KBUU Newswire Monday March 1

Monday… the First of March … and these are the headlines:

= No evidence of any homeless camp at the scene of that fire Sunday.

= Malibu’s city leaders will meet for a fifth time this afternoon … to discuss possibly firing the city manager.

= Crime goes up 142 percent in Malibu … car thefts … petty thefts … big thefts.

= After months of organized campaigns by anti 5G activists … some Malibu residents say better wireless coverage is really important (see separate story).

= Fred Segal … the longtime Malibu resident and retail visionary … dies over the weekend.

= And how do you blow things up over the internet? Malibu High science labs over Zoom.

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No change in the number of deaths from coronavirus in Malibu.

The toll here still stands at 7 …

Only 6 positive case results for Malibu residents in the past two weeks.

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It does not appear that Sunday’s brushfire along Malibu Canyon Road was caused by any homeless camp … or fallen power wire.

Firefighters at the scene said the fire was officially listed as under investigation … but it apparently started along the road ,,, possibly by a tossed cigarette … and then ewas spread byh the wind down a steep gully.

It was during strong Santa Ana winds … at 4:30 in the morning Sunday … when the fire broke out.

It was in a steep canyon … just above Webster Elementary School … and west of the Malib Pacific Church preschool.

More than 200 firefighters and two helicopters were assigned to the blaze.

The choppers could get water just a quarter mile away … at the Pepperdine lagoon.

Firefighters took protective positions and kept the fire from burning any houses.

Two storage sheds burned.

But several power poles burned … and more than 700 customer accounts in the Civic Center area lost power for several hours.

At about the same time … a quarter acre of brush near Serra Estate also burned.

Malibu Canyon Road was closed for several hours.

And traffic was blocked … heading in to the Malibu Civic Center area … for three hours.

Traffic was held at Carbon Canyon Road … and at Latigo Canyon Road.

That’s 11 miles of coast highway … blocked off.

The small canyon that burned has caught fire twice this year.

It also burned in the big 2007 Malibu Canyon fire.

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Malibu’s city council … for the fifth time … will go behind closed doors to talk about City Manager Reva Feldman’s job performance.

Two newly-elected city council members campainged on vows to fire her.

The other three strongly support the work done by Feldman.

Feldman has continued to work as the city’s top executive … after offering to be bought out of her contract.

But Feldman claims evidence that council member Bruce Silverstein has harassed her … leaving the city open to a possible lawsuit.

Today’s special city council meeting is at 3 p-m.

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Malibu residnets who are in favor of improved wireless communications are coming out of the woodwork … after months of organized campaigns against improved wireless service by some Malibu activists.

Anti 5-G activists have been frustrated by federal rules that prohibit cities from restricting 5-G rollouts.

Right now … the wireless companies are taking existing radio frequencies that have been used for decades … and installing power pole base station antennas that are less powerful and more widely spread out.

The federal government has not approved any new frequencies for 5G service … although that will be coming.

Anti-5G activists on Malibu have seized upon fears of that … and organized to demand that the Maloibu city council crack down on wireless antennas.

And to be sure … the wireless companies have installed ugly … loud … and in some cases unsafe cable and wads of unused cable on poles in Malibu.

But most of those ugly overhead messes belong to Charter cable or Frontier … they are wired companies and not wireless … and as such they are beyond the proposed city wireless ordinance.

All of this leads up to the Malibu Planning Commission’s meeting tonight … where the city’s proposed crackdown on wireless antennas and cables comes up.

The anti-5G campaign has peppered the Planninjg Commission with cut and paste form letters … which among other things campaing for a ban on wireless antennas within 15 hundred feet of any building.

The city staff says even a ban of just 500 feet from any building would effectively ban wireless antennas in the city.

The city staff has come up with a set of standards that places an emphasis on stealth facilities … with techniques to minimize visual impacts, and structural safety and security.

But not require any buffer zones.

The form letters from the anti-5G campaigners say Malibu residents says the small cite antennas do not improve voice communications … a contention that communications engineers would dispute.

The form letter also says … quote … “our community does not want or need ultra high-speed wireless data service given the negative consequences.”

And if proclaims that “we have adequate coverage for voice and texting throughout the city for the most part.”

Not so … say some Malibu residents who are emerging into the argument now.

David Kelmenson tells the city planning commission says he lost his Frontier service for three weeks during the Woolsey Fire … and he is 110% in favor of doing whatever it takes to improve cell service…

And Greg Goode writes that he believes that good wireless coverage and strong signals should be our highest priority.

He wants the cell towers to look as nice as possible, but not at the expense of a strong signal.

And he rasies the issue that heavy beach days cause the existing networks to overload … blocking voice and data service.

The Planning Commission meets at 6:30 tonight on the Zoom platform …. there’s a link at the City of Malibu web page.

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A 142 percent increase in crime in Malibu.

That’s the statistic from the LA County sheriff’s office.

Now … you might take that with a grain of salt.

Malibu has a very low number of crimes to start with.

But there is a noticable jump in robberies and theft … when comparing January 2020 … to January 2021.

The number of burglaries from locked vehciles has shot up … from 6 to 13.

The number of thefts … both small and large … went from 4 to 10.

The number of stolen cars went from zero to seven.

And the number of assaults in Malibu went from zero in January 2021 … to two this year.

The parking lot at Solstice Canyon remaons a hotspot for smash and grab thefts from cars.

Criminals from L A get arrrested in Malibu … for mail theft and other crimes.

One guy on P C H got arrested driving a car he had just paid for … with fake money .. in a Facebook deal gone bad.

In January of this year … 22 hundred 60 people got traffic tickets in Malibu.

18 hundred 91 of those were parking tickets.

But 271 of them were for hazardous driving.

A grand total of seven tickets were issued for a muffler violations.

The crime stats will be discussed byt he county sheriff’s liasion and the public safety commission Wednesday at 5 … on the Zoom platform.

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News broke over the weekend … Fred Segal has died.

He was a longtime resident of upper Ramirez Canyon.

The man behind his trendsetting West Hiollywood and Santa Monica retail stores has died of complications from a stroke

He was 87.

“In 1961, Fred Segal created a retail scene that defined Los Angeles fashion and sparked a revolutionary shift in style that has transcended the last six decades. Fred Segal pioneered the shop-in-shop concept and experiential retail, resulting in a brand built on heritage, inclusivity and love that changed the face of retail forever,” Segal’s company said in a statement.

The Beatles, Diana Ross, Bob Dylan and Farrah Fawcett were among those that flocked to the brand early on, according to Variety. Even Elvis Presley’s wardrobe was designed by Segal for a number of years.

Segal is survived by his wife Tina, five children, 10 grandchildren and two great grandchildren, in addition to his wife’s two children and grandson. The family requests donations be made in his memory to the Segal Family-United World Foundation.

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Malibu High School continues to operate under distance learning strictures … and likely will for the entire spring.

We’re taking a look at some of the classroom activities this week …, as spotlighted by the Shark Fund parents group.

Science classes must move their classroom lab exercizes to the web.

Physics, chemistry and other advanced science elective are seeing science experiments on the scree,

The ever-popular demonstration of the chemical reaction of magnesium metal with oxygen.

Other teachers are firing Nerf guns at various anglesexplain the

effects of launch angles.

Students fired from their homes while teachers provided live demos at the other end.

Middle School students were included in similar unique labs like a Thermal

Energy lab demo.

Longstanding Physics teacher Brian Corrigan says he showed his class a problem virtually in class in the last week … and it inspired one of his students to even write his own.

The kid simulated the stacking of blocks on top of each other to see when the would topple.

Senior Theodore (Moe) Putterman said he “so enjoyed some of the quantum simulations like we did for radioactivity …  that I have since written code to do other physics simulations”.

Mr. Corrigan is also the facilitator of Malibu High’s much lauded robotics team.

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If yopu think you spotted some things very strange … flying off the coast last month… your suspicions might be correct.

A pair of Air Force F-117 Nighthawks … the Stealth fighters from the 1990s … were flown up the coast on February …

The boxy looking fighters were being refueled in the air by a KC-135 tanker plane.

The Nighthawks have been officially retired since 2008.

But the Airr Force apparently has flown them over LAX and the coast … hardly keeping their resurrection a secret.

Freelance news photographer Matt Hartman near LAX on Feb. 19  got a shot of them.

Two F-117s can be seen trailing a KC-135R, an Air Force refueling tanker.

This story was reported by the San Frnacisco Chronicle.