Michelle Hake’s sister had been snowed in for days, alone in her Big Bear home. Her family said it wasn’t clear just how urgent her medical needs had become during last month’s record-setting snowstorms and the treacherous days that followed.
She “needed medical attention in the midst of the storm, and we could not get that to her,” Hake said. Her family called for an emergency wellness check Monday.
“We were too late,” she said.
Deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department found Hake’s sister dead just after 9 a.m., agency spokesperson Mara Rodriguez said. A cause of death has not been determined, but Rodriguez said there were no signs of trauma or suspicious circumstances.
Hake, who requested that her adult sister not be identified, declined to expound on her sister’s medical history or what might have led to her death. But she said she had no doubt that her sister would have gotten the care she needed had the storms not trapped her inside.
“We were trying to get someone to go check on her,” Hake said. “There was literally no access to get to her; she lives alone. And for so many that are [stuck] in their homes, that is their story.”
Rodriguez said at least two other people in San Bernardino’s mountain communities had been found dead through official welfare checks since Feb. 23, when the historic snowstorms started. One was found dead in Big Bear and the other in Valley of Enchantment, a neighborhood in Crestline.
The agency, however, has also responded to nine more deaths since the storms, Rodriguez said — a total of 12.
“So far, we can only confirm [one], a traffic accident, as weather-related,” Rodriguez said. “The preliminary information in the other deaths does not indicate they are weather-related, but those investigations are ongoing.”
She declined to release further details about the other deaths, citing ongoing investigations.
But many mountain residents who spoke to The Times, some of whom found neighbors or friends dead inside their homes, said they had no doubt the massive storms and treacherous aftermath — the blocked roads, the lack of heat, cellphone service and food — probably contributed, if not caused, the casualties.
“I don’t think people know how dire it is right now,” Hake said. “We are literally trying to find people like my sister, people who are in their homes, and their life is hanging in the balance.”
At a Big Bear Lake City Council meeting Wednesday night, Laura Johnson told council members during public comments that a friend who lived in the area had died during the storms because their home could not be accessed by a dialysis provider.
“They would not allow the driver to come up and pick up my friend who needed dialysis three days out of the week,” Johnson said. “And he passed.”
Many worry that this is just the beginning as people continue to dig out.
“The level of loss and just the magnitude of the storm … I just cannot convey enough just how devastating” it has been, Hake said.
In Crestline’s Skyland community, Rhea-Frances Tetley said her 93-year-old neighbor, Elinor “Dolly” Avenatti, was found dead Monday.
Avenatti may have been elderly, Tetley said, but she was lively and a fixture in their community.
“She was a joy for the neighborhood,” Tetley said. “She was feisty and independent … and generous to a fault.”
Avenatti was active in senior citizens groups, baked for neighbors, walked daily before the storm and collected bottles and cans to make donations to animal rights groups, Tetley said.
She worried that a week without power, stuck in her cold house alone behind mounds of snow, might have been what killed Avenatti. Tetley said neighbors had been delivering food and checking in on the woman for about a week, but early this week — as electricity finally returned to their street — the nonagenarian didn’t answer her door. On Monday, neighbors went in and found her dead.
“She didn’t have heat,” Tetley said. “I think that she froze to death in the house.”
Tetley said that soon after Avenatti’s body was found, their street was finally plowed, because emergency officials needed to respond to the death.
For nearly two weeks, many living in mountain communities from Crestline to Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear have been trapped under massive amounts of snow — more than 100 inches in some places — while officials have struggled to clear roadways and provide relief after back-to-back storms pummeled the region with blizzard conditions and relentless snowfall. Residents were without power for days, roofs and decks collapsed, gas leaks spurred storm-related fires, and entire neighborhoods struggled to get supplies of food and gas.
As of Wednesday morning, about 95% of San Bernardino County roads had been cleared, officials said, but they noted that many of those roadways were still only wide enough to accommodate single-lane traffic. Almost 30 miles of roads still have not been plowed.
Hake and her family were without power in their Crestline home for at least five days, she said, eventually relocating to a friend’s house to wait for the power to be restored and roads to clear. She said that for days, there was no way to get to Big Bear to check on her sister, or even to her parents’ home in Lake Arrowhead.
“It feels like we are living in an alternate reality up here,” Hake said. As president of the Crestline Chamber of Commerce, she is helping coordinate supply drop-offs and facilitate wellness checks across the mountain community — even before her sister was found dead.
She said during one of those checks, a neighbor found an elderly man inside his home, where “for the last five days he had been rationing a frozen tamale.”
“Right now, we’re still focused on getting to people in need and getting everybody accounted [for],” Hake said.
Aaron Creighton, who lives in Crestline’s Cedarpines Park community, said an older neighbor who lived across from him was just reported dead in his home Wednesday morning. The man had been sick for a while, Creighton said, but he feared the stress of the storm accelerated his decline.
“There’s the stuff that does you harm right away and its obvious, and then there’s the stress that comes with this kind of stuff,” Creighton said, who is the owner and publisher of the community’s hyper-local newspaper, the Alpine Mountaineer. “It’s incredibly stressful to not be able to get out of the house.”
He said the neighbor, whom he declined to identify, did not live alone, but he wasn’t sure how often his housemates checked on the man and said no one in the house had dug out their driveway. The fire department spent at least 30 minutes digging through snow to access the man’s house to transport his body, Creighton said.
“It’s not the end of it,” Creighton said. “We have a lot of people that are completely and utterly cut off and stranded right now.”
Megan Vasquez, who started a food distribution center for Valley of Enchantment, said she’s heard of at least two people who died during the storms — and agreed with Creighton’s dismal prediction.
“I do feel like there is going to be a large body count when it’s all said and done,” Vasquez said. “There are many elderly people who are kind of reclusive in their homes with nothing, and there will be more people who have passed.”
Kristy Baltezore found one of her Crestline neighbors dead after she went to check on her. The woman, whom Baltezore didn’t want to identify, hadn’t been ill and wasn’t disabled.
“This is not good,” Baltezore said. “We still have half our community we haven’t made contact with.”
Rodriguez, the San Bernardino sheriff’s spokesperson, said the number of official welfare checks in recent days has decreased significantly. She said authorities are making house calls the same day a welfare check is requested.
“We continue to respond to calls for service for our mountain residents,” Rodriguez said in a statement.
If anyone needs help checking on a neighbor or loved one, officials said to call 911 or the county’s Storm Response Call Center at (909) 387-3911.
A deranged defendant with a lengthy rap sheet was convicted Wednesday for murdering a beloved Bronx FDNY emergency medical technician with her own hijacked ambulance, ending a nearly six-year wait for justice by her heartbroken family and friends.
Jose Gonzalez, 31, heard the jury verdict following a monthlong trial and two days of deliberations in the gruesome killing of veteran EMT Yadira Arroyo, the mother of five sons. He stood impassively as the late afternoon decision was announced.
The drug-addled Gonzalez was charged with first-degree murder for twice running down the first responder with her stolen truck in the March 16, 2017 killing that shocked the city and devastated her colleagues.
Co-workers wept in the courtroom and shared hugs outside with the victim’s family once the defendant was found guilty of killing the devoted 44-year-old mom.
“It just brings solace,” said Ali Acevedo Hernandez, the victim’s aunt. “… Yes, it makes me feel good in a sense. I’m full of emotions.”
The decision came eight days before the sixth anniversary of the killing of the veteran lifesaver, revered by her co-workers. The case was repeatedly delayed by more than 50 hearings before Gonzalez was finally deemed mentally fit to face a Bronx jury.
“This case has dragged on for nearly six long years, but finally we can breathe knowing that justice for our EMT sister, Yadira Arroyo, has been served,“ said Oren Barzilay, president of her union, FDNY EMS Local 2507. “The outcry of support and love for her family has been massive and at last, they can rest.”
The trial began last month following a pitched legal battle where defense lawyers unsuccessfully argued he was too sick to stand trial. A sentencing date of April 5 was set for the defendant, who could face life without parole for the slaying.
Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark thanked the Arroyo family for their patience as the case wound its tortuous path through the legal system. She recalled the tears in her own eyes after learning about the murder.
“She was a hero out there, doing her job, serving the public,” the top prosecutor said. “We finally got justice for her. …. To be taken away like that was so unfair. So to get this justice today means everything to me and to this family.”
Arroyo was a 14-year FDNY EMS veteran assigned to Station 26 when she went to work on overtime on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, with prosecutor Michael Schordine recounting the horrifying details of her final tour of duty in his opening argument.
“Dragged by the rear wheel down the street,” he told jurors. “She was dead, never to finish her shift. This wasn’t a tragic accident. … This was so much more. It wasn’t an accident, it was a murder.”
Jurors watched a video of the fatal encounter between Arroyo and the oft-arrested suspect with a rap sheet of 31 prior busts. Arroyo’s distraught co-worker was seen screaming “my f—ing partner!” as an off-duty MTA police officer and bystanders tackled a fleeing Gonzalez.
During one pretrial hearing last year, Gonzalez insisted Arroyo’s death was an accident and denounced the prosecutor as a satanist. His first court appearance came in April 2017, when he pleaded innocent.
FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh is among those satisfied by the guilty verdict.
“For the last six years, the family of EMT Yadira Arroyo has lived with the heartbreak of her murder at the hands of Jose Gonzalez,” Kavanagh said. “…We are grateful to the Bronx district attorney and the jurors who have found him guilty — and know this justice is one step to help all those who loved Yadi heal.”
The details of Arroyo’s killing remained fresh despite the passage of time.
She was working with partner Monique Williams when they spotted Gonzalez riding on the back of their truck around 7:15 p.m. near the corner of Watson Ave. and White Plains Road in the Soundview section.
When the EMTs pulled over, Gonzalez jumped off the vehicle and tried to rob a passing man’s backpack, authorities said. When Arroyo got out to investigate, Gonzalez climbed inside the ambulance and mowed her down twice.
Trial witnesses recounted Gonzalez bizarrely reciting the alphabet once bystanders tackled him and before he was placed inside a police car where he apparently passed out.
“For the last six years, the family of EMT Yadira Arroyo has lived with the heartbreak of her murder at the hands of Jose Gonzalez. Today, we are grateful to the Bronx district attorney and the jurors who have found him guilty — and know this justice is one step to help all those who loved Yadi heal,” said Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh.
An Illinois Senate bill could help Chicago firefighters get promotions more easily and frequently by standardizing the process.
Currently, the promotional exams are not held on a regular basis and sometimes, only once in a decade, IAFF Local 2 officials told reporters.
Chicago is exempted from the Fire Department Promotion Act, which other departments across the state follow.
“Chicago firefighters you have been treated unfairly for far too long. You don’t have clarity about the career that you have chosen to take on that is very dangerous and that protects all of us. And that ends now,” Senator Willie Preston told reporters.
Some firefighters may only get one chance at a promotion during a 20-year career.
The bill is headed for the state senate for consideration.
Mar. 9—MADISON — A day after a tank containing 11,500 gallons of liquid asphalt caught fire, residents living mere yards away from the Seal Master contracting company are asking why the company and local firefighters didn’t know exactly how to fight the blaze.
Fearing a possible explosion as contents of the tank hissed and the temperature of the fire increased, Madison Fire Department Chief Jim Ritchey said during a Tuesday news conference that his agency and Seal Master staff turned to the Canadian manufacturers of the asphalt for help.
The fire, which was first noticed around 6 a.m. on Tuesday and produced intermittent smoke and flame, was almost completely contained within one of three similar tanks. To some, it did not appear to be burning.
The fire started when insulation on the exterior of the tank ignited, a company official said Wednesday.
“We’re still not quite sure what caused the insulation to catch fire, but it’s over. It’s done,” said Lee Lowis, Seal Master’s chief operating officer, in a telephone interview.
With a capacity of 17,000 gallons, the burning tank sat just three feet from a second tank holding 6,000 more gallons of liquid asphalt, fire officials said.
“It concerned us that nobody knew how to put it out, and it seemed like there was no protocol in place,” said James King, 62, a Baptist minister who lives across the street from the plant that is located at 703 W. Decatur St. “If you’ve got to call Canada and ask how to put out the fire, it’s too late.”
Even before the fire, King and his wife Myra were troubled by persistent asphalt fumes from the plant that stores liquid asphalt for paving and road sealant.
Petroleum-based asphalt produces fumes that are known to cause headache, skin rash, fatigue, reduced appetite and skin cancer, according to the federal government’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration website.
State environmental officials said Tuesday they were not part of the emergency response at and around the plant.
“This facility does not hold any active permits from any of (the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s) regulatory divisions,” agency spokesman Shawn Taylor said. “When conditions are safe, DEQ staff will investigate to make sure the facility was in compliance with all environmental regulations.”
Air quality is one of the areas under DEQ’s purview, and neighbors of the facility say it has been a source of irritation for years.
“Some days it smells horrible. You know how it smells when a road is being paved? It’s 10 times worse than that some days. It’ll blow your boots off,” said Myra King, 57, who has operated Little Gems Day Care from the couple’s home for the past decade. She noted that the fire cost her a day’s business and left working parents without a sitter. “I feel (Seal Master) should have standards they must adhere to. I have to give safety plans to the state for my business. Don’t they?”
Clean air is important to the Kings, they said, talking on their porch as a parent arrived to collect a toddler. The Kings’ grandchildren play at their home and wait for the school bus across from the plant on weekday mornings, they said.
Next door, Felicia Moore and her daughter, Courtney, said they are afraid that firefighters and Seal Master weren’t prepared for the emergency.
Paralyzed from the waist down, Felicia, a 52-year-old former nursing assistant, was evacuated from her home early Tuesday morning by EMS workers who took her to a nearby parking lot.
“I don’t think they’ve ever really mapped out a plan,” the elder Moore said of Seal Master and the local fire department. “I don’t think they were prepared for a situation like this. And I think the company could be more open to us as a community.”
Cleanup at the site involved removing “maybe two 5-gallon pails of material,” said Lowis, adding that the company hopes to present its findings to fire officials by early next week.
“We have another tank with the same material in it so it’s not going to shut us down, thank goodness,” he said. “We’re very fortunate no one was hurt and I’m extremely grateful that the fire department responded as quickly as they did.”
Two New Haven firefighters injured when their engine was hit on an interstate late Tuesday night are recovering.
A BMW sideswiped a tractor-trailer and a car before striking the engine, according to WTNH.
After the collision, the BMW caught fire. The driver, Wilton Ketter, was rescued and transported to a hospital.
The two firefighters who were in the rig were released after treatment and are expected to be OK.
Connecticut troopers found a gun in Ketter’s vehicle.
He was charged with carrying a pistol without a permit, illegal possession of a weapon inside a motor vehicle, carrying a dangerous weapon, improper use of a marker plate, failure to insure a private motor vehicle, operating an unregistered motor vehicle, failure to maintain proper lane and failure to move or slow down for emergency vehicles.
The son of a Chicago firefighter injured in a house fire Tuesday night has died.
Ezra Stewart, 7, died Wednesday night at Loyola University Medical Center, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner.
The firefighter, who was on duty, rushed to the scene after hearing his address on the scanner, Chicago Fire Spokesman Larry Langford told ABC News reporters.
The firefighter’s wife and daughters, 7 and 2, remain in critical condition.
A neighbor said he called 9-1-1 after he heard a loud explosion and looked out to see heavy fire coming from the house about 9 p.m.
Others at the scene said the man’s fellow firefighters huddled around to show their support.
Neighbors said it was tragic to watch medics perform CPR on the mother. The children, a boy and girl, both seven, and a two-year-old girl also were transported with smoke inhalation.
The cause remains under investigation.
Officials said the firefighter’s home had a smoke alarm. However, they will return to the neighborhood Thursday to hand out detectors.
Two people were critically injured in a Kansas City crash involving a stolen ambulance on Tuesday afternoon, according to police.
The crash occurred around 3 p.m. on Meyer Boulevard near the exit ramp at 71 Highway, police said. The stolen ambulance crashed into four vehicles before leaving the roadway and hitting a tree. It went down an embankment before coming to rest in the northbound lanes of Prospect Avenue, police said.
Drivers from two of the vehicles that were struck by the ambulance were taken to the hospital with serious injuries. Drivers of the two other vehicles declined medical treatment at the scene.
The suspect who was behind the wheel of the stolen ambulance was taken to the hospital as well, police said. All the injured persons were last listed in stable medical condition.
Police say the ambulance was stolen from the emergency bay at Research Medical Center. The vehicle belonged to the Kansas City Fire Department, according to police.
Kansas City police continued to investigate the crash on Tuesday evening.
Mayor Adams showered his FDNY commissioner with praise and defended her on Monday for “changing the culture” as turmoil over a shake-up in leadership continues to roil its upper ranks.
“We knew from the onset that Commissioner Kavanagh was coming in, she was changing a culture that she felt she should have changed, and she wanted those high-ranking individuals to be responsive to her mission moving forward. And that’s what she did,” Adams said Monday morning on 1010 WINS.
“I take my hat off to her being the first woman to become the fire commissioner in one of the largest fire departments on the globe. It’s a tough job, but she’s up for it.”
Historically, the fire department has been dominated by men, most of them white, giving Kavanagh’s elevation to the post a level of unprecedented symbolism.
Her promotion from interim commissioner to the role permanently brought with it the expectation that change would be coming, but inside the FDNY, a debate continues to rage as to whether it’s good or bad.
Despite their demotions, assistant chiefs Michael Gala, Joseph Jardin and Fred Schaaf have been detailed back to FDNY headquarters, but their new roles are not clear, according to a department source with knowledge of the situation. Kavanagh has declined to sign off on demotions for the two chiefs who asked to be demoted in solidarity: Chief of Department John Hodgens, the FDNY’s most senior uniformed official, and Chief of Fire Operations John Esposito.
According to the source, Kavanagh has asked all the chiefs who wanted to be demoted or transferred to stick around for the next three months so she could “right the ship,“ and they’ve agreed.
Without citing specifics, Adams seemed to defend Kavanagh’s decisions Monday, saying that it is within a leader’s purview to build the team they view as most effective.
“When you come into office, any office — I did it here at City Hall — you want to build a team that can execute the plan that you lay out. And that’s what she’s doing,” Adams said later on PIX11 Morning News. “I don’t know a person that takes over a leadership role and doesn’t do an analysis of who’s going to remain on their team and who they are going to bring in new.”
Jabez Bobo, 21, was arraigned Monday, and bail was set at $100,000, according to ABC12.
He is facing life without parole.
After Hill’s death, Mayor Sheldon Neeley said: “This is a tremendous loss for the Flint Fire Department and the entire city of Flint. I ask the Flint community to join us in lifting the family in prayer during this difficult time.”
