It was getting close to last call early Saturday morning at Flame Club, a midtown dive bar known for its cheap drinks and understated vibe, when Diana Anderson and her friend Tanya Faison spotted trouble brewing.
Two men at the bar began raising their voices, then swinging their fists.
“Everybody get out!” a manager yelled, and dozens of people abandoned their beers and cocktails and poured out the door.
“As soon as we got outside, we heard gunshots,” Anderson said. Their first instinct was to leave. But as they ran from the bar at 16th and V, “something told me I needed to go back,” Anderson said. They returned to find two men lying on the ground, and one was not moving. Anderson, who said she has long been certified in CPR but had never had to use it in an emergency situation, stepped in.Similar situations in some ways: a distracting brawl near closing time, and an out-of-control situation outside, where security was absent.
Officially known as coccidioidomycosis — or “cocci” for short — valley fever is a fungal infection that is transmitted in dust. In the United States, it has mostly plagued humans and animals in Arizona and California’s San Joaquin Valley, where the illness was first described as “San Joaquin Valley fever” more than a century ago.
But a disease that was confined to the arid Southwest for decades appears now to be spreading, with new cases being reported in Washington, Oregon and Utah. At the same time, infection rates are increasing, particularly in California, where rates have risen 800% since 2000.
Now, as health officers attempt to track this emerging infectious disease, researchers say climate change is largely responsible for its spread — much the way malaria, Zika virus and Lyme disease are believed to be getting worse because of global warming.
Cycles of extreme precipitation, along with worsening drought and heat, are creating more of the dangerous dust, researchers say, and worsening wildfires may also be fueling the spread. By the end of the century, valley fever may be a threat across the entire western United States, they say.
“It’s emerging because we have increasing numbers, and it’s emerging because it’s being found in new areas,” said Nancy Crum, a physician with Scripps Health System in San Diego who published a review of valley fever in the journal Infectious Diseases and Therapy last month. “It’s a fungus in the soil, and so if you have really windy, dusty conditions, it can get from one area to the other.”
...The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there are about 150,000 valley fever cases in the United States each year, but most researchers say the number is much higher — closer to 350,000. In most of those cases, people who inhale the spores are asymptomatic or do not seek treatment. In some, the cases are missed because neither they nor their doctors know what to look for.
But what is undisputed is that weather patterns play a huge role in the spread of the disease, said Morgan Gorris, an Earth system scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and one of the leading researchers of the relationship between valley fever and climate change.
The ideal conditions for valley fever are wet winters followed by dry summers, she said. Coccidioides, the fungus that causes cocci, thrives in rain-soaked soil. When the soil dries and temperatures rise, the fungus breaks up into spores that can be launched into the air in billows of dust. In some cases, the spores can travel up to 75 miles.
It's going to take them a long time to figure this out. At least 100 shots. There were two concerts in the immediate vicinity that evening. Both let out by midnight, but some attendees no doubt went the bars in the immediate area. Even at 2 a.m., hundreds of people were on the streets. This event started with some kind of brawl. Then the weaponry came out. Hundreds of people in a dark glassy urban street canyon, with many bullets. Reconstructing events will be a nightmare for detectives. But they are reporting one arrest today, though.@franceswangtv Horrible news out of #Sacramento #California… 18 hurt, 6 killed in a #downtown #massshooting ♬ original sound - Frances Wang
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento police have arrested a 26-year-old man in connection with Sunday’s deadly mass shooting, the city's police chief confirmed.
Dandrae Martin was taken into custody and booked on charges of assault with a firearm and being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm, police Chief Kathy Lester told KCRA 3’s Ty Steele in an exclusive interview Monday morning.
“Right now that’s really all we’re able to share about him," she said. "As you know this is a complex investigation and we’re looking for multiple suspects and so we’re currently working to identify what his role was the night of the shooting."
...Lester said Monday that police now know that at least three buildings and three cars were hit by gunfire and more than 100 bullet casings were recovered from the scene.
"So we know that there were a lot of shots fired that night and hence the complexity of the investigation," Lester said.
She said police are still searching for multiple shooters. 9The coroner’s office in Sacramento County identified the three men and three women who were killed on Monday as:
Johntaya Alexander, 21
Melinda Davis, 57
Sergio Harris, 38
Joshua Hoye-Lucchesi, 32
Yamile Martinez-Andrade, 21
DeVazia Turner, 29
