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Life & Times Transcript
07/10/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- With images of this wildfire still burned in our mind, is this any time for cutbacks in firefighting? Peter Brierty>> The federal government has to look at this from their perspective, but on our front country here, we have upwards of ninety thousand properties and, on any weekend, we'll have a couple hundred thousand folks in our mountain communities. Val Zavala>> And then, they might make us feel dumb now, but these Science Fair contestants are the hope for our future. These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> Is this the time to be cutting back on fire protection just as the summer months are heating up? Well, like it or not, the cuts are here along with some good news and some new fire regulations that will affect every homeowner in California. Roger Cooper has the story. [Film Clip] Roger Cooper>> It's that dangerous time of year again, the months when southern California braces for the sight of smoke plumes in the air and flames in the forest. We're back in fire season. [Film Clip] Roger Cooper>> Fire season 2003 looked like this, and San Bernardino County fought some of the biggest and most destructive fires in its history. Almost a thousand homes burned to the ground. Six people died, and more than forty thousand people had to be evacuated down from the mountain, a feat accomplished in twenty-four hours flat. So where do we stand this year? The picture, according to fire officials, is mixed. On the one hand, a giant new firefighting airplane may be swooping down on fires. And on the other hand, federal cutbacks are in the works. The federal cutbacks involve the San Bernardino National Forest. The U.S. Forest Service plans to field fewer fire engines this year. Instead of twenty-five fire trucks, there would be about twenty on weekends and only about fifteen on weekdays. The San Bernardino Sun railed against the cutbacks in an editorial, saying "A federal plan to reduce the state's firefighting attack capabilities by up to fifty percent in some cases is dumbfounding." But the fire chief for the San Bernardino National Forest, Mike Dietrich, explains the cuts this way. Mike Dietrich>> We've made a conscious decision based on our budgets that we have available to us to reduce not the staffing per se, but their coverage levels. We're still staffing the same number of fire engines except five days per week instead of seven on the San Bernardino National Forest. We still have the same number of hotshot crews, the same number of aircraft, the same number of dozers, as we have had in prior years. Roger Cooper>> That's for federal crews. Will state fire agencies follow suit and cut back? Mike Padilla is Chief of Aviation for the California Department of Forestry, the CDF. Mike Padilla>> Well, CDF is not. CDF is looking at continuing with its staffing and maybe even increasing it. We look at our responsibilities down here to maintain them at the highest level of preparedness and resources available to fight fires down here. Our season is starting and we want to be ready for it. Roger Cooper>> And how about Los Angeles County? Deputy Chief John Tripp of Los Angeles County Fire says the federal cuts could leave a gap to be filled. John Tripp>> Well, that presents a challenge to us. With them reducing their resources, that puts a little bit more on us, so we've been talking about that, briefing our commanders, that if they see while they're in route that they have a large working fire, that they know that those resources that we may have been relying on are not going to be there, so we're going to be asking for additional resources to take their place. Roger Cooper>> And in San Bernardino County, Fire Marshall Peter Brierty says local fire agencies have been meeting to discuss their response to the federal cuts. Peter Brierty>> On any weekend, we'll have a couple hundred thousand folks in our mountain communities and we're going to bring our own resources up to various levels that we can maintain and make sure that we protect the public when they're using the mountain areas. Roger Cooper>> Federal officials argue that they can staff up fire engines again in the event of a big fire, but some local officials fear that, in the time it takes to staff up, small fires will become big fires. Staffing and budgets will be a challenge, but the good news is the appearance of something that's hard to miss. It has to be the largest flying fire truck in the world and it has taken years and millions to get it to this runway. Sam White>> We've been working this for over three years. We have forty million dollars of our own money invested in this project. Roger Cooper>> A company called Evergreen Aviation International has taken the seats out of a 747 Jumbo Jetliner, put in big tanks, and turned it into a firefighting super tanker. It's capable of dropping immense payloads on fires, some twenty thousand gallons, seven times the capacity of the largest Forest Service tanker now flying. The super tanker can lay down a drop that's twenty-five thousand feet in length, or a series of shorter drops on different fires. Sam White is the Senior Vice President with Evergreen. Sam White>> There is a real need to revamp aerial firefighting and we believe this is the answer, to be able to disburse twenty thousand five hundred gallons of product on target at night when a fire is dormant. Roger Cooper>> Evergreen brought its 747 super tanker into San Bernardino recently for a demonstration drop, hoping to convince state and federal fire officials that it's a tool they need. Making a slow pass at just five hundred feet, it was water bombs away. [Film Clip] Sam White>> As you saw today, really what we're doing is we're bringing the rainstorm to the fire. What we're trying to do is introduce a lot of humidity in the firefighting environment and choke that fire of oxygen. Roger Cooper>> Fire officials who saw the demo are intrigued, but want to see more testing before committing to use the plane. Mike Padilla>> I think it's a great tool for the future. I think the potential for this in being a new and exciting firefighting tool is good for California and good for the western United States. I think we have to give them a shot at it and let's put it on a fire and see what it will do. Mike Dietrich>> Pretty impressive technology and, of course, with any new technology, we have to look at the merits and what it can do out on the ground. John Tripp>> There's still some data that we have to look at. How much water was actually on the ground where the source of the fire is, at the fuel level? Roger Cooper>> Evergreen hopes to get a contract to demonstrate its super tanker on a real wildfire this August. By the way, it hasn't gone unnoticed that the fire season and the hurricane season overlap. Evergreen is exploring a theory that a drop so big onto a hurricane could take it down a category. Another change coming up across the state this fire season will impact homeowners and their brush clearance. The required clearance boundaries around homes this year are being pushed out. Peter Brierty>> Defensible space has been traditionally thirty feet from your house, your structure, out into the wild land urban interface. Look at any vegetation within thirty feet of your house and what's happened is, we've taken a second look at that and the California Department of Forestry, our partner in this area, has said, well, let's move that out to a hundred feet. Roger Cooper>> Fire officials are always hesitant to predict what kind of fire season we'll have, but the good news so far is that -- Peter Brierty>> We've had two very, very good years of rain and, although that's good for us in the spring where the plants are nice and green and not as likely to burn, as we move into July and August, as they start to dry out, we're going to have an abundance of fuels, what we call our light flashy fuels, that are going to cause some problems for us and we need to be very careful about those. Roger Cooper>> As for those dead trees you've heard so much about in our mountains, the massive effort to cut them down and remove them continues, but it will be well into next year before the project is complete. Meantime, it's fire season in southern California and firefighters and equipment are standing by, including a giant plane that would love to make a big splash. In San Bernardino, I'm Roger Cooper for Life and Times. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> Would the more than seven hundred thousand students in the LAUSD be better off if Mayor Villaraigosa were in charge? Well, the mayor thinks so and that's why he's launched an effort to take over the schools from the school board. But can the mayor do what the school board can't? For some frank talk on that question, we brought together David Tokofsky, a member of the Los Angeles School Board which is against mayoral control, and Caprice Young, a former member of the school board and advocate of charter schools. She supports the mayor's takeover attempt. And David Lehrer, President of CommUnity Advocates, Inc. gets our conversation going. David Lehrer>> The past few months have seen an increasing focus on the Los Angeles School District and Mayor Villaraigosa's effort to take control of the district. What are the basics of the mayor's plan? Caprice Young>> Well, the key thing is to have schools be the centers of communities so that you can have partnerships between Rec and Parks and libraries and schools so that the kids and their whole families can be served, and that way we can improve education and really focus on what the kids need. David Lehrer>> That's a pretty good idea. David Tokofsky>> That's a great idea. That's why Laura Chick referred to the city's Department of Parks and Recs as Parks and Wrecks as the worst Parks and Recs Department in the entire United States. My argument is let's fix the parks, let's fix the transportation, let's fix homelessness, let's fix the lack of police across the city and then integrate that with what we're doing to fix the schools. And that should not be put all in one place because the experience on the east coast is that power corrupts and the more power that's concentrated, the more corruption that occurs. That's why people came to Los Angeles from the east coast to avoid these -- David Lehrer>> -- but aren't the schools in Los Angeles Unified -- clearly there's been progress over the past several years. But at the pace we're going, won't it take thirty five years until most of the grades come up to standards? David Tokofsky>> No, I don't think that's true. If you follow the state system which is a goal of eight hundred and you prefer to ideally be over nine hundred, the schools are massively on the rise. There are over eighty schools that are over eight hundred. There's over fifteen over the nine hundred mark, including the mayor's own neighborhood, Mount Washington Elementary School where his -- David Lehrer>> -- in your district. David Tokofsky>> That's in my area and I was there when he was the Speaker of the Assembly. We celebrated that school. Suddenly, instead of celebrating and cheerleading, we're coming in with the old stick approach, and we know in education that you have to use that very sparingly in order to motivate people to move -- David Lehrer>> -- this progress that they made, why -- Caprice Young>> -- well, the progress is just simply not fast enough. If our kids only improve two percent a year, which is what the school board that you serve on has approved as your strategic plan for how much you want to increase, it is going to be that case before our kids come up to proficiency and that's not fast enough for my kids. What I see in Los Angeles Unified are pockets of tremendous excellence and I think that those innovators really deserve to have some real power put behind them so that they can replicate what they're doing and do more of it as opposed to just getting mired -- David Lehrer>> -- but you were crying to the school board. What should have been done that you wanted to do, couldn't be done, and why? Caprice Young>> I wanted to radically increase the size of the magnet school program, for example. We've got more than sixty thousand families that applied for the magnet program for fifteen thousand seats. It seems like a no-brainer that you should expand the program like that because parents want it and it's clearly working. Yet we could not get the bureaucracy to add more than a couple of schools and that's an example of where the bureaucracy just gets in the way. David Lehrer>> And will the bureaucracy vaporize when the mayor takes control of the school district? Caprice Young>> No, but I think that it will actually really profoundly change because, with the power concentrated in the mayor, he'll be able to decentralize and to pull the decisions down to the school level and also to support some of these wonderful innovative programs. Right now, what happens is these great innovative program leaders get frustrated and they call me because they want to start a charter school because they can't do what they need to do for the kids. David Tokofsky>> I've never called City Hall and found it to be a model of efficiency, whether I'm trying to get scum cleaned up near my house or get the trash taken care of or any of the other issues. If you look at the homelessness issue that Steve Lopez wrote column after column about, there doesn't seem to be any efficiency except for maybe hauling people out and moving them away. If it comes to housing issues, people are moving to Riverside as we sit here and talk, to find cheaper houses, affordable houses out there. They're not moving and naming a school and saying, "I'm going to Riverside because of that school." There are a variety of options and choices in Los Angeles. Even in the other districts within Los Angeles County, kids are much more trapped in issues of low performance than they are in this larger more cumbersome system. But on the other hand, it's a system that has a variety of -- David Lehrer>> -- well, somebody says, okay, the mayor will forget about trying to take over. How would you respond to what Caprice is saying is the urgent need to take the examples of excellence and replicate them throughout a district of seven hundred fifty thousand? David Tokofsky>> I worked with Caprice and I loved her impatience on all issues. That was a motivating factor and, again, I would suggest to her that here is an application, don't just do the charter schools. I'd love to see Caprice apply for Superintendent because what we need is the kind of energy and passion and optimism about what can happen. Superintendent Romer came in and he brought some peace and some progress and performance on the construction and on the academic piece. What we now need to do is accelerate. We've gotten consensus about what can be happening. Let's see, if it's a matter of publicizing whether the school board and the Superintendent are doing things right, four times we've gone to the voters and said, "Would you trust us with your tax money?" Four times they have returned billions of dollars at seventy percent of the voter approval. To me, that's a massive sense of you're doing things right. Any parent like myself, like Caprice and like yourself want to accelerate things and make them much more challenging. That's a nationwide problem and not just a Los Angeles Unified problem. David Lehrer>> Well, if you've got a Board that's interested in doing what's right, you have a Superintendent who manifestly at his age didn't have to come here and he must care about kids and want to accomplish something. What were the obstacles to moving this massive aircraft carrier in the right direction? Caprice Young>> Well, you know, I think part of it also is that the innovations that existed just three or four years ago don't exist anymore. I mean, this is a Board where we've got Board members calling for a moratorium on charter schools just in time when our test scores are beginning to really outperform at the secondary level and parents are creating massive waiting lists for charter schools. I don't understand the logic when a Board member calls for a moratorium against something that's clearly working and that parents clearly want. That's not forward thinking. David Lehrer>> What are the political underpinnings of that? Are the unions against charter schools? Who opposes the charter schools? Caprice Young>> Well, A.J. Duffy, the head of the union, has opposed charter schools. But interestingly enough, most of the charter schools in Los Angeles are not particularly anti-union. We've got a lot of charter schools that are union charter schools. In fact, the group of charter schools that David works for are all union charter schools. David Lehrer>> Well, you know, the UTLA is the mayor's alma mater. Is he going to take on the UTLA if he takes over the school district? David Tokofsky>> Well, I don't know. I think that not only is it his alma mater, but he served in a role as a grievance arbiter, so he would go in and in essence protect the due process of an employee who was not deemed to be performing well and often left the children and the families with people in the classroom based on due process who were not necessarily performing at the high level. Now whether or not he's had a rebirth and suddenly is saying, "I did things wrong. It's between me and my maker. I want to move things", I'd love to see that. But there is no long line at the personnel office for people to come and teach. There is no long line for people to become TAs. The average age of a principal in the state of California is sixty-three years old. What we need to do is take that golden nugget that each person came into to work with kids and motivate it and uncloud it and push it and push it constantly. That's what Caprice did. Too often, though, we demonize things and put it as this is good and this is bad. We end up reinventing the wheel and frustrating the public even more. David Lehrer>> Well, we've run out of time. Thank you very much, Caprice. Thank you, David. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> We're always reading about the problems in our schools, but now there's an antidote to all that bad news. Just make one visit to the Los Angeles County Science Fair and get ready to be impressed, charmed and entertained, as Cris Franco was. Cris Franco>> What's got a big pencil and a stopwatch and a tube and a ruler and a place? >> A catalyst reaction rays meter. Cris Franco>> But, of course, you knew that. Well, you would have if you'd been at today's Los Angeles County Science Fair where the southland's best middle and high school scientific minds bring their brightest ideas to life. This yearly science palooza draws over a thousand local public and private school students in a competition for awards and scholarships in categories ranging from biology to zoology. I had the pleasure of meeting just a few of these dynamic participants whose entries pose some rather important questions. Swati Yanamadala>> Well, what I was doing was looking at the bacterial levels in aquatic ecosystems and seeing if that affects our coastal beach water quality. What I found was that humans contribute a lot to the fecal contamination going into our beaches. So basically, when we use the restroom, our feces are going into the water and then going into our beaches and we're swimming in it. Cris Franco>> Contamination's up. Now what school do you go to? Alex Nescovic>> I go to John Muir Middle School in Burbank. Cris Franco>> Oh, I'm from the Valley too. Valley boys, for sure, for sure. Okay, for sure, tell me about your experiment here. Alex Nescovic>> Well, I tested the five-second rule. Cris Franco>> Oh, like five seconds if you drop a potato chip and you go, five-second rule, and then you pick it up and then it's not dirty? Alex Nescovic>> Yes. Cris Franco>> Every bachelor knows that. You're a bachelor, right? Alex Nescovic>> Yes, of course. Cris Franco>> Alex arrived at his conclusion by checking for contamination using a wand and a Petrie dish. Alex Nescovic>> This is a Petrie dish. Cris Franco>> If it falls on the floor, it has acquired enough of the bacteria. It doesn't matter how long it's there. One second or five seconds -- Alex Nescovic>> -- you might get sick, exactly. Cris Franco>> Speaking of getting sick -- Erica Kepski>> Which antacid will neutralize gastric acid the best? [Film Clip] Cris Franco>> Erica's thorough explanation kind of gave me a tummy ache. [Film Clip] Cris Franco>> How do people get gastric acid? Because I have that problem. I have a lot of stomach acid. Erica Kepski>> Get some Milk of Magnesia. Cris Franco>> Where do you go to school? Krishna Choudhary>> Nobel Middle School in Northridge. Cris Franco>> Another Valley boy. Krishna Choudhary>> How I got the atmosphere effective turbulence is I used these stoves to create different speeds of air. Then I used a laser so that the laser would quiver through like a graph paper and I would measure how much it would quiver. Cris Franco>> Now where did you get a laser? Not every kid has a laser at home. Did you just happen to have one at home? Krishna Choudhary>> Yeah, I just happened to have one at home. Cris Franco>> Can you get our suits there? Very good, right? We look like an ad at Sears. Tell me a little bit about your hovercraft engineering display. Robert Hollar>> Well, the purpose of my project was to build a hovercraft that could lift twenty-five pounds. Some of the materials we used were these PVC plastic sheets here for the frame of the hovercraft. We used a model aircraft engine. The distance in centimeters between the two liquids times the density of the liquid divided by the weight that you want it to carry equals the diameter in centimeters. Cris Franco>> This last part flew over my head like a hovercraft. Joshua Anderson was a little easier to follow. Tell me about your experiment which asks which valley has clean water. Joshua Anderson>> I was testing to see which valley had cleaner water, either the Conejo Valley or the San Fernando Valley. The water temperature is fourteen degrees Celsius and I tested the nitrate level which was three ppm which means parts per million. The dissolved oxygen level which was three ppm, parts per million, and I did that for all the streams in both valleys. Cris Franco>> And the winner is? Joshua Anderson>> The San Fernando Valley had cleaner water. Cris Franco>> Valley boys. Lyndsey Aponik>> Well, I did "Global Warming: Myth or Reality?" I wanted to find out if global warming was true or false. Cris Franco>> And the answer is? Lyndsey Aponik>> True. Cris Franco>> True. Lyndsey Aponik>> And what I did is, I got two jars. One I filled with the room air and the other I filled with carbon dioxide. I got two heat lamps and I turned them on and I found that the jar with the carbon dioxide treated air was hotter. Alexandra De La Torre>> What I did was, I put them in separate containers and then I put soil over them and I gave them food scraps. There was inorganic fertilizers which was slow release and instant release and there was an organic fertilizer used. Cris Franco>> And is this what the worms look like? Alexandra De La Torre>> This isn't really what the worms looked like. [Film Clip] Alexandra De La Torre>> Inorganic fertilizer should not be used. Organic fertilizer should be used instead. Cris Franco>> Because what happens? Alexandra De La Torre>> Because then the earthworms die. Cris Franco>> And that's bad because? Alexandra De La Torre>> Because the long-term value of the soil isn't good anymore. Those worms maintain it. Cris Franco>> These future Einsteins and Edisons are out to change their world and often how they found their inspiration is as unique as their discoveries themselves. Calvin Huang>> The title of my experiment is "Will You Be The Next Millionaire?" Cris Franco>> And how did you come up with that idea? Calvin Huang>> I came up with this idea. Every once in a while, I see my parents playing the lottery and I wondered if I could help them out because they're usually not winning much money. My conclusion is that the lottery numbers are not predictable, so you're just really wasting your money. Cris Franco>> What gave you the idea? Robert Hollar>> Just thinking about all the stuff my dad builds like oil pipes under water, all the crazy stuff he makes around the house to make cleaning and stuff easier. Well, I want to build something crazy too. I mean, every kid wants to be like his dad, so I just decided to build the hovercraft. Lyndsey Aponik>> I was actually watching an Oprah show with my mom and Leonardo DiCaprio was on. He was talking about global warming and I thought that was really interesting, so I decided to do more research about it. Cris Franco>> He saved Kate Winslet in "Titanic". Now he's going to save our planet. Meeting these young scientists made me feel optimistic about our world's future and theirs. Alex Nescovic>> I want to go to MIT and then work at NASA or JPL. Cris Franco>> Those are good places. I think they have good insurance plans, right? Alex Nescovic>> I have no clue about the insurance. Cris Franco>> Tell me, what do you think when people say that young people that are into science are nerds? Krishna Choudhary>> Well, don't call them nerds because, when you grow up, you're going to end up working for them and they're going to be your boss. Robert Hollar>> It has huge benefits in life. It can get you a very well high-paying job. It can get you into good schools and it can just do a lot for you. So I find it sad that a lot of today's young people don't appreciate science and math as much as they should. Cris Franco>> These young Americans have a true passion for science, math and engineering, and there's a practical reason to encourage them all to understand the stars above us and the molecules around us because discovery leads to innovation, innovation leads to production, which is just another word for jobs. Any everybody understands what that is. Even I do. Lyndsey, what's going to happen to the polar bear if people don't pay attention to your experiment? Lyndsey Aponik>> The polar bears are going to lose their ice and die. Cris Franco>> The polar bears are going to die. You have to stop them. Lyndsey Aponik>> Okay (laughter). Val Zavala>> The Los Angeles County Science Fair is always looking for judges and sponsors. If you're interested, contact Gilbert Dean at (562) 922-6896 or email him at gilbert_dean@lacoe.edu. And for all the English majors at Life and Times, I'm Val Zavala. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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