LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — With showers forecast through this week and next, the National Weather Service has issued a flood watch for parts of Northern California, including Lake County.
The flood watch will be in effect from 4 p.m. Thursday through 4 p.m. Saturday.
The National Weather Service said another round of rain is expected to bring an additional 2 to 4 inches of rain to low elevation locations with total amounts approaching 7 inches at higher elevations over the coming week.
Forecasters said already saturated soils will increase the risk of flooding as a result.
The forecast also calls for a potential break in the rain on Sunday, followed by “a pattern conducive to atmospheric rivers” that will continue from the middle to late next week.
The specific Lake County forecast is predicting the potential for nearly 8 inches of rain from Thursday through Saturday.
Sunday, New Year’s Day, is predicted to have patchy fog in the morning, followed by sunny conditions and no rain during the day, with temperatures in the low 50s. Sunday night is forecast to be mostly cloudy with a temperature low in the high 30s.
Showers are then forecast to return from Monday through Wednesday.
Temperatures during the day will hover in the high 40s to low 50s through next week, with nighttime temperatures ranging from the high 30s to low 40s.
From Thursday through Saturday, winds of up to 11 miles per hour also are anticipated.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
As we head into the new year, the California Highway Patrol is educating the public on traffic safety laws that were passed during this year’s legislative season and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The laws take effect Jan. 1, 2023, unless otherwise noted.
Public Employment: Peace Officers: Citizenship (Senate Bill (SB) 960, Skinner)
The law maintains that peace officers, including peace officer trainees, be legally authorized to work in the United States consistent with federal law and regulations, however, removes the requirement that they be citizens or permanent residents of the United States.
Catalytic Converters (SB 1087, Gonzalez) (Assembly Bill (AB) 1740, Muratsuchi)
These laws specifically list who can sell catalytic converters to recyclers and require those recyclers to keep documentation such as the year, make, model, and copy of the vehicle title from which the catalytic converter was removed.
The purpose of these laws is to help reduce catalytic converter theft.
Vehicular Manslaughter: Speeding and Reckless Driving (SB 1472, Stern)
This law expands the criteria for “gross negligence” as it relates to the crime of vehicular manslaughter.
Drivers involved in sideshow activity, exhibition of speed, or speeding over 100 miles per hour which results in a fatality could now be charged with vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence.
Motor Vehicle Speed Contests and Exhibitions of Speed (AB 2000, Gabriel)
Parking lots and off-street parking facilities are now included as locations where it is a crime to engage in a speed contest, exhibition of speed, or sideshow activity.
Endangered Missing Advisory: Feather Alert (AB 1314, Ramos)
The new “Feather Alert” allows law enforcement agencies to request the CHP to initiate an alert when an indigenous person has been kidnapped, abducted, or reported missing under unexplained or suspicious circumstances, and specific criteria has been met to permit alert activation.
Additionally, consistent with the Department’s existing AMBER, Blue and Silver Alert programs, this new “Feather Alert” program encourages the use of radio, television and social media to spread the information about the missing indigenous person.
Hit-and-Run Incidents: Yellow Alert (AB 1732, Patterson)
This law authorizes law enforcement agencies to request the CHP to activate a “Yellow Alert” when a fatal hit-and-run crash has occurred, and specific criteria has been met to permit alert activation.
The law also encourages local media outlets to disseminate the information contained in a Yellow Alert.
The new law serves to use the public’s assistance to improve the investigatory ability for law enforcement agencies throughout the state when working to solve fatal hit-and-run crashes.
Online Marketplaces: Reporting (AB 1700, Maienschein)
This law requires the Attorney General’s Office to create an online reporting system for users of third-party online marketplaces to report listings of suspected stolen items.
The reported information would be available to local law enforcement and the CHP’s Organized Retail Crime Task Force to assist with investigations.
Bicycles Omnibus Bill (AB 1909, Friedman)
Much like the move over or slow down law, this law provides for increased protections to bicyclists by requiring vehicles passing or overtaking a bicycle in the same direction, to move over to an adjacent lane of traffic, if one is available, or slow down and only pass the bicyclist when safe to do so.
The law also permits Class 3 e-bike riders to use approved bicycle paths and trails, bikeways, and bicycle lanes.
The law prohibits local governments from requiring bicycle registration and allows local authorities to prohibit any electric bicycle on an equestrian, hiking, or other recreational trail.
Electric Bicycles: Safety and Training Program (AB 1946, Boerner Horvath)
This requires the CHP to work with other traffic safety stakeholders such as the California Office of Traffic Safety, to develop statewide safety and training programs for electric bicycles.
This training program, which will consist of electric bicycle riding safety, emergency maneuver skills, rules of the road and laws pertaining to electric bicycles, will launch on the CHP’s website in September 2023.
Pedestrians (AB 2147, Ting)
This law prohibits peace officers from stopping pedestrians for certain pedestrian-specific violations, such as crossing the road outside of a crosswalk, unless there is an immediate danger of a crash.
The CHP reminds all road users of the responsibility to travel safely and look out for one another on the road.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Yuba Community College District has selected the next dean of Woodland Community College’s Lake County Campus.
The district board unanimously voted to approve the appointment of Ingrid Larsen at its Dec. 15 meeting.
Larsen has worked as an academic counselor and instructor for college success skills at the Lake County Campus since 2016, according to a college profile.
She will succeed Dr. Annette Lee, who served as dean on an interim basis since July, after the departure of Dr. Cirilo Cortez.
The contract with Larsen that the board approved — signed by her and interim Chancellor James Houpis on Nov. 30 — runs from Dec. 31 to June 30, 2024.
She will receive a base salary of $115,446 per year based on the Yuba Community College District 2021-2022 Management Salary Schedule, Range 37, Step 4.
Larsen holds a Bachelor of Science in health science from California State University, Chico, and a Master of Arts in counseling with a Pupil Personnel Credential from Sonoma State University. She also studied at Florida Institute of Technology in behavior analysis.
Larsen’s college profile page says she started her career pathway working with victims of crime and supporting health education. She’s worked as an educator in Lake County’s kindergarten through high school system, credentialed counselor and behavior analyst. She also has been adjunct disability resources counselor for Mendocino College.
At Woodland Community College, she has worked with the Lake County Extended Opportunity Program & Services, or EOPS/CARE, and CalWORKs programs.
She loves the outdoors and enjoys hiking, paddleboarding, camping and photography, according to her faculty profile.
In other news, the district board held its annual organizational meeting at the same time as the regular Dec. 15 meeting, appointing Juan Delgado as board president, Susan Alves as board vice president and Jesse Ortiz as board clerk for 2023.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2023, Californians will benefit from newly created consumer protections as 11 new state laws sponsored by Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara this past legislative session take effect.
The new laws address climate change, expand health access and reproductive care, preserve health protections, protect against fraud and ensure public safety.
“Protecting consumers is my number one priority,” said Commissioner Lara. “Partnership with the Legislature and Gov. Newsom is essential to my Department’s mission of bringing fairness for all in our oversight of the nation’s largest insurance market. I look forward to putting these eleven new laws into effect while taking further actions that benefit California consumers.”
New laws that start taking effect on January 1, 2023 include:
AB 2238, jointly authored by Assemblymembers Luz Rivas, Eduardo Garcia, and former Assemblymember Cristina Garcia, directs the creation of a statewide extreme heat advance warning and ranking system based on climate and health impact information by the California Environmental Protection Agency, in coordination with the Department of Insurance and the Integrated Climate Adaption and Resiliency program in the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. This would be the nation’s first-ever extreme heat wave ranking system when it is finalized by January 1, 2025.
SB 852, authored by Senator Bill Dodd, authorizes the creation of Climate Resilience Districts statewide to help communities mitigate risk in advance of a disaster and promote recovery, a recommendation from the Department of Insurance’s first-ever climate insurance report that would improve access to insurance for all, so that we can better prepare ourselves from increasing climate change-related threats. CivicWell was also a co-sponsor to this measure.
AB 2134, jointly authored by Assemblymember Dr. Akilah Weber and former Assemblymember Cristina Garcia, establishes the “Reproductive Health Equity Program” to make available grants to providers who offer reproductive and sexual health care free of cost to patients with low incomes and those who lack health care coverage for reproductive health services, including consumers who come to California from other states that have decreased access to abortion care services. The grants afforded under AB 2134 are in addition to $40 million appropriated in the enacted 2022-23 State Budget to help cover these important health care services. Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, NARAL Pro-Choice of California, Access Reproductive Justice, Essential Access Health, and the National Health Law Program were also co-sponsors to this measure.
AB 1823, authored by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, aligns the definition of student blanket policies that are purchased by colleges and universities with the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA). This alignment is necessary to ensure state regulatory oversight and that consumer protections under the ACA are also applicable to these student health policies sold through a university or college to their enrolled students, including Dreamers and refugee students.
AB 2127, authored by Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, is an important follow-up measure to Commissioner Lara’s previously sponsored “Parent Healthcare Act” last year, that would clarify and strengthen notice requirements for Medicare-eligible older adults who are seeking to be added as dependents to their adult child’s individual health insurance policy or health care service plan contract.
AB 2568, authored by former Assemblymember Ken Cooley, creates a ”safe harbor” by stating that an individual or firm providing insurance or related services to a state legal cannabis business does not commit a crime under California law solely for providing that insurance or related service.
SB 972, authored by Senator Lena Gonzalez, brings thousands of entrepreneurial sidewalk food vendors into a more equitable and well-regulated food economy by updating the “Safe Sidewalk Vending Act,” which Commissioner Lara authored in 2018 as a member of the California State Senate to end the criminalization of sidewalk vending. Inclusive Action for the City, Public Counsel, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, the Community Power Collective, and the Western Center on Law and Poverty – all part of the California Street Vendor Campaign – were also co-sponsors to this measure.
SB 1040, authored by Senator Susan Rubio, authorizes the Insurance Commissioner to order restitution from persons who sell insurance without the necessary license from the Department of Insurance, including “extended vehicle warranties” sold illegally through robocalls and misappropriation of consumers’ and businesses’ premiums, among other insurance scams.
SB 1242, authored by the Senate Committee on Insurance, bolsters anti-insurance fraud efforts essential to protecting consumers from unnecessary economic loss by further clarifying agent-broker anti-fraud education requirements as well as the process by which alleged fraud is reported to the Department of Insurance, in addition to other consumer protection proposals.
New laws that start taking effect in July 2023 include:
AB 2205, authored by Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, requires health insurers and health plans offering coverage through Covered California to report annually to the Department of Insurance and the Department of Managed Health Care the total amount of abortion funds. This new law will require transparency and disclosure from health carriers to regulators regarding the amount of separate abortion premium payments that are being collected from policyholders and distributed as claims. As we consider options available for payment of abortion services, this new law will help regulators and policymakers identify available funds to support abortion patients in California. Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and the National Health Law Program were also co-sponsors of this measure.
AB 2043, authored by Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer Sr., requires all bail fugitive recovery agents, commonly known as “bounty hunters,” to be licensed by the Department of Insurance to ensure that appropriate education and training requirements are met prior to licensure and that all applicants successfully pass fingerprint-based background checks, obtain an appointment from a licensed bail agent or surety insurer, and maintain a minimum $1 million liability insurance policy so that harmed consumers have an avenue to collect damages.
In addition to these new laws, in October, Commissioner Lara enforced the nation’s first wildfire safety regulation to help drive down the cost of insurance for Californians at risk of wildfires, further protecting vulnerable consumers across the state. Commissioner Lara’s regulation is the first in the nation requiring insurance companies to provide discounts to consumers under the Safer from Wildfires framework created by the Department of Insurance in partnership with state emergency preparedness agencies.
The regulation is now state law and enshrined in the California Code of Regulations. Under the new regulation, insurance companies are required to make new rate filings including wildfire safety discounts and comply with new transparency measures starting in April 2023.
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA — Federal action to address ghost guns is being applauded by Lake County’s member of the House of Representatives.
On Tuesday, Chair of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force Rep. Mike Thompson (CA-05) commended Director Steve Dettelbach of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, for releasing guidance on the agency’s ghost gun rulemaking.
“Ghost guns are sought out by criminals and other people prohibited from purchasing a firearm because these untraceable weapons could be sold without a background check,” said Thompson. “I commend ATF Director Dettelbach for releasing a guidance letter to industry which will provide clarification about how the ghost gun rule will be enforced to ensure that frames and receivers have a serial number and require a background check to be sold.”
The ATF’s ghost gun guidance letter follows action by the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force to urge the ATF to provide clear guidance and vigorously enforce the rule cracking down on the illegal sale of ghost guns.
Prior to the release of this guidance, some ghost gun retailers sought to evade the ghost gun rule by selling frames and receivers separate from the easily accessible tools and parts needed to complete the firearm.
In December, Chairman Thompson met with Director Dettelbach to discuss gun violence prevention issues including the implementation of the ghost gun rule.
In October Thompson led a letter to the ATF signed by 135 members of Congress on the ghost gun rule implementation. Read the letter here.
Read the ATF’s December 27, 2022 guidance letter below.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — As predicted, heavy rain hit Lake County on Monday night and early Tuesday morning, leading to some reports of downed poles and trees.
Overnight, about 2 inches of rain fell along the Northshore and other parts of the county.
The rain led to road issues. Shortly after 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, there was a report of a tree and power poles sheared off on the side of Bottle Rock Road near Penson Court, with a few boulders also in the roadway.
About an hour later, there were reports of mud, dirt and rocks in the roadway at Highway 29 and Highway 175 in Middletown.
The National Weather Service continues to estimate that several more inches of rain could fall through the rest of this week, before a forecasted break in the rain on New Year’s Day.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Everyone knows that sleep is critical for growing children and their mental and physical health. Regular, high-quality sleep habits help children consolidate memory and learn better. A lack of sleep contributes to childhood depression, anxiety and even risk of suicide, along with physical health problems, including risk of injury. The challenge is making sure kids log those valuable zzz’s.
There are three main components of high-quality sleep for children. First, they need enough total hours – sleep duration. Sleep quality is important, too – sleeping soundly during the night with few disruptions or awakenings. And, finally, there’s sleep timing – essentially, a consistent schedule, with bedtime and risetime about the same across the whole week.
Even when you know how important good sleep is, it’s easy for sleep duration, quality and timing to get knocked off track. It can happen for infrequent reasons, such as the pleasant chaos of a holiday, or the disturbances that accompany pandemic life. Healthy sleep habits are hard to maintain for everyday mundane reasons, too, such as parent-child disagreement, busy schedules and older children’s leisurely weekend behavior. But there are ways for families to get sleep back on course.
As a child development researcher and family therapist, I study parenting and family behaviors that create healthy environments for children’s sleep patterns. In particular, I help parents to develop consistent and nurturing routines. Sleep patterns are set early, and parents play an important role in nurturing children’s perspectives and attitudes. Here’s the overarching advice I share with families, no matter the age of their kids.
1. Set and model family values about sleep
Children are observant learners. They pay very careful attention to both the spoken and unspoken rules of their clan.
To get everyone in the household sleeping well, sleep can’t be something that only children must care about, while adults who have freedom and power joke about their own unhealthy habits. If sleep seems like punishment, rather than the gift for health that it is, children will be likely to resist it.
Adults need to talk the talk and walk the walk that sleep is a priority for everyone in the family. Be a role model. If you’ve fallen into a habit of binge-watching TV into the wee hours, for instance, work on reining that in. Use positive language about your own sleep. Pay attention to what you say, and what you communicate through your own habits, reinforcing that it’s important to the whole family to get sleep and have energy for the next day. Don’t make the mistake of discussing bedtime as a chance for adults to get distance from the kids.
2. Know your child
Remember, every kid is unique, so don’t expect one-size-fits-all sleep advice to work universally. A child’s temperament plays a significant role in the duration, quality and timing of their sleep. For instance, a feistier child may not adapt as quickly to a sleep schedule over the first year. And temperament is a pretty stable part of who your child is and will continue to be.
A parent’s job is to keep encouraging routines and setting limits – but with ongoing warmth and sensitivity about the characteristics of the one-of-a-kind child you have.
When you’re exhausted and struggling with a child’s behavior, it can be hard to stay positive. My recommendation is to use the daytime hours wisely as investment in your relationship. Be proactive about noticing the good in your kid. Remind yourself that your child is their own person, learning in lots of ways throughout the day, and that child development is a marathon, not a sprint, for positive change. Sleep regressions or other sleep difficulties, like night awakening or changes in sleep habits, are opportunities for growth, not punishment.
By laying this groundwork, it becomes easier to tap into a positive and respectful attitude during times of stress. Remind yourself that change over time is more important than control over a given moment. After all, strained parent-child relationships can actually lead to continuing sleep and behavioral problems in young children.
3. Aim for consistency, with some flexibility
In my practice, I see two common – but opposite – mistakes that parents make around sleep.
First, many parents let go of rules and boundaries altogether. Often this happens as a result of what children bring to the equation: personal temperament or age-related phenomena. For instance, the peak in behavioral aggression that can come in toddlerhood or the shift in sleep timing that comes in adolescence can cause some parents to just throw in the towel and give up.
Alternatively, other parents become rigid. They see conflict around sleep as a struggle for power that the adult must win.
I argue that balance is key. Parents should adopt a consistent approach that fits with the sleep values they’ve been clear about all along. But they must also remain flexible to help children adapt routines to their own unique needs.
For example, all children at all ages should have a regular bedtime and risetime. However, parents may be open to a collaborative plan with older children about what those times should be, or attending to patterns and cues from younger children, working on a reasonable compromise that takes into account the needs of the individual child. Parents’ message about the importance of sleep should never waiver.
4. Manage household issues that influence sleep
Research shows that certain problems outside the bedroom create immediate and long-term risk for children’s sleep quality. These include exposure to second-hand smoke, excessive or evening-timed blue light exposure from screens and conflict in the home. Dealing with these factors will likely pay dividends when it comes to your kids getting a good night’s sleep.
Good sleep hygiene is a family affair. It’s never too late to nudge habits in a good direction and recommit to everyone getting the rest they need. Your child’s sleep habits can be a critical building block of lifelong wellness.
Over 90% of the world population has the virus that causes chickenpox lying dormant in their nervous system. Most people contract the varicella zoster virus, or VZV, when they get chickenpox as children. For around a third of these people, this same virus will reactivate years later and cause shingles, also called herpes zoster.
While most people are familiar with the painful rash that VZV causes for shingles, a wide spectrum of other complications can also occur even without visible skin symptoms. Among the most severe is stroke, in particular ischemic stroke, which occurs when the blood supply to the brain is restricted by narrowing arteries or blocked by a clot.
People with shingles have an approximately 80% higher risk of stroke than those without the disease, and this risk stays elevated for up to a year after the rash has resolved. Stroke risk is nearly doubled for those with the rash on their face, and tripled for those under the age of 40.
The mechanism behind this long-term stroke risk is mostly unknown. Some researchers have proposed that direct infection of the arteries may be the cause. However, some features of VZV infections suggest that this is not the full picture. A common theme of VZV infections is chronic inflammation that spreads beyond the original infection site, which can persist for weeks to months after the virus is no longer detectable and presumably dormant again.
I am a neurovirologist, and my lab studies how VZV contributes to neurological disorders such as stroke and dementia. In our recently published research, we found that VZV reactivation triggers the formation of cellular sacs, or exosomes, carrying proteins that contribute to blood clotting and inflammation. An increase in these proteins may lead to an increased risk in stroke.
Exosomes carry blood clotting proteins
Exosomes are small vesicles, or fluid-filled sacs, made inside cells throughout the body. They’re like duffle bags that carry cargo, such as proteins and nucleic acids, from the cell to distant tissues. Although critical for essential biological functions like communication between cells, exosomes can also play a key role in disease progression and are drug targets for many diseases.
We wanted to see whether shingles patients develop exosomes that carry proteins involved in blood clotting, increasing their risk of stroke. So we isolated exosomes from the blood of 13 patients at time of shingles rash and compared them to exosomes isolated from healthy donors.
When we analyzed the contents of these exosomes, we found that shingles patients had nine times higher levels of clotting proteins than healthy patients. Moreover, we found the exosomes of shingles patients still had elevated levels of these proteins three months after their initial rash.
To functionally confirm that the contents of these exosomes can induce clotting, we exposed platelets – cell fragments involved in blood clotting – of healthy people to exosomes from either shingles patients or healthy people. We found that exposing platelets to shingles exosomes triggered them to clump together and form aggregates with other types of blood cells, as they would in forming a blood clot.
These findings suggest that exosomes may be a potential mechanism for how the varicella zoster virus increases stroke risk for shingles patients.
Considering stroke with shingles
A Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccine to prevent shingles, Shingrix, is available for adults age 50 and older and immunocompromised adults age 18 and older. However, those at highest risk of stroke are under the age of 40 and are ineligible for Shingrix. A large group of these individuals were likely not vaccinated for chickenpox as children, as the chickenpox vaccine was only approved in the U.S. in 1995 and uptake by adults was quite low at the time. While vaccination with the chickenpox vaccine significantly reduces the risk of shingles, it is still possible for a latent infection to reactivate and cause the disease.
While our study provides evidence for a potential way that shingles can cause an increased risk of stroke during and soon after infection, further research on how long this risk persists is needed. We are conducting follow-up studies to evaluate how long patients may have an increased tendency to form blood clots after their shingles infection has resolved. These longitudinal studies will also examine whether exosomes can be used as a biomarker to monitor stroke risk after shingles.
Meanwhile, we hope that our findings may provide a potential target for treatment development, and encourage people to get vaccinated for shingles.
Last month was another unusually warm month, as the planet saw its ninth-warmest November on record.
Looking at the Arctic and Antarctic, both poles had their top-10 lowest November sea ice coverage on record.
Below are more highlights from NOAA’s November global climate report:
Climate by the numbers
November 2022
The average global land and ocean surface temperature for November 2022 was 1.37 degrees F (0.76 of a degree C) above the 20th-century average. This ranks as the ninth-warmest November in 143 years, but the coolest November since 2014.
November 2022 marked the 46th consecutive November and the 455th consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th-century average.
Europe tied 2000 for its third-warmest November on record. South America, Asia and Africa each had a November that ranked among their 20 warmest on record. North America had a warmer-than-average November, but it did not rank among its top-20 warmest.
Season (September through November) and year to date
The season (meteorological spring or autumn, depending on the hemisphere) saw an average global land and ocean temperature of 1.51 degrees F (0.84 of a degree C) above the average of 57.1 degrees F (14 degrees C). This ties with September through November of 2016 and 2018 as the fifth-warmest such season in the climate record.
The year to date (YTD, January through November) global land and ocean surface temperature was 1.55 degrees F (0.86 of a degree C) above the 20th-century average, making it the sixth-warmest YTD on record.
According to NCEI’s Global Annual Temperature Rankings Outlook, there is a greater than 99% chance that 2022 will rank among the 10-warmest years on record but a less than 1% chance that it will rank among the top five.
Other notable climate events
• Polar sea ice coverage was among the top-five lowest: Globally, November 2022 saw the fourth-lowest November sea ice extent (coverage) on record. Arctic sea ice extent in November averaged 3.75 million square miles, which is about 165,000 square miles below the 1991-2020 average. This marks the eighth-smallest November extent in the 44-year record. The Antarctic sea ice extent ranked fifth smallest on record at 5.81 million square miles, or about 313,000 square miles below the 1991-2020 average. • Six named tropical storms formed in November: Of those six, four reached tropical cyclone strength (74 mph winds or higher), but none reached major tropical cyclone strength (111 mph winds or higher). The North Atlantic, with three hurricanes, was more active than normal during November. The West Pacific had below average activity for the month with two named storms, including one typhoon. No storms were active in the East Pacific during November for the first time since 2017.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — In order to meet state and federal policies, Lake County’s law enforcement agencies are in various states of transition to new radio equipment that allows for encryption.
It’s a move that California’s law enforcement agencies — estimated at about 500 — are faced with making, although based on information from the State Legislature only about a quarter of those have moved to the new and expensive radio systems.
Press and First Amendment organizations have pushed back, although bills introduced in the State Legislature that would have altered or turned back the project have failed to advance.
Encryption is a process of modifying radio traffic in order to enable it to become secure. A typical police scanner would not be able to pick up or monitor encrypted radio traffic.
However, the new rules will not impact fire or other emergency traffic, and since the changes have gone into effect, much of Lake County’s scanner traffic has remained available on traditional scanners, both on and offline.
The encryption requirements come from the California Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Criminal Justice Information Services Security Policy.
The California Attorney General’s Office, which includes the Department of Justice, told Lake County News that it is not directly monitoring the hundreds of law enforcement agencies operating across the state with regards to meeting this requirement, and that it’s up to those agencies to comply.
The Clearlake Police Department has already completed the transition, with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and Lakeport Police Department in the process.
The California Attorney General’s Office issued an information bulletin October 2020 to all agencies that subscribe to the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, or CLETS, explaining the rules regarding radio transmission of protected data.
In that bulletin, California Justice Information Services Division Chief Joe Dominic said all law enforcement and criminal justice agencies subscribing to CLETS, must adhere to CLETS policies, procedures and practices and the FBI’s CJIS in order to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the data.
Dominic said access to certain criminal justice information and personally identifiable information must be limited to authorized personnel, and the transmission of that information must be encrypted.
He referred to the CLETS Policies, Practices and Procedures regulations, which say that any information from CLETS is confidential and for official use only. “Access is defined as the ability to hear or view any information provided through the CLETS.”
The personally identifiable information the state’s directives apply to include “information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity, such as an individual’s first name, or first initial, and last name in combination with any one or more specific data elements, such as Social security number, passport number, military ID number, and any other unique ID numbers issued on a government document.
“The most common data elements encountered during field operations include a driver's license number or ID number,” the bulletin said.
The Attorney General’s Office said compliance with the requirements was possible through two options: encryption of radio traffic or establishing policies to restrict dissemination of specific information to protect restricted database information and combinations of named and data elements that meet the definition of personally identifiable information.
Agencies approach the move
Not all agencies are being required to go to encryption.
“Since the California Highway Patrol (CHP) uses low-band radios for communication, and that technology is older and does not support digital encryption, the CHP has no plans on this topic,” CHP spokesperson Jaime Coffee told Lake County News. Coffee has since left the CHP.
An October 2020 CHP memo updated departmental policy and procedures for the use of unencrypted radio channels related to the protection of Criminal Justice Information obtained from the Criminal Justice Information System databases and Personally Identifiable Information.
That memo included directions to use computers, tablets or terminals to perform records checks whenever possible; only enough information to complete the request should be given over the radio in a single continuous transmission, with further information sent over computers or tablets; limiting of address information on the air; providing address, date of birth and physical descriptors over the air only when requested; and providing only enough information to broadcast to aid in identifying and/or locating a potential suspect when an officer or the public safety are in jeopardy.
That memo also noted that the CHP does not allow Criminal History System or Criminal Offender Record Information to be transmitted over the radio. “Dispatch and field personnel shall continue to follow procedures outlined in Highway Patrol Manual (HPM).”
In Lake County, the Clearlake Police Department led off the encryption conversion effort.
Andrew White, Clearlake Police’s chief who left for Martinez earlier this month, said in an interview before his departure that Clearlake Police went live with encryption at the end of September 2021.
He estimated that the department’s overall radio infrastructure and upgrades cost a total of about $150,000, with that amount including the process of getting radios compliant with the encryption technology at about $75,000. Repeater upgrades had already been completed.
“We were replacing radios already,” he said, explaining they were able to leverage the work they already were doing so that they were able to turn on encryption with relatively minimal effort. He said the equipment includes standard Motorola radios.
Radio traffic is encrypted one way, from dispatch, in accordance with the requirements of the California Department of Justice and FBI’s CJIS Security Policy, White said.
He explained that the encryption is to safeguard sensitive information, including personal identifying information, or PII, that originates from the various local, state and federal law enforcement databases.
“While numerous regulations have been implemented to safeguard PII held in databases by public and private entities, it has flowed rather freely across unencrypted law enforcement radio,” he said.
“The implementation of encryption is not a simple feat, especially in rural areas like Lake County with challenging topography and where existing radio systems were analog systems, not capable of supporting encryption. Additionally, implementing encryption creates new challenges for radio interoperability with mutual aid agencies,” White explained.
He added, “Locally, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, Clearlake Police Department and Lakeport Police Department have closely coordinated the roll out of encryption for law enforcement in Lake County to ensure seamless communication between all agencies, including consideration of communication with fire agencies. The use of encryption does present challenges for real-time monitoring particularly by journalists who are often the first to share breaking news impacting public safety.”
White said there are no plans for encryption of fire department radio traffic. “Given that major incidents often involve a dual response of police and fire, it is not anticipated that the encryption will severely hamper public awareness that would have otherwise been obtainable via listening to the police radio via a scanner.”
At the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, Lt. Gavin Wells said the agency has finalized installing the encryption enabled radios in its patrol vehicles in accordance with the requirements of the California Department of Justice and FBI’s CJIS Security Policy.
“At this time the cost of the encryption project is roughly $300,000,” Wells said.
Wells said that work for patrol radios, as well as portable radios, was completed in 2020 and 2021.
The sheriff’s office will not be encrypting its primary traffic like Clearlake Police has, only information from CLETS and CJAS, Wells said.
Wells said another aspect of the project is upgrading the agency’s mountain top repeater sites and the radios in Central Dispatch to be able to function in analog mode or digital mode with encryption and to install new dispatch radios that are encryption enabled.
He didn’t have an estimated time frame for the completion of the work on the repeater due to the complexity of the project and working with outside vendors and their time frames. Wells confirmed this week that the work is still underway.
He said the county of Lake has a contract with the county of Mendocino for tech services and repeater installation. The radios on all of the repeaters are now being replaced so that they are the same.
There are five Lake County Sheriff’s Office repeaters for the primary radio channel, Wells said.
A sixth repeater is in the build out process but it won’t initially be capable of encryption use, but will instead be used for the Mendocino National Forest area, he said.
Wells said there also is an additional repeater for the Sheriff’s Marine Patrol.
Outside of those law enforcement repeaters, Wells said the sheriff’s office maintains four repeaters as part of the RedNet fire channel.
Dispatch also is being upgraded. “That is going to be the last piece of the puzzle,” Wells said.
He said they have the equipment and are waiting to install it, but that it needs to integrate into the dispatch radio console.
The Lakeport Police Department also is working to make its transition to encryption equipment.
At its Oct. 5, 2021, meeting, the Lakeport City Council unanimously approved spending $320,000 to purchase encrypted radios for the police and public works departments. Of that amount, $200,000 goes to police and $120,000 to public works.
By August, Rasmussen said the Lakeport Police Department had completed 90% of the installation of the vehicle and base station radios and had started to use the portable radios but had not fully transitioned.
Rasmussen said the equipment being used so far is not yet encrypted. “That will not happen until the county is fully ready for that,” he said, referring to the repeater upgrades Wells had noted are still underway.
“Our new radios are great so far and have many more advanced features than the old,” Rasmussen said.
Legislation responds to rules but fails to advance
For decades, police and fire scanner traffic have been an important source for journalists and community members in following emergencies and crime response.
Radio encryption has raised legal and transparency issues for a number of organizations dedicated to protecting the First Amendment and representing journalists.
White said some early adopter agencies of encryption allowed access to encrypted communications by journalists, but DOJ regulations were determined to preclude that practice.
In February 2019, Assemblyman Todd Gloria (D-San Diego) AB 1555 was introduced to provide access to encrypted law enforcement radio communications to a duly authorized representative of any news service, newspaper, or radio or television station or network, upon request.”
The bill received support from groups like the California Newspaper Publishers Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, but law enforcement organizations opposed it.
As a result, two months after its introduction, Gloria pulled the bill, saying it required more work, according to news reports.
Then, in February, Sen. Josh Becker, whose 13th Senate District comprises most of San Mateo County and the northern part of Santa Clara County, introduced SB 1000, regarding radio communications.
The Legislative Counsel’s Digest said Becker’s bill would have required a law enforcement agency, including the California Highway Patrol, municipal police departments, county sheriff’s departments, specified local law enforcement agencies, and specified university and college police departments, to ensure public access to the radio communications no later than Jan. 1, 2024.
“This bill would also require those law enforcement agencies to ensure that any criminal justice information or personally identifiable information obtained through CLETS is not broadcast in a manner that is accessible to the public, as specified,” the digest said.
The bill was making its way through the Legislature although it was hitting headwinds due to law enforcement agencies’ concerns about impacts, including costs.
It was sent to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, where it was held in committee and under submission on Aug. 11. That meant it wouldn’t advance.
Becker said in a tweet after the hearing that the Legislation “missed a chance to ensure police transparency & accountability. Without this fix, many agencies will continue to encrypt vital radio communications, cutting off almost 90 yrs of public & press access to critical public safety info. I’ll continue to fight to restore access.”
He also urged law enforcement to follow the model used by other agencies, including the CHP, to use alternatives to full encryption.
“Even if it had become law we really had no concerns as our original plan, before the bill ever became a possibility, was to use them the way the bill proposed — that is not everything would have been encrypted. I know the plans have varied by agency throughout the state,” Rasmussen said of the bill.
So far, there’s been no word about plans for new legislation to be introduced regarding encryption.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Authorities are investigating a single-vehicle wreck early Tuesday morning that claimed the life of a Lower Lake man.
The California Highway Patrol’s Clear Lake Area office did not release the name of the 58-year-old man, and the Lake County Sheriff’s Office was in the process on Tuesday afternoon of notifying the man’s family.
The CHP’s Tuesday afternoon report said the crash occurred at 3:15 a.m Tuesday.
The driver was in a 2015 Chevrolet Trax SUV traveling westbound on Highway 281 east of Konocti Bay Road at an unknown rate of speed, the CHP said.
The report also noted the wet and rainy conditions at the time of the wreck. Overnight, heavy rain occurred throughout Lake County.
For unknown reasons, the CHP said the driver unsafely turned and allowed his vehicle to travel off the south road edge of Highway 281.
As a result, the SUV crashed into an uphill dirt/grass embankment and overturned, the CHP said.
The CHP said the driver, who was not wearing a seat belt, was partially ejected during the crash and succumbed to his injuries at the scene.
The crash is still under investigation and it is unknown if alcohol or drugs contributed to the collision, the CHP reported.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
BERKELEY — A study published this month in the journal Nature Communications reveals how a viral toxin produced by the SARS-CoV-2 virus may contribute to severe COVID-19 infections.
The study shows how a portion of the SARS-CoV-2 “spike” protein can damage cell barriers that line the inside of blood vessels within organs of the body such as the lungs, contributing to what is known as vascular leak. Blocking the activity of this protein may help prevent some of COVID-19’s deadliest symptoms, including pulmonary edema, which contributes to acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS.
“In theory, by specifically targeting this pathway, we could block pathogenesis that leads to vascular disorder and acute respiratory distress syndrome without needing to target the virus itself,” said study lead author Scott Biering, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. “In light of all the different variants that are emerging and the difficulty in preventing infection from each one individually, it might be beneficial to focus on these triggers of pathogenesis in addition to blocking infection altogether.”
While many vaccine skeptics have stoked fears about potential dangers of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein — which is the target of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines — the researchers say that their work provides no evidence that the spike protein can cause symptoms in the absence of viral infection. Instead, their study suggests that the spike protein may work in tandem with the virus and the body’s own immune response to trigger life-threatening symptoms.
In addition, the amount of spike protein circulating in the body after vaccination is far less concentrated than the amounts that have been observed in patients with severe COVID-19 and that were used in the study.
“The amount of spike protein that you would have in a vaccine would never be able to cause leak,” said study senior author Eva Harris, a professor of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley. “In addition, there’s no evidence that [the spike protein] is pathogenic by itself. The idea is that it's able to aid and abet an ongoing infection.”
By examining the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein on human lung and vascular cells, and on the lungs of mice, the research team was able to uncover the molecular pathways that allow the spike protein to disrupt critical internal barriers in the body. In addition to opening new avenues for the treatment of severe COVID-19, understanding how the spike protein contributes to vascular leak could shed light on the pathology behind other emerging infectious diseases.
“We think that a lot of viruses that cause severe disease may encode a viral toxin,” Biering said. “These proteins, independent of viral infection, interact with barrier cells and cause these barriers to malfunction. This allows the virus to disseminate, and that amplification of virus and vascular leak is what triggers severe disease. I’m hoping that we can use the principles that we’ve learned from the SARS-CoV-2 virus to find ways to block this pathogenesis so that we are more prepared when the next pandemic happens.”
How spike protein triggers vascular leak
Vascular leak occurs when the cells that line blood vessels and capillaries are disrupted, allowing plasma and other fluids to leak out of the bloodstream. In addition to causing the lung and heart damage observed in severe COVID-19, vascular leak can also lead to hypovolemic shock, the primary cause of death from dengue.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Biering and other members of the Harris Research Program were studying the role of dengue virus protein NS1 in triggering vascular leak and contributing to hypovolemic shock. When the pandemic hit, the team wondered if a similar viral toxin in SARS-CoV-2 could also be contributing to the acute respiratory distress syndrome that was killing COVID-19 patients.
“People are aware of the role of bacterial toxins, but the concept of a viral toxin is still a really new idea,” Harris said. “We had identified this protein secreted from dengue virus-infected cells that, even in the absence of the virus, is able to cause endothelial permeability and disrupt internal barriers. So, we wondered if a SARS-CoV-2 protein, like spike, might be able to do similar things.”
Spike proteins coat the outer surface of SARS-CoV-2, giving the virus its knobby appearance. They play a critical role in helping the virus infect its hosts: The spike protein binds to a receptor called ACE2 on human and other mammalian cells, which — like a key turning a lock — allows the virus to enter the cell and hijack cellular function. The SARS-CoV-2 virus sheds a large portion of the spike protein containing the receptor-binding domain (RBD) when it infects a cell.
“What's really interesting is that circulating spike protein correlates with severe COVID-19 cases in the clinic,” Biering said. “We wanted to ask if this protein was also contributing to any vascular leak we saw in the context of SARS-CoV-2.”
Currently, scientists attribute the heart and lung damage associated with severe COVID-19 to an overactive immune response called a cytokine storm. To test the theory that the spike protein might also play a role, Biering and other team members used thin layers of human endothelial and epithelial cells to mimic the linings of blood vessels in the body. They found that exposing these cellular layers to the spike protein increased their permeability, a hallmark of vascular leak.
Using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology, the team showed that this increased permeability occurred even in cells that did not express the ACE2 receptor, indicating that it could occur independently of viral infection. In addition, they found that mice that were exposed to the spike protein also exhibited vascular leak, even though mice do not express the human ACE2 receptor and cannot be infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Finally, with the help of RNA sequencing, the researchers found that the spike protein triggers vascular leak through a molecular signaling pathway that involves glycans, integrins and transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta). By blocking the activity of integrins, the team was able to reverse the vascular leak in mice.
“We identified a new pathogenic mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 in which the spike protein can break down the barriers lining our vasculature. The resulting increase in permeability can lead to vascular leak, as is commonly observed in severe COVID-19 cases, and we could recapitulate those disease manifestations in our mouse models,” said study co-author Felix Pahmeier, a graduate student in the Harris lab at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. “It was interesting to see the similarities and differences between spike and dengue virus protein NS1. Both are able to disrupt endothelial barriers, but the timelines and host pathways involved seem to differ between the two.”
While blocking the activity of integrins may be a promising target for treating severe COVID-19, Harris said more work needs to be done to understand the exact role of this pathway in disease progression. While increased vascular permeability can accelerate infection and lead to internal bleeding, it can also help the body fight off the virus by giving immune machinery better access to infected cells.
“SARS-CoV-2 evolved to have a spike surface protein with increased capacity of interacting with host cell membrane factors, such as integrins, by acquiring an RGD motif. This motif is a common integrin-binding factor exploited by many pathogens, including bacteria and other viruses, to infect host cells,” said Francielle Tramontini Gomes de Sousa, former assistant project scientist in Harris’s lab and co-first author of the study. “Our study shows how spike RGD interacts with integrins, resulting in TGF-beta release and activation of TGF-beta signaling. Using in vitro and in vivo models of epithelial, endothelial and vascular permeability, we were able to improve understanding of the cellular mechanisms of increased levels of TGF-beta in COVID-19 patients and how spike-host cell interactions could contribute to disease.”
The team is continuing to study the molecular mechanisms that lead to vascular leak and is also investigating possible viral toxins in other viruses that cause severe disease in humans.
“COVID-19 is not gone. We have better vaccines now, but we don't know how the virus is going to mutate in the future,” Biering said. “Studying this process may be able to help us develop a new arsenal of drugs so that if someoneis experiencing vascular leak, we can just target that. Maybe it doesn't stop the virus from replicating, but it could stop that person from dying.”
Additional co-authors of this study include Laurentia V. Tjang, Chi Zhu, Richard Ruan, Sophie F. Blanc, Trishna S. Patel, Bryan Castillo-Rojas, Nicholas T.N. Lo, Marcus P. Wong, Colin M. Warnes, Douglas M. Fox, Anders M. Näär, Sarah A. Stanley and P. Robert Beatty of UC Berkeley; Caroline M. Worthington and John E. Pak of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub; Dustin R. Glasner, Venice Servellita, Yale A. Santos and Charles Y. Chiu of the University of California, San Francisco; Daniel R. Sandoval, Thomas Mandel Clausen and Jeffrey D. Esko of the University of California, San Diego; Victoria Ortega and Hector C. Aguilar of Cornell University; and Ralph S. Baric of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
This work was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) (grants R01 AI24493 and R21 AI146464 Supplement) and a Fast Grant from Emergent Ventures. Additional support was provided by the National Science Foundation (grant RAPID 201989), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) (grant HL131474), the National Institutes of Health (R01 AI109022), the Innovative Genomics Institute and the Life Sciences Research Foundation.
Kara Manke writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.