In The
News
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1. For homes, a fire shield
Diane Wedner, LA
Times
November 5, 2006
The recently contained Esperanza fire in Riverside County, which killed
five firefighters and destroyed 34 homes, serves as a stark reminder that houses
are vulnerable to burning.
But tools are available to help keep new and existing homes and their
contents from igniting in a fire: retardants and reactants.
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2. Cheaper insurance rates point to decline in
risks
Associated Press as printed by SB Sun
11/06/2006
The world seems awash in risk: nuclear rumblings in North Korea,
bloodshed in Iraq, bird-flu scares, terrorism, hurricanes, corporate scandals,
political uncertainty and more. But one barometer of risk — the price of
insurance — indicates that many facets of life and business are getting less
risky.
Insurance is a hedge against risk, and in many areas it has gotten cheaper
lately.
Homeowners' insurance costs are falling in many parts of the nation.
Car-insurance prices are rising at a slower rate than inflation. This year,
companies are spending less than they did in 2005 to protect themselves against
injuries to their employees, lawsuits aimed at directors and officers and
liability claims in general. The cost of some life insurance, too, has fallen in
recent years, as has insurance against terrorism.
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3. Dallas woman sentenced in FEMA fraud case
November 6, 2006
Associated Press as printed in the Press Enterprise
DALLAS – A Dallas woman who pleaded guilty to defrauding the Federal
Emergency Management Agency of $80,000 through false claims for Hurricane
Katrina benefits was sentenced Monday to nearly six years in prison.
U.S. District Judge David C. Godbey sentenced Lakietha Diann Hall, 35, to
70 months in prison. She was ordered to pay $83,254 in restitution. In a related
case, she pleaded guilty to one count of failure to appear.
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4. Block Partying 101
A successful block party
brings neighbors together to have fun, share safety info
Story by Katie
Cobb, SB Sun Correspondent
11/10/2006
As a police chopper circles tightly above the 13100 block of Margate
Street, it's clear something is going down.
On the street below, a DJ raps energetically to the crowd, while an LAPD
mobile command post pulls up next to an inflatable bounce house. Nearby, a fire
truck raises its ladder through the smoke of a trio of barbecues. Bingo players
wait for the next call.
[the article continues]... "Being good neighbors is not only about making
sure someone's car doesn't get broken into, it is also about being prepared for
a large-scale disaster, like an earthquake," says Bergman, raising his voice to
be heard over the music. "You need to know who knows CPR, who has all the
bottled water, the contact information, a generator and who is a doctor."
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5. Is public policy pouring fuel on wildfires?
By Tim
Reiterman, LA Times Staff Writer
November 14, 2006
When 14 firefighters died in a wind-fanned inferno near Glenwood
Springs, Colo., in 1994, Roger G. Kennedy was struck by the senselessness of the
tragedy.
"They were not fighting to protect an ecosystem or even a railroad or a
highway," he recalled. "Those people went to their death protecting a real
estate development."
Kennedy, National Park Service director under President Clinton for four
years in the 1990s, is the author of a new book, "Wildfire and Americans: How to
Save Lives, Property and Your Tax Dollars," that contends that government
policies have placed millions of residents in the path of wildfires.
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6. Simulation tests bioterrorism readiness
RIVERSIDE COUNTY: The scenario begins with a powerful virus and a
hijacked school bus.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
By JOHN ASBURY The Press-Enterprise
A simulated bioterrorism attack Wednesday on a school bus in Moreno Valley
with 40 paramedic students was a sobering test in preparing for a large-scale
disaster in Riverside County.
Firetrucks, ambulances and police cruisers converged on an overturned
school bus at March Air Reserve Base to begin the practiced bioterrorism
exercise. Paramedic students from Riverside and Mt. San Jacinto community
colleges acted as victims infected with influenza who were trapped in the bus,
howling for help and drenched in fake gore.
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7. Esperanza Fire aid
11/17/2006
By Megan Blaney, SB Sun Staff Writer
The federal government today begins offering assistance to those who
had losses of buildings and property in the deadly Esperanza Fire.
The U.S. Small Business Administration declared a disaster in Riverside
County and some surrounding areas Thursday because of the destruction caused by
the Esperanza Fire, which burned 34 homes and 20 other structures in October and
killed five firefighters.
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8. Esperanza Fire victims apply for disaster loans
By
Megan Blaney, SB Sun Staff Writer
11/19/2006
BANNING - Repairing and restoring the San Jacinto mountain communities
in the aftermath of the deadly Esperanza Fire may be more feasible now that
federal loans are available.
A few residents of the small mountain communities affected by the blaze
filed into the Banning Community Center last week to apply for low-interest
disaster loans that could help them regain the lives they had before the fire
took so much of the hillside in the San Jacinto mountains.
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9. Fire-risk group might form
Riverside County
supervisors to take up proposal today
By Megan Blaney, SB Sun Staff
Writer
11/21/2006
Riverside County supervisors today will decide whether to create a Fire
Hazard Reduction Task Force to study the county's fire prevention and protection
techniques, as well as the future of development in fire-prone areas.
"Even clearing significant perimeters around homes in high-fire hazard
areas may not be enough to protect the structures or the occupants from raging
wind-blown fires," reads the agenda item by 1st District Supervisor Bob Buster.
"Certainly, the Esperanza Fire has again shown that rescuers and firefighters
are always (in) great risk in these areas."
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10. Lost hiker sparks wildfire
YUCAIPA: Favorable conditions helped firefighters contain the blaze to
about 125 acres.
November 22, 2006
By PAUL LAROCCO The Press-Enterprise
A lost hiker unintentionally provided work for almost 400 firefighters
Tuesday night when he lit a signal blaze that tore through thick brush above
Yucaipa, officials said.
The Jefferson Fire had been held to 125 acres by 6 p.m. Wednesday, with
almost half the blaze surrounded, said U.S. Forest Service spokesman John
Miller.
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11. Sifting through fire's ashes
Residents of charred Twin Pines wrestle with what to do
next
November 23, 2006
By GREGOR McGAVIN The Press-Enterprise
TWIN PINES - If anyone should have been ready for the Esperanza Fire, it
was probably Dana Dickey and Meryl Krolick.
Dickey grew up on the 2.4-acre property her father bought in 1969 for his
dream retirement home and has seen her share of wildfires. Krolick is a former
emergency-management technician who trained with the Fire Department of New York
and taught ambulance crews how to respond to crises.
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12. Fire victims worry insurance won't cover damage for coming
rain
By Guy McCarthy, SB Sun Staff Writer
11/25/2006
BANNING - Martha Schenk is grateful her family's hilltop house in Twin
Pines did not burn in the Esperanza Fire four weeks ago.
But she is frustrated her insurance will not cover erosion prevention
measures she says are badly needed on scorched slopes below her house and
driveway off Twin Pines Road.
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13. Rain likely to follow El Nino
Andrew Silva, SB Sun
Staff Writer
11/26/2006
The giant energetic heat engine in the Pacific Ocean is sloshing
against the western shores of the Americas, bringing with it a chance of a wet
winter.
El Nino is back in our neck of the woods, although it's not expected to be
nearly as spectacular - or destructive - as the record-setting event of 1997 and
1998.
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14. SB County supervisors behind the curve
Our
view: Creation of a task force to study development in risky areas is overdue
here.
SB Sun Editorial
11/26/2006
Riverside County supervisors are thinking smart with the possible
creation of a task force to study not only fire prevention and protection
techniques, in the wake of the deadly Esperanza Fire, but also the future of
development in fire-prone areas.
That is an exigency that San Bernardino County supervisors need to address
as well. An honest, forthright discussion of why building should continue in
areas that put not only homeowners, but firefighters, at risk is long overdue.
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15. Insurers learn to pinpoint risks -- and avoid
them
Computer models can test a quake's effects on your house.
The result could change your rates or threaten your policy.
By Peter G.
Gosselin, LA Times Staff Writer
November 28, 2006
NEWARK, CALIF. — Hemant Shah is in the business of creating
catastrophes.
The computers at Shah's Silicon Valley company, Risk Management Solutions
Inc., contain mathematical models of every U.S. disaster from the 1812
earthquake that toppled chimneys in St. Louis to the 9/11 assault that brought
down the twin towers in New York, as well as 100,000 synthesized "extreme
events."