The Brief

A recent video circulating on social media showed farmworkers in Ventura County picking strawberries under a blood-orange sky because of smoke from the Hughes Fire in northern Los Angeles County.

"That reddish light, there's something primal that — you really do — sort of your lizard brain recognizes that there's danger," says Elizabeth Strater, who is an organizer and national vice president for the United Farm Workers of America.

Oxnard, in Ventura County, isn't prone to wildfires, but it is "prone to being affected by wildfire smoke," Strater said.

Many people don't realize how close L.A. is to the state's agricultural region. Drive a little north of the county and all of a sudden you're surrounded by green fields, rows of produce and farmworkers.

As the Hughes Fire tore through northern L.A. County, thousands of farmworkers continued to pick strawberries, leafy greens and other produce in hazy smoke in Ventura County.

California has some of the strongest regulations in the nation to protect farmworkers from wildfire smoke. It's one of only three states, along with Oregon and Washington, that require employers to provide masks to workers when the air quality reaches unhealthy levels. But the fact that many farmworkers labored through the smoke of the Los Angeles fires underscores the limitations of California's laws, worker advocates say.

Plumes of smoke rise from the Hughes Fire near Castaic. That smoke wafted to Ventura County, where around 40,000 farmworkers labor in agricultural fields.

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Ethan Swope

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Associated Press

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Unhealthy air conditions

Parts of northern L.A. and Ventura counties had Air Quality Index (AQI) levels around 150 on Jan. 22 when the Hughes Fire erupted, turning the sky orange. But thousands of farmworkers continued to work in the fields.

Studies show that when AQI levels hover between 100 and 200 on a smoky day, that air pollution is like smoking a quarter to a half pack of cigarettes a day. Air quality is considered "good" when the AQI is below 50.

A new law that allows farmworkers to take sick days when the AQI reaches unhealthy levels took effect this year. But according to UFW spokesperson Antonio de Loera, workers feel the financial pressure to continue working during wildfires.

The Department of Industrial Relations, an extension of CAL/OSHA, says employers in California are legally required to provide N95 respirators to workers when the AQI reaches 150. But it remains unclear how many employers abide by the law, worker advocates say. The state of California doesn't have data about mask distribution by farmers.

The agency declined to be interviewed, but did provide a statement. Denisse Gómez, a spokesperson from the state's Department of Industrial Relations, says it has created worker safety and health regulations in wildfire regions and requires employers to protect workers from unhealthy air due to wildfire smoke and calls for specific training requirements.

"In California, it is illegal for employers to retaliate against workers for refusing to work in unsafe conditions, including in evacuation zones," the agency wrote.

Farmworkers typically work between eight to 10 hours a day outside. It's hard, physical work, so when it's smokey outside, workers are breathing in more smoke.

" They're working fast. They're trying to get all the produce into the bins because many of them are paid [at] a piece rate," says Michael Mendez, who teaches environmental policy and urban planning at UC Irvine. "The more that they're able to harvest and put in those bins, the more they're able to make money."

But working in wildfire smoke can quickly affect the body, causing headaches, lingering coughs and sore throats. According to the California Air Resources Board, wildfire smoke can worsen heart disease, asthma and lead to premature death.

Wildfire smoke carries tiny particles known as PM2.5, which can be harmful when inhaled.

According to Francesca Dominici from Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the long-term effects are unclear.

Dominici says long-term exposure to low-level PM2.5 from freeways or construction — what she calls "less toxic" — causes fluid in the lungs, which leads to coughing.

"We can anticipate, unfortunately, a repeated exposure to high and more toxic levels of PM2.5 will also have an adverse health impact on the health system," Dominici says.

The increasing toxicity of PM2.5 is linked to the fact that wildfires don't just burn forests anymore, but also cars, buildings and appliances. All those things are made of materials that are highly toxic when they burn. Since January, L.A. County has seen a series of catastrophic wildfires causing billions of dollars in damage that one company estimates is around $250 billion and leaving more than 10 million people in unhealthy air conditions for several days.\

A rush against the fire

As soon as the Hughes Fire erupted Jan.22, the United Farm Workers and other community groups knew they had to deploy thousands of N95 respirators to farmworkers in Ventura County.

The UFW scrambled to get help going. A mutual aid group answered the call, donating 20,000 respirators to help around 40,000 farmworkers laboring in wildfire smoke in cities including Oxnard, Camarillo and other agricultural hubs in the county.

The labor union quickly found a truck to take the masks from an L.A. warehouse to Ventura County. A group of around 100 volunteers well respected in the farmworker community helped to distribute between 150 and 200 N95s each to non-union represented workers around the county.

Strater says union workers receive masks at job sites, while nonunion workers often do not. Still, the workers are a tight-knit community and look out for one another, she says.

" These are folks without a social safety net," Strater says. "Even when you're under an evacuation warning, this is a group of people that's probably less likely to seek out support from a shelter, less likely to go to aid relief stations."

A firefighter looks toward Castaic Lake during the Hughes Fire.

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Ethan Swope

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Associated Press

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Government falls short in helping farmworkers

Many farmworkers are already susceptible to developing asthma and other respiratory illnesses before a wildfire strikes, according to Mendez.

"There needs to be additional care, guidance and enforcement for these individuals that are at the front lines of this climate crisis and are continuing to work throughout these wildfires," he says.

The outlook for California wildfires is grim so far. The state has seen little rainfall this year, and early forecasts anticipate a warmer late spring and early summer. According to UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, that could lead to an early "start" for fire season in Southern California — peak fire season can start as early as May and run through October. Climate change has made the planet hotter, with 2024 being the hottest year on record, and a warmer planet makes large destructive wildfires more likely.

According to Sonja Diaz, who co-founded the Latina Futures 2050 Lab, COVID-19 showed that the federal government could not deploy information, resources and care quickly enough at the rate that historically excluded communities needed.

She says that's why the trusted messengers for Black, Latino, Indigenous and other marginalized groups became community clinics, state hospitals, labor unions, nonprofits and mutual aid groups.

"In the aftermath of the fires and the devastation, there remains this continued thread that these entities — nongovernmental — are the ones able to deploy necessary relief, aid, support to meet people's basic needs," Diaz says. "So the government really needs to start looking at this sector as a partner, investing in it, recognizing that it is a necessary element for keeping residents safe, communities healthy and the economy moving."

Working with concern

Farmworkers are concerned about their health, says Jorge Toledano, a community organizer at Mixteco Indígena Community Organizing Project (MICOP), a nonprofit that helps Indigenous migrant communities.

" But they have to work to feed their families, to pay rent," Toledano says in Spanish. "They have no other choice but to work."

Toledano says the nonprofit received more than 5,000 masks during the Mountain Fire in Ventura County last fall. MICOP's  rapid response team immediately mobilized to distribute between 1,000 and 2,000 N95 respirators during the Hughes Fire.

The nonprofit uses Facebook and a radio station called Radio Indigena to broadcast in multiple Indigenous languages about the dangers of wildfire smoke, where to get N95s and how to wear them.

MICOP worked with other community organizations to create a smoke alert text system in 2019. Toledano says the organization is also educating workers to ask their employers for N95 masks when a wildfire breaks out.

"We don't know when there's going to be a fire; they happen so fast," Toledano says. "But it's the employer's obligation to provide masks."

Copyright 2025 NPR

Los Angeles County will begin sending mail-in ballots starting this Thursday ahead of the Nov. 3 elections. Counties across the state have until next Monday, Oct. 5, to begin mailing out ballots.

In the June primary, nearly 82% of the total ballots cast in L.A. County were through vote-by-mail ballots.

State and local officials are encouraging people to vote early.

When can I turn in my ballot?

L.A. County elections officials say voters can turn in their ballots by mail as soon as they receive them. No postage is necessary.

They can also turn them in starting this week at official dropboxes across the county, which are often found at parks, community centers or libraries.

Voters can also turn them in or vote in person at the county’s Vote Centers, which L.A. County officials say will start to open on Oct. 24. Officials say all Vote Centers will be open by Halloween.

What about in Orange County?

Orange County officials say U.S. Postal Service officials are scheduled to pick up about 1.9 million ballots from the county elections office on Saturday and start delivering them on Monday, Oct. 5.

The Trump administration has tried to restrict mail-in ballots. Will my ballot be affected?

The California Secretary of State’s office says nothing has currently changed. The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month issued an injunction on President Trump’s executive order requiring states to turn in lists of voters and ordering the USPS to send mail-in ballots to the people on the approved lists.

"Voters will be able to cast their ballots without uncertainty, without hesitation, and without fear that their voices will be questioned or their ballots rejected," said Secretary of State Shirley Weber.

Los Angeles County is reporting the highest number of rabid bats on record, a to-date total of 69, officials said.

This year’s rabid bat count has already matched 2025’s total, according to the L.A. County Department of Public Health, which released the count Monday, marking World Rabies Day.

Health officials emphasized that rabid bats have been found all over the county "from suburban areas such as the San Fernando Valley to urban areas like downtown Los Angeles, in office buildings, parks, schools, businesses, and residential backyards."

That said, a large share of rabid bats — 68% of the 69 found so far — were in the Santa Clarita Valley, and they were mainly canyon bats, which are common in California.

When to be on high alert

Officials warned that a third of human encounters with rabid bats happened indoors, where the risk of exposure to the virus is higher.

Bat bites are small and can be hard to detect. Rabies can also be spread through scratches or other transfers of saliva.

“If you find a bat indoors or think you may have had contact with one, contact your medical provider or Public Health right away,” Dr. Muntu Davis, a Los Angeles County Health officer, said in a statement. “And remember, never touch a bat or any wild animals. Immediately report any bat found indoors, or outdoors if it appears sick, active during the day, unable to fly, or dead, to your local animal control.”

Who to call

Veterinary Public Health

Phone: 213-288-7060
Email: vet@ph.lacounty.gov
Website: publichealth.lacounty.gov/vet

*Call 211 to find your local animal control

What to know about rabies

Rabies in humans is treatable with a series of vaccines. Rabies is always fatal in animals, the county said in a release, so vaccinate your pets.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law Sunday that tightens building rules for sites that store explosive chemicals, responding to an Orange County chemical incident that forced thousands of residents to evacuate Memorial Day weekend.

The law also adds the chemical methyl methacrylate to a state program that aims to prevent chemical disasters.

In May, CalMatters reported that California’s toughest accidental-release prevention rules do not cover the chemical in the tank at GKN Aerospace, a company that makes cockpits and windshields in Garden Grove. Weeks later Democratic state Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana amended an existing bill with language that addressed that gap. Assembly committee and floor analyses noted CalMatters’ reporting. 

Had the chemical exploded, it “would have been perhaps the greatest catastrophe, certainly in the last several decades in California,” Umberg said at a June Assembly hearing.

Umberg’s original proposal would have set stronger standards for more types of explosive chemicals, but legislators narrowed it significantly in last-minute negotiations.

The final law bars building new facilities near homes and schools and requires backup cooling systems. It also strips an exemption from environmental review that facilities storing methyl methacrylate previously qualified for.

Garden Grove advocates call the bill a good step, but say it offers the community little immediate recourse, especially with GKN Aerospace planning to reopen by the end of September.

The law’s siting requirements apply to new facilities, not to existing ones like GKN’s Garden Grove plant.

Mai Do, research and policy manager for the Orange County advocacy group Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, said she hopes the state will do more to address the threat of toxic chemicals at existing facilities.

“This is a much larger fight than just what's happened in Garden Grove,” Do said. “What we see in terms of the Lineage fire and other industrial crises is that this is a problem that is affecting a lot of different communities”

In an interview with CalMatters, Umberg said the bill reflected a balancing act. “This is a net benefit for the state, a net benefit for the community,” he said.

Stronger rules for new facilities, not existing ones

Over Memorial Day weekend, residents learned of a problem with a tank storing methyl methacrylate at the GKN Aerospace facility. A crack in the tank released pressure and, along with efforts by emergency responders, averted disaster, but questions remained about what went wrong.

CalMatters reported in May that methyl methacrylate and other chemicals that could explode under certain conditions falls outside the California Accidental Release Program, which requires facilities to maintain detailed plans for preventing or responding to chemical leaks or explosions.

Rachel Tochterman, a spokesperson for Sen. Umberg, said the senator took note and initially proposed incorporating a broader category of reactive chemicals into the program.

But industry groups opposed the plan, arguing it was too broad without clearer evidence.

Dawn Koepke, a lobbyist for the California Manufacturers and Technology Association and the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance, said she does not believe a regulatory gap exists that would justify incorporating more chemicals into the state’s accidental release regimen.

Facilities storing toxic chemicals are already heavily regulated under other federal and state laws, she said, including a requirement for plans to protect people from chemical releases.

Koepke said she worried that "jumping to conclusions and over-regulating" could affect "a wider array of facilities."

Tim Shestek, a lobbyist representing the American Chemistry Council and other groups, said in an email that Umberg’s original proposal would have affected “far more facilities, substances and sectors than were in the original scope.”

After amendments on the next-to-last day of the legislative session, nine industry groups stopped lobbying against the bill.

Most provisions of the law only apply to methyl methacrylate — the chemical involved in the Garden Grove incident. The bill adds it to the state’s accidental release program, requires facilities to maintain prevention and emergency-response plans, and closes the environmental-review exemption for new sites where the chemical is present.

Scrapped from the bill: a requirement to map reactive-chemical sites in CalEnviroScreen, a state program that identifies polluted communities.

GKN Aerospace plans to reopen 

Steve Carlin, senior vice president for GKN Aerospace programs, said the company has been working with regulators and independent experts “to safely reset the remainder of the facility with the appropriate oversight” work that has included inspections, upgrades to safety equipment, and additional monitoring. The company plans to reopen in the next few days.

The company also announced an additional $100 million program to pay residents and businesses that lost money during evacuations.

Lisa Fu, director of the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, a worker-safety group, wants California to regulate hazardous chemicals more broadly.

“It's just unfortunate that it's a piecemeal thing,” said Lisa Fu, director of the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative. “Is it worth it to go piece by piece in terms of trying to ban certain chemicals? It makes the work harder for us, and you can see who's benefiting and who's not.”

Newsom also signed a pair of bills in response to the Lineage fire, a June cold storage fire in Los Angeles. The fire briefly prompted a shelter-in-place order over fears that toxic anhydrous ammonia had been released into the air.

The new laws raise the fines agencies can levy on companies that endanger health and safety. They also bar building permits for cold storage facilities that lack contingency funds or insurance to help communities in emergencies.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

California is now the second state to recognize the two main Muslim holidays as state holidays.

Eid ul Fitr is the festival marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, and Eid ul Adha is the festival honoring Abraham or Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son as a mark of his devotion to God. They join a state holiday list that also includes Lunar New Year and Diwali.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the change into law Monday. Washington first recognized the holidays in 2025.

Oussama Mokeddem, legislative and government affairs director at the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told LAist the signing day is  “an exciting day for the California Muslim community and a big day for the American Muslim community at large.”

Muslims follow the lunar calendar, so the dates of the two festivals vary each year. Next year, Eid ul Fitr will likely fall on March 10 and Eid ul Adha on May 17.

Why it's important to Californians

The holiday recognition comes at a time when the community is facing “unwarranted and unjustified criticism,” Mokeddem said, which he cited as a reason for a May 2026 attack at the Islamic Center of San Diego. A recent Pew study also found that 42% of Americans believe Muslim Americans have a negative impact on the country.

Adam Khaja, an 11th grader at Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, said the holiday recognition signals that  "you don't have to give up an important part of your identity to fully participate in Californian society."

" For a long time, immigrant and minority communities have sometimes felt pressure to leave parts of their identity at home in order to fit into American educational or industrial institutions," he said.

What does the holiday recognition mean?

California is home to more than 1 million Muslims, and with this law, state employees can use existing paid time off to celebrate the two holidays.

And for students in K-12 public schools, Mokeddem said the law does not mandate statewide time off, but local school districts can declare a district-wide day off if enough community members bring it up as a need.

He added that students can also cite state law when they are absent from school to celebrate the holiday.

Khaja said he will be advocating for his school district to give a district-wide day off.

"Eid has always been a huge part of our lives, but I think that the school calendar and district policies haven't always reflected that," he said.

He hopes his students will not be put in a situation now "to choose between going to school or fully participating in one of the most important days of their faith."

Muslim Women Professionals, a nonprofit, has templates on how to advocate for time off to celebrate Eid ul Fitr and Eid ul Adha.