Theresa Reyes, left, Antjuan Roy and his mother Diane Johnson, stand in front of Roy and Johnson's home and Roy's destroyed car in Temple City, Calif., on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/David Zentz)
Postal worker Edward Tena delivers mail along Live Oak Ave., in Temple City, Calif., on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011.
Occupy LA protesters march from Pershing Square to the Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail where protesters, who were arrested during the arrests on Wednesday, were being held, in Los Angeles, Calif., on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/David Zentz)
Occupy LA protesters arrive at the Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail where protesters were being held, in Los Angeles, Calif., on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/David Zentz)
First the preoccupied: Last Saturday had me busy with two assignments for the AP, first doing follow up on Santa Ana winds damage in the formerly tree-lined town of Temple City. Two days prior, winds reaching 150 miles per hour had blown through town causing extensive damage. When I arrived in Temple City it didn’t look all that bad at first. Traffic lights were out along Las Tunas Drive, the town’s main street, causing traffic to move at a slower clip than usual, but other than a few piles of downed branches on the curbside it didn’t seem that bad. It was a different story though when I turned off into the neighborhoods. On the first block to the south large trees still blocked driveways and entire yards were covered with branches. On Live Oak, the next road south, it really looked like a hurricane had come through town. The entire street had been cast in a net of power lines, as one utility pole after another laid outstretched across the road. The power outage was the most pressing problem for the city, as overnight temperatures were dropping unusually low, into the thirties, making life rough for the local residents. Despite some criticism that power wasn’t coming back on fast enough, it was good to see that the power company had deployed additional forces to address the problem. In 2004 I photographed Hurricane Charley, a category 2 storm that tore a new O in Orlando, and remember it took more than eight days in some areas to regain power. This was in August, with temperatures pushing 100 degrees. I remember visiting families who seemed to be melting into their sofas as they sat in the dark, waiting. Here, I believe all power was restored within the week, but understand why people would be impatient. I shot the workers and the downed power lines, walking all the way around the block each time I wanted to move a block east or west since the road was blocked off. After one or two blocks I grew tired of this and was relieved when a postal worker told me about a car that was still crushed beneath a giant tree a couple blocks to the north. (That sounds bad.) What I was hoping to find was an example of how the storm damage had affected someone personally, and this sounded like it might be the thing. The scene he described wasn’t hard to find. It turns out that not only had the tree crushed the one visible car, but there were two cars in front of it that were also trapped, if not destroyed. The red car belonged to the Antjuan Roy, the 20-year-old son of the homeowner, and was his first car, which he’d worked and saved up for. I was told he only had liability insurance, so it was a total loss. Considering the news, they seemed to be taking it well. As I stood there talking to them, passers by slowed their vehicles, jaws slacked, some pausing long enough to shoot a photo with their phone. Theresa, the homeowner, joked that they should put out a can for donations. In the scheme of things they were lucky. The giant tree had somehow managed to fall directly into the one-lane driveway separating their home from their neighbor’s. A couple feet to the right or left and it would have come down on one of their rooftops. But I wished there was something I could do other than try to get the photo published and hope someone would notice.
On to the Occupiers: After filing the images from Temple City I was asked to head downtown where a group of two hundred or so Occupiers had reconvened. This time they were protesting the
Lilly and Allison Varner, a legally married couple from Los Angeles, join the hundreds turned out, despite the rain.
One couple brought their dog.
Jay Mendez, left, and his husband, Vantha Sao, hold candles while joining the hundreds who turned out for Eve of Justice.
