Free Republic

California has been hit by a 5.1 magnitude earthquake as Hurricane Hilary hits LA and San Diego with 80mph winds. The quake centered in Ventura County was felt across parts of Southern California on Sunday afternoon. The center is reported to have been four miles southeast of Ojai, about 80 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Shaking was reported in Malibu, Porter Ranch, parts of Los Angeles, Manhattan Beach and other locations. A tornado warning has also been issued for San Diego and the surrounding Alpine and Descanso areas. The National Weather Service released the warning at t 3:39 p.m. on...

Many of those commercials were filmed under the large “Worthington Ford in Long Beach” sign at the dealership he bought in 1963. Now that sign has come to mark the end of an era. Worthington’s family said they have sold the 3-acre business, the last dealership still bearing the name of the legendary car salesman who died in 2012. “It’s very sad,” Nick Worthington, Cal’s grandson, said in an interview with ABC7. “Our employees have been with us 40 plus years. “It’s a part of everyone’s childhood and life growing up here,” he added. “It’s hard to close that book...

SoCal Gas, which supplies natural gas throughout Southern California, warned consumers this weekend that their next bills will be unusually large, blaming what it calls unusually cold winter weather across the nation. In an email to consumers, the company wrote: There’s no easy way to put this: January bills are likely to be higher than usual. An unprecedented cold snap across the nation in part has caused natural gas market prices in the West to more than double between December and January – much higher than expected. As a result, SoCalGas residential customers can expect the typical January bill likely...

Five Los Angeles County sheriff's recruits were critically injured Wednesday morning when a man driving a Honda CRV plowed into a large group during a training run in South Whittier, authorities said. ....California Highway Patrol Assistant Chief Charlie Sampson said there were approximately 75 recruits running in formation when the SUV veered into their group.... ...."It does seem like this car did not slow down," Supervisor Janice Hahn told KABC-TV. .....]

A rape victim in California has shared a harrowing image of her facial injuries after she was assaulted by a homeless man who had been released from jail just a few hours earlier. Marissa Young, 44, of Torrance, was walking her dogs about 1 a.m. July 31 when she was attacked by Darrell Waters, 46, who was arrested days earlier ... The homeless man was released on his own recognizance about 12 hours before the brutal assault, according to the report. “I was tackled from behind, I heard nothing,” Young told KTLA. “I didn’t have headphones in, I wasn’t looking...

[Video 7:38] Human Feces, Other Biohazards on San Diego Sidewalks Cost City Nearly $1 Million Every Year NBC 7’s Alexis Rivas takes a look at the issues behind filth on public streets, and the price tag for cleaning it up. NBC Universal, Inc. Taxpayers in San Diego spend nearly $1 million each year sanitizing sidewalks from biohazards, including needles, personal hygiene waste and human feces. It’s a problem that is not only gross, it's also a major public-health threat some say the city isn’t doing enough to fix. “Maybe this is really gross,” said Sherman Heights resident Essence McConnell, “but...

Ten hospitals around Southern California have had ICUs at or over capacity for 25 weeks or more. Three hospitals have had full ICUs for over a year. During the earliest days of the pandemic, calls to "flatten the curve" flooded social media from all corners, as health officials and politicians asked everyone to stay home and avoid spreading COVID-19. Those calls aimed to prevent more cases of the then-novel coronavirus, but beyond that, they aimed to keep hospital systems, healthcare workers and intensive care units from becoming overburdened with too many patients.... For some hospitals, ICUs began to slowly empty...

If it was up to Riverside County, California would have a new governor. Final certified results posted Thursday, Sept. 30, by the county Registrar of Voters showed a slight majority of county voters in the Sept. 14 gubernatorial recall election wanted to remove Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office.... ...Recall voters faced two ballot questions — should Newsom be recalled from office before his term expires at the end of next year and if so, who should replace him? On the first question, 50.5% of Riverside County voters voted “Yes” and 49.5% voted “No.” The margin between “Yes” and “No”...

Canines and humans hit the waves Saturday at the annual Surf City Surf Dog competition in Huntington Beach. Competitors had 12 minutes to catch their top five waves and be judged on confidence level, length of ride and overall ability to ride. [photos at link]

Provisional ballots were given to voters in a Los Angeles neighborhood who fell victim to a glitch in which the system erroneously showed they had already voted days ahead of the recall Election Day. Two locations in Woodland Hills were affected over the weekend, according to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's office, which blamed the problem on electronic poll book devices used to check in voters...

...Just days after 13 American flags were vandalized in Riverside County, more than two dozen more have now gone missing....The community is now fighting back by buying more flags. ... a local resident had hung 13 American flags honoring the sacrifice of the 13 US service members who were killed last month during the withdrawal from Afghanistan. There was also a US Marine Corps flag, but all of them were vandalized over Labor Day weekend. In response, another family replaced the 13 American flags, which inspired others to place 13 more flags on the fence across Ivy Street. But just...

But what some thought was another quake turned out to be a sonic boom that was recorded about 9:20 a.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The blast of sound energy occurred about one mile south of San Dimas, the USGS reported. But the effects rippled out toward the coast, where several people reported feeling an earthquake-like rumble.

Authorities say a Southern California man is recovering after he was bitten by a rattlesnake when he tried to pick up the poisonous reptile using barbecue tongsA Southern California man is recovering after he was bitten by a rattlesnake when he tried to pick up the poisonous reptile using barbecue tongs, authorities said. The man spotted the snake Saturday evening near his home in the Sycamore Creek community of Corona and was worried about it coming into contact with children, according to a statement from Riverside County Animal Services. When he tried to remove the rattler using the tongs, the...

YORBA LINDA — Political commentator Bruce Herschensohn, a longtime fixture on Southern California television and radio, former aide to Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, has died at the age of 88. Herschensohn’s death was announced Tuesday by the Richard Nixon Foundation in Yorba Linda. The cause of death was not released. “One word defines Bruce Herschensohn: patriot,” said Hugh Hewitt, the Nixon Foundation’s president. “A resonant, mellifluous voice for freedom, he was always calm, always insistent on the truth that people needed to be free, wanted to be free...

For more than 70 years, a 34-foot illuminated cross looming over the Cahuenga Pass has been one of the landmarks by which motorists mark their passage between downtown and the San Fernando Valley. In fact, the cross was conceived not as a purely religious monument, but as a memorial to one of Hollywood’s pioneers, Christine Wetherell Stevenson, the heiress to the Pittsburgh Paint fortune who helped arrange construction of the Hollywood Bowl. She was also an aspiring playwright who wrote “The Pilgrimage Play,” a pageant about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. In 1920, Stevenson chose 29 acres across...

6.6 magnitude, 12km SW of Searles Valley, CA

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Another tough U.S. House race is shaping up in Southern California. Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel announced Thursday that she's challenging first-term Rep. Harley Rouda, whose victory in the coastal 48th District last year helped Democrats retake control of the House. [snip] ...In the neighboring 39th District, Republican Young Kim has announced her candidacy and is hoping to set up a rematch with Democrat Gil Cisneros, who defeated her in 2018. Last month, Orange County prosecutor Ray Gennawey, a Republican, announced his campaign in the county's 45th District, where Democrat Katie Porter defeated Republican Rep. Mimi...

"After word spread about a renewed push by the Department of Homeland Security to get Vietnam to accept more deportees, some people saw it as a mistake by the Trump administration given the GOP’s fading strength in Orange County and the historical support that the Republican Party has gotten from Vietnamese Americans. But in a community where many older residents oppose undocumented immigration and younger ones tend to lean left politically, the controversy is just the latest to underscore the generational divide among those of Vietnamese descent." "More than 8,000 Vietnamese residents in the U.S. who escaped their homeland but...

...The Holy Fire, which had exploded from 75 to 700 acres within an hour Monday afternoon, was threatening recreation structures in the area of Trabuco Creek and Holy Jim Canyon roads, according to the United State Forest Service. It had consumed more than 1,200 acres by 5:40 p.m., with zero percent containment. At 8:19 p.m., the Cleveland National Forest's official Twitter account said the Holy Fire had grown to 4,000 acres with zero percent containment, meaning the blaze had more than tripled in size in fewer than three hours.

Southern California is bracing for the first significant rainstorm to hit the region in nearly a year, beginning Monday and with the heaviest rain expected in some burn areas, forecasters said. Almost four inches of rain is expected in eastern Santa Barbara County and western Ventura County over 12 hours from Monday evening through Tuesday morning, forecasters said. The Thomas fire, which was centered in these two counties, burned more than 281,000 acres in that area last month, making it the largest fire on record in California. “Unfortunately it’s centered almost exactly where the Thomas fire was,” said Kathy Hoxsie,...