112 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



"The homeless were estimated at nearly 20,000 in the five 

 affected counties Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Ber' 

 nardino, and Ventura. 



"All was silent in the Delta Land of the wildest river of the 

 flood, the Santa Ana. The last ten miles of its drainage area, 

 one of the most productive regions agriculturally in the United 

 States, was a muddy lagoon." 



"San Francisco, March 3. Graphic descriptions of inundated 

 areas of residential districts and fertile farm lands in and 

 around metropolitan Los Angeles were given here today by 

 the pilot and passengers of the first plane in from Southern 

 California in two days. 



"There literally is water everywhere,' Roberts, the plane 

 pilot, said. "My own home is in North Hollywood, on the banks 

 of a wash from Tujunga Dam. At five o'clock yesterday after' 

 noon, the peak of the flood, there was twenty feet of water 

 running over what normally is a bed of dust. 



"The waters lapped at the side of my house. We had no 

 electricity at times and our drinking water still was shut off 

 when I left this morning. Yesterday when the river rose I saw 

 three houses on the opposite side of the stream collapse and 

 tumble into the flood. 



" 'My wife and the neighbors had to put pans out to catch 

 rain water for drinking and washing/ " 10 



"Los Angeles, March 4. Floods here are different from those 

 in the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers where the waters rise slowly 

 and steadily until the rivers overflow their banks or breach the 

 levees. Here levees and dikes are almost useless for the water 

 pours down the mountain sides so fast that no levees could 

 hold it in check. 



"Floods here come and go almost overnight, rising so rapidly 

 that often the first warning is the roar of the water descending 

 the mountain sides. 



Times, March 4, 1938. 



