The Brief

In Bloomington, a small community of some 24,000 people in unincorporated San Bernardino County, people ride horses next to big rig trucks rushing to warehouses. Solar panels adorn the roofs of homes next to truck yards — the panels sometimes paid for by warehouse developers.

Like so much of Southern California, Bloomington is a place of contrasts.

Over the last 15 years or so, this once-rural town that’s bordered by the cities of Fontana, Rialto and Jurupa Valley has been surrounded by warehouses being built to support our online shopping habits and the supply chain corridor from the ports of L.A. and Long Beach. That pipeline is one of the largest sources of the Southland’s health-harming and planet-heating pollution.

A partially demolished home in Bloomington, where a 213-acre warehouse project is being developed.

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And now, 117 homes and small ranches in Bloomington are being demolished to make way for yet another warehouse — the largest one yet in the community. The project will bring more than 2 million square feet of warehouse space built by Orange County company Howard Industrial Partners. The project is expected to bring more than 1,000 additional big rig truck trips per day.

After years of debate, San Bernardino County supervisors unanimously approved the project in 2022. Today, everyone in the development’s way — the non-numbered streets of Bloomington — have been bought out and homes have already been demolished.

The project was able to happen because back in 2017, the county designated the non-numbered streets of Bloomington as a potential area for re-zoning and development to boost tax revenue to fund more services for the community.

Construction progress has now stalled due to a lawsuit against the project brought by environmental justice groups. (County Supervisor Joe Baca, who represents Bloomington, declined an interview with LAist due to the ongoing litigation).

But those who want to stay in Bloomington worry the warehouse will mean the end of their small town and rural lifestyle. Others say the project is necessary to get badly needed infrastructure improvements.

The site of the future warehouse project, which will bring more than 2 million square feet of warehouse space to Bloomington.

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A changing community

I meet Margaret Razo and her husband Rafael at a park that will be right across the street from the new warehouse project and next door to another warehouse being developed in Jurupa Valley.

The 54-year-old grew up in Bloomington and has watched the community transform.

“Bloomington was so pretty, so beautiful,” Razo said. “And, just driving over here now, it's awful. All the houses are torn down. Childhood homes of our friends. I almost want to cry thinking about how much Bloomington has changed.”

Rafael and Margaret Razo live in a house near the new warehouse development in Bloomington. They regularly receive calls from developers asking if they want to sell.

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When she was a kid, the road in front of her family’s house was dirt. Her little brother and sister played Little League at the park we’re sitting at. The park has changed too … but for the better, thanks to recent donations the county received to improve the park, with a new skate park, children’s play structure and well-kept grass. She loves seeing people ride horses around town.

The warehouse project will be across the street from a park and baseball field. Another warehouse being developed in neighboring Jurupa Valley is also being developed just west of the field.

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“We just never left Bloomington because we loved it,” Razo said. “And it's the first time in my whole entire life that I've ever thought maybe it's time to leave. Because I feel like we're being pushed out by industry.”

Though they’re not within the bounds of this project — they live in the numbered streets of Bloomington — they’re close to it, and Razo said calls from warehouse developers offering to buy the home she and her husband live in are constant.

“It just takes one person to sell,” said Rafael.

But Razo said she can’t blame others for selling.

“My cousin is a teacher at Colton High School and she said she was talking to someone and the guy told her, ‘You know, if they're offering me a million dollars for my house, and I'm going to be able to send my kids to college now, how can I say no to that?’” Razo said.

“At first I was mad at the people who were accepting the money and leaving Bloomington because I'm like, ‘Oh, they don't really love Bloomington,’” Razo continued. “How can you blame them? These big old companies are coming in and just throwing money at people and it's such a poor community. And it just keeps chipping away and chipping away more at Bloomington.”

For some people, the buyouts, which have all been at or above fair market value, were welcome. I spoke to one Bloomington resident who lives with his grandmother across from the construction site — he declined to share his name, but said they want to move to Yucaipa due to rising crime in Bloomington and his grandmother’s desire to be in a more rural area. He said they were excited to be in conversation with the developer for a generous buyout, but those discussions have now halted due to the lawsuit.

Razo said if they left, she doesn’t know where they’d go. After all, Bloomington is home. She raised her own children here, her siblings still live here, and her parents are buried here.

“If they start chipping away at my neighborhood, I don't know,” Razo said. “We're gonna be the little 'Up' house [referring to the movie “Up”]. I don't want to leave, but I feel like they're pushing me out. There's going to be nothing left of the character of Bloomington, the place that we grew up in, it's just going to be all gone.”

A rural lifestyle coming to an end

I run into Felipe Ortiz and his daughter Fatima while he’s picking her up from Bloomington High School, which is across the street from the future warehouse project. He, his wife and three kids rent a house in the path of the warehouse. One day they were startled by a bulldozer destroying palm trees Ortiz had planted and fencing on the property. Their landlord didn’t tell them that he’d sold the house to the developer.

Felipe Ortiz shows a photo of his children, who grew up riding horses.

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Felipe Ortiz and daughter Fatima outside Bloomington High School. Ortiz and his family are currently looking for somewhere else to live after their landlord sold the house they rent to a warehouse developer.

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Like many people in the area, they own horses, goats and other livestock and thought Bloomington was a place where they could maintain their rural lifestyle and connection to their Mexican roots. Now, they don’t know what they’ll do.

“It’s hard that we can't find anywhere to go because we don't have the money to buy a house,” Ortiz said in Spanish. “I have to protect my family and my animals.”

15-year-old Fatima said the whole experience has been so stressful she’s had trouble focusing in school.

“I be seeing machines going through, passing by my house, and I be getting scared,” she said. “And then sometimes I get the feeling of not wanting to come to school. Even if I do, I be thinking about the house instead of thinking about my subjects at school.”

Across the street from where I talk with the Ortiz’s, I meet 15-year-old Jose Sanchez and 17-year-old Francisco Plascencia riding their horses, something they do every day. They grew up riding, and even in their short lives they’ve seen other warehouse projects already change the community — more big rig trucks driving the roads, and less open space to ride their horses.

“I grew up here in Bloomington so seeing everything go away … it kind of hurts me,” said Sanchez.

For now, he said, they’ll have to appreciate riding their horses around town as much as they can.

“Just enjoy what we have right now,” Sanchez said. “Until the time comes, if they do end up buying our property, it is what it is.”

Jose Sanchez, left, and Francisco Plascenscia grew up riding horses in Bloomington and have seen the community become more industrial over the years.

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A necessary project? 

Others in the community say the project is desperately needed.

Like many unincorporated areas, Bloomington has a lack of basic infrastructure, such as sidewalks, sewage lines and flood control. That’s led to persistent flooding issues and dangerous traffic conditions. Many community members also worry about public safety with little law enforcement dedicated to the area.

“The residents of Bloomington need better streets, better schools, good paying jobs and law and order,” said Irma Hansel, who's lived in Bloomington for more than 40 years, at the 2022 supervisor’s meeting when the project was approved. “We believe that the Bloomington project is a way to help to achieve prosperity and a better future for the residents of Bloomington.”

“Personally, my family and I would love to go one winter without our house flooding or having a river that builds up in my backyard, [taking] my 68-year-old mom along with it when she tried to redirect the water without success,” said resident Raquel Diaz at that same meeting.

To address the flooding issues, traffic conditions, and public safety concerns, the developer has promised to spend:

• $39 million for 2.2 miles of street improvements like sidewalks and traffic signals (some of those street improvements will also support an increase in truck traffic expected from the project).
• $30 million to build a 13-acre drainage basin and 2 miles of storm drains 
• More than $1 million in tax revenue per year will go to a fund for Bloomington to spend on public safety, code enforcement and parks. $6.4 million in one-time funding will go to a Bloomington-specific infrastructure fund. 
• $45 million for a brand new elementary school because the old one is right next to the project
• 198 apartment units will be built in another part of Bloomington to make up for the homes destroyed and comply with California's housing law. 

The project is also expected to generate more than 3,200 permanent local jobs and some 5,450 union construction jobs, as well as $500 million in tax revenue for the county over 30 years.

A FedEx truck drives past a trucking terminal in Bloomington. The new "Bloomington Business Park" isn't the first warehouse development to come to Bloomington, but it's the largest.

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A spokesperson for the developer said in a statement to LAist that the property will be landscaped with mature trees and drought-tolerant plants and that electric charging infrastructure will be installed to power electric forklifts and other heavy duty electric equipment onsite.

“If you're going to get infrastructure improvements, it's going to come out of one of two sets of hands — it's either going to come out of the business and development community," said Gary Grossich, a 45-year Bloomington resident, "or it's going to come from the residents. The residents don’t have that kind of money."

Meaning, taxes. Unincorporated areas often lack basic infrastructure because they have less tax revenue, and the revenue that does exist is stretched across an entire county.

Truck yards like this one are common in Bloomington.

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“So unfortunately — you can maybe call it a trade-off — for these types of infrastructure improvements that the community needs, we have to rely on the development community to bring in these types of projects because that's the only thing that's going to pencil out for that type of a huge, tens of millions of dollars of investment in a community,” Grossich said.

Grossich owns a pizza restaurant in neighboring Colton and has lived in Bloomington for 45 years. His home is near the development.

Grossich said he’s been against past warehouse projects in the community, but he thinks this one is the gold standard and will bring more benefit than harm.

Bloomington resident Gary Grossich stands outside his restaurant in Colton. He believes the warehouse project will bring more benefit than harm to Bloomington.

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A dream of becoming a city that can keep warehouses out

Grossich serves on the Bloomington Municipal Advisory Committee, or MAC, a non-voting group of community members that liaison between the community and county supervisors.

Gary Grossich owns a pizza shop in Colton, where he grew up, and moved to Bloomington 45 years ago after purchasing his dream home with his wife.

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He says that’s part of the problem — because Bloomington is unincorporated it has too little political representation. He worries that if Fontana and Rialto continue to build warehouses on Bloomington’s borders — multiple projects are planned, with land already leveled to make way for them — those cities will be able to annex Bloomington and turn all of it into warehousing space.

“The idea is that we want people that live in Bloomington to make these decisions, not people from outside,” Grossich said. “For Bloomington to ever get to the point where we can make our own decisions, it is going to be necessary to find funding. It was never the intention of the MAC to make Bloomington into any type of a warehouse central or anything like that. As a matter of fact, we wanted to preclude that from happening.”

Ultimately, he sees this project as a necessary step for Bloomington to generate enough revenue to become its own city, so it can ideally elect people from the community who will keep further warehouse development out.

He envisions a city that has some warehouses, but also has a thriving downtown corridor full of local businesses, restaurants and homes.

“Each individual project, you gotta weigh the pros and cons,” Grossich said. “All projects have impacts, no matter what it is. You can build a church, it's gonna have impacts. The question really is, can you mitigate the impacts to beyond a significant level.”

The foundation of a home demolished where the future warehouse project is planned.

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A dangerous precedent?  

Joaquin Castillejos, an organizer with the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, worries that relying on warehouse development for necessary infrastructure improvements in unincorporated areas sets a dangerous precedent, and that there are not enough protections in place now to prevent future warehouse expansion into the numbered streets of Bloomington.

He said it’s up to the county to find the needed funding for building safe infrastructure without approving a project that brings more heavy truck traffic and pollution near residential areas, schools and a park.

People walk along a residential street. The green fencing on the right is where part of the warehouse development will be. The developer purchased a palm tree nursery.

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“The county has a responsibility to the residents of Bloomington to keep up with the infrastructure, to fix our streets and to make sure that it's a livable area,” he said.

The county said in a statement to LAist that it's made "significant investments" in Bloomington in recent years, including street improvements, an affordable housing project, a sewer installation on Valley Boulevard, a new park and additional dedicated sheriff's deputies to the area, among other things.

"There are challenges throughout the County, as with any government agency, to meet all the needs with funding not being unlimited," the statement to LAist read. "However the County has done well toward investing in Bloomington."

Castillejos said this new warehouse project is different from others for its scale and because the county rezoned a residential area to industrial to make way for the warehouse project. Unincorporated areas in the Inland Empire such as Bloomington have been some of the few places left in a state with rising housing costs where people, like Castillejos’ family, can still afford to buy their own homes.

Castillejos grew up in Bloomington after his family moved there from an apartment in south L.A. to achieve their dream of buying a house in the early 2000s. He lives in Pomona now, but his parents still live in Bloomington, two blocks from another large warehouse project that was built in neighboring Fontana.

Warehouses dominate the Inland Empire

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Courtesy of Riverside Art Museum

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“There's nothing that they can say to justify creating an industrial zone in the middle of a residential area, but that's exactly what they did,” he said. “This project will just be the beginning of more types of developments like this, where they target residential areas in other unincorporated areas in the county.”

Though homes have already been demolished, Castillejos hopes the current lawsuit against the project at least sends a message to future warehouse developers.

“I'm hoping that this lawsuit shows all other developers that if you want to do a project like this,” he said, “there's going to be consequences.”

Updated November 14, 2026 at 13:52 PM ET

WASHINGTON— Friday's nationwide ground stop started when a contractor updated old Federal Aviation Administration telecommunication lines, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Saturday.

Tens of thousands of passengers across the U.S. are still stranded Saturday after the rare ground stop. Bryan Bedford, the FAA administrator who joined Duffy at Saturday's media briefing, said schedule problems should be resolved by Sunday evening.

Nearly 25,000 flights were delayed, and over 9,000 were cancelled on Friday, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking site. The disruption seeped into Saturday morning with more than 4,000 cancellations recorded, which is 18% of flights departing the U.S., according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company.

L3Harris, a long time contractor for the FAA, was doing routine maintenance in at least one remote location changing copper wire to fiber optics, Duffy said. "When I tell you that we're using old equipment, we're using old equipment," he said.

He said the FAA is still investigating the exact error that started flooding other routers in the air traffic control system, and if L3Harris was at all responsible.

"It's pretty straightforward work that we were doing yesterday at, again, a very remote location. So what we're working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error, installator error from L3Harris, or did they install a faulty router?"

L3Harris did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.

These updates have been happening in American institutions for decades, Duffy said.

"Virtually every single institution in America has gone from copper to fiber, from analog to digital," Duffy said. "Just maybe the FAA is the last one to be doing this work because the investments haven't been made, but this is not complicated."

Bedford said there was no evidence of anything nefarious happening or any AI-related issues.

Since his time in office, Duffy said he's been asking Congress for money to make more upgrades. In July 2025, Congress approved $12.5 billion to modernize the nation's aging air traffic control system.

With that money, 70% of copper communications have been replaced to high-speed fiber, Bedford said. Duffy called the innovations and the need for more a "bipartisan moment."

"This is the moment, if we don't start to switch out our systems, when, how long are we going to wait, America, and Congress?" Duffy asked.

Thousands of passengers miss flights

Passengers wait at boarding gates at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, DC on November 13, 2026.

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For about four hours on Friday, thousands of flights at U.S. airports were grounded in one of the biggest disruptions of the nation's air travel system since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

The aviation system is back online and slowly returning to normal Saturday morning, but delays and cancellations will continue, Duffy said. Bedford said all passengers will be put on new flights or they'll get a full refund, but that people should reach out to their airlines directly.

Flight boards at airports across the country Saturday morning continued to be riddled with red cancelled marks. At Tampa International Airport in Florida, people in the main terminal area before security curled up in chairs to grab a wink of sleep.

On Friday night, a flight board at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in D.C. showed dozens of flights delayed into the early morning hours or cancelled.

Passengers Erin and Jake Britt spent half the day at the airport in D.C. on Friday. Their plane to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. boarded at 3 p.m. By 5:30 p.m., they were getting off the plane — but they were still in D.C.

"Overall, our plane was definitely annoyed, but reasonable," Erin Britt said, as the couple left the airport at 8 p.m. "People being upset and asking like, 'Well, how are you not prepared for this?' And it was like, 'Well, no one was prepared.'"

She said neither the pilot nor flight attendants had any more information than passengers."They seem just as in the dark," she said.

The pair decided to cancel their weekend trip, but the night didn't end there. They spent over nine hours overnight waiting on the JetBlue customer service call line to be reimbursed. "I was setting alarms in 20 minute intervals in case I fell asleep," Erin Britt said.

For people who had events or plans over the weekend – the delay added an extra layer of stress. Joe Romano and Maddie Cabana had a cruise leaving Orlando, Fla. Saturday afternoon.

"It was a big eye roll. I mean, I travel a lot for work already, so I'm constantly dealing with flight delays," Romano said. "When this happened, I was just like, 'Of course, it always happens to me.'"

"Just rather inconvenient and frustrating," Cabana added, as the pair contemplated checking their bags or going home. They even thought about driving to Florida. "Hopefully, everything will be fine. It'll all work out. It always does."

And it did— eventually. After their JetBlue flight was ultimately cancelled, they quickly booked another one on Southwest Airlines and made it early Saturday morning.

Others, like Suze DiPietro decided flying wasn't worth it anymore. Her husband drove about four hours down from Ocean City, New Jersey to pick her up in D.C. Luckily, they had friends in the area where they spent the night.

"My husband, my hero, is driving down from New Jersey to come get me," DiPietro said.

Other alternatives included people switching to Amtrak trains as they struggled to get to their destination. Although, even Amtrak's system had a brief outage Friday night.

This was only the second nationwide ground stop since September 11, 2001. The U.S. last issued a ground stop of this scale in 2023, when all U.S. airports were shut down due to an outage in the NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) system, which alerts pilots and airports of real-time hazards.

That outage prompted fears of a cyberattack, but the FAA later determined the issue was caused when contract workers inadvertently deleted critical files.

The FAA has recently begun rolling out an AI-enhanced software tool known as the SMART system as part of its ambitious overhaul of the nation's air traffic control system. But Air Space Intelligence, the company that makes the tool, quickly dismissed speculation that its product could be connected to the flight disruptions.

"The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC," the company said on social media.

Ava Pukatch contributed to reporting.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Eggs from the first confirmed sea turtle nests found on the U.S. West Coast have hatched.

"We are excited to share that some of the olive ridley sea turtle eggs from Seal Beach successfully hatched after a 58-day incubation period," said the Aquarium of the Pacific in a social media post.

The Long Beach-based aquarium has been keeping watch over 204 olive ridley sea turtle eggs, laid on Seal Beach and Huntington Beach in September. A second set of eggs found on Huntington Beach is still incubating

The aquarium said the hatchlings were released early Saturday morning in a coastal area with little light and human disturbances.

Baby turtles, the aquarium said, go through a “frenzy period” after hatching, where they swim nonstop for up to two days

The eggs came from the first confirmed sea turtle nests found on the U.S. West Coast. Scientists say unusually warming water tied to El Niño likely drew the rare turtles to the Southern California coast.

A couple of decades ago, a friend in New York told me about something happening that was kinda underground and just getting traction. It was called “The Moth.” People took turns telling a true, personal story, with no notes, named after the Southern tradition of sitting on front porches and sharing spellbinding tales — with moths flying mesmerized around the porchlight.

It sounded amazing. And terrifying. I filed it under the same list as bungee jumping — no doubt exhilarating but something I’d never do — and got on with my life. Over the years, as it grew bigger and bigger, I went to several Moth events in different cities, and was always so impressed with the storytellers — and equally adamant I’d never do it.

Cut to this September, when a message went out to all the staff at LAist. We’re a media sponsor of The Moth, and an event, a open mike StorySLAM, was coming up in Silver Lake. There were a few tickets available. Did anyone want one? The theme was "Divas." Sure, I thought. I’d go watch. It's always fun.

Nagging thought

As the days went by, the same thought kept nagging at me. How about getting on stage yourself? No, I thought. Too risky. But this time there was another thought, even more vehement. Why are you being held hostage by fear? Life is too short. If you want to do something, you just have to do it. And this opportunity has just fallen into your lap.

So when the day came, I went to the event, and put my name in the hat. Would I be picked? I sat there with sweaty palms as the show started and people came up tell their own funny, moving, poignant stories.

Finally, near the end of the show, my name was called out. Gulp. I walked on stage to the mic, and began telling my story.

“Some years ago I was a BBC radio producer. A show host and I were at Albuquerque airport, on our way to Los Alamos to do interviews about the Manhattan project. But when we got to the gate, it was closed. They’d boarded the plane 15 minutes early. We couldn't believe it. There was only one plane per day and we'd flown in from London and were on a tight schedule. What should we do?”

Holding their breath

It was a strange experience, simultaneously storytelling while looking at the audience and scanning for their reactions. They seemed to be enjoying themselves.... and were holding their breath, waiting to see what came next.

“I could see the plane on the tarmac, one of those regional planes with propellers, on the other side of an alarmed emergency exit door. So I decided, in the heat of the moment, to push it open, and started dashing across the tarmac, yelling for the host to follow me. Security men began running towards me from every direction as the alarm blared loudly.”

The audience was laughing with delight and disbelief, and I was laughing, too, at the recollection. What on earth had made me do that? Ah, my young, impulsive, determined self. Just as well it wasn’t today, post 9/11. I’d be dead.

“As I reached the plane, the security men were shouting 'What are you doing? You can’t run onto the tarmac!' That’s when the diva part came in. I drew myself up to my full 5’ 2” and said, determinedly, 'No, YOU were the ones who boarded the plane early. We did everything right! We have our tickets, we have interviews to do and we are going to get on this plane.'"

The security men looked at each other, unsure what to do. Maybe it was the British accent, or not being used to a woman giving them a dressing down. But one of them shrugged, moved out of the way, and they let us get on the plane. "Hurray! And we made it to Los Alamos, in time to do our interviews. Thank you.”

The audience went crazy, clapping and whooping. I was standing there grinning stupidly. I couldn’t believe I’d done it.

Yes, the story went down well. And the audience hadn't eaten me alive. But there was something bigger, something even more satisfying in my reaction. I’d had made myself do something I was scared of. I'd faced my demons.... and survived.

A lesson for us all.

If you happen to see 600 people snaking down 14.3 miles of Santa Monica Boulevard (and then some) on Saturday, Nov. 21 — their sole purpose is just to … walk.

“For years people were asking us, ‘What are you doing?’” said Michael Schneider, founder of the Great Los Angeles Walk.

These strolls are maximalist in nature, usually covering the entire length of a given thoroughfare. Sunset Boulevard. Melrose Avenue. Ventura Boulevard.

The inaugural Great L.A. Walk in 2006 along Wilshire Boulevard.

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How the walk began 

The pre-Thanksgiving tradition started in 2006 with Wilshire Boulevard. Schneider, who had reached the milestone of living in L.A. for a decade, was inspired by a book about the street’s history to walk its entire 15.8 miles on foot. He asked others to join on his blog Franklin Avenue.

About two dozen people showed up. That day, they popped into storefronts, stopped by restaurants, sneaked into the Park Plaza Hotel near MacArthur Park and shot up to the roof. “That kind of unearthed a whole new side of Los Angeles as we walked down Wilshire,” he said.

By the time the trek reached the ocean, folks were asking Schneider about next year. Now, it's always on the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

“I inadvertently turned it into an annual tradition,” he said.

The 2016 edition of Great L.A. Walk along Pico Boulevard.

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The 2007 installment was Pico Boulevard — with restaurant recommendations along the route handpicked by the late Pulitzer-winning food critic Jonathan Gold.

Eventually, Schneider included themed walks. March of Los Pobladores — which retraces the final leg of the 1781 journey taken by the original founders of L.A. — from the San Gabriel Mission to downtown. And USC to UCLA when the rivals faced off on game day.

This year’s route: Route 66 

This year's theme is Route 66.

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This year’s focus is Route 66, marking the centennial of the iconic road. Saturday's walk will start in Echo Park, then go the whole way down Santa Monica Boulevard and end at the pier, totaling about 16 miles.

“You see so many different versions of Los Angeles,” he said.

Michael Schneider, founder of the Great L.A. Walk, at last year's trot along Wilshire Boulevard.

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Celebrity sightings and a marquee shout-out 

One year, he said, the group walked by Magic Johnson.

“He waved at us," Schneider said. "Probably was wondering why [there were] hundreds of people walking past where he was."

As many as 600 people now join the walk, he said. As the number grows, so too has its legend.

“Now we find a lot of people who know who we are,” he said. “You hear people say, ‘Hey, it's the Great L.A. Walk.”