Important Takeaways:
- One of the worst environmental and public health crises in America is happening right now in Southern California
- Over the past five years, more than 100 billion gallons of raw sewage, industrial waste and toxic runoff from Tijuana have flooded across the border into our communities. Let that sink in: 100 billion gallons. In 2023 alone, 44 billion gallons crossed into the U.S. — the most ever recorded.
- This sewage isn’t just disgusting — it’s dangerous. It contains E. coli, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, arsenic and other toxic chemicals. Our water is contaminated. Our air is polluted with aerosolized waste. Residents are reporting everything from skin infections to viral pharyngitis — and even family pets have gotten sick after exposure. And some beaches have now been closed for over 1,000 consecutive days. That’s nearly three years of lost access to one of the greatest natural assets in America.
- Millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent. Just like the homelessness crisis, we’ve seen government throw money at the problem with nothing to show for it. The pollution keeps coming. The promises keep breaking. The leadership keeps failing.
- Let’s be honest: Mexico has failed to fix this, and the United States has failed to hold them accountable. Across multiple administrations, we’ve seen weak oversight, delayed action and zero results. That must end.
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Important Takeaways:
- Southern California is getting ready for another weather extreme this week, after already dealing with devastating winds and several storms this year.
- “Later this week, we’re looking at temperatures 10 to 15, even 20 degrees above normal,” KTLA’s Kirk Hawkins said Monday.
- Afternoon highs will be above normal on Monday but the hottest temperatures will arrive midweek.
- Coast and valley areas, except for the beaches, will see highs top out in the 80s and lower 90s, according to the Weather Service.
- Gusty winds, possibly reaching advisory levels, are also expected late Tuesday into Wednesday.
- The ridge will push to the east on Thursday allowing a cooling trend to return and accelerate into the weekend.
- Forecasters are even calling for a chance of light rain to develop across the weekend. There is a 30% to 40% of rain arriving on Sunday, according to the Weather Service.
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Important Takeaways:
- Roads remained closed throughout Southern California on Friday following an atmospheric river that triggered rounds of evacuations and closures as it unleashed damaging mudslides in the fire-ravaged region.
- Multiple mudslides and flash floods were reported through Thursday night. In the Los Angeles area, mud and debris covered several major roads including the Pacific Coast Highway near Pacific Palisades and Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills.
- High winds tore through a mobile home community in Oxnard, about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles, damaging at least 12 homes, many with entire walls and roofs shredded and torn off. The damage could have been caused by a waterspout that came onshore as a weak tornado, said Joe Sirard, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Oxnard. Winds in the area were recorded at speeds of 50 mph.
- Evacuations warnings and orders were issued in multiple counties, though the majority occurred in the Los Angeles area where the worst of the wildfires broke out last month. By late Thursday, the National Weather Service lifted all rain-related weather advisories in the region, but officials warned that “mud and rockslides can still happen even after the rainfall has stopped.”
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Important Takeaways:
- After a much quieter weekend, Southern California is experiencing a major shift in the weather pattern. The winds will peak Monday evening and overnight but extend into Tuesday morning.
- Destructive Santa Ana winds, forecast to gust up to 100 mph, are poised to grip the region on Monday, igniting fears of widespread and uncontrollable wildfires, the FOX Forecast Center noted.
- This comes as more than 14,000 structures have been destroyed since Jan. 7 in the Palisades and Eaton fires, leading to the event being labeled as one of the costliest disasters in U.S. history. The Palisades Fire has burned nearly 24,000 acres and is 56% contained. The Eaton Fire has burned over 14,000 acres and is 81% contained.
- “With Santa Ana winds back in the forecast, that is a concern,” FOX Weather Meteorologist Craig Herrera said. “Containment, a reminder, means they’ve surrounded the fire. But with winds returning, some of those embers can jump some of those fire lines, and they’ve got to be careful with this.”
- Between noon on Monday and Tuesday at 10 a.m., the National Weather Service issued a “Particularly Dangerous Situation” Fire Weather Warning for a large portion of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
- “Take action now to prepare your home and loved ones for another round of EXTREME WIND and FIRE WEATHER,” the agency warned on X
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Important Takeaways:
- Wildfires began breaking out in Southern California Tuesday morning as a life-threatening, widespread windstorm that could be one of the most destructive to hit the region in over a decade roars to life and creates extremely dangerous fire weather conditions.
- At least two fires broke out in the Los Angeles area as winds increased. The largest one, the Palisades Fire, quickly grew to 200 acres near Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
- The area is under a rare, “particularly dangerous situation” red flag warning, the most dire such warning issued by the National Weather Service, for a high risk for dangerous fire weather conditions Tuesday afternoon until Wednesday afternoon for most of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties.
- “Widespread damaging winds and low humidities will likely cause fire starts to rapidly grow in size with extreme fire behavior,” the NWS warned, something fire officials echoed on Tuesday once fires broke out.
- “If we don’t catch these (fires) within the first 20 minutes, it can go hundreds of acres very quickly and can lead to significant evacuations,” Capt. Erik Scott, LAFD PIO told CNN affiliate KABC.
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Important Takeaways:
- A fast-moving wildfire fueled by heavy winds was tearing through a community northwest of Los Angeles for a second day Thursday after destroying dozens of homes and forcing thousands of residents to flee when it exploded in size in only a few hours.
- The Mountain Fire prompted evacuation orders Wednesday for more than 10,000 people as it threatened 3,500 structures in suburban communities, ranches and agricultural areas around Camarillo, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
- The fire was at 0% containment late Wednesday, according to the Ventura County Fire Department.
- Officials in several Southern California counties urged residents to be on watch for fast-spreading blazes, power outages and downed trees amid the latest round of notorious Santa Ana winds.
- The Mountain Fire was burning in a region that has seen some of California’s most destructive fires over the years.
- The fire grew from less than half of a square mile to more than 16 square miles in little more than five hours.
- First responders pleaded with residents to evacuate. Deputies made contact with 14,000 people to urge them to leave as embers spread for miles and sparked new flames.
- Meanwhile to the south, Los Angeles County Fire Department crews were scrambling to contain a wildfire near Malibu’s Broad Beach as authorities briefly shut down the Pacific Coast Highway as flames burned near multimillion-dollar properties.
- Residents were urged to shelter in place while aircraft dropped water on the 50-acre Broad Fire.
- By late Wednesday, the fire was at 60% containment and its forward progress was stopped, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said in a statement. Fire officials said two structures burned.
- With predicted gusts up to 50 mph and humidity levels as low as 9%, parts of Southern California could experience conditions ripe for “extreme and life-threatening” fire behavior into Thursday, the weather service said. Wind gusts topped 61 mph on Wednesday.
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Important Takeaways:
- A magnitude 5.2 earthquake near Bakersfield on Tuesday night rattled much of Southern California, including parts of the Los Angeles metro, and was followed by dozens of aftershocks.
- According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the initial 5.2-magnitude quake struck at 9:09 p.m. PT, some 14 miles southwest of Lamont, California, in Kern County, at a depth of about 7.3 miles. Some residents of the Los Angeles area reported the shaking nearly 90 miles away.
- The USGS recorded more than 50 aftershocks in the hours following Tuesday night’s earthquake, ranging in magnitude from 2.5 to 4.5.
- Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced late Tuesday night that no injuries or damage were reported on the city level, according to FOX 11.
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Important Takeaways:
- Southern California was recently rattled by several small earthquakes. They produced minor shaking but nonetheless left psychological aftershocks in a region whose seismic vulnerabilities are matched by our willingness to put the dangers out of our minds.
- For many, it all added to one question: Is this the beginning of something bigger?
- First, a magnitude 3.6 earthquake in the Ojai Valley sent weak shaking from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles on May 31. Then came two small quakes under the eastern L.A. neighborhood of El Sereno, the most powerful a 3.4. Finally, a trio of tremors hit the Costa Mesa-Newport Beach border, topping out at a magnitude 3.6 Thursday.
- Having half a dozen earthquakes with a magnitude over 2.5 in a week, hitting three distinct parts of Southern California, all in highly populated areas, is not a common occurrence.
- But experts say these smaller quakes have no predictive power over the next major, destructive earthquake in urban Southern California, the last of which came 30 years ago.
- Generally speaking, there is a 1 in 20 chance any earthquake in California will be followed by one that’s larger, said Susan Hough, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Those odds aren’t high, and typically, the subsequent, larger quake would occur in the same area within a week. Plus, if something bigger did happen, the odds are a new temblor would be only a little bigger, Hough said.
- In contrast, last week’s earthquakes highlighted nearby fault systems directly under our most populated cities and could produce even worse death tolls than a San Andreas megaquake, targeting our oldest neighborhoods with many unretrofitted buildings when they rupture.
- “All three sets of these earthquakes occurred near large, potentially dangerous faults,” said James Dolan, an earth sciences professor at USC. “The L.A. urban fault network has been in a seismic lull for the entire historic period, and this lull likely extends back on the order of the last 1,000 years. We know at some point this lull we’re in will end.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Two sets of earthquake swarms have hit California. What’s going on along the Mexico border?
- Another earthquake swarm has been rumbling along the California-Mexico border.
- More than two dozen quakes greater than magnitude 2.5 have occurred since just after midnight Saturday, with epicenters about 175 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles and 100 miles northeast of San Diego, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
- They have occurred largely along farmland between the towns of Brawley and Imperial in Imperial County. The largest quake was a magnitude 3.9 that struck at 4:05 p.m. Saturday, bringing light shaking to the Imperial Valley as well as south of the border and rattling Mexicali.
- An even larger earthquake — a magnitude 4.1 — occurred at 5:17 a.m. Monday about 28 miles northwest of the swarm that began Saturday.
- The epicenter of that quake was in a remote desert area east of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, and weak shaking was felt as far away as San Diego, parts of Orange County, Temecula, the Coachella Valley, El Centro and Holtville.
- A separate swarm of earthquakes occurred a week ago, about 40 miles southeast of the most recent quake activity. Last week’s swarm occurred about 18 miles southeast of Mexicali in Baja California, with the largest a magnitude 4.2 that was felt as far away as El Centro in California and Yuma, Ariz.
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Important Takeaways:
- A 4.5 magnitude earthquake hit southern California on Wednesday night, originating in San Bernardino and generating a shockwave that could be felt between Los Angeles and Palm Springs.
- No current damage has been reported out of the San Bernardino epicenter, which serves as home to Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear…
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