NATION/WORLD
Friday, October 25, 2019
East Oregonian
A7
Hundreds fl ee fi re in California wine country
By JOCELYN GECKER
AND NOAH BERGER
Associated Press
GEYSERVILLE, Calif.
— Hundreds of people
were forced to fl ee North-
ern California wine country
early Thursday as a wildfi re
exploded in size amid dan-
gerous winds that prompted
utilities throughout the state
to impose electrical black-
outs to prevent fi res.
Authorities ordered the
entire community of Gey-
serville to evacuate after the
fi re in the Sonoma County
wine region north of San
Francisco grew to more than
15 square miles. The town
has about 900 residents and
is a popular stop for wine
country tourists.
The cause of the blaze
was not yet known, but
strong, dry winds with
gusts of up to 70 mph have
affected much of the state,
including that area. There
were no immediate reports
of any injuries.
Winds slowed after day-
break, helping fi refi ghters
get a handle on the blaze,
but it was still growing, said
California Department of
Forestry and Fire Protection
spokesman Jonathan Cox.
He did not have an estimate
on the number of buildings
destroyed.
A series of deadly blazes
tore through the same area
two years ago, killing 44
people.
Mary
Ceglarski-Sher-
win and her husband, Matt
Ceglarski-Sherwin,
lost
their Santa Rosa rental
home during one of those
fi res and fl ed the fl ames
again early Thursday when
Mary’s asthma awakened
her around 2:30 a.m. Their
power was still on when they
grabbed their small dogs,
some clothes and emergency
kits they acquired during the
last fi re.
“I told him, ‘We gotta
go, we gotta go; I can feel
it changing,’” Mary Ceglar-
ski-Sherwin told the Santa
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File
Commuters walk through a corridor in the World Trade Cen-
ter Transportation Hub in New York. The United States will
add 79 million people in the next 40 years.
Census report: U.S. will
get older, more diverse
AP Photo/Kent Porter
Firefi ghters prepare to defend their ground as the Kincade fi re spreads down Black Moun-
tain in the Geysers on Thursday in Sonoma County, Calif.
Rosa Press-Democrat. “By
the time we got out there, we
could feel the heat and see
the smoke.’”
At least two fi res have
erupted in Southern Califor-
nia, but they have remained
small.
Utilities in California
have said the power shut-
offs are designed to keep
winds that could gust to 60
mph or more from knocking
branches into power lines
or toppling them, sparking
wildfi res.
The state’s largest util-
ity, Pacifi c Gas & Electric,
fi led for bankruptcy protec-
tion in January as it faced
billions of dollars of dam-
ages from wildfi res sparked
by its equipment that have
killed scores of people and
destroyed thousands of
homes over the past cou-
ple of years. The inves-
tor-owned energy company
has set aside billions of dol-
lars for insurance compa-
nies and wildfi re victims
while facing a public back-
lash over its handling of the
incidents.
PG&E began rolling
power outages Wednesday
stretching from the Sierra
foothills in the northeast to
portions of the San Fran-
cisco Bay Area, affecting
a half-million people — or
nearly 180,000 customers.
PG&E warned that a sec-
ond round of outages could
occur over the weekend
when winds were forecast to
return.
In Southern California,
hot and dry Santa Ana winds
prompted Southern Califor-
nia Edison to cut power to
more than 15,000 custom-
ers. The utility was con-
sidering additional power
cuts to more than 286,000
customers.
The San Diego Gas
& Electric utility said
it cut power to about
328 customers.
Ukrainian leader concerned about
becoming entangled in U.S. elections
By DESMOND BUTLER
AND MICHAEL
BIESECKER
Associated Press
KYIV, Ukraine — More
than two months before the
phone call that launched the
impeachment inquiry into
President Donald Trump,
Ukraine’s newly elected
leader was already wor-
ried about pressure from
the U.S. president to inves-
tigate his Democratic rival
Joe Biden.
Volodymyr
Zelens-
kiy gathered a small group
of advisers on May 7 in
Kyiv for a meeting that
was supposed to be about
his nation’s energy needs.
Instead, the group spent
most of the three-hour dis-
cussion talking about how
to navigate the insistence
from Trump and his per-
sonal lawyer Rudy Giuliani
for a probe and how to avoid
becoming entangled in the
American elections, accord-
ing to three people famil-
iar with the details of the
meeting.
They spoke to The Asso-
ciated Press on the condition
of anonymity because of the
diplomatic sensitivity of the
issue, which has roiled U.S.-
Ukrainian relations.
The meeting came before
Zelenskiy was inaugurated
but about two weeks after
Trump called to offer his
congratulations on the night
of the Ukrainian leader’s
April 21 election.
The full details of what
the two leaders discussed
in that Easter Sunday phone
call have never been pub-
licly disclosed, and it is not
clear whether Trump explic-
itly asked for an investiga-
tion of the Bidens.
The three people’s rec-
ollections differ on whether
Zelenskiy specifi cally cited
that fi rst call with Trump as
the source of his unease. But
their accounts all show the
Ukrainian president-elect
was wary of Trump’s push
fastest-growing group in the
next 40 years, its population
expanding as births outpace
deaths.
Other fast-growing groups
include Asians, whose growth
will be driven by migration,
and Hispanics, whose growth
will be driven by natural
increases, according to the
projections.
The U.S. is expected to
cross the 400 million-person
threshold by 2058, as it adds
79 million more people in
40 years, but annual growth
will slow down. The U.S.
has about 326 million people
today.
Population growth is
expected to go from an addi-
tional 2.3 million per year
currently to an additional 1.6
million people a year by 2060.
Growth comes from immi-
gration and when births out-
pace deaths, but that natu-
ral increase will decline as
the nation ages. The nation’s
median age is expected to go
from 38 today to 43 by 2060.
As the number of people
over age 65 grows, the share
of working-age adults, who
pay with their employers for
Social Security through a
payroll tax, will also decline.
Next year, there are expected
to be 3.5 working-age adults
for every person of retire-
ment age, but that ratio
declines to 2.5 by 2060,
according to the projections.
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
Associated Press
for an investigation into the
former vice president and
his son Hunter’s business
dealings.
Either way, the newly
elected leader of a coun-
try wedged between Russia
and the U.S.-aligned NATO
democracies knew early on
that vital military support
might depend on whether he
was willing to choose a side
in an American political
tussle. A former comedian
who won offi ce on promises
to clean up corruption, Zel-
enskiy’s fi rst major foreign
policy test came not from
his enemy Russia, but rather
from the country’s most
important ally, the United
States.
The May 7 meeting
included two of his top
aides, Andriy Yermak and
Andriy Bogdan, the peo-
ple said. Also in the room
was Andriy Kobolyev,
head of the state-owned
natural gas company Naf-
togaz, and Amos Hoch-
stein, an American who
sits on the Ukrainian com-
pany’s supervisory board.
Hochstein is a former diplo-
mat who advised Biden on
Ukraine matters during the
Obama administration.
Zelenskiy’s offi ce in Kyiv
did not respond to messages
on Wednesday seeking
comment. The White House
would not comment on
whether Trump demanded
an investigation into the
April 21 call.
The White House has
offered only a bare-bones
public readout on the
April call, saying Trump
urged Zelenskiy and the
Ukrainian people to imple-
ment reforms, increase
prosperity and “root out
corruption.” In the inter-
vening months, Trump and
his proxies have frequently
used the word “corruption”
to reference the monthslong
efforts to get the Ukrainians
to investigate Democrats.
Trump has said he would
release a transcript of the
fi rst call, but the White
House had no comment
Wednesday on when, or if,
that might happen.
After news broke that a
White House whistleblower
had fi led a complaint about
his July 25 call with Zel-
enskiy, Trump said the con-
versation was “perfect”
and that he had asked his
Ukrainian counterpart to do
“whatever he can in terms
of corruption because the
corruption is massive.”
During the call, Trump
asked Zelenskiy for “a
favor,” requesting an inves-
tigation into a conspiracy
theory related to a Dem-
ocratic computer server
hacked during the 2016
election campaign. Trump
also pushed Zelenskiy to
investigate Biden and his
son. Trump then advised
Zelenskiy that Giuliani and
Attorney General Bill Barr
would be contacting him
about the request, accord-
ing to a summary of the
called released by the White
House.
Within days, Giuliani
fl ew to Madrid to meet pri-
vately with Yermak, Zel-
enskiy’s aide who was in the
May 7 meeting.
Trump has denied that an
investigation of Biden was a
condition for releasing mil-
itary aid as a quid pro quo.
But on Tuesday, the senior
U.S. diplomat in Ukraine at
the time, Ambassador Wil-
liam Taylor, starkly contra-
dicted the president, saying
that Trump had demanded
that everything Zelenskiy
wanted, including the aid
and a White House meeting,
was conditional on a public
vow that he would open an
investigation.
Taylor also detailed mul-
tiple previously undisclosed
diplomatic
interactions
between Trump’s envoys
and senior Ukrainian offi -
cials in which the presi-
dent’s demand to investi-
gate the Bidens in exchange
for American aid was clear.
The latest outages come
two weeks after PG&E shut
down power for several
days to about 2 million peo-
ple in northern and central
California.
“We understand the
hardship caused by these
shutoffs,” PG&E CEO Bill
Johnson said. “But we also
understand the heartbreak
and devastation caused by
catastrophic wildfi res.”
Sonoma County Supervi-
sor James Gore said PG&E
was better this time about
getting information to peo-
ple who would be affected,
but he was still astonished
by the need to resort to
large-scale blackouts.
“I am a big believer
in shutdowns to prevent
fi res. But the thing that
erodes public trust is when
it doesn’t make sense,”
he said. “You say, ‘God, I
know if we can put a man
on the moon ... we can man-
age a (power) grid.’”
WASHINGTON — The
U.S. population will grow
older and more diverse over
the next four decades, accord-
ing to new Census Bureau pro-
jections presented Thursday
at a meeting of demographers.
As the U.S. median age
increases, there will be a
smaller ratio of workers in
the labor force able to pay the
payroll tax that funds Social
Security payments to peo-
ple of retirement age. In 15
years, the number of people
over age 65 will be larger than
the number of children for
the fi rst time in U.S. history,
according to the presentation
at a Southern Demographic
Association meeting in New
Orleans.
At the same time the U.S.
is growing older, it will also
become more diverse, with
children leading the way. By
next year, no single race group
alone will make up more than
half of U.S. children, the pro-
jections show.
Although non-Hispanic
whites currently are a major-
ity in the U.S., their numbers
will dip below 50% of the
population in 40 years, declin-
ing from 199 million next year
to 179 million in 2060, the
projections show.
People who identify as
two or more races will be the
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From the archives of the Athena Public Library, City
of Echo, Milton-Freewater Area Historical Society,
Pendleton Round-up, Tamástslikt Cultural Institute
and Umatilla County Historical Society