[californiadisasters] Flash Flood Warning - Inyo Co. (7/31/12-PM)
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN LAS VEGAS HAS ISSUED A * FLASH FLOOD WARNING FOR... SOUTH CENTRAL INYO COUNTY IN EASTERN CALIFORNIA... * UNTIL 1245 AM PDT. * AT 1048 PM PDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED VERY HEAVY RAIN FROM A THUNDERSTORM 30 MILES SOUTHEAST OF PANAMINT SPRINGS...OR 37 MILES NORTHEAST OF RIDGECREST...MOVING SOUTH AT 15 MPH. * LOCATIONS IMPACTED INCLUDE... PANAMINT SPRINGS...BAD WATER ROAD AND WARM SPRINGS CANYON IN DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... FLASH FLOODING IS EXPECTED IN WASHES...LOW WATER CROSSINGS AND ON AREA ROADWAYS. FLASH FLOODING IS NATURES NUMBER ONE KILLER. TO ESCAPE RISING WATER...MOVE TO HIGHER GROUND. NEVER TRY TO CROSS A FLOODED ROADWAY OR WALK THROUGH FLOODWATERS. TURN AROUND...DONT DROWN! REPORT FLOODING BY POSTING YOUR REPORT TO THE LAS VEGAS NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FACEBOOK PAGE...OR BY USING THE TWITTER HASHTAG... NWSVEGAS. && LAT...LON 3580 11682 3582 11761 3645 11750 3629 11676 $$ JA
Source: http://forecast.weather.gov/wwamap/wwatxtget.php?cwa=vef&wwa=flash%20flood%20warning
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[californiadisasters] North Ops News & Notes Update (7/31/12-6PM)
Date | Time | News and Notes |
7/31/2012 | 1815 | Light initial attack in the Geographic Area today; no new large fires reported (0600-1800). |
07/31/2012 | 1815 | CA-PNF Chips Fire. 1000 acres, 10% contained. At 1000 on 8/1/12, NorCal Team 1 (Whitcome) will assume command of this fire as a Branch, but still as a separate incident. |
07/31/2012 | 1815 | CA-PNF Peak Fire. 780 acres, 80% contained. Patroling and mopping up all divisions. |
07/31/2012 | 0644 | CA-PNF Chips Fire 400 acres 20% contained. Low afternoon humidities, diurnal wind shifts, roll out, snags, heavy fuel loading, steep innaccesable terrain continue to make firefighting difficult. |
07/31/2012 | 0644 | CA-PNF Peak Fire 780 acres, 30% contained. Fire is 15 miles NE of Portola. Unburned interior pockets with potential for additional tree torching and spotting, Gusty daytime and nighttime winds, very dry live fuel moistures, poor nighttime humidity recovery. |
07/31/2012 | 0644 | CA-MEU North Fire 385 acres 100% contained . |
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[californiadisasters] South Ops News & Notes Update (7/31/12-7:30PM)
Date | Time | News and Notes |
07/31 | 1930 | Light initial attack activity today. South Fire, CA-CND-002404, 271 acres, 90% contained. |
07/30 | 1930 | South Fire, CA-CND-002404, 271 acres, 70% contained.SQF and CND in Unified Command Central Sierra Type 2 IMT (Cooper) not deployed, but partially absorbed into Type 3 organization; the rest to be released. |
07/30 | 1430 | Starting to get some thunderstorm activity, lightning (wet) in Imperial & San Diego Counties. |
07/30 | 0800 | South Fire CA-CND-002404 South Alpine Way, Bodfish Myers Canyon & Bodfish Canyon 450 acres, 25% contained |
07/29 | 1700 | South Fire CA-CND-002404 South Alpine Way, Bodfish SRA/FRA 150 acres, 0% contained Fire started on SRA with 2/3rds of fire spread on BLM, Threat To FRA Moderate Rate of Spread. Sequoia NF Central Ordering point |
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[californiadisasters] PG&E Ignored Gaps in Data, Engineer Says
PG&E ignored gaps in data, engineer says
Jaxon Van Derbeken - San Francisco Chronicle
Published 09:33 p.m., Tuesday, July 31, 2012
A key Pacific Gas and Electric Co. gas engineer testified that he repeatedly told his bosses the company was relying on flawed data to vouch for the safety of its gas transmission lines before the San Bruno disaster, but that the utility took no steps to fix the problem.In a civil deposition that attorneys for 350 plaintiffs filed Tuesday in San Mateo County Superior Court, PG&E's Todd Arnett said gas-system managers had ignored his and other employees' concerns that the company was relying on incomplete and inaccurate records contained in its geographic information system.
"Over the years, I'd raised it to superiors and folks that may have known about that, to ensure that they had the same understanding of the quality of the data," Arnett said in his deposition taken in March.
"Weren't you concerned, sir, that because there were errors in the GIS survey sheets for PG&E, that people who lived along the pipeline could be exposed to death or injury?" asked Steven Campora, a lawyer who represented the family of a woman and her daughter who died in the blast.
"That general concern, yes," Arnett answered.
Ignorance called key factor
Federal investigators determined that a major factor in the explosion was PG&E's ignorance that its pipe had a seam running down the length of the line, which ruptured at an incomplete weld in San Bruno on Sept. 9, 2010. Such a seam would have been noted on an accurate geographic information system report, and if it had, PG&E would have been legally obligated to prove it was in good condition.
The explosion and fire killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes. PG&E settled the last of the wrongful-death suits stemming from the disaster last week, but 350 other suits filed by San Bruno residents have been consolidated and are scheduled to go to trial in October.
PG&E also faces hundreds of millions of dollars in potential regulatory fines for mishandling the San Bruno pipe, losing track of population growth around its gas lines, and maintaining shoddy records.
Arnett said he could not recall what, if anything, his superiors had said or done when he complained "a handful of times" about the record-keeping problem. The company's geographic information system is supposed to list details such as pipeline history and characteristics such as welds, strength and construction, but federal and state regulators found after the San Bruno disaster that it was filled with errors and information gaps.
"To your knowledge, after you expressed your concerns to your superiors, were there any changes in policy at PG&E about the use of the GIS system?" Campora asked.
"Not to my knowledge, no," Arnett replied.
Arnett also said other PG&E engineers had worried about making critical decisions about pipeline safety in light of the data gaps, which he said were "commonly known" in the company.
'A ton of errors,' e-mail says
At least one PG&E gas-system official, Bill Manegold, testified he had been aware of the problems since he joined the company in 2005. Chris Johns, PG&E's president, said in a deposition in June that he had been told only after the San Bruno blast that the geographic information system "could use some improvement."
Lawyers for victims and their families also pressed Arnett about a March 2009 internal e-mail referring to the flawed records for the San Bruno pipe, known as Line 132, and two parallel lines running from Milpitas to San Francisco, lines 101 and 109.
"There are a ton of errors in GIS for transmission lines 101, 109 and 132," said one e-mail, written by PG&E engineer Drew Kelly, who ultimately relied on those records in researching long-term management plans for Line 132.
Memo justified spiking
Arnett said that before he got that e-mail, he believed there might be "a few" problems with those lines.
After the blast, PG&E began a major project to validate the accuracy of the information about its transmission pipelines. Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board, however, still expressed alarm about the state of PG&E data as of August 2011.
Arnett was among the PG&E officials involved in spiking the gas pressure on Line 132 to just beyond the pipeline's legal maximum in December 2008, an action the company took in the mistaken belief that if it failed to do so, the line's federally approved limit would be reduced.
Arnett justified the action in a memo documenting the $45,000 expense for the spiking exercise. State regulators later concluded that the spiking should have legally required PG&E to check for damage to the pipeline, an inspection that might well have caught the fatally flawed San Bruno weld.
Financial considerations
Arnett concluded that spiking the pressure - to avoid a reduced maximum on the line and prospect of a forced inspection should gas levels accidentally surge past the lowered cap - would be "much less painful" than an inspection.
Arnett testified that he had been referring to the problems involved in taking a line out of service for an inspection, "as well as financial considerations that the consumers would pay for."
"Oh, so you're saying that it would be painful because the consumers are going to be stuck with the cost for PG&E to make sure the line is safe - is that right?" asked Frank Pitre, one of the lawyers in the case.
"I'm saying that the nature of our rates and costs were primarily passed on to the consumer," Arnett said.
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/PG-E-ignored-gaps-in-data-engineer-says-3752181.php--
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[californiadisasters] Cal Fire Losing Inmate Volunteers
Cal Fire losing inmate volunteers
Wyatt Buchanan - San Francisco Chronicle
Published 09:33 p.m., Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Sacramento --The number of state prison inmates available to perform crucial, labor-intensive tasks in battles against wildfires could soon drop dramatically, due to California's shift of low-level offenders from state prisons to county jails.
When wildfires ignite in California, some of the first crews on the scene are not state firefighters but inmates who undergo training to handle such jobs as creating containment lines.
There are more than 4,000 prisoners statewide trained for the work now, but prison officials said they expect that number to shrink by 1,500 by next June as inmates are sent to county jails instead of prison.
"They're able to provide a large workforce," said Daniel Berlant, spokesman for the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "Oftentimes we have just as many, if not more, inmate firefighters on the fire line than regular fire crews."
Inmates - distinguished by their orange protective clothing (Cal Fire firefighters wear yellow) - were a key force last month in containing the Robbers Fire, which burned 2,650 acres in a steep American River canyon northeast of Auburn (Placer County). The area was mostly inaccessible to large bulldozers and other equipment used to build fire lines.
Dropping large amounts of flame retardant was not an option because it would have ended up in the river, which flows into Folsom Lake, part of California's water system. So instead, much of the fire line work fell to more than 800 prisoners who used chain saws and hand tools to create a containment line in the rugged terrain.
The fire forced evacuations in the area and threatened 170 residences, but only one home and four outbuildings burned.
Realignment fallout
This week, more than 1,000 inmate firefighters are battling blazes in six counties, including Lake, Mendocino and Napa counties in Northern California.
But their availability is about to take a steep dive because of Gov. Jerry Brown's realignment program to reduce the number of state prisoners and cut costs by housing more inmates in county lockups.
State officials are discussing with sheriffs the creation of a system under which county inmates could shore up the loss, but so far there have been no agreements, said Dana Simas, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The state prisoners - nonviolent offenders who volunteer for the effort - stay in 42 conservation camps throughout California. They can be called up to fight blazes or respond to other emergencies at a moment's notice.
When they aren't fighting fires, the inmates do other tasks, such as clearing brush and vegetation to reduce fuel for a wildfire. They also perform community service such as restoring historic structures and maintaining parks.
For their work, they get paid about $1 per day, or $1 per hour when they are fighting fires.
Sticking point
The sticking point between Sacramento and the counties that are taking on the inmates has been the amount the state wants counties to pay to house them at the conservation camps. Although there has been no resolution, Simas said she expects that the reduced number of inmates available to fight fires to over the next year will change that.
"Once it finally comes up where it's an issue, then we're likely to see more progress," she said.
County sheriffs say that progress will have to come on the state's side, though.
Nevada County Sheriff Keith Royal, the president of the California State Sheriffs' Association, said sheriffs and state officials are drafting an agreement that would charge counties $46 per day for the state to house county inmates in the camps.
But Royal said he does not expect many sheriffs to participate in such a program, as sending four or five inmates per year to the camp would be equivalent to the cost of one correctional officer at the jail.
"I can speak for myself and a number of other sheriffs that I am close to that I'm not going to spend $46 a day to put somebody in a facility like a fire camp. I'd rather keep that money so I can keep my department funded and manage my population locally," he said.
He said realignment has put more inmates in county jails than originally estimated and that sheriffs statewide are struggling with those costs.
Still, Cal Fire officials are not yet contemplating how they will operate with a big drop in the number of crews available to battle wildfires.
"For us, we haven't looked at that option - what do we do with 1,500 less (firefighters) - the option is finding a solution," Berlant said.
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Cal-Fire-losing-inmate-volunteers-3752179.php--
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[californiadisasters] Moderate El Nino Forecast For This Winter
Moderate El Nino forecast for this winter
Written by Gary RobbinsSan Diego Union-Tribune
6 a.m., July 27, 2012
The National Weather Service says Southern California will experience a moderate El Nino this fall and winter, a change that's likely to produce above average rainfall. On average, moderate El Ninos produce about 17 inches of rain in San Diego, which is five inches above the seasonal average. But the impact of the natural and periodic climate change can vary greatly. The last moderate El Nino occurred in 2003, when San Diego recorded 10.6'' of rain. In 2005, there was a weak El Nino, and San Diego recorded 22.5 inches of rain.
Forecasters worry about El Nino, in part, because the phenomenon can produce stronger and more frequent Santa Ana winds. The Santa Anas usually don't hit San Diego County as hard as they do Orange County. But San Diego has been whipped hard by the Santa Anas, which have in turn spread many wildfires. The scenario is of special concern this year, says the weather service, because inland San Diego County is drier than normal. The Santa Anas typically hit the county's mid-section, from Vista and San Carlos down to the Campo area.
In addition to producing more rain and wind, an El Nino can also result in below average air temperatures during the fall and winter.
Source: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jul/27/moderate-el-nino-forecast-winter/--
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