Morning Lookout: Boil water notice for some, pipe bomb at local high school, uptick in femicides and more
Good Morning! It’s Monday, October 4 and it will be mostly sunny with a high of 78.
Our thoughts are with our neighbors to the south in Huntington Beach and along the Orange County coast where a massive oil spill over the weekend has spewed at least 126,000 gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean. We have a surfer’s first-person account of what it was like to hit the waves on the morning of the spill. And with surfing in mind, Lookout has put together a comprehensive surfing guide to help you navigate the season. Check it out here.
In your “not the Onion” headline for the day, Star Trek’s Captain Kirk actor William Shatner will be headed to space on Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin tourist spaceflight later this month.
We have a lot of local news this morning including Boil Water Notice for some Boulder Creek residents, a pipe bomb explosion at a local high school and an upswing in homicides of women in Santa Cruz County in the last year.
Here are your headlines:
Boil water notice in place for some Boulder Creek residents for at least two weeks
After a “water outage” on September 30, the Big Basin Water Company has issued a Boil Water Notice for the residents of the following Boulder Creek residents: Double Boogie Dr., Hare Way, Unit #1 Lake Dr., Memory Lane, Dogwood, West Hilton Dr., McPhereson Ct., McGranahan Ct., Everest and Bloomgrade. Officials say the notice will be in place for at least two weeks. To read more from the company click here. For water safety guidelines from the CDC, click here.
Q&A: Director of county office of response, recovery and resilience talks about the CZU rebuilding process
Dave Reid is in charge of making the process of rebuilding as easy as possible for those who lost their homes in the wake of the CZU fire. The director of the Santa Cruz County Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience said he understands families’ frustrations and is looking for ways to help. Read more from a Q&A he did with Lookout’s Grace Stetson here.
Digital NEST’s centers for technology are empowering a wave of local tech-minded young people
Digital NEST’s centers for technology are empowering a wave of local tech-minded young people
Quick Take
Jacob Martinez is preparing local young people for opportunities in tech and digital innovation. His growing network of...
‘I’ve seen some brutal things’: Murders of Santa Cruz County women on the rise
In the last 12 months, five women have been victims of homicides, a dramatic jump from 2019. Women’s shelter officials and service providers say they have seen an increase in calls for help as the pandemic eases, and urges anyone who may be in a dangerous situation to get help. Read more about what officials are saying about the deadly trends from Lookout contributor Hanna Merzbach here.
Pipe bomb explosion at Harbor High over the weekend
Officers with the Santa Cruz Police Department responded to the 300 Block of La Fonda Saturday evening after receiving reports of an explosion. They found a pipe bomb “stuck into the chain-link fencing on the baseball field of Harbor High School,” officials wrote in a Facebook post.
ICYMI: Newsom orders COVID vaccines for eligible students, the first state mandate for K-12 schools
Last week, California became the first state to announce a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for all public and private school children, a move affecting millions of students and once again placing the state at the forefront of strict pandemic safety measures. Read more about the mandate and when it will go into effect here.
READ ALSO: What we know about vaccine safety for schoolchildren as California sets mandate (LA Times)
‘Leaving a legacy’: UCSC alumnus and photographer Stephen Louis Marino captures student life through his lens
Stephen Louis Marino, 62, is a self-described “shy man” who found a home at UC Santa Cruz in 1979. He said one of his biggest regrets was not taking enough photos when he was a student. But given the more than 15,000 images he’s taken and donated in the past two decades of the campus and its people, it seems he’s more than made up for that. Read more about his mission and the community response from Lookout Contributor Haneen Zain here.
Living the dream: Santa Cruz filmmaking duo makes the break for Hollywood
Santa Cruz actors and filmmakers Drew Crocker and Erik Gandolfi are headed to La-La Land to see if they can make their Hollywood dreams come true. But before heading south, they will show all of their comic shorts in one program on an outdoor screen at the Tannery. Read more from our Wallace Baine here.
Clean transit options
Future transit preview or limited engagement? Coast Futura will demo Santa Cruz rail option: The battery-powered, zero-emission Coast Futura is offering free rides along the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line on its clean-energy streetcar. The rides, which must be reserved, will be in Watsonville on Oct. 16-17 and between the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and Capitola the following weekend. Read more from Lookout contributor Haneen Zain here.
Get out of your car and ride — Biketober hits Santa Cruz for third year: Local nonprofit Ecology Action has kicked off its third annual Biketober festivities, encouraging Santa Cruz County residents young and old to use alternative means of transportation, participate in group events, and possibly win up to $1,000 in cash prizes. Read more from our Grace Stetson here.
Quick Take
On the heels of the 1-year anniversary of the CZU Lightning Complex Fires, “Big Basin Redwood Forest, California’s...
Surf life
May the stoke be with you! Surf season is here & so too is this handy guide to Santa Cruz surf schools: With the concurrent arrival of fall and the season’s first northwest swell, which brought large waves to Santa Cruz’s world-famous stretch of coastline this past week, it’s the perfect time to consider being part of the action in the water. Whether you’re brand new to it or just need to scrape off some rust, Lookout has your complete guide to finding the stoke.
What it was like to surf on day of Orange County oil spill: Frantic dolphins, exhaust smell: ”... about 10 dolphins tore through the heavy crowd of surfers. One broke through the surface just a few feet ahead of me... They were racing north as fast as I’d ever seen. Dolphins are a common sight in Huntington. But they usually saunter around, and swim fast only when they’re riding waves... I’ve never seen them make a mistake, so I just sat there and marveled for a minute.” Read more of the first-person account here.
Around the county...
Mill Creek waters run free after dam removed in San Vicente Redwoods (Santa Cruz Sentinel)
HS football| Sharks stomp Bruins in league action (The Pajaronian)
Strawberries top Santa Cruz County crop report, flowers hit hard during pandemic (KSBW-TV)
That’s it for today. If you’re enjoying our coverage, please tell your family and friends about our Lookout Newsletter & Text Center, where they can sign up for all the newsletters and alerts we offer. You can also keep tabs on everything we’re publishing through the day by bookmarking our website and following us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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Have a great day!
Tulsi Kamath
Lookout Santa Cruz
