Wolves In The Throne Room Arrives April 15th
4/15/2010 Noctrum – Eureka, CA
Tags: ca, Eureka, Humboldt, Humboldt County, Humboldt County News, San Francisco
Posted in Events | Comments Off
Posts Tagged ‘San Francisco’
Blackout Backtrack: PG&E Fine-Tunes Outage Plans
Arcata Eye – Responding to concerns about economic and public safety impacts expressed by Arcata business and government, PG&E has modified its plans for this weekend’s planned power outage. Tuesday morning, City officials and PG&E personnel gathered at City Hall to exchange details on areas affected, the outage’s expected duration and to coordinate response.
Tags: Arcata, ca, California, city council, downtown, earthquake, Ferndale, fire department, Humboldt, Humboldt State University, Kevin L. Hoover, KHUM, Mad River, Mad River Community Hospital, McKinleyville, meth, Northern California, Old Arcata Road, PG&E, pot, Samoa, San Francisco, UPD
Posted in Humboldt County News | Comments Off
Sausalito’s Bay Model still moving water, visitors
Linda Holm, park ranger for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, squirts dye to simulate an oil spill in the San Francisco Bay. More than 150,000 people a year visit the 145,000-square-foot Bay Model in Sausalito, a hydrologically precise scaled working replica of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the San Francisco Bay. mcrisostomo@sacbee.com
A scaled representation of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta waterways leading to Suisun Bay can be seen at the Bay Model – a three-dimensional mock-up that can simulate tides, currents and river inflows.
SAUSALITO – It stands as a monument to the days before supercomputing when engineers wearing pocket protectors had to be able to do math – serious math – in their heads and on the fly.
Tucked into a sprawling World War II-era shipbuilding warehouse in a corner of this North Bay town is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Bay Model.
The hydrologically precise scaled working replica of the entire San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Delta takes a first-time visitor’s breath away – just as it has since it first opened in 1957.
Corps Ranger Linda Holm said the site was used as a research facility from 1958 through 2000 to measure and evaluate the freshwater and saltwater circulation characteristics of the bay, the Delta and its tributaries. While the hard science officially ended there in 2000, the corps decided to keep the site open.
Now more than 150,000 students of all ages annually tour the model for a chance to see the entire bay and Delta with one sweep of their eyes.
“It really never gets old,” Holm said. “We have our visitors first sit and watch a short movie and then they walk out and look down over the model. Watching their reactions can just be priceless.”
The model was approved and paid for by Congress in the early 1950s following a series of massive private-sector proposals on how best to dam up and manipulate the greater Bay-Delta Watershed. The model was designed to help officials better understand how the watershed worked and what would happen if some of the dams were built.
The 145,000-square-foot model is made up of 286 individually supported concrete slabs with adjustable screws.
All of the bay and Delta’s most important features can be found – every river, creek, slough, ship channel and canal. Every major pier, slip, wharf, dike, bridge and breakwater is also represented.
Holm said the deepest part of the model is about 3 feet in the narrow undersea canyon that runs under the Golden Gate Bridge. Elsewhere, in some of the upstream sloughs and tributaries, only a trickle of water is present. All told, about 150,000 gallons circulate through the model at any one time, she said.
Although advanced computer software modeling has long replaced the slide rule-era facility, Holm said the site is still a favorite of TV reporters when oil spills on the real waterway occur. To help them – and their viewers – better visualize how a spill would spread, Holm sprays a bright pink nontoxic dye into the water.
“There, see how it’s eddying?” Holm asks a visitor after spraying two or three squirts into the water out in front of a mini-Golden Gate Bridge. “You can see that we have an ebb tide, and if that was oil, it’d be headed out to sea.”
Following the 2007 Cosco Busan fuel oil spill, Holm said, she was mobbed by TV crews looking for ways to better quantify the size and scale of the real spill.
The model is also designed to simulate the tide cycle as it occurs on the bay – only instead of taking 24 hours to complete, the model’s system replicates the tidal patterns every 15 minutes or so, Holm said.
Although rangers like Holm lament that scientific or engineering work is no longer conducted at the site, they take comfort that the model remains an educational resource for the greater Bay Area.
“When I’m out showing schoolkids the model I sometimes feel like I’m Godzilla because of the scale,” Holm said, mimicking the movements of the beloved Japanese movie monster. “We try to keep it fun. The object is for them to understand that the bay and the Delta are real living ecosystems and that only through understanding will come the need to preserve and protect.”
The model’s future appears bright. The Corps of Engineers was recently given $13.2 million in federal stimulus funds to install solar panels on the roof, make seismic structural improvements, remove asbestos and make general improvements to the model, the adjacent visitor’s center and the exhibits.
To accommodate the renovation, the model will close today through May 31.
The Bay Model includes an exhibit of the San Francisco watershed. The blue LED lights represent water flow from the snow-covered Sierra to the bay. Elements are drawn on a scale of 1 to 1,000.
The Golden Gate Bridge exhibit includes an underwater canyon – at 3 feet, it’s the deepest part of the Bay Model. About 150,000 gallons of water flow through the model at any given time.
A scaled representation of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta waterways leading to Suisun Bay can be seen at the Bay Model – a three-dimensional mock-up that can simulate tides, currents and river inflows.
Tags: ca, California, Delta, Freshwater, Humboldt, Northern California, Sacramento, San Francisco
Posted in State News | Comments Off
Bus Driver Tour To Hit Eureka
04.08.10 – Eureka, CA – Red Fox Tavern
Tags: Eureka, Humboldt, Humboldt County, Humboldt County News, San Francisco
Posted in Featured Articles | Comments Off
Ghilarducci Pleads Not Guilty, New Court Date Set
Former Humboldt Creamery CEO Rich Ghilarducci has entered a not guilty plea in Federal Court in San Francisco. Appearing Wednesday morning before Federal Magistrate Judge Edward Chen Ghilarducci waived his right to indictment and entered a plea of not guilty to one count of fraud.
Tags: California, court, Eureka, Humboldt, Humboldt Creamery, KIEM, Northern California, San Francisco
Posted in Humboldt County News | Comments Off
Former Humboldt Creamery CEO Rich Ghilarducci pleads not guilty to fraud charges in federal court
SAN FRANCISCO — Former Humboldt Creamery CEO Rich Ghilarducci appeared in federal court Wednesday morning, pleading not guilty to the single fraud charge brought against him by the United States Attorney’s Office.
Tags: attorney, court, Humboldt, Humboldt County, Humboldt County News, Humboldt Creamery, Local, San Francisco, United States
Posted in Times-Standard | Comments Off
City College of San Francisco students train to handle ex-inmates’ health issues
John Silver discusses the political and economic policies of former President Ronald Reagan in a new certificate program at City College of San Francisco that trains community health workers to help former inmates navigate the medical system. Many class members are ex-inmates themselves or relatives of ex-inmates.
SAN FRANCISCO – About two dozen City College of San Francisco students leaned forward in their wobbly desks on a recent evening as they debated personal responsibility, the role of correctional officers and the fear of going to the doctor.
Many of these students are former inmates and family members of inmates. The course they’re taking is part of the country’s first certificate program for post-prison health workers, which trains participants how to handle ex-inmates’ chronic health problems and negotiate the barriers that hinder access to care.
“Can you manage your life outside an institution without someone managing it for you?” asked Clifton Martin, a City College student who spent 20 years in and out of prison on drug and robbery charges and now works for a drug counseling organization.
The first group of students will graduate this spring. Other schools around the country are watching the program as a possible model for shoring up county-led indigent care programs and saving public health dollars by catching diseases early, getting parolees into primary care and reducing the number of emergency room visits.
“People may not have gotten good health care or health education in prison,” said Tim Berthold, chairman of the health education department. “As a consequence, … they might be particularly reluctant to access health services on the outside.”
About 120,000 California prison inmates are now paroled every year. Over the next two years, the state may also reduce the overall prison population by more than 40,000 inmates to comply with a federal court order.
Because of IV drug use, unprotected sex and tattooing, rates of HIV infection are nine times higher among prison inmates than the general public. Hepatitis C rates are at least 10 times higher, according to a 2009 report from the Rand Corp.
With an aging prison population, chronic diseases such as advanced diabetes, hypertension, asthma and cancer are all common.
“Incarceration is pathogenic,” said Donna Willmott, who teaches the class on the health effects of incarceration. “It creates ill health, and it complicates ill health people already have.”
Challenges of care
Willmott’s students learn how to manage these diseases. But they focus even more on the challenges of delivering care to ex-inmates.
“There’s an assumption that they will not be treated well or with dignity,” said Berthold. “There’s real discrimination, and the fear that it will happen everywhere.”
So many problems were detailed in a lawsuit against California’s prison health care system – insufficient facilities, long wait times, even deaths – that a federal receiver has been appointed to oversee it.
Because many of the students were once incarcerated themselves or have family members in and out of prison, they know firsthand what their future patients have experienced and the obstacles they face when they get out.
“Incarceration strips you of responsibility for yourself,” Martin said during Willmott’s class. “You get three meals a day, your laundry is done for you, even your medication is brought to you.”
Hands flew up around the circle of desks during the discussion. You can’t relinquish responsibility like that, says Johnny. What about kids who grew up in jail and never learned responsibility? asks Desiree. You get broken down, Jessie says. People go in fine, but they come out with post-traumatic stress disorder, Norell says.
“I was in the best shape of my life when I was in the penitentiary,” student Kevin Mitchell said. “I spent days laying on my bunk dreaming what to do when I got out. But when I hit the streets, it’s a whole different ballgame.”
‘Been there, done that’
Willmott helps put the personal stories into context.
“What is the purpose of prison and jails? Why is there this instrument for social control?” she asked. “How does that impact people’s health?”
The public’s health is also at issue. When chronic diseases go untreated, people can land in emergency rooms with advanced illnesses that are expensive to treat, with taxpayers often picking up the tab.
Even if prescriptions are called in to community pharmacies, parolees rarely pick them up, according to a University of Texas study. Co-author David Paar says parolees don’t have practice navigating the health care system.
“If you call to verify an appointment, you get 10 minutes of phone tree. If you’re like me, you get irritated and you hang on,” Paar said. “A lot of those patients don’t have those life skills, so they call their crack dealer who lives down the street and get their crack.”
That’s a scenario that the City College program is trying to prevent by training workers to coach parolees through difficult times. They learn how to walk patients through the health care system and help them find housing, employment, and mental health and substance abuse services.
Administrators expect this year’s graduates to find jobs at nonprofits, county public health departments, and specialty centers like San Francisco’s Transitions clinic, which treats ex-inmates only and offers internships to the program’s students.
“They trust me because they know I’ve been there, done that,” said Juanita Alvarado, a former inmate who’s now a community health worker at Transitions.
Funding for such training programs is hard to come by, and City College is already scrambling to cover next year’s costs. But advocates believe that such care for parolees will save money in the long run by controlling disease, preventing emergency room overuse and reducing recidivism.
And, at least for some former prisoners, the City College program provides an opportunity for them to find work that leverages their incarceration history, instead of forcing them to hide it or make excuses for it.
“They come to community college with the goal of independence, the goal of standing on their own two feet,” Berthold said. “Many have a mission to give back to their communities, where some of their individual strengths can really be assets in the public health field.”
Hermann Bormann, majoring in social work, is part of the first-in-the-nation program. Its aims include providing jobs for former inmates and saving taxpayer dollars by reducing emergency room visits.
Tags: California, court, employment, Humboldt, inmate, job, law, lawsuit, Northern California, prisoner, robbery, San Francisco, sex
Posted in State News | Comments Off
Tsunami advisory after 8.8 quake in Chile
Hawaii is bracing for a tsunami following a massive quake that hit Chile at 3:34am local time. The first waves are expected to hit the island state at 11:19 am.
Coastal California is under a lower-grade advisory, so use caution in your whereabouts for the next several hours.
[UPDATE: The National Weather Service predicts a wave will hit San Francisco at 1:26 pm and Crescent City at 1:46 pm.]
At least 78 122 are dead from today’s earthquake.
The same area of Chile was rocked by a 9.5 earthquake in May of 1960.
Tags: California, coast, Crescent City, earthquake, Humboldt, Local, Northern California, San Francisco, tsunami, UPD
Posted in Humboldt Blogs, Opinion | Comments Off
Humboldt County senior agencies look at rural program’s potential
A San Francisco-based nonprofit group, On Lok, is helping local agencies determine if a comprehensive senior care program is right for Humboldt County.
Tags: Humboldt, Humboldt County, Humboldt County News, Local, pot, San Francisco
Posted in Times-Standard | Comments Off
East Coast storms causing delays at SFO
Storms on the east coast have caused some delays for flights at San Francisco International Airport early Friday as officials are readying for a local front of high winds and heavy rain. Three of the 15 early morning flights bound for New York were canceled, said Lily Wang, airport duty manager at SFO.
Tags: California, coast, Humboldt, Local, Northern California, San Francisco
Posted in State News | Comments Off
Dairy Farmers React to the News That Ghilarducci Will Not Enter ‘Guilty’ Plea
By this time next week, former Humboldt Creamery CEO Rich Ghilarducci will have made his first court appearance in San Francisco.
Tags: court, Humboldt, Humboldt Creamery, Northern California, San Francisco
Posted in Humboldt County News | No Comments »
Westlands district quits state water association
The Westlands Water District, the powerful farm irrigation agency in the San Joaquin Valley, has quit its membership in a leading statewide water association.
Tags: California, court, Delta, homeless, Humboldt, law, lawsuit, Northern California, Sacramento, San Francisco
Posted in State News | Comments Off
Cleary Talks Economy on KMUD [Humboldt Herald]
Fifth District Supervisorial candidate Patrick Cleary was on KMUD’s Monday Morning Magazine this morning to chat about the issues of the day. Below are some notes on what he said. Listen to the whole interview in the KMUD archives.
Tags: Arcata, California, caltrans, CAMP, Cleary, Delta, employment, Eureka, Headwaters, HSU, Humboldt, Humboldt County, Kirk Girard, Local, marijuana, Northern California, Patrick, Patrick Cleary, Ryan Sundberg, San Francisco
Posted in Humboldt Blogs, Opinion | Comments Off
Ghilarducci to appear in court March 3
Former Humboldt Creamery CEO Rich Ghilarducci is scheduled to appear in a San Francisco courthouse for a hearing on March 3, when he is expected to plead guilty to a single charge of making false statements to an agricultural credit union.
Tags: court, hearing, Humboldt, Humboldt County, Humboldt County News, Humboldt Creamery, Local, San Francisco
Posted in Times-Standard | Comments Off
Drowned Fisherman Near Salt Point State Beach ID’d
A fisherman who died after he was swept or fell into the ocean near Salt Point Saturday was identified early Monday as a San Francisco man. Chin Shaun Tom, 55, had been fishing near Horseshoe Cove with a friend Saturday morning. His body was recovered just before 2 p.m. about 100 yards offshore by the Sonoma County sheriff’s helicopter crew.
Tags: fishing, Humboldt, Northern California, San Francisco
Posted in State News | No Comments »