The Brief

On a beautiful summer day in July, 7-year-old Penelope is turning into a mermaid.

"I like playing mermaid," she says, with her feet dangling in the swimming pool at Beauvoir Summer Camp in Washington, D.C.

"Like, I'm a human, and then I turn into a mermaid, and I use one of the pool noodles as a dolphin, and I play with my friends," she says.

It's Friday, which means free swim, and the kids are splashing around on blue kickboards and sinking miniature torpedo toys. In the kiddie pool, the littlest campers jump in and show off their twists and turns with screeches of delight.

Penelope and her best friend Sam, also 7, say pool time is their favorite activity at this camp. NPR is only using the kids' first names because they are minors.

The pool was empty during the last free swim. Campers spent the day indoors to avoid hazardous air quality from wildfire smoke. And, earlier in the summer, the heat forced them to cut down their outside play time, says Drew Mackay, the director of auxiliary and summer programs at Beauvoir School.

This summer has brought no shortage of extreme weather and wildfires across the country. In northern Minnesota and Canada, fires devastated communities and caused dangerous smoke to blanket large swaths of the Midwest and Northeastern U.S. Deadly floods prompted disaster declarations in parts of Texas. And an extreme heat wave in July was dubbed the "new normal" for July Fourth celebrations.

As the climate warms due in large part to the burning of fossil fuels, research shows that heat waves, droughts, hurricanes and floods have become more intense and more frequent.

Families are feeling it. Further north in Pennsylvania, Lauren Smith and her kids have had a summer full of dangerous weather. First, it was the extreme heat that disrupted normal activities at a soccer camp, with temperatures reaching almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit on a big, treeless field. Then, wildfire smoke kept the family in the house. When the nonstop rain hit, it was almost a blessing.

"The kids are going crazy in the house — that's it, we're going for a walk," she remembers thinking. "Then, they're like, 'It's starting to rain.' I'm like, 'Doesn't matter. It's an adventure.' "

Smith added that, surprisingly, her kids have enjoyed helping her declutter the house. They also took up baking and painting acorns. But on the few days of sunny bliss, she can't get them back inside, she said. "The summer is just like a waiting game — just waiting to do some stuff outside," Smith says.

This generation of school-aged kids has already dealt with the isolation of COVID-19, the global pandemic that forced students to work from home. Now, they're up against extreme weather.

Throughout the summer months, parents scramble to get kids out of the house. But with weather conditions that make outdoor fun not just impossible, but dangerous, parents, summer camp leaders and school-aged kids told NPR how they're experiencing the effects of the changing climate.

"It's changed my summer a lot," Penelope, the mermaid, says. She describes climate change as "the areas around you are just, like, changing all around you all the time."

Summer camps confront 'a new reality'

For many kids, summer is an around three-month break from school routines and homework.

A 2024 Gallup survey found that 55% of U.S. parents reported their school-aged kids attend at least one structured summer program. Henry DeHart, the CEO of the American Camp Association, which provides resources and accreditations to hundreds of camps across the country, says the skills kids learn at camp — independence, problem-solving and teamwork — will equip them for the future, especially in an increasingly AI-centric world.

"Kids need camp now more than ever," DeHart says.

While dealing with the whims of weather is nothing new for camps, and accredited ones are required to have thorough safety plans, DeHart says the frequency of these extreme weather events is noticeable.

In the past few decades, he says, "A camp might have had three or four or five days with the heat index over 105 [Fahrenheit]". Now they may have eight or 10."

The impacts on specific camps across the country are varied. In Ohio, Ellen Watkins directs Miakonda Day Camp on a 160-acre site for Scouting groups. When wildfire smoke filled the air, they were able to move inside and provided masks.

While inside, they did swim exercises on dry land and pulled out an inflatable archery set. She said she got many comments from parents thanking them for finding a way to keep the camp running.

"Was it stressful to have campers inside of buildings all day when they would rather be outside? Yes. Did it stress our program? No, we were fine," Watkins said.

But for some camps, switching up activities to deal with the smoke wasn't an option. That was the case in Ely, Minn., at Camp Widjiwagan. The camp, which hosts over 700 kids each summer and leads programs across North America, evacuated in July.

The camp drew considerable attention after a haunting photo showing 19 of its canoes under water was widely seen online. Ben Hoffman, the camp's executive director, said they decided to submerge the historic canoes that were too fragile to move to safety.

"This is a pivotal moment," Hoffman said. "We have never sunk canoes at camp."

Camp Widjiwagan submerged some of their canoes in lake waters to protect them from the wildfires.

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Eleanor Pitts, a 17-year-old camper at Widjiwagan, went on the camp's 26-day backpacking trip in Willmore Wilderness Park in Alberta, Canada, starting in June with four other girls and a counselor.

"It was an experience like no other," Pitts, who has attended the camp for seven summers, said. "We become the closest group of people. They were genuinely my family by the end."

The last day of the trip was supposed to be a homecoming back at the base camp in Ely with a huge celebration of hot dogs and watermelon and campfire skits. Her group found out the day before that the wildfire smoke would force them to miss that last day. " 'Wait, so this is our last night?' " Pitts said she and her fellow campers asked their counselor. "And we all just started crying."

Pitts said it brought the reality of climate change right before her eyes. Beyond the wildfires, throughout the trip, her counselor pointed out flooded rivers in Canada because of extreme heat melting snow runoff.

"Going forward, trips are just going to be different because of this climate change situation," Pitts said. "It hasn't affected me until I'm seeing it right now and I'm just like: Now it's too late."

In D.C., at Beauvoir Summer Camp, summer programs director Mackay said adapting to extreme weather is now part of the summer camp job. "For us, it's a new reality," he said.

The kids, on the other hand, are just worried about getting as much pool time as possible.
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State and local lawmakers are joining immigrant rights groups in urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would bar California law enforcement from moonlighting for ICE.

Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, who represents Angelenos from South L.A. to Mar Vista, introduced AB 1537 in January. If implemented, the bill would ban California police, sheriffs and other law enforcement from taking on second jobs that involve “arresting, detaining, transporting, or deporting” people.

The bill has made its way through the state legislature and is now on the governor’s desk. Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto it.

At a press conference outside L.A. City Hall on Wednesday, José Madera, who directs the Pasadena Job Center, pointed to multiple deaths involving federal immigration agents in recent months — from Minneapolis to Houston — and to a recent shooting in Austin. “We don't need our local police to be part of that violence,” he said.

“ICE is a lawless, rogue agency that is terrorizing our communities, separating our families and kidnapping our neighbors,” said Bruno Huizar, supervising policy manager at the California Immigrant Policy Center. “Governor Newsom must sign AB 1537 into law to protect Californians.”

L.A. City councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, whose own parents were undocumented, said it pained him to see immigrant parents go to work and to church in fear of being separated from their children.

“If you’re a public servant, you should be serving the public — not helping ICE tear families apart,” he added in a follow-up email statement.

The bill, dubbed “No side jobs for ICE” by its proponents, would also require officers to report secondary employment offers relating to immigration to their employers.

“If a law enforcement agent gets a conditional offer from an immigration enforcement agency, that will be part of their employment records. And that will be subject to a public records act request,” said Shiu-Ming Cheer, a licensed attorney at the California Immigration Policy Center. “This is aimed at bringing transparency, so that we know how many officers are actually getting offers to work as an ICE agent or a Border Patrol agent.”

The Peace Officers Research Association of California, which represents officers across the state, has spoken out against the bill, arguing that “policies like this don’t improve public safety.” The Los Angeles Police Protective League did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.

The bill is part of a growing effort to bar local law enforcement from engaging in the ongoing mass deportation effort. The L.A. City Council approved a motion in March, barring city employees from holding second jobs with federal immigration enforcement agencies.

In Santa Ana, the City Council recently adopted a policy that prohibits employees from obtaining outside work that involves federal immigration enforcement activities.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill aimed at protecting children who are abused.

The law, which went into effect this week, is named “Gabriel’s Law,” after Gabriel Fernandez — an 8-year-old boy in Palmdale who died in 2013 after being tortured and abused by his mother and her boyfriend.

“It devastated the community. Still has,” said State Assemblymember Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale), who worked on legislation related to Gabriel’s case for years. “It hasn't gone away, right? It’s something we still acknowledge.”

Since Fernandez’s death, the Antelope Valley has seen a number of high-profile child deaths at the hands of their parents.

The new law requires social workers to make sure a child gets emergency medical care when needed, and it makes it easier to prosecute social workers who knowingly falsify records.

Officials said there had been warning signs about Fernandez’s abuse, but social workers with the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services failed to follow up on them. The high-profile case prompted internal reforms in the agency.

What happened to Gabriel

Gabriel died in May 2013, after months of abuse from his mother and her boyfriend. He was found with a number of injuries, including a fractured skull, broken ribs and BB pellets lodged in his body. His mother and her boyfriend were both sentenced.

A teacher had reported signs of abuse to the county, but social workers did not remove him from the home. Then they ended the investigation. Prosecutors charged the social workers with child abuse, but the charges were later dismissed.

“He was literally tortured. And there were many, many, many documented events, and there are many encounters that he had with people that lacked follow-up,” Lackey said.

What does the law change?

Before this week, the law said that social workers may authorize care if a child needs immediate emergency care, but did not require it. Gabriel’s law requires a social worker to secure medical care for a child.

“ They call for an ambulance or escort the child to an emergency room— make sure a physician has the opportunity to provide some level of remedy and documentation of the injury,” Lackey said.

It also clarifies the law so that social workers who are guilty of falsifying or destroying public records can be imprisoned or fined.

Why did the law take so long to change?

Lackey’s previous legislative efforts related to Fernandez’s case failed over the years. He introduced at least five different pieces of legislation that failed to advance.

“I'm not even saying that I blame the pushback and the concern, because if you're too aggressive, there's a tendency to accuse people of wrongdoing when they are not guilty of wrongdoing, so we wanted to make sure that the balance was reasonable,” he said.

Lackey terms out this year. “We're trying to do something as a community to not only pay tribute to [Gabriel], but to prevent it from reoccurring,” he said.

The Los Angeles Fire Department has completed its investigation into the cause of the Lineage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights but was unable to determine what caused it. 

In a press release, LAFD said the June 17 fire was caused by an “electrical event” that occurred on the roof of the building, “adjacent to a section of solar panels.” Despite a “comprehensive investigation,” the department could not determine what caused the electrical event.

“The Department’s thoughts remain with all those impacted by this deeply tragic incident,” Arson and Fire Investigation Chief Thomas Raymond said in a release.

In response to the inconclusive investigation, District 14 Councilmember Ysabel Jurado said, “LAFD’s finding that the cause remains undetermined does nothing to alleviate what Boyle Heights residents have endured and are still carrying: months of health concerns and disruption, along with unanswered questions about whether this site can safely operate again.”

“The fact that we still cannot explain how this catastrophe began is yet another reason I will continue opposing any permits to rebuild this facility,” Jurado said.

Recently, the LA City Council voted to withhold rebuilding permits for the Lineage warehouse until after the Los Angeles Fire Department completed its investigation. Earlier this month, Lineage Chief Executive Officer Greg Lehmkuhl told Boyle Heights Beat and The LA Local that the company had not decided whether to rebuild, saying, “We’re still focused on holding the right people accountable here and making sure that we’re continuing to support the community.”

The CEO’s comments came after Lineage sued solar power provider Altus Power, Inc. and its contractor, blaming them for the fire. Altus Power and its contractor dispute those claims.

In a statement following the completed investigation, Lineage said, “Today’s report from the Los Angeles Fire Department validates what we have known all along: This was a solar fire.”

The fire and subsequent cleanup of millions of pounds of rotting food caused a flood of issues for residents living in Boyle Heights, East LA and surrounding communities, including an infestation of flies and pests, nausea and headaches, higher utility bills and other health concerns. 

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Boyle Heights Beat senior reporter Alejandra Molina and LA Local reporter Christopher Damien contributed to this report.

The post LAFD closes investigation into Lineage warehouse fire without determining a cause appeared first on LA Local.