It’s been well documented that wildfires in California and elsewhere are becoming more frequent and more intense, and climatologists say the warming atmosphere assures that this is the new normal. That trend also means different patterns of precipitation — perhaps the same annual rainfall totals but more intense patterns of precipitation during certain periods.

What this all adds up to is more wildfires followed by more landslides like the one that struck the city of Montecito in Santa Barbara County in January 2018. That event produced debris flows so robust they killed 23 people despite warnings.

More vaccines are headed to California’s vast Central Valley, an agricultural region whose workers and residents have been hard hit by coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday.

The multi-county region, which includes the cities of Fresno and Bakersfield, will get significantly more vaccines this week dedicated to farmworkers. The shifting allocation comes as California moves to inoculate others beyond health care employees in other essential jobs, including food and farm workers and teachers.

California had been distributing doses based on the estimated number of health care workers and seniors in each county, but is revising its formula as it moves through its planned vaccination tiers.

Stephanie Medrano, 33, of West Covina, Calif., was arraigned on Tuesday on multiple counts of grand theft and insurance fraud after allegedly making misrepresentations following a COVID-19 diagnosis in an attempt to collect more than $33,000 in undeserved workers’ compensation insurance benefits.

The California Department of Insurance launched an investigation after receiving a claim of suspected fraud from Medrano’s employer, the Baldwin Park Unified School District, on Aug. 21, 2020. The investigation reportedly revealed Medrano made multiple misrepresentations in order to extend a workers’ comp claim submitted to her employer after she was diagnosed with COVID-19.

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara on Monday announced a new partnership between the California Department of Insurance and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Administration to establish statewide standards for home and community hardening aimed at reducing wildfire risk, protecting lives and property and making insurance available and affordable to residents and businesses.

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara is alerting residents to review their current insurance policies in the midst of a forecast of winter weather bringing the possibility of floods, mudslides, debris flows, and other disasters to recent wildfire burn areas throughout the state.

Lara issued a formal notice to insurance companies reminding them of their duty to cover damage from any future mudslide or similar disaster that is caused by recent wildfires that weakened hillsides.

California may have paid out nearly $10 billion in phony coronavirus unemployment claims – more than double the previous estimate – with some of that money going to organized crime in Russia, China and other countries, according to a security firm hired to investigate the fraud.

At least 10% of claims submitted to the state Employment Development Department before controls were installed in October may have been fraudulent, Blake Hall, founder and CEO of ID.me told the Los Angeles Times.

The Times said that would work out to $9.8 billion of the benefits paid from March through September.

A California Workers’ Compensation Institute analysis of claims reported to the state Division of Workers’ Compensation as of Jan. 11 shows that the number of COVID-19 claims in the California workers’ compensation system more than tripled between October and November, then jumped another 64.2% to a record 23,483 claims in December.

A new CWCIU projection shows that the December total could climb to 37,573 cases once claims that are yet to be filed or still under investigation are added to the tally.

(TNS) - Jan. 10—Elizabeth Apana is 72 years old. She moved to Santa Rosa in 2019 because her cardiologist told her she needed surgery to stabilize the rhythm of her heart, and it would be too risky to have the procedure done in Hawaii, where she lived at the time. She also has congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma. She is eager to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, for obvious reasons.

"Mentally, it's going to make me feel a whole lot better, because I know I won't have to worry about catching COVID, and I won't have to worry about giving it to other people," Apana said. "I feel it will be a new chance at life."

After spending most of 2020 telling small businesses to close and limit their customers, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday proposed $4 billion worth of state spending he says will help them survive in 2021.

Newsom was the first U.S. governor to impose a statewide stay-at-home order because of the coronavirus pandemic in March, earning praise at the time for decisive action to contain the spread. But a recent surge of cases has caused those restrictions to linger into 2021, shuttering bars, restaurants, barber shops, gyms and movie theaters for months at a time while imposing strict limits on capacity inside retail stores during the year’s busiest shopping season.

A magnitude 3.9 earthquake rattled parts of Northern California on Sunday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed.

The earthquake was reported at 6:44 a.m. about 14 miles from Chico.