Wrightwood, a community of 4,720 residents in the San Gabriel Mountains, was hit hard by last week's rain storms. The rainwater turned into a debris flow after hitting the loose dirt along the Bridge Fire scars. 

Forty-five structures are damaged from the flows, according to San Bernardino County spokesman David Wert, along with 36 structures in Lytle Creek to the south, and 11 in Pinon Hills to the north. Two of the damaged structures were completely destroyed, while 20 had major damage and 40 had minor. Wert reported that the county has distributed 1,278 military rations, 1,291 lanterns, 309 food buckets and 2,772 cases of water.

State Route 2 fully reopened from State Route 138 to Wrightwood yesterday, but is still closed west of Big Pines. Mountain High, the ski resort, is closed while repairing damage. 

Wrightwood resident Sarah Bailey-Deaver said the community is having trouble with insurance, contractors and debris-clearing.

"I know people that did not get terrible damage, but they are tearing up carpet and finding mold," Bailey-Deaver said.

As an administrator for a Wrightwood Facebook group, Bailey-Deaver is fighting back a second flood: of unlicensed contractors posting on the site. She said it is hard to find enough licensed contractors to meet the needs of the community, and insurance is unlikely to pay for mudslide damages.

As for the immediate clean up, residents are working to clear debris from outside their homes without help from the county. The county's hands are tied: working on a private property would be considered a prohibited gift of public funds under state law, unless special funding was authorized, Wert said. That special funding can only be authorized for large-scale disasters. In situations like these debris flows, insurance is supposed to provide relief.

A lot of the homes' insurance, however, do not cover mudslide damage, an issue that County Supervisor Dawn Rowe told me about in regard to the mudslides in Oak Glen earlier this year.

Robert Deaver, Bailey-Deaver's husband, is organizing a two-day clean up this weekend. 

Some cars are still trapped, either by mud or by a wall of mud on their driveway.  

"There are a lot of people that need help unburying their property," said Bailey-Deaver. 

For other news on emergency management, read Levi Sumagaysay's article on the new grant program to make homes more fire-resistant: California homeowners could qualify for grants for new roofs and fire safety.

Inland Empire legislators are getting back to work this week after enjoying months off for the winter recess. Sen. Eloise Gomez Reyes of Colton is wasting no time. She introduced a bill yesterday that would prevent federal immigration agents from arresting people attending court hearings. 

"California is not going to let the federal government make political targets out of people trying to be good stewards of the law. Discouraging people from coming to court makes our community less safe," Gomez Reyes wrote in a press release.

California law already prohibits civil arrest in a courthouse, as CalMatters' Nigel Duara wrote in September, but officers have been arresting them outside anyway. The actual language of Gomez Reyes' bill has not been published, but it will expand the exclusion from the courthouses themselves to the area around the courthouses, said Allison Wescott, Gomez Reyes' communications director. 

Meanwhile, Riverside Sen. Sabrina Cervantes was appointed chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Senator Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) was sworn in yesterday as the first Latina Senate President pro tem. 

"I look forward to working closely with Pro Tem Limón and my Senate colleagues to advance California's values, while evaluating the fiscal impact of legislation and improving the lives of working families in the Inland Empire and across our Golden State," Cervantes said in a press release.

Yu Stella Yue and Jeanne Kuang wrote on Gov. Gavin Newsom's final year in office this week: Newsom's final year in office begins with an $18 billion deficit. How will he address it? and Gavin Newsom's legacy: Can he deliver on unmet promises in his final year as governor?

I hope you've enjoyed the recaps on your legislators that I provided during this winter recess. Now that the legislators are back in Sacramento, I want to make sure you know about CalMatters' My Legislator tool, which sends you weekly recaps on your own state senator and assemblymember. 

This tool pulls information from CalMatters' Digital Democracy database, which monitors bills, floor sessions, committee hearings and campaign contributions. The whole database is remarkable: it was being used to transcribe voice to text years before large language models debuted. As a disclosure, I worked part-time with Digital Democracy for one year as a student, before joining CalMatters. 

You can sign up for My Legislator here.

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