Supervisors debate taking state grant for homeless
SacBee -- Folsom/El Dorado News @ January 4, 2009 # Comments Off
El Dorado County supervisors will consider an agreement with the state for a $1.47 million grant to establish a year-round resource center for the homeless.
If the board accepts the Department of Housing and Community Development grant, United Outreach – a collaboration of faith-based groups, service clubs and local agencies – proposes to locate the center at 4570 Pony Express Trail in Cedar Grove.
The supervisors will meet at 9 a.m. in the board meeting room, 330 Fair Lane, Building A, Placerville.
To learn more, go to www.co.el-dorado.ca.us/bos.
– Cathy Locke
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Miwok tribal chairman proud of role in adding a casino
Diana Lambert @ January 4, 2009 # Comments Off
Nick Fonseca, tribal chairman of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, spent nine years leading his tribe’s quest to build Red Hawk Casino. He says he’ll continue to try to improve his tribe’s fortunes.
Nick Fonseca didn’t know he was American Indian until he was 13.
Now, at age 54, he is the tribal chairman of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, which recently opened the $530 million Red Hawk Casino in Shingle Springs.
Fonseca has spent his nine years as chairman battling lawsuits and eliciting support for the casino.
The chairman seemed relaxed as he spoke to The Bee a few days before the casino opened. He wore a T-shirt, jeans and a rugged cotton jacket and laced his fingers behind his head as he reclined in his office chair.
On the wall behind him were trophies of his greatest accomplishments – a giant photo of the entrance to the Red Hawk Casino and a replica of the overpass that leads to it.
The gambling establishment, which opened Dec. 17, is expected to generate about $250 million a year. Much of that will go to repay investors and to pay expenses and government fees – 20 percent to 25 percent of the net win of its slot machines to the state and at least $191 million over 20 years to El Dorado County.
Fonseca said much of the expected tribal windfall from the casino will be spent on health care, social services, education and housing, as required by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The rest will be split among the 503 members of the tribe.
Each adult member of the tribe will receive an equal share. Children younger than 18 will receive a quarter share. If a child does not earn a high school diploma by age 18, he or she will continue to collect the smaller share until age 21.
The tribe wants to encourage education, Fonseca said of the decision. It doesn’t want its youths to rely on casino checks.
The influx of money also could mean more land for the tribe. Fonseca has his eye on a couple of parcels, one near the casino and 1,500 acres on Rattlesnake Bar Road in Placer County.
He said those who live on the rancheria aren’t required to pay local property taxes. Residents who work there also don’t have to pay state taxes.
But there are regulations.
The chairman learned about these when he first acquired a tract of land in 1975. Recipients of the land must erect a house or otherwise improve the land within two years in order to keep it. Fonseca’s land was taken back and reassigned in the ’80s. He didn’t move to the rancheria until 1997.
As a boy growing up in West Sacramento, Fonseca was told he was Hawaiian. He didn’t learn about his American Indian heritage until age 13. It was then that his grandmother told him of the family’s legacy.
Fonseca believes his lineage comes through one of 10 Hawaiians brought to the United States by John Sutter about 1839. He says his great-grandmother, a Maidu Indian, married one of the Hawaiian men.
The revelation didn’t change life much for Fonseca at the time. He graduated from high school in 1972 and joined the U.S. Navy. After leaving the military, he worked for electronics companies, including Atari.
He returned to the Sacramento area after a layoff and found work at a sawmill. An accidental injury resulted in 300 stitches, and Fonseca went to work as a laborer at the Shingle Springs Rancheria at age 46.
People were getting excited about the notion of a casino at the rancheria at that time, Fonseca said.
Fonseca lives on the rancheria with his wife, Katherine, the tribe’s gaming authority treasurer, who is of German descent. Two of his four daughters also work on the rancheria.
Fonseca said that when he started as chairman, he had to re-energize the seven-member tribal council to get the casino going. But as the casino came closer to reality, tribe members became more active and more people wanted to become members.
“When you distribute checks, people come out of the woodwork,” Fonseca said.
But becoming a tribe member isn’t so easy. Applicants to the Shingle Springs tribe must prove their descent from one of five families of Miwok and Maidu Indians.
Fonseca also has seen more people interested in running for seats on the seven-member tribal council. But he’s not too worried about competition for his seat as chairman, up for election Jan. 20, two days before the casino’s official grand-opening celebration.
“I put a casino up on a hill and an interchange on the freeway,” Fonseca said. “If they don’t appreciate it, I don’t need to be chairman of the tribe.”
Being chairman is a full-time job that calls for everything from quelling neighborhood disputes to rounding up roaming dogs.
“I can visit Governor Schwarzenegger, then I come down here and catch a dog,” Fonseca said.
Fonseca says he hopes to retire from the chairman’s job one day, but not quite yet.
“I don’t ever expect I’ll be able to leave,” Fonseca said. “I won’t always be chairman, but I’ll always be on the council.”
He said the tribe would eventually like to expand the casino and add a hotel. He’d also like to add more businesses to the tribe’s portfolio.
Despite Fonseca’s interest in building a gambling empire, don’t expect to see him contributing to the tribe’s coffers at a slot machine or gambling table.
“I’m not a gambler,” Fonseca said. “You’re not going to watch me dropping a dime into those machines.”
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Folsom History Museum tests Gold Rush knowledge
Cathy Locke @ January 3, 2009 # Comments Off
Students who dredge for nuggets of information about their community’s past could hit pay dirt in the Folsom History Museum’s annual online History Bee.
Jody Hornor, marketing manager for the project, said the History Bee, in its fifth year, focuses on the history of Folsom, Sacramento and nearby communities that were at heart of the California Gold Rush. The event complements school curriculum, particularly for third- through fifth-graders.
Kids in kindergarten through 12th grade may go online at www.folsomhistorymuseum.org between now and Feb. 28 to take four History Bee quizzes. Winners will be announced in April.
Hornor said adults are invited to test their knowledge, too, although they aren’t eligible for prizes.
“We get a few adults – not as many as I might have thought,” Hornor said. “And they don’t score as well as the kids do.”
Questions are based on two local history books: “The Golden Corridor” and “The Golden Hub, Sacramento,” published by Hornor, a Pilot Hill resident, and her husband, Ric. Both books are available at the museum gift shop, area bookstores and online at www.19thCentury.us.
This year’s topics include European explorers who visited the area, the history of Sacramento and Folsom, the discovery of gold, public buildings and railroads.
The History Bee is one of several educational programs offered by the history museum in Folsom’s historic district.
Traveling programs take history to schools in Folsom, Rancho Cordova, Fair Oaks, Gold River and El Dorado Hills.
Melissa Pedroza, educational program coordinator, portrays Isadora Pico Forrester in “Mission Moments,” telling of the Spanish colonization of California through the mission system. Another living history program, “Trails & Tales,” features stories told in the character of Nancy Kelsey, the first American woman to enter California by an overland route.
The museum houses a permanent exhibit on Folsom’s history, but also features temporary displays highlighting specific aspects of the community. A popular exhibit with children this past year, Pedroza said, was “Whimsical Toons,” paintings of historic Folsom houses by Sutter Creek artist Loretta Armstrong.
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Shingle Springs Band of Miwok sue to protect name
Diana Lambert @ January 3, 2009 # Comments Off
Cesar Caballero has been a thorn in the side of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians for several years.
Now the tribe is suing him.
The 39-year-old graphic artist says that 300 descendents of El Dorado County Miwok Indians are being denied their tribal rights, including land on the Shingle Springs Rancheria and proceeds from the new Red Hawk Casino.
The Sacramento Verona Band of Homeless Indians has stolen the identity of the Shingle Springs tribe in order to build the casino and reap the rewards, Caballero claims.
And he’s been pretty vocal about it.
Caballero has spoken at meetings of the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors, El Dorado Irrigation District and chamber of commerce. Whenever the Shingle Springs Indians and the casino have been discussed, he usually has had something to say.
In August, he filed a fictitious business statement with the El Dorado County clerk naming himself as the tribal historian of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians.
There is no such business, Caballero says. He just wanted to lay claim to the name.
The tribe first sent Caballero a letter telling him to cease using the name, then last week filed a lawsuit in federal court.
The suit says the tribe has operated as the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians since 1982, before Caballero started using the name. It points out that 39-year-old Caballero states in the fictitious business statement that he has been doing business under that name since 1914. It also claims his use of the name is an infringement of the tribe’s unregistered trademark.
The tribe seeks a permanent court order to keep Caballero from using the name or any symbol associated with it. It also wants Caballero to stop representing himself as being affiliated with the tribe. The suit seeks unspecified damages, attorney’s fees and any profits Caballero has made using the name.
“There is no profit,” Caballero said Wednesday of the suit’s specifics. “We’re just declaring who we are. I guess they are mad at me because I’m Miwok and I’m declaring it. … We are the Miwok tribe. It’s the truth.”
He points to a letter from the Sacramento Local Agency Formation Commission, dated Oct. 21 of last year, that says that the rancheria’s initial application for annexation to the El Dorado Irrigation District in 1987 was made by the Sacramento Verona Band of Homeless Indians.
He says this band of Maidu Indians moved up to the Shingle Springs Rancheria in the 1970s and ’80s, ultimately usurping the Miwok Indians living there.
A representative for the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians said that the tribe does not comment on pending litigation.
The Shingle Springs Reservation was established on 240 acres in Shingle Springs in 1914, according to county documents. It was later renamed the Shingle Springs Rancheria.
Caballero said his quest to have his tribe recognized as the authentic Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians began as simply tracing his family tree.
“When I started five years ago, it was just research – going to Indian gatherings collecting data,” Caballero said.
Caballero said his research now fills four briefcases. He’s assisted by a core group of 15 to 20 tribe members and a small group of local historians.
Wednesday he pushed a copy of a letter signed by a county librarian across the table. It says that a Rosa or Rose Craig, a full-blooded Indian, was living in the White Oak Township – now the Cameron Park-El Dorado Hills area – during an 1880 census. A letter from the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Sacramento certifies that Caballero is the grandson of Joseph A. Blackwell and great-great grandson of Rosa Craig.
So why doesn’t Caballero simply become a member of the Shingle Springs Band?
He says the tribe hasn’t responded to the application he made in 2004 and has denied at least three dozen others from his tribe.
Karen Hess of Lincoln says her family also was denied. Her mother applied to become an official member of the tribe many years ago.
“The original people are the ones being denied,” Hess said. “… It’s like we’ve never existed.”
Hess and cousin Carla Minor in Arizona are both involved in the effort. Minor, who once worked for the Inter-tribal Council of California, travels from Arizona monthly to attend meetings.
“We’re following along behind him (Caballero), trying to help in any way we can,” Minor said Friday.
Hess said she resents insinuations their efforts are driven by greed. “We were fighting this well before the casino was even an idea,” she said.
Caballero says he has relatives who sorely need the medical care and other benefits that they would have if their tribal identity were restored.
This suit and the countersuit he plans will bring the facts to light, he said.
“I’m not upset about being sued,” Caballero said. “It gives me the opportunity to show the truth.”
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Placerville-area club gets grant for teen center
Cathy Locke @ January 2, 2009 # Comments Off
Placerville-area teenagers in search of recreation, entertainment or just a spot to hang out will have a chance to develop a place of their own.
The Boys and Girls Club of El Dorado County last month received a $20,000 grant from the United Way California Capital Region to install a portable building for use as a teen center.
Daniel Root, 15, is a student at El Dorado High School in Placerville and among the 30 to 40 teenagers who come to the Boys and Girls Club several times a week.
“It’s important to have our own center, because it gives us a place to be away from the little kids,” he said.
The club, housed in the California National Guard Armory next to the El Dorado County Fairgrounds, serves youths 6 to 18.
Duane Wallace, the organization’s executive director for western El Dorado County, said Boys and Girls Clubs nationwide typically see a drop-off in participation among teenagers when they enter high school.
They get cars and jobs, become involved in school activities – and tend not to want to hang around with younger kids.
“They don’t mind being on the same property with their little brother or sister,” Wallace said, “but they don’t want to be in the same room.”
Heidi Messer, teen director, said the number of high school students participating has increased fivefold since a room was set aside for teenagers a couple of years ago.
“If we put (the word) out that we have a teen center, I think we’ll have a flood of new members,” Messer said.
El Dorado Hills and Folsom are among Sacramento-area communities that have opened teen centers in recent years.
The Folsom Parks and Recreation Department operates The Edge, a room reserved for high school teens at the Folsom Sports Complex on Clarksville Road. Kelly Ford, recreation coordinator, said it was developed in conjunction with the Folsom Teen Council, a group of students who perform community service projects.
The Edge is intended as a place for teens to gather and offers no formal programs. The room includes a small stage and is the venue for open mike nights, which typically attract up to 80 youths.
The El Dorado Hills Community Services District opened a teen center in the Community Park at El Dorado Hills Boulevard and Harvard Way in January 2007. It features computers, big-screen TVs, and air hockey, pool and pingpong tables.
Staff member Christine Foster said the center is open to middle school and high school-age youths, but organized programs cater to those in middle school. As the middle school students move into high school many remain involved. The older teens, she said, tend to become activity leaders.
Both the El Dorado Hills center and the Boys and Girls Club set aside the first hour of their after-school programs as a quiet period, in which kids are encouraged to do homework.
Ceili Lamoureux, 14, a student at El Dorado High School, said she looks forward to selecting furniture and equipment for the Placerville center. Topping her list are computers, a TV, games, a musical keyboard and a radio.
She and Root are active in the Boys and Girls Club’s Torch Club, which focuses on community service.
The teenagers raised funds for Angora fire victims in 2007, and baked and sold dog biscuits to raise money for the county animal shelter.
Wallace said the opening date for the teen center depends on how long it takes to install the portable building, which was donated by a Boys and Girls Club board member. The United Way grant will help cover the cost of the required environmental study and site plans.
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Photos from Cash concert at Folsom Prison surface
Cathy Locke @ January 2, 2009 # Comments Off
The Folsom Prison museum now sells photos of Johnny Cash taken during his 1968 visit to the prison, including this 18-by-24-inch print of the singer standing in front of the prison’s gate.
Singer Johnny Cash never did time in Folsom State Prison, but the concert he performed there in January 1968 put the prison on the map and marked a turning point in the entertainer’s career.
The resulting album, “At Folsom Prison,” and its signature song, “Folsom Prison Blues,” have led many people to believe that Cash experienced life behind those gray stone walls, said Jim Brown, a retired correctional officer and operations manager of the Retired Correctional Peace Officers Museum at Folsom Prison.
Among the souvenirs most requested by museum visitors are photos of Cash during his now-legendary performance for inmates. Until recently, Brown said, all he could offer were the photos included with a CD of the concert.
But thanks to his fluke encounter with a former newspaper reporter last year, the museum now sells candid photos of Cash taken during that 1968 visit, as well as an 18-by-24-inch print of the singer standing in front of the prison’s east gate.
Cash became intrigued with the prison after watching the film “Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison,” while serving in the U.S. Air Force in the early 1950s. It inspired him to write “Folsom Prison Blues,” recorded with Sun Records in 1956.
The song became popular with inmates at numerous prisons, and many wrote to Cash asking him to come visit. Cash responded with several prison performances, beginning in 1957 and including one at Folsom Prison in 1966. But it was his return in 1968 to record a live album for Columbia Records that is celebrated in music annals.
Gene Beley was a 28-year-old reporter with the Ventura Star-Free Press when he and the newspaper’s chief photographer, Dan Poush, were invited to accompany Cash to Folsom Prison. Cash was living in the Ventura area at the time.
Beley, now 69 and living in Stockton, returned to the prison a few months ago to participate in a BBC radio documentary marking the 40th anniversary of the concert.
“I took a picture along to give Jim Brown as a gift, and he freaked out,” Beley said in a telephone interview, describing Brown’s excitement upon learning of the photo collection.
Beley, who also recorded the concert on a reel-to-reel tape recorder for reporting purposes, said he had no idea it would prove to be a historic event.
“At the time,” he recalled, “John was really on the skids.”
Stories in the hometown paper were more often about Cash’s brushes with the law – smuggling pills across the Mexican border or driving his Cadillac at high speeds – than about his musical talent, Beley said.
But a meeting between Poush and the Rev. Floyd Gressett at a New Year’s Eve party led to an invitation for the photographer and reporter to accompany Cash to Folsom Prison for the Jan. 13 concert. Gressett, a friend of Cash’s who ministered to California inmates, had worked with the prison’s recreation director, Lloyd Kelley, to set up the concert.
Beley was with Cash’s party in a room at West Sacramento’s El Rancho Hotel the night before the concert when Gressett asked Cash to listen to a tape recording by Folsom Prison inmate Glen Sherley.
“John said, ‘Has anybody got a tape recorder?’ ” recalled Beley, “and I raised my hand.”
Cash leaned over the tape recorder and wrote down the words to Sherley’s composition, “Greystone Chapel,” which tells of the solace the inmate found in the chapel at Folsom Prison. Cash performed it the following day, and Poush photographed Sherley listening in the audience.
Cash was a strong advocate for prison reform, and Sherley played with Cash’s band for a while following his release from prison.
Beley said Columbia Records had hired a photographer for the concert, and when Beley and Poush arrived at the prison, record company officials forbade them to take pictures. But Cash overheard the conversation and intervened, saying “These are my friends,” and telling them they could photograph whatever they wished.
The concert and record album changed the course of Cash’s career. The live version of “Folsom Prison Blues” became a Top 40 hit.
Cash also married June Carter, who had performed with him at Folsom Prison and helped him overcome his drug abuse.
“It was like God grabbing him by the lapel and pulling him back up on top,” said Beley, who continued to cover Cash’s concerts for several years.
In later years, Beley tried, as a freelance writer, to interest publications in stories about Gressett and Kelley’s role in arranging the Folsom Prison concert. He found no takers. But the night Cash died in 2003, Beley said, newspapers and magazines began calling him.
Beley said he and Poush, now a commercial photographer in Lake Oswego, Ore., combined their copyrighted photo collections and decided it was time to offer selections to the public. Currently, he said, the photos taken at Folsom Prison are available only at the prison museum and a shop in Billings, Mont.
Johnny Cash memorabilia abounds inside the Folsom Prison museum, which now sells photos from his 1968 concert.
Johnny Cash performs for Folsom Prison inmates on Jan. 13, 1968. Candid photos from the concert are being sold at the prison museum.
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Service district to seek support for fee hikes
SacBee -- Folsom/El Dorado News @ January 1, 2009 # Comments Off
El Dorado Hills Community Services District staff will meet with residents of two subdivisions to discuss raising fees for street landscaping, lighting, fencing and signs.
Homeowners in the Hills of El Dorado and Woodridge subdivisions are invited to meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the clubhouse at Oak Knoll Park, 3371 Alyssum Circle.
The meeting is one in a series about funding for El Dorado Hills landscaping and lighting assessment districts.
This year, eight of the district’s 22 landscape and lighting assessment districts were subsidized a total of $177,000 from the CSD general fund. District officials said they hope residents will agree to higher fees so CSD can stop the subsidies.
District officials expect special elections on increased fees in May or June.
For more information, call Allison Hamaker at (916) 614-3207 or e-mail to ahamaker@edhcsd.org.
– Diana Lambert
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Prep journalism teachers get shield against retaliation for student work
Walter Yost @ January 1, 2009 # Comments Off
When the Oak Ridge High School newspaper published results of a poll showing most students supported Barack Obama, an advertiser called to cancel her ad.
“She called us a ‘Communist publication,’ ” said Janice White, the paper’s faculty advisor.
White has advised the Oak Ridge student newspaper for four years and the yearbook for 13 years with the support of a principal who values the role of a free press.
Fortunately, she said.
Teachers throughout California who advise student journalists have been reassigned – or dismissed – for what has appeared in their newspapers. Effective today, however, they’ll have a measure of protection.
Senate Bill 1370, which goes into effect today prohibits a school employee from being dismissed, suspended, disciplined, reassigned, transferred or otherwise retaliated against for acting to protect a student’s speech.
During the past two years, civil libertarians and First Amendment advocates have documented 16 instances of faculty advisers being disciplined for content in a student newspaper.
“We haven’t seen this occur anywhere else in the country,” Jim Ewert, legal counsel with the California Newspaper Publishers Association, said of the number of cases.
Ewert’s organization was one of several – including the California Teachers Association and the California Labor Federation – that supported the bill by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco.
“Allowing a school administration to censor in any way is contrary to the democratic process and the ability of a student newspaper to serve as the watchdog and bring sunshine to the actions of school administrators,” Yee said in a press release.
In 2006, Yee wrote legislation making California the first state to prohibit censorship of student press by administrators and to protect students from being disciplined for engaging in speech or press activities.
Yee spokesman Adam Keigwin said some school administrators “realized they could still go after the faculty.”
The new bill is meant to close that loophole.
“California just happens to have some of the best student journalism programs in the country and where the more substantive and aggressive journalism is, that’s where administrators crack down,” said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Virginia.
“My job is to defend the right of self-expression by my students,” said White of Oak Ridge, which is in El Dorado Hills. “This piece of legislation allows me to do that.”
Karl Grubaugh, journalism adviser at Granite Bay High School and a part-time Bee copy editor, said he hasn’t had any problem with administrators in 10 years, but he is concerned about the vulnerability of untenured teachers.
“The bigger issue is people who can lose their jobs in their first two years of teaching. They can be dismissed without cause and are more susceptible to pressure,” he said.
The average tenure of the state’s high school newspaper advisers, Grubaugh said, is less than three years.
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PG&E hands over rulebook
Chris Bowman @ January 1, 2009 # Comments Off
Investigator Karl Gunther: “I would think (the rule book) would be public.”
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. on Wednesday gave the federal official in charge of investigating the deadly Rancho Cordova explosion its rule book on handling reported gas leaks, but the utility continued to refuse to make it public.
The thick emergency-response manual is key to the investigation because it details the procedures PG&E workers should have followed when they received complaints of strong gas odors hours before the Dec. 24 blast.
Karl Gunther, the lead investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, has said the utility should have evacuated the neighborhood before the blast.
PG&E officials are not commenting.
PG&E workers were in the neighborhood with gas-detecting devices when a home on Paiute Way was blown up, killing Wilbert Paana, 72, and injuring his daughter Kim Dickson, 44, and granddaughter Sunny Dickson, 17.
Both remain hospitalized with burns; the mother was in critical condition late Wednesday.
Paana was the first California fatality resulting from a ruptured utility-owned gas line in at least a decade, according to the state Public Utilities Commission.
On Wednesday, one week after the incident, the safety board received PG&E’s tome of emergency-response protocols.
“I got the documents. It’s 1,000 pages,” Gunther said.
Gunther said he was reluctant to release the records because the utility had marked them confidential.
“I would think they would be public, but I am not a lawyer,” Gunther said.
A lawyer for the Public Utilities Commission, which regulates PG&E and other investor-owned utilities, said he sees no reason why the utility’s protocols for handling gas leaks should be kept secret.
“I would assume it would be in everybody’s interest to release some, if not all of it,” said Fred Harris, who handles records requests for the commission. “I was encouraging (PG&E) to see if they could at least make some of it available.”
Since the explosion, PG&E has declined to share with the public any insight into when it would evacuate houses around suspected gas leaks.
PG&E officials said Wednesday that releasing its emergency-response protocols might jeopardize public safety.
“Part of the emergency plan describes our facilities, the location of our facilities, and how we operate and maintain facilities,” said Brian Swanson, a company spokesman. “If that information goes into the hands of people who wanted to harm our system, we would be putting the public at risk.”
Swanson said no one was available Wednesday to see whether portions of the plan relating only to the prevention of gas explosions could be released.
Federal pipeline safety rules require PG&E to have “written procedures to minimize the hazard resulting from a gas pipeline emergency.”
At a minimum, the plan must spell out protocols for “prompt and effective response,” emergency shutdown of gas lines and “making safe any actual or potential hazard to life or property,” including “reports of gas odor inside or near a building.”
Swanson acknowledged that PG&E’s manual includes the criteria utility workers must weigh before calling for an evacuation in areas of suspected gas leaks.
“That would be part of the information we are providing the NTSB,” Swanson said.
Meanwhile, in an unsolicited effort to calm residents’ concerns, PG&E on Wednesday dispatched seven workers to go door-to-door offering to check for appliance leaks in a nine-block area surrounding the Paiute Way blast site.
“We’re confident the neighborhood is safe. This is to further address the questions residents have,” Swanson said.
About 100 area residents left a community forum Tuesday night with few answers to their questions of a PG&E official.
Investigators have determined that the leak came from a coupling in the gas-delivery pipe running under the victims’ front yard, but they do not know what caused the leak, how the gas entered the home or what sparked the blast.
The leak occurred precisely where PG&E repair crews had found seepage about 18 months ago. Investigators are looking at whether the repair job was done correctly and whether the replacement pipe and coupling were sound, according to the safety board’s Gunther.
The safety board, known mostly for investigations of major airline crashes and bridge collapses, took on the Rancho Cordova incident because deaths from utility gas leaks are rare.
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El Dorado agency helps children in court
Cathy Locke @ December 31, 2008 # Comments Off
Informational meetings are scheduled in El Dorado County for people interested in helping abused or neglected children as they move through the court system.
CASA El Dorado seeks volunteers to serve as court appointed special advocates. Youngsters who find themselves in the court system because of abuse or neglect need someone to listen to them and serve as their voice in court proceedings.
Trained volunteers with the Court Appoint Special Advocates program are appointed by judges to assist vulnerable children.
Informational meetings for prospective volunteers will be held from 5 to 6 p.m. Jan. 14 at Centro, 385 Main St., Placerville, and from 5 to 6 p.m. Jan. 15 at Starbucks, 3317 Coach Lane, Cameron Park.
Training classes will begin in January and May.
For more information, call CASA El Dorado at (530) 621-6760.
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