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Obituaries CHARLES JOSEPH COMISKEY February 16, 1949 to June 30, 2012 From his sister: Joe was my baby brother. He was born in Chicago 63 years ago and throughout his life "he did it his way". As a toe-headed, blue-eyed toddler he would roam the Oakland hills and worry all of us……but, he was never lost…he was just exploring. He always found his way home. He loved animals and created a zoo in our back- yard when he was a very young boy collecting all sorts of unusual animals including a fox. His life revolved around music, playing the guitar and writing songs. His favorite food was pizza. And, he was funny….oh, yes…he was very funny; and his jokes were always followed by that infectious laugh. In the last few years he "discovered" the computer and U-Tube and he was addicted! He loved his dog, Dave, who he shared with his mother, Helen. And, his darling granddaughters, Abbie and Bella……the absolute joys of his life. Stricken with brain cancer three and a half years ago, the doctors predicted that he would not live very long. He proved them wrong and was determined to do just that. He fought a long and hard battle, but he did it his way. He wanted nothing more than to be at home and if he was to die, home was where he wanted to be. With the unbelievable support of his former wife, Pam, and their only child, Joe, he lived every last minute at home. With his mother holding his hand, he left us to join our Dad, Charlie. I will miss my brother. DERBY Continued from page 1A vided the action, a variety of food and music was being enjoyed by a large crowd in the park at the bottom of the hill. The day began with a parade at 9 a.m. before the focus shifted to the park and the derby, which kicked off at 11 a.m. Results of the derby Pee Wee division — ages 1-5: First place Jay- den and Jordyn Oaks; sec- ond place Johnny Hay- burn; third place Jason Willis. Junior division — ages 5-10: First place Chris Parsons; second place Heather Willis; third place Sadee Jones. No Teen division entry. Adult division: First place Lynda Blunkall. POLICE Continued from page 1A Bob Carrel and Wayne Brown. dedicate as much money as needed to make sure citizens were safe and added the council's top priority should be, "safe- ty, safety, safety." Brown said he was proud the council made the decision this year to get behind the police department. Carrel said he would Thursday, July 5, 2012 – Daily News 7A to give the police," he said. "I wish we had more Nanfito asked for the restructuring to mitigate possible city liabilities caused by failure to supervise officers. Police Chief Paul The department oper- ated for the past 25 years with a practice of assign- ing a shift's senior offi- cer to be the Officer-In- Charge (OIC) when a sergeant's other respon- sibilities took him away from supervisory duties. The week prior the council adopted a new contract with the police officers' union, which ended their furloughs and offered raises in upcoming years. Nanfito said 25 years ago the average tenured officer that would act as an OIC had between seven and 15 years of experience. Because of high attrition rates in the past few years an OIC's CORNING Continued from page 1A council an update on his research into having invocations before council meetings. allowed the use of the name of Jesus," Fitzpatrick said. "My rec- ommendation is that you give invocations up there, but different cities handle it different ways." If the council did open invoca- "There is a federal case that experience dropped to between two and five years. Mayor Forrest Flynn and Jackson both ques- tioned whether the city was creating another level of bureaucracy with the plan. erdew said the position would cause an employ- ee to be accountable for his leadership. Police Lt. Dan Flow- "When you take own- ership of something, it is something different," he said. The corporal position will receive pay 5 per- cent higher than a police officer and about 9 per- cent behind that of a top step sergeant. Nanfito's report to the council estimates it will tions to the broader community, it would need to be careful not to discriminate, Fitzpatrick said. The council requested that Fitzpatrick write a policy that the invocation was to be given by council members. It is scheduled to be brought to the July 10 meet- ing. The council changes every two years and the policy could be changed with each new group, Strack said. The Corning City Council FIRES Continued from page 1A since 1950 have occurred since 2000, according to a recent U.S. Forest Service report on California wildfires. The annual average of acres burned since 2000 is twice the average for fires that happened between 1950 and 2000. all cost about $7,895 to reclassify three employ- ees. In the past year the city paid $5,665 to offi- cers for their time spent as OIC, as employees receive a incentive pay when working out of their usual class. Nanfito projected future savings from the recent hiring of a sergeant from outside the department would all but offset the corporal pay raises. would allow the depart- ment to select the indi- viduals best suited for leadership positions and groom them with the proper skills to oversee street supervision of a shift. He said the program meets the second and fourth Tues- days of the month at City Hall, 794 Third St. Meeting minutes and agendas are available at www.corning.org. ——— Julie Zeeb can be reached at 527-2153, extension 115 or jzeeb@redbluffdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @DN_Zeeb. common origin of wild- land fires in Northern California. Typically, about 10 to 15 percent of fires in the area are start- ed by humans, with the Angora fire a devastating example. "The concern is what we're going to get for human ignition and human carelessness," Brady said. "Thankfully, so far, we're about a nor- mal level for that." Daily News photo by Chip Thompson Larry Vinson helps propel his grandsons, Jayden, 4, and Jordyn, 1, Oakes, during the Red Neck Derby in Rancho Tehama Wednesday. After several years of rela- tively benign fire seasons, the West is headed into a hot dry summer of poten- tially ferocious blazes like the ones that have scorched Colorado in recent weeks. The wildfires that have already destroyed more than 700 homes and out- buildings along Colorado's Front Range and blackened hundreds of thousands of acres of New Mexico wilderness are not likely to be the season's last for one simple reason: drought. "This year, fires are going big," Tom Harbour, fire and aviation director for the U.S. Forest Service, said last week. "We've had some really extraordinary runs ... fires that are running 10 miles in lighter fuels. Fires that are running miles in forested areas." A dry La Nina winter and a paltry, quick-melting snowpack in much of the West have set the stage for another incendiary summer, compounding the effects of a long-term drought that has gripped the seven-state Colorado River basin for more than a decade. burning is they've had pro- longed drought," said Bob Keane, a forest service research ecologist based in Montana. Add the high temperatures and gusting winds that hit the state last week, and you have a recipe for combustion. Officials in Southern California are bracing for a higher fire danger after sev- eral years of respite from the catastrophic blazes that erupted over the last decade, including the 2009 Station fire, the largest in Los Angeles County histo- ry. Last winter, rainfall was well below average, leaving hills brown and dry even "The reason Colorado is West faces long hot summer as wildfire threat intensifies LOS ANGELES (MCT) before summer began. Still, federal officials do not expect this year to be as disastrous as 2002, when massive blazes exploded all around the West, including Colorado's largest ever, the 138,000-acre Hayman fire. Wetter conditions in the Pacific Northwest and parts of the northern Rocky Mountains should help ease the fire threat there. Drought, rising tempera- tures, a century of fire sup- pression policies that allowed many forested areas to grow unnaturally thick with fuel, and more and more people living on the wilderness edge have thrust the West into this new era of bigger and fiercer burns. The amount of land charred every year has soared compared with previous decades. 152,000 acres. None indi- vidually is as big as the Hayman was. But the Waldo Canyon fire west of Colorado Springs, which claimed two lives, and the High Park blaze in the mountains west of Fort Collins, now 100 percent contained, burned more than 700 structures, making them the most destructive in the state's history. Since 2000, it has not been uncommon for wild- fire seasons to end with a tally of 7 million to 9 mil- lion blackened acres nation- ally. Though total burned acreage dropped during a few years of milder weath- er, it spiraled again last year when flames galloped across parched Texas. Researchers predict that rising temperatures associ- ated with climate change will lead to more wildfires in much of the West. But it is hard to tease out the effects of global warming from natural climate cycles, which in past centuries have seized the region with long, severe droughts. "We've had conditions like this in the past," Keane said. "So you can't say with any degree of certainty ... that this is climate change. But what you can say is that it certainly meets the model of climate change." As of Sunday, seven large fires in Colorado had charred a total of nearly Colorado recognized the potential for a fiery sum- mer, but "I don't think any- one was prepared" for what has occurred, said Chad Hoffman, co-director of the Western Forest Fire Research Center at Col- orado State University at Fort Collins. Smoke from the High Park fire about 13 miles away shrouded the campus early last week and flames were visible on the horizon. have raced across grass, shrub lands and timber, including ponderosa pine stands that are denser than they were historically. "There's a lot more fuel than there used to be," Hoffman said. The Colorado blazes orado fires, the still-smol- dering Whitewater-Baldy Complex fire in New Mex- ico destroyed only 20 struc- tures because it has burned mostly in remote national forest lands, including the Gila Wilderness. this season, including near- ly 300 in Utah, 223 in Mon- tana's Dahl fire and 254 in the Little Bear fire in New Mexico. Far larger than the Col- The Gila National Forest has also been a pioneer in using fire as a management tool, monitoring wildfires rather than rushing to put them out and using con- trolled burns to clean out younger, dense growth. An initial review of burn dam- age by the forest service suggests that approach has helped. Of the nearly 300,000 acres within the Whitewater-Baldy fire perimeter, slightly more than half burned lightly or not at all. "In Lake Tahoe we're seeing conditions that are similar to what we had in 2007 with the Angora fire," said Beth Brady, fire prevention officer with the U.S. Forest Ser- vice at Lake Tahoe. "It's not unexpected because we had such a light winter this year, which means vegetation and fuels on the forest floor are drying out. We're getting down to some pretty low moisture levels, which means veg- etation is available to burn early," she said. So far the Forest Ser- vice has not seen an increase in lighting fires this year — the most One of the major con- cerns is that a "super fire" — like the 2007 South Lake Tahoe Ango- ra fire — will happen again. That fire scorched more than 3,000 acres and destroyed 254 homes. been working for the Forest Service, Brady has noticed a clear trend of longer fire seasons. In the time she has year-round fire season now. When I started 18 years ago the season was pretty much confined to late July through early October. This past year we had fires in Decem- ber, January and Febru- ary, and that's highly unusual for us," she said. "We certainly have a North said that despite fluctuations from year to year, long fire seasons and the high potential for devastating fires are here to stay. "Fire is an inherent part of the system. You can never exclude it. You can suppress it and keep it from happening for a while, but eventually all of these systems will burn. Every homeowner and policymaker needs to know that," he said. Oregon man at DUI checkpoint Cops snare There are also a lot more houses. Though Harbour said Colorado has up-to- date fire prevention stan- dards for new homes, older residences were not built with wildfires in mind, a sit- uation throughout the West. And whipping wind, triple-digit temperatures and dried-out fuel can make an inferno unstoppable until the weather changes. Rain came to the aid of fire- fighters in the High Park blaze, while cooler weather and rising humidity helped to calm the flames in Waldo Canyon, where the fire is now 45 percent contained. All told, more than 1,500 structures have been lost to Western wildfires Prescribed fire and mechanical thinning of dense growth are critical to making forest lands less vulnerable, Harbour said. "It's that combination of having communities become fire adapted and improving the condition of the forest that is going to get us out of this death spi- ral of increasingly severe fire that we're in right now," he said. Red Bluff police offi- cers arrested a 20-year- old Oregon man during it's 5-hour DUI check- point Saturday night. The department screened 358 drivers through its checkpoint set up on South Main Street from 8 p.m. Sat- urday to 1 a.m. Sunday. Of the drivers screened, six were found to be driving without a driver's license. Six drivers were given roadside sobriety tests, although only Tay- lor Michael Jones of Beaverton, Ore. was arrested for operating a vehicle while under the influence. A federal grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Adminis- tration administered through the California Office of Traffic Safety funded the program.