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Freeway closure HEADLINES

Angelinos (aka our cousins to the south in the great state of CA) feared something that may rank only next to the next big quake. They lost the use of one of their freeways. For a whole 48 hours. Caltrans (local road fixers) had a project to demol and needed to keep the omnipresent driving public away from their blast site. Hence the 405 was closed.

It is amazing how a country's or region's culture dictates what becomes news or noteworthy as compared to say Europe or India or China and how the local public might react to that same piece of information (that is if that information was indeed deemed worth sharing and shared with the public).

So it was in the case of this freeway closure that the entire state of CA was on high alert almost a few weeks ahead of the event. There were large signs alerting drivers traveling in the general direction of Los Angeles that this section of freeway would be closed and that detours were available. They even hired an old Soap Star that portrayed a CA Highway Police to come out and encourage the Angelinos and other visitors to park their cars and not show up on 405.

That it made headline news on all local channels along side the silly weather people was quite in keeping with what moves the people here. Literally - they need to know their weather and the state of their highways. Give them that and they can sweat it out in the jams, no problem. But throw in an unexpected drizzle or a detour and they get turned upside down - major accidents adding to the detoured delays and high anxiety leading to some road rage.

Anyway these warnings paid off with the highway opening 17 hours ahead of schedule and the petrol burning devices once again unleashed to travel on their merry way.

I wonder if Monday's news might pertain to some unusual weather activity due to Ozone layer malfunction in light of absence of all the Carbon Monoxide fumes that might otherwise be pervading the atmosphere in that part of our planet? No cars - no fumes - no pollution - BAM - weather malfunction - one that the dumb weather man did not anticipate - more accidents!

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