The Brief

Researchers out of UC Irvine have said that nationally used flood modeling lacks specificity when it comes to measuring risks in urban areas like Los Angeles County.

They've created their own modeling system, PRIMo-Drain, that can better predict which properties are at risk when using accurate, granular data.

How the flood modeling system works

In a new report, UCI engineering professor Brett Sanders and his team compared widely used national flood risk assessment modeling in areas like Los Angeles County against their own PRIMo-Drain model. Long story short: Traditional models don’t usually include infrastructure like levees and dams, unresolved drainage and topographic data, which means their modeling is less specific when it comes to measuring risks for the spreading of floods in cities.

That data on storm drain infrastructures is collected mostly from GIS (geographic information system) shape files maintained by public agencies like the Los Angeles Department of Public Works. The UCI researchers also updated those databases with aerial image capture of the conditions of levees mapped in public records.

“Once we have this relatively detailed representation of the land surface, of the flood infrastructure, we look at different types of flooding,” Sanders said.

Those types of flooding include river floods, coastal floods, and flash floods from intense rainfall, like what Los Angeles saw the past two winters. Estimates show the frequency of extreme rainfall under a warmer atmosphere to likely be higher in seasons to come.

In recent years, large rainfall events in Southern California have been kept at bay by flood control infrastructure like those aforementioned levees and dams (the technical word for them is mainstem). But water is starting to reach above levee and dam walls more often. Places like Santa Barbara and San Diego experienced these flooding scenarios in the latest few rounds of atmospheric rivers.

This is why PRIMo-Drain researchers want to get as specific as possible in future models. If they could measure where water goes after escaping flood control walls and what areas get flooded, even more accurate models could be put to use for cities.

According to Sanders, part of this is why the developers of the model engage in “collaborative flood modeling” with the Los Angeles Regional Collaborative for Climate Action and Sustainability out of UCLA. The idea is to ask people where they see flooding, what they think drives flooding, and for suggestions on data sources that could help improve the model.

The model became publicly available in 2023. Since then, organizations like the City of Los Angeles and Southern California Edison have used PRIMo for planning and vulnerability measurement purposes.

Strategies to maintain flood risk

Right now Sanders and researchers on the PRIMo team are engaged in a two year study in Los Angeles in partnership with Los Angeles County and community groups to look at alternative strategies to manage this risk to communities and who they would benefit. (The same team also conducted a 2022 study that found L.A. County’s Black residents face disproportionately high flood risks.)

There are three strategies they’ve identified as potential solutions. The first is a tried and true method: make levees taller so that channels have more capacity and can prevent water from escaping the levee walls.

Another strategy involves widening channels to create more capacity, which would eliminate some of the concrete in channels and allow for vegetation to begin growing.

Sanders said the third strategy would be to “capture more storm water in the upper parts of the watershed…with more parks, more green space, and more infrastructure that would promote the infiltration of rainwater into the soil.” Ideally, this would reduce the amount of water that flows down these channels and in doing so reduce the risk facing these lowland cities.

In the meantime, the researchers will continue working on updating their models during future rain events. According to Sanders, it’s still “really hard to say [the researchers’] method is more accurate” since it hasn’t been exposed to enough severe flooding.

Beyond the Rose Bowl and historic bungalows, Pasadena has stranger tales to tell. David Kalbeitzer has been seeking out those stories where rocket science meets the occult and ghosts haunt the city’s grandest buildings.

For Kalbeitzer, a Disney executive who investigates the paranormal in his free time, his fascination with the city’s mysterious side started when he bought a Victorian north of Old Town.

He sensed a spirit at the open house a dozen years ago and took it as a reason to move his family to Pasadena. Then he started learning the city’s history.

David Kalbeitzer, a paranormal investigator from Pasadena, is giving a talk about the city's strange history Saturday night in Old Town.

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Courtesy of David Kalbeitzer

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“I realized, ‘Oh, this place called us just as much as we were looking for it,’” he said.

On Saturday night, he’s sharing the lore he’s collected at Mesmer Mesmer an Old Town shop and event space. While the event is full, there’s a waitlist, and more talks featuring Kalbeitzer are in the works.

A city of ghost stories 

Ask Kalbeitzer about haunted Pasadena, and the list stretches from alleyways to the Colorado Street Bridge to Castle Green, the turreted former hotel overlooking Central Park.

“The Pasadena Playhouse theater is, you know, very haunted,” he added.

He says playgoers have reported hearing disembodied voices.

“And you look, and there’s no one there, or apparitions that have been seen sort of standing in the corner, and then you walk up, and they kind of disappear,” he said.

As for the spirit that helped draw him to his current Pasadena home?

Kalbeitzer says she’s still around — and a psychic friend says she has a name: Dolores.

“It’s actually haunted by a very kind ghost that looks out for the house, protects my family and has been able to activate our alarm,” he said.

Having a Dolores in the house might send some people running, but Kalbeitzer said he grew up in a haunted house in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

And when his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a teenage Kalbeitzer started seeking out places known for paranormal activity.

Rocket science, ritual magic and mind-reading

Having lived in different neighborhoods in L.A., Kalbeitzer says there’s something uniquely otherworldly about Pasadena — and it goes beyond ghost stories.

He said the city has an energy that draws people exploring the unknown, perhaps most famously Jack Parsons.

The rocket pioneer who helped launch the Jet Propulsion Laboratory also practiced ritual magic at his Pasadena home with the likes of L. Ron Hubbard before he founded Scientology.

“Many people call it the occult. I don’t know that I fully subscribe to that, but there is spiritualism and occult mixed in there,” Kalbeitzer said.

Then there was Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of The Jungle, whose interests while living in Pasadena extended to telepathy and séances.

Upton Sinclair, pictured with his wife Mary Craig Sinclair in 1935, several years after he published a book examining her reported telepathy.

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Los Angeles Times via Wikimedia Commons

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In 1930, Sinclair published Mental Radio, a book about experiments in mind-reading. Albert Einstein provided a preface. Yes, that Einstein, who would spend the following winter at Caltech expanding on the theories of relativity and cosmology.

“Like it’s the craziest mixture of things that were happening at that time and all of it at the same time,” Kalbeitzer said.

A presence in the shop 

The event couldn’t have found a more appropriate venue.

Since opening five months ago in Old Town, Mesmer Mesmer has embraced the dark and mysterious, offering tarot and crystal readings and hosting events on subjects such as hip-hop’s relationship with ghosts.

At that event, a medium told owner Tyke O’Brien she could sense a presence in the shop, which formerly housed a bridal store.

“She goes, ‘Do you ever feel it?’” O’Brien recounted, “And I’m like, ‘I am such a bummer. I really wish I could. How wonderful would that be to be able to?’”

The same can be said for this writer who’s lived and worked in and around Pasadena for years without so much as a brush with the otherworldly.

Kalbeitzer, on the other hand, reports supernatural encounters all around town.

“I think that how you see yourself in the world has a lot more to do with it, and whether you want to have those experiences,” he said.

Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027. 

At a community meeting Thursday night at MacArthur Park Elementary School, officials said fence installation is now expected to continue through fall 2027, overshooting the previously announced spring 2027 completion date.

Thursday’s meeting highlighted the divide over the city’s plan to fence off MacArthur Park, with tensions rising during public comment. The Los Angeles Police Department says the fence will make drug enforcement easier, while some in the community who volunteer around the park questioned whether it will improve safety enough to justify the cost.

The city has allocated $2.3 million for the project, but officials have not said whether that will cover the full cost.

Installation of the green metal fence around the park’s perimeter is expected to begin in November and take about a year. A second phase, adding decorative elements to the fence, is planned for fall and winter 2027. Officials said the schedule could change because of weather or other unforeseen circumstances.

The park is expected to remain open during construction.

Capt. Ben Fernandes with the LAPD’s Rampart Division said the fence would create a barrier along Alvarado Street and other areas where officers have seen people using narcotics. That would allow police to focus more of their enforcement efforts inside the park, he said.

“So if people are going deeper into the park to use, that’ll make it easier for us to go in and do enforcement on them and arrest them for that use,” Fernandes said. 

MacArthur Park will close every night once an 8-foot-tall fence goes up around the green space, with Los Angeles police officers sweeping the park for encampments and people sleeping there before the gates shut. The Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners approved the plan Thursday.

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LA Recreation and Parks

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“I’ve been an officer for 29 years, and I’ve always known I can go buy drugs there, and I did as a narcotics officer. So what I’m saying is, we are trying to make it not convenient,” he added. 

Fernandes also said the city plans to enhance the park’s existing camera network. LAPD officers and Los Angeles Park Rangers will be able to monitor the cameras from their respective stations, he said. City officials are still evaluating whether additional cameras will be needed to address blind spots in the park after construction is complete.

Ariana Walker, who visits MacArthur Park every Saturday with a group of friends who pool their own resources to distribute food and hygiene kits, questioned whether the city had shown that the fence would improve safety and how much it would cost to maintain.

“The fence is a $2.3 million fence at the base level,” she said. “And they haven’t given us any indication of how much more it’s going to cost for upkeep, to keep anybody safe. There’s no conclusive evidence that a fence is going to stop crime the way that they’re suggesting.”

The meeting grew tense when John Alle, a local property owner whose family owns the building that houses Langer’s Delicatessen across the street from the park, objected to having his comments read from a written comment card rather than speaking directly to officials. Alle has been a vocal critic of the city’s response to drug activity and public safety concerns around MacArthur Park.

He was allowed to comment during the meeting and said the city needs to take a tougher approach to drug use and sales around the park. 

“We see knife attacks at all hours of the day. It’s out of control. And it’s not gotten any better,” he said. “We want to bring it back to where it was 15 or 20 years ago.”

Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027.

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Gary Coronado

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The LA Local

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Alle pointed to public events at the park, including an upcoming Día de los Muertos celebration and a Labor Day weekend picnic hosted by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman as positive developments for the space. But he added those events do not reflect conditions throughout the park.

Officials also outlined other planned improvements, including restoring access through the tunnels connecting the park’s north and south sides, making accessibility upgrades and providing free Wi-Fi for parkgoers. 

Residents who want to provide input on the fence’s decorative elements can email admin@themorcosgroup.com or call (310) 479-4727 for more information.

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