Rising to a Rising Occasion : Angelenos look out for each other as menacing storms hit

As the great nature writer John McPhee pointed out in his 1989 book “The Control of Nature,” the Los Angeles Basin in a dry year is as dry as the Gobi Desert.

In such a place, flood might seem to be one opportunity for heroism the citizenry might have to forgo.

The truth is, however, that our rainfall can be as sudden, as spectacular and, on the admittedly rare occasion, as menacing as brush fire. “Some of the most concentrated rainfall in the history of the United States,” writes McPhee, has occurred in L.A.’s local mountains, which otherwise may be, as he puts it, “so dry they hum” for months or even years on end. But then, watch out.

The winter storms that strike Southern California arrive at the end of an extraordinarily long transpacific run. By the end of that run, they are laden with huge quantities of water. And sometimes they just dump the whole load on us. Thus, in January, 1969, more rain fell here in nine days than falls on New York in a year. In January of 1943, 26 inches fell in 24 hours. On April 5, 1926, one rain gauge recorded an inch in a minute. “These are by no means annual events,” McPhee writes, “but when they occur they will stir even hydrologists to bandy the name of Noah.”

McPhee rightly regards Los Angeles County flood control as one of the engineering wonders of modern times, the more wonderful perhaps because it is so rarely needed. We join him in that and take further pride in those rescuers, Fire Department professionals and spirited amateurs, who were so active Monday. To the several dozen people who had to be plucked from instant oceans in the San Fernando Valley, rescuers’ helicopters and boats and trucks were havens as welcome as Noah’s Ark. Well done!