Viewpoint.

NEWS"Los Angeles is a topographical wonderland. Mountains loom in the distance. Hillsides and canyons are the refuge of hikers and dog walkers. Beaches and bluffs above the coastline beckon. Into this wilderness we have threaded our neighborhoods and streets, not to mention freeways, making it a mix of the wild and the urban. To live here, we don't make a pact with nature as much as we reach an uneasy standoff with it. What happened this past week has upended all our assumptions about our truce with the wildness of Los Angeles. We were wrong."Carla Hall in the Los Angeles Times [Extracted from the article]