ABSTRACT
In so far as there is a beginning to the modern history of storm-hazard management in Los Angeles County, the storms of 1914 mark that beginning. They were not particularly distinctive or severe, nor were they wholly unexpected. The region had experienced many similar events before. Within living memory, the storms of 1862, 1866 and 1884 were probably larger in terms of rainfall and runoff, those of 1889 were estimated to have been 70% greater, and there had been heavy rainstorms in 1891, 1906 and 1911 (Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors 1915). In his appendix to the County Board of Supervisors (1915) report, C. T. Leeds listed floods in the vicinity of Los Angeles on no less than 41 occasions in the 37 years between 1878 and 1914. Carpenter (1914) recorded floods of one sort or another in the region in
