The Canyon Alliance Unveiled
A new organization, comprised of residents of the Santa Monica and Rustic Canyon community, was unveiled March 1 at a Canyon Square exhibit celebrating residents’ return after the devastating January 7 Palisades fire.
An estimated 400 attendees perused maps, photos, and information about the canyons and heard Doug Suisman, the interim president of the Santa Monica Canyon Civic Association (SMCCA), share a vision of the Canyon Alliance, created to forge a more cohesive and resilient canyon community ready to face the next disaster.
“We need to self-organize and self-govern with greater clarity and purpose than ever before,” Suisman told residents. Due to distinct features, such as winding streets and hidden staircases, the Canyon can confuse firefighters and other first responders.
“The Canyon is complicated, charming, quirky,” he said. “In an emergency, it’s confusing and difficult to navigate.”
To help address these issues, the Canyon Alliance intends to build on everything the community has learned since January to achieve three goals: 1) recovery and repopulation; 2) relief for the broader Palisades community, which suffered the brunt of the fire; and 3) resilience, including long-term planning and emergency communications.
To begin, Suisman, an architect and urban planner, created maps and informative displays that formed the basis of the exhibition. They show the 0.8 square mile community of about 2,500 people divided into five distinct neighborhoods that together total around 1,000 homes.
Each of the neighborhoods—Upper Rustic Canyon, Lower Rustic Canyon, Upper Santa Monica Canyon, Lower Santa Monica Canyon, and Boca (the mouth of the canyon)— has roughly 200 homes and its own unique issues, but they also share many common issues with the entire Canyon community.
For example, Lower Santa Monica Canyon, which has Canyon Elementary School at its center, includes streets with varied, inviting personalities (Amalfi, (lower) East Channel, Entrada, Sage, Stassi, and Sumac), while Upper Santa Monica Canyon has its own flavor and features, including buried power lines and wide sidewalks along its streets (Alisal, Attila, Dryad, (upper) East Channel, Entrada, Esparta, Kingman, Mesita, and San Lorenzo). While sidewalks and buried power lines might mainly concern Lower Santa Monica Canyon and the rest of the Canyon, all five neighborhoods share broader concerns about traffic, the environment, and safety.
Boca includes the business center and beach access, which makes it a hub of activity on most of its streets (Channel, Entrada, Mabery, Ocean Avenue Extension, Ocean Way, Short, and West Channel), while Lower Rustic has a set of loosely parallel streets, including the busier roadway Mesa and the more sedate streets (East Rustic, Hillside, Sycamore, Vance, and West Rustic). Upper Rustic Canyon features the popular Rustic Canyon Park at its base, and has the largest area of land, including a mix of interweaving streets (Brooktree, Greentree, Haldeman, Hightree, Hilltree, Latimer, Ranch, Rustic, and Rustic Creek).
Emergency preparedness is one of the key areas that affects everyone, since fire, floods, and earthquakes are inevitabilities in the Canyon Alliance. During the fire and its aftermath with flooding and looting, WhatsApp and Google groups allowed residents to stay in touch, alert each other to spot fires, and combat looters.
In preparation for the next disaster, Suisman would like to see Canyon residents organize a disaster preparedness network that could feature buildings using non-combustible materials, a fire brigade, water tanks, pool pumps, earthquake preparedness, and flood control.
As he wrote in the introduction to his exhibition “The mountains are going to burn. The creeks are going to flood. The ground is going to shake. And the sea may even rise up in a wall.”
When those events happen, he and the broader Canyon Alliance aim to ensure that the community is as ready as it can be.
Sue Pascoe, editor of Circling The News, Inc., contributed to this story and also covered the exhibit. Read her article here.
