California

The Robber Baroness of Northern California

Published

2 years ago

May 30, 2022

The Robber Baroness of Northern California

As he investigates her homicide, White finds that Jane Stanford’s sanitized public persona masked a actuality that was each extra scandalous and weirder. A spiritualist who attended the flowery séances {of professional} mediums, Stanford sought counsel and luxury from her departed son and husband. However extra importantly, for White’s functions, she usually clashed with the residing.

These clashes, in accordance with White, started within the dwelling. Regardless of her professions of devotion, Berner usually fought with Stanford over the circumstances of her employment. She briefly stop, in 1889, when Stanford denied her day off to look after her sick mom. Comparable disputes arose once more on a number of of Stanford’s prolonged home and worldwide journeys. Stanford, who was deeply spiritual, additionally suspected that Berner was romantically concerned with two male workers within the family, and made no secret of her disapproval. Berner obtained her revenge by taking kickbacks on family bills.

Although White portrays her as a very tyrannical employer, Stanford was all too typical within the management that she sought over her workers’ time and our bodies. Reside-in servants usually labored twelve-hour days, and even when not formally working had been “on name.” “Mistresses,” like Stanford, sometimes permitted the members of their employees to go away the home just one night through the week, and each different Sunday afternoon and night. They positioned themselves because the ethical guardians of their working-class workers, and disciplined servants discovered flirting or socializing with males. Romantic suitors, in any case, had been opponents for workers’ time and loyalty. On this sense, Berner’s relationships weren’t solely a menace to Stanford’s Christian sensibilities—additionally they threatened the sleek operations of a family that was each bit as a lot of a enterprise as Leland’s railroads. The maids, cooks, and secretaries who play a key position within the occasions in White’s guide had been solely the innermost circle of the Stanfords’ a lot bigger employees.

White focusses on the dramas that unfolded within the family and the college, however the Stanford property’s most bitter labor conflicts passed off on the household farms. Moreover their major residence, located in downtown San Francisco, the Stanfords owned three rural properties: a seventy-two-hundred-acre residential property and inventory farm, in Palo Alto; the Gridley wheat farm, in Butte County; and the Vina Ranch, straddling Butte and Tehama County, which contained a rustic home and what was, by some accounts, the world’s largest winery. The properties constituted the unique endowment for the college that the Stanfords based and, after Leland’s loss of life, a possible supply of money.

When Jane Stanford inherited the farms, she got down to make the sometimes money-losing properties worthwhile by leasing sections of the land, promoting off a few of Leland’s horses, closing a distillery, and firing workers who wouldn’t take pay cuts. When Stanford visited Vina within the winter of 1894, newspapers reported {that a} group of native males surrounded her non-public automobile, shouting and firing their revolvers into the air.

Stanford additionally took a web page out of her late husband’s enterprise playbook, hiring indebted migrant staff by the labor contractors who operated all through the area. Not lengthy after the taking pictures incident, rumors started circulating that she had changed Vina’s whole employees of white winery staff with Japanese migrants contracted at decrease wages. That wasn’t fairly true, however newspaper protection, guests’ accounts, and data within the Stanford household’s archives all point out that Jane Stanford employed a whole bunch of each Chinese language and Japanese staff throughout the farm properties, sometimes paying them lower than whites in comparable jobs. Because the historian Cecilia Tsu has written, the favored picture of Northern California as a haven for the idyllic white “household farm” masked the area’s reliance on a big, expert Asian labor drive.

In August, 1898, Stanford instructed her buddy Could Hopkins that she was in Vina attempting to “pacify a bitter feeling current between white workers and Chinese language.” The white staff, it turned out, had set hearth to the winery, protesting the discount of their day by day wages and the employment of Chinese language grape pickers. The arsonists destroyed 600 kilos of hay and alfalfa, together with all the winery instruments, although it appeared that their actual targets had been close by cabins belonging to the Chinese language pickers. Stanford claimed that she subtle the stress with “a couple of form phrases,” and the newspapers praised her as a “peacemaker.” Per week later, fifteen cabins burned down.

The papers attributed the fireplace to a “careless smoker,” however the incident had all of the markers of the anti-Chinese language violence that the historian Beth Lew-Williams has proven was endemic within the Gilded Age. Towards the backdrop of California’s surging battles over labor and immigration, the goings on at Vina couldn’t fully escape controversy. But the farm’s proprietor retained her picture as a gracious homemaker. In her biography, all Berner talked about of Stanford’s administration of Vina had been the preserved fruits, fruit cordials, and selection meats that the widow introduced again to share among the many residents and company of her residence within the metropolis.

Valued at twenty million {dollars} in 1891, Leland Stanford Junior College’s land-backed endowment exceeded the price of Harvard’s by an element of almost 5. The Stanfords envisioned the college as an alternative choice to the élite universities of the East, which sought to coach rich gents for a lifetime of cultured leisure. Their college, in distinction, would admit women and men of all courses. It could settle for high-school store work as an entrance prerequisite, provide extension programs on agricultural science to native fruit growers, and dispense with each grades and tuition.

It’s tempting to view the college merely as a sort of cash laundry, recycling the Stanfords’ ill-gotten positive aspects for the noble functions of teaching the frequent individuals. However the couple’s goals, particularly Jane ’s, had been extra formidable. She didn’t solely need to achieve the favor of California’s working courses. Because the scholar John Ott has argued, she additionally needed to mildew them.

The college’s most significant function, Stanford defined in an deal with to its Board of Trustees a couple of years after her husband’s loss of life, was the event of the coed’s “soul germ.” She urged the trustees to eschew school rooms in favor of outlets and workshops that will “dignify labor” by educating future staff to “use their palms deftly and usefully.” Stanford believed that, along with offering vocational coaching, the college ought to inculcate the values of religion, thrift, and abstinence of varied sorts. She and her husband banned alcohol from the dormitories and capped the variety of girls undergraduates at 5 hundred.

Élite Western girls of this era, because the historian Peggy Pascoe has written, sought ethical authority in a male-dominated world by insisting on their distinctive capability for piety and purity. In search of affect in relation to males, they might exert their energy over nonwhites and the poor. Like friends who established “rescue properties” for sex-workers and single moms, Stanford made her generosity contingent on adherence to her ethical code.

Unsurprisingly, college students chafed at Stanford’s supervision of their social lives. White finds that directors and professors additionally objected to her meddling in tutorial affairs. “Within the eyes of the legislation the college professors had been Mrs. Stanford’s private servants,” the college president, David Starr Jordan, wrote in “The Story of a Good Lady,” primarily based on a speech he gave to honor the college’s co-founder. Jordan was referring to a decide’s order, through the dispute over Leland Stanford, Sr.,’s property, that the college pay its workers’ salaries from the identical allowance reserved for family employees. However White’s characterization of the connection between Jordan and Jane Stanford means that the assertion may need had one other that means. Regardless of the flowery reward he provided her in public, Jordan privately fumed over Stanford’s interference in issues of hiring and firing.

The tensions between Stanford and Jordan got here to a head over the destiny of the economics professor Edward Ross. Ross had advocated publicly for populist causes resembling including silver to gold because the financial customary, the general public regulation of personal utilities, and a ban on Japanese immigration—reportedly saying the U.S. ought to flip its weapons on each ship crossing the Pacific. Stanford was outraged by the assertion, much less due to its horrifying genocidal implications than as a result of it represented an assault on the labor practices of capitalists like her husband and herself. Jordan tried to steer Stanford to retain Ross within the title of freedom of speech, to no avail. Ross resigned, at Stanford’s behest and amid nice scandal, forcing Jordan to take the blame for the choice and defend his benefactress with a purpose to save the college’s fame. For as soon as, the general public wasn’t fooled. “Mrs. Stanford selects a president and college as she would a butler with a employees of footmen, cooks, and scallions,” one newspaper reported.

The injury to the college’s standing ensuing from the “Ross Affair” and different tutorial scandals set the stage for what White argues was Jordan’s cover-up of Jane Stanford’s homicide. Wills and trusts had been susceptible to authorized problem if the testator was deemed insane, and people episodes had impressed whispers about Stanford’s erratic decision-making and her communions with spirits. A homicide trial would convey extra undesirable consideration to a few of the much less savory elements of the benefactress’s previous, and solutions of suicide might be taken as proof of madness. With the college’s monetary and reputational grounds threatening to break down underneath the load of one other scandal, the one answer was to redirect the general public’s consideration away from the suspicious circumstances of Stanford’s loss of life.

Solely as soon as in her biography, on the third-to-last web page, does Bertha Berner come near telling one thing like the reality about Jane Stanford. “Mrs. Stanford got here to rule individuals by her wealth,” Berner writes, “and no crown or title might have made her rule extra absolute nor the conclusion of her energy extra clear in her thoughts.” Nonetheless, Berner couches that blunt evaluation in reward. She tells us that Stanford modelled her monarchical fashion on Queen Victoria’s, doggedly devoting herself to the welfare of her individuals. When Stanford had performed all that she might to enhance their lot, Berner writes, she was able to die.

White additionally lays out his playing cards in his guide’s remaining pages. Berner, he concludes, killed Jane Stanford—possibly due to the cash that Stanford left her in her will, possibly as a result of Berner feared that Stanford would discover out concerning the kickbacks, possibly as a result of she’d merely had sufficient. Jordan, too, had a believable motive for homicide—Stanford deliberate to fireside him upon getting back from her journey—however White thinks that the bumbling administrator didn’t have it in him. As a substitute, the historian concludes, Jordan hid Berner’s crime to guard the college’s picture, and his personal.

White helps his theories with some essential items of neglected proof, resembling a short point out in a newspaper story connecting Berner to a druggist who would have had entry to strychnine. However, greater than something, it’s the continually shifting tales that Berner and Jordan instructed about their employer that appear to show their guilt. Like Debs, each Berner and Jordan had incentives to uphold Stanford’s picture as a guileless widow.

The thriller of Jane Stanford’s loss of life seems to hinge on the thriller of her life: how a lady on the flip of the 20th century might amass such energy, and the way she might disguise that energy from the general public. As a substitute of in search of equality with males, Stanford insisted on her distinction, and capitalized upon her authority as a spouse and mom. She prolonged her dominance properly past the family by working underneath the pretense of female care and generosity. Her achievement, ultimately, was not emulating her husband, however performing with a ruthlessness that was fully her personal.

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California

California air regulators to vote on contentious climate program to cut emissions

Published

5 hours ago

November 8, 2024

Press Room

California air regulators to vote on contentious climate program to cut emissions

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California air regulators will vote Friday on changes to a key climate program aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions from transportation fuels that has a wide swath of critics — from environmentalists to the oil industry.

The California Air Resources Board is set to decide on changes to the low carbon fuel standard, or LCFS, which requires the state to reduce the climate impact of transportation fuels by incentivizing producers to lower their emissions.

The proposal would increase the state’s emission reduction targets and fund charging infrastructure for zero-emission vehicles. It would also phase out incentives for capturing methane emissions from dairy farms to turn into fuel.

But environmental groups have criticized the program for stimulating the production of biofuels, which are derived from sources including plants and animal waste, when they say the state should focus more on supporting power for electric vehicles. They argue the proposal fails to adequately address those concerns.

The oil industry, state lawmakers and others have said the agency hasn’t been transparent about how the proposed updates could increase gas prices.

Agency staff released a cost-benefit analysis last year estimating that the initial proposal could have led to an increase in gas prices by 47 cents per gallon by 2025. But staff has not repeated the analysis since later updating the proposal, and the agency contends it cannot accurately predict gas prices.

“If you’re going to ask drivers to pay a lot, which is what this program proposal is going to do, I think you need to be able to make the case that it’s worth paying for,” said Danny Cullenward, a climate economist with the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.

Gas prices could increase by as high as 85 cents a gallon by 2030, and $1.50 per gallon by 2035 under the proposal, according to an estimate from Cullenward. Cullenward said his figures and the estimates initially released by board staff are not an apples-to-apples comparison, in part because his projection uses 2023 dollars and theirs used 2021 dollars.

Jodie Muller, chief operating officer for the Western States Petroleum Association, said the group supports the program overall but wants the agency to be more transparent about how it leads to an increase in gas prices.

The California Air Resources Board says the program will ultimately lower the cost of sustainable transportation fuels.

The agency first approved the low carbon fuel standard in 2009, and it was the first of its kind in the nation. It is part of California’s overall plan to achieve so-called carbon neutrality by 2045, meaning the state will remove as many carbon emissions from the atmosphere as it emits. The state has passed policies in recent years to phase out the sale of new fossil-fuel powered cars, trucks, trains and lawn mowers.

“The low carbon fuel standard has already successfully created lower-cost, lower-carbon alternatives, and the benefits of the proposal vastly outweigh those costs,” Steven Cliff, the agency’s executive officer, said at a news briefing last month.

The vote comes a day after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom called the state Legislature into a special session to protect some of California’s environmental and other liberal policies ahead of former President Donald Trump’s second term in office.

The Trump administration in 2019 revoked California’s ability to enforce its own tailpipe emissions standards. President Joe Biden later restored the state’s authority, which was upheld in federal court.

Future challenges from the Trump administration could lead to long court battles, said David Pettit, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.

“In the meantime, I think we still need something … to enhance the development of electric vehicles and the electric vehicle infrastructure,” Pettit said. “The LCFS is a way that we might be able to do that.”

___

Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Twitter: @ sophieadanna

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California

Food, fluoride and funding: How a new Trump term might affect health in California

Published

12 hours ago

November 8, 2024

Press Room

Food, fluoride and funding: How a new Trump term might affect health in California

Donald Trump’s return to the White House stands to significantly shape the health of Californians — the foods they eat, the medicines they take, the costs they face and more.

Trump has said he’ll grant a prominent health role to supporter Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has made discredited claims about vaccines and bucked the advice of pediatricians and dentists by advocating an end to water fluoridation. Policy analysts expect cuts to Medicaid.

And though Trump has publicly distanced himself from the conservative Project 2025 playbook, many of its proposals overlap with Trump’s agenda and the Republican Party platform. As such, analysts say its detailed proposals on opioid addiction, contraception, mental health treatment and more bear watching.

“I think everything is on the table,” said Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

Already, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has vowed to take the incoming president to court if his administration tries to stymie the state’s progressive agenda.

“Every action they take will likely provoke a lawsuit,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “California was a leader in the legal opposition to the first Trump administration, and I would expect that to be the case again this time.”

But some of those moves may not have legal remedies, Levitt cautioned. For example, if Kennedy makes changes to the Food and Drug Administration that weakens its ability to ensure foods and medicines are safe, “there’s not a whole lot California will be able to do to stop that.”

Elections matter. Here are six ways this could affect the Golden State.

Reproductive rights

While Trump has publicly claimed credit for being able to “kill” Roe vs. Wade through his Supreme Court appointments, he’s been harder to pin down on his plans for abortion in a second term. He has said on social media that he wants to leave the matter up to the states, and favors exceptions for rape, incest or life-threatening pregnancies.

With a state constitution that names abortion as a fundamental right, California has some of the strongest reproductive healthcare protections in the U.S.

Yet the administration could attempt to restrict abortion in the state by limiting access to mifepristone, one of the most common drugs used in medication-induced abortions. Conservative groups have been trying to get courts to withdraw the FDA’s approval for the drug.

More than 60% of abortions in the U.S. are induced with medication, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

Project 2025 suggests limiting access to mifepristone by reviving a 19th century law called the Comstock Act that prohibits sending abortion-causing agents by mail. Though both Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance said during the campaign that they would not enforce it, Vance was among 40 Republican lawmakers who signed a letter last year asking the Department of Justice to do just that. That could matter if Vance has another change of heart and tries to sway his boss.

“Obviously, it would be challenged in court, but we could see a huge disruption to the provision of medication abortion if they decided to try to enforce that,” said Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute.

Vaccines

Public health experts have been alarmed by Trump’s embrace of Kennedy, who dismisses overwhelming evidence that vaccines are safe. A recent study estimated that a federal program to help pay for childhood immunizations against diseases such as measles, polio and rotavirus has prevented more than 1 million deaths and 32 million hospitalizations since its inception in 1994.

This week, Kennedy said he wouldn’t take vaccines away from anyone who wanted them. “People can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them,” he told NBC News.

Trump himself said he would cut federal funding to schools with vaccine mandates. His campaign said he was talking about COVID-19 vaccines in particular, but as a candidate, he repeatedly made the pledge without clarifying that. California requires elementary and secondary school students to be immunized against a range of diseases unless they have a medical exemption; the COVID-19 shot is recommended but not mandatory.

In other areas of public health, Trump has said he “probably would” disband the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, even as the country is facing a mounting threat from bird flu.

And Kennedy triggered concerns by calling fluoride “an industrial waste” and saying he would push to have the mineral removed from drinking water. The CDC says fluoridation to prevent tooth decay is one of the 20th century’s greatest public health achievements, and more than half of Californians live in communities with fortified water.

Gender-affirming care

California law requires health plans and insurers licensed by the state to provide transgender enrollees with medically necessary gender-affirming care. It also aims to protect doctors from laws that criminalize such care in other states.

But access to gender-affirming care could still be undermined by federal action. Trump said he would press Congress to block the use of federal funds for gender-affirming care, a position also reflected in the Republican Party platform.

A prohibition could be modeled on the decades-old Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal funds from being used to pay for abortions, or tied to appropriations bills, said Julianna S. Gonen, director of federal policy for the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

If implemented, people who rely on public programs such as Medicaid or Medicare could end up with “really limited access to gender-affirming care,” said Lindsey Dawson, director for LGBTQ Health Policy for KFF.

California officials might decide to have the state pick up the tab. Gonen said it would be “very hard” for the Trump administration to block states from doing so, although the last Trump administration threatened to withhold some Medicaid funding from California over its abortion policies.

Trump has taken particular aim at gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and he has a stated goal of prohibiting it “in all 50 states.” He said hospitals that provide such treatment would be cut off from Medicaid and Medicare funding. Gonen said losing that money would be “an existential threat” for health facilities.

Medicaid

In his first term, Trump proposed changes that would reduce federal spending on Medicaid. Trump has promised to spare Medicare and Social Security, but that could make Medicaid a target if spending cuts are needed, some public health experts believe.

“Medicaid would definitely be on the chopping block,” said Edwin Park, a research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.

Cuts in Washington could force California to either pony up more money or shrink existing programs. California has relied on its own dollars to expand its Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, to cover people regardless of their immigration status, said John Baackes, chief executive of L.A. Care, the largest publicly operated health plan in the country. But amid budget deficits, “there’s a limitation of what California can do.”

Park added that Trump’s Republican allies have also floated plans that would restrict or prohibit state taxes on healthcare providers, further squeezing funding for Medicaid programs.

Nutrition and food safety

After Kennedy dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump, the former president seemed eager to delegate responsibility for food policy to his new ally, telling supporters last month that “I’m gonna let him go wild on the food.”

Kennedy told NBC that he would work to remove chemical additives from foods that are banned in Europe but still allowed in the U.S. Some of those substances, including red dye No. 3, will become illegal in California in 2027 under a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year.

Kennedy said he would eliminate the FDA departments tasked with assessing the safety of food ingredients because they are not “doing their job.” It’s not clear if Trump would go along with that.

Project 2025 calls for a repeal of the nation’s dietary guidelines on the grounds that they’ve gone astray by considering the environmental impact of food production. Project 2025 also embraces genetic engineering and other crop biotechnology. It’s not clear if Trump supports those proposals, though in his first term he eased restrictions on genetically engineered foods.

The Affordable Care Act

Trump tried unsuccessfully to roll back the Affordable Care Act during his first term. This time around, Trump has said he would only replace the landmark law if a better plan were devised.

Vance raised the idea of dividing up “risk pools,” which are used to share medical costs and calculate insurance premiums. Critics cautioned that doing so could drive up rates for elderly people with chronic conditions.

Mark A. Peterson, a professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said that despite continued jabs at the law, “it’s very unlikely that Republicans will want to take on the Affordable Care Act. It did not go well for them last time … and now the Affordable Care Act is more popular than ever.”

A more immediate target may be a set of enhanced subsidies for people buying health insurance through Affordable Care Act marketplaces, which are due to expire at the end of 2025. One analysis found that if that happens, more than 1.5 million Californians would see their annual costs rise by an average of $967.

The Trump campaign has criticized the subsidies, arguing they helped insurance companies more than patients.

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California

Strong winds fuel rapid spread of wildfires in Southern California

Published

20 hours ago

November 8, 2024

Press Room

Strong winds fuel rapid spread of wildfires in Southern California

A firefighter prepares to douse flames while battling the Mountain Fire on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in Santa Paula, Calif.

Noah Berger/AP

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CAMARILLO, Calif. — A Southern California wildfire has destroyed 132 structures, mostly homes, in less than two days, fire officials said Thursday as raging winds were forecast to ease.

The fire started Wednesday morning in Ventura County and has grown to about 32 square miles at 5% containment. Its cause has not been determined.

Ten people have been injured in the course of the fire, Ventura County Sheriff James Fryhoff said. Most of them suffered from smoke inhalation or other non-life-threatening injuries.

Fire officials said 88 other structures were damaged but did not specify whether they had been burned or affected by water or smoke damage.

Some 10,000 people remained under evacuation orders Thursday as the Mountain Fire continued to threaten some 3,500 structures in suburban neighborhoods, ranches and agricultural areas around Camarillo in Ventura County.

County fire officials said crews working in steep terrain with support from water-dropping helicopters were focusing on protecting homes on hillsides along the fire’s northeast edge near the city of Santa Paula, home to more than 30,000 people.

Kelly Barton watched as firefighters sifted through the charred rubble of her parents’ ranch home of 20 years in the hills of Camarillo with a view of the Pacific Ocean. The crews uncovered two safes and her parents’ collection of vintage door knockers undamaged among the devastation.

“This was their forever retirement home,” Barton said Thursday. “Now in their 70s, they have to start over.”

Her father returned to the house an hour after evacuating Wednesday to find it already destroyed. He was able to move four of their vintage cars to safety but two — including a Chevy Nova he’d had since he was 18 — burned to “toast,” Barton said.

Kelly Barton, left, is hugged by a family friend after arriving at her parents’ fire-ravaged property in the aftermath of the Mountain Fire, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024, in Camarillo, Calif.

Ethan Swope/AP

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Officials in several Southern California counties urged residents to be on watch for fast-spreading blazes, power outages and downed trees during the latest round of notorious Santa Ana winds.

Santa Anas are dry, warm and gusty northeast winds that blow from the interior of Southern California toward the coast and offshore, moving in the opposite direction of the normal onshore flow that carries moist air from the Pacific. They typically occur during the fall months and continue through winter and into early spring.

Ariel Cohen, the National Weather Service’s meteorologist in charge in Oxnard, said Santa Ana winds were subsiding in the lower elevations but remained gusty across the higher elevations Thursday evening.

The red flag warnings, indicating conditions for high fire danger, expired in the area except for in the Santa Susana Mountains, Cohen said. The warnings will expire by 11 a.m. Friday in the mountains.

The Santa Ana winds are expected to return early-to-midweek next week, Cohen added.

The Mountain Fire was burning in a region that has seen some of California’s most destructive fires over the years. The fire swiftly grew from less than half a square mile to more than 16 square miles in little more than five hours on Wednesday. By Thursday evening it was mapped at about 32 square miles and Gov. Gavin Newsom had proclaimed a state of emergency in the county.

Air quality in Denver was badly affected by wildfire smoke from blazes in Oregon and provinces of western Canada on July 24, 2024.

Marcus Eriksen, who has a farm in Santa Paula, said firefighters kept embers from spreading to his home, his vehicles and other structures even as piles of compost and wood chips were engulfed.

The flames were up to 30 feet tall and moving quickly, Eriksen said Thursday. Their speed and ferocity overwhelmed him, but the firefighters kept battling to save as much as they could on his property. Thanks to their work, “we dodged a bullet, big time,” he said.

Sharon Boggie said the fire came within 200 feet of her house in Santa Paula.

“We thought we were going to lose it at 7:00 this morning,” Boggie said Thursday as white smoke billowed through the neighborhood. She initially fled with her two dogs while her sister and nephew stayed behind. Hours later the situation seemed better, she said.

The Ventura County Office of Education announced that more than a dozen school districts and campuses in the county were closed Thursday, and a few were expected to be closed Friday.

Utilities in California began powering down equipment during high winds and extreme fire danger after a series of massive and deadly wildfires in recent years were sparked by electrical lines and other infrastructure.

Power was shut off to nearly 70,000 customers in five counties over the heightened risk, Southern California Edison said Thursday. Gabriela Ornelas, a spokesperson for Edison, could not immediately answer whether power had been shut off in the area where the Mountain Fire was sparked.

The wildfires burned in the same areas of other recent destructive infernos, including the 2018 Woolsey Fire, which killed three people and destroyed 1,600 homes near Los Angeles, and the 2017 Thomas Fire, which burned more than a thousand homes and other structures in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Southern California Edison has paid tens of millions of dollars to settle claims after its equipment was blamed for both blazes.

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