Essential California Week in Review: First-ever tropical storm watch issued for Southern California

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It is Saturday, Aug. 19.

Here’s a look at the top stories of the last week

The first-ever tropical storm watch was issued for Southern California as Hurricane Hilary barrels north. The watch is in effect for much of southwestern California, from the San Diego deserts to the San Bernardino County mountains and onto Catalina Island, something the National Hurricane Center said is a first for this area.

• The hurricane is expected to dump a lot of rain on Southern California on Sunday and Monday. What’s your flood risk?
• 6 things to know about Hurricane Hilary as it churns toward Southern California.

The eighth bus from Texas arrived in L.A. with 40 asylum-seekers, one as young as 9 months. Since June 14, Texas officials have bused 323 people from Brownsville, Texas, to Los Angeles, many of whom traveled from Brazil, Cameroon, Haiti, China and Nicaragua through the U.S.-Mexico border.

Looking to support victims of the Maui fires? Start with these L.A. restaurants. Los Angeles restaurant owners are allocating percentages of their profits, hosting fundraisers and raising awareness for the Maui communities grappling with the tragedy of the recent fires.

Banging drums. Wedding scuffle. What it’s like inside a hotel during L.A.’s summer of strikes. Forty days since the rolling strikes began, this has become the defining tableau of L.A.’s summer of labor — workers chanting in red T-shirts as guests, some appearing perplexed, others a bit sheepish, lug their suitcases past them and into the lobby.

An L.A. hotel became homeless housing. The city paid $11.5 million to cover the damage. Now, Mayor Karen Bass wants the city to purchase the hotel and convert it into homeless housing once again. But this time, residents, merchants and property owners are pushing back.

• Now, officials say that money won’t go toward any repairs in the building, even though the city is on the verge of acquiring the property, officials said this week.

Photo of the week

The worst days of the “Big Melt� are over, officials say.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Fear of the ‘Big Melt’ turns to big relief along California’s Eastern Sierra. The worst days of the “Big Melt� are over. Epic snowpack threatened to unleash catastrophic flooding on small valley towns throughout much of the Eastern Sierra Nevada. But local officials and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power are finally breathing a collective sigh of relief.

‘We want to do our part’: L.A. pro sports teams donate $450,000 to Maui fire relief. All 12 major sports teams in Los Angeles — including the Dodgers, Lakers, Rams and Kings — have teamed up to donate $450,000 to Maui fire relief efforts.

Wildfires once fueled extinctions in Southern California. Will it happen again? Even with only a tiny fraction of today’s population and infinitely less powerful tools, it took the area’s earliest human inhabitants less than 200 years to utterly transform Southern California’s landscape.

Cops with lassos on the train? A new crime-fighting weapon is suggested for Metro. Amid an increase in crime and drug overdoses, the Los Angeles Police Department has proposed arming officers who patrol Metro buses and trains with a nonlethal whip-like device that wraps around a person’s body.

California offers help for more homeowners who missed mortgage or tax payments. The program offers up to $80,000 to low- and moderate-income homeowners who have missed at least two mortgage payments because of a pandemic-related financial hardship.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) has a bill to save the sequoias, but some environmental groups aren’t into it. Some groups, including the Sierra Club, the GreenLatinos and the Pacific Crest Trail Assn., warned in a letter that the proposal would undercut existing environmental protections and “expedite potentially harming logging projects.�

Finding clean air in Los Angeles? It’s an almost unsolvable puzzle. The harsh reality is, there are few havens from air pollution in Southern California, and very few people even know where to begin as they search for a place to live. But here’s a good starting point: stay away from freeways.

Watching from a wheelchair as crucial items are trashed: Unhoused people sue California cities. The lawsuits against the Inland Empire’s two largest cities are the latest targeting California municipalities for allegedly violating the constitutional rights of unhoused people during encampment sweeps.

La Habra condo owners see a gaping chasm where their greenbelt used to be. Over the last four years, portions of the tree-lined greenbelt that once shaded the complex have violently collapsed into a concrete maw below. That’s because, unbeknownst to most residents, the greenbelt wasn’t built on solid earth.

A reporter kept a diary of her plastic use. It was soul-crushing. It’s not that there aren’t a lot of wonderful things about plastic. But there’s clearly too much out there. And statistics and research suggest that no amount of recycling is going to get us out of this mess.

ICYMI, here are this week’s great reads

Jimmie Mac Lee, 50, stands inside the abandoned property where he lives in Detroit.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Why Detroit, America’s poorest city, doesn’t have an L.A.-sized homeless problem. It’s a high-crime city with the country’s worst poverty rate — nearly 1 in 3 people meet the federal definition. But Detroit also has one of the nation’s lowest rates of homelessness.

The radical L.A. student newspaper that inspired a generation of activists. In the 1970s the Red Tide, a radical student newspaper, advocated for Gary Tyler, who was once the youngest person in America on death row. Recently, Red Tide members and Tyler met face-to-face for the first time.

‘I’ve got to find out who I am:’ How the Garifuna Museum is reclaiming culture and identity. Latinidad is an ever-expanding concept, but it has not often made space for the Garifuna people who come from various regions of Central America. In Los Angeles, the Garifuna are working hard to preserve their culture and help others learn about their little-known history in Latin America.

Today’s week-in-review newsletter was curated by Kevinisha Walker. Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to [email protected].