PG&E warns of safety blackouts in Northern California amid risky wildfire conditions
ROSALIO AHUMADA, SacBee: "PG&E Corp. warned it might shut off power to thousands of customers in portions of 13 California counties starting Monday morning because of dry wind amid critical fire weather conditions.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. sent notifications on Saturday to the customers who could be affected by this latest Public Safety Power Shutoff “to reduce the risk of wildfire from energized power lines,” according to a company news release. The potential shutoffs include 20 affected PG&E customers in Yolo County.
PG&E is already under investigation in connection with the Dixie Fire, which started July 13 and has become the second-largest wildfire in California history. Last week, victims sued Pacific Gas & Electric Co. over damages from the fire. Cal Fire is investigating whether the Dixie Fire was sparked by PG&E equipment."
Here's how the Bay Area's light rain knocked out power for nearly 29,000 PG&E customers
Jessica Flores, SF Chronicle: "Around 6,000 residents remained without power across the Bay Area Sunday evening as PG&E worked to restore it following light overnight rain that triggered the outages, officials said.
After multiple outages that PG&E said were weather related, crews by Sunday morning faced restoring power for approximately 28,900 customers across the region, said spokesperson Deanna Contreras.
As of 7:30 p.m. Sunday, 6,003 remained without power: 5,749 in the East Bay; 12 in the Peninsula; 241 in San Francisco; 1 in the South Bay."
READ MORE about power outages: Thousands of PG&E power outages hit Bay Area residents --MARISA KENDALL, Mercury News; PG&E warns of potential power shut-offs in North and East Bay early next week -- DANIELLE ECHEVERRIA, Chronicle
ROSANNA XIA, LA Times: "Firefighters battling a major wildfire in Sequoia National Park had some good news to report on Sunday: General Sherman — the giant sequoia and one of the largest living trees in the world — is still standing.
The 21,777-acre lighting-sparked wildfire — dubbed the KNP Complex fire after the Colony and Paradise fires merged into one — grew by more than 3,900 acres overnight, but officials said Sunday that hundreds of firefighters have valiantly kept key areas of the forest under control. The park is east of Fresno.
In an upbeat report Sunday, fire officials said they were feeling fairly confident about protecting the Giant Forest, home to thousands of towering sequoias. Numerous well-established walking trails meander through this iconic part of the park, so firefighters have been able to move around and work from multiple locations."
Another wildfire, at 21,598 acres with 3% containment, burns near California’s giant sequoias
JOSHUA TEHEE, SacBee: "While the KNP Complex Fire continues to burn in Sequoia National Park, a second fire is also threatening giant sequoia groves in California’s southern Sierra Nevada.
The Windy Fire is burning 25 miles east of Porterville on the Tule River Indian Reservation and in the Giant Sequoia National Monument inside Sequoia National Forest. As of mid-morning Sunday, the fire burned 21,598 acres and was 3% contained.
Evacuation orders have been triggered for the communities of Johnsondale, Camp Whitsett, Fairview, Peppermint Ranch, Peppermint Work center, Lower Peppermint, Ponderosa, and Quaking Aspen."
California schools prepare for thousands of Afghan refugee students
DIANA LAMBERT, EdSource: "Standing near the charred remains of her home, 2-year-old Lily Tyler bent over and looked at her dirt-covered toes poking out from glittery flip-flops.
Nearby, her mother, Candance Tyler, and her 13-year-old sister, Amber, picked through twisted metal and debris from their house, once covered with cedar siding milled from their land. There was the popcorn bowl, Amber’s porcelain bunny, a piece from Lily’s puzzle, the collection of antlers they’d found in the forest.
“Mama, my feet dirty,” Lily said, interrupting a discussion about the precise location of rooms."
Grizzly Flats family lost everything in the Caldor Fire. Will they rebuild in the woods?
JULIE JOHNSON, Chronicle: "Standing near the charred remains of her home, 2-year-old Lily Tyler bent over and looked at her dirt-covered toes poking out from glittery flip-flops.
Nearby, her mother, Candance Tyler, and her 13-year-old sister, Amber, picked through twisted metal and debris from their house, once covered with cedar siding milled from their land. There was the popcorn bowl, Amber’s porcelain bunny, a piece from Lily’s puzzle, the collection of antlers they’d found in the forest.
“Mama, my feet dirty,” Lily said, interrupting a discussion about the precise location of rooms."
Here's why California has the lowest COVID rate in the nation
NANETTE ASIMOV, Chronicle: "California hit the lowest coronavirus case rate in the nation Friday — thanks not only to high vaccination and masking, but also to a state culture that generally embraces public health precautions, experts said.
Despite the highly contagious delta variant, which accounts for essentially all COVID cases in California, coronavirus infections are plummeting in the state, with a 32% drop in average weekly cases as of Thursday compared to a month earlier — 25 per 100,000 people, down from 33 per 100,000.
In much of the country outside the Northeast, case rates are at least double, or even five times higher, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports."
JACK EPSTEIN, Chronicle: "Forty-two years ago, I gave the Unabomber travel advice.
I didn’t know back when Ted Kaczynski and I were exchanging letters that he would become one of America’s most infamous domestic terrorists.
He hadn’t yet written his manifesto, published 26 years ago Sunday, in the Washington Post, New York Times and The Chronicle, blaming technology for ruining the planet. In fact, these letters arrived 17 years before the FBI identified Kaczynski as the Unabomber, a name the agency gave him since he sent some of his makeshift bombs to universities and airlines. By the time of his arrest in 1996, Kaczynski’s bombs had killed three people and injured 23 others. When I received his letters, his name wasn’t yet connected to these terrorist incidents."
California’s reboot of troubled Medi-Cal puts pressure on health plans to perform
BERNARD WOLFSON, KHN in LA Times: "When Denise Williams’ son was 2 months old, she became alarmed by a rattling sound in his lungs and took him to the emergency room. While undergoing treatment, he spiraled into a disabling neurological disorder.
Now 2 years old, Markeano is attached to breathing and feeding tubes. He can’t walk or move his arms.
“If I want him to sit up, I have to sit him up. If I want him to play with a car, I’ve got to put his hand on the car and move it back and forth,” said Williams, 38, who lives with Markeano, her four other children and her husband, Marcus, in Adelanto, a small city in the High Desert region of San Bernardino County."
New lawsuit could halt Sacramento’s $100 million homeless shelter and tiny home plan
THERESA CLIFT, SacBee: "A new lawsuit threatens to halt a major Sacramento plan to address the homeless crisis.
The lawsuit — filed Wednesday in Sacramento Superior Court by a group called the Coalition for Compassion and city resident Michael Malinowski — alleges the new plan skirted an environmental review. It also alleges the plan would place homeless individuals at risk of air pollution by placing them under the W-X freeway.
The city’s $100 million Comprehensive Siting Plan to Address Homelessness, approved by the City Council last month, contains 20 sites where the city plans to open shelters, tiny homes and Safe Ground sanctioned encampments. Once they open, the sites will be able to serve 2,209 people at a time. Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who proposed the idea, called it “the most aggressive plan in the history of the city.”
Return to sender: Couple receives mountain of EDD mail that isn’t theirs
SCOTT SCHWEBKE, OC Register: "Attention Jeffrey B. Feller, Melvin M. Mosby, Patricia Ellis, Laquita Ortiz and dozens of others wherever you are, if you even exist.
That letter you’ve been waiting for from the California Economic Development Department, possibly containing an unemployment benefit payment, was indeed delivered — just not to you.
It’s been sent to Tom and Andrea Gray, a perplexed, retired Rancho Cucamonga couple who can’t figure out why they keep getting mail from the EDD bearing their address and the names of folks they don’t know."