Essential: How Santa Rosa is planning to rebuild

[Essential California]( Essential California [Send to friend](mailto:?subject=Essential: How Santa Rosa is planning to rebuild&body= | [Open in browser]( Good morning, and welcome to the [Essential California newsletter](. It’s Thursday, Oct. 19, and here’s what’s happening across California: TOP STORIES Fires keep on burning After the fires in Northern California, Shelly Lanning is one of thousands of residents who have lost their homes in a region that has faced some of the worst effects of the state’s housing affordability crisis. A limited housing supply fueled by the San Francisco Bay Area’s booming job growth and decades of slow construction has forced home values and rents to near-record highs. [Los Angeles Times]( Facts and figures: The death toll rose to 42 as containment of the Northern California fires grew. [Los Angeles Times]( Where does the debris go? Authorities are now shifting to what will be one of the pressing tasks in the long recovery effort: clearing out the neighborhoods. On Wednesday they said Northern California’s worst wildfire disaster is transitioning into the largest debris removal campaign in state history. [Los Angeles Times]( Finally: One writer contemplates what it means to lose his home in Santa Rosa. [Los Angeles Times]( More Puliafito revelations For more than a year while he was dean of USC’s medical school, Dr. Carmen Puliafito abused drugs on days he worked as an eye doctor in university facilities and “would return to his medical office to see patients within hours of using methamphetamine,” a state investigation alleges. Puliafito consumed heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs on a near-daily basis at the Keck School of Medicine campus and in other locations, and the physician supplied drugs to other people, including a teenager and a patient in an addiction treatment facility, according to a filing that details the results of an investigation conducted for the Medical Board of California. [Los Angeles Times]( Weinstein vs. Weinstein Together, Bob and Harvey Weinstein built a studio that would redefine independent cinema by drawing upon their complementary skills. Though they became famous for their conference room shouting matches, the brothers from Queens, N.Y., always managed to put their differences aside when facing common enemies. But their escalating tensions finally burst into the open this month amid allegations that Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted more than 40 women over two decades. [Los Angeles Times]( ADVERTISEMENT L.A. STORIES About Exposition Park: “Exposition Park is getting crowded. And that’s both a challenge and an opportunity for the Natural History Museum, at 104 years old the park’s oldest cultural tenant,” writes Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne. [Los Angeles Times]( The times are changing: Once a taboo for Vietnamese refugees who came to the U.S., divorce has gained wide acceptance with assimilation, with advertisements for it all over neighborhoods like Little Saigon. [Los Angeles Times]( Upon further review: NPR took a closer look at the charitable-giving claims made by a Trump property, the Trump National Golf Club, Los Angeles. They found that the golf club’s charitable giving has followed the same pattern — falling far short of what the organization claimed. [NPR]( IMMIGRATION AND THE BORDER The Amazon price: Chula Vista is offering Amazon a $400-million incentive to build its headquarters near the U.S.-Mexico border. [Business Insider]( POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT Pelosi in L.A.: In Los Angeles, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called on the GOP-controlled Congress to come up with a new Dream Act by year’s end. The San Francisco Democrat said she has confidence Republicans and Democrats will be able to work together to pass it. [Los Angeles Times]( KDL for Senate: Democratic state Senate leader Kevin de León held his first official campaign event and went right to his core criticism of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein ahead of what promises to be a bitter and expensive battle. [Los Angeles Times]( Going to court: California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra asked a federal court to issue an emergency temporary restraining order to block the Trump administration from cutting off cost-sharing subsidies that help reduce the price of healthcare for millions of Americans. [Los Angeles Times]( Cox weighs in: Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox said Wednesday he will donate a “substantial” amount of money — in the “six figures” — to a campaign to qualify a ballot measure that would repeal increases in gas taxes and vehicle fees in California. [Los Angeles Times]( ADVERTISEMENT CRIME AND COURTS More Durst: Shortly before she was shot to death inside her Benedict Canyon home, Susan Berman told a close female friend she had the “inside story” about the disappearance of the wife of a male friend in New York with whom she was angry and disappointed, according to testimony Wednesday in the murder case of Robert Durst. [Los Angeles Times]( Fugitive killed: A fugitive suspected in the 2002 kidnapping and slaying of a 15-year-old girl on her way to school in Montebello was killed in Mexico, investigators announced Tuesday.[Los Angeles Times]( Real estate agent arrested: Charged with kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder, among other felonies, Barret Murphy was arrested on the morning of Oct. 6 by sheriff’s deputies in Montecito. [Santa Barbara Independent]( THE ENVIRONMENT Sad story: Wildlife authorities are looking into the case of a sea otter found skinned on a beach in San Luis Obispo County. [SFGate]( CALIFORNIA CULTURE LA Weekly is sold: LA Weekly’s owner, Voice Media Group, has agreed to sell the alternative weekly newspaper as it sheds print assets and focuses on its digital business, a representative for Voice Media confirmed Wednesday. [Los Angeles Times]( Changing their ways: Audience measurement company Nielsen will offer networks and studios data on who is watching programs on streaming video-on-demand services such as Netflix. [Los Angeles Times]( Cool history lesson: Learn more about the language that’s been used throughout history to describe California’s climate. [KCET]( Not just an axe: Read about the century-old tool being used to battle flames in Northern California. [Atlas Obscura]( CALIFORNIA ALMANAC Los Angeles area: partly cloudy, 78, Thursday; partly cloudy, 76, Friday. San Diego: partly cloudy, 72, Thursday; showers, 70, Friday. San Francisco area: partly cloudy, 63, Thursday; partly cloudy, 61, Friday. Sacramento: partly cloudy, 68, Thursday; partly cloudy, 67, Friday. [More weather is here.]( AND FINALLY Today’s California memory, from Loren Steck: “Watching the Justin Turner home run a couple of days ago, I was reminded of the Kirk Gibson one. My wife Annette and I lived in L.A., but we were on the Monterey Peninsula to put an offer on a house in Carmel. To celebrate our offer, we went out to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. It was Oct. 15, 1988. While Annette waited for a table, I wandered over to the bar. It was crowded, Game 1 of the Dodgers-A’s World Series was on, and I arrived just in time to see an injured Kirk Gibson hobble up to the plate in the bottom of the ninth. He hit his walk-off home run, I let out a spontaneous scream — and then I realized I was the only one yelling. It turns out that the Monterey Peninsula is A’s (and, even more so, Giants) territory. I quickly learned that lesson. We got the house, and I have since become a fan of Bay Area baseball, but my loyalty to the Dodgers endures, and that at-bat still puts a smile on my face these 29 years later.” If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. [Send us an email](mailto:benjamin@latimes.com?subject=California%20Memory) to let us know what you love or fondly remember about our state. (Please keep your story to 100 words.) Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to [Benjamin Oreskes](mailto:benjamin.oreskes@latimes.com) and [Shelby Grad](mailto:shelby.grad@latimes.com?subject=Essential%20California). Also follow them on Twitter [@boreskes]( and [@shelbygrad](. [Email](mailto:?subject=Essential: How Santa Rosa is planning to rebuild&body=[Twitter]( [Sign up for Newsletters]( | [Privacy Policy]( | [Unsubscribe]( | Copyright © 2017 Los Angeles Times | 202 West First Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90012. | 1-800-LA-TIMES