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Massive Water Main Break Floods Area Near UCLA

Massive Water Main Break Floods Area Near UCLA

By Robert J. Lopez, Caitlin Owens, and James Queally, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — A massive water line break sent a geyser shooting 20 to 30 feet into the air and flooded part of busy Sunset Boulevard and the University of California, Los Angeles, campus.

The water had been raging for nearly two hours when Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said at 5:15 p.m. PDT that it would take crews at least another hour to shut down the line.

Thousands of gallons of water trapped at least three people in cars, flooded underground parking lots on the UCLA campus, and sent a dramatic cascade pouring down the stairs into Pauley Pavilion, according to officials and television news footage.

The water was also flooding campus athletic fields, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

Water was seen inside the J.D. Morgan Center, which houses athletic staff and administration offices, the George Kneller Academic Center, and UCLA’s Athletic Hall of Fame, and water has also been spotted inside the John Wooden Center.

The water flooded Pauley Pavilion, which underwent a $136 million renovation in 2012. Water covered the entire floor in the arena. There were also reports that the water got into the high-end club, which is on the first floor.

Tractors on campus were dropping dirt to create embankments to try to channel torrents of water away from buildings.

In messages on Twitter, Garcetti said the pipe involved is from 1921. The pipe is being “shut down now, but will take an hour to prevent shock to the system and further damage.”

The water main ruptured shortly before 3:30 p.m. in the 10600 block of Sunset Boulevard, fire officials said.

Sunset was closed in both directions from Marymount Place to Westwood Plaza, complicating the rush-hour commute for scores of drivers.

“This is the same thing you would have in any flash flood,” Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Jaime Moore said.

He said that “thousands and thousands of gallons” of water had flooded the area from a 15-foot-wide hole on Sunset just a few yards from the UCLA campus.

People were evacuated from Parking Lots 4 and 7, Moore said.

An LAFD swift-water rescue team with four inflatable boats was at the scene, standing by in case people were stranded.

Students took off their shoes and waded across rivers of ankle-deep water on campus. Other people were showing up with boogie boards — a move discouraged by firefighters.

“That is probably one of the most dangerous things you can do,” Moore said. “For somebody to try and boogie board in this, it’s just going to be an asphalt bath.”

Water was as high as wheel wells shortly after the flooding began. Firefighters assisted at least three motorists.

Photo: Los Angeles Times/MCT/Jabin Botsford

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Death Toll In Fiery Bus Crash Rises To 10; Five Are High School Students

Death Toll In Fiery Bus Crash Rises To 10; Five Are High School Students

By Matt Stevens, Paige St. John and Chris Megerian, Los Angeles Times

ORLAND, Calif. — The death toll in a head-on collision between a FedEx truck and a bus full of Los Angeles-area high school students rose to 10 early Friday, officials said.

The victims included five students, three adult chaperons, the driver of the truck and the driver of the bus, a California Highway Patrol dispatcher told the Los Angeles Times.

Shortly after 5:30 p.m. Thursday, the FedEx truck crossed the grassy median that separates Interstate 5 here and slammed into the bus packed with students en route to visit Humboldt State University, about 200 miles north of the crash site.

The impact, which witnesses said sounded like a series of explosions, caused both vehicles to burst into flames. The fireball and towering black smoke were captured by the cellphone cameras of others in nearby cars.

Dorsey Griffith, a spokeswoman for UC Davis Medical Center, said one patient who was admitted to the burn unit died late Thursday night. The CHP dispatcher confirmed the 10th fatality occurred at the medical center.

Several other patients remained in critical condition at area hospitals. Griffith said another patient admitted into the medical center was in critical condition as of about 3 a.m.

Enloe Medical Center in Chico said it had received a total of 11 patients from the scene and that, as of 2 a.m. Friday, two of the patients were in critical condition. Four were in fair condition, and five had been discharged, the medical center said in a statement, adding that all the admitted patients were passengers on the bus.

Hours after the deadly head-on collision, skid marks from the charter bus stretched nearly 100 yards down the pavement. The hulk of the charred vehicle sat nose down in a ditch, pressed against a mangled small white car.

Marc Smutny, 27, said he was nearby when he heard “probably three explosions” and ran to the scene. “It was insane. The bus was engulfed in flames, smoke in and out of the front,” he said. “The bus looked like it took most of the hit. … It was horrible.”

The identities of the dead were not immediately known. Company officials confirmed in statements that the bus was operated by Silverado Stages and the truck by FedEx.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials were still scrambling to piece together which students were caught up in the accident.

Although officials said they were aware of students from Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools in Koreatown and Manual Arts High School in South L.A. participating in the trip, which was not organized by L.A. Unified, it was unclear whether they were on the bus.

Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino wrote on Facebook and tweeted that two Banning High School students were on the bus but had survived.

“It’s almost impossible to confirm who was on that bus because there were three buses,” said a senior school district official who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak.

LAUSD Assistant Supt. Earl Perkins confirmed Thursday night that students from other districts were also on the trip, but said he did not want to release the names of the other school systems, pending confirmation with them.

“We’re still identifying all who were involved, who was on the buses,” Perkins said.

He added that he and other officials intended to stay up all night gathering information and doing what was possible to inform and assist families. “These are our babies,” he said.

In the wake of the crash, uninjured students were brought to the Veterans Mall Hall in Orland, where the Red Cross set up a shelter.

Volunteers shuttled in and out, serving up water, chips and other food to the students. One grabbed candy to bring inside.

“I’m just trying to think of what they would want if they were home,” the volunteer said.

By about 11:30 p.m., some students had already been picked up by family members, said Bob Coombs, a Red Cross volunteer. The remaining students claimed cots inside the hall where they could spend the night.

Steven Clavijo, 18, a student at West Ranch High School in Santa Clarita, told the Associated Press that he was on the bus during the crash. For hours during the long drive north, the students — from several different schools in the Los Angeles area — watched movies and listened to hip-hop on the radio, Clavijo said.

But he said just as he was trying to get some sleep in his seat in the back of the bus, he felt the vehicle shake from left to right.

“I just heard this loud boom,” he said. “We knew we were in major trouble.”

CHP investigators were just beginning their investigation late Thursday, and officials said it would be picked up by a team from the National Transportation Safety Board on Friday morning. Both northbound and southbound lanes of the 5 Freeway in the area were expected to be closed until around 7 a.m. Friday.

Early Friday, a FedEx spokeswoman confirmed that a company “freight truck” was involved in the collision. In a statement, FedEx said, “We are cooperating fully with the authorities as they investigate.”

In a statement, Silverado Stages officials said they were “helping the authorities in gathering information regarding the tragic accident that occurred on Thursday evening. Our top priority is making sure that the injured are being cared for. Our thoughts and prayers are with the injured, their families and everyone affected by this accident.”

Humboldt State officials said the charter bus was bringing a group of prospective students to the campus’ April 12 spring preview day.

University officials made use of the school’s website to report what they knew. An emergency information line for the Humboldt State University Police was made available to family members seeking their loved ones, at (707) 826-6327.

Gov. Jerry Brown and his wife Anne expressed “heartfelt and deep sympathies to the families, friends and loved ones of those who died in the tragic accident near Orland this evening.”

“As we mourn the loss of those who died,” Brown said in a statement, “we join all Californians in expressing our gratitude for the tireless work of the Red Cross and emergency personnel who responded bravely to this terrible tragedy.”

Photo: Greg953 via Wikimedia Commons

LA Mayor Suspends City’s Firefighter Recruitment Program

LA Mayor Suspends City’s Firefighter Recruitment Program

By Robert J. Lopez and Ben Welsh, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti suspended the city’s firefighter recruitment program Thursday amid concerns about mismanagement and nepotism, including new emails that show special recruitment workshops were organized for relatives of department insiders.

“I have determined that the Fire Department’s recruiting process is fatally flawed,” the mayor said in a statement Thursday.

The action follows a Los Angeles Times report last month that thousands of candidates who passed a written test were excluded from consideration for a new training class because some of their paperwork wasn’t received in the first 60 seconds of a filing period last spring. Nearly 25 percent of the 70 recruits eventually hired were related to LAFD firefighters.

Internal LAFD emails newly obtained by the Times show dozens of department officials were alerted last year that the paperwork, certifying that candidates had passed a physical fitness test, needed to arrive at the city in the first minutes of the filing period if applicants were to have a chance.

Another email discusses a coaching session for relatives of firefighters that was held at a city fire station. The captain who wrote the emails is the focus of a disciplinary investigation. He told the Times he also gave workshops to people not connected to the LAFD.

As part of Thursday’s announcement, Garcetti said a new training class scheduled to begin later this year has been canceled. He also said Santa Monica-based Rand Corp. was being retained to conduct a thorough review of LAFD recruitment and hiring practices.

The screening process used for the first new class of LAFD recruits in five years has been criticized as arbitrary and unfair by unsuccessful candidates, City Council members and Interim Fire Chief James G. Featherstone. Critics say qualified applicants, including some with paramedic and firefighting experience, were passed over merely because they failed to meet the unannounced one-minute cutoff.

Officials say the class, which is 60 percent white and has just one woman, failed to increase diversity at an agency that has struggled to overcome a legacy of discrimination and bias complaints that have cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in legal payouts. Garcetti has said the department needs to move more rapidly toward a decades-long goal of reflecting the population of city, which is 29 percent white.

The mayor’s suspension of hiring was criticized by Capt. Frank Lima, president of the union representing rank-and-file LAFD members.

“We’re very upset and we’re very disappointed with the decision,” he said, adding that the move would exacerbate firefighter staffing shortages. He called the internal investigation and the mayor’s decision to suspend hiring “crazy” and “political.”

The Fire Department declined to comment on the investigation. But documents obtained by the Times show the probe is focused on Capt. Johnny L. Green, a 24-year veteran who has been active in community organizations and mentored youths and new recruits for years.

Records show that the LAFD investigation was launched March 11, several days after Green spoke to the Times about his view of flaws in the hiring process.

Green declined to comment Thursday, citing the internal probe. But in the previous interview, he said he held at least four workshops, three of which were attended by members of the community. “That’s what I do,” Green said. “I help the community.”

During the latest round of hiring, he said he gave workshops to about 75 applicants, including a few dozen LAFD relatives and friends. The workshops focused on interview skills and resume writing. Other department members assisted by participating in mock interview panels, Green said.

He also sent an email, forwarded by a department secretary to dozens of Fire Department members, announcing he would lead workshops at a West L.A. fire station for “LAFD cadets and family members of the LAFD only” to prepare candidates for in-person interviews. One Green email to LAFD members urged recipients to inform applicants they must submit proof they had passed the physical fitness exam to the city Personnel Department as quickly as possible after the filing window opened at 8 a.m. April 22.

“Don’t delay, they have to be ready to go. NO exceptions!!!!!!” he wrote on April 19. He also wrote that they expected to meet their quota of several hundred applicants within two minutes.

After a deluge of submissions on April 22, personnel officials quietly decided to extend interview invitations only to 965 applicants deemed to have submitted their paperwork electronically or in person before 8:01 a.m. Personnel officials have acknowledged they did not inform the public that such a cutoff would be used.

Los Angeles Fire Department via Vlickr