 |
HOME |  |
SCHEDULE | |
PROGRAMS | |
KIDS & FAMILY | |
LOCAL | |
SUPPORT KCET | |
ABOUT US | |
SHOP KCET |  |
| About Us | Contact Us | |
 |
|
 |
          |
|
|
 |
 |
||
|
|
Life & Times Transcript
11/11/05 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- The fire season is heating up, but fire budgets are going down and so is the ability to thin our fire-prone forests. Dr. Richard Minnich>> Every tree is a bomb. When a fire is moving through it, it's contributing to the flames. Val Zavala>> And then, they were the carpools of their day, the horsecar line. We look at the first attempt at mass transit in Orange County. Did it work? It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> Thousands of acres blackened, hundreds of firefighters on the front lines and homeowners praying the winds will go easy on them. It's just another fire season in Southern California. Only this one is especially dangerous because fire prevention budgets have been slashed dramatically, thanks to Hurricane Katrina. Sam Louie takes us to the San Bernardino Mountains where fire officials are very nervous. Sam Louie>> The Gran Prix and Old Fire back in 2003 were the largest in history for San Bernardino County. The blaze destroyed one hundred fifty thousand acres, scorched a thousand homes and killed six people. Now, two years later, the danger remains. According to all indicators, Southern California is facing what could be the most severe fire season in history. Dr. Richard Minnich>> There is a comparison again through eighty years of time. Sam Louie>> Dr. Richard Minnich is an earth science professor at UC Riverside. Dr. Richard Minnich>> The forests themselves are still very, very dense and can have the potential of carrying a fire through the national forests as well as the urban forests such as Arrowhead and Idyllwild. Sam Louie>> Minnich is concerned that the natural disaster of 2003 could happen again. Dr. Richard Minnich>> Every tree is a bomb. When a fire is moving through it, it's contributing to the flames. Sam Louie>> To reduce the fire risk, crews are cutting and removing trees from the national forests. Thinning the forests, though, costs money and this year there are more trees than dollars. Hurricane Katrina relief efforts have diverted funds usually reserved for the Forest Service. The San Bernardino National Forest normally gets thirty million for forest management. This year, the budget was slashed more than eighty percent leaving the agency with only five million dollars. Bob Sommer is with the San Bernardino National Forest. Bob Sommer>> The impact of not getting as much money is that not as much work gets done. With a thirty million dollar budget, we were able to treat eleven thousand acres last year and, with a five million dollar budget, we're only going to be able to treat, you know, one-sixth of that, so a couple thousand acres. Sam Louie>> Removing trees and trimming down brush is an expensive endeavor in our region. One tree can easily cost up to several thousand dollars to remove. Bob Sommer>> We don't have the markets here in Southern California to dispose of wood like in some other parts of the country. We don't have mills and we don't have a lot of power plants close by, so it's expensive work for us when you factor in the trucking. So it's really limited by dollars. [Film Clip] Sam Louie>> It's also a slow process. Bringing down a tree can take up to half an hour. Crews use their chain saws like doctors use a scalpel, cutting wedges into the tree with exact precision, then carefully making sure it falls safely to the ground. [Film Clip] Sam Louie>> Another way to thin the forests is through controlled burns. Dr. Minnich feels this is the cheapest and quickest way to thin out a dense forest. Dr. Richard Minnich>> Once you've burned a big patch of land, while it may be a threat at the moment, it's also a solution in the longer term. You have removed the fuel that can endanger you for decades. Sam Louie>> Sommer acknowledges that his agency would like to see more controlled burns, but the threat of fire spreading to existing homes makes it impractical on a large scale and risky in warm weather. Bob Sommer>> It's not a good idea to burn in the summertime. It's just a little too dangerous. Weather patterns can change on you and you could end up burning homes that you intended on protecting. Sam Louie>> It's estimated there are between five to ten million dead trees here in San Bernardino County. Environmental experts believe, if a lot of these trees aren't removed, a catastrophic fire is imminent. But it's not just the number of trees, but also the conditions that heighten the danger. Conditions like the Bark Beetle infestation and a severe drought that can make a fire worse. Peter Brierty>> But as you can see here, it is so criss-crossed with so many different Bark Beetle galleries that there's no way that the moisture, that the nutrients, of the tree could get up to where it's supposed to go. Sam Louie>> Fire experts believe these factors, combined with the Santa Ana winds, will keep the fire hazard high. It's all the more reason homeowners need to do their part. Fire officials recommend limiting the number of trees on your property and making sure your home is free of debris. Peter Brierty>> The citizen absolutely has to take control of their property, has to look for ladder fuels. Those are the dry fuels that lead up into the bushes that lead up into the trees and drop those down. We cannot get fire engines and firefighters into a house that's surrounded by trees. Dr. Richard Minnich>> A half-acre lot, you shouldn't have more than twenty trees on it. Hopefully, they're big trees that are two feet in diameter, three feet in diameter, pruned upward halfway up, hopefully not hanging over a roof and dumping litter on a roof, and you clean the needles out every spring in May and June. You're going to have a fire-safe forest. Sam Louie>> Minnich says the forest is still a long way from being fire-safe. He would like to see it restored to what it looked like one hundred years ago when logging and controlled burns made the forests more manageable. Dr. Richard Minnich>> This is San Bernardino near Big Bear in those years, 1897 and 1900. Of course, they're open at that point because of the cutting and the fires of the nineteenth century. Then there's been no burning since, so it's gone thicker with time and still thicker with time. Sam Louie>> In 2003, the fires stopped short of reaching the mountain communities of Lake Arrowhead, Crestline, Running Springs and beyond. Fire experts can't guarantee these cities will escape the next major blaze. Considering how many more trees need to be taken out, they estimate it will be at least two years before this region can be labeled a safe fire zone. In the meantime, they will have to work with the limited resources they have and just hope Mother Nature cooperates. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> And now for this Life and Times story update. Last year, we told you about the surge in traffic coming into the Los Angeles port and the traffic congestion created by more and more trucks, especially during the peak daytime traffic hours. So last July, the port expanded its hours, staying open on Saturdays and late into the night. Those cargo owners who still used the port during peak times had to pay an additional fee. The idea was to encourage truckers to drive during off-peak hours. So has it worked? Generally, yes. Cargo is moving through the port more quickly. In fact, the number of containers that are being loaded during those late-night and Saturday hours have nearly doubled. But the change is not an improvement for everyone. Nearly half of the truckers are unhappy about having to work late-night shifts and the noise and traffic are bothering some neighbors. But when it comes to moving goods quickly through the port, especially during the upcoming holiday season, port officials say the program is succeeding. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> Sometimes when we're crawling along the freeway with our speedometer barely registering, we wonder if we weren't better off in the horse and buggy days. Well, in fact, there was a time when the so-called horsecar lines transported people around Tustin, Santa Ana and Orange. Roger Cooper takes a look back at Orange County's very first mass transit system. Roger Cooper>> It was the 1880's, boom years for Orange County. The population at the time was less than twenty thousand and, just like today, they had trouble getting around quickly. But for a short time, there was something called the hayburners. Ed Miller is the author of "The Hayburners of Orange County". For people that don't remember, what's a hayburner? Ed Miller>> Well, what a hayburner really is is a horse actually. But in the old days, they used to have transportation of horsecars and they were drawn either by a mule or a horse, so I thought why not call it a hayburner? Roger Cooper>> Ed Miller has written a book about the dawn of mass transit in Orange County. It was a brief period a hundred twenty years ago when entrepreneurs tried to convince people to give up their horse and buggies and ride together on horse-drawn rail lines. It was the nineteenth century equivalent of carpooling. Ed Miller>> And there were so many people coming out here that they needed some way to transport them about the time the railroads were coming in. So some of these actually went to the railroad, out to the depot, to bring the people from the depot into the center of town. Also, there were a couple other small towns like Orange and El Modena and Tustin, and it was a way of transporting people to the center of these other towns. Roger Cooper>> Before this, people walked? Rode bikes? Ed Miller>> Rode bikes. My grandmother rode a bike and she came out in 1898. That's what they did. They either walked -- well, actually they had horse and buggies, which was probably the major way to go. Roger Cooper>> Now, Ed, this was mass transit, the first mass transit, but it was not rapid transit. Ed Miller>> That's exactly right. It was mass transit for this time in the 1880's, but definitely wasn't rapid transit. Those horses went quite slow and, of course, after they've been pulling those horsecars for a while, they'd begin to tire out. Roger Cooper>> We forget that this had to prove the concept that people would ride together, that they wanted to be in mass transit and this was the first real test of that. Ed Miller>> Well, that's probably right. I don't know if they were that excited about riding together, but the question was it was faster than a horse and buggy generally or a bicycle. So I think that was the main thrust of that. Roger Cooper>> At the peak of horse-drawn rail travel in Orange County, three lines operated, taking people between Santa Ana, Tustin, Orange, El Modena and Anaheim. Ed Miller>> Well, this is a photo of another horsecar and this particular one looks like, since we can't see the horse up in front of it, it was heading from Tustin into Santa Ana. This is taken right in the center of Tustin. You can see the big bank on the right hand side. Roger Cooper>> More than one hundred years later, that very spot in Tustin where the rails ran down Main Street looks like this. Was this kind of a romantic way to get around or an enjoyable way, do you think? Ed Miller>> No, I don't think it was particularly enjoyable at all, especially in the wintertime when it was raining. They would put sort of like a tarp type of thing over the sides, but I don't think it was enjoyable at all. The horses would kick up dust in the summer and it would be dry and hot, but it was a way of getting somewhere. This picture was taken on West Fourth Street in Santa Ana and you can see there are three cars there. One goes to Orange, the one on the right goes to Tustin and then the one in the center there says S.P. Depot. That's the one that went out to the depot in east Santa Ana. Roger Cooper>> Why did they fail? What went wrong? They were only around how many years or so? Ed Miller>> Like I say, I really think it turned out to be a novelty there for a while. Most of those lines went belly up. They just couldn't make it. The ridership just kept dwindling and dwindling. This is a picture probably taken in the 1880's of a horsecar that used to operate out of Ontario. It's sort of a unique thing in that there's a mule on the back of it in the picture and the mule would take the horsecar up the hill, but on the way back, he'd ride back on that platform. He'd get a free ride. Roger Cooper>> A tribute to that mule-powered railcar that once moved along Euclid Avenue still stands in Ontario, preserved inside this glass display case. What was the technology that came next after the horse-drawn? Ed Miller>> Well, they had a steam dummy that was powered on steam. They used to call it the Peanut Roaster that used to run between Santa Ana and Orange. That came next and, of course, later the Red Cars came in around 1905 or 1906. The Red Cars came in to Orange County and, of course, they were electric. Roger Cooper>> These were the tycoons of the era that put these in. Ed Miller>> That's true. In fact, these things didn't come cheap. I don't know exactly what they did cost, but by the time you bought the rails and the ties and the equipment, the cars themselves, they were quite expensive. Roger Cooper>> In a way, we're still trying today to grapple with those same problems the hayburners were trying to address. Ed Miller>> That's really true. Roger Cooper>> And that's the remarkable thing about the story in Ed's book. That today, more than a century later, Orange County is still trying to meet the challenge of mass transit. This county once served by three horse-drawn rail lines now has three million people, all trying to move about. Today the Orange County Transportation Authority deploys a massive fleet of buses and Metro Link trains, but most commuters are still wedded to their cars, especially on the 91 Corridor that goes through the Santa Ana Canyon. Transportation officials say, if nothing is done, it could grind to a complete stop in the years ahead. Art Brown>> If we don't do something, freeway speeds will drop by fifty percent and it's important to get our people back and forth to work. A lot of the workforce for Orange County comes from Riverside, so without speed on that freeway, we're going to have a lot of people late for work. Wes Bannister>> Every time I get on the 91, I say there's got to be a better way. Roger Cooper>> For some commuters, that better way is a toll road. The first toll road opened up in 1993. There are now fifty-one miles of toll roads in Orange County. Art Brown>> I'm just happy the toll road is there because I couldn't get through otherwise. I've got the transponder and I take the toll road all the time. Without that, I look over at the other side and see traffic just at a dead stop. Roger Cooper>> About the only place you can still see a horse-drawn rail line these days is within the walls of the Magic Kingdom at Disneyland. Ed Miller>> I'm not really sure what the occasion was, but this picture was taken -- we're looking at the old S.D. Depot on the east side of Santa Ana. Over on the right hand side, I think you can see a couple of horsecars there. It was either the late 1880's or early 1990's. The fellow up front there, I'm sure, was the driver and then there is a small child there right next to him. It looks like she was cuddling a doll, and there's another couple of small children there. Roger Cooper>> Well, Ed, thanks for taking us back to the very start of transportation in Orange County, the hayburners of Orange County. They're long gone, but thanks to your book, "The Hayburners of Orange County", they're not forgotten. Ed Miller>> Well, that's the major reason I think I wrote that thing. I just wanted to leave a history that the young people growing up today would get some idea of what took place in the old days. Roger Cooper>> Thank you so much for sharing it with us. Thank you. Val Zavala>> Well, Orange County has come a long way, as we've seen, but it also still has plenty of traffic problems. But next week, the Orange County Transportation Authority is holding its annual conference called "Making the Connection" and the public is invited. For registration information and details, you can go to their website at octa.net/vendorfair. It's taking place on Thursday, October 13, at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim and KCET is pleased to be the official television sponsor. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> We all know that you can grow almost any kind of plant in Southern California, but the bad thing is we often forget about the hundreds of species of native plants that do so well here. Well, we found a nursery tucked away in Sun Valley that offers nothing but native plants. Now how many acres have you got here? Holly Wagner>> Well, we have about twenty, a little over twenty acres. Val Zavala>> Twenty acres. The Theodore Payne Foundation Nursery has been cultivating and selling California native plants for thirty years. Holly Wagner is its manager. Any idea how many plants you've got? How many different kinds of plants? Holly Wagner>> It varies, but probably between six hundred and eight hundred. Val Zavala>> Six hundred and eight hundred different native species? Holly Wagner>> Yeah, yeah. Val Zavala>> Wow. So what are these, Holly? Holly Wagner>> These are Yellow-Eyed Grass. And these, even though it looks like a grass, it's actually an iris and it has a beautiful yellow bloom to it and they're just prolific. Here they are sitting in a pot and they look a little innocuous, but they do spread which we always like in a native. Val Zavala>> It looks like grass. Holly Wagner>> It looks just like grass, but it's much flatter than a grass. I like native plants because you can just put them in and pretend that, you know, your garden, you can just walk through it every day and just ignore it. Val Zavala>> These are great. Look at that. What are these called? Holly Wagner>> Wooley Blue Curls. Val Zavala>> Wooley Blue Curls. Again, what conditions would they grow under? Holly Wagner>> These actually I've seen on very dry, very hot slopes. Val Zavala>> Really? Holly Wagner>> Yes. Val Zavala>> Because they're deep green. They've got these great blossoms. Holly Wagner>> They're very deep green, yeah. These are some of the ones that you have to sit there and slit the pot and slit off the bottom and stick them in. Val Zavala>> Oh, in terms of getting them established? Holly Wagner>> Getting them established. Val Zavala>> That's a great trick when you don't want to disturb the roots, right? Holly Wagner>> Right. You do not want to disturb the roots on these guys. Val Zavala>> So you just cut this off. Holly Wagner>> Cut that off. Val Zavala>> Slit it here and then place the whole pot in. Holly Wagner>> Right. Val Zavala>> And then you take the pot out eventually? Holly Wagner>> Yeah, in a year or so after. You see, by that time, the roots have gone all down there and it's well established. Val Zavala>> And then you just -- Holly Wagner>> And then you take that off, right. Val Zavala>> And what is this called here? Holly Wagner>> This is the Desert Marigold and it is absolutely gorgeous. It's actually even more gorgeous out in the field, but it's really gorgeous even in a pot. One of the things about almost all California natives is that, if you fertilize them or if you do soil amendments or all those things that you do to your lawn or other plants, they really don't do very well. And definitely pesticides, for the most part, you don't need them. Now we have problems with rabbits and I shouldn't say this, but rabbit stew isn't bad (laughter). Val Zavala>> Now what's the main advantage to native plants? Holly Wagner>> Okay, first of all, you can pat yourself on the back (laughter). Val Zavala>> Yeah. Ecologically? Holly Wagner>> Ecologically, you can pat yourself on the back, but there are lots of other things, one of which is most of them save water, okay? Val Zavala>> So very little water needed. Holly Wagner>> Very little water needed for most of them. Val Zavala>> Cut your water bills down. Holly Wagner>> Cut your water bills down. The other thing is, which I think is really important, because it's Southern California. There are two parts of that, one of which is that insects and so on that are accustomed to feeding on these that can't feed on the non-natives will be there and guess who eats them? The birds. So you can have many more birds and also just animals. Little teeny lizards and, who knows, if you're close enough to an arroyo, frogs. I mean, there are all sorts of things that will end up in your yard because you have natives. Val Zavala>> Oh, so not just plants, but insects, birds. Holly Wagner>> Right. And it's called like having a backyard habitat and actually you can get certified for that. Val Zavala>> Wow. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> This is not just a front yard garden. It's a certified habitat created with native California plants by the Gillilands in Tujunga. That's where I met John Wickham, Chairman of the Board of the Theodore Payne Foundation. John Wickham>> Theodore Payne came to the United States in 1893 from England and he came pretty much directly to Los Angeles and started working in the agricultural field. He was a trained seedsman and plantsman. As a high school student, he did a project where he went around the neighborhood and collected plant examples and he put them together in a project and he won first prize. In 1903, he opened his first nursery in downtown Los Angeles and that was the start of a sixty-year career in the nursery business in California and particularly with native plants. Theodore wanted to retire and he had been looking for somebody to take over his nursery. People really wanted to make sure that his services continued and native plants were available, so they started a nonprofit organization. A group of horticulturists in the Los Angeles area came together and they formed the Payne Foundation. Forty-five years later, we have the Theodore Payne Foundation. We have a nursery that sells California native plants, as well as a wide variety of seeds so you can get wildflower seeds of all sorts. Val Zavala>> Are all these for sale? Holly Wagner>> All these are for sale. We have the ones over on the right which are for the shade, but this is a dry shade. A lot of our other shade gardeners may be wet shade, but these -- and there are a lot of irises in here. I'm not even sure -- the Coral Bells. That's the other name. We have a lot of Coral Bells in here, lots of different kinds of Coral Bells. I hate to say this, but in every color of Coral Bells and in every shape of leaf of Coral Bells you could ever want. Val Zavala>> The variety is unbelievable. Holly Wagner>> The variety is absolutely incredible. Val Zavala>> And what are these really charming little orange-red flowers? Holly Wagner>> These are called Monkey Flowers. I love Monkey Flowers. They come in lots of different colors. Actually, they don't come in the blues. They come in the range of orange, blue, pink -- not blue, excuse me -- orange, red, white, cream, and they're wonderful. But these also, if you give them too much water, they really don't like it at all, so you have to have good drainage. Val Zavala>> Now what's the hardest thing about convincing people to convert to native plants? Holly Wagner>> Some of the difficulties they may have heard from other people. A lot of developers apparently have put in native plants and then they've had terrible problems with them dying and so on. They may not be choosing the correct plants for the right spot and also their maintenance in terms of how they're watering it may not be correct. If you put it on a southwest face and you plant it in the summer, it's not going to do well, but sometimes the job calls for that. You can do that with non-natives, but with natives, there are just some things you can't do. John Wickham>> It would be extraordinary if one or two or three percent or five percent of our landscape was returned over to native flora just in honoring our heritage as Californians. This is an incredible place for plants, for native plants. One of the richest floras in the world, and it's ours. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> You can buy plants here year-round, but their big plant sale and fall festival is this October 7, 8 and 9. For information, give them a call or go to their website at theodorepayne.org. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
|
Home | Features | Arts | Health/Science | OC Edition | L&T Blog | Archives | About Us | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use |