Camps

The first California county has agreed to send some of its jail inmates to work at state prison fire camps, helping to patch a hole in the state's wildfire defense system created by prison realignment. Riverside County agreed to pay the state $46.19 a day for each of up to 200 inmates it sends to the prison system's fire camps. The money is intended to cover the cost of housing and training the inmate laborers. A five-year contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was approved by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

The Mustangs will take to the field for the final time this fall. The sports program at the Kilpatrick juvenile detention center is being disbanded - "suspended," officials call it - so the 50-year-old facility in the Malibu Hills can be leveled and rebuilt. The remake has been in the works for years; it's one of the oldest, most decrepit of the county's 14 rural juvenile camps, with a gym yellow-tagged since the Northridge earthquake and a pitted, patchy playing field. But it is also the only camp with a sports program , one that made a national name for itself six years ago in the movie "Gridiron Gang.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Facing the crumpled remnants of the national palace, an expansive plaza is punctuated by trees, benches and statues of Haitian heroes. Students read in the shade, women gossip, children play soccer. This serene picture in Port-au-Prince's central square might seem ordinary, but it is not. After a massive earthquake devastated Haiti's capital on Jan. 12, 2010, about 5,000 displaced people took shelter on the square, turning it into a crowded and dangerous new neighborhood.

Here's a thought: Stash the kids at museum camp and take in a little culture accompanied by the sounds of silence. This summer, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is staging its first summer camps, for children ages 6 to 12. The four one-week camps are from 10 a.m. to noon Mondays through Fridays in August. The schedule: "Is It Art?" teaches children to look at art in different ways by making an installation piece and turning found art into sculpture. Aug. 5-9.

If it weren't hard enough looking after 2,000 earthquake victims crammed into a sweltering schoolyard, Jean Robert Charles now has to worry about rapists. Charles is the de facto mayor of a tent settlement that fills a school and a soccer field in the gang-plagued Matisan section of the Haitian capital. A recent series of rapes has created fear in his camp and others nearby, adding crime and safety to the long list of anxieties facing residents displaced by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The public should know that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is seriously considering closing 19 juvenile court schools in anticipation of a $35.8 million shortfall in the county Probation Department budget. If the politicians are successful in closing the juvenile camps, which have served troubled youths in our county for over 60 years, it will affect some 17,000 youngsters and allow many of them to be released before their sentences and their education are completed in the camps.

Angeles National Forest officials temporarily closed Buckhorn and Chilao campgrounds 30 miles north of Los Angeles because of aggressive bears on the prowl for food in ice chests. Forest Service officials warn campers to store food "out of sight and out of scent." Meanwhile, they will consider more bearproof lockers and garbage cans. The state Department of Fish and Game has killed three bears in the area since Sept. 1, says Angeles forest spokeswoman Kathy Peterson.

Hundreds of children have been sent home from summer camps across Southern California in recent weeks with flu-like symptoms, and camp counselors and directors are taking precautions to prevent the spread of the H1N1, or swine flu, virus in cabins and mess halls.

I read with fascination and sympathy Betty Cuniberti's article on the Japanese internment camps ("Internment: Personal Voices, Powerful Choices," Oct. 4). The mental and physical cruelties perpetrated on these citizens were not worthy of a great democracy. In some respects, they are reminiscent of some of the cruelties perpetrated by our enemies of that time. After all, these people came to our shores for freedom and were learning the principles of democracy. The article reminds me of my own past.

The top contenders to be Los Angeles' next mayor divided into two neatly aligned camps at a debate Tuesday night, with the elected officials touting their records and the City Hall outsiders questioning why voters ought to trust them to solve the city's problems if they have failed to during their combined decades in office. Attorney Kevin James and former technology executive Emanuel Pleitez hammered City Controller Wendy Greuel and City Council members Jan Perry and Eric Garcetti throughout the two-hour forum.