Gov. Gavin Newsom’s message on homelessness in recent weeks has been clear: The state will no longer tolerate encampments, and cities shouldn’t either.

Californians who live on the streets, as well as the outreach workers who support them, say they’re already feeling the difference. Places where someone used to be able to pitch a tent and sleep in peace have suddenly become inhospitable. Police seem to be clearing camps more often and more aggressively, and are less likely to give advance notice before they come in with bulldozers and trash compactors, according to anecdotal reports in some cities. Even in cities where officials said publicly nothing would change, unhoused people and activists say it’s become harder to be homeless.

But the shift, sparked by a Supreme Court ruling and then further fueled by an executive order, hasn’t caused a significant increase in shelter beds or affordable housing.

That’s led people on the streets to ask: Where are we supposed to go?

“We gotta be somewhere,” said Tré Watson, who lives in a tent in Santa Cruz, and says unhoused people are running out of places to go. “We can’t hover. We come here, they run us away. We go to any park and they run us away. We go to the Pogonip (nature preserve), and they bring bulldozers.”

Tré Watson outside the Housing Matters shelter in Santa Cruz on Aug. 7, 2024. Photo by Manuel Orbegozo for CalMatters

Homeless Californians and activists from San Diego to Sacramento told CalMatters that enforcement has become more frequent and more aggressive. Some city leaders have made their intentions to ramp up enforcement explicitly clear. The Fresno City Council recently passed an ordinance, which, if it gets final approval later this month, will make it illegal to camp on public property at all times. San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the city will launch a “very aggressive” crackdown, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Others have said they won’t make changes to their encampment strategies. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors last month reaffirmed that the county won’t use its jails to hold homeless people arrested for camping, the Los Angeles Times reported. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also has been critical of criminalizing public camping.

Newsom pushes for a crackdown on homeless encampments

Homelessness has been a defining obstacle of Newsom’s career ever since he was mayor of San Francisco in the early 2000s. And it’s only become more pressing — California’s estimated homeless population has swelled to more than 181,000, at the same time Newsom is widely rumored to have presidential ambitions.

Earlier this summer, the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court handed cities a new cudgel to crack down on the encampments that proliferate across California’s parks, sidewalks and open spaces. Per the Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling, law enforcement can now cite or arrest people for sleeping on public property — even if there are no shelter beds available to them. That’s a major change from prior legal precedent, which said it was unconstitutional to punish someone for sleeping outside if they had nowhere else to go.

Roberta Titus, 67, sits outside a juice shop on Front Street in Santa Cruz on Aug. 7, 2024. Photo by Manuel Orbegozo for CalMatters

A month later, Newsom responded with an executive order directing state agencies to ramp up enforcement against encampments, and encouraging cities to do the same. The order didn’t technically require cities to act, but last week, Newsom made it clear there will be consequences for cities that don’t.

If he doesn’t see results in the next few months, and if he doesn’t feel local leaders are acting with a “sense of urgency,” he’ll start redirecting their funding, Newsom said during a news conference outside a homeless encampment in Los Angeles.

“We’re done with the excuses,” he said. “And the last big excuse was, ‘Well, the courts are saying we can’t do anything.’ Well, that’s no longer the case. So we had a simple executive order: Do your job. There’s no more excuses.”

The state agencies that will be most immediately affected by Newsom’s order — Caltrans, California State Parks and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife — did not answer questions requesting details about how the executive order will change how they clear encampments on their property, nor did they provide data on their prior abatement efforts. State Parks referred questions to the governor’s office, which did not respond.

What it’s like for homeless Californians

In Santa Cruz, enforcement has become particularly “brutal” in recent weeks, said Keith McHenry, an activist who hands out food and other supplies to homeless communities through his organization Food Not Bombs. Though, as in many cities, it’s hard to tell how much of the change is a direct result of the Supreme Court decision and executive order. The tide already was shifting toward enforcement before the justices ruled.

In April, Santa Cruz pushed between 30 and 40 people out of a major encampment in a community park, according to the city. Many of the people displaced from the park then set up tents on Coral Street, outside the local homeless shelter, McHenry said. The city cleared that camp in June. After those sweeps, some people relocated to the Pogonip nature preserve at the edge of the city. Late last month, the city swept the nature preserve.

“We can’t hover. We come here, they run us away. We go to any park and they run us away. We go to the Pogonip (nature preserve), and they bring bulldozers.”
— Tré Watson, resident, Santa Cruz

The city says just five people were removed from the Pogonip in that sweep, but McHenry suspects it was more.

The city says its strategy for dealing with homeless camps hasn’t changed.

“The City’s current practices have proven effective and are already consistent with Governor Newsom’s suggested encampment-related policies for local governments contained in his recent executive order,” city spokesperson Erika Smart said in an email.

First: Spraq, 46, stays with his dogs and a partner in a small camp outside the Housing Matter shelter. Last: An eviction notice on a tent set up on Pacific Avenue. Santa Cruz on Aug. 7, 2024. Photos by Manuel Orbegozo for CalMatters

A group of unhoused people camp outside the Housing Matters shelter in Santa Cruz on Aug. 7, 2024. Photo by Manuel Orbegozo for CalMatters

On a recent Wednesday morning, a man who goes by the nickname Spraq was packing his belongings onto a bike trailer, preparing for the sweep he thought might come later that day on Coral Street. Spraq, who ended up on the streets after the truck he was living in got repossessed about 10 years ago, was camping in the park until police kicked everyone out. He and his ex-girlfriend moved to a nearby street, and two days later, police found them, threw away his ex’s clothes and other possessions, and forced them to move on, Spraq said. So they moved into a parking spot on the street outside Costco – a place where they’d camped without issue many times before, he said. Again, police found them, said they couldn’t be there, and threw away their belongings, Spraq said.

“They kept doing that until we had nothing,” he said.

Combined, McHenry says the recent sweeps mark the biggest push to dismantle encampments that he’s seen in Santa Cruz in years. Before, he said, people would relocate after a sweep and the city generally would leave them alone for a while. This time, police have been coming back regularly to spots like Coral Street to make sure people don’t return, he said. The city recently erected a chain-link fence and orange, plastic barricades along the sidewalk to deter campers.

“There’s just a full-court press to keep people from being settled anywhere,” McHenry said.

Cities respond to Newsom’s push for a crackdown

Enforcement seems to be ramping up along the bank of the San Diego River, where about 300 people live in tents and make-shift shacks — many of whom ended up there after police kicked them out of other camps closer to town, said Kendall Burdett, an outreach worker with the nonprofit PATH. Lately, the authorities have been clearing camps along the river multiple times per week, Burdett said. Before Newsom’s executive order, sweeps happened closer to a few times a month, he said.

The riverbank includes land controlled by Caltrans and by the city, and it’s not always clear who is sweeping camps, Burdett said. But he said he’s noticing the authorities are less likely to give advance notice before sweeping, leaving him and his co-workers scrambling to help their clients. That’s making it harder to get people into housing, Burdett said. People often lose their identifying documents in sweeps — which they need to get into subsidized housing.

“That sets the whole thing back,” he said.

Other times, Burdett can’t find clients after they’re swept. As a result, sometimes clients end up losing their housing placements.

“The last big excuse was, ‘Well, the courts are saying we can’t do anything.’ Well, that’s no longer the case. So we had a simple executive order: Do your job. There’s no more excuses.”
— Gov. Gavin Newsom

San Diego already had been ramping up enforcement, passing an ordinance banning encampments in certain areas last year. But the city says recent developments have changed nothing.

“There has been no change or move to increase abatements after the Supreme Court decision or following Newsom’s executive order,” city spokesperson Matt Hoffman said. “It’s just business as usual as of now.”

In San Francisco, where Mayor Breed promised an aggressive crackdown following the court ruling, the city removed 82 tents and five other structures from the streets the week of July 29 through Aug. 2. Abatement teams engaged with 326 people during those operations — 38 of whom accepted a shelter bed — and arrested or cited nine people, according to the city.

Other cities are passing or considering new, more punitive rules as a result of Newsom’s executive order. In Fresno, the City Council granted preliminary approval last month to an ordinance that would ban camping on public property at all times, the Fresno Bee reported. Fresno County approved a similar measure.

An unhoused person on a kayak in the San Diego River on March 23, 2024. Photo by Kristian Carreon for CalMatters

Stockton Mayor Kevin Lincoln said on Twitter the city must “move urgently” to ensure public safety while also supporting those in need. He made plans for a public study session later this month to discuss how the city will enforce anti-camping ordinances going forward.

In Sacramento, the city is distributing fliers to educate its unhoused residents about the changes under the Supreme Court ruling. The light-blue notices, titled “Attention: Unlawful Camping,” warn that people can be charged with a misdemeanor for camping on public property.

“They’re forcing someone under threat of arrest to pack up and move all their belongings,” said Niki Jones, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness. “And people’s bodies literally can’t handle the physical stress.”

‘Where do we go?’

While Newsom has provided an influx of money for shelter beds and other services in recent years — including $1 billion in this year’s budget for Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention funds that cities and counties can spend as they see fit — his recent executive order comes with no additional funding. Last year, California cities and counties reported having roughly 71,000 shelter beds. They’d need more than twice that to accommodate every homeless Californian.

“Folks are rightly asking, ‘Where do we go?’” Jones said.

Stephanie Ross, 49, has been homeless in Santa Cruz but receives help from local activists. Aug. 7, 2024. Photo by Manuel Orbegozo for CalMatters

Even when shelter beds are available, sweeps often fail to fill them. Santa Cruz, for example, estimates between 30 and 40 people were living in the park encampment it swept in April. Just 16 of those people accepted a shelter placement. No one kicked out of the nature preserve accepted shelter.

People living on the streets of Santa Cruz say police often tell them to go to a sanctioned encampment on the National Guard Armory property — where residents sleep in tents and get meals and showers. But many people won’t even consider it. Several unhoused people CalMatters spoke to said they didn’t want to live somewhere with strict rules and a curfew.

Stephanie Ross, who has been living on the streets of Santa Cruz for seven months, recently lost everything in a sweep. All she had left was the outfit she was wearing — a dinosaur-print dress, pants covered in pink flowers and a sweater she found on the ground. On Wednesday, she met up with McHenry to pick up a new tent to replace the one she says was confiscated by police a few days ago.

Ross said she can’t concentrate on finding a job or doing anything else, because she’s constantly worried about hiding her blankets and other possessions from the police. Even so, she worries she’d chafe under the rules of the Armory tent shelter.

“I need a little bit more freedom than that,” she said.

Demarr Clark, 42, said no one offered him a bed when police recently kicked him out of his camp on the sidewalk outside the Santa Cruz shelter. He lost everything he owned, including his tent, he said. Afterward, Clark moved across the street with a new tent gifted to him by a friend.

Clark grew up in Santa Cruz, and the city always seemed like a place where you could find somewhere out of the way to camp, he said. But that’s changing, he said. “It just seems like they have no tolerance for it anymore.”

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

Though lawmakers and advocates proposed dozens of bills to regulate artificial intelligence in California this year, none have attracted more disdain from big tech companies, startup founders, and investors than the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act.

In letters to lawmakers, Meta said the legislation, Senate Bill 1047, will “deter AI innovation in California at a time where we should be promoting it,” while Google claimed the bill will make “California one of the world’s least favorable jurisdictions for AI development and deployment.” A letter signed by more than 130 startup founders and incubator Y Combinator goes even further, claiming that “vague language” could “kill California tech.”

Prominent AI researchers are also taking sides. Last week, Yoshua Bengio and former Google AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton, who are sometimes called the “godfathers of AI,” came out in support of the bill. Stanford professor and former Google Cloud chief AI scientist Fei-Fei Li, who is often called the “godmother of AI” came out against SB 1047.

The bill, approved 32-1 by the state Senate in May, must survive the Assembly Appropriations suspense file on Thursday and win final approval by Aug. 31 to reach Gov. Gavin Newsom this year.

The bill, introduced by San Francisco Democrat Scott Wiener in February, is sprawling. It would:

• Require developers of the most costly and powerful AI tools to test whether they can enable attacks on public infrastructure, highly damaging cyber attacks, or mass casualty events; or can help create chemical, biological, radioactive, or nuclear weapons.
• Establish CalCompute, a public “cloud” of shared computers that could be used to help build and host AI tools, to offer an alternative to the small handful of big tech companies offering cloud computing services, to conduct research into what the bill calls “the safe and secure deployment of large-scale artificial intelligence models,” and to foster the equitable development of technology.
• Protect whistleblowers at companies that are building advanced forms of AI and contractors to those companies.

The latter protections are among the reasons whistleblower and former OpenAI employee Daniel Kokotajlo supports SB 1047, he told CalMatters. He also likes that it takes steps toward more transparency and democratic governance around artificial intelligence, a technology he describes as “completely unregulated.”

Kokotajlo earlier this year quit his job as a governance researcher at OpenAI, the San Francisco-based company behind the popular ChatGPT tool. Shortly thereafter he went public with allegations that he witnessed a violation of internal safety protocols at the company. OpenAI was “recklessly racing” toward its stated goal of creating artificial intelligence that surpasses human intelligence, Koktajlo told the New York Times. Kokotajlo also believes that advanced AI could contribute to the extinction of humanity — and that employees developing that technology are in the best position to guard against this.

In June, Kokotajlo joined more than a dozen current and former employees of OpenAI and Google in calling for enhanced protections for AI whistleblowers. Those workers were not the first to do so; Google employees spoke out in 2021 after co-leads of the Ethical AI team were fired. That same year, Ifeyoma Ozoma, the author of a tech whistleblower handbook and a former Instagram employee, cosponsored California’s Silenced No More Act, a state law passed in 2022 to give workers the right to talk about discrimination and harassment even if they signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Kokotaljo said he believes that, had SB 1047 been in effect, it would have either prevented, or led an employee to promptly report, the safety violation he said he witnessed in 2022, involving an early deployment of an OpenAI model by Microsoft to a few thousand users in India without approval.

“I think that when push comes to shove, and a lot of money and power and reputation is on the line, things are moving very quickly with powerful new models,” he told CalMatters. “I don’t think the company should be trusted to follow their own procedures appropriately.”

When asked about Kokotajlo’s comments and OpenAI’s treatment of whistleblowers, OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois said company policy protects employees’ rights to raise issues.

Existing law primarily protects whistleblowers from retaliation in cases involving violation of state law, but SB 1047 would protect employees like Kokotajlo by giving them the right to report to the attorney general or labor commissioner any AI model that is capable of causing critical harm. The bill also prevents employers from blocking the disclosure of related information.

Whistleblower protections in SB 1047 were expanded following a recommendation by the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection committee in June. That recommendation came shortly after the letter from workers at Google and OpenAI, after OpenAI disbanded a safety and security committee, and after Vox reported that OpenAI forced people leaving the company to sign nondisparagement agreements or forfeit stock options worth up to millions of dollars. The protections address a concern from the letter that existing whistleblower protections are insufficient “because they focus on illegal activity, whereas many of the risks we are concerned about are not yet regulated.”

“Employees must be able to report dangerous practices without fear of retaliation.”
— Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, Democrat from San Ramon

OpenAI spokesperson Hannah Wong said the company removed nondisparagement terms affecting departing employees. Despite these changes, last month a group of former OpenAI employees urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate nondisclosure agreements at the company as possible violations of an executive order signed by President Joe Biden last year to reduce risks posed by artificial intelligence.

Bay Area Democrat Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, who leads the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee, said she helped add the whistleblower protections to SB 1047 because industry insiders have reported feeling muzzled by punitive non-disclosure agreements, even as more of them speak out about problems with AI.

“If Californians are going to feel comfortable engaging with these novel technologies, employees must be able to report dangerous practices without fear of retaliation,” she said in a written statement. “The protections the government provides should not be limited to the known risks of advanced AI, as these systems may be capable of causing harms that we cannot yet predict.”

Industry says bill imperils open source, startups

As vocal as they’ve been in opposing SB 1047, tech giants have said little about the bill’s whistleblower protections, including in lengthy letters that Meta, Microsoft, and Google sent to lawmakers. Google declined to comment about those provisions, while Meta declined to make California public policy lead Kevin McKinley available for comment. OpenAI pointed to a previous comment by Bourgeois that stated, “We believe rigorous debate about this technology is essential. OpenAI’s whistleblower policy protects employees’ rights to raise issues, including to any national, federal, state, or local government agency.”

Instead, opponents have highlighted the bill’s AI testing requirements and other safety provisions, saying compliance costs could kneecap startups and other small businesses. This would hurt the state economy, they add, since California is a center of the AI industry. The bill, however, limits its AI restrictions to systems that cost more than $100 million, or require more than a certain quantity of computing power to train. Supporters say the vast majority of startups won’t be covered by the bill.

Opponents counter that small businesses would still suffer because SB 1047 would have a chilling effect on individuals and groups that release AI models and tools free to the public as open source software. Such software is widely used by startups, holding down costs and providing them a basis on which to build new tools. Meta has argued that developers of AI software will be less likely to release it as open source out of fear they will be held responsible for all the ways their code might be used by others.

“If we over regulate, if we over indulge and chase a shiny object, we can put ourselves in a perilous position.”
— Gov. Gavin Newsom

Open source software has a long history in California and has played a central role in the development of AI. In 2018, Google released as open source its influential “BERT,” an AI model that laid the groundwork for large language models such as the one behind ChatGPT and that sparked an AI arms race between companies including Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Other open source software tools have also played important roles in the spread of AI, including Apache Spark, which helps distribute computing tasks across multiple machines, and Google’s TensorFlow and Meta’s PyTorch, both of which allow developers to incorporate machine learning techniques into their software.

Meta has gone farther than its competitors in releasing the source code to its own large language model, Llama, which has been downloaded more than 300 million times. In a letter sent to Wiener in June, Meta deputy chief privacy officer Rob Sherman argued that the bill would “deter AI innovation in California at a time when we should be promoting it” and discourage release of open source models like Llama.

Ion Stoica is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and cofounder of Databricks, an AI company built on Apache Spark. If SB 1047 passes, he predicts that within a year open source models from overseas, likely China, will overtake those made in the United States. Three of the top six top open source models available today come from China, according to the Chatbot Arena evaluation method Stoica helped devise.

Open source defenders also voiced opposition to SB 1047 at a town hall hosted with Wiener at GitHub, an open source repository owned by Microsoft, and a generative AI symposium held in May.

Newsom, who has not taken a position on the legislation, told the audience it’s important to respond to AI inventors like Geoffrey Hinton who insist on the need for regulation , but also said he wants California to remain an AI leader and advised lawmakers against overreach. “If we over regulate, if we over indulge and chase a shiny object, we can put ourselves in a perilous position,” the governor said. “At the same time we have an obligation to lead.”

Aiming to protect tech workers and society

Sunny Gandhi, vice president of government affairs at Encode Justice, a nonprofit focused on bringing young people into the fight against AI harms and a cosponsor of the bill, said it has sparked a backlash because tech firms are not used to being held responsible for the effects of their products

“It’s very different and terrifying for them that they are now being held to the same standards that pretty much all other products are in America,” Ghandi said.” There are liability provisions in there, and liability is alien to tech. That’s what they’re worried about.”

Wiener has disputed some criticisms of his bill, including a claim, in a letter circulated by startup incubator Y Combinator and signed by more than 130 startup founders, that the legislation could end up sending software developers “to jail simply for failing to anticipate misuse of their software.” That assertion arose from the fact that the bill requires builders of sufficiently large language models to submit their test results to the state and makes them guilty of perjury if they lie about the design or testing of an AI model.

“It’s very different and terrifying for them that they are now being held to the same standards that pretty much all other products are in America.”
— Sunny Gandhi, vice president of government affairs at Encode Justice

Wiener said his office started listening to members of the tech community last fall before the bill was introduced and made a number of amendments to ensure the law only applies to major AI labs. Now is the time to act, he told startup founders, “because I don’t have any confidence the federal government is going to act” to regulate AI.

Within the past year, major AI labs signed on to testing and safety commitments with the White House and at international gatherings in the United Kingdom, Germany, and South Korea, but those agreements are voluntary. President Biden has called on Congress to regulate artificial intelligence but it has yet to do so.

Wiener also said the bill is important because the Republican Party vowed, in the platform it adopted last month, to repeal Biden’s executive order, arguing that the order stifles innovation.

In legislative hearings, Wiener has said it’s important to require compliance because “we don’t know who will run these companies in a year or five years and what kind of profit pressures those companies will face at that time.”

AI company Anthropic, which is based in San Francisco, came out in support of the bill if a number of amendments are made, including doing away with a government entity called the Frontier Models Division. That division, which would review certifications from developers, establish an accreditation process for those who audit AI, and issue guidance on how to limit harms from advanced AI. Wiener told the Y Combinator audience he’d be open to doing away with the division.

Kokotajlo, the whistleblower, calls SB 1047 both a step in the right direction and not enough to prevent the potential harms of AI. He and the other signatories of the June letter have called on companies that are developing AI to create their own processes whereby current and former employees could anonymously report concerns to independent organizations with the expertise to verify whether concern is called for or not.

“Sometimes the people who are worried will turn out to be wrong, and sometimes, I think the people who are worried will turn out to be right,” he said.

In remarks at Y Combinator last month, Wiener thanked members of open source and AI communities for sharing critiques of the bill that led to amendments, but he also urged people to remember what happened when California passed privacy law in 2018 following years of inaction by the federal government.

“A lot of folks in the tech world were opposed to that bill and told us that everyone was going to leave California if we passed it. We passed it. That did not happen, and we set a standard that I think was a really powerful one.”

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

With great sadness, we announce that John William McKeown, aka Papa John, passed away suddenly on May 23, 2024, at the age of 77. John was born August 19, 1946, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island to Frances and John McKeown.

For the past fifty years his home has been in Bayside. He was a master welder and fabricator. He could build anything. He could drive anything. He was the man with the plan. John lived and loved life with passion. He possessed a sharp intellect, a righteous sense of justice, a warrior’s courage, and a clever sense of humor. He was a beloved patriarch; life partner, dad, granddad and great-grandad; he was a dearly loved brother, uncle, great-uncle, and best friend. John established deep relationships and earned the trust, respect, and admiration of many who would call him brother, and many others who would think of him as dad. He valued his family and friends over all else.

This extraordinary man was a legend in his own lifetime! He will be dearly missed.

His family will host a celebration of life on August 18, 2024, starting at 2 p.m. at the Bayside Grange.

“For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” Carl Sagan.

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UPDATE 4:30 p.m: Earlier this afternoon the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office issued a notice expanding the evacuation order for communities surrounding the Boise Fire. Residents in HUM-E009-A, HUM-E009-B and HUM-E025-B should evacuate immediately. 

An evacuation warning is currently in place for HUM-E009-E, HUM-E009-D, HUM- E025-A and HUM-E025-E.

“Residents should be ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice if fire behavior and weather conditions worsen,” according to the Sheriff’s Office. “Residents are advised to prepare for potential evacuations, including gathering personal supplies and securing overnight accommodations.”

A temporary evacuation point has been established at the Karuk Department of Natural Resources at 39051 State Route 96 in Orleans. 

Additional evacuation information can be found on the Sheriff’s Office Facebook page. A map of current evacuation orders and warnings can be found here.

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Original post:

Press release from Six RiversNational Forest:

Orleans, CA., August 10, 2024— The Boise Fire, located approximately 5 miles southeast of Orleans in the Boise Creek Drainage, is experiencing active fire behavior with rapid rate of spread. The fire is currently 915 acres and 0% contained. Fire behavior includes crowning, uphill runs, and long-range spotting. Multiple structures are threatened. Several ground and aerial resources are on scene utilizing an aggressive, direct and full suppression strategy.

A Complex Incident Management Team was ordered. California Interagency Incident Management Team 10 will in-brief at 6pm today, August 10.

Evacuations
Evacuation order and warnings are in effect. For current updates on evacuations, visit the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page or the county’s website.

Conditions are subject to change at any time, visit Genasys for a full zone description. Sign up for Humboldt Alert emergency notifications at the county’s website. 

Fire Restrictions
Forest fire restrictions also went into effect on July 12th. Campfires and stove fires are restricted to those developed areas listed in the forest order located at the Six Rivers National Forest’s website. Smoking, welding, and operating an internal combustion engine also have restrictions in place.

Forest Closures
There are currently no forest closures in effect at this time. Conditions are subject to change at anytime for updated forest closure information visit https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/srnf/notices/?cid=FSEPRD1096395

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PREVIOUSLY: Cal Poly Humboldt President Tom Jackson, Jr. to ‘Step Away’ Next Month But Remain at University

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Press release from California State University:

California State University (CSU) Chancellor Mildred García has appointed CSU Dominguez Hills provost and vice president for Academic Affairs Michael E. Spagna as acting president of California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt effective August 26, 2024. At its September meeting, the CSU Board of Trustees will be asked to approve Spagna as interim president for approximately 12 months while the board conducts a national search for the university’s next regularly appointed president.

“I want to thank Chancellor García for the opportunity to serve Cal Poly Humboldt,” said Spagna. “I’m excited by the prospect of working collaboratively with the university’s dedicated faculty and staff and the greater North Coast community to continue advancing Cal Poly Humboldt’s vision as a center for interdisciplinary study that prepares students seeking to make a difference in our world.”

Spagna succeeds President Tom Jackson Jr., who in July announced his decision to step down and transition to a faculty role.

“Dr. Spagna has personified the mission and core values of the CSU for more than three decades,” said Chancellor García. “He is an extraordinarily skilled and innovative educational leader with a demonstrated and unwavering commitment to improving access, retention and success for diverse students through the deployment of data-informed practices. In addition, he has a remarkable ability to cultivate collaboration across university operations and to inspire external partnerships and support. Dr. Spagna is the ideal leader to guide Cal Poly Humboldt through this time of transition.”

As provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at CSU Dominguez Hills since 2017, Spagna has provided strategic leadership and oversight for the university’s academic vision. He also serves at the system level as provost representative on the CSU Admission Advisory Council and as commissioner for the CSU Commission of Professional and Continuing Education (CPaCE).

Prior to joining CSUDH, Spagna held several positions at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) over a 25-year period, including professor and dean of the Michael D. Eisner College of Education, where he cultivated a $7 million gift to the university’s Center for Teaching and Learning.

From 2008 to 2023, Spagna also served as chair of the L.A. Compact’s Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) Collaborative, where he led a consortium workgroup dedicated to improving educational and career outcomes for the youth of Los Angeles.

Prior to his service at CSUN, Spagna served as consultant to the California State Department of Education; coordinator of the Services to Students with Learning Disabilities program at University of California, Berkeley; learning disabilities specialist and lecturer at Chabot College in Livermore, California; and special education teacher at Landmark West School in Culver City, and at the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA.

Spagna is a scholar in educator preparation and special education. He received a Ph.D. in special education from the UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University joint doctoral program. He earned a master’s in special education from UCLA and a bachelor’s in communicative disorders from Northwestern University.

Fire’s gonna be right about here, more or less.

Press release from Fortuna Fire:

The Eel River Valley Probationary Fire Academy will conduct a structure fire training burn on August 11, 2024, on Tompkins Hill Road in Fortuna. The training will begin at 8:00 a.m. with multiple interior firefighting evolutions followed by demolition of the structure by approximately 2:00 p.m. Access to Tompkins Hill Road may be subject to short delays to allow for water tender/shuttle operations. Caution is advised.

Through the generosity of the property owners and the cooperation of the North Coast Unified Air Quality Management District, these new firefighters from in and around the Eel River Valley will experience the opportunity to test the various skills learned in the academy. One of the primary objectives of the training will be to provide students the opportunity to experience live fire in a controlled environment, allowing the students to feel the reality of heat as in that of an actual structure fire. Training of this type is invaluable and not easy to come by as structures available for training are few and far between.

The live fire training will wrap up an intense seven-week academy where recruits were taught entry-level structural firefighting and rescue skills necessary to bring these new firefighters into compliance with National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) training standards and ensure that they can operate both safely and efficiently on the fire ground and/or rescue scene.

Please forward any questions to Public Information Officer Kirsten Foley, Fortuna Volunteer Fire Department. (707)407-6516.

When I was growing up in Humboldt County, I did not learn much from my parents about their lives in Italy; however, I was exposed to the Italian language every day, especially at mealtimes when my father and mother spoke in the dialect of the Trentino region of northern Italy. Although I always spoke to them in English, my memory stored the Italian. By 1964, it was too late to ask questions about the lives my parents had led in Italy — my father had died and my mother was incapacitated by a stroke. Fortunately, over the years. I had worked on my Italian. In 1964, 1 began what was to be a series of trips to Italy to meet several aunts and many cousins, to visit my parent’s birthplace, the village of Cogolo in the Val di Peio at the foot of the Alps, and to learn about the lives of the people I loved. This is their story.

Val di Peio

As it is today, with young men from Mexico risking the journey to America to work in the dairies, it was the dairies — and the timber — that drew European workers: Danes, Finns, Germans, Italians, Portuguese and Swiss-Italians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Usually, a husband or a son emigrated, made some money, returned to the “old country,” often re-emigrating with a wife and other family members. Still others stayed in America, and summoned their friends and family to join them. Such was the case with the immigrants from Cogolo.

Val di Peio, also known there as the “Valletta” (“Little Valley”) is — if one flew as a little bird — 150 miles directly north of Florence in Trentino, the diminutive name given to the western portion of the province of Trento. The Valletta, extending nonh-south for four miles, is the home of five alpine villages. At the valley’s northern point sits the village of Cogolo; behind Cogolo, the land zooms precipitously upwards, past the mountainside village of Peio, to the peaks of the snow-capped Alps, places nearly three miles high, that separate Italy from western Austria.

Along the slope of the western peaks of the Valletta is the border that separates Trento from the province of Lombardy. Lombardy was always a part of Italy; Trento, until the end of World War I, was on the extreme western border of the Austrian Empire. Without assimilating the German language or the culture, the people of Trento had been ruled by — and taxed by — the Austrian Empire for centuries.

The people were farmers or miners. In the Middle Ages, after the Romans and other conquerors had passed by. the Roman Catholic Church and royalty joined forces and gave the Bishop of Trent authority over the region. No matter who was the ruler, the peasant farmers always bore the brunt of heavy taxes. In 1525, a rebellion the “Rustic War,” pitted farmers against the nobility and the clergy; monasteries and castles were plundered. As a result, each of the villages was given greater local autonomy, and each devised its own constitution, called the “Carta di Regola.”

With the emergence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a national government took over power. Ultimately the mines gave out and the agricultural land decreased its yields. The staples grown by the contadini — rye, barley, and potatoes — became less plentiful, and it was more and more difficult to feed both the family and the cow (or goat) and pig. Money to buy corn meal to make the contadini’s staple meal of polenta was never sufficient. Taxes, whether they were paid in the form of portions of crops, live cows or pigs, or cash, were increasingly burdensome. Cows were raised for milk; heifers and pigs were sold to butchers and wealthy individuals at the annual fairs.

As Austria’s annual assessments increased, the working-age sons of the valley’s families left the region at to find work elsewhere. Some went to other parts of Austria or Italy for seasonal work; some went to Australia for work in the mines and in timber; and some immigrated to the Americas, where there were mines. lumber, and fertile lands. Most of the men from this region who went to the United States to became miners in the copper mines of Colorado or the coal mines of New Mexico.

These young men — Italian in language, Austrian in nationality — had one major advantage over many other immigrants: They were well educated. For this they had the Empress Maria Theresa to thank. It was she who reformed education during her 18th century reign over the Hapsburg Empire. The Empress decreed that all children be schooled through the age of 12 (later, 14). Consequently, when the men left their home towns, their literacy enabled them to maintain written temporal correspondence with their families and information about America flowed generously throughout the region.

It was not unusual for immigrants to make several trans-Atlantic passages. The steamship companies charged about $30 for a steerage ticket; the largest ships could hold as many as 2,000 people in the lower deck for the two-week crossing. Steerage passengers were allowed scant baggage (one trunk, now in a place of honor in my living room, accompanied my parents to America).

All that was needed to embark was a passport or visa, and a quick inspection by the European steamship representative to determine if a person had any illness that would bar him from entrance. After 1892. arrivals in New York City disembarked at Ellis Island and doctors inspected them for signs of “dangerous” diseases or mental deficiency. After 1909, each immigrant parent was also required to show that they possessed the equivalent of $25. After 1917, everyone was subjected to a literacy test — the ability to read forty words in his native language. Unlike today, once someone passed through the immigration procedures and was admitted to the country, they were legal U.S. residents. It would not be until the Immigration Act of 1921, in which quotas were initiated, that the ease of entry diminished.

Vigilio Pegolotti

The eider statesman who began the migration to Humboldt County from the Val di Peio was Vigilio Pegolotti, born in Cogolo in 1871. The Pegolottis were a peasant family that Cogolo’s church records trace back to the 16th century. The family name, so far as can be ascertained, is unique to the Val di Peio. (It may be derived from the valley’s name.) Vigilio went to school until he was 14. Every morning, the teacher led the children in singing the Austrian National Anthem in honor of his Majesty. Emperor Franz Josef I — but they sang it in Italian. When Vigilio grew up, he was an imposing six-footer, who was well-read and loved to quote Dante’s La Divina Commedia. Vigilio also loved to give orders: As his family had more land than most people in Cogolo, he had a certain local importance. Then he got into trouble.

Vigilio Pegolotti family, c. 1930, at Goble Lane, Ferndale. From left to right: Agnes, Vigilio, Maria, Pauline. This photo and those below via the Humboldt Historian.

Each summer, everyone’s cows were herded to a communal pasture. There, the cattle stayed throughout the season, guarded by shepherds. To breed the cows, the community had only one bull. One summer, Vigilio was in charge of the bull — and he allowed it to get loose. Village lore is that, as a result. Vigilio generated ill-will that he could never overcome. While the exact details are lost to history, we can assume that a loose bull impregnated cows in the wrong season. If cows were not bred so that they would calve before winter, they could not give milk throughout the winter, an essential dietary need. The people in the village whose cows were wooed by the loose bull would not easily have forgiven Vigilio’s blunder. Also unforgiving was one of the village’s loveliest women, who had been enamored with Vigilio, but who, because of the bull, refused to marry him. In a small village, such a rejection is shameful. Vigilio, humbled, married instead Maria Bezzi, a plainer woman. A daughter. Agnes, was born in 1910, and a second girl, Pauline, in 1912.

Now forty years old, with a wife and two infant daughters, Vigilio decided to go to America, a judgment that rested most likely on a combination of village disapproval and the need for money to support his family. At the urging of a cousin, who talked of fertile valleys, timber forests, and the Italian colony in San Francisco, in 1912 Vigilio sailed from Le Havre on the SS Chicago, passed through Ellis Island, and took the train to California. His family — due to the outbreak of World War I — was unable to join him for seven years. In San Francisco, regaled by tales of the fertile Eel River Valley, Vigilio sailed north to Humboldt Bay, and soon settled on a rented farm on Loleta’s Cock Robin Island. Vigilio was to be the magnet that ultimately drew other farmers from the Val di Peio to Humboldt.

Giacomo Pegolotti

Giacomo Paolo Pegolotti was born in 1890. the only male in a family of four children. (Before his birth, three sons had died in infancy, including twins named Giacomo and Paolo.) After his school years, he worked with his father Antonio farming small plots of land on the hillsides during the summers, and finding winter work elsewhere, sometimes in an uncle’s store near Ferrara. The family’s funds were sparse; Giacomo most likely had no choice but to emigrate.

His journey began in October 1912, eight months after his cousin, Vigilio, left Cogolo. Giacomo. 22 and unmarried, made his way with three friends to Southampton, England, where they sailed to America on the SS St. Paul. The men went to the coal mines of Raton, New Mexico, a major destination of Italian immigrants since the 1880s. Mining paid well enough money for Giacomo to send money back to Italy to help the family pay their taxes. The mines, however, were dangerous — and so were the living conditions. When he was an old man, Giacomo gave his son, Antone, a small revolver, and told Antone that he bad always kept the gun by his side when he slept in Raton.

In August, 1914, the “War to End All Wars” began on the European continent between the Allies (principally England, France, and Russia) and the German/Austro- Hungarian coalition. Italy remained neutral until 1915. when the government joined the Allies by signing the Pact of London, which guaranteed that at the end of the war Italy would regain the Trentino and the Tyrol from Austria. With that, Italy and Austria became enemies — and the peaceful Val di Peio became a major site of confrontation, the Italians on the Lombardy side of the valley, and the Austrians on the other.

Giacomo, tired of the mines, could not return to his home without being drafted into the Austrian army; gratefully, he accepted Vigilio’s invitation to leave New Mexico and work on his cousin’s dairy.

Vigilio was a hard taskmaster. In those days, milk was placed in ten-gallon cans to be picked up by the creamery truck. One morning, in his haste to get the cans up on the platform. Giacomo, my father, spilled an entire can. Vigilio yelled at my father and asked how it could have happened. My father explained, using another full milk can as an example — and spilled the second can as well. My father never forgot le botte (the blows) he received from Vigilio for his mistakes.

Homesick and longing to begin a family of his own, Giacomo returned to Cogolo in 1920. Eight years earlier, he had been engaged to a village girl who had planned to join him in America. Her father forbid her to leave and she married another. Whether my father knew this before he returned is unclear, but once he arrived in Cogolo women were not scarce: marriage to Giacomo guaranteed a life in America. One who showed particular interest was Ida Migazzi.

The Migazzi family had less of a peasant tradition than most people in the village. Ida’s father had been a blacksmith, a trade long practiced by the family in a region where iron ore had been a commercial staple. The family had a special ranking: the Bishop of Trent had bestowed the royal title of “count” on the head of the family. Not only that, but one branch of the Migazzi family had left Cogolo, settled in Innsbruck. Austria, and produced Christoforo Migazzi, the Cardinal of Vienna at the time of the Empress Maria Theresa and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

It is unlikely that all this meant much to my father; he simply found Ida Migazzi a worthy woman to be his wife. On February 23, 1921, they were married in the crowded little village church, followed by a brief reception at the Migazzi home. Toasts were given with the traditional zabaglione. The reception had to be brief — that afternoon the newlyweds left for Trieste and boarded the SS Belvedere for the journey to New York. In America they rode the cross-country train to San Francisco, and then traveled up to Loleta, to the farm of Vigilio Pegolotti, where they began their life as tillers of the Humboldt soil.

The Paolo Gabrielli Family

Vigilio’s letters to his wile in Cogolo about the good news of Humboldt were shared with everyone in the close-knit society of the Valletta, including the village of Vermiglio, a town near the mouth of the Valletta. Paolo Gabrielli was a shoemaker in Vermiglio who had fallen in love and married, in 1907, one of Vigiiio’s cousins, Felicita Pegolotti. Felicita had come to the Gabrielli home to learn the skill of sewing from Paolo’s sister. In 1914, when Paolo and Felicita had two little boys and an infant daughter, Paolo determined that he, too, should go to America to earn more money for his family. The news from Vigilio about the lush Eel River Valley was appealing. Paolo emigrated to Ferndale in February 1914 with the intention of sending for his wife and children shortly. What he didn’t know was that with the Great War, all immigration would cease and, even worse, the war would bring tragedy to his town and to his family.

When Italy and Austria declared war in 1915. the Austrians feared an attack by the Italian army from Lombardy to the west. To set their defenses, the Austrians placed massive gun emplacements on the snow-and-ice-covered eastern flanks of the Valletta. Naturally, the Italians followed with similar defenses on the western Lombardy ramparts. For three years, the armies bombarded each other with severe regularity in what would become known as la Guerra Bianca, the White War.

For the Austrians, cannonading was not enough; they feared surprise attack by infiltration at night from the Lombardy hills, over the Passo Tonale, and down what had been the Austrian Imperial Highway. This road went through Vermiglio. the closest town to the Italian border, and past the mouth of the Valletta on its way east along the Val di Sole. Since the entire area of the Valletta was lull of Italian sympathizers, the Austrians first considered deporting everyone from the region. Astute cooperation of the clergy and town leaders with the military saved everyone except those in Vermiglio.

The fearful Austrians first drafted all the healthy men of the village into the army, and then assembled the remaining villagers — old, young, healthy, or infirm — to begin a long journey by foot and by train to a refugee camp at Mittendorf, outside of Vienna, hundreds of miles away. Felicita Gabrielii and her three children — two small boys, Virgilio and Louis, and an infant girl, Paolina — were among the evacuees. Contagious diseases spread quickly through the close quarters in the wooden barracks; among the many from Vermiglio who died was Paolina.

After the war ended in 1918, the province of Trento reverted to Italy, and the survivors of Mittendorf, including Felicita and her two sons, returned to Vermiglio. A year later, the two joined Paolo in Ferndale. (Virgilio Gabrielli. the little boy who had suffered in the Mittendorf concentration camp, became a Catholic priest. Known to friends as “Father Gino,” he was the second man from Ferndale to become a priest; called to the Sacramento diocese, he served nine parishes in three Sierra Nevada foothill counties.)

The Migazzi/Dieni Family

Virginia “Pia” Megazzi Deini.

The foundation for the fourth of the families to come from Cogolo to Humboldt was set a month before the marriage of my parents, when in January 1921, Virginia “Pia” Moreschini set out for the United States.

Pia’s parents had had eleven children, but only four lived to adulthood — a son and three daughters. To help grow the crops, the young girls worked as hard as the men. Then along came the White War. As happened to many young women of the Val di Peio, Pia was conscripted by Austrian officers to bring food to the soldiers at night. Cannons fired across the Valletta during the day. At night, the ice-cold brilliance of massive searchlights attempted to ferret out any secret activities. Pia and other young girls knew mountain trails; they followed the dark trails up to platforms at the base of aerial trams. There, they deposited food to be transported via funiculars to the often frostbitten Austrian troops in their bunkers. Meat was seldom available, since the few goats and cows were needed milk; potatoes, barley soup, and rock-hard rye bread were the staples for the contadini and the Austrian soldiers. As Pia brought food over icy trails to the Austrian troops, she must have prayed for some miracle to get her out of the the Valletta.

Her prayers were answered — three years after the war ended — when 38-year-old Achille Migazzi, who had left Cogolo in 1905 for the United States, sent word back to his family that he was ready to marry. Was there any woman there who would come to be his wife in Idaho? Twenty-eight-year-old Pia didn’t hesitate — for two years already she had heard about the wonderful United States from Felicita Gabrielli, her first cousin, in Ferndale.

Pia wrote to Achille (also a second cousin of my mother) and made arrangements to be his bride. With sad goodbyes to a family she would never again see, Pia left Cogolo for Genoa to board the ocean liner Re D ‘Italia and begin her journey to Pocatello. There on March 4, 1921, she and Achille were married. And it was on the marriage license that, for reasons unknown, the family name officially exchanged an “i” for an “e,” and became Megazzi.

Achille Migazzi (ca. 1900) in the uniform of an Austrian soldier.

Once settled with her husband and working the farm they had rented, Pia sent word to her cousin Felicita of her happiness. In the next ten years, Pia and Achille entered a variety of farming ventures from Utah to Oregon, while raising their three children — Felix, Rose, and Henry. Then, in the Depression years, times were hard. Pia and Achille borrowed money to buy a dairy in Ontario, Oregon, along the Snake River; not long after, in March, 1931 almost ten years to the day of their marriage, Achille dropped dead of a heart attack. Pia, completely distraught, suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be taken to the hospital while nuns took care of the children for many months. Meanwhile, the ranch was foreclosed and sold.

After her recovery, Pia, in a story she was to tell often in later years, went to the bank of the Snake River, took out the remaining few coins she had in her pocket and tossed them into the river, saying, in Italian: “Might as well start from the beginning.”

When Pia was well enough to find employment, she took advantage of Prohibition and became a runner for bootleggers, delivering the goods hidden under the blankets of a baby carriage.

Her good-hearted cousin, Felicita, however, was looking for an opportunity to become a matchmaker, and for she found it in Emanuel — Manuel — Deini, a bachelor from the Piedmont area of northern Italy. Manuel was a farmhand for Hans Hansen in Port Kenyon, and often visited the Gabriellis on their Centerville ranch, a mile from Pacific Ocean. Very likely the reason for Manuel’s frequent visits involved sampling “grappa,” the hair-raising Italian whisky made from the distillation of grape residues after the preparation of legal wine. Paolo Gabrielli had added this illegal venture to the roster of his dairy activities. The still was hidden under the boards of his chicken house.

Felicita convinced Manuel to visit Pia in Oregon. The bachelor took the advice. He had more than one reason to seek a wife — his 93-year-old mother, Fortunata, had taken up residence with him. Fortunata spoke no English and she loved to smoke dark Italian cigars. In Italy, she had survived both the birth of thirteen children and an avalanche that had wiped out her home and all the family possessions.

Pia and Manuel were married by a county judge in Vale, Oregon on December 12, 1934, and they returned to Ferndale, where Reverend J. Gleeson validated their marriage in the Assumption Church two weeks later. The Deini house on Herbert Street now became the home of Pia, Manuel, the three Megazzi children, and Fortunata, the mother-in-law. When Fortunata reached a hundred, Ferndale had a celebration at the Village Club. By that time, Pia’s care for Manuel’s mother had gained the attention of the Ferndale Enterprise, which reported: “Much of the elderly lady’s comfort and happiness is due to her daughter-in-law’s kindnesses and attention,”

The Antonio Ravelli Family

In 1921, the man who would bring the fifth family from the Valletta arrived in Ferndale in the person of Antonio Ravelli, Vigilio’s first cousin. Ravelli was from Comasine, a village hugging the western flank of the Valletta, a half-mile from Cogolo. Trained as a shoemaker, Tony had been in the Austrian army for several years before World War I began. After discharge, he helped his family by working in Broken Hill, the largest mining center in Australia, where, for six years he pushed carts of silver and lead ore along tracks in the mineshafts.

Tony had kept in touch with his cousin Vigilio, who welcomed him into the United States and gave him temporary work on his ranch. Later, Ravelli moved into the redwood forests as a sawyer, paid off his debts, and earned enough money to open Square Deal Shoe Repair in Eureka. In 1928, Tony’s brother Basilio, took over the shop for six months, so Tony could return to the Val di Peio and find a wife. There, in a restaurant in the town of Male, he spotted Maria Gemma Angeli, the hostess. After a short courtship, they manned; Tony returned to Eureka and Gemma joined him a few months later. They had two children, Doris and Bruno, who were raised in the family home on F Street in Eureka.

Of all the families, only my parents, Giacomo and Ida Pegolotti, ever returned to Italy — thirty years after their zabaglione nuptial toasts.

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Author’s note: There are two primary sources for this article: (1) information from visits to the Val di Peio, especially oral histories from cousins that I recorded in November 1995, as well as elderly Cogolo residents who are relatives of the “five families. ” (2) information front members of the “five families”: Donald and Donna Gahrielli. Kathryn Griffith and the late Rose Megazzi Griffith, the late Pauline Pegolotti Mayer, Henry Megazzi, my brother Antone Pegolotti. Bruno Ravelli, and Doris Ravelli, I am most grateful to them all.

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