Research from the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety consistently identifies wind-borne embers, firebrands carried well ahead of the fire front, as a dominant cause of residential structure loss in wildfires.
The Trump Administration's sweeping changes to the Forest Service, which operates under the Department of Agriculture, represent a gutting of an agency that has been a stable fact of life for over a century.
"This fire was very quickly identified as suspicious in nature," said Deputy Chief Mike Wedell. "There was a subject of interest identified very early on in the incident. That subject has been arrested."
I think this brings up the question as to whether Spencer Pratt can satisfy the residency requirement required under the charter to be elected mayor, said Jessica Levinson, professor of law at Loyola Marymount University.
Large blooms across the state typically occur after an intense rain year, and while blooms started appearing in late January, mid-March to late May is when spring colors are at their peak.
One year ago, Nancy Ward, then the director of the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), petitioned the Federal Emergency Management Agency to spearhead the cleanup of toxic ash and fire debris cloaking more than 12,000 homes across Los Angeles County. Although Ward's decision ensured the federal government would assume the bulk of disaster costs, it came with a major trade off.
Showers moving into the region from the Central Coast should bring steady rain to Ventura and Los Angeles counties Thursday morning, with frosty temperatures pushing snow levels lower than normal, potentially impacting commuters along the Grapevine, according to the National Weather Service. "Steady precipitation will taper off to showers by late this afternoon and become confined to the mountains by late tonight," the weather service posted in a Thursday morning forecast.
Californians looking to resume their weekly commute Tuesday awoke to see several major roads closed after heavy rains drenched much the state Monday - with the expected precipitation far from over. Among the closures was a section of Highway 1 through Big Sur, which state officials just weeks ago celebrated reopening for the first time in three years. The road closed Monday after rockslides left "debris in the roadway at multiple locations," according to the California Department of Transportation.
After experiencing one of the wettest holiday seasons on record, still soggy California hit a major milestone this week - having zero areas of abnormal dryness for the first time in 25 years. This data, collected by the U.S. Drought Monitor, is a welcome nugget of news for Golden State residents, who in the last 15 years alone have lived through two of the worst droughts on record, the worst wildfire seasons on record and the most destructive wildfires ever.
A week later, powerful Santa Ana winds arrived, picked up some bits of rubber from one of the tractor's scorched tires and carried them over the containment area into dry vegetation, bringing the fire back to life, according to investigators. The subsequent blaze, the Mountain fire, burned nearly 20,000 acres and destroyed roughly 250 homes and structures in Camarillo Hills and nearby communities in western Ventura County.
