Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson       Red Bluff Daily News 2/18/2024

        The great floods, fires and recovery

Consider the floods of the geologically distant past, echoing to this day in maps of the “500-year flood zone,” known to real estate agents and few others. Most owners, sellers and buyers of homes and property see flood zone disclosures, mostly the “100-year flood zone” types, showing high-water areas in heavy rain year events.

What no one alive has seen is a so-called “500-year” flood, derived from the calculation of a 1 in 500 possibility in any given year, as I recall from my real estate days. I believe the Army Corps of Engineers created the maps which, currently, show how long the areas along the Sacramento River would have to seek higher ground if the Shasta Dam were to fail (8 to 10 hours, I think); such maps exist for every dam.

The fertile soils from the Bend district between Jellys Ferry Road and the Sacramento River, to the Antelope area, to the vast agriculturally productive parts south to Corning and beyond—all have such “500-year” flood events to thank for the rich ground, delivered from the mountainous areas north, east and west of here.

Hence, Red Bluff was built on the “bluff” overlooking Antelope, filled now with subdivisions, small acreage homes and larger orchards. Such floods extended to the Sacramento city area, the settlement of which probably drew chagrin by Native tribes who occasionally saw waters extend from the Sierra foothills to the coastal mountains. European settlers eventually turned flooded ground-level structures into basements, building new construction on top.

Allow your imagination and knowledge of local topography to paint this scenario: The Bend district under so much water that it pushes up against the banks across the river, which are overflowed. Water rushes down the natural channel, flooding the Adobe Road area, where it rejoins the rest of the river that carved through the China Rapids, expanding as it flows below the “red bluffs” of our town.

From our perch safely above the deluge, we would see that flood spread eastward to the foothills just above where our house sits on Saint Marys Avenue, held in check only by the rocky banks where Highway 36 climbs out of the valley. Deep waters slowly move over the Dairyville area south to Los Molinos and beyond, from the banks east of Vina, to the Rancho Tehama and Paskenta foothills.

The rich soil scoured off the mountains to the north was repeatedly deposited upon farming land of the Sacramento Valley. Such is the blessing of the genius that conceived, designed and built Shasta Dam, as we would occasionally be subjected to this day to such floods.

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More take-aways from the fires and recovery in Southern California: Adam Carolla (searchable by name) said, on January 8 (from a hotel as his house burned): “You guys all voted for Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles [and] Gavin Newsom, and now you get what you get [with] your houses on fire.

“All these people who are deep blue Democrats are now going to have to pull a permit to rebuild, and they’re going to get the 28-year-old from the Coastal Commission...(and) when they start getting the regulation, the bureaucracy and the red tape, they’re going to go nuts and vote differently next time.”

Gov. Newsom, on CNN: “You can’t rebuild the same. We have to rebuild with science. We have to build with climate reality in mind.” So, a burned-out Pacific Palisades or Altadena resident who just wants to recreate their beloved home the way it was before, must wait because of “science” or “climate reality”? Newsom: “...infrastructure or redundancy systems. Ingress, egress...emergency management and planning materials.” Sounds like bureaucratic gibberish.

Current environmentalism, aka “climate change (reality?)” is Marxist/socialist at its core. Marx and Engels called it “scientific socialism,” and to this day the enviro-left proclaims “science” to be their bulwark.

“Whatever happened to Newsom's promise that he'd eliminate red tape and accelerate the rebuilding of one of L.A.'s nicest and most historic neighborhoods? What Newsom says needs to be done, before lots can be cleared and construction begins, looks to me like a huge, centralized process involving an awful lot of well-connected and high-priced ‘experts’ impaneled to redesign Pacific Palisades according to ‘scientific’ principles involving all the techno-babble Newsom went on about in that CNN sit-down.

“Instead of, you know, letting people build the homes they want in the kind of city they like.” (“‘Scientific Socialism’ Has Come to Pacific Palisades,” Stephen Green, pjmedia.com, February 10).

“The City of Los Angeles requires its workers — including in the Los Angeles Fire Department—to complete annual “Workplace Harassment and Abusive Conduct” training, according to a whistleblower...which orders employees to use ‘preferred pronouns,’ treats ‘gender identity’ as a protected class, and enables men who think they are women to use the women’s restroom.” (“L.A. Puts Pronouns Ahead of Fire Recovery,” pjmedia.com)