Solano Land Trust has plenty of activities in July A3
Where Warriors sit after recent departures B1
MONDAY | July 4, 2022 | $1.00
DAILYREPUBLIC.COM | Well said. Well read.
Divers search for Winters teen after crash near Lake Solano Daily Republic Staff
DRNEWS@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET
LAKE SOLANO — Divers were searching for an 18-year-old Winters man Sunday who was missing since shortly after midnight after the vehicle he was in crashed in the area of Lake Solano Park and sank. Rescue personnel were not able to find Eduardo Fierros overnight and resumed the search Sunday morning, the Solano County Sheriff’s Office reports. Deputies responded to a call just after midnight Sunday to an area near the east end of Lake Solano County Park and Putah Creek Road, west of Canal Lane. Deputies who arrived there found a red truck fully submerged and found an 18-year-old man clinging to the shoreline. Deputies assisted the man and called for medical aid. The man told deputies his friend, Fierros, was still in the truck, the Sheriff’s Office reports. Vacaville Fire Protection District firefighters trained in swift water rescue attempted to access the truck but were not able to get to it. The Solano County Sheriff’s Office Dive Team was called out while deputies searched the shoreline. The truck was later recovered from the water and was unoccupied, the Sheriff’s Office reports. Solano County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue personnel with assistance from the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office searched for Fierros throughout the day Sunday. The Sheriff’s Office at 12:20 p.m. announced the closure of Putah Creek Road from Pleasants Valley Road to Canal Road to facilitate the search. No further updates were provided prior to press deadline at 7 p.m. Sunday. The California Highway Patrol is conducting the crash investigation.
Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images/TNS
Ukrainian troops move by tank on a road of the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, June 21.
Russia claims to have captured city of Lysychansk Ukraine denies claim Tribune Content Agency MOSCOW — Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu declared on Sunday that Russian forces had captured the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk, but Kyiv rebutted the claim. Shoigu told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the city had fallen, granting Moscow full control of the Luhansk region, according to the Interfax news agency. But Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesperson Yuriy Sak said Lysychansk was not under the “full control” of Russian forces, in comments to the British public broadcaster BBC. The situation in the city has been “very intense for quite a while now,” he told the broadcaster, adding that Russian ground forces were attacking “non-stop.” Sak noted that Ukrainian forces may at times temporarily retreat from certain areas to protect people’s lives, but then retake them again later. Control of the eastern Donbass region – consisting of Luhansk and Donetsk – has been one of the stated goals of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Donbass would not be entirely lost, however, even if Russia captured all of Luhansk, the Ukrainian ministry spokesperson said, noting that other large towns in Donetsk remained under Kyiv’s control. “These are cities that for the last couple of days (have been) targets of severe missile attacks, artillery shelling,” he told the BBC, “but the battle for the Donbass is not over yet.” See Ukraine, Page A7 INDEX Arts B4 | Business B2 | Classifieds B6 Comics A5, B5 | Crossword A4, B4 | Food B3 Opinion A6 | Sports B1 | TV Daily A5, B5
Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times/TNS file (2021)
A boat navigates Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, June 11, 2021.
Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric Hayley Smith
LOS ANGELES TIMES
LOS ANGELES — Unprecedented dryness across the Western United States is meeting with increasingly warm temperatures to create climate conditions so extreme that the landscape of California could permanently and profoundly change, a growing number of scientists say. The Golden State’s great drying has already begun to reduce snowpack, worsen wildfires and dry out soils, and researchers say that trend will likely continue, along with the widespread loss of trees and other significant shifts. Some say what’s in store for the state could be akin to the conditions that drove people thousands of years ago to abandon thriving cities in the Southwest and other arid parts of the world as severe drought contributed to crop failures and the crumbling of social norms. But unlike in those ancient
civilizations, California’s current transformation is being accelerated by carbon emissions and human-caused climate change, which is creating not only longer and more severe droughts, but also hotter ones. It’s a process known as aridification, and many say it’s here to stay. “All the factors in the Southwest are leading to a drier and drier climate,” said Jonathan Overpeck, co-author of a 2020 paper on aridification. “And because they are being driven by human-caused increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we expect this drying out to just get worse and worse until we stop.” Hundreds of years ago, the Ancestral Puebloans of what is now known as the Four Corners region of the American Southwest were a prosperous people known for their art and architecture. But sometime in the late 1200s, they abruptly abandoned their established home for reasons long considered to
be a mystery. Now, a growing body of evidence suggests that a prolonged period of dryness known as the Great Drought is to blame, at least partially, for their exodus. A similar drying has also been linked to the collapse of ancient cities in Mesopotamia and the Mayan Empire. Researchers say that can offer clues about what’s to come. “We can use these sort of ancient, old climates to potentially learn about something that’s relevant for today,” said Jessica Tierney, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies past climates. “We know it’s going to get hotter and drier. It’s happening already. So I think the question we have to ask ourselves is, how do we adapt to those conditions?” According to Tierney, part of the challenge is that while there have been megadroughts and periods of high atmospheric carbon dioxide See Drought, Page A7
Proposal to boost state minimum wage to $18 won’t go on November ballot Jeanne Kuang
INSIDE In final sprint toward deadline, here’s how California’s November ballot changed. Page A7.
CALMATTERS
Californians won’t vote this fall on whether the minimum wage should rise again as inflation continues to tear through families’ budgets. An initiative to bump the minimum wage to $18 over the next three years, though bankrolled by a wealthy investor and backed by a slew of labor organizations, has failed to qualify for the November ballot. The Secretary of State’s office said not enough signatures had been verified by county election officials by the Thursday deadline to qualify the measure. Triggered by the record rate of inflation, which in the past year has caused the biggest increase in the consumer price index in four decades, California’s topof-the-nation minimum wage already is set to increase to $15.50 an hour next January. Had the California Living Wage Act proposal succeeded, it would have
Robinson Kuntz/Daily Republic file (2021)
A hiring sign is seen in Fairfield in 2021. increased it to $16 next January and $18 by 2025, after which the minimum wage would have adjusted annually to account for the cost of living.
‘Empty stomachs’ Starting in February, the initiative campaign was among the later ballot efforts to begin collecting signatures this year. Joe Sanberg, a Los Angeles startup investor-turnedadvocate against poverty, said he would spend what it took to get it on the ballot. He personally poured $10 million into the
WEATHER 77 | 62 Mostly sunny. Five-day forecast on B8.
campaign, and supporters announced in May they had turned in more than a million signatures. But the measure, which was opposed by a group of small business owners, fell victim to the timeconsuming process of signature verification. Supporters said they’re still trying to get the measure on the ballot this fall through “whatever legal means necessary.” As of the Thursday night deadline, the measure was still awaiting signature verification from just a few larger counties such as San
Diego, Kern and Sacramento that would likely put the measure over the threshold to qualify. “Nothing should stand between working people and affording life’s basic needs – that includes meaningless bureaucracy,” said Anna Bahr, campaign spokesperson, in an email. “This is a wildly popular, morally See Wage, Page A7
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