EAST COUNTY ROUNDUP: LOCAL AND STATEWIDE NEWS

October 30, 2019 (San Diego’s East County) -- East County Roundup highlights top stories of interest to East County and San Diego’s inland regions, published in other media. This week’s top “Roundup” headlines include:

LOCAL

• 'More Than a Meal': Meals on Wheels Helps San Diego Seniors Amid Fire Watch (NBC 7)
• El Cajon’s pension numbers are bleak (Voice of San Diego)
• California regulators approve funding for controversial wildfire law (San Diego Union-Tribune)
• CA Allocates Funding To Cities, Counties Affected By Shutoffs (Patch.com)
• PG&E Blasted For Not Being More Like SDG&E In Managing Power Shutoffs, But Is The Comparison Fair? (KPBS)
• San Diego County will help low-income residents buy electric vehicles (San Diego Union-Tribune)

STATE

• From Simi Valley to wine country, extreme winds and explosive fires maintain hold on California (Los Angeles Times)
• Climate change is contributing to California’s fires (National Geographic)
• Newsom announces $75 million program to help California cities prepare for PG&E blackouts (McClatchy News)
• ‘Life or death:’ Cell service outage could mean fire alerts don't go through (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Getty fire spreads in elite enclaves, a celebrity-studded spectacle of L.A.’s inherent dangers (Los Angeles Times) 
• Kincaid Fire spreads to 118 square miles (San Francisco Chronicle)

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

LOCAL

'More Than a Meal': Meals on Wheels Helps San Diego Seniors Amid Fire Watch (NBC 7)

an effort to prevent more wildfires amid hazardous Santa Ana conditions, San Diego Gas and Electric cut power to tens of thousands of customers -- but for the county’s seniors, outages are more than inconvenient, they’re dangerous…. une Kaufman, 78, lives in Alpine where the strong winds blew out one of her windows, leaving her in the cold and in dark during the safety outages. Meals on Wheel delivered a radio and blanket to Kaufman, as well as food.

El Cajon’s pension numbers are bleak (Voice of San Diego)

The California auditor says El Cajon is at risk of financial distress, with one of the highest pension obligation risks in the state.

Maya Srikrishnan and Ashly McGlone crunched the numbers and found that in fiscal year 2016-16, the East County city owed roughly $493 million to its workers’ retirement accounts. There was a $174 million gap between the city’s pension assets and its pension liability, and it’s only going up.

California regulators approve funding for controversial wildfire law (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Assembly Bill 1054 creates a $21 billion fund for fires caused by utility equipment

CA Allocates Funding To Cities, Counties Affected By Shutoffs (Patch.com)

San Diego is one of four cities in the state that will receive $500,000 in state funding to support residents affected by power shutoffs.

PG&E Blasted For Not Being More Like SDG&E In Managing Power Shutoffs, But Is The Comparison Fair? (KPBS)

Local critics argue SDG&E should not be put on a pedestal so quickly and the comparison is not equal.

San Diego County will help low-income residents buy electric vehicles (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Through state-funded Clean Cars 4 All program qualified residents could receive $5,000 to $9,500 to replace their vehicles

STATE

From Simi Valley to wine country, extreme winds and explosive fires maintain hold on California (Los Angeles Times)

Buffeted by unusually strong winds, brush fires broke out across Southern California on Wednesday, sending thousands of people fleeing, closing major freeways and threatening the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library... As the day wore on and the winds howled, more than a dozen other smaller fires erupted in communities including Riverside, Santa Clarita, Brea, Whittier, Lancaster, Calabasas, Long Beach, Nuevo and Jurupa Valley.The outlook was brighter in Northern California, where thousands of evacuees began to return home as firefighters started to gain the upper hand on the wine country blaze that has scorched more than 76,000 acres and burned dozens of homes. 

Climate change is contributing to California’s fires (National Geographic)

… Over the past century, California has warmed by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit, more than the global average of about one degree Fahrenheit. Hotter air draws water out of plants and soils more efficiently than cool, leaving the trees, shrubs, and rolling grasslands of the state dry and primed to burn. Crucially, that effect increases exponentially with every degree of warming, explains Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. That means that today’s hotter, climate-changed air is much more effective at drying vegetation to a crackle than it was 100 years ago.

Newsom announces $75 million program to help California cities prepare for PG&E blackouts (McClatchy News)

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a $75 million program on Friday to help local governments deal with the precautionary power shut offs that are likely to grow more frequent as the troubled PG&E utility attempts to limit its liability during fire conditions.

‘Life or death:’ Cell service outage could mean fire alerts don't go through (San Francisco Chronicle)

 Without cell service, signing up for emergency wildfire evacuation notices or getting backup chargers to keep phones going during a power outage is useless. Some customers were also without television and internet over the last few days, losing other vital links. Even radio stations, a low-tech resource during crises, went down as PG&E cut the power. 

Getty fire spreads in elite enclaves, a celebrity-studded spectacle of L.A.’s inherent dangers (Los Angeles Times) 

The cantilevered palaces of Los Angeles’ elite were under siege. “Apocalypse bags” were packed. LeBron James fled with his family and couldn’t find a hotel room. News copters filmed the fire copters, as drivers on the 405 Freeway sailed through the fiery vortex and lived to Instagram it.

Kincaid Fire spreads to 118 square miles (San Francisco Chronicle)

Cal Fire officials said Tuesday morning the Kincade Fire in north Sonoma County gained another 1,000 acres overnight. The fire is now 118 square miles, more than twice the size of the city of San Francisco. While firefighters were able to limit spread overnight, the containment remains at 15%...The fire, which has grown to 74,324 acres, has destroyed 123 structures, 57 of those homes, and is threatening 90,000 structures.