2016 in Review: March

    0
    105
    Los Angeles County Fire personnel honor fallen inmate firefighter Shawna Lynn Jones with a full line-of-duty memorial service in 2016.

    MARCH

    • Malibu brush fires are always dangerous and unpredictable, and a 22-year-old firefighter was killed when a rock struck her head, while fighting a 10-acre brush fire in West Malibu. The young woman, Shawna Lynn Jones, was a volunteer inmate firefighter.

    • The Malibu Planning Commission, in a close 3-2 vote, gave a green light to the new Santa Monica College facility that will be built in the Civic Center area, where the old sheriff’s station was located. The $25 million building will be paid for with proceeds of a bond issue passed in 2004 with monies specially set aside for the project.

    • When personal belongings and a journal were found at water’s edge on Zuma Beach, lifeguards and volunteers went searching for the owner, whom they thought might be suicidal and may have walked into the surf. This one had a happier ending, as she was found later in a Santa Monica hospital.

    • Traffic on Point Dume has been growing, particularly now that so many people are using online software to get around traffic jams. The city tried to fix the problems but ran into a firestorm when it was suggested many of the encroachments into the right-of-ways should be removed to widen the streets. Encroachments, which included walls, mailboxes, gardens and trees, had been there for years and were part of the meandering ambiance of the point — the neighbors went ballistic. The city quickly backed off.

    • Malibu celebrated the 25th anniversary of its founding on March 28, 1991. We reprinted part of the front page with the first city council