Monday, 25 November 2024

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NORTH‌‌ ‌‌COAST, ‌‌ ‌‌Calif. ‌‌— ‌Caltrans‌‌ ‌‌reports‌‌ ‌‌that‌‌ ‌‌the‌‌ ‌‌following‌‌ ‌‌road‌‌ ‌‌projects‌‌ ‌‌will‌‌ ‌‌be‌‌ ‌‌taking‌‌ ‌‌place‌‌ ‌‌‌around‌‌ ‌‌the‌‌ ‌‌North‌‌ ‌‌Coast‌‌ ‌‌during‌‌ ‌‌the‌‌ ‌‌coming‌‌ ‌‌week. ‌‌ ‌‌‌ ‌
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Included‌‌ ‌‌are‌‌ ‌‌Mendocino‌‌ ‌‌County‌‌ ‌‌projects‌‌ ‌‌that‌‌ ‌‌may‌‌ ‌‌impact‌‌ ‌‌Lake‌‌ ‌‌County‌‌ ‌‌commuters, as well as work in Del Norte and Humboldt counties.
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Caltrans‌‌ ‌‌advises‌‌ ‌‌motorists‌‌ ‌‌to‌‌ ‌‌drive‌‌ ‌‌with‌‌ ‌‌caution‌‌ ‌‌when‌‌ ‌‌approaching‌‌ ‌‌work‌‌ ‌‌areas‌‌ ‌‌and‌‌ ‌‌to‌‌ ‌‌be‌‌ ‌‌‌ ‌prepared‌‌ ‌‌to‌‌ ‌‌stop‌‌ ‌‌at‌‌ ‌‌traffic‌‌ ‌‌control‌‌ ‌‌stations. ‌‌ ‌‌‌ ‌
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The‌‌ ‌‌Caltrans‌‌ ‌‌Traffic‌‌ ‌‌Operations‌‌ ‌‌Office‌‌ ‌‌has‌‌ ‌‌reviewed‌‌ ‌‌each‌‌ ‌‌project‌‌ ‌‌and‌‌ ‌‌determined‌‌ ‌‌that‌‌ ‌‌individual‌‌ ‌‌‌project‌‌ ‌‌delays‌‌ ‌‌are‌‌ ‌‌expected‌‌ ‌‌to‌‌ ‌‌be‌‌ ‌‌less‌‌ ‌‌than‌‌ ‌‌the‌‌ ‌‌statewide‌‌ ‌‌policy‌‌ ‌‌maximum‌‌ ‌‌of‌‌ ‌‌30‌‌ ‌‌minutes‌‌ ‌‌unless‌‌ ‌‌‌noted‌‌ ‌‌otherwise. ‌‌ ‌‌‌ ‌‌‌ ‌

Caltrans will suspend most work on Northern California highways from Friday, Dec. 24, through Sunday, Dec. 26, in observance of the Christmas holiday. However, in the case of unforeseen circumstances, it may be necessary for Caltrans crews to respond to emergency situations.
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For‌‌ ‌‌updates‌‌ ‌‌to‌‌ ‌‌this‌‌ ‌‌list‌‌ ‌‌check‌‌ ‌‌QuickMap‌‌ ‌‌at‌‌ ‌‌‌www.dot.ca.gov‌‌‌ or‌‌ ‌‌1-800-GAS-ROAD‌‌ (1-800-427-7623). ‌‌ ‌‌‌ ‌

LAKE‌‌ ‌‌COUNTY‌‌ ‌‌‌ ‌
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Highway‌‌ ‌‌20

— Utility work will continue at Scott Valley Road on Monday, Dec. 27. One-way traffic control will be in effect from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Motorists should anticipate five-minute delays.

MENDOCINO COUNTY

Highway 1

— Utility work will occur from Road 8067 to Ocean View Drive on Monday, Dec. 27, and Tuesday, Dec. 28. One-way traffic will be in effect from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Motorists should anticipate five-minute delays.

— Utility work will occur from Philo Greenwood Road to North Limits Elk on Wednesday, December 29 and Thursday, Dec. 30. One-way traffic control will be in effect from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Motorists should anticipate five-minute delays.

— Utility work will occur from 0.75 mi North of Albion to 1.5 mi South of Little River Airport on Thursday, Dec. 30. One-way traffic control will be in effect from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Motorists should anticipate five-minute delays.

Highway 20

— Tree work will occur from Muir Mill Road to Monica Lane on Tuesday, Dec. 28. One-way traffic control will be in effect from 8 p.m. to 12 p.m. Motorists should anticipate five-minute delays.

Highway 101

— Slide removal at Pieta Creek Bridge will continue. Northbound Lane closures will be in effect. Motorists should anticipate five-minute delays.

— Moss Cove Safety Rest Area will be closed through March 2022.

— Empire Camp Safety Rest Area will be closed through March 2022.

— Slide removal from Piercy to Lowell Allen Memorial Bridge will continue. Northbound Lane closures will be in effect. Motorists should anticipate minor traffic slowdowns.

DEL NORTE COUNTY

Highway 101

— Bridge work near Old Hunter Creek Road will continue. One-way traffic control will be in effect. Motorists should anticipate 10-minute delays.

— Emergency work and construction in the Last Chance Grade area will continue. Motorists should anticipate 30-minute delays at all hours.

— Work near Mill Creek Road will continue. One-way traffic control will be in effect from 6 p.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. Motorists should anticipate five-minute delays.

HUMBOLDT COUNTY

Highway 36

— Utility work near Fielder Creek will occur on Tuesday, Dec. 28. One-way traffic control will be in effect from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Motorists should anticipate five-minute delays.

Highway 101

— Bridge work south of Phillipsville will continue. Lane closures will be in effect weekdays. Motorists should anticipate minor traffic slowdowns. A northbound onramp closure will also be in effect. Motorists should use an alternate route.

— Utility work will occur near Chapman’s Gem & Mineral Shop on Wednesday, Dec. 29. Motorists should expect minor slowdowns from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

— Sign work from the Arcata Overhead Bridge to the 299 junction will begin on Monday, Dec. 27. Lane closures will be in effect from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. through Thursday, Dec. 30. Motorists should anticipate minor traffic slowdowns.

— Shoulder closure will continue near the Del Norte County Line. Motorists should expect minor slowdowns at all hours.

Highway 299

— Work at the 101 junction will close the eastbound off-ramp overnights, resuming Monday, Dec. 27. Motorists should plan to use an alternate off-ramp between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. weeknights.
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UPPER LAKE, Calif. – The Rodman Preserve at 6350 Westlake Road near Upper Lake will be closed on both Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

The preserve is generally open for walking on Saturdays from 9 a.m. until noon.

Volunteers will be taking both Christmas Day and New Year’s Day off.

Both State Parks in the county will be holding “First Day Walks,” which all are invited to attend.

The preserve will reopen on Saturday, Jan. 8, for its regular 9 a.m. until noon hours.

Rodman Preserve is owned and operated by the Lake County Land Trust and is located off of the Nice-Lucerne Cut-off on Westlake Road.

For information about the Land Trust, go to www.lakecountylandtrust.org.
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EUREKA, Calif. — The PG&E Corporation Foundation on Friday announced the four 2021 recipients of the Better Together Resilient Communities grants, a program to support local initiatives to build greater climate resilience in Northern and Central California, with a particular focus on disadvantaged, vulnerable, and historically underserved communities.

The program awarded $100,000 each to the Lake County-based Tribal EcoRestoration Alliance, the Blue Lake Rancheria, the Yurok Tribe and the city of Richmond. The projects are designed to support wildfire prevention, disaster response preparation, and local emergency cooling for extreme heat events.

“In California, the communities we are privileged to serve face a growing threat from a changing climate,” said Carla Peterman, executive vice president of corporate affairs and chief sustainability officer for PG&E Corporation. “For the past five years, this program has enabled PG&E to partner with our communities to find new and creative community-driven solutions to build local climate resilience, with a focus on under-represented and vulnerable populations.”

The Better Together Resilient Communities grant program, now in its fifth and final year, has invested $1.7 million in funding from The PG&E Corporation Foundation and $300,000 from Pacific Gas and Electric Co., a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation.

Strategies and solutions resulting from the grants are made publicly available to assist all communities in resilience planning and work, and to encourage local and regional partnerships.

The Tribal EcoRestoration Alliance’s project, “Fire as Medicine,” will build capacity and provide Native American tribal members with relevant firefighting certifications to participate in prescribed burns, purchase equipment for participating in prescribed burns, and share traditional tribal knowledge and techniques with a broader audience of practitioners.

“The Tribal EcoRestoration Alliance was founded in 2019 with seed funding from PG&E’s Better Together Resilient Communities grant,” said Lindsay Dailey, program director of the alliance. “With PG&E's catalytic support, we have been able to get our program off of the ground in record time to bring indigenous voices to the table around land stewardship, wildfire resilience, and building an eco-culturally literate workforce to meet the challenges of our times.”

The Blue Lake Rancheria’s project, “Humboldt County COAD Launch,” will fund 12-months of rapid start-up activities for the recently formed Humboldt County Community Organizations Active in Disaster, or COAD, network, which is designed to help local non-governmental organizations prepare and coordinate for disaster response. The grant will help establish a network of communications in the region, enable disaster response training, and support outreach and information events.

“This support from PG&E’s Better Together Giving Program, in partnership with the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe, enables the Humboldt County Community Organizations Active in Disaster to succeed in this important work for our communities,” said Jason Ramos, the rancheria’s tribal councilman. “It will serve all of Humboldt’s people, especially those with economic disadvantages, cultural barriers, access and functional needs, and other impediments to effective emergency preparedness and resilience.”

The Yurok Tribe’s project will use prescribed and cultural burns to collect scientific data on the impacts to soil quality, wildfire fuel, and invasive species and serve as a framework for future studies and wildfire mitigation plans. The project will also support food security by creating a traditional foods calendar to plan for climate-driven changes in seasonality for the foods they depend on for nutrition and culture.

"As a way to keep the environment in balance, Yurok people have implemented prescribed and cultural burns within ancestral territory since time immemorial,” said Louisa McCovey, Yurok tribe environmental program director. “This project will allow us to quantify some of the benefits of cultural and prescribed burns, such as preventing catastrophic forest fires, reducing invasive species, and improving soil quality for traditional food systems. This grant will also support the creation of a traditional foods calendar, which will quantify past seasonal shifting of traditional food harvest times, increasing cultural resiliency to global climate change by creating a model for future shifts.”

The city of Richmond’s project, “Emergency Cooling Structures for Extreme Heat Events,” will increase access to cooling centers by installing cooling misters and canopies in local parks or community centers. Unsheltered residents will be trained and hired to staff the cooling centers and do outreach, along with a broader effort to educate the public in the ways climate change will directly affect the community and how to reduce that impact.

“The city of Richmond is dedicated to building community resilience to climate change,” said Sasha Curl, interim city manager. “As global temperatures continue to rise, we must ensure communities have a way to stay cool.” The 2021 Better Together Resilient Communities grant will invest “in a project that will reduce the impacts of extreme heat on our residents while providing employment and training opportunities.”

Grant proposals for the Better Together Resilient Communities program were evaluated for the extent to which they were designed to build community resilience and capacity to withstand climate-related hazards.

Priority was given to proposals that demonstrated past or projected exposure to climate hazards and that addressed the needs of disadvantaged and/or vulnerable communities.

To be eligible, applicants must be a governmental organization, educational institution or 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. All applicants must include a local or tribal government within PG&E's service area as a partner.

Please check the Better Together Resilient Communities website for more information.
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Santa’s Sleigh won’t be the only blip seen on California radars this week.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. meteorologists are forecasting that a series of moderately strong storm systems that began to arrive in northern areas Tuesday will produce strong winds, steady rainfall, low elevation snow and potential widespread power outages for the next week.

In advance of the storm, PG&E is confirming the availability of crew resources during the holiday weeks, shifting planned maintenance work until after the storm window closes, and hunkering down for a long winter’s work period of holiday power restoration.

“We know how much our customers depend on us to keep the lights and the heat on, especially during the holidays. As we’ve studied this developing weather pattern over the past several days, we’ve activated our winter storm response plans so that we can be ready when our customers need us,” said Wade Smith, PG&E’s senior vice president, electric operations.

PG&E meteorologists, along with experts from the National Weather Service, are calling for light to moderate rain and breezy to gusty winds from the first weather system which arrived in the Humboldt area on Tuesday and began moving south last night and this morning.

A second and colder weather system is expected to arrive Friday into Saturday with widespread rain, lowering snow levels and gusty winds. Wind gusts of 30 to 45 miles per hour are possible with the passage of this system with snow levels down to around 2,000 feet in some areas.

Winter storms produce wet and windy conditions that can cause trees, limbs and other debris to fall into power lines, damage equipment and interrupt electric service. In some areas, ground already saturated by previous storms, along with drought-intensified conditions that weakened vegetation, could cause more trees to fall into our equipment and cause power outages.

PG&E’s meteorology team has developed a storm outage prediction model that incorporates real-time weather forecasts, historical data and system knowledge to accurately show where and when storm impacts will be most severe. This model enables the company to pre-stage crews and equipment as storms approach to enable rapid response to outages. Those activities are taking place now.

Among other actions being taken by PG&E:

Workers are prepared to tackle restoration in challenging weather conditions and are supported by the utility’s geosciences team. Geosciences is monitoring potential post-wildfire debris flows from incoming rains which could impact PG&E’s equipment and vegetation around its equipment.

PG&E is also distributing power poles, power lines, transformers and other electric equipment from our three materials centers to yards throughout our service territory to restore power to impacted areas as quickly as possible.

We will also be activating local operations emergency centers throughout our service area in impacted regions to allocate all staff and resources to restoration efforts.

Keeping customers informed

Customers can view real-time outage information on its website outage center and search by a specific address, by city or by county. This site has been updated to include in-language support for 16 languages.

Additionally, customers can sign up for outage notifications by text, email or phone. PG&E will let customers know the cause of an outage, when crews are on their way, the estimated restoration time, and when power is restored.

Storm safety tips

Never touch downed wires: If you see a downed power line, assume it is energized and extremely dangerous. Do not touch or try to move it—and keep children and animals away. Report downed power lines immediately by calling 9-1-1 and then PG&E at 1-800-743-5002.
Secure outdoor furniture: Deck furniture, lightweight yard structures and decorative lawn items should be secured as they can be blown by high winds and damage overhead power lines and property.

Use generators safely: Customers with standby electric generators should ensure they are properly installed by a licensed electrician in a well-ventilated area. Improperly installed generators pose a significant danger to customers, as well as crews working on power lines. If using portable generators, be sure they are in a well-ventilated area.

Use flashlights, not candles: During a power outage, use battery-operated flashlights, and not candles, due to the risk of fire. And keep extra batteries on hand. If you must use candles, please keep them away from drapes, lampshades, animals and small children. Do not leave candles unattended.

Have a backup phone: If you have a telephone system that requires electricity to work, such as a cordless phone or answering machine, plan to have a standard telephone or cellular phone ready as a backup. Having a portable charging device helps to keep your cell phone running.

Have fresh drinking water, ice: Freeze plastic containers filled with water to make blocks of ice that can be placed in your refrigerator/freezer during an outage to prevent foods from spoiling. Blue Ice from your picnic cooler also works well in the freezer.

Turn off appliances: If you experience an outage, unplug or turn off all electrical appliances to avoid overloading circuits and to prevent fire hazards when power is restored. Simply leave a single lamp on to alert you when power returns. Turn your appliances back on one at a time when conditions return to normal.

Safely clean up: After the storm has passed, be sure to safely clean up. Never touch downed wires and always call 8-1-1 or visit 811express.com at least two full business days before digging to have all underground utilities safely marked.

Other tips can be found at www.pge.com/beprepared.
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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The E Center Women, Infants and Children Program, or WIC, has released its January 2022 clinic schedule.

The nationwide, federally sponsored WIC nutrition program provides nutrition education, support and help with breastfeeding, community and health care referrals, and supplemental food benefits to eligible pregnant women, new moms, postpartum women, infants and children under the age of 5.

WIC encourages enrollment of migrants and eligible women in the early months of pregnancy.

Single fathers, foster parents and guardians of children under age 5 are also eligible to enroll their children.

Formula supplementation is available for infants. The food packages include fruits, vegetables, eggs, cheese, milk, cereal, juice, whole grains, and beans or peanut butter.

This nonprofit program has generous income guidelines. For example, a family of four can have a yearly gross income of $49,025 or monthly income of up to $4,086 and still be eligible for the health benefits of the WIC program.

To enroll in the program, schedule appointments or for more information, call 707-263-5253 or 707-994-1151. Fax numbers are 707-263-4183 and 707-994-1152.

Bilingual staff and lunch-hour appointments are available. Please call ahead for an appointment.

The January 2022 clinic schedule is as follows:

Lakeport, at the WIC office, 831 Bevins St., on Monday, Janu. 31; Tuesdays, Jan. 4, 11, 18, and 25; Wednesday, Jan. 5 (afternoon only); and Friday, Jan. 21. The schedule is 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., with the exception of Jan. 5.

Clearlake, 14085-4 Lakeshore Drive, across from Main Street Café, on Monday Jan. 10, and Monday, Jan. 24; Wednesday, Jan. 19; Thursdays, Jan. 6, 13, 20 and 27; and Friday, Jan. 28. The schedule is 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Middletown, First Baptist Church, 15576 Graham Road, on Friday, Jan. 7, from 9:15 to 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 to 2:30 p.m.

Lucerne, First Lutheran Church, 3863 Country Club Drive, on Friday, Jan. 14, from 9 to 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 to 2:30 p.m.
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MENDOCINO NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. — Mendocino National Forest offices in Willows and Upper Lake will close early at 12 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 23, and will be closed on Friday, Dec. 24, in observance of the Christmas Day holiday.

Regular office hours will resume on Monday, Dec. 27.

Forest offices will also close early at 12 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 30, and will be closed on Friday, Dec. 31, in observance of the New Year’s Day holiday.

Regular office hours will resume on Monday, Jan. 3.

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