Los Angeles Times - 09.08.2019

$2.75DESIGNATED AREAS HIGHER © 2019 WST FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2019 latimes.com

The cellphone of Foun-
tain Valley resident Jacobo
Alvarez pinged repeatedly
on Saturday with news that
a gunman had killed 22 peo-
ple, nearly all Mexican na-
tionals or Mexican Ameri-
cans, at a Walmart in El
Paso.
But many of the mes-
sages didn’t come from his
hometown. They were from
a massive group chat Alva-
rez belongs to of young Lat-
ino El Pasoans who live in
Southern California.
These expats usually
connect with one another to
share memories and gossip
about Chuco — the city’s
Spanish nickname, used by
Latinos and hip Anglos alike
—or host parties to cook
Tex-Mex food they can’t find
on the West Coast, like me-
nudo served with French
rolls or taquitos bathed in
tomato sauce and cheddar
cheese.
Far from joyful, this text
thread was bone-chilling.
“Right away, people were
saying ‘Hey, everyone, check
on your family como estan,’ ”
said Alvarez, who works as
manager for a mortgage
company. “ ‘Call your cous-
ins, your tías. See who needs
help.’
“It’s been a big, emotional
ride for us,” the 36-year-old
added. “Everyone back
home is very angry and sad.
Out here, we’re just devas-
tated.”
Nationwide, Latinos are
expressing grief and anger
over the massacre, which
law enforcement officials are
investigating as a hate crime
because the alleged gunman
published an online mani-
festo railing against a “His-
panic invasion” of Texas.
The tragedy resonates
deeply in Southern Califor-
[SeeChuco,A7]

El Paso

roots

and pain

run deep

in L.A.

Tightknit community

of transplants living in

the Southland is left

in grief and anger over

massacre back home.

By Gustavo Arellano

EL PASO — Robert Evans stood on

the grass of the baseball field Wednes-

day night, and a little bit of him was a

kid again.

He had played second base and

some shortstop growing up in El Paso.

When he was young, in the 1970s, he’d go

to minor league games with his grand-

father. “He could answer any trivia

question they put up there,” Evans

said. “He loved baseball.”

Evans remembered — he couldn’t

have been more than 10 — sitting near

metal and wood bleachers, waiting to

catch baseballs that flew off the bats.

Sometimes he’d keep them. Some-

times he and his friends would trade

them in for snow cones.

Baseball was a place to dream. A

place for joy. A place where things made

sense: 90 feet between the bases, three

outs per half-inning, and a diamond

shape of grass and dirt hemmed in by

foul lines and a home run wall.

But what happened in El Paso on

Saturday morning made no sense. It

was madness. The 44-year-old Wal-

mart manager had been in the parking

lot of his store when a gunman ap-

proached. He saw the first bullets fly

and the first customers crumple. Evans

ROBERT EVANS,manager of the store where tragedy struck, is honored at an El Paso Chihuahuas game.

Photographs by Rudy GutierrezFor The Times

On a field of solace

Baseball offers respite for the El Paso Walmart manager who

helped customers survive the shooting and employees cope

PLAYERSfor El Paso’s minor league team observe 22 seconds of silence

— one second for each person killed — before Wednesday’s game.

By David Montero

[SeeBaseball, A7]

WASHINGTON — The

Trump administration’s at-

tempt to deploy a scientifi-

cally disputed system for de-

tecting airborne anthrax or

other infectious agents in

terrorist attacks is facing in-

creased scrutiny from a bi-

partisan group of House

members.

In a three-page letter,

four Democrats and Repub-

licans on the House Energy

and Commerce Committee

asked the Government Ac-

countability Office to con-

duct an in-depth scientific

evaluation of the new

system, called BioDetection

21.

Officials from the GAO,

an investigative arm of Con-

gress, signaled that they

plan to open the inquiry.

The lawmakers’ request

cited a Feb. 15 Los Angeles

Times article as the impetus

for a full-fledged review of

the controversial new bio-

defense system.

The letter was signed by

the committee chairman,

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-

N.J.), and the ranking mem-

ber, Rep. Greg Walden (R-

Ore.), along with Reps. Di-

ana DeGette (D-Colo.) and

Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.).

Homeland Security is

facing separate congres-

sional scrutiny for efforts

over the last two years to

reduce or eliminate other

programs intended to iden-

tify and block chemical,

biological, radiological and

nuclear threats posed by ter-

rorists.

The cutbacks were de-

tailed in a Times investiga-

tive report last month that

found the Trump adminis-

tration had gutted training,

drills and other programs

that were put in place after

the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist at-

tacks in a broad-based effort

to prevent an attack on U.S.

soil involving weapons of

mass destruction.

The Department of

Homeland Security has ini-

tially installed BioDetection

21 in 12 U.S. cities as a

planned replacement for

BioWatch, the nation’s exist-

ing, problem-plagued bio-

detection system.

BioWatch has been beset

from the start by false

alarms, however, and gov-

[SeeBioDetection,A8]

AGENCY

ASKED TO

EVALUATE

DEFENSE

SYSTEM

Troubled biological

warfare detection

devices face increased

bipartisan scrutiny

from House panel.

By David Willman

DELTA, Utah — If you

know anything about solar

and wind farms, you know

they’re good at generating

electricity when the sun is

shining or the wind is blow-

ing, and not so good at other

times.

Batteries can pick up the

slack for a few hours. But

they’re less useful when the

sun and wind disappear

for days at a time — a prob-

lem that the Germans call

dunkelflaute, meaning

“dark doldrums.”

Those long stretches of

still, cloudy days are one of

the main obstacles standing

in the way of renewable ener-

gy fully replacing fossil fuels.

For Los Angeles, salt may

be a solution.

One hundred miles south

of Salt Lake City, a giant

mound of salt reaches thou-

sands of feet down into the

Earth. It’s thick, relatively

pure and buried deep, mak-

ing it one of the best re-

sources of its kind in the

American West.

Two companies want to

tap the salt dome for com-

pressed air energy storage,

an old but rarely used tech-

nology that can store large

amounts of power.

It would work like a giant

battery. Hollow caverns

carved out of the salt — each

more than 1,000 feet from top

to bottom and several hun-

dred feet wide — would be

pumped full of air at high

pressure, using energy gen-

erated by solar panels or

wind turbines during times

when the power isn’t

needed. Like storing wind

COAL IS brought to the Intermountain Power Plant, the last coal-fired generat-

ing station serving California. The Delta, Utah, plant is scheduled to close in 2025.

Luis SincoLos Angeles Times

Utah’s buried salt solution

By Sammy Roth

[SeeEnergy,A9]

Los Angeles hopes to use underground caverns like

a giant battery for storing wind and solar power

Days after his wife filed to
move their divorce forward,
a Garden Grove man with a
long rap sheet is suspected
of having gone on what au-
thorities describe as one of
Orange County’s worst
binges of violence, robbing
and stabbing his way south
from his own apartment
building, leaving four bodies
and eight crime scenes in his

wake.

First, police say, 33-year-

old Zachary Castaneda ran-

sacked his next-door neigh-

bor’s apartment. Then he al-

legedly terrorized the owner

of a nearby bakery, walking

off with her cash register

when he couldn’t get the

machine open. After that,

the man police describe as

a known gang member

doubled back to the first

crime scene and apparently

stabbed his neighbor and

another man to death.

Over 2^1 ⁄ 2 hours Wednes-

day in attacks that became

more brazen, Castaneda is

suspected of terrorizing a

swath of Santa Ana and Gar-

den Grove, stabbing four

people to death and nearly

slicing off a man’s nose, a

string of crimes that

THE BODY of one victim is taken out of the Casa De
Portola apartments in Garden Grove on Wednesday.

Irfan KhanLos Angeles Times

Two hours of terror

in Orange County

After the deaths of

four, on top of deadly

attacks in other states,

comes a plea: ‘This

violence has to stop.’

By Hannah Fry,
Cindy Carcamo
and Maria L. La Ganga

[SeeStabbings,A8]

50 years later,

Manson victims

remembered

The killers have domi-

nated the story since

the attacks, but fam-

ilies of the victims, like

Sharon Tate, above,

are fighting to make

sure they’re not for-

gotten. CALIFORNIA, B

Land’s crucial

link to climate

Healthy forests and

sustainable agriculture

are key to cutting

greenhouse gas emis-

sions, a U.N. report

warns. BACK STORY, A

Weather

Mostly sunny.

L.A. Basin: 84/62. B

Printed with soy inks on

partially recycled paper.

Associated Press