Ongoing LA blazes raise wildfire recovery questions

Fires in Southern California continue to burn as people in parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties remain under red flag warnings. Dry conditions are expected to last through today, according to Cal Fire, but this weekend is expected to bring “calmer and more humid weather.” 

To date, the death toll has climbed to at least 25 people and more than 12,000 structures are estimated to be damaged or destroyed. As public officials and utility companies come under sharp scrutiny, residents face the long road ahead of restoring their homes and lives. 

More news about the Southern California fires:

Blazes spur new bills: Legislators have introduced a handful of new proposals, writes CalMatters’ Yue Stella Yu. These include bills to require mortgage servicers to halt mortgage payments for fire victims; allow homeowners to create a “catastrophe savings account” to cover insurance deductibles; and enable residents to voluntarily contribute to a “wildfire management tax contribution fund” through their tax returns. 

Read more here.

Risky homes: To quicken the pace of reconstructing homes in L.A. County, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order that waives certain requirements in the state’s landmark environmental law. But while California has historically rebuilt neighborhoods after wildfires, it does raise an important question: Why do we keep building (and rebuilding) in fire-prone areas? 

As CalMatters’ Ben Christopher explains, between 1990 and 2020, nearly 45% of homes built in California were in “wildland urban” areas where residential buildings butt up against the state’s forests and scrublands. These areas make up less than 7% of all the land in the state, but more than 80% of all structures destroyed by a wildfire between 1985 and 2013 were in these zones.

Given California’s housing crisis, some argue the state doesn’t have the luxury to leave these high-risk areas undeveloped. But to truly protect the public, entire neighborhoods must be fire-hardened — which can be too costly for most communities.

Read more here.

As technology companies promise an easier and more productive life through the use of artificial intelligence, California workers are organizing to ensure their jobs are protected under this industry-disrupting technology, reports CalMatters’ Khari Johnson.

Earlier this year, the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute published a report that found that 4.5 million Californians are in 20 industries that are at “high risk of job loss due to automation,” with more than half of workers at high risk being Latino.

To protect workers from potentially exploitative technology, labor groups came together at a conference in Sacramento this week to discuss job elimination stemming from AI and other tech, and strategize for upcoming labor disputes. 

Union leaders urged workers, for example, to negotiate the use of AI in the workplace when bargaining, and to require management to discuss tech with workers before implementation.

• Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, chief organizer at SAG-AFTRA union: “We’re up against the biggest corporate interests and the biggest political interests that you can imagine, and working together in unity is absolutely where our power comes from.”

Read more here.

To comply with federal law, nearly all schools in the U.S. use some type of web filter to block kids from accessing obscene content online.

But data released this week by the Center for Democracy & Technology shows just how frequent content filtering happens nationwide — and how frustrating it can be for both teachers and students, writes CalMatters’ Tara García Mathewson.

In its annual survey, the digital rights advocacy group found that 70% of teachers and students this year said web filters impede students’ ability to finish assignments. One-third of teachers said their schools block content related to the LGBTQ+ community, and half said information about reproductive health and sexual orientation is blocked.

The findings mirror what Aleeza Siddique, a 15-year-old Northern California high school student, experienced after filters blocked her from accessing the Spanish-language news outlet Telemundo for an in-class activity.

• Aleeza: “The amount that they’re policing is actively interfering with our ability to have an education. … We should have a right to know what we’re being protected from.”

Read more here.

California law mandates mental health care coverage, but families still face devastating gaps. CalMatters health reporter Jocelyn Wiener and video strategy director Robert Meeks have a video segment on Jocelyn’s story on insurance denials as part of our partnership with PBS SoCal. Watch it here. 

SoCalMatters airs at 5:58 p.m. weekdays on PBS SoCal.