...katie porter's whiteboard is one way she's: [news anchor] ...often seen grilling top executives of banks, big pharma, even top administration officials. katie porter. never taken corporate pac money - never will. leading the fight to ban congressional stock trading. and the only democrat who opposed wasteful “earmarks” that fund politicians' pet projects. katie porter. focused on your challenges - from lowering housing costs to fighting climate change. shake up the senate - with democrat katie porter. i'm katie porter and i approve this message. palisades ski resort at lake tahoe. it happened at about 930 this morning, and a section of

expert trails that had only opened for the season today for those who know the area more specifically, this is just above the gs gully area of ct 22. good afternoon, i'm karina nova. we got word about an hour ago that the search for trapped skiers has ended. abc seven news reporter tara campbell talked to a. area, and has an update from officials. tara >> yeah. karina. while we know the person who was injured is expected to survive and suffered possible bone fractures, palisades tahoe resort says the avalanche occurred at around about 930 this morning on the palisades side of the mountain. the avalanche was met with a swift and intense rescue response. here's some video of the effort to find trapped skiers. the resort and mountain are closed for at least today. now, more than 100 palisades personnel participate in what's called a beacon search, looking for a type of emergency locator beacon. cal fire moved resources

and personnel to help with rescue efforts as well. meanwhile the placer county sheriff's office says the avalanche debris field is approximately 150ft wide. 450ft long, and ten feet deep. the mass of snow came down at an expert run known as ct 22, an area for the most advanced skiers and boarders. now here's one of the emergency calls to dispatch traffic from palisades tahoe ski patrol. there's a slide at the mountain with subjects buried. >> an update is that we have significantly more possible burials or victims than originally intended are accounted for. >> now, this morning, the sierra avalanche center issued an alert about a strong winter storm entering the tahoe area today, bringing intense, intense snowfall and gale force winds. it warned that the avalanche danger would quickly increase today, with avalanches occurring in areas in a variety of areas. this afternoon and this

afternoon. i also spoke with an experienced mountaineer who lives in the tahoe area. >> you know, and as mountaineer, as someone who spends so much time in the mountains, i'm very afraid of avalanches. right. but, you know. this is why we say know before you go, you have to be prepared. now, palisades has excellent team and avalanche management. um, uh, system. however, the weather is almighty . >> this is a very sad day. now experts say for my for my team and everyone here. um uh, this is a dynamic situation. we're still undergoing an investigation. >> you know, experts say this appears to be an inbound avalanche, which are rare and account for about 3% of avalanche deaths in the us. slides are especially rare on trails that are open to skiers because patrollers will keep those areas high. high in danger closed until the avalanche risk dissipates. the last avalanche death in the tahoe area happened

in 2020 at alpine meadows. karina >> so much for all of that detailed. information. now to a man from santa cruz who was on the mountain and says he and a friend were right behind the person who triggered the avalanche, joining us live now is marcus franklin. marcus, thank you so much for joining us . um, can you first tell us what you saw and what you experienced this morning? >> yeah. so we were one of the first people up on cdt when they opened it this morning. um, and. and we didn't actually see the avalanche occur, but as we were riding down under the chairlift, some, some people on the lift started yelling at us that there was an avalanche. um, so then we slowed down, proceeded with caution, and as we rode down through the avalanche debris field, we came across a man, um, who had lost his wife in the avalanche. there was a couple of other people there at that time.

um, but we were one of the first few to arrive. we've, um, arrived to him and he was frantically looking for his wife . um, so i unstrapped my snowboard and, uh, asked where he had last seen her. so, um, he pointed to an area, but then somebody else said that when they were on the lift and they had come down by this point, they said they saw her get swept quite far below that point. um, i identified another person several hundred feet below that wasn't fully buried. um, and so, so at that point, like, i didn't have any of my backcountry gear with me. it was just kind of an unassuming day at the resort. and so i harvested or went and gathered some bamboo poles that were used for marking hazards, ski patrol places them around for to help people navigate. um, there are about ten feet tall, so i grabbed as many of those as i could and, uh, handed them out

to people so we could try to strike the ground and, uh, combing the avalanche field to get a positive. strike. when you make contact with somebody's body, when they're fully buried. >> wow. uh, marcus, i'm sure a lot of people are happy that you were there and doing all that. now, you did say it was an unassuming day. did you have any concerns initially this morning due to any weather conditions? >> um, no. no, none at all. it was like really far from my mind that anything like this would happen on a, on a day like today. um, yeah. very surprised. >> and, marcus, can you describe the area of the mountain where this happened? is it familiar to most skiers who visit palisades? we know it's maybe more for expert skiers. can you describe it to us? yeah >> so, i mean, ct is legendary. um, and it's for expert skiers. um and this was, like, off piste or, like, off the groomed run in

the gs bowl. um, yeah. it was, uh, it. yeah like i said, it was really a surprise that anything like that would happen on a day like today. they run that lift under a lot deeper. worse visibility. like, you know, they're they're really good at their job and they're super on top of it. and um, i think everybody's going to be really surprised by what happened. >> yeah. very rare. as we've reported for something like that to happen. and did you feel ever like your life was in danger today? no. >> i feel really fortunate at my timing. that's something i've kind of been reflecting on today that, um, i was able to show up after this event happened and not be wrapped up in it. so, like, jason and i were, uh, the first two people to ride through after the avalanche was triggered, and, um, and so i was

never fearful for my life. um, i just feel like i was very lucky with my timing and that i wasn't one or, you know, two minutes earlier, and i would have been one of the people that they were looking for. >> it's scary to think about that. um, yeah. i know that you mentioned that you did some work to kind of warn people, and you know, some other initial things that you did, you were able to help as much as you can do. you know how quickly emergency crews arrived or shut down that mountain. uh, after the avalanche happened? >> yeah, they were the ski patrol was super on it. they are incredibly good at their job. they were there within minutes of the incident happening and incredibly helpful and helping to locate the lost person. ins. um and. yeah, then, then then shortly after that, they were there with dogs to try to sniff out the missing people and snowmobiles. um, yeah, i think it was really just a freak accident that caught everybody off guard. um, like i said, the

palisades ski patrol are like the best in the world. um, yeah. and i'm really sorry that this happened. and i'm really grateful that i was where i was when i was. and not a moment earlier. yeah >> and that you were there after the fact to help as well. again, we have confirmed that one person died today, one person injured. do you mind before we let you go? just sharing your overall thoughts. on that experience, knowing that you were right there. um yeah. >> i mean, for me, it was just really like i've said, really surprising. i was super rattled by it. um i've knowingly put myself in a lot more risky and high exposure situations and, um, never. would have thought today would be the one that i get so close to, to, uh, to a call like that. and i've never seen or been around, you know, somebody that's been buried for a few minutes. fortunately one of the, uh, riders who was buried was experienced, and he covered his face as he was

consumed by the avalanche. so he had a small air pocket to breathe in while he was buried. and for what i think was around five minutes. um so yeah, just really humbling and surprising. um yeah, just counting my blessings today. >> yeah. mark we appreciate your time. we're glad you're okay. and thank you for sharing your story and your courage today. >> thank you. >> as we mentioned, the avalanche happened as a powerful storm is expected to bring as much as two feet of snow to the area. so let's get right to abc seven news. weather anchor spencer christian and spencer, what are the conditions there now? but also at the time of the avalanche, can you also give us some background on avalanches in that area? >> well, it's been a pretty intense storm, uh, karina, since this morning. and in the afternoon hours right now, in fact, we're. getting some of the strongest wind gusts. the snow is falling at a rate of about 1

to 2in per hour. so again, pretty intense storm. and it's been that way virtually all day and will continue into the night as you see here on live doppler seven looping image. so let's go in a little bit closer here to the palisades tahoe area, which is at one of the higher elevations at 9000ft, which means it's getting that area is getting some of the coldest air, some of the strongest wind gusts and some of the heaviest snowfall from this storm. we'll take a look at the winter storm warning, which will be in effect until 1 a.m. for a much wider area of the sierra, including the greater tahoe area, in effect until 1 a.m, we're expecting a snow totals to range from 1 to 2ft. snow levels down to between 2500 and 3500ft, and snow rates at 1 to 2in per hour, which is a pretty furious snowstorm. and of course, the wind gusts up to 60mph can produce whiteout conditions. obviously, travel is very virtually impossible right now. certainly difficult now. the wind gust graph shows that the winds will start to diminish in intensity a little bit going into the late night hours. after about 8 or 9 p.m, but until then, we'll may see gusts

between 45 and about. higher in the higher elevations. and the three day forecast, including today, shows more heavy snow and gusty wind for today. but tomorrow, a sunny day in the greater tahoe area. uh- cold high of only 32 degrees, but at least the snow will have ended by then. but snow flurries are likely to resume on friday, so that's the situation right now. it's, uh, travel is challenging to nearly impossible, and the snowstorm is still a very serious one. >> all right, spencer, thank you for that weather update. and you can stay with abc seven for developing news as we get new information. we'll pass it along to you. and you can even receive alerts just like this one to your phone for customized breaking news and weather updates, download the abc seven news bay area app and be sure to turn on the notification as coming up. california grappling with a whopping $38 billion budget deficit, abc seven news insider phil matier will join me next to talk about how governor

newsom

now is abc seven insider phil matier with a breakdown and perspective. okay, phil, so initially it was estimated that the state deficit would be around $68 billion. so why the big difference? well, a billion here, a billion there. >> some comes in, more goes out, different estimates, different uh- looks at the economy and what's going ahead and projected spending. but the bottom line is that it was just a year or two ago that we had a $100 billion surplus in california, and we

had more money than we could spend almost. right. we've gone from that to now. it's belt tightening time. and the governor, who has been uh- is no secret. and no stranger to political situations like this. it's an election year. it's a time when people are antsy and it's a time, not unnecessarily, a time when you want to say things aren't going as good as we planned, but they're not. so he's got to come up with a plan between now and may to somehow balance out the two. and the chances are what we're going to see from his early indications are tapping the brakes on a couple of things. okay, maybe the, the, the $8.5 billion we have set aside for climate change initiatives or housing initiatives might not see the shovel in the ground right now. we just lay off on that. possibly the raises for health care workers to $25 an hour might not happen as quickly. he still plans to go ahead with medicaid for all medi-cal for all immigrants, regardless of their legal status. but there's going to be a back and forth

about how we spend the money. >> okay, you're talking about billions and millions, but to the everyday citizen, people like you and me, california citizens out there, what does this all mean to us? >> what it means is that what we don't pay for here, they're going to come and ask for us to pay for here. let's say you're a school district. if you've been sort of following your budgetary guidelines, you'll probably be okay because there's not going to be a significant cuts, but there's thing is, there's not going to be extra money in the state of california. we have still been living off the money that came in from the feds for covid. so that has propped up school systems. that is propped up transit agencies like bart, and that money is going away as well. so what they have is the state is not going to be able to necessarily come in and fill that. so what they do is those school districts or those uh- uh, transit agencies or cities that got those big grants for programs to fight retail crime. they turn around and they come to the voters and say, well,

maybe we should raise tolls by $1, or maybe we should increase taxes here and taxes that to pay for some of these services that you sort of took for granted before. >> and that's what i was going to ask you about the election year. i mean, how does that impact all of this? how does this impact the budget? >> well, first of all, what you have is a budget that has to be approved by the state legislature, and they're all up for a good number of them are up for election as well. and they don't like to cut. now one of the groups that they don't like to cut especially is state workers. now we haven't heard anything about furloughs or pay freezes or rollbacks there. so what these lawmakers do, they look at the interest that got them there, whether it be labor unions, whether it be businesses, let's say solar companies or oil companies or whatever, saying, how do i figure out in this budget equation? so there's pressure there. the other one is popularity pressure. nobody likes to sit around and say, no, that's not a popular word for politicians, but it's one. jerry brown used it. arnold schwarzenegger used it, and gavin newsom is going to have to start using it as well. oh,

speaking of the election and politicians, let's talk about the latest on the senate race. >> what can you tell us about that? because there's some news about that. >> there is what we're starting to starting to see is keep your eyes on television, because we're going to start seeing ads for the various senate candidates. first we had katie porter. she's a congresswoman from southern california who is hitting the bay area with a vow to shake up the us senate. and now adam schiff is going to be delivering television ads in our area. why are we going to be the focus of these early campaign ads? in addition to the barbara lee being here, are you a congresswoman who's running for senate as well? the bay area is going to see more than its share of tv ads in the senate campaign. and that's because the bay area, from monterey to sacramento is the bread basket for voters in especially democratic voters. we not only have more voters here and more democratic voters here than the rest of the state, we turn out we actually vote. our voting

percentages are a lot higher than, let's say, los angeles. so this is where these senate candidates will make it or break it. and that's where the big push is going to be. we're going to start seeing it as it stands right now. adam schiff stands the best chance of making it into the second round of the election, followed by katie porter, barbara lee. but don't forget, we have a republican, steve garvey, former dodger, former san diego padres. he's republican, just that are beside his name. probably gets him into 25 to 30% of the vote. so there's a good chance he could be it could be one democrat rather than two democrats in the runoff. >> we'll be watching. real quick before you go late this afternoon, we learned on the national scale that chris christie is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. your thoughts on that? i think some people will say they expected that. right. >> some people are going to be saying sigh of relief, expecting the phone to ring and him asking for money, you know, going forward because that's what a lot of this has been about. he hasn't been able to get the momentum going. there is a

question now that with christie's exit to his voters, who oppose donald trump, go to nikki haley, the former governor of south carolina. and if so, does that put her within striking distance of donald trump in new hampshire? that remains to be seen. but christie's exit is winnowing down that that the republican side to uh- nikki haley and ron desantis, the governor of florida. so we actually are now having a real race rather than just a pony run. >> all right, phil, thank you so much, as always for your perspective. all right. after the break, alaska airlines cancels even more flights due to mandatory inspections of certain boeing planes. east bay congressman mark desaulnier, who sits on the transportation and infrastructure committee, will join us to talk more

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airlines plane on friday. to talk more about airline regulations and safety. east bay congressman mark desaulnier, who sits on the transportation and infrastructure committee. thank you for being here today. >> my pleasure. thanks for asking. >> so first, like many frustrated passengers, your travel was impacted by this airplane issue. can you tell us about that? >> well, i flew back last night and because of the storm on the east coast, my flight into d.c. into reagan national, um, was a bumpy one. and uh, we had to go around because of wind shears. at one point, they were going to divert us to dulles. so, um, and then when we landed, we found out that the steering was not working. so it was, uh, a little remind air about how much we trust aviation and how much we count on it, but also, um, the dangers. >> right. and alaska and united airlines say they found loose

hardware on a number of their boeing 737 max nines. what do you know about the latest findings in that investigation? >> uh, just what you just expressed and what i've gotten, uh, the national transportation safety board is excellent. uh, but they're stretched right now because we've had so many of these near misses and these challenges. so i'm really concerned, um, more than i have been about the overall system and our, our safety. >> and i understand your concern, but do lawmakers then plan to take any action in connection with this plane investigation? when can we expect congressional hearings about it? yes >> uh, so the subcommittee of the transportation and infrastructure committee, the aviation subcommittee, of which i'm a senior member, uh, my full expectation. i talked to, uh, the senior democrat on that committee who's a friend just recently on the floor is saying, well, what are we going to do? so my expectation is that we will we will have ntsb and faa

and alaska to and boeing to hear more about what happened. the faa said that tuesday boeing was updating its instruct for inspections. >> can you talk more about the requirements for safety inspections on planes? i mean, a lot of people are wondering how something like this could just be missed. well the same thing for me. >> it's, um, outrageous that it happened. and something is seemingly as simple as where's the quality assurance to make sure, uh, and make sure that we make sure that things like bolts are tightened properly. so this is an endemic problem right now with our system historically left over from the 50s, the faa, uh, the manufacturers in the industry, uh, had a cooperative agreement. and unfortunately, i think, um, we're going to have to take a serious look at that cooperative meaning that they were asking what was going on rather than, um, making sure it was happening, that this quality assurance was of the very best

and highest standards to protect the flying public. >> well, along with this very public issue that just happened, uh, real quick, could you talk about some of the other, uh, big safety issues or concerns that you have in travel right now? >> well, one of the biggest concerns is the corporate culture. uh, they're driven for profits. there's nothing wrong with profits, but not at the expense of the flying public. and one of one tragedy is going to cost them and cost us not just lives, but the economy. millions of dollars. so i am not at all satisfied, uh, that the industry, the manufacturers, boeing or in spite of their public apologies or the airlines are being as diligent as they should be, they clearly are not at all. >> right. congressman desaulnier, thank you

experts from around the bay area and coming up on abc seven news at four, we'll have more coverage on the deadly avalanche at palisades tahoe resort. world news tonight with david muir is next. tonight, breaking news. chris christie dropping out of the race for president. but not before a hot mic picked up what he was saying about nikki haley. also breaking, the deadly avalanche in the u.s. the search and rescue.