La Cañada History: Brief but powerful rainstorm floods homes, damages cars with Station fire debris
Ten Years Ago
In a precursor to devastating events that unfolded the following winter, a brief but powerful rainstorm that hit the area on Nov. 12, 2009, sent mud and rocks into the streets of several hillside neighborhoods, flooding half a dozen homes and damaging cars. The storm dropped between 1 and 2 inches of the wet stuff in less than 20 minutes, according to fire officials, enough to loosen debris from the slopes above La Cañada and La Crescenta compromised by the Station fire that ignited in late August of that year.
Twenty Years Ago
Then JPL Director Edward Stone was at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. to take part in a press conference announcing the outcome on an inquiry into the September 1999 loss of the $125-million Mars Climate Orbiter. Stone said better management practices were being put into place at JPL to ensure nothing more went wrong with the overall project, as the $16-million Mars Polar Lander was nearing its scheduled Dec. 3, 1999, landing date on the Red Planet. But the changes were not enough to save the lander as it was lost less than a month after Stone made his statements to the press.
Thirty Years Ago
Akiko Iwakura, a student in Denise Lindahl’s class at Paradise Canyon Elementary School, was named the winner of the 1989 Valley Sun Thanksgiving art contest, open each year to fifth-grade students learning about the early days of America. (This year’s entries are due Friday, Nov. 22.)
Forty Years Ago
La Cañada High School’s varsity football team defeated Temple City for the first time in 12 years to claim the Rio Hondo League championship. The team’s head coach was Marty McWhinney.
Fifty Years Ago
La Cañada Country Club officials said their course experienced $5,000 in damages after vandals drove two golf carts across three greens, tearing up the grass. Sheriff’s deputies reported the intruders broke the lock on the cart garage to gain access to the vehicles.
Sixty Years Ago
In the wake of the disastrous October 1959 Woodwardia fire in the Angeles National Forest, the fire station on Georgian Road was making more than 191,000 sandbags available for La Cañada residents’ use to protect their homes from mudslides during the 1959-60 rainy season.
Compiled from the Valley Sun archives.
