Toxic gas detected near Tijuana River

Good Morning, I’m Debbie Cruz….it’s Tuesday, September 10th.

Toxic levels of gasses have been detected near the Tijuana River. More on that next. But first... let’s do the headlines….

It’s going to be another hot day across the county, but relief is expected tomorrow.

Forecasters expect highs in the mid to upper 90s for our inland valleys, mid 80s to low 90s for our mountain areas and upper 70s to low 80s by the coast. .

It’s expected to be much cooler tomorrow (Wednesday).

A plan to give San Diego’s mayor new authority to act on homelessness is on hold.

The San Diego City Council says it needs more time to review the potential ramifications.

Council President Sean Elo-Rivera pulled the item just before the council was scheduled to discuss it at yesterday’s meeting.

He says the item will return as soon as possible, but did not give a date.

If the council gives its approval, the mayor would be given more authority to make certain spending decisions during declared homelessness and housing emergencies.

The San Diego Unified School District will work tonight to solidify its leadership following the sudden firing of former Superintendent Lamont Jackson.

Jackson and the district parted ways last month following an investigation into misconduct with female employees.School board trustees are expected to formally name Fabiola Bagula as the interim superintendent to lead the state’s second largest district.

Bagula was named acting superintendent when Jackson was fired on August 30th.

From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now.Stay with me for more of the local news you need.

A toxic gas used as an ingredient during World War Two to kill millions of people is being detected in communities near the Tijuana River as recently as Monday morning.

Video journalist Matthew Bowler says Imperial Beach city officials, medical professionals and residents are demanding the county, state and federal government step in.

Researchers from UC San Diego and SDSU leading air quality testing found toxic levels of both hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen cyanide in the air near the Tijuana River over a small waterfall.

Kimberly Pray-ther is an atmospheric chemist with UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography 

“Everybody should put a filter for particles and gasses in their house as soon as possible .”

South Bay Urgent Care Dr. Matthew Dickson says the situation could be very dangerous for nearby residents.

“If you didn’t realize that those gasses were there, thought you smelled something and were jogging by that bridge where the Tijuana River goes underneath, you could be dead in minutes.”

Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre is calling for air filters and purifiers to be distributed to residents. 

She wants signs up to warn people about the toxic gas. 

Matthew Bowler KPBS News.

State regulators are suspending residential substance use treatment at Veterans Village of San Diego, leaving federal and local officials scrambling to connect residents with other providers.

Military and veterans reporter Andrew Dyer has more on how this impacts local veteran services.

The California Department of Healthcare Services says the temporary suspension is the first step in revoking veterans village’s license to provide residential substance use treatment over safety concerns.

Seven residents have died over the last two years.

It leaves Veterans Village ineligible to receive reimbursement from medi-cal.

Local and federal officials are scrambling to get affected veterans into other programs.

VA San Diego is suspending new referrals to Veterans Village. It says current residents who want to stay can choose to remain at the facility and receive substance use treatment elsewhere or enroll in another one of veterans village’s transitional housing programs.

About a third of the 141 veterans the VA’s placed at the pacific highway facility are there for substance use treatment.

Veterans Village didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Andrew Dyer, kpbs news.

It's been almost eight months since floods displaced more than a thousand residents.

Reporter Katie Hyson reconnected with a survivor whose story shows how the floods’ effects are still rippling.

On a street in Logan Heights, just past a chicken coop plants peek out from a carport.

Fewer than there used to be.

Still, roses sit inside a humming refrigerator.

And windchimes dangle between vases of sunflowers – Jackie Jo Lopez’s favorite.

Former neighborhood kids crowd around, learning to arrange them.

One little flower two little flowers three little flowers four little flowers . . . . fade under

Lopez says she’s been working with flowers since she was 14.

“I love what I do. It's not a job. I love flowers.”

She runs Jackie Jo Flowers out of this open carport.

The January 22nd storm flooded the business and her home.

“All my computer software was completely destroyed. You know, I'm a small business. So everything I lost is by hard work and sweat.”

I met Lopez on February first at Lincoln High’s evacuation shelter.

Just weeks before what’s usually her biggest sales day of the year – Valentine’s.

She gave what flowers she could salvage to the other evacuees.

Then, she joined the county’s hotel voucher program.

But says her mother had an accident at the hotel.

And they decided to live in the back of her florist van instead.

“We stayed in the car because of the trauma . . . She fell inside the hotel, and we couldn't take it no more.”

Lopez began tumbling through bureaucratic cracks.

Moving out of the hotel early disqualified her from the San Diego Housing Commission’s flood recovery program.

The few thousand dollars she received from her insurance disqualified her from receiving FEMA aid. 

And, because her business license was expired when the flood hit, she was rejected for a business recovery grant.

Meanwhile, she found it hard to keep filling orders.

“I had no idea that this was actually going to knock me off to my knees to the point that I was not able to get up sometimes from bed because it was extremely depressing . . . I was getting a panic attack, anxiety. I shut down my website. I didn't want to deal with no one. I've lost so much revenue.”

She says before the flood, she brought in about 15 to 20 thousand dollars in revenue every month.

Now, she says she’s lucky if she pulls in a thousand.

And falling income collided with a rise in rent after her landlord remodeled her home.

She could no longer afford it. She began renting out her bedroom.

She doesn’t want to speak about where she currently sleeps. Just says she’s doing OK.

And slowly trying to grow her business again.

“I'm feeling much better now, and I'm doing funeral arrangements every once in a while. Happy birthdays. And people are stopping by little through little . . .  going to release my website very soon, and I think we should flourish again, even if the world is in turmoil as it is. But we've got to be resilient and think positive, you know?”

Lopez says she’s met many flood survivors in worse situations than herself.

“A lot of people lost their homes completely. They were devastated because they were underwater . . .”

“I feel more for the people that are being affected that some of them do not have insurance . . .”

“They didn't have cars, a lot of these people. And they were staying in hotels, so it was very hard for them to operate.”

Many of these survivors might never be captured in the numbers reported by FEMA or other government recovery programs.

Lopez says her neighbor was displaced, but never sought government help.

“My neighbor, he's 96 years old . . . His house got all watered, flooded completely, and he was not staying there for two or three months because of it. He didn't get any help. He didn't go to shelters. I had no idea.”

With or without help, known or unknown to government agencies, Lopez says flood survivors have no choice but to keep going.

. . . six little flowers, seven little flowers, eight little flowers, nine . . . 

 Katie Hyson, KPBS News.

Fasting has many health benefits.

But the physical reaction to a fast is not something we’ve entirely understood.

Sci-tech reporter Thomas Fudge tells us what we’ve learned about how the gut talks to the brain, and what it could mean for our health.

When we eat, food sends a signal that promotes the release of insulin, which delivers nutrients to our bodies.

When we don’t eat, we don’t get that signal.

But researchers at Scripps Research have found the gut talks to the brain in a different way.

It uses an insulin antagonist, called INS-7, to tell our bodies to stop burning fat.

Discovery of the INS-7 molecule could, paradoxically, help some obese people lose weight.

You can imagine a drug that blocked INS7 and its effects would promote the burning of fat, not prevent it.

Supriya Srinivasan is Scripps Neuroscientist. 

“What study allows us to start thinking about is how insulin antagonism in mammals may be a physiologically relevant tool that could be harnessed for metabolic benefits.”

Srinivasan wrote a paper in Nature Communications about the research.

Their test subject was a worm called C Elegans, that has many of the same cells and functions that appear in humans.

Thomas Fudge, KPBS News.

Tomorrow marks 23 years since the September 11th attacks that killed more than 3-thousand people in New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania.

San Diego will have its share of remembrances.

One of those will be held at all border crossings in the San Diego region.

At 5-46 A-M, cross-border traffic will be briefly held to mark the start of the attacks in 2001.

San Diego’s Hilton Bayfront hotel is also hosting a stair climb to pay tribute to first responders who were killed.

That’s it for the podcast today. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. I’m Debbie Cruz. Thanks for listening and have a great day.