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Map: Where Landslides in California Quicken Their Pace

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Map: Where Landslides in California Quicken Their Pace


Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Data from Sept. 18 to Oct. 17, 2024

Along the sparkling coast of Southern California, a string of landslides creeping toward the sea has transformed the wealthy community of Rancho Palos Verdes into a disaster zone.

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New data from a NASA plane shows the widening threat of these slow-moving landslides, which have destabilized homes, businesses, and infrastructure like roads and utilities. Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory documented how the landslides have pushed westward, almost doubling in area since the state mapped them in 2007.

The landslides have also sped up in recent years. A month of aerial radar images taken by NASA in the fall revealed how land in the Palos Verdes Peninsula slid toward the ocean by as much as four inches each week between mid-September and mid-October. Before that, a city report showed more than a foot of weekly movement in July and August.

Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Present boundary includes areas where landslides moved faster than one centimeter per week between Sept. 18 and Oct. 17, 2024.

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The mass of slides in Los Angeles County, known as the Greater Portuguese Bend Landslide Complex, reactivated in 1956 after road construction destabilized the once-dormant slope. For decades, it slid just a few inches every year. But heavy rain in 2023 and early 2024 accelerated that movement, leading Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency, citing “conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property.”

Homes in Rancho Palos Verdes began collapsing in June and August of 2023. Streets have fissured. Walls have shifted and floors have cracked open to reveal the dynamic earth below. A downed power line related to the slides started a small brush fire in August. A $42 million buyout program helps property owners voluntarily sell and relocate, but homeowner insurance policies do not typically cover landslides.

A stretch of coastline where landslides meet the beach in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Loren Elliott for The New York Times

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Damage in a residential area of Rancho Palos Verdes in August.

Loren Elliott for The New York Times

Mitigating such a disaster is extremely expensive. By the end of this fiscal year, the city said it will have spent more than $35 million, almost 90 percent of its general fund operations budget, on addressing the landslide. That includes the installation of 11 wells that have worked to pump out 145 million gallons of groundwater that could further destabilize the slope. The investment has yielded results: The landslide slowed by about 3 percent on average between December and February thanks to the wells and a lack of rain, the city said.

Slow-moving slides are common around the world, and especially in California, where several hundred have been mapped in coastal mountain ranges. Normally moving at a sluggish pace, these slides can grind nearly to a halt during the dry summer months before a wet winter makes them crawl again.

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But last summer, the landslide complex in Rancho Palos Verdes exhibited strange behavior when it failed to slow. The best guess for why has to do with a very wet 2023, said Alexander Handwerger, a research scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory who has studied the behavior of slow-moving landslides for well over a decade. Typically triggered tens of meters underground, they remain an ongoing area of research.

“Of all the things we know,” Dr. Handwerger said, “we know the least about what’s happening under the ground.”

Last week, other parts of Los Angeles County faced additional landslides, ones that move quickly, running at meters per second instead of centimeters per week. The National Weather Service in Los Angeles issued warnings for post-fire debris flows — a tangle of mud, rocks and trees that start on burn scars — ahead of heavy rainfall on Thursday. Los Angeles neighborhoods scorched by wildfires like the Eaton and Palisades fires last month faced some of the greatest dangers as those flows hit business and homes in Southern California.

But slower-moving landslides, like the ones in Rancho Palos Verdes, are more predictable. They ooze rather than race. They typically need a season of rain, rather than a single storm, to accelerate. And it’s extremely rare for them to suddenly collapse or slide in a catastrophic way.

It’s unclear what triggers that kind of sudden catastrophe, said Luke McGuire, an associate professor in geomorphology at the University of Arizona. He pointed to one of the few known examples of such an event, in 2017, when the Mud Creek Landslide in Big Sur gave way after eight years of stable sliding. More than 65 feet of rocks and dirt covered a quarter-mile of Highway 1, the scenic drive winding along the California coast.

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Experts say that the city of Rancho Palos Verdes probably will not experience that kind of sudden event. “You can never say never, but the likelihood that this would go into a catastrophic movement phase is quite low,” said Dave Petley, a landslide expert who collects global landslide data for the American Geophysical Union. “It’s likely it’ll continue to cause substantial property damage, but the risk of the thing suddenly sliding into the sea and taking everyone with it is not particularly high.”

A 2019 Nature study by Dr. Handwerger showed that the Mud Creek Landslide could have been triggered by a shift from drought to record rainfall. In a warming world, an increase in extreme rain events could cause more landslides to quicken, according to the study.

More precipitation could also cause more landslides to emerge from hibernation into slow-moving slides.

“Rainfall under climate change can wake a landslide back up,” Dr. Petley said, adding that a vast number of dormant landslides with this potential exist across the globe.

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Big Boy: World’s largest locomotive embarks on California tour

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Big Boy: World’s largest locomotive embarks on California tour


(KTXL) — Northern California residents will have an opportunity to see the world’s largest steam locomotive when Union Pacific’s “Big Boy” makes numerous stops in the state over the next several days.

Big Boy No. 4014 is in the middle of a coast-to-coast tour that will take the train from California to Pennsylvania in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States. The train began the journey last month in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the locomotive’s home base, and arrived in Portola, California on Wednesday.

After stops in Oroville, Marysville and Lincoln Thursday, Big Boy will arrive for a multi-day stay in Roseville, California.

“We’re proud to welcome the Big Boy back to Roseville, a city that owes its founding more than a century ago to the railroad,” Roseville Mayor Krista Bernasconi said in a news release. “Big Boy’s return isn’t just a nod to our past; it brings visitors from across the region to explore the shopping, dining, events and attractions that make Roseville such a vibrant place to be.”

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The train will be on public display at 375 Atlantic Street in Roseville for two days: 1-5 p.m. on April 10 and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on April 11.

While in the Golden State, the train will also make brief “whistle-stops” in several other area towns:

  • Oroville, April 9, 2-2:30 p.m., 2181 High Street
  • Marysville, April 9, 3:30-3:45 p.m., 7th Street Crossing
  • Lincoln, April 9, 4:30-4:45 p.m., 7th Street Crossing
  • Colfax, April 12, noon-12:45 p.m., Amtrak Depot, 99 Railroad Street
  • Truckee, April 12, 4:45-5 p.m., 10065 Donner Pass Road

Admission is free, though Union Pacific warns that guests should always stay 25 feet back from the tracks and never climb on the locomotive.

U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, former Oregon congresswoman who now serves in President Donald Trump’s administration, will be in town to celebrate the visit. The cabinet member plans to talk with the Big Boy’s “steam team” and learn more about the locomotive, officials said.

Union Pacific’s No. 4014 Big Boy makes a stop in Hempstead, Texas, on Oct. 4, 2024. (Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)

Big Boy No. 4014 was one of 25 locomotives commissioned for Union Pacific Railroad beginning in 1941. According to the company, they were built to haul heavy equipment during World War II between Ogden, Utah and Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The locomotives are 133 feet long and weigh 1.2 million pounds. They are “hinged,” which helps the huge trains navigate curves.

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The Big Boys were eventually decommissioned, including the retirement of No. 4014 in December 1961 after traveling more than a million miles, according to Union Pacific.

But in 2013, the company reacquired the locomotive from a museum in Pomona, California. And in May 2019, Big Boy No. 4014 was returned to service, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.



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California Candidate Offers Donors Money-Back Guarantee

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California Candidate Offers Donors Money-Back Guarantee


Matt Mahan wants money to burn.
Photo: Casey Flanigan/Sipa USA/AP Photo

Finding new ways to raise money for political campaigns is a big cottage industry, particularly in California with its 14 expensive media markets. Now a novel wrinkle is being deployed by gubernatorial candidate and San Jose mayor Matt Mahan, as the New York Times explains:

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Two months ago, Silicon Valley could not have been more agog about Matt Mahan, the moderate Democrat who had just entered the California governor’s race as a tech industry ally opposed to a billionaires’ tax …

Mr. Mahan quickly raised millions, including contributions from Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder. But he has struggled to gain traction among voters. Now, with the June primary fast approaching, Mr. Mahan’s supporters have concocted a rather unusual campaign-finance strategy.

The pitch: Help us raise $35 million by April 17, and you’ll get your money back if we fall short.

No, donors aren’t being promised a win or a refund. But they will get their money back if Mahan doesn’t raise enough money to become viable in the home stretch before mail ballots start being cast in early May (the end of the all-by-mail primary is June 3, the date by which those ballots must be postmarked). The conditional nature of these donations, moreover, means they will be anonymous until such time as Team Mahan hits the target and the money is transferred into an official campaign account. It provides a nice hedging device for big-money folk nervous about the fragile shape of the ten-candidate field that is vying for two general-election slots. And the cup-rattling is off to a pretty good start, says the Times:

The campaign is organized by David Crane, an influential California political fixer whose advocacy group, Govern for California, is popular among tech executives. Mr. Crane has told people in recent days that the group’s “escrow” account has $13.5 million so far with $5 million more in the pipeline, according to communications The Times reviewed. Donors pitching it include Michael Moritz, a billionaire venture capitalist and one of Mr. Mahan’s biggest supporters, and Blake Byers, a tech executive and investor.

Mahan’s money hustlers are his campaign’s strength and also one of his weaknesses. California progressives are intensely suspicious of the Silicon Valley bros who have been moving rapidly to the right in the last few years. Some have joined hands with Donald Trump and others have gravitated to “Abundance” Democrats, like Mahan, who have little tolerance for his party’s interest-and-constituency-group “base” and its policy preferences. If Mahan’s campaign did take off, it might stimulate a consolidation of support behind one of the more progressive candidates (probably Eric Swalwell, Katie Porter, or Tom Steyer). That’s particularly true now that Trump’s endorsement of Republican Steve Hilton has likely limited the number of Democratic participants in the general election to one.

For the moment, any Mahan surge is hypothetical. His late entry into the race at the end of January means he wasn’t even being included in early polls. The one public poll where he does appear, a March 15 survey from Berkeley IGS, showed him tied for seventh place at 4 percent. Yes, he needs money to catch up, but he also needs a compelling message that goes beyond “lefties hate me!” Said lefties would undoubtedly shrug and support Mahan if he is in a general election with Hilton. But they have plenty of other options — at least one of whom, Steyer, has more money to burn than Mahan can ever raise — before it comes to that.

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Attorney disputes federal claims after ICE shooting in California; family seeks medical update

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Attorney disputes federal claims after ICE shooting in California; family seeks medical update


The attorney for the man shot by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Patterson is disputing federal claims and raising questions about what led up to the shooting, and what’s happening now at the hospital.

Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez’s fiancée and attorney say they still don’t know his condition and are struggling to get basic information from authorities.

They’re also disputing ICE’s version of events and point to court documents that they say tell a very different story.

“I have a lot of concern right now about getting info, finding out how is he doing, is he alive, is he recovering and what is his situation,” said Patrick Kolasinski, Hernandez’s attorney.

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Dashcam video captured the moments Tuesday morning when Hernandez tried to pull away from agents who were attempting to arrest him as ICE said he is wanted for questioning in El Salvador in connection with a murder. Kolasinski speculated that his reaction may have been driven by fear.

“I wasn’t with him, I can only imagine if you see what’s happening in immigration detention and find yourself about to be detained,” Kolasinski said. “It’s normal to try and flee.”

ICE claims Hernandez is a member of the 18th Street gang and is wanted in El Salvador. But his attorney says none of that is true. 

“Carlos is a family man who was on his way to work when he was detained by ICE. He has had no criminal contacts in the United States,” Kolasinski said.

Court documents from 2019 show Hernandez was charged with aggravated homicide, which was later reduced to simple homicide. The court documents also shows Hernandez was found not guilty.

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“He was, in fact, acquitted, so he cannot possibly have a warrant out for his arrest,” Kolasinski said.

CBS Sacramento reached out to ICE regarding the court document from El Salvador, but has yet to hear back.

“I think the problem is the training,” Kolasinski said. “You have a not dangerous person and when they try to flee. First of all, the car was way too far behind. When you do a traffic stop, you pull up close behind. If you’ve ever gotten a ticket, you’ll see CHP is on your bumper. Why? So this can’t happen.”

Hernandez’s attorney and his fiancée both say they’re now struggling to get basic information.

“Sheriff’s office, no one, no one responded to me, being searching for answers,” said Cindy, Hernandez’s fiancée.

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Cindy said she didn’t hear from the authorities first, but from her sister. After arriving at the hospital, she said an FBI agent took her into a room.

“He said, ‘I’m going to record you because I need to have this recorded, right?’ So I was expecting him to talk to me about Carlos. I literally asked how he’s doing, is he’s in the hospital. He said, ‘I cannot share any information. I’m not authorized.’”

CBS Sacramento reached out to the FBI and is awaiting a response. 

As they wait for answers, she said this goes beyond just one case.

“Right now it’s me and that’s the reason I’m here. I’m also representing our community,” Cindy said. “I don’t want this situation to continue and continue blaming these people, in this case, Carlos.”

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Right now, his family and his attorney say they’re still attempting to find out his condition. 

Kolasinski said Wednesday evening that Hernandez is detained under the U.S. attorney’s office. Kolasinski added that Hernandez underwent a medical procedure, but the family doesn’t know his condition. 



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