OAKLAND — 

The Chargers can recall being showered by debris, doused with beer and enveloped by the wafting smell of weed.

Now, they have the opportunity to play one final time in the home of the Oakland Raiders, in a game both teams desperately need — a game matching longtime AFC West rivals.

It’s also a game played at night, giving the fans ample time to elevate their levels of both excitement and blood-alcohol.

“It’ll be awesome,” Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers said. “The aura of what that place has meant over the years will be alive, for sure.”

The Raiders (4-4) will be moving to Las Vegas after the season, meaning the game Thursday night will be Rivers’ farewell to this place, unless the teams should meet in the playoffs.

It will serve as a fitting bookend for him, his first career start coming here on Sept. 11, 2006.

The Chargers (4-5) won that Monday night 27-0, with Rivers completing eight of 11 pass attempts for 108 yards and a touchdown — one of his least productive outings.

“Only threw it 11 times,” Rivers recalled this week. “I think I can talk [interim offensive coordinator] Shane [Steichen] into more than 11 attempts on Thursday.”

This will be Rivers’ 14th career start in a facility that — during his time in the NFL — has gone from being called McAfee Coliseum to Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum to Overstock.com Coliseum to O.co Coliseum to Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum again to, reportedly, RingCentral Coliseum.

Although many media outlets are calling the stadium RingCentral, official communications from the Raiders continue to use the Oakland-Alameda County name when referring to their home.

Despite the signage out front changing over the years, the atmosphere inside has remained consistent. And comical. And, perhaps in some cases, criminal.

“Every game’s like Halloween,” Chargers coach Anthony Lynn said. “A lot of energy. A lot of excitement. A good place to go play. I’m going to miss it, no doubt.”

As a player, Lynn said he remembers being hit by a battery thrown from the stands. Before confirming that he was, in fact, wearing his helmet at the time, Lynn was asked what type of battery.

“Double-A,” he answered. “It was not a car battery.”

Chargers defensive lineman Damion Square said he also was pelted by a battery at the Coliseum, on another Thursday night in 2015. It apparently didn’t matter to the person firing the object that it was Christmas Eve.

Or maybe it did. Square said his battery was a smaller triple-A type. It deflected off his helmet.

“The noise made my ears ring for two series,” he said. “It truly sounded like someone hit my helmet with a bell. The noise was just crazy. I don’t think I was singled out, but it did feel like it came from about 50 yards away.”

Veteran left tackle Russell Okung was more fortunate than Lynn and Square. The egg that someone whipped in his direction outside the Coliseum missed. The incident came during Okung’s rookie season, when he was playing with Seattle. It was Halloween night 2010.

“One, how did you get the egg?” Okung remembered thinking at the time. “And you really held it that long to be able to throw it at me? It was insane. It was definitely a testament to who they are as a fan base. They’re rabid. They’re crazy and they love their team.”

The fans promise to be boisterous and unforgiving Thursday, which will be nothing new to a Chargers team that, at times over the past three seasons, has had to resort to using a silent count at home.

On Sunday, Dignity Health Sports Park was bustling with Green Bay rooters, every one of them quieted when the Chargers took the opening kickoff and assembled a 15-play, 84-yard drive that ate up more than eight minutes.

The possession netted only three points, but the mood it established was worth much more as the Chargers went on to beat the favored Packers handily, 26-11.

“It will be a crazy atmosphere for them,” running back Melvin Gordon said of the fans in Oakland. “We gotta go in there and silence some noise.”

The winner will sit second to Kansas City in the division and remain undeniably in wild-card contention in an AFC that has been accommodating to playoff-hopeful teams that have struggled.

The Chargers lost five of six games during one stretch but now have back-to-back victories that have basically salvaged their season — at least for another week.

They are coming off their most complete performance in months, a triumph featuring a dominant defense and an offense that rediscovered its run-pass balance.

“I don’t think it’s something like, ‘Oh, we figured it out. So we’re going to look like that for the rest of the year,’ ” Rivers said. “It’s not that easy.

“It’s tough to be consistent in this league. The teams that are, end up … we know where they end up late in December and January. We’re striving to get there.”

The Chargers’ pursuit continues Thursday, with a November night in a painted-up and angry Black Hole looking to consume them.

The New York Giants and Jets, who play each other Sunday in their shared stadium, can provide a blueprint — or maybe greenprint — for the Rams and Chargers, who next fall will move into their $5-billion football palace, SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Giants-Jets doesn’t happen often in the regular season. It’s the 14^th time the teams have met, other than exhibition games, and the third time since MetLife Stadium opened in 2010.

The teams are the oddest New York roommates since Felix and Oscar, even though their home is actually across the Hudson in East Rutherford, N.J. At times, the friction between the organizations has been palpable, especially when the Jets were tenants at Giants Stadium from 1984-2009.

“The Giants organization was much more corporate, much more buttoned-up,” said kicker Jay Feely, who played two seasons for both the Giants and Jets. “Jets, whether it was because of the stadium or whatever, there was always this mentality that you were kind of the little brother. You’re always fighting against that mentality, and it carried over into the dynamics of the organizations themselves.”

That has changed since the teams moved into their current home, where the clubs have split all stadium costs down the middle. What often felt like an inferiority complex has softened over the years.

The Rams and Chargers are entering choppy waters that won’t always be easy to navigate. Their arrangement is similar to the Jets and Giants at the old stadium, because the Inglewood stadium would not have happened without Kroenke, who in 2016 moved the Rams from St. Louis.

This venue is Kroenke’s legacy, the Stan Canyon. The Chargers are tenants.

In a deal hammered out by the NFL and Kroenke, the Chargers pay $1 annually in rent, and bring with them 10 games per season, a $200-million league loan, and whatever they can raise in seat-license sales. In exchange, the Chargers get a glistening new place to call home, and share in a portion of stadium sponsorships and annual suite payments.

It’s Kroenke who is responsible for construction costs, and pitches in an identical loan from the league as well as Rams seat-license sales. Besides the stadium money on a Chargers game day, and aforementioned share of sponsorships and suites, Kroenke receives all other revenue generated by the 298-acre site throughout the year.

In their years of contemplating a move north to Los Angeles, the Chargers repeatedly voiced a concern: If they were to share a new home, they wouldn’t want to be the Jets playing in Giants Stadium. And for good reason. The Jets unquestionably felt like second-class citizens in a place where “Giants Stadium” was printed on their tickets, and the team bus parked under a sign that read the same. The Jets referred to the place as The Meadowlands, but the name never really stuck. The Giants’ locker room was bigger and more plush.

“Mr. Hess tried to do everything he could,” former Jets quarterback Ken O’Brien said of the late Leon Hess, oil magnate and owner of the Jets at the time. “He put up his Hess signs in the end zone and all throughout the stadium, but it still pretty obviously belonged to the Giants. They had been there first and played there. It was what it was.”

Like O’Brien, a lot of the other Jets players learned to block it out and just play.

“Although the stadium was blue, it didn’t really register like that to me,” said former USC and Jets star Keyshawn Johnson, now an ESPN analyst. “Because a field’s a field. Everybody that was inside the stadium was Jet fans, and we had our own facility. So we didn’t share practice facilities with the Giants, we just shared a stadium, as if we were going to a neutral site.”

As part of the agreement between the Rams and the Chargers, both teams will have identical locker rooms — and separate and identical visiting-team locker rooms — as well as identical owner’s suites. The Rams will have the east sideline on game day, and the Chargers will have the west, each team nearest to its locker room.

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Because all the advertising will be digital at SoFi Stadium, a flip of the switch will transform the place from Rams to Chargers.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell probably was especially sensitive when helping craft the arrangement because he started his career at the league as an intern with the Jets. He understands how it feels to be the other team.

Without question, the Jets were the other team. But sometimes they got their day in the sun. Those days came when the Jets played host to the Giants, and the stadium was a roiling sea of green.

“I remember running out of the tunnel at our own stadium, and everything is green, people are booing at you,” former Giants tight end Brian Saxton recalled. “Wait a minute … Oh, that’s right, it’s a Jet home game. It’s like when you were a kid and you have family coming in for the holidays, and your parents kick you out of your room. So now you’re in a sleeping bag on the floor. So you’re home, but you’re not at home at your home.”

The Giants must have felt that way on Christmas Eve in 2011, the first time they faced each other in their new stadium. It was a Jets home game, so, to make the place more comfortable for them, team employees used black curtains to cover a mural of the Lombardi Trophies outside the Giants’ locker room.

The Giants would have none of that and moved the curtains aside. The Jets came into that game with some hope of making the playoffs. However, the Giants broke their spirit with a 99-yard touchdown by receiver Victor Cruz, the highlight of a 35-24 victory, and the Jets haven’t been a playoff contender since.

Lots of people remember the small-minded gesture by the Jets, and the devastating response by the Giants, who went on to collect their fourth Super Bowl victory.

Petty, and the heartbreakers.

Hi, this is Tania Ganguli, Lakers beat writer for the Los Angeles Times with your Lakers newsletter.

It would be an exaggeration to say the Lakers are firing on all cylinders right now (not to mention a cliche), but they have made the best of the early part of the season.

A looming question for this veteran team is one they haven’t yet begun to really grapple with. Will the Lakers begin employing load management?

Technically speaking, the league doesn’t allow players to simply be rested. That hasn’t stopped the Clippers from twice resting Kawhi Leonard this season. The NBA approved the move after consulting with the Clippers’ medical staff who said Leonard isn’t healthy. The league later fined the team $50,000 after coach Doc Rivers made comments about the situation that contradicted the assessment of Leonard’s injury.

The Lakers could use a similar plan for their stars, LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and I think we all assume they will at some point.

Davis has a shoulder injury that he’s admitted would take four or five days of true rest in order to fully heal. But when I asked Lakers coach Frank Vogel if there was any chance he’d rest Davis in Chicago, he shot down the notion entirely.

He deadpanned: “No. And how dare you.”

I don’t think Vogel likes even thinking about playing a game without Davis, and who can blame him? Even on an off night, Davis ultimately made an impact for the team in Chicago. Unless he injures his shoulder again, the Lakers see little reason to not allow him to keep playing through a little bit of pain.

James was given the “load management” distinction a few times last season after he returned from a groin injury. At the time the Lakers said it was a strain, but James has referred to it as a tear this season. Each time he’s mentioned it lately, he’s said once he returned to play after five weeks off, he was still dealing with a tear.

Vogel was asked at Thursday’s practice about protecting James from overexposure this season.

“Yeah, just every way we can,” Vogel said. “Whether it’s off days in practice or minimize his minutes, minimize his load. There’s some things built in scheme-wise that require him to do — to pass some guys off at certain times. Every way we can.”

So far that hasn’t included resting James. Throughout his 17-year career, James has rarely been interested in resting during games, especially while his team is fighting for playoff position.

The bigger picture with both players, though, is their availability will become much more critical after the regular season.

LeBron’s passion project

The LeBron James Family Foundation announced a pretty remarkable next step to the I Promise School project this week.

They’ve partnered with Graduate Hotels to provide transitional housing a few blocks from the school to families facing homelessness, domestic violence issues and other housing-related challenges. James met the CEO of Graduate Hotels, Ben Weprin, in Cabo San Lucas and the idea to do this began then. Graduate Hotels is a chain of boutique hotels near college campuses.

When I visited the I Promise School last year, one of the counselors there, whose job it is to work with parents of students at the school, mentioned that there were students whose families were homeless. The I Promise School prides itself on taking care of the whole student, not just while they are in class. They have a food bank where families can go shopping. They offer job and GED-related services for the parents of their students. They want to take care of any obstacle their students had that would prevent them from truly taking advantage of education.

Housing is an issue that’s personal for James. He and his mother, Gloria, moved between living locations for part of his childhood. They’d move from home to home, sometimes staying where kind neighbors or friends would let them.

“You can have all the support in the world while you’re at school or while you’re at basketball or while you’re playing sports or doing anything,” James said. “But if you go home and it’s not stable, you don’t have any stability there, you’re gonna resort back to the negative things or the bad habits that you might have. Sometimes it’s not even the kids’ fault of why the situations are the way they are. For us to be able to provide that for our kids and for the families, and the adults as well, the parents, it’s a pretty cool thing.”

Here’s what else happened since last we spoke…

—Last Friday, the Lakers played an instant classic of a game against the Dallas Mavericks — and one that had a metaphorical tint to it. The Lakers sent the game into overtime with a buzzer-beating three-pointer by Danny Green, who had a message about failure. He could hit that shot because of all the times he’d failed and tried again.

—Last year Luka Doncic asked for James’ jersey after the teams played. This year, Doncic matched James’ triple-double with one of his own and received an admiring greeting from his idol. My colleague Broderick Turner examined their nights.

—Kyle Kuzma made his debut in Friday’s game, and learned that he had to be patient with himself.

—There was a time when James was a lock for an NBA All-Defensive team each season, and even competed for defensive player of the year. Lately, that’s not been the case. But James’ defense has been called one of the “great surprises” on the Lakers this season. He’s committed and healthy. He’s been challenged by Vogel and Davis. It’s no accident that the Lakers’ defense has been elite so far.

—Avery Bradley had a really nice game before being kicked in the knee area against the Spurs. He missed Tuesday’s game in Chicago but says he will play unless he has a setback on Friday at home against Miami.

—Kentavious Caldwell-Pope got the start against the Bulls while Bradley recovered. Vogel really has liked his defense. But Caldwell-Pope also had a breakout game offensively in San Antonio.

—For his historic week of play, Davis was named the Western Conference’s player of the week for last week.

—Davis has always been curious and willing to learn from other players. He did it when he was young, and he felt comfortable approaching the game’s greats with questions. He still does it now that he is one of the league’s best players. On Tuesday, he returned to Chicago to show the fruits of that in his hometown.

—The Lakers answered this question against the Bulls on Tuesday: Can they survive if Davis and James are both on the bench? A group of reserves — Alex Caruso, Quinn Cook, Dwight Howard, Troy Daniels and Kuzma — pulled them out of a double-digit deficit. Vogel then turned to Davis and James to close out the game.

—James has notched triple-doubles in three consecutive games. He’s the first Laker to do it since Magic Johnson in 1987.

—Just because the Lakers are on a six-game winning streak doesn’t mean they don’t have areas of improvement. They know it and promise they won’t get complacent.

As always, thank you for reading our newsletter. If you enjoy our work, please consider buying a subscription to the paper in order to help support our journalism. Until next time …

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Mike Bohn stood at the dais, an unfamiliar face in a place so profoundly predisposed to the familiar. He wasn’t a former USC football hero, nor had he won a Heisman Trophy. There were no statues or buildings or plaques which bared his name on campus.

Outside of the cardinal and gold tie he wore to his introductory news conference, there were no discernible ties between Bohn and the “Trojan Family” from which USC has hired its athletic directors for a quarter century.

In a stark departure from the traditions which long dictated its direction, USC introduced Bohn as its athletic director on Thursday. He is the ninth ever to assume the role and first to lead the department without previous ties to the school since Mike McGee, who left in 1994 and was succeeded by three former football players.

But as he addressed a room full of administrators, alumni, and coaches, Bohn did his best to ingratiate himself into an institution otherwise leery of outsiders, hitting all the right notes. He talked about the magic of walking on campus and the “gleam” in the eyes of an athlete he met that morning.

As he spoke passionately about the tradition of USC and past glories of the athletic programs he’s now tasked with leading, his voice rose to a boom.

“You like to talk about the Trojan family here, right?” Bohn said, gripping the podium as he spoke. “Well, it’s real. I feel it.”

A longtime administrator with deep experience leading athletic departments at Idaho, San Diego State, Colorado and, most recently, Cincinnati, Bohn is no stranger to stepping in as an outsider. He had no ties to any of those schools before taking the reins, and that “fresh perspective,” Bohn noted Thursday, could be “very, very powerful.”

That is the bet that new President Carol L. Folt is making in Bohn, as she attempts to usher in a new era at USC, where turmoil has been a constant visitor over the past decade. It was Bohn’s vast experience elsewhere, in stark contrast to some of USC’s past athletic directors, which gave her confidence that he is up to that task.

“He has real integrity,” Folt said. “He has run class acts and done it really well in some difficult situations.”

At USC, Bohn steps into a situation that will surely test that mettle. Not only will he be charged with restoring the reputation of a department scarred by recent scandals, but he’ll also soon have to assess the direction of USC’s flailing football program.

Bohn said that he’d yet to meet with coach Clay Helton, whose job, with three weeks remaining in the football season, is believed to be in jeopardy.

When asked if he anticipates making a coaching change, Bohn noted that any conversation about Helton or other coaches was “premature.”

“It’s important to win,” Bohn said. “You heard the president talking about winning. I’m not trying to add more pressure to him or the student athletes that represent him, but we always want to finish strong. Good programs finish strong.”

Still, the specter of Helton’s status and the football program’s direction loomed over the proceedings Thursday, as speculation over a potential, high-profile replacement continued.

The conversation on Urban Meyer, the former Ohio State and Florida coach, isn’t likely to cease in the coming weeks, as prominent boosters continue to push for USC to passionately pursue him as Helton’s successor.

Bohn categorically denied a report that his hiring had been held up because of a disagreement about pursuing Meyer, who has three national titles to his name, but also a record of integrity questions in his past.

Later, when Folt was asked if Bohn had any limitations on a future search, she said, simply, “No.”

Any coaching decision, Bohn said, would not be made alone. As he inherits the stakes of that decision, though, his history of hiring coaches remains decidedly mixed.

His hiring of Ohio State assistant Luke Fickell at Cincinnati has proven to be a success. But over nine years at Colorado, Bohn hired and fired three coaches, while his last hire, Mike MacIntyre, lasted six seasons before his ouster.

In light of those failed football hires, Bohn was forced to resign in 2013. But where that history might cast doubt on his handling of a possible coaching search, Folt said it was how Bohn bounced back from that failure which impressed her.

“What I look for is the person,” Folt said. “You face disappointment. He talked about loving it there. What did he do? He turned around, took another place, and loved it. He took what he learned there and made it even more effective at Cincinnati. That’s the person I want, one that builds from mistakes.”

Atop a department in desperate need of a new direction, Bohn will have plenty of rebuilding to do. But on Thursday, as he was introduced, Bohn held up two fingers in the “Fight On” symbol in a nod to the tradition he was inheriting.

“I didn’t talk about coming in here and, ‘Let’s change this, let’s change that, let’s move this, let’s move that,’ ” Bohn said. “I think that’s why I introduced the concept of fight on to vic-to-ry. It’s more than fight on. It’s fight on to victory.”

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WASHINGTON — 

For much of the United States, invasive grass species are making wildfires more frequent, especially in fire-prone California, a new study finds.

Twelve non-native species act as “little arsonist grasses,” said study co-author Bethany Bradley, a University of Massachusetts professor of environmental conservation.

Wherever the common Mediterranean grass invades, including California’s southern desert, fires flare up three times more often. And cheatgrass, which covers about one-third of the Intermountain West region of the U.S., is a big-time fire promoter, Bradley said.

“I would not be surprised at all if invasive grasses are playing a role in the current fires,” Bradley said, “but I don’t think we can attribute to them directly.”

University of Utah fire expert Philip Dennison wasn’t part of the study, but he said it made sense. “In a lot of ways, California was ground zero for invasive grasses,” he said. “Much of California’s native perennial grassland was replaced by Mediterranean annual grasses over a century ago. This study doesn’t look at invasive grasses in the areas that are burning in California, but invasive grasses are contributing to the fires there.”

Experts say the areas burning now in California are more shrubs and grasses than forests, despite what President Trump tweeted over the weekend.

“This is a global problem,” said University of Alberta fire expert Mike Flannigan, who wasn’t part of the study. “I think with climate change and human assistance, we are moving to a grass world. One region they should have mentioned is Hawaii, where wildfires are increasing in large part due to invasive grasses.”

Invasive species are spreading more because of climate change as warmer weather moves into new areas, said the study’s lead author, Emily Fusco, also of the University of Massachusetts. New England and the Mid-Atlantic are seeing new invasive and more flammable grasses, Bradley said.

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The study in Monday’s journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looks at the connections between a dozen species of invasive grasses and fires nationwide, finding fires occur more often in places with the non-native grasses. But the study did not find a link between invasive grasses and the size of the fires.

Four of these species, including cheatgrass and common Mediterranean grass, are in California. When these grasses get dry, watch out, Fusco said.

“When you start a fire normally you want kindling,” Fusco said. “The grasses are, more or less, like kindling”

If someone lights a match and throws it in the middle of a forest, it is unlikely a fire will start, but throw it in a field of cheatgrass “and odds are that it’s going to catch,” Bradley said.

“We are the reason that invasive species are here. We are the reason that they get spread around,” Bradley said.

Flannigan noted that invasive plants that are not grasses also feed the wildfire problem.

Most outside experts said the study was important. But wildfire expert LeRoy Westerling of UC Merced said that with wildfires the size of the blaze was key, so he felt this study was less valuable because it measured frequency.

Although size matters in forest fires, study author Bradley said, mid- to small-size fires are the ones “in everybody’s backyard” and affect people and their buildings more.

Every day for a year, Marsha Maus has trekked up Mulholland Highway to tend to her garden.

Her yard overflows with towering sunflowers and creeping vines, so green it looks neon. Her plot looks down on the 1960s-era section of Seminole Springs Mobile Home Park, a tidy subdivision tucked high in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Above it lies a wasteland.

“All this was torched — there was nothing left,” Maus, 75, said as she surveyed the Janus-faced landscape from her burned-out lot. “Every day I come up here, it tears me up. We get a glimpse of hope, but then it’s gone.”

For victims of the Woolsey fire, recovery has been agonizingly slow. The blaze charred 151 square miles and 1,600 structures when it ripped through Malibu, the Santa Monica Mountains and eastern Ventura County a year ago, consuming mobile homes and movie star mansions in what would become one of the most destructive wildfires in California history.

In Seminole Springs alone, 110 homes burned. But unlike their neighbors in Malibu or Westlake Village, some of whom have turned to modular units as a quick way to rebuild, fire victims here have barely set foot on the road to return.

That’s because the park lost not just homes, but the entire network of infrastructure that ran underneath them. Streets, storm drains, sewers systems, water mains, gas and electric lines — all were damaged or destroyed in the fire and its aftermath. Replacing them could take up to a year, and would cost $10 million.

“We’re still in the same place we were a year ago — there’s nothing done,” said Ester Marantz Bruce, a burned-out victim and a member of the park’s embattled board of directors. “Insurance gave me money for a year of rent, but that money is over. We now need to rent homes for another year, and we all don’t know how we will pay.”

Marantz Bruce and others on the board say the park must replace its fire-ravaged infrastructure before California Department of Housing and Community Development will allow new homes to be brought in — work they are struggling to finance. But with insurance money running out and burned-out lots languishing on the market, frustrated fire victims are pushing for a quicker fix.

The divide has pitted neighbor against neighbor in this tight-knit community. Resentment has mounted in recent weeks as plans for short-term repairs that might bring homes in sooner have foundered. On Facebook and Nextdoor, there is talk of betrayal.

“The meetings are getting tenser,” said longtime resident Richard Lohmann, an outspoken opponent of the board’s current plan. “The corporation and our eight board members are stuck on replacing everything — the rest of us want to move in.”

It’s an article of faith that rich communities and poor ones all burn the same in California’s wildfires. In reality, poor ones tend to burn faster, and worse. This is particularly true in mobile home parks, where fires spread quickly and rebuilding is slow, experts said.

More than 100 mobile home parks were affected by California wildfires last year alone, according to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which oversees 81% of the state’s roughly 4,800 mobile home and “special occupancy” parks. Many of those that burned the year before remain empty even as neighboring tracts have rebuilt.

Residents “are often reliant on the park owners to rebuild the park after the fire before they may install a new home or repair a damaged home,” department spokeswoman Alicia Murillo wrote in an email. “Due to the size of most parks, it can often take longer … to rebuild their utility infrastructure.”

In Seminole Springs, millions of dollars of structural damage to the parks’ roads and utilities has slowed recovery to a crawl.

“It’s kind of a perfect storm,” said board member Jeremy Kerns. “Every time we find a solution, there’s a new wrinkle.”

But beneath the community’s structural crisis lies an existential one: Unlike the vast majority of mobile home parks in the country, Seminole Springs is owned and run by its residents, who have worked together for decades to keep it affordable.

Now, they must grapple together with how to rebuild it, a process that has strained the foundations of a model that experts call “the gold standard” for mobile home parks and “the most secure form of investment the homeowners can make.”

“Privately owned mobile home parks are one of our biggest sources of affordable housing, but they’re also one of the most insecure,” said Esther Sullivan, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Denver and an expert in mobile home parks. “Eighty percent of households in parks own the unit, but only 14% own the land underneath. You’re living with insecurity inscribed into the land underneath you.”

Seminole Springs was among the first parks in the country to collectivize, forming a nonprofit to purchase the land in 1986 after rent control expired in L.A. County. (It was temporarily reinstated last year, and is expected to be made permanent later this month.)

Of the half-dozen residents interviewed for this article, all were adamant they would not have moved to Seminole Springs if it were not mutually owned.

“It’s a very desirable mobile home park because it’s a co-op and all the residents own an equal share of the land, so you have a low monthly HOA payment,” said Bracken Carter, a real estate agent and mother of three who has been living with her parents in Paradise Cove since losing her home in Seminole Springs.

Assessments at Seminole Springs run between $400 and $460 a month, less than a third of what residents pay at nearby private parks and a boon for retirees. But those same low rates have left the park vulnerable in the wake of the disaster.

“In any [cooperative] mobile home park, there’s always a conflict between the members who would like to keep their rents low and the … responsibility to collect enough money to properly maintain the place,” said David Loop, vice president of resident-owned communities for the Golden State Manufactured Home Owners League. “In many homeowners associations, the reserves aren’t built up like they should be.”

A year after the Nov. 8, 2018, fire, Seminole Springs is still nowhere close to funding its rebuild, residents said.

“There’s no physical reason we couldn’t put our units back where they were before,” said Eugene Donald Michael, a 91-year-old hydrogeologist whose home was among the first to burn. “The only work that should be done right now is restorative, taking us back to where we were the day before the Woolsey fire.”

For those like him who plan to move back, every day that passes is a day he dips into the money he will need for his trailer. But those who’ve decided to leave are equally stranded. “For sale” signs dot the scorched landscape where debris has been removed, but without a clear timeline for recovery, buyers have shied from the park, Carter said.

“This is the time you wish you did have an owner of the park who would make this decision for everybody,” the real estate agent said. “A park like Paradise Cove or [Oak Forest Estates in] Westlake, they’re already ready to put homes back on. The homeowners have the flexibility to do it their way. Whereas in Seminole Springs, we’re stuck following what the corporation needs us to do, because we’re all in it together.”

Despite the park’s slow recovery, many fire victims said they still support the cooperative.

“Right now we have strain, but the moment you give it over to some private entity, forget it,” said Marantz Bruce, who is searching for a cheaper room to rent when her insurance money runs out this month. “We want our corporation to stay. But it’s so hard not to lose hope.”

A graphic video released this week by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department shows the moment three deputies opened fire on a man after he gunned down his girlfriend in front of them.

The Sheriff’s Department released video and 911 audio clips from last week’s fatal encounter. The 10-minute compilation video was released on the sheriff’s YouTube channel and includes commentary and a warning about coarse language and graphic imagery.

The confrontation began about 12:30 a.m. Oct. 27, when multiple callers reported that a vehicle had crashed into a tree in Carmichael east of Sacramento and a man was aiming a gun at his female companion.

Private surveillance video from outside a nearby apartment released Wednesday shows a man pulling a woman toward the apartment after the crash.

“When they come, I’m blasting you,” he’s heard saying.

The man, identified as Earnest Easterling, 25, kicks the woman, identified as Channell Brown, 23, as she sits on the ground outside the apartment. He paces in and out of the frame as a dog barks in the background.

While the two are seen scuffling on camera, neighbors help children who were inside the apartment to safety, Sgt. Tess Deterding said.

Brown is heard crying in the video while seemingly trying to calm Easterling. At one point, Deterding says, Easterling walks away before returning with a 50-round drum magazine attached to a handgun, which can be seen in the video.

“None of these events and details were reported [to 911 dispatchers],” the sheriff’s spokeswoman said. “Deputies were unaware of the gravity of the situation as they arrived on scene.”

Deputies arrived about 10 minutes later. In the video, a woman runs from the apartment building to direct them, warning them that the suspect has a gun.

Easterling and Brown are off-camera when deputies initially order them to put their hands up and move away from the doorway. Brown complies and then pauses, calling for Easterling to do the same.

As she walks out of view, Easterling can be seen in the video charging after her and repeatedly shooting. Deputies immediately open fire on Easterling as screams are heard in the background.

Both Brown and Easterling were pronounced dead at the scene. The shooting is under investigation.

According to Deterding, who provides commentary throughout the video, Easterling was arrested in Nevada in 2016 for possession of a concealed firearm, possession of a gun with an altered serial number and possession of marijuana. He had not been convicted of any gun-related charges, which allowed him to purchase a Glock handgun in 2017 and use it in the attack on Brown.

Shortly after Brown’s death, her family told KTXL-TV she had been in an abusive relationship with Easterling.

“My sister was a beautiful person, inside and out, who loved hard and as a result is no longer with us,” Brown’s sister Keonna Brown said.

Sacramento County sheriff’s officials ended the video with a list of resources available to domestic violence victims.

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KINGS CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — 

Authorities say a man found dead in California’s Kings Canyon National Park matches the description of a missing hiker.

The National Park Service says searchers discovered the body Thursday on a glacier at the base of Mount Darwin in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

Investigators will determine whether it’s 40-year-old Alan Stringer of Huntington Beach. His family reported him missing on Monday.

The peak named for Charles Darwin is in a remote and scenic section of the national park where several mountains are named for promoters of the theory of evolution.

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Tired aphorisms on free will and fate plunge writer-director Oliver Mann’s chaotic crime-drama “Such a Funny Life” into a humdrum groove of situations and reactions from which it never emancipates itself. Three distinct time periods in an aspiring comedian’s troubled existence come up short in their task of characterizing him as a multidimensional survivor of psychological abuse.

Unresolved hurt stemming from a dreadful upbringing courtesy of his bitter, ex-con father still mortifies David Gutierrez (Gonzalo Trigueros), even now that he’s amassed considerable recognition as a stand-up performer. Self-assured in front of the microphone, the bearded jokester crumbles when past sorrows resurface.

Unnecessarily and sporadically narrated by the protagonist’s mentally unstable mother (Nastasha Strang), this stale New York tale teems with flashbacks, including to the antihero’s teenage years, when his drug-dealing friends committed a vile crime for him.

Contrary to the exaggerated inflections and mannerisms of his costars, Trigueros doesn’t succumb to the urge to ham it up. In fact, the movie’s most laudable trait is his feasible transition from scrappy, beanie-wearing scoundrel to virile and creative L.A. resident.

With an air of gritty nostalgia, the hues that tinge the frames and the cinematography in general, generate the illusion of a higher production value. Mann, an emerging Latino filmmaker, exhibits signs of vocation for the craft that could lead to a more fruitful product some day. For now, what he serves is a tortuous trick with a confusingly dark punch line for an ending.

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Writer-director Josh Aronson’s moving documentary “To Be of Service” takes an intimate, respectful look at the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on U.S. military veterans and the ways in which pairing up with specially trained service dogs dramatically improve their emotional and physical well-being.

Aronson (2000’s Oscar-nominated doc “Sound and Fury”) memorably immerses us in the tough, complex lives of an array of vets who candidly recount their harrowing experiences serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam; the traumas that followed them home (to New York, Wisconsin, Montana, North Carolina and elsewhere); and the painful road to their varying degrees of recovery. Several mental health professionals informatively weigh in as well.

The film also depicts how, if these soldiers’ PTSD never disappears, they can learn to manage it with support from family and fellow veterans, therapy, medication, exercise and more. But it’s the stabilizing and comforting presence of a service dog that uniquely helps ease such injurious consequences of PTSD such as fear, paranoia, loneliness and suicidal thoughts.

It’s hard not to be taken by these beautiful animals’ intelligence and devotion. More specifics about the dogs’ training, care and the costs involved would have been a plus. Otherwise, it’s a stirring portrait of war, duty, sacrifice and the love of a good dog.