Southern California's water infrastructure, recommendations for Valentine's dinner without breaking your wallet's heart, and new tracks on "Tuesday Reviewsday".
Oroville Dam: California requests federal aid, FEMA joins in on evacuee management
While the work continues to prevent a catastrophic flood at the Oroville Dam, nearly 200,000 Californians remain evacuated.
On Sunday, engineers realized the sudden rush of water following the last rain storms had caused erosion in the dam's emergency spillway. The threat of a potential flood of disastrous proportions sparked a sudden and widespread evacuation.
But providing for those evacuees– many of whom had little time to grab the essentials– is a challenge.
FEMA is now on the ground working with the American Red Cross and state and local authorities. And Governor Brown has asked for federal assistance.
To find out how the needs of the evacuees are being managed, Take Two's A Martinez checked in with Brad Alexander of the California's Office of Emergency Services.
Meeting the needs of evacuees
You've got a lot of different kinds of populations. A lot of people with different kinds of concerns. People with small animals. People with large animals. And each one of those is a difficult thing to manage when you're dealing with hundreds of thousands of folks that don't have a place to go to otherwise. Then you've also got medical sensitivities. People with various medical conditions that need to be cared for on a regular basis. People that need medications at specific times or it could cause side effects. And people who need medical care are being attended to in the various shelters around the area.
They [FEMA] are helping us right now with getting commodities into the area like cots, water, blankets, MRE's in those shelters.
We are still making sure that we have not missed a person or a population out there, access and functional needs are being addressed, folks who need wheelchairs that evacuated without one, folks who need a special kind of shower to be accommodated, and folks who need medication, they're seeing doctors in the the shelters.
Planning to get evacuees back home
From the police departments to the sheriff's departments and to the California Highway Patrol– they coordinate on how that traffic as well as the repopulation process is going to happen. It could be street by street or it could be neighborhood by neighborhood. It's going to be their call.
Awaiting federal assistance
We haven't been waiting for a response as far as getting more aid into this area. It's a 24/7 operation not only at the spillway.... We are also working hand-in-hand with the American Red Cross, the National Guard, Department of Public Health, Social Services to make sure the needs are being met.
Quotes edited for clarity
To hear the full interview, click on the blue Media Player above.
Why this Orville Dam crisis affects Southern California
The events in Oroville could be a preview of more problems to come.
With overall climate patterns becoming more extreme...our water infrastructure is going to face a variety of new challenges.
Is it up to the task, or will we see more failures like the problems at Oroville in the future?
Mark Gold is UCLA Associate Vice Chancellor of Environment and Sustainability. He spoke with A Martinez about the role of climate change in the future of infrastructure.
Interview Highlights
What's the teachable moment for SoCal following the events in Oroville?
"What we really need to do as soon as possible is to do a vulnerability assessment of really all our water infrastructure in the state of California. Because, whether it's going to be due to earthquake or severe climate variation with these extreme storms or the drought problems that we've been having. I think its shone a tremendous amount of vulnerability in the system that we really need to take into account and so pretty scary times indeed when you look at what's at stake up in Oroville."
So we all know that the state has had prolonged periods of drought with now extreme rain, but can you walk us through why these weather patterns put such a strain on our water infrastructure?
"The extreme variation that we're seeing in climate which is sort of looking into the future of what California is going to see more frequently...its really put a strain on water infrastructure because we really didn't think that this level of extremes could happen. Especially so close together. To think that the five year drought was obviously in California recorded history and that was really difficult and made you realize the way we manage water from a year to year basis in the state all too often rather than taking the long view has really been a problem. And so getting more from climate science to take the longer view of how to manage our water so that we can better prepare for these extremes. The bottom line is: these extremes are not what gets prepared for. We sort of look back at history and say, 'what happened in the last 50 years to our system? Are we prepared for that?' But we don't really look forward with the understanding that things could actually be a lot more extreme...that is more than likely the new normal in California."
What kind of things do we have to do to be climate resilient when it comes to our water infrastructure?
"Redundancy, relying more on local water, ensuring that our local water infrastructure actually can withstand these sorts of extreme events in the inevitable onset of sea level rise which causes problems with sea water intrusion into our groundwater basins along the coast...those are some of the things that we really need to do and since California is such a populous state and water supply, we have a pretty large infrastructure, really making sure we build in that resilience is absolutely critical."
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
After reforms, Compton to regain control over community college district
After more than a decade of oversight, state officials say that Compton has proved that it can once again take control over its community college district.
An audit from 2007 of the community college found serious financial problems, along with evidence of corruption. As a result, the state took over control.
That was a big blow to the community, said Keith Curry, Provost for the El Camino College Compton Center, and CEO of the Compton Community College District.
"It had a dramatic effect," he said, especially for the close to 2,000 students at the time. "Students didn't know if there was going to be an educational opportunity for them within their own community."
That's why, he said, the change announced this week is significant. It's also part of a longer-term process.
"So to go from there to where we are now – we have made some strides," said Curry.
In a statement today, the Cancellor's Office for California Community Colleges, called it a sign of "progress" since the problems were identified.
“It is an important step toward the ultimate goal of seeing that Compton College once again operate as an accredited institution under the sole control of Compton Community College District," said Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley in the statement.
A cure for your Valentine's Day dilemma
It's Valentine’s Day, which is great for some, but generally intimidating for a lot more.
But if you’ve left your dinner arrangements to the last minute as usual, don't stick your head in the sand - with the help of "Team Off-Ramp," we have a great list of restaurants across Southern California that would be great for a date. A Martinez talked to Off Ramp's
.
(click on the blue arrow to listen for her recommendations, and here's a link to the full list.)
Tuesday Reviewsday: Rhiannon Giddens, Ibibio Sound Machine and more
If you're like a lot of us, you love music, but don't have the time to keep up with what's new.
And that's why we made Tuesday Reviewsday. Every week our critics join our hosts in the studio to give you some tips on good, new stuff. Joining us this week, music journalist Steve Hochman, here's his picks:
Artist: Rhiannon Giddens (Album: “Freedom Highway”)
Songs: Julie, Better Get It Right the First Time
For her second solo album, Rhiannon Giddens takes the title from, and closes the set with, Pops Staples’ classic gospel anthem of the civil rights movement, a perfect epilogue for the songs that come before it. “Freedom Highway” is an album of vivid tales of people and signposts from that often rough road, a journey from the darkest days of slavery, starting with chilling opening song “At the Purchaser’s Option,” to the tensions and divisions that persist today.
Now, if that sounds pedantic, the songs are anything but. This is not a literal history lesson, but a literary one. And it’s told on such a poetically personal level that, though Giddens wrote or co-wrote all but the Staples’ song and “The Angels Laid Him Away” (by Mississippi John Hurt), you might swear that they were adaptations of songs written in the moment and on-site by people who lived inside the struggles.
Most involving and gripping in that regard is “Julie,” a song that Giddens has made the movingly emotional centerpiece of her shows for the couple of years, the lyrics drawn from a story in Andrew Ward’s book “The Slaves’ War: The Civil War in the Words of Former Slaves.”
Here, with her own minstrel-era banjo and Louisiana musician Dirk Powell’s fiddle accompanying her richly controlled singing, she takes the voice of the slave whose owner is frantic as victorious Union forces are marching onto her estate. The owner pleads with her slave to stay with her, even offering her money — riches, the titular Julie notes, that came from the mistress having sold her slave’s children. It’s not sung as delicious irony, or turnabout justice. It’s about survival of the unimaginable, as human as it gets.
Her expansive, tour-de-force, T-Bone Burnett-produced 2015 solo debut “Tomorrow Is My Turn” honored strong women in music, from obscure 1920s blues singer Geeshie Wylie to Nina Simone and Dolly Parton. It was a challenge Giddens met with aplomb, investing each song not just with her considerable vocal talents but with deep connection to the material.
As “Julie” shows, this album too honors strong women, with an even deeper, more intimate connection. That’s not just a matter of the writing and her performances, but of the overall sounds, closer to her folk-rooted work with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, deriving from African-American string band traditions. Co-produced by Giddens and Powell, “Freedom Highway” is marked by its earthiness.
But it’s not all folkie, and it’s not all old history. “Better Get It Right First Time” is a chilling tale from the streets of Ferguson, or Los Angeles or any number of communities, of a young man, a “good man,” shot down by police. It’s told both by Giddens and in a middle section by spoken-word artist Justin Harrison, their confusion and pain accented by increasingly intense music, driven by a soul horn section. Giddens here takes the role of mother/sister/friend, trying to stave off numbness in the face of so many deaths.
Artist: Ibibio Sound Machine (Album: “Uyai”)
Song: Give Me a Reason
Take what could pass as a remix of prime ‘80s Anglo-dance-pop — the Thompson Twins, Human League, that sort of thing — and add powerful, frisky vocals from Eno Williams, a woman who draws heavily on her heritage from and singing largely in the language of the Ibibio people of southwestern Nigeria.
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It shouldn’t work, at least beyond some sort of culture-clash novelty factor. And it certainly shouldn’t sound forward-thinking in 2017. But “Uyai,” by London’s Ibibio Sound Machine, is a remarkably compelling, engaging, fun and, yes, forward album, at times an epiphany, even.
It’s particularly head-turning when this upbeat cross-cultural dance-floor meld carries a serious message, as in the opening song “Give Me a Reason,” in which Williams sings heartfelt pleas for the freedom of the 276 young Chibok school girls kidnapped in 2014 by factions of the Boko Haram group and still largely missing. “Mother and Father are still trying to make sense of it all,” she sings, in Ibibio, of a tragedy for which there is no sense. Many of the songs come from tales of Nigerian life handed down to London-born Williams from her family, with a focus on the strength of women.
Rather than make for an odd juxtaposition, though, knowing what the lyrics are about gives the celebratory tone even more power. And at the same time, the musical frills bring ISM to new sonic territories far beyond the excellent, but more standard Anglo-Afrofunk of its 2014 debut album. Not that there was anything wrong with that — videos from various concerts and festival appearances around that time show the band tremendously exciting with its punchy horns driving the mix, and Williams as a frenetic, kinetic force on stage. But now it has a sound of true distinction.
Artist: Ondatrópica (Album: “Baile Bucanero”)
Songs: “Hummingbird,” “Malaria”
Tucked into the many delights of the 2012 debut from the multi-generational Colombian collective dubbed Ondatrópica was a real surprise: Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” reworked as burbly cumbia shuffle. It was a little in-joke, or two in-jokes, really. On one level it was a nod to the fact that one the project’s organizers, Will Holland a.k.a. Quantic, is a British transplant, and some funding for the endeavor came from the British Council. On the other, it gave at least a little perspective on some of what was going on elsewhere at the time many of the musicians in the group were at the center of what some see as the golden age of Columbian popular music, combining traditional rhythms and sounds with modern rock and funk for the historic Discos Fuentes label.
But the real trick was that “I Ron Man,” as it was called, simply worked. If you didn’t recognize the melody or read the credits, you might have taken it for a real Colombian cumbia.
So, naturally, one might have an ear out for similar sneakiness on this second recorded outing. Well, don’t bother. There’s no “Smoke on the Water” hidden in the riffs or anything. But there are plenty of other cultures and styles represented. Well, the album title, which translates as “The Pirate Dance” or “The Dancing Pirate,” suggest there’s some plunder going in. But its done with such deftness and glee, and in keeping with the streams of many cultures representing in modern Colombia, that it all works.
And once again it comes naturally from the very nature of the project as conceived and squired by Holland and Bogota native Mario Galeano, the two writing most of the material, with a total of 35 musicians involved. Back again are some Discos Fuentes veterans, including saxophonist Michi Sarmiento and timbales wizard Wilson Viveros, and new-generation percussionist Juan “Chongo” Puello. And this time it was done in two complementary environments, some songs recorded in urban Bogota, others with a group of core members on the idyllic Colombian Caribbean island Providencia, a locale rich in African, English and Spanish heritages. Per reports by Holland and Galeano, rum was involved in the latter sessions.
“Hummingbird,” one of the singles released ahead of the albums early March due date, has a bit of an Afro-Cuban feel with swaying rhythms and breezy horns.
The, well, fevered tone of “Malaria” mimics electronica beats with organic percussion. “Come Back Again,” some reggae with tropical hip-hop undertones, leads into the traditional Latin American clip-clop rhythms and Holland’s wheezy accordion of “Soy Campesino.” “Bogota,” written by Sarmiento in the early ‘70s but never before recorded, is here basically West African highlife. But then, the quasi-title piece, “Cumbia de los Bucaneros,” plays it pretty straight. Not that there’s anything completely straightforward with these dancing buccaneers, except for their own infectious sense of delight.