The Brief

This week's storm dropped nearly half an inch of rain on the Tustin area, and more is on the way — that’s good for dampening smoke from the fire that continues to slowly consume a World War II era hangar on the former Marine Corps base there.

But what about for containing the asbestos, arsenic and other toxins released by the hangar fire?

LAist spoke with officials and public health experts who agreed rain is generally good for cleaning toxins from the air and ground, though it could cause other, likely minor, concerns down the line.

The status of the hangar and cleanup

Officials said in a news release late Wednesday that they had finished cleaning up debris in the immediate vicinity of the hangar — even though they had to stop work early because of lightning. They also said large catch basins around the hangar would collect rain runoff from the still smoldering building.

Most of the massive building — 17 stories high and more than 1,000 feet long — has already collapsed. Officials said that as of Thursday night, 30 to 50 feet of the western facing wall was left standing.

[Listen: Members of the Marine Corps community share their memories of the Tustin blimp hangars on AirTalk.]

Ryan Coe, spokesperson for the fire’s incident management team, said they plan to take down the metal framed doors in the near future. The concrete pillars that frame the doors will remain, Coe said.

"So the public's not going to see some big wrecking ball hitting these concrete pillars and knocking down a bunch of concrete," he said.

Clean-up crews were focusing on neighborhoods north of Edinger Avenue on Wednesday, officials said. Coe told LAist that the hotline set up earlier this week for residents to report debris had received 152 calls on Tuesday, its first full day in operation.

You can reach the hotline by calling (714) 426-2444. Residents can also report debris online.

Lt. Andy Birozy, spokesperson for the Tustin hangar fire incident management team, said that as of Thursday the hotline had received 369 calls. Between the online debris-reporting portal and hotline, officials had taken 692 total requests as of Thursday.

Air quality status

The South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) has been monitoring air quality and testing debris from the fire. Most air quality samples have shown no elevated levels of heavy metals. But inside the smoke plume, some elevated levels of lead and arsenic have been detected.

It's unclear just how far and wide debris from the fire may have spread, given changing wind patterns in recent weeks. The Tustin Unified School District has published a map showing that 14 schools in the district found at least one piece of debris from the fire on their campuses, along with two other schools that are in close proximity to the burn site.

Debris was found as far north as Estock Elementary, north of Irvine Boulevard, and as far east as Beckman High School north of I-5. Both are about 4 miles from the burn site.

According to the AQMD's latest report, air samples collected Nov. 12 at fixed monitors in the surrounding community did not detect any asbestos. (You can view all of the AQMD's reports from the Tustin hangar fire here.)

Michael Kleinman, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine, said the rain would likely help lower emissions from the fire and reduce any toxicity.

"Rain is really very efficient at cleaning particles out of the air," he said.

Still, he said anyone near the smoke plume should take extra precautions. He said people living near the burn site with children should make sure kids are keeping their hands clean and not touching ash or debris from the fire because they're more prone to "getting hand to mouth kind of contamination."

What about soil and water?

Roy Herndon, chief hydrogeologist at the Orange County Water District, said the rain could help remove toxic ash and debris from the places where people are most likely to have direct contact with it.

"Thinking of ball fields, playgrounds, roofs, parking lots, walkways — all the things throughout the area that might have been affected [by fire debris] may get a flushing," he said.

Of course, that water has to go somewhere — mostly into storm drains. Herndon said some of the main drainages in that area include Peters Canyon Wash and Barranca Channel, which feed into San Diego Creek and then Upper Newport Bay.

Shannon Widor, spokesperson for Orange County Public Works, said the department regularly carries tests water in flood channels during and after rainstorms.

The Orange County Health Care Agency advises people to stay away from storm drains and creeks, and out of the ocean for three days after rain.

Are there risks to the water supply?

Herndon said it's very unlikely that toxins from the fire ash could make their way into groundwater used for drinking.

"Ash is a particle, it's a particulate, and particulates tend to be filtered out fairly readily as water percolates through soil," he said.

The Navy has acknowledged that groundwater under the former base is contaminated. But that water isn't used for drinking — rather, drinking water is supplied to the area by the Irvine Ranch Water District.

Greg Pierce, who directs the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he has confidence in local water suppliers and official monitoring bodies to manage any potentially toxic effects from the fire on the water system.

"The Irvine Ranch Water District is incredibly sophisticated when it comes to drinking water quality," Pierce said.

He added that the volume of toxic sediment that could reach waterways is likely small and diffuse and, therefore, unlikely to have a big impact on surface water quality.

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.

A series of community listening sessions will give residents a chance to weigh in on whether streets, monuments and public parks bearing the name of former labor leader César Chávez should be renamed. 

The sessions, scheduled for October and led by the Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office, come after the county launched a survey in June asking the public what mattered most to them in a renaming process.

In March, the Board of Supervisors approved a motion, authored by Supervisors Hilda Solis and Lindsey Horvath, to rename county honors following a New York Times investigation that alleged Chávez sexually assaulted women and girls within the United Farm Workers movement, including fellow labor leader Dolores Huerta.

“The County of Los Angeles has a firm responsibility to ensure any public recognitions reflect our shared values of justice, dignity, and respect,” Solis said in a statement at the time.

Following the investigation, some Eastside residents called for Cesar E. Chavez Avenue to revert to its former name, Brooklyn Avenue, and for murals depicting Chávez’s face to be taken down.

The board also approved a motion by Solis to rename the César Chávez holiday as Farmworkers Day across the county, which will continue to be observed on the last Monday in March instead of Chávez’s birthday on March 31.

How to weigh in

Three in-person community listening sessions will be held in East LA in October. Online registration is encouraged but not required. To register, click here.

Saturday, Oct. 10 – Anthony Quinn Library

Time: 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Location: 3965 E. Cesar E. Chavez Ave., Los Angeles

Saturday, Oct. 17 – Ruben F. Salazar Park

Time: 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Location: 3864 Whittier Blvd., Los Angeles

Note: This session will be held in Spanish only 

Saturday, Oct. 24 – East LA Service Center

Time: 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Location: 133 N. Sunol Dr., Los Angeles

*Spanish-language interpretation will be available

The post LA County wants your input on renaming Cesar E. Chavez Avenue. Join these meetings to weigh in appeared first on LA Local.

Republican State Assemblyman Carl DeMaio is seeking to distance the voter ID measure Californians will see on their November ballot from President Donald Trump’s efforts to restrict voting at the federal level. During a Monday night speech at the Orange County GOP Central Committee meeting, DeMaio said the ballot measure, Proposition 39, is “not the same” as the failed federal SAVE Act, which would have required proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote.

Speaking to dozens of O.C. Republican leaders, DeMaio acknowledged Californians’ overwhelming embrace of mail-in voting, calling Prop. 39 a “bipartisan solution that keeps mail ballots, so that voting is convenient, but improves trust and confidence by requiring an ID to vote.”

What would Prop. 39 do?

• Prop. 39 would change California’s constitution to require voters to provide a government-issued ID when they cast a ballot.
• Mail-in voters would have to include the last four digits of that ID on the ballot envelope.
• The measure would also require election officials to use “best efforts,” using government data, to verify that voters on registration rolls are U.S. citizens, and to report annually the percentage verified.

Reaction to the ballot initiative

Supporters note that nationwide polling has shown widespread support for voter ID across political parties. They also say using a voter’s signature on their mail-in ballot to verify identity, as California currently does, delays election results and causes some valid voters to have their ballots rejected.

Opponents of Prop. 39 say the initiative feeds into President Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud, which they say are false. Opponents also say the measure would make voting more burdensome and expensive, while opening up mail voters to potential identity theft.

How Prop. 39 is being pitched to voters

The latest polling on Prop. 39 suggests it could face an uphill battle in November.

Registered Republicans make up only about one-quarter of California’s electorate, which means Prop. 39 will need significant support from Democrats and independent voters to pass.

A recent poll from the Public Policy Institute of California found a sharp partisan divide in interest in Prop. 39, with a majority (52%) of Republican voters saying it was the ballot measure that most interested them compared to just 7% of Democrats and 23% of independent voters.

In an effort to appeal to the state’s liberal majority, DeMaio and his Reform California PAC recently launched an ad campaign aimed at persuading Trump foes that Prop 39 is unrelated to the president’s efforts to curb mail-in voting and implement stringent checks for U.S. citizenship.

“Can you dislike Trump and still vote ‘yes’ on Prop 39 for voter ID?” a voice in the ad asks. “Yes, you can.”

During his speech Monday, DeMaio said Prop. 39 would boost confidence in elections “whether you think voter fraud is a big problem or a small problem.”

In a subsequent interview with LAist, DeMaio said he thinks voter fraud is a problem. “ How much fraud is hard to prove because we're not looking for it; we don't have internal controls,” he said.

Trump has claimed that large numbers of noncitizens are voting. In California, a handful of recent cases have made headlines. But nationwide efforts to find and prosecute noncitizen voters have thus far turned up few culprits.

The Texas example

Julia Gomez, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, which opposes Prop. 39, blamed the decrease in voter confidence on the “chaos” sowed by people including Trump and DeMaio in questioning the integrity of elections with scant evidence of fraud.

“The way we build trust in elections is not by adding more hurdles to voting, which the data shows will disenfranchise voters every election, but by educating voters, by not lying to voters about what is and isn't a problem,” she said.

Gomez pointed to Texas as a cautionary tale about the potential consequences of adding an ID requirement to mail-in voting: After Texas passed a similar requirement in 2021, a large percentage (14%) of mail-in ballots were rejected, according to a study last year from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

The study found that non-white voters were more likely to have their ballots rejected. Also, many of those voters stopped casting ballots in subsequent elections.