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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
Gov. Gavin Newsom has appointed a new state fire marshal.
Chief Daniel Berlant of Auburn has been appointed state fire marshal with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
Berlant began his career with Cal Fire in 2001 as a volunteer and was hired in 2002 in the Fire Prevention Bureau of the Nevada-Yuba-Placer Unit.
In 2005, he began working in the Cal Fire Communications Office as a fire prevention specialist in Sacramento.
After several fire sieges and extensive work in the public information function, he was promoted in 2008 to department information officer and was tasked with serving as Cal Fire’s main spokesperson.
In 2014, he was promoted to the chief of public information overseeing the Sacramento and region staff of the Communications Office.
In 2016, Chief Berlant was promoted to assistant deputy director at the Office of the State Fire Marshal over the Wildfire Planning & Engineering, and Fire Engineering & Investigations Divisions.
Cal Fire said Assembly Bill 9 (2021) created the Community Wildfire Preparedness and Mitigation Division within the Office State Fire Marshal.
The division will be responsible for the policy and program leadership for defensible space, home hardening/WUI building codes, land use planning, fire prevention grants, pre-fire/fire plan, utility wildfire mitigation, fire hazard/risk mapping, and incident reporting.
In addition, Chief Berlant will continue oversight of the OSFM Fire Engineering & Investigations Division responsible for fire protection related licensing/certification, arson and bomb, and fireworks enforcement/disposal.
Berlant earned a Bachelor of Science degree in political science from the University of California, Davis.
This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $203,564.
Berlant is registered without party preference.
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- Written by: Deogratias Eustace, University of Dayton
If you live on the East Coast, you may have driven through roundabouts in your neighborhood countless times. Or maybe, if you’re in some parts farther west, you’ve never encountered one of these intersections. But roundabouts, while a relatively new traffic control measure, are catching on across the United States.
Roundabouts, also known as traffic circles or rotaries, are circular intersections designed to improve traffic flow and safety. They offer several advantages over conventional intersections controlled by traffic signals or stop signs, but by far the most important one is safety.
I research transportation engineering, particularly traffic safety and traffic operations. Some of my past studies have examined the safety and operational effects of installing roundabouts at an intersection. I’ve also compared the performance of roundabouts versus stop-controlled intersections.
A brief history of roundabouts
As early as the 1700s, some city planners proposed and even constructed circular places, sites where roads converged, like the Circus in Bath, England, and the Place Charles de Gaulle in France. In the U.S., architect Pierre L'Enfant built several into his design for Washington, D.C.. These circles were the predecessors to roundabouts.
In 1903, French architect and influential urban planner Eugène Hénard was one of the first people who introduced the idea of moving traffic in a circle to control busy intersections in Paris.
Around the same time, William Phelps Eno, an American businessman known as the father of traffic safety and control, also proposed roundabouts to alleviate traffic congestion in New York City.
In the years that followed, a few other cities tried out a roundabout-like design, with varying levels of success. These roundabouts didn’t have any sort of standardized design guidelines, and most of them were too large to be effective and efficient, as vehicles would enter at higher speeds without always yielding.
The birth of the modern roundabout came with yield-at-entry regulations, adopted in some towns in Great Britain in the 1950s. With yield-at-entry regulations, the vehicles entering the roundabout had to give way to vehicles already circulating in the roundabout. This was made a rule nationwide in the United Kingdom in 1966, then in France in 1983.
Yield-at-entry meant vehicles drove through these modern roundabouts more slowly, and over the years, engineers began adding more features that made them look closer to how roundabouts do now. Many added pedestrian crossings and splitter islands – or raised curbs where vehicles entered and exited – which controlled the vehicles’ speeds.
Engineers, planners and decision-makers worldwide noticed that these roundabouts improved traffic flow, reduced congestion and improved safety at intersections. Roundabouts then spread throughout Europe and Australia.
Three decades later, modern roundabouts came to North America. The first modern roundabout in the U.S. was built in Summerlin, on the west side of Las Vegas, in 1990.
Ever since, the construction of modern roundabouts in the U.S. has picked up steam. There are now about 10,000 roundabouts in the country.
Why use roundabouts?
Roundabouts likely caught on so quickly because they reduce the number of potential conflict points. A conflict point at an intersection is a location where the paths of two or more vehicles or road users cross or have the potential to cross. The more conflict points, the more likely vehicles are to crash.
A roundabout has only eight potential conflict points, compared to 32 at a conventional four-way intersection. At roundabouts, vehicles don’t cross each other at a right angle, and there are fewer points where vehicles merge or diverge into or away from each other.
The roundabout’s tight circle forces approaching traffic to slow down and yield to circulating traffic, and then move smoothly around the central island. As a result, roundabouts have fewer stop-and-go issues, which reduces fuel consumption and vehicle emissions and allows drivers to perform U-turns more easily. Since traffic flows continuously at lower speeds in a roundabout, this continuous flow minimizes the need for vehicles to stop, which reduces congestion.
The Federal Highway Administration estimates that when a roundabout replaces a stop sign-controlled intersection, it reduces serious and fatal injury crashes by 90%, and when it replaces an intersection with a traffic light, it reduces serious and fatal injury crashes by nearly 80%.
Why do some places have more than others?
Engineers and planners traditionally have installed roundabouts in intersections with severe congestion or a history of accidents. But, with public support and funding, they can get installed anywhere.
But roundabouts aren’t needed in every intersection. In places where congestion isn’t an issue, city planners tend not to push for them. For example, while there are around 750 roundabouts in Florida, there are fewer than 50 in North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming combined.
Roundabouts have been gaining popularity in the U.S. in recent years, in part because the Federal Highway Administration recommends them as the safest option. Some states, like New York and Virginia, have adopted a “roundabout first” policy, where engineers default to using roundabouts where feasible when building or upgrading intersections.
In 2000, the U.S. only had 356 roundabouts. Over the past two decades, that number has grown to over 10,000. Love them or hate them, the roundabout’s widespread adoption suggests that these circular intersections are here to stay.
Deogratias Eustace, Professor of Civil, Environmental and Engineering Mechanics, University of Dayton
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The latest report from the Employment Development Department said the September unemployment rate in Lake County was 5.6%, the same rate as in August. The September 2022 jobless rate was 4.3%.
California’s unemployment rate was 4.7% in September, which is 0.1% higher than the previous month. The state registered a 3.7% jobless rate in September 2022.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the nationwide unemployment rate was 3.8% in August and September, and 3.5% in the previous September.
The Employment Development Department said California payroll jobs totaled 18,109,000 in September 2023, up 8,700 from August and also up 302,800 from September of last year.
Since the current economic expansion began in April 2020, California has gained 3,191,000 jobs, which averages out to a gain of 77,829 jobs per month, the report said.
The number of Californians employed in September was 18,470,700, a decrease of 36,300 persons from August’s total of 18,507,000 and down 500 from the employment total in September, according to the Employment Development Department.
The report said the number of unemployed Californians was 913,600 in September, an increase of 18,600 over the month and up 144,100 in comparison to September 2022.
As of September 2023, California has added 436,400 more nonfarm jobs than it had in February 2020 at the state’s pre-pandemic high, the report said.
Most of Lake County’s job sectors showed declines, with the exception of private service providing, which grew by 1.1%, and private education and health services, which grew by 4.5%.
Lake County’s total farm jobs were down by 14.8% in the month-over comparison, but up by 25.6% over the previous year.
The jobless rate for Lake County ranked it No. 41 out of the state’s 58 counties.
The lowest unemployment rate in California in September, 2.9%, was in San Mateo County, while Imperial County registered the highest rate, 21.1%.
Lake’s neighboring county jobless rates and ranks were: Colusa, 8.5%, No. 56; Glenn, 6.1%, No. 47; Mendocino, 4.6%, No. 28; Napa and Sonoma, 3.5%, tied for No. 6; and Yolo, 4.3%, No. 20.
Five of California’s 11 industry sectors gained jobs in September:
• Private education and health services: Up 18,200 jobs statewide, thanks to above average increases in general medical and surgical hospitals, continuing care retirement communities and assisted living facilities, and individual and family services.
• Leisure and hospitality: Up 11,300, thanks, in part, to job gains in the accommodation industry group.
• Trade, transportation and utilities: Up 2,400.
• Construction: Up 2,200.
• Government: Up 300.
Sectors showing declines included the following:
• Professional and business services: Down 10,900. It posted the largest month-over job loss due to above average declines in accounting, tax prep and bookkeeping services, architectural, engineering, and related services, and scientific research and development services.
• Information: Down 7.300.
• Manufacturing: Down 4,600.
• Financial activities: Down 1,600.
• Other services: Down 1,100.
• Mining and logging: Down 200.
In related data that figures into the state’s unemployment rate, the Employment Development Department said there were 368,452 people certifying for Unemployment Insurance benefits during the September 2023 sample week. That compares to 394,757 people in August and 294,085 people in September 2022.
Concurrently, 37,863 initial claims were processed in the September 2023 sample week, which was a month-over decrease of 111 claims from August, but a year-over increase of 3,362 claims from September 2022, the report said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Lake County News reports
The meeting will begin at 4 p.m. at the Moose Lodge, located at 15900 Moose Lodge Lane in Clearlake Oaks.
The meeting will be available via Zoom. The meeting ID is 986 3245 2684, pass code is 666827.
Business on Wednesday will include an update on Spring Valley, with reports on illegal cannabis cultivation, FireWise Community safety and Spring Valley Lake recovery.
There also will be updates on John T. Klaus Park and commercial cannabis.
Northshore Fire Protection District Chief Mike Ciancio is scheduled to give a report to the group.
Supervisor EJ Crandell also will update the group on the Clearlake Oaks Roadmap Taskforce, a meeting with Sonoma Clean Power, the Lake County Area Plan and general plan updates, and the latest on the Blue Ribbon Committee.
ERTH’s next meeting will take place on Dec. 6.
ERTH’s members are Denise Loustalot, Jim Burton, Tony Morris and Pamela Kicenski.
For more information visit the group’s Facebook page.