Latest news with #Pasadena-based
Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Pasadena Solar Firm Acquired by Florida Energy Company for $10 Million
Pasadena-based Heliogen Inc. agreed to be acquired by Zeo Energy Corp., a Florida-based provider of residential solar and energy efficiency solutions, for $10 million. The transaction is currently expected to close in the third quarter of 2025 and has been approved by the boards of both companies. 'Heliogen brings a set of practical solutions to customers, particularly data centers, looking for longer duration energy storage with substantially lower costs than alternatives on the market,' said Tim Bridgewater, chief executive of Zeo Energy, in a statement. Piper Sandler & Co. acted as financial advisor and Ellenoff Grossman & Schole LLP acted as legal counsel to Zeo. Pickering Energy Partners is the financial advisor and Cooley LLP is legal counsel to Heliogen. Information for this article was sourced from Heliogen.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
FCC commissioner sounds alarms about free speech 'chilling effect' under Trump
Federal Communications Commissioner Anna M. Gomez traveled to Los Angeles this week to sound an alarm that attacks on the media by President Trump and his lieutenants could fray the fabric of the 1st Amendment. Gomez's appearance Wednesday at Cal State L.A. was designed to take feedback from community members about the changed media atmosphere since Trump returned to office. The president initially expelled Associated Press journalists from the White House, for example. He signed an executive order demanding government funding be cut to PBS and NPR stations. Should that order take effect, Pasadena-based radio station LAist would lose nearly $1.7 million — or about 4% of its annual budget, according to Alejandra Santamaria, chief executive of parent organization Southern California Public Radio. 'The point of all these actions is to chill speech,' Gomez told the small crowd. "We all need to understand what is happening and we need people to speak up and push back." Congress in the 1930s designed the FCC as an independent body, she said, rather than one beholden to the president. But those lines have blurred. In the closing days of last fall's presidential campaign, Trump sued CBS and "60 Minutes" over edits to an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, alleging producers doctored the broadcast to enhance her election chances. CBS has denied the allegations and the raw footage showed Harris was accurately quoted. Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, upon taking office in January, revived three complaints of bias against ABC, NBC and CBS, including one alleging the "60 Minutes" edits had violated rules against news distortion. He demanded that CBS release the unedited footage. The FCC's review of Skydance Media's pending takeover of CBS-parent Paramount Global has been clouded by the president's $20-billion lawsuit against CBS. The president rejected Paramount's offer to settle for $15 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, which said Trump has demanded more. Two high-level CBS News executives involved in "60 Minutes" were forced out this spring. Gomez, in an interview, declined to discuss the FCC's review of the Skydance-Paramount deal beyond saying: "It would be entirely inappropriate to consider the complaint against the '60 Minutes' segment as part of a transaction review." Scrutinizing edits to a national newscast "are not part of the public interest analysis that the commission does when it considers mergers and acquisitions," she said. Read more: Trump, '60 Minutes' and corruption allegations put Paramount on edge with sale less certain For months, Gomez has been the lone voice of dissent at the FCC. Next month, she will become the sole Democrat on the panel. The longtime communications attorney, who was appointed to the commission in 2023 by former President Biden, has openly challenged her colleague Carr and his policies that align with Trump's directives. She maintains that some of Carr's proposals, including opening investigations into diversity and inclusion policies at Walt Disney Co. and Comcast, go beyond the scope of the FCC, which is designed to regulate radio and TV stations and others that use the public airwaves. The pressure campaign is working, Gomez said. 'When you see corporate parents of news providers ... telling their broadcasters to tone down their criticisms of this administration, or to push out the executive producer of '60 Minutes' or the head of [CBS] News because of concerns about retribution from this administration because of corporate transactions — that is a chilling effect,' Gomez said. Wednesday's forum, organized by the nonprofit advocacy group Free Press, was punctuated with pleas from professors, journalists and community advocates for help in fending off Trump's attacks. One journalist said she lost her job this spring at Voice of America after Trump took aim at the organization, which was founded more than 80 years ago to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II. The Voice of America's remaining staffers could receive reduction-in-force notices later this week, according to Politico. Latino journalists spoke about the difficulty of covering some stories because people have been frightened into silence due to the administration's immigration crackdown. Read more: How Trump's FCC chairman is stoking the culture war For now, journalists are able to carry out their missions "for the most part," said Gabriel Lerner, editor emeritus of the Spanish-language La Opinión. But he added a warning. "Many think that America is so exceptional that you don't have to do anything because fascism will never happen here," Lerner said. "I compare that with those who dance on the Titanic thinking it will never sink.' The White House pushed back on such narratives: 'President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in history. He regularly takes questions from the media, communicates directly to the public, and signed an Executive Order to protect free speech on his first day back in office," spokesperson Anna Kelly said. "He will continue to fight against censorship while evaluating all federal spending to identify waste, fraud, and abuse.' Traditionally, the five-member FCC has maintained an ideological balance with three commissioners from the party in power and two from the minority. But the senior Democrat — Geoffrey Starks — plans to step down next month, which will leave just three commissioners: Gomez, Carr and another Republican, Nathan Simington. Trump has nominated a third Republican, Olivia Trusty, but the Senate has not confirmed her appointment. Trump has not named a Democrat to replace Starks. Some on Wednesday expressed concern that Gomez's five-year tenure on the commission could be cut short. Trump has fired Democrats from other independent bodies, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Gomez said if she is pushed out, it would only be because she was doing her job, which she said was defending the Constitution. Read more: The network evening news is in flux: Why an American TV institution is under pressure Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) applauded Gomez's efforts and noted that he's long appreciated coordinating with her on more routine FCC matters, such as ensuring wider broadband internet access. "But now the fight is the survival of the free press," Ruiz said. He noted that millions of people now get news from non-journalist sources, leading to a rise of misinformation and confusion. "What is the truth?" Ruiz said. "How can we begin to have a debate? How can we begin to create policy on problems when we can't even agree on what reality is?" Sign up for our Wide Shot newsletter to get the latest entertainment business news, analysis and insights. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
29-05-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
FCC commissioner sounds alarms about free speech ‘chilling effect' under Trump
Federal Communications Commissioner Anna M. Gomez traveled to Los Angeles this week to sound an alarm that attacks on the media by President Trump and his lieutenants could fray the fabric of the 1st Amendment. Gomez's appearance Wednesday at Cal State L.A. was designed to take feedback from community members about the changed media atmosphere since Trump returned to office. The president initially expelled Associated Press journalists from the White House, for example. He signed an executive order demanding government funding be cut to PBS and NPR stations. Should that order take effect, Pasadena-based radio station LAist would lose nearly $1.7 million — or about 4% of its annual budget, according to Alejandra Santamaria, chief executive of parent organization Southern California Public Radio. 'The point of all these actions is to chill speech,' Gomez told the small crowd. 'We all need to understand what is happening and we need people to speak up and push back.' Congress in the 1930s designed the FCC as an independent body, she said, rather than one beholden to the president. But those lines have blurred. In the closing days of last fall's presidential campaign, Trump sued CBS and '60 Minutes' over edits to an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, alleging producers doctored the broadcast to enhance her election chances. CBS has denied the allegations and the raw footage showed Harris was accurately quoted. Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, upon taking office in January, revived three complaints of bias against ABC, NBC and CBS, including one alleging the '60 Minutes' edits had violated rules against news distortion. He demanded that CBS release the unedited footage. The FCC's review of Skydance Media's pending takeover of CBS-parent Paramount Global has been clouded by the president's $20-billion lawsuit against CBS. The president rejected Paramount's offer to settle for $15 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, which said Trump has demanded more. Two high-level CBS News executives involved in '60 Minutes' were forced out this spring. Gomez, in an interview, declined to discuss the FCC's review of the Skydance-Paramount deal beyond saying: 'It would be entirely inappropriate to consider the complaint against the '60 Minutes' segment as part of a transaction review.' Scrutinizing edits to a national newscast 'are not part of the public interest analysis that the commission does when it considers mergers and acquisitions,' she said. For months, Gomez has been the lone voice of dissent at the FCC. Next month, she will become the sole Democrat on the panel. The longtime communications attorney, who was appointed to the commission in 2023 by former President Biden, has openly challenged her colleague Carr and his policies that align with Trump's directives. She maintains that some of Carr's proposals, including opening investigations into diversity and inclusion policies at Walt Disney Co. and Comcast, go beyond the scope of the FCC, which is designed to regulate radio and TV stations and others that use the public airwaves. The pressure campaign is working, Gomez said. 'When you see corporate parents of news providers ... telling their broadcasters to tone down their criticisms of this administration, or to push out the executive producer of '60 Minutes' or the head of [CBS] News because of concerns about retribution from this administration because of corporate transactions — that is a chilling effect,' Gomez said. Wednesday's forum, organized by the nonprofit advocacy group Free Press, was punctuated with pleas from professors, journalists and community advocates for help in fending off Trump's attacks. One journalist said she lost her job this spring at Voice of America after Trump took aim at the organization, which was founded more than 80 years ago to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II. The Voice of America's remaining staffers could receive reduction-in-force notices later this week, according to Politico. Latino journalists spoke about the difficulty of covering some stories because people have been frightened into silence due to the administration's immigration crackdown. For now, journalists are able to carry out their missions 'for the most part,' said Gabriel Lerner, editor emeritus of the Spanish-language La Opinión. But he added a warning. 'Many think that America is so exceptional that you don't have to do anything because fascism will never happen here,' Lerner said. 'I compare that with those who dance on the Titanic thinking it will never sink.' The White House pushed back on such narratives: 'President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in history. He regularly takes questions from the media, communicates directly to the public, and signed an Executive Order to protect free speech on his first day back in office,' spokesperson Anna Kelly said. 'He will continue to fight against censorship while evaluating all federal spending to identify waste, fraud, and abuse.' Traditionally, the five-member FCC has maintained an ideological balance with three commissioners from the party in power and two from the minority. But the senior Democrat — Geoffrey Starks — plans to step down next month, which will leave just three commissioners: Gomez, Carr and another Republican, Nathan Simington. Trump has nominated a third Republican, Olivia Trusty, but the Senate has not confirmed her appointment. Trump has not named a Democrat to replace Starks. Some on Wednesday expressed concern that Gomez's five-year tenure on the commission could be cut short. Trump has fired Democrats from other independent bodies, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Gomez said if she is pushed out, it would only be because she was doing her job, which she said was defending the Constitution. Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) applauded Gomez's efforts and noted that he's long appreciated coordinating with her on more routine FCC matters, such as ensuring wider broadband internet access. 'But now the fight is the survival of the free press,' Ruiz said. He noted that millions of people now get news from non-journalist sources, leading to a rise of misinformation and confusion. 'What is the truth?' Ruiz said. 'How can we begin to have a debate? How can we begin to create policy on problems when we can't even agree on what reality is?'
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Only a fraction of fire cleanup workers are protecting themselves against toxic debris. One community center is fighting to change that
A crew of 10, many sporting bright orange National Day Laborer Organizing Network T-shirts, funneled out of a Mexican restaurant on the edge of the Eaton burn scar. Four months — to the day — after winds smashed a tree into a car next to NDLON's Pasadena Community Job Center and soot blanketed the neighborhood, a University of Illinois Chicago professor, NDLON staff and volunteers sorted into cars under the midday sun and began discreetly traveling every road in fire-stricken Altadena. They watched nearly 250 crews, working long hours (for good pay) under contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, remove the toxic debris covering the landscape in the wake of the fire. Of the over 1,000 workers they surveyed in the burn area on May 7 and 9, only a quarter wore gloves, a fifth wore a protective mask, and a mere tenth donned full Tyvek suits, as required by California's fire cleanup safety regulations, the group's report, released Thursday, found. For Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director and co-founder of NDLON, the results aren't surprising. NDLON — a Pasadena-based, national network of day laborer organizations, focused on improving the lives of day laborers, migrant and low-wage workers — has been responding to post-disaster worker safety issues for decades. Alvarado couldn't help but remember the laborers he and NDLON supported during the cleanup following 9/11 over 20 years ago. 'Those workers are no longer alive. They died of cancer,' he said. 'These are workers I'd known for decades — their sons, their cousins.' As Alvarado watches a new generation of laborers get to work in the aftermath of the L.A. fires, his call to action is simple: 'I just don't want to see people dying.' NDLON has seen lax PPE use time and time again following disasters. Since 2001, NDLON has dispatched to countless hurricanes, floods and fires to support what the organization calls the 'second responders' — the workers who wade through the rubble and rebuild communities after the devastation. Eaton was no different. 'We always respond around the country to floods, fires, no matter where it is,' said Cal Soto, workers' rights director for NDLON, who helped survey workers in the burn area. For the Eaton fire, 'we just happen to be literally in the shadow of it.' When wildfires push into developed areas like Altadena, they chew through not just trees but residents' cars, plastics, batteries and household goods like detergents and paint thinners, releasing hosts of toxic chemicals previously locked away. They include heavy metals like lead and mercury, capable of damaging the nervous system and kidneys, as well as arsenic and nickel, known carcinogens. Organic materials like wood and oil that don't fully burn can leave polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — or PAHs — which can harm the immune system and cause sickness in the short term and cancer in the long term. Read more: The L.A. wildfires left lead and other toxic material in the soil of burn zones. Here are their health risks Their primary opportunities to enter the body are through the inhalation of toxic air or through ingestion, after collecting on the hands of a person who then touches their face or uses their hands to eat. They can also, to a lesser extent, absorb directly through the skin. Masks and disposable head-to-toe coverall suits act as a barrier against the dangerous contaminants. The responsibility to ensure workers are using those protective barriers on the job ultimately falls on the employer, said Soto. However, the breakdown of the safety standards can happen anywhere in the chain: The state's OSHA division can fail to communicate rules to companies and enforce them. Employers can fail to educate their employees or provide the correct PPE. Workers themselves — despite it all — can choose to remove their PPE on long, hot days where a plastic suit and heavy duty mask feel suffocating. 'Sometimes it's uncomfortable to wear all of that crap — particularly when it's hot," said Alvarado, who was a day laborer before founding NDLON. "Sometimes you feel like you're suffocated.' NDLON and its Pasadena Community Job Center, within hours of the Eaton fire, became a hub for the community's response. Its volunteers handed out PPE, food and donations to workers and community members. By the end of January, it had hundreds of helping hands clearing Pasadena's parks and streets of debris to assist overwhelmed city employees. At the same time, day labor, construction and environmental remediation workers quickly rushed into the burn zone along with the donations, media attention and celebrities. Like clockwork, so did the labor safety violations. In a dimly-lit Pasadena church in late January, dozens of day laborers watched as Carlos Castillo played the role of an impatient boss, barking directions at three workers standing before them. 'Hurry up,' Castillo told them in Spanish, handing out boxes of protective suits and masks. One woman, standing in front of the room, fumbled with the straps of a respirator. Debora Gonzalez, health and safety director NDLON, eyed the day laborer's efforts before asking the crowd: 'What is our friend missing?' 'Gloves!' someone called out. Gonzalez and other volunteers called on the crowd, who quickly pointed out more problems with the equipment that the three workers had hastily donned. One had a mask that wasn't sufficient for toxic cleanup; Gonzalez also pointed out that his beard would allow dust to infiltrate. Castillo, a volunteer trainer and president of the D.C.-based immigrant worker-support nonprofit Trabajadores Unidos de Washington D.C., reminded them that when they are cleaning up an area after a wildfire, there could be a range of noxious chemicals in the ash. Gonzalez said she wanted them to be prepared. 'Tomorrow we'll practice again,' she told them. NDLON set up the free trainings for any day laborers interested in supporting fire recovery after some laborers began picking up work cleaning homes contaminated with smoke and ash near the fire zones. Employers are supposed to provide protective equipment to workers and train them on how to use it, but 'many times employers want to move quickly. They just want to get the job done and get the job done as quickly as possible,' said Nadia Marin-Molina, NDLON co-executive director. 'Unfortunately, workers' health goes by the wayside.' As NDLON worked to educate day laborers, another group of workers moved in: The Army Corps of Engineers' contractors. Alvarado quickly noticed that many of the corps' workers were not wearing the required PPE. Never one to let the 'Day Laborer' in NDLON's name limit his compassion, Alvarado reached out to a longtime collaborator, Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois Chicago professor who studies labor standards enforcement, to do something about it. A week later, Juan Pablo Orjuela, a labor justice organizer with NDLON, made sure the air was recirculating in the car as the team drove through the burn zone, surveying workers for the NDLON and University of Illinois Chicago report in early May. He watched an AllTrails map documenting their progress — they'd drive until they had traced every street in northeast Altadena. Read more: When FEMA failed to test soil for toxic substances after the L.A. fires, The Times had it done. The results were alarming Orjuela spotted an Army Corps crew working on a home and pulled the car to the curb. 'Eight workers — no gloves, no Tyvek suit,' he said. Nestor Alvarenga, a day laborer and volunteer with NDLON, sat in the back, tediously recording the number of workers, how many were wearing protective equipment and the site's address into a spreadsheet on an iPad with a beefy black case. One worker walked up to the car; Orjuela slowly lowered the window. 'Do you guys need anything?' the worker asked. 'No, we're OK,' Orjuela said, 'we'll get out of your way.' Orjuela rolled up the window and pulled away. 'I don't really have to tell anybody what I'm doing,' he said. 'I'm not being antagonistic, but you know … I'm just not saying anything to anybody.' Theodore and NDLON hope the window survey, spanning 240 job sites with more than 1,000 total workers, can raise awareness for safety and health concerns in the burn areas, help educate workers, and put pressure on the government to more strictly enforce compliance. 'This was no small sample by any means,' Theodore said. 'This was an attempt to be as comprehensive as possible and the patterns were clear.' For Soto, the results are a clear sign that, first and foremost, employers are not upholding their responsibility to ensure their workers' safety. 'It's the responsibility of the employer,' he said. 'I want to be clear that we have that expectation — that demand — always.' Yet the window survey found even job sites where the PPE requirements are explicitly listed by the employer on a poster at the site, usage was still low. The reality, NDLON organizers said, is that the state must step in to help enforce the rules. 'I understand that the disaster was colossal, and I never expected the government to have the infrastructure to respond immediately,' said Alvarado, 'but at this point, making sure workers have PPE, that's a basic thing that the government should be doing.' Former Times staff writer Emily Alpert Reyes contributed to this report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
22-05-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
Only a fraction of fire cleanup workers are protecting themselves against toxic debris. One community center is fighting to change that
A crew of 10, many sporting bright orange National Day Laborer Organizing Network T-shirts, funneled out of a Mexican restaurant on the edge of the Eaton burn scar. Four months — to the day — after winds smashed a tree into a car next to NDLON's Pasadena Community Job Center and soot blanketed the neighborhood, a University of Illinois Chicago professor, NDLON staff and volunteers sorted into cars under the midday sun and began discreetly traveling every road in fire-stricken Altadena. They watched nearly 250 crews, working long hours (for good pay) under contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, remove the toxic debris covering the landscape in the wake of the fire. Of the over 1,000 workers they surveyed in the burn area on May 7 and 9, only a quarter wore gloves, a fifth wore a protective mask, and a mere tenth donned full Tyvek suits, as required by California's fire cleanup safety regulations, the group's report, released Thursday, found. For Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director and co-founder of NDLON, the results aren't surprising. NDLON — a Pasadena-based, national network of day laborer organizations, focused on improving the lives of day laborers, migrant and low-wage workers — has been responding to post-disaster worker safety issues for decades. Alvarado couldn't help but remember the laborers he and NDLON supported during the cleanup following 9/11 over 20 years ago. 'Those workers are no longer alive. They died of cancer,' he said. 'These are workers I'd known for decades — their sons, their cousins.' As Alvarado watches a new generation of laborers get to work in the aftermath of the L.A. fires, his call to action is simple: 'I just don't want to see people dying.' NDLON has seen lax PPE use time and time again following disasters. Since 2001, NDLON has dispatched to countless hurricanes, floods and fires to support what the organization calls the 'second responders' — the workers who wade through the rubble and rebuild communities after the devastation. Eaton was no different. 'We always respond around the country to floods, fires, no matter where it is,' said Cal Soto, workers' rights director for NDLON, who helped survey workers in the burn area. For the Eaton fire, 'we just happen to be literally in the shadow of it.' When wildfires push into developed areas like Altadena, they chew through not just trees but residents' cars, plastics, batteries and household goods like detergents and paint thinners, releasing hosts of toxic chemicals previously locked away. They include heavy metals like lead and mercury, capable of damaging the nervous system and kidneys, as well as arsenic and nickel, known carcinogens. Organic materials like wood and oil that don't fully burn can leave polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — or PAHs — which can harm the immune system and cause sickness in the short term and cancer in the long term. Their primary opportunities to enter the body are through the inhalation of toxic air or through ingestion, after collecting on the hands of a person who then touches their face or uses their hands to eat. They can also, to a lesser extent, absorb directly through the skin. Masks and disposable head-to-toe coverall suits act as a barrier against the dangerous contaminants. The responsibility to ensure workers are using those protective barriers on the job ultimately falls on the employer, said Soto. However, the breakdown of the safety standards can happen anywhere in the chain: The state's OSHA division can fail to communicate rules to companies and enforce them. Employers can fail to educate their employees or provide the correct PPE. Workers themselves — despite it all — can choose to remove their PPE on long, hot days where a plastic suit and heavy duty mask feel suffocating. 'Sometimes it's uncomfortable to wear all of that crap — particularly when it's hot,' said Alvarado, who was a day laborer before founding NDLON. 'Sometimes you feel like you're suffocated.' NDLON and its Pasadena Community Job Center, within hours of the Eaton fire, became a hub for the community's response. Its volunteers handed out PPE, food and donations to workers and community members. By the end of January, it had hundreds of helping hands clearing Pasadena's parks and streets of debris to assist overwhelmed city employees. At the same time, day labor, construction and environmental remediation workers quickly rushed into the burn zone along with the donations, media attention and celebrities. Like clockwork, so did the labor safety violations. In a dimly-lit Pasadena church in late January, dozens of day laborers watched as Carlos Castillo played the role of an impatient boss, barking directions at three workers standing before them. 'Hurry up,' Castillo told them in Spanish, handing out boxes of protective suits and masks. One woman, standing in front of the room, fumbled with the straps of a respirator. Debora Gonzalez, health and safety director NDLON, eyed the day laborer's efforts before asking the crowd: 'What is our friend missing?' 'Gloves!' someone called out. Gonzalez and other volunteers called on the crowd, who quickly pointed out more problems with the equipment that the three workers had hastily donned. One had a mask that wasn't sufficient for toxic cleanup; Gonzalez also pointed out that his beard would allow dust to infiltrate. Castillo, a volunteer trainer and president of the D.C.-based immigrant worker-support nonprofit Trabajadores Unidos de Washington D.C., reminded them that when they are cleaning up an area after a wildfire, there could be a range of noxious chemicals in the ash. Gonzalez said she wanted them to be prepared. 'Tomorrow we'll practice again,' she told them. NDLON set up the free trainings for any day laborers interested in supporting fire recovery after some laborers began picking up work cleaning homes contaminated with smoke and ash near the fire zones. Employers are supposed to provide protective equipment to workers and train them on how to use it, but 'many times employers want to move quickly. They just want to get the job done and get the job done as quickly as possible,' said Nadia Marin-Molina, NDLON co-executive director. 'Unfortunately, workers' health goes by the wayside.' As NDLON worked to educate day laborers, another group of workers moved in: The Army Corps of Engineers' contractors. Alvarado quickly noticed that many of the corps' workers were not wearing the required PPE. Never one to let the 'Day Laborer' in NDLON's name limit his compassion, Alvarado reached out to a longtime collaborator, Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois Chicago professor who studies labor standards enforcement, to do something about it. A week later, Juan Pablo Orjuela, a labor justice organizer with NDLON, made sure the air was recirculating in the car as the team drove through the burn zone, surveying workers for the NDLON and University of Illinois Chicago report in early May. He watched an AllTrails map documenting their progress — they'd drive until they had traced every street in northeast Altadena. Orjuela spotted an Army Corps crew working on a home and pulled the car to the curb. 'Eight workers — no gloves, no Tyvek suit,' he said. Nestor Alvarenga, a day laborer and volunteer with NDLON, sat in the back, tediously recording the number of workers, how many were wearing protective equipment and the site's address into a spreadsheet on an iPad with a beefy black case. One worker walked up to the car; Orjuela slowly lowered the window. 'Do you guys need anything?' the worker asked. 'No, we're OK,' Orjuela said, 'we'll get out of your way.' Orjuela rolled up the window and pulled away. 'I don't really have to tell anybody what I'm doing,' he said. 'I'm not being antagonistic, but you know … I'm just not saying anything to anybody.' Theodore and NDLON hope the window survey, spanning 240 job sites with more than 1,000 total workers, can raise awareness for safety and health concerns in the burn areas, help educate workers, and put pressure on the government to more strictly enforce compliance. 'This was no small sample by any means,' Theodore said. 'This was an attempt to be as comprehensive as possible and the patterns were clear.' For Soto, the results are a clear sign that, first and foremost, employers are not upholding their responsibility to ensure their workers' safety. 'It's the responsibility of the employer,' he said. 'I want to be clear that we have that expectation — that demand — always.' Yet the window survey found even job sites where the PPE requirements are explicitly listed by the employer on a poster at the site, usage was still low. The reality, NDLON organizers said, is that the state must step in to help enforce the rules. 'I understand that the disaster was colossal, and I never expected the government to have the infrastructure to respond immediately,' said Alvarado, 'but at this point, making sure workers have PPE, that's a basic thing that the government should be doing.' Former Times staff writer Emily Alpert Reyes contributed to this report.
