A La Cañada resident is asking Caltrans to increase bicyclist safety along Angeles Crest Highway by replacing missing signage that reminds vehicle drivers to share the road.

Trent Sanders emphasized in an email to Dale Benson, Caltrans senior transportation engineer in charge of bicycle and pedestrian safety, the importance of replacing three such signs that burned down in the 2009 Station fire.

Sanders said he was inspired to start pushing for the increased signage when he read about the arrest in June of La Crescenta resident Earl Clyde Cox for a road rage incident in which he threatened a group of cyclists on the highway with his vehicle.

A 14-year-old Sunland girl died Thursday after driving an SUV into a storm channel two days earlier.

Lindsey Woodward was attending a gathering at the Sunland Neighborhood Evangelical church about 9:10 p.m. Tuesday when she climbed into the driver's seat of an SUV, then backed through a chain-link fence and plunged into the channel, Los Angeles Police Sgt. Donald Kelly said.

"She put it into reverse and didn't -- or was unable to -- stop," Kelly said.

Woodward was taken to Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, where she was pronounced dead Thursday, L.A. County coroner's investigator Kitty McCracken said.

Police said an 18-year-old in the passenger seat received minor injuries.

-- Christopher Goffard

The La Cañada Unified School District will install up to 10 security cameras at all four school sites as early as this summer after a series of vandalism incidents.

“We are concerned with the vandalism that is going on at the sites,” Mike Leininger, the district’s assistant superintendent of facilities and operations told the La Canada Sun. “There has been an increase in the theft of copper and brass with the economy going down.”

Leininger recalls an incident at the beginning of this year where some brass and large copper pipes were installed. A short time afterward, the pipes vanished.  “We didn’t even have time to put a cage around [the installation],” Leininger said.

School board member Joel Peterson said the district is looking at using wireless cameras that will be of high enough quality to detect facial features for easy identification, he said.

--Andrew Shortall, Times Community News

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Photo: Different color paint was dropped on the Blue Ribbon logo at La Canada High School in March. Credit: Raul Roa/Times Community News

Driven by conditions after the Station fire, more bears are venturing into foothill neighborhoods in search of food, but officials told residents at a community meeting that human contact is rare.

California Department of Fish and Game Lt. Marty Wall offered tips to two dozen residents who attended the Thursday forum organized by Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge) after several bear sightings had been reported in the area.

Wall said grass and brush growing in clearings created by the Station fire provide good springtime foraging for black bears. But he said the dry chaparral typical of the foothills doesn’t offer enough food, so bears come into residential areas to check out fruit trees, garbage cans, dog bowls, koi ponds and backyard barbecues.

Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge) on Friday announced that he would convene a public panel to discuss wildlife safety measures after several bear sightings in the foothills.

A California black bear reportedly ate four backyard chickens last month in La Cañada at a home on Bonita Vista Drive and was photographed by a resident on Alta Canyada Road.

La Cañada officials at the time said they had asked state wildlife officials to step up their presence in the area.

But a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game said the agency planned to continue its policy of not interfering with bears unless they become aggressive toward people or pose an imminent public safety threat.

Read the full report on bear sightings here.

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-- Jason Wells, Glendale News-Press / Times Community News

Photo: A bear makes its way back toward the Angeles National Forest last month from the backyard of a home on Bonita Vista Drive. Credit: Glendale News-Press

La Cañada-Flintridge officials have decided to get more community input before proposing a law to crack down on teen house parties.

"Social host ordinances" are designed to crack down on underage drinking by making adults and property owners accountable. They allow the city or county to levy fines against the adult hosts of noisy, unruly parties. Some social host ordinances also require the responsible adults or property owners to pay the costs incurred by law enforcement to break up the gatherings.

The city's public safety committee began exploring the possibility of proposing a social host ordinance following residents' suggestions in March and decided last month to continue researching the issue.

According to Los Angeles County sheriff's Capt. David Silversparre, there were 54 noise complaints in La Cañada from June through August 2009. In the same period a year earlier, there were 68 noise complaints.

Read the full story here.

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-- Megan O'Neil, Times Community News / La Cañada Valley Sun

Photo: Teenagers dance during a party. Credit: Stefano Paltera / For the Times

In response to concerns about underage drinking in La Cañada Flintridge, the city is hosting a forum next month designed to educate parents about teenagers’ partying habits and how to keep their kids safe.

The forum will feature speakers from the county sheriff's and fire departments, members of the city’s Youth Council, a school district representative, local parents and others who will share approaches for talking to teens about the dangers of drug and alcohol use.

The city's Public Safety Commission chose not to recommend adoption of a citywide social host ordinance last year, concluding that restrictions on loud parties and teen drinking already existed and taking those rules any further would violate Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department policy.

Under the department’s field operation directive for handling loud parties, deputies need consent, a search warrant or exigent circumstances to enter a home, city Public Safety Coordinator Peter Castro said. That means that even if city officials passed an ordinance asking law enforcement to check IDs at social gatherings, it couldn’t be enforced.

Read the full story: City Hall to tackle teen parties

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-- Joe Piasecki, La Cañada Valley Sun / Times Community News

 
Most major roads were open Sunday after a passing cold front brought ice, freezing rain and snow to local mountains and Los Angeles foothill communities.

The Grapevine section of Interstate 5 reopened  about 8:30 a.m. after ice and snow forced its closure Saturday evening. Overnight lows in the area near the Kern County line dipped into the 20s.

Patches of black ice were reported on the 210 Freeway near La Tuna Canyon Road. But all lanes remained open, said Officer Francisco Villalobos of the California Highway Patrol.

“We’re advising people to use caution when driving through some of the upper elevations because theres’s a chance it could still be slippery in areas that are shaded and not getting direct sunlight,” Villalobos said.

Elsewhere, several roads leading to mountain resorts were still affected, including a portion of the Angeles Crest Highway from Big Pine Highway to Largo Vista Road which required chains.

In La Crescenta, at about 1,700 feet, a half-inch of snow fell overnight and there were reports of flurries in Burbank, Santa Clarita and Studio City.  

Long Beach recorded a record low temperature for the date of 35 degrees, eclipsing the previous record of 37 in 1996. Forecasters had expected overnight lows to approach records in other areas but light winds kept temperatures higher.     

The low in downtown Los Angeles was 42, short of the record 38 in 1894, said Stuart Seto, a weather specialist for the National Weather Service.

Temperatures are expected to increase through Tuesday with another chance of showers Wednesday. A high-pressure system from the Southwest will cause temperatures to climb to around 70 degrees by the weekend, Seto said.

-- Carla Rivera

Photo: A boy walks near Hansen Dam on Saturday. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

An Altadena family doctor currently serving federal prison time for a drug conviction was forced to surrender her medical license by the state medical board Wednesday.

Dr. Monique B. Williams, 44, had been accused of 10 disciplinary violations, including prescribing dangerous drugs without an appropriate prior exam and medical indication; repeated acts of excessive prescribing, furnishing, dispensing or administering drugs; gross and repeated negligence; excessive use of alcohol or drugs and violation of federal or state drug laws.

DOCUMENTS: Read order and allegations

Williams graduated in 1993 from the State University of New York Health Science Center, was licensed in 1995 and worked as a family doctor and obstetrician.

The medical board's accusation lays out investigators' findings:

An anonymous complaint in October 2005 alleged Williams was over-prescribing pain medications and abusing both prescription and illegal drugs.

Los Angeles County supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to deny the request of a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center to continue operating in an unincorporated residential neighborhood of Pasadena.

Many neighbors of the Eaton Canyon Treatment Center, at 3323 Fairpoint St., opposed the center’s 20-bed operation. They cited problems with vandalism, mail and trash can theft, increased traffic and patients wandering outside facility grounds. They argued it was inappropriate for a 20-bed residential rehab center to operate in a neighborhood of single-family homes.

The treatment center defended its operations and asserted that its operations do not disrupt the neighborhood.

“The public comments repeatedly assert generalized fears of people with disabilities in recovery without any evidence of problems from the home in the neighborhood,” lawyer Kim Savage wrote to the county on the rehab center’s behalf.

The rehab center has operated since 2003, first operating at 12 beds and then expanding in 2007 to 20 beds.

During that time, its owners did not seek a special permit to operate an “adult residential facility” by the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning. An “adult residential facility” is defined as any facility that provides 24-hour-a-day non-medical care and supervision to adults.