A bill pending in the California Legislature would allow landowners and hunters to shoot invasive mute swans like this one seen recently in the Grizzly Island Wildlife Area near Fairfield.
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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.
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CalMatters
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Topline:
California has tried to eradicate ugly South American swamp rodents called nutria. Shooting destructive nonnative mute swans might be a tougher sell.
Why it matters: While the invasive swans may be beautiful, California biologists and wetlands scientists say they are a threat to the few remaining wetlands in the state. The swan population has increased from 1,150 in 2022 to more than 12,000 as of this spring.
What can be done? There is debate about the best way to deal with the swans, but a measure before the state Legislature would allow hunters and landowners to shoot the birds. Some animal welfare groups, however, oppose the measure, arguing that claims of environmental damage may be overblown.
On an early August morning, it didn’t take long to spot the first pair of huge white swans with orange and black bills and graceful, curving necks as they swam in the marsh along the side of a Solano County levee road.
They dabbled in the vegetation as a pickup drove through the Grizzly Island Wildlife Area. A short drive later, past a herd of a dozen tule elk, two more swans appeared in the marsh alongside the dirt road. Then four more. A few hundred yards down the road, out in the distance past a thicket of swaying reeds, dozens of swans swam in the water.
For casual bird watchers, the sight of all these majestic animals might be a pleasure and bring to mind swan-themed works of literature, such as “Leda and the Swan” and “The Ugly Duckling.”
But for wetland biologists and others with a stake in the health of the surrounding Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast, the birds represent the latest — and an exponentially growing — threat to the few remaining wetlands left in California.
These are mute swans, native to Europe and Asia. Weighing up to 30 pounds and with a wingspan of up to 8 feet, they’re the biggest bird in the marsh, and they’re not the least bit shy about throwing their weight around.
Fiercely territorial, especially during breeding season, they’ve been known to drown smaller animals and have killed at least one American kayaker. They’ve displaced colonies of nesting native birds in other parts of the U.S. they have invaded. Mute swans also feed gluttonously on submerged vegetation, destroying the plant life on which other native wetland species depend.
“They might be a pretty, big, white bird ... and they may be charismatic, but they can be pretty nasty,” said Brad Bortner, a retired chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s migratory bird management programs in Washington, D.C.
In 2008, California banned anyone without a special permit from keeping mute swans as pets or from importing them into the state. The hope was to head off yet another destructive invasive species taking hold in the state.
It didn’t work. The mute swan population exploded in just a few years. In 2022, state waterfowl biologists estimated there were 1,150 of them. This spring, they estimated more than 12,000, nearly double the year before. Most of the mute swans are in the Suisun Marsh, a sprawling complex of public wetlands, agricultural lands and private duck-hunting clubs on the outskirts of the Bay Area near Fairfield.
“We keep watching them climb and climb and climb,” said Melanie Weaver, waterfowl coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Mute swans at the Grizzly Island Wildlife Area on Aug. 8, 2025.
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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.
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CalMatters
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A measure before the state Legislature aims to allow hunters and landowners to shoot the swans for the next five years to try to bring their numbers down to more manageable levels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and beyond.
The hunting groups supporting Assembly Bill 764 essentially ask: If Californians are OK with spending more than $13 million since 2018 to kill nearly 6,000 nutria, the 20-pound, orange-toothed South American rodents that have invaded the same waterways, why not let hunters and land owners do the same to mute swans — but for free?
“If the population gets too large and out of control, it may be beyond our ability then to really effectively manage them,” Mark Hennelly, a lobbyist for the California Waterfowl Association, told the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee this spring. “So we want to get ahead of the problem.”
Animal welfare groups object
That argument has so far been a surprisingly easy sell in the Legislature, despite California’s passionate and influential anti-hunting activists. Similar swan-killing proposals have led to protests in other states.
The measure easily passed the Assembly without any lawmaker voting against it. It’s now pending in the California Senate.
No group has opposed the measure so far, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database, but that might soon change.
Mute swans, unlike nutria, have a dedicated group of supporters, mostly on the East Coast.
Nicole Rivard, a spokesperson for Friends of Animals, said she and fellow members of the animal welfare organization believe mute swans shouldn’t be treated like vermin.
The birds arrived here through no fault of their own, brought by humans, and they don’t deserve to be killed for it, she said.
Rivard believes the California legislation is motivated by hunters looking for an excuse to have yet another bird to legally shoot. Currently, mute swans can only be killed by landowners if the birds “are found to be injuring growing crops or property,” according to state regulations.
“We’re anti-hunting, so we don’t like the idea that [hunting] might be, you know, part of the reasoning behind this,” Rivard said.
Arguing that claims of mute swans’ environmental damage and aggression are overblown, Friends of Animals and other groups opposed killing them decades ago, after Mid-Atlantic states proposed eradication when their populations began expanding dramatically in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The groups protested, filed lawsuits and proposed legislation to try to stop the killing. They had mixed success. Some states began killing the nonnative swans over the animal welfare groups’ objections. Notably, Maryland was able to knock the mute swan population down from around 5,000 birds in the early 2000s to around 200 by 2010.
“Continued control and maintenance operations have reduced that number to just a handful of birds today,” said Josh Homyack, the game bird section leader for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
In Maryland, government agency employees raided mute swan nests and destroyed eggs, captured and euthanized swans when they were flightless during their feather-molting season, and shot them in carefully coordinated operations, Homyack said. The state also issued a few permits to kill the birds to local landowners.
In New York, the mute swan lobby got a law passed that made it harder to kill the birds, requiring state officials to “fully exhaust non-lethal control measures,” such as nest destruction and capturing birds and moving them to wildlife facilities “prior to any lethal removal.”
On the East Coast, mute swans have been around since before the turn of the last century. They were first imported as ornamental livestock for zoos, parks and estates.
Some of California’s mute swans likely came in the same way. Weaver, the California waterfowl coordinator, said others were likely brought in the past few years to chase away Canada geese that have increasingly become a nuisance at parks and golf courses.
“People were buying these [swans], and they were just throwing them out there,” she said.
Weaver noted their owners didn’t do the responsible thing and clip their wings to keep them from flying off. That’s hardly surprising. It’s no easy task to grab a hissing 25-pound swan, big and angry enough to swamp a kayaker. So with nothing to stop them, the birds flew to nearby marshlands and began reproducing.
“Here we are, not very many years down the road, with a population that is really increasing at a rapid rate,” Weaver said.
So far, California's wildlife agency hasn’t enacted a mute swan eradication plan similar to the one it started almost immediately – and publicly promoted – a few years ago, after nutria first started turning up in the San Joaquin Valley.
Nutria are similarly destructive feeders on aquatic plants. The South American swamp rodents also burrow holes in levees, posing a threat to the state’s flood-control and water-supply infrastructure.
Dave Strayer, a retired invasive species expert with the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York, said he’s not surprised state officials haven’t been as aggressive with the beautiful mute swans, given the uproar over killing them in other states.
He said research has shown that when it comes to invasive animals, charisma matters. The more attractive a problematic non-native species is, the less appetite there is to wipe it out.
Stayer gave an example: Few complain about killing common nonnative rats, but you’re apt to get death threats at even the suggestion of wiping out ecologically harmful feral cat colonies in the same habitats.
“I never had even one person stand up for zebra mussels and say, ‘No, these are beautiful, elegant God’s creatures’ and so forth,” he said.
Few wetlands and too many mute swans
Supporters of the swan-killing legislation say reducing the number of mute swans should be fairly easy since the giant white birds are easy to spot, identify and kill. Their size and the color and shape of their bills also reduce the risk they’ll be confused with other protected bird species, they say.
California’s native tundra and trumpeter swans would still be protected and illegal to shoot if the bill becomes law.
Mute swans at the Grizzly Island Wildlife Area on Aug. 8, 2025. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters Despite their undeniable beauty, Weaver, the state waterfowl coordinator, sees mute swans similarly to nutria.
The swans pose too great a threat to native species reliant on the few wetlands left in California, which has lost at least 90% of the habitats to agriculture and urban sprawl.
“They don’t move around the state all that much, and they really like the Delta-Suisun Marsh area, so it’s still easy to handle the issue,” Weaver said. “The longer we wait, it won't be.”
Libby Rainey
has been tracking how L.A. is prepping for the 2028 Olympic Games.
Published April 3, 2026 4:58 PM
Tickets to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles went on sale Thursday.
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Emma McIntyre
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Getty Images for LA28
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Topline:
As the locals-only sale kicks off and Southern Californians have their first chance to buy tickets to the Olympic Games, some fans are wide-eyed at the high fees on all tickets and the prices in general, which start at $28 but go up to more than $5,500 a pop.
Sticker shock: Lori Rovner of Manhattan Beach told LAist that one $2,100 ticket had a $505 service fee, bringing the total cost to $2,604.63.
Other prices: Some people LAist spoke with opted for only $28 or similarly priced tickets, even if it meant missing some of the biggest Olympic events. One user on Reddit said they purchased 18 tickets for around $550.
Read on … about how much fans are spending on tickets.
Lori Rovner of Manhattan Beach is a big sports fan, so there was no question that when tickets for the Olympic Games went on sale, she'd be signing up.
She scored a slot in the first ticket drop, which launched Thursday, and logged on right at 10 a.m., hoping to score tickets to the Opening Ceremonies and some finals too. After battling her computer to get through "access denied" screens and a lost shopping cart due to a 30-minute time limit, she bought 16 tickets.
It was only when she was about to purchase that she noticed the service fees, which were around 24% of each ticket. One $2,100 ticket had a $505 service fee, bringing the total cost to $2,604.63.
"It's insane," she said of the fee. "I don't understand what the service is."
As the locals-only sale kicks off and Southern Californians have their first chance to buy tickets to the Olympic Games, some fans are wide-eyed at the high fees on all tickets and the prices in general, which start at $28 but go up to more than $5,500 a pop. Opening Ceremony tickets start at $328.68
The service fees aren't a surprise add-on. The price fans see when browsing the site is the total cost, including the fee. Still, some who bought in the first phase of sales were surprised when they saw the fees add up.
One user on Reddit of shared their cart of 10 tickets, which added up to $11,264. That included $1,038 in fees alone. Commenters responded in shock and awe.
Service fees are standard in ticket sales, but the percentage they charge can vary widely. High fees have been a source of ire for music and sports fans for years. A 2018 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the average fees on a primary ticket market were 27%.
LA28 did not respond to LAist's requests for details on the service fee, like what it pays for or why it's a percentage rather than a flat rate.
Not everyone seemed bothered by the prices. Some people LAist spoke with opted for only $28 or similarly priced tickets, even if it meant missing some of the biggest Olympic events. One user on Reddit said they purchased 18 tickets for around $550.
"I went with all $28 tickets," they wrote in the online forum about the Olympics. "I got women’s soccer, gymnastics, beach and regular volleyball, track and field, baseball and a few others."
For some, the ticket process, the prices and the dense web of events to choose from made it too hard to pull the trigger.
Jeff Bartow of Sierra Madre made a spreadsheet with some competitions he was interested in seeing before he logged on to buy tickets Friday.
"So many times, so many schedules, so many events," Bartow said. "I think I initially thought I was going to go to a bunch, but thinking about how crazy it's going to be … I might be a little more limited."
This is just the first ticket drop. There will be more opportunities to buy tickets in the months to come — and on a resale market that launches in 2027.
Some ticket-buyers told LAist they already were contemplating which tickets they'd keep and which ones they'd re-sell, just minutes after buying them.
In the more than two months since the Department of Justice released its latest batch of files on the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors have not brought any new charges based on the documents, despite federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continuing to demand accountability.
The backstory: Since the release of the files in 2025 and 2026, there have been no related arrests in the U.S. However, the disclosures have led to some resignations and other reputational repercussions for some high-ranking Americans. The lack of arrests in the U.S. contrasts to the fallout in the U.K., where investigators have pursued charges related to corruption, not sexual abuse, in their dealings with Epstein. Two former government officials — former Prince Andrew and ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson — were arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
Lack of evidence: In the U.S., top Justice Department officials have said that they found no evidence compelling enough to pursue further charges related to Epstein, and that the public can make their own assessments based on the disclosed documents. In a statement to NPR, Justice Department spokesperson Katie Kenlein said that "there have not been additional prosecutions beyond Epstein and Maxwell because there has not been credible evidence that their activities extended to Epstein's network."
In the more than two months since the Department of Justice released its latest batch of files on the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors have not brought any new charges based on the documents, despite federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continuing to demand accountability.
The more than 3 million pages of documents include accusations by alleged victims of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's abuse and thousands of emails and photos showing Epstein associated with prominent figures. The files indicate that many of these people maintained contact with the disgraced financier long after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to sex crimes that involved minors. Appearing in the files is not necessarily an indication of criminal wrongdoing.
The release of the Epstein files came after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which forced the Justice Department to make public all documents it held related to Epstein.
The lack of arrests in the U.S. contrasts to the fallout in the U.K., where investigators have pursued charges related to corruption, not sexual abuse, in their dealings with Epstein. Two former government officials — former Prince Andrew and ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson — were arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he is now known, has denied wrongdoing and has not been formally charged. Mandelson has also not been charged, and lawyers for Mandelson have said that the arrest was prompted by a "baseless suggestion."
In the U.S., top Justice Department officials have said that they found no evidence compelling enough to pursue further charges related to Epstein, and that the public can make their own assessments based on the disclosed documents.
In a statement to NPR, Justice Department spokesperson Katie Kenlein said that "there have not been additional prosecutions beyond Epstein and Maxwell because there has not been credible evidence that their activities extended to Epstein's network. However, if prosecutable evidence comes forward, the Department of Justice will of course act on it as we do every day in sexual trafficking and assault cases across the count[r]y."
On Thursday, President Trump announced that Attorney General Pam Bondi is out of the top job at the Justice Department, following bipartisan criticism over her handling of the Epstein files.
NPR asked four former prosecutors and one former law enforcement officer why there may not have been enough evidence to levy additional charges. Here's what they said.
Prosecutors must prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt"
Prosecutors must prove to a jury that a person committed a crime "beyond a reasonable doubt," according to Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.
"One of the biggest misconceptions people have is how difficult it is to charge and convict somebody for a criminal case," said McQuade, who served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
A prosecutor's ethical responsibility is to charge cases only if they believe there is enough evidence for a conviction, McQuade said. Documents, including emails, jokes, and even plane itineraries, can be a place to start, but, alone, they are not enough to prove guilt, McQuade said.
"What you would need [is] rock solid evidence," McQuade said. "You can't charge someone for a crime without sufficient evidence, and I have yet to see evidence of a crime involving an Epstein associate that has gone uncharged."
Based on his understanding of the case, Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown Law, said he agreed that prosecutors who investigated Epstein's alleged associates "may have believed that they couldn't persuade a jury beyond a reasonable doubt." He said problems with witness credibility or certain forensic evidence can prevent a case from moving forward.
The U.K. cases are focused on corruption
In the U.K., the two people arrested are being investigated on suspicion of "misconduct in public office." McQuade said the U.S. does not have a single equivalent federal law. Instead, the U.S. prosecutes public corruption through statutes that focus specifically on crimes such as bribery and extortion.
After the release of the latest files, British police began investigating Andrew's correspondence with Epstein when Andrew was a U.K. trade envoy. At that time, Andrew allegedly shared government itineraries, investment plans and notes from official foreign trips with Epstein. The information may have been covered by the United Kingdom's Official Secrets Act.
Similarly, Mandelson has been accused of passing confidential government information to the late sex offender when Mandelson was a U.K. Cabinet minister.
Meeting the burden of proof is especially challenging for sex crime cases
Victim statements are essential for establishing basic elements, such as the timeframe of events, required to build sexual assault cases, said Diane Goldstein, a retired police lieutenant from California and the executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. But a victim may be reluctant to come forward because of a fear of retaliation, not believing the police can help, believing it is a personal matter, or not wanting to get the perpetrator in trouble.
McQuade noted that in some sex trafficking cases, especially those in which a perpetrator is in a position of power, victims may experience intimidation or threats that prevent them from speaking out.
Victims also may be hesitant to move forward with allegations because they fear having to testify at trials where defense attorneys may attempt to poke holes in their allegations, McQuade said.
Goldstein said that for sex crime cases to advance, investigators need to follow certain policies and procedures. "If you don't have a legitimate police investigation to start, you're not going to get any type of criminal filing," Goldstein said.
Other potential charges are also a difficult path
Prosecutors may have considered pursuing charges of criminal conspiracy related to sex trafficking against people associated with Epstein, said Jessica Roth, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. FBI documents in the files relating to its investigation into Epstein's crimes identify certain people as "co-conspirators."
But Ankush Khardori, a senior writer and columnist at Politico magazine who worked as a federal prosecutor on financial fraud cases, told NPR those identifiers are not "formal accusation[s]" and are simply part of "interim documents."
"The FBI does not determine who is a co-conspirator," Khardori said. "That is a legal judgment that prosecutors make."
But for those conspiracy cases, "criminal intent," in particular, is difficult to establish, said Roth, who worked as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York for seven years. Criminal conspiracy charges "would require knowledge and intent on the part of each individual who was charged," Roth said. If a person who communicated with Epstein had some suspicion that he was engaged in illegal activity, that alone would not be sufficient evidence to press charges, she said.
Investigators may have considered charges related to criminal tax violations, McQuade said. But the statute of limitations has likely ended on those cases, she said, meaning that prosecutors can no longer bring charges.
The current evidence lacks context
Legal experts say the haphazard way the documents were released and redacted makes it difficult for the public to understand why no additional charges have been filed.
Roth, the Cardozo law professor, said the information is in "isolation," without the appropriate context. "We'll see an individual photograph that looks perhaps incriminating. We'll see an email that looks incriminating, but we don't necessarily have everything that was said before and after that email and that exchange," Roth said.
One document that could explain why no charges were pursued, according to Butler, is a heavily redacted DOJ memo naming "potential co-conspirators" of Epstein. "The parts that should indicate why the department declined prosecution on any alleged co-conspirators other than Ghislaine Maxwell [are] redacted," said Butler, the Georgetown law professor and a former federal prosecutor.
Butler said those redactions are "unusual" because they do not appear to follow the permissible reasons for redactions in the Epstein documents. Those reasons include confidentiality for Epstein's alleged victims, or anything that would compromise an ongoing investigation, Butler said.
"When the Justice Department grudgingly releases information when pressed by politics or forced by Congress, it also creates the impression that they have something to hide," Butler said. "That there is some cover-up going on."
Copyright 2026 NPR
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Nearly 30% more students in Los Angeles County experienced homelessness from 2022-23 to 2023-24, making it the county’s highest rate in the past five years and far outpacing the rate of homelessness across the state in the same timeframe, as the resources to identify and support this student population have decreased.
Norwalk-La Mirada Unified: Researchers found that Norwalk-La Mirada Elementary Unified School District had the highest rate of student homelessness in the county — 1 in 3 students, meaning that over 4,700 students were identified as experiencing homelessness during the 2023-24 school year out of a total cumulative enrollment of about 15,600.
Underidentifed students: Researchers also found that the Transformation of Schools focuses on the lack of dedicated funding for school staff to identify and support homeless students. Students and families facing homelessness do not always self-identify, whether due to fear, shame or being unaware that their housing situation is considered homelessness
Nearly 30% more students in Los Angeles County experienced homelessness from 2022-23 to 2023-24, making it the county’s highest rate in the past five years and far outpacing the rate of homelessness across the state in the same timeframe, as the resources to identify and support this student population have decreased.
Researchers found that Norwalk-La Mirada Elementary Unified School District had the highest rate of student homelessness in the county — 1 in 3 students, meaning that over 4,700 students were identified as experiencing homelessness during the 2023-24 school year out of a total cumulative enrollment of about 15,600.
The city of Norwalk, where the district is located in the eastern region of the county, was sued by the state in 2024 for banning emergency shelters and other support services for people experiencing homelessness. Last year, the state reached a settlement with the city, which was forced to overturn the ban and put $250,000 toward building affordable housing.
Student homelessness is defined differently under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law that requires every public school to count the number of students who are living on the street, in shelters, in motels, in cars, doubled up with other families, or moving between friends’ and relatives’ homes.
As a result of this expanded definition, McKinney-Vento includes doubled-up students in the count of homelessness. Doubled-up is a term used to describe children and youth ages 21 and under living in shared housing, such as with another family or friends, due to various crises.
There were a few other patterns seen in the L.A. County data analyzed by the UCLA researchers:
Latino students were disproportionately more likely to experience homelessness: they represent 65% of the county’s student population, but 75.5% of student homelessness
A third of homeless students were in high school
Many districts with the highest rates of homelessness had higher school instability but lower dropout rates
While McKinney-Vento has an expanded definition that includes more types of homelessness than several other definitions, identifying students remains difficult.
The second report from the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools focuses on the lack of dedicated funding for school staff to identify and support homeless students. Students and families facing homelessness do not always self-identify, whether due to fear, shame or being unaware that their housing situation is considered homelessness under McKinney-Vento.
“A lot of these young people are dealing with a lot of trauma, so they don’t want to be identified. They don’t want to be pointed out; sometimes it’s scary for them, because they think we’re going to report them to the Department of Children and Family Services,” said L.A. County Office of Education staff interviewed for this report.
School staff, known as homeless liaisons, who work with homeless students received a historic influx of federal funds during the Covid-19 pandemic — $98.76 million for California, out of $800 million nationwide, from the American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth.
That funding has since ended, and there is no other dedicated, ongoing state funding set aside solely for the rising number of homeless students. This has led districts in California to “heavily depend on highly competitive and unstable federal streams,” the UCLA researchers wrote. Those federal streams have become increasingly precarious as the federal administration last year sought policy changes that would shift how they are structured.
Destiny Torres
is LAist's general assignment reporter and brings you the top news you need for the day.
Updated April 3, 2026 4:43 PM
Published April 3, 2026 1:59 PM
The Springs Fire around 11 a.m. in east Moreno Valley.
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Alert California
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UC San Diego
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Topline:
Multiple evacuation orders are in place for residents near the Springs Fire burning east of Moreno Valley in Riverside County. The fire was first reported around 11 a.m.
Multiple evacuation orders are in place for residents near the Springs Fire burning in east of Moreno Valley in Riverside County. The fire was first reported around 11 a.m.
As of this afternoon, the fire has reached 3,500 acres.
West of the Springs Fire, a separate bush fire near Acton also began Friday afternoon. The Crown Fire has burned 280 acres and is 25% contained.
Evacuation orders have been issued by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department for the following areas:
MOE-0507
MOE-0747
MOE-0745
MOE-0641
MOE-0746
MOE-0744
RVC-0748
RVC-0826
RVC-0825
Evacuation warnings
Authorities say those who require additional time to evacuate and those with pets and livestock should leave immediately.
MOE-0504
MOE-0505
MOE-0506
MOE-0633
MOE-0637
MOE-0638
MOE-0639
MOE-0640
MOE-0743
MOE-0822
MOE-0823
Evacuation shelters
Valley View High School 13135 Nason St. Moreno Valley, 92555
Animal Shelter
San Jacinto Animal Shelter 581 S. Grand Ave. San Jacinto 92582
Moreno Valley Animal Services 14041 Elsworth St. Moreno Valley, CA 92553
Road closures
Gilman Springs Road is closed from Alessandro Road to Bridge Street, according to Cal Fire.
What we know so far
The Springs Fire was first reported around 11 a.m. Friday near Gilman Springs Road as a 5-acre fire that grew to 1,000 acres by 1:45 p.m.
VEGETATION FIRE - rpt @ 10:59AM. 15900 block Gilman Springs Road, east of Moreno Valley. Firefighters are on-scene of 5-6 acres burning in light flashy fuels. Gilman Springs Road is closed from Alessandro Road to Bridge Street. #SpringsIC@RivCoNowpic.twitter.com/KsTOq4QxM5
— CAL FIRE/Riverside County Fire Department (@CALFIRERRU) April 3, 2026
Conditions are fairly windy and dry in that area, according to the National Weather Service. Wind gusts reached 20 to 30 mph from the east.The Santa Ana wind event is expected to last into tomorrow.
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