Good morning. It’s Monday, July 29.
- Fire rips through historic Kern County mining town.
- Roblox struggles to contain pedophile problem.
- And five high-style destinations along Highway 1.
California wildfires
1.
Suddenly, much of the West Coast is on fire.
As of Sunday, there were 60 large wildfires burning across California and the Northwest, according to the Interagency Fire Center. The largest, the Park fire, grew to more than 560 square miles across four counties — Butte, Tehama, Plumas, and Shasta — covering an area larger than Los Angeles and San Francisco combined. With another heat wave in the forecast, climate scientist Daniel Swain warned that the four-day-old inferno was only getting started. “This fire will likely be burning for weeks, if not months,” he said. N.Y. Times | S.F. Chronicle
Other Park fire numbers:
- ~8,000 — people ordered to evacuate in Butte and Tehama counties
- 3,927 — firefighters assigned to the blaze
- 12 — percentage of the fire contained
- 100 — structures confirmed destroyed
- 7th — ranking among largest infernos in state history
2.
Other Park fire developments:
- The wildfire crawled to within a few miles of Paradise, the mountain community destroyed by the 2018 Camp fire. “I thought surely God wouldn’t let us burn again,” said Sherry Schlobohm, a resident for 63 years. “But this one worried me.” Sacramento Bee
- Fire scientists have been shocked by the ferocious speed of the Park fire, which has grown as fast as 5,000 acres per hour since first igniting on Wednesday. They blamed searing heat, strong winds, and copious dry vegetation. Washington Post
- The flames neared Lassen Volcanic National Park on Sunday. See a live map. 👉 Cal Fire
3.
A wildfire that ignited in the Kern River canyon last Wednesday tore through a tiny, historic mining town on Friday, officials said. Only a few structures still stood in Havilah, a community of roughly 250 people, surrounded by ash, smoldering flames, and dead livestock. “We lost everything — it’s all gone,” resident Sean Rains said on Sunday. “This whole town burned down. Multiple people, friends that I know — everybody lost everything.” L.A. Times | KGET
Election 2024
4.
Latest campaign developments:
- Elon Musk shared a doctored video that mimics Vice President Kamala Harris’ voice calling herself an “ultimate diversity hire.” Gov. Gavin Newsom responded by vowing to sign a bill outlawing such manipulations. A.P. | @lara_korte
- Harris’ campaign said on Sunday that it had raised $200 million in the first week of her candidacy, an eye-popping figure even in comparison with other fundraising surges of the 2024 race. Politico | A.P.
- A small network of right-wing investors including Peter Thiel orchestrated JD Vance’s rise in Silicon Valley and later pushed former President Trump to add him to the presidential ticket. They now stand to gain if he wins the White House. Washington Post
Northern California
5.
In March, San Francisco’s district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, quietly installed a new chief of staff who has no law degree, making her the first in the office’s history to lack the qualification. But another attribute set Monifa Willis apart: She’s an old friend of Jenkins. Even after the appointment, Willis kept her part-time job as a nursing professor at UC San Francisco, where she earns $100,000 a year. That’s on top of her chief of staff salary of $289,000. A former staffer who worked under Willis described her as unqualified and overstretched. SF Standard | S.F. Chronicle
6.
On a recent 114-degree day, May Yang, 61, sought relief at a cooling center in Fresno. After the center closed for the night, she returned home, took a cold shower, and slept on her living room couch. While California requires that landlords keep residences warmed to certain temperatures in winter, there is no mandate for cooling in the summer. There’s now a fight on to change that as extreme heat exacts an increasingly deadly toll. Washington Post
7.
With 78 million daily active users, Roblox has become social media for the youngest generation. But the San Mateo company employs significantly fewer moderators per user than TikTok. Current and former employees told Bloomberg that policing the platform has become a Sisyphean task as reports of possible pedophiles overwhelm moderators. Yet an unstated doctrine prevails inside the company, they said: growth takes priority over child safety. Bloomberg
8.
There’s a beach resort two hours north of San Francisco where you can rent a modern little cottage looking out on Point Reyes National Seashore for as little as $149 a night. Dillon Beach Resort introduced 13 minimalist tiny homes a few years ago as part of a refresh of the 136-year-old getaway. San Francisco Standard included Dillon Beach Resort in a list of five new high-style destinations between Big Sur and Mendocino County.
Southern California
9.
El Segundo is the latest city to emerge as a rival technological hotbed to Silicon Valley. But instead of apps and chatbots, founders in the small factory town southwest of Los Angeles are building drones, rockets, and portable nuclear reactors. In “The Gundo,” as it’s called, the young men believe they are saving America. “The Gundo founders, for their part, think of themselves as serious people who do not take themselves seriously. This, they say, is in contrast to those in Silicon Valley: unserious people who take themselves extremely seriously.” Vanity Fair
10.
The first California sports bar dedicated to women’s sports opened in Long Beach on Friday. The owners of Watch Me! Sports Bar are hoping to replicate the success of The Sports Bra in Portland, which opened in 2022 and brought in nearly $1 million in revenue in the first eight months. Watch Me’s immediate programming plan: a cornucopia of women’s Olympic events displayed on 26 televisions. Daily Breeze | LAist
11.
The northbound lanes of a heavily traveled highway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas were closed for 48 hours after a big rig hauling lithium-ion batteries overturned, caught fire, and created a hazmat situation. The stoppage along Interstate 15 near Baker created a traffic nightmare on Friday and Saturday, with vehicles backed up for miles in the triple-digit desert heat. Some motorists had no water, said Barbara Gray, who was waylaid while on a trip to Vegas with friends: “It was scary. Honestly, it was very scary.” CNN | KCAL
12.
San Diego hosted the 55th annual Comic-Con over the weekend, welcoming an estimated 135,000 fans dressed as Sith lords, Barbies, ghouls, Disney princesses, cyborgs, sandworms, Hogwarts professors, X-Men, “Inside Out” emotions, and post-apocalyptic marauders. See 57 photos of the best costumes. 👉 Variety
- By many accounts, the most exciting moment came when Robert Downey Jr. revealed his return as Doctor Doom. Watch the fans go wild. 👉 Reddit | Washington Post
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