Teaming up for all breeds of disaster

People aren’t the only creatures who need help in a natural disaster—just ask the buffalo who was rescued from its backyard during the 2009 Station Fire. Or the zoo animals evacuated in 2007 when Griffith Park burned. Or any number of feline or canine survivors of the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

For years, when Los Angeles County has needed help rescuing animals in peril, local municipalities and nonprofit animal welfare societies have willingly pitched in. The system has had just one problem, says county Directorof Animal Care and Control Marcia Mayeda: It hasn’t been official.

Now that situation is about to change, thanks to a mutual assistance agreement that spells out the framework under which the county and animal welfare groups will cooperate.

“No one has ever had a problem,” says Mayeda, “but over time, we began to realize that signing a formal Memorandum of Understanding might be good.” Although local agencies always responded gladly, she says, disasters elsewhere made it clear that potential liability questions and lines of communication could be clarified and federal reimbursement could be streamlined if a formal agreement were put in place.

This week, to the relief of Southern Californians of many species, the Board of Supervisors set the process in motion, approving an MOU with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles.

Mayeda says the agreement, which lays out general lines of authority and resource sharing between the county and spcaLA, will help local officials respond to disasters more efficiently. Over time, she says, the department will ask other animal services agencies to sign on; the MOU can be expanded to include various humane societies and local animal control offices as co-signatories in times of need.

“There are about a dozen agencies like this that we’ve worked with in L.A.County,” she says. Cooperation is crucial, she says, because “a disaster or emergency knows no boundaries.”

“There aren’t a lot of us in the world who spend our time being concerned about the welfare of animals,” says Madeline Bernstein, executive director of spcaLA. “So we can get a lot more done when we help each other out in mutual aid.”

Bernstein says spcaLA has teamed up with the county informally on many occasions, manning shelters when county workers were out doing rescues, rounding up and dispersing food at pet evacuation centers, even joining forces with county investigators to help prosecute cases of animal cruelty.

During the Station Fire, she says, spcaLA helped the county feed and house countless animals who were rendered homeless by the conflagration near the Angeles National Forest.

“We had dogs, cats, birds, a very large pig, a llama they were trying to pull to safety,” she remembered. “A buffalo who was someone’s pet. We evacuated part of the Wildlife Way Station in conjunction with the county. In a disaster, there are all sorts of animals other than the ones you’d expect.”

Bernstein says Hurricane Katrina and other recent natural disasters spurred the move toward formalization.

“After Katrina, when we could see that people were choosing not to evacuate rather than to leave pets behind, it became clearer that a disaster plan should include animals,” she says.

“We have done exactly this forever,” says Bernstein. “This just puts forth a more organized face.”

Posted 9/21/11

Deadly passage for a mountain lion

He was little more than a teenager, strong and healthy, big for his age and not yet fully grown. What he was doing at night near the freeway is uncertain; those who knew him believe that like, most late adolescents, he was just looking for some turf that hadn’t already been claimed by others, just trying to strike out on his own.

 In any case, the 15-month-old mountain lion known to the National Park Service as P-18 (the “P” stood for “Puma”) somehow wandered onto the 405 Freeway just south of the Getty Center southbound onramp shortly after 4 a.m. Tuesday. His death was a hit-and-run.

 “He was found at 7:30 am when traffic started backing up and the CHP went in and found a dead lion with a GPS collar,” says a stricken Christie Brigham, chief of planning, science and resource management for the Santa Monica National Recreation Area. Born last May in the Santa Monica Mountains and part of a decade-long national study, the lion’s movements had been tracked since he was three weeks old.

A total of 21 mountain lions have been tracked since 2002 in the area, says Woody Smeck, park superintendent in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.  Of those, Smeck says, only one is known to have successfully crossed a freeway. A lion known as P-12 crossed Highway 101 in 2009 into the Santa Monica Mountains near Liberty Canyon. He survived to father the cub who died this week.

Southern California’s freeways may not invite their denizens to think much about nature, but wildlife crossings are a significant transportation issue in L.A.  Great swaths of natural habitat here are bisected by asphalt, which may impede the movement of coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, raccoons and other native species but doesn’t stop their instinct to travel in search of food and mates.

Wild animals require safe access to new territory so they don’t inbreed and endanger their species’ survival. Male mountain lions in particular tend to range widely, says Brigham, and previous tracking has shown them to range throughout the entirety of the Santa Monica Mountains, from Camarillo to the 405 Freeway.

P-18, she says, was one of four lions being tracked this summer; he had appeared to be slowly making his way east from his mother’s home range in Malibu Creek State Park. Radio telemetry signals from his collar placed him near the Getty Center around 4 a.m. just south of an onramp

“We suspect there was another, untagged, male lion using that part of the moutain, which meant it wasn’t an open territory for him as a young male,” says Brigham. “We think he was trying to disperse out of the Santa Monicas in search of open space when he was hit.”

Brigham says the area where P-18 died has been especially lethal to wildlife. “We found an un-collared, road-killed lion in the same area in 2008, “ she says.

Moreover, she says, P-18’s life might have been spared had he padded a mile or so further north to the Sepulveda Boulevard undercrossing. Motion-sensitive cameras, which have been set up there to track wildlife, have shown that, while it is not the ideal wildlife crossing—it was built for 4-wheeled vehicles, not 4-legged creatures—and rarely used by mountain lions, it is heavily used by other wildlife with relative safety.

Unbroken fencing might have funneled the lion to a safe passage, says Brigham. “But there was nothing to direct him to that area.”

Wildlife issues have been under discussion with Caltrans and other agencies as part of the 405 freeway widening project, says Brigham, but money has been tight and fencing proposals have run up against right-of-way and setback issues.

“There are rules about how far the fence has to be from the roadway,” she points out, “and not all of the land involved is Caltrans right-of-way.”

Plans for improved lighting and wildlife access are in the works in a few spots including the Skirball Center Drive bridge area and the Bel Air Crest Road undercrossing, “but the ultimate solution is to put in wildlife crossings that will be effective and funnel animals to the appropriate place.”

The 405 isn’t the only freeway with a wildlife problem; Highways 101 and 118 also bisect important habitat. Nor is the issue just one of road-kill—a wild animal trapped on a freeway is lethal to motorists, too.

Caltrans has applied for a $10 million federal grant to build a wildlife tunnel in Agoura Hills under the 101 at Liberty Canyon Road, says Francis Appiah, an associate environmental planner and natural scientist at the state agency. But the grant has yet to be approved.

“Investing in connected pieces of parkland and constructing wildlife crossings along major freeways around Los Angeles is essential for long term mountain lion survival in the Santa Monica Mountains,” says park superintendent Smeck.

The thinking person’s film fest

Plot twists set in motion by the viewer’s brainwaves? Neurocinema? MRIs that can trace an actor’s empathy?

If this weekend’s 7^th Annual Topanga Film Festival doesn’t sound like your ordinary day at the movies, it’s not just because Topanga Canyon is known for doing things differently.

The film festival, which opens Thursday, will bring big names to rustic settings, as always. Event director and co-founder Urs Baur says, in fact, that this year is the biggest ever, with about 50 films that will be shown over four days, including short film and feature documentary competitions judged by such respected names as director Randall Einhorn and actors William H. Macy, Felicity Huffman and Elijah Wood.

But it will also carry a theme you don’t see at every film festival: neuroscience. The backstory? “It all started when I lost my job,” says volunteer communications director L.G. Taylor:

A 30-year-old novelist and actress, Taylor says she had been earning her paycheck at an acting studio until the recession forced them to lay her off.  When a friend steered her to a temp agency, she hoped for a studio gig, hoping it might bring her big break into show business.  Instead, she was sent to the Institute of Neurosurgical Innovation, a research foundation started by Dr. Amir Vokshoor, a Westside neurosurgeon, after Alzheimer’s Disease claimed his father’s life.

For the next six weeks, Taylor says, she was immersed in brain research, a field that, she discovered, has increasingly been applied to film marketing.

“When the position ended, I had this passion,” she remembers. “But I was left with ‘Now what?’”

Fortunately, she says, the festival was approaching. A suggestion that the organization include a single panel discussion on creativity and neuroscience morphed into a decision to build this year’s event around the intersection of art and the brain.

“This is really an interesting time in the movie industry,” says Baur, a Topanga local who works as a branding consultant when he’s not organizing the festival or running its new year-round presence, the Topanga Film Institute.

“Content creation is changing, business models are changing. Hollywood has begun employing neuromarketing in its advertising. It’s no longer enough to ask what you think about a movie. It’s become more interesting for Hollywood to measure what you feel.”

This year’s event will feature a new, cutting-edge screening in which special headsets will let viewers determine the plot of a film by the state of their brain waves. Panels on filmmaking and creativity will feature not only Hollywood A-listers, but also a surprisingly renowned cross-section of scientific rock stars.

One panel on directing will include California Institute of Technology’s Steven Quartz, whose groundbreaking brain research is helping to shape the next generation of movie trailers. Another session, on acting, will feature both Oscar-winner Melissa Leo and Jonas Kaplan of USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute, whose research uses functional MRIs to search for the roots of empathy and self-awareness.

“It’s pretty revolutionary,” says Vokshoor of the Institute for Neurosurgical Innovation, who will also participate as a panelist. “We’re in a period right now where we are really speaking collaboratively across various disciplines.”

Vokshoor says his Institute focuses on such collaborative research because “from quantum mechanics and basic neuroscience to metaphysics, religion and the creative arts, we’re all trying to answer some of the same kinds of questions.”

“If I were to name one great life goal for neuroscience research, it would probably be: Where is the molecule for consciousness, for inspiration, located?” says Vokshoor. “I’m not sure we’ll find the answers, but these kinds of collaborations are exciting, because they say, ‘There’s something here.’”

The Topanga Film Festival runs from July 28-31. For tickets and more information, click here.

Posted 7/28/11

Behind the scales at “The Biggest Loser”

On the hit TV show “The Biggest Loser,” it’s known simply as “The Ranch”—a serene, sprawling property where thousands of pounds and decades of shame have been shed during the past four years.

For months at a time, the mountainous acreage is home to dozens of contestants who battle their demons and their weight to gain the title of “The Biggest Loser,” along with a tidy purse of $250,000. But the property, complete with its Hollywood-imported state-of-the-art gym, is no ordinary production set.

Unbeknownst to the NBC show’s millions of fans, who’ll be tuning in for tonight’s finale, “The Ranch” is one of Los Angeles’ most historic and dazzling properties, designed by famed architect Wallace Neff in the late 1920s for razor-blade tycoon King Gillette. In 2005, an unprecedented coalition of government agencies, including Los Angeles County, raised $34 million to protect the ranch’s 600 oak-studded acres from expansive development.

Located along Mulholland Highway in Calabasas, King Gillette Ranch is being transformed into a gateway destination for the Santa Monica Mountains recreation area. A new visitor’s center currently is under construction there. The property is operated by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, which receives $50,000 a month from the show to help underwrite the agency’s operations throughout the region.

Managing the property for the MRCA is ranger Scott Hughes, a fit and trim Army veteran who has the tricky job of ensuring that the public has unfettered access to the property—including dozens of grade-school campers—while helping the show’s producers create an illusion of exclusivity and privacy. Talk about your mixed-use property.

“There’s no effective job description for this position,” Hughes says. “I add something new to it every day.” One thing, however, remains a constant above all else, he says. “It’s my job to protect this property.”

Living on the grounds with his wife and a 15-year-old son, Hughes has gotten to know not only the production crew but each of “The Biggest Loser” contestants, some of whom arrive weighing nearly 500 pounds and carrying a heavy psychological burden that has been with many of them since childhood.

“Season after season, you see them around the property,” Hughes says. “You can see the sadness in their eyes.” But then, after weeks of healthy dieting and high-intensity workouts, “you can literally see their spirits lift. It’s an amazing transition.”

There’s also been a fair share of drama on the ranch, including romances and, this season, the abrupt departure of one of the contest’s frontrunners—former Olympic wrestler Rulon Gardner, who won a gold medal in the 2000 Sydney Summer Games by beating the seemingly invincible Russian Alexander Karelin.

Gardner, 39, came to the ranch weighing 474 pounds, 200 more than during his storied wrestling career. In late April, after having lost 188 pounds, he announced during the show that he was going home “for personal reasons”—the first contestant to voluntarily walk away from the ranch, leaving behind mystery and speculation about his hasty exit.

“The Biggest Loser’s” relationship with the ranch began shortly after it was acquired as public land from the previous owner, Soka University, which had been blocked in its plan to expand the campus to accommodate some 5,000 students. The show’s crew had come to film a single competition, or “challenge,” between the contestants in season four.

But the producers quickly recognized that the property’s beauty and its structures would represent a substantial upgrade. Back then, contestants were living in the state’s old mental institution in Camarillo. Now they’d be bunking in an annex to the Gillette mansion built in the late 1950s for an order of monks by one of the ranch’s several owners over the decades, who have included MGM director Clarence Brown and church leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet.

On a recent day at the ranch, the “Biggest Loser” crew was busy preparing the place for the upcoming season, which starts production in early June. The kitchen, with its to-die-for appliances, is being redone, as are the “living room” and the bedrooms. Ranger Hughes was making sure that a dead oak limb was carefully cut by his staff so that it would not collapse on an outdoor table where interviews with contestants are sometimes filmed.

Despite all the activity, Hughes says, “this is the calm before the storm. The storm is when there’s 80 to 100 people here.”

Posted 5/24/11

Practicing for peril in paradise

Topanga Canyon is one of the most storied and bucolic nooks in Los Angeles County. It is also one of the most fire-prone.

The only way in or out is via a winding and often-gridlocked blacktop. Gardens and yards intertwine with flammable chaparral and tinder-dry wildlands. Past fires have shown over the years that the canyon could burn end to end in less than half the time it would take for its 12,000 inhabitants to get to safety.

“There’s a reason we call Topanga the ‘Perilous Paradise’,” says Maria Grycan, community services liaison for the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

 “It’s one of the most beautiful places to live and play, but with that beauty comes a great deal of danger in terms of wildfires.”

This is why Topanga has adopted one of the more aggressive strategies in Los Angeles County when it comes to drilling for fire safety: On May 7, for the second year in a row, residents will practice evacuating the entire town.

Sometime in the morning, Topangans will be roused by the sort of “emergency” phone call they could expect in the event of a fast-moving brushfire. If they’ve done their homework, they’ll know what to do next; if not, they’ll have plenty of firefighters around to help them.

Either way, within a few minutes, if all goes as planned, thousands of canyon dwellers will show up and sign in at an assortment of designated addresses where they could survive a wildfire if the canyon’s escape routes were blocked or congested.

Think of it as a massive dry run for an ongoing threat, but don’t call it a fire drill, says Grycan.

“Drills are just to get people out of a burning building,” she says. “This is way beyond that. We’re dealing with a whole canyon here.”

The exercise, which drew nearly 1,100 participants last year, is considered a crucial link in Topanga’s emergency planning. With the serpentine Topanga Canyon Boulevard as the only main road in or out, Topanga is vulnerable to bumper-to-bumper traffic even on better days. Authorities have estimated that evacuating the whole community could take close to six hours—enough time for the town to burn more than twice over, says Grycan. “A fire that started on the north end of Topanga could get all the way through town and to the coast in less than two and a half hours.”

Also, despite its rural reputation, some parts of Topanga are densely populated.

“We live in the Fernwood area, which has so many trees and so many houses that if a fire came to Fernwood, it would be like Armageddon,” says Debra Silbar, who took part in last year’s drill with her then-14- and 9-year-old children in tow.

So at the county’s behest, the unincorporated community has sought in recent years to become a model for preparedness, splitting itself into nine “tactical zones” for easier evacuation, publishing a “Topanga Disaster Survival Guide”, designating safe – or at least survivable – meeting points throughout town for times when evacuation won’t work and educating residents with an annual Topanga Safety Week and evacuation exercise.

This year’s Safety Week will begin May 2 with a series of daily activities to promote awareness. Grycan says a workbook will be mailed to every household to help locals freshen their knowledge. Topanga Elementary School will drill on Wednesday, and county firefighters will demonstrate firefighting techniques.

The week will culminate with the community-wide evacuation exercise from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturday, May 7. Led by the county fire department, the drill will involve an array of local law enforcement, first responders and government and community volunteer organizations, says Grycan. “The premise is, there’s a fire, the road is in gridlock, evacuation is not an option. Where do you go?”

The exercise, she says, will help residents remember the answers to that question.

“Our first preference in the event of a fire is that people leave early enough that they can get out of the canyon,” says Grycan. “Plan B is, if you can’t get out, then get to a safety area. And Plan C is, if you can’t do Plan B, then at least get to a neighborhood survival area where, say, a fire is more likely to blow over you, or where, if you were caught in a fire, you’d be more likely to survive.”

Additionally, she says, the drill will allow local emergency workers to practice their internal coordination, and will offer a chance to test Alert LA, the mass notification system that they were unable to use last year. Grycan says a last-minute glitch forced emergency workers to use a fallback notification system that only allowed notification of residents with landlines. As a result, many Topangans failed to get the reminder, particularly in less densely populated areas of the canyon.

“We were one of the evacuation sites but nobody showed up at our place,” says Patricia Moore, whose 6-acre Eden Ranch has been designated a neighborhood survival area because of its flat terrain and ample access to water. “There were two people here to take names, and they just kind of sat there, which was kind of sad.”

Pat MacNeil, former chair of the volunteer Topanga Coalition for Emergency Preparedness, says she expects turnout to be even better this year.

 “With all the disasters in Chile and Japan and Louisiana, people are becoming more aware of the fact that they have to take care of themselves,” she says.  

Meanwhile, locals like Silbar say they are looking forward to reprising their civic duty.

“Last year, I put my kids in the car, we drove down and checked in and it literally took one minute,” she says. “It was a simple way to help out the community. But we’ve also had to evacuate before, and we know how crazy things can get in those situations. Drills like this, I think, help our kids realize what happens when there’s an emergency in the canyon, and will give them a better sense of control.”

Posted 4/28/11