BUSINESS
July 9, 2011 | By Julie Wernau
It's not a regulatory arm of the government, but try to find a gadget in your home that Underwriters Laboratories hasn't touched. Check under the computer mouse or the smoke alarm, beneath the light switch or on the TV cable, and the telltale "UL" stamp will be there. The marking means the device is unlikely to catch fire. And if you accidentally drive away from the gas station with the nozzle still in the tank, UL is the reason you don't haul away the entire pump and set the neighborhood ablaze.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 2, 2010 | By Bettina Boxall
Why does Malibu seem to erupt in flames every fall, while most of Los Angeles, which has its share of houses clinging to brushy hillsides, does not? The reason, according to a new study, is blowing in the wind. Researchers have developed the first high-resolution map of Santa Ana wind events, showing that the hot, dry blasts don't sweep uniformly across the Southland and that the danger of large, wind-whipped wildfires is therefore greater in some parts of the region than others.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 25, 2009 | By Paul Pringle
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors called on the federal government Tuesday to authorize the U.S. Forest Service to deploy water-dropping helicopters at night and make greater use of local reinforcements to battle blazes like the deadly Station fire. Acting at the request of the county Fire Department, the board voted 5 to 0 to send letters to Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommending the policy changes for all fires in the Angeles National Forest. "We need to implement every possible measure to allow firefighters to do their work and put out fires," said Tony Bell, a spokesman for Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who introduced the letters.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 12, 2009 | Baxter Holmes
Every morning for 19 days, Dave Jurasevich awoke on Mt. Wilson to sunrises darkened by smoke and ash. Every night, the superintendent of the Mt. Wilson Observatory slept at the site he hoped to protect. He was too worried to catch more than three or four hours of rest a night. When he did sleep, he bedded down on a mattress on the floor of a small office. He was usually hungry. Firefighters slept in the next room. Overhead, the night sky glowed hot as the Station fire raged closer.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 10, 2009 | Baxter Holmes
More than a month ago, the Station fire was fully contained by firefighters. But on Mt. Wilson, it doesn't look that way. Dave Jurasevich has looked out the window of the Mt. Wilson Observatory and spotted several plumes of smoke in recent weeks since the worst fire in Los Angeles County history was declared contained. "We don't see a lot of fire, but we see smoke -- and where there's smoke, there's fire, obviously," said Jurasevich, the superintendent at the observatory, which was evacuated twice during the Station fire.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 1, 2009 | Tony Perry
San Diego Gas & Electric Co. has agreed to pay the state $14.3 million to settle accusations that shoddy maintenance led to downed power lines, igniting the devastating 2007 brush fires in northern San Diego County that destroyed more than 1,500 homes.But the tentative settlement, announced Friday by the utility company and the Consumer Protection and Safety Division of the Public Utilities Commission, does not end the dispute over power line maintenance and its link to brush fires.