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Congressmen Mike Thompson (CA-05) and Tom Rooney (FL-17) on Friday formally established the new Congressional Natural Disaster Caucus.
“Over the last year, several natural disasters have torn through communities across the country. Unfortunately, we know none of these disasters will be the last,” said Rep. Thompson. “Our goal with the new Congressional Natural Disaster Caucus is to bring together a bipartisan group of Members of Congress who are committed to improving the way in which we prepare for disasters, respond to them, and ultimately deliver relief to survivors.”
“The number of natural disasters that devastated communities from coast to coast in 2017 was staggering,” said Rep. Tom Rooney. “My home state of Florida is no stranger to facing extreme weather and we know these will not be the last storms we will have to face. The new Congressional Natural Disaster Caucus will bring together a bipartisan group of lawmakers who want to ensure we are better prepared to deal with future disasters. I am hopeful that the Caucus will provide a platform for my colleagues and I to examine how Congress can improve not only how we prepare and respond to natural disasters, but ultimately how we deliver relief to the survivors and the impacted communities.”
The Congressional Natural Disaster Caucus will serve as an informal, bipartisan group of Members dedicated to natural disaster preparation, response, and relief.
The caucus will provide resources for Members of Congress and their staff to help their Districts prepare for and respond to natural disasters.
Thompson and Rooney will serve as co-chairs of the caucus.
Thompson represents California’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes all or part of Contra Costa, Lake, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.
“Over the last year, several natural disasters have torn through communities across the country. Unfortunately, we know none of these disasters will be the last,” said Rep. Thompson. “Our goal with the new Congressional Natural Disaster Caucus is to bring together a bipartisan group of Members of Congress who are committed to improving the way in which we prepare for disasters, respond to them, and ultimately deliver relief to survivors.”
“The number of natural disasters that devastated communities from coast to coast in 2017 was staggering,” said Rep. Tom Rooney. “My home state of Florida is no stranger to facing extreme weather and we know these will not be the last storms we will have to face. The new Congressional Natural Disaster Caucus will bring together a bipartisan group of lawmakers who want to ensure we are better prepared to deal with future disasters. I am hopeful that the Caucus will provide a platform for my colleagues and I to examine how Congress can improve not only how we prepare and respond to natural disasters, but ultimately how we deliver relief to the survivors and the impacted communities.”
The Congressional Natural Disaster Caucus will serve as an informal, bipartisan group of Members dedicated to natural disaster preparation, response, and relief.
The caucus will provide resources for Members of Congress and their staff to help their Districts prepare for and respond to natural disasters.
Thompson and Rooney will serve as co-chairs of the caucus.
Thompson represents California’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes all or part of Contra Costa, Lake, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.
To have a full picture of the lives of massive stars, researchers need to study them in all stages – from when they’re a mass of unformed gas and dust, to their often dynamic end-of-life explosions.
NASA's flying telescope, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, is particularly well-suited for studying the pre-natal stage of stellar development in star-forming regions, such as the Tarantula Nebula, a giant mass of gas and dust located within the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC.
Researchers from the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics, led by Michael Gordon, went aboard SOFIA to identify and characterize the brightness, ages and dust content of three young star-forming regions within the LMC.
“The Large Magellanic Cloud has always been an interesting and excellent laboratory for massive star formation,” said Gordon. “The chemical properties of star-forming regions in the LMC are significantly different than in the Milky Way, which means the stars forming there potentially mirror the conditions of star formation in dwarf galaxies at earlier times in the universe.”
In our galactic neighborhood, which includes the LMC, massive stars – generally classified as stars more than eight times the mass of Earth’s Sun – are believed to form exclusively in very dense molecular clouds. The dark dust and gas absorb background light, which prevents traditional optical telescopes from imaging these areas.
“The mid-infrared capabilities of SOFIA are ideal for piercing through infrared dark clouds to capture images of potential massive star-forming regions,” Gordon said.
The observations were completed with the Faint Object infrared Camera for the SOFIA Telescope, known as FORCAST. This infrared camera also performs spectroscopy, which identifies the elements present.
Astronomers study stars evolving in both the optical and the infrared to learn more about the photosphere, and the population of stars in the photosphere. The mid- and far-infrared data from SOFIA reaffirm dust temperature and mass accretion rates that are consistent with prior research of the LMC.
"We want to combine as many observations as we can from the optical, as seen through images from the Hubble Space Telescope, all the way out to the far infrared, imaged using the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Herschel Space Observatory, to get as broad a picture as possible," Gordon continued. "No previous researchers have used FORCAST’s wavelength range to effectively study massive star formations. We needed SOFIA to fill in the 20- to 40-micron gap to give us the whole picture of what’s taking place."
In summer 2017, further research of the Tarantula Nebula was accomplished aboard SOFIA during the observatory’s six-week science campaign operating from Christchurch, New Zealand, to study the sky in the Southern Hemisphere.
Gordon and his team are hopeful that when analyzed, data obtained from the Christchurch flights will reveal previously undiscovered young massive stars forming in the region, which have never been observed outside of the Milky Way.
SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP jetliner modified to carry a 100-inch diameter telescope. It is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center, DLR. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley manages the SOFIA program, science and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and the German SOFIA Institute (DSI) at the University of Stuttgart. The aircraft is based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center's Hangar 703, in Palmdale, California.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The Clearlake Police Department is working to develop leads in a shooting on Thursday night that claimed a man’s life.
At 6:40 p.m. Thursday the Clearlake Police Department received numerous calls from citizens reporting gunshots heard with a male subject down on the ground near the 3200 block of Second Street, according to Det. Sgt. Martin Snyder.
Snyder said officers responded to the scene and located a Hispanic male adult lying in the intersection of Second and Bush streets.
Lake County Fire Protection District medical personnel responded to the scene to treat the wounded man. However, after several minutes the male victim was pronounced deceased, Snyder said.
The roadway was closed at the intersection of Second and Bush streets as the investigation got under way, according to Snyder.
Snyder said Clearlake Police detectives responded to process the scene for evidence and conduct witness interviews. During the investigation, it was determined the victim had numerous gunshot wounds.
In his early Friday morning report on the shooting, Snyder said there was minimal suspect information.
At that point, Snyder said leads were being developed regarding the series of events which led up to the shooting.
A vehicle of interest was identified as a dark-colored newer model Mercedes passenger car with a white-colored top. Snyder said it is believed that the vehicle was used by or associated with the person, or persons, responsible for the shooting.
He said witnesses on scene were unable to give further information into the identity of who committed the killing.
The victim’s exact cause of death is unknown at this time; Snyder said it will be determined after a forensic autopsy.
Snyder said the victim has been identified, however, his identity is not being released as the investigation is ongoing.
If you have any information regarding this incident, please contact Det. Ryan Peterson at 707-994-8251, Extension 320, orThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
At 6:40 p.m. Thursday the Clearlake Police Department received numerous calls from citizens reporting gunshots heard with a male subject down on the ground near the 3200 block of Second Street, according to Det. Sgt. Martin Snyder.
Snyder said officers responded to the scene and located a Hispanic male adult lying in the intersection of Second and Bush streets.
Lake County Fire Protection District medical personnel responded to the scene to treat the wounded man. However, after several minutes the male victim was pronounced deceased, Snyder said.
The roadway was closed at the intersection of Second and Bush streets as the investigation got under way, according to Snyder.
Snyder said Clearlake Police detectives responded to process the scene for evidence and conduct witness interviews. During the investigation, it was determined the victim had numerous gunshot wounds.
In his early Friday morning report on the shooting, Snyder said there was minimal suspect information.
At that point, Snyder said leads were being developed regarding the series of events which led up to the shooting.
A vehicle of interest was identified as a dark-colored newer model Mercedes passenger car with a white-colored top. Snyder said it is believed that the vehicle was used by or associated with the person, or persons, responsible for the shooting.
He said witnesses on scene were unable to give further information into the identity of who committed the killing.
The victim’s exact cause of death is unknown at this time; Snyder said it will be determined after a forensic autopsy.
Snyder said the victim has been identified, however, his identity is not being released as the investigation is ongoing.
If you have any information regarding this incident, please contact Det. Ryan Peterson at 707-994-8251, Extension 320, or
CLEARLAKE, Calif. – As part of its continuing effort to improve the city’s roads, the Clearlake City Council on Thursday night approved the hiring of four new Public Works staffers to complete the creation of a full road crew.
The funding for the hires comes from Measure V, the one-cent sales tax Clearlake voters approved in November 2016 to fund road repairs and improvements.
City Finance Director Chris Becnel told the council that when Measure V first passed but before the city began receiving funds, the council initiated the hiring of five people to do road work.
“We’re now at a point where we have sufficient funds to warrant the hiring of additional persons for Measure V,” Becnel said.
Becnel said that in a 2015 presentation made to the council about the number of persons required for a dirt road grading team, it was reported that a full road crew required nine people: two flaggers, two support, and one operator each for the dump truck, loader, grader, water truck and roller.
Those nine crew members are the minimum number required to safely handle grading work, Becnel explained.
The council was asked to consider the request on Thursday rather than waiting for the midyear budget review in about a month due to some key factors, Becnel said.
Those factors included that the process for hiring the first five staffers was slower because of demand for workers. “There is a massive effort to rehabilitate the road infrastructure in the state of California and we were competing against lots of other organizations, so that slowed down the hiring process,” Becnel said.
Then there was the October Sulphur fire, which Becnel said necessitated taking some of the road crew and using them on fire-related work.
Becnel said those workers are limited to 960 hours per year and the Sulphur fire caused them to use up their hours much faster because they were manning barricades and involved in other emergency work.
During the process, Public Works Superintendent Mike Baker determined that the temporary workers are very qualified and eligible to be hired full-time, Becnel said.
“We don't want to lose them to another jurisdiction,” which Becnel said might happen if the city waited another month.
Given the recruitments for road workers happening in California, “When you have an opportunity, you need to seize it,” Becnel said.
The staffers’ assigned range of maintenance worker would be determined by City Manager Greg Folsom in consultation with Public Works Director Doug Herren, Becnel said.
Becnel said the financial impact would range from $192,000 per year for wages plus benefits for four basic maintenance worker positions, up to $212,000 per year for three maintenance workers and one senior maintenance worker.
“Measure V is well funded at this point,” said Becnel, and the city is ready to ramp up the grading of streets.
Herren said he wanted to hire one supervisor and three maintenance workers to run the grading operation that the council wants and is needed.
He said he wanted to keep Public Works and parks staff separate. The city has two full-time and three temporary staff for parks, and it requires a minimum of five staff to keep the parks maintained.
Vice Mayor Phil Harris said his biggest concern is that the staff will be working on road renovation on a daily basis.
“What I would personally like to see is a constant commitment to the roads,” Harris said.
“That’s the goal,” Herren responded.
During the meeting Herren told council members that the city’s grading operation is year-round, with the height of the grading season from June through October. “We're going to hit it the hardest in that timeframe.”
Councilman Russ Perdock said he was looking forward to when the city might be able to increase the road crew staffing level more, noting that the staff is doing good work.
Mayor Bruno Sabatier said he had been concerned that five staffers wasn’t enough during a Measure V review several months ago.
He said the costs of the entire road crew is still less than the $500,000 which it would have cost the city to contract out for grading, with those staffers doing more than just grading. They're also cutting trees and clearing culverts to prevent flooding.
“I think that we're going to see some great changes,” Sabatier said.
Harris moved to approve the request, with Perdock seconding and the council voting 5-0.
In other council action on Thursday, Sabatier presented certificates of appreciation to Christmas parade volunteers, the council approved the mayoral appointments for the new year and appointed Perdock as the voting delegate and Councilman Joyce Overton as alternate for to the League of California Cities Redwood Empire Division.
The council also received an update from Folsom on what he said has proved to be busy weeks at the start of the new year.
In that time he’s met with county, state and federal officials regarding fire recovery, and noted that Gov. Brown’s new budget, released on Wednesday, includes some backfill for lost property taxes due to the Sulphur fire.
“That's not a huge dollar amount for us, thank goodness,” he said.
The bigger issues are infrastructure and damage to the roads, with Folsom pointing out that potholes have grown exponentially on roads in the fire area including Davis, Lakeshore, San Joaquin and Arrowhead. “That’s really where our focus is.”
Folsom said Pacific Gas and Electric has donated a generator for the community center and Sulphur fire debris removal is at 90 percent.
He said city staff met with State Parks officials on Wednesday about a grant for the Austin Park Interpretive Trail, and new Clearlake Police Officer Cali Batz was sworn in on Tuesday.
City Attorney Ryan Jones said there was no reportable action from a closed session discussion on a potential case of litigation.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Museums of Lake County will be opening a new exhibit honoring Lake County law enforcement from past to present at the Historic Courthouse Museum in Lakeport.
"Some Gave All: A Salute to Lake County Law Enforcement," opens Feb. 1, with a reception for Lake County Law Enforcement. The exhibit runs until March 25.
Curated by Jessica Sekhon, this exhibit was inspired by the love of history of fallen officer Robert Rumfelt.
Deputy Rumfelt had a special connection with the Museums of Lake County. He had been assisting Ms. Sekhon in the process of firearms tracing for some of the historic weapons.
This special exhibit will feature historic and modern objects from the museum collections as well as items loaned from the following agencies: Lake County Sheriff's Office, Lakeport Police Department, Clearlake Police Department, California Highway Patrol, California State Parks - Clear Lake, California State Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Artifacts on display will include a World War I machine gun, a Colt 1861 Navy Revolver and historic badges from local law enforcement agencies.
For additional information, please contact the museums at 707-263-4555 or emailThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
The Courthouse Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m.
"Some Gave All: A Salute to Lake County Law Enforcement," opens Feb. 1, with a reception for Lake County Law Enforcement. The exhibit runs until March 25.
Curated by Jessica Sekhon, this exhibit was inspired by the love of history of fallen officer Robert Rumfelt.
Deputy Rumfelt had a special connection with the Museums of Lake County. He had been assisting Ms. Sekhon in the process of firearms tracing for some of the historic weapons.
This special exhibit will feature historic and modern objects from the museum collections as well as items loaned from the following agencies: Lake County Sheriff's Office, Lakeport Police Department, Clearlake Police Department, California Highway Patrol, California State Parks - Clear Lake, California State Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Artifacts on display will include a World War I machine gun, a Colt 1861 Navy Revolver and historic badges from local law enforcement agencies.
For additional information, please contact the museums at 707-263-4555 or email
The Courthouse Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m.
Gov. Jerry Brown announced on Thursday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has granted the state’s request for expanded federal disaster assistance in response to the devastating mudslides that have impacted Santa Barbara County and the community of Montecito.
“Our hearts break for the communities first ravaged by fires and now devastated by these mudslides. We will push for every available resource to help Californians recover from these tragedies,” said Gov. Brown.
FEMA expanded the recently approved Presidential Major Disaster Declaration in the areas affected by the December 2017 wildfires to include damage incurred from flooding and mud and debris flows.
This declaration ensures that federal funds are available for emergency response and eligible disaster recovery costs.
The Thomas Fire, in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, is 92-percent contained and has burned over 280,000 acres and destroyed nearly 1,000 structures, leading to dangerous mud and debris flows following recent heavy rains.
In response to the mudslides, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, or Cal OES, activated the State Operations Center in Mather, California and is coordinating closely with local, state and federal emergency response agencies to address all emergency management needs.
Multiple state resources have been mobilized in Santa Barbara County, including: urban search and rescue teams and emergency management personnel from Cal OES; high-water vehicles for evacuations and helicopters from the California National Guard; and personnel from the California Department of Transportation and California Highway Patrol, who are working together to reroute traffic and clear Highway 101 and other roadways.
“Our hearts break for the communities first ravaged by fires and now devastated by these mudslides. We will push for every available resource to help Californians recover from these tragedies,” said Gov. Brown.
FEMA expanded the recently approved Presidential Major Disaster Declaration in the areas affected by the December 2017 wildfires to include damage incurred from flooding and mud and debris flows.
This declaration ensures that federal funds are available for emergency response and eligible disaster recovery costs.
The Thomas Fire, in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, is 92-percent contained and has burned over 280,000 acres and destroyed nearly 1,000 structures, leading to dangerous mud and debris flows following recent heavy rains.
In response to the mudslides, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, or Cal OES, activated the State Operations Center in Mather, California and is coordinating closely with local, state and federal emergency response agencies to address all emergency management needs.
Multiple state resources have been mobilized in Santa Barbara County, including: urban search and rescue teams and emergency management personnel from Cal OES; high-water vehicles for evacuations and helicopters from the California National Guard; and personnel from the California Department of Transportation and California Highway Patrol, who are working together to reroute traffic and clear Highway 101 and other roadways.