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UPPER LAKE, Calif. – More firefighters have joined the work on the Elk fire, bringing the containment on the incident up to 50 percent.
Cal Fire said Saturday evening that firefighters are halfway to fully containing the fire, which remains at 670 acres.
The fire began Wednesday afternoon off of Elk Mountain Road and Mount Dinger Road north of Upper Lake.
The number of firefighters on the incident more than tripled on Saturday, rising to 977 personnel, with the number of engines now totaling 47, with 31 fire crews, 10 water tenders, four helicopters and one dozer also assigned, Cal Fire said.
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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – AT&T said Friday that it is offering a reward for information about who is responsible for cutting a fiber-optic line, which resulted in cell phone and some landline service outages across the North Coast.
AT&T told Lake County News that the daylong outage was resolved, with service restored Friday morning for wireline and wireless customers in northwest California affected by a fiber vandalism cut that occurred on Thursday near Ukiah.
“Technicians worked around the clock to repair the damage and service is currently running normally,” the company said. “We are cooperating with law enforcement on an investigation of the matter. We apologize for this inconvenience.”
On Friday AT&T said it is offering up to a $10,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for cutting the fiber-optic line, which the company said was part of an attempted copper theft.
In addition to AT&T, cell phone carriers including T-Mobile, US Cellular and Verizon separately confirmed to Lake County News that their systems had experienced interruptions in Lake, Mendocino, Sonoma and Humboldt counties as a result of the damaged fiber-optic cable.
The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office – which reported that its 911, landline and cellular telephone services along with its Internet connection throughout the county had been impacted by the outage – is leading the investigation into the matter.
The agency said the above-ground fiber-optic cable that was cut was located a mile and a half south of Burke Hill, near Ukiah.
AT&T encouraged anyone with credible information to call AT&T Asset Protection at 1-800-807-4205. Callers can remain anonymous.
The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office also is seeking information and asking for anyone who knows about the case to call its tip-line at 707-234-2100.
“Tampering with phone networks is a violation of federal and state laws and we cooperate with law enforcement agencies to identify and punish offenders,” AT&T said in a Friday statement. “This is a serious matter that affects public safety and the community at large.”
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LAKEPORT, Calif. – A man who was convicted of shooting at two California Highway Patrol officers in October of 2013 has been found mentally competent.
At the end of a brief hearing on Aug. 28, Judge Andrew Blum ruled that 41-year-old William Edward Steele of Hopland has no mental competence issues.
Steele is facing 154 years in prison after a jury convicted him in April of the attempted murder of CHP Officers Shane Roach and Glen Thomas, as Lake County News has reported.
The jury also convicted Steele of assault with a deadly weapon, discharging a firearm from a vehicle, being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition, violating a restraining order by possessing a gun, shooting at an inhabited car, reckless evading, evading a peace officer causing death or serious injury, involuntary manslaughter, unlawful imprisonment and more than 30 special allegations relating primarily to firearm use as well as causing great bodily injury.
He shot at the officers during an early-morning traffic stop in the area of Highway 29 and Cruickshank Drive in Kelseyville.
At the time he also had two other people with him in the Chevy Tahoe he was driving. One of them, Jeremy John, jumped from the vehicle and later died of his injuries, which was the cause of the involuntary manslaughter charge.
Steele originally had been scheduled for sentencing in May, but a few weeks ahead of that he raised doubts as to his own mental competence, which temporarily suspended the criminal proceedings, according to Senior Deputy District Attorney Art Grothe.
Steele had sought a jury trial on his mental competence, however a bench trial was conducted on Aug. 28 before Judge Blum, Grothe said.
Grothe said he presented reports from two psychiatrists saying Steele was mentally competent, and Steele's attorney, Tom Quinn, also provided a report from a third doctor that offered the same conclusion.
Judge Blum read the reports and after about five minutes concluded Steele was competent, Grothe said.
Quinn said he requested a trial transcript in order to file a new trial motion in the case, as he wasn't the attorney at the time of trial.
The court reporter said she would need six weeks to prepare the transcript, according to Grothe.
If Quinn goes forward with preparing a new trial motion, Grothe said that could delay the case further.
Grothe said the court is “not even close” to setting a sentencing date for Steele at this point.
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UPPER LAKE, Calif. – Despite challenges from gusting winds, firefighters on Friday were able to continue their progress on the Elk fire burning near Upper Lake.
The Elk fire had burned 670 and was 40-percent contained as of Friday night, Cal Fire said.
The fire, which began on Wednesday afternoon, is located off Elk Mountain Road and Mount Dinger Road, north of Upper Lake.
Firefighters with Cal Fire and the United States Forest Service – which hold unified command on the incident – continued to improve existing fire line and build additional direct hand line around the perimeter of the fire on Friday, officials reported.
There were significant winds of 30 miles per hour along the ridgetops on Friday, but firefighters still raised containment on the incident, according to Cal Fire.
The spread of the fire has been stopped, and firefighters continued to monitor and extinguish hot spots within the perimeter overnight. Officials also said there remains a large amount of unburned fuel within the lines.
Also on Friday, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. restored power to those residences that were still affected by the power loss that occurred when the fire started on Wednesday, Cal Fire said.
Resources assigned on Friday included 270 firefighters, 26 fire engines, 18 fire crews, four helicopters, four water tenders and three bulldozers, according to Cal Fire.
Fire officials asked the public to be extremely cautious while working or recreating near dry fuels for the remainder of the fire season.
Using equipment, parking in dry grass, mowing, dragging tow chains, and cooking all are avoidable causes of fire. Learn more by visiting www.preventwildfireca.org .
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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The end of summer, final camping trips, last boating adventures and one last barbecue cookout are quickly approaching with the upcoming Labor Day weekend holiday.
For most people this time of year usually marks the unofficial end of summer, but for California, it is historically just the beginning of the most dangerous time for wildfires.
“Cal Fire has seen thousands of wildfires already this year and currently, there is no relief in sight from the dry conditions,” said Chief Ken Pimlott, director of Cal Fire. “The potential for wildfires remains extremely high across the state and everyone must do their part to help prevent new fires from igniting.”
While the fall season may quickly be approaching, the fire risk is far from over. Historically, it’s the months of September and October when California experiences its largest and most damaging wildfires.
Already this year, Cal Fire crews have responded to nearly 5,000 wildfires that have charred nearly 150,000 acres.
Four years of drought and bark beetle infestations have taken their toll on California’s forests and wildland areas.
Cal Fire is reminding everyone to be extra cautious this weekend as fire danger remains high, even extreme in some areas, and fires ignite easily and spread rapidly.
As you take to the great outdoors, Cal Fire offers these important tips to help prevent a wildfire:
Camping
· Obtain a campfire permit.
· Check for loCal Fire restrictions.
· Clear away grass, leaves and other debris within a 10-foot perimeter of any campfire.
· Have a responsible person in attendance at all times.
· Ensure all campfires are completely extinguished before leaving.
· When barbecuing, never leave the grill unattended.
Vehicles
· Never pull over in dry grass.
· Make sure your vehicle is properly maintained.
· When towing ensure chains are not dragging on the ground.
· Check your tire pressure to avoid driving on an exposed wheel rim.
One less spark, means one less wildfire. For more ways to be safe during Labor Day weekend visit www.ReadyForWildfire.org or the Cal Fire Web site at www.fire.ca.gov .
If you liked the first historic images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, you’ll love what’s to come.
Seven weeks after New Horizons sped past the Pluto system to study Pluto and its moons – previously unexplored worlds – the mission team will begin intensive downlinking of the tens of gigabits of data the spacecraft collected and stored on its digital recorders.
The process moves into high gear on Saturday, Sept. 5, with the entire downlink taking about one year to complete.
“This is what we came for – these images, spectra and other data types that are going to help us understand the origin and the evolution of the Pluto system for the first time,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colo. “And what’s coming is not just the remaining 95 percent of the data that’s still aboard the spacecraft – it’s the best datasets, the highest-resolution images and spectra, the most important atmospheric datasets, and more. It’s a treasure trove. ”
Even moving at light speed, the radio signals from New Horizons containing data need more than 4 ½ hours to cover the 3 billion miles to reach Earth.
As a flyby mission, New Horizons was designed to gather as much information as it could, as quickly as it could, as it sped past Pluto and its family of moons – then store its wealth of data to its digital recorders for later transmission to Earth.
Since late July, New Horizons has only been sending back lower data-rate information collected by the energetic particle, solar wind and space dust instruments.
The pace picks up considerably on Sept. 5 as it resumes sending flyby images and other data.
During the data downlink phase, the spacecraft transmits science and operations data to NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) of antenna stations, which also provide services to other missions, like Voyager.
The spacecraft’s distance from Earth slows communication rates, especially compared to rates offered by today’s high-speed Internet providers.
With New Horizons past Pluto, the typical downlink rate is approximately 1-4 kilobits per second, depending on how the data is sent and which DSN antenna is receiving it.
“The New Horizons mission has required patience for many years, but from the small amount of data we saw around the Pluto flyby, we know the results to come will be well worth the wait,” said Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
The team also plans to continue posting new, unprocessed pictures from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on the New Horizons project Web site each Friday.
The images are available at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/index.php ; the next LORRI set is scheduled for posting on Sept. 11.
New Horizons is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built, and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. SwRI leads the science mission, payload operations, and encounter science planning.
