SHED YE YOUR EVIL, LOS ANGELES -- OR FACE AN EVENT THAT WILL EXCEED ANY HURRICANE

By Michael H. Brown

Years ago, in 2001, I wrote a plea to New Orleans. The headline was, "Oh New Orleans, shed ye the darkness or face disaster." The article delineated problems there and foresaw an imminent hurricane disaster (of category-three or higher).

I don't know if that was a "prophecy" or a simple deduction based on research. It is a city that, as many have long known, sits in harm's way. And it was overdue. In 2005 came "Katrina."

But there was that niggling feeling and I also have it about Los Angeles.

Again, one could see this as simple deductive reasoning. Perhaps some intuition is thrown in. Perhaps it is a feeling after spending a few days there (at a wonderful retreat, attended by truly wonderful people).

"I have to be blunt: New Orleans, you are in peril," I had written. "You are a fine people but you have let fester an evil that is unmatched outside of Hollywood and Berkeley and Times Square."

Hollywood.

That brings us to Los Angeles and it brings me to issuance of my first strong warning since that 2001 missive to the Big Easy.

I believe Los Angeles and Southern California are in more imminent danger than at any other time since I first began visiting there in  the 1970s. It is just adding up too swiftly.

There's the genetics. To the south, in San Diego, a laboratory is brazenly creating the first synthetic life (as well as cloning human embryos). A coincidence it is that the major fires there recently erupted at nearby Witch's Creek. A wizard's brew!

There's the pornography: even though the 1994 quake was centered in the suburb of Northridge -- which is the nation's center of video pornography -- few got the point. But a point was to be made. The good and evil both suffer but in that case the most noticeable damage was precisely to the studios cranking out smut. They did not heed the warning; they have since rebuilt.

There are the billboards: they are across L.A., across Hollywood, in the heart of this place, and their lewdness has only grown. It is pornography right there high above the streets for every kid to see. Shame on you!

Shame on us all. How many of us have protested? How many of us have complained?

In Chicago, good folks there had a priest bless all the salt they use on roadways during snow. After the San Francisco retreat, many sprinkled it across the entire Bay Area. Can we find a way of spreading blessed salt throughout L.A.?

There are the movies: Hollywood has learned nothing from the little rumblings and fires and continues to export evil not only to the rest of American citizenry but the whole world. Hardly a movie goes by that is not sexual, occult, blasphemous, based on materialism, gory, or all of the above. I have to be truthful: There are precious few redeeming ones. Even the religious ones come with baggage.

There is the assault of God's creation: countless cars create a smog that contains mutagens, obscures the surrounding mountains, and some days even casts a pale as far away as the Grand Canyon.

Out in the Pacific, wastes from the West Coast have generated a massive gyre of plastic such that in the middle of the ocean traffic cones have been spotted bobbing by (to the shock of ships) and the guts of albatrosses are filled with bottle caps.

There is the Playboy lifestyle. In Los Angeles, anything goes. There are few places on earth that are more libertine. It ranks with New York and Rio and historic places such as Babylon. There is the fornication. There is the adultery. There is swapping. There are the "escorts." There is the homosexuality -- which in actual numbers (this is a far bigger city) almost surely surpasses San Francisco.

There is the materialism: Nowhere is greed and wealth more revered and blatant, with the possible exception of Fifth Avenue and Sutton Place and Park (although they have little over Rodeo). In money-soaked Beverly Hills, an ad in last Sunday's paper included a house for sale for $88 million.

And we have not even mentioned Malibu.

There is the New Age: whole websites exist to list the many dozens of organizations devoted to paganism, psychic phenomena, the New Age, palmistry, astrology, and outright witchcraft in the L.A. area.

If, just before Lent, New Orleans has the Mardi Gras, Tinseltown is the Mardi Gras.

It is here always.

It is here in the skimpiness of an actress's dress. It is here in the celebrity murders. It is here in the actors who are in rehab (did I mention the drugs?). It is here in the idolatry of the Oscars (staged some years at an old Masonic temple). Was Padre Pio right when he said there was something evil in the very nature of the medium?

And so the danger is now acute and it is a bubble and as we know bubbles eventually burst. This grieves me to say because I have a special place in my heart for California.

Fascinating it is how cities with special such problems are perched on precarious terrain. I mentioned New Orleans. I could also mention Miami. There is San Fran. I need say nothing more about San Fran. We all know about New York (terrorism and a hurricane threat as well as the potential for -- yes -- earthquakes).

But when it comes to seismic prospects, nowhere in America is as prone as Los Angeles, at least according to the experts.

And so the prayer-warriors there need to pray.

There is the famous San Andreas fault to the east and this can cause enormous quakes but is probably not the greatest seismic threat to Los Angeles.

That's because there are dozens if not hundreds of hidden "thrust" faults directly below the city itself.

Experts are only beginning to get a handle on these. In most cases, seismologists discover such faults (one was in Northridge) only after the eruption of an earthquake.

What we do know is not comforting. Let me touch the high points. There is the Hollywood fault. Incredibly, this passes right by the "Walk of Fame" and is visible as a rise of land near a major record studio!

There are the faults downtown. There are faults with names like Raymond and Newport-Inglewood. There is the Sierra Madre. It could start along the San Gabriel Mountains and spread from Pasadena to Glendale to Burbank and this is what we really need to pray about; this is where we need intercession.

I don't like to dwell on it. The focus, at our retreat, was on spiritual development. What a bright future we all have to look forward to, if we love. In the Light of eternity, few things of this earth are monumental, and none should cause fear.

Those who pray will be protected. In some way, they will be in a bubble. And L.A. -- though clearly tempting fate, and now moving beyond the stage of "warnings" -- may not even be the next big domino to fall (ala a September 11). There are certainly other candidates.

But let me spell it out here:

If the Hollywood fault went, if it was above a magnitude-six, and if it was joined by neighboring crevices, the rubble would be chest-deep on that Walk of Fame.

If several faults slipped, there would be no more sign on a hill saying "Hollywood."

Such a mega-quake could go on for some time and according to a geologist with whom I spoke at the California Institute of Technology, one involving just several downtown thrusts or in the Wilshire district of magnitude-7.5 would be a half-a-trillion-dollar event.

Compare that to "Katrina's" $81 billion.

If somehow the San Andreas were triggered or was the trigger to start with (and had a higher magnitude than they currently guess), the damage would also be in San Diego, Riverside, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and perhaps substantially north.

And so we have a focus upon which to intercede!

It does not have to happen. There is still time for the sackcloth. But the scale has tipped.

You are a fine people, most of you, Los Angelinos.

Truly wonderful.

It was so great to meet so many, at an event that overflowed.

There are so many good people in this city and these wonderful friends give us hope. They can and must win.

But also there is reality.

There have been warnings. Mud slides. Storms. El Ninos. Fires. Most recently, a rash of quakes near the Mexican border (289 of magnitude-two or higher in the past ten days).

How imminent is imminent?

There is time.

There is time for everywhere. There is time for St. Louis and New York and Seattle. "Katrina" was in 2005. The warning was several years before.

There is time for Miami (which, however, today -- 2/26 -- is in the dark).

There is time but the question is whether the same timeline will operate as in Louisiana and whether the good folks in areas like Los Angeles -- the great folks -- will be able to balance out the evil that is done and continues to grow and I have to be blunt:

The feeling swells, City of Angeles, that you are in great danger.