To hot

Nah. Just too ephemiral. The link changes content daily. The original was about searching for lost nuke fuel, the current one is about theft from the Salvation Army, who knows what it will be today. Interestingly, the two stories are somewhat related: a percentage lost and not yet found. We'll see if the next story follows the same pattern.

Bill, your comment got me to look at that page again and the following story caught my attention:

SR man shot, killed friend at Christmas party

A 23-year-old Santa Rosa man who died in a Christmas Day brawl was accidentally shot by a friend who was trying to protect him, police said Wednesday.

Santa Rosa police said they havenÂt arrested the friend, whose name they withheld, citing concern for his safety.

"He didnÂt know at the time that he had struck his friend in the head," Santa Rosa Police Lt. Jerry Briggs said. Six men are being held without bail on murder charges in the death of William Dzul Sulub. Police said they invaded a house on Kingwood Drive on Saturday and attacked Sulub and three others with baseball bats.

The intruders took Sulub to a house on Santa Ana Drive, where police found him bleeding from a gunshot wound to the head. He later died at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.

Briggs said police determined that the friend fired several shots from a .22 caliber handgun at their fleeing car, trying to stop the men from kidnapping Sulub.

"He knows they are going to kill this guy," Briggs said. But the friend couldnÂt see who was in the car and he accidentally shot Sulub, Briggs said.

That's pretty funny (in a morbid sort of way); since the perp's were going to kill him anyway, his friend hasn't been charged with a crime.

We do love our guns and the right to bear and use them at our (in)discretion, whichever the case may be. It's an accident, judge. I shot him, not drowned him.

Had I such a friend, and such thuggish enemies, I'd have wished the friend more diligent in his moving-target practice, or better yet would pull the trigger when the thugs are distinct.

It's concievable to run away from baseball bats, much harder to dodge friendly fire. Sounds like certain socal environments are much degraded.

This one will not change...this is the piece..

POND TO BE SEARCHED FOR NUCLEAR ROD SEGMENTS

Published on December 29, 2004

© 2004- The Press Democrat

BYLINE: GLENDA ANDERSON

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

PAGE: B1

In its continuing effort to find four pounds of missing radioactive fuel rods, PG&E will vacuum the bottom of a storage pool at its mothballed Humboldt Bay nuclear power plant near Eureka.

Sediment at the bottom of the 30-foot-deep pool may be hiding pieces of a fuel rod authorities discovered was unaccounted for in June, said PG&E spokesman Jeff Lewis.

``It's possible the segments are on the bottom of the pool,'' he said Tuesday.

If not, Lewis said the company is certain the fuel rod pieces will eventually be found at a nuclear waste storage facility. PG&E is confident the pieces have not been stolen or otherwise illegally diverted.

``There's never been any evidence to suggest or support a theft or diversion of these segments,'' Lewis said.

PG&E began searching for the fuel rod segments in July, shortly after the company discovered a discrepancy in its records for the nuclear plant, which was closed in 1976. The facility continues to produce electricity using natural gas.

Records from a 1968 meeting indicate a 7-foot-long fuel rod was removed from the plant's fuel assembly and three pieces cut from it and shipped to an Ohio nuclear facility for analysis. But conflicting documents also indicate the rods were either placed in the storage pool or sent with the entire fuel assembly -- consisting of 49 rods -- to a New York facility for reprocessing in 1969.

``It's still an open question,'' Lewis said.

The pool, which contains almost 400 fuel rods, has been searched with robotic equipment and underwater cameras, Lewis said. But the missing pieces, each about 18 inches long and a half-inch in diameter, have not been found.

The fuel rods could be hidden under sediment at the bottom of the pool, he said. ``In some areas, it's several inches thick,'' Lewis said.

The company has recovered numerous rod fragments during its search of the pool, but it has not yet been determined if they belong to the missing rod, Lewis said.

Next month, a contractor will begin vacuuming up sediment at the bottom of the pool in hopes it will reveal the missing segments, he said.

What this country needs is a good Dust Buster. Then I'll sleep better.

Marshall,
A google search for "dust buster" turned up: 1 a Jamaican rum/pinapple drink; 2 a 4WD vehicule; 3 numerous shop vacs. My own idea was rain.....perhaps So. Cal. needs more??!!

God no! we don't need more rain right now even though the weather people are predicting rain from this evening through maybe Wednesday. I recorded over 7 inches of rain over a four day period at the farm and about 6 inches in Santa Barbara. The mountain ranges above the coast have received upwards of 15 inches during the same period.

My earlier comment referred to the hand vacuum of do-it-your-self lore.

I feel for you Marshall but I'll take all the rain we can get. Of course, here on the Oxnard Plain the topsoil overlies sand and our house is two feet above street level, flooding isn't a worry (closer to the coast where all the storm runoff converges is another matter of course).

Ryan

Ryan, remember that the Oxnard Plain was formed primarily by fluvial action; namely period massive floods carrying those sediments from the mountains to your neighbhood. You are likely residing on a bajada, or alluvial fan. Let there be a major wildfire in the hills and mountains above you, then watch out.

Marshall,

Thankfully our part of the plain is safe, I wouldn't want to live to the east of Lewis however. The hills to the north of us shed there (away from us) as does everything north of Las Posas rd. and west of Woodcreek rd. along with whatever Somis might send our way (the hills between them and Fillmore are much more worrying). Oxnard to the west is only marginally better as Spanish Hills drains toward them (a lot of concrete, asphalt and roofing tiles shedding water).

Ryan

There were many flood control and debris-basin structures built a generation or more ago in the Santa Paula drainage thus opening up the flood plains to ag development. And later for the housing and businesses replacing the orchards and farm fields.

West of the Rincon/Ventura Co. border the coastal plains are narrower and ranges much more prone to flash flood. Luckily (?) the major creeks have been deepened/straightened and bermed so that flooding has pretty much been eliminated except Atascadero and Goleto creek systems which have flooded at least twice since I came to this region in 25 or so years ago. It was weird to see the SB airport mostly under water and later masked with a foot or more of new sediment.