are stretched thin, it might be a while before anyone has the presence of mind to put out a general notification, and by that time, it's probably not going to be very useful. (Probably a good thing, in this case... I shudder to think what it might have looked like if hundreds of staff members tried to rush the parking structures when the water was still reaching its peak.)
...Texted my son to tell him UCLA had flooded and I might be a bit late returning... "What?!? It's completely clear here!" 8*)
On 7/29/2014 4:17 PM, Kate Hutton katehutton@gmail.com [californiadisasters] wrote:
The news is covering a HUGE water main break in Sunset Blvd, which is flooding parts of UCLA ...
Kate
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