During the week of August 31 to September 7, 1955, Los Angeles experienced its worst-ever heatwave, reaching a record peak of 110° on September 1st. And then on September 13 (69 years ago today!), this spell of hot weather and a low inversion layer led to the highest recorded ozone level in Los Angeles history. And you know what ozone is the major ingredient of? Smog! So here we have some nutty Angeleno who thought he’d take walk through the worst smog Los Angeles had ever seen. He was on the corner of First and Olive Streets in downtown Los Angeles. The smog was so thick that we can barely see the outline of LA City Hall.
This is roughly how that view looked in June 2024. What a difference 69 years makes. Now we can see City Hall quite clearly and look at all those shade trees. In some aspects, the good old days weren’t so great.
I can confirm all of this. I was there. The smog was intense as was the heat. And homes were not air conditioned then as they are now.
Did you have a/c at the time?
No we didn’t. I remember many hot, sleepless nights with the windows open trying to cool off. That’s why years ago houses had sleeping porches.
I came along a few years later, but our house in Burbank, built in 39 had a water cooler. It sat on top of the roof. It worked good as long as it was a dry heat not so well if it was if it was humid. And I sure do remember the smog.
Was your water cooler like a swamp cooler?
Yes, a swamp cooler, I forgot that is what they were called.
The irony is that the solution is visible down slope there…electric motored streetcars for public transit. Over on the left we see diesel fume belching busses which hardly helped, but hey, GM was getting rich. Producing all this fuel with noxious effluents required refineries on the coast which just added more garbage everyday. Now they weren’t happy with ground rail systems but when a monorail solution was proposed it was all, “No, we can’t go in that direction. Not enough waste to generate that 10% profit margin for our banksters and deadwoods. Gotta go with inefficiency to the max and carve up all that open space to boost the realtors share.” Perhaps you can see better today, but I’m not convinced that that parking lot on the right is a sign of a healthy urban environment for the future. Roll the dice again.