Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/100398
Saturday, December 22, 2012 ��� Daily News BLUSTERY Continued from page 1A Northern California between today and Thursday with the potential for two to three feet of snow in Shasta County mountains and along Interstate 5. Between three and six feet of snow above 3,500 feet in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains. In Tehama County, there were 1.36 inches of rainfall in the past 72 hours by 1 p.m. Friday with the majority falling between Thursday evening and Friday at noon. With many of the creeks in Tehama County nearing capacity, CalFire was helping with flood control efforts in the Paynes Creek area, a CalFire spokesman said about 10:30 a.m. Friday. There had been reports of flooding in Lake California, but it wasn���t as bad as initially reported, he said. Tehama County Public Works sent out a road closure at 7:35 a.m. for Lake California Drive between Main Street and the front gate. However, at 9:27 a.m., another notice was sent out advising the road was open with warnings posted due to flooding. Other closures by Tehama County Public Works on Friday included Flores Avenue from I-5 to Highway 99W and Woodland Avenue from Hamilton to Tehama Avenue in the Gerber area and Shasta Boulevard from 62nd to Eighth avenues in the Los Molinos area. The roads are closed until further notice. Those affected by the Shasta Boulevard closure should use 99E, according to the public works closure release. ���Many areas of the county have been impacted,��� Public Works Director Gary Antone said. Gyle Road west of I-5, Flores Avenue at Oat Creek, Lake California Drive, any gravel road that crosses a creek and the Paynes Creek area near the elementary school has also had some flooding, Antone said. Downed tree limbs have been minimal, however there could be an increase in as rain continues and the winds pick up, he said. Public works has responded to the Mineral area for snow plowing and road clearing activities and he expected the weekend to be a very busy, Antone said. The California Highway Patrol listed on its website at 10:28 a.m. Friday some flooding in the road and on the rocks on the side of the road on Highway 36. At least one weather-related accident had occurred in the Red Bluff area where a pickup and semi collided at 8:53 a.m. Friday on southbound Interstate 5, at the Antelope Boulevard on-ramp. The driver, a young man, was received minor injuries and was taken to St. Elizabeth Community Hospital, CHP Officer Jake Bushey said. He was driving an older Chevy pickup onto the onramp when he began to fishtail as he entered I-5, Bushey said. The driver overcorrected, rotating so that the front of his pickup went into the right side of the big rig���s trailer, which was in the slow lane, Bushey said. The big rig pulled off to the side, but the impact from the collision caused the pickup to spin out westbound, going onto the right shoulder where it ���hit a pine tree at a good speed,��� Bushey said. Nothing further was available at this time. The PG&E outage map listed seven outages affecting 115 PG&E customers. Of those, the biggest was a 109 customer outage that started Thursday in the Red Bluff area, PG&E Spokesman Jason King said. Within that 109 customer outage, the first started at 1:03 p.m. Thursday and affected 53 customers. It was restored just after midnight. An outage at 3:25 a.m., affecting 59 customers, was restored by 4:18 a.m. The last 87 customers of the out- age, which was weather-related, were restored by 7:09 a.m. Friday, King said. The remaining outages in Red Bluff were single-residence outages, he said. Other Tehama County areas affected were Lyonsville, Mineral, Lassen Park, Mill Creek, along Highway 36 from Ponderosa Way east to Mineral and along Little Giant Mill Road south to Lyonsville, King said. Cottonwood had an outage at 1:17 p.m. Thursday with 18 people affected and power restored by 2:28 p.m. Thursday. There was also a brief weather related outing lasting less than a minute at 3:38 p.m. Thursday in the Corning area, which was probably caused by something such as a tree brushing against a powerline, King said. ���There are no significant outages at this time, but we are in for some pretty severe weather over weekend,��� King said. ���We do have staffing in place to respond quickly and effectively if needed. Those experiencing an outage can call PG&E at 1(800)743-5002 to report it. If residents see a downed line they should assume it is live, get as far away as possible and call 911, King said. More rain is expected over the weekend with Friday expected to have a 0.5-0.75 inches in rain and today expecting an additional 0.250.5 inch of rainfall. For more information on road conditions and closures visit Caltrans: http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist2/ or CHP: http:cad.chp.gov/traffic.aspx. Julie Zeeb can be reached at 527-2153, extension 115 or jzeeb@redbluffdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @DN_Zeeb. Continued from page 1A Continued from page 1A players would be present at the event. Hausman said she sent in an application in early December to be considered for the San Francisco Giants World Championship Trophy Tour and learned of Red Bluff���s selection last week. She said it was an honor to be selected and that she was excited when she was notified. The Red Bluff Senior-Community center is located at 1500 S. Jackson St. The trophies will also make stops in Chico on Jan. 9, and Redding on Jan. 11, according to the trophy tour website. ��������� Sports Editor Andre Byik can be reached at 5272151, ext. 111 or at sports@redbluffdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter: @TehamaSports Leftover food goes to homeless Continued from page 1A came to school. As a precaution the school staff placed the school on lockdown. When the student didn���t show up, officers conducted a search for the student. The student was located at another student���s home. The student was inter- viewed and denied making any comments about brining a gun to school and had no idea why another student would say he had. No weapon was located at the residence where the student was found nor at his home. The juvenile was released to his parent. The lockdown was later lifted and officers are attempting to determine where the rumor started. JOBLESS Continued from page 1A Marin County was the lowest at 5.8 percent followed by San Mateo, 6.2 percent; San Francisco, 6.7 percent; Orange, 7 percent and San Luis Obispo, 7.3 percent. Imperial County, with just over a quarter of its population, was the highest at 26.6 percent. Colusa, 18.2 percent; Sutter, 16.2 percent; Merced, 15.7 percent and Yuba, 15.1 percent, round out the five highest unemployment. State unemployment has dropped 0.2 percent to 9.6 percent from October to November and national unemployment dropped 0.1 percent to 7.4 percent. There were no increases in jobs for the year overall. Most changes were not drastic with the biggest being a 6.6 percent decrease in the transportation, warehousing and utilities category. Several, including construction, wholesale trade, information, financial activities, other services, federal government and state government had no change. Most industries saw no significant change, but retail trade was up 1.2 percent in jobs for the month. The two biggest drops for the month were farm, which saw a 20.3 percent drop in jobs and federal government, which saw a 14.3 percent decrease. ��������� Julie Zeeb can be reached at 527-2153, extension 115 or jzeeb@redbluffdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @DN_Zeeb. ��������� APOLOGY TROPHY GUN 5A portedly was sponsored by ���Freethinkers for Dacquisto,��� attacked Aanestad personally, saying that he was "not really a doctor" and that he was licensed as ���only a dentist��� and wasn't a surgeon. It also attacked his voting record when he was in the Senate. Aanestad contacted Dacquisto, demanding an explanation for the website. Dacquisto told him he knew nothing about it. Aanestad searched further and discovered a document he said showed the website had been paid for by Mark Spannagel, LaMalfa's chief of staff and a consultant to the senator's congressional campaign. After this discovery, Aanestad filed a complaint against the LaMalfa campaign with the Federal Elections Commission and a lawsuit against Spannagel, accusing him of defamation of character. The LaMalfa campaign denied CARE TO COMMENT? At redbluffdailynews.com, scroll to the end of any story, click the link and type away. any involvement with the website. Several weeks ago, Aanestad was asked about the suit. He said a hearing was scheduled shortly before Christmas. On Thursday, Mark Standriff, who was a spokesman for Aanestad's campaign, before the primary, sent an email to this newspaper, which included a copy of a ���public apology��� by Spannagel. It read as follows: ���I, Mark Spannagel, offer this public apology to Dr. Samuel Aanestad for publishing an Internet website that was factually incorrect regarding Dr. Aanestad's qualifications as a doctor and a surgeon. I also apologize to the voting public in making accessible to them factually incorrect information regarding Dr. Aanestad's personal and professional character. ���I believe Dr. Aanestad, a highly regarded oral surgeon with an excellent reputation as both an oral surgeon and past political representative of the 4th Senate District, deserves to have the record publicly corrected. I did this independently, on my own time, while I was a paid campaign staff member for a rival congressional campaign and while as a chief of staff in the California State Senate. I apologize to the Senate Rules Committee for my actions.��� Asked about the hearing that had been scheduled, Barry Pruett, Aanestad's attorney, said ���some things��� happened on Wednesday and that an apology had been issued.��� He said the lawsuit and FEC complaint had been dropped and that he couldn't say more than that. Contacted by phone Thursday, Aanestad said, ���The reason we filed was to demand a public apology for something that was not right. Yesterday, I received a public apology from Mark, and I believe he was sincere.��� The matter is now closed, Aanestad said. ���The apology has been issued, and life will go on.��� Chico Enterprise-Record staff writer Larry Mitchell can be reached at 8967759, lmitchell@chicoer.com, or on Twitter @LarryMitchell7. Farmers, residents to get more water FRESNO (AP) ��� California residents and farmers can expect to receive more of the water they requested for next year, thanks to early storms that replenished reservoirs and built up the snowpack. The state Department of Water Resources said Friday that State Water Project contractors will get 40 percent of their requested deliveries for 2013. That���s up from the 30 percent announced at the end of November. The contractors supply water to more than 25 million residents and nearly a million acres of farmland. Initial projections are usually low because more than 90 percent of California���s snow and rain falls from December through April. The final allocation this year was 65 percent of requested deliveries. Higher allocations are difficult to achieve even in wet years due to pumping restrictions to protect threatened and endangered fish. Audit: Poor management, training at Calif. parks Courtesy photo On Friday, Dec. 21, Cattle Country Catering and Bar-B-Que donated tri-tip that was leftover from a Christmas party to the homeless people living under the Antelope bridge. The food was given to Randy Dueck, who runs a ministry to the homeless, and distributed in the former Riverside Bar and Grill parking lot. Dueck is in the process of trying to secure land to start Supernatural Life Transition Ranch for the Homeless in Red Bluff. For more information on his ministry call 2006871 or visit http://supernaturallifetransitionranchforthehomelessinredbluff.weebly.com/inde x.html. SACRAMENTO (AP) ��� Poor management and insufficient training at the California Department of Parks and Recreation led to a scandal in which parks officials hid $54 million as state parks faced millions of dollars in cutbacks, an audit released Friday said. For 19 years, parks staff intentionally under-reported funds used by the governor���s office to craft the state budget, the audit by the state Department of Finance said. ������We found the methodology was inconsistent, parks staff could not provide reasonable explanations, and supporting documentation was not retained,������ the audit stated. Parks Director Ruth Coleman resigned and a senior parks official was terminated last summer after it was revealed that some employees kept $54 million hidden in two special funds. The funds were kept hidden even as local governments and nonprofit organizations contributed money to keep open 70 parks that faced closure in July because of budget cuts. Friday���s audit did not say why the department reported different numbers to the state controller and the governor���s office. The attorney general is investigating and the audit was released just days after the controller found that managers overpaid parks employees more than $500,000 over a three-year period. ������Parks must improve accountability, transparency, and communication Red Bluff Simple Cremations & Burial Service You DO have a choice in the Red Bluff area. Caring & Compassionate Service Full traditional burial service or cremation 527-1732 722 Oak Street, Red Bluff, FD Lic. 1931 to restore trust with the public,������ the audit stated. In a written response, new parks director Anthony Jackson agreed with most of the audit���s findings and said he is implementing better internal controls. The department has 60 days to complete a corrective action plan. The audit also found that parks staff failed to track donations and employees made improper charges on stateissued credit cards. Auditors found that donations sometimes lacked supporting letters specifying what the money should be used for. Three of six $100,000 donations or larger were accepted without authorization, the report found.