2015 in Review: February

By The Malibu Times · Wed Dec 30 2015

• Seventy-five cases of measles were reported across the region, and the outbreak, which traced back to Disneyland, raised questions about places like Malibu where parents are opting out of vaccinating their children and vaccination rates are low. Public health officials insist that vaccination rates of 90 percent or higher are necessary to maintain what they call herd immunity, and some Malibu schools are well below that number. For example, it is reported that only 57 to 78 percent of kindergartners in Malibu schools had been vaccinated for the 2013-14 school year.

• Kim Howe, a 69-year-old Calabasas woman, died in a four-car, chain-reaction collision on PCH. Former Olympian and Malibu local Bruce Jenner allegedly rear-ended her Lexus, sending it into oncoming traffic where she was struck head-on by a Hummer.

• The Malibu Times announced the 2014 Dolphin Award Winners, selected for their service and commitment to the Malibu community.

Grant and Terry Adamson

Graeme Clifford

Maggie Luckerath

Romy Rapoport

Michele and Rob Reiner

Kian and Joel Schulman

Hillary Sturgeon

Steven Weinberg

• At an unprecedented rate, young sea lion pups were swimming ashore on Malibu beaches, exhausted and malnourished. At of the end of February, 129 pups were rescued in Malibu, compared to only seven at the same point in 2014. People at the California Wildlife Center, who were involved in the rescues daily, believed the increased number of rescues may have been due to a lack of food source for the pups to eat.