Kirk Siegler reports for NPR, based out of NPR West in California.
Siegler grew up near Missoula, MT, and received a B.A. in journalism from the University of Colorado. He’s an avid skier and traveler in his spare time.
A train leaves the Rangeland Energy company's crude oil loading terminal near Epping, N.D. So far this year, 60 percent of all oil produced in North Dakota left the state by rail. One economist says there aren't enough oil tankers to fill the demand.
The oil boom in the United States is creating another boom — for the railroad industry.
So far this year, in North Dakota alone, 140 million barrels of oil have left on trains. Shipments of crude oil by rail are up almost 50 percent over last year — and this upward trend is expected to continue.
A visit to the world-famous Tehachapi Loop, part of a winding mountain pass in Southern California, demonstrates the scale and reach of the oil boom in the middle of the country. As a train full of oil tanker cars rumbles past, it's hard not to think of it as a pipeline on wheels.
Many Filipinos living in the United States are frantically trying to get in touch with loved ones in some of the areas hardest hit by the typhoon. California, with about a million Filipino immigrants, is the center for a large fundraising effort.
Los Angeles is home to one of the largest concentrations of Filipino immigrants in the U.S. Many across this city are glued to the local Asian TV stations' nightly news broadcasts. Some are turning their worry and stress into action, pounding the pavement to raise money for typhoon victims.
Airports around the country will hold a moment of silence this morning to honor Gerardo Hernandez. He was the TSA officer killed a week ago today at Los Angeles International Airport. That shooting is renewing debate over airport security and the role of the TSA. NPR's Kirk Siegler reports.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Security at major airports is a web of moving parts, and a tangle of bureaucracies and jurisdictions.
A lone gunman opened fire Friday at Los Angeles International Airport, police say. Police fired on the alleged shooter, who is now in police custody. The attack left one TSA officer dead and at least seven people needing medical treatment (including the shooter), officials said. The shooting forced the evacuation of a terminal and more than 45 flights into and out of LAX have been cancelled.
The Eastwood Village mobile home park in Evans was wiped out in September's floods.
Credit Brennan Linsley / AP
Sonia Marquez, an organizer with the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, looks for keepsakes amid the muck inside one of the many flood-ravaged homes at a decimated trailer park in Evans, Colo., on Sept. 24. The majority of the residents in the trailer park are immigrants.
Credit Kirk Siegler / NPR
Inside one family's home, an English as a second language certificate remains untorn.
Credit Kirk Siegler / NPR
Close to half of Evans' 19,000 residents are Latino. Many live on the town's poorer east side, which bore the brunt of the storms.
In flood-ravaged Colorado, much of the recovery has focused on rebuilding roads and bridges to mountain towns cut off by last month's floods. But take a drive east to the state's rolling plains, and a whole new set of staggering problems unfolds in farm country.
Living In Limbo
A woman named Claudia, who doesn't want to use her last name because of her immigration status, is sitting on a couch in the lobby of a shabby hotel in Greeley, about an hour's drive northeast of Denver.
Meg Gill is the president and co-founder of Golden Road Brewing in Los Angeles. Her brewery is favored to win awards at the Great American Beer Festival.
Thousands of beer aficionados are in Denver this weekend for the Great American Beer Festival. Some 600 breweries from around the country are represented at the marquee event for the craft-brewing industry.
And while this annual competition has long been male-dominated, that's starting to change.
A former encampment. Fresno officials have dismantled three shantytowns.
Credit Kirk Siegler / NPR
Cinnamon, as she's called, serves as the de facto "mayor" of a homeless encampment of an estimated 60 people near Fresno's downtown. It's not a place for children, she says, but overall, as a single woman, she feels safe there.
Any day now, Fresno plans to raze a large homeless encampment that's grown up near downtown. The poor, farm-dependent city in California's Central Valley has one of the highest per capita homeless populations in the country.
In recent weeks, city officials there have dismantled three other sprawling shantytowns. The moves have displaced hundreds of people and sparked controversy.
Underneath Highway 180
Fresno is one of the poorest places in America. One in 4 people here live below the poverty line, and the recession only made things worse.
And on a reservation in Arizona, there's a tiny radio station marking its first year on the air. KYAY is owned by the San Carlos Apache Tribe and it's become a window into this isolated reservation, offering news and entertainment. NPR's Kirk Siegler has been listening.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRADITIONAL APACHE SONG)
KIRK SIEGLER: From a cinder block building in a dusty lot on the edge of San Carlos, comes KYAY 91.1 FM, the voice of the San Carlos Apaches.
Flames burn near the Tuolumne Family Camp near Groveland, Calif., on Sunday.
Credit Kirk Siegler / NPR
The Geronimo Hotshots are one of seven elite Native American firefighting crews in the country.
Credit Kirk Siegler / NPR
Unemployment is high and most families live well below the federal poverty line in San Carlos, Ariz. Firefighting jobs are one of only a few ways for many young men here to earn a living.
One of the firefighting teams trying to contain the Rim Fire in and around Yosemite National Park is the Geronimo Hotshots team from San Carlos, Ariz., one of seven elite Native American firefighting crews in the U.S.
On the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, firefighting jobs are one of only a few ways for many young men to earn a living. For team member Jose Alvarez Santi Jr., 25, the work is rewarding — but being away from home fighting fires can be tough.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca at the Men's Central Jail in downtown LA in 2012. Baca, who has been under fire for jailhouse abuses, is facing calls to step down and not seek a fifth term.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca — who oversees the largest municipal jail system in the country — is facing growing pressure to bow out of the race for what could be his fifth term.
There's a lot that's been piling up against Sheriff Baca lately. At the top of the list is an FBI probe into what's been described as a systemic pattern of unnecessary force against inmates in county jails.
Marchers kick off a 21-day march calling for immigration reform in Sacramento, Calif. on Monday. The 285-mile walk through California's Central Valley ended in Bakersfield at the district office of House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy.
Immigrant and farm worker rights groups came from Los Angeles to Bakersfield, Calif., by the busload this week. Bakersfield, in the state's Central Valley, is farm country, and immigration is a complex issue here.
The groups were converging on the home of the third-most powerful Republican in the House, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy.
Activists across the country are targeting a number of Republican members of Congress this summer, trying to pressure the House to take up the immigration reform bill passed in the Senate.
Bison have been roaming the Santa Catalina Island since the 1920s. At one time they numbered more than 600.
Credit Julie King / Catalina Island Conservancy
A scientist administers the PZP birth control vaccine to a bison on Santa Catalina Island. The island is the first place contraception is being used on bison in the wild.
In an open-aired Jeep, it's a bone-jarring ride into Santa Catalina Island's vast interior. The dirt road winds and climbs, twists and turns, climbing 2,000 feet up.
From there, the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean comes back into view, and if you squint, you can see downtown Los Angeles 30 miles off on the horizon.
Northern California's Salinas Valley is often dubbed America's salad bowl. Large growers there have long relied on thousands of seasonal workers from rural Mexico to pick lettuce, spinach and celery from sunrise to sunset. Many of these workers seem destined for a life in the fields. But a program that helps field workers, like Raul Murillo, start their own farms and businesses is starting to yield a few success stories.
Los Angeles police officers take a break during a basketball game with residents of the Nickerson Gardens housing project in July 2011. Violent crime at Nickerson Gardens and two nearby housing projects has fallen by almost half since 2010.
Credit Courtesy of The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles
The Los Angeles Police Department helped launch the Watts Bears, a team of the Pee Wee division of Pop Warner football, in 2012. The players come from the neighborhood and practice at a park that's considered a neutral site between local gangs.
On most weeknights, in the middle of his shift, Los Angeles police officer Keith Mott trades his gun and uniform for a T-shirt and shorts, and heads to a park in the Watts neighborhood of South Los Angeles. He's there to coach 7- and 8-year-old boys on the Pop Warner Pee Wee football team, the Watts Bears.
The kids come from three nearby housing projects: Jordan Downs, Nickerson Gardens and Imperial Courts. The park was carefully chosen. It's a neutral site for local gangs. Otherwise, most of the Bears' parents wouldn't allow them to come and play.
Tourists walk across the Badwater Basin, which sits 282 feet below sea level, in Death Valley, Calif., on June 30. People from around the world flock to the area to experience temperatures that rise to the high 120s on a regular basis.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Charlie Callagan, a Death Valley National Park Ranger, stands near the bluffs overlooking Badwater Basin. Tourists come to experience temperatures they can't back home, Callagan says.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A crowd gathers at the temperature gauge outside the Furnace Creek Visitors on June 30. The temperature on the official thermometer was at 129 degrees in the shade.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A motor home parked in the lot of Zabriskie Point. The official world record high of 134 degrees was set 100 years ago in Furnace Creek.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
A family walks away from Zabriskie Point.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
The sun sets on a record 129-degree day on Artists Drive near Furnace Creek.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Tourists walk across the Badwater Basin which sits 282 feet below sea level, in Death Valley, Calif., on June 30. People from around the world flock to the area to experience temperatures that rise to the high 120's on a regular basis.
Credit David Gilkey / NPR
Jonathan Rice, dressed as Darth Vader, gulps down a bottle of Vitamin Water after running a 6:36 mile in the hottest stretch of Death Valley. Rice has been doing the run to try and set a world record for the fastest mile run in a record-setting temperature and has dubbed it the "Darth Valley Challenge."
It's no secret that Death Valley, Calif., is one of the hottest, most unforgiving places on Earth come summertime. July 10 is the 100th anniversary of the hottest temperature ever recorded on the planet — 134 degrees Fahrenheit — and the heat is drawing tourists from all over the world to Death Valley.
Like Terminal 5 at London Heathrow Airport, Death Valley becomes a melting pot of foreign accents. On a recent afternoon, Belgian tourist Yan Klassens admires the view of the Badlands from Zabriskie Point, describing it as "nice, awesome and colorful."
