SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – The future of San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy is up for debate after one supervisor proposed adding an exception to it. That led to a rally ahead of Tuesday night’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
San Francisco is among the first 12 cities in the country to be dubbed a sanctuary city, prohibiting local police from stopping or arresting people based on their national origin or immigration status. Dozens of people came out to show support for the policy on Tuesday, pointing out that immigrants are people’s neighbors, friends and family.
But Supervisor Matt Dorsey recently introduced legislation that would add fentanyl crimes to the list the city considers for cooperating with federal prosecution. That list already contains violent crimes like carjackings, burglaries and shootings.
Supervisor Hillary Ronen sponsored a resolution for the board to condemn attacks on sanctuary city policies.
“We’re not going to fall for this age-old attack on immigrants,” she said. “We’re going to stand up for our sanctuary ordinance like we have many times in the past, and we will not let our immigrant brothers and sisters be scapegoated for every problem in San Francisco.”
“This is no more scapegoating immigrants for fentanyl dealing than the 50 crimes that are already exceptions to sanctuary,” Dorsey said. “There have always been crimes that are exceptions here.”
Supervisor Shamann Walton was also at the rally before the meeting to support Supervisor Ronen’s resolution to condemn Dorsey’s legislation.
“There is no way we’re going to stand by and allow people to say that one race or immigrants are responsible for these fentanyl deaths,” he said.
Many community leaders like Stephany Arzaga with Legal Services for Children spoke at the rally and again in the board meeting’s public comment to support the sanctuary city ordinance.
“This recycled war on drugs that only scapegoats immigrants will only make the overdose crisis worse, which is why we should uphold and protect our sanctuary ordinance,” she said.
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But there were also public comments from people supporting the addition of fentanyl dealers as an exception to the sanctuary city ordinance.
“I oppose Item 37, the resolution put forward by supervisors Ronen, Walton, Preston, Melgar and Chan, and I support Dorsey,” one speaker said.
The board voted unanimously to continue the debate at next week's meeting on March 7.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California's coronavirus emergency officially ends Tuesday, nearly three years after Gov. Gavin Newsom issued the nation's first statewide stay-at-home order and just days after the state reached the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths related to the virus.
As California's emergency winds down, such declarations continue in just five other states — including Texas and Illinois — signaling an end to the expanded legal powers of governors to suspend laws in response to the once mysterious disease. President Joe Biden announced last month the federal government will end its own version May 11.
The end of California's order will have little to no effect on most people as Newsom has already lifted most of the state's restrictions, like those that required masks, closed beaches and forced many businesses to close. It offers a symbolic marker of the end of a period that once drastically altered the lives of the state's nearly 40 million residents.
Illinois' order will end in May alongside the federal order, while the governors of Rhode Island and Delaware recently extended their coronavirus emergency declarations. In New Mexico, public health officials are weighing whether to extend a COVID-19 health emergency beyond its Friday expiration date.
Texas, meanwhile, hasn't had any major coronavirus restrictions for years, but Republican Gov. Greg Abbott keeps extending his state's emergency declaration because it gives him the power to stop some of the states' more liberal cities from imposing their own restrictions, like requiring masks or vaccines. Abbott has said he'll keep the emergency order — and his expanded powers — in place until the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature passes a law to prevent local governments from imposing virus restrictions on their own.
The conflicting styles show that, while the emergencies may be ending, the political divide is not — foreshadowing years of competing narratives of the pandemic from two potential presidential candidates in Newsom and Abbott.
Newsom has used his authority to make sure all of California’s local governments had restrictions in place during the pandemic, even threatening to cut funding to some cities that refused to enforce them. While California’s emergency declaration is ending, other local emergencies will remain in place — including in Los Angeles County, home to nearly 10 million people.
The Los Angeles emergency order encourages mask use in some public places like business and trains and for residents who have been exposed to the virus. It will remain in effect for at least another month. Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will debate whether to end the order March 31.
Many public health experts say it makes sense that California's order is coming to a close.
“Three years ago, if you ... got infected you were rolling the dice about dying,” said Brad Pollock, chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of California, Davis. “What's happened in the three years now is we have vaccines, we have antiviral therapy, we have much more knowledge about how we take care of patients in terms of supportive care. Your risk of dying is a fraction of what it was.”
The Newsom administration's approach was to issue broad restrictions on what people could do and where they could go. California ended up faring better than other states, but they did worse than some other countries, like Sweden, said Jeffrey Klausner, professor of clinical population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.
“I think if we had better focused our resources on those most at risk, we probably could have avoided more deaths,” he said.
The pandemic strained California's health care system, which has yet to fully recover, said Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the California Hospital Association. She said hospitals remain overwhelmed — not from COVID patients, but from an influx of people returning to the health care system after staying away during the pandemic. She said a majority of California's hospitals are losing money, prompting fears some could close — just as a community hospital in the state's Central Valley did in December.
“While the state’s COVID public health emergency is formally concluding, the health care system emergency remains,” Coyle said.
Health care workers have felt the strain, too, working long hours among people infected with a highly contagious and potentially life-threatening disease. The strain has prompted a workforce shortage, with competing proposals to remedy it. The California Hospital Association is asking for a one-time infusion of $1.5 billion to help keep hospitals afloat. Labor unions, meanwhile, are backing a bill that would impose a $25 minimum wage for health care workers.
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Meanwhile, local public health departments worry the end of the coronavirus emergency will mean a return to limited funding for their budgets, an issue exposed in the early days of the pandemic when many counties did not have enough people to respond to the crisis. Newsom signed a budget last year that will spend $200 million to help public health departments hire more workers. This year, he's proposing cutting nearly $50 million in public health workforce training programs, part of his plan to cover a projected budget deficit.
“Public health is dependent on their frontline workforce, and that frontline workforce has to be skilled and trained and educated,” said Michelle Gibbons, president of the County Health Executives Association of California.
Overall, Newsom's budget proposal would sustain $300 million in public health spending, including $100 million for 404 new positions in the state Department of Public Health, including areas of workforce training and emergency preparedness and response. The money will “modernize state and local public health infrastructure and transition to a resilient public health system,” said H.D. Palmer, spokesperson for the California Department of Finance.
DALY CITY, Calif. (KRON) -- Fire crews are on the scene of a gas fire on the 900 block of Gellert Boulevard that broke out overnight, according to the North County Fire Department.
Gellert Boulevard from King Drive to Verducci Drive is closed. People are being advised to avoid the area if possible.
(North County Fire Department)
(North County Fire Department)
PG&E crews are also on scene working to secure a 6-inch gas line.
For most of the last decade, buying a California home meant deciding how much over the asking price you were willing to bid. However, a cooling market gives some house buyers more power and a bit more opportunity to be picky. But the dramatic price drops and fizzling competition seen in the Bay Area may not hit the rest of the state the same way, experts warn.
For the first time since 2012, houses in the Bay Area sold for less than the asking price in January, Redfin data revealed. Home prices in the area have steadily grown behind high-paying careers at Meta, Google and Uber and other tech companies in the area.
But layoffs at some of those same companies are contributing to a decrease in potential buyers in the market, according to real estate professionals.
In January many tech companies announced employee layoffs by the thousands. Google planned to cut 12,000 jobs which equated to 6% of its workforce. Also, inflation and rising interest rates took a toll on potential homebuyers entering the market.
During the massive price COVID era price spike, buyers in the market were taking advantage of low mortgage rates seen throughout the latter half of 2020, 2021 and early in 2022, according to Danielle Hale, the chief economist at Realtor.com.
Those cheaper loans allowed people to pull the trigger on buying, even as prices soared, Hale explained.
“Mortgage rates continued to be low, which really enabled people to not only have those dreams but act on them because it created a lot of buying power for homebuyers in the market,” Hale said.
With the Bay Area seeing lower home prices, some have questioned if the same thing will happen in other areas across the Golden State. Experts say it depends on whether the seller is taking the new market into account.
Thomas Royds, a Los Angeles-based agent with Redfin, explained that while there have been a few homes selling for below the asking price in the LA area, some have also sold for more.
“I would refer you to the last two homes, and one of them was priced at 1,000,050 and the other was priced at 2,000,150. So those are two very diverse price ranges; both of those houses had multiple offers and both of those houses sold at around 3% above the asking price," Royds said.
“The key to that was that both of those properties were priced correctly when they came out on the market if not just slightly under market,” Royds said. “So that created the type of action and activity that the seller was looking for. And ultimately, when you get two to three people bidding on the same product, you're going to go ahead and you're going to get a higher sales price.”
Royds explained that buyers currently in the market are very savvy about the current market trends. He noted that if sellers in his jurisdiction attempted to sell their properties for more than what they were worth, buyers wouldn’t be receptive, one of the many reasons behind the possibility of homes selling for a cheaper price.
Royds sells homes primarily in the South Bay area of Southern California, specifically areas like Santa Monica, Palos Verdes and Gardena.
However, UCLA professor Eric Sussman, who specializes in real estate and accounting, doesn’t believe that other areas of California, specifically Los Angeles, will see homes sell below the asking price because the southland’s economy doesn’t heavily rely on one industry.
“Los Angeles, Southern California is actually far more economically diverse in terms of entertainment, aerospace, and yes, technology, but also global trade, etc.,” Sussman said. “So, we have a much more diverse economy, which means we aren't experiencing the same price drops that they are up north.”
“I don't expect a big drop in housing prices here,” Sussman said.
While it’s debatable if other areas of California will see a big drop in housing prices, for residents that are in the housing market wondering if they can score a deal on their dream home; experts say it depends on the realtor or company people align themselves with.
“Whether or not a home is going to bid way over the asking price or be a competitive situation or on the flip side of that, may be a great opportunity for somebody to be able to negotiate price and get it a little bit less than the asking price with some contingencies, is really going to be a one-off depending on the neighborhood, depending on the type of home, depending on the location,” said Josh Felder, a San Francisco-based agent for Redfin.
“So, if you have a great real estate agent, they can help kind of guide you in that process.”
Even though some homes have sold for below the asking price, overall home prices in the Golden State are still expensive.
For example, in San Francisco, the median home price is over $1.2 million; in Los Angeles, the median home price is $890,194, according to Zillow data.
SANTA ROSA (BCN) -- Authorities in Santa Rosa are beefing up their search for a missing at-risk man as temperatures drop on Monday night.
Lawrence "Larry" Atchison left his residence on foot at 4:45 p.m. and his current whereabouts are unknown. Atchison has dementia and does not know how to navigate his way around the city and will not know how to return home, police said.
The Santa Rosa Police department requested the assistance of the Sonoma County Search and Rescue Team to find Atchison. While Search and Rescue is mobilizing, SRPD officers, Community Service Officers, and Field and Evidence Technicians are assisting with the search, SRPD said at 10 p.m.
SRPD is also deploying drones to help locate Atchison.
He was last seen in the area of Leafwood Circle. He is white, 65 years old, 6 feet tall and 200 pounds. He was last seen wearing a black Columbia jacket with no hood, dark blue jeans and black slip-on shoes.
Anyone who sees Atchison should contact the Santa Rosa Police Department dispatch at (707) 528-5222 with any information about his location.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he’ll work this year to reform a landmark state environmental law that he says has been weaponized by wealthy homeowners to block badly needed housing for students at the University of California, Berkeley.
Newsom’s comments over the weekend followed a state appeals court ruling that found the University of California “failed to assess potential noise impacts from loud student parties in residential neighborhoods near the campus” as required by the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, when it planned new housing near the university.
The 1st District Court of Appeals’ ruling Friday could delay the building of a complex at Berkeley’s historic People’s Park, which is owned by the University of California, Berkeley, for years or even decades, Newsom said.
The housing complex would accommodate about 1,100 UC Berkeley students and 125 formerly homeless people. Part of the park would be set aside to commemorate its significance in the civil rights movement, university officials have said.
University officials said in a statement Monday they were “dismayed” by the decision and planned to file an appeal with the California Supreme Court, adding that their commitment to building the People’s Park project “is unwavering.”
The university called the appeals court decision “unprecedented and dangerous” because it could prevent colleges and universities across California from building student housing.
The project has faced opposition since its inception and last year two local organizations, Make UC a Good Neighbor and The People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group, filed a lawsuit against it, citing the CEQA law and saying the university’s environmental impact report had not considered the housing complex would bring more noise to the area.
The landmark 1970 environmental law requires state and local agencies to evaluate and disclose significant environmental effects of projects and to find ways to lessen those effects. But in the decades since its passage, critics say the environmental law has been used by opponents of development to block housing and public transit projects.
“This law needs to change, and I’m committed to working with lawmakers this year to making more changes so our state can build the housing we desperately need,” he added.
His office offered no additional details Monday about what changes he wants to see — and how soon. The environmental law is often cited as a nuisance but overhauling it is seen as politically perilous. Often, the Legislature passes exemptions for specific projects like sports stadiums to speed development.
Last March, the University of California, Berkeley said it would have to cap student enrollment after the California Supreme Court sided with irate neighbors who sued over the school’s growth. State lawmakers fast-tracked a fix to allow the campus to enroll as many students as planned for the 2022 fall semester, but the legislation did nothing to produce more housing.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, said the appeals court ruling was “horrific” and would have major implications for housing in California because it classifies noise from people as an environmental impact.
“It introduces the idea that people are pollution,” Wiener said.
The court ruling, he said, will be abused in a wide range of housing projects in the future.
He said he plans to introduce legislation in the next two weeks that addresses the court’s ruling and makes sure that “Pandora’s box remains closed.”
LAFAYETTE, Calif. (KRON) – The Bay Area’s recent wet weather is driving rodents to seek shelter indoors.
Local pest control expert, Gilbert Jaimez, said he is getting swamped with calls about rats and other animals getting into homes.
He recently went to a Lafayette home where rats had already snuck inside. “See that hole? They can get right in there and start to eat the wall. The sheet rock is like butter to them,” said Jaimez.
He said with all of the recent rain, the calls are pouring in for help to catch the rodents. “They can find any hole, and get inside,” said Jaimez.
He said sealing your home is critical to prevent an infestation. For problems already inside your home, you will have to set up traps.
Jaimez added there is one big misconception about vermin. “You could have the cleanest home, that’s not the problem. You should be able to have food out. They are just trying to find shelter, that’s the problem," said Jaimez.
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If you suspect you have a rodent problem, don't forget to check your vehicle. “Look around. They love to eat the wiring,” said Jaimez.
What used to be a rare one-two punch of consecutive hurricanes hitting about the same place in the United States weeks apart seems to be happening more often, and a new study says climate change will make back-to-back storms more frequent and nastier in the future.
Using computer simulations, scientists at Princeton University calculate that the deadly storm duet that used to happen once every few decades could happen every two or three years as the world warms from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, according to a study in Monday’s Nature Climate Change.
Louisiana and Florida residents have already felt it.
In 2021, major Hurricane Ida blasted Louisiana with 150 mph winds. Just 15 days later a weakening Nicholas came nearby, close enough for its wind, rain and storm surge to add to the problems, said study co-author Ning Lin, a risk engineer and climate scientist at Princeton. Her study looked at not just the storms but the problems back-to-back hurricanes caused to people.
The Ida-Nicholas combo came after Louisiana was hit in 2020 by five hurricanes or tropical storms: Cristobal, Marco, Laura, Delta and Zeta. Laura was the biggest of those, packing 150-mph winds.
After Laura, relief workers had set up a giant recovery center in a parking lot of a damaged roofless church when Delta approached, so all the supplies had to be jammed against the building and battened down for the next storm, said United Way of Southwest Louisiana President Denise Durel.
“You can't imagine. You're dumbfounded. You think it can't be happening to us again,” Durel recalled 2 1/2 years later from an area that is still recovering. “The other side of it is that you can't wish it upon anyone else either.”
Florida in 2004 had four hurricanes in six weeks, prompting the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration to take note of a new nickname for the Sunshine State — “The Plywood State,” from all the boarded-up homes.
“We found a trend,” Lin said. “Those things are happening. They’re happening more often now than before.”
There’s a caveat to that trend. There haven’t been enough hurricanes and tropical storms since about 1950 – when good recordkeeping started – for a statistically significant trend, Lin said. So her team added computer simulations to see if they could establish such a trend and they did.
Lin’s team looked at nine U.S. storm-prone areas and found an increase in storm hazards for seven of them since 1949. Only Charleston, South Carolina, and Pensacola, Florida, didn’t see hazards increase.
The team then looked at what would happen in the future using a worst-case scenario of increasing carbon dioxide emissions and a more moderate scenario in line with current efforts worldwide to reduce greenhouse gases. In both situations, the frequency of back-to-back storms increased dramatically from current expectations.
The reason isn’t storm paths or anything like that. It’s based on storms getting wetter and stronger from climate change as numerous studies predict, along with sea levels rising. The study looked heavily at the impacts of storms more than just the storms themselves.
Studies are split on whether climate change means more or fewer storms overall, though. But Lin said it’s just the nastier nature and size that increases the likelihood of back-to-back storms hitting roughly the same area.
Any increased frequency in sequential storms in the past was likely due to a reduction in traditional air pollution rather than human-caused climate change; when Europe and the United States halved the amount of particles in the air since the mid-1990s it led to 33% more Atlantic storms, a NOAA study found last year. But any future increase will likely be more from greenhouse gases, said two scientists who weren't part of the study.
“For people in harm’s way this is very bad news,” University of Albany hurricane scientist Kristen Corbosiero, who wasn’t part of the study, said in an email. “We (scientists) have been warning about the increase in heavy rain and significant storm surges with landfalling TCs (tropical cyclones) in a warming climate and the results of this study show this is the case.”
Corbosiero and four other hurricane experts who weren’t part of the study said it made sense. Some, including Corbosiero, say it is hard to say for sure that the back-to-back trend is already happening.
Colorado State University hurricane expert Phil Klotzbach said the emphasis on worsening effects on people was impressive, with storm surge from rising seas and an increase in rainfall from warmer and stronger major hurricanes.
“You have to have faith and be able to move forward. You've just got to be in constant motion,” Durel, the Louisiana United Way president, said. “Our neighbors mean much more than wallowing in aggravation.”
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) -- San Francisco-based Twitter laid off 10 percent of its employees Saturday night in an attempt to cut costs since Elon Musk's takeover, the New York Times reported.
The layoffs impacted about 200 employees out of the 2,000 left at the social media company.
The New York Times reported that former employees were locked out of their corporate emails as well as the company's internal messaging system ahead of the layoffs on Saturday night.
NYT reported that not only were Twitter project managers, data scientists and engineers and monetization services teams impacted by the job cuts, but also a number of founders of smaller companies Twitter had acquired over the years.
(KRON) -- If you're looking for a high-paying job, you may want to head out west to the Golden State. Employment company Forage found that many of the best cities for high-paying entry level work were right here in California.
Joe Silverman, personal finance expert and economics professor at San Diego State University told KRON4 that many factors determine of a job is high paying, "not the least of which is the cost of living."
While Californians may see bigger paychecks on average, they've also got higher bills. The median home price in January 2023 within the state of California was a whopping $696,600, according to real estate company Redfin. Choosing to rent in California may seem more affordable, but not by much. The median monthly rent for all bedrooms and all property types in California is $2,950, according to Zillow's most recent data.
Silverman said that some people may be able to accept lower-paying jobs if they have a way to reduce their cost of living, by living with family for example. He also shared that doing your research on how others are being paid in your field along with the status of the labor market can help to negotiate the best salary for you.
If you're looking for a new job that pays well, where should you start your search?
Forage ranked cities with high-paying roles and compared them with how affordable it is to live in each place. Cities were scored then ranked based on ten criteria, listed in full below.
Many of the cities on this list are based in the Bay Area, which benefits greatly from high-paying roles at various tech companies. But tech isn't the only field where you can find high-paying roles. Two cities in the Greater Sacramento area also made the list, thanks to high-paying roles in law, health care and engineering.
1. Mountain View, California
Weighted average entry-level hourly wages: $32.01
Percentage of people spending 30% or more of their income on housing: 30.9%
Roles in the city of Mountain View offered some of the highest entry-level wages available, and that's thanks in big part to technology companies like Google and parent company Alphabet. The company is headquartered in Mountain View and, even after recent layoffs, still employs over 150,000 people.
As of May 2021, entry-level software developers in the area earned $71.62 per hour on average. There were over 67,000 software developers working for various companies across the San Jose metro area in 2021.
2. Palo Alto, California
Weighted average entry-level hourly wages: $32.01
Percentage of people spending 30% or more of their income on housing: 30.9%
Home to Stanford University and the birthplace of some of the biggest companies in tech, it's no surprise Palo Alto comes in at No. 2. The median household income in Palo Alto is the highest of all of the cities in the study, $195,781, about $38,000 more than in neighboring city Mountain View.
3. Santa Clara, California
Weighted average entry-level hourly wages: $32.01
Percentage of people spending 30% or more of their income on housing: 26.4%
Though Santa Clara comes in third on the list, it appears to be a more affordable place to live, according to the study. Though entry-level wages in Santa Clara are the same as Mountain View or Palo Alto, only 26.4% of this city's residents are spending 30% or more of their income on housing. The median earnings for all workers in the city is $88,186, which is significantly lower than other areas of Silicon Valley.
4. Sunnyvale, California
Weighted average entry-level hourly wages: $32.01
Percentage of people spending 30% or more of their income on housing: 30.1%
Sunnyvale, nestled between Mountain View and Santa Clara is comparable in may ways to its Silicon Valley companions, as entry-level wages are the same. However the median household income and median earnings for all workers are both higher in Sunnyvale.
Housing in Sunnyvale requires a bigger chunk of its residents' incomes at 30.1%. Unemployment in this city is slightly higher than others within the metro area at 6.3%. These numbers pushed Sunnyvale down the list.
5. Newton, Massachusetts
Weighted average entry-level hourly wages: $21.58
Percentage of people spending 30% or more of their income on housing: 24.5%
Forage credits Newton's top-five finish on the list to high-paying entry-level roles for software developers ($48.57 per hour), mechanics and investment analysts. Though these wages are significantly less than their Bay Area counterparts, the affordability of housing in the area means those wages go further.
6. Milpitas, California
Weighted average entry-level hourly wages: $32.01
Percentage of people spending 30% or more of their income on housing: 30.9%
Back in the Bay Area, Milpitas benefits from tech roles just about as much as its counterparts in Sunnyvale or Mountain View. One surprising number is that the median household income in Milpitas is significantly higher than Santa Clara, Sunnyvale or Mountain View.
7. Rochester, Minnesota
Weighted average entry-level hourly wages: $22.98
Percentage of people spending 30% or more of their income on housing: 24.6%
Rochester's entry-level wages are boosted by roles at the Mayo Clinic. Entry-level registered nurses in the area earned an average of $39.45 per hour as of 2021. Rochester's median household income is the lowest on the list, coming in at $75,902 per year. The median earnings for workers in the area is also lower, sitting at $45,870.
Though wages in the state are significantly lower, Minnesota offers a much more affordable cost of living than its California counterparts, and only 24.6% of residents in Rochester were spending more than 30% of their income on housing, according to 2021 data.
8. Roseville, California
Weighted average entry-level hourly wages: $22.66
Percentage of people spending 30% or more of their income on housing: 31.3%
The first California city outside of the Bay Area is 20 miles outside of Sacramento. Thanks to this area's more affordable cost of living, wages are going much further in Roseville than they do for Bay Area workers.
9. Folsom, California
Weighted average entry-level hourly wages: $22.66
Percentage of people spending 30% or more of their income on housing: 34.2%
Another city based in the greater Sacramento area, Folsom is about a 25-minute drive southeast of Roseville. Entry level wages here mirror those in Roseville, as the cities are both in the same metro area. One number that dropped this city lower on the list is the high number of residents spending more than 30% of their income on housing.
10. Broomfield, Colorado
Weighted average entry-level hourly wages: $21.42
Percentage of people spending 30% or more of their income on housing: 27.8%
Broomfield benefits greatly from the Ball Corporation, a manufacturing company which is headquartered in the town, according to Forage. Colorado has a much more affordable housing market than California is able to offer, so fewer residents are spending above 30% of their income on housing.
Methodology
Forage used data from the U.S. Census and the Bureau of Labor and Statistics along with other government sources to develop the list. The ten criteria considered in the study were listed as follows:
CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, Calif. (KRON) -- At least one person was killed during a head-on collision with a big rig Monday morning on Vasco Road near Camino Diablo in Brentwood, according to the California Highway Patrol incident page.
All northbound and southbound lanes of Vasco Road have been shut down due to the accident. Expect delays and avoid the area if possible. The estimated time of reopening is unknown, CHP said.
OAKLAND, Calif. (KRON) -- A violent weekend is continuing in Oakland. There were three more overnight shootings, leaving one person is dead and two others in critical condition.
Oakland leaders speak out about why this continues to happen and how they hope to stop it. From sideshows to now shootings and killings, robberies and drugs, there's a feeling of lawlessness in The Town.
Violence continues to plague Oakland streets -- all while multiple sideshows happened throughout the city Friday and one of them even involved a big rig.
Shootings have taken the lives of four people, and two more are in critical condition.
Friday night's three shootings all resulted in deaths.
The first shooting happened around 7:45 p.m. on the 7200 block of International Boulevard -- blocks from the Coliseum BART station.
The second shooting happened an hour later two blocks away from the first.
Two hours later, a third shooting happened -- not far from the others -- on 67th Avenue. All three victims died before they could be taken to the hospital.
"While the police are attending to one, there's another one down the street," Oakland City Councilmember Noel Gallo said.
Gallo says the challenges in Oakland right now are tremendous, but he says police are trying to adapt and increase their presence where it is most needed.
"For the weekend, we located the command post on the street of International to monitor that street day long, nightlong to make sure it's safe for merchants and safe for the neighborhood," Gallo said.
Despite that, another shooting happened on International Boulevard near 85th Avenue late Saturday night just before midnight. One person is in critical condition.
Another person is in critical condition after being shot on Webster Street near I-880 around 1:15 Sunday morning. Just 15 minutes later, a person was shot and killed on the I-580 off-ramp at Edwards Avenue.
Gallo says the city needs help.
"We just need more assistance from the highway patrol, the sheriff's department, and we just started bringing the FBI back into the City of Oakland."
Right now, the Oakland Police Officer's Association President Barry Donelan says the department only has 712 officers, which is shy of the 740 minimum they need to comfortably operate. In addition, they are working without their police chief.
"The sad answer to that question is pretty much all of us are used to it," Donelan said. "We just lost our 10th chief in 10 years, and it does not hamper the hard work and dedication that the officers have."
It's all because of the ways in which a jackpot winner can claim their prize.
Anyone lucky enough to win the Powerball jackpot, regardless of its size, has two options when it comes to claiming their winnings.
The first, and most common, is the cash option. That value is typically listed secondary to the advertised, estimated jackpot. For example, the record-setting Powerball jackpot was advertised as being $2.04 billion while its cash value was $997.6 million.
According to Powerball, that cash value has to do with the second prize-claiming option: the annuity option, which gives the winner 30 graduated payments, which increase by 5% annually, over 29 years.
The cash value listed for the jackpot is, generally, "the amount of money required to be in the jackpot prize pool, on the day of the drawing, to fund the estimated jackpot annuity prize," Powerball officials explain. So, during the last major Powerball jackpot run, officials determined $997.6 million was necessary to pay the winner $2.04 billion over 29 years if they selected the annuity option.
"There is no $2.04 billion sitting around, that money does not exist. What exists is that lump sum," Carolyn Becker, deputy director of public affairs and communications for the California Lottery, told Nexstar last month. That lump sum is fueled by ticket sales, which, along with the annuity factor, is crucial in determining the jackpot's estimated size.
According to Powerball, the annuity factor is calculated based on the interest rates for securities - U.S. Treasury bonds - that are purchased to fund the annuity prize payments. Higher interest rates, like those we've seen in recent months, allow the advertised jackpot prize to climb.
The difference between the cash and annuity options isn't limited to Powerball - Mega Millions functions the same way. The winner of the $1.35 billion Mega Millions jackpot hit by a single ticket sold in Maine last month also opted for the cash option when they came forward, giving them a slightly smaller prize of $723 million before taxes.
Though the annuity option will, eventually, end up being a bigger payout than the cash option, most jackpot winners select the lump sum payments. Some financial advisers say that might be a mistake.
While the winner of the $2.04 billion jackpot isn't walking away a billionaire, he has received the largest cash payout in Powerball history, according to game records.
Powerball is played in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Drawings are held every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, and your odds of landing the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million.
DALY CITY, Calif. (BCN) -- A 24-year-old man was rescued by a U.S. Coast Guard air crew after becoming stranded on rocks below a Daly City cliffside on Sunday morning, a Coast Guard spokesperson said.
The Coast Guard received a call directly from the stranded man at 4:24 a.m., after he was unable to connect with 911 dispatchers. He had been stuck for about 45 minutes, according to Lt. Christopher Payne.
The Coast Guard relayed the call to the North County Fire Authority, which covers parts of San Mateo County including Daly City.
Firefighters responded to the scene and requested the assistance of a helicopter after assessing the man's location on the rocks at Mussel Rock Park Beach, Payne said. The Fire Authority tweeted that the rescue was ongoing at 6:08 a.m.
A Coast Guard MH-65 Dolphin was sent from Coast Guard Station San Francisco to retrieve the man, who was rescued by a hoist operation. The man was flown to Coast Guard Air Station San Francisco, according to Payne. (Photo: NCFA)
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He was being medically evaluated, according to a statement from the North County Fire Authority, which said the operation was successful by 7:08 a.m.
DALY CITY, Calif. (KRON) -- Two collisions involving multiple vehicles occurred early Sunday morning, according to the North County Fire Authority.
Two accidents occurred on southbound Highway 280, south of John Daly Boulevard, around 3 a.m. According to the California Highway Patrol, a dark colored car collided with a white SUV.
The second collision occurred with a white SUV, grey sedan and red Toyota Prius. Around four cars are blocking two southbound lanes, CHP said.
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North County Fire advises drivers to avoid the area. A tow truck has been called.
SAN JOSE, Calif. (BCN) -- San Jose officials have a message for street vendors: report any attacks, because the city is listening.
San Jose's Latino councilmembers and a coalition of a dozen local advocates gathered Thursday to reassert their commitment to protect street vendors and highlighted services available to them following recent attacks on two vendors near downtown.
"Street vendors are honest, hardworking members of our community. And as such, we will continue to do right by them advocating for their safety, protection and freedom to work," Vice Mayor Rosemary Kamei said. "I would like to urge you to always report to the police department if you're a victim, regardless of immigration status."
Kamei, along with Councilmembers Omar Torres, Domingo Candelas and Peter Ortiz, worry vendors are not reporting attacks because of fears related to immigration status or whether they've obtained the necessary permits to legally operate.
Councilmembers attempted to soothe these fears by reassuring residents that officers do not ask about citizenship status. Torres said he and other councilmembers are exploring options such as providing assistance to pay for permits or restitution for vendors who have been affected.
The first attack occurred last Thursday. Hot dog vendor Saul Reconco was brutally beaten outside the SAP Center after he refused to give a customer free food. The suspect was caught on camera kicking Recono while he was face-down on the floor. He was hospitalized with a fractured nose, three loose teeth and a bruised eye and face.
Vendor Carlos Sanchez was attacked just a few days later by an auto parts employee who ordered Sanchez to leave the property outside the auto business on Old Bayshore Highway. The suspect, Kintex Ho, is facing charges of assault with a deadly weapon and attempted carjacking.
Video shows Ho striking Sanchez's barbecue grill with a baseball bat before turning to attack Sanchez. He then climbed inside Sanchez's pickup truck in an attempt to move it before confronting Sanchez again and hitting him with the bat.
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Torres said councilmembers are hoping to create a city policy that makes it safer for vendors to operate and provide a better process for vendors to come forward to report an attack. The policy is still in the early stages of brainstorming, Torres said.
"We want vendors to know the city is there to protect them and also offer them services if they unfortunately get attacked," Torres told San Jose Spotlight. "Policy is going to be about connecting the dots and not operating in silos... working with the police department and nonprofits."
With the most national and state parks in America, California has no shortage of desirable places to pitch a tent and spend an evening under the stars.
But one campground in particular is the hardest to reserve in the state, and one of the most competitive bookings in the country.
Camping website The Dyrt looked into the most hard-to-book campgrounds in America and found that some of the most sought-after campgrounds are fully booked around the clock.
"Camping’s popularity is at an all-time high," the website says. "More than 80 million Americans went camping last year, and 58.4 percent of campers surveyed in the 2023 Camping Report said they had difficulty finding a campsite to book because all reservations were taken."
For Californians looking to reserve a spot in the Inyo National Forest, you'll have to cross your fingers and say a prayer if you want to secure one highly coveted campsite.
The Twin Lakes Campground near Mammoth Lakes is the hardest-to-book campground in California and the ninth most difficult in the nation.
The campground offers 94 camping spots for tents and RVs, but they are fully booked 97.2% of the year, according to The Dyrt.
Twin Lakes is particularly popular due to its amenities, including fishing, boating and waterfall views, as well as its close proximity to Mammoth Lakes.
Reviews compiled by the website include reports of bald eagle sightings, excellent fishing, quality hiking trails and breathtaking views.
Although Twin Lakes is the most sought-after spot in California, it didn't even crack the top five in the nation.
The top two spots both go to campgrounds located in America's first park: Yellowstone.
The Slough Creek Campground in Yellowstone is the hardest campground to book in the nation. The National Park Services says the campground offers some of the best wildlife watching opportunities in the park, beautiful clear views of the night sky and the chance to hear some howling wolves. There are only 16 campsites available at Slough Creek.
In second place is Mammoth Campground, the only campground at Yellowstone that is open year-round. Located just five miles south of the park's North Entrance near Mammoth Hot Springs, the campground is close to fishing and hiking trails and offers great opportunities to view some of the park's famous bison and elk.
Both Slough Creek and Mammoth campgrounds are fully booked 100% of the year, the website says.
And if you want to try your luck and hope for a cancellation to book one of these highly sought campsites, The Dyrt offers alerts to let you know when a campground is available.
PETALUMA, Calif. (KRON) -- Many cities in Sonoma County are experiencing freezing cold temperatures, along with rain Thursday night. That is often when the need for shelter for the unhoused becomes dire.
A shelter in Petaluma called COTS has a warming center on cold nights.
It has also found success in providing tiny homes with several resources to get people into permanent housing. KRON4 spent some time there to learn about the work being done.
On a rainy and freezing night, COTS Mary Isaak Center tries to make extra room for people in need of warm shelter.
"When it rains it's problematic," COTS Director of Shelter Services Robin Phoenix said. "We do have the ability to close half our dining room off and serve three to a dozen people. It's helpful, but it's not enough."
COTS is always running at max capacity, providing shelter to more than 150 unhoused people. There are 25 tiny homes on the property called the People's Village.
The shelter also provides 70,000 hot meals a year. The people who stay here have often been unhoused for many years.
Stacie Questoni manages the People's Village. She says the key to getting people off the streets is providing resources.
"Case management, social support, art teacher, we have a legal aid is here, job link -- all things to make sure these people are successful," Questoni said.
The tiny homes opened last March, Questoni says they have learned it takes time to get people back on their feet.
"They need more than six months, a long amount of time to sometimes just learn how to shower, clean their homes," she said.
COTS is a low-barrier shelter, meaning they don't have to be sober to live there. But, there are addiction services like AA.
"People getting sober and decreasing their intake are the ones getting housed," Questoni said.
The shelter has put eight people into permanent housing since March. COTS also has a recuperative care unit -- currently with six beds. The unit is often full, so the program is expanding to 20 beds this year.
"It's been a blessing, I would be right back on the street," said one COTS client Buck Smith.
The shelter helps people like Smith who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
"It's very overwhelming. They keep my appointments organized; they pick up my medicines for me. Give me rides to and from the doctors. They are very very supportive."
It's the feeling of being supported and cared for that makes a difference between someone wanting to get off the streets permanently, which will be Smith soon.
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"I'm blessed to be here, I'm grateful to be here. I was born and raised in this town, and I'm proud we have this place," Smith said.
COTS has an annual budget of $8 million. The money comes from the city, Sonoma County, foundations and donors. Management hopes to continue to expand and to be a role model for other Bay Area cities.
"We are here to recognize them as human beings, give them dignity and lead them to housing," Phoenix said.
(NEXSTAR) – Regular customers at In-N Out may have noticed something missing from the offerings at their favorite burger joint, and it’s leaving some customers fired up — or rather, not-so-fired-up.
“We apologize for any disappointment, but unfortunately there is a widespread shortage of the whole cascabella chilies that we traditionally offer,” a representative for In-N-Out confirmed in an emailed statement to Nexstar. “In the meantime, we have hot banana pepper rings available as a substitution.”
The little yellow-green peppers have been out of stock for “a couple of months now,” according to SFGATE, which broke the news of In-N-Out’s efforts to replenish the peppers in an article published earlier this week.
Indeed, a Reddit user who claimed to be employed at In-N-Out had warned of the pepper shortage in mid-December, alleging that restaurants were only serving what was left of their “stockpiles" at the time.
Others likened the current shortage to a similar supply-chain issue in 2016 and 2017, when the peppers were scarce (and even rationed) amid what In-N-Out called an “industry-wide” crop shortage, Foodbeast reported at the time.
“My [store manager] was talking about the 2017 shortage and [said] that people were going crazy,” one Reddit user claimed, after earlier writing that customers were generally pretty understanding in recent months.
“Maybe people now are used to shortages because of the pandemic and they aren't caring too much.”
In any case, In-N-Out has likely fielded at least a few complaints from heated customers, some of whom took to Twitter to lament the lack of their preferred peppers.
“We appreciate our Customers’ concern," In-N-Out’s representative said, "and we hope to have our standard cascabella chilies available again in the spring."
(KTXL) — Millions of tourists flock to California each year to visit the Golden Gate Bridge, Hollywood Sign and other attractions, but when the next massive earthquake happens which landmarks are located in the most vulnerable sites?
When it comes to the risk of damage, Don Drysdale from the Department of Conservation and California Geological Survey highlighted the following factors:
•How close the earthquake is centered to a landmark
•How large the earthquake is
•How well-built the structure is
•What the underlying soil conditions are like
Are California landmarks located near fault lines?
Some of California's long-standing landmarks – including the Griffith Observatory, the Hollywood Sign and the Golden Gate Bridge – are more at risk than others.
According to Drysdale, the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles is north of the Hollywood Fault, as is the iconic Hollywood sign. The Hollywood Fault is capable of generating an earthquake with a magnitude of 7, Drysdale said.
The Hollywood Sign is also considered part of a CGS Seismic Hazard Zone because of its hillside location in an area prone to earthquake-induced landslides. The CGS Seismic Hazard Zones are areas that are especially prone to "earthquake hazards of liquefaction (failure of water-saturated soil), earthquake-induced landslides and amplified ground shaking."
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is located seven miles west of its own major fault line – the San Andreas, which caused the massive 1906 earthquake. The deadly quake, with the epicenter two miles west of San Francisco, registered a magnitude of 7.8. The Golden Gage Bridge didn't exist at the time of the earthquake – construction would begin 27 years later.
As for the State Capitol in Sacramento, it's not near any known faults, as the Hayward Fault, which runs north to south along the East Bay, is the closest to California's capital city.
Are any California stadiums at risk of an earthquake?
The 1989 Loma Prieta quake temporarily halted the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics. The earthquake struck before Game 3 at Candlestick Park, the former home of the Giants and San Francisco 49ers.
“In the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, centered much closer to Santa Cruz than to San Francisco; a portion of the Bay Bridge collapsed,” Drysdale wrote in an email to Nexstar's KTXL. “That was a magnitude 6.9 quake, certainly powerful, but not the largest expected on the San Andreas Fault.”
According to the Department of Conservation, the earthquake took the lives of 63 people, 3,757 more people were reported injured and 12,053 more were displaced. The Bay Bridge was unusable for a month; 18,306 houses were damaged and 963 were destroyed.
General view of the Marina district disaster zone after an earthquake, measuring 7.1 on the richter scale, rocks game three of the World Series between the Oakland A's and San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park on October 17, 1989 in San Francisco, California. Despite some discussion to cancel, baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent agrees to allow the series to continue. Play resumed October 25, and the A's go on to sweep the Giants in four games. (Photo by Otto Greule Jr /Getty Images)
The 1989 World Series series resumed on Oct. 27. The original east span of the Bay Bridge that was damaged in the quake was repaired, but was replaced for seismic safety. The replacement was completed on Sept. 2, 2013, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Giants’ current stadium, Oracle Park, is just a few miles from where Candlestick Park once stood.
“Across the Bay, the Hayward Fault runs under Memorial Stadium in UC Berkeley, same for the Chase Center, where the Warriors play,” Drysdale said. “The Oakland Coliseum and Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara are just west of the Hayward Fault.”
Stadiums in Southern California are also located either under or near fault lines. In Los Angeles, the Elysian Park Fault is under Dodger Stadium and the Memorial Coliseum is close to the Puente Hills Fault, Drysdale said.
The Rose Bowl is a little north of the Verdugo Fault while SoFi Stadium is west of the Newport-Inglewood Fault, according to Drysdale.
What happens if a massive quake hits California?
The San Andreas Fault poses a threat in the northern and southern portions of California. Experts say a 7.8 earthquake in Southern California could have a death toll among the worst for a natural disaster in the U.S. at 1,800, according to a 2008 projection.
About 50,000 people could be injured as the main freeways to Las Vegas and Phoenix that cross the San Andreas fault would be destroyed, according to the study from the United States Geological Survey.
In Northern California, the San Andreas fault produced the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco that killed an estimated 3,000 people and displaced 225,000 more. That earthquake is the second-largest recorded in the state at a magnitude of 7.8, according to the Department of Conservation.
"These numbers are as low as they are because of aggressive retrofitting programs that have increased the seismic resistance of buildings, highways and lifelines, and economic resiliency," scientists noted in 2008. "These numbers are as large as they are because much more retrofitting could still be done."
The largest recorded in California was in Fort Tejon on Jan. 9, 1857 with a magnitude of 7.9. That earthquake also occurred on the San Andreas Fault.
A sign posted at the San Andreas Fault, separating the Pacific and the North American tectonic plates near Parkfield, California on July 12, 2019 in a remote part of California but one of the most heavily studied quake areas in the world. - In a state full of earthquake fault lines, the San Andreas Fault is perhaps California's most famous, extending some 1,200 kilometers through the State forming the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate, which is moving to the northwest at 3 inches each year and the North American Plate, heading south at about 1 inch per year. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) (Photo credit should read FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
The East Bay is also at risk of a large earthquake with the Hayward Fault, which is 52 miles and centered below Oakland.
According to a 2018 report from the U.S. Geological Survey,at least 800 people could be killed and 18,000 more could be injured in a magnitude 7 earthquake along the fault. A quake of that magnitude could also cause a fire, potentially killing hundreds more people and burning the equivalent of 52,000 single-family homes.
The magnitude of an earthquake is expressed in whole numbers and decimal fractions and the sizes vary. A magnitude 5.3 earthquake is considered moderate, while 6.3 is a strong earthquake, according to the USGS.
