The crash was reported around 1 a.m. Saturday on Highway 101 south of Brokaw Road.

In a statement, the CHP said a 2020 Toyota Camry was traveling northbound when it veered to the right, hit a 2023 Tesla Model Y and “continued out of control in a northeasterly direction.”

The Toyota then collided with a wooden traffic sign pole and a metal light pole before crossing the North First Street onramp and traveling down an embankment, the CHP said, adding that the car rolled over before coming to a rest on its wheels.

San Jose firefighters pronounced the male driver of the Toyota dead at the scene just before 1:30 a.m., the CHP said. The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office will release the driver’s identity once it is confirmed and his next of kin is notified.

The other driver, a 45-year-old San Carlos man, was not injured, according to the statement.

The collision remains under investigation, but the CHP said it does not suspect alcohol played a role.

Anyone with information about the crash can contact the CHP San Jose area office at 408-961-0900.

Check back for updates.

Nolan Rian Hurd, 23, was charged last September with one count of murder in the death of 20-year-old Nikha Marcella DeGuzman. Though the charges were filed more than three months ago, Nolan was not arrested until Dec. 15, when police in Stockton took him into custody. He is scheduled to make his first court appearance Thursday.

A probable cause statement filed by Fremont police lays out in horrifying detail how Hurd went from being viewed as a potential witness of DeGuzman’s suicide to being wanted for murder and suspected of covering up a homicide. The shooting occurred in room #219 at a Fremont hotel, but police have not revealed the location of the shooting, nor was it initially reported by local media.

Hurd was identified as a suspect based on the angle of the bullet, gunshot residue tests, witness statements, and his own conflicting accounts of the shooting, authorities say. Despite all this, police initially recommended that Hurd be charged with a lesser count of involuntary manslaughter, not murder, though no explanation is offered for the disparity.

The shooting took place a little before 10 p.m. on Jan. 27, 2022. Police say that DeGuzman was initially shot behind the ear, but that the bullet missed her skull and she was initially conscious and alert. According to police, it was Hurd who called 911 — though investigators believe it was several minutes after the shooting — and that DeGuzman could be heard talking in the background.

Fremont police Det. Rachel Nieves wrote in court records that, “Based on the calls I believe that Hurd was trying to influence her to say she shot herself and convince the witnesses as they arrived that it was self-inflicted.”

The pistol was found underneath DeGuzman’s right leg.

Other hotel guests reported seeing Hurd banging on doors and asking for help after the shooting, while DeGuzman was seen crawling in a hotel hallway before losing consciousness, while Hurd allegedly told her not to leave and trying to get her back into their room. Some heard the couple arguing before the shot was fired, police say.

Nieves also reviewed police body-worn cameras showing Hurd’s initial interacts with the responding officers.

At one point, he can be heard saying, “I love you… what did I do… Please I did the best I can… I did the best I can,” according to police. At his initial interview at the Fremont police department, Hurd simply placed his head on the table, began crying, and ignored an investigator’s attempts to talk to him for 30 minutes, at which point he was released.

DeGuzman was hospitalized and died two days later, on Jan. 29, 2022. Her obituary describes her as a James Logan High School graduate who attended Chabot College and worked as a service representative for Apple, Tesla, and Round Table Pizza. It says she loved animals, was a talented artist, and wrote poetry, literature, and music in her spare time.

“She was a devoted worker, and often took the responsibility of working late nights. She always was self-sufficient and an independent young lady,” the obituary says.

In April, police interviewed Hurd for a second time at the Santa Rita Jail, where he was in custody for an unrelated criminal investigation. They say that this time — after initially claiming he was in the room when DeGuzman shot herself — that he was actually in the bathroom, but he denied touching the gun. Hurd’s mother allegedly told police that he had confided in her that he had, in fact, handled the pistol after DeGuzman shot herself.

Finally, police say they calculated the trajectory of the gunshot, and believed it was fired from the bed. Nieves wrote that “based on the angel of the entrance wound and trajectory of the fired round I believe that it is physically impossible” for DeGuzman to have shot herself.

Hurd is being held without bail at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A shooter stood over a 16-year-old mother clutching her 10-month-old baby and pumped bullets into their heads in a brazen attack in a central California farming community that left six dead at a home linked to drugs and guns, a sheriff said Tuesday.

Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said the teenager was fleeing the violence early Monday when the killers caught up to her outside the home in Goshen, a central California community of about 3,000 residents in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley, and shot the young mother and her child “assassination-style.”

The other four victims ranged from 19 to 72 years old, including a grandmother who was shot as she slept. Their autopsies are expected to be completed later in the week.

Authorities said they were searching for two suspects and offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to their arrests.

“None of this was by accident,” Boudreaux said during a news conference Tuesday. “It was deliberate, intentional and horrific.”

Boudreaux walked back his earlier comments to reporters that the attack was likely a cartel hit, saying that investigators are also looking into whether it was gang violence.

“I am not eliminating that possibility,” the sheriff said. “These people were clearly shot in the head and they were also shot in places where the shooter would know that a quick death would occur … This is also similar to high-ranking gang affiliation and the style of executions that they commit.”

Law enforcement is familiar with the home, the sheriff said, citing gang activity there that “has routinely occurred in the past” without giving any specifics. He added that not everyone who was shot was a drug dealer or gang member — and said that among the victims believed to be innocent are the teen, her grandmother, and of course, the baby.

The sheriff’s department on Tuesday identified the victims as: Rosa Parraz, 72; Eladio Parraz, Jr., 52; Jennifer Analla, 49; Marcos Parraz, 19; Alissa Parraz, 16; and Nycholas Parraz, 10 months.

Boudreaux said “there was no reason” for the shooters to kill the young mother and her child.

“I know for a fact this 10-month-old baby was relying on the comfort of his mother. There was no reason for them to shoot that baby, but they did,” he said.

Samuel Pina said Alissa was his granddaughter and the baby, Nycholas, was his great-grandson.

“I can’t wrap my head around what kind of monster would do this,” he told The Associated Press on Monday.

Pina said Parraz and her baby were living with her father’s side of the family in Goshen, and that her dad’s uncle, her dad’s cousin, her grandmother and her great-grandmother were also killed.

He said the family is in shock.

“It comes in big waves,” he said.

Authorities received a call at 3:38 a.m. Monday about multiple shots being fired — so many that it initially seemed like an active shooter situation — at the residence in the town of Goshen, some 170 miles (273.59 kilometers) south of downtown Los Angeles.

It was later determined the person who made the call was someone hiding at the property. Deputies arrived seven minutes later and found two bodies outside the home in the street, and a third body at the doorstep, Boudreaux said.

Deputies found more victims inside the home, including the grandmother. Down the street they discovered the teen mom and her baby. A forensics investigation revealed she had tried to run away before the shooter caught up with her and stood over her and fired multiple rounds into her skull, Boudreaux said.

“It is very clear that this family was a target,” he said.

Three people survived and will be interviewed by authorities. They include a man who hid in the home as the killings happened.

“He was in such a state of fear that all he could do was hold the door, hoping he was not the next victim,” Boudreaux said.

On Jan. 3, a search warrant at the home led to the arrest of Eladio Parraz Jr., a convicted felon who was killed in the shooting Monday — though Boudreaux said Parraz Jr. was not the “initial intended target” and declined to elaborate. Parraz Jr., 52, had an extensive criminal record including driving recklessly to evade arrest, and possessing firearms and drugs, according to prison records.

The search warrant stemmed from a parole compliance check during which investigators found shell casings on the ground, the sheriff said. The occupants refused to let officials inside the home, Boudreaux said.

They returned with a search warrant and arrested Parraz Jr. after discovering ammunition, a rifle, a shotgun and methamphetamine in the home, court records show. He was released on bail four days later.

Rural California is no stranger to drug-related violence. In 2020, seven people were fatally shot in a small, rural Riverside County town where the property had been used for an illegal marijuana growing operation — a common practice in that area.

The following year, a man accidentally shot himself while working at his family’s illegal marijuana grow in Butte County’s Forbestown. His father and two brothers were accused of moving his body to prevent investigators from discovering the grow site.

__

Associated Press writer Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz contributed to this report. Researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York and Video Producer Javier Arciga in San Diego contributed to this report.

Those attending the District 1 event will have the opportunity to hear from Chief Ford and meet several of the city’s officers. The two-hour community forum will be at Contra Loma Estates park at 1203 Sycamore Drive.

Earlier in the day on Sycamore Drive, police responded to calls about a possible shooting near Peppertree Way just after 10:45 a.m. A man, who suffered at least one gunshot wound, was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. It was the city’s first homicide of the year.

The police department plans to hold community forums in each district, rotating them throughout the year.

Submit your letter to the editor via this form. Read more Letters to the Editor.

Save reservoir roomfor snowmelt

Re. “Tiny fish hindering water capture,” Page A1, Jan. 14:

Your article on water capture ignores a very obvious reason for not filling the reservoirs at this point, and it has nothing to do with tiny fish. It’s called the snowpack.

If we fill our reservoirs now, and we get a warm atmospheric river in March, and the snowpack melts, then we have no capacity to hold that water back. Look back to the emergency spillway at Lake Oroville. With the volume of the current snowpack it would flood Sacramento, Stockton and the Delta region.

It’s easy to blame a little fish for our water deficit, but what about the expanding planting of almonds and vineyards at the same time we are expanding housing and population in arid regions of the state? Instead, we should be looking to capture water run-off in urban environments. There are 40 million people in the state, but let’s blame a fish.

Peter CalimerisPleasant Hill

Difference between Trump,Biden is obstruction

The big difference between Donald Trump’s documents and Joe Biden’s is the difference between cooperation and obstruction.

If Trump had turned over the documents when asked, several times, Mar-a-Lago would never have been searched.

Frank GrygusSan Ramon

A’s development willadd only empty offices

Re. “Vacancies on offices, rents rise at year end,” Page B1, Jan. 16:

The East Bay Times reports the office vacancy rate for Oakland, including Jack London Square, is 25%. One wonders how many vacant offices the A’s ownership development project will add to Oakland.

Please, do not approve this plan.

Mike TracyOakland

State should not importnon-native animals

California annually imports some 2 million American bullfrogs (commercially raised) and 300,000 freshwater turtles (taken from the wild) for human consumption, non-natives all. All are diseased and/or parasitized, though it is illegal to sell such products. Released into local waters, the non-natives prey upon and displace our native species.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife should cease issuing import permits. The powers-that-be seem more concerned about politics as usual, profits and cultural/racial matters than the real issues here — environmental protection, public health, unacceptable animal cruelty and law enforcement.

The deadline for the introduction of new bills is Jan. 20. Let your representatives hear from you.

Eric MillsOakland

(Mercury News & East Bay Times)

No. 1 PIEDMONT (15-0)

Previous ranking: 1

Update: Beat Castro Valley 85-22, Alameda 73-14, Cathedral Catholic-San Diego 80-37, Salesian 69-63.

Up next: Wednesday at Bishop O’Dowd, 5:30 p.m.

No. 2 ARCHBISHOP MITTY (14-2)

Previous ranking: 2

Update: Beat Sacred Heart Cathedral 65-45, St. Francis 79-30, Oakland Tech 68-60, Bishop O’Dowd 61-31.

Up next: Friday vs. Valley Vista-Surprise, Arizona, 7 p.m.

No. 3 SALESIAN (15-3)

Previous ranking: 3

Update: Beat St. Mary’s-Berkeley 74-40, St. Patrick-St. Vincent 52-39, Moreau Catholic 57-43. Lost to Piedmont 69-63.

Up next: Wednesday vs. Swett, 5 p.m.

No. 4 SACRED HEART CATHEDRAL (14-2)

Previous ranking: 4

Update: Lost to Archbishop Mitty 65-45. Beat Valley Christian 57-50, Menlo School 66-44.

Up next: Jan. 25 at St. Ignatius, 7:30 p.m.

No. 5 CARONDELET (17-3)

Previous ranking: 5

Update: Beat Bethel-Spanaway, Wash., 67-29, Lakeside-Seattle 56-40.

Up next: Today at San Ramon Valley, 7:30 p.m.

No. 6 OAKLAND TECH (13-5)

Previous ranking: 6

Update: Lost to St. Mary’s-Stockton 65-52. Beat Castlemont 72-16, Skyline 85-7. Lost to Archbishop Mitty 68-60. Beat Pinewood 69-59.

Up next: Friday vs. Oakland, 5:30 p.m.

No. 7 ACALANES (10-5)

Previous ranking: 7

Update: Beat Clayton Valley 95-19.

Up next: Wednesday at Northgate, 7 p.m.

No. 8 SAN RAMON VALLEY (15-3)

Previous ranking: 9

Update: Beat Dougherty Valley 67-35, California 68-39, Dougherty Valley 80-30.

Up next: Today vs. Carondelet, 7:30 p.m.

No. 9 BISHOP O’DOWD (10-5)

Previous ranking: 8

Update: Beat Castro Valley 67-41, St. Patrick-St. Vincent 59-53. Lost to Archbishop Mitty 61-31.

Up next: Wednesday vs. Piedmont, 5:30 p.m.

No. 10 PINEWOOD (5-5)

Previous ranking: 10

Update: Beat Priory 69-36, Moreau Catholic 58-56. Lost to Oakland Tech 69-59.

Up next: Today vs. Harker, 5 p.m.

No. 11 HERITAGE (13-3)

Previous ranking: 12

Update: Beat Freedom 68-49, Antioch 72-33.

Up next: Wednesday at Deer Valley, 5:30 p.m.

No. 12 MONTE VISTA (13-4)

Previous ranking: 15

Update: Beat Hayward 55-19, Dublin 76-39, California 66-46.

Up next: Today vs. Granada, 7 p.m.

No. 13 MIRAMONTE (16-2)

Previous ranking: 16

Update: Beat Las Lomas 58-18, Alhambra 63-38, Northgate 53-26.

Up next: Friday vs. Acalanes, 7 p.m.

No. 14 ST. PATRICK-ST. VINCENT (13-3)

Previous ranking: 18

Update: Beat Swett 77-28. Lost to Salesian 52-39, Bishop O’Dowd 59-53.

Up next: Today at De Anza, 7 p.m.

No. 15 PINOLE VALLEY (13-5)

Previous ranking: Not ranked

Update: Beat De Anza (forfeit), Swett 66-37, Priory 50-37.

Up next: Today at St. Mary’s-Berkeley, 7 p.m.

No. 16 LOS GATOS (12-3)

Previous ranking: Not ranked

Update: Beat Lynbrook 50-43, Palo Alto 55-44, Los Altos 47-29, Evergreen Valley 48-39.

Up next: Today vs. Saratoga, 7 p.m.

No. 17 PALO ALTO (10-4)

Previous ranking: 11

Update: Beat Saratoga 56-36. Lost to Los Gatos 55-44. Beat Monta Vista 54-45.

Up next: Thursday vs. Homestead, 7 p.m.

No. 18 MONTA VISTA (13-1)

Previous ranking: 13

Update: Lost to Palo Alto 54-45. Beat Leland 69-42.

Up next: Today at Homestead, 7 p.m.

No. 19 MOREAU CATHOLIC (9-7)

Previous ranking: Not ranked

Update: Beat Mission San Jose 33-21. Lost to Pinewood 58-56. Beat Washington-Fremont 64-25. Lost to Salesian 57-43.

Up next: Today at American, 7 p.m.

No. 20 SAN LEANDRO (13-3)

Previous ranking: 20

Update: Beat Berkeley 52-49. Lost to Francis Parker-San Diego 42-41.

Up next: Thursday vs. Bishop O’Dowd, 6:30 p.m.

Teams eligible for the Bay Area News Group rankings come from leagues based predominantly in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. For updated records, please email highschools@bayareanewsgroup.com.

In limited initial details, a police spokesperson said officers responded to Sycamore Drive near Peppertree Way just after 10:45 a.m. for a report of a possible shooting.

A victim found suffering from at least one gunshot wound was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police did not share any suspect or vehicle descriptions Tuesday afternoon. The shooting is the city’s first homicide of the year. According to reporting by this news organization, Antioch police investigated eight homicides in 2022.

Anyone with information may call Antioch police’s non-emergency line at 925-778-2441, or may text a tip to 274637 (CRIMES) using the key word ANTIOCH.

Check back for updates.

Contact George Kelly at 408-859-5180.

New rainfall totals show that no person alive has experienced a three-week period in the Bay Area as wet as these past 21 days. The last time it happened, Abraham Lincoln was president.

From Dec. 26 to Jan. 15, 17 inches of rain fell in downtown San Francisco. That’s the second-wettest three-week period at any time in San Francisco’s recorded history since daily records began in 1849 during the Gold Rush. And it’s more than five times the city’s historical average of 3.1 inches over the same time.

The only three-week period that was wetter in San Francisco — often used as the benchmark for Bay Area weather because it has the oldest records — came during the Civil War when a drowning 23.01 inches fell from Jan. 5 to Jan. 25, 1862, during a landmark winter that became known as “The Great Flood of 1862.”

“The rainfall numbers over the past three weeks just kept adding up. They became a blur,” said Jan Null, a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services in Half Moon Bay, who compiled the totals. “We had a strong jet stream that was bringing in storms, one after another. It was hard along the way to separate the individual storms.”

So much rain fell since Christmas in Northern California that some cities, including Oakland, Stockton, Modesto and Livermore, already have reached their yearly average rainfall totals. In other words, if it didn’t rain another drop until October, they would still have a normal precipitation year.

The parade of soaking storms, which have caused flooding in the Central Valley, Salinas Valley and Santa Cruz Mountains, along with power outages, mudslides and at least 20 deaths statewide, left the Sierra Nevada with a statewide snowpack 251% of normal on Tuesday.

Light rain is expected Wednesday night, but otherwise forecasts call for dry conditions for much of the rest of January. River levels now are dropping.

“We’ve gotten so much water and so much snow,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. “It’s going to help us dry out and dig out heading into late January. It’s really good news because it takes off the trajectory toward worsening flooding.”

For a sense of how much worse it has been, consider the winter of 1861-62.

Between November 1861 and January 1862, it rained so much that the Central Valley became a vast inland sea, 30 feet deep, for 300 miles. Leland Stanford, who had been elected governor, took a rowboat through the streets of Sacramento to reach his inauguration.

Warm storms on a massive snowpack that winter caused immense flooding, wiping farms, mills, bridges and in some case whole towns off the map. An estimated 4,000 people died, roughly 1% of California’s population at the time, and more than the death toll in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

Now, California has large dams and reservoirs that limit flooding in wet years. There also are thousands of miles of levees and pumps, weirs and other flood control projects that were not in place in the 1860s.

And despite the recent wet weeks, Northern California is nowhere near the final yearly rainfall total of 1861-62. San Francisco on Tuesday had 21.75 inches of rain since Oct. 1. That total would have to more than double in the coming months to reach the 49.27 inches that fell in 1861-62, or the 47.19 inches that fell in the second-wettest year in history, 1997-98.

Weather experts have become increasingly concerned that if another massive winter like 1861-62 hit — and tree rings and other historical records show they have occurred roughly every 100 to 200 years — millions of people could be trapped by floods, freeways could be shut for weeks, and the damage could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

A study last summer by scientists at UCLA found that the chances of such a series of huge storms, while still remote, have roughly doubled due to climate change. Climate change has warmed ocean waters, allowing more moisture to be absorbed in atmospheric river storms.

Swain, a co-author of that study, said that climate change is already increasing the amount of moisture in such storms by about 5%, and that will climb as temperatures continue to warm.

Very wet winters are nothing new in California. Since July 1, San Francisco has had the fifth most rainfall on record. But all four of the wetter periods were in the 1800s.

“California has always had big storms like this,” said Park Williams, an associate professor of geography at UCLA, whose research has shown that droughts and wildfires are becoming more severe due to warming. “Climate change can make them more intense. But we might have had a year this wet whether or not we had climate change. And 1862 proves that.”

The dog is named Sandor, and he was with Bankman-Friend when he greeted a writer for Puck at his parents’ home near the Stanford campus earlier this month. Bankman-Fried “certainly is a young man in need of both defense and a friend,” Theodore Schleifer wrote. He explained how Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, the parents of the disgraced FTX founder, are paying for 24-hour security around their house and purchased the dog soon after their son was released on a $250 million bond.

Bankman-Fried has become a “public enemy” and has reportedly faced death threats since the collapse of FTX and his arrest in the Bahamas in mid-November. The 30-year-old mop-haired entrepreneur is charged with eight felony counts pertaining to what federal prosecutors have called “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.”

During his visit to Bankman-Fried’s home, Schleifer said he saw neither Bankman nor Fried, who, up until their son’s notoriety, were popular, longtime professors at Stanford Law School. The couple may have retreated to another part of the house, while Bankman-Fried, wearing a T-shirt, shorts and a GPS monitor strapped to his ankle, escorted the writer into the kitchen.

During the more than two-hour interview at the kitchen table, Bankman-Fried “evinced his loneliness and his isolation, but also a hint of mysterious confidence, as if he could somehow wiggle his way out of his current predicament as he had in the past,” Schleifer said. Bankman-Fried expressed repentance but also seemed incredulous that his $32 billion company had gone bankrupt and that his legal troubles “might bleed his parents dry of cash and ruin the lives of the entire Bankman-Fried family.”

About home confinement, Bankman-Fried said, “It doesn’t feel like being bored during a vacation. It feels simultaneously, very antsy and frustrating and stressful. And a lot of trying to find anything I can do, to the extent there is anything. But what I can do is limited.”

Bankman-Fried spends his days going “stir-crazy,” eating vegan burgers delivered to his home, playing video games, “voraciously consuming Twitter,” and studying up on federal wire-fraud laws ahead of his trial, Schleifer said. Indeed, Bankman-Fried seems more consumed by learning about the law than about the people who lost money on FTX, Schleifer added.

During the interview, Sandor rested near the kitchen table as Bankman-Fried declined to talk about his brother, Gabe, and admitted that he had not spoken to any of his former colleagues at FTX and Alameda Research, his trading firm.

“A lot of the people who I was closest to were my colleagues,” Bankman-Fried said when asked whether he still had any childhood or high school friends living nearby. “Most of the people who I was friends with are not talking to me.”

“For a number of years, I was incredibly lucky and fortunate in terms of a lot of the relationships and support that I had,” Bankman-Fried continued. “Now there’s basically nothing left.”

One of those friends who presumably no longer speaks to Bankman-Fried is Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House spokesperson and founder of SkyBridge Capital. At a crypto panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Monday, Scaramucci said that he, Bankman-Fried and Joseph Bankman were once close, but he said he now views Bankman-Fried as a “fraud,” Insider reported.

FTX reportedly bought 30% of Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital investment firm for $45 million, while SkyBridge Capital bought $10 million of FTX’s cryptocurrency; The token’s value has since fallen 90%, Insider reported.

“I made a mistake being involved with Sam,” Scaramucci said, according to Insider. “I thought Sam was the Mark Zuckerberg of crypto, I did not think he was the Bernie Madoff of crypto. And I got that wrong.”

Bankman-Fried confirmed to Schleifer that the only people he talks to are his attorneys and his parents.

“He is a public enemy, defended by a German Shepherd, a few lawyers he will eventually struggle to afford, a pair of loving parents, and basically no one else,” Schleifer said in the conclusion of their interview. “All he has left to bet on is himself, an instinct that worked in the past. Until, one day, it didn’t.”

State should not letwater run off to ocean

Re. “Tiny fish hindering water capture,” Page A1, Jan. 14:

If what the Mercury News reported in a recent edition, that “94% of the water that flowed since New Year’s Eve through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta … has continued straight to the Pacific Ocean instead of being captured in the state’s reservoirs,” then we can officially be called the “Most Ignorant Generation” since the “Greatest Generation.”

It seems inconceivable that in the midst of a long-term drought, it makes sense to anyone that with a solution at hand (which may not be at hand next year) we literally toss that solution into the ocean. We argue the necessity of building more reservoirs to store water and yet we won’t fill the reservoirs we currently have. Something is fishy here.

Manny MoralesSan Jose

Sites Reservoir couldguard against floods

California needs to build the Sites Reservoir to store flood waters from the Sacramento River. It is needed both for water storage and protection from the types of catastrophic floods that inundated California in 1861 and 1605. The 1861 megaflood was caused by a 45-day atmospheric river.

The Sites off-stream reservoir is the most cost-effective way to protect against such storms. It would store 1.8 million acre-feet of water for 5 million homes and agricultural water needs. Govs. Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown strongly support the Sites project. While it costs $3.9 billion, it is less expensive per acre-foot than other proposals. Federal funds would be available from recently passed infrastructure bills to reduce the cost. Compared to spending $100 billon on high-speed rail, it’s a no-brainer to build the Sites Reservoir.

Ed KahlWoodside

Runoff is criticalto healthy waterways

Since the rains began we have heard and seen on TV, water from rivers rushing into the ocean. And every time the refrain is, “water wasted.”

But this is not the case.

Free and swift-flowing water is necessary for the health of our rivers and their wildlife. Even more important this rush of fresh water into the ocean is needed to protect the long-neglected health of the ocean.

We simply think of water from the homocentric “me” position. This clouds our judgment and how we manage this life source. Salmon habitat is affected, reservoirs fill with silt, rivers don’t get revitalized, silt does not get evenly distributed to replenish riparian habitats.

This rush of fresh water maintains the balance of the ocean’s salinity. It brings fresh nutrients into the ocean so that ocean plants and fauna can thrive and self-sustain.

John FrancisSan Jose

GOP should take chanceto expel George Santos

The George Santos story seems to get worse by the day. Not only did he lie about his credentials but he also may have violated campaign finance rules. He has the nerve to admit to these exaggerations but says he “did nothing unethical.” One wonders when lying became ethical.

The Democrats will rightly make a big deal about this, but the Republicans should seize the initiative and throw the bum out. They would gain stature by stepping up quickly and decisively.

Neil BonkeLos Altos

End unnecessary travelto save the planet

We were glad to see Paula Danz’s letter (“We must mitigate weather extremes,” Page A12, Jan. 15), which pointed out that extreme weather fluctuation is not a coincidence, that climate change has been wreaking havoc on our state, and that we need to stop emitting heat-trapping pollution. We know many people who already understand and totally agree with all of this -– yet they continue to plan vacations across the country or abroad. After all, they reason, they’ve saved the money for travel, and this trip or that trip has “always” been on their bucket list.

With each weather extreme we read about or experience, we hope that it will finally sink into our collective conscience that we have no correct choice but to halt all unnecessary travel. Fuel-reducing technologies aren’t enough; we can’t get out of this catastrophic mess we’ve created without immediate and large personal sacrifices.

Martha and Carl PlesciaSunnyvale

Let’s just stickwith standard time

I agree with Margaret Lawson. Keep Standard Time permanent (“If we change time, change to standard,” Page A7, Dec. 30).

Hawaii, most of Arizona, and now Mexico have permanent standard time. California, too, can have permanent standard time.

We are now standard time. Let’s keep it this way. Please, no more messing with the clocks.

Curtis GleasonPalo Alto