{"id":6266,"date":"2015-03-13T05:15:47","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T11:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=6266"},"modified":"2015-03-13T05:15:47","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T11:15:47","slug":"a-day-in-the-war-between-the-city-and-its-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=6266","title":{"rendered":"A day in the war between the city and its mountains."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A href=\"http:\/\/m.nautil.us\/issue\/22\/slow\/los-angeles-should-be-buried\">Justin Nobel<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The San Gabriel Mountains are waging war on Los Angeles and Ed Heinlein\u2019s chainsaw is screaming in the late afternoon sun. It\u2019s January 2015 and Heinlein, who has a friendly paunch and paws sheathed in mud-stained work gloves, is carving up avocado trees. They were drowned the previous year when a series of mud freight trains roared out of the hills above his house. \u201cWelcome to mud central,\u201d says Heinlein, \u201cThe assistant fire chief tells me it\u2019s the most dangerous property in L.A.\u201d<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&nbsp;Heinlein is a retired elementary school teacher, current Christian minister, and has a preacher\u2019s tendency to speak in terms of fire and brimstone. He lives in Azusa, a scenic nook in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, which rise 10,000 feet above the city of Los Angeles. Aware that the mountain range\u2019s mud war is far from over, Heinlein has spent more than $100,000 to protect his property behind a trio of steel and concrete walls. Immediately surrounding his home is a final barrier, consisting of about 400 sandbags, 60 sheets of plywood and heavy plastic sheeting. It is a mighty fortification, so complete that Heinlein and his family cannot even exit their backdoor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Justin Nobel: The San Gabriel Mountains are waging war on Los Angeles and Ed Heinlein\u2019s chainsaw is screaming in the late afternoon sun. It\u2019s January 2015 and Heinlein, who has a friendly paunch and paws sheathed in mud-stained work gloves, is carving up avocado trees. They were drowned the previous year when a series of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6267,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266\/revisions\/6267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}