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CHP investigates I-80 crashes in Dixon; 1 fatality

Daily Republic Staff

DRNEWS@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET

DIXON — Authorities are investigating a pair of crashes early Sunday that involved seven vehicles and left at least one person dead along Interstate 80.

The crashes were reported shortly before 12:40 a.m. on westbound I-80 in the area of the Dixon Avenue-West A Street off-ramp.

The California Highway Patrol reports that one crash involved two vehicles and that another crash involved five vehicles. The five-vehicle crash involved at least one fatality.

Preliminary reports indicate a black sedan was traveling at approximately 100 mph prior to the crash. Those reports also indicate a big rig was involved.

Authorities shut down westbound I-80 near the crash site and issued a regional traffic alert. Westbound traffic was diverted to Dixon AvenueWest A Street.

One lane of westbound I-80 reopened shortly after 2:20 a.m., the CHP reports. All lanes were cleared and reopened shortly before 6 a.m.

The CHP is investigating the cause of the crashes.

Police: Shooting

From Page One

in the area upon arrival but did find evidence of a shooting.

One person was found shot to death at about 5:40 a.m. June 13 on the 1400 block of Hammond Lane. Police suspect the person may have committed suicide.

Police continue to investigate a shooting that was reported at about 8:50 p.m. May 18 near Charleston Street and Little Rock Circle.

No victims were found there but officers soon were called to the 1600 block of Vandenberg Circle where residents reported finding spent shell casings. Officers found 31 spent casings in two calibers. Police also found two homes that had been struck by gunfire.

Anyone with information about any of the shooting incidents is asked to call the Suisun City Police Department’s investigations unit at 421-7373. vaccinated. Some argue the final outcome is similar, but one is far more dangerous than the other.

Here’s what the latest data show about immunity from prior infection and vaccines.

There are certain illnesses in which infection can offer more protection than a vaccine.

For example, coming down with measles or mumps is said to confer lifelong immunity to the virus, but some people who get the vaccine may still get infected, although the shots still limit and prevent the spread of outbreaks.

But if the novel coronavirus is anything like others in the coronavirus family, like the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), then permanent protection after infection is unlikely.

Studies offer some positive clues, however.

Research published in February found that coronavirus patients gained “substantial immune memory” that involved all four major parts of the immune system: memory B cells, antibodies, memory CD4+ T cells and memory CD8+ T cells.

This protection lasted about six months after infection in most people, but for some, it remained for up to eight months, suggesting it could last even longer in some cases.

Separate research posted in April showed a history of Covid-19 among U.K. patients was associated with an 84% lower risk of reinfection for about seven months after testing positive.

Another non-peer reviewed study published in June found that over five months, 1,359 American health care workers who previously had Covid-19 and didn’t get vaccinated stayed clear of reinfection. The Cleveland Clinic researchers said, in the context of a short supply of vaccines globally, “a practical and useful message would be to consider symptomatic Covid-19 to be as good as having received a vaccine,” adding that people who’ve had the coronavirus “are unlikely to benefit from Covid-19 vaccination.”

While scientists cannot predict who will develop natural immunity, evidence shows people who had severe Covid-19 are more likely to develop a stronger immune response than those who had milder forms of the disease.

It’s also true that research shows Covid-19 vaccines offer protection against reinfection, although “breakthrough cases” can occur because no vaccine is 100% effective.

However, studies have found vaccinederived antibodies are more robust compared to those from natural infection – and the job is done without causing illness or other long-term complications often brought on by the disease.

Two doctors from Italy compared the process of infection and vaccination in relation to variants to the plot of an action movie.

It “begins with a character (the virus) running freely across the globe, eluding capture until being finally sent to jail (built by natural immunity). However, if this prison is not secure enough, the virus could escape, aided by certain mutations,” Dr. Emanuele Andreano and Dr. Rino Rappuoli of the Monoclonal Antibody Discovery Lab, wrote in Nature. “Vaccine-induced immunity . . . should help ensure those escape routes are securely closed.”

An April study that has not been peer-reviewed found that two doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines offered 10 times higher levels of antibodies compared to those developed after natural infection.

Another April paper showed that people who were previously infected with the coronavirus experienced significant boosts in their preexisting antibodies after two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which also offered protection against coronavirus variants.

“Vaccines actually, at least with regard to SARSCoV-2, can do better than nature. . . . They are better than the traditional response you get from natural infection,” White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said during a Covid-19 briefing in May.

Exactly why vaccines appear to generate more robust immunity than natural infection remains unclear, but Dr. Sabra Klein, a virologist and professor of immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said infection and vaccination work in different ways.

“The immune system of people who have been infected has been trained to target all these different parts of the virus called antigens. You’d think that would provide the strongest immunity, but it doesn’t,” Klein said. “The Pfizer or Moderna vaccines target just the spike protein – the part of the virus that is essential for invading cells.

“It’s like a big red button sitting on the surface of the virus. It’s really sticking out there, and it’s what our immune system sees most easily,” she continued. “By focusing on this one big antigen, it’s like you’re making our immune system put blinders on and only be able to see that one piece of the virus.”

In other words, vaccines work to strengthen immune responses gained during natural infection; that’s why health experts advise people who’ve had Covid-19 to still get vaccinated.

“There’s nothing deleterious about getting a boost to an immune response that you’ve had before,” Dr. Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, told The New York Times. “You could get an actually even better immune response by boosting whatever immunity you had from the first infection by a vaccine.”

Suisun

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first responder fee is that local government fire department services have expanded well beyond the traditional fire suppression generally supported by property taxes, according to the staff report. The change in balance from fire suppression to medical services has shifted the rationale for financing fire department operations from primarily property-related taxes to a combination of property taxes and user fees.

“As our department has transitioned to provide trained staff for both fire suppression and medical services, there were no additional taxes or increases in our budget to absorb the costs to provide these services,” the report reads. “Regardless of the number of incidents we respond to, we must maintain our apparatus, equipment, skills/training and certifications for both fighting fires and providing emergency medical services.”

The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. at the City Council chamber, 701 Civic Center Blvd. The complete agenda can be viewed at suisun.com.

The final draft of the budget, originally planned for Tuesday, has been postponed to June 29.

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Forests

From Page One

the forest floor, California officials contend, blazes will be less likely to turn into the mega-fires that devour thousands of acres. Dousing them once they erupt can’t be the lone strategy in a state already scarred by global warming, they say.

The question is whether this new push can be done at a pace and scale that’ll actually make a difference.

In a best-case scenario, Gov. Gavin Newsom hopes state and federal crews will be thinning out 1 million acres annually by 2025.

He’s asking the state legislature to give him $2 billion to accelerate efforts in the fiscal year starting July 1. But even if his goal is achieved, it’d still leave millions of acres, and the communities that surround them, vulnerable for decades.

And with temperatures soaring and drought conditions worsening across the state, it’s only a matter of time, scientists say, before the first of the big blazes of 2021 break out.

Although California’s plan to thin woodland is a costly one, it’s necessary to break the cycle of devastating blazes, according to Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University. Simply fighting fires as they start is “a forever war,” he said. “You don’t win those. The solution is to change your strategy and really rethink what you are doing.”

It’s an approach not dissimilar to the one thenPresident Donald Trump proposed in 2018, when he said California should follow Finland’s lead and spend more time “raking” the forest floor to prevent blazes – a suggestion that promptly became fodder for memes and late-night television jokes. What Trump didn’t mention is that the U.S. government owns about 58% of the state’s land.

As part of the new plan, state and federal government are joining forces. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, is supplementing its own crews with outside organizations like the National Guard and the California Conservation Corps, a state department that puts young adults to work on environmental projects.

The push to thin California’s forests is a race against time. Climate change has left the U.S. West hotter and drier, creating prime conditions for blazes.

Last year, wildfires in California killed 33 people and charred a record 4.3 million acres, an area larger than Connecticut.

Heading into peak fire season in the summer and fall, the entire state of California is gripped by drought conditions.

Fire season in the West is running about a month ahead of schedule, with conditions normally seen in July emerging now because of the drought, according to U.S. government forecasters.

Blazes will likely be more severe across the region this year, said Gina Palma, a fire meteorologist with the Department of Agriculture.

After years of mismanagement, many California forest lands are overcrowded stands of thirsty trees susceptible to insect infestation and disease. Suburban sprawl is reaching further into wooded areas in the most populous U.S. state, increasing the risk of wildfire fatalities. Last year, wildfires across California and the West cost the U.S. $16.5 billion, according to the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information.

The task of forestclearing is a perilous one, said Alex Makela, one of a dozen-member crew from the Conservation Corps. On a typical day, Makela and his fellow workers hike into a tangled thicket of branches, lugging everything they need – chainsaws, gasoline, food, rain gear and a medical kit – on their backs while they wipe sweaty brows and swat at mosquitoes.

Crew members must be vigilant to stay out of the path of falling trees. In some areas, with debris piled as high as four feet deep, wood chippers and controlled burns are required.“

Lack of awareness is most dangerous,” said Makela, who slipped and cracked a rib a few weeks back.

Because the goal of clearing 1 million acres is part of a joint project between California and the U.S. government, the state will only have to target 500,000 acres per year, said Christine McMorrow, a Cal Fire spokeswoman. Clearing done by private landowners, community groups and timber harvests may be counted toward that target, she said. The forest-management approach won’t supplant the long-term strategy of attacking every fire over 10 acres in size.

While not all of California’s 101 million acres are wildlands, state fire officials admit that meeting the million-acre-per-year goal will be a daunting, never-ending process.

“As soon as you cut it down, it starts to regrow,” said Steve Hawks, manager of the wildfire planning and engineering division at Cal Fire, which has firefighting responsibility for 31 million acres. “It is going to be a constant thing.”

Still, it’s a good investment, according to Robert Bailey, direct of climate resilience at risk management and consulting firm Marsh McLennan. Governments fall into a “firefighting trap,” spending their money each year on putting out fires and leaving little for clearing deadwood and debris, Bailey said.

“You get caught in this spiral of increasing costs and increasing fires,” he said. “The governments have to break out of this spiral by doing more preventative measures.”

Views on forest management have shifted over time. In the U.S., forests were seen as a source of cheap building materials during the housing boom following World War II, then as a source of recreation in the decades that followed, leading to a strategy of aggressive firefighting.

Some environmental groups support forest clearing in certain areas, while others have expressed opposition. The Natural Conservancy in California

“has been and is very much involved in increasing efforts to reduce the risk of megafires through ecological thinning and controlled burns, particularly in the fire-adapted forests of the Sierra Nevada” mountain range along the state’s eastern edge, according to spokesman Juvenio Guerra.

But Bryant Baker, conservation director for Los Padres ForestWatch, said controlled burns in Southern California’s national forests threaten native plant areas.

“There are issues with just assuming this is some sort silver bullet in changing overall fires in the state,” Baker said. “Prescribed fire is not going to be the thing that stops very large wind-driven fires that are occurring.”

A century-long ban on burning by Native American groups, some of which had a tradition of thinning forest, has made woodlands even more susceptible to uncontrolled

fires, Amy Cordalis, general counsel for California’s Yurok Tribe, said last month at a hearing before Congress. “We are facing an ‘As soon as you cut it down, extremely elevated forest fire risk due it starts to regrow.’ to the drought and to the 100-year-long ban — Steve Hawks, manager of the on cultural burning, wildfire planning and engineering which has led to a division at Cal Fire massive buildup of exceedingly flammable fuels,” Cordalis said. Other indigenous groups, however, have opposed government proposals to thin California forest land. The human toll of wildfires has been vast, with the blazes killing more than 100 people in California over the past five years and upending the lives of millions more. Residents of the state have endured blackouts as utilities periodically cut power in an attempt to prevent their equipment from sparking flames. In 2019, San Francisco utility giant PG&E Corp. was pushed into bankruptcy after it was found responsible for several large fires. Wildfires have also decimated air quality, spreading acrid, choking smoke throughout the state. ‘We are facing an extremely elevated forest fire The fires are only getting worse. risk due to the drought and to the 100-year-long Five of the state’s largest-ever blazes seared ban on cultural burning, which has led to a massive California last year, and 10 of the most expenbuildup of exceedingly flammable fuels.’ sive have happened since 2003, according to Cal — Amy Cordalis, general counsel for California’s Yurok Tribe Fire. The price tag for fire suppression surpassed $100 million for the first time in the 1990s. In the 2020 to 2021 season, costs are estimated to have topped $1 billion for the first time, according to Cal Fire. Although it’s started off slowly so far, this fire season is expected to be an active one in the West, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. More than 88% of an area that includes 11 western states is under drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. “The trend is pretty clear – the wildfire problem is not what it was 15 years ago,” said Lou Gritzo, vice president and manager of research at commercial insurer FM Global. “The fires are getting bigger.”