4A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN MONDAY AUGUST 17, 2009
WILDFIRES
Evacuation order lifted, residents return to homes
BY LOUISE CHU
Associated Press
DAVENPORT, Calif. Hundreds of residents returned home when an evacuation order was lifted in a Santa Cruz mountain town Sunday, even as hot and dry winds fanned nearly a dozen wildfires across the state.
A firefighter battles the Lockheed Fire as it threatens to jump a road in unincorporated Santa Cruz County, Calif., on Friday.
Bonny Doon residents trickling home along newly reopened roads were relieved to be out of immediate danger, but still apprehensive because containment lines built by firefighters are holding back only half the blaze. That fire has burned through about 10 square miles of the rugged terrain since Wednesday.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Santa Cruz's Lockheed Fire was among 11 burning in the state. A state of emergency was declared in the county, while other blazes forced evacuations and knocked out power in the city.
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other parts of the state.
Margaret
Kliegel was at
the fire command
center in
Davenport on
Sunday afternoon
dropping off
bread and cook
ies for the fire crew
when she learned she could return home. She left her house Thursday as the flames shot into the air three miles away.
"We've lived here for close to 40 years so you got all your mementos and family things, and you don't know if you'll have a home to go back to." Kliegel said. "Second time in 14 months that these guys have saved us"
Chance Road with his wife, chickens, dogs, cats and cockatiels. They all left under orders, and remained under mandatory evacuation for a third day.
"I'm just anxious to get home" he said.
The news wasn't as good for Bob McAuliffe, a carpenter who lives on a two-story home on Last
"The danger is still real. It still could pop up on us"
Fire crews were unable to fight the blaze by air Sunday because of the heavy smoke, but made good progress on the ground along the western and southern ends of the wildfire, said Paul Provence, a state fire department engineer.
"The danger is still real." Provence said. "It still could pop up on us."
Crews planned to clear the canyon of heavy brush on Monday, he said.
PAUL PROVENCE Fire department engineer
Crews reinforced the firefighting effort Sunday, totaling 2,165 firefighters.
Fire officials warned that the nearby community of Swanton remained threatened by the blaze. A mandatory evacuation order there continues to keep about 400
residents away from their homes.
Weather conditions overnight — cooler temperatures and increasing humidity — are expected to help the firefighting effort. But authorities remain
The widespread fires were pushing firefighters into rugged terrain to contain the flames and guard against new blazes.
vigilant, because the drought in much of the state has created dangerous conditions.
"Things are so dry out there that it doesn't take much for a spark or an ember to quickly develop into a wildfire," said CalFire spokesman Daniel Berlant.
A fire in Yuba County, north of Sacramento, had burned more
than 3 square miles after jumping the Yuba River and moving away from the Sierra Nevada foothills community of Dobbins, which had been threatened. About 120 residents who had left their homes were able to return, Berlant said.
"It's being fanned by the wind," he said.
That fire, which, was ignited by burning feathers from a red-tailed hawk that flew into a power line, was more than 15 percent contained, but about 600 homes were still threatened Sunday. Voluntary evacuations remain in effect for parts of the community.
The Colgate Powerhouse — the oldest powerhouse in the state — and two others were powered down, along with four major power lines. Together, they produce 300 Megawatts of power for the area.
About 1,385 fire personnel are in the area fighting that blaze, though the steep, rough terrain made their
work difficult.
In Alameda County, firefighters were able to fully contain a grass fire that burned about 19 square miles near Trace, said' Alameda County Fire department spokeswoman Aisha Knowles.
"Even with the fire contained, people should remain vigilant because we're still in the middle of fire season," said Knowles.
U. S. Forest Service spokesman Joe Pasinato said the fire was 64 percent contained at nightfall Sunday. The blaze has burned nearly 134 square miles of timber and brush in and around the Los Padres National Forest about 20 miles east of Santa Maria.
Meanwhile, winds were helping crews beat back an wildfire in its eight day in northern Santa Barbara County that investigators say was started by a camp fire used by marijuana growers.
POLITICS
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California Fire spokesperson Julie Hutchinson tells fire displaced residents in Santa Cruz County to keep their fingers crossed and hope for favorable weather conditions and no wind on Sunday in Santa Cruz, Calif. Officials say they ve contained 50 per cent of the Lockheed Fire which has burned nearly 7,000 acres in Santa Cruz County.
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President Barack Obama and Sasha Obama, front right, walk off Air Force One at Grand Canyon National Park Airport in Tusayan, Aniz., on Sunday. Obama recently abandoned his original rhetoric on the healthcare debate.
Obama reaches across aisle on healthcare
PHILIP ELLIOTT Associated Press
Officials from both political parties reached across the aisle in an effort to find compromises on proposals they left behind when they returned to their districts for an August recess. Obama had wanted the government to run a health insurance organization to help cover the nation's almost 50 million uninsured, but didn't include it as one of his core principles of reform.
WASHINGTON — Bowing to Republican pressure and an uneasy public, President Barack Obama's administration signaled Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system.
Facing mounting opposition to the overhaul, administration officials left open the chance for a compromise with Republicans that would include health insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run plan. Such a concession probably would enrage Obama's liberal supporters but could deliver a much-needed victory on a top domestic priority opposed by GOP lawmakers.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that government alternative to private health insurance is "not the
essential element" of the administration's health care overhaul. The White House would be open to coops, she said, a sign that Democrats want a compromise so they can declare a victory.
With $3 billion to $4 billion in initial support from the government, the co-ops would operate under a national structure with state affiliates, but independent of the government. They would be required to maintain the type of financial reserves that private companies are required to keep in case of unexpectedly high claims.
"I think there will be a competitor to private insurers," Sebellius said. "That's really the essential part, is you don't turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing."
Under a proposal by Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., consumer-owned nonprofit cooperatives would sell insurance in competition with private industry, not unlike the way electric and agriculture co-ops operate, especially in rural states such as his own.
Obama's spokesman refused to say a public option was a make-or-break choice.
"What I am saying is the bottom line for this for the president is, what we have to have is choice and competition in the insurance market," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Sunday.
NATIONAL
Assistant principal Patrick McLaughlin taught in a hallway while giving a tour at St. Francais Prep high school in the Queens borough of New York. St. Francis Prep was closed for a week earlier this year after an outbreak of swine flu in New York was linked to the school.
NYC schools prepare for swine flu
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BY SAMANTHA GROSS
Associated Press
NEW YORK - At St. Francis Preparatory School this fall, the auditorium will double as a sick room. New York City might make students wash their hands several times a day. There will be a unit on swine flu in health class.
In the weeks after the swine flu outbreak that began at the Queens parochial school, New York City became a viral epicenter and focus of the nation's fears of the illness, sickening as many as 1 million, killing 47 people and closing dozens of public and private schools.
No one wants to call the city's outbreak a blessing, but the spring's out-of-season flu invasion did provide a peculiar kind of gift. Now New York City's Health Department and schools are trying to take advantage of the lead time — preparing for a fall season that is expected to be even worse.
The details of the city's swine flu plan are still being finalized by a Health Department panel.
"I don't want them to come to school being afraid," McLaughlin says, standing by neat rows of empty classroom chairs. "But I do want that awareness ... that knowledge, that it's out there. It could come back. Be ready for it."
And like St. Francis Prep, the city's public schools are largely waiting to follow the lead of the agency, which hopes to have its recommendations by the first day of school, said Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley.
While educators and health officials decide how best to ward off a stronger strain of the virus in the fall, St. Francis Assistant Principal Patrick McLaughlin said his students may have already learned from experience to be vigilant.
He already noticed the changes: Sharing water bottles at school suddenly became a major transgression. And in 25 years of teaching health class, McLaughlin had never seen students get so excited about communicable diseases.
The wait for a plan is taking too long for Cathy Cahn, Parent-Teachers' Association president at P.S. 205, who says Mitchell Weiner, the assistant principal who became the city's first swine
flu fatality, was a friend.
"How easily that could happen in any building," she said, "I would like to know. How are we going to keep our kids healthy?"
PATRICK MCLAUGHLIN Assistant Principal
Farley warned the fall will likely be worse than the surprise round of illnesses in the spring. But with any luck, the new flu season will simply be a matter of more people sick — not more people
Weiner's family has since filed court papers saying they plan to sue the city, claiming it was negligent in its response to the outbreak and that schools established no procedures for coping with the illness. The mayor has said the city did nothing wrong.
sicker than anyone was before.
There are signs that students have already learned lessons the hard way about spreading the virus.
"I don't want them to come to school being afraid. But I do want that awareness ..."
"Most people can recover on their own, alone at home," Farley said. "And then they should stay home so they don't spread the infection to others."
Like many of her classmates at St. Francis, Abby Opam's early brush with swine fluky likely left her
immune to any fall outbreak—but the experience has changed how she's looking at her first year of college at New York University.
"Instead of going there for a few hours during the school day, you're going to be surrounded by kids all the time, living in a dorm," she said.
"I'm being more careful to not, like, share drinks or, you know, get too touchy with people
Federal officials have said the nation's schools should only close as a last resort this year. Closings at dozens of schools last year kept thousands of children at home officials wor-
Previously, those struck ill were advised to stay home for a week after their fever broke. But this school year, children will be told they can return to school 24 hours after their fever is gone and they're feeling better.
- especially with so many new
people from different parts of the country"
ried about the burden on working parents who had to arrange impromptu child care or stay home with their kids.
St. Francis Prep is planning a health assembly for its 2,700
students at the start of the year to impart the basics: Wash your hands. Don't share drinks and utensils. If you get sick, stay home.
School officials are determined not to repeat the scene of feverish students lined up by the dozen in hallways outside the school nurse's office, coughing on healthy students who were walking from class to class. So the school's auditorium has been assigned special status as a sick room.
Officials are still contemplating whether enough vaccination shots are available for all the city's schoolchildren. If so, Farley says, the Health Department would prefer that family doctors handle students' inoculations, although flu clinics in schools are also a possibility.
Schools might also institute routine checks, Farley said, asking students whether they are experiencing fever or respiratory symptoms, then putting them in a designated room until they can be picked up by their parents.
The panel that's determining the finer points of city policy even considered requiring students to wash their hands several times a day, said Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, the city's flu coordinator who is heading up the team.