Japan's Quake Leads to Damage on California Coast

By Julia Prodis Sulek, Paul Rogers and Mark Gomez, San Jose Mercury News
03.12.11

Surging water generated from the powerful earthquake off Japan's coast hit the California coastline Friday morning, capsizing boats, splintering docks and panicking thousands of seaside spectators from Eureka to Santa Cruz who had expected a mild amusement but were sent scrambling to higher ground. Some picked up their boards and ran to the beach. Others paddled out farther, then rode the swelling surge to shore.
 
One person taking pictures along the Klamath River in far Northern California was swept away and was still missing Friday afternoon, while emergency crews in Oregon rescued a handful of others from the water.
Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday declared a state of emergency for Del Norte, Humboldt, San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties. 

In the Bay Area, Santa Cruz Harbor took the worst of the tsunami; $15 million in damage was caused by two separate series of thick, rolling surges, the first about 8 a.m. and the second at 11:15 a.m. At least 30 boats broke away from moorings and several sunk, including one of two harbor patrol boats. Onlookers gasped and screamed as they tripped and stumbled up the hillsides moments before the second major surge blasted through.

"The dock, it looked like an explosion," Michael Sack, co-owner of Sanctuary Cruises, said of the harbor's U dock that was hit by the first surge. "The dock just blew up. It buckled and it splintered."

While many thrill-seekers were drawn toward the water by news reports that the tsunami was heading this way, thousands of more cautious beach-dwellers heeded evacuation advisories sent through automated calls from county emergency service agencies and headed en masse to the safety of mountaintops.

Parking lots and roadsides were jammed from Mount Madonna and the summit along Highway 17, to Skyline Boulevard through San Mateo County and the clifftops of Pacifica. Scores of people filled their cars with food and clothing, expecting the kind of devastation they had seen in movies or the apocalyptic sights from Japan on TV Friday morning.

"My main thing was to save my family," said Jose Urbina, who lives a few blocks from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. After receiving a call from a friend, he left his home at 3:15 a.m., some three hours before automated calls went out through the Beach Flats and other low-lying areas near his neighborhood. Urbina, his wife and two children were in one of hundreds of cars filling the summit parking lot along Highway 17. "Panic," he said, "was the only thing."

In Watsonville, after evacuation calls went out at 6:30 a.m., long lines of vehicles jammed gas stations and roads leading out of town. Highway 152 leading out of Watsonville and up to Mount Madonna was at a standstill early Friday morning. Children didn't show up for class at Watsonville area schools.

"We have up to 75 to 80 percent, possibly a 90 percent loss of attendance," said Brett McFadden, chief business officer at Pajaro Valley Unified School District.

Attendance also was down at Aptos-area schools, but not significantly.

In San Francisco, police shut a four-mile stretch of highway that runs along the city's western edge. Further south, several neighborhoods in Half Moon Bay on the west side of Highway 1 were evacuated and public schools in Half Moon Bay, Pacifica and Pescadero were closed Friday. 

At the Berkeley Marina, Harbormaster Ann Hardinger said at least four surges of water rushed into the harbor at about 25 mph, damaging six boat slips, breaking three docks and breaking a wooden piling.
 
"I've never seen the current so fast in all my life," Hardinger said.Some ferry services that shuttle commuters across the bay suspended operations Friday morning. Still, it was the worst tsunami damage to California since an Alaskan earthquake in 1964 triggered a tsunami that killed 17 people along the West Coast. Eleven of those deaths occurred in Crescent City, which suffered no deaths or injuries Friday but was hit by surges that destroyed boats.

In Santa Cruz, "we were just in the line of fire," Santa Cruz Port Director Lisa Ekers said of the direction, energy and flow of the tsunami. The Santa Cruz Harbor, which is home to about 850 boats, experienced "far more damage," she said, than any other harbors in the area, including Moss Landing, Monterey and Half Moon Bay.

The damage could have been far worse, she said, if her staff hadn't rushed to the harbor at 3 a.m. to tie down boats and disconnect all electricity and fuel supplies. Using megaphones in the early-morning hours, they woke up some 60 people sleeping on their boats. 

While the first series of surges caused the most damage, to the U dock as well as part of the J dock, hundreds more people had gathered along the frontage road and grassy area near the upper harbor by the time the second series hit.

"Everybody evacuate right now!" a harbor employee yelled through her megaphone as she drove up and down the waterway. "There's another big wave coming!"

That's when people scrambled up the hillsides, turning around when they heard the crunching of boats and splintering of wood. Dozens of boats, many 30 feet and longer, turned onto their sides and slammed into other boats. 

By lunchtime, the normally serene harbor reeked of diesel fuel, a colorful sheen polluted the surface and tires, and empty plastic bottles, paddles, life jackets and other debris bobbed in the water. Sections of dock 20 feet long washed out into the open ocean. An abandoned jet ski crashed up against the jetty rocks and rowboats, kayaks and other crafts were floating upside down in the harbor.

ReNae Ammon of Scotts Valley had come to the harbor to check on her 31-foot sport-fishing boat.

"You forget how powerful the ocean is," Ammon said. "You can really be at its mercy."

But Santa Cruz being Santa Cruz, laid-back surfers took to the waves despite the evacuation warnings. At the mouth of the San Lorenzo River just before 8 a.m., however, they were caught off-guard when the tide rushed out from under them. Many who had been floating on deep water just moments before suddenly found themselves standing in water just knee-deep.

Assignment: Expository Essay

The Manzanar Cemetery Monument

Answer one of the two following prompts:

A) What is the function of loyalty in Farewell to Manzanar? For example, how do characters decide who they are loyal to and when? Why is a person's loyalty of particular importance during the time of Japanese internment? Analyze issues of loyalty in Farewell to Manzanar. Cite specific evidence from the book.

B) Describe the family's relocation home of Manzanar. As portrayed in the book, what does Manzanar sound like, smell like, look like, etc.? How does it stand in contrast to other locations in the book? Explore the primary setting of Farewell to Manzanar. Cite specific evidence from the book.

Requirements:

• MLA format, including parenthetical citation
• 2.5-page minimum

The best papers:

• Stay within the parameters of the subject matter
  
• Have a concise thesis which clearly outlines a position
  
• Clearly support the thesis with solid evidence and a logical structure, citing specific passages from Farewell to Manzanar
  
• Conclude with a summation of the argument
• Properly cite evidence using MLA's parenthetical citation method
  
• Are in compliance with MLA Style

Due: We 3.16 / Th 3.17

Teen on Field Trip Survives Leap Off Golden Gate Bridge

By Kevin Fagan, San Francisco Chronicle 
03.10.11

SAN FRANCISCO -- A 17-year-old boy on a field trip with his Sonoma County high school class leaped from the Golden Gate Bridge Thursday, but survived and was able to swim to shore with a surfer who went out to rescue him, authorities said.

The boy is a junior at Windsor High School whom officials did not identify because of his age. Some students said he might have leaped to impress his classmates, but for now the California Highway Patrol is investigating the matter as an attempted suicide, said CHP Officer Chris Rardin.

The boy jumped at 11:15 a.m. from the east sidewalk near the south tower, the CHP said. He was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where he was expected to live.

Some witnesses said he broke his tailbone and damaged his lungs in the fall, but a Windsor Unified School District press release said he suffered no severe injuries beyond bruising and tenderness. Hospital officials said they cannot release specific information about the boy.

Surviving the fall was remarkable considering the spot the student leaped from is more than 200 feet off the water - and 99 percent of the estimated 1,500-pluspeople who have jumped from the bridge since it opened in 1937 died from the fall.

So far this year, seven people had jumped to their deaths from the bridge, officials estimate. Last year, the count was 32.

Golden Gate Bridge District spokeswoman Mary Currie said that the number of people attempting suicide off the span has grown from about 20 a year in the early 2000s to about 30 annually in the past few years.

"It could be from population growth, the economy, you name it - you just can't draw conclusions about why the numbers went up," Currie said.

The district has plans to install safety nets on the bridge, but the final design is not complete and the installation is a couple of years away at best, Currie said.

Rumors about Thursday's leap tore through the student body by conversation and social media, and the common thread was that it appeared the boy jumped of his own accord and that onlookers were upset by the experience.

"He did it to try to look cool," said one classmate, who did not want to be identified. "He said he'd jumped off bridges before." Another student who said he was on the scene tweeted that students tried to stop the boy before he leaped.

Rardin said the boy jumped as he was walking on the bridge with about 45 other students on a school field trip.

"He landed in the water, a surfer paddled out to him, and they both swam back to shore," Rardin said. "He was conscious when they came up at Fort Point.

"I've heard a bunch of things about how this happened, but we haven't come to a conclusion yet," he said. "I do know he's very lucky to be alive."

Bay Area Tops State Again in Median Income

By Jenny Pisillo, San Francisco Chronicle
03.0711

From It's expensive to live in the Bay Area so it's a good thing that we lead the state in terms of median income. Now that income tax paying time is around the corner, the California Franchise Tax Board last week released income statistics based on the tax returns filed for 2009. The residents of a handful of Bay Area counties have the highest incomes of all Californians, and have been the highest wage earners for a long time now.

The four Bay Area counties of Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, and Santa Clara have led California for 38 years in reported highest median incomes.

The Franchise Tax Board defines the "median income" as the midpoint of all tax returns filed. Marin County, came in at the top spot again, with the highest median income of $48, 172. This was followed by San Mateo, Santa Clara and then Contra Costa counties. San Francisco was edged out by El Dorado County, preventing a Bay Area monopoly for the top five spots. Alameda County, was #8 with a median income of $41,964.

Despite a good showing by the Bay Area, the effects of the faltering economy have taken its toll and we are making less compared with past years. Median income across the state is 5% below 2008 figures. In Marin County, which has held the top spot for quite some time, the median income dipped below $50,000 for the first time since 2005, thanks to a downward trend starting in 2007.

Imperial County, in the state's southeastern corner, bordering San Diego County and Mexico had the lowest median income of all 58 state counties. With a median income of $22, 841, it just about half of the median incomes of the top four Bay Area counties. The bottom 10 spots are mainly counties in the state's Central Valley, where unemployment and housing have really been hit hard.

Santa Clara County's 408 Will Spin Off a New Area Code: 669

By Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News
03..07.11

There are 8 million phone numbers in the naked city. And no matter who you were calling in San Jose -- or large swaths of the South Bay -- for the past half century, you've had to dial this: area code 408.

But with the explosive proliferation of cell phones, wireless IP addresses and 4G-enabled baby pacifiers, the area code that has served San Jose since neighbors could listen in on each other's party line calls is officially "exhausted."

That conclusion -- arrived at by the Orwellian-sounding North American Numbering Plan Administration, or NANPA, in December -- means some South Bay phone customers will start being assigned area code 669 by the end of next year.

Deciding who gets to hang onto their 408, and who becomes a 669, is the job of the California Public Utilities Commission, which will convene hearings March 16-18 in San Jose, Los Gatos and Morgan Hill to explain the switch.

The current area code will either be split in two -- a Balkanization of the chattering classes, with 408 Hatfields on one side and 669 McCoys suspiciously screening their calls on the other -- or the PUC will impose an "overlay." That has become a popular method of allowing phone customers to keep their current area code, while assigning 669 to people signing up for new service. Companies providing phone service have recommended an overlay. The upshot: Soon, we'll all be dialing 10-digit numbers to make a local call in Silicon Valley.

"It seems like every man, woman and baby has a cell phone now," says John Manning, senior director of NANPA, an obscure agency in Virginia that monitors the depletion of dialing prefixes the way tree-huggers track the ozone layer. Manning acknowledges that people could easily get confused by the fact that, "theoretically, 408 has 8 million telephone numbers. But there aren't 8 million people living in 408." 

So with just more than a million residents of San Jose, what happened to the nearly 7 million missing phone numbers?

"There's only so many prefixes, and once those are assigned, theoretically, the area code is in exhaust," says Cherrie Conner, supervisor in the communications division of the PUC, which will moderate the March 16 meeting at San Jose's City Hall.

Phone companies are assigned three-digit prefixes a thousand at a time, so when a large corporate customer wants all its phone numbers to have the same signature -- to reach Cisco's San Jose campus, for instance, you dial 526 -- it gobbles up prefixes in bulk. But often hundreds of unused numbers are orphaned.

It isn't as if 408 was carved out during Old Testament times. The entire Bay Area once shared what is now San Francisco's tony 415 area code. For people in San Jose before that change was made in 1959, 408 always seemed like 415's slightly less cool little brother.

Ma Bell's original area codes are easy to spot by their middle digits, which are 0 or 1, conferring a measure of hipness on the East Bay when it converted to 510 in 1991. For 650, 831 and 925, undoubtedly those area codes have many fine qualities that are known to the people who live there.every man, woman and baby has a cell phone now," says John Manning, senior director of NANPA, an obscure agency in Virginia that monitors the depletion of dialing prefixes the way tree-huggers track the ozone layer. Manning acknowledges that people could easily get confused by the fact that, "theoretically, 408 has 8 million telephone numbers. But there aren't 8 million people living in 408."
The process of assigning area codes remains cloaked in mystery. Conner has no idea how this area was assigned 669. "They probably just draw it out of a hat," she says. Some area codes are off limits; 666 is not being used anywhere, unless you are direct-dialing Satan. South Bay residents might have preferred 369 for its easy rhyming mnemonic:

"You're going to get a lot of people who think it's cool to get a 669 number just because it has 69 in it," says Marina Renneke. She is not one of those people, having clung tight to her 408 area code since moving to Phoenix five years ago."3, 6, 9, the goose drank wine ..." from "The Clapping Song." Unfortunately, Solano County got there first.
"It's funny how people identify with area codes," she says. "I was born and raised in the Bay Area, and 408 was always my area code, so when I moved here I felt like it sort of distinguished me. Like, 'Hey, I'm a 408'er.' "

When the PUC attempted to impose a split plan in San Diego a few years ago, people in the county's urban areas rose up in fury and forced the agency to change to an overlay plan. "People's phone numbers are very personal," says Christopher Chow, public information officer for the PUC. "They identify very strongly with it."

Conner says there is one way to avoid adding new area codes. If there were a nuclear war or some other cataclysmic event that forced the phone companies to start from scratch, numbers could be assigned to each user consecutively, so that every one is used. Then everybody in San Jose could remain a 408'er.

"But that's changing your phone number," Conner says. "And nobody's going to go for that."

Reflection 4: A House Divided—Northern California vs. Southern California

Northern California's Golden Gate Bridge

Southern California's Hollywood Sign

It may not be obvious to those outside of California, but many amongst us are of the belief that we are, in fact, two separate states. They don't believe we are literally two states, of course, but some Californians feel that our state is nonetheless made up of two distinct cultures: NorCal, centered around the Bay Area, and SoCal, centered around Los Angeles. Some even claim that crossing the line from one region to another (generally thought to be Hwy 58, from San Luis Obispo to Bakersfield) is like crossing from one country to another. Admittingly, this is a vast generalization about a very diverse place, yet Northern California's cooler climates, liberal politics, and geek chic style do stand in contrast to Southern California's sunny beaches, conservative suburbs, and glamorous trend-setters. Just compare NorCal's sparse and uniform Facebook to SoCal's flashier and jumbled MySpace. Are we really two families living under one roof? How are we truly alike, and how do we truly differ? Are these differences only superficial or do they represent real fractures between the two regions? And which California are you more likely to see on TV or in film? Finally, what of often-forgotten Central California?

Requirements:

• MLA format
• 2 pages minimum

Due: We 3.14 / Th 3.15

Week 7: San Diego

Mission Bay

 

I never saw the morning 'til I stayed up all night
I never saw the sunshine 'til you turned out the light
I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long
I never heard the melody, until I needed a song.

—Tom Waits, "San Diego Serenade"

NOTE: I made a mistake on the dates in the print syllabus and, as a result, left Wed. 3.9 and Thur. 3.10 off the schedule. Instead of moving everything up, I'm canceling this Wednesday and Thursday's classes—as well as my Wednesday office hour. Just keep in mind that there will be minor corrections in upcoming weekly agendas. Also, note potential changes in few presentation dates. Enjoy the morning off!

Week 7: San Diego
Mo 3.7 / Tu 3.8
Read: MANZ—p. 133 - 185
In-Class: Lecture—“California on Film”; Preview—Expository essay
Due: Persuasive essay (Final draft, attach draft 1 and, on a separate sheet, one paragraph rationale for your revisions)

We 3.9 / Th 3.10
Class canceled
Due: Reflection 4 (Email me your reflection to dhdelao@gmail.com by noon on the day your section meets) 

Week 8: San Jose
Mo 3.14 / Tu 3.1 

Read: eR—“California's Public Colleges Face $1.4-Billion in New Budget Cuts” by Josh Keller (The Chronicle of Higher Education), “Editorial: California Voters Seem to be Clueless about the Budget” (Oakland Tribune) “Schools Still Face Deep Spending Cuts” (KCRA TV, Sacramento)
In-Class: Reading discussion; Presentations; Lecture—“Understanding Parenthetical Citation”

We 3.16 / Th 3.17
Read: eR—“Editorial: California Must Not Resort to Short-term Fixes” (The Highlander), “California Now 43rd in Per-student Spending” by John Fensterwald (Silicon Valley Education Foundation); “Education Cuts to Impact Future of Silicon Valley” (KGO TV, San Francisco)
In-Class: Watch—The Bridge (2007); Preview—Cause and effect essay
Returned: Persuasive essay