A Sig Alert was put into place for a University City water main break that closed an intersection, San Diego Police said.
The break happened at 1:10 p.m. at Nobel Drive and Genesee Avenue and water offciials shut off the water about an hour later.
Police closed Nobel Drive between Cargill Avenue and Genesee Avenue to all traffic.
The Water Department responded.
No further information was immediately available.
Two people safely escaped their home as it went up in flames early Christmas Day, but lost one of their pets in the fast-moving fire, Oceanside Fire Department officials told NBC 7.
The fire happened at approximately 10:30 a.m. Friday on the 600 block of Ann Street near the water heater in the garage, the OFD Fire Battalion Chief said.
The two adults tried to find something to put out the fire, but could not stop it. The fire quickly spread from the garage into the kitchen.
When they went back into their home to try to find their three cats at the same time about 28 firefighters mostly from the OFD arrived on scene. One unit from the Vista Fire Department and Camp Pendleton Fire Department also responded.
One officer went into the building to try to find the three cats left behind, but by the time he found the cats, one had died. The two others were found alive.
It took roughly 30 minutes to put out the fire, firefighters said, and flames could be seen rising high above the structure.
No further information was immediately available.
The childhood home of former President Bill Clinton was partially damaged early Friday in a fire that local Arkansas police are investigating as an arson, NBC News reported.
A passing driver reported smoke pouring from the side of the Hope home — designated in 2011 as a National Historic Site — at 3:17 a.m. CT, Police Chief J.R. Wilson said.
"There was a strong odor of accelerant at the point of origin. It smelled like gasoline," Wilson told NBC News.
The back side of the two-story home was torched, and the flames reached about 8 feet high before they were distinguished, he added.
Videos and photographs belonging to the ringleader behind the Paris terror attacks offer a glimpse of his life as a "gore hero" on ISIS' front lines, NBC News reported.
Anti-ISIS activists told NBC News they obtained the files from Belgian-born Abdelhamid Abaaoud's cellphone in northern Syria in early 2014.
The series of nearly 50 digital photographs and video clips show shocking scenes of death and brutality, but also commonplace images of people in unremarkable settings. There are also pictures of rental car flyers and one of a boat.
Abaaoud, 27, died in a gunbattle with police five days after a series of shootings and bombings in the French capital killed 130 people. In addition to participating in assaults on a cafe and restaurant in Paris, officials allege Abaaoud was involved in four of the six attacks foiled by French intelligence since the spring.
A 77-year-old passenger died after the driver of a sedan crossed the median and hit a traffic signal box at a busy intersection, temporarily turning the traffic lights off, San Diego police said.
The collision happened at approximately 1:40 p.m. Friday at Hidden Valley Road and Torrey Pines Road, police and fire officials said.
The 81-year-old driver of a 2008 Lexus sedan was driving west on Torrey Pines Road when the driver, for unknown reasons, crossed the median and drove across the opposite lanes, police said.
The driver hit the curb and a signal box, but was not injured. The passenger suffered cardiac arrest and was taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Traffic lights are out in the area.
The crash remains under investigation.
No word yet on when the light will be restored.
A man distracted by his electronic device fell 60 feet to his death at San Diego's Sunset Cliffs on Christmas Day, San Diego Lifeguards confirmed to NBC 7 San Diego.
The incident happened at 4:50 p.m. Friday on the 900 block of Sunset Cliffs Boulevard when the man, in his 30s, tumbled off the side of a cliff.
"Witnesses stated seeing someone distracted by an electronic device and he just fell over the edge," said San Diego Lifeguard Bill Bender. "(He) wasn't watching where he was walking, he was looking down at the device in his hands."
The details of what he was doing were unclear, Bender said. Lifeguards have not found a device yet and said the device could have been a camera or a phone.
When the man fell, three Good Samaritans found their way down the rocks to help rescue him and administered CPR.
"They acted quickly, they found a way to get down the cliff," Bender said. "They put themselves at jeopardy...They administered CPR to the person in attempt to save a life."
A lifeguard on scene told NBC7 a teen who lived across the street was one of the people who raced out with a rope to help.
The man, in his 30s, was pronounced dead at the scene by medics.
Bender warned people to be more aware of their surroundings.
"Just like driving and using a cell phone, you don't want to be walking and using a cell phone or be distracted or anything," Bender said.
No further information was immediately available.
Refresh this page for updates on this breaking news story.
Vienna police said on Saturday a "friendly" intelligence service had warned European capitals of the possibility of a shooting or bomb attack before New Year's, prompting police across the continent to increase security measures, NBC News reported.
"Several possible names of potential attackers were mentioned, which were checked, and the investigation based on (these checks) has so far yielded no concrete results," Vienna police said in a statement, some six weeks after 130 people were killed in Islamist bombing and shooting attacks in Paris.
Extra steps include surveillance in crowded spaces, "especially at events and traffic hubs" as well as intensive identity checks and higher alertness for objects which could carry explosives such as bags or "bicycle frames", it said.
Crews are working to repair a concrete water main break on the 4600 block of Morena Boulevard.
The 12-inch diameter main broke early Saturday morning, the City of San Diego Public Utilities Department said.
As a result, about 10 customers on the 4400 block of Morena Boulevard do not have water. Water service should be restored by 8 p.m.
A water wagon is on site for those without water to provide water for their drinking, cooking and other needs.
No further information was immediately available.
Several lanes were shut down in Rancho Penasquitos early Saturday morning when a driver crashed into a fire hydrant, San Diego Police said.
The crash happened around 12:17 a.m. Saturday on Cuca Street and Penasquitos Drive when a man ran into a hydrant, police said.
The driver got out of the car, conscious and breathing.
Leaking water from the hydrant was eventually turned off.
Several northbound lanes of Penasquitos Drive were shut down during the investigation.
No further information was immediately available.
Once you've gone through the presents and taken photos in front of the tree, what do you do with that tree?
Residents of San Diego have several options when it comes to recycling their Christmas trees.
See the list of residential drop-off site locations below. More information is available by calling Environmental Services Department Customer Service at (858) 694-7000.
The City of San Diego Environmental Services Department will be hosting their annual Christmas Tree Recycling Program starting Dec. 26, 2015 to Jan. 23, 2016. Drop off locations for residents are:
Residents with yard waste collection can get curbside collection for their trees. Manual container customers can use their own bins and place trees on the curb on their regular greenery pickup day. Automated container customers using the large, green 96-gallon bin provided should cut their trees to fit into the container on the designated collection day.
Before getting rid of your trees, be sure to take off all ornaments, tinsel, lights and tree stands before dropping off your tree at the locations or leaving it out for the curbside pickup. Flocked trees are also accepted.
Artificial trees will not be accepted.
The Miramar Greenery accepts trees throughout the year at 180 Convoy St., inside the Miramar Landfill, North of Highway 52.
Coast Guard officials have suspended their search for a possible missing person after an unmanned kayak and life jacket were found miles off the coast of Oceanside.
After combing through 238 square miles of combined coastline and ocean, authorities said they found no evidence there was a missing person and suspended the search.
A fisherman called the Coast Guard Sector San Diego at approximately 1:20 a.m. Saturday, saying he saw two amber-colored flares. As he was on the phone, he said he saw two more.
CGSD launched a MH-60 Jawhawk helicopter and the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Sea Otter to search for a source of the flares. The Jayhawk completed its search 39 miles northwest of the flare sighting at 5:30 a.m. and the Cutter at 8 a.m. without finding anything.
Shortly after, another Jayhawk crew launched to continue the search and found the unmanned red kayak 16 miles west of Oceanside, at approximately 8:15 a.m. Crews also found a life jacket less than a mile northeast of the kayak.
The kayak looks to be like-new. Officials are still piecing together if the kayak and life jacket are connected to the flare sighting or if the kayak was originally manned.
A Jayhawk crew, an MH-65 Dolphin helicopter from Coast Guard Air Station Los Angeles and a 45-foot boat with a medium-sized crew from San Diego searched throughout the day.
Anyone with information is requested to contact the Joint Harbor Operations Center at (619) 278-7031 or via VHF marine-band radio channel 16.
No further information was immediately available.
A 5-year-old girl and her father were hospitalized when a thick tree fell on them on a playground in Santee, San Diego Sheriff's Deputies said.
The incident happened at 2:34 p.m. Saturday at Big Rock Park on the 8100 block of Arlette Street.
Witnesses said they saw the man push the child out of the way as the tree fell down, landing on him. He was not trapped under the tree, deputies said.
Witnesses on scene said the strong winds were to blame for the collapse of the tree.
Santee Fire Battalion Chief Chief Stuber said the winds were 20 to 25 miles per hour at the park, not counting gusts.
"We've had some solid winds all day," Stuber said. "Unfortunately, this is when trees fall."
Parents at the park Saturday said the park was abnormally windy.
"It's so loud...with the rustling of the trees, I could imagine it was difficult to actually hear anything falling down," Jesperson said.
"It was completely out of the ordinary," he added.
Jesperson commended the father for his actions.
"Obviously if that were me, I'd try to do the same thing in that situation, push the kid out of the way," said Eric Jesperson, a parent.
Both the child and the man suffered minor injuries and both are expected to be okay. They were taken to Sharp Hospital.
"This is one of those rare situations that we had a lot of children in the area...everyone's on break and playing and having fun post holidays and unfortunately a tree fell," Stuber said.
No further information was immediately available.
Chain-reaction brawls involving up to 2,000 people erupted in one of Kentucky's largest shopping centers Saturday night, forcing the entire mall and businesses in the surrounding area to shut down, police said, NBC News reported.
The hours-long chaos at Mall St. Matthews began about 7 p.m. ET when the six St. Matthews police officers assigned to the mall for the holiday season began responding to "disturbances," which began to "feed on themselves" and spread, police spokesman Officer Dennis McDonald said.
"It was a series of brawls" involving 1,000 to 2,000 people ages 13 to their early 20s, McDonald said, adding that "the entire mall" was affected.
A canal that delivers vital water supplies from Northern California to Southern California is sinking in places. So are stretches of a riverbed undergoing historic restoration. On farms, well casings pop up like mushrooms as the ground around them drops.
Four years of drought and heavy reliance on pumping of groundwater have made the land sink faster than ever up and down the Central Valley, requiring repairs to infrastructure that experts say are costing billions of dollars.
This slow-motion land subsidence — more than one foot a year in some places — is not expected to stop anytime soon, experts say, nor will the expensive repairs.
"It's shocking how a huge area is affected, but how little you can tell with your eye," said James Borchers, a hydro-geologist, who studies subsidence and says careful monitoring is necessary to detect and address sinking before it can do major damage to costly infrastructure such as bridges and pipelines.
Land subsidence is largely the result of pumping water from the ground. As aquifers are depleted, the ground sags.
The most severe examples today are in San Joaquin Valley, where the U.S. Geological Survey in 1975 said half of the land is prone to sinking. USGS researchers later called it one of the "single largest alterations of the land surface attributed to humankind."
A sparse mountain snowpack in California's driest four-year span on record has forced farmers in the Central Valley, the nation's most productive agricultural region, to rely on groundwater to irrigate their crops.
Drought has spawned a well-drilling boom with some tapping ancient aquifers 3,000 feet down.
In wet years, groundwater provides about 40 percent of water used in California, but in times of drought, groundwater can amount to 65 percent of the state's water supply.
Decades of over-pumping have destroyed thousands of well casings and buckled canal linings. To keep water flowing through low spots, irrigation districts raise the sides of sagging canals so they can increase the water level and maintain a gravitational flow.
As a result, at least one bridge now sits below the waterline. Chris White, general manager of the Central California Irrigation District in Los Banos, said replacing it is expected to cost $2.5 million. Rebuilding another canal recently cost $4.5 million.
Putting a grand total on damage from subsidence in California is tricky because irrigation districts don't often single out repairs required by subsidence from general upkeep, said Borchers, who estimates long-term costs as being "probably in the billions."
Subsidence has been a problem for decades, and it's accelerating. Last year near Corcoran, the land sank 13 inches in eight months, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory found by comparing images collected over time from satellites and airplanes.
Parts of the California Aqueduct, a massive canal that delivers water 400 miles to Southern California, also sank by nearly 13 inches, the NASA research shows.
This has cost the state of California "tens of millions of dollars" in repairs to the aqueduct in the last 40 years, and officials expect to spend that much in the future, said Ted Thomas, a spokesman for the state's Department of Water Resources.
California became the last state in the West to regulate groundwater when Gov. Jerry Brown last year signed legislation ending a Gold Rush-era policy that generally let property owners take as much as they wanted. But local agencies have until 2040 to put groundwater management plans into effect.
Farmers and irrigation districts are not the only ones taking note of sinking land. Spokesman Greg Snapper said Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has not sustained any broken natural gas pipelines from sinking land in the Central Valley, but it monitors the lines and this year started using NASA's satellite research as part of that effort.
A 60-mile stretch of California's High Speed Rail track, designed to whisk passengers through the Central Valley in excess of 200 mph, will be built on a bed of rocks. This design is more forgiving and easier to maintain and repair if the land sinks than other stretches built on highway-like slabs, said Frank Vacca, the rail authority's chief program manager.
Sinking land has stopped work on part of a historic project to return water flows to an irrigation-depleted section of the San Joaquin River. Before construction of a passageway for fish can begin, officials need to assess how fast the land will sink in the future, said Alicia Forsythe of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
With a wet El Niño winter forecast, geologists also worry that subsidence in a flood control channel elsewhere on the river may cause water to pool, prompting flooding rather than flow toward the sea.
"We haven't had to use it for a while," said Michelle Sneed, a USGS subsidence researcher. "We'll see how that's going to perform this year, if it's called upon."
Here’s a preview of what is going on in San Diego sports for the week of December 28th-January 3rd.
CHARGERS: The Bolts finish out the season on the road in Denver at 1:25 p.m. Sunday. As always NBC 7’s Derek Togerson will be at the game with postgame reactions for Football Night in San Diego following the Sunday night game on NBC.
GULLS: The Gulls are on the road all of this week. Thursday they play at Texas 5:00 p.m. before heading to San Antonio for a duo of games on Friday at 5:30 p.m. and Sunday 2:00 p.m.
SOCKERS: The Sockers keep the away game trend going this week. They’re in Tacoma on Sunday at 3:05 p.m.
CLUB TIJUANA XOLOS: The Xolos round out preseason play with a friendly against Monarcas Sunday at 4:00 p.m. in Avaya Stadium in San Jose, California.
UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO TOREROS:
-WOMEN’S BASKETBALL: Thursday vs. Pacific at 4:00 p.m. and Saturday vs. Saint Mary’s 2:00 p.m. both at the Jenny Craig Pavilion.
-MEN’S BASKETBALL: Thursday at Pacific 6:00 p.m. and Saturday at Saint Mary’s 7:00 p.m.
SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY AZTECS:
-MEN’S BASKETBALL: Wednesday vs. Wyoming 7:00 p.m. at the Viejas Arena and Saturday at Utah State 7:00 p.m.
-WOMEN’S BASKETBALL: Wednesday at Wyoming 6:00 p.m. and Saturday vs. Utah State 2:00 p.m. at the Viejas Arena.
-WOMEN’S SWIMMING: Saturday vs. Grand Canyon, UNLV and UCSD 1:00 p.m. in La Jolla.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO TRITIONS:
-SWIMMING & DIVING: Wednesday vs. Cal State East Bay 2:00 p.m., Saturday vs. Boise State, Grand Canyon and SDSU 12:00 p.m. at UCSD and Sunday vs. Incarnate Word, Missouri S&T and San Jose State 12:00 p.m. at UCSD.
-WOMEN’S BASKETBALL: Friday vs. Humboldt State 5:30 p.m. and Saturday vs. Cal Poly Pomona 5:30 p.m. both at UCSD.
-MEN’S BASKETBALL: Friday vs. Humboldt State 7:30 p.m. and Saturday vs. Cal Poly Pomona 7:30 p.m. both at UCSD.
POINT LOMA NAZARENE UNIVERSITY SEA LIONS:
-MEN’S BASKETBALL: Saturday at UC Santa Barbara (exhibition) 4:00 p.m.
Good luck to everyone playing this week and have a happy and safe New Year’s!
DUI arrests made during the extended Christmas holiday weekend across California were up from the previous year, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) reported.
From 6 p.m. Thursday night to 6 a.m. Sunday, CHP officers across the state reported 608 DUI arrests, up from the 565 arrests made during the same time frame in 2014. Fourteen DUI-related fatalities were reported for all law enforcement agencies in 2015, as opposed to the 18 in 2014.
In San Diego County, CHP officers reported 34 DUI arrests in 2015, the exact same number as during the same time frame in 2014. The number of fatalities linked to DUI in 2014, two, remained the same in 2015 during the same time period.
In Orange County, 33 people have been arrested for DUI, up from the 29 in 2014. There were no fatalities in 2014 or 2015 for that time period.
DUI arrest numbers above are those made by CHP officers; fatality numbers are for all law enforcement agencies.
President Barack Obama this fall announced that about 10,000 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan through most of 2016 — with a smaller group staying even longer. For many of those troops, it won't be their first deployment, or even their second, NBC News reports.
America's war in Afghanistan has seen multiple deployments become routine for military families. As many as 700,000 service member have served more than one tour in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Froehlichs, who live at Fort Drum in New York, knows this all too well. They weren't able to spend Christmas together again this year because Wade Froehlich, a chief warrant officer with the Army, was on his third deployment to Afghanistan — and the sixth of his career.
While Wade Froehlich has adjusted to deploying to various parts of the the world, he says, "you never get used to leaving your family, that's the toughest thing."
