Press release from the Humboldt County Administrative Office:

Humboldt County residents are one step closer to potentially having new forest trails to enjoy on the North Coast. The County of Humboldt today released the final McKay Community Forest Trail Plan along with the associated environmental report, both of which are available for review and comment on the county’s website. The trail plan proposes a trail network with 31 miles of multi-use roads, multi-use trails, hiking trails, and mountain bike trails. 

The trail plan describes the overall goals, objectives, guiding principles, design standards, and construction practices for building sustainable trails to support outstanding outdoor experiences for a diversity of trail users. The plan contains detailed maps showing the proposed access points and trail locations. The final plan was revised based on 85 comment letters received from the public on the draft plan.

The environmental report identifies a set of mitigation measures to ensure that implementation of the trail plan does not have significant effects on water quality and biological resources. The public review period for the environmental report extends from Dec. 17, 2020, through Jan. 19, 2021. The Board of Supervisors will consider adopting the report in February or March, 2021. Trail construction within the McKay Community Forest can begin once the environmental report is adopted and public health guidance allows groups to gather for trail building.

The trail plan was prepared with an emphasis on accommodating users with accessibility needs. The proposed trail network includes 1.5 miles of trails that fully meet the technical standards for accessible trails, and 0.7 miles of trails that meet most, but not all, the technical standards due to topographic constraints. The trail plan includes 5 miles of trails with features designed specifically for mountain bike riders, to be constructed in conjunction with the Redwood Coast Mountain Bike Association. Mountain bikers often prefer narrow, curvy trails with features that are technically challenging and provide an experience of play and discovery.

“The release of the trail plan and environmental report for the McKay Community Forest is a huge milestone and gives us something really exciting to look forward to in 2021,” said Rex Bohn, Humboldt County First District Supervisor. “Trails and open spaces help make Humboldt County a great place to live in and visit, and trails have been especially important for people this year during the COVID-19 pandemic. Once groups can gather once again, hopefully next spring, we’ll be able to work with volunteers to start the trail building and make the McKay Community Forest a tremendous asset for our community.”

The McKay Community Forest was established in August, 2014, in partnership with Green Diamond Resource Company and The Trust for Public Land, and then expanded in June 2020 to its current size of 1,194 acres. Funding for developing and managing the Community Forest will be achieved through timber harvest revenues, grants, and donations. A parking area was constructed in Cutten along Northridge Road in 2018 to provide dedicated access to the community forest. Additional access points will be located along Harris Street and within Redwood Acres. More entrances are expected to be developed near Redwood Fields, Manzanita Avenue, and Walnut Drive within 2 to 5 years as large parcels are permitted for subdivision.

Trails will be developed incrementally in a logical sequence over the course of several years. The first trails to be built and opened to the public will be located near Northridge Road, Harris Street, and Redwood Acres. Trail construction will depend heavily on the California Conservation Corps, Volunteer Trail Stewards, and Redwood Coast Mountain Bike Association. A total of 12 bridges will be required.

The trail plan includes a proposed Bike Skills Park near the Northridge parking area that would be developed and maintained in collaboration with the Redwood Coast Mountain Bike Association. Facilities would include a pump track, skills area, kids zone, and three sets of flow trails. The pump track would provide a continuous loop with features that allow riders to gain momentum without pedaling by “pumping” the bike with up and down movements. The skills area would provide features developed with dirt or wood to help riders practice bike handling, balancing, and jumping.

The kids zone would provide small-scale features with a focus on safety and skill development. The flow trails would have a concentration of technical features with a range of difficulty levels. These facilities would provide opportunities for riders, especially youth, to learn and practice skills and then apply those skills on the trails within the Community Forest.

Proposed “Double Couplet” from Broadway Multimodal Corridor Plan

For over 10 years, the Humboldt County Association of Governments, the City of Eureka and Caltrans have been looking at ways to improve the Broadway corridor to make it prettier, less congested, and most importantly, safer. And, once again, the public will have a chance to comment on the latest proposed Broadway Multimodal Corridor Plan during HCAOG’s board meeting on Thursday.

Planners have looked at many different approaches to addressing Broadway’s safety and traffic issues and have identified the controversial Double Couplet Option — which proposes building two new segments of one-way road  to the west of Broadway — as the preferred plan. One of the couplets would run between Fourth Street and Koster Avenue, passing through the area known as the Balloon Track,  and the other would run between Hawthorne Street and the Bayshore Mall.

Opponents of this plan — including Humboldt Baykeeper and the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities — argue that this option is not feasible because it requires building through coastal wetlands, something that the California Coastal Commission would not be likely to approve. But planners argue that the commission has approved similar projects, such as the 101 Safety Corridor improvements, and say that the existing segments of Broadway are too constrained to allow for adequate safety improvements.

The City of Eureka and Caltrans are working together to find some short term solutions to improve pedestrian and bicyclist safety on Broadway. Caltrans has also applied for a grant to begin improvements to the southern portion of the corridor between Herrick Avenue and Truesdale Street. HCAOG Executive Director Marcella May says they are hoping to hear good news about that grant soon.

One thing all of the stakeholders agree on is that something needs to be done to deal with the Broadway nightmare sooner rather than later. “Three people have died since we started this plan,” May told the Outpost.

Members of the public will have a chance to comment either during the HCAOG meeting on Thursday at 4:00 p.m. or by emailing or mailing written comments to the board by Jan. 13. Once the public comment period has ended, the plan will return to the board for adoption at a future meeting

You can find more information in the following press release from HCAOG:

The Humboldt County Association of Governments (HCAOG), the City of Eureka, and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), are proposing new improvements to save lives, reduce traffic accidents, improve pedestrian access, provide bicycle facilities, improve traffic flow and freight movement and provide transit lanes where possible on Broadway between Herrick Avenue and the 4th Street on Highway 101.

Highway 101 is the most highly traveled and crowded roadway in Humboldt County. It is important for both quality of life and economic development that residents, commuters, and visitors be able travel easily whether they are choosing to walk, bike, drive or use transit to get around. HCAOG, the City of Eureka and Caltrans are all working together on this plan to identify projects that will be competitive to receive funding and can ultimately be constructed.

The community is encouraged to join the HCAOG Board meeting to watch a presentation on the Broadway Plan, offer improvements and join the conversation. Meeting information can be found at this link: HCAOG Board Meeting Information.

California Highway Patrol press release: 

On 12-16-2020, at approximately 1 p.m., the Humboldt Area CHP was notified of a vehicle which Caltrans workers located off the roadway on SR-299, west of the East Fork Campground. Officers responded to the scene and located a 2004 Dodge SUV which, for unknown reasons, had traveled off the south roadway edge and overturned down the embankment. The driver, and only occupant of the vehicle, had suffered major injuries and was pronounced deceased by emergency medical personnel on scene. The identification of the driver is being withheld pending notification of next of kin by the Humboldt County Coroner’s office.

It is unknown exactly when this collision occurred and it is unknown if alcohol and/or weather were a factor in this collision.

The CHP Humboldt Area Office is continuing to investigate this collision and asks anyone who may have information to contact the Humboldt Area CHP Office at 707-822-5981.

Today, Lindsey Mendez, a nurse practitioner with the county’s public health division, took all sorts of questions from the media on the vaccine. Who’s getting it now? Who’s getting it next? What happens after you get it? How does it work?

Video above, rough transcript below.

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Good afternoon, we’re here today with Lindsey Mendez, family nurse practitioner for Public Health. Would you like to start out by addressing the community?

Yes, we are very excited today at Public Health because yesterday we had our first shots go into arms at Mad River Hospital and then today our own immunization clinic here at Public Health will be administering vaccine to nurses at the hospital for Sempervirens so that they can in turn go and vaccinate their staff at that hospital.

This is a very exciting day.

The Lost Coast Outpost asks, “Since this vaccine requires two shots spaced a few weeks apart, will the 975 doses we received only cover 487 people? When do we get more?”

So the 975 doses that we were given are going to be covering 975 people because we are going to be ordering weekly allotments, so that this will be replenished when the next order goes through. And it is weekly, so that’s when we are getting more.

The Lost Coast Outpost asks, “In this first round, who exactly is being inoculated? Are any care home residents receiving the vaccine this week?”

So, in this first round we are trying very hard to saturate the hospitals because of the workers who are most at risk. Okay, so the ICUs, the ER nurses, EMS, the COVID floors, making sure that we have all of those covered, and also Sempervirens Hospital.

When it comes to the care homes, they are an extremely important population, so important in fact that the federal government has actually taken on a contract for these homes themselves. We are aware that they are contracting through CVS and Walgreens and that they will be getting their own allotment of doses that we actually don’t even control.

The Redheaded Blackbelt asks, “Are the vaccine doses for the second round of shots already allotted for and set aside or are those second doses still needing to be procured?” So the second round of shots as we previously answered will be allotted when we get the next order coming through.

So the 975 will cover 975 people and then we will have the ordering process where they will then replenish that supply to ensure that we get the second dose.

The Redheaded Blackbelt asks, “Once people get the vaccine, are they then required to self-isolate or can they resume normal duties, for example as a frontline healthcare worker?”

So once you get the vaccine we are asking that you remain socially distanced and that you continue to mask and you continue to do the washing of hands and all the protocols that we have asked in the past.

This is because the CDC thinks that after 28 days of the first vaccine you are immune, but we do not have enough information at this time and we are asking that we continue to mask and socially distance, even as a healthcare worker. 

The Redwood News asks, “For those that may not understand, can you give your average person a better idea of how the vaccine generally works? What are some of the most common misconceptions about the vaccine so obviously there are common misconceptions about every vaccine?”

So obviously there are common misconceptions about every vaccine. We know that because this is a new kind of vaccine for most people, the MRNA vaccine, there’s a lot of concerns about side effects and what MRNA is if it’s injected and to give you a good overview of how this vaccine works, essentially think about it as a way for your body to recognize just a small part of the COVID virus and that’s all it’s doing.

We’re getting a little bit of information about the COVID virus itself called a spike protein and then when we give that to you, next time COVID comes to see if it can affect you, your body already knows that one spike protein and that’s all that it needs to know at that time. So that’s how that vaccine works. 

The Redwood News asks, “Some people are skeptical about the vaccines. Some have concerns over the safety or the effectiveness of the vaccine. What would you say to them to maybe alleviate some of those fears or concerns?”

So the vaccine has gone through the process of an emergency release for safety concerns, right, so it has checked all the trial boxes and the FDA has told us that this is a safe vaccine for persons over the age of 16. So when we talk about effectiveness they are also telling us that the Pfizer vaccine is 95 percent effective, so that is a significant effectiveness. 

The Redwood News asks, “Can you talk about what life is like for someone post-vaccination after getting both doses? How are they able to act around others while out and about? Risk of still transferring the virus to others, etc.?”

Again I would just urge everyone to continue to socially distance and to wear their masks as we are waiting for guidance from the CDC about how we are going to interact with each other as we move, especially through the tiers, because we have to remember that not everybody in our community is being vaccinated at the same time, we are going to be doing the highest level with people at the highest risk in hospitals and in long-term care facilities as the federal government is going to be doing, and then as we move forward in the future with the coming months, then the population as a whole will be getting vaccinations.

So continue to socially distance, continue to wear your masks until you are told otherwise by the CDC. 

The North Coast Journal asks, “Can you please explain how immunity works with the two-dosed Pfizer vaccine and how the doses are spaced over time? For example, is someone considered partially immune after the first dose then fully immune after the second?”

They believe that you will be immune after the second dose and I will make that clear, it is supposed to be 95 percent effective, the Pfizer vaccine is broken into two parts and they are 21 days apart. So when we say that the vaccine is seen to be effective after 28 days, you actually need the second dose of the Pfizer after 21 days, but this is the preliminary information about when you are immune. 

The North Coast Journal asks, “Can someone who has received both doses of the vaccine and is considered immune still act as a vector and transmit the virus?”

That’s a great question and we have had this as a question for the CDC and we are waiting on a response of an absolute response from the CDC and CDPH. 

The North Coast Journal asks, “We understand Public Health recommendations are that people who receive the vaccine should still follow masking social distancing and other public health guidelines to slow transmission of COVID. Can you explain why?”

We should continue to socially distance because of the way that the tier system works, we should continue to mask because of the way that this tier system is working. Because we are not all getting vaccinated at the exact same time and we’re not all getting vaccinated even in the same months maybe, because we’re going to be allotting the vaccine to the highest level down to then the general population in risk, then we need to continue to do these things as to not have a sense of security that everybody here is immune. 

The North Coast Journal asks, “Understanding the state has set a basic tiered criteria for vaccine distribution, how is the county determining the order of who gets vaccinated when within those tiers. For example the county reported receiving 975 doses earlier this week, enough to administer a first dose to less than 10 percent of our estimated health care workforce. What’s the criteria and who is determining it for deciding the order of who gets vaccinated when?”

That’s a very important question and one thing that the community should know is that there is actually an advisory board that has been created by the state of California around this exact question and this has been created by the California Health and Human Services along with CDPH and every week actually there is a call in which stakeholders and members of all of the vast California communities get into this call and they ask questions and they talk about why separate workforces and separate populations fit into the equity scheme, right, of distributing this vaccine appropriately, ranging from workers that are dealing with agriculture to the ACLU, are on this call.

And so we have worked very hard in California to establish a tier system so that we are literally getting the people who are in close contact with COVID first, then all the way down with equity into people who are still around COVID and doing essential jobs. 

The North Coast Journal asks, “What oversight or transparency measures are in place to ensure this is an objective process based on need, risk and science?”

So the process that has gone into place in the state of California during this whole COVID-19 vaccination planning comes from an advisory committee that is run by the state of California and this advisory committee was created by the California Department of Public Health and the California Department of Health and Human Services. This advisory committee makes up many stakeholders who publicly come onto the calls and talk about the equity of how we are distributing this vaccine and the state of California feels very strongly about equity when it comes to workers who are in constant contact with COVID, workers who are essential, and as we move through the tiers, as we move more into the general population and the other essential workers, we are actively trying to find a way to be equitable for all of those populations.

PREVIOUSLY:

• McKinleyville Man Shot to Death on Samoa Peninsula Last Night; Sheriff’s Office Seeking Suspect Associated With Matte, Two-Door Coupe

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Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

The suspect of a homicide occurring last month in Samoa has been arrested.

Hutson.

On December 10, 2020, at about 1:30 p.m., an officer with the Eureka Police Department on patrol near the 100 block of West Del Norte Street in Eureka saw a man matching the description of a person of interest in the homicide of 34-year-old Perry Bailey on November 15 in Samoa. The man, identified as 26-year-old Travontae Javoni Hutson of Eureka, was also known to have out of county warrants for his arrest.

When the EPD officer attempted to contact Hutson, Hutson fled on foot into a residence on the 200 block of West Hawthorne Street. Additional officers responded and took Hutson into custody without further incident. During the booking process at the Humboldt County Correctional Facility, Hutson was found to have a small quantity of methamphetamine on his person.

Hutson was booked into Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of obstructing an officer (PC 148(a)(1)) and possession of controlled substance (HS11377(a)), in addition to his out of county warrants.

Following further investigation by the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Criminal Investigation Division, on Monday, December 14, Sheriff’s Investigators requested a charge for murder (PC 187) be added to Hutson’s booking in relation to the homicide of Perry Bailey. Hutson is being held in the correctional facility without bail.

This investigation is ongoing.

Anyone with information about this case is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

From the Eureka Police Department:

On December 15, 2020, at about 5:15 p.m., officers of the Eureka Police Department (EPD) responded to 4th (Northbound Highway 101) and L Streets for the report of an injury traffic collision involving a pedestrian and a vehicle.

Officers located the 65-year-old male pedestrian down on the ground with what appeared to be major injuries. Humboldt Bay Fire and City Ambulance arrived on scene and provided medical care and transportation to the hospital. The 54-year-old male driver of the vehicle remained on scene and was cooperative throughout the investigation.

Preliminary investigation indicates that at the time of the collision, the involved vehicle was traveling in the center lane of 4th Street and the pedestrian was crossing 4th street at the L Street intersection. The exact cause of the collision is under investigation. The pedestrian remains in critical but stable condition. The driver of the vehicle was evaluated on scene and displayed no signs of impairment. An EPD officer with advanced traffic accident investigation training and an Evidence Technician processed the scene.

This is an ongoing investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact Officer White at (707) 441-4060.

From the Humboldt County Druge Task Force:

On December 15th, 2020, special agents with the Humboldt County Drug Task Force (HCDTF), with the assistance of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department (HCSO), served a search warrant on Dale “Davey” Baldridge (43 years old from Eureka). Baldridge was currently out of custody on bail from a November 24th, 2020 arrest by the Eureka Police Department POP team for drug sales. Baldridge is also on Humboldt County probation for felon in possession of a firearm. HCDTF agents had information that Baldridge was again selling drugs.

Agents had Baldridge stopped by an HCSO Deputy after he drove away from his residence in the 6000 block of Noe Drive in Eureka. A search of Baldridge was conducted, and agents located the following evidence in his pockets:

• 5 bags of heroin totaling 12.2 grams
• 3 bags of methamphetamine totaling 13.5 grams
• $6,500 in US currency
• 2 rounds of .22 caliber ammunition

Agents responded back to Baldridge’s residence and served the search warrant on the house. Agents located a digital scale with heroin residue on the scale. No other evidence was located.

Baldridge was booked at the Humboldt County Jail for the following

• H&S 11351 Possession of heroin for sale

• H&S 11352(a) Transportation of heroin for sale

• H&S 11378 Possession of methamphetamine for sale

• H&S 11379(a) Transportation of methamphetamine for sale

• PC 12022.1 Committing a felony while out on bail

• PC 30305(a) Felon in possession of ammunition

Anyone with information related to this investigation or other narcotics related crimes are encouraged to call the Humboldt County Drug Task Force at 707-267-9976.