Bee Opinionated: Storms strike Sacramento + Councilwoman’s cancer + Nowhere by Southwest | Opinion
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I’m Robin Epley, here again with The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board.
In the past, I’ve been given strict instructions to never start off this newsletter by mentioning the weather, which I guess I tend to fall back on when I’m struggling for an intro. But I’m pretty sure I can get a one-time pass for extraordinary circumstances — because, have you seen this weather?
The city of Sacramento and nearby communities actually got off pretty lucky compared with the rest of the state, and even compared with southern Sacramento County, where levees broke in multiple places, flooding land for miles and stranding people, cars and animals. Across the state, the death toll is already up to six, including a young boy who was crushed by a falling redwood in Sonoma County.
In the city, though, forecasts predicted that we would see up to 3 inches of rain in about a day, but the National Weather Service’s totals show most of the region got less than half that. But the storm still sent enormous amounts of rainfall through our water systems. If you can safely get out to the American River at some point this week, it’s quite the scene.
That doesn’t mean we’re not in for it over the next few days. As I write this on Friday afternoon, the sky is darkening, and it looks like we’re in for another battering this weekend. At times like these, I’m extremely grateful for the roof over my head, even if there is a small leak in the laundry room. Sacramento’s homeless population can’t say the same, and it’s something I wrote about last week:
“When a storm barreled through Sacramento in January 2022, at least three homeless people died in the wind and rain, their deaths a consequence of their government’s inability to provide shelter. A year before that, a January 2021 storm killed homeless people as Sacramento officials declined to open shelters.
“Local officials still clearly haven’t learned their lesson. Thousands of unhoused people are enduring the worst storms of another winter with no more than a thin tent between them and the elements.”
“‘They should open up every empty building they’ve got, including City Hall,’ said Bob Erlenbusch of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness. ‘This is a disaster. This should be an emergency. The top priority for the city and county should be that people don’t die in these storms.’”
‘Like a champ’
“Heading into the holidays with a typically busy schedule, [Quirina] Orozco visited her doctor in November for a long-overdue checkup. When the doctor asked whether anything was wrong, the longtime fitness instructor mentioned that she had a small, hard lump in her abdomen. She thought it was a hernia and almost didn’t mention it. ‘Just for the sake of being safe,’ Orozco said the doctor told her, ‘Let’s send you to ultrasound.’ Then ‘the ultrasound tech was very serious about what she was doing,’ Orozco added. ‘And then the next thing I know, I’m being sent to all these other tests.’ ”
I had the incredible honor of interviewing West Sacramento Councilwoman Quirina Orozco about her life, work and recent Stage 4 kidney cancer diagnosis.
Orozco is an incredible woman, mother and politician who is currently serving as mayor pro tem while raising a growing family and prosecuting child abuse cases for the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office.
Her impressive résumé — she has degrees from UC Berkeley and Harvard and experience working for the Lieutenant Governor’s Office and the White House — could have made her a contender for state office. But Orozco, who grew up in Sacramento, chose to serve her community on the West Sacramento council, which as of December consists entirely of women of color.
The daughter of a Mexican American father and Filipina American mother, Orozco has been honored with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s Latina Estrella Champion Award and, this year, as an Asian American Pacific Islander Change Maker by The Bee.
“She’s one of the strongest and (most) tenacious women I know,” recently elected West Sacramento City councilwoman Verna Sulpizio Hull said. “I’m absolutely holding on to her fighting this battle and winning. West Sacramento is such a better place with her.”
Opinion of the Week
“‘You are now free to move about the country.’ Well, except when the weather is bad. Or it’s Christmas. Or they have to rely on their TRS-80-era computers.” — Jack Ohman, on the nationwide meltdown of Southwest Airlines over the Christmas holiday. The snafu coincided with a terrible winter storm and stranded him in Los Angeles, along with thousands of other would-be fliers across the country.
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Stay dry, my friends,
Robin Epley
