‘Slow avalanche’ gobbles road, homes in San Diego
For a few years, I used to write and edit La Jolla Light newspaper in La Jolla, California. So of you may know La Jolla for its enchanted coast and some of you may know it because of a recent massive sinkhole that damaged a road and several homes a few days ago.
I spent a lot of time in La Jolla, five days a week for four or so years. Like New Orleans, it’s a culturally rich community composed of artists, writers, musicians, surfers, chefs and liberal arts professors from the nearby University of California San Diego. Unlike New Orleans, it’s also a financially rich community composed of biotechnology executives, media executives, real estate agents, brokers, Fortune 500 CEOs and administrators from the nearby University of California San Diego.
There are aspects of La Jolla that are about as far away from New Orleans as I could ever imagine a place being. The homes sell for minimums of $1 million. They have a top-ranking public high school with an Olympic-size swimming pool and a pretty good water polo team. There have been only a handful of murders over the last few years. They just opened a fantastic new library in addition to the private art library that has been open for years. There is a world renowned college, modern art museum and playhouse.
La Jollans and New Orleanians share certain traits. Both groups of people share a fabric within their residents that is strongly opposed to developers moving in and fouling up a culture they have tried to preserve. Historic homes are protected, ordinances are passed.
They know they have something special and we do as well.
When I worked at the paper, our “hard news” was often about the height of new public restrooms or the ongoing saga of what to do with two dozen or so marine mammals who took up residence at a favorite beach. this is a far cry from a breaking story about five teen-agers killed in an SUV or a mother killed in front of her toddler by an intruder.
Now, New Orleans and La Jolla have something else in common, a disaster that has destroyed homes. It goes without saying that the scale of the disasters are no comparison.
But for the sake of this argument, let us simply compare the fact that homes were built in New Orleans’ cypress swamps and La Jolla’s collapse-prone Mt. Soledad both in seeming defiance of nature.
Earlier today, the LA Times posted a story stating the La Jollans were ready to rebuild. I applaud them for that. I want them to rebuild. They have a beautiful culture there and it is truly a gemstone in San Diego culture.
New Orleans is a gemstone too.
Now, the questions I have regarding these two events are simple:
– Will pundits speak out against the rebuilding of homes on Mt. Soledad?
– Will people dismiss the event based on the premise that homes should never have been built there to begin with?
– Will people say the La Jollans who lost their homes ‘deserved it for living there’?
– Will San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders’ appeal to Gov. Schwarzenegger and President Bush for disaster funds be viewed as the city “looking for a hand-out?”
– Should residents be forced to move from homes that have a possibility of being damaged or destroyed in landslides?
I hope for the sake of the La Jollans that the answer to all those questions is no.