How Los Angeles Is Preparing for a Worst-Case Scenario
LOS ANGELES—On paper, Eric Garcetti is one of the least powerful big-city mayors in America. Los Angeles doesn’t even have its own health department. This sprawling metropolis surrounds and adjoins, yet is still dwarfed by, the raft of other municipalities that are home to the 10 million people of Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest county, with an area more than 80 percent the size of Connecticut’s.
Yet Garcetti has emerged as a prominent fighter in the battle against the coronavirus, last week ordering the month-long closure of all but essential businesses, and requiring residents to stay in their home except for necessary trips to buy groceries and gasoline, obtain medical care, and the like. “Each one of us is a first responder in this crisis,” he said at the time, “and Angelenos understand that we have to make big sacrifices right now to save lives.”
It was a bold move for Garcetti, 49, who in his nearly seven years in office has often been criticized as ambitious but politically hyper-cautious. And it had a big effect: Less than an hour later, Governor
