Strong winds across California mean a risk of fire and power shutoffs
LILA SEIDMAN, LA Times: "Strong, dry offshore winds — including Santa Anas and sundowners — are forecast to arrive in California this week, prompting fire warnings and potential power shutoffs.
From Los Angeles to Solano counties, gusty northerly winds are expected to arrive beginning Thursday, colliding in some places with the twin fire hazards of single-digit humidity and bone-dry vegetation, weather officials said.
The winds could spark new fires and fan the Alisal blaze in Santa Barbara County, which exploded to more than 14,000 acres in two days amid fierce gusts."
How this year's historic fire season compares to others in destructiveness so far
The Chronicle, YOOHYUN JUNG: "The 2021 calendar year is already the second biggest year on record for wildfires in California. As of Oct. 6, nearly 2.5 million acres burned in more than 7,800 fires across the state this year, with new and old blazes powered by dangerous conditions still igniting and spreading, according to Cal Fire data.
But despite historically dry conditions, this year’s fire season hasn’t been quite as destructive as last year’s record-shattering season. In 2020, 4 million acres had burned in 8,700 fires by Oct. 6.
However, 2021’s edge over 2020 — at least so far — is hardly evidence of improving climate conditions. Both years far surpassed the average of 1.2 million acres burned in the previous five years."
Wildfire experts escalate fight over saving California forests
Sacramento Bee, RYAN SABALOW/DALE KASLER: "As the Caldor Fire roared into the Lake Tahoe basin more than a month ago, Brian Newman took some comfort in the surroundings.
An operations section chief with Cal Fire, Newman knew that thousands of acres of trees and brush had been deliberately removed from around the basin in recent years.
He and other firefighters said the work helped level the playing field, turning imminent disaster into one of the most dramatic success stories of the 2021 wildfire season. On the night of Aug. 30, as the fire exploded in Meyers and Christmas Valley, firefighters saved hundreds of homes and businesses. No buildings were lost."
LA Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas and ex-USC dean indicted on bribery charges
LA Times, MICHAEL FINNEGAN/MATT HAMILTON/HARRIET RYAN: "Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas was indicted Wednesday on federal charges that he took bribes from a USC dean in exchange for directing millions of dollars in public funding to the university when he was on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors.
Ridley-Thomas is accused of conspiring with Marilyn Louise Flynn, who at the time was dean of USC’s School of Social Work, to steer county money to the university in return for admitting his son Sebastian into the graduate school with a full-tuition scholarship and a paid professorship.
Ridley-Thomas, 66, one of the most powerful figures in Los Angeles politics, is the third L.A. City Council member to face federal corruption charges over the last two years. In a 20-count indictment, he and Flynn face charges of conspiracy, bribery and mail and wire fraud."
SEIU leader resigns amid theft, perjury charges
JOHN HOWARD, Capitol Weekly: "Alma Hernández, the executive director of the 700,000-member SEIU California labor union, resigned Wednesday after she and her husband were accused of multiple charges that included perjury, fraud and grand theft.
SEIU California is the biggest labor union in the state and Hernandez, a major player in state politics, has served as the top executive there for five years. Recently, she headed a major organized labor effort against the recent recall attempt against Gov. Newsom.
“We have accepted Ms. Hernández’s resignation, and we have cooperated fully with authorities on this matter and will continue to do so,” the SEIU State Council said in a written statement. The Council said it had named Tia Orr, a 16-year veteran of the union, as an interim executive director."
Officials knew of potential for 'catastrophe' when OC oil platforms approved in 1970s
LA Times, THOMAS CURWEN: "The red flags came early.
Selling offshore leases for oil drilling in the middle of shipping lanes seemed reckless. Building a complex of oil platforms just off the Orange County coast was an invitation to disaster.
But the green light was given, and in the late 1970s, Shell Oil Co. proceeded, eventually raising three towering edifices in the middle of a nautical highway leading to two of the busiest ports in the world."
The Chronicle, ALEXEI KOSEFF: "Anti-abortion activists have sued to overturn a new California law that restricts protests outside vaccination sites, just days after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the measure despite warnings from First Amendment experts that it would violate free speech rights.
The lawsuit, filed Sunday in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, argues that the state went too far in trying to protect people from harassment as they get vaccinated. Buffer zones for demonstrations established under the law, according to the complaint, unfairly burden and deny free speech in public spaces.
“This is such a broad attack,” said attorney Michael Millen, who sued on behalf of anti-abortion activists Teresita Aubin of Santa Clara, David Brownfield of Salinas and Wynette Sills, director of Californians for Life. “I really feel this is a solution that’s looking for a problem.”"
FDA booster authorization could come this week
The Chronicle, CATHERINE HO: "While the millions of Americans who got the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine have been able to start getting booster shots since federal regulators authorized them last month, millions more who got the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines have been waiting to hear if and when they too can get boosters.
Answers could be coming this week. An influential committee that advises the Food and Drug Administration on vaccine policy is slated to discuss authorizing Moderna and J&J boosters on Thursday and Friday, respectively.
If the committee supports authorizing them, the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control — which typically adopt the panel’s recommendations — would likely give the formal go-ahead on booster shots shortly afterward. That would give pharmacies, health care providers and county-run vaccine sites the green light to start offering boosters to Moderna and J&J recipients."
Sacramento Bee, DAVID LIGHTMAN: "Suppose you didn’t have to spend more than $2,000 a year on your prescriptions?
Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care advocacy group, estimated that in 2019, there were 154 drugs where Medicare Part D recipients incurred average annual out-of-pocket costs of more than $2,000 for a single drug. In 108 cases, the average cost was more than $3,100.
About 1.2 million Americans would save money if the new limit was $2,000, which House Democrats have pushed. If it was $3,100, as has been discussed by Senate lawmakers, about 300,000 would benefit."
SF Mayor Breed is facing pressure to declare the overdose crisis a health emergency. Would it help?
The Chronicle, TRISHA THADANI: "Amid a dramatic increase in fatal overdoses, several supervisors and advocates are pressuring Mayor London Breed to replicate the city’s urgency around the pandemic and declare the drug crisis a local health emergency — just as she did for the coronavirus.
The motivation behind the declaration is twofold: The supervisors and advocates believe it will increase attention on the crisis and also create more incentive for the mayor to flout federal and state laws to open a site where people can use drugs in a supervised setting.
A spokesperson for Breed said it's unclear how such a declaration — which would be largely symbolic — “could practically allow us to do anything we cannot already do today.”"
USC to apologize to WWII actions that derailed education of Japanese American students
LA Times, TERESA WATANABE: "In the throes of World War II, weeks after a 1942 presidential executive order forced the removal of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast, then-UC Berkeley President Robert G. Sproul sprung into action.
He sent an impassioned letter to university presidents across the country, asking them to accept his displaced students, most of them U.S. citizens and “excellent” scholars. Other major West Coast universities joined, including the University of Washington and Occidental College, to assist an estimated 2,500 Japanese American students.
There was one glaring exception: USC."
Families in Hayward protest plan to shut campuses to help close budget gap
The Chronicle, ANNIE VAINSHTEIN: "Dozens of parents, teachers and students gathered Wednesday at a Hayward elementary school to protest its potential closure under a plan that the district says will address plunging enrollment and a major budget shortfall — but that the protesters said would intensify disruption from the pandemic.
Parents at Glassbrook Elementary said they planned the rally after learning that the school — which is more than 70% Spanish-speaking and serves mostly immigrant families from Central America and, more recently, refugees from Afghanistan — was one of several on a list for potential closure.
“This is not fair, what they’re doing,” said Vanessa Rodriguez, whose daughter is a Glassbrook first-grader. “She’s sad. She said she doesn't want to go to another school. She’s safe here.”"
LA, SD school districts are sued over student vaccination mandate
LA Times, HOWARD BLUME/KRISTEN TAKETA: "California’s two largest school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — are targeted in lawsuits challenging their student COVID-19 vaccination mandates, alleging the vaccines are too new and that unvaccinated children face discrimination and the denial of their equal right to a public education.
Both school systems were ahead of the state in requiring student vaccines as a measure to make campuses safer and to limit spread of the coronavirus in the community — and their mandates are more comprehensive than the state requirement, which has yet to be codified into law.
In Los Angeles, an individual parent who is not named filed suit Friday. In San Diego, the parent group Let Them Breathe filed suit Monday. That group had previously filed pending litigation against the state’s student mask mandate."
Sacramento paid $11M settlement after car hit boy, grandmother in x-walk
Sacramento Bee, THERESA CLIFT: "The city of Sacramento quietly paid an $11 million settlement to a family last year — one of the largest payouts in city history — after an elderly woman and her grandson were hit by a car in a crosswalk.
In January 2018, QuiChang Zhu, 72, and her grandson Jian Hao Kuang, 6, were using a crosswalk to cross Freeport Boulevard at Oregon Drive, according to a lawsuit filed in Sacramento County Superior Court. The intersection — located between South Land Park and Hollywood Park — has no traffic lights.
A sedan driver traveling north on Freeport Boulevard struck the pair, killing Zhu and causing severe injuries to Kuang, including catastrophic and permanent brain damage, the lawsuit said."
Oakland residents split generationally on police as city confronts surge in homicides
The Chronicle, SARAH RAVANI: "When Oscar Grant was shot and killed by a BART police officer, Jessica Ramos was only 5. But she said she still remembers wondering why police would kill an innocent man.
Now 18, Jessica said she doesn’t want more police, despite a surge in homicides in Oakland. She doesn’t support Mayor Libby Schaaf’s decision to invite the California Highway Patrol to help enforce traffic.
“Having so many different types of police makes me feel unsafe,” she said."
The Chronicle, RACHEL SWAN: "On a crisp night in February, a caravan of cars and trucks tore through San Jose, following a cryptic set of directions posted on Instagram, police said.
The participants stopped at the corner of Hamilton and Leigh avenues and formed a circle around the intersection. In the center — an area that police call “the pit” — drivers took turns spinning donuts and figure-eights, tires squealing on the asphalt.
Spectators fired guns as smoke from burnt rubber fogged the air, the cars careening in every direction. When police swept the area the following morning — Feb. 14 — they picked up 100 shell casings."
Ray Fosse, longtime A's broadcaster and former All-Star, dies at 74
The Chronicle, MATT KAWAHARA/RON KROICHICK: "Ray Fosse, the longtime A’s broadcaster and former All-Star catcher, died Wednesday after a long battle with cancer, the team confirmed. He was 74.
Fosse played for A’s teams that won World Series titles in 1973 and 1974 during a 12-year major-league career. This season marked his 36th broadcasting A’s games.
“I think people know how much he means to our fans,” Ken Korach, the A’s longtime radio play-by-play voice, said by phone. “‘Iconic’ probably doesn’t give him justice. He was a beloved figure.”"