A Czech news crew was robbed of its camera equipment in during the APEC conference in San Francisco. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

San Francisco’s push to use a major international conference to reverse its image as a city in decline is getting off to a rocky start.  

A Czech journalist and his camera crew were robbed at gunpoint Sunday evening by three armed assailants, according to a statement from the San Francisco police. The incident occurred in the North Beach neighborhood, about two miles from the city’s downtown, where world leaders are meeting for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. 

“The suspects demanded their production equipment and the victims complied,” the police said. “The suspects then entered their vehicle and fled from the scene.” 

North Beach is a busy tourist area known for its Italian restaurants and City Lights, a landmark bookstore made famous by beatnik poets such as Allen Ginsberg. The San Francisco Chronicle, which earlier reported the robbery, said Czech TV journalist Bohumil Vostal was filming the bookshop at dusk to capture the city’s beauty. 

The camera equipment was valued at $18,000 and San Francisco Mayor London Breed has promised the city will help replace it, according to the newspaper. 

The incident occurred as San Francisco hosts legions of international delegates, world leaders and journalists for the APEC event. While most of the attention is focused on a planned meeting between President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping of China, San Francisco is hoping to use its moment on the world stage to encourage tourism and pitch itself as a thriving hub of innovation. 

Municipal workers have been been power-washing sidewalks, moving homeless people, and sprucing up buildings in its downtown core, all in hopes that visitors will see a positive side of the city. 

San Francisco has notoriously high property crime rates, and local television crews have been known to travel with armed guards. However, homicide rates are below those of cities such as Austin, Miami and Washington, DC, according to federal and local data.

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PACIFICA, Calif. — A surfer suffered a leg injury in a possible shark attack off the California coast just south of San Francisco, authorities said.

Emergency responders were called Friday afternoon following reports that someone had been bitten by a shark, the Pacifica Police Department said.

They found a 52-year-old man who said he had been surfing at Linda Mar Beach “when something bit his lower leg causing injury,” said a police statement Saturday.

“The surfer was able to exit the water and call for medical assistance,” the statement said. “The victim could not see what bit his leg and could not confirm if it was a shark.”

The man, who was not identified, was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

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PACIFICA, Calif. (AP) — A surfer suffered a leg injury in a possible shark attack off the California coast just south of San Francisco, authorities said.

Emergency responders were called Friday afternoon following reports that someone had been bitten by a shark, the Pacifica Police Department said.

They found a 52-year-old man who said he had been surfing at Linda Mar Beach “when something bit his lower leg causing injury,” said a police statement Saturday.

“The surfer was able to exit the water and call for medical assistance,” the statement said. “The victim could not see what bit his leg and could not confirm if it was a shark.”

The man, who was not identified, was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, police said. His condition wasn’t known Sunday.

The incident occurred about two weeks after a swimmer was reported missing near Point Reyes National Seashore, northwest of San Francisco Bay, after witnesses reported seeing a shark in the water. The man has yet to be found, SF Gate reported Sunday.

The U.S. Coast Guard said that it could not confirm whether the swimmer’s disappearance was related to a shark attack.

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PACIFICA, Calif. (AP) — A surfer suffered a leg injury in a possible shark attack off the California coast just south of San Francisco, authorities said.

Emergency responders were called Friday afternoon following reports that someone had been bitten by a shark, the Pacifica Police Department said.

They found a 52-year-old man who said he had been surfing at Linda Mar Beach “when something bit his lower leg causing injury,” said a police statement Saturday.

“The surfer was able to exit the water and call for medical assistance,” the statement said. “The victim could not see what bit his leg and could not confirm if it was a shark.”

The man, who was not identified, was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, police said. His condition wasn’t known Sunday.

The incident occurred about two weeks after a swimmer was reported missing near Point Reyes National Seashore, northwest of San Francisco Bay, after witnesses reported seeing a shark in the water. The man has yet to be found, SF Gate reported Sunday.

The U.S. Coast Guard said that it could not confirm whether the swimmer’s disappearance was related to a shark attack.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Winemaking has never been an easy business, but many in the industry say this year has been one of the toughest in recent times.

California winemakers, still recovering from last year’s scorching forest fires, anticipate another year of historic drought as retailers and restaurants are hit by the shift in consumer behavior sparked by the pandemic.

Now the industry is also confronted with massive bottlenecks in the supply chain. Delays in ports have left shops and importers reliant on foreign shipments with no inventory. This has disrupted local bottling, labeling and wine-growing businesses.

“2021 just won’t work,” said Stuart Smith, founder of Smith-Madrone Winery on Napa’s Spring Mountain. “Everywhere you go, things that were easy are no longer easy.”

Stuart Smith, right, founder of Smith-Madrone Winery, helps press the grapes at the winery in St. Helena, California on Wednesday, September 8, 2021. (Courtesy Smith-Madrone Winery)

As the pandemic progressed, Smith struggled to get the most basic necessities like PVC pipes or galvanized fittings for sprinklers and fire fighting. “It’s not just about winemaking. It’s all, ”he said. “Right after the glass fire, I needed more chainsaws – I couldn’t get one.”

All of this happens while he struggles to find water for his thirsty vines. “This is a colossal, historic drought,” said Stuart. “We’re all scared because we’re running out of water and our reservoirs are empty.”

But not only winemakers feel the pinch. An entire branch of bottlers, label manufacturers and cooperatives is also feeling the strain caused by the overloading of the ports.

“The word disruptive doesn’t describe how dire the situation is,” said Erica Harrop, founder of Global Package, which supplies glass bottles to high-end Napa wineries. “It’s total chaos”.

Harrop said freight costs have skyrocketed as demand for goods has increased. Meanwhile, ports don’t have enough dockers, dockers or truckers to keep the flow of goods going, resulting in a backlog of products waiting to be reloaded. Those additional costs, she said, are passed on to her customers and ultimately to consumers.

“We fill around 20,000 bottles in a container. And if it costs $ 20,000 to ship, that’s a pretty straightforward calculation, ”she said. “With glass, this has an immediate effect on the cost of the product.”

On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced a plan to keep the Port of Los Angeles open “24 hours a day, seven days a week,” reflecting the already extended opening hours in the Port of Long Beach to move more goods faster.

However, companies that buy inventory months in advance remain affected by the delays. Josh Trowbridge, CEO of Tonnellerie Ô, a Benicia-based barrel maker, said he waited a month to receive a shipment of wood from a ship docked outside Half Moon Bay.

“It was just so frustrating,” he said. “What you need is right there, and it’s not even in port.”

Trowbridge watched wood prices skyrocket during the pandemic as people stuck at home focused on home improvement projects. Just this week he was told that the price of French timber would rise by 20-30%. Combined with the increased cost of shipping goods, he fears that his barrels will be unaffordable for many wineries in the years to come.

Wine label makers are also getting into trouble as paper is scarce and demand for such services explodes.

“Demand for wine had gone above the charts in the past year and a half,” said Travis Pollard, vice president of ASL Print FX in Napa Valley, finding that business had grown 57% over the past year.

However, satisfying this demand has been challenging as paper suppliers have moved to making products from corrugated cardboard that are easier for online retailers like Amazon to make, as opposed to fine paper, which is needed for wine labels.

“The availability of the raw components for making this paper is tight,” said Pollard. “What we are seeing is a huge change in the way people shop and the huge impact this is having on our industry.”

The disturbance is already seeping through to local wine shops.

Some of the cheaper wine selections at Decant SF on Thursday, October 14, 2021. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

“If you look at the shelves at Gemini, you can see it all along the line,” says Dominique Henderson of San Francisco’s Gemini Bottle Co., which focuses on natural wines from small producers. “You see a Riesling bottle and there is something like Pinot in it, or there is Blaufrankisch in it or something, because people have ordered whatever vessels there were.”

As the holidays get closer, wine stores try to figure their way around how to stock the shelves when there is less wine and it takes a lot longer to arrive.

French wines were particularly hard hit this year as frost, bad weather and mold ravaged the vineyards. “Champagne was very difficult to come by,” said Simi Grewal, co-founder of Decant SF. “Our shelves are definitely a lot lighter than usual.”

The champagne department at the Decant SF wine shop on Thursday October 14th, 2021. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

Yet when Grewal tries to convey this inedible reality to their customers, the warning is often answered with a collective shrug. “They kind of laugh at it like, ‘Oh, champagne problems,’ but it’s like, ‘No, literally,'” she said. “If you know you want to ship 100 bottles or 50 bottles of something, we need to start planning now.”

jwolfrom@sfexaminer.com

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California’s already record-setting fire season worsened considerably Wednesday as more than two dozen fires forced thousands of residents from their homes amid growing alarm about a new monster blaze that rapidly consumed more than 250,000 acres around Oroville and killed at least three people.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea announced the deaths Wednesday evening. He did not provide details about where the victims died but said the bodies were found in areas where the Bear fire, part of the massive North Complex, had swept through.

For the record:

10:50 PM, Sep. 09, 2020A previous version of this story misspelled the last name of Creek fire response spokesman Chris Vestal as Vestel.

The remains of two people were found at one location; the third body was found elsewhere.

Honea said his agency and others had desperately tried over the last 24 hours to alert residents in mountain communities that the fire was headed in their direction and that they needed to evacuate.

In announcing the deaths, Honea said he was reminded of how, two years earlier, he had to disclose the toll of the Camp fire, which killed 85 people and is the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history.

“We cannot underestimate what they can do to the community and what they can do to the people we love,” he said.

Twenty-eight major wildfires burning statewide have prompted more than 64,000 people to evacuate, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Some 20,000 residents in Plumas, Butte and Yuba counties have been forced to flee from the North Complex fires, which exploded in size as “topography, high winds and dry fuels aligned to produce unprecedented fire behavior,” officials said Wednesday morning.

Overnight, the complex — which includes the Bear fire — spread at a rate of about 2,000 acres an hour, according to federal firefighters handling the incident.

By Wednesday morning, it had consumed an additional 80,000 acres — bringing its total size to more than 254,000 acres, stunning fire officials with its speed and ferocity and extending its potential threat all the way to the towns of Paradise and Concow, which were devastated in the 2018 Camp fire.

Photos showed devastation in the tiny Butte County hamlet of Berry Creek, where many homes and other structures were destroyed by flames. Officials said they don’t know the extent of the destruction in the town, which is north of the Oroville Dam. Some witnesses said many buildings were lost.

Both towns are now under evacuation warnings, while evacuation orders have been issued for other areas around Lake Oroville.

Jay Kurth, incident commander for the U.S. Forest Service, said the agency was still working Wednesday morning to “figure out where the fire footprint really is” because of the extreme overnight activity.

Kurth added that weather conditions had improved with daybreak, including a softening of the winds, but he said the situation remained volatile.

“Overall, the combination of hot, very dry and windy weather is a culmination of very critical conditions for the state,” Brent Wachter, a predictive services meteorologist with the Forest Service, said in a video statement Wednesday.

Nearby, 3,000 residents were evacuated from the community of Loma Rica in Yuba County on Wednesday as the Willow fire grew to 1,000 acres, according to Cal Fire.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. also worked Wednesday to restore service to numerous communities whose power had been shut off in hopes of avoiding new fires potentially being sparked by downed power lines. As of just after 11 a.m., power had been restored to 30,000 customers, the utility said.

UPDATED
Sep. 17, 2020 | 2:49 PM

Where are fires burning?

If I need to evacuate, what should I take with me?

It’s a good idea to prepare well in advance for an evacuation order. Have an emergency kit with water, food and prescriptions for all the people and pets in your household. Include extra clothes, a flashlight and batteries, important documents such as passports and birth certificates, and sanitation supplies. In the age of coronavirus, don’t forget face coverings.

What can I do about the unhealthy air?

What do fire containment percentages mean?

A containment percentage is firefighters telling the public how much of the fire perimeter they believe will not go beyond their defenses. That’s why even when a fire is 100% contained, it can still be burning, and firefighters stay to make sure it does not get out of control.

How can I protect my home?

Remove anything flammable, including furniture, from within five feet of your home. Remove debris under trees within 30 feet of your home; that prevents fire from climbing the tree canopy. Read more tips for fire-proofing your home.

In light of the unprecedented fire conditions, the Forest Service announced that all national forests in California would be temporarily closed starting at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

The agency had already closed eight of the state’s national forests Monday but moved to shut the remaining 10 — Eldorado, Klamath, Lassen, Mendocino, Modoc, Six Rivers, Plumas, Shasta-Trinity, Tahoe and the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit — “to protect the public and our firefighters,” Regional Forester Randy Moore said.

“We will keep [closures] in place until conditions improve and we are confident that national forest visitors can recreate safely,” he added in a statement. “I ask all Californians and visitors to take these closures and evacuations seriously for their own safety and to allow our firefighters to focus on the mission of safely suppressing these fires.”

With the potential for more strong winds in the forecast and red flag warnings in place for much of the state through Wednesday evening, fire officials warned that the challenging conditions present a risk not only of swelling existing fires — some of which already rank among the largest in California’s history — but also of giving a foothold to new ones.

“Yesterday and overnight, firefighters had a significant battle on their hands as winds whipped a number of fires, allowing significant growth and extreme fire behavior, not only for a number of new fires, but also in some of the major fires that have been burning,” Berlant said.

The Dolan fire burning in Monterey County, for instance, has doubled in size this week — a frenetic growth rate one official attributed to the combination of strong winds, punishing temperatures and steep, rugged terrain.

Flames burn behind the Bidwell Bar Bridge at Lake Oroville.

(Noah Berger / Associated Press )

That fire had burned through more than 93,000 acres and was 20% contained as of Wednesday morning.

“For wildland firefighters, we’ve been in an all-hands-on-deck situation for weeks now,” said Jacob Welsh, public information officer for Pacific Northwest Team 2, pointing to the number of significant fires burning up and down the West Coast.

He added: “I’ve never seen anything like this in 20 years.”

Forecasters said winds remained relatively calm in the vicinity of the Bobcat fire, burning in the San Gabriel Mountains above Monrovia, and near the Creek fire in the Sierra foothills.

“We didn’t have much wind overnight,” Mike Wofford, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard, said of the Bobcat fire.

As of Wednesday morning, Wofford said, winds were “generally under 15 mph,” though “we could get some gusts, 20 to 30 mph, later this morning around the fire area.”

The smoldering remains of a structure are seen along Auberry Road in Fresno County, where the Creek fire burned through.

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

“We’re getting some stronger winds now, but they’re mostly on the ridges higher up above where the fire is currently,” he said about 7:30 a.m.

Though extreme winds have howled in some parts of the state, Wofford said, “the [Bobcat] fire area was always a little bit questionable given its location — it wasn’t in an area that typically gets these strong winds.”

“We’re just fortunate it wasn’t in one of those areas,” he said.

Officials on Tuesday expanded the evacuation warning area for the Bobcat fire — warning residents of Monrovia, Arcadia, Sierra Madre, Bradbury, Altadena, Duarte and Pasadena that they should be prepared to leave quickly should the need arise.

That blaze has charred more than 11,400 acres and is still 0% contained.

Regarding the Creek fire, “generally speaking … most locations weren’t that windy the other day,” said Colin McKellar, a weather service meteorologist in Hanford.

“We’re getting kind of lucky in that sense,” he said Wednesday. “The winds aren’t going to be that big of an issue.”

Forecasters also said it appeared that winds could weaken throughout the day.

Cars cross the Golden Gate Bridge under an eerie midday sky in San Francisco.

(Harold Postic / AFP/Getty Images)

“We’re encouraged that the wind activity appears to be dying down … and the rest of the week looks a little more favorable from a wind perspective and a weather perspective,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said during a briefing Wednesday.

Still, the rash of new fires has been devastating.

The Creek fire alone has burned more than 163,000 acres and destroyed an estimated 360 structures as of Wednesday morning. An additional 5,296 structures are threatened.

On Tuesday, officials issued new evacuation orders covering the Fresno County communities of Tollhouse, Burrough Valley and Cold Springs Rancheria.

The bulk of the firefighting efforts Wednesday were on the Creek fire’s southern flank, closest to foothill towns such as Prather, Auberry and Clovis in the flatland, where winds were light and ash rained down throughout the day.

The forest that surrounds them is filled with up to 2,000 tons of burnable timber per acre, most of it dead and dry from a bark beetle infestation that exploded in the Sierra Nevada during the drought that began in 2012.

Crews are focusing on areas south of the fire, “clearing roads in any communities not evacuated and making sure people can get out if they’re evacuated,” fire spokesman Chris Vestal said.

Relatively scant growth was reported on two other Southern California wildfires.

The El Dorado fire, near Yucaipa, was 11,479 acres and 19% contained as of Wednesday, while the Valley fire, southeast of Alpine in San Diego County near the Mexican border, was 17,565 acres and 11% contained, according to Cal Fire.

An orange glow is seen over a darkened Howard Street in San Francisco.

(Philip Pacheco / Getty Images)

As of Wednesday, more than 14,000 firefighters were contending with 28 major wildfires, according to Cal Fire, and the agency had increased staffing in preparation for critical fire weather in several areas.

So far this year, 7,657 fires statewide have scorched more than 2.5 million combined acres, Berlant said. That’s an increase of more than 2,000% over the number of acres burned by this time last year.

“This year has already been a very destructive fire season, and it is nowhere close to being over,” Berlant said.

Fire activity has been particularly prolific since Aug. 15, which marked the start of a “lightning siege” that unleashed thousands of lightning strikes statewide.

Eight people have died during the weeks-long firestorm, and more than 3,400 structures have been destroyed.

“This is a challenging year,” Newsom said this week. “It’s historic in terms of magnitude, scope and consequence, and it also has required … a deep reservoir of resource.”

The numerous fires also have wreaked havoc on the region’s air quality.

The National Weather Service said Wednesday morning there was an “unprecedented amount of smoke in the atmosphere as a record number of acres burn across California and the West,” obscuring the marine layer up and down the West Coast.

Satellite imagery posted by the agency showed a blanket of smoke over much of California and extending far out over the Pacific Ocean.

Air quality officials have issued a wildfire smoke advisory for much of Southern California through Wednesday evening, warning that “meteorological conditions will bring smoke and ash into portions of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange Counties.”

The Transamerica Pyramid and Salesforce Tower are partially obscured by an orange smoky haze late Wednesday in San Francisco.

(Eric Risberg / Associated Press )

According to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the worst concentrations of smoke, which contains tiny, lung-damaging pollution particles known as PM2.5, are expected in communities closest to the Bobcat and El Dorado fires — the latter of which is burning near Yucaipa.

The smoke that’s blanketing California’s entire Central Valley and Sierra foothills is also hurting firefighters’ ability to defend against the oncoming flames.

The high-pressure system that’s brought record-breaking heat is also, with few exceptions, keeping smoke from the state’s myriad fires closer to the ground, creating a gray shroud that makes it unsafe for pilots to fly and survey where the fires have been and where they are going, officials said.

“One of the things we’ve seen statewide is with all the smoke, we can’t get a good assessment,” said Vestal, the Creek fire spokesman.

Burning in extremely dry and steep terrain, flames carry the potential to spread their red-hot embers across football-field distances in seconds and miles in minutes — making situational awareness for the crews that battle them paramount.

“It’s hard to see that same vantage point from the ground,” Vestal said. “We get to make some tactical decisions and the … chiefs can then order resources and figure out what exactly it is, where our values at risk are, if there’s any critical infrastructure, anything that needs extra protection. It’s just a lot easier to see it from above and get that full, really comprehensive view of the incident.”

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