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Mountain Fire update: California fire threatens critical infrastructure

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Mountain Fire update: California fire threatens critical infrastructure


The Mountain Fire in Southern California continues to threaten critical infrastructure after destroying over 130 homes and injuring six people in Ventura County, according to officials and local reporting.

Sixty crews have been deployed to fight the flames of the Mountain Fire that started Wednesday morning in the Ventura County community of Somis.

The Ventura County Fire Department said Saturday night that the Mountain Fire had burned through 20,630 acres and that only 21 percent of the fire had been contained.

“Threats remain to critical infrastructure, highways and communities, while active fire continues to burn within islands of unburned fuel,” the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) said in an update from Saturday. “Damage inspection teams remain out in the fire area assessing affected structures.”

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Newsweek has reached out to CAL FIRE via email for comment Sunday morning.

A house is engulfed in the flames of the Mountain Fire as the wildfire scorches acres in Camarillo Heights, Camarillo, California, on November 6. The Mountain Fire in Southern California continues to threaten critical infrastructure…


Etienne Laurent/AFP via Getty Images

Local residents grieved the loss of their homes and their neighbors’ homes. One man’s home that had been in his family for almost four decades was destroyed in the fire.

Brandon Francis told local news station KTLA 5 on Saturday morning that he, his wife, his grandmother and his newborn baby don’t have a place to live.

Their lives were “turned upside down in a matter of minutes” by the Mountain Fire, he said.

“Those rooms had such value to us because we grew up here,” Francis said. “This was the meeting spot for our entire family.”

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Suzette Barrick, another local resident, called the fire “horrible,” and said, “I couldn’t stop crying.”

She told KTLA 5 that her neighbor, “a sweet lady, her house is gone, but the one next to hers is fine.” And the home of her friend “is now gone to the ground.”

Nearly 3,000 personnel have been assigned to help fight the fire while 21 helicopters and 497 fire engines have been deployed.

According to CAL FIRE’s Saturday update, decreasing winds have helped crews “with their aggressive fire attack.” But “terrain in some areas continue to be a challenge.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Ventura County on Thursday.

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“This is a dangerous fire that’s spreading quickly and is threatening lives,” Newsom said in a statement on Thursday. “California has mobilized state resources, including personnel, engines and aircraft from CAL FIRE and Cal OES [California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services], to protect communities as our fire and emergency response teams work around the clock to combat this fire.”

He added: “Stay safe and remain alert for instructions from local authorities as dangerous fire weather conditions continue.”

On Wednesday, the governor said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) approved a Fire Management Assistance Grant to help crews on the ground.

Meanwhile, there are currently multiple evacuation orders and evacuation warnings in effect. Details can be found on CAL FIRE’s website.

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California

Kamala’s California problem

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Kamala’s California problem


In the final days of the presidential election, President-elect Donald Trump never missed a chance to tie his opponent to California. It was a critique that required no elaboration—though true to form, Trump didn’t shy away from providing an overheated one. At his Madison Square Garden rally in October, he proclaimed that Vice President Kamala Harris was a “radical-left lunatic” who “destroyed California.”

Breathless rhetoric notwithstanding, it is a problem for national Democratic ambitions that California—the state most associated with the party’s rule—is now synonymous with the top issue of the election: the rising cost of living. 

For the first time in recent memory, housing costs emerged as a major presidential election issue. (Experts agree that it’s the last major driver of inflation.) And while Harris promised to oversee the construction of 3 million homes over her term, that wasn’t enough to shake the California stigma.

As of 2024, California has the most expensive housing of any continental U.S. state, with a median home price that is more than eight times the state median household income. (A healthy ratio is considered between three to five times the state median income. The ratio in Texas is four.) As a result, working- and middle-class Californians have virtually no path to homeownership.

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Locked out of homeownership, half of California renters spend at least a third of their income—for many, up to 50 percent—on rent. And they’re the lucky ones: Nearly 200,000 Californians and counting are homeless.

On some level, rank-and-file Democrats understand that the state is a problem. Ask a progressive in swing states like North Carolina or Wisconsin what she thinks about California, and she will likely try to change the topic of conversation. (Could you imagine a conservative having the same reluctance about Texas?)

Where millions of Americans—myself included—once knew California as a place where friends and family went off and claimed their slice of the dream, the Golden State is today better known as the source of embittered migrants making cash offers on homes. 

Over the past 25 years, hundreds of thousands of people have voted with their feet and left the state. Sluggish population growth over the 2010s led California to lose a congressional seat after the 2020 reapportionment. (On net, red states picked up three seats in that election.) Amid declining immigration, the state has started losing population for the first time in history.

In 2022 alone, an estimated 102,000 Californians moved to Texas. They weren’t fleeing the perfect weather or the high-paying jobs—by and large, they were pushed out by the cost of living.

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Occasionally, California’s progressive NIMBYs celebrate this unhappy exodus as a way of flipping other Mountain West states blue. Yet this year, Nevada voted for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in 20 years. Even before the election, the polls acknowledged that Arizona was a lost cause for the Democrats.

It turns out that forcing people to abandon their home state in search of an affordable home doesn’t exactly engender party loyalty. Indeed, it may be having the opposite effect: Surveys out of states like Texas suggest that new arrivals from California might actually be more conservative than the locals. 

 Of course, Kamala Harris isn’t the reason California has a housing crisis. Democrats aren’t even solely to blame—the zoning that has made it illegal to build housing in California has been backed by NIMBYs of the right and left, and it was Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan who signed the state’s infamous environmental review act into law. 

But the state has been under Democratic supermajority control since 2011. Outside of the unusual case of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican who backed Harris for president, they have effectively run the state since 1999. The undecided voter might be forgiven for wondering why this issue has only gotten worse under a quarter century of Democratic governance.

Immediately after the election, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom—who has made no secret of his presidential ambitions—called for a special session to address how California will respond to anticipated attacks on reproductive rights, immigrants, and the state’s climate policies by the Trump administration. The proclamation makes no mention whatsoever of the cost-of-living issues that likely handed the election to Trump. 

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There is a small but growing cadre of pro-housing Democratic state legislators who have taken up the cause of cutting through the red tape and getting California building again. And they’ve had some successes: Since 2017, the state has legalized granny flats, abolished parking mandates, and streamlined permitting. But all too often, reform efforts have been stymied by members of their own party.

It’s too late for Kamala Harris. But the next Democratic nominee for president had better hope those reformers are successful.



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California Lottery Powerball, Daily 3 Midday winning numbers for Nov. 11, 2024

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The California Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big. Here’s a look at Nov. 11, 2024, results for each game:

Powerball

03-21-24-34-46, Powerball: 09, Power Play: 3

Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.

Daily 3

Midday: 9-4-2

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Evening: 5-6-3

Check Daily 3 payouts and previous drawings here.

Daily Derby

1st:4 Big Ben-2nd:12 Lucky Charms-3rd:6 Whirl Win, Race Time: 1:44.41

Check Daily Derby payouts and previous drawings here.

Fantasy 5

07-10-29-30-34

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Check Fantasy 5 payouts and previous drawings here.

Daily 4

3-7-9-7

Check Daily 4 payouts and previous drawings here.

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Desert Sun producer. You can send feedback using this form.

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Sales slump fails to curb climbing Southern California home prices

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Sales slump fails to curb climbing Southern California home prices


The region’s median home price was up 6% in September, despite transactions falling to a near-record low, CoreLogic reported.

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