Geography Midterm

Front 1

Burlington Ordinance

Back 1

Built in 1985, the tenements at Burlington were repeatedly cited for failure to comply with city fire regulations, but kept refusing to comply. A fire in April 1993 ended up killing 10. The Burlington Ordinance was designed to add sprinkler systems to tenement homes over 7 to 9 years at a relatively low cost.

Front 2

Chaparral

Back 2

-Traditionally require wildfires and floods for nutrients and germination
-Chaparral grove fires have a propensity to spread into other areas, especially around Malibu
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Front 3

Dorothy Mae

Back 3

-Tenement building filled with immigrants from a single village in Mexico
-The owners ignored citations from building fire inspectors
-A 1982 fire killed 24; it was very similar to the earlier Hotel St. George Fire

Front 4

Hotel St. George

Back 4

-Tenement hotel in Westlake
-Burned down 3 times
-Was in violation of many building fire codes

Front 5

New fire regime

Back 5

-The combination of suburbs and chaparral makes the area even more prone to fire than before when it was just forest
-Made more work for firefighters who have to defend homes at the same time as fighting the fire itself

Front 6

Ponet Square Ordinance

Back 6

-Ponet Square was a tenement apartment built in 1910, which burned down in 1970
-The disaster finally forced the city to require retrofitting of old buildings
-Sprinkler systems and fireproof doors were made mandatory
-A 4 year grace period was given, and 2 story buildings were exempt
-Because of this, after 3 years only 6% of building owners who had been cited complied, and dozens of fires over the next few years showed the failure of the ordinance

Front 7

Santa Anas

Back 7

-"Fire winds" which blow from the north between Labor Day and Thanksgiving
-Start in high pressure areas, and become hot and dry by the time they reach SoCal
-The San Fernando valley acts to accelerate the wind speed

Front 8

Total fire suppression

Back 8

-The policy of firefighting in SoCal since 1919
-It has been a failure because it allows huge amounts of fuel to accumulate, which results in extremely large fires
-These extreme fires can change the chemical makeup of the soil, making it more prone to flooding and erosion

Front 9

Westlake

Back 9

-A district of downtown LA, filled with overcrowded tenement houses, very prone to catastrophic fire

Front 10

Ecotone

Back 10

-The transition zone between wild communities and urban ones
-More diverse species than one or the other

Front 11

Edge Effect

Back 11

-The greater diversity among species that results from an ecotone, because there are both domestic and wild animals, as well as some species adapted to an ecotone itself

Front 12

Wilderness vs. Wildness

Back 12

-Wilderness is simply uninhabited land
-Wildness is more complicated, "preservation of the world,

Front 13

Widow Rindge

Back 13

-The wife of Frederick Rindge, who had bought the land of Malibu in the 1880s.
-She tried to keep it isolated from the public, fighting to stop the state from building freeways through it
-May Rindge was ultimately unable to keep Rancho Malibu closed to the public

Front 14

California Coastal Acts of 1972 and 1976

Back 14

-Legislation which slowed the populization of Malibu, as well as preventing the construction of a nuclear power plant and an 8 lane freeway through Malibu Canyon

Front 15

Super-Cubes

Back 15

Poorly constructed living complexes built in the 1980s, which instantly became overcrowded slums

Front 16

California Fair Plan

Back 16

-A state mandated insurance pool which spreads the cost of fire insurance among a mass of homeowners

Front 17

Tongva

Back 17

-Indian tribe, which used to purposely burn away excess fuel in the chaparral
-The original people of the LA region
-They drastically modified the terrain with their burning