Monday, December 7, 2020

12-7: Winds return to Southern California Monday, along with heightened fire risk; Bracing for an eviction tsunami; Remote learning widens the equity gap; Feminism lives; DACA restored

✅ As OC Bond Fire Evacuations End, Residents Call Out Failures in Wildfire Emergency Communications
 
—Voice of OC 
     ….In addition to the communication challenges, residents also pointed out how crippling it was for many to be without any power. 
     Southern California Edison cut out the region’s electricity earlier Wednesday night following red flag warnings in the area due to high winds, but residents say that move could have cost lives. 
     In Silverado, Williams and Modjeska Canyons, the primary areas evacuated due to the fire, cell phone reception is spotty at best according to residents, and the loss of power stopped any notices from going out to home phones or other devices dependent on wifi. 
     “My family, which has landlines as well as cell phones, were able to receive official evacuation notices only after we left the canyon,” said one anonymous comment submitted to OCFA online. “The notices had been sent much earlier, but we had no idea.” 
     During Sunday’s public conference, one man began to cry as he shared that his home was one of the 11 that burned to the ground and that he didn’t have a way to call in the fire. 
     “You guys all did a great job…but if we would have been able to call 911 and had a response from anywhere, I don’t care if it was Chicago, we might have saved the house,” he said. “Something really needs to be done. We could have had dead people all over the place. I built my house 40 years ago, I loved it. There’s nothing there but ash.” 
     “It’s not your guys fault, but it’s somebody’s fault that there’s no communication out there when this happens. The county is putting 2-3,000 people in Silverado, putting their life in jeopardy, if they are out there and there’s no way to know anything.”…. 
     “I also just want to reiterate how vulnerable we are when that power goes off,” [resident Sarah] Nightingale said. “At some point the risk of turning the power off to our homes becomes less of a risk than having a whole community of people who run generators…our inability to communicate with each other when something goes wrong. The inability to call 911 or to check in on elderly neighbors, or to call in a fire hotspot that may have arisen 
     No representative from Edison came to either conference, and fire officials repeatedly said they could not address the decisions behind cutting power to the affected areas…. 

—OC Reg 

A homeowner discovered the human remains while doing yardwork in February. 
—OC Reg 

✅ How California renters are bracing for an eviction tsunami -- Two million Californians could be forced from their rental homes early next year, and the bad omens are happening now, all around them. Nigel Duara CalMatters -- 12/7/20 

✅ Police Drones Are Starting to Think for Themselves -- When the Chula Vista police receive a 911 call, they can dispatch a flying drone with the press of a button. Cade Metz in the New York Times$ -- 12/7/20 

—Inside Higher Ed 
     A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to begin accepting new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and otherwise restore the program to the form it took prior to Sept. 5, 2017, the day the administration announced plans to end the program. 
     The Supreme Court ruled in June to vacate President Trump’s decision to end DACA, which provides protection against deportation and work authorization to certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, including many current and former college students. 
     Rather than reinstate the program following the Supreme Court ruling, Chad Wolf, acting in his capacity as acting secretary of homeland security, issued a memo in July curbing DACA, reducing the term for renewals from two years to one and saying the administration would not accept any new applications. 
     But U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis ruled Nov. 14 that Wolf “was not lawfully serving as acting secretary of homeland security under the Homeland Security Act” at the time he issued the memo, rendering the memo void. Judge Garaufis noted that the Government Accountability Office reported in August to Congress that Wolf was serving as acting secretary "by reference to an invalid order of succession."…. 
—Inside Higher Ed 
     Historical groups are suing the Trump administration to prevent the destruction of records before the end of Donald Trump’s term. 
     The National Security Archive, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the American Historical Association, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have joined in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia…. 

A mission to unearth forgotten female writers became a publishing house. It has risen and fallen with the tides of feminism, and it’s not going away. 
—NYT

—WashPo 

Frequent testing is the way to keep coronavirus from spreading on campus, but many colleges don't have the resources to handle the coming flood of coeds. 
—Politico

Today's OC Covid numbers


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