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Oct. 7th, 2001 03:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
libertangoSo.
So Ulrika and I went to Regency dancing in Culver City tonight. It went well, we enjoyed ourselves, the company was fine...
We left to return home at about 11PM, 11:10, somewhere in there.
(Some of this will only make sense to Angelenos. Either that, or you need to go to http://maps.yahoo.com, or somesuch.)
We get on I-405, the San Diego Freeway, heading southbound.
Just as we pass the Sepulveda Blvd/Howard Hughes Pkwy exit, there's a portable text sign that flashes, "BLOCKAGE AT CENTURY BLVD - EXPECT DELAYS". There's also a car with a flashing police light in it, except it's not a black and white -- it's an all-white station wagon.
I turn on KFWB, 980AM, which is the only 24x7 news station in LA. (KNX is "mostly" news, meaning CBS has sports there sometimes, and old-time radio theatre, as well. KFWB makes great hay of this, rightly so, sometimes.)
KFWB's traffic broadcast tells us (this would've been -- 11:21? Around there. "Traffic on the Ones" is one of KFWB's slogans) that the lanes blocked at Century Blvd have been cleared, and the backup should get moving fairly quickly.
So we creep along for a while... Century is only 1-1/2 miles forward... Which is when the Number 1 lane gets taken away by cones, forcing a merge.
Twenty minutes later, we catch up to a CalTrans truck, which is under Calif Highway Patrol escort, and replacing earlier flares with cones, taking away lanes 1,2, and 3. (the number system I know for lanes is to start left/center-most, and then count outwards.) I call KFWB's "PhoneForce" line, which is their freeway traffic tipster's line. I tell them how, far from being cleared, it seems the cones take an additional lane away, and that since they're cones, they're going to be there a while -- longer than flares, that's for certain.
That's when we get to the Century Blvd off-ramp.
And get forced off the freeway, onto the ramp.
I make call 2 to KFWB, telling them the 405 is completely closed at Century, which also happens to be the exit for LAX, Los Angeles Int'l Airport.
But that turns out not to be quite true. The transition/exit lanes through that stretch are much more intricate than I knew, and they allow us to rejoin the 405 without ever having been at street level. You merge back in to the main freeway just north of the 105 interchange.
Along the way, we see what must've been a police investigation scene. Highway Patrol cars are parked perpendicular to lanes, to block the freeway. There may have been an LAPD car or two, I'm not sure. Maybe 6-8 black and whites, total. And more of the stealth all-white station wagons.
In addition to this cluster of manpower, plastic markers are all over the freeway, each showing a letter: A, B, C, etc. My first thought is bullet marks, but Ulrika says, no, the trajectories are wrong, it's probably debris markers. Certainly they seem to be a way of marking and differentiating evidence.
So I call KFWB a third time, telling them this -- that I was wrong about the full closure, you can still get through albeit on the transition roads; about the investigation; the white cars; the lettered markers.
Then I keep tuning in every ten minutes, to see if we get any updates.
At first, nothing. Then KFWB says there's an accident on the 405 at Century, closing the fast lane (which would be the Number 1 lane).
Folks, there were four lanes of freeway closed at Century. Plus beaucoup cops and unidentified law enforcement crawling over the place. At the airport. To hell with the traffic implications alone, this was a story.
By the time we got home to Costa Mesa, half-an-hour and three updates later, KFWB never accurately reported the situation once.
After dropping off Ulrika and our dog at home, I went to In-N-Out for a late dinner. I listened to KFWB some more. One more update, no news.
After ordering at In-N-Out's window, I called KFWB one last time: Why weren't they reporting the four lane closure at Century?
"That's police activity."
"Yes, I know, but why aren't you reporting it on the air?"
"We aren't?"
"Not for at least the last half-hour, no."
A long pause. "I have no idea, chief."
That was at 1:05AM. When I left In-N-Out at 1:31AM, I listened on the way home. One more update, no 405/Century info.
So... The clear inference is that somebody spiked this story, good and hard.
Just look out for plain white station wagons in your rear view mirror, is all I have to say.
So Ulrika and I went to Regency dancing in Culver City tonight. It went well, we enjoyed ourselves, the company was fine...
We left to return home at about 11PM, 11:10, somewhere in there.
(Some of this will only make sense to Angelenos. Either that, or you need to go to http://maps.yahoo.com, or somesuch.)
We get on I-405, the San Diego Freeway, heading southbound.
Just as we pass the Sepulveda Blvd/Howard Hughes Pkwy exit, there's a portable text sign that flashes, "BLOCKAGE AT CENTURY BLVD - EXPECT DELAYS". There's also a car with a flashing police light in it, except it's not a black and white -- it's an all-white station wagon.
I turn on KFWB, 980AM, which is the only 24x7 news station in LA. (KNX is "mostly" news, meaning CBS has sports there sometimes, and old-time radio theatre, as well. KFWB makes great hay of this, rightly so, sometimes.)
KFWB's traffic broadcast tells us (this would've been -- 11:21? Around there. "Traffic on the Ones" is one of KFWB's slogans) that the lanes blocked at Century Blvd have been cleared, and the backup should get moving fairly quickly.
So we creep along for a while... Century is only 1-1/2 miles forward... Which is when the Number 1 lane gets taken away by cones, forcing a merge.
Twenty minutes later, we catch up to a CalTrans truck, which is under Calif Highway Patrol escort, and replacing earlier flares with cones, taking away lanes 1,2, and 3. (the number system I know for lanes is to start left/center-most, and then count outwards.) I call KFWB's "PhoneForce" line, which is their freeway traffic tipster's line. I tell them how, far from being cleared, it seems the cones take an additional lane away, and that since they're cones, they're going to be there a while -- longer than flares, that's for certain.
That's when we get to the Century Blvd off-ramp.
And get forced off the freeway, onto the ramp.
I make call 2 to KFWB, telling them the 405 is completely closed at Century, which also happens to be the exit for LAX, Los Angeles Int'l Airport.
But that turns out not to be quite true. The transition/exit lanes through that stretch are much more intricate than I knew, and they allow us to rejoin the 405 without ever having been at street level. You merge back in to the main freeway just north of the 105 interchange.
Along the way, we see what must've been a police investigation scene. Highway Patrol cars are parked perpendicular to lanes, to block the freeway. There may have been an LAPD car or two, I'm not sure. Maybe 6-8 black and whites, total. And more of the stealth all-white station wagons.
In addition to this cluster of manpower, plastic markers are all over the freeway, each showing a letter: A, B, C, etc. My first thought is bullet marks, but Ulrika says, no, the trajectories are wrong, it's probably debris markers. Certainly they seem to be a way of marking and differentiating evidence.
So I call KFWB a third time, telling them this -- that I was wrong about the full closure, you can still get through albeit on the transition roads; about the investigation; the white cars; the lettered markers.
Then I keep tuning in every ten minutes, to see if we get any updates.
At first, nothing. Then KFWB says there's an accident on the 405 at Century, closing the fast lane (which would be the Number 1 lane).
Folks, there were four lanes of freeway closed at Century. Plus beaucoup cops and unidentified law enforcement crawling over the place. At the airport. To hell with the traffic implications alone, this was a story.
By the time we got home to Costa Mesa, half-an-hour and three updates later, KFWB never accurately reported the situation once.
After dropping off Ulrika and our dog at home, I went to In-N-Out for a late dinner. I listened to KFWB some more. One more update, no news.
After ordering at In-N-Out's window, I called KFWB one last time: Why weren't they reporting the four lane closure at Century?
"That's police activity."
"Yes, I know, but why aren't you reporting it on the air?"
"We aren't?"
"Not for at least the last half-hour, no."
A long pause. "I have no idea, chief."
That was at 1:05AM. When I left In-N-Out at 1:31AM, I listened on the way home. One more update, no 405/Century info.
So... The clear inference is that somebody spiked this story, good and hard.
Just look out for plain white station wagons in your rear view mirror, is all I have to say.
