A strike and then a deal at Cal State // A 100-year deluge in San Diego

Good morning. It’s Tuesday, Jan. 23.

Cal State faculty calls off strike after deal is reached.
Torrential rain causes widespread flooding in San Diego.
And surrendering to the unpredictable in rural Fort Bragg.

Statewide

1.

Faculty members reached a tentative contract agreement with the California State University system late Monday, hours after nearly 30,000 workers began what was the largest strike of its kind in U.S. history. Educators planned to resume classes on Tuesday. The deal falls somewhere between the 12% salary increase that faculty had sought and the 5% Cal State offered. Instead, the contract will provide a 5% raise that backdates to last summer, along with another 5% bump this July. Both sides portrayed it as a win. CalMatters | N.Y. Times

2.

A car sat submerged in San Diego on Monday. (Gregory Bull/A.P.)

An extraordinary deluge of rain unleashed chaos across San Diego on Monday, sending muddy water into homes, sweeping away cars, and turning low-lying roads into rivers. Emergency officials said they performed rescues for hundreds of people, some of whom climbed onto roofs to escape rising floods. It was the wettest day in San Diego in nearly 100 years, weather officials said. “Put another way, San Diego just had just over one-quarter of its annual average rainfall … in less than 6 hours,” meteorologist Jonathan Erdman wrote on X. S.D. Union-Tribune | A.P.

Further north, there were reports of toppled trees, mudslides, and flooded homes from Santa Cruz to the Sacramento Valley. Sierra ski resorts accumulated 48-hour snowfall totals as high as 32 inches. KSBW | Press Democrat | KRCR | @NWSSacramento

3.

Social media lit up with flooding videos. Five that stood out:

4.

During the first debate between California’s front-runners for U.S. Senate on Monday, the three Democrats largely refrained from attacking each other. But they came alive on the subject of Gaza. Rep. Barbara Lee noted she is the only candidate pressing for a cease-fire. “Killing 25,000 civilians, it’s catastrophic,” she said. Rep. Adam Schiff shot back: “We can’t leave Hamas governing Gaza.” Rep. Katie Porter appeared to hedge. “Cease-fire is not a magic word,” she said. For his part, Steve Garvey, the only Republican, said he stands with Israel, “yesterday, today and tomorrow.” Politico | L.A. Times

5.

Ruth Ashton Taylor when she worked at KNX Radio in 1963. (CBS via Getty Images)

Four deaths reported across California in recent days:

Ruth Ashton Taylor, widely believed to be the first female newscaster in Los Angeles, died on Jan. 11 in San Rafael. After graduating from journalism school in 1944, she joined CBS, where she became the only woman in a documentary unit led by Edward R. Murrow. Taylor was 101. N.Y. Times | A.P.
Dexter Scott King, one of the four children of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who worked to preserve his legacy, died at his home in Malibu on Monday. The cause was prostate cancer. He was 62. Washington Post | N.Y. Times
Luis Vasquez, an electronic musician who performed as the Soft Moon, and John Mendez, a popular Los Angeles DJ, were among three people found dead at a Los Angeles loft last week. The cause of the deaths is suspected to be fentanyl overdoses. L.A. Times | S.F. Chronicle

Northern California

6.

For months, Gaza cease-fire activists have been disrupting Berkeley City Council meetings, booing at disfavored speakers and heckling councilmembers when they try to move on to government business. Fed up, the council adopted new rules on Monday intended to establish “enforcement of decorum,” including a ban on megaphones. “We are not going to capitulate to bullies,” Mayor Jesse Arreguín said. “We are not going to let a loud mob of people shut down the gears of government.” Berkeleyside

7.

Fort Bragg, a former logging town on the Mendocino coast, is home to roughly 7,000 people. Yet there are no labor and delivery services. That’s how Kailyn McCord and her husband, a woodworker named Ben whose medical credentials include a Boy Scout first aid badge, found themselves setting out along a remote mountain highway in the wee hours of the morning last September. “I spend the whole two hours facing backward, on all fours, braced against the flipped-flat back of the passenger’s seat, the forest whipping darkly by the windows and Ben driving quickly, quietly, reaching out to take my hand on the straightaways.” Alta

Dozens of California hospitals have shut down maternity wards since 2012, a retrenchment driven in part by plunging birth rates. CalMatters

8.

Edith Ceccarelli, a resident of Willits, was 10 years old when the pandemic began — that is, the flu pandemic of 1918. She was 33 when the U.S. entered World War II and 61 when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. Now 115, Ceccarelli just became the oldest living person in the United States. For her birthday on Feb. 5, well-wishers are invited to drive by her senior living facility in decorated cars. Dementia has left her diminished, said Evelyn Persico, a family member. But there are occasional sparks. “Suddenly she’ll say, ‘It’s Feb. 5. It’s my birthday!’” she said. Ukiah Daily Journal

9.

After a rockslide left giant boulders in the middle of a road in the Sierra foothills northeast of Sacramento, a crew was hired to blast them to pieces for cleanup last Friday. Thankfully, they thought to record video from multiple angles. 👉 YouTube (26 seconds)

Southern California

10.

Tensions escalated at the Los Angeles Times Monday as 10 members of California’s congressional delegation sent a letter to billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong expressing concern over the potential layoffs of roughly 100 newsroom employees. On the same day, Times staffers were informed that two top editors are leaving the newspaper, less than two weeks after Kevin Merida abruptly stepped down as executive editor, citing differences with Soon-Shiong over editorial and business priorities. N.Y. Times

11.

On March 5, Huntington Beach residents will vote on charter amendments that would require ID at the ballot box; ban the flying of the Pride flag on city property; and empower the mayor to unilaterally cancel City Council meetings. Anger over the city’s growing embrace of culture war politics has aroused resistance in the form of “a revolution led by retirees” who have been packing City Council meetings. “We’re really the people who built this city, and we’re proud of what we did,” said Shirley Dettloff, a former mayor who is nearly 89. “And this new council is diminishing all that we worked for.” L.A. Times

The Orange County Register editorial board, not known for liberal leanings, urged Huntington Beach to quit the “comic political theater” and get back to governing. O.C. Register

12.

There’s a pool cleaning service in San Bernardino County with a highly unorthodox business model. For a few hundreds bucks, the owner of Salba Pool Cleaning will drain and clean out your disused pool. But if you let him and his friends skate the pool once it’s empty, there’s no charge. “On the one hand it’s a facade, to make us look official,” said Steve Alba, who is 60 and has skated professionally since the 1970s. “The ultimate goal is to skate the pool.” Wall Street Journal

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