The LA Times reports more than a thousand of LA's older, concrete buildings are at risk of collapse when an earthquake strikes; Die-hard Dodgers fans talk about their pre-game rituals and superstitions; Central Valley farmworker who are close to fresh food, yet struggle to find some to put on their own tables; Meet the agent who casts laugh tracks for a living; Congressman Adam Schiff about the ongoing government shutdown; KPCC's Erika Aguilar on the growing questions of safety on USC's campus; and more.
An earthquake could topple thousands of buildings in LA
LA County has rapidly expanded over the last several decades, adding more and more buildings to the landscape.
But Southern California is due for a major earthquake. And a new analysis by the LA Times shows more than a thousand of LA's older, concrete buildings are at risk of collapse when an earthquake strikes.
According to the Times, officials have known about such dangers for more than 40 years but have failed to force owners to make their properties safer.
Reporter Ron Lin has more of the story.
How big does an earthquake have to be to level some concrete buildings in LA?
A 6.0 could possibly deal a ton of damage.
That's according to Thomas Heaton - the director of Caltech's Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory.
Thomas joins the program today to detail the problems with many of LA's older concrete buildings. He also talks about what it would take to make them safer, where the biggest problem areas in Los Angeles are and where an earthquake would have to hit to deal the most destruction (hint: the west side isn't looking too stable).
This is a followup conversation to the earlier talk about the Los Angeles Times story about the danger of some concrete buildings in LA.
Get to know Brown from his bills
Governor Jerry Brown was hard at work yesterday, tending to the last heap of bills approved by the Legislature.
Over the course of his career, the third-term governor has signed more than 13,500 regular session bills.
John Myers of the ABC affiliate in Sacramento has been carefully looking at just what he's signed and what he's vetoed this time around, and says there are some lessons to be learned.
For some in the Valley of Plenty, next meal is uncertain
This is the first of a 3-part series by KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting
To get to Jessica Ortiz’s kitchen, you have to step over some rotting floorboards in the crowded living room, peel back a curtain, and wait for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. She’s got the shades drawn to keep out the heat and the bugs. But you can see her face by the dim light that shines when she cracks open the refrigerator door.
“This is what our refrigerator looks like at the end of the month. It’s still a few days until we get our food stamps,” Ortiz said.
Her husband, Oscar, is out working in the almond orchards, and she’s trying to figure out what to feed her five kids tonight. She’s got a few eggs, some potatoes, and half a bag of breakfast cereal.
“We don’t have milk,” she said, adding that her children’s sandwich supplies have also run out. “Our freezer is totally empty.”
Tonight, she might end up making Hamburger Helper “without the hamburger.”
The Ortiz family lives in Raisin City, a speck on the map about 25 miles southeast of Fresno. It’s surrounded by vineyards, and the sandy soil here leaves a haze of dust hanging over everything: its lone elementary school and its tiny park, where residents’ boom boxes often blare music in Spanish.
Many field workers here are from Mexico. But others, like the Ortizes, are California natives. Oscar is deaf. Jessica dropped out of her senior year of high school after getting pregnant with their first child.
Their job prospects might be better in a bigger city. But here the only work is in the fields, and it’s seasonal and often part time. Oscar Ortiz makes an average of $170 per week. Not enough, says Jessica, to cover the basics.
“My electricity came up to almost $300. My water’s $140. So it’s pretty hard,” she explained.
The Ortizes rent a house for $800 a month, with broken windows, chipped paint and a front yard that’s nothing but packed dirt. Other farmworker families here live in trailers without running water or electricity.
Feeding the World — and Going Hungry
Jessica Ortiz pays the rent with cash aid from the government that varies, depending on Oscar’s income in the fields.
“He’s out there picking for almost the whole world, and I mean, he only brings like so much money home to feed his own family,” Ortiz said. “We have many, many field workers that do that. They’re out there providing for everybody else’s family and barely bring home enough to take care of their own.”
Their monthly food stamp allotment of $800 goes quickly at the local mini-mart in Raisin City.
Ortiz walks there with her kids to pick up groceries. She can rattle off the price of almost everything the market sells, part of the careful calculus of balancing the household budget for seven people.
“For a gallon of milk, it’s like $4.99. For eggs it’s like $3.50. A loaf of bread is $3.50,” she said. These prices are much higher than in big grocery stores.
And there’s hardly any produce, except for some wilting cilantro and cabbage, and bananas turning brown in a basket near the cash register.
Junk food is a cheaper choice. The Ortiz kids eagerly reach into the ice cream cooler. Jessica Ortiz buys herself some beef jerky, then scrutinizes her receipt as she leaves the store.
“I got a loaf of bread, a gallon of juice, and three ice creams, and it was $13.15,” she said. “I could have got it cheaper in Fresno.”
'Food System Beyond Broken'
But getting to a grocery store in Fresno isn’t easy. The Ortizes don’t have a car. Taking the bus turns into an all-day trip since it only stops in Raisin City in the morning and doesn’t return until late afternoon. Ortiz can’t afford to pay a babysitter in order to take the trip. And sometimes, she can’t even scrape together the $6 round-trip fare.
“The food system here locally is beyond broken,” said Sarah Ramirez, former epidemiologist for neighboring Tulare County.
“When I worked at the public health department, we could tell people, 'Yes, you’re supposed to eat so many servings of fruits and vegetables.’ It’s easy to say and not take into account the environment — the fact that in these communities sometimes soft drinks are more affordable than water,” Ramirez said.
This region ranks among the highest in the nation when it comes to food insecurity, or families not knowing where their next meal is coming from.
But it’s also struggling with an epidemic of obesity and diabetes.
“Maybe you’re having to make the choice of even buying lesser-quality food just to fill up on calories. So that your kids and your family don’t go hungry,” Ramirez said.
"What we tend to see happening quite a bit is parents skipping meals so their kids can eat."
-Andy Souza
“We’re the most bountiful region in the country, if not the world. Yet we know that one in four families are at risk of going to sleep hungry,” said Andy Souza, director of Fresno's Community Food Bank. “We know that one in three children are at risk of being hungry. There are no simple answers, you know?”
Community food banks distribute food to 190,000 people a month at food pantries, churches and community centers in Fresno, Madera and Kings counties. They’ve become a primary source of nutrition for residents in dozens of rural towns, including Raisin City, where farmworker families line up for hours to make sure they get a box of food.
“A high percentage [of people] we serve are the actual working poor,” Souza said. “We have a situation here in the valley where our unemployment rates have just been historically higher than the rest of the nation and the state. And there’s a significant amount of underemployment that we grapple with.”
Farmworkers, for example, may be out of work during the winter months.
“Folks that are trying desperately just to make ends meet, unfortunately when you have to get between a car payment or a house payment or utilities and food, you can skip a meal,” Souza said. “And what we tend to see happening quite a bit is parents skipping meals so their kids can eat.”
Artists retrace the Joad family's journey from 'The Grapes of Wrath'
John Steinbeck's classic novel "The Grapes of Wrath" will be celebrating its 75th anniversary next year.
The 1939 novel tells the story of the Joad family, who make the long trek from Oklahoma to California along Route 66 during the Great Depression.
To commemorate the upcoming anniversary, three artists are retracing the Joad family's trip and talking to people along the way.
Playwright Octavio Solis, joined by filmmaker PJ Palmer and visual artist Patricia Wakida, traveled along Route 66 and collected audio stories of what motivates people to keep going forward in difficult times.
On The Lot with Rebecca Keegan: Charlie Hunnam doesn't drop trou, but drops out of "Fifty Shades"
It was big news when "Sons of Anarchy" star Charlie Hunnam was cast as the lead in the film adaption of "Fifty Shades of Grey." But now he's dropped out ... and there's talk that Dakota Johnson should be replaced, too.
Development is its own kind of torture.
LA Times film writer Rebecca Keegan talks about the now-troubled film, the Somali immigrant who became a movie star in "Captain Phillips," and the lengths that Hollywood goes to to keep a script from being leaked.
Hollywood Jobs: Make 'Em Laugh
For our next installment of Hollywood jobs -- to look at those gigs behind-the-scenes that help make the movies -- get your gut ready.
There's a whole industry in Hollywood based on laughter. Not the kind to make you laugh, but rather finding the best people out there for laugh tracks.
It's Lisette St. Claire's job as the world's first laugh wrangler, and explains what it take to be the best in the laughing biz.
Rep. Schiff on the shutdown's third week
The partial government shutdown is now in its third week and the country is about to bump up against a borrowing limit.
Talks between House Speaker John Boehner and President Obama broke down over the weekend.
Now Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are trying to craft a deal. But, by most reports, they aren't making much progress.
California Congressman Adam Schiff joins Take Two for an update from the Hill.
California's water supply, a 700 mile journey
This is the first in a 5-part piece series by Amy Quinton at Capital Public Radio
Engineers drive through a tunnel on an electric cart down to the Hyatt Power Plant, which lies under rock at the bottom of the Oroville Dam.
“It’s a quarter of a mile underground and it’s the length of two football fields,” says Gina House with the California Department of Water Resources. “So there are five floors. This is the top floor, the generator floor.”
Delivering water in California takes vast amounts of energy. This is where it all begins. House takes me 770 feet above the plant, to the top of Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest. Behind it, the Lake Oroville Reservoir can store up to 3.5 million acre feet of water.
“This is the head of the state water project, this is where all the water starts to be delivered,” says House.
The State Water Project is the nation’s largest state-built water delivery system, consisting of more than 700 miles of canals, reservoirs, pumping stations and power plants. From Oroville, water flows down the Feather River to the Sacramento River and into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Carl Torgersen, the state water project deputy director, stands above the Harvey O Banks pumping plant near Tracy.
“This is the initial facility for export of water from the Delta,” he says.
The Banks plant is one of two huge Delta pumping facilities, the other is part of the federal Central Valley Project.
“There are 11 pumping units and basically it pumps water about 250 feet up that hill and discharges into the first reach of the California Aqueduct,” says Torgersen.
It goes fast, almost 7,000 cubic feet per second. A cubic foot is about the size of a basketball. So imagine seven thousand of them, every second. The California Aqueduct begins at the Banks Plant. The Aqueduct carries water more than 400 miles, all the way to Los Angeles.
“We deliver water ultimately to over 25 million people in the state. We provide water for irrigation for 750,000 acres of ag lands,” says Torgersen.
Parts of the California Aqueduct can be seen on Interstate 5 south. They’re the large pipes going over the mountain at the Grapevine.
“We are at the headworks for Chrisman Pumping Plant. Chrisman lifts the water 520 feet over this mountain,” says Darren Choyce an operations superintendent with DWR.
He says the Chrisman pumps need about 44,000 horsepower.
Choyce says more impressive than Chrisman, is what happens when the Aqueduct hits the Tehachapi Mountains just 20 miles away. He takes me to the Edmonston Pumping Plant and we wait for an electric generator to turn on.
When it does, a thundering sound vibrates the ground beneath my feet. It’s the Edmonston plant coming on line. 14 pumps push the water 2,000 feet up the mountain, the highest water lift in the world. Choyce says it consumes about 60 megawatts, enough electricity for a small city.
“That’s what’s pumping the water through: 600 rpms, 80,000 horsepower, running on 14,400 volts.” It’s clear from the smile on Choyce’s face that he’s thrilled by the power.
“I love it. Producing 2,000 psi to push water 2,000 feet up over the mountain,” says Choyce.
Choyce says each pump could fill an Olympic size swimming pool in six seconds.
From Edmonston, water travels south, far south. Not just to LA, but to San Diego.
Tiff Nelson is sitting on his porch overlooking a swimming pool in his backyard in a northern San Diego suburb. His irrigation system keeps it green and lush.
“We’ve got some Oleander trees as hedges, some Melaleuca trees,” says Nelson, describing his lawn. I ask him how often he thinks about his water.
“Normally I look at my grass to see if it’s green enough to see if I need water. But when it’s the rainy season, for what counts as the rainy season in San Diego, I’ll turn my water off,” says Nelson.
Nelson knows he gets water from the Colorado River. He tries to conserve it as well. He says he will even use rain water that pools on top of his swimming pool cover to water the yard first, before turning on an irrigation system. But he didn’t know that 20-percent of his water comes from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
“It’s always available and I think sometimes people forget we’re really a desert here and if you go out into the underdeveloped areas you’ll see what San Diego looks like if you don’t water,” says Nelson.
But pumping Delta water to Central Valley farms and San Diego lawns comes at a huge cost. The Delta ecosystem is crashing. Endangered fish – already suffering from habitat loss and pollution- continue to die at the pumps that send the water south. The state’s solution is the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. It’s designed to improve the ecology and provide a reliable water supply. But its proposal to build two huge tunnels to send water south has created a political firestorm. Finding the right balance may prove to be the state’s biggest and most contentious debate.
President John F. Kennedy at the San Luis Reservoir groundbreaking ceremony in 1962
Chasing Amy: Click on the pins to see where Amy traveled as part of the "California's Delta: Inside and Out" series.
National Guard members are feeling the effect of the shutdown
One of the many effects of the partial government shutdown is military training.
While the Pentagon has the funding to train units that are immediately deploying to Afghanistan, there isn't money to fully train their replacements.
In Oregon, the National Guard has delayed training for more than one thousand of its members scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan next spring.
Capt. Stephen Bomar with the Oregon National Guard said when the guard members do resume weekend training - they won't be getting paid just yet.
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, a senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations, has been writing about the effect of the shutdown on the National Guard.
Mexico mayors vulnerable in drug war
Mexico has seen its share of protest in recent months. For weeks, the capital was shut down by teachers speaking out against new education reforms. Now a mayor of a small town in the highlands of Mexico is holding a hunger strike in front of the Senate.
Ygnacio Lopez is asking for better resources from the federal government for mayors under threat by the ongoing drug wars. Dozens of mayors have already been killed or gone missing in recent years. Reporter Dudley Althaus of Global Post joins the show.