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The long overdue national standards rein in the largest remaining source of uncontrolled toxic pollution in the U.S. - the emissions from the nation's coal - and oil-fired power plants, which have been allowed to run for decades without addressing their full environmental and public health costs.
The impact of the ruling will be greatest in the Midwest and in the coal belt - Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia - where dozens of units likely will be mothballed, according to an Associated Press survey. The majority of facilities will continue to run, and find ways to reduce pollution.
About half of the 1,200 coal - and oil-fired units nationwide still lack modern pollution controls, despite the EPA in 1990 getting the authority from Congress to control toxic air pollution from power plant smokestacks. A decade later, in 2000, the agency concluded it was necessary to clamp down on the emissions to protect public health.
At a news conference Wednesday at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the regulation was the Obama administration's "biggest clean air action yet", trumping a landmark agreement to double fuel economy standards for vehicles and another rule that will reduce emissions from power plants that foul the air in states downwind.
The administration was under court order to issue a new rule, after a court threw out an attempt by the Bush administration to exempt power plants from toxic air pollution controls.
"Before this rule, there were no national standards limiting the amount of mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases that power plants across the country could release into the air that we breathe," said Jackson, listing the contaminants linked to cancer, IQ loss, heart disease and lung disease that are covered by the rule, and that also pollute lakes, streams and fish.
(Dina Cappiello, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The fire was reported at 1:27 p.m. north of Mount Ararat Drive and Augustus Avenue, San Diego Fire-Rescue Department spokesman Maurice Luque said. It was at the bottom of a very steep canyon, in a zone of the city rated as extremely hazardous for a major blaze, Luque said.
"Luckily, it had been raining recently and all the vegetation was green," Luque said. "There were homes at the top and this was burning uphill."
The cause was not yet known.
(Pauline Repard, U-T)
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Still, officials reopened Interstate 40 in the Texas Panhandle and New Mexico, and portions of Interstate 70 in western Kansas that had been closed. New Mexico reopened a closed section of Interstate 25, the main highway from Santa Fe to the Colorado line after crews cleared drifts as high as 5 feet. The storm dumped as much as 15 inches of snow as it hit parts of five states.
At least 40 people were stranded at the Longhorn Motel on Main Street in Boise City, Okla., where manager Pedro Segovia said blowing snow had created drifts 2- and 3-feet high and closed the main road.
"Some people cannot even get out of their houses. There is too much snow," Segovia said. "It was blowing. We've got big piles. It's real bad."
Receptionist MaKenzee Grove sympathized with the 50 or so people stranded at the hotel where she works in Guymon, about 60 miles east of Boise City. She spent Monday night there, too.
"I have this rinky-dink car that does not do well in this," Grove said. "If we wouldn't have had the wind, it wouldn't have been as bad. The winds … made the drifts really bad."
A few guests traveling to Oklahoma City managed to leave Tuesday, but others would likely have to wait another night before all roads were clear, she said.
In Kansas, schools in Manhattan canceled classes Tuesday, anticipating several inches of snow. The National Weather Service reported later that 3 inches or less fell.
To the east, a cold rain pelted the Topeka area, turned into a mix of light sleet and snow without much accumulation and tapered off. Forecasters said the storm became less potent as it moved northeast toward the Great Lakes.
Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Ben Gardner said the patrol dealt with dozens of accidents in which motorists slid off highways Tuesday morning.
"We had ice-covered roads, covered by snow packed on top," he said.
The late-autumn snowstorm lumbered into the region Monday, turning roads to ice and reducing visibility to zero. Many of the areas hit Monday had enjoyed relatively balmy 60-degree temperatures just 24 hours earlier.
The storm was blamed for at least six deaths Monday, authorities said. Four people were killed when their vehicle collided with a pickup truck in part of eastern New Mexico where blizzard-like conditions are rare, and a prison guard and inmate died when a prison van crashed on an icy road in eastern Colorado.
The Colorado Army National Guard said it rescued two stranded motorists early Tuesday in eastern Las Animas County, in the state's southeast corner, using a special vehicle designed to move on snow. Smaller highways in that area remained closed.
(John Hanne, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The settlement provides for $15 million to go to the county's general fund, and $9.5 million will be placed in a county trust to be used for fire-safety projects, such as fire station construction, support for the firefighting helicopter program, and bettering emergency communications systems.
Two state investigations concluded SDG&E equipment, and to a lesser degree Cox Communications, caused the Witch Creek/Guejito fire and the Rice Canyon fire.
Hundreds of lawsuits representing thousands of clients were filed in the aftermath. Most have been settled, however, many more remain, mostly involving individuals, that could eventually result in one or more trials next year.
The county sued the utility to recover damages - money lost - for such things as the cost of operating emergency management centers, evacuation centers and for debris removal, said Senior Deputy County Counsel Bill Johnson. The settlement followed months of mediated hearings, he said, and is a satisfactory result for both sides.
The city of San Diego is one of the few remaining governmental entities yet to settle its lawsuit against the utility, but hundreds of home and business owners still remain in litigation. Most of the money paid so far has gone to insurance companies looking to recoup some of the money they paid to clients.
A trial date in September has been tentatively set for those plaintiffs who can't reach an agreement before then.
Arcing power lines, blown about by Santa Ana winds, near Santa Ysabel were blamed by investigators for the Oct. 21, 2007, Witch Creek fire. That fire eventually merged with the Guejito fire, which had begun early Oct. 22 in the San Pasqual Valley and quickly burned into Rancho Bernardo. More than 1,600 structures were lost in the fires.
Power lines were also blamed for the Rice Canyon fire that burned hundreds of homes in Fallbrook later that week.
(J. Harry Jones, U-T)
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The research gathering on Tuesday includes leading climate experts from across the state who will discuss California's vulnerability to extreme weather events, such as sea-level rise, heat waves, floods and drought. Presentations will put those events in historical context and explore how they might be altered if the world warms as scientists expect.
Many in the public still harbor doubts and questions about the causes of climate change, climate projections and whether future problems can be reduced by affordable actions today. "We do have a real strong challenge to get this message across. It's a tough message," said Dan Cayan, a climate researcher at Scripps, which is part of the University of California San Diego. "We all hope that California will continue to be a role model at least for the U.S. in dealing with these issues, and I think that time will justify the attention and seriousness that we have been putting into this."
Cayan's studies underscore the likelihood that the Sierra Nevada will have dramatically reduced snow packs by the end of the century, creating more challenges for water management. This could have sweeping consequences in San Diego and the rest of the Southwest because millions of residents rely on snow melt from the mountain range for drinking water.
Cayan has fashioned a panel of experts from across the UC system and beyond for the Tuesday event. Speakers include Gary Griggs of UC Santa Cruz, Terry Root of Stanford University, Marty Ralph of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Tony Westerling of UC Merced.
"It's always hard when you have scientists … but we are trying to make this more at a Scientific American level rather than a peer-review journal kind of format," Cayan said. "It is meant to be approachable for an educated layperson."
The daylong workshop is called, "Vulnerability and Adaptation to Extreme Events in California in the Context of a Changing Climate: New Scientific Findings." It costs $25, which pays for breakfast and lunch, and is open to the public. For more information about the workshop and to register, go to sio.ucsd.edu/extreme_ climate/.
The Scripps forum is part of a series of events focusing on climate change that state officials are pushing over the next few months. It includes a meeting called by Gov. Jerry Brown in San Francisco on Dec. 15 in hopes of preparing residents for the impact of climate change.
Also next week, San Diego is holding three free public forums that will discuss the city's Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Plan. The city's is developing a plan to identify and prioritize actions to conserve resources, reduce waste, create jobs and cut greenhouse gas emissions. It also highlights the vulnerabilities the region faces from climate change and possible responses.
The meetings are:
The site, sdcountyemergency.com, can be accessed via computers, mobile phones or tablets. Residents are encouraged to check the site frequently for updates in the event of an emergency, such as wildfires, blackouts, flooding and earthquakes. Maps can point evacuees to shelters and other resources.
The site also provides links to the county's Twitter feed, as well as to Cal Fire, the National Weather Service and U.S. Geological Survey. The website was developed for free by Microsoft so the company could show the finished product to other jurisdictions. The site is also able to handle more traffic with the use of cloud technology.
"During the 2007 wildfires, national news outlets linked to our emergency site, which resulted in a flood of visitors and required us to purchase enough server capacity to handle increased traffic," said Holly Crawford, director of the Office of Emergency Services "The new site can be adjusted as needed, handling a high volume of visits without paying for storage space during nonemergency times," Crawford said.
(Kristina Davis, U-T)
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"There's a lot of cold air east of the mountains that will move toward the sea overnight," said Mark Moede, a National Weather Service forecaster. "The air is so dry, we won't have much frost. But it will be really cold."
The brisk weather began over the weekend with residual cold from a low-pressure system. A cold air mass then built east of the local mountains and drained part way to the coast. Temperatures hit the upper 30s and low 40s before dawn Tuesday. It was 41 degrees at Lindbergh Field in San Diego, the coldest it had been at the airport since Dec. 28, 2008.
Lindbergh temperatures could fall to 37 by dawn today, tying the record for Dec. 7, which was set in 1891 in another part of downtown San Diego. Oceanside could fall to 29. It won't be quite as cold tonight. But forecasters say the region won't return to seasonal levels until late in the week.
Bob McElroy, president of the Alpha Project for the Homeless, which operates San Diego's day center and its winter shelter, said the cold weather has snapped his organization to attention. McElroy and others planned to spend Tuesday night handing out blankets to people sleeping on the streets, and accommodate about 15 more women than the typical 50 at a shelter.
McElroy also asked government officials for permission to open the day center at night for extra beds; Caltrans owns the property, and the city contracts with the Alpha Project to run the day center. By late afternoon Tuesday, McElroy hadn't received an official OK to open its doors at night, but he said if temperatures dropped below 40 degrees, he would open the facility anyway. "We're not going to let people die out there," he said.
(Gary Robbins & Matthew T. Hall; with contributions from Robert Krier, U-T)
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The ceaseless churning of factories and automobile engines in and around Beijing has led to this: hundreds of flights canceled since Sunday because of smog, stores sold out of face masks, and many Chinese complaining on the Internet that officials are failing to level with them about air quality or make any improvements to the environment.
Chronic pollution in Beijing, temporarily scrubbed clean for the 2008 Summer Olympics, has made people angry for a long time, but the disruptions it causes to daily life are now raising questions about the economic cost, and the government's ability to ensure the safety of the population.
"As a Chinese citizen, we have been kept in the dark on this issue for too long," said Yu Ping, the father of a 7-year-old boy, who has started a public campaign to demand that officials report more accurately about Beijing's air quality. "The government is just so bureaucratic that they don't seem to care whether we common people live or die. And it's up to us, the common people, to prod them and to put pressure on them so that they can reflect on their actions and realize that they really just have to do something."
When the frustration of parents boils over, Communist Party leaders start worrying about their legitimacy in the eyes of the people. That was the case in 2008 when parents vented anger over deadly school collapses in the Sichuan earthquake and over adulterated milk.
The motionless cloud of pollution that has smothered the capital and its surroundings in recent days has frayed tempers.
Many people now follow a Twitter feed from the U.S. Embassy that gives hourly updates on air quality; gauges on top of the embassy in central Beijing measure, among other things, the amount of fine airborne particles, which are extremely damaging to the lungs. Since Sunday, the air has been rated "very unhealthy" or "hazardous."
(Edward Wong, NYT NEWS SERVICE)
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Such seismic spasms are common in Southern California and rarely lead to a major event. However, seismologists keep a close watch on the San Jacinto because it is capable of producing a [magnitude] 7.5 quake. An event like that could represent "The Big One" for San Diego County because the fault is much closer to urban areas than the San Andreas.
(Gary Robbins, U-T)
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The 2,000-acre blaze also gave a firefighter first- and second-degree burns and was blamed for the death of a 74-year-old man who had a heart attack while trying to flee, but authorities said the worst was likely over as growing snow flurries and falling temperatures stoked hopes that the remaining showers of ember and ash would die down.
Reno Fire Chief Mike Hernandez' said firefighters had largely contained the blaze that sent nearly 10,000 people from their homes in the middle of the night and sent flames licking the edges of the region's mountain roads.
"We are actually backtracking and going over areas that have burned and extinguishing hot spots," Hernandez said.
The cause of the blaze wasn't known, but a downed power line or homeless encampments in the area might be to blame, Hernandez said. He said the region is also a popular area for teenagers who might have started the fire to stay warm.
At least 400 firefighters from as far as 260 miles away flocked to Reno early Friday as multiple fires roared from the Sierra Nevada foothills in northwestern Nevada and spread to the valley floor. Flames reached 50 feet high and embers pushed by the wind traveled up to a mile.
Police went house-to-house, pounding on doors and urging residents to evacuate in the dark of the night.
Hernandez said residents ran from their homes dressed in pajamas, frantically trying to grab as many possessions as possible. One elderly man dressed in his underwear ran out with a blanket wrapped around his body. "The people are in a state of shock and are hanging in there," Gov. Brian Sandoval said.
Dick Hecht said when he escaped from his home with his wife, "the whole mountain was on fire," and it was so windy he could barely stand. "It was so smoky, you couldn't hardly see."
Gusts of up to 60 mph grounded firefighting helicopters and made it difficult for firefighters to approach Caughlin Ranch, the affluent subdivision bordering pine-forested hills where the fire likely began after 12:30 a.m..
(Scott Sonner, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The flooding since late July has killed 533 people, caused billions of dollars in damage, and inundated hundreds of factories.
Weeks after monsoon runoff swamped more than 1,000 factories across central Thailand, the corrosive floodwaters have slightly receded, leaving the world's largest computer makers uncertain about when crucial parts will be available once again.
Consumers worldwide could see increases of at least 10 percent in the price of external hard drives because of the flooding, said Fang Zhang, an analyst at IHS iSuppli, a market research company.
The effect will be less noticeable for laptops and desktop computers, he estimated, because demand has been weakened by the current global economic malaise.
Prices for hard drives have spiked, and computer makers such as Dell and Apple have been monitoring supplies.
Research group IDC said Thailand accounted for up to 45 percent of worldwide hard drive production in the first half of the year. It said nearly half of that capacity was affected by the flooding as of early November.
But it won't hurt PC sales significantly this holiday season, IDC says. The disaster's real effect isn't expected to hit makers of personal computers until early next year. In a worst-case scenario, PC shipments could drop more than 20 percent from previous forecasts in the first quarter of 2012.
Many of the personal computers that will be sold during the holiday season have already been produced or can be made with existing supplies of hard drives, limiting disruptions from the flooding, IDC said. IDC expects PC shipments in the October-December quarter to be less than 10 percent below earlier forecasts because of constraints in the supply of hard drives.
The flooding, the worst in at least five decades, has revealed to the world the scale of Thailand's industrialization and the extent to which two global industries, computers and cars, rely on components made here.
Until the floodwaters came, a single facility in Bang Pa-In owned by Western Digital produced one quarter of the world's supply of "sliders," an integral part of hard-disk drives. Last weekend, workers salvaged what they could from the top floors of the complex. The ground floor resembled an aquarium and the loading bays were home to jumping fish.
The world's biggest names in hard-drive manufacturing operate from Thailand. "Surely one of the inevitable impacts of this is that never again will so much be concentrated in so few places," said John Monroe, an expert on storage devices at Gartner, a research firm.
The flooding is the second reminder this year of the vulnerability of global supply chains, coming just a few months after the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan and shut down facilities that produce crucial car electronic components. Thailand became a hub for Japanese car manufacturers in the 1980s and 1990s.
Today, the flooding has forced Toyota to slow production in factories in Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, North America, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Africa and Vietnam. Honda, the carmaker that is most affected by the floods in Thailand, has also slowed production at factories in several countries.
(NYT NEWS SERVICE & ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts of generation capacity, is about enough energy to power 750,000 residences.
The milestone puts the state on schedule to achieve a legislated goal of three gigawatts by 2016, according to the report released Wednesday by the Environment California Research & Policy Center.
California, if it were its own country, would now rank sixth in the world for rooftop solar generation capacity. The leaders are Germany, with more than 16 gigawatts, followed by Spain, Japan, Italy and the Czech Republic.
California had about 200 megawatts installed in 2006, when the state decided to devote $3.3 billion to incentives that make rooftop solar installations pay for themselves quicker.
Since then, the rooftop market has grown by about 40 percent each year, according to the study.
The California Public Utilities Commission said about 60 percent of the state's rooftop solar was aided by its California Solar Initiative, which provides incentives to customers of the state's three investor-owned utilities. San Diego Gas & Electric customers apply for those incentives through the California Center for Sustainable Energy.
Publicly owned utilities, such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, run their own state-financed programs. And the California Energy Commission's New Solar Homes Partnership seeks to expand the amount of solar energy systems installed on new homes built in investor-owned utility territories.
(Morgan Lee, U-T)
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The blaze, fueled by dry brush and 15 mph Santa Ana winds, was reported about 4:30 p.m. near Old Course Road and Marantha Drive, just north of Marantha Christian School, said Julie Taber, spokeswoman for the Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District.
A volleyball tournament was taking place at the school, which was briefly evacuated as a precaution.
The fire briefly threatened a sewer treatment plant, but firefighters were able to protect the structure, Taber said. The flames neared power lines, and some residents and businesses in the area were briefly without power.
Firefighters from Rancho Santa Fe, San Diego, Cal Fire and Encinitas responded. The cause of the blaze was under investigation.
(Susan Shroder, U-T)
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The Board of Forestry and Fire Protection voted 6-2 to impose a $150 per home annual fee on those who rely on the state to defend their property.
Those who also pay for fire defenses provided by a separate agency would receive a $35 credit, lowering the final levy to $115. About nine out of every 10 residents would qualify for the reduced rate because their homes are in a fire district.
The stakes are high across San Diego County, where an estimated 73,000 homes and 1 million acres are protected by Cal Fire, the state's firefighting arm. Preliminary estimates indicate San Diego County residents cumulatively could pay $10 million.
The fire fee is being imposed to net at least $50 million to offset cuts to the Cal Fire budget for preventive programs, but could raise as much as $90 million. More than $6 million of that would go to the state Board of Equalization to identify and bill those who rely on Cal Fire within what's called "state responsibility areas." Critics have railed against the fee, calling it an unjustified tax that will not put more firefighters on the ground or attack planes in the air. It also would dampen the public's willingness to pay local taxes or contribute to all-volunteer departments if they are paying a separate state fee.
"We'll be in direct competition" for dollars, testified Mike McMurry, chief of the Scotts Valley Fire Department near Santa Cruz.
Responding to the board's action, San Diego County Supervisor Dianne Jacob called it "yet another sneak attack maneuver by the state to try to hold together its jalopy of a budget by unfairly fleecing rural residents." She said it amounted to "triple taxation" for those who pay state taxes and are also billed by a local fire protection district. In a statement, Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Horn said: "If the money goes toward anything short of suppression, the fee is a boondoggle. Taxpayers are already burning mad."
Board members made it clear they did not relish being forced to act by legislation passed quickly by lawmakers, but indicated there was little choice, given the directive to fill the gap in the Cal Fire budget.
Forestry and fire board Chairman Stan Dixon was one of those irritated by being forced to rewrite their fee policy with little public notice. He wanted more time "to give people an opportunity to know what's happening."
Members pledged to come back next year with a fresh look, including adjusting fees and expanding deductions in special circumstances. One possibility is to impose higher fees on those living in fire-prone regions, but also trying to make it more equitable for residents already paying toward local fire protection services.
The new fee structure also requires payment of $25 for each additional unit on the same parcel.
State Fire Fees
| • $150 for one home, $25 for each subsequent structure |
| • $35 discount if homeowner already pays a local fire assessment |
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The space rock poses no danger, as its nearest approach will be a comfortable 202,000 miles distant. But the event marks the closest flyby of an asteroid this large since 1976, according to NASA.
Asteroid 2005 YU55 has a name only a scientist could love. They're also loving the chance to stare at the nearly round, slowly spinning chunk of space debris as it flies by at some 30,000 mph. "It will be scanned and probed and scanned some more," said Marina Brozovic, an asteroid researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Starting Friday, Brozovic will ping the approaching asteroid with radar from giant dishes at Goldstone in the Mojave Desert near Barstow. She wants to map every crater and boulder while refining estimates of the asteroid's path, which swings inside the orbit of Venus and then out near Mars, crossing Earth's orbit.
Meanwhile, telescopes in Arizona and Hawaii will analyze light reflected from the asteroid to determine more precisely what it's made of. Scientists know it's darker than charcoal, because it's a "C-type" asteroid, heavy with carbon and silicate minerals. Astronomers will also look for signs of water. Similar asteroids that have plunged to Earth — called carbonaceous chondrites — hold within them amino acids and other building blocks of life.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Cal Fire stationed crews at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in case the fire spread across the border from Mexico and firefighters were ready to help in Mexico if needed. Fire officials in Mexico asked for Cal Fire’s assistance in the afternoon but later canceled the request.
The fire was burning after sundown, with Mexican fire officials not saying when it would be contained.
Firefighters in San Diego County, meanwhile, managed to contain two small brush fires. The largest burned 12 acres in the Black Mountain Ranch area in northern San Diego. The city's firefighters kept it from reaching homes about a half-mile away.
Cal Fire responded to two small blazes in the county, one a rubbish fire in Dulzura and the other a 1-acre brush fire near Harrah's Rincon Casino & Resort in Valley Center.
"We dodged a bullet," Cal Fire Capt. Michael Mohler said, given the winds and low humidity. He said crews were on high alert, and Cal Fire will retain extra staffing today.
A red-flag warning issued by the National Weather Service was in effect until 9 p.m. Wednesday in the county. The warnings are made when sustained winds of at least 25 mph or frequent gusts of 35 mph occur, combined with 15 percent or lower humidity over at least six hours.
Wind gusts as high as 50 mph were reported in parts of East County and North County. Winds were expected to diminish overnight. Light rain is forecast for tonight and Friday, with up to a quarter-inch possible along the coast and a half-inch in the valleys and foothills.
The National Weather Service said the snow level could drop to 3,500 feet, with light snow possible atop Palomar Mountain.
Tecate Fire
On Wednesday, South County residents said smoke from the fire in Mexico was thick at times, and some reported eye and throat irritation and difficulty breathing. By early evening, residents as far north as La Jolla reported smelling smoke.
Imperial Beach resident Chris Morrow, who lives near the Tijuana Estuary, closed her condominium's windows and kept her two dogs inside. She went outside to record video of the fire, but said it was difficult to breathe. She said some people outside were holding cloths over their faces.
The fire in Mexico began shortly after 10 a.m. about two miles south of the border in the area of Valle Redondo, south of the toll road between Tijuana and Tecate, said Carlos Carreno, spokesman for the Tijuana Fire Department.
Alfredo Escobedo, Baja California’s civil protection chief, said firefighters were trying to protect some rural cabins. The mountainous area is difficult to access. "The mountain is high, the firefighters can't climb it, and winds make it dangerous to use a helicopter," Escobedo said.
A tall, brown column of smoke from the blaze was visible by late morning from Lemon Grove and Rancho San Diego. By the afternoon, smoke had drifted north, causing a brown haze in Mission Valley. Cal Fire said that some people erroneously thought the fire was on the south slope of San Miguel Mountain, southeast of Spring Valley.
In eastern Tijuana, residents of Ejido Francisco Villa watched as a huge cloud of smoke rose on the other side of the mountain around midday. Fire authorities said no residences were threatened, but the head of the city’s General Hospital urged anyone with respiratory difficulties or nausea from the smoke to seek medical attention.
San Diego County fires
Because of the potentially dangerous weather conditions, San Diego firefighters made an aggressive attack on the Black Mountain blaze when it started about 8:45 a.m., tackling it "with everything we’ve got," said San Diego Fire-Rescue Department spokesman Maurice Luque.
No cause had been determined, but it may have been deliberately set, Luque said.
He said witnesses reported seeing a man near where the blaze started, but investigators questioned him and determined he was not involved.
The fire began in a dry canyon west of Camino del Sur near Paseo del Sur. Winds of 20 to 30 mph pushed flames across sparse vegetation crisscrossed by walking and biking trails. The winds blew the flames generally away from houses, many of them new and some still under construction.
About 60 firefighters battled the blaze, along with two firefighting helicopters that drew water from a nearby golf course pond. Most of the flames were out by about 10 a.m. Cal Fire sent a hand crew to help with mopping up the smoldering fire.
"Things were dry out there, and we had the wind and the low humidity," Luque said. "These kinds of days are a heightened concern. We're very fortunate we didn't have a lot of fires."
Lisa Vitale and Kim Zupnik, who both live in the neighborhood, had watched from afar as a fire helicopter dumped water in a canyon. "They took care of it before it became a major catastrophe," Zupnik said. Vitale agreed. "I'm impressed at how quickly they jumped on it and took care of it," she said.
The fire in Valley Center near Harrah's Rincon Casino & Resort was sparked shortly after 6 a.m. when winds snapped a tree branch that fell onto power lines, Mohler said. The blaze near West Tribal Road and Valley Center Road was quickly contained. The federal government maintains the power lines, Mohler said.
The Dulzura fire was first reported as a house fire but turned out to be a burning pile of rubbish, Mohler said. It was reported about 3:15 p.m. Cal Fire had it under control before it could reach the house or surrounding vegetation.
Southern California fires
A 2-acre blaze driven by Santa Ana winds also damaged several structures in the Glen Avon area near Riverside. One home was heavily damaged and two other structures had moderate damage, said Jody Hagemann, a Cal Fire spokeswoman.
Three people were taken to a hospital for minor smoke inhalation. The fire appeared to have started near a freeway, swept across a plowed field and among adjacent homes. Authorities said power lines were down in the area, but the cause of the blaze remained under investigation.
In Orange County, a brush fire burned 5 acres in a hilly unincorporated territory near Brea before it was contained.
Staff writers Debbi Baker, Sandra Dibble, Gary Robbins and Steve Schmidt and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
(Susan Shroder & Pauline Repard, U-T)
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The warning, indicating a high wildfire risk, went into effect at 3 a.m. today and will remain until at least 2 p.m.
Forecasters say the biggest gusts will likely be recorded in Ramona, Santa Ysabel, Campo and Warner Springs. Valley Center also could get gusts that strong[,] as dry winds out of the eastnortheast squeeze through canyons and foothills.
The conditions could make driving difficult at times on state Routes 78 and 79, and the winds will place stress on power lines.
The weather service issued the red-flag warning because forecasters expect the region to get sustained winds of 25 mph, or gusts to 35 mph or higher, for at least six straight hours. The warning also means that the relative humidity is expected to drop to 15 percent or below.
A red-flag warning also has been issued for the Inland Empire and parts of Orange and Los Angeles counties, where gusts could reach 50 to 60 mph.
(Gary Robbins, U-T)
NB: this news about the first major Santa Ana is really odd as we had a pretty strong Santa Ana already last week, on the days around October 27. Humidity in San Diego dropped below 30% and temperatures were unusually high. Smog was also well visible along the coast. My auto mechanic who lives in Boulevard in east county reported winds in excess of 50 mph. Not lastly, it seems that this earlier Santa Ana also lasted longer.
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The project, expected to cost roughly $60 million, still needs final signoffs from state and federal regulators. It’s expected to start in September if it survives environmental appeals that are likely.
On Monday, the City Council unanimously approved the channel maintenance plan after years of drafting and debate. It’s a watershed moment for San Diego, which is trying to avoid going through the costly and time-consuming multiagency permitting process for each segment of waterway where crews want to remove vegetation and muck that reduce channel capacity.
Council members cast their votes as a matter of public safety and business retention after local industry leaders framed winter floods as a major cost and operations problem. "If we do not go forward with this program and go forward quickly, we are putting public safety at risk, we are putting the environment at risk and we are putting businesses at risk," said council member Sherri Lightner, whose district includes the flood-prone Sorrento Valley.
Several council members pushed for assurances that work in the waterways won't worsen downstream water quality or create other ecological problems. "The monitoring and those mitigation measures will be extremely important," said council member Kevin Faulconer. "If it doesn't work, you will certainly hear from us."
Once formally approved by agencies such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the long-term maintenance plan will allow the city to clean out about 32 miles of channels in Murphy Canyon, Alvarado Creek, Chollas Creek and other spots where flooding is common during downpours. The plan approved Monday doesn't address the city's $246 million backlog of deferred upkeep on the stormwater system.
An overarching stormwater plan is viewed by many as superior to the piecemeal regulatory process, but conservationists raised objections to San Diego’s proposed work in sensitive wetlands, and they wanted more leverage over future site-specific plans.
Environmentalists can still appeal the city's plans and are likely to do so, given their stance that the council didn’t install enough safeguards should the projects cause sediment to foul areas downstream of work sites.
Livia Borak, a lawyer for the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation, challenged the process used by the council to review the permit and said the city's water quality analysis was skewed.
"There is actually no accountability," she said. "Water quality is just going to get worse every time they do this maintenance."
Others were disappointed that the council didn't mandate that the Storm Water Division rethink the way it manages stormwater in hopes of creating a longterm solution instead of what some view as stopgap measures.
"We don’t oppose doing it, we just want to make sure that it's done with the right kind of protections and the right kind of feedback so that the protections evolve," said Jim Peugh with the local chapter of the Audubon Society. "The worry is, this is not an answer to our flooding problem."
City stormwater leaders said they are confident about getting the final signoffs because they worked closely with regulators as they developed the 20-year plan. They have predicted that about half the overall bill will be for mitigation to help make up for environmental damage they do in the channel-clearing process.
San Diego and other local governments have struggled for years to find a balance between flood control and protection of rare wetland habitat, much of which has been lost to development.
Bill Harris, a spokesman for the Storm Water Division, expressed relief after Monday's vote but said his agency's work is just starting.
"This may go down … as one of the most comprehensively evaluated maintenance programs ever devised by any municipal agency anywhere," he said.
(Mike Lee, U-T)
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Rescue teams with generator- powered floodlights worked into the night in the worst-hit city of Ercis, where running water and electricity were cut by the quake that rocked eastern Turkey on Sunday. Unnerved by more than 200 aftershocks, many residents slept outside their homes, making campfires to ward off the cold, as aid organizations rushed to erect tents for the homeless….
Aid groups scrambled to set up tents, field hospitals and kitchens to help the thousands left homeless or too afraid to re-enter their homes.
Victims were trapped in mounds of concrete, twisted steel and construction debris after more than a hundred buildings in two cities and mud-brick homes in nearby villages pancaked or partially collapsed in Sunday's earthquake. About 80 multistory buildings collapsed in Ercis, a city of 75,000 close to the Iranian border that lies in one of Turkey's most earthquake-prone zones….
Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said the quake killed 279 people and injured 1,300, though search- and rescue efforts could end as early as today. Authorities said 10 of the dead were students learning about the Quran at a religious school that collapsed….
Bodies were still being pulled from the rubble late Monday. Dozens were placed in body bags or covered by blankets, laid in rows so people could search for their missing relatives.
Several men carried a child’s body wrapped in a white cloth as weeping family members followed behind.
Still, there were some joyful moments. Yalcin Akay was dug out from a collapsed six-story building with a leg injury after he called an emergency line on his cellphone and told the operator where he was, Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported. Three others, including two children, were also rescued from the same building in Ercis 20 hours after the quake struck. Two other survivors were trapped for more than 27 hours. Abdurrahman Antakyali, 20, was brought out of a crumbled Internet cafe after an eight-hour-long joint rescue effort by Turkish and Azerbaijani teams. His father and brother wept with joy as he emerged, Anatolia reported.
(Selcan Hacaoglu and Suzan Fraser, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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With large sections of Ayutthaya submerged under a sea of one-story high water, rescue workers and volunteers are still crisscrossing town to pluck stranded residents from waterlogged ruins. Others are staying to protect what’s left.
"Nobody ever thought the water would rise this high," 54-year-old Pathumwan Choichuichai told The Associated Press in the city of ancient temples just north of Bangkok, minutes after a Thai navy team snatched her family from an apartment building where they were stranded for five days.
Epic monsoon rains and typhoons have relentlessly battered a vast swath of Asia this year, killing hundreds of people from the Philippines to India and inflicting billions of dollars in damage over the last four months. Thailand is among the hardest hit; the floods here are the worst in half a century, claiming more than 280 lives since late July.
Floodwaters have swamped more than two thirds of the country, submerging rice fields and shutting down hundreds of factories. American computer hard drive manufacturer Western Digital Corp. and Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp. became the latest to suspend production in Thailand on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said many provinces could remain submerged for the next two months, according to state broadcaster MCOT.
For weeks, water has coursed down key rivers from northern Thailand in a slow-motion catastrophe, overwhelming a national system of dams and dikes. Several days ago, floods transformed Ayutthaya into one of the country’s worst disaster zones, navigable in some districts only by boat.
Images of calamity in Ayutthaya and elsewhere have fed fears that skyscraper-filled Bangkok could be engulfed by the weekend. Panicked residents of the capital cleared supermarket shelves to hoard bottled water and dried noodles, while luxury hotels packed sandbags around their perimeters.
The crisis is proving to be a major challenge for Yingluck, who took power in August. Her government has not been able to give a reliable estimate of how bad Bangkok’s flooding will be.
On Wednesday, though, she played down the threat, saying the capital’s inner districts will be safe. New flood barriers built from 1.5 million sandbags in the north of the city should be finished by today, she said.
(Todd Pitman, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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None poses a danger to the planet in the next several centuries.
"We know now where most of them are and where most of them are going. That really has reduced our risk" of an impact, said Amy Mainzer of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
NASA researchers also downgraded their estimate of the number of medium-sized asteroids, saying there are 44 percent fewer than previously believed. The downside is that scientists haven’t found many of these mid-sized asteroids, which could destroy a metropolitan city.
"Fewer does not mean none," Mainzer said. "There are still tens of thousands out there that are left to find."
The updated census comes from data from NASA’s sky-mapping spacecraft named Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) which launched in 2009 to seek out near-Earth objects, galaxies, stars and other cosmic targets. Unlike previous sky surveys, WISE has sensitive instruments that can pick out both dark and light objects, allowing it to get the most accurate count yet of near-Earth asteroids. The spacecraft takes a small sample of asteroids of varying sizes and then estimates how large the population would be. For the largest asteroids — bigger than 3,300 feet across — NASA said 911 of the 981 thought to exist have been found. None poses a threat to Earth in the near future, the space agency said.
Previous estimates put the number of medium-sized asteroids at 35,000, but WISE data indicate there are about 19,500 between 330 and 3,300 feet wide. About 5,200 have been found, and scientists said there remains much work to identify the potentially hazardous ones.
Results were published in the Astrophysical Journal.
WISE is not equipped to detect the more than a million smallest asteroids that could cause damage if they impact Earth. The spacecraft recently ran out of coolant and is in hibernation.
By locating most of the giant asteroids, NASA has fulfilled a goal set by Congress in 1998. More recently, the space agency has been asked to find 90 percent of asteroids that are at least 460 feet in diameter — slightly smaller than the Superdome in New Orleans — by 2020. Don Yeomans, who heads NASA’s Near-Earth Object [NEO] Program Office, said that goal is about 35 percent complete.
"NEOWISE was just the latest asset NASA has used to find Earth’s nearest neighbors," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near Earth Object Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The results complement ground-based observer efforts over the past 12 years. These observers continue to track these objects and find even more."
(Alicia Chang, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The legislation was narrowly defeated Wednesday after a tense afternoon of vote counting. Conservatives voted against the bill because they thought its spending level was too high and Democrats rejected it because of the requirement for cuts.
The spending bill is needed to keep the government running through Nov. 18; spending authority stops at the end of September.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, had hoped to avoid another budget battle in the wake of the summer’s debt-ceiling fight and a near shutdown of the government in April that caused voters to sour on both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
The rebuke gives new currency to Senate Democrats’ efforts to fund disaster aid without cuts elsewhere. Congress has days to resolve the impasse as lawmakers are expected to recess Friday for next week’s Jewish holiday.
"They’re threatening to shut down the government to get what they want," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said about the GOP-led House.
House Republican leaders huddled late Wednesday to consider their options. It isn’t likely they’ll be able to persuade their right flank to support a bill with spending levels higher than they want. Instead, Boehner will likely be forced to rely on Democrats for votes. "We continue to work on a responsible plan that can pass the House," said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said the rejection of the Republican approach leaves the GOP leaders few options. "Now it’s time to pass the Senate disaster aid bill," she said in a Twitter post.
Disaster funding typically draws bipartisan support, but this year Republican leaders insisted any supplemental emergency funds be offset by spending cuts.
After a year of floods, tornadoes and recent hurricanes and wildfires, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster fund is about to run out — as soon as Monday. Already, FEMA has prioritized its remaining resources to provide immediate food, water and debris removal for recent disasters, while longer-term building projects are on hold.
To pay for additional aid needed to cover victims of Hurricane Irene and other recent disasters, the House bill targeted a loan program for alternative energy vehicle manufacturing. Democrats opposed cutting funds for the program because they said it was on the forefront of creating green jobs.
(Lisa Mascaro, MCT NEWS SERVICE)
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Queensland Premier Anna Bligh urged people living in low-lying areas to get out quickly because roads and airports were within hours of closing. "Do not bother to pack bags. Just grab each other and get to a place of safety. Remember that people are irreplaceable," she said. Yasi was forecast to hit land at about 10 p.m. Wednesday (4 a.m. PST), the Bureau of Meteorology said. The timing, just after high tide, meant high storm surges of at least 6.5 feet were likely to flood significant areas along the coast.
"Yasi ... poses an extremely serious threat to life and property," the bureau warned, adding that the storm is likely to be "more life-threatening than any experienced in recent generations." Bligh said residents in coastal areas should have left already as their region would undoubtedly flood. Those living farther inland were told to “bunker down” in their homes and get ready for gale-force winds expected to hit within hours.
The storm is expected to make landfall between Cairns — a city of about 164,000 people and a gateway for visitors to the Great Barrier Reef — and Innisfail, a rural community about 60 miles south.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The newspaper in Tulsa, Okla., canceled its print edition for the first time in more than a century. In Chicago, public schools called a snow day for the first time in 12 years, and both major airports gave up on flying until at least Wednesday afternoon. The storm also led Chicago officials to close the city’s busy and iconic Lake Shore Drive while crews tried to plow snow Tuesday night. City officials said the move was temporary but that they could have to close it again if high winds push 25-foot waves from nearby Lake Michigan onto the roadway. Everyone “should brace for a storm that will be remembered for a long time,” said Jose Santiago, executive director of the city’s office of emergency management.
Cities across middle America shut down hours ahead of the snow. Scores of schools, colleges and government offices canceled activities or decided not to open at all. Large sections of busy Midwest interstates were closed. Advice to stay home was followed widely. Thousands of office workers in Chicago’s famous downtown Loop district left early to avoid any transit troubles. ...
The wind was strong enough outside one building’s lobby to send the heavy revolving door spinning by itself.
In Missouri, more than a foot of snow had fallen by midday, with no end in sight. For the first time in history, the state of Missouri shut down Interstate 70 between St. Louis and Kansas City due to a winter storm. … Meteorologist Jeff Johnson of the National Weather Service in Des Moines said the storm was sure to "cripple transportation for a couple of days." The snow and the wind were a dangerous combination, even in areas where not that much snow was expected. ...
The storm was so bad in Polk County, 200 miles west of St. Louis, that emergency officials requested help from the National Guard because local officials did not have enough vehicles to get the elderly and shut-ins to shelter if the power went out.
In state capitols across the Midwest and East, lawmakers cut short their workweek because of the storm. Normally bustling downtown streets were quiet, too. And many stores were closed, with signs on the windows blaming the weather. Others didn’t let the weather keep them from work. The bakery Chez Monet in downtown Jefferson City was open, adding hot oatmeal for chilled customers. …
The storm was expected to roll into the Northeast on Wednesday, bringing still more snow to a winter-weary region. Towns that have been hit by several blizzards since December feared they wouldn’t have anywhere to put more snow. Ice-coated roads were nearly empty in Dallas, but the NFL managed to stick to its Super Bowl schedule, holding media activities at Cowboys Stadium in suburban Arlington as planned. Weather for the game on Sunday was predicted to be in the high 50s and partly sunny.
(Michael Tarm, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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