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NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Caltrans and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife remind motorists to remain alert while driving to improve safety for travelers and wildlife alike during “Watch Out for Wildlife (WOW) Week,” Sept. 16-22.
“It’s important that motorists, when driving through areas frequented by deer, elk and other animals, do all they can to protect themselves as well as some of California’s greatest natural resources – our wildlife,” said Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty.
The California Highway Patrol reported more than 1,800 wildlife-vehicle collisions in 2010. Approximately $1 billion in property damage is also caused by these incidents.
The Defenders of Wildlife (DOW), a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting native animals and plants, reports more than 200 people are killed in collisions with deer, elk, and other wildlife each year with an estimated 1.5 million animals hit annually.
The WOW campaign is supported by Caltrans, CDFW, and the Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis.
Caltrans and its partners work together to protect natural resources while providing safe and effective transportation.
“It’s a shame so many animals are injured and killed on our roads every year,” said Craig Stowers, CDFW's Deer Program Coordinator. “And it’s not a pleasant experience for the drivers who hit them, either. Many deaths, injuries, and costly vehicle repairs could be avoided if drivers would just pay more attention, be aware of when animals are most active and be prepared to react safely if an animal moves onto the road.”
Caltrans and CDFW offer a few tips for motorists:
- Be particularly alert when driving in wildlife areas.
- If you see an animal cross the road, know that another may be following.
- Don’t litter. It could entice animals to venture onto the road.
Examples of what Caltrans, in cooperation with our partners, is doing to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions:
U.S. Highway 101, San Luis Obispo County
U.S. Highway 101 near San Luis Obispo bisects a major wildlife corridor in the Los Padres National Forest. Caltrans installed electric mats at unfenced intersections to prevent animals from entering the roadway and ramps to allow wildlife to escape from the highway, if necessary. In recognition of this effort, the California Transportation Foundation gave Caltrans its 2013 Safety Project of the Year Award.
State Route 76, San Diego County
State Route 76 serves the North County inland areas of San Diego County. Five wildlife crossings and fencing were installed as part of the SR-76 Melrose to Mission Highway Improvement Project in 2012. A wildlife movement study is now underway to determine the effectiveness of the crossings and fencing. Data gathered from the survey will help improve wildlife fencing and crossing effectiveness.
State Route 89, Sierra County
This month, Caltrans will begin Phase II of the Kyburz Wildlife Crossing Project on State Route 89 in Sierra County. Fencing and other barriers will be erected to prevent wildlife from accessing the highway and encourage use of the undercrossing. In addition, monitoring cameras will be installed to evaluate the effectiveness of the fencing and barriers.
CLEARLAKE PARK, Calif. – A fire that broke out early Sunday evening in Clearlake Park forced dozens of people from their homes as firefighters continued to work on the incident into the night.
The Lakeshore Fire was first reported shortly after 5 p.m. on Lakeshore Drive just past the gooseneck, according to radio reports.
The fire burned in grass and brush on the area's steep hillsides, coming close to dozens of homes, based on witnesses and reports from the scene.
At around 8:15 p.m., Lake County Fire Chief Willie Sapeta the incident commander, said the fire had burned about 35 to 40 acres, and was between 80 and 90 percent contained. A short time later, Cal Fire said the fire was fully contained.
No structures were lost, Sapeta said, crediting firefighters with an “awesome job” of structure protection.
He said between 20 to 25 homes on San Joaquin Avenue just northwest of the gooseneck were evacuated.
He said there were “hours and hours” of mop up work yet to do, but he estimated that evacuees could be allowed back to their homes as soon as 10 or 11 p.m.
Radio reports indicated that Red Cross was staging resources for evacuees at Highlands Senior Center on Bowers Road in Clearlake, and that Red Cross closed down shortly before 10 p.m.
He said responding agencies included Lake County Fire, Northshore Fire, South Lake County Fire, Kelseyville Fire, Lakeport Fire, Cal Fire and US Forest Service units from the Mendocino National Forest.
Two Cal Fire helicopters and five tankers worked the fire from the air, while Sapeta said there were 20 engines, three water tenders, five crews and several dozen firefighters on scene.
“We'll have resources here all night, Sapeta said.
County Road Superintendent Steve Stangland said county road crews had blocked off Lakeshore Drive at San Joaquin Avenue and Crestview early Sunday evening to keep the roads clear for firefighters.
Shortly before 9 p.m. he Lakeshore Drive had been reopened but San Joaquin Avenue was remaining closed for the time being as firefighters continued their work at the scene.
Radio reports indicated several homes in the fire area were out of power beginning shortly after 8 p.m. Pacific Gas and Electric was on scene to work on the outage.
As for the fire's cause, “I have my investigator on that now,” said Sapeta, noting the area of origin will be under guard throughout the night.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
NICE, Calif. – Lake County’s two members of Congress visited the community on Saturday night, sharing dinner and updates on issues, including the developments in Syria.
The Saturday afternoon barbecue dinner event, held at the Sons of Italy Club in Nice, was the first campaign fundraiser in the county for Congressman John Garamendi, who represents the northern part of Lake County. He is up for reelection next year.
He invited along Congressman Mike Thompson, who represents the county’s southern area.
In interviews with Lake County News at the event, both Garamendi and Thompson discussed the latest news about Syria.
Over the past several weeks, Garamendi had strongly urged President Barack Obama to bring the matter to Congress for a debate and vote.
“There is no greater decision we can make than the decision to go to war,” Garamendi, who made appearances on national news channels to argue his case, said late in August.
In recent days, the possibility of the United States taking military action against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – who on Aug. 21 is alleged to have launched a chemical weapons attack on a Damascus suburb that killed innocent civilians, including children – has lessened as a diplomatic option, proposed by Russia, has arisen.
Assad has said he will hand over his country’s chemical weapons to international control as proposed by the Russians, a move that in the international press he has credited to Russian diplomacy. President Obama has since asked Congress to delay votes on military action against Syria.
An agreement regarding Assad’s chemical weapons handover was put together on Saturday, said Garamendi. “We’re moving very aggressively.”
Now, with plans to try to get Syria to hand over its chemical weapons, Garamendi said it’s possible that within the next year 1,000 tons of “very dangerous weapons” could be removed from Syrian control and destroyed.
“We never, a week ago, imagined that we could take that step,” he said, after the country came close to starting a new war.
He said it won’t be easy and it will take time, and pressure, on the Assad regime.
Earlier this week, after the president addressed the nation a televised speech to argue the case for taking action against Syria, Thompson said that when weapons of mass destruction are used, “as appears to be the case in Syria, there should be a robust, global response to deter these types of atrocities from ever happening again. Any such response, military or otherwise, must be taken with a strong, international coalition.”
However, Thompson has remained skeptical that a US military strike would diminish Assad’s ability to carry out more chemical attacks, a sentiment he reiterated on Saturday.
He said he’s very hopeful that a diplomatic solution will work and avoid a military confrontation, as well as further chemical weapons usage by the Assad regime. “Everybody in the world needs to speak out against that,” he said of chemical weapons usage.
Thompson said he also hopes work with the Russians will succeed and “we’ll be able to get ahold of those chemical weapons, get them out of the Assad quiver and be able to secure those in a way that they don’t fall into the wrong hands.”
See their full comments in the video at top, and event highlights in the second video.
John Jensen contributed to this report.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
Scientists at UC Berkeley have detected previously unknown channels of slow-moving seismic waves in Earth’s upper mantle, a discovery that helps explain “hotspot volcanoes” that give birth to island chains such as Hawaii and Tahiti.
Unlike volcanoes that emerge from collision zones between tectonic plates, hotspot volcanoes form in the middle of the plates.
The prevalent theory for how a mid-plate volcano forms is that a single upwelling of hot, buoyant rock rises vertically as a plume from deep within Earth’s mantle – the layer found between the planet’s crust and core – and supplies the heat to feed volcanic eruptions.
However, some hotspot volcano chains are not easily explained by this simple model, suggesting that a more complex interaction between plumes and the upper mantle is at play, said the study authors.
The newfound channels of slow-moving seismic waves, described in a paper published Thursday, Sept. 5, in Science Express, provide an important piece of the puzzle in the formation of these hotspot volcanoes and other observations of unusually high heat flow from the ocean floor.
The formation of volcanoes at the edges of plates is closely tied to the movement of tectonic plates, which are created as hot magma pushes up through fissures in mid-ocean ridges and solidifies.
As the plates move away from the ridges, they cool, harden and get heavier, eventually sinking back down into the mantle at subduction zones.
But scientists have noticed large swaths of the seafloor that are significantly warmer than expected from this tectonic plate-cooling model. It had been suggested that the plumes responsible for hotspot volcanism could also play a role in explaining these observations, but it was not entirely clear how.
“We needed a clearer picture of where the extra heat is coming from and how it behaves in the upper mantle,” said the study’s senior author, Barbara Romanowicz, UC Berkeley professor of earth and planetary sciences and a researcher at the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. “Our new finding helps bridge the gap between processes deep in the mantle and phenomenon observed on the earth’s surface, such as hotspots.”
The researchers utilized a new technique that takes waveform data from earthquakes around the world, and then analyzed the individual “wiggles” in the seismograms to create a computer model of Earth’s interior. The technology is comparable to a CT scan.
The model revealed channels – dubbed “low-velocity fingers” by the researchers – where seismic waves traveled unusually slowly. The fingers stretched out in bands measuring about 600 miles wide and 1,200 miles apart, and moved at depths of 120-220 miles below the seafloor.
Seismic waves typically travel at speeds of 2.5 to 3 miles per second at these depths, but the channels exhibited a 4 percent slowdown in average seismic velocity.
“We know that seismic velocity is influenced by temperature, and we estimate that the slowdown we’re seeing could represent a temperature increase of up to 200 degrees Celsius,” said study lead author Scott French, UC Berkeley graduate student in earth and planetary sciences.
The formation of channels, similar to those revealed in the computer model, has been theoretically suggested to affect plumes in Earth’s mantle, but it has never before been imaged on a global scale.
The fingers are also observed to align with the motion of the overlying tectonic plate, further evidence of “channeling” of plume material, the researchers said.
“We believe that plumes contribute to the generation of hotspots and high heat flow, accompanied by complex interactions with the shallow upper mantle,” said French. “The exact nature of those interactions will need further study, but we now have a clearer picture that can help us understand the ‘plumbing’ of Earth’s mantle responsible for hotspot volcano islands like Tahiti, Reunion and Samoa.”
Vedran Lekic, a graduate student in Romanowicz’s laboratory at the time of this research and now an assistant professor of geology at the University of Maryland, co-authored this study.
The National Science Foundation and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center helped support this research.
Sarah Yang writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Seven cats are waiting to meet new families this week at Lake County Animal Care and Control.
These cats – four females and three males – come in a variety of colors and ages, and if not already altered will be by the time they head to new homes.
In addition to spaying or neutering, cats that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are microchipped before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets there, hoping you'll choose them.
The following cats at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (other cats pictured on the animal control Web site that are not listed here are still “on hold”).
Domestic short hair mix
This female domestic short hair mix is 6 months old.
She has a black and white coat, and has not yet been spayed.
Find her in cat room kennel No. 1c, ID No. 37540.
Dilute calico
This female domestic medium hair mix is 2 years old.
She has dilute calico coloring and blue eyes, and has been spayed.
Shelter staff said she is a very sweet cat, and she is available for a low adoption fee.
She's in cat room kennel No. 6, ID No. 37510.
Male orange tabby
This male orange tabby is 4 years old.
He has a short coat and gold eyes, and has been neutered.
He's in cat room kennel No. 7, ID No. 37700.
Male lynx point mix
This male lynx point mix is 1 year old.
He weighs 9 pounds, has a long coat and has been neutered.
Find him in cat room kennel No. 19, ID No. 37517.
Domestic short hair mix
This domestic short hair mix is 6 years old.
He has seal point coloring and blue eyes, and has been neutered.
He's in cat room kennel No. 28, ID No. 37760.
'Tigger'
“Tigger” is a 7-month-old female domestic medium hair mix.
In she has an orange and white coat, weighs nearly 6 pounds and has been spayed.
She's in cat room kennel No. 74, ID No. 37464.
Female Siamese mix
This female Siamese mix is 2 years old.
She has flame point coloring and blue eyes, and a medium-length coat. She has not yet been spayed.
She's in cat room kennel No. 90, ID No. 37619.
Adoptable cats also can be seen at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control/Adopt/Cats_and_Kittens.htm or at www.petfinder.com .
Please note: Cats listed at the shelter's Web page that are said to be “on hold” are not yet cleared for adoption.
To fill out an adoption application online visit http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control/Adopt/Dog___Cat_Adoption_Application.htm .
Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.
Office hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm .
For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Get ready now to participate in the “Great California ShakeOut,” which takes place next month.
The event is set for Thursday, Oct. 17, at 10:17 a.m.
The ShakeOut is a drill that helps individual Californians as well as organizations prepare to survive and recover from major earthquakes.
As of Saturday, 12.3 million people worldwide were registered to participate, with 8.3 million Californians among them, according to the ShakeOut Web site.
So far, approximately 2,531 Lake County residents will be taking part, including 19 individuals or families, 52 members of local government, 120 individuals in health care, and 2,340 educators and students at K-12 schools and districts, organizers reported.
Check out the Great California Shakeout Web site at http://www.shakeout.org/california/ to learn more about the drill and to register yourself or your organization, as well as to learn about safety during earthquakes.
Registering is very easy – just click on the red “Register Here!” tab and answer a few questions.
First, register for your family at home, and, second, make sure your workplace or organization is registered.
The Web site also has many resources to assist your ShakeOut participation. Just click on the “Resources” tab to access that information which will greatly help your involvement in the ShakeOut.