Tuesday, December 4th, 2018 marked the first anniversary of the Thomas Fire which ravaged Ventura County, forever changing lives and the landscape of the Santa Clara Valley and so many other communities in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. Supervisor Kelly Long, along with officials from Santa Paula and Fillmore, are encouraging local residents to take a moment this week to remember the fire victims and recognize the heroic efforts of our first responders.

The Thomas Fire started on December 4, 2017 just outside of Santa Paula and is the largest wildfire in Ventura County’s history consuming 281,893 acres, destroying over 1,000 structures, including 777 homes and requiring the evacuation of more than 94,000 people. “The Thomas Fire’s impact on the communities in the Santa Clara Valley cannot be understated.” Supervisor Long said, “Lives were lost, personal and agriculture property were lost and damaged, and our schools were forced to close, yet our communities remained resilient. The County continues its commitment to work closely with our local, state and federal agencies including FEMA and the SBA to rebuild properties damaged in the fire.”

This month’s one-year mark provides us a perfect opportunity to reflect on how our communities were impacted, lessons learned, and focus on steps we can take in the future to improve our collective disaster response approach. Santa Paula Mayor Ginger Gherardi stated, “We all witnessed neighbors helping neighbors and our public safety officials - at all levels, met the challenge to keep us safe and informed. It is critical that we acknowledge the impact that the Thomas Fire has had on all of us, assess our response, and chart our path forward”. Recovery efforts continue to this day with most damaged properties cleared of debris and nearly 2,000 properties surveyed with taxes adjusted by the County Assessor, Tax-Collector and Auditors office.

The recent Woolsey and Hill Fires which burned through more than 100,000 acres combined last month, highlight the importance of preparing for this “new normal”. Fire officials from Ventura County Fire as well as Fillmore Fire continue to remind us that wildfires are now a year-round reality in Ventura County. “Every family in the Santa Clara Valley should create a Family Disaster Plan that includes meeting locations and communications plans”, said Fillmore Fire Chief Keith Gurrola. “Residents need to take personal responsibility for protecting themselves, their family and their property and be ready to evacuate in a moment’s notice when a wildfire is on the move.”

Residents are encouraged to sign up for VC Alert at www.vcalert.org for all emergency notifications.

Submitted by Piru Neighborhood

The Piru Christmas Parade is scheduled for Saturday, December 8th. The Parade will start at 12pm with sign ups beginning at 10am. Festival follows parade and is over at 6pm. Music - Santa - Booths! The Grand Marshals of this year’s Christmas Parade are Tomas and JoAnn Torres.

Tomas and JaAnn’s Bio
Tomas and JoAnn Torres are both proud Piru natives. Tomas grew up the cowboy way of roaming the hills of Piru Canyon as the son of the caretaker of the Piru Dam and enjoyed hunting, fishing and working cattle. While growing up, Tomas participated in local sports activities and was a proud football player for the Fillmore Flashes. JoAnn grew up in a family that ran the local market, Sanchez Grocery, and volunteered their time to the community of Piru. JoAnn began her community work as a summer youth program coordinator at Piru’s Warring Park before she left to pursue her college career that included attending New York University.
In 2009, due to no sports programs offered in the town of Piru, Tomas and JoAnn worked with a group of community members to create Piru Youth Baseball. Later established as Piru Youth Sports (PYS), Tomas and JoAnn work to help coordinate a program that currently serves over 350 youth a year in baseball, soccer and softball as well as adult softball programs.
Tomas and JoAnn both work for the County of Ventura, Tomas almost completing 20 years of County service. Both have participated in Piru Neighborhood Council meetings, and Tomas completed the Piru emergency response program CERT. When not serving their local community, Tomas and JoAnn enjoy camping trips with their three children James, Thomas and Lily Jo and weekend BBQ’s.

Bob Crum

You watched the fantabulous Fillmore Christmas parade, didn't you? Sadly, I didn't. First parade I've missed in 15 years! You saw Santa on Fillmore & Western's Santa train didn't you? I didn't. Depressing!

To my chagrin, I have both asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Late last Friday afternoon my lungs became extremely congested impacted to the degree that breathing was extremely difficult. I have not been so debilitated in years and to say that it's frustrating is an understatement. When an additional disease invades my lungs, it's like the feeling of suffocation. Rejoice! Even with a very low SpO² (Blood/Oxygen level), I can still write.

Last week’s Photo of the Week, the yellow-crested night heron, brought many questions regarding the extremely high ISO. So, why minimal noise visible in the photo? Below you'll see how I deal with excessive image noise.
First "image noise" is like grain in the days of film. In photos, this noise appears as random speckles and can significantly degrade image quality. A camera's "ISO” speed" describes its absolute sensitivity to light. Higher numbers represent a greater sensitivity. Greater sensitivity is accomplished by amplifying the image signal in the camera, however, this also generates 'digital' noise and so higher ISO speeds will produce progressively more noise. Not good. Unless you want the film look.

As an analogy, take your hi-fi, if you still have one, and turn up the volume to the max without any music. What you hear is digital noise. Now, you're out with your camera, at sunset and it's getting dark. BTW, I almost always have ISO on auto mode because I would never, in good conscious, manually dial up an ISO of 16000. I know the disastrous result!

You see something interesting to photograph - perhaps a rare bird, or a mermaid, also rare! You mash the shutter button. The camera groans as it amplifies the low-light image. In “auto” ISO, the camera takes ISO to the max! BAM! In that amplification process, the digital noise is also amplified... ruining the photo. Or not!

Hark! Many times it's salvageable. These days, photo editing software are excellent programs. I use Adobe Lightroom (LR) first to convert the 'raw' file to a graphic image. LR editing options include “Sharpening” and “Noise Reduction.” When done in LR, I export the image to Adobe Photoshop Elements 14 with NIK Plugins. (I rarely use Photoshop) I use NIK's Define as stage 2 noise reduction. If that doesn't work to my satisfaction, my ace in the hole is called Imagenomics Noise Reduction. It's a powerful plugin which means it's just as easy to make matters worse than better thus requires great care when using it. I used it for the bird photo.

Watch out for that proverbial fly in the ointment. The more noise reduction that's applied, the greater the loss of detail. It's a balancing act. Eventually, you learn just how far to go with noise reduction and still retain sufficient detail.

Without a recent photo for photo of the week, I pulled a favorite from recent archives: The angler on the jetty at sunset. I like it particularly because it allows me to present an important photography adage: 'f/11 and be there!' Be there (anywhere) and many times photo ops magically materialize. As the sun was setting, I walked across the street from Ventura Harbor to the shore. Just curious. Saw the angler. In the background giant waves smashing on the jetty. Still good light with the sun close to the horizon. VOILA! Awesome photo op simply because I showed up. (hint... hint) Get out and shoot! Happy photoing!

Send comments, questions or suggestions to: focusonphotography@earthlink.net

This project idea started in 2005 when I was watching the kids waiting with anticipation to see Santa at the North Fillmore Community Storefront for the Fillmore Volunteer Fire Department toy giveaway. Looking at the line, none of the kids had on coats. My mind thought immediately “Did the children forget their coats? They knew it was cold and that the wait was long.” The line snaked as the little boy tucked into his mother and the realization hit me like the cold wind- The little boy didn’t forget his coat. He doesn’t have a coat.

Please join Santa Clara Valley Legal Aid and Fillmore Community’s Winter Coat Drive with support from the Fillmore Volunteer Firefighters Foundation, Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, Fillmore Rotary and other community organizations. In December we will be giving away brand-new warm winter coats to needy children of the Santa Clara Valley who are standing outside in line in Fillmore to receive their toy from Santa. There are no “administrative” costs. You send the money and our teams go and buy the coats.

As Marion Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund says: “We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.” When you place a warm coat on cold little shoulders, you know that a warm coat makes a big difference. We have given away over 7,000 new coats through the years.

Tax deductible donation can be made to Fillmore Volunteer Firefighters Fund, in the memo- coats, and mail to POB 331, or deliver to Taylor, Scoles & Bartels or donated through Go Fund Me at https://www.gofundme.com/warm-coats-for-fillmore039s-kids

Laura Bartels, Director
Santa Clara Valley Legal Aid
PO Box 236
Fillmore, CA 93016