LBReport.com

Editorial

What LB Schools Should Do When We Get Fire Fallout





(May 1, 2014) -- When Santa Ana winds blow from the northeast, they predictably send fallout from northeast brushfires toward the southwest, in other words, toward Long Beach. It's happened before; it happened yesterday (April 30); and we urge Long Beach Unified School District to adjust its response when it happens again.

On April 30, after media reports warned of Santa Ana winds, high temps and low humidity, a brush fire broke out at early morning in Rancho Cucamonga. By midmorning, Long Beach residents in East Long Beach (and we suspect elsewhere) could smell smoke and skies turned from blue to a hazy yellowish brown. It's been worse before (including some heavy ashfalls) but it was bad enough yesterday.

Of course the notoriously bureaucratic AQMD didn't send LBUSD timely "official word" of these conditions. AQMD's "smoke advisories" are mainly boilerplate and AQMD's website was mindlessly telling the public that conditions (a composite of various items including particulates) were "moderate."

In contrast, LBREPORT.com had hourly data (not easily found but we found it) on our front page from the CA Air Resources Board showing what was really taking place on an hourly basis (caveat: monitor data lags by an hour or so; times shown are PST, meaning one has to add an hour for PDT.) The CARB monitor showed that PM10 particulates in Anaheim (the nearest NE monitor site we could find to Long Beach) at Lincoln Blvd. (i.e. Carson St.) at the I-5 freeway were soaring way beyond what state and federal bureaucrats say anyone -- children or adults -- should breathe over a twenty four hour period. Do you want your children exercising in this? (Graph times are in PST, so add one hour for PDT.)

LBUSD's Nursing Services office cautioned school sites to use their best judgment in reminding schools that smoke, wind and heat are respiratory irritants and that schools may curtail activity as appropriate, and also provided schools with the usual list of hot weather precautions. We have no tally on what happened at every school but we're informally told that students at some schools were kept indoors while others were told to do their physical education exercises during the worst of this.

Since geography, Mother Nature and brushfires can combine to produce these conditions, we think it would be smart for LBUSD to review its current procedures and upgrade them.

Our recommendation: When Santa Ana winds blow and a brush fire breaks out, LBUSD HQ should send school sites an alert specifically advising that if one can smell smoke or see yellow/brown fire haze, students shouldn't be exercising outdoors. We'll leave it to LBUSD to come up with specific verbiage...and it will probably be better than AQMD's regional boilerplate "smoke advisories" and even the best high tech data. (We will provide LBUSD with the CARB webpages where they can view PM10 particulates just as we did, and we'll do our best to have the data on our front page again when this happens again (as it will.)

From what we can tell, the quickest local response is from eyes and noses attached to LBUSD school site staff who've been told that students shouldn't be outdoors exercising while smoke can be smelled or smokey haze begins turning blue skies yellow.

As for AQMD, we're still waiting for the region's clean air agency to figure out how to locate and identify the "mystery stinks" that periodically afflict Long Beach...but no, we're not holding our breath.



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