Transcripts For KGO ABC7 News 500PM 20240713

Thing. But we want some solutions to the problems. Solution and answers. Thats a county supervisor talking about state regulators today opening an investigation into the recent pg e power shutoffs. Blackouts that pg e insists were necessary to prevent its lines from sparking wildfires. Good evening. Im dan ashley. Im kristen sze. Thanks for joining us. More than a million customers were impacted. We went through four rounds last month adding up to ten days total. Thats about a third of october. Abc 7 News Reporter Melanie Woodrow was at the cpcu meeting. Shes in the newsroom with the latest. Dan and kristen, the vote followed a series of Public Comments in which residents and local leaders conveyed the challenges theyre facing in the wake of the shutoffs. They may consider taking action if they find pg e committed violations. Commissioner cher ohm a the California Public Utilities Commission voting to formally investigating the pg e power shutoffs. The the investigation will assess whether pg e properly balanced the need to provide safe and Reliable Services when planning and executig the shutoffs. Something residents impacted want to know as well. Many californians are debating whether california is still safe. The first phase of the investigation will evaluate the internal coordination, external communication and execution of the shutoffs. This will serve as a forum for taking evidence. The supervisor, moke simon. Hopefully we come up with suggestions and solution toss help folks move forward. The city mayor says her Community Plans to contribute. Basically, were asking to put sensors on the lines to be more tafrgted and not do this broad shutoff for days on end. In an emailed statement to abc 7 news, a pg e spokesperson writes, quote, while we recognize that the scope of events is unsustainable in the longterm, it was the correct given the large scale weather event and ensuing equipment damage that unfolded across our service area. An investigates is one thing. When we investigate, we want some solutions to the problem. The cpuc says an enforcement phase could be opened if the commission find noncompliance with rules and regulations. The California Public Utilities Commission has ordered pg e to demonstrate why it shouldnt be sanctioned for the safety power shutoff event. Abc 7 news. Melanie, thank you. In the east bay, two counties are cracking down on illegal dumping. The state is giving contra costa and alameda counties 750,000. The money will pay for three shiefrs deputies dedicate today target people who dispose of the trash illegally. Its a oneyear Pilot Program. A task force is cleaning up target areas. They hope it serves as a model for the rest of the state. Abc 7 News Reporter Laura Anthony will have much more at 6 00 on this. The protest signs are back out. Demonstrators may try for a fourth time to disrupt a meeting of the Oakland Unified School board. The one protest escalated into a clash with police. The issue is has plans to close a number of schools to save money. Its causing controversy. Thomas is hes live at the meeg. Eric, thats quite a crowd behind you. It is quite a crowd behind me, dan. Theyre upset over a lot of things. As you mentioned, school closures, the fact that the district has 11,000 more seats than it does students. But also, the police and the schools, after that clash you mentioned with police at the last school board meeting, well, theyd rather not have them around. Theyre going to go in and try to disrupt this meeting tonight. Teachers from several different schools gathered after class at oakland high to gear up for tonights protest. Oakland unified spokesman told me the meeting will be open to the public initially at least. Theres a contingency in place in case protesters try to take over the meeting as theyve done the past meetings. At the october 23rd meeting, they clashed with police after a protester jumped over a barricade separating them from the school board. Several arrests were made. There was no threat to the board. But there is a threat to their business because we dont want them to be closing down these schools. Last meeting the board moved to an upstairs room for security. It left the public in the meeting hall to watch them on closed circuit tv. Theyre angry that the district is closing schools like kaiser elementary due to declining enroll am. Some believe the district wants to they tend to cherry pick the kids. We dont. We accept everyone. Saah saki says the district would be shooting itself in the foot by favoring charter schools. That means they they get the money from the state. Bypasses the district. Reporter no. That upstairs room doesnt have enough room for any of protesters, basically. The district has taken care of that by providing closed circuit tv and microphones so they can ask questions or make Public Comments in that downstairs room that the board of education will hear in the upstairs room. That has not been decided on yet initially. Theyre supposed to start the public hearing in a half hour or so. Well see what happens then. Yes, there will be police on hand tonight. Reporting live in oakland, eric thomas, abc 7 news. Well keep following it. Thank you. New developments in the murder of a tech millionaire. Were getting a first look at the suspects. The Santa Cruz County Sheriffs Office released this security video today showing three suspects in the murder of the millionaire. One of men is carrying a duffel bag. The other a rifle. Theyre seen walking near his house in santa cruz. He was kidnapped and killed last month. A reward was increased from 25,000 to 150,000. A highspeed chase ended in an arrest at gunpoint in downtown healdsburg today. This was a video from the helicopter today. The chase reached 90 Miles Per Hour at one. Santa rosa police rammed the vehicle as the suspect slowed to navigate a roundabout. The police took a passenger and driver out of vehicle at gunpoint. San francisco has a new transit chief and hes making new promises. First to fix the mechanical problems. A deal with a shortage of drivers. To basically fix a system overloaded and notorious for chaos. Muni is one of the busiest in the country. Agency head jeffrey tum lynn will have its a major issue when it comes to building a better bay area. Abc 7 News Reporter vic lee is live in San Francisco with more on the plans to vic . Reporter thats right, dan. Jeffrey tum lynns vision is to build a better Transit System for San Francisco and hes got a lot of experience to back him up. In fact, more than 20 Years Experience in Transportation Planning and management. Mayor london breed introduced him today at city hall with some words of advice. We need to do better. The reality of Public Transportation in the city and the challenge facing the new transportation director. But Jeffrey Tumlin says hes ready. Ive long been an outspoken proponent of changing core practices in my industry. His first task is to listen. He doesnt know all the answers yet. He should get an earful. Escooters and bike shares are proliferating as are ride shares. Infrastructure repairs overdue. Even the new railcars have design issues. Theres a lack of parking. Nowhere more evident than van ness avenue. Traffic lanes is years behind schedule. The construction has driven Small Business owners out of business. This man may lose his market as well. Almost 60 of the businesses are dpon. All these issues facing the new transportation czar, not to mention a labor shortage of muni operators. Last year alone 400 vacant positions. Tumlin says thats a critical problem. I want to have conversations about how do we make sure that we are paying every employee a living wage. We asked muni riders what message theyd like to send to him. I would like the bus toss come at regular intervals rather than have it chaotic timing. Theyre always breaking down, thats one thing. The quality of service overall. Reporter the board of directors of sfmta will formally appoint him at its meeting on monday. Vic lee, abc 7 news. Thank you very much. A different kind of airbnb option. This one is the first of its kind and its happening in san jose. Google gets into the banking business. Theres one big reason why. Mural in the mission. A house gets a new addition as a tribute to latin music honors a new legend. Im meteorologist sandhya patel. Its going to be it takes a village to raise a child. To build a bridge. To throw a baseball. To throw yourself into the unknown. To lose fear, to create hope. We believe that it takes a village of over 200thousand dedicated, passionate, driven medical and nonmedical professionals to deliver on our belief in total health for all. We are kaiser permanente. Thrive. The beat goes onp for Heart Failure look like . It looks like emily cooking dinner for ten. The beat goes on it looks like jonathan on a date with his wife. Ladiladidi entresto is a Heart Failure medicine that helps your heart, so you can keep on doing what you love. Entresto helped people stay alive and out of the hospital. Heart failure can change the structure of your heart, so it may not work as well. Entresto helps improve your hearts ability to pump blood to the body. Dont take entresto if pregnant; it can cause harm or death to an unborn baby. Dont take entresto with an ace inhibitor or aliskiren, or if youve had angioedema with an ace or arb. The most serious side effects are angioedema, low blood pressure, kidney problems, or high blood potassium. The beat goes on ask your doctor about entresto for Heart Failure. Ask your doctor about entresto for Heart Failure yeah entrust your heart to entresto. The beat goes on a new effort to build a better bay area for homeless students. One in four of the homeless in Santa Clara County is a college student. Now, airbnb is teaming up with civic and educational leaders to change that. Abc 7 News Reporter chris nguyen has the story. Reporter homelessness or housing insecurity can be huge barriers to higher education. Weve got hundreds of homeless students who should be thinking about their exams and classes rather than where are they going to sleep each night. Reporter thats why the Mayors Office is teaming up with airbnb to launch a first of its kind Pilot Program to offer temporary shortterm housing to homeless students who attend sjsu or local community college. We have hosts who are incredibly interested in playing this role and opening up their homes and engaging with student who is may need housing. The bill Wilson Center, a nonprofit who works with Homeless Youth will have access to the booking platform typically used by businesses to reserve rooms for employees. The rooms we covered using a 250,000 state grant that was previously awarded to the center. If youre already struggling with the cost of how you afford housing, how do you do that during the period when College Dorms are closed. This really solves a problem in a very specific issue. Airbnb will waive host and booking fees as the bill Wilson Center hose using technology for good. See how we can leverage everyones good resources to tackle homelessness. A recent study found more than 4,000 sjsu students experienced some form of homelessness during their college career. Its a complex problem. We need to start somewhere and temporary emergency housing, i think, is a good place for that. A Pilot Program with the potential to expand beyond san jose. Chris nguyen, abc 7 news. And we are just days away from our building a better bay area fremont week. Well be holding a town hall and looking at issues that impact the bay area fourth large hes city, including housing, job creation, diversity and much more. Its going to be an interesting conversation. We hope youll join us. Today Governor Newsom held a roundtable discussion in Mountain View with top executives from 15 different businesses. The focus was housing. The businesses on your screen were all represented. You can see the companys spanned the tech, travel, health care and finance industries. The governors says says newsom called on businesses to follow the lead of apping, facebook and google by making investments to build more affordable housing. Several communitybased organizations also took partisue glnowti io the world of financial services. 7 on your sides Michael Finney is here to explain why. Everybody is jumping in now. Google announced it will be launching consumer checking accounts next year. Theyre working with citi group and the stanford credit union. Google will gain a gold mine of Financial Data on consumer spending. It will not sell Financial Data to advertisers. If you want to shop on thanksgiving, you will have a bunch of stores to choose from. A lot long list of National Retailers are sharing the Holiday Spending spirit with black friday specials on thanksgiving. 58 of shoppers say they plan to hit the stores on thanksgiving day. That according to a survey from Marketing Firm niq. Here are some of the places you can go. Walmart, target, best buy, j. C. Penney, macys, kohls, game stop, bed, bath and beyond. Stores opening on thanksgiving is a very divisive issue with opponents saying workers should have the day off to spend with their family. Theres a good amount of retailers sticking with the tradition of staying closed on thanksgiving. The ones closed are nordstroms, lowes, costco, sams club, office depot and staples. Take your pick. Who do you like . It is a controversial issue. It is. Thanks, michael, very much. Lets turn our attention to the weather forecast. Midweek, heading towards the weekend. You felt it cool off. Felt the change coming sandhya. Live doppler 7 showing you just a thick layer of clouds. Theres a system spinning off the coast. Thats sending us all the clouds that youre seeing right now. Really the cloud cover has been around all afternoon and going into tonight. As we look at the temperatures right now, lets just say, theyre more in line with what we expect this time of year and even cooler than average. Temperatures right now in the 50s, 60s compared to 24 hours ago. Running 19 degrees lower in santa rosa. Thats a dramatic drop. 8 degrees cooler in san jose. Down 7 in oakland. San francisco down six degrees. Heres a live look from the east bay hills camera. You will notice the fog and the layers of clouds up above. A view from the pier 39 camera. We look at ghirardelli square. A beautiful evening. Need the jacket or a sweater. Spotty drizzle tomorrow morning. Cloudy and cooler than average. A warming trend this weekend. 1 00 tomorrow through 4 00 p. M. Friday. Theres a higher risk of sneaker waves. Definitely watch out. Look at the wave rights building into friday afternoon. Theyll be between 8 and 10 feet. Watch out for that. Tonight, a lot of cloud cover. Tomorrow morning, spotty drizzle between 5 00 and 10 00 a. M. Near the coastline. The roads will be slippery in spots and for the afternoon and evening well keep the clouds coming through. Temperatures first thing in the morning. Low 40s to the 50s. Drizzle around. Then for the afternoon, its going to be cloudy and cool. Pretty much all areas except for cloverdale in the 60s as you will notice. 60 in half moon bay. 62 San Francisco. Keep that extra layer handy. 63 san rafael. 67 in concord. 65 san jose. Accuweather sevenday forecast. Cooler than average tomorrow. Slightly milder, brighter on friday. A warming trend for the weekend with temperatures in the low to mid60s. Mid to upper 70s inland. Not much change on monday. Then well start to notice a cooldown tuesday, wednesday with 50s to low 70s. Mild no real sign of rain, unfortunately in the next seven to ten days. Were waiting. Thanks, sandhya very much. A spectacular spot in sonoma an the eldorado Sheriffs Office arrested a man who stole one of their suvs. They noticed it was missing from the parking lot. They found it 50 miles away. That led to a chase which ended when spike strips were deployed. When the suspect was finally arrested, he was waerk a Sheriffs Office hat. Nothing else was taken. All of it strange. Californias first in the country law requiring publicly Held Companies have women on their board of directors is facing a second lawsuit. The new lawsuit was filed in federal court today by the Pacific Legal foundation. Thats a libertarian group. It says the law violates the equal protection clause by taking gender into account. Secretary of state, alex padilla, named in the suit, has not commented yet today. In the north bay, historic ranch that straddles the sonoma napa county line is on the way to becoming park land. The land trust announced a deal with the owner of the mccormick ranch. The 14 million deal has been in the works more than a year. Its been owned by one family for five generations. The owner made a promise to his late wife to make sure its preserved. It will prevent development and result in a new public open space. It includes a threemile path completing an existing 20mile loop. Some of the best in rock n roll is enshrined forever. First, we want to thank andrew for this picture of sunset in San Francisco. Share your pictures with us at. 6, 7, 8 big dreams start with small steps. But dedication can get you there. So just start small. Start saving. Easily set, track and control your goals right from the chase mobile® app. Chase. Make more of whats yours®. Blow a kiss, into the sun we need someone to lean on blow a kiss, into the sun all we need is somebody to lean on im ama daetz, at 6 00, the Health Crisis from vaping hits home. A bay area woman dies after vaping for only six months. Tonight the alarm being sounded by local health officials. Also the number of people registering at republican and democrat is declining. So where are they going . Were examining the numbers. It was a big day in her life. But the photographer hired to document the occasion didnt produce any photos or video until now. A year later. 7 on your sides Michael Finney foubd out why. Its coming up at 6 00. Dan, kristen. A mural that honors frt heroes of latin rock music includes the image of the genres biggest star. He just finished this likeness of Carlos Santana gracing his home in the mission district. He gran this project as a way to honor latin rock born in thee mission. He got his first look at it today. He says its quite an honor. What youre seeing on this house is inspiration. What do i mean by that . These people you see before me on the house inspire me to play music like richard did. The house located at 25th and york is amazing to look at as you can see from droneview 7 that we can show you here. Well have more on this project at abc 7 news at 6 00. Ive known him for years. Wonderful guy. World news tonight with david muir is next. Appreciate your time. Im kristen sze, for all of us here at abc tto harrison, the wine tcollection. To craig, this rock. I leave these things to my heirs, all 39 million of you, on one condition. That you do everything to preserve and protect them. With love, california. Tonight, from washington, the new evidence revealed. The impeachment surprise on day one. Tonight, history made here in washington. The televised hearings begin. The drama and the stakes inside that room. The first two witnesses. And the new evidence, the alleged phone call involving President Trump we did not know about. And the person who heard that call already summoned to capitol hill. President trumps response just in tonight. Our team is standing by live. The other news this wednesday night, the horror unfolding. The deadly fire in this brutal cold. A firefighter killed after saving two other firefighters. Hundreds of records broken. Up to two feet of snow in some places. And now, whats coming next. The American Teacher killed. What authorities found in her apartment, saying her hands and feet were tied. Investigators now on the scene