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California Today: Cleaning Up Fire Damage in Santa Rosa
Jennifer Medina and
Good morning.
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Today’s introduction comes from Jim Wilson, a Times photographer based in the Bay Area.
Ben Hernandez stood, mostly silent, watching a crew of cleanup workers using an excavator to pick up the pieces of what was once his family’s four-bedroom home in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park neighborhood. Occasionally he raised his phone to take a photo or record video of the scene where the deadly Tubbs fire had burned.
On the morning of Oct. 9, he woke up early to the smell of smoke, looked outside, saw flames advancing toward his street and knew he had to get his wife and four children out. Quickly, they evacuated.
Now, the cleanup of the fire has begun. Crews wearing full face masks and white protective suits have started peeling away the debris left by the blaze which destroyed most of the homes in the tidy urban area, where some streets bear coffee-themed names.
Excavator buckets can be seen in multiple locations scooping the ash, shells of appliances and other twisted metal into waiting dump trucks. Small items like pieces of pottery or parts of a Nativity scene left behind on a retaining wall are sometimes all that’s left.
With the rainy season beginning, the crews are careful not to let the material wash into storm drains — they’re also careful to protect themselves from anything harmful that may be in the ash. They hope to clear each home in a day, but that depends on the amount that has to be removed.
Coffey Park is the first neighborhood where large-scale cleanup has begun, but other Santa Rosa neighborhoods won’t be far behind. Here are a collection of images from the cleanup in Coffey Park.
California Online
(Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.)
• Charles Manson, notorious for masterminding a series of Los Angeles-area murders in the 1960s, died of natural causes Sunday night at a Kern County hospital, near the state prison he had been in for decades. [The New York Times]
• After two women accused him of sexual misconduct, Jeffrey Tambor, the star of the Amazon series “Transparent,” said he would not return for the fifth season of the hit show. [The New York Times ]
• The Tehama County gunman built his own semiautomatic rifles, leading gun control advocates to call for a crackdown on kits that help create “ghost guns.” [The San Francisco Chronicle]
• In Sunnyvale, a formerly working-class suburb, a home recently sold for $2.47 million. The only couple who had lived there had paid $25,000 for it —- about 1 percent of what it sold for this year. [The Los Angeles Times]
• “I’m as shocked as everybody else is because I never witnessed it,” the State Senate leader, Kevin de León, said of recent reports that another senator and former housemate of his sexually harassed young female staff members. [The Los Angeles Times]
• As a child, Chad Braverman thought his father was part of the mafia. As a teenager, he learned the family business was making rubber penises. Now, they are the largest producer in a $15 billion industry. [The New York Times]
• Some shoppers and drivers for Instacart are planning to strike Monday, calling it “no-delivery day” as they press for higher pay for large orders and ask the company to highlight tipping for customers. [The San Francisco Chronicle]
• Anne Wojcicki, the founder of 23andMe, a mail-order genetics testing firm, says she’s made peace with her ex-husband and makes her children do their own laundry on Fridays. [The New York Times]
• Michael Showalter talks about creating “juicy” chaos and comedy in the TBS noir show “Search Party,” which has become a kind of cult hit. (Spoiler alert.) [The New York Times]
• After U.C.L.A. lost to rival U.S.C. in Saturday’s football game, the Bruins head coach Jim Mora was fired Sunday. [The Orange County Register]
Coming Up This Week
• Dress up like a turkey, hop into a potato sack or run the 5K or 10K in downtown Los Angeles for the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day, with all proceeds benefiting the Midnight Mission in Skid Row.
• The historic Mission Inn Hotel & Spa in Riverside will officially turn on the “Festival of Lights,” an extensive holiday display, with a ceremony and performance from Kenny Loggins on Friday.
• Saint Nick and his reindeer arrive in Capitola in a canoe on Saturday. Take your Christmas photo with what may be the only Surfing Santa.
• See quintessential L.A. on Sunday with the Hollywood Christmas Parade, which is celebrating its 85th year and welcoming Dr. Oz as the Grand Marshal.
And Finally ...
We’re just starting to cook for our elaborate Thanksgiving feast this week. But at Farm Sanctuary in Acton, the celebration happened weeks ago. For the last three decades, the farm and animal rescue organization has thrown a “Celebration for the Turkeys,” with the animals enjoying their own feast of pumpkin pie, cranberries and salad.
This year, the two-day event was so popular that it sold out both in California and New York.
Gene Baur, the co-founder and president, said he struggled for years with how to participate in the traditional feast. “Thanksgiving can be a difficult holiday for vegans and vegetarians, who think it’s cruel to celebrate around the dead body of an animal,” he said. “This is a celebration where the turkeys are the guests of honor, not the main course.”
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The New York Times has dozens of journalists based in California. They will be contributing to California Today while we seek a permanent California Today columnist. Check out the job posting for the weekday newsletter here.
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