Westside Subway 101
January 29, 2010
It takes a while to plan a subway. So for those who want a cheat sheet to catch up with everything that’s happened so far in the plan to create a westward extension of the Purple Line, check out this list of frequently-asked questions just posted on the Metro site.
If you want a more up-close-and-personal tutorial, consider attending a brown bag lunchtime open house in Century City on Tuesday, Feb. 2, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. You will need to bring your own potato chips, but the transit talk and video presentation are free.
LA’s Haiti rescuers
January 29, 2010
Images of Haiti from returning heroes
The LA County Fire search and rescue team that was hailed for its heroics in Haiti is on its way home. For a look at some of what they encountered and accomplished, click through this gallery of photos the team sent home and posted on Facebook. The team is expected to arrive in L.A. later this afternoon.
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After Haiti, a red-carpet family reunion
Dad was in Haiti on a rescue mission, but the Pinewood Derby waits for no man. So 8-year-old Caden Wells finished building his little wooden car with relatives, christened it “USA” in honor of his father’s faraway search-and-rescue squad and raced it to a personal best third-place finish.
For the Wells family, life went on after Los Angeles County fire captain Bryan Wells shipped out for a 16-day tour of duty in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
But life was not the same.
For the families of the 72-member Los Angeles County Fire Urban Search and Rescue team that returned home to a hero’s welcome Thursday, the time away was measured in hope, prayer, worry, nightly conference calls—and kids counting the days till they could start hanging out with their dads again.
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READ RELATED HAITI NEWS
After Haiti, a red-carpet family reunion
January 29, 2010
Dad was in Haiti on a rescue mission, but the Pinewood Derby waits for no man. So 8-year-old Caden Wells finished building his little wooden car with relatives, christened it “USA” in honor of his father’s faraway search-and-rescue squad and raced it to a personal best third-place finish.
For the Wells family, life went on after Los Angeles County fire captain Bryan Wells shipped out for a 16-day tour of duty in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
But life was not the same.
For the families of the 72-member Los Angeles County Fire Urban Search and Rescue team that returned home to a hero’s welcome Thursday, the time away was measured in hope, prayer, worry, nightly conference calls—and kids counting the days till they could start hanging out with their dads again.
Caden, along with his mom, Tara, and the rest of the family—Brady, 6, Nathan, 4, and baby Ellie—was in the crowd of 300 that greeted the returning squad at the department’s Technical Operations center in Pacoima Thursday evening.
“I missed him a lot,” Caden said simply as he waited. Nathan was more exuberant as he thought of what he’d been missing.
“Tickle Daddy!” he yelled. He said he was looking forward to wrestling with his father again, too. “We both win,” he said, then hollered gleefully “My dad is a hero!”
The kid knows what he’s talking about on that point.
Wells, a 13-year county fire department veteran, led one of the two fire rescue teams in Haiti. Dispatched to by the U.S. government, the task force made 9 dramatic rescues and garnered international attention for the county team during their mission.
Tara Wells is used to her husband’s dangerous deployments. He has fought wildfires in Northern California for weeks at a time, and traveled with the county search and rescue team to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. But for her, Haiti was different.
“This particular deployment was by far the one that gave the most anxiety problems,” Tara said. The uncertainty of aftershocks, the unstable crowd situation, all made her uneasy. “The first couple days were really rough.”
But she gained courage from prayer and a church retreat the first weekend of the mission. The daily updates for family members from Haiti via conference call, something new that the department implemented during this trip, bolstered her spirits as well.
She designed special T-shirts for her kids to wear to the homecoming. The words on the shirts, beside a green map of Haiti, said it all: “The earth shook. The people called. My daddy went. My dad’s a hero.”
Word got around, and before you knew it, everybody wanted one. She ended up handing out 75 to the crowd–navy for the boys, pink for little girls.
Finally, the search and rescue team arrived, after a long traveling day in which they drove from Port-au-Prince to the Dominican Republic, then flew to Orlando and on to LAX, where buses awaited to transport them to Pacoima.
When Wells popped off the bus, his boys climbed all over him, and he took little Ellie in his arms for a kiss.
Then Wells, 40, spoke a little of what they’d seen and done. He was the team manager for the 30-person “Blue Squad,” one of the two rescue teams that the L.A. contingent formed. The worst moment came when his team had to extract a corpse in view of a trapped woman who was already injured and screaming. “It was upsetting to her to see that,” Wells recalls. But the team pulled her out alive, as a throng of Haitians shouted “USA, USA, USA!”
Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas, Michael D. Antonovich and Zev Yaroslavsky attended the homecoming. “This is the most versatile fire department in the world,” Yaroslavsky said proudly.
Tara Wells spoke, too. “Our hearts were with you as we watched, and we could not stop watching,” she told the team.
And she thanked the department for supporting the families with aid, advice and a steady flow of news from Haiti. “Words cannot describe our gratitude,” she said, “for taking care of us while they were gone.”
READ RELATED HAITI NEWS
Images of Haiti from returning heroes
January 28, 2010
The LA County Fire search and rescue team that was hailed for its heroics in Haiti is on its way home. For a look at some of what they encountered and accomplished, click through this gallery of photos the team sent home and posted on Facebook. The team is expected to arrive in L.A. later this afternoon.
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READ RELATED HAITI NEWS
Supervisors to consider creating a countywide recovery zone
January 25, 2010
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will be asked on Tuesday, Jan. 26, to designate the entire county as an economically-distressed “recovery zone,” paving the way for it to issue hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of bonds to fund an array of projects under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA.)
The county is seeking to take advantage of a massive U.S. Treasury Department program that has allocated $25 billion to help state and local governments across the nation get projects moving in areas that have been hit hard by job losses. Los Angeles County’s allocation is nearly $181 million in economic development bonds and $271.5 million facility bonds, which can be made available to private entities for projects in the recovery zone.
To support the case for a countywide recovery zone designation, county analysts pored over economic data and found that more than 83% of Los Angeles County census tracts have “directly experienced significant levels of poverty, unemployment, home foreclosures, or general distress,” according to a letter to supervisors from the Chief Executive Office.
Since the rest of the county falls within an average worker’s 31-minute commuting range, that means all areas of the county have a “reciprocal impact” on each other and should be included in the designation, the letter said. The countywide designation would also give supervisors more flexibility in coming up with a final list of projects to be funded with the bonds.
The only project specifically mentioned in the board letter is the Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center. The CEO’s office said it has identified more than $1.1 billion in project proposals that meet the basic bond criteria—far more than the county’s bond allocation could cover. It currently is working with each supervisor’s office to develop a priority list of projects to be funded. The final list must be compiled by Aug. 15, 2010, and the bonds issued by Dec. 31, 2010.
The recovery zone economic development bonds come with a federal subsidy covering 45% of the interest. There is no federal subsidy with the facility bonds, which are tax-exempt and can be issued by the county and the funds loaned to private borrowers developing projects within the recovery zone.
The county also is authorized to issue $27,312,584 in Qualified Energy Conservation Bonds for energy-reducing or renewable energy projects in public governmental projects, with an additional $11,705,393 allocated to bonds for such projects in the private sector.
[Updated 1/26/10]: The supervisors, at their weekly meeting, approved the “recovery zone” designation. The CEO’s office will prepare quarterly briefings for the board on the project’s progress.
Press conference on storm update 1/22/10
January 25, 2010
Faced with the prospect of serious cuts to social services in the California budget, the L.A. County Department of Public Social Services has produced two videos showing the crucial role of one endangered program—In-Home Supportive Services, which helps seniors and others with disabling conditions avoid institutionalization.
Leading the charge from Malibu to Port au Prince
January 22, 2010
Battalion Chief Terry DeJournett commands the largest fire battalion in the Los Angeles County Fire Department, with 12 fire stations that cover the Santa Monica Mountains.
So what’s he doing in Haiti?
DeJournett, 55, is running the 72-person L.A. County urban search and rescue team that was rushed to Haiti last week in the wake of an earthquake that has left the nation in ruins. Already, the team has saved nine victims from the rubble, including three women buried under a collapsed Port-au-Prince apartment building and another who was pulled from the remains of a bank.
“The thing you get with Terry is defined leadership,” says Battalion Chief Thomas Ewald, who is directing from Pacoima the support of the Haiti mission. Ewald says DeJournett thrives as a tactical commander in the field.
The task force’s work has drawn international acclaim and attention, including a CNN interview (see below) Wednesday during which DeJournett praised the Haitian’s resiliency. “The fact that we are still making rescues,” he said, “shows the strength of the people here.”
Cathy DeJournett, his wife of 34 years, has taken comfort hearing her husband’s voice a few times during conference calls arranged by the department each night. “He’s enjoying being able to help people there so much,” she said. The family has two grown children.
The stress of having a firefighter spouse who travels to danger spots, Cathy said, “is something you get used to.” She said she draws confidence from the fact that “I know they are doing everything they can to take precautions.”
A 24-year County fire veteran, DeJournett joined the elite squad in 1991 and rotates the front-line leadership with a half dozen colleagues. He has traveled throughout the world. Less than two years ago, for example, he led a small rescue contingent to China following the Sichuan earthquake. On his return, he flew to Washington to receive congratulations from then-President George W. Bush. He also frequently travels abroad representing L.A. County and the U.S. in training missions in Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia.
Closer to home, DeJournett , who performed rescue work during the 1994 Northridge earthquake and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, leads firefighting teams in the hills above L.A. He directed the assault on a portion of the Station Fire last summer, as well as during the Malibu fire in 2007. Since 2006, he’s been the Battalion 5 chief, overseeing stations stretching from Westlake Village and Malibu to Topanga and Calabasas.
“He runs a tight ship,” said his boss, Assistant Chief Gary Burden. “When he is on the scene, he gets a lot of respect because of his experience.”
How long DeJournett’s team will stay in Haiti remains unclear.
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READ RELATED HAITI NEWS
Paging doctors-in-training to help solve L.A.’s medical dilemmas
January 22, 2010
Most UCLA medical students are up to their stethoscopes in work—boning up on behavioral neuroscience, getting hands-on experience in local hospitals and clinics, preparing to hit the books for this spring’s dreaded “boards.”
But for the past 14 years, a hardy band of second-year students has taken on even more—like tackling some of the biggest issues in health care today.
The student-run UCLA Health Care Symposium, which began in 1997, has targeted topics ranging from stem cell research to the high cost of prescription drugs. This year’s symposium, to be held Saturday, Jan. 23 at Covel Commons on the UCLA Campus, will tackle an issue closer to home: health care disparities in L.A.
They could have looked nationally, or even globally. But they saw Los Angeles as a better-than-textbook example of health care inequities—a place where a 15-minute drive can transport you between extremes of wealth and poverty.
“Bridging the Divide: Practical Health Care Solutions for Los Angeles,” which is the focus chosen by the five student directors charged with running this year’s conference, will feature speakers and a panel discussion exploring the issue from a variety of demographic, clinical and policy perspectives.
“We just felt that sometimes it’s important to look in your own backyard,” said one of the directors, Michael Safaee, 23. “What can we as students do to make a difference? The first way to attack a problem is to understand it.”
The conference, expected to draw between 300 and 400 people, is free and open to the public, with advance registration encouraged. The student directors worked closely with an advisory board headed by Dr. Gerald S. Levey, dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Levey, who is stepping down as dean, established the public forum after a group of students approached him with the idea. “He wanted to give the students a venue to ask important questions,” Safaee said.
This year’s student directors credit their predecessors with setting up a good infrastructure to help with logistics and fundraising. But they’ve come up with some innovations of their own—such as an interactive registration process in which audience members can send in questions for the speakers along with their own ideas for creating better access to healthcare in Los Angeles. The ideas will be projected onto screens during the event, and “some of the ones we liked the best will be printed out on sheets at every table to get people talking,” said Neelroop Parikshak, 24, who is handling logistics for the symposium.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who previously addressed the symposium in 2000 and 2007,will deliver this year’s keynote address. Other speakers include Dr. David M. Carlisle, Director of the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, and Dr. Hector Flores, Chairman of the Family Medicine Department at White Memorial Medical Center. Loretta Jones, Founder and Executive Director of Healthy African American Families II, and Yasser Aman, CEO and President of University Muslim Medical Association Community Clinic, will take part in a panel discussion moderated by Dr. Patrick Dowling, Chair of the UCLA Department of Family Medicine.
A super Sunday for County rescuers in Haiti
January 19, 2010
Working throughout the night on Sunday, rescuers from the Los Angeles County Fire Department saved three Haitian women who had survived without food or water for five days, buried under a collapsed apartment building.
County firefighters reached the last of the three women—a 31-year-old found trapped on her bed in a tiny pocket below tons of concrete debris—at 7 a.m. Monday morning, capping a dramatic 14-hour operation by the Los Angeles County task force.
The three successful rescues brought to eight the number of earthquake victims saved by the task force since its arrival in Haiti last Thursday on a military C-17. Now dubbed USA-2, the 70-person task force has been divided into Red and Blue squads, each working independently throughout Port-au-Prince to free victims of the magnitude 7 quake.
L.A. County firefighter saws rubble at a Port-au-Prince building Photo: U.S. Navy photo / Specialist 2nd Class Justin Stumberg
At 11 p.m., the work paid off. The rescue workers freed a pair of Haitian sisters, 18 and 20. Dehydrated and suffering minor injuries, the women were rushed to a makeshift Israeli-run hospital.
But the rescue operation wasn’t over. Through an interpreter, the sisters said that while trapped, they continued to hear noises made by someone buried below them. The County team renewed their digging through the night.
By daylight, the team had tunneled 15 feet deeper into the tons of rubble. They reached a two-foot-high cavity where an injured but conscious woman lay pinned against her mattress. She too was rushed to the Israeli hospital.
The three rescues capped a very successful Sunday for the task force. At mid-day, the Blue Squad extricated a 30-year-old Haitian woman who had been trapped waist deep in the shattered concrete of a downtown building.
Later Sunday afternoon, Red team rescuers freed a dehydrated 50-year-old woman from a collapsed bank building. “When she came out of the void, she was singing,” reported County Fire Battalion Chief Thomas Ewald, who leads the mission’s deployment support team, which is based in Pacoima and receives frequent satellite phone updates from the team in Haiti.
County workers clear rubble in downtown Port-au-Prince | Photo: U.S. Navy photo / Specialist 2nd Class Justin Stumberg
Things did not go so well on Saturday. The L.A. squad thought they heard sounds of life beneath the rubble at a day care center in the city. Specially trained dogs were brought to the scene but did not pick up a scent. As team members did their best to dig through the wreckage, the tapping sounds stopped. It is still unknown whether anyone actually had been trapped.
The mission to Haiti by the County task force is being fully funded by the U.S. government. Family members back home get updates through a nightly conference call by satellite phone, Ewald says. Thankfully, the news back home has all been good. Despite the dangers, the task force from Los Angeles is in good spirits and has suffered no injuries.
Other members of the task force include emergency room doctors, as well as logistics and communications specialists working to help local authorities improve earthquake response. The task force’s leader is Battalion Chief Terry DeJournett, who is stationed in Malibu when the search-and-rescue task force isn’t deployed.
The team is expected to continue their work in Haiti through the remainder of the week.
In addition, a team of doctors and nurses from Los Angeles County + USC Medical Center arrived in Haiti Sunday and began performing emergency surgeries.
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