Education on preparing for wild land fires includes keeping brush cleared from the house, having a water source available, devising evacuation routes, planting fire-resistant bushes around houses. The Red Cross distributes pamphlets with this information in cooperation with local fire departments. Late winter flooding and mudslides have touched L.A. most recently. The city hasn t seen the high level of flooding that has plagued northern California, but has dealt with mudslides and landslides. The former consists of flowing mud, while landslides are less wet, with saturated soil but much more dirt and rock.
Landslides are also less predictable.
In southern California, flooding results from heavy rains, but in northern and eastern parts of the state, melting snow also contributes. Last year s flooding in January and February was one of the biggest disasters in the state s history, says Brutsche. After a heavy snow pack, a warm storm from the Hawaiian islands dumped more water and melted the snow, creating flooding throughout the river system. That relief operation was at least twice as large and expensive as this year. Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix expends most of its energies responding to floods, though it runs emergency drills twice a year at a nuclear power plant and deals with forest fires every summer.