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Volume 137, Number 33 — Locally owned since 1884
The hometown paper of Coleen & Joe Jurado
Winters, Yolo County, California, Wednesday, September 9, 2020
Yolo County officials address emergency fire alert failure By Anne Ternus-Bellamy McNaughton Media On the evening of Aug. 18 and into the morning of Aug. 19, fires burning in Napa County changed direction and began heading into western Yolo County. Now known as the LNU Lightning Complex fires, they prompted evacuation orders to go out to multiple zones in the county, including those in the vicinity of the city of Winters on Aug. 19. The problem: Residents in those areas who expected to receive an emergency alert via a phone call were out of luck. Text and email alerts went through, but
none of the voice phone alerts sent out by the county’s emergency alert system did. “One hundred percent of the voice communication tactics — the audible phone calls that leave you a message on your cell phone or home phone — did not go through,” Dana Carey, manager of Yolo County’s Office of Emergency Services, told the Board of Supervisors on Sept. 1. “They did not reach their end destinations.” Turns out they were identified as robocalls and blocked. Carey said legislation enacted by the state in 2019 to eliminate robocalls led in
part to the failure. For six years, up until last fall, the county used an emergency alert number, 999-999-9999, that was easily identifiable to residents as a mass notification message. In 2019, after the robocall law was passed, the county purchased a new number — 833-422-5253 — that would not be identified by computer systems as a robocall number. However, on Aug. 19, the system “reverted back to using our old caller ID number rather than the 833 number, so they were immediately scrubbed by companies as robocalls and were denied being de-
livered,” Carey said. The county’s vendor has now gone through and reprogrammed the mass notification system, and a test will be conducted at 10 a.m. on Friday to ensure it’s working, Carey said. Mass notifications will be sent to zones 58, 59 and 60 (all in the vicinity of Winters) “just so we can make sure the program is working,” said Carey. She and County Administrator Patrick Blacklock also noted that the county doesn’t rely on electronic notifications alone. “The emergency mass notification system we use here in Yolo County is a combination of many dif-
ferent systems,” Carey said. “We use social media, we use the county’s website… the sheriff goes out using tones on their vehicle, fire (personnel) go door to door. “There is no 100-percent going-to-hit-everybody-allthe-time solution, which is why we encourage everybody to sign up for as many different communication pathways in that digital system as possible,” she said, “and also heed the warnings of anybody who comes to their door. Listen for the law enforcement sirens. There’s a lot of different ways that we’re trying to get information out.”
See ALERTS, Page 3
No progress as firefighters maintain containment of area wildfires By Glen Faison McNaughton Media
Crystal Apilado/Winters Express
The new Winters High School Administration Building is completed and furnished. The current high school building (far left) will soon be demolished to make way for the next project--a 12 classroom building.
Trustees hear updates on WHS building projects, COVID guidelines By Crystal Apilado Editor-in-Chief The Board of Trustees unanimously voted to accept the completion of the Winters High School Administration Building project at the Sept. 3 Winters Joint Unified School District school board meeting. In lieu of a ribbon cutting ceremony, Mary Fitzpatrick, Senior Project Manager with Van Pelt Construction Services, showed Trustees a slideshow of the different stages of the project up to the almost finished interior.
I ndex Features ........................ B-2
Staff are now working out of the building as last minute furniture and blinds are installed. The next project already in progress is the 12 classroom building, which will replace the current main WHS building. Assistant Superintendent Sandra Ayón gave an update on distance learning within the district. Students began the school year through distance learning on Wednesday, Aug. 26. Each school’s website has a link for distance learning resources, as well as a COVID-19
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resource tab available on the Winters JUSD website. She also presented the 2020-21 draft for the Winters JUSD Learning Continuity and Attendance Plan (LCAP). Ayón noted that at the time there wasn’t anything new from what had already been presented to trusteed over the summer, but now was the time to make any additions or adjustments. The LCAP is a three-year document that details the goals, actions, services, and expenditures to address state
See SCHOOL, Page 5
More than 1,300 firefighters labored through a third consecutive day of oppressive heat Monday as they continued work to fully contain a massive wildfire that raged across five counties in mid-August, killed five people and destroyed more than 300 homes. Both the Hennessey Fire and the overarching LNU Lightning Complex Fire were contained at 91 percent early Saturday night, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection reports. That was the same level of containment reports as of Tuesday morning. The Hennessey Fire is the merger of eight smaller fires that quickly burned together into a conflagration that raged into Yolo and Solano County late Aug. 18 and into the early morning hours of Aug. 19. It forced residents in the greater Winters area and rural Vacaville to flee from their homes overnight. Two people died in the fire in Solano County, one along
Yolo remains at purple Tier 1 in state county status update By Anne Ternus-Bellamy McNaughton Media Yolo County remained solidly in the state’s purple Tier 1 with widespread COVID-19 activity on Tuesday when the state updated the status of counties throughout the state. Five counties — Amador, Placer, Santa
Clara, Santa Cruz and Orange — did make the move to Tier 2 on Tuesday but Yolo remains one of 33 counties still in the top tier where business and school activities are most restricted. Moving to Tier 2 would allow a number of businesses, including gyms, libraries, nail salons, movie
theaters and places of worship to reopen, albeit with restrictions on the number of people allowed in at a time. Restaurants could also resume indoor dining with a maximum capacity of 25 percent or 100 people, whichever is fewer, and schools could resume in-person in-
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Pleasants Valley Road and another in the English Hills area of rural Vacaville. Three people died in Napa County. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection reports there were 1,315 personnel still assigned to the fire as of Saturday night, including 29 hand crews. They were supported by 85 engines, four helicopters, 34 water tenders and 35 bulldozers. The fires in the LNU Lightning Complex destroyed 1,491 structures and damaged 232 others, Cal Fire reports. The fire remains the third-largest wildfire in the state’s recorded history. The LNU Lightning Complex Fire has charred 586.26 square miles (375,209 acres) over six counties. The Hennessey Fire burned 496.73 square miles (317,909 acres), Cal Fire reports. Strong winds in the area on Tuesday prompted a red flag warning as fire crews worked to reinforce containment lines, as well as extinguish smaller vegetation fires.
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struction. But to move to Tier 2, Yolo County needs to go at least two weeks with a daily new case rate below 7 and a test positivity rate below 8 percent. However, the county’s daily new case rate went in the wrong direction over the last
See TIERS, Page 5
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