LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County community is invited to participate in the Lake County Library’s Book-to-Action series of events, featuring the book “A Man Called Ove” by Fredrik Backman, to be held during April at all four branches of the Lake County Library.

Three discussions of “A Man Called Ove” will take place on Wednesday, April 19, and a fourth discussion will take place Saturday, April 22.

On April 19 discussions will be at Upper Lake Library, 310 Second St., at 2 p.m.; at Middletown Library, 21256 Washington St., at 2:30 p.m.; and at Lakeport Library, 1425 N. High St., at 5:30 p.m.

The April 22 discussion will be held at Redbud Library, 14785 Burns Valley Road in Clearlake, at 2 p.m. All of the discussions are free and no registration is required to attend.

The Lake County Library chose “A Man Called Ove” for its theme about the importance of community.

Ove is a lonely, grieving man who masks his sadness with grouchy outbursts and hyper attention to rules and regulations.

Ove plans to put an end to his misery but his neighbors inadvertently interrupt his plans and gradually he responds to their friendship.

In a series of darkly comic events Ove comes to value his neighbors and to be valued in turn. His story reminds us we are not alone in the world, and that community and connection matter. We wear our masks of strength or unapproachability hiding our sorrows and solitariness behind them.

The Book-to-Action program is a variation on the traditional library book group – it offers participants not only the opportunity to collectively read and discuss a book, but also to put their newfound knowledge into action by engaging in a community service project or activity related to the book's topic.

Book-to-Action is a project of the California State Library in partnership with the California Center for the Book, and it is being implemented in libraries throughout the State.

The project is supported in whole or in part by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian.

The full calendar of events is available at all Lake County Library branches and is posted on the Internet at http://library.lakecountyca.gov . For more information call 707-263-8817.

Jan Cook works for the Lake County Library.

When wildfires spread and scorch the earth, people like Penny Luehring have to act fast. Secondary impacts such as debris flows can be devastating to nearby communities.

As program leader for the National Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) Team for the U.S. Forest Service, it’s her job – along with her team – to manage and assess the effects of fires, including what can happen right after a fire and what damage can occur long afterward.

“We have an important role as stewards of the land,” said Luehring. “National forest lands, national parks, wildlife refuges, tribal lands: that’s our responsibility, to protect those tribal and public lands from [aftereffects] triggered by the fire.”

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, in the last decade, wildfires burned over 80 million acres of lands across the United States.

In 2016, massive wildfires have affected sections of the Nation. For example, the Range 12 Fire in Washington burned over 176,000 acres and the Hot Pot Fire in Nevada burned over 122,000 acres.

Wildfires can brutalize vegetation. “Natural, unburned vegetation protects the soil from erosion,” said Luehring. But high-severity fires make soils water-repellent, “so [the soil] no longer acts like a sponge during rainfall events, and water runs off rapidly, taking the soil with it.”

This loss of absorption means that when the rains come, more water stays on the surface, causing fast-moving slurries of soil, rocks, boulders, vegetation and water, called debris flows, along with flooding.

Danger of debris flows

A debris flow can destroy any object in its path; they strip vegetation, block drainage, and damage homes, forests, parks, and community water resources such as dams and reservoirs. They also endanger human lives.

Debris flows are particularly dangerous because they can be triggered by rainfall that would not otherwise cause problems. But after a fire has left vegetation-denuded slopes, water can wreak havoc: the rain comes, the ground fails.

“What we do is time-sensitive,” Luehring said. “Many times the damaging events are right around the corner.”

Her team typically provides an assessment seven days after a fire is contained. The team starts the BAER assessment when fires are between 60 percent and 80 percent contained.

“What we do is postfire risk management,” she said. “We don’t provide rehabilitation for the damages caused by fires or repair what was burned, but we try to predict and manage what might happen after the fire.”

A critical component of managing the effect of debris flow is to know when and where it may happen next. That’s where the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, involvement begins.

Faster and better predictions

The USGS uses predictive models to estimate the probability and size of debris flows that may occur in response to a storm.

“There was a time when it took us almost a month to get assessments out to our customers,” said Dennis Staley, a research physical scientist at the USGS.

That timetable has since changed. “Now we’re able to turn around results in just a few days,” Staley said.

Staley and his team produce maps based on models derived from data, such as burn severity, collected from recent wildfires. These models take into account the combined effects of storm rainfall conditions, terrain and soil properties, and the area recently burned.

For Luehring, the USGS is a valuable resource that can accommodate BAER’s short timeframe.

“Whether it’s the State emergency agencies, Homeland Security, or other emergency response entities like FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] who’re in charge of public protection, the USGS provides information that helps them do their job fast,” said Luehring.

To gather all the necessary data, the USGS works alongside agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resource Conservation Service, the National Weather Service, U.S. Department of Interior land management agencies, and many other public and private groups.

In 2015, the USGS completed 35 hazard assessments, fulfilling all BAER Team requests for major fires that year.

“We’re helping out groups that need it, and we’re doing this as a public service,” said Staley. “We took a pretty clunky process and turned it into something efficient.”

Case study: Collaboration at work

In 2014, a fire broke out in the Silverado Canyons of the Cleveland National Forest in Southern California.

The fire burned about 1,600 acres of land. Evacuations affected about 217 homes, according to news reports.

At the request of the U.S. Forest Service, the USGS developed a debris flow hazard map that helped Forest Service geologists identify at least five homes in the Silverado Canyon, and an unnamed watershed, that were in danger of debris flow.

Emergency response agencies were alerted and advised to conduct additional evaluations and warn communities in the at-risk area of potential flood and debris flows.

Linda Thrasybule writes for the United States Geological Survey.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – With a theme of “Strength, Resilience and Justice” Lake County Victim Advocates will join officials across the nation to mark the 37th annual National Crime Victims’ Rights Week April 2 to 8.

Thirty-seven years ago, President Ronald W. Reagan declared the first National Crime Victims’ Rights Week to focus more attention on crime victims and survivors and the professionals and volunteers who assist them.

“This year’s observance provides an opportunity to pay tribute to all who have been harmed by crime and to recommit our energies to ensure that victims are aware of their rights and the services available to help them,” said Crystal Martin, program administrator, Victim Witness Division of the Lake County District Attorney’s Office.

In Lake County the celebration will include a barbecue of gratitude for our law enforcement and community partners who help us inform and enforce victims’ rights every day.

“Our Victim Witness Assistance Center staff can help victims navigate through the criminal justice system and direct them to a variety of resources in the community. Advocates can also help victims apply for financial compensation through the Victim Compensation Program,” Martin said.

“This program can provide qualifying victims reimbursement for a wide range of crime related expenses such as medical/dental treatment, mental health counseling, funeral or burial expenses, home or vehicle modifications, job retraining, and lost income. Program costs are paid entirely by fines and penalties from offenders, not by taxpayers,” she added.

During 2016, Lake County received applications for help from more than 180 victims of violent crime and their family members and provided services to 700 victims in fiscal year 2015-16 including case status, resource referral, restraining orders and court accompaniment.

For information about crime victims’ rights and services in Lake County, please contact the Victim Witness Division of the Lake County District Attorney’s Office at 707-262-4282.

This week in history features the birth of an American icon, one that shows just how far we were willing to go to get the latest news in the middle of the 19th century.

April 3, 1860

In today’s fast-paced world of the New York Stock Exchange, where fortunes are made and lost in mere fractions of a second, instantaneous communication is imperative.

It is almost inconceivable to think that businesses of any kind could operate without modern conveniences: phones, computers and automobiles.

So integrated into our lives have these technologies become that we have literally built our existence around them. To do without them on a large scale is simply impossible. I dare you to approach a trader on Wall Street and tell him he can only use snail mail to communicate with his clients. That wolf of Wall Street would become a simpering sheep in a heartbeat.

And yet, as with any modern convenience, there was a time when people did fine without them. In fact, before April 3, 1860, businessmen and everyday citizens expected that the surest way to communicate with someone on the opposite coast of the country would be via steamer to the Isthmus of Panama, overland through jungles to the Pacific Ocean and once more by ship to San Francisco. The total journey would last a minimum of three weeks.

In 1859 an alternative to the sea route was established when three companies began operating overland mail routes. These arduous paths started somewhere in Missouri and went either south through Texas or centrally through Nebraska and Utah.

The overland companies were able to deliver messages in roughly the same amount of time as the steamers over the Isthmus of Panama.

However, these were new lines, going through territory sparsely populated over land that was a menace to the most veteran stagecoach driver. One breakdown along a single stretch of the route and the entire mail schedule would be backed up.

Of course, the steamer route was no less fraught with possible delays, between weather at sea and the choked confines of the Panamanian jungle.

Who knew that sending a simple letter could be such a gamble? But these were the exigencies that one had to count on to do business in pre-Civil War America.

The turning point was soon in coming. You see, the government began offering lucrative contracts for overland mail service in the late 1850s.

Those same new and somewhat unreliable overland routes were being operated by private companies with federal money (between $205,000 and $600,000 each year).

If anything could ensure speedier deliveries it was the possibility of making more money. Competition soon grew and by the dawn of 1860, other men hoped to cash in and bellied up to the federal feeding troth.

William H. Russell, Alexander Majors and William B. Waddell were old hats at the game of milking the federal cow. They first joined forces in 1854 to get the government contract to ship military supplies to western outposts.

The Mormon War of 1857 threatened these shipments and eventually led to the three men digging themselves into debt.

Looking once more to the government, the three partners found themselves in charge of an overland mail route, between St. Joseph’s Missouri and Salt Lake City, Utah.

After a failed start by Russell, who had split with the trio to create the Leavenworth and Pike’s Peak Express Company (which went under almost immediately), the reunited trio created the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company (COC&PP) in November of 1859.

But they had not yet received the lucrative government contract. In a stunning move, Russell once more broke ranks and announced that the company would create an express service that could transport mail from Missouri to California in just 10 days. They’d call it the Pony Express.

Since it was created primarily as a marketing ploy by the COC&PP to gain the more financially-secure government contract for their standard overland service, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Pony Express was a financial failure of sorts.

The Pony Express was designed to operate on a relay system, with a rider changing horses every 10 to 15 miles and a new rider taking over every 75 or so.

In the end, the total distance traveled along the route was approximately 1,840 miles from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, where the mail was put on a steamer to San Francisco). Such a route required roughly 190 stations to be constructed, 400-500 horses gathered together and estimated 50 to 80 riders hired.

Announcing their intention to create the express in January of 1860, the trio set the start date for the service for April 3 of that year. They had just four months to put together these logistics. Then as now, money was a great motivator and the COC&PP got the job done.

On April 3, 1860 two riders – one in San Francisco and the other in St. Joseph – set out on the first ride of the Pony Express.

The land they crossed was unsurpassed in its ruggedness and danger, but represented the untarnished beauty of the American west. On the westward trip from Missouri the intrepid rider would race along with herds of bison numbering in the tens of thousands, dashing towards the horizon where the great expanse of the blue sky met the flowing prairie. 

As with any dearly-held American story, specific details about the Pony Express are sometimes hard to verify. On the first trip, the westward-riding expressman was probably John Frye, who carried in his leather pouches about 85 pieces of mail.

Of course, he didn’t carry it the whole way and the rider who trotted into Sacramento on the afternoon of April 13 with the mail from Missouri was far removed from the riders who had hauled the load through the plains and Rocky Mountains.

Contrary to the popular myth, the company did not intentionally hire men without families to serve as their express riders. Although, they probably did look for young, lithe men eager for adventure.

Adventure they found, but only for a time. That first trip was certainly enough to light a fire in the minds of Americans. “Go west, young man,” said famed journalist of the day Horace Greely.

The Pony Express embodied that admonition and did one better: it went west faster than anyone before it. As a marketing ploy, the Pony Express worked and the COC&PP won the contract to run mail overland for the Postal Service.

In fact, it was perhaps the most effective PR campaign in American business because the memory of this great American venture still intrigues us today; this despite the fact that the Pony Express only operated for 19 months.

When the transcontinental telegraph line was finally completed in 1861, the ability to nearly instantaneously transmit information across the nation made a relic of the Pony Express.

Despite its short run, the Pony Express nevertheless persists. In memorabilia, old westerns and in the hearts and minds of nostalgic Americans, the young man on his fast horse racing towards the horizon survives.

Antone Pierucci is the former curator of the Lake County Museum and a freelance writer whose work has been featured in such magazines as Archaeology and Wild West as well as regional California newspapers.