ReportWire

Tag: tuesday

  • Wildfire destroys 13 homes in Northern California as heat wave continues

    Wildfire destroys 13 homes in Northern California as heat wave continues

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    A wildfire that broke out near Oroville last week amid California’s record-breaking heat wave destroyed 13 homes and more than a dozen other buildings, state fire officials said.

    The Thompson fire arrived Friday in lockstep with a heat wave that parked itself over the West, setting the stage for the fire to sustain itself on brush and vegetation in extreme heat and dry winds in Butte County. Over the weekend, it grew to 3,789 acres before it was declared 100% contained on Monday by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

    “The word that our fire chief has been using to describe the fire is stubborn,” Cal Fire spokesperson Rick Carhart said. “The fire broke out on a day that was extremely hot, quite windy and the humidity was almost nothing.”

    The fire was fanned by 20 mph north winds and burned through steep terrain, putting a strain on firefighters battling the flames.

    Thirteen single-family homes were destroyed, five homes were damaged, and 13 other buildings were also destroyed, according to Cal Fire. Two firefighters have been injured, Carhart said. There have been no reports of civilian injuries.

    Though the Thompson fire is contained, the lingering heat wave sets the stage for more dry conditions with extreme heat that could drive more fast-moving wildfires and stretch firefighting resources thin. Temperatures on Tuesday continued to linger 10-15 degrees above average across huge swaths of the state and show no signs of letting up until the weekend.

    “That prolonged heat really makes a big difference that stresses the vegetation and especially the firefighters,” meteorologist Alex Tardy with the National Weather Service in San Diego said.

    Among the other fires in the state, the Vista fire in the San Bernardino National Forest is burning through steep terrain near Mt. Baldy and Wrightwood, the U.S. Forest Service said.

    The fire nearly doubled in size overnight and has burned 1,095 acres since it started Sunday afternoon in steep, remote terrain. Details on the fire’s containment were not immediately available.

    Temperatures around the fire near Mt. Baldy, which is around 7,000 feet in elevation, will reach up to the 90s on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service. Firefighters can also expect to see noticeable wind gusts, but they should follow a predictable pattern, rising in the day and dropping at night, Tardy said.

    The area is flush with vegetation now in the heat after a strong rainy season.

    “That area near Lytle Creek is the wettest part of the mountain with a lot of vegetation,” Tardy said. “That means a lot of fuels are already in place.”

    The severity and persistence of this heat wave is unprecedented, according to meteorologists, setting several records for high temperatures across the Golden State and the Western United States.

    Lancaster and Palmdale continued to stretch their all-time record of consecutive days at or above 110 degrees, reaching five days on Monday, according to the National Weather Service. The prior record for both Antelope Valley cities was three days.

    Las Vegas is expected to break its all-time record for consecutive days at 110 degrees or above, hitting five days in a row Monday. The current record is 10 days in a row, but forecasts show temperatures will remain that high through next week, easily toppling the previous record.

    Several other areas, including Madera and Needles, also hit daily their record highs on Monday, according to the National Weather Service. Palmdale reached 112 degrees on Monday, recording above normal temperature for the fourth day in a row.

    Madera hit 110 degrees, beating a record by three degrees; Merced hit 109 degrees, inching past its daily record from 1921; Las Vegas hit 115 degrees, one degree above its prior July 8 record set in 2021; and Needles, in the Mojave Desert, hit 123 degrees, breaking its July 8 record from 2017 by three degrees.

    In Santa Barbara County, a wildfire forced residents near Figueroa Mountain to leave their homes as authorities issued evacuation orders Monday.

    The Lake fire continues to burn on the western edge of the Los Padres National Forest amid record low levels of moisture, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The fire was first reported Friday afternoon northeast of the city of Los Olivos and has burned 26,176 acres since then to become the biggest fire in California so far this year, officials said.

    The fire is burning near Zaca Lake and several residential properties including the Sycamore Valley Ranch, formerly Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. Firefighters reported 12% containment as of Tuesday morning.

    An evacuation is in effect for parts of Figueroa Mountain, south of Tunnel House at Sisquoc River, east of Figueroa Creek, north of the southern end of Cachuma Mountain, and west of Los Padres National Forest areas, officials announced on Monday. Though most of the fire’s growth overnight occurred in isolated pockets of forest, it pushed evacuation warnings Tuesday to the edge of communities in Los Olivos and Santa Ynez and triggered expanded evacuation orders to Goat Rock, east of Figueroa Creek, north of the U.S. Forest Service entrance at Happy Canyon Road and south of Cachuma Mountain.

    The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for the area Tuesday afternoon because of high winds and extreme heat.

    “It’s hot, dry and stronger winds are in effect today,” said fire behavior analyst trainee Dan Michael with the Interagency Incident Management team responding to the fire.

    Even at night when fire activity usually dies down, the Lake fire has remained active because it’s burning on top of mountain ridges where it can be 30 degrees warmer or more than lower elevations, Michael said.

    “The marine layer comes in and it’s not able to reach where the fire is burning,” Michael said. “The conditions are much worse at night.”

    Los Angeles Times staff reporter Grace Toohey contributed to this story.

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    Nathan Solis

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  • State recalls vape many months after it was told of contamination

    State recalls vape many months after it was told of contamination

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    SACRAMENTO — 

    California cannabis regulators on Tuesday issued the state’s first recall of a pesticide-tainted weed product following a Los Angeles Times investigation disclosing dangerous contamination in the state’s legal cannabis supplies.

    The product ordered pulled from sale is an “Orange Cookies”-flavored West Coast Cure vape cartridge produced in September. The state recall said the vape exceeded safety limits for a single chemical, the insecticide chlorfenapyr.

    The Department of Cannabis Control did not immediately disclose how many of the vapes remained on store shelves, but posted online a list of 169 locations throughout the state where the product had been sold. The product’s safety certificate came from a lab whose license has since been suspended. That lab, Verity Analytics, reported the batch consisted of nearly 5,000 vapes.

    It was among a dozen West Coast Cure batches manufactured in September — consisting of more than 62,000 vapes in assorted flavors — that private lab Infinite Chemical Analysis tested last fall and reported to state regulators as containing pesticides that exceeded state limits. All had been certified as safe by other labs.

    Infinite reported the Orange Cookies batch in a complaint to the state in November. In addition to chlorfenapyr, the lab identified two additional chemicals in that batch: paclobutrazol, a growth hormone not allowed at any level, and trifloxystrobin, which showed up at four times what California deems safe.

    State regulators would not say why they did not flag the product for the additional chemicals. The state also did not immediately respond to questions about why it took seven months to recall a product reported for safety concerns.

    “It’s a symbolic recall,” said Elliot Lewis, owner of the 27-store Catalyst dispensary chain. Twenty-three of his stores carried the recalled vape. They sold out months ago, he said.

    Lewis posted news of the recall on social media, provoking heated comments that left him flustered.

    “Getting slammed,” he said. “First time I can remember going home unplanned [in the] middle of the day.”

    The owner of another large dispensary chain said its stores had two of the products still in inventory but pulled them from shelves last week after their inclusion in an investigation by The Times, in conjunction with industry newsletter WeedWeek, that found alarming levels of pesticide contamination in cannabis products available to consumers, including some of the most popular brands.

    That June 14 report showed 25 out of 42 products bought from licensed stores exceeded either state safety limits or federal tobacco standards. The results mirrored 85 contamination complaints filed with California regulators since October by Infinite and another whistleblower, Anresco Laboratories.

    Before Tuesday, regulators had issued pesticide-related recalls for only two of the products that were the subject of the complaints.

    West Coast Cure is California’s fourth-top-selling cannabis brand. Its parent company, Shield Management Group, this year was fined $3.2 million by California regulators after a surprise inspection found it had failed to guard against product tampering, such as storing cannabis products in parking lot containers without video surveillance. The company also could not produce state-required footage proving products had not been tampered with before lab testing or distribution.

    West Coast Cure co-founder Logan Wasserman did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the recall.

    A statement to The Times on Tuesday by a public relations firm on behalf of the company said: “We have passing test results from state licensed labs for every product we put on the market. Our dedication to excellence and doing what’s right for our customers and our community is at the core of our values. We remain steadfast in our mission to provide fully tested, exceptional products and uphold the trust placed in us.”

    In federal court Monday, Infinite and Anresco filed a lawsuit against 13 independent labs that test cannabis products for the weed industry, accusing them of manipulating test results in order to win business, while putting consumer health at risk. The civil suit cites product safety certificates issued by some of the labs for products later found to be contaminated, as well as Department of Cannabis Control findings cited in disciplinary reports.

    Infinite also provided the testing behind a proposed class-action lawsuit filed June 14 in Orange County Superior Court against West Coast Cure, seeking redress for 23 vape flavors alleged to be contaminated with pesticides, including the Orange Cookies product recalled Tuesday.

    “Whereas competition used to be healthy and revolved around quality, turnaround time and customer service, it has now devolved into a free-for-all, in which brands and laboratories agree, jointly, to ignore ‘safety fails’ … in an effort to hide the presence of dangerous chemicals, which otherwise would prevent the sale of these tainted goods,” the consumer complaint alleges.

    Both cases were handled by Arkansas class-action attorney David Slade, whose litigation cases include filings against Apple, Best Buy stores, Target and Hobby Lobby.

    Other weed industry leaders called for a crackdown on alleged “persistent testing fraud” by the private labs California relies upon to screen cannabis for harmful substances.

    “The state’s continued failure to enforce against those who fail to comply — both inside and outside of the regulated market — has put the credibility of the entire adult-use market in peril, and now threatens the very consumers we aim to serve,” the California Cannabis Industry Assn. said in response to the report by The Times and WeedWeek.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office voiced confidence in his cannabis agency’s handling of contamination issues, saying it “supports DCC in developing innovative policies and effective implementation that advances and facilitates a well-regulated, legal, and safe market that benefits all Californians.”

    California has struggled since creation of the recreational cannabis market in 2018 to set up a state lab to enforce limits on pesticides in weed products.

    In 2021, the cannabis agency signed an $11-million, five-year contract with UC San Diego’s cannabis research program to create a state lab “in order to confirm that licensed testing laboratories are accurately and reliably testing cannabis goods,” budget filings and contract records show. Those documents describe the lab as intended to run tests for regulators with results available within five days.

    Four years and $9 million in payments later, the San Diego lab is not certified to check pesticide levels, its accreditation record shows.

    With consolidation of cannabis-related regulation under a single agency in 2021, the Department of Cannabis Control took over a cannabis lab in Richmond that had been run by the Department of Public Health. In the ensuing years, that lab has gained accreditation to test for potency levels and microbial contamination, but is not certified to measure pesticides.

    In the interim, cannabis regulators are constrained by the limitations of other state labs that have sometimes agreed to test weed. The Agriculture Department lab, for instance, tested cannabis flower to identify the presence of smuggled Chinese-label pesticides. But the lab cannot assess the safety of vaping oils, in which contamination problems appeared greatest.

    With state safety certificates called into question, one of California’s largest weed retailers, Catalyst, announced it would start its own shelf testing program. Lewis, its owner, voiced mixed feelings about what consumers would make of that. He said that he remained convinced that products sold on the illicit market are worse, and that lessening public confidence in the legal market would hurt brands producing clean products.

    In an email, he said vape sales have dropped since the June 14 article. “I suspect more folks now see no benefit of shopping for legal products,” he wrote. “The customer’s thought process is, ‘It’s all dirty.’”

    It is not good timing for a loss of faith in the legal market. Sales of licensed products have been in slipping in California since peaking in 2021 at $5.3 billion, according to monthly sales reports posted by the Department of Cannabis Control. The most recent data show reported sales of $4.9 billion for 2023.

    The desire to convince California residents and tourists to purchase their cannabis in licensed and taxed shops has driven state marketing and data collection campaigns since 2020, including the $5-million “Real CA Cannabis” campaign that kicked off in February, featuring social media messages on Facebook, Instagram and Reddit targeted at key demographics.

    “[F]or public health purposes, the state has an interest in seeing consumer behavior shift more swiftly to the legal and regulated market,” the cannabis control agency wrote in a 2022 budget request, citing deaths and injuries two years prior from dangerous substances in cannabis and tobacco vaping products.

    In California alone, some 250 people were hospitalized and five died when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2019 linked a rise in lung-related injuries to vaping products, the cannabis agency wrote in its budget request.

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    Paige St. John

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  • ‘I had fun’: Alleged scammer takes credit for Graceland foreclosure upheaval

    ‘I had fun’: Alleged scammer takes credit for Graceland foreclosure upheaval

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    A self-proclaimed identity thief based in Nigeria claimed responsibility over the puzzling, and now court-blocked, auction of Elvis Presley’s historic Graceland mansion.

    The thief sent an email to the New York Times claiming to be part of a criminal network that targets the dead and elderly, particularly those from Florida and California, the outlet reported Tuesday.

    The statement, which was sent in reply to questions about the case, came from an email address listed in court documents related to Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC. Riley Keough, Presley’s granddaughter and owner of Graceland, sued the company earlier this month to stop a foreclosure sale of the Memphis property.

    “We figure out how to steal,” the thief wrote to the New York Times on Friday. “That’s what we do.”

    Naussany Investments presented a deed of trust to the estate in September via the Los Angeles County Superior Court, claiming that the late Lisa Marie Presley, Keough’s mother, borrowed $3.8 million from the company and offered Graceland as collateral. Keough fiercely disputed the claims, calling the documents “fraudulent” and “forgeries” in her lawsuit.

    The alleged thief accepted defeat.

    “I had fun figuring this one out and it didn’t succeed very well,” the statement continued.

    Referencing Keough’s legal victories in the case, the message, as reportedly written, continued: “Yo client dont have nothing to worries, win fir her. She beat me at my own game.”

    The New York Times reported that the thief wrote their message in Luganda, a Bantu language of Uganda. The email, the outlet said, was faxed from a North American toll-free number that also appeared in court documents.

    A Tennessee judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the sale at a hearing last Wednesday, in which no representatives from Naussany Investments appeared. Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins said he would proceed with Keough’s fraud lawsuit, which asked the court to declare the deed of trust illegitimate.

    Tennessee’s Shelby County Register of Deeds said last Tuesday that it did not have any filings relating to a Graceland deed, according to broadcast outlet WREG Memphis. The deed also included the signature of Florida notary Kimberly L. Philbrick, who submitted an affidavit stating she had never met Lisa Marie Presley or notarized a document signed by the singer.

    Hours after the Wednesday ruling, a person purporting to be a Naussany Investments representative submitted a statement that said the company intended to drop its claims on Graceland, according to the Associated Press. However, the legal filings have yet to appear.

    Elvis Presley Enterprises, which manages the Presley estate, told The Times in a statement at the time that it agreed with the court’s ruling to block the sale.

    “As the court has now made clear, there was no validity to the claims,” the statement read. “There will be no foreclosure. Graceland will continue to operate as it has for the past 42 years, ensuring that Elvis fans from around the world can continue to have a best in class experience when visiting his iconic home.”

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    Angie Orellana Hernandez

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  • City of L.A. won’t issue new dog breeding licenses, citing overcrowded shelters

    City of L.A. won’t issue new dog breeding licenses, citing overcrowded shelters

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    The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to temporarily stop issuing new dog breeding licenses because of overcrowding at city-run animal shelters.

    The city’s six shelters have 737 kennels, but more than 1,500 dogs were living at the shelters in February, according to the most recent available data. The shelters are more than 200% over capacity, which has led to dogs tripled up in kennels or being housed in crates in hallways for months on end.

    Euthanizations of dogs by the city are up 22% so far this year compared with the same period last year.

    The Times has chronicled poor conditions at shelters, including a lack of dogwalking and inadequate food supplies for small animals.

    “It is unacceptable for the city to continue issuing breeding permits while thousands of animals are suffering from overcrowded conditions in our shelters,” Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who chairs the committee that oversees the city’s Animal Services Department, said Tuesday.

    The American Kennel Club, which bills itself as the world’s largest not-for-profit all-breed registry, opposes the ban. It said in a statement this week that “blaming registered, responsible breeders” for the shelter crisis won’t improve conditions for those dogs.

    Anecdotal evidence suggests the majority of people who purchase licenses from the city aren’t breeding their dogs, said Staycee Dains, the Animal Services Department’s general manager, at a hearing last year.

    Rather, many dog owners buy a city breeder permit, which costs $235, so they don’t have to spay or neuter their pets as required under city law.

    The city doesn’t regulate breeders, and unlicensed backyard breeders remain a problem.

    Dains said at last year’s hearing that she is seeing more and more purebred dogs coming into the shelters.

    The ban applies only to new dog breeding permits. It will lift when the three-month average of the daily inventory count of dogs at the city-run animal shelters is “equal to or less than 75 percent of the department’s total dog kennel capacity.”

    People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Senior Vice President Lisa Lange praised council members for the vote Tuesday but said in a statement that more needs to be done, including enforcing the existing spay and neuter law.

    Hernandez said the ban is “far from the only action” needed by the city. She said she hopes to discuss “current conditions in the shelters during our budget conversations” in the coming months.

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    Dakota Smith

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  • Crackdown on Airbnb and other short-term rentals likely coming to unincorporated L.A. County

    Crackdown on Airbnb and other short-term rentals likely coming to unincorporated L.A. County

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    Airbnbs and other short-term rentals in unincorporated areas will be restricted to hosts who are renting out their primary residence, under a proposal that gained preliminary approval from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

    Officials say the rentals have proliferated across the county’s unincorporated areas, sometimes leaving a trail of raucous parties and trash-strewn streets.

    The proposed ordinance, five years in the making, would prohibit hosts from listing second homes, guesthouses, accessory dwelling units or investment properties in unincorporated L.A. County.

    The supervisors, who unanimously passed the ordinance on Tuesday, must vote on it one more time, likely early next month, before it becomes law.

    Under the proposed ordinance, hosts in unincorporated areas — home to roughly 1 million residents — would have to register with the county and pay an annual fee of $914. A property could be rented for no more than 30 consecutive days at a time. And so-called “corporate hosts,” who rent out multiple properties, would have to pull their listings.

    “It takes them right out of the game,” said Randy Renick, head of Better Neighbors LA, which pushes for regulations on short-term rentals.

    Better Neighbors LA says the ordinance would return desperately needed housing to the market. The group has estimated that there are more than 2,600 houses available for short-term rental in unincorporated county areas.

    The ordinance was supported by several tenant advocacy groups and public officials, who argued that short-term rentals were displacing long-term residents and replacing them with unruly tourists. Some residents have told news outlets that their street has been turned into a “de facto hotel.”

    “All around the County, residents must suddenly deal with commercial enterprises in the middle of their neighborhoods, bringing in rowdy parties, parking difficulties, high volumes of trash, loud noise, and guests that have no stake in safeguarding the community,” a coalition of city officials wrote in a joint letter.

    Some hosts — as well as the rental platforms they use — have opposed the proposed ordinance, arguing that it is an “attack” on mom-and-pop landlords, disincentivizes tourists from visiting and cuts off a much-needed income stream.

    At a county board meeting last month, Airbnb host Ellen Snortland said she felt she was being unfairly lumped with corporate landlords. She said she is in her 70s and uses Airbnb to stave off foreclosure.

    “Do you think people like us Airbnb hosts do it to get rich?” she said. “We do it for survival.”

    Vrbo, an online platform for vacation rentals, said it believes the county’s regulations would harm both tourists and the families that want to host them.

    The proposal “severely limits the options available to traveling families visiting the area and economic opportunity for residents who own, manage, and service these accommodations,” a spokesperson for the Expedia Group, which oversees Vrbo, wrote in a statement.

    The county’s crackdown comes more than five years after the city of Los Angeles passed its own short term rental restrictions, which barred Angelenos from renting out second homes on platforms such as Airbnb. The county’s version would bring unincorporated areas roughly in line with the city.

    Maria Patiño Gutierrez, director of policy with the tenant rights group Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, said residents will sometimes report illegal vacation rentals in their neighborhoods, only to discover that the homes are actually in unincorporated L.A. County and, therefore, completely legal.

    “The housing crisis is in all of L.A. County,” she said.

    Some supporters of the ordinance hope there will be one significant difference from L.A. city: enforcement with teeth.

    Researchers have found that hosts in L.A. regularly flout the city’s rules, with little consequence. A study from 2022 found that nearly half the short-term rentals in the city were illegal.

    Renick with Better Neighbors LA said he believes the county will do a better job of enforcement, though he said details on how that will be done are “thin.”

    “We’re confident, given what the various supervisors have told us, that the county’s going to take enforcement seriously,” he said.

    Nichole Alcaraz, operations chief with the county’s treasurer and tax collector, which spearheaded the ordinance, said they’re still hammering out the penalties for hosts that don’t comply. She said there will be more details in the coming month.

    “We do know there’s going to be an enforcement arm. We do have some general ideas about how that’s going to work,” she said. “But the amount [of the penalty] may change.”

    The ordinance would go into effect six months after the final vote and would include all property owners in unincorporated L.A. County with the exception of those along the coast. Residents in unincorporated coastal areas — including Marina del Rey, Catalina Island and the Santa Monica Mountains — will need to wait for the California Coastal Commission to consider the ordinance.

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    Rebecca Ellis

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  • Tenant rights lawyer Ysabel Jurado pulls ahead of Councilmember Kevin de León in L.A. election

    Tenant rights lawyer Ysabel Jurado pulls ahead of Councilmember Kevin de León in L.A. election

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    Los Angeles City Council candidate Ysabel Jurado didn’t have any big-money backers spending lavishly on her behalf.

    The Highland Park resident didn’t mail out glossy campaign mailers either, opting instead for an estimated 3,000 postcards, which were less expensive and personally handwritten.

    What Jurado, a tenant rights attorney, did have was a supercharged canvassing operation. According to her campaign, she sent 20 paid staffers and about 250 volunteers to 85,000 doors across the 14th District, which stretches from Boyle Heights and downtown north to Eagle Rock and El Sereno.

    That strategy is paying dividends. On Tuesday, she pulled ahead of Councilmember Kevin de León, who had been leading in the eight-way race to represent his Eastside district, according to the latest election results. Now in first place and likely headed to a runoff, Jurado is yet another example of the electoral might being wielded by the city’s political left.

    Jurado, in an interview, said she’s not certain who her opponent will be in the Nov. 5 runoff election, since votes are still being counted. She portrayed her campaign as a lean operation, one focused on supporting renters, fighting gentrification and “uplifting the voices of those who haven’t been heard.”

    “We don’t have an office. We haven’t sent mailers. We are talking to voters one-to-one,” she said. “Everything involved in building this campaign has been an uphill battle.”

    Jurado’s first-place showing was revealed Tuesday as part of the latest daily election update from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk since the March 5 primary. Jurado had 24.5% of the vote, compared with 23.5% for De León — a difference of 318 ballots.

    On Tuesday, Assemblymember Miguel Santiago was 730 votes behind De León, with 21.2% of the vote.

    Election officials say an estimated 126,000 ballots are left to be processed countywide. Up until now, each of the county’s daily updates has broken in Jurado’s favor.

    On Friday, Jurado pulled into second place, securing more votes than Santiago. Four days later, she was leading the pack.

    De León, who is seeking a second four-year term, will face some serious challenges if he makes the second round. A former state lawmaker, he was at the center of the 2022 scandal over leaked racist remarks that spurred the resignations of former Council President Nury Martinez and Ron Herrera, former head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

    De León repeatedly apologized for his remarks during that conversation, and for failing to put a stop to those made by others. He resisted calls to step down from a wide array of politicians, including President Biden, showing up at meetings where he was frequently jeered by audience members.

    Less than a fourth of voters opted to keep De León in office, according to the results so far.

    If he and Jurado end up in the top two, voters in the 14th District will have a clear choice on several of the city’s most contested issues.

    De León voted last year for Mayor Karen Bass’ budget, which called for the hiring of 1,000 police officers. Jurado said she would have voted against the spending plan, pushing for funds to be allocated to social services instead.

    De León also voted for a four-year package of police raises, which Jurado opposed. In addition, De León is a supporter of Municipal Code 41.18, which bars homeless encampments within 500 feet of schools, day-care centers and “sensitive” locations designated by the council, such as senior centers and freeway overpasses.

    Jurado has called for 41.18 to be repealed, saying it has led to the criminalization of homelessness.

    On Tuesday, a De León representative made clear that his candidate would highlight some of those differences in a runoff against Jurado.

    “The voters have a clear choice in November between an experienced, results-driven elected official and someone who has promised to undo some of the progress we’ve made in housing Angelenos and cleaning up sidewalks,” said David Meraz, a De León spokesperson.

    Meraz pointed out that 18 months ago, in the wake of the audio leak scandal, many political groups called for De León to step down. The results so far show that “the community makes the choice of the candidate, not outside organizations,” he said.

    Jurado has been running to push the council to the left, expanding the size of the council’s ultra-progressive bloc if she wins. She would be the first Filipino American to serve on the council, representing a district that is 61% Latino, 16% white and nearly 15% Asian, according to a demographic breakdown posted by the city in 2021.

    De León, who was born in Los Angeles, is of Mexican, Guatemalan and Chinese descent, Meraz said. During the campaign, De León highlighted his own efforts to reduce homelessness, aid renters and halt gentrification in downtown L.A. and Boyle Heights.

    Brian VanRiper, a political consultant who does not have any clients in the race, said Jurado is in a strong position to prevail in the runoff. Still, he offered a word of caution for the Jurado camp, noting that the district has a “history of forgiving” incumbents with major political baggage.

    District voters reelected Councilmember Jose Huizar in 2015, even after he was sued by a former staffer who alleged that he had sexually harassed her. In that contest, Huizar easily defeated former County Supervisor Gloria Molina, a political “titan” who had been in office for about three decades.

    “[Huizar] doubled down on constituent services and making the case that he delivered for the district,” VanRiper said. “It seems like Kevin de León is following that playbook.”

    Huizar was later charged in a sweeping federal corruption case and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. De León was elected to the seat in 2020.

    In recent months, many of the groups that supported De León four years ago lined up behind other candidates. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Western States Regional Council of Carpenters and other groups spent a combined $687,000 on efforts to elect Santiago, the state lawmaker who was in third place.

    A consultant for Santiago did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Jurado, for her part, has secured endorsements from an array of politicians and community groups, many of them at the left end of the political spectrum.

    Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, City Controller Kenneth Mejia and former mayoral candidate Gina Viola have been campaigning for Jurado. Volunteers from the Democratic Socialists of America-Los Angeles, Ground Game LA and Boyle Heights Vota — formerly known as Boyle Heights for Bernie — have knocked on doors for her.

    Caleb Elguezabal, who lives in Eagle Rock and is a member of the DSA, said the district has not “had the best representation” over the last decade.

    Elguezabal, who volunteered on Jurado’s campaign, said he expects her to bring change to City Hall with a new approach to homelessness, fighting for a tax on vacant residential units and helping renters purchase their apartment buildings.

    “Having someone with integrity would be a massive sea change,” he said.

    Times staff writer Angie Orellana Hernandez contributed to this report.

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    David Zahniser

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  • New storm to bring more rain across L.A. County Monday

    New storm to bring more rain across L.A. County Monday

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    Los Angeles County can expect to see rain across the region beginning Sunday night and continuing through Wednesday, with the latest winter storm system forecast to bring the heaviest rain and threat of flooding along the Central Coast.

    Compared with the historic storm that pummeled the region earlier this month, forecasters expect “much less rain” for the county this time but warned that the most intense precipitation will hit during the day Monday and Tuesday night. Over the next three days, downtown could see up to 2.4 inches of rain; Santa Clarita, 2.19 inches; Long Beach, 1.8 inches; and Torrance, 1.97 inches.

    The rain may not be as intense as some areas farther north, but there are still concerns about the prospect for flooding, landslides and mudflows — particularly in the Santa Monica Mountains and Hollywood Hills — because of the soaking Southern California received from the previous storm, David Gomberg, a weather service meteorologist in Oxnard, said during an online media briefing Sunday afternoon.

    A flood watch was in effect across broad swaths of California.

    “Debris flows, mudslides, and landslides could happen just about anywhere within the flood watch area, as even L.A. County — which is expecting somewhat lower rainfall totals — took the brunt of the last storm, leaving them more susceptible to this kind of activity,” the weather service office in Oxnard said Sunday night.

    Residents are urged to move parked cars out of low-lying flood-prone areas, to be alert for mudslides and rock slides on or below canyon roads and to prepare for possible flooding and power outages, the weather service said.

    The slow-moving storm system began moving into the Central Coast region Saturday night, bringing light rain to Santa Barbara and western San Luis Obispo counties, officials said. The second, more powerful wave of the storm had arrived in Santa Barbara by Sunday evening. Officials warned of gusty winds, an increased chance of thunderstorms, and the possibility of high surf and coastal flooding.

    By 8:20 p.m. Sunday, forecasters reported rainfall rates of between 0.3 to 0.5 inches per hour across the Santa Barbara area.

    The Central Coast is expected to feel the brunt of this storm, according to the weather service. Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo county foothills and mountain ranges could see 8 to 10 inches of rainfall. The city of Ventura can expect to see up to 3.01 inches, and the city of Santa Barbara 5.66 inches.

    High surf advisories are in effect through Tuesday across all beaches in the region, with waves of up to 20 feet expected in some areas. Strong rip currents are expected with large breaking waves at Morro Bay, Port San Luis and Ventura harbors.

    There is also a brief risk of “weak tornado activity” during this period in San Luis Obispo County, Gomberg said Sunday.

    The greatest threat for coastal flooding — particularly in Malibu and Santa Barbara — will be Tuesday morning, Gomberg said.

    The engine driving the storm system across the central Pacific is the jet stream — high-altitude winds in excess of 200 mph — which is expected to slow as it approaches the coast.

    Once the system has passed, the state will have a few days to wring itself out before the arrival of another possible system next weekend, Gomberg said, this time coming out of the north and potentially colder.

    Times staff writer Thomas Curwen contributed to this report.

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    Priscella Vega, Rong-Gong Lin II

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  • Dramatic drone footage shows luxury homes on edge of California cliff

    Dramatic drone footage shows luxury homes on edge of California cliff

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    The three multimillion-dollar estates perched high on the edge of a Dana Point bluff boast some of the most magnificent views in Orange County: unobstructed panoramas of the crystal blue Pacific, boats moored in the harbor and, on a clear day, Santa Catalina.

    But back-to-back rainstorms have prompted fresh concerns about the homes on the aptly named Scenic Drive. The same steep cliff that falls away under the properties — giving them the illusion of being on the edge of the Earth — has withered under the atmospheric river precipitation that pounded Southern California last week. A portion of the cliff leading up to the blufftop homes washed away in the torrent.

    But though their perch appears precarious, none of the homes have been evacuated or deemed too dangerous to occupy — even with more rain in the forecast, officials said.

    Dr. Lewis Bruggeman, who owns the home just above the slide area, told KCAL-TV Channel 9 that his house is “not threatened and it will not be red-tagged.”

    “The city agrees that there’s no major structural issue with the house right now,” he told the station. Bruggeman did not respond to a request for comment from The Times on Tuesday.

    The slide erased the greenery that just recently backed up to Bruggeman’s home, a 9,700-square-foot compound estimated to be worth nearly $16 million, leaving only sandy soil behind. On Tuesday, piles of rocks and dirt sat on the shoreline below.

    An aerial view of three large homes in Dana Point after a cliffside gave way following recent heavy rains. A satellite image from Google Earth shows the cliffside before the landslide. (Photo by Allen J. Schaben; photo animation by Lorena Elebee / Los Angeles Times)

    The city’s geotechnical engineer and a building inspector have visited the home to assess the slope failure, according to Dana Point officials.

    “Engineers who already surveyed the home said there was no damage and there is no imminent threat to the structure, which is really good news,” said Mayor Jamey Federico. “So quite frankly, it looks a lot scarier than it really is.”

    The entire property, including all the way down the cliff to the high tide line, is privately owned, he added.

    Many cities in south and coastal Orange County have a long history of landslides, particularly during wet weather.

    In Laguna Beach, a 1978 landslide destroyed more than 20 homes in Bluebird Canyon. The same area slid again in 2005, destroying 17 homes.

    After a winter of heavy rains in 1998, several homes slid down a hillside below Via Estoril in the Niguel Summit neighborhood of Laguna Niguel. Homeowners said their properties had shown signs of moving for months before they toppled down the hill.

    More recent slides in San Clemente have damaged the historic Casa Romantica and periodically interrupted train service between Orange and San Diego counties.

    Last week’s storm dumped 7.5 inches of rain in Dana Point. The city has received about 9.5 inches since Jan. 1, said Casey Oswant, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego.

    Strong downpours triggered more than 500 mudslides in the city of Los Angeles alone and damaged more than 45 homes and buildings.

    And more wet weather is on the horizon.

    Based on current models, Orange County is likely to see more rain from the system moving into the region this weekend than other areas such as San Diego, though forecasters say it’s too early to say exactly how potent the storm will be.

    “There’s potential for this to be another prolonged rain event,” Oswant said.

    Steve Viani, a civil engineer who has experience with landslides, said tarps should be placed over the bare soil on the Dana Point property and pipes should be installed on gutters and downspouts to carry water away from the building foundation ahead of this weekend’s storm.

    Prolonged rain on the bare soil could further damage the slope, he said, adding that it could “give way at any time.”

    Visitors hiked along the adjacent Dana Point Headlands nature preserve on Tuesday morning, many completely unaware of the damage to the cliff, which is only visible from the ocean.

    Billy Prescott, 56, who spent 25 years living in Dana Point before relocating to Idaho, said he’d come to expect landslides and ground movement along the coast — particularly during El Niño years.

    “It’s just Mother Nature,” he said. “You don’t always win going up against her.”

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    Hannah Fry

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  • Southern California sees astronomical rain totals, and more yet to come

    Southern California sees astronomical rain totals, and more yet to come

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    The latest atmospheric river megastorm inundating Southern California with precipitation and high winds — prompting evacuations from mudslides and causing widespread road flooding — brought eye-popping rain totals by Monday morning.

    Rainfall topped 10 inches in some areas of Los Angeles County in two days, easily surpassing the average amount recorded for the entire month of February, according to the National Weather Service.

    “And February is our wettest month,” said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. He noted this storm is “significant.”

    As of 8 a.m. Monday, downtown Los Angeles had recorded 5.62 inches of rain over the previous 24 hours. The February average is 3.80 inches.

    Historical records won’t be confirmed until the storm passes, and there are still multiple days of rain forecast. But Kittell said that Sunday had already become the region’s 10th-wettest calendar day since record keeping began in 1877. The two-day rainfall tally is expected to break the top five in history, he said, pointing out that the heaviest rain fell late Sunday and early Monday.

    And there’s still more rain to come, with another 1.5 to 3 inches expected across the L.A. Basin. Higher elevations — which already had recorded the highest rain tallies — could see 3 to 6 more inches, Kittell said.

    “It’s pretty relentless; nothing of the intensity we saw last night, but the rains really are not letting up until, possibly, Thursday,” Kittelll said. “But it should be generally light in nature. The one caveat is we do have a chance of thunderstorms, so if we do get a thunderstorm, we could get a brief, heavy downpour.”

    Here are the highest rain tallies for select cities across Southern California as of 8 a.m. Monday. The totals include rain that began late Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.

    Los Angeles County

    • Santa Monica Mountains, at the Topanga fire station: 10.67 inches
    • Bel-Air: 10.46 inches
    • Sepulveda Pass, near the Skirball Cultural Center: 10.28 inches
    • Santa Monica Municipal Airport: 5.58 inches
    • Brentwood: 9.90 inches
    • Inglewood: 4.96 inches
    • Los Angeles International Airport: 3.27 inches
    • Downtown Los Angeles: 5.95 inches
    • Woodland Hills: 6.73 inches
    • Malibu Canyon: 8.06 inches
    • Van Nuys Airport: 6.04 inches
    • Eagle Rock Reservoir: 4.05 inches
    • Los Angeles Valley College: 7.41 inches
    • San Gabriel Dam: 6.26 inches
    • Harbor City: 4.83 inches
    • Pomona: 5.73 inches

    Areas with higher elevation saw greater totals, Kittell said, as the hills and mountains act as a ramp to push air up and squeeze out the storm’s moisture.

    Areas along the coast have recorded some of the lowest totals, with 2.78 inches reported at Long Beach’s airport, 2.55 inches in Manhattan Beach and 2.59 in Rancho Palos Verdes.

    Santa Barbara and Ventura counties:

    • Matilija Canyon near Ojai: 8.52 inches
    • Ojai: 4.38 inches
    • Oxnard: 1.85 inches
    • Thousand Oaks: 3.58 inches
    • Lake Casitas: 4.93 inches
    • Montecito: 5.04 inches
    • Carpinteria: 4.2 inches
    • Santa Barbara: 4.39 inches

    Across much of San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties, rain tallies remained generally below 3 inches Monday morning, but those regions are expecting the worst of the rainfall throughout the day Monday and into Tuesday. San Diego County is not forecast to see heavy rain until Monday evening into Tuesday, though predictions there have been more moderate.

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    Grace Toohey

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  • 'Thousand-year storm' leaves San Diego reeling from punishing rainfall, floods

    'Thousand-year storm' leaves San Diego reeling from punishing rainfall, floods

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    In a matter of minutes Monday morning, communities across southeastern San Diego were transformed into disaster zones: Families fled their homes in chest-deep floodwaters; vehicles were swept downstream as roads became rivers; residents cried for help from their rooftops.

    A deluge of rainfall from what city officials are calling a “thousand-year storm” forced hundreds of rescues, flooded an untold number of homes and businesses and caused millions of dollars in estimated damage. The floodwaters had mostly receded by Tuesday afternoon, revealing the devastating aftermath of California’s latest climate emergency — and leaving hundreds without housing and transportation, and with ruined valuables and personal belongings.

    “The damage and the impact was absolutely devastating,” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said at a Tuesday news conference. “Entire lives changed in just a few minutes.”

    “The amount of water that we saw yesterday would have overwhelmed any city drainage system,” he said. “This dumping of rainwater is unprecedented in most San Diegans’ lifetimes. None of us alive have seen anything quite like this.”

    More than 4 inches of rain fell in several areas in and around San Diego on Monday — much of it in just a few hours — a historic rainfall event, according to Elizabeth Adams, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego. The airport recorded 2.73 inches, more than its typical total for the entire month of January.

    “That is not only the wettest January day on record, but it’s the fourth-wettest day of any calendar day” for San Diego, Adams said. Many areas saw rainfall rates well above three-quarters of an inch per hour. Over half an inch per hour can easily cause dangerous flash flooding.

    “It’s a ton,” Adams said. “Pretty much anywhere in the country that receives 3 to 4 inches in a three- to four-hour time period is going to see flooding.”

    Parts of San Diego were completely inundated.

    The city’s southeastern neighborhoods, including Southcrest, Mountain View, Encanto, Logan Heights and San Ysidro, saw some of the worst damage.

    Gloria said city and county leaders are focused on recovery. Both the city and county declared a local emergency. The mayor estimated, conservatively, that the storm caused $6 million in damage, but officials say assessments are far from complete.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday proclaimed a state of emergency for San Diego and Ventura counties, both of which have been walloped by wet winter storms. At the end of December, torrential downpours in and around Oxnard caused similar damage. During that event, Oxnard saw rainfall rates of 3 inches an hour, one of the heaviest downpours ever recorded in the area.

    A woman looks over her flood-damaged home

    Homeowner Maria Ramirez walks through her flood-damaged home in San Diego.

    (Denis Poroy / Associated Press)

    The worry now is that the number of people displaced in San Diego could continue to grow in the coming days. Though no official figure was provided Tuesday, city leaders said they estimated hundreds had been forced from their homes, at least temporarily.

    “What was generally assumed to be the impact yesterday … was probably an underestimate,” said San Diego City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera, whose district includes some of the communities that saw the worst of the flooding. He said he visited many of those residents early Tuesday, touring a whole apartment complex that took on water, likely displacing dozens of families.

    The American Red Cross is operating two emergency shelters at Lincoln High School and Bostonia Recreation Center. As of Tuesday, the nonprofit said 18 households — more than 50 people — had registered to stay. But with so many people probably still returning home after fleeing, Elo-Rivera said he expected those numbers to rise. City and county officials are asking residents to fill out a voluntary survey about flood damage.

    “I think it’s going to take a little bit more time to realize the extent of the damage,” Elo-Rivera said.

    On Monday afternoon, Manuel Deleon was unexpectedly called back to the office during his shift driving a tow truck — only to find the office flooded. Roaring water had swept away his personal vehicle.

    “The water was out of control,” said Deleon, 47. “My car slipped with the mud and went right into [a nearby] ditch and it was just fully submerged.”

    Deleon, whose 2007 BMW was one of dozens of cars carried away in the flash floods, said he wasn’t sure how he’d get to work in the coming days. He attempted to clean the soggy and caked-in mud from the interior, but that was a lost cause.

    “This rain took everybody by surprise,” he said. “It’s crazy.”

    San Diego Fire Chief Colin Stowell said his crews made at least 150 rescues Monday, in addition to 30 animal rescues.

    “We literally saw over 100 rescues in the Southcrest neighborhood alone,” Stowell said.

    “Luckily we saw very few injuries and no fatalities,“ Stowell said, calling that feat “remarkable” given the extent of the emergency.

    More than 1,000 people remained without power Tuesday, after widespread outages Monday, according to the San Diego Gas & Electric outage map.

    Although much of San Diego was under a flood watch all day Monday, city officials said they were not prepared for the extent — and speed — of what came down.

    “Nobody anticipated the severity of the storm,” Gloria said. “We got a lot more rain than [what was predicted] in a much shorter amount of time.”

    He said he planned to meet with the National Weather Service to discuss the disparity between forecasts and what occurred but emphasized that his teams were currently focused on recovery.

    Adams said the circumstances Monday ended up being a perfect storm for rare, heavy rainfall in San Diego: extreme atmospheric moisture and a storm path over its downtown — which forecasters warned residents about as soon as possible, she said.

    Just after 8 a.m. Monday, the agency issued a flash flood warning for a stretch of coastal communities just south of Orange County, including Oceanside, Carlsbad and Vista. Soon after, a larger stretch of southwestern California was placed under a flash flood warning.

    Marlene Sanchez-Barriento salvages items behind her home

    Marlene Sanchez-Barriento salvages items behind her San Diego home, which was damaged by flooding.

    (Denis Poroy / Associated Press)

    “We used pretty intense warnings,” Adams said. “We tried to really heighten the message … [that] this is a really dangerous situation that doesn’t happen in San Diego proper that often.”

    The day before the storm, the National Weather Service’s forecast discussion warned that the ground, already saturated from storms over the weekend, could heighten flood concerns. But forecasters said it was still hard to predict how much rain would fall, and where.

    By Monday morning, Adams said the situation developed rapidly, with that intense atmospheric moisture — what she called 250% to 350% of normal — and the direct storm path aligning.

    That “really lead to torrential rainfall across the county, but especially focused on downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods,” Adams said.

    City officials said these extreme circumstances are likely to become a new normal requiring more preparation, coordination and investment.

    “This is called climate change. It is real, it is happening,” Gloria said, “and we experienced it yesterday in San Diego.”

    Officials agreed that the city’s outdated stormwater drainage system, for which $2 billion of necessary work hasn’t been budgeted, didn’t help.

    Elo-Rivera said he would like to see those much-needed funds allocated, and in an equitable way — noting that many of the communities affected most were working-class, with a majority of Latino and Black residents.

    These communities “have long been under-invested in and divested in and ignored by the city,” he said. “Public investment in climate resiliency is incredibly important … [especially] prioritizing the communities that have been left behind and are most likely to be devastated by events like yesterday.”

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    Grace Toohey

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  • Bodies found inside and outside Palmdale house; deaths of 4 men under investigation

    Bodies found inside and outside Palmdale house; deaths of 4 men under investigation

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    Four men were found dead at a Palmdale residence on Tuesday — two in the backyard and two inside the home — according to Los Angeles County authorities.

    Sheriff’s deputies were contacted Tuesday by the Los Angeles County Fire Department after fire crews found “multiple persons down” at a residence in the 37000 of 17th Street East. The Fire Department had been dispatched to the home at 4:35 p.m.

    When law enforcement arrived, officers found four people around the property, all of whom were pronounced dead.

    “There were obvious signs they had been deceased for a while,” said Chris Reynoso, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

    The deaths are under investigation by law enforcement, but a Sheriff’s Department spokesperson told The Times there was no threat to the community.

    Deputies were at the scene Tuesday night trying to determine the circumstances surrounding the deaths.

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    Jeremy Childs

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  • Cal State faculty just got a 5% raise. Here's why they're upset.

    Cal State faculty just got a 5% raise. Here's why they're upset.

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    California State University officials are unilaterally raising faculty pay by 5%, rejecting demands for much higher increases and ending contract negotiations with the faculty union, a move that has ramped up labor strife as a systemwide, weeklong walkout approaches.

    The pay hike effective Jan. 31 is far from the 12% increase for the 2023-24 academic year sought by the California Faculty Assn., which represents professors, lecturers, counselors, librarians and coaches. University officials said Tuesday the union’s salary demands were not financially viable and would have resulted in layoffs and other cuts.

    “With this action, we will ensure that well-deserved raises get to our faculty members as soon as possible,” Leora Freedman, vice chancellor for human resources, said in a statement. “We have been in the bargaining process for eight months and the CFA has shown no movement, leaving us no other option.”

    Charles Toombs, president of the California Faculty Assn., lambasted the university’s decision to end contract talks.

    “CSU management expressed nothing but disdain for faculty,” he said in a statement. “CSU management has never taken seriously our proposals for desperately needed equity transformation for CSU students, faculty, and staff.”

    The divide over pay had reached an apex in recent weeks, with faculty staging one-day strikes at four campuses in early December to voice dissatisfaction with the university system’s pay proposals. A weeklong strike is planned at all 23 of the system’s campuses starting Jan. 22, which marks the beginning of the spring semester for most students.

    The CSU and faculty union were engaged in so-called reopener bargaining, in which parts of the existing contract can be negotiated before it expires in June. Bargaining sessions were scheduled for this week, but university leaders imposed their final offer during a session Tuesday, according to the union.

    Toombs said the union, which represents 29,000 workers, had planned to “bargain in good faith” and explore a solution that could avert a strike. Instead, he said, they were met with “disrespect from management.”

    “Management’s imposition gives us no other option but to continue to move forward with our plan for a systemwide strike,” he said.

    Before Tuesday’s session, the sides had reached an impasse, meaning they could not reach an agreement on their own. That triggered a report from an independent fact -finder, who recommended the sides agree to a 7% increase.

    Having exhausted the negotiation process without an agreement, the system was permitted to impose a final offer during bargaining. Faculty members may strike to protest the system’s decision, though the union has not yet said if they will extend the walkout planned for this month beyond a week.

    Throughout negotiations, union leaders have called on the CSU to draw on money from its reserves to pay for increases, accusing the system of “hoarding billions of dollars in reserves instead of investing in faculty and staff.” An Eastern Michigan University professor commissioned by the union to conduct a financial analysis of the CSU found the system is “in very strong financial condition” with “a high level of reserves.”

    But university officials have disputed the union’s findings, contending that they need to maintain the reserves to pay for short-term or emergency expenses. They also said some of the money the union says is part of the university’s reserves cannot be used on salaries.

    “We are committed to paying fair, competitive salaries and benefits for our hard-working faculty members, who are delivering instruction to our students every day and are the cornerstone of our university system,” Freedman said. “But we must also operate within our means to protect the long-term success and stability of the university, our students and our faculty.”

    Freedman noted the 5% raise aligns with increases given to unions representing other CSU workers.

    In addition to across-the-board increases, the union had also sought to raise the salary floor for its lowest-paid workers to $64,360 from $54,360. During the one-day strikes last month, lecturers said they live in financial precarity, with many having to teach classes at multiple campuses or take on debt to pay for basic living expenses.

    The faculty association also sought other improvements, including caps on class sizes, an expansion of paid parental leave to a full semester, accessible lactation rooms, and gender-inclusive restrooms and changing rooms.

    The CSU’s move is unlikely to stem disagreements over pay. With the current contract set to expire in June, both sides will probably begin negotiations over the next contract in the coming weeks or months.

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    Debbie Truong

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  • L.A. County aims to collect billions more gallons of local water by 2045

    L.A. County aims to collect billions more gallons of local water by 2045

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    Over the next two decades, Los Angeles County will collect billions more gallons in water from local sources, especially storm and reclaimed water, shifting from its reliance on other region’s water supplies as the effects of climate change make such efforts less reliable and more expensive.

    The L.A. County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday adopted the county’s first water plan, which outlines how America’s largest county must stop importing 60% of its water and pivot over the next two decades to sourcing 80% of its water locally by 2045.

    The plan calls for increasing local water supply by 580,000 acre-feet per year by 2045 through more effective stormwater capture, water recycling and conservation. The increase would be roughly equivalent to 162 billion gallons, or enough water for 5 million additional county residents, county leaders said.

    Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science.

    “We need to conserve every drop of water possible for beneficial reuse by reducing demand, by recycling our water, by capturing much more stormwater in our natural aquifers. And I know that the public is watching to make sure we do exactly that,” said Board Chair Lindsey P. Horvath. “As climate change makes our important water resources less reliable and more expensive, I would like to see the majority of our stormwater be diverted for beneficial reuse rather than washed out to the ocean where it pollutes our coast.”

    The development of the county’s water plan started in 2019 when former L.A. County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl authored a motion that created the county’s sustainability plan and paved the wave for a water plan.

    Horvath, her successor, closed the loop Tuesday on her first day as board chair with her motion to implement the plan. At 41, Horvath is the youngest person to serve as board chair.

    Mark Pestrella, L.A. County Department of Public Works director, said pivoting the county from a long history of importing water “is aspirational, but it is actually achievable.”

    There are at least 200 independent water districts or agencies in L.A. County responsible for delivering safe, clean water, and Pestrella said the plan was aimed at fostering collaboration.

    In 2020, the county asked each for input and also held 90 stakeholder meetings over three years with local and tribal leaders, community members and advocate groups, Pestrella said.

    Most of the 200 agencies are on record agreeing to adopt the county water plan.

    “For years, we’ve been basically letting each of those any one or a number of those water agencies sort of lead the way or actually just act individually in the interest of the county of Los Angeles,” Pestrella said. The water plan however “has brought all those people together saying what makes sense for this region in terms of our best and highest use of our water.”

    The plan will focus on a number of goals: improving the reliability of the region’s water supply; collecting and storing groundwater; increasing the quality and resilience of small systems that are at risk of failing; mitigating the impact of wildfires on the water supply and managing watershed sediment.

    The county’s water plan, Pestrella said, also sets the county up to be more competitive in applying for state and federal money.

    Environmental advocacy groups, such as Heal The Bay and the Natural Resources Defense Council, applauded Tuesday’s move.

    “I think I (was in) the very first stakeholder group when this was first formed, and at that time, I admit I was very skeptical of the effort,” said Bruce Reznik, executive director of watchdog group L.A. Waterkeeper. However, he said, the county listened to stakeholders and developed a “a plan I think we can all be really proud of.”

    Supervisor Kathryn Barger, whose Fifth District includes Antelope Valley, said L.A. County is mandated by the state to build 90,000 more housing units by 2029 and asked how the plan incorporates that mandate.

    Pestrella said it’s built into the plan, but it will require conservation as “an absolute way of life for us to not only maintain our current water supply but to meet the demands you’re describing.”

    The supervisors at Tuesday’s meeting stressed how important it was that all residents have access to clean water.

    Of the 200-plus water agencies in L.A. County, 11 are failing, 23 are at risk of failing, and 33 are potentially at risk of failing, according to the county water plan. Many of these systems provide water to low-income communities.

    Pestrella said the purpose of the plan is not to call out and punish these systems — the state regulates water systems, not the county — but to instead of bring them into the fold and give them resources to improve their systems.

    “Full immunity — come out and tell us what your needs are, work with us, don’t hide the problem, put it on the table, there’s actually help,” Pestrella said. “In their defense, I’m sure in the past they’ve asked for help, and they don’t get the help they need.”

    Supervisor Hilda L. Solis said there must be standards that everyone follows.

    The water quality for some residents in the First District, Solis said, which includes East L.A. and many factories, is “least to be desired,” whether that is because of old systems that need to be maintained or because of illegal discharge from industrial areas.

    Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell agreed, highlighting residents of Compton and Willowbrook who for years dealt with “putrid groundwater that they paid top dollar for” from the failed Sativa Water District, which suffered poor maintenance and mismanagement. The county’s Department of Public Works assumed full control after the district was dissolved in 2019.

    “That shouldn’t happen anywhere,” Mitchell said. “And the regional program that’s being proposed in this plan to identify and support the small potentially at-risk and failing systems will be instrumental in ensuring that nothing like Sativa happens again.”

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    Jaclyn Cosgrove

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  • Redondo Beach high school closed after 2nd student brings loaded firearm onto campus

    Redondo Beach high school closed after 2nd student brings loaded firearm onto campus

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    A 10th-grader was arrested Tuesday after bringing a loaded firearm onto the campus of a Redondo Beach high school, officials say.

    The same thing happened Monday.

    Classes at Redondo Union High School will be canceled Wednesday after the second incident in as many days in which a student brought a loaded weapon to school, officials said. Tuesday’s incident included a false report of a school shooting.

    In both cases, officers with the Redondo Beach Police Department said they had apprehended a 15-year-old sophomore who was carrying a loaded firearm and a high-capacity magazine on campus — although in each case, police said, there was “no evidence of a specific threat or plan for violence.”

    Tuesday’s incident was reported to police at 9:23 a.m. as a student with a weapon.

    Officers were already on campus as security had been beefed up after Monday’s arrest, and said they found the student with the firearm within minutes. The student tried running away from police, according to the department, prompting a school lockdown that lasted less than 40 minutes.

    The student was apprehended by a school employee and two police officers. No injuries were reported during the incident, and police said that earlier reports of shots fired or a school shooting were false.

    Monday’s arrest occurred around 10:30 a.m. at the school located at 1 Sea Hawk Way. The campus, which had over 3,100 students enrolled as of 2021, is the only public high school in the district.

    Administrators had contacted police on Monday, saying students had reported a student with a gun on campus. Police responded and arrested the male student, who was not identified because he is a minor.

    In both cases, the suspects were arrested on suspicion of multiple firearm violations, including being a juvenile with a firearm, possessing a firearm on school grounds, having a high-capacity magazine, carrying a loaded firearm in public and possessing an unregistered loaded firearm.

    Police gave no details about the type of firearm carried by each student, nor did they say how the students acquired their firearms, citing the ongoing investigation. Investigators have neither confirmed nor denied whether the two incidents are related.

    Officials with the Redondo Beach Unified School District will host an online meeting at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday to discuss the incidents and safety protocols for Redondo Union High School.

    “The two back-to-back incidents are something we would have never imagined,” district officials said in a statement. “We are going to need to work together to solve the issue of access to guns.”

    The campus closure on Wednesday will allow Redondo Beach police to sweep the campus for weapons and explosives, school officials said.

    When school resumes on Thursday, only three entry points will be open on the campus, and each will be monitored by police officers and school administrators. Police will also perform additional patrols at the high school and all other campuses within the school district.

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    Jeremy Childs

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  • Santa Ana police search for suspect in child sex crime

    Santa Ana police search for suspect in child sex crime

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    Santa Ana police are searching for a man suspected of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old child.

    Nicolas Gonzalez, 39, is suspected of harming the child at a home in the 500 block of North Mortimer Street on Tuesday, according to police.

    Gonzalez fled his home after being confronted by the child’s family members, police said.

    There is an active warrant for his arrest on multiple child sexual assault charges, authorities said. He has black hair, brown eyes and is described as standing around 5 feet 3 and weighing around 160 pounds.

    Anyone with information on Gonzalez’s location is asked to contact police at (714) 245-8379 or AAvila@santa-ana.org.

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    Jaclyn Cosgrove

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  • Police Commission rules LAPD shooting of mentally ill man was not justified

    Police Commission rules LAPD shooting of mentally ill man was not justified

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    Two Los Angeles police officers violated department rules on lethal force by shooting and killing a schizophrenic man who barricaded himself in a cramped kitchen as officers ordered him to drop his knife, the LAPD’s civilian Police Commission ruled Tuesday.

    The decision marked the second time in recent weeks the commission found that city officers were not facing an imminent threat when they used force against someone in the throes of a mental health crisis.

    Furthermore, officials concluded that the officers’ attempts in January to coax Takar Smith out of the kitchen were undermined by a combination of poor planning, questionable tactics and a disregard for protocols that direct officers to summon the department’s mental health unit for such occasions.

    The incident came after Smith’s wife, Shameka, called police on Jan. 2 to report her husband had violated a restraining order by showing up at her apartment, where he grew violent.

    She mentioned several times that he hadn’t been taking his medication to treat schizophrenia, but the information wasn’t relayed over a radio transmission dispatching officers to the scene. Rather, a dispatcher informed the responding officers that Smith said he intended to fight police.

    By a 4-0 tally, the commission agreed with Chief Michel Moore’s findings that officers Joseph Zizzo and Nicolas Alejandre acted inappropriately when they fired a combined seven rounds at Smith, who used a pair of bikes to create a barrier between himself and police as he stood in the kitchen, holding a knife.

    After officers shocked Smith several times with a Taser, he was knocked to his knees and lost control of the blade; officers opened fire when he picked up the knife again.

    Moore agreed with an internal force review board that said Alejandre and his police partner, Audrey Lopez Alonzo, had “sufficient time to contact” the Mental Evaluation Unit, or MEU, which pairs officers with county social workers trained in de-escalating standoffs with people thought to be mentally ill.

    Lopez Alonzo was a probationary officer at the time of the incident. Neither she nor Alejandre considered contacting the MEU, Moore said, nor did they relay information about Smith’s history of schizophrenia to the other responding officers, including Zizzo.

    The layout of the small, cluttered apartment posed several tactical disadvantages for officers, according to the report. For one thing, they had little space to maneuver and find better cover, Moore wrote in the report. Still, Moore said he would’ve liked the officers to retreat, even briefly, so they could reevaluate the situation and come up with a better plan of action.

    What punishment the officers will receive, if any, falls to Moore.

    Smith’s death came amid a string of fatal police encounters to start the year, which set off protests and prompted Mayor Karen Bass to voice her “grave concerns” after watching body camera video of the encounters.

    Last month, the commission concluded that officers involved in one of those deaths broke from department policy on multiple occasions. In that incident, Keenan Anderson, a school teacher and cousin of Black Lives Matter Global Network co-founder Patrisse Cullors, died several hours after an officer stunned him repeatedly with a Taser after a traffic accident.

    As with Anderson’s case, Smith’s death was held up by mental health practitioners and critics of the department as proof that officers are ill-equipped to make the right decisions when confronting people in distress. Days after Smith was shot, Moore took the unusual step of publicly second-guessing the officers’ actions, telling reporters at a news conference that he worried about the “actions of our officers and supervisors.”

    Some of those concerns were reflected in his report about the incident, released Tuesday, which synthesized the findings of a months-long investigation of the incident.

    In an interview after the shooting, Alejandre told department investigators he felt that even while on his knees Smith could still cause him harm because of his 6’1” height. “The stabbing motion to me appeared that it could reach me,” said Alejandre, who is 5’4”, according to the chief’s report.

    No officers were injured in the incident.

    Relatives said Smith, a father of six, had been on medication the last several years to treat schizophrenia. But, his wife and others said, his mental health had been worsening, which had strained the couple’s relationship.

    On the day of the shooting, Smith became enraged and started throwing things around the apartment. When he refused to leave, Shameka Smith walked into the nearby Rampart police station and told an officer at the front desk that her husband had violated a restraining order.

    The officer gave her the number for the department’s nonemergency dispatch and advised her to return to the apartment and wait for police there, the chief’s report said. Moore said the officer’s actions are the subject of an internal investigation.

    A few hours later, a group of officers showed up and instructed her to wait outside while they checked on her husband, Shameka Smith said. In an exchange that was captured on Alejandre’s body-worn camera, she warned him that her husband had threatened to fight police if they were called and that there was a knife in the kitchen. But she also relayed that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and implored them not to kill him.

    Inside, the officers confronted Smith, engaging in a tense back-and-forth with the incoherent man.

    Both Alejandre and Zizzo fired their Tasers at Smith after he picked up a kitchen knife and wouldn’t drop it; but the electrified barbs didn’t appear to have any effect on Smith, who pulled them out of his skin. Another officer deployed pepper spray. At one point, Smith fell to the ground and dropped the knife, but picked it up.

    The standoff ended when the officers opened fire, killing Smith as he knelt on the kitchen floor holding a knife. Alejandre shot twice, while Zizzo fired five rounds.

    Smith’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city in July, alleging that the involved officers unnecessarily escalated the encounters while contending that “there were other reasonable alternatives to using deadly force against (Smith) which were available and not utilized prior to using deadly force.” The suit is pending.

    In recent years, the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies nationwide have faced increasing criticism for how often officers shot people in the throes of a mental health crisis. LAPD data show that 35% of the people shot at in 2022 were showing obvious signs of mental distress, a 6% decrease from the year before.

    Moore has expressed support for partnering officers with mental health workers but has maintained that incidents involving armed suspects require some sort of police response. Understaffing at the county has resulted in gaps of coverage by the mental health co-responder teams, Moore has previously said.

    Several of Smith’s relatives attended the Nov. 14 meeting of the Police Commission, giving emotional testimony, calling for the officers involved to be held accountable and describing how his death had left a huge hole in their lives that they could never hope to fill.

    His cousin, Daphne White, said his death had devastated Smith’s mother, who had suffered two mini-strokes that family members think may have been from the pain and stress of losing her son so suddenly. She has been given to long bouts of crying since the incident, White said. “She misses her baby.”

    White wondered why the officers hadn’t called a mental health unit upon recognizing they were dealing with someone who wasn’t in his right mind, and may not have understood what was happening.

    “They could’ve handled it way differently. I mean he wasn’t charging them,” she told a reporter before the meeting.

    Raischard Smith, Smith’s brother, wore a gray hoodie and held a photo of Smith.

    “They didn’t go through the right procedures. If they’d gone through the right procedures we wouldn’t be here,” he said. “We want justice. They keep killing us and getting away with it.”

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    Libor Jany

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  • California Assembly: Who’s in and who’s out for the most powerful posts

    California Assembly: Who’s in and who’s out for the most powerful posts

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    SACRAMENTO — 

    California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) announced new legislative leadership on Tuesday, a key decision in his first year as leader of the lower house that could shape what becomes law in the nation’s most populous state.

    Among the most significant changes is the announcement of a new majority leader: Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Davis). She replaces Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles) who was a key lieutenant to Rivas in his contentious year-long battle to become speaker that ended when he was sworn in this summer. Bryan now takes over as chair of the Natural Resources committee, a key panel on environmental policy.

    Committee chairs have significant power to determine which bills live or die at the Capitol. New influential committee leaders announced Tuesday include Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), who will chair the powerful appropriations committee, and Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), who will oversee the budget committee. Both Wicks and Gabriel hold power over the state’s purse strings in their new roles, and are allies of Rivas, helping him secure the speakership during chaotic jockeying in the Capitol.

    The tweaks to leadership could mean changes to come in Sacramento policymaking, with a renewed focus on affordability, safety and “strong public services,” said Rivas, who was sworn into the leadership role this summer after a contentious battle with former Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) who reluctantly gave up the position after seven years at the helm.

    “The Assembly is unified and ready to deliver,” Rivas said in a statement. “That’s what Californians expect from their Legislature and that’s what this team will achieve.”

    But not every recipient of a new leadership role supported Rivas, signaling that he and state lawmakers are willing to forgive and forget after this year’s political drama.

    Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, a Democrat and longtime Rendon ally who is running for mayor of Sacramento, was named chair of the high profile public safety committee as California grapples with its crime response and leads the nation on issues like gun regulation. Tensions over how to respond to fentanyl and child sex trafficking split Democrats at the Capitol earlier this year.

    Assemblymember Chris Ward (D-San Diego) also supported Rendon over Rivas and was named leader of the housing committee on Tuesday, now overseeing policy decisions on one the state’s top issues.

    “We have transitioned and we are about looking forward,” Ward said in an interview Tuesday, adding that Rivas told him he was chosen in the role because of his background working on housing and homelessness issues as a member of the San Diego City Council.

    Ward said in his new role, he will focus on removing barriers to housing production and making options more affordable for prospective homeowners and renters.

    “There’s tension between state and local roles on housing. We do need to have stronger partnerships with local governments,” Ward said.

    Freshman lawmaker Liz Ortega (D-San Leandro) will helm the labor and employment committee on the heels of a remarkable year for union backed policy. She was elected last year after working for years as a labor union leader.

    Some of Rivas’ picks are newly-elected lawmakers with the potential to stay in office for another decade.

    “I think it speaks to Speaker Rivas’ leadership to say we respect the people who have come before us, and now it’s time to build on that work and to think long-term about people who can be here in these positions for quite a number of years,” said Assemblymember Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City) who was elected last year and was named chair of the transportation committee Tuesday.

    Other new appointments include:

    • Assemblymember Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) as speaker pro tem.
    • Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) as assistant majority leader.
    • Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) as chair of the judiciary committee.
    • Assemblymember Blanca Rubio (D-Baldwin Park) as chair of governmental organization.
    • Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-San Jose) as the chair of human services.
    • Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda) as chair of privacy and consumer protection.
    • Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo) as chair of water, parks and wildlife.
    • Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Alameda) as chair of the health committee.

    This story will be updated.

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    Mackenzie Mays

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  • ‘Driving in traffic is stressful’: More commuters are trying public transit after fire closes 10 Freeway

    ‘Driving in traffic is stressful’: More commuters are trying public transit after fire closes 10 Freeway

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    Caprice “Kip” Harper was among those commuters who heeded the call from transit officials to take public transportation after a fire under the 10 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles closed that vital thoroughfare.

    Harper, an archaeologist for the state, opted for a 50-minute commute on the Metro’s A line train from Pasadena to downtown L.A. Thursday morning to partake in a strike held by California state scientists calling for more pay.

    “I wanted to chill out,” she said. “Driving in traffic is stressful, and I also wanted to save energy for the protest.”

    Preliminary data from transportation officials suggest that the closure of the freeway may have prompted more motorists like Harper to jump on public transit to avoid the traffic headache created in downtown Los Angeles after a fire erupted under the 10’s overpass at Alameda Street on Saturday morning. The fire was fueled by wood pallets stored there and is being investigated as an arson.

    The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority recorded a 10% increase in ridership on the E line train that runs parallel to the 10 Freeway Monday and Tuesday, L.A. Metro Communications Director Dave Sotero said. L.A. Metro also reported a 25% increase in parked cars at outlying stations including Norwalk, Lakewood, Azusa and East L.A. on Thursday.

    “Metro usage is up and we need to continue that until we get to Tuesday,” Mayor Karen Bass said at a press conference Friday, urging commuters taking the Metro system this week to make it a habit even after the freeway opens.

    It remains unclear, however, if there has been a notable uptick in ridership on the entire regional system this week in response to the freeway closure. L.A. Metro said it does not yet have data on overall ridership for this month.

    While Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that the 10 Freeway would reopen by Tuesday — much sooner than expected — the roughly 300,000 commuters that drove that stretch of the freeway daily have been tasked with finding alternative routes or modes of transportation until then. But many commuters have chosen to continue driving, opting for side streets through neighborhoods in the city’s core.

    To help speed up the commute for those taking public transit, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation has adjusted signal times along the A and E train lines for faster service into downtown L.A. The L.A. Metro has also added buses to Line 66, which runs along Olympic Boulevard, and Line 51, which runs along Soto Street, while Metrolink increased the number of commuter trains from San Bernardino and Covina to Union Station. Bass even rode the Metro’s E line train to work Wednesday morning, encouraging commuters to take public transit while the 10 is closed.

    Although taking the Metro had a “comparable” commute time to driving, Harper’s first 15 minutes of her Thursday commute was spent getting to the nearest Metro station, Fillmore Station. It’s a reality that deters many locals from ditching their car and hopping on the train.

    For many others, mass transit wasn’t a viable option.

    Ashley Olmeda, 30, said taking public transit just does not make sense for her when the nearest Metro train station to her residence in Alhambra is an 18-minute drive to Memorial Park Station in Pasadena. She instead drove 40 minutes to downtown L.A., a drive that would have normally taken 15 minutes. But it was still the better alternative to taking public transit, she said.

    “There’s no Metro near me, so I would have to go out to Pasadena to the nearest Metro station,” she said. “But if I had access to one, I would [take public transit].”

    For others, using public transit is not feasible when they need to get around the city throughout the day.

    Tom Somers, 69, came into downtown L.A. from La Cañada Flintridge to go to court Thursday morning. As a lawyer, he needs to be able to travel freely between the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in downtown L.A. to his office in Koreatown.

    “I’d like to [take the Metro]. I’d really like to,” he said. “But I need to get to court and the office and driving makes more sense for that.”

    He instead opted for a 65-minute commute to downtown L.A., which would normally have taken him 35 minutes, he said.

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    Ashley Ahn

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  • 10 Freeway to reopen by Tuesday, much earlier than originally thought

    10 Freeway to reopen by Tuesday, much earlier than originally thought

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    Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that the fire-damaged 10 Freeway would reopen sooner than expected — Tuesday “at the latest.”

    “Five lanes in both directions,” Newsom said at a news conference Thursday evening at the site of the fire in downtown Los Angeles.

    More than 100 columns along the swath of the freeway were damaged — nine or 10 of them severely, officials said. Construction crews have erected wooden structures to shore up the overpass while the repair work gets underway.

    “By Tuesday next week, trucks, passenger vehicles in both directions will be moving again,” Newsom said. “We’ve doubled the crews, we’ve doubled down on our efforts here.”

    Newsom said 250 contractors were working on repairing the bridge, including 30 carpenters joining efforts in the most recent day.

    “Things continue to move favorably in our direction,” Newsom said. “The bridge structure itself seems to be in better shape than we anticipated.”

    Mayor Karen Bass thanked Los Angeles residents who had switched to public transit and heeded calls to avoid crowding surface streets while the 10 remained closed this past week.

    “This is a good day in Los Angeles,” Bass said.

    Gloria Roberts, appointed director of Caltrans District 7, thanked the governor and mayor for their leadership. She also praised Caltrans workers who had logged numerous hours at the site.

    “Proud to bleed orange,” she said, sparking chuckles and smiles from the governor and mayor.

    The fire, which arson investigators believe was intentionally set, started at a property under the 10 that was being leased from the California Department of Transportation. No arrests have been made, and the investigation remains ongoing.

    Although the exact cause of the fire has not been revealed, “there was [malicious] intent,” Newsom said at a news conference Monday afternoon. The cost of the repair project also remains under assessment.

    In addition to pallets, sanitizer accumulated during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was stored under the overpass and helped fuel the flames, according to sources familiar with the probe who were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation.

    The fire was reported early Saturday, shortly after midnight, in the 1700 block of East 14th Street after a pallet yard under the freeway caught fire and spread to a second pallet yard, damaging the freeway overpass and destroying several vehicles, including a firetruck, authorities said.

    As part of its investigation, the Los Angeles Fire Department will inspect other underpasses in the city, according to Mayor Bass.

    “L.A. city wants to make sure our house is in order,” she said. “We have a number of leases under the freeway as well. So we are looking at those to make sure that what we’re doing is appropriate as well.”

    The Los Angeles Times reported that immigrant businesses had occupied the space beneath the freeway while their landlord dodged Caltrans, to which it owed thousands of dollars in unpaid rent. State officials, tenants and a lawyer for the company leasing the land maintain that Caltrans was long aware of conditions under the freeway that fueled the fire.

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    Jeremy Childs, Ruben Vives

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