latimes--2020-10-23--L.A. voters are being asked to raise property taxes to help schools. Here's why supporters are optim

L.A. voters are being asked to raise property taxes to help schools. Here's why supporters are optimistic

The Los Angeles Unified School district is asking voters to increase their property taxes and approve a $ 7-billion bond measure that would pay for campus renovation and construction as well as technology , which has risen to prime importance during coronavirus-forced distance learning .
School bonds in Los Angeles and statewide have not fared well lately , but supporters of Measure RR have reason for optimism — there ’ s no significant opposition campaign and the November electorate is expected to be more tax friendly .
A possible parallel would be Measure Q , which the school district put @ @ @ @ @ @ @ earlier $ 7-billion bond measure passed easily during the November election that brought Barack Obama to office .
Then as now , liberal leaning Democrats were especially inspired to vote .
“ The much higher turnout of a presidential election will increase turnout among voters who are strong supporters of education and schools , ” said veteran political consultant Bill Carrick , who is not working on the bond campaign .
“ Younger voters , African-Americans , Latinos , Asians , and Democrats will all turn out at higher levels .
These voters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voters.
” The largest school district in California has a long list of repairs and upgrades , including work on ceilings , bus purchases , new air conditioners and seismic retrofits .
Also on the list are mobile computers and other technology .
To pass , 55 % of voters who live within L.A. Unified boundaries — which extend beyond the city of Los Angeles — would have to cast ballots in favor of Measure RR .
How much would taxes increase ?
To make the bond tax more appealing — and less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ measure is structured to keep the overall tax rate for schools about where it is now , through 2034 , before it begins to taper off over the following 20 years .
The annual property tax payment for schools during that peak period would be about $ 140 per $ 100,000 of assessed property value .
This figure would include Measure RR and other previously passed bonds that taxpayers are still paying off .
The share of that tax bill resulting from Measure RR by itself would work out , on average , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 100,000 of assessed property value .
How do bond funds address schools ’ pandemic needs ?
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced campuses to close in March , L.A. schools Supt .
Austin Beutner moved quickly to allocate $ 80 million left over from previous bonds to purchase up to 200,000 computers to meet the distance-learning needs of students who did not have a computer .
The district used other funding sources — including state and federal coronavirus relief aid — to purchase hot spots for broadband access , which students also needed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ used bond funds to purchase off-campus internet access , but that would be allowed under Measure RR .
Although the district hopes pandemic costs will be covered by outside emergency aid , Measure RR funds would be permitted to cover a wide range of these expenses , including “ well-ventilated spaces , hand sanitizing stations , touchless faucets , automatic flush urinals and toilets , motion-sensor hand dryers , touchless/hands-free/automatic doors , and physical barriers such as clear plastic sneeze guards , ” according to the resolution approved by the school board .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Because bonds are paid back over decades and technology often has a short shelf life , some argue that bond money should not be used for such purchases .
But fewer have made this argument as the role of technology in schools has increased .
Before the pandemic L.A. Unified students did not typically have a school-issued computer for home use .
Instead , the district set up each student with an account to use from any computer at school or home .
Not every class used computers every day , so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as needed .
Since campuses closed in March , students from low-income families without computers and internet access have been disproportionally harmed in distance learning .
The school board ’ s Measure RR resolution makes it clear that money will be spent to continue to bridge this digital divide , specifying the need to purchase “ 119,400 new computing devices annually , and a total of 1.2 million new individual computing devices over 12 years as the existing devices age , become unreliable and no longer perform as needed.
” How have school @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , voters statewide defeated school bonds .
In June 2019 , local voters rejected Measure EE , a parcel tax to fund L.A. Unified schools .
This setback was a huge disappointment because district leaders had hoped to build on momentum from a six-day teachers strike in January of that year , when polls indicated strong support for increased school funding .
The previous try for a parcel tax also failed in 2010 .
The Measure RR tax rates are linked to the assessed value of residential and commercial properties .
Measure RR @ @ @ @ @ @ @ district ’ s general fund — where they could be used , for example , to pay for teachers and nurses — would pay for construction and facilities-related purchases .
This kind of bond typically fuels the construction industry , and business and labor groups have united in support .
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn .
opposes the measure as an unfair additional burden , asserting that past bond funds have not been spent efficiently .
What happens if Measure RR fails ?
It will be harder for the district to make needed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The district ’ s oldest campuses are more than 100 years old .
The district would ultimately try again for a bond .
If the measure falls short , tax rates for schools would taper off within the next few years as earlier bonds are paid off .
The entire existing debt will be retired in about 2052 , according to district documents .
School bonds are just a portion of overall property taxes , which rise or fall based on many factors .

Workers build classrooms at Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in 2017 in San Fernando. Measure RR, on the November ballot, would provide $7 billion for school construction and modernization.
The Los Angeles Unified School district is asking voters to increase their property taxes and approve a $7-billion bond measure that would pay for campus renovation and construction as well as technology, which has risen to prime importance during coronavirus-forced distance learning.
School bonds in Los Angeles and statewide have not fared well lately, but supporters of Measure RR have reason for optimism — there’s no significant opposition campaign and the November electorate is expected to be more tax friendly.
A possible parallel would be Measure Q, which the school district put on the ballot in 2008. That earlier $7-billion bond measure passed easily during the November election that brought Barack Obama to office. Then as now, liberal leaning Democrats were especially inspired to vote.
“The much higher turnout of a presidential election will increase turnout among voters who are strong supporters of education and schools,” said veteran political consultant Bill Carrick, who is not working on the bond campaign. “Younger voters, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Democrats will all turn out at higher levels. These voters should be largely Yes on Measure RR voters.”
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The largest school district in California has a long list of repairs and upgrades, including work on ceilings, bus purchases, new air conditioners and seismic retrofits. Also on the list are mobile computers and other technology.
To pass, 55% of voters who live within L.A. Unified boundaries — which extend beyond the city of Los Angeles — would have to cast ballots in favor of Measure RR.
How much would taxes increase?
To make the bond tax more appealing — and less noticeable — L.A. Unified officials say the measure is structured to keep the overall tax rate for schools about where it is now, through 2034, before it begins to taper off over the following 20 years. The annual property tax payment for schools during that peak period would be about $140 per $100,000 of assessed property value. This figure would include Measure RR and other previously passed bonds that taxpayers are still paying off.
The share of that tax bill resulting from Measure RR by itself would work out, on average, to $22 a year per $100,000 of assessed property value.
How do bond funds address schools’ pandemic needs?
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When the COVID-19 pandemic forced campuses to close in March, L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner moved quickly to allocate $80 million left over from previous bonds to purchase up to 200,000 computers to meet the distance-learning needs of students who did not have a computer.
The district used other funding sources — including state and federal coronavirus relief aid — to purchase hot spots for broadband access, which students also needed. So far, the district has not used bond funds to purchase off-campus internet access, but that would be allowed under Measure RR.
Although the district hopes pandemic costs will be covered by outside emergency aid, Measure RR funds would be permitted to cover a wide range of these expenses, including “well-ventilated spaces, hand sanitizing stations, touchless faucets, automatic flush urinals and toilets, motion-sensor hand dryers, touchless/hands-free/automatic doors, and physical barriers such as clear plastic sneeze guards,” according to the resolution approved by the school board.
Will these bonds be used for computers?
Because bonds are paid back over decades and technology often has a short shelf life, some argue that bond money should not be used for such purchases. But fewer have made this argument as the role of technology in schools has increased.
Before the pandemic L.A. Unified students did not typically have a school-issued computer for home use. Instead, the district set up each student with an account to use from any computer at school or home. Not every class used computers every day, so there were generally enough to go around as needed.
Since campuses closed in March, students from low-income families without computers and internet access have been disproportionally harmed in distance learning.
The school board’s Measure RR resolution makes it clear that money will be spent to continue to bridge this digital divide, specifying the need to purchase “119,400 new computing devices annually, and a total of 1.2 million new individual computing devices over 12 years as the existing devices age, become unreliable and no longer perform as needed.”
How have school bonds fared in elections?
In March, voters statewide defeated school bonds. In June 2019, local voters rejected Measure EE, a parcel tax to fund L.A. Unified schools. This setback was a huge disappointment because district leaders had hoped to build on momentum from a six-day teachers strike in January of that year, when polls indicated strong support for increased school funding. The previous try for a parcel tax also failed in 2010.
The Measure RR tax rates are linked to the assessed value of residential and commercial properties. Measure RR proceeds, instead of going to the district’s general fund — where they could be used, for example, to pay for teachers and nurses — would pay for construction and facilities-related purchases. This kind of bond typically fuels the construction industry, and business and labor groups have united in support.
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. opposes the measure as an unfair additional burden, asserting that past bond funds have not been spent efficiently.
What happens if Measure RR fails?
It will be harder for the district to make needed repairs as existing bond funds run out. The district’s oldest campuses are more than 100 years old. The district would ultimately try again for a bond.
If the measure falls short, tax rates for schools would taper off within the next few years as earlier bonds are paid off. The entire existing debt will be retired in about 2052, according to district documents. School bonds are just a portion of overall property taxes, which rise or fall based on many factors.


latimes--2020-10-24--Along California's ring of fire, residents face decades of danger, destruction

In the haze outside his family trailer , he stubs out a cigarette and stares off across the hospital parking lot in Clovis where he has hitched up for now , pondering his future in California .
Just weeks before , Mark Van Aacken , 40 , was living his idyll .
He and his wife owned a home on a 5-acre parcel of white firs , dogwoods , ponderosas , sugar pines and incense cedars .
Their 7-year-old twin girls roamed free , riding bikes , exploring the woods .
On weekends , they packed their heavily modified Grand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — and low-geared it up boulder-strewn Jeep trails to camp next to blue alpine lakes .
That high granite country was where he found those moments of natural bliss at the heart of California ’ s promise .
But now his home in Shaver Lake is gone , taken by the flip side of that promise : disaster .
The Creek fire torched not only the house but every single tree on his property .
“ We moved up there for the forest .
And now it ’ s not there.
” He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like so many others besieged by the worst fire season on record .
With climate models predicting a hotter , drier California , many wonder what the state will look like in the decades to come .
What places might be too risky to live in ?
What great icons of nature will be left in a land so long defined by its extremes ?
The California landscape has excited such an enduring sense of wonder that it is as much a concept as a place , having drawn its own canon of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mark Twain , John Muir , Jack London , Mary Austin , John Steinbeck , Wallace Stegner , Joan Didion , John McPhee , Barry Lopez and so many others .
The land is so inextricably tied to the culture and self-image of the state that relentless years of burning , coupled with sea rise and a diminishing water supply , can only demystify the dream that was millions of years in the making .
No one can answer what , exactly , will come .
But with a record-shattering 4 million acres @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people in the ever-expanding ring of fire are forced to envision their own fates .
This month a Times reporter and photographer traveled a loop of much of the state ’ s more populated timber country — up the Western Sierra , across the Central Valley to Lake , Mendocino and Sonoma counties — to see how the explosion of fires over the last five years has taken a toll on communities and ecosystems , to see where there is resilience and where there is retreat .
This longer narrative of life in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the blazes themselves , drowned out by headlines of catastrophic loss and harrowing escape ; the outside world predicts California ’ s doom during every bad fire season , and questions why people even live here .
“ I ’ ve long been struck by how many Californians are acutely aware that their lives are unfolding against what ’ s arguably the most diverse , most stunning weave of nature to be found anywhere in North America , ” said Gary Ferguson , a naturalist and author who frequently writes about the ecology @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think this actually has much to do with the state ’ s sense of confidence , of possibility .
“ Hearing about giant sequoias dying from a megafire , or for that matter the more than 130 million other trees that have died from drought and related beetle kill in the past decade , brings to many a sense of their larger community being harmed.
” The reality is as devastating as it is nuanced : Wildfires don ’ t simply scorch to dirt huge swaths of the state ’ s surface every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a mosaic .
The vast majority of people in a fire zone don ’ t lose their homes .
And burned-out areas , depending on the intensity of the blaze , usually start recovering the following spring .
But few doubt the fires will become bigger and more frequent and a large number of Californians will have to expect repeated disruptions to their lives — or worse .
As for the plant communities , ecologists , fire scientists , naturalists and climatologists don ’ t envision some permanent hellscape .
They predict some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ woodland , as fires continue to increase in magnitude and heat , particularly in the mid-elevations of the Sierra Nevada , the Cascades and the Klamath Mountains .
Thicker forests will move to higher altitudes where they can .
Nor do the experts say this terrible year necessarily presages fire seasons to come .
A calamitous set of circumstances came together this season .
A rare August dry lightning siege over much of Central and Northern California ignited some 650 blazes , many in areas where trees were abnormally dry or dead from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ came a record-breaking heat wave over Labor Day weekend , followed by heavy downslope winds just four days later .
While climate change probably affected many of these factors , no one expected all of them to converge with such disastrous timing .
“ This is an anomalous event , ” said Jon E. Keely , a fire ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey .
“ It ’ s what I would describe as a perfect storm.
” And yet , the notion that there could be more fire seasons like this — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — is forcing people to make wrenching decisions like never before .
The option to uproot is not easy .
People have deep bonds to these increasingly vulnerable areas — family networks , businesses , farms , childhood memories , sentimental attachments to the streams , lakes and mountaintops .
In the more remote corners , many are living on limited income , in trailers and outbuildings , and could not afford the cities even if they wanted to go there .
“ This is the type of place homeless people can come @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bothered , ” says Tyler Burrett , 27 , of his mountain community , Berry Creek .
The Bear fire destroyed more than 1,000 structures here on Sept. 9 and killed 14 people .
Burrett was living with his wife in her parents ’ barn when all four escaped safely down the mountain .
Burrett and his wife returned a week later with a trailer and plan to stay and help rebuild the community .
Her parents drove south to a well-paved , manicured suburb in Temecula and say they are done with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have the means to build fire-protected homes , Burrett envisions a more mobile Berry Creek in the future , with RVs and trailers that can be driven out at a moment ’ s notice .
Ferguson said that although California is the leader in trying to create fire-safe communities with better building and zoning codes , there are places where fire fatigue could push humans out .
He wonders “ whether or not there are some places in California , and in the Mountain West in general , that really should not be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much risk for fire.
” The anguish comes because there is no moment of absolute clarity .
Charles Mefford , 64 , bought an old A-frame cabin in Berry Creek for $ 55,000 in 2007 and fell in love with the place .
He canoed on Buck Lake and reveled in making a mental inventory every day of what wildlife he spotted : bear , deer and mountain lions , timber rattlers and whip snakes , blue-bellied lizards and green skinks .
At dusk , he ’ d step out to watch the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Two years ago , when the Camp fire destroyed the town of Paradise just over the ridge , he was spooked .
His brother called him from Tennessee and told him , “ Get out of there or you ’ re going to die there.
” But he had no plans to leave .
Then in September , the Bear fire roared through Berry Creek .
Mefford ’ s house was the only one on his road still standing .
He lost a shed and a 17-foot trailer .
“ It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no neighbors now , ” he said .
“ It ’ s like the ‘ Twilight Zone ’ of the end of the world.
” Yet pockets of trees remain singed or unscathed and many torched ones have already sprouted green shoots from their base , even before the rains .
While Mefford wonders what will come back in spring , he ’ s already called a real estate agent to talk about listing his property .
He thinks he might move to Tennessee to be around his brother and grandchildren .
Just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ My heart is in California , ” he said .
“ Every time I think about leaving , I get emotional.
” John Abatzoglou , a climate scientist at UC Merced , said 2020 was an “ unlucky year made unluckier by long-term climate change ” and a century of fire suppression that allowed vegetation to build up .
“ The most unlucky part of it was the lightning siege that set a ring of fire around the Bay Area , ” he said .
But even if ignitions remain stable , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fuels and longer fire seasons , with conditions worsening most dramatically in densely forested northern parts of the state .
“ The locus of fire activity has certainly shifted north to the wetter parts of the state where there is more fuel , ” Abatzoglou said .
He says the Mediterranean biome of Southern California is always dry enough to burn in summer and fall , so the warming alone might not magnify the risk as much it will in the heavy fuels to the north .
“ The megafires in Southern California @ @ @ @ @ @ @ events , so that puts the onus more on the weather than the climate.
” But every factor is integral .
Combined with these downslope winds , a later start to the rainy season — even two or three weeks — could lead to more megafires .
While Californians normally associate the big downslope winds like the Santa Anas with mid-fall , they are most prevalent — and stronger — in December and January .
“ If you miss your fall rainstorm that would have shut down the fire season , you extend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the year that you ’ re more likely to get a big wind event , ” said LeRoy Westerling , a climate scientist , also at UC Merced .
Westerling was a coordinating lead author of California ’ s Fourth Climate Change Assessment in 2018 .
His models on fire compared what burned in 1961-1990 to projections for 2035-2064 and 2070-2099 , based on a multitude of scenarios .
His researchers generated millions of maps for every month of every 36 square-kilometer grid in the state .
In almost every scenario , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Western Sierra , the Cascades and the Klamath Mountains more than tripled by 2070 , with the mid-elevation , 4,000-to-8,000-foot mixed conifer zone suffering the most .
“ That area between Mariposa and El Portal is also where the biggest absolute increase in fires is projected to happen , ” he said .
This is the area abutting the western edge of Yosemite National Park .
There were other hot spots , such as one in the Santa Cruz Mountains on the border of Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties .
Westerling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ San Mateo to local officials and firefighters so they could use them for planning .
The locals were dubious , he said , because they had “ this marine layer that comes in and wets things down.
” This summer , in the same area Westerling was pointing to , the massive CZU Lightning Complex fire burned nearly 90,000 acres .
“ People were skeptical that we would see these by 2050 and we already have an example of one in 2020 , ” he said .
“ We drew that map in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ground in 2020.
” Part of that equation is that the marine layer is diminishing .
A UC Berkeley study found a 33 % reduction in the coast ’ s famous fog that , as Steinbeck wrote , “ rolled in like herds of sheep ” and fed the forest through the rain-less summer .
That ’ s particularly troublesome for the coastal redwood , the tallest tree in the world and a driver of a critical tourism economy .
Winemakers who rely on the fog can adapt by changing their varietals , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such as tempranillo or shiraz .
Two-thousand-year-old trees can ’ t evolve so fast .
The redwoods ’ towering limbs scoop the cool vapor as it drifts inland , drinking it in through the stomata in their needles while also giving it a surface to condense and drip to the ground , feeding the roots just like rain .
In the southern part of the redwoods ’ range , the Santa Cruz Mountains and Big Sur , the Cal researchers are already finding drought stress .
“ We saw clear signs of slowed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of needles ) and levels of water stress in redwood trees we ’ d never measured before in the southern redwood stands south of Big Sur , ” said UC Berkeley professor Todd Dawson .
“ This past August , some of these southern redwood stands were lost in the lightning fires that swept through Central California .
And experienced firefighters said they had never seen coast redwood burn in the way it did in the Big Sur area and in the Big Basin State Park where the destruction was terrible.
” He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ along the coast ” will lead to more wildfires and more loss of forested landscapes .
In the Sierra , scientists are finding similar stress in California ’ s inland redwood , the giant sequoia — the world ’ s most massive tree .
The behemoths are built to survive dozens of fires in their lifetime .
Historically , fires helped by clearing ground cover and allowed their seedlings space to grow .
But fire suppression in the Western Sierra over more than a century has left such a buildup of fuels that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and last month ’ s Creek fire burned high into the canopy in many places with much more intense heat .
Researchers fear repeated fires like these could have a devastating impact on the estimated 65 groves of giant sequoias .
So far , firefighters have managed to protect them .
What has forest managers concerned on a wider scale is that these crown fires burn with such ferocity that nothing is left to re-seed that part of the forest , allowing brushland and invasive species to take over .
In the lower @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lead to similar “ vegetation conversion.
” “ As we ’ re warming things up , we realize these trees that exist on the landscape may have actually been established 100 or 200 years ago , ” Abatzoglou said .
“ So they established in a much cooler climate .
They had more water to work with .
Will they establish today , is a different question .
So what we may see in some of these areas is forest being replaced by shrub lands or grasslands .
The landscape will recover , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 60 , has watched the patchwork of forest , woodland brush and orchards in his native Lake County evolve all his life .
The Valley fire burnedthrough 76,000 acres of conifer forest in 2015 .
“ Oaks and manzanita are coming back pretty strong there right now , ” he said .
Brown is a rancher , bail bondsman and 20-year county supervisor whose grandfather first came here in the 1930s to raise sheep .
From a construction job he ’ s overseeing in Kelseyville , he points to a hill that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chaparral .
“ That ’ s chamise right there .
You couldn ’ t walk through it.
” He sees the change as inevitable , and a folly for humans to try to stop .
He thinks residents need to be more vigilant in clearing brush and fireproofing their homes , and not count on government to protect them .
He talks about the hamlet of Cobb , where hundreds of homes burned during the Valley fire .
“ If you go up on Cobb right now , you ’ ll see that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ four inches apart — “ in pine needles on top of the roofs.
” “ They ’ re just asking for trouble , ” he said .
“ I ’ ve got 500 acres .
I ’ m on the bulldozer all the time , clearing brush .
It ’ s expensive .
But that ’ s part of being a landowner.
” He is sick of the fires .
The August Complex blaze burning to the north — the largest fire in California history — has smothered his county in smoke for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down to Santa Rosa the next day to hook up to a nebulizer to clean his lungs out .
He says he knows people who are leaving , mostly retirees who are sick of evacuating and want to be near grandchildren or closer to a hospital .
He plans to stay , for the most part , because the truth is , “ It ’ s beautiful here most of the year.
” He is building a home with concrete siding , windows sheltered by a composite wrap-around porch and no vents to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ m getting married and I told her , hey , next year , the minute the first fire starts we ’ re going to lock everything up and head out of town .
There ’ s no point in staying .
Go to Idaho for a while .
When the smoke clears , let me know and we ’ ll come back.
” With young kids and a job , Van Aacken can ’ t be that flexible .
He thinks about rebuilding .
But he wonders if his insurance will be cost-prohibitive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ area will ever come back .
“ People want to have this big go-forward attitude on rebuilding everything up there , but there ’ s a lot of people that are very unsure , ” he said .
He floats the idea of relocating to places such as Montana or Idaho , but he ’ s never spent time there , and fires are worsening throughout the Mountain West as they are in California .
On Oct. 17 , Van Aacken towed the trailer back up to Shaver Lake and set it up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which survived the fire .
His plan was to stay through winter and see how he and his wife felt looking at all that burnt terrain .
“ We might be up there .
.
.
and staring at it for quite a while , we might just say forget it , ” he said .
He ’ ll go look for California ’ s promise somewhere else .

In the haze outside his family trailer, he stubs out a cigarette and stares off across the hospital parking lot in Clovis where he has hitched up for now, pondering his future in California.
Just weeks before, Mark Van Aacken, 40, was living his idyll. He and his wife owned a home on a 5-acre parcel of white firs, dogwoods, ponderosas, sugar pines and incense cedars. Their 7-year-old twin girls roamed free, riding bikes, exploring the woods. On weekends, they packed their heavily modified Grand Cherokee — one-ton axles, 40-inch tires — and low-geared it up boulder-strewn Jeep trails to camp next to blue alpine lakes. That high granite country was where he found those moments of natural bliss at the heart of California’s promise.
But now his home in Shaver Lake is gone, taken by the flip side of that promise: disaster. The Creek fire torched not only the house but every single tree on his property.
Mark and Jaime Van Aacken display a photo of their Shaver Lake home, which was destroyed by the Creek fire. They currently live in a camper as they figure out how to move forward. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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“We moved up there for the forest. And now it’s not there.”
He is feeling lost and in limbo, like so many others besieged by the worst fire season on record.
With climate models predicting a hotter, drier California, many wonder what the state will look like in the decades to come. What places might be too risky to live in? What great icons of nature will be left in a land so long defined by its extremes?
The California landscape has excited such an enduring sense of wonder that it is as much a concept as a place, having drawn its own canon of literature, amassed by the likes of Mark Twain, John Muir, Jack London, Mary Austin, John Steinbeck, Wallace Stegner, Joan Didion, John McPhee, Barry Lopez and so many others.
A wooded area in the Sierra National Forest has been transformed into a moonscape by the Creek fire near Shaver Lake. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
The land is so inextricably tied to the culture and self-image of the state that relentless years of burning, coupled with sea rise and a diminishing water supply, can only demystify the dream that was millions of years in the making.
No one can answer what, exactly, will come. But with a record-shattering 4 million acres burned in three months, the smoked-out people in the ever-expanding ring of fire are forced to envision their own fates.
This month a Times reporter and photographer traveled a loop of much of the state’s more populated timber country — up the Western Sierra, across the Central Valley to Lake, Mendocino and Sonoma counties — to see how the explosion of fires over the last five years has taken a toll on communities and ecosystems, to see where there is resilience and where there is retreat.
This longer narrative of life in the fire zone is often lost during the blazes themselves, drowned out by headlines of catastrophic loss and harrowing escape; the outside world predicts California’s doom during every bad fire season, and questions why people even live here.
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Motor traffic passes a gas station with a melted sign that was burned by the Creek fire near Shaver Lake, Calif. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
“I’ve long been struck by how many Californians are acutely aware that their lives are unfolding against what’s arguably the most diverse, most stunning weave of nature to be found anywhere in North America,” said Gary Ferguson, a naturalist and author who frequently writes about the ecology of the American West. “I think this actually has much to do with the state’s sense of confidence, of possibility.
“Hearing about giant sequoias dying from a megafire, or for that matter the more than 130 million other trees that have died from drought and related beetle kill in the past decade, brings to many a sense of their larger community being harmed.”
The reality is as devastating as it is nuanced: Wildfires don’t simply scorch to dirt huge swaths of the state’s surface every year; they burn through forests in a mosaic. The vast majority of people in a fire zone don’t lose their homes. And burned-out areas, depending on the intensity of the blaze, usually start recovering the following spring. But few doubt the fires will become bigger and more frequent and a large number of Californians will have to expect repeated disruptions to their lives — or worse.
“It’s spooky up here because I have no neighbors now,” he said. “It’s like the ‘Twilight Zone’ of the end of the world.” — Charles Mefford, Berry Creek resident
As for the plant communities, ecologists, fire scientists, naturalists and climatologists don’t envision some permanent hellscape. They predict some forests will transform to chaparral and oak woodland, as fires continue to increase in magnitude and heat, particularly in the mid-elevations of the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades and the Klamath Mountains. Thicker forests will move to higher altitudes where they can.
Nor do the experts say this terrible year necessarily presages fire seasons to come. A calamitous set of circumstances came together this season. A rare August dry lightning siege over much of Central and Northern California ignited some 650 blazes, many in areas where trees were abnormally dry or dead from drought and bark beetle infestation. Then came a record-breaking heat wave over Labor Day weekend, followed by heavy downslope winds just four days later. While climate change probably affected many of these factors, no one expected all of them to converge with such disastrous timing.
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Mailboxes are all that remain in a neighborhood destroyed by the Camp fire in Paradise, Calif. The fire was started by a faulty electrical transmission line and burned 153,336 acres. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
“This is an anomalous event,” said Jon E. Keely, a fire ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “It’s what I would describe as a perfect storm.”
And yet, the notion that there could be more fire seasons like this — with the entire state hacking in smoke — is forcing people to make wrenching decisions like never before.
The option to uproot is not easy. People have deep bonds to these increasingly vulnerable areas — family networks, businesses, farms, childhood memories, sentimental attachments to the streams, lakes and mountaintops. In the more remote corners, many are living on limited income, in trailers and outbuildings, and could not afford the cities even if they wanted to go there.
“This is the type of place homeless people can come live in a trailer and not be bothered,” says Tyler Burrett, 27, of his mountain community, Berry Creek.
The Bear fire destroyed more than 1,000 structures here on Sept. 9 and killed 14 people. Burrett was living with his wife in her parents’ barn when all four escaped safely down the mountain. Burrett and his wife returned a week later with a trailer and plan to stay and help rebuild the community.
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A charred vehicle sits in a vacant lot in Paradise, which was burned by the Camp fire in 2018. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Her parents drove south to a well-paved, manicured suburb in Temecula and say they are done with rural fire country.
While wealthier towns have the means to build fire-protected homes, Burrett envisions a more mobile Berry Creek in the future, with RVs and trailers that can be driven out at a moment’s notice.
Ferguson said that although California is the leader in trying to create fire-safe communities with better building and zoning codes, there are places where fire fatigue could push humans out. He wonders “whether or not there are some places in California, and in the Mountain West in general, that really should not be buildable, because there’s too much risk for fire.”
The anguish comes because there is no moment of absolute clarity.
Charles Mefford’s one-room cabin in Berry Creek survived the Bear fire in September. A California native, Mefford now is pondering a move to Tennessee. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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Charles Mefford, 64, bought an old A-frame cabin in Berry Creek for $55,000 in 2007 and fell in love with the place. He canoed on Buck Lake and reveled in making a mental inventory every day of what wildlife he spotted: bear, deer and mountain lions, timber rattlers and whip snakes, blue-bellied lizards and green skinks. At dusk, he’d step out to watch the bats feast on the mosquitos and gnats.
Two years ago, when the Camp fire destroyed the town of Paradise just over the ridge, he was spooked. His brother called him from Tennessee and told him, “Get out of there or you’re going to die there.” But he had no plans to leave.
Then in September, the Bear fire roared through Berry Creek. Mefford’s house was the only one on his road still standing. He lost a shed and a 17-foot trailer. “It’s spooky up here because I have no neighbors now,” he said. “It’s like the ‘Twilight Zone’ of the end of the world.”
Yet pockets of trees remain singed or unscathed and many torched ones have already sprouted green shoots from their base, even before the rains. While Mefford wonders what will come back in spring, he’s already called a real estate agent to talk about listing his property. He thinks he might move to Tennessee to be around his brother and grandchildren.
Charles Mefford’s one-room cabin in Berry Creek survived the Bear fire in September. “My heart is in California,” he said. “Every time I think about leaving, I get emotional.” (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Just talking about it chokes him up.
“My heart is in California,” he said. “Every time I think about leaving, I get emotional.”
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***
John Abatzoglou, a climate scientist at UC Merced, said 2020 was an “unlucky year made unluckier by long-term climate change” and a century of fire suppression that allowed vegetation to build up.
“The most unlucky part of it was the lightning siege that set a ring of fire around the Bay Area,” he said.
The sun sets on the charred landscape around Lake Oroville, which was swept by the North Complex West Zone fire in September. The megafire burned more than 318,930 acres, killed 15 people.and enveloped Northern California in a thick pall of smoke. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
But even if ignitions remain stable, the models predict warmer years, drier fuels and longer fire seasons, with conditions worsening most dramatically in densely forested northern parts of the state.
“The locus of fire activity has certainly shifted north to the wetter parts of the state where there is more fuel,” Abatzoglou said.
He says the Mediterranean biome of Southern California is always dry enough to burn in summer and fall, so the warming alone might not magnify the risk as much it will in the heavy fuels to the north. “The megafires in Southern California are normally driven by Santa Ana wind events, so that puts the onus more on the weather than the climate.”
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But every factor is integral. Combined with these downslope winds, a later start to the rainy season — even two or three weeks — could lead to more megafires. While Californians normally associate the big downslope winds like the Santa Anas with mid-fall, they are most prevalent — and stronger — in December and January.
A burned-out vehicle in Paradise, which was leveled by the Camp fire in 2018. The blaze was started by a faulty electrical transmission line and consumed 153,336 acres in Butte County. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
“If you miss your fall rainstorm that would have shut down the fire season, you extend that much further into that part of the year that you’re more likely to get a big wind event,” said LeRoy Westerling, a climate scientist, also at UC Merced.
Westerling was a coordinating lead author of California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment in 2018. His models on fire compared what burned in 1961-1990 to projections for 2035-2064 and 2070-2099, based on a multitude of scenarios.
His researchers generated millions of maps for every month of every 36 square-kilometer grid in the state.
In almost every scenario, the amount of burned area in parts of the Western Sierra, the Cascades and the Klamath Mountains more than tripled by 2070, with the mid-elevation, 4,000-to-8,000-foot mixed conifer zone suffering the most.
Jenny Lowrey and Bruce Mattews plan to open the Lake Concow Campground to people living in recreational vehicles and cars in the aftermath of wildfires that have charred large swaths of Butte County. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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“That area between Mariposa and El Portal is also where the biggest absolute increase in fires is projected to happen,” he said. This is the area abutting the western edge of Yosemite National Park.
There were other hot spots, such as one in the Santa Cruz Mountains on the border of Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties. Westerling’s team presented the findings in San Mateo to local officials and firefighters so they could use them for planning.
The locals were dubious, he said, because they had “this marine layer that comes in and wets things down.”
This summer, in the same area Westerling was pointing to, the massive CZU Lightning Complex fire burned nearly 90,000 acres.
Clouds and smoke from the Creek fire partly obscure the sun near Shaver Lake. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
“People were skeptical that we would see these by 2050 and we already have an example of one in 2020,” he said. “We drew that map in 2018 and saw it happen on the ground in 2020.”
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Part of that equation is that the marine layer is diminishing. A UC Berkeley study found a 33% reduction in the coast’s famous fog that, as Steinbeck wrote, “rolled in like herds of sheep” and fed the forest through the rain-less summer. That’s particularly troublesome for the coastal redwood, the tallest tree in the world and a driver of a critical tourism economy.
Winemakers who rely on the fog can adapt by changing their varietals, replacing pinot noir and cabernet with grapes such as tempranillo or shiraz. Two-thousand-year-old trees can’t evolve so fast.
The redwoods’ towering limbs scoop the cool vapor as it drifts inland, drinking it in through the stomata in their needles while also giving it a surface to condense and drip to the ground, feeding the roots just like rain.
A sign stands at a crossroads in the charred Redwood Valley near Ukiah. The area was hit bad by the Redwood Complex fire in 2017, which burned over 36,000 acres, destroyed more than 500 homes and killed nine people.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
In the southern part of the redwoods’ range, the Santa Cruz Mountains and Big Sur, the Cal researchers are already finding drought stress.
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“We saw clear signs of slowed growth, thinning tree crowns (loss of needles) and levels of water stress in redwood trees we’d never measured before in the southern redwood stands south of Big Sur,” said UC Berkeley professor Todd Dawson.
“This past August, some of these southern redwood stands were lost in the lightning fires that swept through Central California. And experienced firefighters said they had never seen coast redwood burn in the way it did in the Big Sur area and in the Big Basin State Park where the destruction was terrible.”
He said continued “warming and drying conditions along the coast” will lead to more wildfires and more loss of forested landscapes.
A new development goes up in Paradise, which was obliterated by the Camp fire in 2018. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
In the Sierra, scientists are finding similar stress in California’s inland redwood, the giant sequoia — the world’s most massive tree.
The behemoths are built to survive dozens of fires in their lifetime. Historically, fires helped by clearing ground cover and allowed their seedlings space to grow. But fire suppression in the Western Sierra over more than a century has left such a buildup of fuels that blazes such the Rim fire in 2013 and last month’s Creek fire burned high into the canopy in many places with much more intense heat. Researchers fear repeated fires like these could have a devastating impact on the estimated 65 groves of giant sequoias. So far, firefighters have managed to protect them.
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What has forest managers concerned on a wider scale is that these crown fires burn with such ferocity that nothing is left to re-seed that part of the forest, allowing brushland and invasive species to take over.
In the lower elevations, heat and drought alone might lead to similar “vegetation conversion.”
“As we’re warming things up, we realize these trees that exist on the landscape may have actually been established 100 or 200 years ago,” Abatzoglou said. “So they established in a much cooler climate. They had more water to work with. Will they establish today, is a different question. So what we may see in some of these areas is forest being replaced by shrub lands or grasslands. The landscape will recover, but it will change.”
A utility truck drives past the burned hulk of an automobile along the shore of Lake Oroville, which was swept by the North Complex West Zone fire in September. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Rob Brown, 60, has watched the patchwork of forest, woodland brush and orchards in his native Lake County evolve all his life. The Valley fire burned through 76,000 acres of conifer forest in 2015.
“Oaks and manzanita are coming back pretty strong there right now,” he said.
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Brown is a rancher, bail bondsman and 20-year county supervisor whose grandfather first came here in the 1930s to raise sheep.
From a construction job he’s overseeing in Kelseyville, he points to a hill that was once forested and is now thick chaparral. “That’s chamise right there. You couldn’t walk through it.” He sees the change as inevitable, and a folly for humans to try to stop.
He thinks residents need to be more vigilant in clearing brush and fireproofing their homes, and not count on government to protect them.
He talks about the hamlet of Cobb, where hundreds of homes burned during the Valley fire.
“If you go up on Cobb right now, you’ll see that much” — Brown holds his fingers four inches apart — “in pine needles on top of the roofs.”
“They’re just asking for trouble,” he said. “I’ve got 500 acres. I’m on the bulldozer all the time, clearing brush. It’s expensive. But that’s part of being a landowner.”
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Forecast: warm, dry and prone to fires Here is how some scientists envision California’s future Hotter, drier conditions will increase the frequency, magnitude and intensity of fires in most of California.
Fall and early winter rains may come later, leaving vegetation dry and vulnerable to massive fires when the heaviest winds come in December and January.
The hardest-hit areas are expected to be the mid-elevations of the Western Sierra, the Cascades and the Klamath Mountains.
Iconic trees like the coastal redwoods in Big Sur and the Santa Cruz Mountains and the giant sequoias in the Sierra could be threatened by drought and more intense fires.
Ecosystems will adapt. Lower-elevation forests could turn into oak woodland and chaparral. Higher-elevation forests may become denser with mixed conifer.
Too many fires over too short a time in chaparral can deplete the seed bank in the soil that plants use to regenerate, letting invasive species in.
When forest fires are too intense, fire can reach the crown, killing the trees. If there are no trees to spread seeds, brush and invasive species move in.
He is sick of the fires. The August Complex blaze burning to the north — the largest fire in California history — has smothered his county in smoke for two months. He plans to head down to Santa Rosa the next day to hook up to a nebulizer to clean his lungs out.
He says he knows people who are leaving, mostly retirees who are sick of evacuating and want to be near grandchildren or closer to a hospital. He plans to stay, for the most part, because the truth is, “It’s beautiful here most of the year.”
He is building a home with concrete siding, windows sheltered by a composite wrap-around porch and no vents to let embers in.
“I’m getting married and I told her, hey, next year, the minute the first fire starts we’re going to lock everything up and head out of town. There’s no point in staying. Go to Idaho for a while. When the smoke clears, let me know and we’ll come back.”
With young kids and a job, Van Aacken can’t be that flexible. He thinks about rebuilding. But he wonders if his insurance will be cost-prohibitive and whether what drew him to the area will ever come back.
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“People want to have this big go-forward attitude on rebuilding everything up there, but there’s a lot of people that are very unsure,” he said.
He floats the idea of relocating to places such as Montana or Idaho, but he’s never spent time there, and fires are worsening throughout the Mountain West as they are in California.
On Oct. 17, Van Aacken towed the trailer back up to Shaver Lake and set it up on his father’s property, which survived the fire. His plan was to stay through winter and see how he and his wife felt looking at all that burnt terrain.
“We might be up there . . . and staring at it for quite a while, we might just say forget it,” he said.
He’ll go look for California’s promise somewhere else.


latimes--2020-10-24--Column One: She's pregnant, she has COVID-19, and she can't breathe

The last thing Monica Ramirez remembers is hearing her doctor ’ s voice .
“ You have COVID , honey , ” he said .
“ But you ’ re going to be OK. ” She had driven herself to the emergency room at Corona Regional Medical Center on a blistering afternoon in July .
She was 38 years old , 30 weeks pregnant , and she could not breathe .
Ramirez woke up from a medically induced coma nearly three weeks later .
In a different city .
In a different hospital .
Hooked up to a ventilator .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ thought ?
That she had somehow ended up in a dungeon .
And then she heard laughter .
“ All the doctors and nurses were clapping and high-fiving , ” she said .
“ They were asking my nurse for the day , ‘ Where ’ s her baby ?
How ’ s her baby ?
’ “ But I didn ’ t know what baby they were talking about , because I was still pregnant.
” The jubilation in the intensive care unit at Loma Linda University Medical Center that day stemmed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regained consciousness .
Fourteen days earlier , doctors had delivered her baby by emergency cesarean section .
Emiliana was born July 13 — 10 weeks early , weighing 3 pounds , 6 ounces .
She needed a ventilator for the first several days of her life .
More than a month would pass before she felt her mother ’ s touch .
She spent her first eight weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit .
The day Ramirez delivered Emiliana , the new mom was one of 19,502 people in hard-hit San Bernardino @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The county has now reported more than 61,000 ) .
She was one of 616 confirmed cases in a hospital there and one of 174 in a San Bernardino County intensive care unit .
Of the 48 pregnant women who have been admitted to Loma Linda University Medical Center with COVID-19 , 45 are Latina — an extreme snapshot of a disease that has infected and killed Latinos at a rate disproportionate to their share of the population .
Very little is known about the impact of COVID-19 on women and the babies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clear how a pregnant woman passes the virus on in the rare cases in which a baby has become infected .
Most of the early research on COVID-19 has used data from older men , because they have gotten sickest and died in greater numbers .
“ What ’ s unique about COVID-19 is we haven ’ t really been able to identify out of the gate why some moms seem not sick at all , ” said Dr. Courtney Martin , medical director for maternity services at Loma Linda University Children ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ portion are insanely sick , like Monica .
Who almost died .
Several times.
” Ramirez was dragging on the Fourth of July , when she gathered with her family at their Corona home for a barbecue .
Her husband , Juan , grilled hamburgers and hot links .
Fireworks were planned for later that night .
Her 11-year-old daughter Viviana was there , and so was her mother , Hermila Nuñez , who lived with them in the northwest corner of Riverside County .
Her older sister , Adriana Nuñez , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too .
It was Christian ’ s sixth birthday .
The sisters are eight years apart .
They talk every day , text when they can ’ t talk and sound uncannily like each other .
They worked together at McKinley Elementary School in Corona — Nuñez as head custodian for 25 years ; Ramirez as lunchtime supervisor — until the pandemic hit .
“ Monica seemed tired , and she told me when we were sitting down to eat that her body ached so bad , ” Nuñez said .
“ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tired from being pregnant .
Go lay down and rest .
I will stay out here with the kids.
’ ” But Monica remained , picked at her food and watched the fireworks .
Three days later , lying in bed , barely able to breathe , she knew she had to get help .
Her sister was at work .
So was her husband , who roofs houses for a living .
So Ramirez left Viviana home with her mom , piled into her Nissan Sentra and headed to the emergency room @ @ @ @ @ @ @ negative .
Two days later , still in Corona Regional , Ramirez texted her sister .
It was July 9 , 9:20 p.m. : The rapid-fire text conversation that followed hit all the high points of coronavirus panic .
Nuñez : Omg / You doing ok / So we all have to get tested / What are they gon na do for you Ramirez : You guys should all get tested / No I can ’ t breathe … .
Nuñez : It won ’ t affect the baby right / Are you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Who gave it to me / Is what I want to know … .
Nuñez : Well all that matters right now is that you get better / What do we do On July 10 , the sisters talked on the phone .
Ramirez gasped for breath .
Nuñez and Juan left work determined to find someone with whom they could speak about the sick woman ’ s condition .
Because of the pandemic , they couldn ’ t get into the hospital to see Ramirez for themselves .
When they finally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she had news : Loma Linda University Medical Center , a Level 1 trauma center , had an available bed .
Ramirez was set to be airlifted there at around 5:30 p.m .
But first she had to be put on a ventilator .
Nuñez , Juan and Viviana raced to Loma Linda .
They parked the truck where they were sure to see the helicopter land on the hospital roof .
And they waited .
People in the neighborhood walked by with their dogs or on their evening strolls .
Nuñez @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re not weird people .
We ’ re just waiting for the helicopter.
” Some of them asked Nuñez for her sister ’ s name .
And they prayed for her .
Loma Linda had geared up for a wave of pregnant COVID-19 patients long before infected women began showing up .
When the hospital started universal testing April 4 , Martin said , “ it was like , negative , negative , negative.
” The first pregnant patient who tested positive arrived May 4 .
The wave of sick women did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is hard-pressed to explain with any certainty why so many of the pregnant patients with coronavirus infections at her hospital are Latina , a far higher percentage than demographics would account for .
The population of San Bernardino County is nearly 55 % Latino , according to the U.S. Census Bureau .
The San Bernardino County Department of Public Health figures that about 46 % of all infected people in the region are Latino .
The department does not have information on the ethnicity of 37 % of the COVID-19 patients in its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the socio-economic disparity , I think , because either their partners or themselves are essential workers that need to go in and out of the home , ” Martin posited .
“ And sometimes they have multi-family homes , ” which can increase the chance of infection .
Two days after Ramirez arrived by helicopter , doctors at Loma Linda knew she needed to give birth — fast .
She wasn ’ t due for 10 weeks , but her amniotic sac , which protects the fetus from injury , had broken .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , premature rupture of membranes — and it is common among pregnant women who are very sick .
Obstetricians have begun to see this condition in pregnant women with COVID-19 .
“ The body is saying , ‘ Something is wrong .
I ’ m mounting a stress response .
I need to deliver the baby to make sure Mom can survive , ’ ” Martin said .
“ On top of that … [ Ramirez ] needed more help breathing.
” The medical team tried to induce labor , but after 24 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ giving birth .
Even with the ventilator ’ s help , her breathing worsened .
She needed more and more oxygen .
Emiliana began to struggle .
The only choice was surgery .
Martin was on call and delivered the tiny girl .
But in the ICU after the emergency cesarean section , Ramirez ’ s heart stopped beating .
Twice .
Weeks later , she would talk about her “ out-of-body experience ” with more than a little awe .
Her late father had had a liver transplant at Loma Linda 17 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she said , “ my dad was here with me.
” On that day , she said , “ I died .
I came back .
I gave birth.
” Martin can ’ t explain why the pregnant COVID-19 patients admitted to the hospital have been so sick ; more than a quarter of those women have needed some kind of help breathing , but only two required ventilators .
And only two had to deliver their babies while in a medically induced coma .
Ramirez was the first .
Blanca Rodriguez — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — was the other .
Rodriguez lives in Adelanto with her husband , a construction worker ; her two sons , 6 and 8 ; her two teenage brothers-in-law ; and another brother-in-law and his wife .
In late July , she began to have trouble breathing .
“ I felt , ” she said , “ like somebody was suffocating me.
” It took four tests at the hospital before she received a positive result for the virus .
Her condition worsened .
As Rodriguez was hooked up to a ventilator , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ serious distress .
Martin ordered an emergency cesarean section .
Rodriguez never made it to the operating room : Jade was delivered July 27 in the intensive care unit .
She weighed 2 pounds , 11 ounces .
When Rodriguez awoke eight days later in the ICU , she saw the walls covered in baby pictures .
She touched her stomach and asked the nurse about the images .
“ That ’ s when I found out that I had my baby.
” That ’ s when she found out all of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ UCLA and UC San Francisco have created a nationwide registry of 1,300 pregnant women with COVID-19 so they can follow their progress .
The registry includes women who were infected in each trimester of pregnancy , allowing researchers to study how the disease affects fetuses at various stages of development .
Ninety-five percent of the women in the study were not hospitalized .
Among the study ’ s findings so far are that pregnant women tend to have different early symptoms than other COVID-19 patients : more cough and sore throat and less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the women in the study still had symptoms after eight weeks .
One problem in caring for pregnant women with COVID-19 , Martin said , is that they can look OK one moment and be really sick the next , with few warning signs that things will go from bad to worse .
In emergency departments and ICUs , doctors use so-called “ early warning scores ” to predict the course of illness .
The scores include such factors as age , gender , fever and CT scan findings ; the higher the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will become very sick .
Doctors tend to avoid ordering CT scans for pregnant patients , because they want to limit the baby ’ s exposure to radiation .
But that also lowers the early warning score .
Martin and her Loma Linda colleagues have used their data to fashion a diagnostic tool with pregnant women in mind .
They ’ ve submitted their work to the medical journal Obstetrics & Gynecology and are waiting to hear whether it will be published .
“ We wanted to build a system that is specific @ @ @ @ @ @ @ differently than non-pregnant COVID patients , ” Martin said .
By Labor Day , Emiliana had doubled in weight .
She was breathing on her own and eating from a bottle instead of the feeding tube that had snaked through her tiny nose and into her stomach for weeks .
She ’ d graduated from preemie-sized diapers to newborn , although they still swam on her slender frame .
She was 56 days old and ready to go home .
Ramirez was ready , too .
She pulled Emiliana ’ s travel clothes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the rocking chair beside the baby ’ s bassinet : a sleeveless pink dress with a sequined bodice and a delicate net skirt .
Tiny white socks with pink-and-white sequined bows on the arch .
A headband with a white bow .
It had been a long two months .
Three days after Ramirez could breath on her own , she was discharged from Loma Linda and transported to a nursing home , the kind of place she ’ d vowed never to put someone she loved .
She lasted six days @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had seen Emiliana for the first time Aug. 6 via Zoom .
After two negative coronavirus tests , she was allowed to visit the NICU on Aug. 15 and hold her baby for the first time .
She was exhausted after about 20 minutes .
“ They got me a rocking chair and got me comfortable , ” Ramirez said .
“ But I got really tired .
I didn ’ t want to drop her .
I said , ‘ Can you just put her back ?
I want her to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she zipped Emiliana into her fancy clothes .
She got a final lesson on preemie care from a nurse named Doug : “ The No .
1 reason for babies having fevers and showing up in the emergency room is over-dressing and blankets.
” She strapped the baby into her car seat .
Doug took the laminated sign — “ Ramirez ” — off the monitor that had flashed Emiliana ’ s vital signs and handed it to the anxious mom .
He picked up the car seat .
Ramirez grabbed her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of the NICU and into the world .

The last thing Monica Ramirez remembers is hearing her doctor’s voice.
“You have COVID, honey,” he said. “But you’re going to be OK.”
She had driven herself to the emergency room at Corona Regional Medical Center on a blistering afternoon in July. She was 38 years old, 30 weeks pregnant, and she could not breathe.
Ramirez woke up from a medically induced coma nearly three weeks later. In a different city. In a different hospital. Hooked up to a ventilator. The room was dark. Her first thought? That she had somehow ended up in a dungeon. And then she heard laughter.
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“All the doctors and nurses were clapping and high-fiving,” she said. “They were asking my nurse for the day, ‘Where’s her baby? How’s her baby?’
“But I didn’t know what baby they were talking about, because I was still pregnant.”
Newborn Emiliana Ramirez in the NICU at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
The jubilation in the intensive care unit at Loma Linda University Medical Center that day stemmed from a simple fact: Ramirez had regained consciousness. Fourteen days earlier, doctors had delivered her baby by emergency caesarean section.
Emiliana was born July 13 — 10 weeks early, weighing 3 pounds, 6 ounces. She needed a ventilator for the first several days of her life. More than a month would pass before she felt her mother’s touch. She spent her first eight weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit.
The day Ramirez delivered Emiliana, the new mom was one of 19,502 people in hard-hit San Bernardino County who had contracted COVID-19. (The county has now reported more than 61,000). She was one of 616 confirmed cases in a hospital there and one of 174 in a San Bernardino County intensive care unit.
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Monica Ramirez, 38, of Corona, is tearful as she holds her daughter Emiliana inside the NICU at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Of the 48 pregnant women who have been admitted to Loma Linda University Medical Center with COVID-19, 45 are Latina — an extreme snapshot of a disease that has infected and killed Latinos at a rate disproportionate to their share of the population.
Very little is known about the impact of COVID-19 on women and the babies they carry. It is still not clear how a pregnant woman passes the virus on in the rare cases in which a baby has become infected. Most of the early research on COVID-19 has used data from older men, because they have gotten sickest and died in greater numbers.
“What’s unique about COVID-19 is we haven’t really been able to identify out of the gate why some moms seem not sick at all,” said Dr. Courtney Martin, medical director for maternity services at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital. “And then another portion are insanely sick, like Monica. Who almost died. Several times.”
Dr. Courtney Martin, the OB-GYN who delivered Emiliana, hugs Monica Ramirez. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
::
Ramirez was dragging on the Fourth of July, when she gathered with her family at their Corona home for a barbecue. Her husband, Juan, grilled hamburgers and hot links. Fireworks were planned for later that night.
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Her 11-year-old daughter, Viviana, was there, and so was her mother, Hermila Nuñez, who lived with them in the northwest corner of Riverside County. Her older sister, Adriana Nuñez, and Adriana’s son Christian joined them too. It was Christian’s sixth birthday.
The sisters are eight years apart. They talk every day, text when they can’t talk and sound uncannily like each other. They worked together at McKinley Elementary School in Corona — Nuñez as head custodian for 25 years; Ramirez as lunchtime supervisor — until the pandemic hit.
“Monica seemed tired, and she told me when we were sitting down to eat that her body ached so bad,” Nuñez said. “I responded, ‘You are probably just tired from being pregnant. Go lay down and rest. I will stay out here with the kids.’”
Nurse Barbara Ogilvie holds Emiliana Ramirez as mother Monica Ramirez looks on. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
But Monica remained, picked at her food and watched the fireworks.
Three days later, lying in bed, barely able to breathe, she knew she had to get help. Her sister was at work. So was her husband, who roofs houses for a living. So Ramirez left Viviana home with her mom, piled into her Nissan Sentra and headed to the emergency room.
Her first coronavirus test came back negative. Two days later, still in Corona Regional, Ramirez texted her sister. It was July 9, 9:20 p.m.:
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Ok Hey I have covid / I tested positive
The rapid-fire text conversation that followed hit all the high points of coronavirus panic.
Nuñez: Omg / You doing ok / So we all have to get tested / What are they gonna do for you
Ramirez: You guys should all get tested / No I can’t breathe ….
Nuñez: It won’t affect the baby right / Are you gonna tell everyone ….
Ramirez: Who gave it to me / Is what I want to know ….
Nuñez: Well all that matters right now is that you get better / What do we do
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On July 10, the sisters talked on the phone. Ramirez gasped for breath. Nuñez and Juan left work determined to find someone with whom they could speak about the sick woman’s condition. Because of the pandemic, they couldn’t get into the hospital to see Ramirez for themselves.
When they finally reached Ramirez’s nurse by phone, she had news: Loma Linda University Medical Center, a Level 1 trauma center, had an available bed. Ramirez was set to be airlifted there at around 5:30 p.m. But first she had to be put on a ventilator.
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Nuñez, Juan and Viviana raced to Loma Linda. They parked the truck where they were sure to see the helicopter land on the hospital roof. And they waited. People in the neighborhood walked by with their dogs or on their evening strolls. Nuñez explained over and over: “We’re not weird people. We’re just waiting for the helicopter.”
Some of them asked Nuñez for her sister’s name.
And they prayed for her.
::
Loma Linda had geared up for a wave of pregnant COVID-19 patients long before infected women began showing up. When the hospital started universal testing April 4, Martin said, “it was like, negative, negative, negative.” The first pregnant patient who tested positive arrived May 4. The wave of sick women did not hit until June 8.
Martin is hard-pressed to explain with any certainty why so many of the pregnant patients with coronavirus infections at her hospital are Latina, a far higher percentage than demographics would account for.
“The body is saying, ‘Something is wrong. I’m mounting a stress response. I need to deliver the baby to make sure Mom can survive.’” — Dr. Courtney Martin
The population of San Bernardino County is nearly 55% Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The San Bernardino County Department of Public Health figures that about 46% of all infected people in the region are Latino. The department does not have information on the ethnicity of 37% of the COVID-19 patients in its purview.
“We’re seeing the socioeconomic disparity, I think, because either their partners or themselves are essential workers that need to go in and out of the home,” Martin posited. “And sometimes they have multi-family homes,” which can increase the chance of infection.
Two days after Ramirez arrived by helicopter, doctors at Loma Linda knew she needed to give birth — fast.
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Dr. Courtney Martin holds Emiliana Ramirez as fellow OB-GYN Dr. Victoria Haase looks on. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
She wasn’t due for 10 weeks, but her amniotic sac, which protects the fetus from injury, had broken. The condition is called PPROM — preterm, premature rupture of membranes — and it is common among pregnant women who are very sick. Obstetricians have begun to see this condition in pregnant women with COVID-19.
“The body is saying, ‘Something is wrong. I’m mounting a stress response. I need to deliver the baby to make sure Mom can survive,’” Martin said. “On top of that … [Ramirez] needed more help breathing.”
Monica Ramirez feeds Emiliana in the NICU. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
The medical team tried to induce labor, but after 24 hours, Ramirez was no closer to giving birth. Even with the ventilator’s help, her breathing worsened. She needed more and more oxygen. Emiliana began to struggle. The only choice was surgery.
Martin was on call and delivered the tiny girl.
Ten fingers. Ten toes. A healthy first cry.
But in the ICU after the emergency caesarean section, Ramirez’s heart stopped beating. Twice.
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Weeks later, she would talk about her “out-of-body experience” with more than a little awe. Her late father had had a liver transplant at Loma Linda 17 years earlier. On July 13, she said, “my dad was here with me.”
On that day, she said, “I died. I came back. I gave birth.”
::
Martin can’t explain why the pregnant COVID-19 patients admitted to the hospital have been so sick; more than a quarter of those women have needed some kind of help breathing, but only two required ventilators. And only two had to deliver their babies while in a medically induced coma.
Ramirez was the first. Blanca Rodriguez — age 32 and only 28 weeks pregnant — was the other.
VIDEO | 04:52 She’s pregnant, she has COVID-19, and she can’t breathe The coronavirus has killed Latinos at a rate disproportionate to their share of the population. Doctors don’t exactly know why.
Rodriguez lives in Adelanto with her husband, a construction worker; her two sons, 6 and 8; her two teenage brothers-in-law; and another brother-in-law and his wife. In late July, she began to have trouble breathing.
“I felt,” she said, “like somebody was suffocating me.” It took four tests at the hospital before she received a positive result for the virus.
Her condition worsened. As Rodriguez was hooked up to a ventilator, both she and her baby went into serious distress. Martin ordered an emergency caesarean section. Rodriguez never made it to the operating room: Jade was delivered July 27 in the intensive care unit. She weighed 2 pounds, 11 ounces.
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When Rodriguez awoke eight days later in the ICU, she saw the walls covered in baby pictures. She touched her stomach and asked the nurse about the images. “That’s when I found out that I had my baby.”
Barbara Ogilvie, RN, right, holds Emiliana Ramirez in the NICU at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital. (Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times)
That’s when she found out all of the photographs were of Jade.
Researchers at UCLA and UC San Francisco have created a nationwide registry of 1,300 pregnant women with COVID-19 so they can follow their progress. The registry includes women who were infected in each trimester of pregnancy, allowing researchers to study how the disease affects fetuses at various stages of development. Ninety-five percent of the women in the study were not hospitalized.
Blanca Rodriguez of Adelanto holds the hand of her daughter Jade in the NICU at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Among the study’s findings so far are that pregnant women tend to have different early symptoms than other COVID-19 patients: more cough and sore throat and less fever. Also, 25% of the women in the study still had symptoms after eight weeks.
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One problem in caring for pregnant women with COVID-19, Martin said, is that they can look OK one moment and be really sick the next, with few warning signs that things will go from bad to worse.
Nurse Maria Brown cares for Jade Rodriguez in the NICU at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
In emergency departments and ICUs, doctors use so-called “early warning scores” to predict the course of illness. The scores include such factors as age, gender, fever and CT scan findings; the higher the score, the more likely the patient will become very sick. Doctors tend to avoid ordering CT scans for pregnant patients because they want to limit the baby’s exposure to radiation. But that also lowers the early warning score.
Martin and her Loma Linda colleagues have used their data to fashion a diagnostic tool with pregnant women in mind. They’ve submitted their work to the medical journal Obstetrics & Gynecology and are waiting to hear whether it will be published.
“We wanted to build a system that is specific to pregnant women, because they present differently than non-pregnant COVID patients,” Martin said.
::
From left, Monica Ramirez; her daughter Viviana Ramirez, 11; her sister Adriana Nuñez; and her husband, Juan Ramirez, greet baby Emiliana outside Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
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By Labor Day, Emiliana had doubled in weight. She was breathing on her own and eating from a bottle instead of the feeding tube that had snaked through her tiny nose and into her stomach for weeks. She’d graduated from preemie-size diapers to newborn, although they still swam on her slender frame. She was 56 days old and ready to go home.
Ramirez was ready, too. She pulled Emiliana’s travel clothes from her diaper bag and arrayed them on the rocking chair beside the baby’s bassinet: a sleeveless pink dress with a sequined bodice and a delicate net skirt. Tiny white socks with pink-and-white sequined bows on the arch. A headband with a white bow.
It had been a long two months. Three days after Ramirez could breathe on her own, she was discharged from Loma Linda and transported to a nursing home, the kind of place she’d vowed never to put someone she loved. She lasted six days there and signed herself out.
Monica Ramirez dressed her daughter Emiliana in a dress and bow as they got ready to leave the hospital. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
She had seen Emiliana for the first time Aug. 6 via Zoom. After two negative coronavirus tests, she was allowed to visit the NICU on Aug. 15 and hold her baby for the first time. She was exhausted after about 20 minutes.
“They got me a rocking chair and got me comfortable,” Ramirez said. “But I got really tired. I didn’t want to drop her. I said, ‘Can you just put her back? I want her to be safe.’”
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But on this day, she zipped Emiliana into her fancy clothes. She got a final lesson on preemie care from a nurse named Doug: “The No. 1 reason for babies having fevers and showing up in the emergency room is over-dressing and blankets.”
Juan Ramirez straps in his daughter to take her home from the hospital. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
She strapped the baby into her car seat. Doug took the laminated sign — “Ramirez” — off the monitor that had flashed Emiliana’s vital signs and handed it to the anxious mom. He picked up the car seat. Ramirez grabbed her purse and diaper bag.
They walked out of the NICU and into the world.
Times staff photographer Francine Orr contributed to this report.


latimes--2020-10-23--Garcetti faces new questions as top aide is accused of sexual misconduct

When the # MeToo movement swept the country in the wake of sexual abuse allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein , it was not long before Los Angeles City Hall faced questions about how it had handled workplace harassment .
Mayor Eric Garcetti indicated he didn ’ t know of any incidents when asked in 2018 by The Times if his office had dealt with harassment allegations .
“ I don ’ t think any office is ever immune , ” Garcetti added .
“ I mean , I think jokes are told , things happen , people are survivors.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ are emerging about one of Garcetti ’ s top aides , former Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Jacobs , whom multiple men have accused of sexual misconduct .
The accusations — which Jacobs denied — have prompted some to ask for a more detailed examination of what happened and whether officials in the mayor ’ s office were aware of the allegations .
Los Angeles Police Officer Matthew Garza sued the city in July , alleging that Jacobs made crude remarks and touched him inappropriately .
That lawsuit alleges that Garcetti and mayoral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t do anything to stop it .
But a month earlier , Garza first outlined his sexual harassment allegations in more detail in a three-page complaint to state authorities aimed at preserving his right to sue .
That complaint , which was reviewed by The Times this week , states that Garcetti spoke with First Lady Amy Wakeland about Jacobs ’ behavior .
That detail isn ’ t included in the civil lawsuit in July .
The name of the individual Garza said harassed him is redacted in the complaint , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lawsuit filed in L.A. County Superior Court .
The complaint states Garza was subject to inappropriate comments in the mayor ’ s presence .
“ In fact , Garcetti has discussed with his wife that [ Jacobs ’ ] behavior would one day be held to account , ” the complaint states .
Asked about that section of the state complaint , Diana Wells , an attorney for the officer , told The Times on Friday that Garza was present when the mayor and his wife discussed allegations about Jacobs ’ sexually harassing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The attorney said Garza was also present when the couple was in a car with Garcetti ’ s Chief of Staff Ana Guerrero when Jacobs ’ behavior was discussed .
Asked why this detail wasn ’ t included in the state complaint , Garza attorney Greg Smith said the initial filing is a general statement of facts and does not usually address the specifics .
Garcetti spokesman Alex Comisar said the mayor didn ’ t witness any harassment .
“ The city and mayor were not told of any allegations of harassment prior @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Comisar said .
“ These statements attributed to Mayor Garcetti , his wife and chief of staff are false.
” Journalist Yashar Ali alleged this week that Jacobs repeatedly and forcibly kissed him .
And two men told The Times that the former deputy chief of staff also forcibly touched or tried to touch and kiss them .
The new allegations have the potential to cause political problems for the mayor , who has emerged as an important player in Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden ’ s campaign and is talked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Biden administration .
Jacobs said Tuesday that he will “ take a leave ” from his work amid increasing questions about the allegations .
Jacobs , who worked for the city from 2013 to 2016 , is a political consultant to Garcetti , a board member and treasurer for the Mayor ’ s Fund for Los Angeles and head of Accelerator for America , a nonprofit focused on economic development that he founded with Garcetti .
Jacobs didn ’ t respond to a request for comment about allegations of sexual misconduct made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interviewed by The Times .
When the police officer filed the lawsuit this summer , it got little public reaction at City Hall .
In August , Garcetti publicly backed Jacobs by stating he didn ’ t think he should step down from his work .
This week , the tenor shifted after more allegations .
Time ’ s Up , an organization focused on protecting workers , called for a “ thorough and transparent investigation ” into the allegations against Jacobs .
“ Everyone who experiences sexual harassment or assault deserves to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said Latifa Lyles , vice president of advocacy and survivor initiatives at Time ’ s Up Foundation .
“ And justice starts with holding those who abuse their power accountable , no matter who they are.
” After the national reckoning over workplace harassment , Garcetti ordered new reporting protocols , unveiled a city website for workers to lodge allegations and hosted a panel at the mayor ’ s official residence on sexual harassment and assault .
He also ordered an overhaul of the city ’ s system for reporting misconduct so complaints @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Previously , elected officials and departments could seek to deal with allegations internally , away from the public view , which made it difficult to know the total number of complaints lodged by city workers .
Around that time , The Times asked about if there had been any complaints of harassing behavior in the mayor ’ s office .
The spokesman also told The Times in 2018 that Garcetti ’ s office kept no records of the complaints of harassment because “ city policies and procedures on sexual harassment did not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , written reports in all situations.
” Garcetti ’ s office acknowledged that “ inappropriate behavior ” had been reported by staff members in his office but declined requests by The Times to provide details .
A Garcetti spokesman would not detail the exact number of reports made by staff , even though some other city departments did release details .
Jessica Levinson , a professor at Loyola Law School , said this week that what Garcetti ’ s office has released to this point about those complaints is insufficient because it relies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s word that it was dealt with adequately .
She said the city needs to provide information about the complaints , when they were filed and types of allegations made , if questions are asked about them .
“ When it comes to a private company , it ’ s up to them and their shareholders what to make public , but when it comes to government there is an obligation to be slightly more transparent , ” she said .
Some City Council members also weighed in this week , with Councilman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ upsetting.
” “ All Angelenos have the right to a safe workplace free from harassment , ” Ryu said .
“ The city must ensure that sexual harassment and misconduct allegations are taken seriously and investigated , with a process that protects the privacy and confidentiality of those who are reporting the behavior.
” “ All claims of sexual harassment deserve to be heard , ” said City Council President Nury Martinez .
“ I expect all complaints to be thoroughly investigated and addressed.
” Other council members declined or didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mayor ’ s office ’ s refusal in 2018 to release information about the inappropriate behavior .

Dakota Smith, Benjamin Oreskes, Richard Winton

Rick Jacobs, center, shown in 2016, when he served as Mayor Eric Garcetti’s deputy chief of staff.
When the #MeToo movement swept the country in the wake of sexual abuse allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, it was not long before Los Angeles City Hall faced questions about how it had handled workplace harassment.
Mayor Eric Garcetti indicated he didn’t know of any incidents when asked in 2018 by The Times if his office had dealt with harassment allegations. “I don’t think any office is ever immune,” Garcetti added. “I mean, I think jokes are told, things happen, people are survivors.”
Two years later, new questions are emerging about one of Garcetti’s top aides, former Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Jacobs, whom multiple men have accused of sexual misconduct.
The accusations — which Jacobs denied — have prompted some to ask for a more detailed examination of what happened and whether officials in the mayor’s office were aware of the allegations.
Advertisement
Los Angeles Police Officer Matthew Garza sued the city in July, alleging that Jacobs made crude remarks and touched him inappropriately. That lawsuit alleges that Garcetti and mayoral staff saw Jacobs’ behavior but didn’t do anything to stop it.
But a month earlier, Garza first outlined his sexual harassment allegations in more detail in a three-page complaint to state authorities aimed at preserving his right to sue. That complaint, which was reviewed by The Times this week, states that Garcetti spoke with First Lady Amy Wakeland about Jacobs’ behavior. That detail isn’t included in the civil lawsuit in July.
The name of the individual Garza said harassed him is redacted in the complaint, but the details match those found in the lawsuit filed in L.A. County Superior Court. The complaint states Garza was subject to inappropriate comments in the mayor’s presence.
“In fact, Garcetti has discussed with his wife that [Jacobs’] behavior would one day be held to account,” the complaint states.
Asked about that section of the state complaint, Diana Wells, an attorney for the officer, told The Times on Friday that Garza was present when the mayor and his wife discussed allegations about Jacobs’ sexually harassing behavior at their home in 2016.
The attorney said Garza was also present when the couple was in a car with Garcetti’s Chief of Staff Ana Guerrero when Jacobs’ behavior was discussed.
Advertisement
Asked why this detail wasn’t included in the state complaint, Garza attorney Greg Smith said the initial filing is a general statement of facts and does not usually address the specifics.
Garcetti spokesman Alex Comisar said the mayor didn’t witness any harassment.
“The city and mayor were not told of any allegations of harassment prior to LAPD Officer Garza’s lawsuit,” Comisar said. “These statements attributed to Mayor Garcetti, his wife and chief of staff are false.”
Journalist Yashar Ali alleged this week that Jacobs repeatedly and forcibly kissed him. And two men told The Times that the former deputy chief of staff also forcibly touched or tried to touch and kiss them.
The new allegations have the potential to cause political problems for the mayor, who has emerged as an important player in Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign and is talked about as a potential Cabinet appointee in a Biden administration.
Jacobs said Tuesday that he will “take a leave” from his work amid increasing questions about the allegations. Jacobs, who worked for the city from 2013 to 2016, is a political consultant to Garcetti, a board member and treasurer for the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles and head of Accelerator for America, a nonprofit focused on economic development that he founded with Garcetti.
Jacobs didn’t respond to a request for comment about allegations of sexual misconduct made by Ali and the two other men interviewed by The Times.
When the police officer filed the lawsuit this summer, it got little public reaction at City Hall. In August, Garcetti publicly backed Jacobs by stating he didn’t think he should step down from his work.
This week, the tenor shifted after more allegations. Time’s Up, an organization focused on protecting workers, called for a “thorough and transparent investigation” into the allegations against Jacobs.
“Everyone who experiences sexual harassment or assault deserves to be heard and get justice,” said Latifa Lyles, vice president of advocacy and survivor initiatives at Time’s Up Foundation. “And justice starts with holding those who abuse their power accountable, no matter who they are.”
After the national reckoning over workplace harassment, Garcetti ordered new reporting protocols, unveiled a city website for workers to lodge allegations and hosted a panel at the mayor’s official residence on sexual harassment and assault.
He also ordered an overhaul of the city’s system for reporting misconduct so complaints can more easily be filed and catalogued. Previously, elected officials and departments could seek to deal with allegations internally, away from the public view, which made it difficult to know the total number of complaints lodged by city workers.
Around that time, The Times asked about if there had been any complaints of harassing behavior in the mayor’s office.
The spokesman also told The Times in 2018 that Garcetti’s office kept no records of the complaints of harassment because “city policies and procedures on sexual harassment did not mandate the preparation and preservation of formal, written reports in all situations.”
Garcetti’s office acknowledged that “inappropriate behavior” had been reported by staff members in his office but declined requests by The Times to provide details. A Garcetti spokesman would not detail the exact number of reports made by staff, even though some other city departments did release details.
Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, said this week that what Garcetti’s office has released to this point about those complaints is insufficient because it relies on citizens to take his office’s word that it was dealt with adequately.
She said the city needs to provide information about the complaints, when they were filed and types of allegations made, if questions are asked about them.
“When it comes to a private company, it’s up to them and their shareholders what to make public, but when it comes to government there is an obligation to be slightly more transparent,” she said.
Some City Council members also weighed in this week, with Councilman David Ryu calling the allegations “truly upsetting.”
“All Angelenos have the right to a safe workplace free from harassment,” Ryu said. “The city must ensure that sexual harassment and misconduct allegations are taken seriously and investigated, with a process that protects the privacy and confidentiality of those who are reporting the behavior.”
“All claims of sexual harassment deserve to be heard,” said City Council President Nury Martinez. “I expect all complaints to be thoroughly investigated and addressed.”
Other council members declined or didn’t respond to questions about Jacobs and the mayor’s office’s refusal in 2018 to release information about the inappropriate behavior.