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CHP reports at least 35 die in Memorial Day weekend crashes
Daily Republic Staff
DRNEWS@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET
FAIRFIELD — At least 35 people died in crashes across the state during the Memorial Day holiday weekend, the California Highway Patrol reports.
The deaths occurred on roadways, highways and freeways over which the CHP has jurisdiction. The total does not include those who died in crashes outside the CHP’s jurisdiction, such as within a city.
This year’s total is an increase of 13% over the 31 deaths recorded over the Memorial Day weekend in 2020, the CHP reports. There were 34 deaths reported over the holiday weekend in 2019.
Nearly two-thirds of the people who died this year – 63.6% – were not wearing seat belts, the CHP reports.
CHP officers arrested 979 people on suspicion of driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs during the 78-hour holiday enforcement period. That is an increase of 14.6% over the total from 2020 – 854. That number was down 22% from the total recorded in 2019 – 1,099.
Harry, Meghan welcome Lilibet ‘Lili’ Diana
tRibune content agency
Her name is Lilibet “Lili” Diana MountbattenWindsor.
The second child of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, was born at 11:40 a.m. Friday at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, the press secretary for the couple said.
Mother and child are well and “settling in at home,” the announcement said. Lili, who weighed 7 pounds, 11 ounces, is named after her greatgrandmother, Queen Elizabeth, whose family nickname is Lilibet. The middle name, Diana, honors Harry’s mother, the late Princess of Wales.
Justice
From Page One
consistent with traumainformed care, affecting the quality of services provided to victims.”
The response rebuked the notion.
“We are committed to having the highest quality of care for all the people we serve,” the response stated.
The report stems from a revisit of a previous grand jury report, which also was critical of the center, including its assertion that the center needed more community partnerships.
That was a repeated recommendation in the latest report.
“Aggressively pursue additional on-site partners to provide the comprehensive services needed by domestic violence and sexual assault victims,” the report states.
In their response, Abrams and Aguiar stated that the “recommendation has been implemented.”
“However, we continue to strengthen our collaboration within the community in an effort to better serve those in need,” the response states.
Another finding, and probably more directed at the Board of Supervisors and the county administration than the District Attorney’s Office and the center itself, is about the center facility.
“The building currently housing the Solano County Family Justice Center is inadequate and its location is unknown to many residents,” the grand jury stated, recommending the center “develop a plan to procure a more appropriate and better-located facility to house the SFJC.”
The response states, “Ideally, in the future we would like to increase capacity, however, at this time the SFJC is maximizing all available space to ensure all essential services are rendered.”
The grand jury also recommended more public outreach to inform residents how they can access services.
The response suggests that some kind of facility plan has been or is being developed, but does not say so directly. It states that outreach to potential community partners and residents, however, is a regular part of the center’s efforts.
The grand jury report also was critical of the public transportation system to the facility for “victims outside Fairfield,” and recommends establishing a satellite office in Vallejo.
The response was that the center is centrally located in Fairfield, and there is a presence in Vallejo.
“We have increased our services such that we are on-site in Vallejo for those who have challenges traveling to Fairfield,” the response states. “We continue to work with our on-site and off-site partners to ensure that victims are served despite any transportation issues they encounter. To date, no victim has been denied services because of a transportation issue.”
Adding center-specific training for law enforcement also was mentioned in the report.
Required responses from the Board of Supervisors and the Department of Health and Social Services had not yet been filed.
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“They’re one of the most fire-adapted species on Earth, and that is one way that this really is a warning sign much bigger than the trees themselves,” Bringham said. “If we’re looking at forest fires that can now kill these old trees that have survived dozens, if not 100 or more previous wildfires, that’s a very bad sign.”
The Castle fire was one of hundreds sparked last August by a siege of dry lightning strikes that was bookended by a pair of historic heat waves. The fire burned through portions of about 20 giant sequoia groves on the western slopes of the Sierra, the only place on the planet they naturally grow.
Bringham, with help from researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Forest Service and conservation group Save the Redwoods League, came up with the revised estimate of dead trees based on satellite imagery.
The report is expected to be published this summer after it undergoes peer review. Now that the snow has thawed, teams of researchers are starting to go into the field to verify its findings.
The mortality estimates focus on trees that had trunks of at least 4 feet in diameter, meaning they were at least 100 to 200 years old. Some that burned were much older, Bringham said.
“It’s untold losses,” she said. “When I have walked in two of the highseverity burned groves, the groves that really burned hot, we see really large dead trees, trees that probably are 1,500 to 3,000 years old.”
A giant sequoia can survive a wildfire if just 5% of its crown remains unscorched. But the intensity of the Castle fire caused some of the trees’ crowns to combust on a scale researchers had never seen before.
“The first time we ever saw that was in 2015 in the Rough fire and it only happened to a very small number of trees,” Bringham said. “So this is a new, unprecedented fire effect.”
And severe, sequoiadestroying fires have been on the rise over the past decade, said Nate Stephenson, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who also contributed to the report. He recalled when the Pierce fire burned through the Redwood Mountain grove in 1987, killing 14 sequoias.
“To the best of our knowledge, that was the 2016, both directly and as a result of fatal bark beetle infestations. And last summer’s hot, dry weather ensured those socalled ladder fuels capable of carrying the fire up into the canopy were bone-dry and combustible.
The combination made the Castle fire burn extraordinarily hot and high, rendering the sequoias’ defenses inadequate, said Paul Ringgold, chief program officer for Save the Redwoods League, which also provided data for the report.
light so it melts more slowly and supplies a steady stream of water to the reservoirs and the San Joaquin Valley when it’s needed. “We have this great water tower in the Sierra Nevada and it may not be as good at supplying water the way we want water supplied to us,” Stephenson said. “Or maybe the same amount will come but it will come out faster, maybe carrying a lot of sediment with it.” Researchers are also worried that the severity of the recent fire could mean some areas simply can’t regenerate on their own. In April, a group including Bringham and Stephenson hiked — Christy Bringham, chief of resources management and into a high-intensity science at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks burn area in Sequoia National Park. On most that had been killed in historic times in a wildfire,” he said. “Then things started to shift.” Fast forward to the Rough fire in 2015, which killed at least 100 sequoias; in 2017, the Pier and Railroad fires killed about 120, Stephenson said. “Then you get to the Castle fire where it’s multiple thousands and clearly out of bounds of anything we knew about in the historical record,” he said. Researchers believe this is because sequoias evolved to live with low- and mixed-intensity ground fires, “fire that doesn’t get up into the canopy and certainly doesn’t burn up the canopy of 100-foot-tall, 2,000-year-old trees,” Bringham said. These types of fires used to be more common due to Indigenous burning practices, as well as lightning strikes that weren’t immediately extinguished. “Sequoias are just not able to withstand that kind of fire in that kind of environment,” he said. The trees are also facing another new enemy. For the first time, researchers have found that bark beetles are also killing sequoias. They’ve documented 33 sequoias within Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks that have been killed by a genus of cedar bark beetle that they’re investigating to determine if it’s its own species, Stephenson said. “The reason it worried us is we thought, ‘This is new to us,’ ” he said. “And if it continues to get warmer, this is going to become a bigger and bigger problem.” Each of the sequoias killed by beetles was suffering from the effects of drought and had its base scarred by a recent fire, weakening the tree by reducing the amount of water that could make it to the top. Scientists are the way, they traveled through less severely burned areas and saw “lots of little sequoia seedlings on the ground,” Stephenson said: As expected, the fire had caused seeds to fall in the autumn and germinate in the spring. “When we got into the core area where the really severe crown fire was, we could not find a single giant sequoia seedling,” Stephenson said. “And that was shocking to me.” They believe the fire burned through the little pedestals that hold the cones on the trees, causing them to drop on the ground, where they were destroyed. Groups including Save the Redwoods League are already replanting seedlings in those areas, Ringgold said. “That said, it will take thousands of years for those forests to return to the majesty that we’ve seen them in in our lifetime,” he said.
“In a given grove, working to determine what Those areas might also you probably had a fire role each factor played. turn into shrub fields, and burning somewhere in it “The forest is chang- it could be harder for every 10 years or so,” Ste- ing, and the drought trees to grow there in the phenson said. “For a given and climate change are future, Stephenson said. sequoia, you might have really stressing these “It’s conceivable that a fire at its base every forests in new ways with if it continues to warm 20 years or so. That kept both fire and beetles,” and warm and warm, you the forests a lot more open Bringham said. might not get anything and the fires, when they The loss of the sequoias looking like the forest did burn, to lower-inten- could accelerate the pace used to be there coming sity fires because there of that change. The trees back in,” he said. wasn’t a lot of time for remove a massive amount At the same time, dead material to build up of carbon dioxide from forest managers are conon the ground.” the atmosphere and store fident it’s possible to make
But a century of it for thousands of years, the forest more resilient to aggressive suppression and they serve as a habitat future fires through treattactics meant some of for wildlife like the Pacific ments like prescribed the groves that burned fisher and spotted owl. burning and thinning. last year had no recent They also defend It’s also important for history of fire, leading to against erosion and play a people to work together an accumulation of dead crucial role in the state’s to reduce greenhouse trees and litter. That was natural water storage gasses, they said. compounded by a drought system, helping retain “This is not a hopeless that killed scores of pines the snowpack longer by situation,” Bringham said. and firs from 2012 to shielding it from the sun- “This is a call to action.”
Israel
From Page One
passions are running high in advance of the showdown between Netanyahu and a diverse coalition arrayed against him, which is drawn from Israel’s political left, right and center.
Israel’s domestic security agency, the Shin Bet, issued an unusual warning over the weekend that rising political incitement could lead to violence, and security has been tightened for several members of the “change coalition” seeking to unseat Netanyahu, who is being tried on corruption charges.
In an address to members of his conservative Likud party on Sunday, Netanyahu lambasted Bennett over earlier pledges that he would not join forces with centrist politician Yair Lapid, the coalition’s leader, or with other participants in the new political grouping seeking to oust him. Under an accord struck last week, Bennett and Lapid would share the prime minister’s job on a rotating basis, with Bennett taking the first turn.
Denouncing that alliance, Netanyahu told party allies, “We are witnesses to the greatest election fraud in the history of the country and, in my opinion, the history of democracies.”
“People justifiably feel deceived,” he told the gathering in remarks that were broadcast nationwide.
Critics swiftly pointed out that the accusations hurled by Netanyahu were reminiscent of rhetoric employed by former President Donald Trump, a loyal booster over the past four years. In addition to excoriating Bennett as dishonest, Netanyahu characterized his rivals as radical leftists whose lack of resolve would leave the country vulnerable to external security threats.
The prime minister also sought to deflect accusations that his supporters were creating a dangerous climate with virulent threats against some members of the coalition. Instead, he painted his own camp as the victim, asserting that “incitement toward us runs rampant.”
In a complaint that further echoed the airing of grievances, Netanyahu railed against what he called attempts to “silence” his supporters on social media. Those include his son Yair, some of whose social media accounts were temporarily suspended after he shared a post providing the home address of a lawmaker the prime minister’s allies were pressuring to vote against the coalition.
Voting
From Page One
has said repeatedly he wouldn’t support ending it. President Joe Biden in May called for the Senate to pass the voting rights legislation. The measure would set national standards for election laws, including no-excuse mail-in voting and automatic voter registration, require additional campaign finance disclosures, and impose new ethics provisions for all three branches of federal government.
Manchin and GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have instead urged a broad rewrite of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, dubbed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, as a bipartisan alternative to the House legislation.
“The truth is there is a better way – if we seek to find it together,” Manchin wrote.
On “Fox News Sunday” Manchin said the nearly 800-page bill passed by the House and known in the Senate as S.1, was “the wrong piece of legislation” and contained many items that don’t pertain to actual voting rights.
The senator’s concerns “remain on the process, not the substance,” the End Citizens United/ Let America Vote Action Fund, a coalition supportive of the bill, said in a statement.
“When Senator Manchin comes to the realization that Republicans in the Senate are not acting in good faith, he is going to have to make a decision about whether he is truly committed to protecting everyone’s freedom to vote,” said ECU/LAV President Tiffany Mueller.
Manchin said he didn’t think that by rejecting a measure supported by his own party, he had “empowered” Republicans in Congress to be obstructionist to Biden’s agenda.
Still, he said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who’s characterized the voting rights legislation a partisan power grab, “is 100% wrong in trying to block all good things that we are trying to do for America.”