Malibu Cliff Collapse
The scatter of rocks along the tide line was the first sign something was wrong. The tree was the second sign. One doesn’t often find a fresh pine tree— roots, trunk, green branches—on the beach. And then, there was...
Shipwrecked in Malibu
The steamship St. Croix sank off the coast of Point Dume almost exactly 112 years ago. The incident is nearly entirely forgotten now, but the dramatic disaster was headline news in 1909. Readers all over the country were left...
New Study Finds Field Lab Spread Radiation During Woolsey Fire
Radioactive particles from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) spread during the Woolsey Fire in 2018, despite repeated claims to the contrary from officials and agencies, including the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC). A study of 360...
Pumped: The Toxic History of South Coast Oil
The Elly Platform oil spill at Huntington Beach has refocused attention on the hazards and history of offshore oil drilling on the Southern California coast. The Chumash took advantage of natural petroleum seeps, using the tar they collected to...
Oil in the Water: The Huntington Beach Oil Spill
An oil spill at Huntington Beach has clogged the Orange County coastline with as much as 132,000 gallons of toxic crude oil. The United States Coast Guard, which is overseeing the cleanup, described the spill as “a major marine...
October Surprise
The appearance of giant firefighting helicopters above Topanga on October 19 wasn’t in response to a fire; it was Los Angeles County Fire Department’s annual training exercise at Helispot 69 Bravo. The four Quick Reaction Force (QRF) aircraft and...
In Film We Trust
October arrived in a blaze of hot summer weather, before being tempered by cooler temperatures and a low pressure system that was forecast to bring the first real chance of autumn rain as the Topanga New Times went to...
Pomegranate Season
The pomegranate tree, Punica granatum, is a tough desert survivor that seems to thrive in drought and heat. And this October, in gardens and backyard orchards all over the Santa Monica Mountains, trees are bowed under the weight of...
William Pereira: The Architect of Yesterday’s City of Tomorrow
Instead of Topanga’s rugged mountains and oak-forested canyons, imagine a city with a population of 60,000, straight off the cover of a 1960s paperback sci-fi novel—sky towers clustered on mountaintops, and high rises cascading down steep cliffs—all that is...
What Might Have Been
Fire-ravaged Northern California received some welcome rain last week, but the forecast for Southern California continues to be dry, as we head into autumn. Fire risk remains extremely high in Topanga and throughout the Santa Monica Mountains. Everyone who...
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