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Wednesday, August 17, 2011 – Daily News 7A Death Notices William McGivern Byrne William McGivern Byrne of Redding died Friday, Aug. 12, 2011, at Golden Living Center in Redding. He was 69. McDonald's Chapel in Redding is handling the arrangements. Published Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2011, in the Daily News, Red Bluff, Calif. Mildred Ford Mildred Ford of Red Bluff died Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2011. She was 88. Hoyt-Cole Chapel of the Flowers is handling the arrangements. Published Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2011, in the Daily News, Red Bluff, Calif. Beverly McFarland Beverly McFarland of Red Bluff died Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2011, at Lassen House. She was 88. Hoyt-Cole Chapel of the Flowers is handling the arrangements. Published Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2011, in the Daily News, Red Bluff, Calif. WHALE Continued from page 1A ing the river and a Maori from New Zealand. ''Early on, it was a novel experi- ence, with people happy and intrigued. But as it dragged on, people became concerned. Eventually it turned into a tragedy. As it moved past normal, there was a sense that people were visiting to say their final farewells, or wish she would do something to improve her situation.'' No one knows why the whale took refuge in fresh water while migrating north from the birthing grounds off Baja California. Some scientists say it may have been driven inland by killer whales. On Tuesday afternoon, about a dozen people stood on the bridge to watch the researchers. Among them was Phil Purcell, who lives in the nearby town of Arca- ta. ''We thought we would pay our respects,'' said Pur- cell, who brought his twin 7- year-old sons, Shane and Kai. ''It's sad because we did- n't get to see it alive,'' Kai said. ''That poor calf has got to swim around for the rest of its life without its mother,'' his father added. The calf swam back out to sea on July 23, about the right time for it to wean and go off on its own. But efforts to drive its mother back to sea, including calls of killer whales played upriver, did not persuade it to leave. It stayed, sometimes feeding on invasive species of clams and snails in the mud of the river bottom, shooting great geysers of air and water out of her blow- hole. The whale revived mem- ories of a story told by late tribal member Fannie Flounder and recounted by anthropologist Theodora Kroeber in the book, ''The Inland Whale.'' ''She said when the whale is in the river, it means the world is out of balance ... things aren't the way they should be,'' said Janet Wort- man, a relative of Flounder and partner in the Requa Inn. ''Fannie said you all need to get together and pray and dance and beat your feet on the ground and that will tilt the earth back the way it is supposed to be.'' The last time wayward whales made headlines in California was in 2007, when a mother humpback and her calf journeyed 90 miles up the Sacramento River. The two were fol- lowed by crowds for more than two weeks before swimming out to the Pacific Ocean at night. O'Rourke said he agreed that the whale's visit meant the world was out of bal- ance, that ecosystems fail- ing. He said the whale brought together state and federal agencies and the tribe in a way he has never seen. ''It is acts like this that are going to happen if we are going to stabilize the envi- ronment,'' he said. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — July home sales in California fell to their lowest level in 16 years as economic worries kept potential buyers on the sidelines, a real estate tracking firm reported Tuesday. An estimated 34,695 new and resale houses and condos were sold statewide last month, an 11 percent decline from June and 1.4 percent decrease from July 2010, according to San Diego-based DataQuick. California home sales dropped to their lowest level for the month of July since 1995 and the second lowest since 1988, when the firm's statistics begin. DataQuick analysts attributed the decline to heightened economic uncer- tainty in July, when would-be buyers and sellers watched the political drama over the debt ceiling unfold in Wash- ington. ''More people were getting cold SACRAMENTO (AP) — California prison offi- cials said Tuesday they expect to meet a federal court's mandate to reduce the state's inmate popula- tion by 33,000, or 23 per- cent, over the next two years, a goal that could eventually end court chal- lenges that have largely dri- ven prison operations for years. The state is relying pri- marily on a controversial new law that will shift responsibility for tens of thousands of lower-level offenders to local sheriffs and probation offices begin- ning Oct. 1. California will fall just shy of meeting the court's first deadline at the end of FLOOD Continued from page 1A said John Stover, county building official and flood plain administrator. The area most affected includes a wedge of land between Antelope Boule- vard and Highway 36. The land has been des- ignated a Special Flood Hazard Area requiring property owners to pur- chase flood insurance as soon as the updated Flood Insurance Rate Maps become effective Sept. 29. FEMA's modernization of old flood plain maps included disallowing roads, such as Highway 36, to hypothetically act as a levee should a cata- strophic flood occur, said FEMA Region District 9 representative Kathy Sha- effer in a presentation to the county supervisors March 29. Taking away Highway 36 as a barrier moves the map lines depicting poten- BOUNCE Continued from page 1A Tehama, Butte, Shasta and Siskiyou. The new 1st District shifts from FAIR Continued from page 1A Thursday will not have a grandstand event, but there will be the Miss Tehama County Pro- gram. Friday will see the Outlaw Karts in the main arena and Saturday will be the tractor and truck pulls. Sunday will see the return of a fan favorite in the Destruc- tion Derby. As a part of fair preparation, the board took its quarterly tour of the grounds and looked at several areas for potential hazards and to check whether previous issues had been fixed. Lisa Sandberg and April Farmer from the Tehama County Depart- ment of Education gave an update on the upcom- ing Education Day, usu- ally held the Thursday of fair week. "Education Day is an opportunity for them to be a part of our culture in Tehama County," Sand- tial flood paths. That means more people could be affected by flooding than previously thought, according to the maps. Stover tried to get FEMA to put off imple- mentation of the new flood maps but was unsuccess- ful, he said. The deadline has been set for Sept. 29, six months after the board issued a letter of final determination approving the updated maps. "I am now concentrat- ing my effort on letting property owners know they will need flood insur- ance if they have a federal- ly backed loan or if their insurance companies require it," Stover said. Stover enlisted the help of area Boy Scouts last week to deliver letters door to door to let affected residents know about the requirements and the meetings, he said. People affected have the option to purchase a temporarily lower-cost Preferred Risk Policy before the maps become effective. However, after Sept. 29, they will no longer have that option and will have to pay full- price premiums for flood insurance. Stover is working to implement other methods to lower the flood risks in the area as well, he said. "I am not giving up on this issue," he said. "I still intend to pursue mitiga- tion measures that may lessen the danger of flood- ing in the area, such as better drainage, cleaning out culverts and other drainage areas and possi- bly working with local hydrologists to get a detailed study done of the area." The hydrologists could establish Base Flood Ele- vations in the area so prop- erty owners can find out if their property is above the flood plain or not, Stover said. However, at the moment, doing so would be too expensive. the coastal counties to the northeast- ern part of the state, an area that before the maps were redrawn was mostly part of the 4th Congressional District represented by U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Roseville. Herger said McClintock has indi- berg said. "If we didn't have presenters and our volunteers we wouldn't be able to do it." Among other business discussed was solar pan- els, which were installed around 2008, and the funding for them, which was supposed to be done through Clean Renew- able Energy bonds that fell through due to the down economy. The fairboard had been making payments to California Construc- tion Authority, which was in charge of con- struction for fairs. With that group now defunct, California Fairs Services Association took over managing the payments for the solar system. In March, CFSA stopped making their payments to PNC, the company who loaned the money for the solar pan- els to be put in, which has caused PNC to bring a lawsuit against CFSA. Even though the Tehama District Fair has continued to make pay- ments to CFSA, because Home sales drop amid economic jitters feet as news on the economy wors- ened and people worried about the possibility of the nation defaulting on its debt,'' said DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage. ''There were plenty of reasons for some people to retreat to the sidelines as the future becomes less certain.'' The median California home price in July was $252,000, down 0.4 per- cent from June and down 6 percent from July last year, DataQuick said. The median price peaked in early 2007 at $484,000 and hit bottom in April 2009 at $221,000. About 34.6 percent of resale home sales last month were foreclosures and 17.3 percent were short sales, when a lender allows the owner to sell for less than what is owed on the mortgage, the firm said. On Tuesday, DataQuick reported that San Francisco Bay area home the year, the officials said in a court filing Tuesday, but their long-range plan to transfer jurisdiction over many criminals to counties is on track. The Department of Cor- rections and Rehabilitation projects the law will reduce the population of the state's 33 adult prisons by 9,200 inmates in time for the ini- tial Dec. 27 deadline, about 800 inmates short of the court mandate. It expects to meet the second deadline by removing 20,000 inmates by next June. ''At this point ... there appears to be no need to implement additional mea- sures or to ask that the benchmark dates be extend- ed, when defendants' best sales fell 13.9 percent from June to July, with a total of 6,887 houses and condos changing hands. Bay Area home prices on average fall 6.8 per- cent from June to July. Bay Area home sales in July, how- ever, were 1.7 percent higher than in July 2010, the first full month after the expiration of federal homebuyer tax credits. Sales of homes costing more than $500,000 dropped 25.4 percent, while sales of less expensive ones fell 17.1 percent, DataQuick said. Sales of many lower-end homes were fueled by government-insured FHA home loans that require low down pay- ments. The median home price in the nine- county Bay Area dipped to $374,000, 1 percent lower than in June and 7 per- cent lower than in July 2010, accord- ing to the firm. Calif prisons expect to meet long-term inmate goal projections show they that they will achieve the June 2012 benchmark on time,'' attorneys for the department said in their court filing. That conflicts with a report from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office earlier this month that urged the department to seek an extension of the deadlines. It projected that the state will miss all the deadlines and urged Gov. Jerry Brown's administration to keep more inmates in pri- vate prisons in other states. Corrections spokesman Oscar Hidalgo said the ana- lyst's report was based on old projections and that seeking a delay is premature until the department sees actual numbers from the realignment law that Brown sought and signed into law. ''Overall we see this as progress toward regaining control and ending some of the litigation before us,'' Hidalgo said. ''The num- bers give us some hope that that will be sooner rather than later.'' Michael Bien, a lawyer representing mentally ill inmates in a major court case, said attorneys want to run their own numbers before projecting whether the state can meet its dead- lines. ''They're correct that this is a major change in Califor- nia sentencing policy, so no one knows exactly how the numbers are going to come out,'' he said. The department is look- ing into grants available for some of these pre- flood mitigation measures through FEMA or the Department of Water Resources, he said. Flood Map Moderniza- tion began after Congress appropriated funds for FEMA in 2003 to update the nation's flood hazard maps upon the request of President George W. Bush, according to FEMA records. FEMA representatives will be available for ques- tions at the public meet- ings. Those who cannot make it to the meetings may contact the building department at 444 Oak St., Room H, in the courthouse annex building or call at 527-7002. ——— Andrea Wagner can be reached at 527-2153, extension 114 or awagner@redbluffdailyne ws.com. cated that he will continue to try to represent the 4th Congressional dis- trict, which was moved slightly to the south. While he may have competitors, one of them will not be McClintock, Herger said. CFSA has stopped pay- ments to PNC, the Tehama District Fair has been named in the law- suit, Eidman said. The board of directors is aware of the lawsuit, but it has been passed on to Jerry Blair with the Attorney General's Office to await his legal counsel, Eidman said. Despite the loss of state allocations, equiva- lent to about $200,000 for the Tehama District Fair or 25 percent of its budget, the state contin- ues to require a budget. The fair has to have its 2012 budget in by Nov. 30, which will be tough to do this year, Eidman said. Red Bluff business- man Don Williams was back with his proposal for an ice hockey rink at the fairground. "I've been working on this project for over a year and the business plan I have was written to be non-competitive both locally and in the North State," Williams said. "I've looked at Tyler Jelly and it's ideal." Costs would be about $60,000 and would cost less than building new, Williams said. Fairboard directors asked Williams to come back when he had a pro- posal with firmer num- bers. "We need to see where the money is coming from, who is paying the PG&E bills to keep it cool, who is in the group of investors and who would be in the LLC," director Tonya Reda- monti said. Director Don Crain said he'd like to see a "dollar and cents propos- al" and the cost of any improvements that would be needed to make the building ready. The fairboard meets at 1 p.m. on the third Tues- day of each month. Due to the fair, the September meeting will be held Sept. 13. ——— Julie Zeeb can be reached at 527-2153, extension 115 or jzeeb@redbluffdailynew s.com. THE PASSING PARADE (In 1958 Dave Minch wrote the following in his I Say column.) My mother was visiting a neighbor one summer afternoon while we were still living in rural New Jersey. She had two of my brothers with her; Dallas age 5 and Roger age 3. As she was talking to her neighbor, Dallas came into the room and said quietly, "Mother, you will never see Roger again." Mother jumped to her feet because she knew that he was not the kind to say anything like this unless there was a reason. She ran to the room where the pump was located, and where an open hole about one foot square was cut in the floor to allow cream to be lowered down the well to keep it cool. The lid was off and she knew what had happened. Neither of the women could get down the small hole, so mother ran to the door and screamed for help. The men working in the field came quickly but only a very thin colored man could squeeze through the opening. They could find no rope but tied him to some rotten leather reins used for a team of horses and lowered him into the hole. Mother refused to believe Roger was dead, although no sound had been heard from the well for some time. The brick lined well was 57 feet deep with 6 feet of water in the bottom with wooden 2' x 4's across the well to keep the pipe that brought the water up, rigid. When the man got near the water, the harness broke and he fell the rest of the way down the 3 foot wide well. When he came to the surface, the 3 year old boy had a death grip on his neck which he did not loosen until they pried his fingers apart after getting them both out of the well with a newly found rope. It was considered a miracle in that part of the country and got lots of coverage in the local papers. Mother tried to get a Carnegie Medal of Honor for the colored man but was not successful. Father gave him a half month's wages which in those days amounted to $5.00. Fate has a peculiar way of working. After going to such extremes to save his life, fate took his life just as quietly a few years later when he was in the house alone and got too close to a hot stove while dressing. * * * * ** With Pat Noble getting married last week, and Andy Giambroni getting married next week, the supply of eligible bachelors is rapidly decreasing in this area. It just goes to show that if the right girl comes along, being a confirmed bachelor is soon changed. * * * ** ** If you had been eating in the Tremont's Palomino room this past week, you might have recognized Clark Gable. Dave Minch 1900-1964 The Passing Parade is brought to you by by Minch Property Management, 760 Main Street specializing in commercial leasing and sales. 530 527 5514