“Until recently, a pandemic had been kind of abstract,” said Carla Bittel, a Loyola Marymount University history professor who has had her students use archival material to write projects about the Spanish flu. That focus is crucial to understanding how the Spanish flu spread across Southern California. (Los Angeles Times archives)At the C. Erwin Piper Technical Center near downtown, Los Angeles city archivist Michael Holland tells L.A.’s 1918 flu story through stats and ordinances. Los Angeles City Health Commissioner Luther M. Powers was instrumental in lessening the effects of Spanish flu on the city. (Los Angeles City Archives)While praising how Los Angeles officials reacted to the Spanish flu, he also noted that their modern-day peers “are much more coordinated than we were a century ago.

Source: Los Angeles Times March 16, 2020 18:11 UTC