Heat and Smog Join Forces for 9th Day in Row

Southern California suffered Wednesday under the ninth day of a merciless plague of heat and smog that has obliterated skylines, sent a few disgruntled tourists packing for home and left some residents literally gasping for clean air.

The Los Angeles Civic Center posted a high of 94, marking nine consecutive days of 90-degree-plus weather. Inland valleys fared worse, with highs reaching 105 in Woodland Hills, Monrovia, Riverside and Ontario.

First-stage smog alerts have been posted in parts of the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys for five of the past seven days. In downtown Los Angeles, visibility has been limited to a few miles, with the San Gabriel Mountains lost in a sea of brown haze.

Conditions did improve slightly on Wednesday, when no first-stage alerts were called. But the air was still declared “unhealthful” in 12 of the 34 air-monitoring areas of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, including normally clear West Los Angeles.

Meteorologists predicted slightly cooler weather today, but real relief was not expected until Friday.

Those who could avoided the smog by staying indoors. Jim Lewis was not so lucky. His work as a garbage truck driver took him to what was arguably the most unpleasant place to be on a hot, smoggy day--high atop 500 feet of trash at the Sunshine Canyon Landfill north of Sylmar.

As a light wind kicked up a cloud of dust amid the sea of disposable diapers and plastic trash bags, Lewis watched bulldozers cover his load with a layer of dirt.

“They keep the trash covered up pretty good, so you don’t have too much stench,” said Lewis, 56. “It’s the smog and the fumes from all these trucks that bother me. . . . The heat isn’t that bad. It’s nothing like what the fellas are suffering in Saudi Arabia.”

What’s causing the hellish weather? Joe Cassmassi, a weather forecaster with the AQMD, described the atmospheric conditions as “worst-case meteorology.”

Normally, temperatures near the 100-degree mark break up the inversion layer that holds pollutants close to the ground, he said. But this week, a high-pressure system centered over San Diego has kept the inversion layer intact, leading to the unusual combination of smog and near-100-degree heat.

“You have to get out of L.A. pretty much, and even out of Orange County, to get away from the smog,” he said.

For out-of-towners visiting Southern California, Wednesday’s dirty air and heat seemed a far cry from the pleasant, post-card vistas they had seen in the travel agent’s office back home.

Karen Steven, a 21-year-old tourist from Scotland, sat in the shade of a kiosk at the main entrance to the Huntington Library in San Marino, resting after a midday walk that unexpectedly became a desert-like trek.

“It’s almost unbearable,” she said. “I expected brilliant sunshine and clear skies. It’s been kind of a surprise.”

Joe Prigatamo, a volunteer who collects donations for the library, offered the weary tourist a glass of water. It was not the first time Prigatamo had rescued a pedestrian from the heat wave. Earlier in the day, a Swiss woman and her child approached his kiosk.

“I told her, ‘You walked all the way from Switzerland in this heat? That’s crazy,’ ” Prigatamo said, laughing. “But seriously,” he added, “another person walked from the Norton Simon Museum (in Pasadena). Now that’s a long way.”

Some locals appeared to take it all in stride, greeting the summer-ending smog siege and heat wave with the same aplomb reserved for rush-hour traffic jams.

Daniel Urquisa, 29, spent Wednesday installing a sprinkler system at Caltech. Three days of working shirtless in the hot Pasadena sun left his skin bright red. But he didn’t seem to mind. “It’s like I’ve been to the beach,” he said in Spanish. “Sure, you can feel the heat. But you get used to it.”

In some San Gabriel Valley communities, intermittent first-stage smog alerts during the first week of school forced officials to limit playground activities. And even when the smog was not that bad, children seemed to be less enthusiastic about playing, observers said.

Watching her students during the lunch hour at Atwater Avenue Elementary School in Silver Lake, Principal Ingrid Isaksen noticed a few children trying to escape from the simmering heat of the playground blacktop.

“Some of them said that it was hot and that they didn’t want to play,” Isaksen said. “They just sat down in the shade. They don’t have to play. They have that choice.”

Most Angelenos know that coping with the smog means adapting one’s activities to the ebb and flow of the nitrogen oxide in the atmosphere. Gardening, jogging or any other outdoor activity should be reserved for early evening, when the smog usually dissipates.

Those forced to work outdoors have developed survival strategies. Letter carrier Lester Santiago, 55, followed his usual routine Wednesday to avoid heat stroke while on his Pasadena route.

“Just before I leave for work in the morning I have 1 1/2 glasses of apple juice and a glass of water,” Santiago said. “I have another glass of water at the office just before I start my route. . . . By the end of the day, I’ve had about six glasses of water.”

The heat wave is expected to end soon, perhaps by the weekend, forecasters say, as the high-pressure system moves eastward.

“It’ll be slowly cooling down each day from here on out,” said Marty McKewon, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times.