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Photo: Red Car Property Neighbor, August 11, 2017. LAFD Brush Inspector Perez, CD13's Hector Vega met the Red Car Property Owner and his son, at the Corralitas end of the Red Car Property. In no uncertain terms Inspector Perez instructed to do the brush clearance and remove fire hazards like dumping and abandoned homeless debris. According to CD13's Vega, the owner said it would be done next week.
Worth noting in this photo: the green slope directly above the cul-de-sac, is the southbound 2 Freeway. November 30, 2016, a car flew off the freeway and crashed onto Corralitas Drive. CalTrans merely replaced the damaged guardrail, rather than extend the guardrail further south. After the 2016 fire, CalTrans removed all the trees that prevented cars from landing on the street or on the Red Car Property.
CalTrans has not seen the need for even temporary K-rails to prevent cars from flying off the freeway. The guard rail is there to protect the overhead sign across the southbound lanes, not to protect neighbors. A chain link fence is at the bottom of the hill.
Note: We're playing catch up for the month of August. This was post was actually published 8-24-17 and backdated to the date the photo was shot and originally published on Twitter.
Photo: Red Car Property Neighbor, January 12, 2017, around 5 PM. After a day of nearly 3" of rain, a white Ford 4x4 crew cab pick-up truck with what appears to be a large chair in the truck bed, got stuck in the mud. Another neighbor reports the California license plate as: 2901901. We don't know if they were joyriding, planning of dumping the chair or actually had legitimate business on the Corralitas end of the Red Car Property. The white stuff on the ground is water (Lake Corralitas) reflecting the sky. (Click on photo to enlarge.)
On a separate note, check out all the rows of new plantings on the southbound lanes of the 2 Freeway. Sadly they are just shrubs, not trees.
Photo: Diane Edwardson, July 18, 2009. The scale of the loss of trees on the 2 Freeway adjacent Corralitas Drive is only evident when people are in the photos with trees. (Click on photos to enlarge.)
It's hard to imagine the southbound lanes of the 2 Freeway are about 15' away from the urban hikers of The Big Parade 2009 on Corralitas Walk.
Photo: Lupita Chapa, August 5, 2016. A month after the Silver Lake Fire, CalTrans began removing the 50+ year old enormous Eucalyptus and Brazilian Pepper Trees (that for the 26 years I've lived on Corralitas Drive) have formed a 30-40' tall green barrier between Corralitas and the Southbound lanes of 2 Freeway.
Don't expect to see new trees planted here. CalTrans is under water restrictions imposed by Governor Brown. If we're lucky, we might get some ground cover to help prevent erosion. I've spoken to two CalTrans representatives who have told me, on multiple occasions - even before the Silver Lake Fire, trees planted on freeway parkways do not clean the air, control dust, mitigate sound, provide psychological benefits or provide a safety barrier. I guess trees lose their ability to do those things when they're planted on freeways.
Yes trees planted today won't mitigate much right now. However, that is no reason to ignore the long term effects of tree planting.
Earlier this year Doug Brown, Senior Landscape Architect for CalTrans was quoted in a Scientific American story, "When managed properly, trees are proven cost-effective mitigation measures that sequester carbon.” (Sequestering carbon is how trees remove pollutants from the air and store it underground.)
Photo: Lupita Chapa, August 5, 2016. As far as public safety goes, there is only about 50 feet of guard rail near the freeway signs that cross the freeway, which are north of where the cars usually fly off the freeway - to be stopped by the large (now removed) Eucalyptus.
CalTrans is concerned about the safety of drivers, not the safety of those who have chosen to live next to a freeway because it was affordable. Until the Silver Lake Fire, and CalTrans' subsequent removal of trees their landscape experts deemed necessary, trees made living across the narrow street from the freeway tolerable.
