TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
politics & the nation
COLORADO
Man arrested in plot
to blow up synagogue
The FBI arrested a self-
proclaimed white supremacist
who investigators said was
planning to blow up a historic
Colorado synagogue and poison
congregants, federal officials
said Monday. The FBI called the
alleged plot a hate crime and an
act of domestic terrorism.
Richard Holzer, 27, was
arrested Friday night after
picking up what he thought was
a bundle of pipe bombs and
dynamite from undercover
agents, according to an affidavit
filed in federal court in Denver.
He was wearing a Nazi armband
during the meeting and
carrying a copy of Adolf Hitler’s
“Mein Kampf,” FBI Special
Agent John W. Smith wrote in
the filing.
Investigators said Holzer
wanted to blow up the Temple
Emanuel synagogue in Pueblo,
Colo. The structure is the
second-oldest synagogue in
Colorado and is on the National
Register of Historic Places.
Holzer briefly appeared in
court Monday in handcuffs and
wearing a gray polo shirt with a
black collar, the Associated
Press reported. He told U.S.
Magistrate Judge Kristen Mix
that he understood the charge
against him, and she scheduled
his next court date for Thursday.
Agents said they startedtracking Holzer more than a
month ago after noticing his
anti-Semitic posts on social
media.
An undercover agent posing
as a white supremacist reached
out to Holzer on Facebook in
late September, investigators
said. After sending the agent
pictures of himself holding guns
and wearing swastikas and
other white supremacist
paraphernalia, Holzer bragged
that he had tried to poison the
water at the synagogue in 2018,
according to the affidavit.
Investigators said he told the
agent that he paid a cook to put
arsenic in the water pipes and
that he intended to do it again
on Halloween.
— Derek HawkinsWISCONSINHispanic man hurt in
suspected acid attackMilwaukee police arrested a
man suspected of throwing
battery acid on a Hispanic man
who says his attacker asked him:
“Why did you come here and
invade my country?”
Police said Monday they
arrested a 61-year-old white man
in connection with Friday night’s
attack, but they have not
released his name. Police said
they are investigating the case as
a hate crime, and charges are
expected Tuesday.
Mahud Villalaz suffered
second-degree burns to his face.
He said the attack happenedafter a man confronted him
about how he had parked his car
and accused him of being in the
United States illegally. Villalaz,
42, is a U.S. citizen who
immigrated from Peru.
Villalaz said Saturday that he
was headed into a Mexican
restaurant for dinner when a
man approached him and said:
“You cannot park here. You are
doing something illegal.” He said
the man also accused him of
invading the country.
— Associated PressOHIOEx-trooper indicted
on sex-assault chargesA grand jury has indicted aformer Ohio state trooper
accused of sexually assaulting five
people in the course of his work
and a sixth person who is a minor.
The Ohio attorney general’s
office said the additional charges
in Monday’s indictment mean
Christopher Ward, 44, now faces a
total of five counts of gross sexual
imposition and two counts of
sexual battery.
Ward was previously indicted
in Preble County in July on three
counts of gross sexual imposition
and two counts of sexual battery.
The former state trooper from
Eaton was initially charged in
February over allegations of
inappropriate sexual contact with
an adult in 2015 and a minor in
2018.
— Associated PressDIGESTBY REED ALBERGOTTIAs wildfires raged in Northern
California, Bay Area residents
checked websites and apps last
week to nervously monitor an ap-
proaching smoke plume roughly
the size of Rhode Island. What
some people found were multicol-
ored maps showing contradictory
information, or in some cases no
information at all.
The problem: Many of the air
quality measurement stations
supplying the information had
been shut off when Pacific Gas &
Electric cut power to the area,
leading to inaccurate and confus-
ing information.
In recent fire-plagued years,
Californians have gotten used to
using online tools to determine
when to go out for a jog, wear
masks or get out of the area. But
according to public officials, there
are only about 250 official air
monitoring stations, one for every
647 square miles, many of them
clustered around large metro ar-
eas. And none of them can operate
on backup power.
“When you have these wild-
fires, it’s exposing the gaps in the
infrastructure we’re relying on,”
said Davida Herzl, CEO and co-
founder of Aclima, a start-up that
is working with regulators in Cali-
fornia to map pollution block-by-
block using air quality sensors on
automobiles.
The smoky air in California has
shown few signs of abating. On
Monday, several fires smoldering
around Los Angeles County creat-
ed unhealthy air for many of the
10 million residents, as tiny parti-
cles known as PM2.5 grew to more
than twice the recommended lev-
els in some areas.
The 2019 wildfires, the first in
which power company PG&E has
preemptively shut off power in an
attempt to reduce fire danger,
have laid bare the drawbacks of an
air quality monitoring system de-
signed more for measuring large
swaths of land over time than for
providing real-time, localized
data that is more valuable in di-
sasters like wildfires. It usually
takes more than an hour for gov-
ernment monitors to record bad
air, for instance, enough time for
conditions to go from perfect to
dangerous. And with so few sen-
sors, the government system lacks
the fidelity required to show
where smaller pockets of safe or
dangerous air might exist.
While air quality has worsened
in California during this year’s
wildfires, it is far from the dire
situation last year. During last
year’s Camp Fire, which leveled
the town of Paradise, the air in
Northern California temporarily
became the worst in the world,
shutting down schools and send-
ing people to the hospital.
Consumer expectations have
also evolved, as data about the
world becomes more readily avail-
able, whether it’s up-to-the min-
ute traffic updates in mapping
apps or fitness technology that
measures every step and heart-
beat.
Inaccurate air measurements
made for a stressful weekend for
Lucas Saugen, a 40-year-old pho-
tographer in San Francisco, who
was grappling with inaccurate air
quality measurements last Sun-
day when deciding whether to
cancel a practice for the Bay Area
Derby, a roller derby league he
helps run.
The league’s air quality policy
cites official government mea-
surements, but the sensors near
the old, drafty warehouse housing
the practice were down with the
power outage. Airnow.gov, a real-
time reporting service operated
by several federal agencies, was
showing contradictory readings.
The maps showed the color pur-
ple, for “very unhealthy,” while the
“current conditions” on the right
showed the color green, for
healthy air.
Saugen instead turned to a
website maintained by Utah-
based PurpleAir, which sells low-
cost sensors to individuals, main-
ly for personal use. People can
share the data, which shows up
online. “Within 10 blocks of our
warehouse there are probably
five, which is good enough for me,”Saugen said.
The data can be a matter of life
and death. A prolonged whiff of
toxic wildfire air, a concoction of
pollutants from burning homes
and forests, can be deadly for
asthmatics and other vulnerable
people. There’s also mounting evi-
dence that even short-term expo-
sure to wildfire smoke can cause
permanent health problems, es-
pecially for children and infants
whose lungs are still developing.
“It really doesn’t help that the
regulatory monitors go down
whenever there is an event such as
this,” said Ananya Roy, an envi-
ronmental epidemiologist with
the bipartisan, nonprofit Environ-
mental Defense Fund, noting that
her organization sent its own air
monitors to do mobile air moni-
toring during Hurricane Harvey,
when oil refineries and other pet-
rochemical plants released toxic
fumes into the air.
The government sensors,
which evolved from efforts to
monitor and warn people aboutindustrial air pollution emergen-
cies in the 1950s, work by sucking
air into an isolated chamber over
the course of roughly an hour.
State agencies generally decide
where they should be located. Par-
ticulate matter sticks to a piece of
tape inside the device and a light
shined through the tape, sort of
like a film projector, creates an
image revealing the levels of par-
ticulate matter. The government
stations can cost tens of thou-
sands of dollars and require
trained staff to monitor them con-
stantly.
That method has been studied
and validated thoroughly to en-
sure accuracy, but a new wave of
businesses entering the air quality
measurement industry are push-
ing for new standards, and some
government agencies are starting
to take heed.
Andrea Polidori, advanced
monitoring technologies manag-
er for the South Coast Air Quality
Management District, which uses
about 40 monitoring stations tomeasure air quality around the
Los Angeles area, said the agency
started a new initiative to learn
more about different sensor tech-
nology. “I think a lot of communi-
ty groups would like to get their
air quality information more at
the local level,” he said.
His agency is one of a few to test
low-cost monitors, such as the
ones made by PurpleAir, which
retail for around $200, to see how
they stack up against the govern-
ment’s machines. While placed
next to an official monitoring sta-
tion outside, PurpleAir’s devices
earned a score of 93 to 97 percent
for accuracy in counting the
amount of particulate matter that
is smaller than 2.5 microns in
width. That level of accuracy is
more than sufficient to determine
the general threat level during a
wildfire, according to air quality
measurement experts.
PurpleAir’s founder, Adrian Dy-
bwad, said he created the device
because he was concerned about
plumes of dust from a gravel facto-ry near his Salt Lake City home. In
2015, he and others in the commu-
nity began to lose trust in govern-
ment air sensors, which often re-
ported healthy air quality when a
layer of smog could be seen.
“There’s this huge big polluter,
and there’s no government sen-
sors for miles around,” he said.
“You don’t monitor output, so how
can you know if they’re adhering
to the standards?”
He says there are now more
than 3,000 PurpleAir sensors re-
porting data in California. The
data, which mainly comes from
individual customers, is uploaded
to a cloud and the data can be used
by researchers and local agencies
to measure air quality. Some agen-
cies, such as the South Coast Air
Quality Management District,
have bought more than 300 for
research purposes.
Without enough sensors to pro-
vide an accurate street-by-street
picture, some companies use
“modeling” to predict air quality
using a variety of data. Israel-
based BreezoMeter uses traffic,
weather and satellite imagery to
predict street-level air quality
down to the individual address. It
compares its predictions with ac-
tual readings from government
sensors to improve accuracy. The
problem with modeling, though,
is that the data amounts to a
computer-assisted estimate that
can sometimes differ from on-the-
ground sensors.
Gaelen Gates, an in-house at-
torney for San Francisco start-up
Credit Karma, had been training
for a half-marathon when the Kin-
cade Fire erupted. She hoped to
find a window when the air was
relatively clear to go for a run. But
Airnow was showing contradicto-
ry information. “There was no
definitive source to say, ‘Hey, don’t
go running.’ ” So she did. Accord-
ing to Airnow.gov, the air was
“moderate,” meaning it could
have been a problem for certain
sensitive groups.
[email protected] More at washingtonpost.com/
technologyCalif. wildfire power outages also halt air quality monitors that many rely on
STUART W. PALLEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
A Cal Fire Monterey crew member monitors a property during a wildfire on Oct. 30. When Pacific Gas
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