California Highway Patrol release: 

On January 21, 2024, at approximately 2237 hours, CHP Humboldt Communications Center (HCC) received a report of a Toyota truck traveling wrong-way, northbound in the southbound lanes of US 101. At approximately 2243 hours, HCC received a report of a head-on traffic crash in the southbound lanes of US 101 at Metropolitan Road. After the crash, both vehicles were disabled and became fully engulfed in flames.

Emergency personnel responded to the scene and located a 2015 Toyota Tacoma and a 2010 Mercedes Benz C300 blocking the lanes. An unidentified driver was located inside the Toyota whom was determined by medical personnel on scene to be deceased. An unidentified driver and an unidentified passenger were located inside the Mercedes Benz whom were determined by medical personnel on scene to be deceased.

At this time, it is unknown exactly where the the wrong-way Toyota entered US 101. It is also unknown at this time if drugs and/or alcohol contributed to the cause of this crash.

The CHP Humboldt Area office is continuing its investigation and asks anyone who may have additional information to contact the California Highway Patrol at 707-822-5981.

Photos/video by Andrew Goff, unless otherwise noted.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Cal State Faculty Strike Across All 23 Campuses in Historic Labor Walkout

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The mood is lively on the corner of 14th and LK Wood this morning, as hundreds of CSU faculty and supporters gather to picket for better working conditions. They’re marching and chanting  along the street to a soundtrack of rebellious rock ballads.

Nicola Walters, a Cal Poly Humboldt lecturer and a membership and organizing chair of the California Faculty Association, told the Outpost that some strikers have been here since 7:30 this morning and the crowd has been building since then.

The association has many demands, including wage increases and an increase in paid family leave time for new parents, who, Walters said, currently only get 30 days of paid leave to care for a new child.

The university has threatened to garnish pay for those participating in the strike, Walters said.

“It’s emotional” Walters said. “It’s scary for our faculty to be looking at the end of the month and wondering if they’re going to be able to make rent. It’s unimaginable that the CSU pays us so little that losing a week without pay would make people homeless.”

Holly Rae, a grad student, was marching in solidarity this morning at a second picket line near Library Circle. Rae said she’s joining the strike to support her professors, who she sees struggle due to unfair working conditions.

On the path to become an educator herself, Rae is also concerned for her own future and wants to feel confident that she’ll be going into a field where she won’t have to constantly struggle to make ends meet.

“I’m here because I too hope to someday earn a living wage and have fair working conditions,” Rae said.

More photos of the today’s strike below. A press release from the CSU system can be found at this link.

UPDATE: 5:50 p.m.: The Eureka Police Department announces, via Facebook:

The adult female and three juveniles were safely removed from the premises. However the incident has ended with an officer involved shooting of the suspect. The scene will continue to be secured, so please avoid the area. We will release more info as it comes available. This is still an active crime scene.

Officers tell our Andrew Goff, at the scene, that no more information will be released tonight.

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There is a heavy police presence on Union Street near the intersection of 14th this morning, as police try to resolve a situation involving a barricaded subject holding hostages in a home.

According to a Facebook post from the Eureka Police Department, the incident began when police received a report of a stabbing at the residence, apparently injuring a juvenile. A SWAT team has been deployed and is attempting to negotiate with the suspect. Neighboring residents and businesses have been advised to shelter in place.

Streets are closed near the intersection. Avoid the area. We’ll update when we know more.

After more than half a year of failed negotiations to increase their pay by 12% and expand other benefits, the faculty of the California State University today began a historic strike at all 23 campuses.The planned one-week work stoppage is the first time the California Faculty Association has walked off the job at every campus since the union was founded in 1983. It’s part of an escalation of tactics by the faculty group, which staged one-day strikes at four campuses last month and vowed then to up the ante if their demands weren’t met.

“It’s a constant struggle to make ends meet,” said Dirk Horn, a full-time political science lecturer at Cal State Bakersfield who augments his salary of just under $63,000 by teaching at nearby community college locations, other schools and picking up gigwork as an Uber driver. Some days, his teaching shifts require nearly 80 miles of driving across three campuses.Receiving the raises the union is seeking would let him work less — and earn more.“I wouldn’t have to seek those outside income sources because I’d be able to pay my bills, essentially, with my one full-time job,” Horn said.For Cal State, the strike represents a likely loss of learning for many of its nearly 460,000 students at the nation’s largest public four-year university system. The systemwide strike coincides with the first day of spring term at most campuses, and while workers have the right to strike, they also have the right to buck the union.

“Faculty may choose to teach their courses as scheduled,” said Leora Freedman, who heads human resources at Cal State, at a Friday press conference.

All campuses will remain open, said Mildred Garcia, system chancellor, at a press conference Friday. So far there are no plans to extend the length of the spring term.

About 25 picketers showed up at Cal State Los Angeles on a rain-soaked morning, their ranks gradually increasing as the droplets dissipated.

“Hey hey, beep beep, the CSU is mighty cheap,” the faculty chanted as they intermittently blocked traffic on the main road at the campus.

Honoring the union’s demands would lead to layoffs and cuts to student services, Freedman said, echoing past Cal State statements. The faculty union maintains the university can afford it.

A striking worker teaches no classes, avoids meeting with students during office hours and answers no work-related emails. Working partially could jeopardize a faculty member’s right to strike, the union warns.

The faculty union represents 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, sports coaches and mental health professionals. Negotiations between the labor group and Cal State management to ward off this week’s strike broke down two weeks ago, further entrenching both camps. They haven’t bargained since, said Kevin Wehr, bargaining team chair for the union and a professor at Sacramento State.

The smaller Teamsters Local 2010, a labor group of 1,100 skilled maintenance workers, agreed to a contract with Cal State negotiators Friday, canceling their planned strike this week.

Salary and benefits impasse

The faculty union and Cal State officials are far apart on pay. The university offered to provide a 5% raise, not the 12% the union is seeking for this year as a way to combat recent spikes in inflation that diminished the buying power of faculty salaries. Cal State’s 5% offer is consistent with the deals it finalized with other unions last year to avoid an even larger walkout of all the roughly 60,000 unionized workers. Cal State negotiators have also proposed to extend parental leave for faculty from six weeks to eight weeks, still less than the full semester that the union wants.

An independent fact-finder affiliated with the state recommended that Cal State provide the faculty union a 7% raise — an amount the faculty union said is too low. If there’s to be a compromise, it’ll land somewhere between 7% and 12%.University negotiators have offered the faculty 15% raises over three years, contingent on growing state funding — no sure thing as California eyes multi-billion-dollar deficits. The faculty refuses to accept any raises that are conditional.Lecturers and professors earn between $64,000 and $122,000 on average. Wages for the lowest-paid faculty have risen about 20% on average since 2007, but grew by about 40% for campus presidents, whose average salaries are now more than $400,000. The new system chancellor, Mildred Garcia, earns close to $1 million from pay as well as car and housing allowances.

Cal State’s 5% offer is consistent with the deals it finalized with other unions last year to avoid an even larger walkout of all the roughly 60,000 unionized workers.

English lecturer Laura Quinn is basically working two full-time teaching jobs to earn $86,000 annually. At Cal State San Bernardino and the private University of Redlands combined, she taught 27 units in the fall semester. Typically, 15 units is considered full-time.

“The majority of lecturers that I know are working on two or three campuses trying to cobble together a living wage, and that’s not good,” she said.

One major impediment to providing the faculty union a higher general raise? The university secured labor deals with other unions that include reopening salary negotiations if any other union received more than a 5% raise.Other disputes aren’t about pay. For example, the union wants lactation rooms with door locks for new parents. Cal state labor negotiators say the university already complies with the labor codes for pumping breastmilk. The faculty union also seeks more mental health counselors, among other demands.Cal State negotiators said they would agree to 13 of the 15 recommendations the fact finder provided in December — but not on salary.

Docked pay

Cal State vows to dock the pay of workers who strike. “It is a misuse of taxpayer dollars for the CSU to compensate any employee who withholds work,” wrote Amy Bentley-Smith, a Cal State spokesperson.Faculty who strike for a week can expect pay reductions of about 3%, she added.

Union leaders are urging all members to walk the picket lines and avoid work, even the lowest-paid workers who earn the equivalent of $54,000 annually.Nearly two-thirds of faculty are in the bottom half of the four pay ranges, a union spokesperson told CalMatters. And a majority of those workers earn the lowest salaries in those ranges. In 2022, the lowest levels were $54,000 and $65,000 for the two ranges. The union is demanding that Cal State raise those minimum salaries by $10,000 and $5,000, respectively.All campuses except San Francisco State, where spring term starts next week, are encouraging students to report their instructors if they canceled classes this week, according to a CalMatters review of campus websites. “If a class or service is cancelled, you are welcome to share that information with us here so that we can best assure continuity and fulfillment of instruction,” Cal State Northridge wrote to students, using language common across all the other campuses that are asking students for that information.

“The majority of lecturers that I know are working on two or three campuses trying to cobble together a living wage, and that’s not good.”
— Laura Quinn, English lecturer at Cal State San Bernardino

Students in solidarity with faculty are pushing back. On the social media platform Reddit, some students across multiple campuses proposed flooding those reporting forms with fake professor names or complaints about administrators instead.

“It just feels wrong that they’re trying to drag us students into it and have us turn on our professors,” said Jasmine Puente, a Cal State Long Beach student. “A lot of students just don’t want to do that. We want to stand by our professors and we don’t want to be a part of taking them down.”As an aspiring teacher coming from a family of educators — including her mom who teaches elementary school and is president of her local union — Puente grew up supporting educators and unions. She recently graduated with a history degree from Cal State Long Beach and is currently working on her single-subject credential.

Meanwhile, the faculty union said that Cal State leaders are asking all faculty to self-report if they didn’t work this week. The union told its members that they’re not obligated to inform their campuses about their intent to strike, but should answer truthfully in the event their managers ask afterward if they walked off the job. The faculty union message added that while Cal State is “legally able to dock the pay of striking faculty, keep in mind that we will recover this and much more when we win a fair contract.”

The union cannot coerce members to strike nor can faculty require students to take part in labor action in exchange for a grade, various campus FAQs say. Similarly, campus managers are barred by law from punishing workers who picket.

Budget disputes

Throughout the negotiations, Cal State said it cannot afford the faculty union’s demands. The system last May revealed that it spends $1.5 billion less than needed to adequately educate its students. That finding prompted Cal State’s board of trustees last September to usher in consecutively escalating tuition hikes starting this fall — increases totaling 34% over five years. However, most undergraduates don’t pay any tuition because they receive enough state and system financial aid. The faculty union opposed those hikes.“The union stood by us and tried to fight against the tuition hikes,” Puente, the Long Beach State student, said. “I think that we as students can stand by them too.”

The labor group’s leaders hired an accounting professor last fall who concluded that Cal State reroutes more than enough annual surpluses toward its own reserves that could instead go toward student services and faculty pay. The annual surpluses are so high that the university wouldn’t need to touch the money it’s already stored in savings to pay the faculty union’s salary demands, the accounting professor said. University officials refute that contention, saying they must build a financial cushion to withstand economic turmoil and presently fall well short of their own savings goals.Despite new revenue from the tuition hikes and extra dollars Gov. Gavin Newsom promised, system finance analysts said last year that Cal State would still run deficits under a scenario in which all university workers receive 5% raises.A wider set of contract items will be up for negotiation this June. The current labor acrimony risks spilling into those quickly approaching bargaining sessions.

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CalMatters College Journalism Network fellows Haydee Barahona, Briana Mendez-Padilla and Elizabeth Wilson contributed to this story.

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Brianna passed away January 5, at her residence in Eureka. She will be fondly remembered as a strong, beautiful, talented, stylish woman whose bright smile and green sparkling eyes could light up any room.

Brianna was born October 30 in a mountain cabin nestled in the Eastern Sierras near Mammoth Lakes, California. Her early life was spent hiking, swimming and snowboarding. Her interests were varied. While attending Bishop school, Brianna showed her skill as a talented, creative, and prolific writer winning top awards for her stories. She was academically acknowledged yearly on the school’s honor roll. Bri won top medals in track when she was chosen for the Junior Olympics. She loved dancing, especially tap and freeform, and she was also involved in the chess club, school band (where she played flute), as well as softball. She threw a mean curve ball as star softball pitcher, often leading her team to “no hitter” games.

After high school, she continued her education by attending Santa Barbara City College and College of Marin, where she continued her creative path, focusing on painting and drawing. Bri became one of College of Marin’s student artists involved in the original “Faces of the Fallen” art project, honoring the first 1,000 young soldiers to perish in the Iraq war. Bri had a unique impressionistic painting style. She possessed insight into drawing faces that revealed the essence of her subject.

Brianna moved from Santa Barbara to Humboldt to be with her family in 2011. She loved the area and enjoyed quiet walks with her dog Jax in Sequoia Park and the Headwaters. She frequented Zen centers and her sense of simplicity and love for beauty expressed itself in everything she did from cooking to fashion.

Brianna found her passion working with children in the local school system and more recently with persons with disabilities, where her kind and caring nature found an outlet.

Bri is survived by her parents Christopher and Carole Haben of Eureka, brother Alexander and sister Desen Haben of Ferndale, and nephews Kieran and Phoenix who knew her as playful “Auntie Bri.” She will be missed by her large extended family of cousins, aunts, and uncles in Michigan, Florida and Louisiana.

Brianna’s loving presence will remain with all who knew her and she will live on through her works and always in our hearts.

The family will hold a small private outdoor memorial.

In lieu of flowers the family is asking for donations to:

NAMI Humboldt County
PO Box 1225
Eureka, CA 95502-1225

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Born to Pearl and Ada Belle Kesterson on January 14, 1931.

Neal had a typical childhood growing up in Chico and graduated from high school in 1949. In September of that year he enrolled in Chico State College on a two-year program majoring in Drafting and Mapping. In January 1951, not wanting to be drafted, he enlisted in the U S. Coast Guard. He spent four months in boot camp, one year on a sea-going buoy tender operating between San Francisco and the Oregon border. He then volunteered for overseas duty and spent one year on top of a hill northeast of Pusan, Korea on a mobile Loran station. He returned to the United States and spent his last eight months working with the U.S. Customs on port security in Philadelphia and was honorably discharged in January 1951.

Neal returned to Chico and worked part time using the GI bill and re-entered Chico State College. He changed his major to a four-year program majoring in Industrial Arts and Applied Science. In college he was a member of Delta Sigma Phi fraternity and a member of the college football team. In the summer between his junior and senior year he met the love of his life and future wife, Pat Heney, and they both graduated in June 1958, and were married in June 1959. They were married for 64 wonderful years.

After graduation Neal spent six years in the missile industry in Sacramento, Beale Air Force Base, and Santa Barbara. While in Santa Barbara, their daughter Kris and son Michael were born. In June 1959, the government stopped all funding on the Titan missile and Neal and hundreds of others lost their jobs. He returned to Sacramento and acquired a job with Teichert & Son, a general contractor. There he managed and inspected various construction projects.

In 1967 while on vacation in Fortuna he acquired a job with Winzler & Kelly Consulting Engineers in Eureka, where he worked on multiple engineering jobs in Humboldt County. Having a state of California building inspector license, his main job was building construction inspection. He retired from Winzler & Kelly in 1996 after 28 years.

While still employed and after retirement, Neal spent 16 years on the City of Fortuna Planning Commission and four one-year terms as its chairman. He also spent five years on the Fortuna Design Review Board and a one-year term as its chairman. Neal was also a 22-year member of Elks Lodge 652. While retired, Neal spent multiple hours in his shop making various signs out of horseshoes and light fixtures out of deer horns. He even made a two-person, four-wheel bike from scratch just for the heck of it.

Neal and family had two recreational spots: a lease lot on Ruth Lake for 25 years and a camp on the family ranch at Petrolia where they and their friends spent many fun-filled vacations. After they retired, Neal and Pat took many wonderful trips: cross country to the east coast taking in Mardi Gras on the way, to Hawaii, Canada, Mexico, China, twelve different countries in Europe, and cruises to Alaska and through the Panama Canal. They also took many snow skiing trips to various locales.

He was preceded in death by his parents and his son Michael. Those surviving him are his wife Pat, his daughter Kris (Tom) his granddaughter Brittany Powell (Lyndon), great granddaughter Mila, great grandson Levi, granddaughter Nicole Whitmire (Chase) and great granddaughter River, his sister Lorlene, and his nieces and nephews. He is also survived by his cat “Buddy.”

At Neal’s request there will be no services. His ashes will be placed by his son’s ashes at the Petrolia ranch.

On October 15, 2023 our loving son and friend Dale Patrick Rader born on Dec. 5, 1984, unexpectedly passed away.

He was a gentle and kind-hearted soul. The kind of person that would give the shirt off his back to anyone. He always had a smile on his face no matter the circumstances. He had a connection to nature and animals, especially the redwoods. Dale always called Humboldt his home. He was an artist who was well versed in art history.

Dale spent his elementary years in Rio Dell with his mom, Karen, visiting his dad and family in Cheyenne, Wyoming, playing basketball and hanging out with his friends.

He was a peaceful, easy-going young man. He will be missed by all that knew and loved him. He is survived by his mother, Karen Fay Rader (Griess) of Rio Dell, and father, Robert Ray Rader of Cheyenne, Wyo., and many other family and friends.

We are planning to have a gathering in remembrance of Dale this spring in Rio Dell.

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