A nearly-century-old Southern California hospital that sits on an active earthquake fault will close because it can’t meet state earthquake safety requirements, officials said this week.

Community Medical Center Long Beach announced it has submitted a four-month lease termination notice to the city, which owns the land.

For most municipal governments right now, times are good. Sales tax revenues are way up, and property values are also reaching new highs — thereby increasing municipal revenues. This stands of course in stark contrast to the brutal Great Recession a decade ago, when collapsing home values, unemployment and plunging sales tax revenues forced cities and counties to make painful cost-cutting decisions.

California state agencies spent nearly $1.8 billion fighting fierce wildfires that killed dozens of people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses last year, legislative budget experts reported Thursday.

The federal government will reimburse most of the costs, but the state will still need to come up with about $371 million on top of the state’s existing wildfire budget, the Legislative Analyst’s Office told the Senate Budget committee. That shouldn’t be a problem because state revenue has far exceeded expectations so far this fiscal year and the general fund is flush with cash.

California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation that seeks to beef up dam inspections following a near disaster that caused the evacuation of almost 200,000 people living downstream from the tallest one in the United States.

The measure implements several recommendations from experts who reviewed the crisis at Oroville Dam last year.

(TNS) - California fire officials asked lawmakers Tuesday for $100 million to improve the state’s strained mutual-aid system, which is designed to quickly rally first responders in an emergency, such as the deadly fires that ravaged the North Bay last year.

At a legislative hearing in Sacramento, fire chiefs and emergency officials said wildfires across the state last year exposed shortcomings in the 60-year-old system.

The number of qualified medical evaluators resolve disputes over California workers’ compensation claim issues fell 20 percent between January 2012 and September 2017, according to a new California Workers’ Compensation Institute study.

However, the CWCI study shows that the impact on QME accessibility was partially offset by an increase in the median number of office locations per QME, which doubled over the same period.

Injuries to workers can occur in many ways, but few employers expect such injuries to come out of an employee's nightmare. When that happens, is the injury covered by workers' compensation? According to the Court of Appeals of Arkansas, the answer is no. But why?

In November 2015, Shawn Hansen was employed by the City of Siloam Springs, Ark., as a firefighter and an EMT. Hansen worked 24-hour shifts. During his shifts, he was required to stay on premises unless he was performing a work-related errand or activity. Because of the 24-hour scheduling scheme, the city provided sleeping arrangements and encouraged the employees to sleep during nighttime hours.

The Earthquake Brace + Bolt program closed its latest registration with more than 7,500 California homeowners applying for 2,000 retrofit grants.

The EBB, funded primarily by the California Earthquake Authority, closed registration on Friday.

(Reuters) - A team of engineers that worked on self-driving cars and helped invent Google Street View wants to help people guard their homes against intruders using the same style of facial recognition that unlocks smart phones.