SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — After 17 years on the force, San Jose Police officer Huan Ngyuen had learned not to get emotionally involved in his work. But then one got through.
On May 6, a road rage slaying in his Little Saigon neighborhood, on the streets where he grew up and now patrols, took the life of a Vietnamese immigrant like himself. The victim was a 37-year-old bus driver who left behind a widow and two young children, one with severe autism.
“We try not to get emotional, but sometimes these things really affect me,” Nguyen said. “It kind of hit the soft core of my body.”
Ngyuen and his colleagues sent texts to friends and family asking if they could help the widow. Then, at his friends’ urging, he launched a website, hoping to raise a few thousand dollars. Word spread quickly: Now, less than three weeks since the murder, nearly $100,000 has poured in from the local Vietnamese community and far beyond, including Houston, Boston, New York, even London.
“I’m very thankful, and I’m very surprised,” said widow Dieu Huynh, a limited English speaker whose husband’s cremated remains were buried last weekend.
Sinking into her couch with her 4- and 7-year-old sons, she fought back tears, telling Ngyuen in Vietnamese how her youngest son, Steven, keeps asking her to call his father. Her older son, Henry, can’t talk, but hugs and kisses her. Unable to function independently, Henry dashes out the door into the street if left unattended, has seizures, and will need a lifetime of constant care.
“When I met this family, I could see they were going to need help,” said Ngyuen, himself a father of two. “It really, really got to me.”
National Center for Victims of Crime Executive Director Mai Fernandez said online, crowd-sourced fundraisers are increasingly common for crime victims, but usually it’s friends or family who launch them.
“I’ve never heard of a police officer stepping in like this. This sounds like a really special person,” she said. “When there’s a tragedy out there, there are a lot of heroes who step up. It’s amazing to see the outpouring of generosity of the public. Humankind really does care about each other.”
Ngyuen, who sought approval before reaching out publicly and has the full support of San Jose Police Chief Larry Esquivel, said he’s shy about being in the spotlight.
“But this isn’t about me at all,” he said. “My job is to help others. No amount of money can replace their dad, but this can help those boys as they grow up.”
Ngyuen also is keeping an eye out on his patrols for the suspect who shot Huynh’s husband, Phuoc Lam. That morning, with a rare few hours free, Lam and Huynh were doing errands for her upcoming birthday party.
Suddenly Lam slammed on his brakes to avoid hitting two men in a Volkswagen Jetta who pulled out of a mobile home park driveway in front of him, police said. Lam climbed out of the driver’s side to survey the scene. Words were exchanged, and as Huynh was stepping out to see what was going on, her husband was shot. Police said she told them she saw Lam fall.
Huynh doesn’t speak of it in front of her children. But at that moment her life crumbled.
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U.S. states plagued by historic drought are bracing for an early wildfire season with a cost that may rise as high as $1.8 billion, or almost $500,000 more than what’s available to control the blazes.
Oklahomans fought seven fires in May during what is normally the state’s quietest period. Flames scorched four times as many acres in Texas from January through May as in the same period a year earlier. California is also far ahead of its usual pace and is bracing for hundreds more containment battles throughout the most populous U.S. state.
“Drought has set the stage for a very busy and very dangerous fire season,” said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for Cal Fire, as the Sacramento-based California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is known. “From Jan. 1 through the end of April, we responded to 1,250 wildfires. In an average year for that same time period, we would have responded to fewer than 600.”
The 2014 season is repeating a pattern of destruction established over the past decade by a combination of high temperatures, parched vegetation and more people living in wooded areas. Fires feeding on plentiful dry grass, brush and hardwood are requiring more personnel and money to bring them under control. More than twice as many acres burned across the U.S. through May 9 this year than during the same period in 2013, according to the Boise, Idaho-based National Interagency Fire Center.
“With climate change contributing to longer and more intense wildfire seasons, the dangers and costs of fighting those fires increase substantially,” Rhea Suh, assistant secretary for policy, management and budget at the U.S. Interior Department said May 1 in a statement.
Diverting Funds
Federal officials expect to spend about $470 million more than the $1.4 billion that’s been allocated, according to a congressionally-mandated report released May 1. Increasing fire costs required the U.S. Forest Service and Interior Department to divert funds from other programs in seven of the last 12 years, the study showed. Millions of additional dollars in state and local funds are spent each year on persistent and ever- increasing blazes.
In Arizona, last year’s record-setting fire season saw 19 members of the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew — firefighters who work behind the lines to control the spread of flames — die in the Yarnell Hill fire, the biggest loss of life from a single fire in 80 years. Colorado experienced its most destructive wildfire in history. A conflagration in Yosemite National Park that threatened San Francisco’s water supply became the largest ever in the Sierra Nevada.
Snowpack Low
With snowpack that provides water for a third of California’s farms and cities at only 18 percent of average in some places after the driest year in state history, officials expect to spend $221 million in emergency funds fighting fires by June 30, said Cal Fire’s Berlant.
In a normal year, the agency would start hiring seasonal firefighters this month. Instead, Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat running for re-election, ordered 125 firefighters hired for the northern part of the state in January and kept seasonal crews in the south on the job longer.
Cal Fire was “never able to transition out of fire season in 2013,” according to a statement. The agency returned to peak staffing in March in San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where equipment and facilities are staffed around the clock.
Dead brush and shrubs are drying out faster than usual in conditions more typical of mid-June than May, according to an outlook for May through August compiled by the interagency fire center.
“Fuels should remain critically dry for most of the upcoming fire season,” the report said, and be “receptive to ignition and fires that are highly resistant to control efforts.”
The risk of significant blazes will also come earlier than usual over much of the U.S. northwest, particularly in Oregon and Alaska, the outlook found. Because of substantial snowpack, the fire potential in the northern Rocky Mountains will be below normal, according to the analysis.
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat running for re-election, said yesterday that several fire-prone areas saw below-average precipitation this winter including the southwest and the southeast, in the grip of an extreme drought.
‘Mitigate Danger’
“It’s up to everyone to make sure they are taking the right steps to mitigate the danger and be prepared,” Hickenlooper said in a statement. “With forecasts and planning, plus the addition of new resources related to wildfire response, we are doing what we can at the state level.”
After record-setting wildfire seasons back-to-back, Hickenlooper signed legislation setting aside almost $20 million to buy two fire-spotting planes and hire four helicopters and four large tankers for the effort.
Triple-digit temperatures that came early this year to the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma dried grasses on what already looked like a moonscape, said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Dust Bowl-like conditions in those areas and in southeastern Colorado and northern New Mexico, last seen during the 1930s, are increasing fire risk, he said.
“The droughts in California and Texas and Oklahoma are once-in-a-generation types of droughts with conditions we haven’t seen since the 1970s,” Svoboda said. “In California, the population has doubled since the 1970s, putting more structures at risk and increasing the potential loss due to fire.
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Monte Vista Christian School to donate portions of proceeds from event
Watsonville >> The Monte Vista Christian School performing arts department is putting on a Disney-themed concert to raise the spirits of children with cancer as well as funds for Jacob’s Heart.
The Watsonville-based private school’s show Friday at the Mello Center for the Performing Arts, 250 E. Beach St. in Watsonville, will feature a number of songs from the Disney repertoire with a strong focus on the latest animated movie, “Frozen.” Proceeds from the concert will go to Jacob’s Heart, the Watsonville-based nonprofit that helps children with cancer and their families.
“Since the concern is basically for the children (at Jacob’s Heart), we’re going to make it a Disney-themed concert,” said Tony Dehner, director of vocal arts at Monte Vista.
It’s the first time Monte Vista has organized a concert fundraiser, according to Dehner. The idea was sparked from a conversation Dehner had with Watsonville Police Chief Manny Solano. The two spoke at a dinner event in November to celebrate Solano’s 18-year-old son, who attends Monte Vista and sings in the school’s choir, making it into the California regional honor choir.
“We’re Facebook buddies so he had been following the various stories through my wife’s posting of my updates,” Solano said, referencing his own battle with cancer. Solano publicly revealed his cancer diagnosis in August and took a three-month leave of absence from the police department to focus on treatment.
During the conversation, Solano talked about his cancer battle and Jacob’s Heart, which Solano has been a strong advocate and supporter of, came up in the discussion. Eventually Dehner suggested a fundraiser for the nonprofit and, soon, the concert was conceived.
“It’s just been a great opportunity to bring people together,” Solano said.
Though the school hosts a spring concert each year, it has traditionally taken place at the high school’s auditorium. The decision to change venues to the Mello Center was prompted in part because of the expected number of attendees.
The concert will feature two sections. The first half will focus on popular and classic songs and a second half will focus on Disney songs. Songs from “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” movies are in the first part of the program as well as a song by Led Zeppelin. The Disney portion of the show will feature 20 characters from the franchise, all in costume, Dehner said.
“I’m pretty sure we’re going to sell out,” he said.
Children from Jacob’s Heart and their families are expected to attend the show, free of charge, Dehner said.
About 170 Monte Vista students will take part in the performance, including three choirs, the vocal ensemble, the jazz band, the orchestra, the high school band, the dance team and the handbell choir.
“The guests will be treated to really quality and incredible music and singing that is right here in our own backyard,” Solano said.
All tickets are $10. For details and ticket reservations, call 831-728-2711.
What: Monte Vista Christian School hosting a concert fundraiser for Jacob’s Heart
When: 7:30 p.m., Friday 5/16
Where: Mello Center for Performing Arts, 250 E. Beach St. in Watsonville
Detail: Call 831-728-2711.
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Watsonville cyclist Ben Jacques-Maynes will continue his streak of riding in every Tour of California when the race begins its eight-day, 720-mile tour from Northern to Southern California in Sacramento on Sunday.
Jacques-Maynes was named to the Jamis-Hagens Berman presented by Sutter Home Continental team when rosters were released Monday. It marks Jacques-Maynes’ ninth Tour of California competition.
Among the other entrants are Olympians, world and national Champions, Grand Tour stage winners and the only cyclist to win the Tour de France and Olympic gold in the same year — Team Sky’s Bradley Wiggins, who did it in 2012.
The riders won’t pass through Santa Cruz this year, but Jacques-Maynes will see some familiar terrain during Tuesday’s Stage 3, which climbs Mount Hamilton and Mount Diablo in San Jose, and Wednesday’s Stage 4, which begins in Monterey and stretches along Highway 1 to Cambria.
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Three Live Oak women and a dog were displaced from their house on the 300 block of Seventh Avenue after a Tuesday night fire destroyed part of a garage and damaged the rest of the home with smoke. Shortly before 10 p.m., one of the residents at the home walked into the garage and found it full of smoke and on fire, said Mike DeMars, fire inspector for Central Fire. A housemate walked in after smelling smoke and found the first woman standing frozen in the smoke-filled room, DeMars said. “(The first woman) was a bit overwhelmed,” DeMars said. After calling 911, the two women told a third housemate to leave the house. Central Fire and Santa Cruz Fire arrived on scene to extinguish the fire, which was in one corner of the garage and spreading to the ceiling, DeMars said. Firefighters extinguished the flames within 10 minutes. The garage, which was attached to the two-story home, had been converted to a living space where one of the women lived, DeMars said. Investigators said the fire was accidental and traced the cause to combustible materials, including a bookcase, that were placed too close to a water heater in the garage, DeMars said. The woman who first discovered the fire may have suffered smoke inhalation but declined treatment, DeMars said. There were no other reported injuries. The home was declared uninhabitable, with fire damage to the garage and smoke damage to the rest of the two-story home. The women and dog were relocated with the help of the American Red Cross Santa Cruz County. DeMars noted that the home did not appear to have any smoke detectors, which could have notified the residents of the fire. Content provided by http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/copsandcourts/ci_25625610/cops-and-courts-april-24-2014-three-women Don’t let this happen to you. Make sure you have working smoke detectors in centralized locations throughout the house. Contact Scurich Insurance Services today to make sure that you are completely covered in the event of a fire.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — After 17 years on the force, San Jose Police officer Huan Ngyuen had learned not to get emotionally involved in his work. But then one got through.
