latimes--2020-08-14--Wanted: California workplace safety retirees to help confront coronavirus crisis

Days after The Times reported “ crippling ” vacancies at California ’ s Division of Occupational Safety and Health that led at least one employee to use Google Translate to decipher Spanish complaints and kept others from on-site inspections , the agency announced it will temporarily hire retired inspectors .
The agency , better known as Cal/OSHA , said the decision had been in the works for weeks and was not in response to The Times ’ reporting .
Staff have struggled to handle an influx of workplace complaints since the pandemic hit , current and former employees told The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to play a critical role in fighting the spread of the disease , ” the Aug. 10 notice read , soliciting retired inspectors to rejoin its ranks .
The agency stressed a “ particular need ” for bilingual speakers .
Spokesperson Erika Monterroza called the move part of a “ robust recruitment and hiring plan that includes short term staffing strategies.
” The agency recently mailed notices to 80 former inspectors and plans to reach out to more soon .
Inspectors are responsible for investigating workplace complaints and responding to reports of injuries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the goal is to build a “ temporary workforce that could be used in a variety of ways to supplement current staffing levels.
” Garrett Brown , a former veteran inspector turned watchdog , said he had not yet received a notice to return and could not recall a similar hiring call in the 20 years he worked at Cal/OSHA .
Brown has been tracking the agency ’ s decline since he left in 2014 , including “ crippling ” vacancies that have kept some offices less than half-staffed .
If the effort @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said , it could provide existing staff with more time to conduct on-site investigations .
Current and former staffers told The Times that the agency has largely abandoned in-person inspections , handling most complaints by letters and calls to employers .
However , Brown and other former staffers , remained skeptical that short-term measures would do much to solve the agency ’ s deep-seated issues surrounding hiring and turnover .
Cal/OSHA ’ s parent agency , the Department of Industrial Relations , was stripped of its hiring abilities amid several audits and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ uncovered nepotism and fraud .
During an Aug. 6 meeting , DIR Director Katie Hagen said the department was still trying to “ earn ” that authority back .
One former inspector called the new hiring effort , “ desperate , ” but another said they would return — provided the agency put COVID-19 safeguards in place for at-risk workers .
The agency temporarily shut down its Monrovia office last month after an employee tested positive for COVID-19 .
Employees have continued to share emails with The Times indicating agency officials have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exposures and have only recently begun to create detailed office policies regarding face coverings and other precautions .
The agency does not provide COVID-19 testing for staff .
Asked how Cal/OSHA would handle retirees whose older age could make them particularly susceptible to COVID-19 , Monterroza said it would place those at risk in positions such as “ trainers , consultation staff , policy writers , researchers and more.
” Those able to perform on-site inspections would be provided with personal protective equipment and training , she added .
Are you facing any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Times wants to hear from you .
Contact Jie Jenny Zou at or leave us a tip anonymously at

Days after The Times reported “crippling” vacancies at California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health that led at least one employee to use Google Translate to decipher Spanish complaints and kept others from on-site inspections, the agency announced it will temporarily hire retired inspectors.
The agency, better known as Cal/OSHA, said the decision had been in the works for weeks and was not in response to The Times’ reporting. Staff have struggled to handle an influx of workplace complaints since the pandemic hit, current and former employees told The Times.
“Please consider this opportunity to play a critical role in fighting the spread of the disease,” the Aug. 10 notice read, soliciting retired inspectors to rejoin its ranks. The agency stressed a “particular need” for bilingual speakers.
Spokesperson Erika Monterroza called the move part of a “robust recruitment and hiring plan that includes short term staffing strategies.” The agency recently mailed notices to 80 former inspectors and plans to reach out to more soon.
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Inspectors are responsible for investigating workplace complaints and responding to reports of injuries, illnesses and fatalities. Monterroza said the goal is to build a “temporary workforce that could be used in a variety of ways to supplement current staffing levels.”
Garrett Brown, a former veteran inspector turned watchdog, said he had not yet received a notice to return and could not recall a similar hiring call in the 20 years he worked at Cal/OSHA. Brown has been tracking the agency’s decline since he left in 2014, including “crippling” vacancies that have kept some offices less than half-staffed.
If the effort succeeds in drawing retirees back, Brown said, it could provide existing staff with more time to conduct on-site investigations. Current and former staffers told The Times that the agency has largely abandoned in-person inspections, handling most complaints by letters and calls to employers.
However, Brown and other former staffers, remained skeptical that short-term measures would do much to solve the agency’s deep-seated issues surrounding hiring and turnover.
Cal/OSHA’s parent agency, the Department of Industrial Relations, was stripped of its hiring abilities amid several audits and a state investigation made public in 2019 that uncovered nepotism and fraud. During an Aug. 6 meeting, DIR Director Katie Hagen said the department was still trying to “earn” that authority back.
One former inspector called the new hiring effort, “desperate,” but another said they would return — provided the agency put COVID-19 safeguards in place for at-risk workers.
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The agency temporarily shut down its Monrovia office last month after an employee tested positive for COVID-19. Employees have continued to share emails with The Times indicating agency officials have been slow to notify staff of potential viral exposures and have only recently begun to create detailed office policies regarding face coverings and other precautions. The agency does not provide COVID-19 testing for staff.
Asked how Cal/OSHA would handle retirees whose older age could make them particularly susceptible to COVID-19, Monterroza said it would place those at risk in positions such as “trainers, consultation staff, policy writers, researchers and more.”
Those able to perform on-site inspections would be provided with personal protective equipment and training, she added.


latimes--2020-08-14--'Hot, hot and hot' — heat wave will bake Southern California starting Friday, with relief a ways off

Southern California ’ s already hot weather will reach even more sweltering heights through the weekend , as a prolonged heat wave will send temperatures soaring 5 to 10 degrees above normal and keep firefighters throughout the region on alert .
Those additional ticks on the thermometer come at a time of year when temperatures are already typically at their highest , leading forecasters to warn residents to take precautions to protect themselves from the dangerous heat conditions .
“ People really need to take it seriously , ” said Kathy Hoxsie , a meteorologist with the National Weather Service @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of water .
Find shade.
” In light of the heat wave — and the expectation that Californians will crank up the AC in response — the California Independent System Operator also has issued a statewide flex alert , asking residents to conserve electricity between 3 and 10 p.m. Friday to reduce strain on the power grid .
While high temperatures always raise fire concerns in Southern California , Hoxsie said winds are expected to be calm — welcome news for crews that have already been busy battling blazes this week .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has scorched more than 11,000 acres and is 12 % contained , while the Ranch 2 fire near Azusa has charred more than 3,000 acres with no containment .
“ High heat , low humidity means that fires surely will start more readily , but it ’ s the winds that really drive them , ” she said .
“ So , as long as the winds stay low , which they will , the conditions are not extreme.
” However , virtually no stretch of the Southland will be spared from conditions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , hot and hot.
” “ We ’ re expecting the heat to continue through the weekend and into next week , probably peaking on Monday , Tuesday , ” she said .
“ We have an excessive heat warning out for the Antelope Valley through Tuesday and the interior valleys through Monday.
” The Los Angeles County coast , as well as downtown , is under a less-severe heat advisory until Sunday night , according to the National Weather Service .
Starting Friday , highs for the next few days are expected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ degrees in the Antelope , Santa Clarita , San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys , according to Hoxsie .
The Inland Empire and high desert also will see their mercury top out in the mid-to-high 100s .
The Coachella Valley and interior deserts will be even hotter , with some areas forecast to approach or hit 120 .
Even after the initial peak of the heat wave , forecasters said hot conditions will persist through much of next week .
“ Unfortunately , the heat won ’ t lose grip and we can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the middle of next week , ” Bruno Rodriguez , a National Weather Service meteorologist in San Diego , said in a video briefing Thursday .
“ The extended nature of this heat is especially concerning because , obviously , the cumulative effects from so many days of above-average temperatures is definitely going to act to increase the overall heat risk.
” Officials said residents should make sure to drink plenty of water , stay out of direct sunlight as much as possible , reduce physical outdoor activities and wear loose , light-fitting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Lake and Ranch 2 fires , the South Coast Air Quality Management District on Friday issued a smoke advisory for the Santa Clarita and San Gabriel Valleys .
It warned older adults , children and people with heart and lung diseases to stay indoors .
Pets also should be brought inside .
Meanwhile , L.A. County is opening a number of emergency cooling centers Friday to help residents beat the heat .
“ Offering free emergency heat relief is an important service to help keep vulnerable members of the public safe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kevin McGowan , director of the county Office of Emergency Management , said in a statement .
Centers will operate in compliance with COVID-19 safety criteria , officials said , and be open at the following locations : Valleydale Park 5525 N. Lark Ellen Ave. in Azusa Friday through Sunday , 12 to 8 p.m. Buena Vista Library 300 N. Buena Vista St. in Burbank Friday through Monday , 12 to 6 p.m. Canoga Park Senior Center 7326 Jordan Ave. in Canoga Park Friday through Monday , 12 to 8 p.m. Claremont Library @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through Sunday,12 to 8 p.m. Grace T. Black Auditorium 3130 Tyler Ave. in El Monte Friday and Saturday , 12 to 6 p.m. Griffith Manor Park 1551 Flower St. in Glendale Friday , 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific Community Center 501 S. Pacific Ave. in Glendale Saturday through Tuesday , 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pecan Recreation Center 145 S. Pecan St. in Los Angeles Friday through Monday , 12 to 8 p.m. Salazar Park 3864 Whittier Blvd .
in Los Angeles Friday through Sunday , 12 to 8 p.m. Slauson Recreation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Friday through Monday , 12 to 8 p.m. Quartz Hill Library 5040 W. Avenue M-2 in Quartz Hill Friday through Sunday , 12 to 8 p.m. Las Palmas Park 505 S. Huntington St. in San Fernando Friday through Sunday , 12 to 6 p.m. Sherman Oaks East Valley Adult Center 5056 Van Nuys Blvd .
in Sherman Oaks Friday through Monday , 12 to 8 p.m. Stevenson Ranch Library 25950 The Old Road in Stevenson Ranch Friday through Sunday , 12 to 8 p.m. Topanga Library 122 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd .
in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 8 p.m .

Parkgoers take in the sunset at Signal Hill Park on a warm afternoon on July 31.
Southern California’s already hot weather will reach even more sweltering heights through the weekend, as a prolonged heat wave will send temperatures soaring 5 to 10 degrees above normal and keep firefighters throughout the region on alert.
Those additional ticks on the thermometer come at a time of year when temperatures are already typically at their highest, leading forecasters to warn residents to take precautions to protect themselves from the dangerous heat conditions.
“People really need to take it seriously,” said Kathy Hoxsie, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. “Drink a lot of water. Find shade.”
Advertisement
In light of the heat wave — and the expectation that Californians will crank up the AC in response — the California Independent System Operator also has issued a statewide flex alert, asking residents to conserve electricity between 3 and 10 p.m. Friday to reduce strain on the power grid.
While high temperatures always raise fire concerns in Southern California, Hoxsie said winds are expected to be calm — welcome news for crews that have already been busy battling blazes this week. The Lake fire burning north of Santa Clarita has scorched more than 11,000 acres and is 12% contained, while the Ranch 2 fire near Azusa has charred more than 3,000 acres with no containment.
California Lake fire raises concern as wildfire season heats up The explosive growth of the Lake fire in Los Angeles County has raised worries about the fall fire season
“High heat, low humidity means that fires surely will start more readily, but it’s the winds that really drive them,” she said. “So, as long as the winds stay low, which they will, the conditions are not extreme.”
However, virtually no stretch of the Southland will be spared from conditions that Hoxsie said will be “hot, hot and hot.”
“We’re expecting the heat to continue through the weekend and into next week, probably peaking on Monday, Tuesday,” she said. “We have an excessive heat warning out for the Antelope Valley through Tuesday and the interior valleys through Monday.”
The Los Angeles County coast, as well as downtown, is under a less-severe heat advisory until Sunday night, according to the National Weather Service.
Advertisement
Starting Friday, highs for the next few days are expected to largely range between 100 and 110 degrees in the Antelope, Santa Clarita, San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys, according to Hoxsie.
The Inland Empire and high desert also will see their mercury top out in the mid-to-high 100s. The Coachella Valley and interior deserts will be even hotter, with some areas forecast to approach or hit 120.
Temperatures are going to be H-O-T the next few days, especially for inland areas 🥵
I know we sound like a broken record, but take it easy if you plan to be outside during the afternoon hours and drink plenty of water! 🥤
Highs today through Sunday below 👇 #cawx pic.twitter.com/iNj55ZiGag — NWS San Diego (@NWSSanDiego) August 14, 2020
Even after the initial peak of the heat wave, forecasters said hot conditions will persist through much of next week.
“Unfortunately, the heat won’t lose grip and we can expect temperatures to increase yet again for the middle of next week,” Bruno Rodriguez, a National Weather Service meteorologist in San Diego, said in a video briefing Thursday. “The extended nature of this heat is especially concerning because, obviously, the cumulative effects from so many days of above-average temperatures is definitely going to act to increase the overall heat risk.”
Officials said residents should make sure to drink plenty of water, stay out of direct sunlight as much as possible, reduce physical outdoor activities and wear loose, light-fitting clothing during the heat wave.
Due to the Lake and Ranch 2 fires, the South Coast Air Quality Management District on Friday issued a smoke advisory for the Santa Clarita and San Gabriel Valleys. It warned older adults, children and people with heart and lung diseases to stay indoors. Pets also should be brought inside.
Meanwhile, L.A. County is opening a number of emergency cooling centers Friday to help residents beat the heat.
“Offering free emergency heat relief is an important service to help keep vulnerable members of the public safe and healthy during heat waves,” Kevin McGowan, director of the county Office of Emergency Management, said in a statement.
Centers will operate in compliance with COVID-19 safety criteria, officials said, and be open at the following locations:
Valleydale Park
5525 N. Lark Ellen Ave. in Azusa
Friday through Sunday, 12 to 8 p.m.
Buena Vista Library
300 N. Buena Vista St. in Burbank
Friday through Monday, 12 to 6 p.m.
Canoga Park Senior Center
7326 Jordan Ave. in Canoga Park
Friday through Monday, 12 to 8 p.m.
Claremont Library
208 N. Harvard Ave. in Claremont
Friday through Sunday,12 to 8 p.m.
Grace T. Black Auditorium
3130 Tyler Ave. in El Monte
Friday and Saturday, 12 to 6 p.m.
Griffith Manor Park
1551 Flower St. in Glendale
Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Pacific Community Center
501 S. Pacific Ave. in Glendale
Saturday through Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Pecan Recreation Center
145 S. Pecan St. in Los Angeles
Friday through Monday, 12 to 8 p.m.
Salazar Park
3864 Whittier Blvd. in Los Angeles
Friday through Sunday, 12 to 8 p.m.
Slauson Recreation Center
5306 Compton Ave. in Los Angeles
Friday through Monday, 12 to 8 p.m.
Quartz Hill Library
5040 W. Avenue M-2 in Quartz Hill
Friday through Sunday, 12 to 8 p.m.
Las Palmas Park
505 S. Huntington St. in San Fernando
Friday through Sunday, 12 to 6 p.m.
Sherman Oaks East Valley Adult Center
5056 Van Nuys Blvd. in Sherman Oaks
Friday through Monday, 12 to 8 p.m.
Stevenson Ranch Library
25950 The Old Road in Stevenson Ranch
Friday through Sunday, 12 to 8 p.m.
Topanga Library
122 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd. in Topanga
Friday through Sunday, 12 to 8 p.m.


latimes--2020-08-14--Column: Trump is so dumb trying to sabotage USPS, Democrats. He's hurting his own voters

One of the most nonsensical things about President Trump ’ s blatant attempt to sabotage the U.S .
Postal Service in hopes of getting reelected is that , if he ’ s successful , the people most harmed will be his own voters .
And there are millions of them .
Every day , postal workers deliver letters and packages — including medication and benefit checks — to some of the most rural stretches of land in this country .
They make some 45 million stops along 78,500 routes , many of which hug remote farms and ranches , such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ counties , where “ Make America Great Again ” flags fly high .
These are places where people could easily go weeks without a real-life connection to the outside world if not for their postal carrier stopping by every day .
Places where Amazon doesn ’ t deliver , nor FedEx or UPS .
Where there isn ’ t even reliable internet service .
As former President Obama tweeted on Friday : “ Everyone depends on the USPS .
Seniors for their Social Security , veterans for their prescriptions , small businesses trying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can ’ t be collateral damage for an administration more concerned with suppressing the vote than suppressing a virus.
” And yet Trump , in an unscrupulous and shortsighted attempt to limit Americans ’ ability to vote by mail , is continuing to refuse additional funding for USPS .
On Thursday , he said he would block both the $ 25 billion in emergency funding sought by Democrats as part of a broader relief package and an additional $ 3.5 billion for states to prepare for the Nov. 3 election .
The funds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ballots with all the precautions needed for safely tallying votes during a pandemic .
“ They need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots , ” he told Fox Business Network .
“ If we don ’ t make a deal , that means they don ’ t get the money .
That means they can ’ t have universal mail-in voting .
They just can ’ t have it.
” A few hours later , Trump backtracked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t veto a relief package that includes funding for the postal service , but Democrats would need to agree to a deal .
“ If we agree to it , ” he told reporters .
“ That doesn ’ t mean we ’ re going to agree to it.
” A few hours after that , negotiations over that deal officially stalled , with lawmakers leaving Washington for summer break .
Trump ’ s theory is that he is more likely to beat the presumptive Democratic nominee , Joe Biden , if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in person .
He also keeps insisting that mail-in voting is “ fraudulent , ” despite evidence to the contrary and his own decision to vote by mail in Florida .
It ’ s the kind of thing that infuriates Tammi Headrick , president of California chapter of the National Rural Letter Carriers ’ Assn .
When we spoke Thursday , she had just returned from her grueling regular route of four and a half hours in the hills around Escondido .
Her mail truck has no air conditioning , and since it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was about 107 degrees in the driver ’ s seat squashed among all of the letters and packages .
“ For him to stand there and say that we can ’ t be trusted , he is insulting every postal employee in this country , ” Headrick said of Trump .
“ I was delivering things today from his campaign .
But I can be trusted with that , right ?
Yeah.
” This is only the latest round of shenanigans since Louis DeJoy , a Republican mega-donor who owns stock in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in May .
The changes he has made since then , from cutting overtime to removing mail processing equipment , are at the root of many of the delivery delays that we ’ ve have endured even in Los Angeles .
The USPS has already warned officials in 46 states , including California , that it can ’ t guarantee all ballots cast by mail will arrive in time to be counted for the November election , the Washington Post reported on Friday .
If Trump , presumably with DeJoy ’ s support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ funding for the USPS is denied or delayed , the ramifications will be enormous — not just for our democracy in the short term , but for people ’ s lives in the long term .
“ In these urban areas , for most of the folks , it ’ s not going to be a big deal to make the trek to the post office to pick up whatever they were waiting on , ” Headrick said .
“ But when you get out into our farm communities , it can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take an hour or more to get to a grocery store or to a Target to get , say , toilet paper — something many people told me during a trip to the high desert city of Alturas , in Modoc County , in July .
Supply chains are delicate things in rural communities , which are often poor .
“ California has some areas like up by Crescent City and stuff like that , that there ’ s nothing even close to them , ” she said .
“ There are still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long-reaching fingers don ’ t go .
They hand it off to us because it wouldn ’ t be profitable for them to drive 40 miles for one address.
” As of April , the postal service was projecting a $ 13-billion revenue loss tied to the COVID-19 pandemic and an additional $ 54 billion in losses over the next decade .
It also has retirement benefits to fund .
But for all the talk over the years of privatizing the USPS , there ’ s a reason why it continues to exist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while surely never will turn a buck , is very much needed by the public .
That ’ s the role of government .
If rural letter carriers are laid off en masse , something that Headrick worries about , she predicts that many of the people along her route and elsewhere in California will be caught completely off-guard .
Most aren ’ t paying attention to the news , she said .
They ’ re worried about planting their crops or what ’ s going on with the head of cattle .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ time available to just drop what they ’ re doing and run to the post office to pick up whatever , ” she told me .
“ If they had that , they would have probably just went into the store and bought it.
” In California alone , there are about 3,000 routes covered by rural carriers , including ones that are surprisingly suburban , such as the city of Murrieta near Temecula , presumably full of the “ housewives ” Trump needs as voters .
That the president is willing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the bus — the people whom he has at least given lip service to protecting in the past — says a lot about how desperate he is .
Trump , ever selfish , is more than willing to turn the postal service into a pawn and subject rural Americans to a fate that will last a lot longer than the November election .
No wonder he is lagging in the polls even in states that he won handily in 2016 .
Making it difficult to vote by mail won ’ t change that @

President Trump is attempting to limit Americans’ ability to vote by mail by refusing additional funding for the U.S. Postal Service.
One of the most nonsensical things about President Trump’s blatant attempt to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service in hopes of getting reelected is that, if he’s successful, the people most harmed will be his own voters.
And there are millions of them.
Every day, postal workers deliver letters and packages — including medication and benefit checks — to some of the most rural stretches of land in this country. They make some 45 million stops along 78,500 routes, many of which hug remote farms and ranches, such as those that dot Modoc and Alpine counties, where “Make America Great Again” flags fly high.
These are places where people could easily go weeks without a real-life connection to the outside world if not for their postal carrier stopping by every day. Places where Amazon doesn’t deliver, nor FedEx or UPS. Where there isn’t even reliable internet service.
As former President Obama tweeted on Friday: “Everyone depends on the USPS. Seniors for their Social Security, veterans for their prescriptions, small businesses trying to keep their doors open. They can’t be collateral damage for an administration more concerned with suppressing the vote than suppressing a virus.”
Advertisement
And yet Trump, in an unscrupulous and shortsighted attempt to limit Americans’ ability to vote by mail, is continuing to refuse additional funding for USPS.
On Thursday, he said he would block both the $25 billion in emergency funding sought by Democrats as part of a broader relief package and an additional $3.5 billion for states to prepare for the Nov. 3 election. The funds would go toward hiring staff and processing ballots with all the precautions needed for safely tallying votes during a pandemic.
Everyone depends on the USPS. Seniors for their Social Security, veterans for their prescriptions, small businesses trying to keep their doors open. They can't be collateral damage for an administration more concerned with suppressing the vote than suppressing a virus. — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 14, 2020
“They need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” he told Fox Business Network. “If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it.”
A few hours later, Trump backtracked a bit, saying that he wouldn’t veto a relief package that includes funding for the postal service, but Democrats would need to agree to a deal. “If we agree to it,” he told reporters. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to agree to it.”
A few hours after that, negotiations over that deal officially stalled, with lawmakers leaving Washington for summer break.
Trump’s theory is that he is more likely to beat the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, if voters have to go to the polls in person. He also keeps insisting that mail-in voting is “fraudulent,” despite evidence to the contrary and his own decision to vote by mail in Florida.
Advertisement
It’s the kind of thing that infuriates Tammi Headrick, president of California chapter of the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Assn. When we spoke Thursday, she had just returned from her grueling regular route of four and a half hours in the hills around Escondido. Her mail truck has no air conditioning, and since it was 97 degrees outside, she figures it was about 107 degrees in the driver’s seat squashed among all of the letters and packages.
“For him to stand there and say that we can’t be trusted, he is insulting every postal employee in this country,” Headrick said of Trump. “I was delivering things today from his campaign. But I can be trusted with that, right? Yeah.”
This is only the latest round of shenanigans since Louis DeJoy, a Republican mega-donor who owns stock in Amazon and UPS, became postmaster general in May. The changes he has made since then, from cutting overtime to removing mail processing equipment, are at the root of many of the delivery delays that we’ve have endured even in Los Angeles.
The USPS has already warned officials in 46 states, including California, that it can’t guarantee all ballots cast by mail will arrive in time to be counted for the November election, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
If Trump, presumably with DeJoy’s support, gets his way now and additional funding for the USPS is denied or delayed, the ramifications will be enormous — not just for our democracy in the short term, but for people’s lives in the long term.
“In these urban areas, for most of the folks, it’s not going to be a big deal to make the trek to the post office to pick up whatever they were waiting on,” Headrick said. “But when you get out into our farm communities, it can be near impossible for them.”
It can take an hour or more to get to a grocery store or to a Target to get, say, toilet paper — something many people told me during a trip to the high desert city of Alturas, in Modoc County, in July. Supply chains are delicate things in rural communities, which are often poor.
“California has some areas like up by Crescent City and stuff like that, that there’s nothing even close to them,” she said. “There are still many places that even Amazon with their long-reaching fingers don’t go. They hand it off to us because it wouldn’t be profitable for them to drive 40 miles for one address.”
As of April, the postal service was projecting a $13-billion revenue loss tied to the COVID-19 pandemic and an additional $54 billion in losses over the next decade. It also has retirement benefits to fund. But for all the talk over the years of privatizing the USPS, there’s a reason why it continues to exist. It provides a service that, while surely never will turn a buck, is very much needed by the public. That’s the role of government.
If rural letter carriers are laid off en masse, something that Headrick worries about, she predicts that many of the people along her route and elsewhere in California will be caught completely off-guard. Most aren’t paying attention to the news, she said. They’re worried about planting their crops or what’s going on with the head of cattle.
“They don’t have the time available to just drop what they’re doing and run to the post office to pick up whatever,” she told me. “If they had that, they would have probably just went into the store and bought it.”
In California alone, there are about 3,000 routes covered by rural carriers, including ones that are surprisingly suburban, such as the city of Murrieta near Temecula, presumably full of the “housewives” Trump needs as voters.
That the president is willing to throw his own base of voters under the bus — the people whom he has at least given lip service to protecting in the past — says a lot about how desperate he is. Trump, ever selfish, is more than willing to turn the postal service into a pawn and subject rural Americans to a fate that will last a lot longer than the November election.
No wonder he is lagging in the polls even in states that he won handily in 2016. Making it difficult to vote by mail won’t change that.


latimes--2020-08-14--Painter Luchita Hurtado, who became an art star in her late 90s, has died at 99

Shortly after the Hammer Museum opened the doors on its “ Made in L.A. ” biennial in 2018 , a visitor reached out to the museum to alert it to a mistake in one of the wall texts .
The tag accompanying several beguiling canvases of nude female forms , created from the perspective of a woman gazing down at her own naked body , listed the painter ’ s birth year as 1920 .
That couldn ’ t be right , the visitor said .
That would have made the artist almost a century old .
As it turns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The paintings were by Luchita Hurtado , who was making her first appearance in a major contemporary art biennial ... at the age of 97 .
This , despite her myriad connections to the art world : Hurtado had been married to notable painters ( Wolfgang Paalen and Lee Mullican ) , and she counted key 20th century figures such as Rufino Tamayo , Isamu Noguchi and Marcel Duchamp as friends .
“ She very much has had the life of an artist , ” exhibition co-curator Anne Ellegood said of Hurtado ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But without an exhibition history.
” Hurtado , whose spirited life carried her from her native Venezuela to New York , Mexico and Los Angeles , died Thursday evening at her home in Santa Monica of natural causes .
Her death was confirmed by a representative at her gallery , Hauser & Wirth .
She was 99 .
Her death comes just six months after the opening of her major career survey at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in February , “ Luchita Hurtado : I Live I Die I Will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is , to some degree , the story of many women artists in the 20th century who subsumed their careers for the needs of others .
Art-making was often done not in a dedicated studio , but on a kitchen table .
Painting hours coincided with children ’ s bedtimes .
Over the course of her life , she created hundreds of works that experimented with Modernism , Indigenous pattern and the surreal , works united by her interest in prehistory and the environment , but exhibited them only sporadically and principally in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very late in life — her body of work came to light , and she was greeted as an overnight success by the art world .
An overnight success that was eight decades in the making .
Of the desire to make art , she once told curator and writer Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer : “ It was a need , like brushing your teeth.
” Jennifer King , an associate curator of contemporary art at LACMA , who helped organize the L.A. installation of Hurtado ’ s survey , said that the narratives about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , combined with the late rediscovery of her work , can often overwhelm her artistic accomplishments .
“ She was a very original artist , ” King said .
“ She was a formal innovator .
She was an incredible colorist.
” And while her work took on myriad forms over the decades — abstract paintings that focused on pattern and works that toyed with the nature and form of written words , it was all bound together by common themes : “ the feeling of deep connection to the Earth and everything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , animals and plants.
” The LACMA show , which originated at London ’ s Serpentine Galleries last year , was given more expansive treatment in its L.A. location , featuring more than 120 works from different eras — including 70 that hadn ’ t been a part of the London show .
( The exhibition was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic but remains fully installed in the hopes that it might be able to reopen . )
Hurtado was a painter whose works straddled eras , styles and continents .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of paintings from the late 1960s and ‘ 70s that rendered aspects of women ’ s bodies as surreal landscapes and others that featured the nude female form as viewed from a woman ’ s perspective , often hovering over bright , patterned rugs .
They were paintings that novelist and critic Yxta Maya Murray , in Artforum , described as being “ less about the pleasures and trajectories of her body than about its suspension in otherwise throwaway moments.
” “ You can imagine how meaningful they were at that time in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ability to represent their own bodies and shifting the so-called male gaze and controlling that gaze , ” said Ellegood at the time of the Hammer biennial .
“ Historically , they are very important.
” ( Ellegood has since left the Hammer and is now the director of the Institute of Contemporary , Los Angeles . )
If Hurtado was ever bothered by the fact that she worked in obscurity for much of her life , she didn ’ t show it .
“ She never expressed any bitterness , ” said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or , to me , in private.
” In a conversation with artist Andrea Bowers in Ursula magazine in 2019 , Hurtado addressed the issue of her late recognition : “ I don ’ t feel anger , I really don ’ t .
I feel , you know : ‘ How stupid of them.
’ Maybe the people who were looking at what I was doing had no eye for the future and , therefore , no eye for the present.
” Luchita Hurtado was born Luisa Amelia Garcia Rodriguez Hurtado on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Venezuela , to a seamstress mother .
When Hurtado was 8 years old , the family immigrated to New York City , settling in Inwood , on the northern edge of Manhattan where , Hurtado once said , “ all the South Americans lived.
” From her youngest years , she was drawn to art and the ways in which it intersected with nature .
In a conversation held at LACMA in February , she recalled noticing the pattern on a butterfly ’ s wings as a child .
“ I was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ head and on the wings of this butterfly , there was this drawing that I thought I had originated , ” she said .
“ Nature was way ahead of me.
” In various interviews , she described finding deep resonance in the earliest photographs of Earth taken from space — images that revealed the fragile nature of existence .
As a student at Washington Irving High School , she made art a focus .
“ I never told my mother that I was taking art — she thought I was taking dress-making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for her exhibition at the Serpentine .
“ I loved to sew , but I thought that was a waste of time , and I didn ’ t tell her .
And she only knew when I graduated , and she was very distressed.
” Her high school courses would come to represent the extent of her formal training .
Shortly after graduating from Washington Irving , she married Chilean journalist Daniel del Solar — a marriage that was short-lived .
( “ He abandoned me with two children , ” she recalled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 , “ for this other woman that he also abandoned when she had two children.
” ) But Del Solar introduced her to a world of intellectuals that would shape the course of her life and her career — such as the prominent Mexican painter Tamayo , who became a good friend .
The two would gather in her kitchen to paint and talk shop , often choosing colors from their environment and imagining how they would re-create them on canvas .
“ We spent much time together using color as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conversation at LACMA .
“ ‘ How do you mix the color of that skirt ?
’ And then we ’ d go at it to see who could do it first.
” Through these circles , she became friends with other artists , too .
She met Noguchi shortly after the Japanese American sculptor had been released from a World War II internment camp in Arizona .
Later , she would get to know Duchamp , the French surrealist .
During their encounter at a friend ’ s house , he set @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( The two were just friends , she said in the 2018 Times interview : “ The people , they all loved to gossip.
” ) It was through her various art world connections that she ultimately met her second husband , Austrian theorist and painter Wolfgang Paalen , one of the founders of Dynaton , a group of artists who became known for their interest in surreal , abstract and cosmic themes .
On a whim , she accompanied Paalen to see newly uncovered Olmec heads at La Venta in Mexico .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Paalen , ” she said of the trip .
“ We married a week after we met .
It was very impulsive.
” By the 1940s , she was living in Mexico with Paalen and her two children — a time that she later described as “ very bohemian , ” socializing with artists such as Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington , as well as Mullican , the Oklahoma-born painter who was also part of the Dynaton group .
But Hurtado ’ s marriage to Paalen was not fated to last .
Her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contracting polio , and his death produced a rift .
Hurtado wanted to have more children ; Paalen did not .
Hurtado returned to the U.S. and ultimately settled in California .
It was in California where she would remain for the rest of her life — first in the Bay Area , then in Los Angeles .
It was also in California where she would reconnect with Mullican — and marry for the last time .
The pair remained together for 40 years until his death in 1998 , and had two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also an artist , and John Mullican , a film director .
Hurtado ’ s late-in-life fame came as the result of a small exhibition of her paintings at Park View Gallery in 2016 , which then operated out of owner Paul Soto ’ s apartment .
The show emerged out of happy accident .
The year prior , Ryan Good , director of Mullican ’ s estate , was cataloging Mullican ’ s estate and kept stumbling into paintings of totemic figures and abstract patterns that bore no resemblance to Mullican ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ L.H.
” Hurtado , at the time , went by her married name , Luchita Mullican .
When Good asked her who the mysterious “ L.H.
” might be , she responded brightly , “ That ’ s me !
” A year later , Park View was showing works by Hurtado from the 1940s and ‘ 50s — a show that received positive notice by Times art critic Christopher Knight .
( “ Hurtado ’ s work , ” he wrote , “ was multicultural before multicultural was cool.
” ) After @ @ @ @ @ @ @ speed : the biennial at the Hammer in 2018 , followed by her survey at the Serpentine , as well as shows with the blue chip Hauser & Wirth .
While her success has been recent , its roots go deeper — to the 1960s and ‘ 70s .
By then , her children were grown and she could take more time to paint .
For the first time in her life , she had her own dedicated studio space .
She created paintings of her own body and patterns inspired by words @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Man Child Child ” ( an abstracted family portrait ) and “ I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn ” ( the phrase from which the show at LACMA takes its name ) .
Her art world connections led her to feminist gatherings and the Woman ’ s Building .
In 1974 , she had her first solo exhibition there — her last until the show at Park View in 2016 .
For the artist , who had lived through so many transformative times , this heady period represented a truly transformative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Hurtado describes attending a consciousness-raising event at the home of , as she recalled it , painter June Wayne .
“ Everybody gave their names and what they did , ” she said .
“ I got up and said , ‘ Luchita Mullican , artist ’ and June Wayne ’ s voice came above , almost a shout and said , ‘ Luchita , what ?
’ and I said , ‘ Luchita Hurtado , painter ’ and that ’ s how it began.
” It is how she will be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two sons , Matt and John , from her marriage to Mullican , as well as two grandchildren from her son Matt : Cosmo and Lucy Mullican .
Daniel del Solar , the surviving child from her first marriage , died in 2012 .

Shortly after the Hammer Museum opened the doors on its “Made in L.A.” biennial in 2018, a visitor reached out to the museum to alert it to a mistake in one of the wall texts.
The tag accompanying several beguiling canvases of nude female forms, created from the perspective of a woman gazing down at her own naked body, listed the painter’s birth year as 1920. That couldn’t be right, the visitor said. That would have made the artist almost a century old.
As it turns out, the tag was correct. The paintings were by Luchita Hurtado, who was making her first appearance in a major contemporary art biennial ... at the age of 97.
This, despite her myriad connections to the art world: Hurtado had been married to notable painters (Wolfgang Paalen and Lee Mullican), and she counted key 20th century figures such as Rufino Tamayo, Isamu Noguchi and Marcel Duchamp as friends.
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“She very much has had the life of an artist,” exhibition co-curator Anne Ellegood said of Hurtado’s trajectory at the time. “But without an exhibition history.”
Hurtado, whose spirited life carried her from her native Venezuela to New York, Mexico and Los Angeles, died Thursday evening at her home in Santa Monica of natural causes. Her death was confirmed by a representative at her gallery, Hauser & Wirth. She was 99.
Artist Luchita Hurtado at work in Mexico in 1945. (Courtesy of Luchita Hurtado)
Her death comes just six months after the opening of her major career survey at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in February, “Luchita Hurtado: I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn.”
The story of Hurtado is, to some degree, the story of many women artists in the 20th century who subsumed their careers for the needs of others.
Art-making was often done not in a dedicated studio, but on a kitchen table. Painting hours coincided with children’s bedtimes. Over the course of her life, she created hundreds of works that experimented with Modernism, Indigenous pattern and the surreal, works united by her interest in prehistory and the environment, but exhibited them only sporadically and principally in group shows.
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Late in life — very late in life — her body of work came to light, and she was greeted as an overnight success by the art world. An overnight success that was eight decades in the making.
Of the desire to make art, she once told curator and writer Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer: “It was a need, like brushing your teeth.”
LACMA recently acquired one of Luchita Hurtado’s untitled works. (Genevieve Hanson / LACMA)
Jennifer King, an associate curator of contemporary art at LACMA, who helped organize the L.A. installation of Hurtado’s survey, said that the narratives about Hurtado’s globe-trotting, bohemian life, combined with the late rediscovery of her work, can often overwhelm her artistic accomplishments.
“She was a very original artist,” King said. “She was a formal innovator. She was an incredible colorist.”
And while her work took on myriad forms over the decades — abstract paintings that focused on pattern and works that toyed with the nature and form of written words, it was all bound together by common themes: “the feeling of deep connection to the Earth and everything that has lived on it: people, animals and plants.”
The LACMA show, which originated at London’s Serpentine Galleries last year, was given more expansive treatment in its L.A. location, featuring more than 120 works from different eras — including 70 that hadn’t been a part of the London show. (The exhibition was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic but remains fully installed in the hopes that it might be able to reopen.)
Luchita Hurtado’s “Untitled,” 1970, was one of many works in which she toyed with perspective and the ways in which the female form is rendered in art. (Jeff McLane / Hauser & Wirth)
Hurtado was a painter whose works straddled eras, styles and continents. Key among her works are a series of paintings from the late 1960s and ‘70s that rendered aspects of women’s bodies as surreal landscapes and others that featured the nude female form as viewed from a woman’s perspective, often hovering over bright, patterned rugs. They were paintings that novelist and critic Yxta Maya Murray, in Artforum, described as being “less about the pleasures and trajectories of her body than about its suspension in otherwise throwaway moments.”
“You can imagine how meaningful they were at that time in terms of female artists taking back the ability to represent their own bodies and shifting the so-called male gaze and controlling that gaze,” said Ellegood at the time of the Hammer biennial. “Historically, they are very important.” (Ellegood has since left the Hammer and is now the director of the Institute of Contemporary, Los Angeles.)
If Hurtado was ever bothered by the fact that she worked in obscurity for much of her life, she didn’t show it. “She never expressed any bitterness,” said King, “at least not publicly or, to me, in private.”
In a conversation with artist Andrea Bowers in Ursula magazine in 2019, Hurtado addressed the issue of her late recognition: “I don’t feel anger, I really don’t. I feel, you know: ‘How stupid of them.’ Maybe the people who were looking at what I was doing had no eye for the future and, therefore, no eye for the present.”
Luchita Hurtado takes a a self-portrait in Santa Monica in 1951. (Luchita Hurtado)
Luchita Hurtado was born Luisa Amelia Garcia Rodriguez Hurtado on Nov. 28, 1920, in Maiquetía, Venezuela, to a seamstress mother. When Hurtado was 8 years old, the family immigrated to New York City, settling in Inwood, on the northern edge of Manhattan where, Hurtado once said, “all the South Americans lived.”
From her youngest years, she was drawn to art and the ways in which it intersected with nature.
In a conversation held at LACMA in February, she recalled noticing the pattern on a butterfly’s wings as a child. “I was drawing figures with the hand above the head and on the wings of this butterfly, there was this drawing that I thought I had originated,” she said. “Nature was way ahead of me.”
In various interviews, she described finding deep resonance in the earliest photographs of Earth taken from space — images that revealed the fragile nature of existence.
As a student at Washington Irving High School, she made art a focus.
“I never told my mother that I was taking art — she thought I was taking dress-making,” Hurtado said in an interview for her exhibition at the Serpentine. “I loved to sew, but I thought that was a waste of time, and I didn’t tell her. And she only knew when I graduated, and she was very distressed.”
Her high school courses would come to represent the extent of her formal training.
Shortly after graduating from Washington Irving, she married Chilean journalist Daniel del Solar — a marriage that was short-lived. (“He abandoned me with two children,” she recalled in an interview with The Times in 2018, “for this other woman that he also abandoned when she had two children.”)
An installation view of Luchita Hurtado’s career survey “I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn.” (Museum Associates / LACMA)
But Del Solar introduced her to a world of intellectuals that would shape the course of her life and her career — such as the prominent Mexican painter Tamayo, who became a good friend. The two would gather in her kitchen to paint and talk shop, often choosing colors from their environment and imagining how they would re-create them on canvas.
“We spent much time together using color as a toy,” she recalled in her conversation at LACMA. “‘How do you mix the color of that skirt?’ And then we’d go at it to see who could do it first.”
Through these circles, she became friends with other artists, too. She met Noguchi shortly after the Japanese American sculptor had been released from a World War II internment camp in Arizona. Later, she would get to know Duchamp, the French surrealist. During their encounter at a friend’s house, he set tongues wagging by rubbing her feet. (The two were just friends, she said in the 2018 Times interview: “The people, they all loved to gossip.”)
It was through her various art world connections that she ultimately met her second husband, Austrian theorist and painter Wolfgang Paalen, one of the founders of Dynaton, a group of artists who became known for their interest in surreal, abstract and cosmic themes.
On a whim, she accompanied Paalen to see newly uncovered Olmec heads at La Venta in Mexico. “That was my first date with Paalen,” she said of the trip. “We married a week after we met. It was very impulsive.”
By the 1940s, she was living in Mexico with Paalen and her two children — a time that she later described as “very bohemian,” socializing with artists such as Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington, as well as Mullican, the Oklahoma-born painter who was also part of the Dynaton group.
One of Luchita Hurtado’s untitled works from about 1950 was shown at Park View Gallery in 2016. The exhibition represented a comeback. (Luchita Hurtado / Hauser & Wirth)
But Hurtado’s marriage to Paalen was not fated to last. Her son Pablo del Solar died unexpectedly after contracting polio, and his death produced a rift. Hurtado wanted to have more children; Paalen did not. Hurtado returned to the U.S. and ultimately settled in California.
It was in California where she would remain for the rest of her life — first in the Bay Area, then in Los Angeles. It was also in California where she would reconnect with Mullican — and marry for the last time. The pair remained together for 40 years until his death in 1998, and had two children: Matt Mullican, who is also an artist, and John Mullican, a film director.
Hurtado’s late-in-life fame came as the result of a small exhibition of her paintings at Park View Gallery in 2016, which then operated out of owner Paul Soto’s apartment. The show emerged out of happy accident. The year prior, Ryan Good, director of Mullican’s estate, was cataloging Mullican’s estate and kept stumbling into paintings of totemic figures and abstract patterns that bore no resemblance to Mullican’s work and were signed simply “L.H.”
Hurtado, at the time, went by her married name, Luchita Mullican. When Good asked her who the mysterious “L.H.” might be, she responded brightly, “That’s me!”
A year later, Park View was showing works by Hurtado from the 1940s and ‘50s — a show that received positive notice by Times art critic Christopher Knight. (“Hurtado’s work,” he wrote, “was multicultural before multicultural was cool.”)
After that, the exhibitions came with blinding speed: the biennial at the Hammer in 2018, followed by her survey at the Serpentine, as well as shows with the blue chip Hauser & Wirth.
While her success has been recent, its roots go deeper — to the 1960s and ‘70s.
Luchita Hurtado sits amid abstracted works inspired by words in Santa Monica in 1973. (Matt Mullican)
By then, her children were grown and she could take more time to paint. For the first time in her life, she had her own dedicated studio space. She created paintings of her own body and patterns inspired by words and phrases, such as “Woman Man Child Child” (an abstracted family portrait) and “I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn” (the phrase from which the show at LACMA takes its name).
Her art world connections led her to feminist gatherings and the Woman’s Building. In 1974, she had her first solo exhibition there — her last until the show at Park View in 2016.
For the artist, who had lived through so many transformative times, this heady period represented a truly transformative moment. In the interview with Lehrer-Graiwer, Hurtado describes attending a consciousness-raising event at the home of, as she recalled it, painter June Wayne.
“Everybody gave their names and what they did,” she said. “I got up and said, ‘Luchita Mullican, artist’ and June Wayne’s voice came above, almost a shout and said, ‘Luchita, what?’ and I said, ‘Luchita Hurtado, painter’ and that’s how it began.”
It is how she will be remembered.
Hurtado is survived by her two sons, Matt and John, from her marriage to Mullican, as well as two grandchildren from her son Matt: Cosmo and Lucy Mullican. Daniel del Solar, the surviving child from her first marriage, died in 2012.


latimes--2020-08-14--7 arrested in vandalism of George Washington statue near L.A. City Hall

Seven individuals were arrested Thursday night in the vandalism of a statue of George Washington in downtown ’ s Grand Park , Los Angeles police said .
No further details of the arrests were available , police said .
Footage from CBS shows the statue toppled over , with red paint smeared on its hands and face and the anarchy symbol tagged on the base of the statue .
The incident followed a small protest at the park across from City Hall on Hill Street between Temple and 1st streets , according to media reports .
Protests over landmarks and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ histories have emerged in recent months following the killing of George Floyd , who died after a Minneapolis police officer pinned him at the neck for more than eight minutes .
President Washington ’ s history as a slave owner has been the subject of protests in various cities .
The statue that was vandalized in Los Angeles is a bronze copy of a statue that sits in the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond .
The original was created in Paris in 1796 , and 30 copies were created in the late 19th @ @ @ @ @ @ @ County Department of Arts and Culture .
The statue that has stood in Grand Park for 87 years was obtained by the Women ’ s Community Service and presented to the county on February 22 , 1933 -- Washington ’ s birthday .

Seven individuals were arrested Thursday night in the vandalism of a statue of George Washington in downtown’s Grand Park, Los Angeles police said.
No further details of the arrests were available, police said. Footage from CBS shows the statue toppled over, with red paint smeared on its hands and face and the anarchy symbol tagged on the base of the statue.
The incident followed a small protest at the park across from City Hall on Hill Street between Temple and 1st streets, according to media reports.
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Protests over landmarks and spaces dedicated to public figures with troubled histories have emerged in recent months following the killing of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer pinned him at the neck for more than eight minutes. President Washington’s history as a slave owner has been the subject of protests in various cities.
A vandalized statue is wrapped in a brown tarp in Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)
The statue that was vandalized in Los Angeles is a bronze copy of a statue that was placed in the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond in 1796. The original was created in Paris, and about 30 copies were created in the late 19th century, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.
The statue that has stood in Grand Park for 87 years was obtained by the Women’s Community Service and presented to the county on February 22, 1933 -- Washington’s birthday.


latimes--2020-08-14--California becomes first state to pass 600,000 coronavirus cases

California has become the first state in the nation to surpass 600,000 confirmed coronavirus cases .
As of Friday evening , there were more than 609,000 recorded cases .
The state also has reported over 11,000 deaths .
Yet despite the grim numbers , there is growing evidence that the surge in infections and fatalities that began when California reopened its economy in May is beginning to slow .
In the effective transmission rate of the coronavirus is now about 0.86 — meaning that every one infected person passes the virus to an average of 0.86 other people .
Last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And statewide , an ensemble computer model known as the estimates California ’ s overall transmission rate is about 0.96 .
When asked about the 600,000-case milestone during a news briefing Friday , Gov .
Gavin Newsom said he and his administration are more concerned with the state ’ s positivity rate — the proportion of people who test positive for the virus of all who have been tested — which currently sits at about 6.2 % .
“ That gives us a better sense of what ’ s really happening in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he said .
Newsom acknowledged that California ’ s efforts to ramp up its COVID-19 testing capabilities will logically increase the number of new infections that are uncovered .
Over the last week , the state has conducted an average of about 137,000 daily tests , he said .
But , he added , “ we ’ re not shying away from that ; we ’ re not playing to the political frame that somehow tests are bad because they will , by definition , show a higher count of total number of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think , deserves to have a better sense — to know , ‘ How prevalent is this disease ?
’ ” he said .
“ And I can assure you ... it ’ s significantly , I would argue , more prevalent than those numbers , even in California , suggest .
And it ’ s simply because we haven ’ t put the testing protocols in place and we haven ’ t scaled our testing capacity as the most innovative nation on the planet .
That includes California .
We ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also falling in many regions of California .
Statewide , the average number of people who were hospitalized seemed to have when an average of nearly 7,000 people were in hospitals with confirmed coronavirus infections over a seven-day period ; by Wednesday , that number had fallen to 5,710 .
“ While our gains might feel slow and our future remains fragile , our success over the last three weeks is real , ” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday .
“ We begin to see signs of light.
” Newsom said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19 patients were hospitalized statewide — an almost 20 % decrease over the last 14 days .
He also announced that the state had confirmed 7,934 new infections on Thursday .
However , 4,429 of those were the result of a backlog caused by data failures with the CalREDIE electronic system , which collects information from laboratories and feeds it to state and local health departments .
While reconciling that logjam has warped the state ’ s daily reporting data throughout the week , Newsom promised that all errors in state coronavirus testing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Last week , the state acknowledged that up to 300,000 records had not been processed by the computer database used to provide local health officials with COVID-19 test results .
The failure has hampered efforts to understand the spread of the coronavirus .
Once all of that information is processed , Newsom said he will update the California counties that will remain on the state ’ s watchlist — a designation that requires areas to impose more severe restrictions on businesses and activities to slow the spread of the coronavirus .
“ On @ @ @ @ @ @ @ break down by county a detailed list so people will have , with clarity and precision , every single number , ” he said .
As America ’ s most populous state , California was viewed early on as a model in the battle against COVID-19 .
But the summer surge has instead made the state a cautionary tale .
A week ago , the state recorded 10,000 deaths .
By Friday , that number had increased 10 % .
The weekly death toll is nearly double what it was in April , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and fatalities were peaking .
Still , at 11,000 deaths , California remains well below New York — one of the earliest hot spots for the virus — which has recorded more than 30,000 fatalities .
Los Angeles County has tallied the bulk of the coronavirus cases and deaths in California , accounting more than one-third of the overall cases and nearly half of all deaths .
On Friday , public health officials reported 2,642 new cases and 45 additional deaths , emphasizing that they continue to see a downward trend in hospitalizations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the new case count includes delayed reporting of a few hundred cases from Thursday but is not known to incorporate a large backlog of cases from the state ’ s reporting system .
There are 1,415 people hospitalized with confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the county , with 33 % in intensive care , according to officials .
So far , L.A. County has identified more than 218,693 cases of the virus and more than 5,214 deaths .
Public health director Barbara Ferrer said Wednesday that the rate of disease is still too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in-person instruction , with limited exceptions such as lab work or arrangements for students who will become part of the essential workforce .
“ The very nature of the way that colleges and universities operate creates a significant risk of outbreaks of COVID-19 , ” Ferrer said .
Times staff writers Phil Willon and Leila Miller contributed to this report .

California has become the first state in the nation to surpass 600,000 confirmed coronavirus cases.
As of Friday evening, there were more than 609,000 recorded cases. The state also has reported over 11,000 deaths.
Yet despite the grim numbers, there is growing evidence that the surge in infections and fatalities that began when California reopened its economy in May is beginning to slow.
In Los Angeles County, the effective transmission rate of the coronavirus is now about 0.86 — meaning that every one infected person passes the virus to an average of 0.86 other people. Last week, the rate was at 0.91.
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And statewide, an ensemble computer model known as the California COVID Assessment Tool estimates California’s overall transmission rate is about 0.96.
When asked about the 600,000-case milestone during a news briefing Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he and his administration are more concerned with the state’s positivity rate — the proportion of people who test positive for the virus of all who have been tested — which currently sits at about 6.2%.
“That gives us a better sense of what’s really happening in terms of the community spread,” he said.
Newsom acknowledged that California’s efforts to ramp up its COVID-19 testing capabilities will logically increase the number of new infections that are uncovered. Over the last week, the state has conducted an average of about 137,000 daily tests, he said.
But, he added, “we’re not shying away from that; we’re not playing to the political frame that somehow tests are bad because they will, by definition, show a higher count of total number of positives.”
Advertisement
“This nation, I think, deserves to have a better sense — to know, ‘How prevalent is this disease?’” he said. “And I can assure you ... it’s significantly, I would argue, more prevalent than those numbers, even in California, suggest. And it’s simply because we haven’t put the testing protocols in place and we haven’t scaled our testing capacity as the most innovative nation on the planet. That includes California. We’ve got work to do.”
Hospitalizations are also falling in many regions of California. Statewide, the average number of people who were hospitalized seemed to have peaked in late July, when an average of nearly 7,000 people were in hospitals with confirmed coronavirus infections over a seven-day period; by Wednesday, that number had fallen to 5,710.
“While our gains might feel slow and our future remains fragile, our success over the last three weeks is real,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday. “We begin to see signs of light.”
Newsom said Friday that the latest data show 5,189 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized statewide — an almost 20% decrease over the last 14 days.
He also announced that the state had confirmed 7,934 new infections on Thursday. However, 4,429 of those were the result of a backlog caused by data failures with the CalREDIE electronic system, which collects information from laboratories and feeds it to state and local health departments.
While reconciling that logjam has warped the state’s daily reporting data throughout the week, Newsom promised that all errors in state coronavirus testing data will be resolved by Monday.
Last week, the state acknowledged that up to 300,000 records had not been processed by the computer database used to provide local health officials with COVID-19 test results. The failure has hampered efforts to understand the spread of the coronavirus.
Once all of that information is processed, Newsom said he will update the California counties that will remain on the state’s watchlist — a designation that requires areas to impose more severe restrictions on businesses and activities to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
California Coronavirus surge turns the Southland inside out Second wave of coronavirus has businesses and the public moving from indoors to the great outdoors
“On Monday, we’re going to break down by county a detailed list so people will have, with clarity and precision, every single number,” he said.
As America’s most populous state, California was viewed early on as a model in the battle against COVID-19. But the summer surge has instead made the state a cautionary tale.
A week ago, the state recorded 10,000 deaths. By Friday, that number had increased 10%. The weekly death toll is nearly double what it was in April, when the first wave of coronavirus cases and fatalities were peaking.
Still, at 11,000 deaths, California remains well below New York — one of the earliest hot spots for the virus — which has recorded more than 30,000 fatalities.
Los Angeles County has tallied the bulk of the coronavirus cases and deaths in California, accounting more than one-third of the overall cases and nearly half of all deaths.
On Friday, public health officials reported 2,642 new cases and 45 additional deaths, emphasizing that they continue to see a downward trend in hospitalizations.
The Department of Public Health said the new case count includes delayed reporting of a few hundred cases from Thursday but is not known to incorporate a large backlog of cases from the state’s reporting system.
There are 1,415 people hospitalized with confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the county, with 33% in intensive care, according to officials. So far, L.A. County has identified more than 218,693 cases of the virus and more than 5,214 deaths.
Public health director Barbara Ferrer said Wednesday that the rate of disease is still too high for colleges and universities to allow in-person instruction, with limited exceptions such as lab work or arrangements for students who will become part of the essential workforce.
“The very nature of the way that colleges and universities operate creates a significant risk of outbreaks of COVID-19,” Ferrer said.
Times staff writers Phil Willon and Leila Miller contributed to this report.


latimes--2020-08-14--Evacuations lifted for Ranch fire burning near Azusa after blaze threatens hillside homes

Residents of Azusa ’ s Mountain Cove community can return to their homes after a brush fire triggered evacuations in the area Thursday .
The Azusa Police Department lifted the evacuation order for the neighborhood at 11 p.m. Officials added that emergency vehicles will remain on scene to monitor the fire for the next 72 hours .
Northbound Highway 39 remains closed at Sierra Madre Avenue , while the southbound lanes are blocked at East Fork Road , officials said .
The blaze , now dubbed the Ranch 2 fire , was first reported about 2:45 p.m. near North San @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , according to Los Angeles County Fire Department spokeswoman Leslie Lua .
As of Thursday night , the fire had charred 3,000 acres with no containment , according to fire officials .
The Ranch 2 fire is one of a handful of blazes that have kept Southern California firefighters busy this week .
Crews quickly jumped on a brush fire by Galster Wilderness Park in the city of West Covina on Thursday afternoon , stopping its forward progress after flames consumed a few acres .
Progress also was reported on the far larger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ acres and destroyed three structures in the Lake Hughes area .
That fire was 12 % contained as of Friday morning , according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection .
Officials say Southern California may be entering a new chapter of its fire season .
Vegetation has dried and is now prone to ignition , authorities say , and the arrival of the searing Santa Ana winds will only heighten the fire risk .
L.A. County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said Thursday that “ over 90 % of fires are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the need for residents to be cautious and prepared .
“ It ’ s going to be a hot , dry summer , ” he said .
The National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat warning for much of Southern California through the weekend due to a heat wave that will boost temperatures anywhere from 5 to 10 degrees above normal .
However , winds are expected to remain relatively calm , according to Kathy Hoxsie , a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard .
“ High heat , low @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more readily , but it ’ s the winds that really drive them , ” she said .
“ So , as long as the winds stay low , which they will , the conditions are not extreme .
”

A helicopter makes a water drop as smoke from the Ranch fire obscures the sky near Azusa. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
A man walks by a row of homes as the Ranch fire burns in the hills of Azusa on Thursday. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
The Ranch fire burns in the hills above a cluster of homes along the San Gabriel River near Azusa on Thursday. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
A firefighting helicopter makes an approach to drop water on the Ranch fire in the hills above a cluster of homes along the San Gabriel River near Azusa. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
People watch the Ranch fire burn in the hills above a cluster of homes along the San Gabriel River near Azusa. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
A man walks by a row of homes as the Ranch fire burns in the hills of Azusa on Thursday. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
The Ranch fire burns in the hills above a cluster of homes along the San Gabriel River. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Residents of Azusa’s Mountain Cove community can return to their homes after a brush fire triggered evacuations in the area Thursday.
The Azusa Police Department lifted the evacuation order for the neighborhood at 11 p.m.
Officials added that emergency vehicles will remain on scene to monitor the fire for the next 72 hours.
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Northbound Highway 39 remains closed at Sierra Madre Avenue, while the southbound lanes are blocked at East Fork Road, officials said.
The blaze, now dubbed the Ranch 2 fire, was first reported about 2:45 p.m. near North San Gabriel Canyon Road and North Ranch Road, according to Los Angeles County Fire Department spokeswoman Leslie Lua.
As of Thursday night, the fire had charred 3,000 acres with no containment, according to fire officials.
The Ranch 2 fire is one of a handful of blazes that have kept Southern California firefighters busy this week.
Crews quickly jumped on a brush fire by Galster Wilderness Park in the city of West Covina on Thursday afternoon, stopping its forward progress after flames consumed a few acres.
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Progress also was reported on the far larger Lake fire, which has burned 11,000 acres and destroyed three structures in the Lake Hughes area.
That fire was 12% contained as of Friday morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
California Lake fire raises concern as wildfire season heats up The explosive growth of the Lake fire in Los Angeles County has raised worries about the fall fire season
Officials say Southern California may be entering a new chapter of its fire season. Vegetation has dried and is now prone to ignition, authorities say, and the arrival of the searing Santa Ana winds will only heighten the fire risk.
L.A. County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said Thursday that “over 90% of fires are human caused” every year, underscoring the need for residents to be cautious and prepared.
“It’s going to be a hot, dry summer,” he said.
The National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat warning for much of Southern California through the weekend due to a heat wave that will boost temperatures anywhere from 5 to 10 degrees above normal.
However, winds are expected to remain relatively calm, according to Kathy Hoxsie, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
“High heat, low humidity means that fires surely will start more readily, but it’s the winds that really drive them,” she said. “So, as long as the winds stay low, which they will, the conditions are not extreme.”


latimes--2020-08-14--Lake fire raises concern as wildfire season heats up

A pillar of smoke and ash rose into the sky over Lake Hughes like an erupting volcano .
Firefighters hustled to save nearby structures as flames swirled and feasted on dry brush and timber .
If the explosive blaze that crews battled in the the Angeles National Forest on Wednesday night is any indication , officials say Southern California has entered a new chapter of the 2020 fire season .
“ We ’ re getting to the most critical part ... after a long , hot , dry summer , ” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Darrell Osby said Thursday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ series of storms in late spring has finally dried and is now prone to ignition , authorities say .
What comes next are the searing Santa Ana winds of the fall .
On Wednesday afternoon , the Lake fire quickly scorched 10,500 acres as it raced west toward Interstate 5 and northeast toward residents in Pine Canyon in the Antelope Valley , triggering evacuations and burning three buildings .
Though the fire ’ s western flank stalled upon hitting a burn scar from the 2013 Powerhouse fire , another section grew ferociously when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been visited by a blaze in nearly a century .
Flames were 100 feet long in some areas , officials said .
“ Where there ’ s a ton of fuel , that ’ s where you ’ ll see the big , giant flames like you saw yesterday , and that ’ s what ’ s really conducive to rapid fire growth , ” said Jake Miller , an L.A. County Fire spokesman .
The blaze was particularly notable because it had became “ plume dominated ” — firefighter-speak for fires that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ light ocean breeze during the day injected just enough moisture into the air that it made the atmosphere in the area unstable , encouraging the smoke and soot to float up and form a towering pyrocumulus cloud that was seen for miles .
“ Sometimes when you have those types of conditions , you can have a fire going in all kinds of directions depending on the behavior of the plume , ” Osby said .
“ I ’ ve never seen it , but there ’ s been instances where it creates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fire tornadoes.
” The smoke plume essentially acts like a vacuum in the sky , sucking in oxygen from the surrounding area , creating wind and lowering the air pressure as heat pushes the soot and ash tens of thousands of feet up .
“ An impressive and terrifying example of extreme fire behavior , when the fire is so hot it creates rotation , along with very strong updrafts and pyrocumulus , ” the National Weather Service tweeted .
In Wednesday ’ s case , the fire went plume-dominated in rugged terrain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ winds and accelerated the fire ’ s movement even more .
Though conditions gave firefighters a break on Thursday , with cloud cover slowing the fire ’ s growth , a heat wave expected to hit the region over the weekend could bring triple-digit temperatures to the Antelope Valley and pave the way for a repeat of Wednesday ’ s extreme fire behavior , said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain .
As crews continued to battle the blaze Thursday — containment remains at 0 % — fires also broke out in West Covina @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The worse-than-average fire season for Southern California that forecasters predicted in the spring , when late-season rains created another layer of grass , appears to be upon us , Swain said .
In another month or so , the onshore winds will reverse , the Santa Ana winds will arrive and everything will dry out even more .
“ Even though it hasn ’ t been a particularly hot summer , there is an expectation that the second half will be worse because the game changes a bit , ” Swain said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the 2020 fire season will be especially challenging .
Evacuation procedures for residents by the Red Cross are different , and how firefighters set up camp is different .
At the 33,424-acre Apple fire in Riverside County , for example , residents were directed to local hotels while firefighters camped in smaller groups than usual .
Osby said it ’ s unclear how much firefighters from other agencies will be willing to send help .
“ With the economy the way it is with local governments , we ’ re not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aid without some mechanism for reimbursement , ” he said .
To that end , firefighting officials at the local , state and federal levels have all called for an extremely aggressive approach to battling wildfires in 2020 to limit the need for evacuations and fire crews gathering in one place .
But there are limited options when the Santa Ana winds arrive in October .
“ Those are scary to us because we can ’ t impact Mother Nature , ” Osby said .
“ When she ’ s blowing ... and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it ’ s up to our citizens to really cooperate with us ... to prevent a fire , and if there is one , to dial 911 and to evacuate .
“ We ’ ve been fortunate we haven ’ t had a significant loss of life , ” the chief added .
“ But it ’ s concerning to me it will happen .
”

A pillar of smoke and ash rose into the sky over Lake Hughes like an erupting volcano. Firefighters hustled to save nearby structures as flames swirled and feasted on dry brush and timber.
If the explosive blaze that crews battled in the the Angeles National Forest on Wednesday night is any indication, officials say Southern California has entered a new chapter of the 2020 fire season.
“We’re getting to the most critical part ... after a long, hot, dry summer,” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Darrell Osby said Thursday.
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Vegetation that was soaked by a series of storms in late spring has finally dried and is now prone to ignition, authorities say. What comes next are the searing Santa Ana winds of the fall.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Lake fire quickly scorched 10,500 acres as it raced west toward Interstate 5 and northeast toward residents in Pine Canyon in the Antelope Valley, triggering evacuations and burning three buildings.
1 / 24 A firefighting helicopter makes an approach to drop water on the Ranch 2 fire in the hills above a cluster of homes along the San Gabriel River near Azusa. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times) 2 / 24 LAKE HUGHES, CALIFORNIA AUGUST 15, 2020-Firefighters from the Santa Barbara County strike team tput out hot spots from the Lake Fire along Pine Canyon Road in Lake Hughes Saturday. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times) (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times) 3 / 24 A house sits alone as the Lake Fire creeps its way up the hill towards Palmdale Friday. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times) (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times) 4 / 24 The Ranch fire burns in the hills above a cluster of homes along the San Gabriel River. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times) 5 / 24 A man walks by a row of homes as the Ranch Fire burns in the hills of Azusa Thursday. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times) 6 / 24 The Ranch fire burns in the hills above a cluster of homes along the San Gabriel River near Azusa on Thursday. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times) 7 / 24 A Cal Fire helicopter makes a water crop on the Skyline fire behind homes on Clearing Lane in Corona. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times) 8 / 24 People watch smoke and flames rising from the Ranch Fire in the San Gabriel mountains above Azusa. (Apu Gomes / AFP ) 9 / 24 A firefighter battles the smoke and flames from the Ranch Fire in the hills in Azusa. (Apu Gomes / AFP ) 10 / 24 The Lake Hughes fire burns vehicles in Angeles National Forest. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/ Associaited Press ) 11 / 24 Firefighters battle the Lake Hughes fire in Angeles National Forest. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/ Associaited Press ) 12 / 24 Firefighters battle the Lake Hughes fire in Angeles National Forest. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/ Associaited Press ) 13 / 24 Firefighters battle the Lake Hughes fire in Angeles National Forest o (Ringo H.W. Chiu/ Associated Press ) 14 / 24 Firefighters battle the Lake Hughes fire in Angeles National Forest. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/ Associaited Press ) 15 / 24 Los Angeles County Firefighter Brandon Smith runs hose through a burned out home to complete mop-up in the Lake Fire. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times) 16 / 24 A scorched statue stands in front of a home on Pine Canyon Road destroyed by fire along Pine Canyon in the Lake Hughes area. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times) 17 / 24 The smoldering remains of a home on Pine Canyon Road that was destroyed by the Lake fire. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times) 18 / 24 Melted metal from a car destroyed by the Lake fire on Pine Canyon Road. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times) 19 / 24 A home burns along Pine Canyon Road near Lake Hughes early Thursday after the Lake fire burned thousands of acres. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 24 A helicopter makes a water drop along a ridge near Lake Hughes after the Lake fire burned thousands of acres. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 24 A truck sits along Pine Canyon Road near Lake Hughes early Thursday after the Lake fire burned thousands of acres. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 24 A helicopter makes a water drop on the fast-moving Lake fire near Lake Hughes. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 24 The fast-moving Lake fire blacked thousands of acres near Lake Hughes. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 24 Fire crews prepare to battle the Lake fire in Northern Los Angeles County. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Though the fire’s western flank stalled upon hitting a burn scar from the 2013 Powerhouse fire, another section grew ferociously when it reached ground that hadn’t been visited by a blaze in nearly a century. Flames were 100 feet long in some areas, officials said.
“Where there’s a ton of fuel, that’s where you’ll see the big, giant flames like you saw yesterday, and that’s what’s really conducive to rapid fire growth,” said Jake Miller, an L.A. County Fire spokesman.
The blaze was particularly notable because it had became “plume dominated” — firefighter-speak for fires that produce their own weather conditions. A light ocean breeze during the day injected just enough moisture into the air that it made the atmosphere in the area unstable, encouraging the smoke and soot to float up and form a towering pyrocumulus cloud that was seen for miles.
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“Sometimes when you have those types of conditions, you can have a fire going in all kinds of directions depending on the behavior of the plume,” Osby said. “I’ve never seen it, but there’s been instances where it creates its own thunderstorms, lightning strikes or fire tornadoes.”
The smoke plume essentially acts like a vacuum in the sky, sucking in oxygen from the surrounding area, creating wind and lowering the air pressure as heat pushes the soot and ash tens of thousands of feet up.
“An impressive and terrifying example of extreme fire behavior, when the fire is so hot it creates rotation, along with very strong updrafts and pyrocumulus,” the National Weather Service tweeted.
In Wednesday’s case, the fire went plume-dominated in rugged terrain marked by steep canyons that funneled the winds and accelerated the fire’s movement even more.
Though conditions gave firefighters a break on Thursday, with cloud cover slowing the fire’s growth, a heat wave expected to hit the region over the weekend could bring triple-digit temperatures to the Antelope Valley and pave the way for a repeat of Wednesday’s extreme fire behavior, said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.
As crews continued to battle the blaze Thursday — containment remains at 0% — fires also broke out in West Covina and Azusa, triggering more evacuations.
The worse-than-average fire season for Southern California that forecasters predicted in the spring, when late-season rains created another layer of grass, appears to be upon us, Swain said. In another month or so, the onshore winds will reverse, the Santa Ana winds will arrive and everything will dry out even more.
“Even though it hasn’t been a particularly hot summer, there is an expectation that the second half will be worse because the game changes a bit,” Swain said.
Add the coronavirus outbreak into the mix, and the 2020 fire season will be especially challenging. Evacuation procedures for residents by the Red Cross are different, and how firefighters set up camp is different. At the 33,424-acre Apple fire in Riverside County, for example, residents were directed to local hotels while firefighters camped in smaller groups than usual. Osby said it’s unclear how much firefighters from other agencies will be willing to send help.
“With the economy the way it is with local governments, we’re not exactly sure everyone can participate with mutual aid without some mechanism for reimbursement,” he said.
To that end, firefighting officials at the local, state and federal levels have all called for an extremely aggressive approach to battling wildfires in 2020 to limit the need for evacuations and fire crews gathering in one place.
But there are limited options when the Santa Ana winds arrive in October.
“Those are scary to us because we can’t impact Mother Nature,” Osby said. “When she’s blowing ... and the fuels are naturally designed to burn, it’s up to our citizens to really cooperate with us ... to prevent a fire, and if there is one, to dial 911 and to evacuate.
“We’ve been fortunate we haven’t had a significant loss of life,” the chief added. “But it’s concerning to me it will happen.”