michael oku visited a food desert and asks - does the community have an appetite for change? >> you're looking at a fast food waste land. south central los angeles, its supersized with junk food joints and drowning. it's where opening a business has at times required negotiating with the bloods and cripps. so it may seem like the last place to debate the best way to use thyme and sage in a sauce. goughin is the chef at post and bean, perhaps the only restaurant with his own herb garden. >> for me it was like a coming home. i was born in inglewood, lived here for several years and there was an opportunity to open up a flag ship for the development of the ball. armstrong bets the residents would want his version of fast food. >> show me something that you could make that is affordable, that someone can make. >> i'll show you a simple kale salad. all the agreeance are from the south central farmers co-op, supplying the kale, the greens. >> reporter: the formers co-op is the -- farmers co-op is the only one available to residents living at or below the poverty rate. >> how much i

we begin our special coverage with "america tonight"s michael oku. >> i ended up smashed against a house, and a beam pressed against my threat. i thought okay, if my throat breaks it will be more merciful than smothering >> reporter: buried in a mudslide and condetemplating a y to die. that's how dire the situation was in february 1998, the last time they were rocked by a powerful winter. somehow the californians was wiped out by a wall of mud. take me back to 1997/'98. what were you doing, what were you participating. >> we were warned that el nino was coming. none of us had an idea of what to expect. we figured a lot of rain. >> reporter: back then the average californians had little understanding of el nino, the warming of the waters near the equator, or how it influenced the climate. >> the interesting thing is storms are not necessarily larger. that's a misconception. there's more of them. so it's back to back to back, like a conveyor belt of storms. >> in october 1997 there was an ominous signs as to what lay ahead. a hurricane fuelled by el-nino causing flooding and hundreds of de