Swamp. Good afternoon, im audrey asistio. Welcome to nbc bay area news at 4 30. Our ian cull spoke to some people from the bay area who are deciding to stick it out for a little longer to avoid that mass exodus from the festival. Also good news for labor day travelers, westbound i80 in Contra Costa County is now set to open ahead of schedule. When crews expect the highway to be back open after being closed all Holiday Weekend. Plus, are the robots taking your jobs . That was the argument today from protesters outside of cruise headquarters in San Francisco. They say the robotaxis are threatening jobs and street safety, how cruise is responding today. And can a star chef help revitalize San Franciscos struggling union square. Two new cafes going into recently closed coffee shops. We sit down with celebrity chef Tyler Florence about his decision to come to the city. Well get to those stories in just a moment. First were going to start with breaking news out of oakland. We are learning an innocent bystander has been caught in the cross fire during a shootout. This happened just before 1 00 at the intersection of madison and lakeside in the lake merritt neighborhood. Police responded to reports of multiple shots fired between two vehicles. When they arrived, they did discover a woman on a trail near the lake with at least one gunshot wound. She has been hospitalized in critical condition. The neighborhood surrounding the shooting is currently closed to traffic while Police Investigate that shooting. Well keep you updated on that. Well, today, a Major Development after a disastrous weekend at the famed burning man festival. The gates are open and people are finally able to drive out after a very dangerous storm essentially turned the Black Rock Desert into a makeshift lake for days, trapped thousands in place. Nbc bay areas ian cull spoke with multiple people at that festival today as they prepared for the socalled exodus, ian. The good news is the roads just opened about two hours ago so theyre finally able to get out. You know, prior to that, a mix of water, mud, stranded 70,000 attendees in the desert for days. Organizers asked people to shelter in place and conserve their food and water because it wasnt clear just how long theyd be stuck there, but the sun finally came out today. Some attendees left their belongings in cars behind, walking a few miles to the nearest road. Our sister station in reno talked with two brothers from france who finally made it back to the airport. It took them 24 hours just to get out. We like put all of our stuff in the rv, tried to move out. After 100 meters, the rv was stuck in the mud, so we had a lot of people helped us to push, to push, and everything. It took us like five hours to do 100 meters more. That sound like such a mess. A nightmare. I know you spoke with some people from the bay area as well about their experience. What did they tell you . One of them is seth leslie, from los altos, he has been there about ten days now. He planned to leave on saturday but is now sticking it out until tomorrow. Its his 8th burning man, and he says the festival has a radical selfreliance ethos, and most burners like himself are prepared to endure things like this most people are following the guidance of yorg, which is stay put, you know, to mitigate any further damage to the roads so that when its safe, we can all get out, you know, where i think most folks are thinking about the Community First here. Now, one person has also died, but the cause of that death is under investigation, and some of the burners worry about how this year may impact festivals moving forward. Youll hear more from them in the next part of our story coming up at 5 30. Ian, thank you for the preview, appreciate it. The big caltrans project is expected to wrap up early tonight, reopening that stretch of roadway to labor day travelers. Westbound 80 between 780 and vallejo, across the carcinas bridge to hercules has been closed the entire Holiday Weekend. You may know this already. Caltrans has been repaving, repainting knocking out smaller projects like tree trimming and electrical fixes. It was a Big Inconvenience in the area, traffic is typically light on Labor Day Weekend, so they wanted to take advantage. What we wanted to do is compress over 106 of nightly work into four days, and so, again, we wanted to thank the motorists and the public for being so patient with us. This is just a shortterm pain for a longterm gain at the end of the day. Caltrans says this facelift will add 40 years to the life span of the stretch of westbound 80. Businesses that lost none as a result of the work can apply for relief from the state. If you went on a labor day road trip, you may have noticed gas prices seem extra high this year. Youre right. According to aaa, the average for a regular gallon of gas here in our state right now, 5. 32 a gallon. The average rose 0. 30 in the last month, six months higher than Labor Day Weekend last year. For comparison, the National Average is just 3. 81 right now. Thousands of Health Care Workers around california used this labor day to send a message to one of the biggest names in medicine. Kaiser. Theyre demanding better working conditions and pay and threatening to go on strike if it doesnt happen. More than a thousand seiu workers rallied, marched down the streets of oakland. They are fighting for a 7 increase nationwide, and they want the health care giant to address what they say are unsafe Staffing Levels that lead to neglects patients. We need more staff at kaiser perm nen day. The average person pays 26,000 a year for their health care coverage. They issued a statement in response, the company says its a leader in employee wages and hired over 29,000 new employees last year. They are on pace to exceed that number this year. Arguing the National Wage increase is an unfair approach. The company says it is confident it will be able to reach a contract with an estimated 80,000 workers by the september 30th deadline. A teenager is under arrest accused of hitting and killing a pedestrian with a stolen car in san jose. This happened at 3 00 on sunday morning in san joses castlemont neighborhood. The teen driver veered off the roadway, hit the man walking down the street and then slammed into a tree. The pedestrian was pronounced dead at the scene. The teenage driver was hospitalized with nonlife threatening injuries. Police have not yet revealed the victims identity. Heres a question for you, are the robots taking over and taking your jobs . That was the argument from protesters gathered outside cruise headquarters in San Francisco today. Demonstrators say the robotaxi company is not only taking jobs but making things more dangerous on city streets, pointing to a mid august incident where a cruise car blocked an ambulance and prevented it from getting to the hospital in time to save a critically ill patient. Cruise disputes that report claiming they have video proof that the cars never blocked the ambulance. Joining us now is nbcs tom jenson who was at that protest this morning. Tom, how is cruise responding today . Reporter good evening. Well, cruise, they sent us some information about their safety record. Keep in mind, this is data they collected themselves, and we have no way to independently verify it or check the control measures that they used to collect this data. They say their studies show that their automated cars, driverless taxis are actually 54 safer, 54 fewer collisions than human drivers, and they say that they also show the numbers do, that there are 73 fewer crashes involving serious injuries with cruise drivers. But once again, we have not been able to independently verify that data. Again, on that august 14th incident, yeah, there was a lot of talk about that today as well. And cruise disputes they were to blame for it. They showed one of our reporters a video of that who also said it did not appear that the cruise car blocked the ambulances as some had disputed. But again, were not able to independently verify that that was the correct video as well. It seems like cruise is vocal when it comes to the safety aspect of their vehicles. Have they been able to respond when it comes to the claim that theyre threatening millions of jobs . Reporter they didnt respond to that overall claim, but as far as their jobs go and their influence on the local work forces where theyre operating, they say here in San Francisco in particular, seiu, the local seiu and ibew unions have thrown their support at them, and they had labor contracts where the workers worked on their charging stations installing them and maintaining them on a regular basis and also said that they used union only laborers, carpenters and iron workers to build their big charging facility on caesar chavez. They dispute that record, but overall, as far as the future goes with the automated jobs and ai taking the jobs of millions or maybe even billions worldwide, they did not discuss that bigger picture. Just defending their record as a company and supporting union workers. Thom jensen, thank you so much, appreciate it. Still ahead at 4 30, can a celebrity chef revive the struggling Union Square Shopping district, the cafes slated to open, replacing two recently closed coffee shops. And pediatric cancer, how one bay area nonprofit is helping to detect and treat cancer early in young children. Heading back into the newsroom to check up on alicia. She is the producer of our 7 00 p. M. Newscast, and, alicia, you have a few interviews lined up for us today. Happy labor day, were going to take you to burning man, then maui. Burning man, we will be there live, a couple of hours until the man burns, and well show you the latest conditions there, and then also sam brock from nbc news will be joining us from maui to talk about his past week there. Theres still questions about the emergency systems, what happened, what didnt, why it happened, why it didnt happen, so hell talk about what he learned today. Reporter hes been there over the past few days now, yes . Absolutely. Yeah. Hes been there for about a week. He says tourists are slowly starting to come back as well. Starting to come back as well. Sound good, looking forward earn your masters in cybersecurity degree online from gcu. Online students received nearly 130 million in scholarships in 2022. Visit gcu. Edu myoffer to see the scholarships you may qualify for. Your brain is an amazing thing. But as you get older, it naturally begins to change, causing a lack of sharpness, or even trouble with recall. Thankfully, the breakthrough in prevagen helps your brain and actually improves memory. The secret is an ingredient originally discovered. In jellyfish. In clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve shortterm memory. Prevagen. At stores everywhere without a prescription. Welcome back, San Francisco is hoping a star chef can help revive the struggling Union Square Shop district. Scott budman sat down with celebrity chef Tyler Florence, who says hes not just bringing one but two new restaurants to the famed shopping district. You know, i sit here in union square right now on a beautiful day, and the only downside is i see these two cafes here that have closed on it, and no one wants to see a closed coffee shop, right . No one does. And its been a real sort of eyesore for the city of San Francisco along with a lot of the closures that have happened since the pandemic. And i think its a really great opportunity, and this is also a callout to folks who are able in the city of San Francisco to step up and do something to bring the energy back, we applied for the rfp that came through in april. It felt like the right thing to do. Coming up next at 5 00, scott will have reaction from city leaders and tourists in the famed shopping mecca. Moving on now, Pumpkin Spice lattes are back in starbucks stores. Youll likely notice something missing from some locations in the area, talking about disposable cups. They are running a test period where they have gotten rid of disposable cups entirely. You have three options, when you go to one of these starbucks, if youre drinking your beverage there, you get a glass or ceramic cup. You can take your drink in a reusable starbucks cup that you can return to any starbucks location or you can have your own container filled up. Starbucks says the reaction to the trial has actually been largely positive, and this runs through october 22nd. Well, september is Childhood Cancer awareness month, and one bay area family is hoping to make a difference in the lives of you patients. According to the National Pediatric cancer foundation, 43 kids are diagnosed with cancer every day. Cancer is the number one cause of death by disease among children and only 4 of governmentfunded Cancer Research is directed towards treating Childhood Cancer. In 2019, enzo keller was drigd diagnosed with nonhodgkins lymphoma and his cancer is in remission. His parents started the enzo foundation, to find better treatments and curious for kids. His parents tell us how hard that experience was. This is probably for most parents one of their worst nightmares. Lets come together and eliminate that from the reality. 11 1 2 million years of life is lost to pediatric cancer. So children are using 11 1 2 million years of life. Doctors, future researchers, future teachers, future all, you know, things that we need for our future are impacted. Last year, the foundation raised more than 300,000. Its next event is going to be september 23rd in san ramon and well be posting a link on nbcbayarea. Com. President biden spent labor day with men and women. Heres scott mcgrew who says union votes are crucial to the president s reelection efforts. Both democrats and republicans are battling for that working man and working womans vote. A few years ago, a union member would have been guaranteed to vote democratic and his boss probably voted republican, but that trend has disappeared. Biden has positioned himself as a pro Union President. He claims the most pro Union President in history. He met with workers this morning as part of the labor day celebration. Its labor day, let me tell you what were celebrating. Were celebrating jobs, good paying jobs, jobs you can raise a family on. Union jobs. Wall street didnt build america. The middle class built america, and unions built the middle class. Now, President Biden himself has not been in a union, as far as we can find. He went straight into law out of college and law school, but other president s certainly have been. Ronald reagan was Union President as head of the Screen Actors Guild in the late 40s and early 50s. Unions have had a brilliant resurgence lately. Ups workers just negotiated a new contract. Drivers will earn 175,000 in pay and benefits a few years from now, even starbucks locations are unionizing, 20 an hour for baristas and more dependable schedules as well. The big challenge for President Biden, both in the speech in pennsylvania and in general is convincing americans the economy is Getting Better because it is. By all standard metrics. But americans dont seem to feel that way. A brand new wall street journal poll, for instance, finds 75 of americans think inflation is getting worse. In fact, chris, its Getting Better. The lowest rate in two years. Scott, thank you. At the anchor desk with our janelle wang working on the 5 00 news, happy labor day. September 4th actually marks the 25th anniversary of google. Larry page and sergey brin cofounded the company, the top Search Engine in the world, well take you down memory lane, how google became one of the most Popular Companies in the world. And many of you have athome test kits that have probably expired by now, because its concne parts can degrade, but the fda has extended the expiration dates on many home test kits. We have a how to on figuring that out. Its all coming up in the next hour of your local news. I have a few of those kids. You still have sniffles, you want to check. It was negative, im here. Good. Thank you so much. Well see you in a few minutes. Still ahead, remembering a rock star who started his career right here in the south bay. Were going to take a look back were going to take a look back at the life of smashmouths there it is. That feeling you get. When you can du more with less asthma. It starts with dupixent. Dupixent is not for sudden breathing problems. Its an addon treatment for specific types of moderatetosevere asthma. And can help improve lung function for better breathing in as little as two weeks. Dupixent helps prevent asthma attacks. And can even reduce or eliminate oral steroids. Can you picture it . Dupixent can cause allergic reactions that can be severe. Get help right away if you have rash, chest pain, worsening shortness of breath, tingling or numbness in your limbs. Tell your doctor about new or worsening joint aches and pain, or a parasitic infection. Dont change or stop asthma medicines, including steroids, without talking to your doctor. Who knows what you can do when you du more with less asthma. Ask your asthma specialist about dupixent. Trending today, it is beyonces birthday and the suspense is building before she takes the stage tonight for the last night of her tour stop in los angeles. Heres a taste of her performance saturday night at sofi stadium. So a lot of people are wondering at this point just how she will celebrate her 42nd birthday. Some wonder if her show will include a special guest or maybe eve