“It’s going to be messy,” said Todd Kluber, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service who is based in suburban Chicago.
With much of the central Plains and Great Lakes region under blizzard or winter storm warnings, around 1,200 flights headed to or from the U.S. had been canceled as of 6 p.m. Sunday, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.
Most were supposed to be routed through Chicago or Kansas City — areas hit hard by the storm.
Strong winds and snow created blizzard conditions across much of Nebraska and parts of Kansas, Iowa and Missouri. The National Weather Service was warning those conditions would make travel difficult in places.
By midday, the blizzard warning was extended to parts of eastern Illinois near Chicago, where snow is forecast to fall at a rate of about 2 inches per hour.
Other parts of the central Plains and Great Lakes region were under a winter storm warning that could see a foot or more of snow dumped in some places by the end of the day.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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The devastating blaze, which began on Nov. 8, scorched more than 153,000 acres and destroyed more than 18,000 structures, according to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection officials. The number of residents still missing stands at 249, and thousands more have been displaced by the massive blaze.
Light rains in the area have assisted firefighters in extinguishing hot spots, but most evacuations and road closures remain in effect. More than 1,000 firefighters remain on site, assisting with search and recovery efforts.
Full containment came as a big relief for fire officials, who noted that the rain helped. Full containment was originally projected for Nov. 30, but the rain helped speed up the process.
“We didn’t get mudslides, so that was good,” said Brigitte Foster, fire prevention officer for Lassen National Forest and spokeswoman for fire officials regarding the Camp fire. “We got enough to hamper down on the fire.”
The rains also gave fire officials the ability to reduce the number of fire personnel and allow them to go home for the holiday weekend.
“We still have plenty of resources out there to work from the containment line and make sure there are no smoldering spots along the edge,” Foster said. “We still have search and rescue teams working in the area.”
Additionally, crews are helping clear roadways and removing hazardous material such as trees that could fall down before residents are allowed to return to burn areas and assess property damages. It’s unknown when they will be able to return.
There are some concerns about storms approaching burn areas this week throughout the state, though they’re not expected to cause major debris flows.
Butte County is expecting two storms this week, one on Tuesday and another potentially stronger one Thursday, which could bring wind gusts up to 35 mph in the Camp fire burn area and threaten to knock over trees, said Bill Rasch, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sacramento. There is a low chance that Thursday’s weather system could also bring thunderstorms, which could increase the rate of rainfall enough to prompt mud flows, he said.
“We’ll give them an updated confidence on that as it gets closer,” Rasch said Sunday. It’s likely that the two weather systems combined will bring two to four inches of rain this week, he said — about half as much as the region saw last week.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES )
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Both administrations called for a significant increase in logging on federal and private lands to thin timberland characterized as tinderboxes ready to explode.
However, according to research scientists and ecologists, wildfire’s increasing toll on life and property has been overwhelmingly driven by global warming and patterns of development — not the state’s most densely wooded areas.
“The fires that are getting everybody’s attention right now are not about forest management,” said Leroy Westerling, a UC Merced professor and researcher specializing in global warming and wildfire.
“The major factor is climate change across the West,” he added. “Regardless of fuels management, we just wouldn’t be burning like this, especially in Northern California, in a normal year.”
In fact, few if any of California’s most destructive blazes have been driven by densely packed forests, according to a review of Cal Fire records.
The most devastating and deadly conflagrations have most often resulted from high winds whipping fire through dried out chaparral and grasslands. These blazes often torch sprawling subdivisions that abut undeveloped landscapes, such as the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa last fall.
Even the Camp fire in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada spread on strong westerly winds blowing down from the mountains across heavily logged forests before jumping from house to house. Trees were one of the only things that remained intact after walls of flame swept through the town of Paradise.
Researchers call for change amid the status quo
Now a chorus of academics and ecology and policy experts have spoken out across the state — from Stanford University to UC Santa Barbara — calling on regional governments to tighten zoning rules and even consider buying people out of homes in fire-prone areas.
“We’ve got to do something smarter than what we’ve been doing,” said Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis at Pomona College, who has proposed the creation of flood and fire bonds that would allow local governments to purchase and set aside property in high-fire areas.
“This is very clear. Get people out of there. Go back to the cities and towns and counties, planning boards and zoning commissions and have a very different approach,” Miller added.
However, the opposite seems to be happening throughout the state. For example, residents in parts of Santa Rosa that burned in 2017 have started to rebuild. And in San Diego County, officials have approved several sprawling new suburban developments despite the concerns of environmental groups and several lawsuits.
“Our experience shows wildfires burn right into the city of San Diego’s long-established neighborhoods, so halting new suburban home building is no panacea,” said county Supervisor Ron Roberts, who’s held the post since 1995 and also sits on the state’s California Air Resources Board.
“The projects this board has recently approved meet stringent, modern fire safety standards, and during our public, televised deliberations, fire authorities responded positively during extensive questioning about their confidence in the safety of those developments,” Roberts added.
Those in Southern California are used to bracing for dry fall seasons when Santa Ana winds create dangerous fire conditions. Using the latest technology in building materials and clearing defensible space around homes are established practices.
Still such precautions only go so far, such as in the recent Woolsey fire that rushed through scrublands on high winds destroying homes from Oak Park to the opulent Malibu coast.
Northern California now also appears to be increasingly facing this dangerous recipe for wildfire, said Noah Diffenbaugh, an earth science professor at Stanford University and the senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
“Autumn precipitation has been decreasing, and is likely to decrease in the future as global warming continues,” he said. “So when those winds occur, they’re occurring over a backdrop of record dry vegetation.”
Pressure ramps up to log the forest
Much of the official government narrative around wildfire in California has centered on the more than 129 million dead and dying trees ravaged by drought and bark beetles that are scattered across the state. Officials have repeatedly pointed to forests that have turned an ominous red and gray, especially in the central and southern Sierra Nevada as evidence that forests pose a threat.
On Tuesday, Trump called on Congress to pass legislation that would dramatically expand the federal government’s authority to remove dead and dying trees as well as salvage logging following wildfires.
The move comes just days after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed “radical environmentalists” for preventing adequate management of forests, telling Breitbart News: “You have dead and dying timber. You have years of neglect. It was like a flamethrower of embers shooting through the forest.”
The comments echo recent statements made by House Republicans such as Rep. Tom McClintock, whose district covers much of the southern and central Sierra Nevada.
“In the name of protecting endangered species, we placed increasing tracts of land off limits to forest management, allowing our forests to become dangerously overcrowded and overgrown,” he said in October at a meeting of the Tuolumne County Alliance for Resources and Environment, a group that among other things advocates for logging on public lands.
Brown has repeatedly blamed climate change for the recent fires while reiterating concerns about overgrown forests.
“The president has talked about how our forests are managed. That’s an element,” Brown said in recent national news broadcast, after surveying wildfire damage with Trump.
“The fact is that managing the forest is part of it,” he added, while also acknowledging the role of climate change. “They’re a lot denser than they were 200 years ago.”
Over the last two years, top forestry and firefighting officials have spent countless hours in public and private meetings discussing how to address overgrown timberland and their potentially catastrophic threat.
While the state’s most destructive and deadly fires are largely not associated with current forest conditions, some researchers fear that could change in the future.
As those dead logs fall on top of one another, they can “jackstraw” and create the conditions for wildfires of unprecedented scale, said Malcolm North, a research ecologist with the Forest Service.
“People will say that usually those big logs don’t burn, but 10 years from now you could get a fire in the concentrated down wood,” he said, “and if that happens, we’re going to see fires that we’ve never seen the likes of before.”
Chad Hanson, a research ecologist with the Earth Island Institute’s John Muir Project, dismissed the argument as an excuse to prop up the logging industry. He said that removing dead trees, known as snags, would likely increase the chance of a large fire.
“I have to say that it’s shocking to me that scientists funded by the Forest Service would push snag removal as fire management right now, after the Camp fire just blew through an area where the Forest Service had removed nearly all of the snags and then burned down most of Paradise,” he said.
Forest Service official countered, saying that efforts to increase logging will be based on the best science.
“It’s for restoration of the forest ecosystem, to protect it from catastrophic wildfire and insect and disease outbreak,” said John Exline, ecosystem management director with the Pacific southwest region of the Forest Service. “It’s a combination of everyone rolling up their sleeves and working together.”
The vision for thinning the forest
Brown set an ambitious goal this year to increase mechanical thinning on private lands from about 250,000 acres last year to about 500,000 acres annually within the next five years.
He also ordered the first-ever creation of Cal Fire crews dedicated solely to thinning forests. The six 10-person teams will be tasked with using chainsaws and controlled burns to help achieve a goal of treating 60,000 acres a year.
At the same time, the U.S. Forest Service has also set a goal of increasing logging and controlled burns, from about 222,500 acres last year to about500,000 acres a year by 2025.
While thinning out all of California’s 8.9 million acres of dead and dying trees using chainsaws is financially and practically speaking impossible, state officials have focused on projects around backcountry communities most at risk. Clearing timber in these areas can reduce fuel loads, but also give firefighters better access when trying to protect homes and other structures using large vehicles.
Cal Fire is now doling out $155 million in grants to help start the process near backcountry communities. The money comes on top of $170 million in recently awarded funds to local government agencies and nonprofits for everything from fire-prevention education to cutting down trees to burning the harvested wood in biomass plants to generate electricity.
Officials have said that a key part of the equation will be convincing private landowners not currently engaged in timber harvesting to start thinning their property. But the state will have to dramatically boost its logging infrastructure, such as adding new sawmills in the southern Sierras.
“There has been a downward trend in timber harvesting in California since the ’70s and ’80s, so you cannot turn that around on a dime,” said Helge Eng, deputy director of resource management with Cal Fire. “It takes time to attract new sawmills to certain parts of the state and attract the workforce, but I think the grants will help with that.”
And even with new mills in place, clearing out smaller diameter trees doesn’t make landowners a lot of money. Most of the profit is in harvesting larger and more fire-resistant trees, which forestry experts say would only increase the danger of wildfire.
Still, the governor’s plan — if not Trump’s — has won over many ecologists because they believe strongly that the forests could benefit tremendously from removing smaller trees and shrubs, known as understory. Beyond concerns about backcountry blazes, such vegetation can suck up limited moisture making a particular stand more vulnerable to drought.
As overgrown forests are exposed to drought and beetle infestations, larger trees die, opening up the canopy for shade-tolerant trees, shrubs and bushes. Beyond the loss of habitat for certain native species, these landscapes are more prone to dry out and fuel the types of wind-driven wildfires that have devastated communities throughout the state in recent years.
“If we could restore the fuels there to a more appropriate density and structure through thinning and prescribed fire we could make them much more resilient to climate change,” said Westerling of UC Merced, “but it’s getting harder and harder to get ahead of that. It requires a lot of resources.”
Craig Thomas, conservation director for the nonprofit advocacy group Sierra Forest Legacy, also said that he supports cutting down smaller trees in targeted areas, as long as private landowners and federal officials don’t turn to logging larger old-growth trees once a sawmill is established.
“I’m hoping that this doesn’t devolve into another way to bag some big trees,” he said. “We’ve had enough of that.”
Getting fire back into the backcountry
Another huge selling point for the environmental community: The state and federal governments’ plans acknowledge the need to ramp up prescribed burns.
“Reestablishing fire has been the finding of the fire science community of the last 25 years,” Thomas said.
California’s forests are, somewhat ironically, overstocked because of aggressive fire suppression that started in the early 20th century and continue through today, according to researchers.
Timber sales in California, and throughout the west, peaked in the 1980s before efforts to protect several species of spotted owl brought levels down. While logging was dramatically curtailed, the Forest Service and Cal Fire continued battling back-county blazes with zeal.
Ecologists have long criticized the state and federal government for putting out lightning strikes that burn far from homes and communities because such fire clears out brush and smaller trees that live beneath the canopy.
Unlike bark beetles that prefer larger trees, fire clears out this understory, while also creating habitat essential to a number of native plant and animal species.
While it’s not as precise as logging and carries the threat of spreading quickly, controlled fires are the most cost-effective way to thin out the forest.
While there is overlap in the rhetoric of the Brown and Trump administrations on forest management and wildfire, it’s unclear for how long the two strategies will converge.
Both promised to embrace prescribed fire and limit logging of lucrative old-growth trees.
However, forestry experts have said that once efforts are under way, private landowners and timber companies will likely push for less prescribed fire and looser limits on logging.
(Joshua Emerson Smith, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE )
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The Sunday temblor hit near Sarpol-e Zahab in Iran’s Kermanshah province, which was the epicenter of an earthquake last year that killed more than 600 people and where some still remain homeless.
Dr. Mahmoud Reza Moradi, the head of Kermanshah’s university of medical science, told Iranian state television that 513 people were hurt. Most of the injuries appeared to be minor; the semi-official ISNA news agency reported that only 33 people needed to be hospitalized.
Authorities said dozens of rescue teams were immediately deployed after the quake stopped and the country’s army and its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard were responding.
Officials reported damage at buildings in town and in rural Kermanshah, as well as to some roadways.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES )
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The report, which was mandated by Congress and made public by the White House, is notable not only for the precision of its calculations and bluntness of its conclusions, but also because its findings are directly at odds with President Donald Trump’s agenda of environmental deregulation, which he asserts will spur economic growth.
Trump has taken steps to allow more planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks, and has vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, under which nearly every country in the world pledged to cut carbon emissions. Just this week, he appeared to mock the science of climate change because of a cold snap in the Northeast, tweeting, “Whatever happened to Global Warming?”
But in direct language, the 1,656-page assessment lays out the devastating effects of a changing climate on the economy, health and environment, including record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastructure in the South. Going forward, American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultural yields could fall to 1980s levels by mid-century and fire season could spread to the Southeast, the report finds.
“There is a bizarre contrast between this report, which is being released by this administration, and this administration’s own policies,” said Philip Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center.
All told, the report says, climate change could slash up to a tenth of gross domestic product by 2100, more than double the losses of the Great Recession a decade ago.
Scientists who worked on the report said it did not appear that administration officials had tried to alter or suppress its findings. However, several noted that the timing of its release, at 2 p.m. the day after Thanksgiving, appeared designed to minimize its public impact.
Still, the report could become a powerful legal tool for those opposed to efforts to dismantle climate change policy, experts said.
“This report will weaken the Trump administration’s legal case for undoing climate change regulations and it strengthens the hands of those who go to court to fight them,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton.
The report is the second volume of the National Climate Assessment, which the federal government is required by law to produce every four years. The first volume was issued by the White House last year.
The previous report, issued in May 2014, concluded with nearly as much scientific certainty, but not as much precision on the economic costs, that the tangible impacts of climate change had already started to cause damage across the country. It cited increasing water scarcity in dry regions, torrential downpours in wet regions and more severe heat waves and wildfires.
The results of the 2014 report helped inform the Obama administration as it wrote a set of landmark climate change regulations. The following year, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized President Barack Obama’s signature climate change policy, known as the Clean Power Plan, which aimed to slash planet-warming emissions from coal-fired power plants. At the end of 2015, Obama played a lead role in brokering the Paris Agreement.
In 2016, Republicans in general and Trump in particular campaigned against those regulations. In rallies before cheering coal miners, Trump vowed to end what he called Obama’s “war on coal” and to withdraw from the Paris deal. Since winning the election, his administration has move decisively to roll back environmental regulations.
The report puts the most precise price tags to date on the cost to the U.S. economy of projected climate impacts: $141 billion from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastructure damage by the end of the century, among others.
The findings come a month after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations, issued its most alarming and specific report to date about the severe economic and humanitarian crises expected to hit the world by 2040.
But the new report also emphasizes that the outcomes depend on how swiftly and decisively the United States and other countries take action to mitigate global warming. The authors put forth three main solutions: putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions, which usually means imposing taxes or fees on companies that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; establishing government regulations on how much greenhouse pollution can be emitted; and spending public money on clean-energy research.
A White House statement said the report, which was started under the Obama administration, was “largely based on the most extreme scenario” of global warming and that the next assessment would provide an opportunity for greater balance.
The report covers every region of the United States and asserts that recent climate-related events are signs of things to come. No area of the country will be untouched, from the Southwest, where droughts will curb hydropower and tax already limited water supplies, to Alaska, where the loss of sea ice will cause coastal flooding and erosion and force communities to relocate, to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, where saltwater will taint drinking water.
More people will die as heat waves become more common, the scientists say, and a hotter climate will also lead to more outbreaks of disease.
Two areas of impact particularly stand out: trade and agriculture.
Trump has put trade issues at the center of his economic agenda, placing new tariffs on imports and renegotiating trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. But climate change is likely to be a disruptive force in trade and manufacturing, the report says.
Extreme weather events driven by global warming are “virtually certain to increasingly affect U.S. trade and economy, including import and export prices and businesses with overseas operations and supply chains,” the report concludes.
Such disasters will temporarily shutter factories both in the United States and abroad, causing price spikes for products from apples to automotive parts, the scientists predicted. So much of the supply chain for American companies is overseas that almost no industry will be immune from the effects of climate change at home or abroad, the report says.
It cites as an example the extreme flooding in Thailand in 2011. Western Digital, an American company that produces 60 percent of its hard drives there, sustained $199 million in losses and halved its hard drive shipments in the last quarter of 2011. The shortages temporarily doubled hard drive prices, affecting other American companies like Apple, HP and Dell.
American companies should expect many more such disruptions, the report says.
“Climate change is another risk to the strength of the U.S. trade position, and the U.S. ability to export,” said Diana Liverman, a University of Arizona professor and co-author of the report. “It can affect U.S. products, and as it drives poverty abroad we can lose consumer markets.”
The nation’s farm belt is likely to be among the hardest-hit regions, and farmers in particular will see their bottom lines threatened.
“Rising temperatures, extreme heat, drought, wildfire on rangelands and heavy downpours are expected to increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity in the U.S.,” the report says. “Expect increases in challenges to livestock health, declines in crop yields and quality and changes in extreme events in the United States and abroad.”
By 2050, the scientists forecast, changes in rainfall and hotter temperatures will reduce the agricultural productivity of the Midwest to levels last seen in the 1980s.
The risks, the report noted, depend on the ability of producers to adapt to changes.
During the 2012 Midwestern drought, farmers who incorporated conservation practices fared better, said Robert Bonnie, a Rubenstein Fellow at Duke University who worked in the Agriculture Department during the Obama administration. But federal programs designed to help farmers cope with climate change have stalled because the farm bill, the primary legislation for agricultural subsidies, expired this fall.
The report says the Midwest, as well as the Northeast, will also experience more flooding when it rains, like the 2011 Missouri River flood that inundated a nuclear power plant near Omaha, Neb., forcing it to shut down for years.
Other parts of the country, including much of the Southwest, will endure worsening droughts, further taxing limited groundwater supplies. Those droughts can lead to fires, a phenomenon that has played out this fall in California as the most destructive wildfire in state history killed dozens of people.
The report predicts that frequent wildfires, long a plague of the western United States, will also become more common in other regions, including the Southeast. The 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires, which killed 14 people and burned more than 17,000 acres in Tennessee, may have been just the beginning. But unlike in the West, “in the Southeast, they have no experience with an annual dangerous fire season, or at least, very little,” said Andrew Light, a co-author of the report and a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute.
Climate change is taking the United States into uncharted territory, the report concludes. “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid,” it says.
(Coral Davenport & Kendra Pierre-Louis, THE NEW YORK TIMES )
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Up to an additional 16 inches of snow was possible by early Saturday above elevations of 7,000 feet around the mountain lake southwest of Reno, the National Weather Service said late Thursday.
The heaviest snow was expected west of the lake’s west shore, west of California state Route 89, with winds gusting over the ridgetops up to 100 mph Thursday night into today, the service said.
The Heavenly Mountain resort on Tahoe’s south shore closed for Thanksgiving Day because of increasing winds and heavy snowfall forecast into the weekend. But it planned to reopen today.
About 11 inches of snow was reported early Thursday at the Kirkwood Mountain resort and 7 inches at the Northstar California resort near Truckee.
“We’re feeling grateful for Mother Nature this morning,” Northstar California spokeswoman Stephanie Myers said Thursday. “It’s still coming down.”
Five inches of snow was reported on Tahoe’s north shore at Incline Village, Nev.
A winter weather advisory remained in effect for the upper elevations around Lake Tahoe from 4 p.m. Thursday through 10 a.m. today. Up to 10 inches of new snow was forecast in the upper elevations late Thursday and early today, with more expected into tonight.
In northeast Nevada, a winter weather advisory was issued for most of Elko County through 4 a.m. Saturday. As much as a foot of snow was forecast in the highest elevations with winds gusting to 60 mph, and up to 8 inches of snow down to 5,500 feet.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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Rescuers from Wakatobi National Park found the rotting carcass of the 31-foot sperm whale late Monday near the park in Southeast Sulawesi province after hearing that villagers were beginning to butcher the rotting carcass, park chief Heri Santoso said.
Santoso said researchers from wildlife conservation group WWF and the park’s conservation academy found about 13 pounds of plastic waste in the animal’s stomach containing 115 plastic cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags, 2 flip-flops, a nylon sack and more than 1,000 other assorted pieces of plastic.
“Although we have not been able to deduce the cause of death, the facts that we see are truly awful,” said Dwi Suprapti, a marine species conservation coordinator at WWF Indonesia.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES )
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But that glimpse of heavenly blue was a temporary respite from the torments that nature continues to bring to this region, beset by the most destructive wildfire in California history. A forecast of three days of rain beginning today has prompted a flash-flood watch in the central part of Northern California, which might slow the blaze and help clear the smoke-filled air but also could complicate the daunting processes of recovery under way here.
The rain threatens to hinder the search for human remains, wash out tent camps providing shelter to evacuees, and trigger mudflows across the barren landscape, imperiling roads and buildings that were spared by the wildfire.
“Major fire followed by heavy rain? It’s kind of the worst-case scenario,” said Chris Pappas, a California firefighter working in Paradise who grew up in the foothills.
The risk of flooding is high, he said, if drainage systems are clogged by a mix of ash and other debris, including countless leaves from charred trees. And the ground, Pappas said, hasn’t had a chance to regenerate its ground cover, increasing the risk of mudflows.
“There’s just nothing to keep the soil there,” he said.
The rains will also challenge the most macabre effort under way here — identifying the bodies of people who failed to escape Paradise before the flames came through.
The death toll has risen to 79 people. Another 700 remain on Butte County’s list of people unaccounted for.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES )
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Gov. Ricardo Rossello released a letter on Tuesday in which he asked the U.S. government to cover all costs linked to debris removal and emergency protective measures, declare the entire island a distressed area for tax break purposes and provide a tourism tax credit, among other things. While he called Congress “an instrumental partner,” he also demanded equal treatment for the people of Puerto Rico, who are U.S. citizens.
“Significant emergency response work remains to be done on the island,” he wrote in the letter dated Monday.
Rossello said the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency is no longer fully funding things such as temporary generators, the demolition of buildings and tree removal. He said this is a major concern because “numerous” critical facilities still rely on generators, millions of cubic yards of debris still have to be cleared and more than 15,000 properties have to be demolished.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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Construction workers are in short supply. The costs of some materials are rising, thanks in part to President Donald Trump’s trade war.
“The individual homeowner just has a nightmare ahead,” said John Mulville, Southern California regional director for real estate research firm Metrostudy.
In all, the still-burning fires in Northern and Southern California have destroyed more than 12,800 structures, swelling shelters and raising questions about whether it’s smart to rebuild in areas prone to wildfires.
In Butte County, flames wiped out 9,800 homes as of Friday morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. In the devastated town of Paradise, entire blocks have been pulverized and a tent city has cropped up in a vacant lot next to Walmart in nearby Chico.
The Woolsey fire, which torched Malibu and Thousand Oaks, has been less severe but still destroyed more than 600 structures.
Any loss of housing is a hit in a state that’s seen the cost of living soar. By some estimates, developers need to double the amount of homes they build each year just to stabilize housing costs.
In part because of the shortage, experts say victims of the most recent fires could very well face hurdles similar to those experienced by survivors of last year’s horrific blazes in Northern California. There, flames destroyed more than 8,000 structures, including 3,000 homes in Santa Rosa.
A Zillow analysis found that in the aftermath of those October fires, asking rent for vacant homes in Sonoma and Napa counties rose more quickly than areas nearby that were largely unaffected.
If someone has homeowners or rental insurance, their policy may cover rent on a new home for around two years. But part of the problem in Santa Rosa was simply finding a place.
Jeff Okrepkie, whose rental home in the Coffey Park neighborhood was destroyed, said he made frequent calls to landlords only to find there were no vacancies or that he needed to make a decision within a day.
Okrepkie, his wife and kids lived with family for two months before they finally found a rental through a friend.
“We were calling in every favor,” the 39-year-old commercial insurance specialist said. “We got a little lucky.”
Others had it worse, and reports surfaced of illegal rent gouging amid the desperation.
Today, rent growth has slowed in Sonoma and Napa counties to around 10 percent and 6 percent, respectively — a reduction of about two percentage points from the peak after the fires. Out of 3,000 homes destroyed in Santa Rosa, 55 have been fully rebuilt and 788 are under construction, said David Guhin, the city’s planning director.
Guhin said labor and material shortages delayed work, as did fights with insurance companies. In the beginning, some builders poached workers off other job sites. Today, the problem is finding concrete. “We are hearing five- to six- to seven-week backlogs to get concrete poured,” he said.
In some cases, people didn’t have insurance or their policies didn’t cover the entire cost to rebuild. According to a recent survey from United Policyholders, two-thirds of the victims from last year’s fires reported being under-insured, and those people were under-insured by an average of $317,000.
Guhin said some individuals even shelled out for architectural work, only to show plans to a builder and discover their insurance wouldn’t foot the bill to finish. “They walked away,” he said.
Still, Guhin and others said the rebuilding effort was made easier by Santa Rosa’s actions to expedite permits and pre-approve models from some builders so victims wouldn’t have to go the custom-home route. Instead, they could turn to larger companies that typically get the job done sooner.
Malibu is also setting up a center to expedite permits. But regardless of city actions, those who lost homes in flat areas of Point Dume may have an easier time rebuilding than those who lived on hillsides.
“Building on the flats, it’s just a lot easier,” said John Allen, vice president of Santa Rosa-based APM Homes, which has opened a design center next to Coffey Park. “The foundations can go in lickety-split.”
Even before the fires, builders were competing for a limited supply of construction workers. The industry blames a prolonged reduction in immigrant labor and the lingering impact of the financial crash. The cratering of construction jobs sent skilled workers fleeing to other industries, and many haven’t returned.
In recent years, as the economy recovered, demand for new homes increased. The result has been good news for workers: In the first nine months of this year, average hourly wages for non-supervisory employees in residential construction rose an average of 6.1 percent over a year earlier, compared with just 2.7 percent for all employees.
Material costs have also been on the rise, though. That’s partly because demand increased as global economies improved. The Trump administration’s tariffs on steel and lumber also played a role.
It helps that lumber prices have plummeted from recent highs and are below year-ago levels as some supply bottlenecks in Canada have been resolved. That’s slowed the growth in building costs, said Kenneth Simonson of the Associated General Contractors of America. Still, prices for overall residential construction material and services jumped 6 percent in October from a year earlier. And Simonson said new tariffs on Chinese goods are likely to increase costs further. Not all insurance policies cover such increases.
Because the housing stock is smaller in a rural community such as Butte County, the squeeze on supply and resources will be worse than in hard-hit areas closer to Los Angeles, such as Malibu and Thousand Oaks, experts said. There are also fewer architects, plumbers and carpenters that can be called upon.
When Chris Morano, 59, lost his home in Coffey Park in Santa Rosa last year, he and his husband, Eric, had to turn to a contractor hundreds of miles away in Tulare County to get their four-bedroom house rebuilt like they wanted, at a price their insurance would pay. The contractor even had to bring in workers from Southern California.
Today, the couple are living in Oregon as workers finish their home. But even when it’s done, they’re not certain to return. Morano worries that if he comes back, he won’t be able to sleep without fearing he’ll once again awaken to flames licking his neighborhood.
(Andrew Khouri, Matt Hamilton, Nicole Santa Cruz, Benjamin Orestes, LOS ANGELES TIMES )
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The death toll from the devastating Camp fire rose to 71 Friday, while the number of people reported missing jumped to more than 1,000, authorities said.
Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea told reporters at a Friday afternoon news conference that search crews had recovered eight more bodies in the burn area.
More than 450 searchers continue looking for human remains in the ashes.
The number of people unaccounted for rose to 1,011, up from 631 on Thursday evening, after authorities combed through additional 911 calls, emails and other reports generated at the peak of the chaotic evacuation.
Honea said that number may include some people who are counted twice or others who may not know they were reported missing.
“We are still receiving calls, we’re still reviewing emails,” Honea said Friday.
The staggering toll was announced as President Donald Trump is expected to visit the area today to meet with people affected by the wildfires. It would mark his second trip as president to the nation’s most populous state.
Trump could face some resentment from locals for blaming the inferno on poor forest management in California.
In an interview taped Friday and scheduled for broadcast on “Fox News Sunday,” Trump said he was surprised to see images of firefighters removing dried brush near a fire, adding, “This should have been all raked out.”
Some survivors have expressed anger that Trump took to Twitter two days after the disaster to blame the fires on poor forest mismanagement. He threatened to withhold federal payments from California.
“If you insult people, then you go visit them, how do you think you’re going to be accepted? You’re not going to have a parade,” Maggie Crowder of Magalia said outside an informal shelter at a Walmart parking lot in Chico.
But Stacy Lazzarino, who said she voted for Trump, thought it would be good for the president to see the devastation up close: “I think by maybe seeing it he’s going to be like ‘Oh, my goodness,’ and it might start opening people’s eyes.”
In his Fox News interview on the eve of his visit, the president repeated his criticism of fire management in the state. Asked if he thought climate change contributed to the fires, he said, “Maybe it contributes a little bit. The big problem we have is management.”
Nick Shawkey, a captain with the state fire agency, said the president’s tweet blaming poor forest management was based on a “misunderstanding.” The federal government manages 46 percent of land in California.
“The thing he’s tweeting about is his property,” Shawkey said.
California’s outgoing and incoming governors said they would join Trump on his visit today.
Democrats Gov. Jerry Brown and governor-elect Gavin Newsom said they welcomed the president’s visit and “now is a time to pull together for the people of California.” Brown and Newsom have been vocal critics of Trump.
By Friday afternoon, firefighters were gaining ground against the Camp fire, which blackened 222 square miles. It was 45 percent contained and posed no immediate threat to populated areas. Crews managed to stop it from spreading toward Oroville, population 19,000.
But it was another challenging day across Butte County. More than 40,000 people remained evacuated and many have no homes to go back to. The fire has also caused terrible air quality in the county as well as many other areas of Northern California.
An ashy haze has blanketed many regions, leading to an “unhealthy” air quality index. That means most people who breathe the air there can experience health problems, regardless of age or fitness level, said Jenny Tan, a spokeswoman for the Yolo-Solano Air Quality Management District.
In recent days, as California’s air pollution map shifted from healthier green and yellow to red and purple — and then dark purple — officials from Los Angeles to Northern California urged residents to stay indoors and wear white N95 masks when they could not avoid leaving their homes. Even in Los Angeles, where smoke from the Woolsey fire had subsided by late Thursday, the air was still hazy and many schools required children to take recess inside.
For anyone who must go outside, the state public health department recommends P100 masks and N95 respirators, both of which are approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health for use by firefighters.
But Sacramento will no longer distribute N95 masks, warning that for those not living next to the fire, their risks outweigh their benefits. Risks include increased heart rate.
In the Bay Area, the National Weather Service said smoke would linger in the region into the coming week. The unhealthy air in Berkeley forced the California and Stanford football showdown to be pushed back until Dec. 1, the first postponement of the Big Game since the rivals’ 1963 match was delayed after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
In the communities around Paradise, air quality is considered hazardous for everyone, and the county health department is urging people to remain inside. But this has been difficult for evacuees. Many of those forced from their homes are sleeping outside in tents, unable to find other shelter.
At the Chico Mall where the Federal Emergency Management Agency and others set up an assistance center, 68-year-old Richard Wilson sought information about lodging. His wife is nearly bedridden from lupus and fibromyalgia.
“We’re having to stay at a Marriott, which is like $100 a night, and we’re running out of money,” Wilson said as he stood outside in rubber sandals and no socks — the only footwear he had when he fled the flames that destroyed his home.
In Southern California, meanwhile, more residents were allowed Friday to return to homes they fled days earlier.
Authorities reopened more areas in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. But they kept some locations within the Woolsey fire zone off-limits because of hazards ranging from burned power poles to compromised gas lines and destroyed roadways.
Utility crews worked to remove damaged equipment and bring in replacements, including numerous power poles.
Although walls of flame and towering columns of smoke were gone, firefighters continue to expand containment lines around the scorched area. Fire commanders said the 153-square-mile burn area was 78 percent surrounded.
The count of destroyed structures reached 713. Another 201 structures were damaged.
Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives were investigating three deaths. Two adults were found in a gutted car last week, and the remains of another person were found Wednesday in the rubble of a home that had burned to the ground.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES; LA TIMES; ASSOCIATED PRESS; THE NEW YORK TIMES )
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The number of people unaccounted for jumped dramatically to 631, up from 130 on Wednesday evening.
Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea told reporters that crews found three bodies in Magalia, three in Paradise and one in Concow. One body in Paradise was found in a car that had been flipped on its side.
Honea said he believes there are people on the list of missing who fled the blaze and don’t realize they have been reported missing. He said authorities were making the list public so people could see if they’re on it and let authorities know they are safe.
He said the 130 figure was a partial count, and after authorities went back through the 911 calls and other reports of missing persons from the past week they came up with the new number.
On Thursday, firefighters reported progress in battling the nearly 220-square-mile blaze that has displaced 52,000 people and destroyed more than 9,500 homes. It was 40 percent contained, fire officials said. Crews slowed the flames’ advance on populated areas.
President Donald Trump plans to travel to California on Saturday to tour the damage and meet with those affected by the wildfires. He is expected to land at Beale Air Force Base and travel to Paradise, which was decimated by the fire.
The visit will come a week after he blamed state officials for the destructive blazes, attributing the cause of the fires to poor forest management and threatening to withhold financial payments to the state. But he has since applauded the state’s efforts, praising the firefighters’ “incredible courage” and promising federal assistance.
With Paradise still smoldering, California authorities are leaning on volunteers for what is being called the largest body-recovery mission in state history, and one of the largest in the United States since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
After Honea put out a statewide appeal for help earlier this week, more than 450 members of California search-and-rescue teams have come to the area offering to help. They represent nearly all of California’s 58 counties, highlighting the effectiveness of a state law that mandates each county sheriff maintain volunteer search-and-rescue teams.
The volunteers are a variety of ages and “a cross-section of our community,” as Ben Ho, who coordinates cadaver-dog teams for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, put it.
Wendy Bailey joined the effort eight years ago, as a volunteer in an aquatic search-and-rescue unit in Southern California. Her unit, based in Kern County, usually responds to water rescues in the Kern River or missing hikers in the lower Sierra Nevada mountains, but has been called in to other areas with large-scale disasters.
Even here in California, where the concept of search and rescue dates back to efforts to rescue settlers who went missing while crossing the Sierra Nevada in the 1800s, the scale of the Camp fire response is testing first responders. As the number of fire disasters continues to grow, state emergency officials say communities here and nationwide need to step up drills and training for how to effectively use volunteer search-and-rescue teams in natural disasters and other mass-causality events.
Many cadaver dogs are not as prepared as they should be to work safely in ash, officials said. California emergency managers also continue to refine how volunteer search-and-rescue groups should be deployed, and under what command.
“Each one seems to be much more intense, and also the expectation of the public, the families, the agencies, is that we can do a number of tasks that are very challenging,” said Ho said. “This is daunting — both physically and mentally.”
Ho said the modern-day search-and-rescue team can be traced back to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which devastated parts of San Francisco Bay area. At the time, Ho was a search manager for the Oakland fire department. After both San Francisco Bay area communities and federal officials struggled to respond to the earthquake, President George H.W. Bush pressed Ho and other regional emergency managers to develop a more effective plan for search and rescue, including more cadaver dog teams.
“He said we need to have the SWAT teams of rescue teams throughout the country and go to big disasters,” Ho said.
After a few years of planning, including the formation of committees Ho participated in, modern-day urban search-and-rescue teams were formed. States and localities also greatly expanded the use of cadaver dog units.
Those teams, which often operate in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have been front-line responders to disasters, such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
There has also been a proliferation of volunteer wilderness search-and-rescue teams, especially here in California. Christopher Boyer, executive director of the National Association for Search and Rescue, said wilderness teams are better suited to respond to the Camp fire due to the scope of the disaster, which has charred about 140,000-acres — nearly the size of Chicago.
“The FEMA teams are designed around finding live people, and their dogs find live people,” said Boyer, whose organization has about 16,000 members. In Paradise, “we are talking about finding human remains, and in some cases, cremains that have been burnt.”
Many of the responders to the Paradise fire say they were stunned by the devastation they now must work in.
David Freeman, a search volunteer from El Dorado County near Sacramento, compared his task to working on the moon.
“It doesn’t even seem real,” said Freeman, 75. “We are basically looking for anything that looks like it could be a body, but the fire was so hot, there may not be a lot left there.”
Each morning, the volunteers are broken up into teams of eight to 10 people. If they find suspected human remains, the volunteers have access to anthropologists who help differentiate human remains from animals. Coroner teams are then responsible for removing the bodies.
On Wednesday, Bailey’s team discovered half of a human skull and several bone fragments, roughly the size of a knuckle, she said.
But Honea, who is also the Butte County coroner, has been warning this grief-stricken community that some victims may never be found. The fire was so hot, he said, “its possible that some remains were completely consumed by fire.”
Meanwhile, in Southern California, fire officials were optimistic Thursday that improved weather would help them get the upper hand against the Woolsey fire.
The wildfire has charred 98,362 acres in Los Angeles and Ventura counties since last week. The remains of three people whose deaths are considered fire-related have been discovered, and more than 500 structures have been destroyed.
Firefighters have stopped the fire’s expansion and increased containment to 62 percent. The boost in containment comes as strong winds that had battered the region for three consecutive days finally diminished. It was a welcome development for those on the front lines, said California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Chris Anthony.
“I think we’re all hoping today will be a turning point for us in this fight,” Anthony said. “But we’re not ramping down. This is a huge fire, and there’s still a lot of containment that needs to be done.”
(Bradley J. Fikes, U-T NEWS SERVICES; LA TIMES; THE WASHINGTON POST; ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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That’s the latest and mixed assessment from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, released Wednesday. The group’s Red List ranks species by how threatened they are.
The update takes a sharper look at the welfare of each of the nine giraffe populations, including species and subspecies. Zoologists differ on how many giraffe species exist. The IUCN currently lists just one species and nine subspecies, but a review is underway.
“The threats facing each of the subspecies differs, with those in southern Africa doing very well but those in East and central Africa struggling,” Julian Fennessy, co-chair of the IUCN’s Giraffe & Okapi Specialist Group, said by email.
The San Diego Zoo has giraffes in breeding programs at the zoo and the Safari Park. It is also taking part in several giraffe conservation programs in Africa, said Jenna Stacy-Dawes, the zoo’s research coordinator in global partnerships.
The zoo has people in northern Kenya who take part in a program called the Twiga Walinzi initiative, she said. Twiga Walinzi means “giraffe guards” in Swahili. The zoo is also participating in a project to sequence the giraffe genome.
In Southern California and elsewhere, people can help giraffes and other animals via their computer by taking part in the San Diego Zoo’s Wildwatch Kenya, a remote monitoring program, Stacy-Dawes said. Go to j.mp/wildwatchkenya for more information.
Participants in the program review photos taken by motion-activated cameras to determine what animals are in the photos. This establishes the location and number of the animals.
Giraffes were first listed as a vulnerable species only two years ago. Previously they had been listed as of “least concern,” a ranking given to species that face a minimal threat.
More than 150,000 giraffes existed in the wild in 1985, the IUCN estimates, but by 2015 their numbers had fallen below 99,000.
Giraffes are herbivores with a prodigious appetite, and require enough land to feed themselves. So encroachment from human development threatens them. Poaching is also a concern in some areas.
The update ranks two out of the nine populations as critically endangered. They are the Kordofan giraffe with fewer than 2,000, and the Nubian giraffe, with 650 individuals. Critically endangered is the most serious ranking short of actual extinction.
The reticulated giraffe is listed as endangered, with 15,784 in the wild.
None of these three populations had been independently assessed before.
However, the West African giraffe, previously listed as endangered, has been downgraded one rank to vulnerable, reflecting improved prospects. There are 607 in the wild.
And the Rothschild’s giraffe, which numbers 2,098 animals in the wild, was downgraded two ranks from endangered to near threatened.
These successes were praised in a statement from the Giraffe Conservation Foundation.
“This is a conservation success story and highlights the value of making proactive giraffe conservation and management efforts in critical populations across the continent,” Arthur Muneza, East-Africa Coordinator of the foundation, said in the statement.
Two populations remain to be rated; the South African giraffe and the Masai giraffe.
Giraffes have been traditionally considered one species, Giraffa camelopardalis. A study published this summer proposed that giraffes should be classified into four species: the northern giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis), southern giraffe (G. giraffa), reticulated giraffe (G. reticulata), and Masai giraffe (G. tippelskirchi).
The study provided genetic evidence that these groups don’t interbreed in nature, a defining characteristic of a species.
If this proposal is accepted, some of the current subspecies, such as the Rothschild’s, will be included among the new full species.
Aside from wild populations, the roughly 2,000 giraffes that live in zoos around the world provide a margin of safety. Zoos will breed rare giraffes to boost their numbers.
At the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park, 25 giraffes live; 2 males and 4 females at the zoo, and 5 males and 14 females at the Safari Park. These include seven Masai giraffes; one reticulated giraffe, and three Rothschild’s giraffes.
The number of giraffes grows as the result of births. The most recent, Kumi, a Giraffa camelopardalis, was born in August at the Safari Park.
These new giraffes may remain in place, or be relocated as part of their species survival plan.
(Bradley J. Fikes, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The National Weather Service said snow and ice fell during the day across parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. Snow and ice are predicted today and Friday for areas ranging from Ohio and the Appalachian Mountains through Washington, D.C., New York and New England from the storm barreling toward the Northeast.
Witnesses told Mississippi investigators that the bus driver lost control after crossing an icy overpass and the bus rolled over on its driver’s side, coming to rest in the median of Interstate 269 in Byhalia around 12:35 p.m., said Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesman Capt. Johnny Poulos. That Mississippi town is about 35 miles southeast of downtown Memphis, Tennessee.
Killed were 70-year-old Betty Russell and 61-year-old Cynthia Hardin, both of Huntsville, Ala., said DeSoto County Coroner Joshua Pounders. The injured were taken to Memphis-area hospitals, with at least three listed in serious condition Wednesday evening. Officials said the group was bound from Huntsville to gamble at a casino in Mississippi’s Tunica County, about 40 miles to the west.
Poulos said investigators hadn’t yet concluded how fast the bus was traveling. He said because the road was icy, investigators have no skid marks to evaluate.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The fire has killed at least 56 people, destroyed more than 10,300 structures and scorched 138,000 acres in Butte County. It was 35 percent contained as of Wednesday evening, according to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection officials. At least 130 people are still missing.
Firefighters continued to strengthen containment lines throughout the day and kept an eye out for hot spots in the area, Cal Fire said. Air tankers dropped retardant in the fire’s path to impede its progress, officials said.
Crews Wednesday worked to build up defenses around the town of Cherokee near the Feather River and Stirling City, northeast of Paradise and Magalia, which were both devastated by the Camp fire.
At a Paradise Town Council meeting, Steve Crowder, an incoming councilman and business owner, said he helped direct traffic out of town when the fire broke out and said there were moments he didn’t know if he’d make it out alive.
Mayor Jody Jones sternly defended the town’s evacuation plan after a community member was critical.
“It wasn’t perfect,” Jones said. “But it worked. It was chaos, but it was sort of organized chaos.”
However, questions still remain after the town of 27,000 was destroyed by the blaze.
When the Camp fire barreled toward this Sierra foothill town last Thursday morning, officials had a crucial choice to make right away: How much of Paradise should be evacuated?
The decision was complicated by history and topography. Paradise sits on a hilltop and is hemmed in by canyons, with only four narrow winding routes to flee to safety. During its last major fire, in 2008, authorities evacuated so many people that roads became dangerously clogged.
So this time, they decided not to immediately undergo a full-scale evacuation, hoping to get residents out of neighborhoods closest to the fires first before the roads became gridlocked.
But it soon became clear that the fire was moving too fast for that plan, and that the whole town was in jeopardy. A full-scale evacuation order was issued at 9:17 a.m., but by then the fire was already consuming the town.
Most of the 56 people killed were in their homes, some trying to flee in their cars and others outside, desperately seeking shelter from the flames.
It’s unclear how much a different evacuation strategy would have changed the outcome of the fire, which was fueled by intense wind gusts of up to 52 mph and record dry vegetation in an area notoriously vulnerable to fires and wind-blown embers.
But the level of destruction and death is sure to make Paradise a grim lesson for agencies trying to improve emergency alerts and evacuations from fires as well as floods, mudslides and other natural disasters.
The death toll from natural disasters in California in the last year has been enormous, with nearly 40 killed in the wine country and Mendocino County fires and more than 20 in the Montecito mudslides. Officials acknowledged shortcomings in the efforts to get people out of harm’s way.
In the chaos of the Paradise fire, many residents said, they never got warnings by phone from authorities to leave. Some said they got warnings from police driving through their streets using loudspeakers. Others got texts from neighbors. But few said they got official text alerts or phone calls from the government.
The fire was first reported near the community of Pulga — about seven miles from Paradise — about 6:30 a.m. By 7:35 a.m., it had reached the nearby hamlet of Concow.
The first evacuation order for Paradise came at 8 a.m., a minute after the first flames were spotted in town. The order was limited to the eastern side of Paradise. The hope was to get the residents closest to fire out immediately, with the rest of the town to follow if needed.
But the fire was simply moving too fast.
“The fire had already outrun us,” said John Messina, California Department of Fire and Forestry Protection battalion chief for Butte County.
The evacuation orders were sent using a phone system called CodeRed, which covers all landlines as well as cellphone numbers voluntarily submitted by residents. But the system doesn’t cover all phones in the town. “In the town of Paradise, I think we’d be lucky to say 25 percent or 30 percent” of phone lines are in the system — and that’s after local officials urge residents to sign up, said Jim Broshears, who directs Paradise’s emergency operations center.
Also, the system can reach only so many phones per hour. “I can’t give you the raw numbers, but there’s a capacity per hour of calls. So CodeRed can’t (make) 12,000 calls at once. It’s really fast, but not this fast,” Broshears said.
Authorities said they were still investigating what caused the blaze. People who lost homes have sued Pacific Gas & Electric Co., accusing the utility of negligence and blaming it for the fire. More than two dozen fire victims said the utility did not maintain its infrastructure and failed to properly inspect and manage its power transmission lines.
Meanwhile, in Southern California, a third body was discovered among the ashes of a home in Agoura Hills as residents in nearby Malibu questioned fire officials about the division of resources and rushed evacuation notices during the Woolsey fire’s devastating march through Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
The body, which has not been identified, was found by a cadaver dog searching a burned-out home with law enforcement. The remains were found on an enclosed patio or what could have been a bedroom, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Lt. Derrick Alfred of the Homicide Bureau said.
The home belonged to a 70-year-old man who lived alone and has been reported missing by relatives, according to authorities.
As more residents in Malibu and Calabasas were allowed to return home Wednesday and firefighters continued making progress — the fire was 52 percent contained — questions remain over how authorities responded to the blaze.
The fire, which had burned 98,362 acres as of Wednesday night, has destroyed an estimated 504 structures — a number that is expected to grow in the coming days as crews continue to assess damage.
L.A. County Deputy Fire Chief Dave Richardson told residents that the agency had resources in place as the fire broke out, with more than 300 county firefighters and more than a dozen strike teams, but the speed of the flames quickly made the fire a life-safety issue. They decided to evacuate residents, but some who were trapped in their homes by the raging conflagration called 911 seeking help.
“Life is our No. 1 priority,” Richardson said. “We divert resources from protecting your structures to go get people out.”
In response to questions about the deployment of resources and why there weren’t more fire engines defending homes, Richardson pointed to historical data mapping. He said the blaze is larger and more destructive than recent fires in the area.
“I’ve been in the business for over 32 years. I have never … seen fire activity and the fire spread that we’ve seen. That’s the reality. Our firefighters were out there putting their life on the line to protect you and the communities,” Richardson said.
(Nicoles Santa Cruz & Dakota Smith, LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The Camp fire has scorched 130,000 acres since Thursday, ripping through mountain towns in Butte County. More than 8,800 structures — mostly homes in Paradise — were leveled as the blaze charred the region.
Two large fires also continued burning north of Los Angeles, and officials said the Woolsey fire, which has torched parts of Malibu, has now destroyed more than 80 percent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area — a large swath of protected urban parkland that is home to hundreds of animal species and native plants.
The Woolsey fire roared to life again Tuesday, but in a sign of significant progress against the blaze, more neighborhoods were reopened to thousands of residents who fled last week.
A massive plume rose suddenly at midmorning in the Santa Monica Mountains near the community of Lake Sherwood, prompting authorities to send numerous aircraft to drop fire retardant and water on the blaze.
Forecasters had warned of ongoing fire danger because of persistent Santa Ana winds.
Except for an apartment building that burned overnight in coastal Malibu, there was little sign of fire activity elsewhere in the vast fire zone west of Los Angeles.
Officials tempered optimism with caution, saying there were hotspots and pockets of unburned vegetation.
“We are not out of the woods yet. We still have some incredibly tough conditions ahead of us,” Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen said.
The death toll from the Woolsey fire stood at two — a pair of adults found last week in a car overtaken by flames. They have not been identified.
The number of homes and other structures destroyed had reached 435. Damage assessments were continuing, with crews having to gain access to canyon areas on foot.
“That number is going to rise significantly,” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said.
Meanwhile, in Paradise, search teams continued to sift through rubble and ash. Residents are holding out hope that their loved ones who went missing when the fire tore through their town might be found.
The confusing search for hundreds of missing people has been complicated by many factors: bad cellphone service. A lack of access to burned-out areas. A sheer scattering of people across the region who are staying in shelters, hotels, friends’ houses and their vehicles and may have not gotten in touch with loved ones.
Over the last several days, Blake Bellairs, 36, has been searching for his brother, Josh.
Bellairs and his girlfriend drove down from Medford, Ore., on Monday night to pick up his mother and stepfather, residents of Paradise, who lost everything in the fire. Finding Josh hasn’t been so easy.
Bellairs has tried calling the local jails, authorities and TV stations, and scoured social media for mentions of his brother. He has called his brother’s friends and ex-girlfriends. One friend heard that Josh got a ride through Magalia, but who knows.
Tuesday morning, Bellairs bought glass chalk from Walmart and wrote “Missing Josh Bellairs” all over his black Ford pickup, along with his phone number.
The board, at a Red Cross shelter, is a throwback to the era before Facebook and Twitter. On white- and yellow-lined paper, friends and relatives write down the names of the missing, their relationship to the person and a contact number.
Photos and personal messages are also posted. “I love you” was written next to the name “John Sedwick.” A man left a message for Mary Cory: “I’m OK, don’t worry about me.” He said he was headed to Yuba City and left a Gmail address.
Paradise resident Jayne Keith lost her house in the blaze and came to the shelter Tuesday to get dog food, blankets and pajamas. She was staying with family members at a hotel in Red Bluff. Keith peered at the board and wrote down the phone number of someone looking for a woman named Barbara Hayes. Keith said a woman whose last name is “Hayes” was staying down the road from her hotel. Keith paused, fretting about the last name. “I think it’s spelled differently. I don’t know if it’s the same woman.
Pressing her hand against her head, Paradise resident Teresa Moniz scanned the list of missing persons.
Her hand shook as she added her husband’s name: “Albert Moniz aka Pete.” When the Camp fire broke out, Moniz, 60, was in nearby Magalia, and her 67-year-old disabled husband was at their home in Paradise, she said.
“He called me and said: ‘There’s a fire; I have to get out,’” Moniz said, her eyes filling with tears.
Her husband went to a friend’s house and called again from there. That was the last time she heard from him. He doesn’t have a cellphone, she said.
Moniz said she knows their Paradise home on Edgewood Lane burned because she saw a video showing its destruction. Moniz said her husband’s daughter started a Facebook page in the hope of finding him.
On Tuesday, crews were working to build up defenses around the town of Cherokee near the Feather River and Stirling City, northeast of Paradise and Magalia, which were both devastated by the raging fire.
One of the biggest questions facing firefighters will be how the fire behaves when it hits swaths of land to the east and north. Officials say the area has no documented history of fire, meaning it’s likely extremely overgrown and dense, which can create explosive fire conditions.
“Be aware, there is a lot of fuel out there ready to burn really hot,” fire behavior analyst Jonathan Pangburn told crews at a morning briefing at the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds in Chico on Tuesday morning.
In the coming days and weeks, more of the sons and daughters, mothers and fathers who perished in the blaze will be identified.
Dozens of people are still missing and each day, recovery workers and cadaver dogs sifting through ashes find new remains.
Workers from California State University Chico’s anthropology department are on hand to assist with identifying bone fragments, and state forensic experts are helping evaluate DNA samples. But it could be weeks before their loved ones have answers.
And DNA itself has limits. It is sometimes impossible to extract DNA from incinerated remains, and trying to identify remains through DNA requires having a sample from the person when alive or building a profile by sampling close relatives.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, but PG&E reported problems with a power line in the area before the fire broke out.
On Tuesday, a lawsuit was filed against the utility company alleging its failure to maintain equipment sparked the fire.
With most residents evacuated, the streets of Paradise were filled with workers, from PG&E to tree-removal crews. A thick haze of smoke hung in the air, along with an eerie silence, save for the sound of an occasional falling tree. In some places, power lines dangled just six or seven feet above the ground.
With heavy smoke from the Butte County wildfire continuing to drift across the region, the Bay Area air quality remained unhealthy Tuesday and is expected to stay that way until at least Friday, according to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
Local school districts say they are monitoring the air quality and amending their schedules accordingly.
(Joseph Serna & Dakota Smith, LOS ANGELES TIMES; ASSOCIATED PRESS; THE MERCURY NEWS)
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In Thousand Oaks, many of those still reeling from Wednesday’s mass shooting at Borderline Bar and Grill were forced to evacuate their homes with whatever they could grab on their way to safety.
Crowded shelters turned away frantic evacuees for lack of space. Freeways were closed. Pepperdine University students — around 1,200 of them — awoke to texts ordering them to shelter in place.
And in true California fashion, people like Shirley Hertel turned on television sets in horror and watched the homes they’d fled catch fire.
“It was so surreal,” the Thousand Oaks resident said, shaken. “I left thinking everything would be OK. You don’t think your house will burn down.”
Fire officials said that more than 150 homes had been destroyed in Southern California, casualties of the Woolsey and Hill fires, blazes that barreled into Malibu and torched a destructive path through Oak Park, Thousand Oaks, Bell Canyon and other Ventura County communities.
By Friday night, the wildfire was racing, uncontained, toward West Hills, a neighborhood at the western edge of the San Fernando Valley. By rush hour, an unknown number of homes were ablaze.
About a quarter of a million people were under evacuation orders Friday — the entire city of Malibu, as well as Calabassas and Agoura and Hidden Hills, the Topanga Canyon area and three-quarters of the city of Thousand Oaks. More than 40,000 acres had burned. Two thousand firefighters were deployed along with more than 600 law enforcement personnel.
Fire jumped U.S. Route 101 in not one, not two, but three places, said Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Orsby during an afternoon news conference, as he urged people to obey evacuation orders.
At times throughout the day, the dangerous job of firefighting was complicated further by residents who refused to leave their homes, he said. “I can only imagine the impact of being asked to leave your home. But we’re doing it for your safety.”
Arita Kronska slept through alerts that her Westlake Village neighborhood had been placed under a mandatory evacuation order. The 62-year-old only found out when her daughter called, worried, around 5 a.m.
“I’ve lived here since 1988,” she said, as she stood in front of a temporary shelter in Thousand Oaks, her dog at her side. “This is the first time I’ve seen a fire like this.”
As she pondered what to bring to the shelter Friday morning, she eventually decided on just two things she could not live without: her passport and her dog.
Driving through her neighborhood in the predawn darkness, the streets were eerily quiet.
“Nobody was there anymore,” she said. “It was a very strange feeling … No people. No driving. … Like in those movies about the apocalypse.”
Kronska sought refuge at the Thousand Oaks Teen Center, where just 30 hours earlier family members had gathered to find out whether their loved ones had been killed by a black-clad gunman.
So many tears shed in such a short time span in the low-slung tan building.
Judy Goodman fled to the center in the Friday morning darkness, too. At one 1 a.m., she heard a loud crash in the living room of her Westlake Hills home. The winds were so fierce that a tree had crashed through her roof, sending shards of glass flying.
Then came the loud pounding at her front door. It was the police, telling her to leave. The fire was close. She grabbed socks, family photos and her dog and headed to the teen center.
“It’s just one thing after another,” she said. “I was crying all day yesterday because of the shooting at the Borderline Bar and Grill, and now this happens.”
She was grateful for a safe place to rest but was distraught when she heard that her refuge was the same place that families of the Borderline victims found out that their loved ones were dead.
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
Throughout the day, air tankers swooped through the skies, making low passes to dump water and flame retardant as firefighters tried to protect homes amid gusts topping 60 mph. The winds and smoky conditions made for difficult firefighting and at times grounded firefighting aircraft.
Crews from around San Diego County headed to the area on Friday to assist.
San Diego Fire-Rescue Department got the call for mutual aid Thursday night and crews left early Friday, spokeswoman Mónica Muñoz said.
The entire city of Malibu — home to Hollywood stars and entertainment moguls — was under a mandatory evacuation order and had lost power in places. Fleeing residents jammed Pacific Coast Highway in a procession that crept along as smoke billowed overhead and mansions on the hills went up in flames.
Fire officials had set up a command post not far from the Thousand Oaks Teen Center. Around noon on Friday, Ventura County Fire Department Capt. Bob Shuett returned to the command post, famished and covered in soot.
He had spent the previous 12 hours battling the Woolsey fire in a residential area just north of Highway 101. His team had been responsible for protecting more than 60 homes in Thousand Oaks, where power lines had crashed to the ground and ruptured gas lines flared.
Seven homes were lost. The rest were safe — for the time being. So many homes were on fire at once that Shuett’s department couldn’t give any one its full attention. Firefighters would partially suppress the flames at one home, just enough to keep it from spreading, and then move on.
“With all that wind and heat, it was like a blast furnace,” he said. “We may have some flare-ups at those homes later. We’ll be out here for a while, picking up what we might have left a few hours ago.”
As the day progressed, the Woolsey fire worsened. It had started out at about 14,000 acres in the morning. By late afternoon it had more than doubled.
Along the Pacific Coast Highway, at least half a dozen homes were burning in the Point Dume area. Flames licked at both sides of the famous thoroughfare. A man on the south side of the road valiantly doused hot spots. Fire lit the hillside, sending violent pops crackling through the air.
Many of those sheltering at Zuma Beach live in Point Dume. On Friday, one resident renamed the enclave: Point Doom.
Charlie Dresser lives in Malibu’s Point Dume Club with Teresa Andersen. They wanted to protect their home. They didn’t want to leave it. So they watered down the roof, sprayed the plants and held off evacuating as long as they could.
But Dresser saw the flames. They were shooting “all over.” He shut off the gas at his mobile home and a few nearby and left.
“It just got to be the right time to get out,” he said.
They left Point Dume at 1:30 p.m. and sought refuge on Zuma Beach. By 7 p.m., they were still there. They brought tents and planned to spend the night.
“This fire is like Armageddon,” he said. “It’s out of control.”
But there was a plus side on this terrifying night.
“Even if that whole hillside goes on fire, we’ll still be safe here,” Dresser said. “We’ve got the ocean.”
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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But after a fast-moving wildfire ravaged this community of 27,000 people, forcing thousands to flee by car and on foot, Paradise has become something else entirely. It has joined the growing list of California towns and cities devastated by one of the worst fire seasons on record.
Officials said at least nine people died and more than 6,700 homes and commercial buildings were lost — making it the most destructive fire in terms of property in state history.
On Friday, a day after the Camp fire broke out, this formerly thriving community sat under a dark canopy of ash and smoke.
Homes and businesses had been reduced to piles of twisted metal. Tall pine trees and utility poles smoldered. According to the California Teachers Association, at least five of the nine schools in Paradise were destroyed.
Cars abandoned by fleeing motorists who found themselves unable to escape lay crumpled in the roadways, their tires melted.
The bodies of five people were discovered in vehicles overtaken by the fire. Others were found outside their cars and homes. Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said they could not immediately be identified because they were burned so badly.
“There were people who weren’t able to get out,” Honea said, speaking from a makeshift command post at Butte College. As he talked, flakes of white ash fell on his uniform as strong winds continued to sweep across the nearby burning ridges.
Authorities are recovering bodies “with as much dignity as we can afford them,” he said.
It could be weeks before officials determine the cause of the Camp fire, named because it began near Camp Creek Road in Butte County. On Friday, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. notified state regulators that one of its high-voltage power lines located near where the fire began had malfunctioned shortly before the first flames were reported on Thursday morning. The company said it later observed damage to a transmission tower on the line.
PG&E spokeswoman Lynsey Paulo said Friday the information was preliminary and stressed that the cause of the fire has not been determined.
PG&E says it will cooperate with any investigations stemming from the wildfire.
Fueled by strong winds and a parched landscape, the fire grew to 90,000 acres by Friday evening.
It forced more than 50,000 people in Paradise and surrounding towns to evacuate. Many of them spilled onto a four-lane road called Skyway — the main evacuation route out of Paradise — that quickly became jammed. Residents described sitting in traffic as flames on both sides of the road reached for their cars.
Faced with worsening gridlock, fire officials said they made a crucial decision to focus their energy on rescuing people stranded on the road, unable to move, rather than try to beat back the growing inferno.
By Friday afternoon, the fire was only 5 percent contained.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said that a few thousand firefighters had been dispatched to battle the blaze. At least three had been injured.
Firefighters’ assault on the Camp fire has, so far, prevented it from reaching Chico, home to about 90,000 people west of Paradise.
Parts of Paradise were still burning Friday afternoon. Honea said conditions were too “unstable” for sheriff’s deputies to go door-to-door looking for survivors.
Paradise Vice Mayor Greg Bolin said that early reports from fire officials suggested that up to 90 percent of the town had burned. Bolin, who lost his home, said: “The town is gone.”
As towns emptied and evacuation centers filled, many residents’ focus shifted from securing their own safety to searching for family members and friends.
Teresa Roberts spent the day frantically trying to reach her mother, Marilyn Allen, 69, and her grandfather, 85-year-old Richard Torres, whose home of 13 years she feared was lost. Neither had registered themselves as safe on a Red Cross website. Her mom’s cellphone rang and rang. She didn’t respond to emails.
“I’m just terrified,” said Roberts. “Did they get out? That’s all I want to know.”
This part of Butte County is no stranger to wildfires. Ten years ago, a blaze swept through Paradise, destroying dozens of structures and forcing chaotic evacuations; the resulting panic was so alarming, angry residents showed up for months at community meetings demanding change.
“There had been no planning,” said Peggy Musgrave, 85, who escaped that fire only to find herself in gridlock again Thursday, joined once more by thousands of Paradise residents fleeing another inferno.
But this time, Musgrave said, she felt there was a measure of control. People had been mailed instructions on what to do: what to pack, what routes to take out of town and a reminder to plan for their pets. When she learned through word of mouth of the encroaching Camp fire, she went to her closet for her box of prized photographs and records, and to another for her jewelry. Then she left.
“We immediately went into action,” she said.
Residents such as Howard Cole, who sought shelter at a converted church in Oroville, knew they were in fire country and said the evacuations are not unexpected.
“This is our fourth evacuation in 10 years,” Cole said. “The first couple were chaos. It’s getting better.”
Other Paradise residents were critical — not of the traffic jams that ensued, but of what they said was a lack of warning to get out in the first place.
Jane Palmer, 77, said she received four automated calls the night before the fire from PG&E, telling her the utility was about to cut her power, which it did about 9:30 p.m.
She said she realized Paradise was on fire and her mobile home park was threatened when she saw the smoke and flames. As Palmer drove out, she encountered a neighbor, Patsy Jacobs, 62, trying to walk out and picked her up. Because Palmer cannot see well, Jacobs helped navigate her rescuer through the thick smoke.
“What (angers me) is I don’t think they told everybody soon enough,” said Kim Benn, 49, a neighbor who realized she needed to flee the fire when another resident pounded on her door.
Honea said the county sent out automated warning calls to 23,862 households, using its Code Red system. However, it did not deploy a universal alert through the national emergency warning system that would have reached every cellphone within reach of activated cellphone towers.
Amid the scenes of devastation and loss were stories of generosity.
Farshad Azad, a taekwondo grandmaster, turned his studio in Chico into a shelter for evacuees and their pets. By Friday afternoon, about 30 people had moved in. Among his guests was a woman who had lost her home but had managed to rescue 11 cats from her neighborhood.
“People are helping each other out right now, and that’s how it should be,” Azad said. “We should be in a place where we exercise compassion and kindness and humanity. It’s just too bad that stuff like that has to come out of disasters and tragedies.”
(LOS ANGELES TIMES; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The ozone layer had been thinning since the late 1970s. Scientists raised the alarm, and ozone-depleting chemicals were phased out worldwide.
As a result, the upper ozone layer above the Northern Hemisphere should be completely repaired in the 2030s, and the gaping Antarctic ozone hole should disappear in the 2060s, according to a scientific assessment released Monday at a conference in Quito, Ecuador. The Southern Hemisphere lags a bit, and its ozone layer should be healed by mid-century.
“It’s really good news,” said report co-chairman Paul Newman, chief Earth scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “If ozone-depleting substances had continued to increase, we would have seen huge effects. We stopped that.”
High in the atmosphere, ozone shields Earth from ultraviolet rays that cause skin cancer, crop damage and other problems. Use of man-made chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which release chlorine and bromine, began eating away at the ozone. In 1987, countries around the world agreed in the Montreal Protocol to phase out CFCs, and businesses came up with replacements for spray cans and other uses.
At its worst in the late 1990s, about 10 percent of the upper ozone layer was depleted, said Newman. Since 2000, it has increased by about 1 to 3 percent per decade, the report said.
This year, the ozone hole over the South Pole peaked at nearly 9.6 million square miles. That’s about 16 percent smaller than the biggest hole recorded — 11.4 million square miles in 2006.
The hole reaches its peak in September and October and disappears by late December until the next Southern Hemisphere spring, Newman said.
The ozone layer starts at about 6 miles above Earth and stretches for nearly 25 miles; ozone is a colorless combination of three oxygen atoms.
If nothing had been done to stop the thinning, the world would have destroyed two-thirds of its ozone layer by 2065, Newman said.
But it’s not a complete success yet, said University of Colorado’s Brian Toon, who wasn’t part of the report.
“We are only at a point where recovery may have started,” Toon said, pointing to some ozone measurements that haven’t increased yet.
Another problem is that new technology has found an increase in emissions of a banned CFC out of East Asia, the report noted.
On its own, the ozone hole has slightly shielded Antarctica from the much larger effects of global warming — it has heated up but not as much as it likely would without ozone depletion, said Ross Salawitch, a University of Maryland atmospheric scientist who co-authored the report.
So a healed ozone layer will worsen man-made climate change there a bit, Newman said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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After surveying the stricken Mediterranean island by helicopter, Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte identified two more of the victims as a German couple whose car was swept away by flood waters near Agrigento, a tourist town known for its ancient Greek temples.
Italian news reports said a 1-year-old, a 3-year-old and a teenager were among the flood victims from the family get-together in Casteldaccia. A survivor, Giuseppe Giordano, lost his wife, two of his children, his parents and a brother, Italian news agency ANSA said.
State broadcaster RaiNews24 said Giordano was stepping outside on Saturday night when the torrent rushed in and described him as the sole person to make it out alive.
When he opened the door, “there was a river of water, I was knocked down and grabbed hold of a tree,” Giordano told reporters. “I was yelling, ‘Help, help.’ ”
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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And children sidestepped the spillover from the canals as they trick-or-treated in Venetian masks and witches’ hats under the Rialto Bridge.
On Wednesday, Venice’s lagoon subsided and revealed the damage a violent storm had wrought on the city earlier in the week, one of the worst episodes of flooding in decades. Windblown tides reaching 61 inches above sea level had submerged more than 70 percent of the city.
On Thursday, the water returned again.
Some tourists frolicked in the filthy water and dined in restaurants as it lapped at the calves of their rubber boots. Locals instead worried about the saltwater eating its way through the city’s treasures.
“Here it’s solid,” said Pierpaolo Campostrini, a member of the board responsible for managing St. Mark’s Basilica, as he knocked on the marble facade of the structure, as if listening for a secret passageway, “But here it’s empty. We have a splitting here in the brick and the plaster. The water did this.”
He explained that “unlike an earthquake where you see the damage right away,” the constant water infiltration, accentuated by dramatic events like this week’s flood, would reveal itself only over time.
The building’s bricks sponged the water up, and as the water rose, the danger became more acute to the 8,450 square meters, or about 91,000 square feet, of fingernail-sized mosaic tiles that give the basilica its stunning golden shimmer.
The water had already taken its toll on the marble columns, brought from Byzantium centuries ago. Campostrini pointed at one base, now a corroded green crumble next to an empty cup of pink strawberry gelato.
“It’s not just global warming,” he said. “But the episodes are more severe and long.”
After about 1,000 years, Venice is imperiled by its sinking foundations and rising waters as well as the hordes of tourists arriving on cruise ships and low-cost flights. They clog the narrow streets and have pushed out residents in favor of Airbnb apartments.
Flooding, though, is the existential danger.
Earlier this week, for only the fifth recorded time in St. Mark’s nine-century history, the water reached the marble floor inside, submerging the area around the altar of the Madonna Nicopeia.
On Wednesday, the floor was dry but a yellow sign reading “Attention: Wet Pavement” stood ready by the entrance. Outside, though, the water still filled St. Mark’s Square. As tourists climbed the steep steps to the basilica’s balcony, the Roman Catholic patriarch of Venice, Monsignor Francesco Moraglia, checked in on his church.
Earlier in the week, he had rushed to visit when he heard the water had breached the door.
“I said a prayer and gave a blessing,” Moraglia said, showing pictures of himself wearing galoshes. Now, he said, he was hoping for help from the multibillion-dollar Mose project, an unfinished system of floodgates that was initiated more than a decade ago to block the rising waters and threats from global warming.
He said he and the city’s leaders had a “mission to defend the basilica not just from the floods” of excessive tourists and the enormous cruise ships that brought them, but also from the threats brought on by climate change.
Toto Bergamo Rossi, a noted restorer and director of the Venetian Heritage Foundation, called the rising waters “a tragedy” for the monuments he had dedicated his life to protecting.
Rossi said he now felt “powerless” in the face of the rising waters. He mourned the damage done to his restored garden, one of the city’s treasures and featured in Gabriele D’Annunzio’s “The Flame of Life.”
The city historically became rich from the salt trade, Rossi said, and now the salt had returned with a vengeance as “our big enemy.”
(Jason Horowitz, THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Today, more than 77 percent of land on Earth, excluding Antarctica, has been modified by human industry, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, up from just 15 percent a century ago.
The study, led by researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia and the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, paints the first global picture of the threat to the world’s remaining wildernesses — and the image is bleak.
“We’re on a threshold where whole systems could collapse, and the consequences of that would be catastrophic,” said James Allan, one of the study’s authors.
In the study, Allan and his colleagues urged the participants of a United Nations conference on biological diversity, scheduled for November in Egypt, to protect the world’s remaining wilderness areas.
“We cannot afford to lose more,” he said. “We must save it in its entirety.”
The parts of the world most in need of protecting are in some of the largest and most powerful nations, the study found. More than 70 percent of wilderness areas can be found in Russia, Canada, Australia, the United States and Brazil.
Wilderness, the study’s authors said, is defined as an area not subject to direct human use.
These areas are the only places on earth that have natural levels of biodiversity and can continue to sustain plant and animal species on an evolutionary time scale.
Moreover, these spots often act as the world’s lungs, storing carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.
“Wild areas provide a lot of life support systems for the planet. We’d lose those benefits and those ecosystems services, and the cost of having to replace that would be immense,” Allan said.
In 2016, the scientists mapped the world’s terrestrial wildernesses. This year, they did the same for the world’s oceans.
More of the oceans have been affected by human industry — including oil exploration, shipping and commercial fishing — than have the world’s land mass, the study found.
According to the study, “87 percent of the ocean has been modified by the direct effects of human activities.”
“This astonishing expansion of the aggressive human footprint is happening everywhere,” said William Laurance, a professor of environmental science at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, who was not involved in the study.
Healthy ecosystems are crucial in their own right for biodiversity and mitigating climate change, but more importantly, said the researchers, they are home for hundreds of millions of indigenous people, who rely on the wilderness to survive and thrive.
(Livia Albeck-Ripka, THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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According to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, ocean temperatures have been warming 60 percent more than outlined by the IPCC.
“The ocean warmed more than we thought, and that has serious implications for future policy,” said Laure Resplandy, a researcher at Princeton University’s Environmental Institute who co-authored the report. “This is definitely something that should and will be taken into account in the next report.”
The new study, authored by scientists at Princeton University, UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a number of other research centers around the world, is not the first to suggest oceans could be warmer than previously thought.
The report, however, relies on a novel approach that could revolutionize how scientists measure the ocean’s temperature. The findings would need to be reproduced in coming years to gain widespread acceptance throughout the scientific community.
According to the most recent IPCC report, climate emissions need to be cut by 20 percent by 2030 and then zeroed out by 2075 to keep warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
The new report found that emissions levels in coming decades would need to be 25 percent lower than laid out by the IPCC to keep warming under that 2-degree cap.
That’s because, according to climate scientists, even if the world slams the brakes on greenhouse gases tomorrow, rising ocean temperatures will continue to drive warming for several more decades. If those warming impacts are underestimated, humanity could easily skid past its goals for capping climate change.
“When you stop the greenhouse gases, the ocean continues to warm for like another two decades, and so everything continues to warm,” said Ralph Keeling, climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and co-author of the report. “Extra warming in the pipeline means it’s harder to stay below the climate targets.”
The Earth has already warmed by roughly 1 degree Celsius above preindustrial levels and is on track to warm 3 degrees by the end of the century, according to the IPCC.
Scientific consensus has found that the impacts of climate change are being felt today with stronger storms, drought and wildfire.
Even if human emissions are reduced to zero, previously emitted greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, will persist in the atmosphere for hundreds of years before dissipating — locking in some level of climate change for generations to come.
With 2 degrees of warming, the impacts to humanity could be catastrophic, all but wiping out the planet’s coral reefs, triggering severe food shortages and throwing hundreds of millions of people, especially in developing countries, into extreme poverty.
Much of the data on ocean temperatures currently relies on the Argo array — robotic devices that float at different depths, surfacing roughly every 10 days to transmit readings to satellites. There are about 3,800 such pieces of equipment in waters around the globe that provide the publicly available information.
However, the program, which started in 2000, has gaps in coverage. Even with national efforts providing hundreds of new floats a year, some parts of the ocean have too many while others have too few.
“It’s not that easy to reliably estimate the whole ocean heat from spot measurements,” Keeling said. “You have to model what’s happening in the gaps.”
Still, the system’s large number of direct measurements means any individual errors are averaged out, said Pelle Robbins, a researcher with the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s department of physical oceanography, who works with the Argo program.
“The power of Argo is that we have so many instruments that we’re not reliant on any one of them,” he said. “When you average over things, you beat down the error.”
By comparison, Resplandy and Keeling calculated heat based on the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide rising off the ocean. Filling round glass flasks with air from research stations in the Canadian Arctic, Tasmania and La Jolla, researchers analyzed the samples to determine the aggregate temperature of the ocean.
Their paper is an extensive effort to prove this new method and ensure the calculations are free of any scientific errors.
Robbins said the new approach is “bold,” but he still believes strongly in the accuracy of the Argo program.
“It’s an intriguing new clue,” he said, “but it’s certainly not the case that this study alone suggests that we have been systematically under-representing the oceanic warming.”
Resplandy said her discovery is not intended to replace the Argo system but rather to complement it. “In science, we want several methods to measure things, to have several methods that converge.”
Measurements of ocean temperatures are also used to determine impacts on marine life and sea-level rise. Oceans have absorbed about 90 percent of the excess energy produced by global warming.
(Joshua Emerson Smith, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Many of the deaths were due to trees crashing down on cars and pedestrians. The victims also included a woman who was buried by mud when a landslide invaded her home near Trento in northern Italy and a man who was slammed against rocks while wind surfing in Emilia-Romagna.
The other fatalities occurred in Naples, Liguria, Lazio and Veneto, where authorities found a 61-year-old man whose body had been swept more than a half a mile away from his car.
The windy weather created an exceptional tide in Venice on Monday, covering three-quarters of the city for the first time in a decade. On Tuesday, water levels topped only briefly the 31.5 inches that floods St. Mark’s Square, one of the city’s lowest points.
“It was the perfect storm during which adverse meteorological conditions contributed to the situation in the sea and winds,” civil protection chief Angelo Borrelli said.
Italian News agency ANSA reported damage to the mosaic floors inside St. Mark’s Basilica, where Monday’s flood waters reached a peak of 35 inches. The bronze metal doors and columns also sustained damage in what was the fifth most serious flood in the church’s 924-year history.
First Procurator Carlo Alberto Tesserin, who is charged with the basilica’s preservation, told ANSA the church “aged 20 years in one day.” He said that parts of the building, near the main entrance opposite the main altar, were under water for 16 hours.
Italian cultural officials were expected to arrive in Venice as soon as possible to inspect the damage, Rome’s top official in Venice, Fabio Carapezza Guttuso, told ANSA.
The wooden floors in the nearly 300-year-old Florian cafe nearby also received serious damage.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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"This report sounds a warning shot across our bow. Natural systems essential to our survival forests, oceans, and rivers remain in decline. Wildlife around the world continue to dwindle," said Carter Roberts, president and chief executive officer of WWF-US. "It reminds us we need to change course. It's time to balance our consumption with the needs of nature, and to protect the only planet that is our home."
The group's biennial report, released Monday, said it measured trends in 16,704 populations of 4,005 species of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish. The biggest declines were among creatures that live in fresh water, which faced an even bigger 83 percent drop. South and Central America were hit hardest as rain forests shrank, with 20 percent of the Amazon disappearing.
"Humanity and the way we feed, fuel, and finance our societies and economies is pushing nature and the services that power and sustain us to the brink," the report states.
Human activity has had an impact on oceans, forests, coral reefs, wetlands and mangroves, the report says. The globe has lost about half its shallow-water corals in the last 30 years.
"From rivers and rain forests, to mangroves and mountainsides, across the planet our work shows that wildlife abundance has declined dramatically since 1970," said Ken Norris, director of science at the Zoological Society of London, which provided one of three indexes used to write the report. "The statistics are scary, but all hope is not lost. We have an opportunity to design a new path forward that allows us to coexist sustainably with the wildlife we depend upon. Our report sets out an ambitious agenda for change."
As an example of the trend, Temple University biologist S. Blair Hedges reported Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that he and a team of researchers had found a near-total loss of Haiti's primary forest and a mass extinction of species. Hedges and his colleagues scrutinized aerial photography and Landsat images from 1988 to 2016, finding that forests covered 4.4 percent of Haiti's land in 1988. That plunged to 0.32 percent by 2016.
John Cecil, vice president for stewardship at New Jersey Audubon, said that he had not yet seen the World Wildlife Fund report, but that it was in line with previous research.
"We're finding a broad decline in species across the board," Cecil said, noting exceptions, such as white-tailed deer and Canada geese. "There are a lot of species out there not threatened with immediate extinction, but compared to 50 or 100 years ago, their populations have declined dramatically."
Previously, habitat loss was by far the biggest driver of species loss, he said. Now, he cites climate change and invasive species as among the top reasons. Both alter the habitat, for example, of birds who can no longer find the insects they once fed on or plant life they depended on because "they're all interconnected."
"The birds are failing where the non-native species are taking over," Cecil said. "We're seeing major changes. These global trends are consistent in the United States and East Coast."
More positively, the World Wildlife Fund report said habitat restoration and other actions have worked, citing population increases in giant pandas, mountain gorillas and endangered dolphins.
It singled out the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973 as helping "an estimated 99 percent of listed species avoid extinction."
Among other findings:
Habitat suitable for mammals dropped 22 percent from 1970 to 2010, with the greatest declines in the Caribbean, where it exceeded 60 percent.
The index measuring extinction risk for birds, mammals, amphibians, corals and cycads (an ancient group of plants) showed declines for all groups, with species moving more rapidly toward extinction.
Humans have already pushed some areas beyond their limits through climate change, loss of biosphere, nitrogen and phosphorous flows, and land-use change.
Ninety percent of the world's seabirds are estimated to have plastic fragments in their stomachs.
(Frank Kummer, The Philadelphia Inquirer)
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Tourists and residents alike donned high boots to navigate the streets of Venice after strong winds raised the water level more than 5 feet before receding. The water exceeded the raised walkways normally put out in flooded areas in Venice, forcing their removal. Transport officials closed the water bus system except to outlying islands because of the emergency.
Venice frequently floods when high winds push in water from the lagoon, but Monday’s levels were exceptional. The peak level was the highest reached since December 2008, according to Venice statistics.
Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said a series of underwater barriers that are being erected in the lagoon would have prevented the inundation. The project, nicknamed Moses, is long overdue, beset by cost overruns and corruption scandals.
Brugnaro said he had asked to talk with Premier Giuseppe Conte to underline the urgency of the project, which would raise barriers when the tide reaches 43 inches. That happens, on average, four times a year in Venice.
Residents and businesses typically reinforce their doors with metal or wooden panels to prevent water from entering the bottom floors, but photos on social media showed shop owners using water pumps this time to try to protect their wares.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Gov. Ralph Torres said on his office’s Facebook page that elections will be postponed until Nov. 13. Early voting will now begin Nov. 6.
The delay won’t affect a balance of power in Congress since the islands only have one non-voting member. In addition to the delegate to Congress, residents will vote on governor and other local races.
Tropical weather has affected other elections in the past. Some results in the 2014 Hawaii primary were delayed nearly a week as residents in two rural districts on the Big Island couldn’t vote on election day because of damage from Hurricane Iselle. A make-up primary for about 8,000 of those residents was held six days later.
Torres and his lieutenant governor running mate will suspend campaign events to focus on recovery, he wrote on Facebook.
“Exercising your right to vote is an important part of our democracy and our freedom,” he said. “Taking care of yourself and your family is even more important.”
At category 5, Super Typhoon Yutu was the strongest storm to hit any part of the U.S. this year.
Saipan, the largest island, is a popular tourist destination for travelers from South Korea and China. There were 3,200 tourists when Yutu hit, said governor spokesman Kevin Bautista.
The South Korean government flew most of their nationals out on military planes over the weekend.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The search for survivors continued after daybreak, with helicopters and teams with sniffer dogs scouring the rocky slopes near the Dead Sea in the Jordan Valley.
The body of a 12-year-old girl was found early on Friday, said the director general of the Civil Defense, Mustafa al-Basaiah. By late Friday, one person was still feared missing.
Thirteen of the dead and 26 of about three dozen people injured in Thursday’s flash floods were middle-school students, officials said. They said three of those killed, including two students, were Iraqis living in Amman.
The incident began early Thursday afternoon when 37 students from an Amman private school, along with seven adult chaperones, as well as other visitors were taking a break at hot springs several kilometers from the Dead Sea shores. Sudden heavy rains sent flash floods surging toward them from higher ground, sweeping them away, some as far as the Dead Sea, officials said.
An extensive rescue operation involving helicopters, divers, sniffer dogs and hundreds of searchers continued into the night Thursday and resumed Friday. Israel’s military said it also dispatched a rescue team at the request of the Jordanian government.
Brig. Gen. Farid al-Sharaa, a Civil Defense spokesman, said Friday that the flooding was one of the deadliest incidents in recent memory involving schoolchildren.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II canceled a planned working visit to Bahrain, initially scheduled for Friday. He was to have been the keynote speaker at a security conference. In a message on his Twitter account, the monarch said that “the pain of each father, mother and family is my pain.”
He also expressed anger toward those who he said “failed to take measures that could have prevented this painful incident.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Thirteen people escaped without injuries, said Brig. Gen. Farid al-Sharaa, speaking after nightfall as large spotlights illuminated the flooded area. Some survived by clinging to rocks, he said.
A dramatic rescue operation involving helicopters and divers continued into the night. Israel’s military said it dispatched a search and rescue team at the request of Jordan’s government.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The U.S. Geological Survey said the epicenter of the 6.8 magnitude quake was 22.3 miles southwest of Lithakia in the southern part of the island. It had a depth of 10 miles and struck at 2 a.m.
Greece’s fire service said no damage has been reported so far, but power has been cut off in the island capital of Zakynthos.
Greece lies in one of the world’s most earthquake-prone regions, with thousands of quakes recorded every year. But few cause injuries or significant damage.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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But what has happened is more insidious: The season has become one of the wettest autumns on record, causing five deaths in the Central Texas region and tainting an entire city’s water supply.
This city of 1 million people took the unprecedented step this week of asking residents to boil drinking water for three minutes to kill any bacteria, the culmination of a series of floods that have deposited large amounts of sediment from the soil, as well as oil and other pollutants into its water system, overwhelming its water-treatment plants.
The warning intensified Tuesday, when the contamination triggered a state-mandated boil-water notice.
Texas’s rainfall this autumn has been historic: Since Sept. 1, Central Texas has gotten anywhere from 200 to 500 percent of the normal rainfall it receives, according to the National Weather Service. Fifteen inches of rain have fallen in Austin, marking the 18th wettest fall.
“Most of the state was in drought,” said meteorologist Brett Williams. “And that’s basically all been wiped out in a matter of several weeks.”
The floods led to the deaths of four people who were swept away from an RV park in Junction, a town about 140 miles west of Austin. A fifth person died in a low water crossing.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has put the State Operations Center on heightened readiness as floods this month rampaged through the nearby Hill Country, washing away a bridge and ripping into homes.
The dramatic measures reflect the challenges to a city familiar with the historic hazards of sudden flooding that have been exacerbated by unusual weather patterns, creating a high-velocity torrent that swept across a vast rural region and kept sediment suspended as it raced toward the city.
“Because of changes in the climate, big floods have become more frequent,” said Raymond Slade, an Austin-based hydrologist.
Residents who in the past left water worries to engineers and other experts are now feeling the effects on their daily lives. On Wednesday, Austin opened seven water distribution centers for them. “We’re giving out water to people who can’t boil it or can’t afford any more bottled water,” said Bryce Bencivengo, a spokesman for the city. Bencivengo said most of the water was purchased, some was donated and some was provided by the state.
Wearing a neon yellow vest and holding a rainbow umbrella, Robert Aleman stood next to a blue sign bearing the words “WATER AGUA,” directing motorists to a distribution site in southwest Austin, where city employees from a smattering of departments loaded cases of bottled water into vehicles.
Sabrina Lau Marquez, 37, came to pick up water with her mother. She is used to boiling water for formula for her 1-year-old son, she said, but she was grateful for the bottles as a backup. Originally from New York City, Marquez said she was impressed by the civility of her fellow residents.
“If this was New York, there would have been a riot already,” she said.
The distribution centers will be open until the boil-water advisory is lifted.
Help in addressing Austin’s water crisis has come from various places. A few breweries gave out water they had boiled to brew beer, and several businesses handed out free water, too.
Since Monday, the San Antonio Water System has supplied water for institutions including the Travis County Jail, the city’s animal shelter and the Emergency Operations Center, Bencivengo said. More bulk water from San Antonio and trucks from Fort Worth were expected to arrive soon.
Central Texans know their floods. Flash Flood Alley, as this area is sometimes called, is one of the most flood-prone regions of the country thanks to a combination of geography and geology. Heavy rainfall is created when moisture from the ocean meets the cooler mountain air of the Hill Country. The rain swooshes rapidly off the granite and limestone landscape, funneling into mounting torrents as it rushes downward.
Among the most memorable floods was in 1935, when the Colorado River’s swelling tributaries destroyed the bridge in Llano before splitting Austin in two and rushing, unhindered, toward the sea.
The response has been to create a massive chain of dams that form the Highland Lakes. They act as drinking-water reservoirs, provide a source of hydroelectric power and are part of a system of waterways that course like veins through Central Texas, supporting life and offering recreational opportunities. Lakefront property is a coveted escape from the summer heat.
(Eva Ruth Moravec & Frances Sellers, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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A strengthening Super Typhoon Yutu, with sustained winds of 180 mph, is on a trek through the Northern Mariana Islands.
The storm is roaring across the islands of Saipan and Tinian, both U.S. territories, and will become among the most intense storms — if not the most — on record to impact U.S. soil.
The Joint Typhoon Warning Center now considers Yutu an incredibly strong Category 5 equivalent typhoon. Because reconnaissance planes do not fly in the western Pacific to directly measure conditions inside storms, the intensity of 180 mph, or 155 knots, is based on estimates from satellites.
Meteorologist Ryan Maue of WeatherModels.com tweeted that the storm would be a “Category 6 if Atlantic scale was extrapolated.”
According to Phil Klotzbach of The Washington Post, Yutu is “tied with Mangkhut for the strongest storm of the 2018 season to date.” If it strengthens further, Yutu will rank among the all-time most intense storms ever recorded.
“This is an historically significant event,” tweeted Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
While the western Pacific is where the world’s most powerful tropical cyclones tend to form, Yutu’s strength is likely to be unprecedented in modern history for the Northern Mariana Islands. The islands are home to slightly more than 50,000 people, a majority of whom live in the largest, northernmost island of Saipan.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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There were no immediate reports of deaths or missing people, but the storm’s 120 mph winds damaged a hospital, knocked out power, toppled wood-shack homes and ripped metal roofing off other houses in the Sinaloa state municipality of Escuinapa when it came ashore Tuesday evening.
Nearly 102,000 homes in Sinaloa lost electricity after the storm made landfall, the head of the state electricity company said on Twitter. Service had been restored to about 62 percent of those.
The worst damage was expected to be in the handful of coastal communities that were cut off by road and without communications. Workers were trying to remove toppled power poles and trees blocking the roads.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Norwegian Cruise Line vessel is the largest cruise ship to ever dock in San Diego, which is more accustomed to accommodating medium-sized ships.
The largest vessels that typically call on San Diego are from Princess Cruises — the Grand Princess, Star Princess and Ruby Princess — which are all Grand class vessels that hold about 3,000 passengers, according to the Port of San Diego.
The original itinerary for the Bliss, which departed Saturday from Los Angeles, included stops in Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas. A revised itinerary had the ship stopping first in San Francisco on Monday, followed by the brief stopover in San Diego on Wednesday. It is scheduled to arrive in Ensenada today and return to Los Angeles on Saturday.
The hurricane that forced the diversion was later downgraded to a tropical storm.
“Our onboard team is working to ensure the best vacation experience possible given these weather-related changes,” the cruise line said in a statement Wednesday. “We will continue to closely monitor the storms and provide additional updates as they become available. We apologize for any inconvenience or disappointment these weather-related changes may cause.”
(Lori Weisberg, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an evening bulletin that the eye of the dangerous Category 3 storm was about to make landfall, and little variation in strength was expected beforehand.
It warned people not to venture outside during “the relative calm of the eye, since hazardous winds will suddenly increase” as it passes.
The storm’s core was hitting a stretch of coast about 50 miles south of Mazatlan, a resort city that is home to high-rise hotels and about 500,000 people, including many U.S. and Canadian expatriates.
Alberto Hernandez, a hotel worker in Teacapan, close to where the storm was making landfall, expressed confidence that the building would hold up. He and his son, who also works at the hotel, were staying on the job, though the rest of his family had left the area.
“We’ve had rain all day. There is nobody in the streets. Everything is closed,” Hernandez said. “But not everyone wanted to leave, even though authorities made it clear that he who stays does so at his own peril.”
Torrential rains began in the afternoon, and emergency officials said they evacuated more than 4,250 people in coastal towns and set up 58 shelters ahead of the dangerous storm.
The storm also battered the Islas Marias, a group of Mexican islands about 60 miles off the mainland that include a nature preserve and a federal prison. Federal authorities declined to comment on precautions that were taken at the prison, citing security concerns.
As Willa closed in, the beach in Mazatlan almost disappeared, with waves slamming against the coastal boulevard under looming black clouds.
The federal government issued a decree of “extraordinary emergency” for 19 municipalities in Nayarit and Sinaloa states.
( ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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After briefly reaching Category 5 strength, the storm’s maximum sustained winds weakened slightly to Category 4 by the evening. But it remained “extremely dangerous” and was expected to bring “life-threatening storm surge, wind and rainfall” to parts of west-central and southwestern Mexico ahead of today’s expected landfall, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Hotel workers started taping up windows, and officials began evacuating thousands of people and shuttered schools in a low-lying landscape where towns sit amid farmland tucked between the sea and lagoons. A decree of “extraordinary emergency” was issued for 19 municipalities in Nayarit and Sinaloa states, the federal Interior Department announced.
The U.S. hurricane center warned that Willa could bring 6 to 12 inches of rain — with up to 18 inches in some places — to parts of Jalisco, Nayarit and Sinaloa states.
( ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an evening bulletin that the storm was “forecast to produce life-threatening storm surge, wind and rainfall over portions of southwestern and west-central Mexico beginning on Tuesday.”
A hurricane watch was posted for a stretch of shore between San Blas and Mazatlan, while a tropical storm warning was in effect from Playa Perula to San Blas. Hurricane force winds extended out 25 miles from the storm’s core and tropical storm force winds were up to 80 miles out.
Willa was about 225 miles south-southwest of Cabo Corrientes with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph. It was moving to the north-northwest at 6 mph, but a turn toward the north was likely during the night or today.
The hurricane center forecast 5 to 10 inches of rain across parts of western Jalisco, western Nayarit and southern Sinaloa states, with lesser amounts falling as it moves inland.
Meanwhile, a weakening Tropical Storm Vicente appeared to be a less potent threat farther south. Forecasters said it was expected to weaken into a tropical depression overnight, while remaining just offshore or near Mexico’s southern Pacific coast through Tuesday morning.
Its core was about 230 miles southeast of Acapulco with top sustained winds of 40 mph. The hurricane center said it could produce 3 to 6 inches of rain in parts of Guerrero, Michoacan, Colima and Jalisco states.
( ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“I just know I don’t feel real, and home doesn’t feel like home at all,” Cross said.
Health workers say they are seeing signs of mental problems in residents more than a week after Michael, and the issues could continue as a short-term disaster turns into a long-term recovery that will take years.
Tony Averbuch, who leads a disaster medical assistance team that is seeing 80 to 100 patients daily in tents set up in a parking lot of the badly damaged Bay Medical Sacred Heart hospital, said some people are showing signs of fraying.
It’s not hard to imagine: Just getting to the treatment site involves navigating streets with roadblocks and fallen utility lines, and the hospital building itself was ripped open by Michael’s powerful winds.
“In any kind of disaster, what we find is that people have been exposed to circumstances that are well beyond what they normally deal with day to day,” said Averbuch, of Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
For Cross, that meant getting new prescriptions for medicine she takes for depression.
“We’re in shock. This is a lot. It’s heartbreaking,” she said.
Signs of trauma aren’t a surprise for those who studied people after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Damage in Mexico Beach was similar to that in southern Mississippi, where entire communities were flattened by wind and storm surge, and Panama City could take years to rebuild, as did parts of New Orleans after the metro area flooded.
( ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Daily life is a series of fears and frustrations, both large and small, for thousands of people living on the edge, more than a week after Hurricane Michael flattened thousands of square miles in the hurricane zone of the Florida Panhandle.
Erin Maxwell waited in line for fuel for more than an hour Thursday at a gasoline station that never opened. “I’m tired and want to go to sleep. I don’t want to wait in another line,” said Maxwell, eyes closed and her head tilted back on the seat.
Meanwhile, husband Mickey Calhoun fretted over the fate of his mother, Anita Newsome, 74. The retired sheriff’s deputy was last seen when officers took her to a hospital the day before Michael made landfall, her son said.
“We can’t find her or get word anywhere,” said an exasperated Calhoun, 54.
Michael slammed into Florida’s Panhandle with 155 mph winds on Oct. 10 and retained hurricane-force winds deep into southern Georgia, also affecting the Carolinas and Virginia. Florida authorities on Thursday say the storm killed 24 people in the state, bringing the overall death toll to at least 34.
With power still out in much of the Panhandle and thousands of buildings destroyed or damaged by Michael, almost nothing is normal.
Driving times are doubled or tripled because roads are clogged with police and fire vehicles, utility trucks, returning residents and people seeking help. Lines are long outside a discount store where more than two dozen insurance, financial services and cellphone companies have set up in a temporary village of open-sided tents erected on asphalt.
( ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In the end, the area was the beneficiary of timing and topography.
The National Weather Service had expected the pressure system that produced the winds to slump a little farther south and cause “potentially damaging” Santa Anas to roar out of the county’s canyons. A red-flag fire weather warning was issued. And on Sunday night, forecasters reminded the public that the winds could rush out of the canyons at the south end of Camp Pendleton Monday morning, making it difficult to drive on nearby Interstate 5.
The winds did gust to 35 mph at the North County coast, and one station near Valley Center recorded a gust of 68 mph. But the winds were expected to be more widespread and even stronger in spots — possibly hitting hurricane force at Sill Hill near Cuyamaca Peak.
But the weather system arrived a little early, a little out of place, and instead sent hot blasts through the north-facing canyons of San Diego, the northeast-facing canyons of Orange County and parts of the Inland Empire.
In Tustin, a eucalyptus tree snapped and fell on a vehicle, killing a 34-year-old woman as she was pulling out of her carport at an apartment complex.
In Irvine, an enormous pine tree fell across Barranca Parkway, landing on a Mazda CX-9. The tree’s branches crushed much of the car, but the driver emerged unhurt.
“Those winds could have happened down here,” said Mark Moede, a weather service forecaster.
The threat of trouble seemed imminent on Sunday night. SDG&E decided to temporarily turn off power to about 360 customers in the Palomar Mountain area, concerned that downed power lines could spark a wildfire.
The utility also put out a warning Sunday night, alerting 4,700 customers in the backcountry mountains and foothills that their power could be shut off as a safety measure.
The weather service was equally concerned, issuing a red-flag warning for North County and East County, and a wind advisory for the coast.
In Northern California, Pacific Gas & Electric began cutting power Sunday night to tens of thousands of customers after the weather service warned of extreme fire danger across the state.
By late Sunday, the utility had shut off power to more than 17,000 customers in Lake, Napa and Sonoma counties. An additional 45,000 customers in the Sierra foothills lost power in the counties of Amador, El Dorado, Placer and Calaveras. Service was expected to be restored for some customers Monday night, according to the utility, though some residents won’t get electricity back until today.
“We know how much our customers rely on electric service, and we have made the decision to turn off power as a last resort given the extreme fire danger conditions these communities are experiencing,” PG&E spokesman Pat Hogan said.
PG&E said it began notifying affected customers on Saturday about possible outages. However, many said Monday they had received little or no notice.
Stewart Munnerlyn scrambled to find generators to save $8,000 worth of ice cream at his creamery shop in Pine Grove, about 55 miles east of Sacramento. Munnerlyn said he is in Virginia visiting a sick relative and received three text messages Sunday night from PG&E saying it might cut power, but he didn't know it actually happened until a friend called him.
“They knew what they were going to do, obviously,” Munnerlyn said. “We weren’t given enough notice to properly prepare.”
PG&E spokeswoman Melissa Subottin said power was also cut to hospitals and other medical providers that are required to have backup power sources. PG&E officials visited 4,400 medical customers in the affected areas to personally warn them of the outages, she said.
Utility companies and fire agencies around the state have been on high alert as powerful winds paired with bone-dry vegetation and low humidity created welcoming conditions for wildfires.
Last weekend’s brief rainstorm in the region only slightly increased the moisture content for small and dead vegetation, which means as winds pick up, the plants will quickly dry out again, according to weather service forecasters.
“Winds don’t start fires, but if one ignites, the winds certainly are going to promote that fire and make it difficult to fight,” said Bonnie Bartling, a weather specialist with the National Weather Service.
(Gary Robbins & Brittany Meiling, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; LOS ANGELES TIMES; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Initially, the French Interior Ministry reported 13 deaths from the floods in the Aude region. French officials lowered the number to 10 later, saying some victims had been counted twice. The Interior Ministry and Aude officials put it at 12 after two more bodies were recovered in the towns of Trebes and Carcassonne.
At least six of the deaths happened in Trebes, Mayor Eric Menassi said. Eight people were injured throughout the affected region, and one person was missing as of late Monday.
The River Aude that flows through towns such as Carcassonne and Trebes was among the waterways that overflowed from the exceptional rainfall, and the flooding was the region’s worst in more than a century, the French agency that monitors flood risks said.
In the town of Villegailhenc, resident Ines Siguet said floodwaters rose so quickly after the rains swept in from the Mediterranean that residents fled to rooftops. Siguet, 17, posted video of a ripped-up road where a bridge used to stand.
Residents described violent walls of water that crashed through doors and quickly inundated homes. A Villegailhenc resident described for French news channel BFMTV how little time there was to escape.
“It was raining, raining, raining, and my wife says to me, ‘We can hear water, switch on the light.’ So I switch on the light and nothing, it’s pitch black. So, what do I do? I get up and my feet are in water. I go to the kitchen, I open the door. Impossible. I am trying hard, and then the water rose up to my belly,” the resident, who was identified only as Jean-Marc, told the broadcaster. “We took what we could and went to the attic.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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More victims were likely to be discovered when rescue reams access all the affected areas in the foothills of Mount Elgon, said Red Cross spokeswoman Irene Nakasiita.
People were killed by boulders and chunks of mud rolling down hills following a sustained period of heavy rains Thursday afternoon in the district of Bududa. Houses were destroyed in at least three villages, and in some cases only body parts of the victims have been recovered from the mud, she said.
“We expect the death toll to increase as some people are still missing,” she said. “It's really bad.”
A river burst its banks, destroying a bridge and threatening settlements nearby, according to Martin Owor, a government commissioner in charge of disaster management.
At least 31 bodies had been recovered and identified, Owor said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Rescue teams combed a region razed by the Category 4 hurricane that flattened blocks, collapsed buildings and left infrastructure crippled. Some of the hardest-hit communities have yet to report any fatalities, and although officials said they hoped they would find survivors, a resigned gloom was setting in throughout the disaster zone.
The violent storm that ripped through the region finally moved off the coast over the Atlantic Ocean overnight. It is now known as Post-Tropical Cyclone Michael.
Michael made landfall in the Florida Panhandle on Wednesday and charged north through Georgia and into the Carolinas and Virginia, wreaking havoc and causing emergencies.
Authorities have warned that the storm’s death toll is likely to climb as they are able to head into the areas — such as Mexico Beach, Fla. — that endured particular damage this week. FEMA Administrator William “Brock” Long said he believed that the toll would increase, particularly as first responders got into places like Mexico Beach.
“Unfortunately, I think you’re going to see that number climb,” Long said Friday morning. “I hope we don’t see it climb dramatically. But I have reasons to believe — we haven’t gotten into some of the hardest hit areas, particularly the Mexico Beach area.”
Long said the storm posed a direct threat to people who ignored warnings and evacuation orders on the coastlines, particularly given the threat of storm surge capable of tearing apart and flattening buildings.
“Very few people live to tell what it’s like to experience storm surge,” he said.
Long asked people in the areas directly hit by the storm to be patient for what is poised to be a long recovery, because it will take time to assess the damage and confront the destruction.
“This is going to be a frustrating event,” he said. “It takes time to put things back together.”
Long, who plans to head to the area hit by the storm over the weekend, said that in Florida’s Bay County — home to Mexico Beach — “it’s not safe to return,” given the downed power lines and other debris littering the region.
Long said that emergency responders were focused Friday on search-and-rescue efforts in Mexico Beach and other hard-hit areas, including inland communities. Emergency responders were expected to complete all of the “initial” search-and-rescue missions by the end of Friday in both Florida and Georgia, he said.
The road to Mexico Beach became passable Thursday morning, less than 24 hours after Michael made landfall, and it became evident that few communities had suffered more. The town of about 2,000 permanent residents swells to as many as 14,000 in July, and is known for having a relaxed feel compared with the brash tourist strips of Panama City Beach or the tony nearby beach developments of Alys Beach or Seaside.
“So many lives have been changed forever, so many families have lost everything,” Gov. Rick Scott of Florida said. “Homes are gone, businesses are gone. Roads and infrastructure along the storm’s path have been destroyed. This hurricane was an absolute monster.”
Long was visibly frustrated over reports that residents of the Panhandle coast had ignored state and federal warnings to evacuate before the hurricane arrived. He said that an estimated 13-foot storm surge, not high winds, had reduced homes to piles of wood and debris.
The homes that were still intact, at least partly, were most likely built higher off the ground, allowing the rushing ocean to pass underneath, Long said. “There’s a lesson here about building codes.”
He asked for patience, especially in the area around Mexico Beach and Panama City as workers tried to clear streets, safely remove downed power lines, and secure ruptured gas lines.
One challenge has been communication, Long said, and officials are working to allow wireless companies access to the areas to restore cellphone service. It may be some time, he said, before people can return home.
“Bottom line, it was one of the most powerful storms the country has seen since 1851,” he said. “It’s going to be a long time before they can get back.”
Meanwhile, government officials were racing to find a way to get food and water to people in need in the Panhandle.
“When is anybody coming to do something?” said Trenisa Smith, 48, a school bus driver in Springfield who had been giving herself insulin treatments in the back of her car. “I’m worried every day.”
In the immediate aftermath of the storm, it was becoming clear that many residents were not only left without a habitable home, but also without adequate stockpiles of food.
Some residents were doing what they could to find food or water, including rummaging through stores that had been damaged. One man said he had been driving to the nearby bay and filling buckets with water to flush the toilets.
Carl Jones, 43, said that he had seen no hint of government response — “only thing is the police came and said you’ve got to be inside” at nightfall, he said.
While the coastal devastation had become obvious by Friday, some disaster experts were most concerned about the conditions farther inland.
Andrew Schroeder, research and analytics director for Direct Relief, said data analyzed by his humanitarian organization showed that people from the coasts had evacuated relatively short distances, to areas that the storm also raked with high winds and cut power lines.
“These are some of the most socially vulnerable places in the entire country,” Schroeder said, low-income counties with high proportions of older adults, and many people with disabilities and chronic illnesses.
These inland areas were “where the focus has to be,” he said. But assessing the impact will take time. “You only find out about a lot of this stuff after the peak of the attention curve.”
(U-T NEWS SERVICES; THE WASHINGTON POST; THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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“This one just looks like a bomb dropped,” said Clyde Cain, who is with the Louisiana Cajun Navy, a group of volunteer search-and-rescue teams that went to Florida to help in Michael’s wake, just as they did last month during Hurricane Florence in the Carolinas.
Michael was downgraded to a tropical storm Thursday as it sped its way northeast through Georgia and the Carolinas on a path out into the Atlantic Ocean. But its relatively short assault on Florida’s Gulf Coast was devastating.
Tiny Mexico Beach, Fla., a town of about 1,190 residents, appeared to have been almost destroyed by Michael’s 155 mph impact — just 1 mph short of a Category 5 storm. Aerial footage showed much of the seaside enclave reduced to kindling, trees sheared off just above the ground, tangles of power lines strewn in the streets and cars and boats piled up like rubbish. Entire blocks seemed essentially empty, with houses and everything else that had been on them smashed by storm surge and wind and presumably washed out to sea.
“This is not stuff that you just put back together overnight,” said William “Brock” Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Official states of emergency were declared in Alabama, Georgia and as far north as the Carolinas and Virginia, which are still reeling from the devastating floods of Florence. Hundreds of thousands of people remained without power late Thursday across the Southeast, and some areas were essentially cut off more than 24 hours after Michael made landfall, with roads blocked by massive trees and cellphone service completely out.
The rain and wind from the storm caused flooding and power outages in Virginia cities along the North Carolina border and in the central part of the state. Nearly 145,000 Virginians were without power Thursday evening, according to the state’s Department of Emergency Management.
Curtis Locus, a Florida Department of Transportation worker, said the damage he had seen across the Panhandle is unprecedented.
“This was a community in the middle of the forest. Now the forest is gone, and so is the community,” Locus said. “It’s a beautiful place. . . . This is Party Town, USA. Now it’s Devastated Town, USA. Everything along the coastline was devastated like a war zone.”
In Springfield and nearby Panama City, apartment buildings are roofless, gas station awnings were twisted beyond recognition, businesses collapsed, metal posts as thick as tree trucks were folded in half, and billboards were blown onto homes or crushed cars.
“We didn’t figure it was going to be this bad,” said Mike Davis, 56, sitting on the sidewalk outside Oasis Liquor, a store on Panama City’s 15th Street, staring dully at the debris around him. “This is devastating.”
Davis lives two blocks away and rode out the storm with his family. He decided to stay because he didn’t think the storm would be very bad. When he woke Tuesday and heard that Michael had intensified, it was too late to leave.
“They ain’t going to fix this overnight,” he said. “It’s going to take a long time.”
Michael was as powerful as it was unexpected, careening across the Gulf of Mexico and intensifying rapidly into a powerhouse. The night before the hurricane hit, police told Georgia Wells, 35, that she and her family were in a safe zone in Springfield in a public housing complex. By Wednesday afternoon, shortly before landfall, it was clear they were in terrible danger.
Her six children, mother and brother gathered in the smallest bedroom of their apartment. As the winds howled and shrieked — Wells said it sounded more like a tornado than a hurricane — the drywall began to tear apart, the roof started to collapse and water flooded in. They ran for cover in a bathroom. The apartment was destroyed.
“We all thought we were going to die; that’s how bad it was,” she said.
Wells, a single mother who works as a manager at a local McDonald’s, lost most of her belongings.
Families that live in the complex slept in cars and on benches Wednesday night and were planning to do the same Thursday.
“Everyone in this place has nowhere to go. We’re stuck,” Wells said. “We don’t have money to go anywhere.”
Just west in Panama City Beach, a resort area popular with retirees and spring-breakers, the area was nearly wiped away by the wind and walls of water, with guardrails and roofs twisted into ribbons. The storm toppled 30-ton train cars.
Michael also pummeled Tyndall Air Force base, set directly on the shoreline between Panama City and Mexico Beach, causing “widespread roof damage to nearly every home and leaving the base closed until further notice,” officials said in a statement.
The base’s 600 families had been evacuated Monday, and many were taken to shelters to ride out the storm. No injuries had been reported there as of late Thursday.
Aerial footage showed buildings destroyed and a parking lot looking like a salvage yard filled with overturned RVs and trucks. A display of an F-15 fighter jet at the base entrance was torn from its base and flipped upside down.
Rescuers continued to search for survivors and victims of the storm on Thursday as authorities warned that the death toll could rise.
(Luz Lazo & Mark Berman, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Now it lies in splinters.
Hit head-on by Hurricane Michael, numerous homes in this resort town of about 1,190 people were shattered or ripped from their foundations. Boats were tossed like toys. The streets closest to the water looked as if a bomb had gone off.
What the 9-foot storm surge didn’t destroy, the 155 mph winds finished off.
Now, rescuers and residents are struggling to get into the ground-zero town to assess the damage and search for the hundreds of people believed to have stayed behind.
Mishelle McPherson and her ex-husband looked for the elderly mother of a friend on Thursday. The woman lived in a small cinderblock house about 150 yards from the Gulf and thought she would be OK.
Her home was reduced to crumbled blocks and pieces of floor tile.
“Aggy! Aggy!” McPherson yelled. The only sound that came back was the echo from the half-demolished building and the pounding of the surf.
“Do you think her body would be here? Do you think it would have floated away?” she asked.
As she walked down the street, McPherson pointed out pieces of what had been the woman’s house: “That’s the blade from her ceiling fan. That’s her floor tile.”
Drone footage of Mexico Beach showed a stunning landscape of devastation. Few structures were unscathed.
John Humphress, a storm chaser and drone pilot, arrived around 5 p.m. Wednesday, a few hours after Michael slammed into the coastline. He had one word to describe what he saw: “apocalyptic.”
State officials said 285 people in Mexico Beach had refused to leave ahead of the hurricane despite a mandatory evacuation order.
A National Guard team went into the area and found 20 survivors overnight, and more crews were pushing into the stricken zone on Thursday. The fate of many other residents was unknown, authorities said.
Humphress, who spent the night in his truck on a bridge near Mexico Beach, said he didn’t see any bodies.
A Florida hurricane expert said the footage of buildings in Mexico Beach stripped to their concrete foundations was no surprise.
“This is what we expect with storm surge and high wind events,” said Craig Fugate, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a former emergency management chief for the state of Florida.
Florida has some of the most stringent hurricane building codes in the country, but they apply only to new or retrofitted structures.
Mexico Beach is on the west end of what is sometimes called Florida’s Forgotten Coast, so named because it is not heavily developed like many of the state’s other shoreline areas, with their lavish homes and high-rise condos and hotels.
(Jay Reeves & Tamara Lush, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Two British citizens and a Dutch woman were among the victims found Wednesday, one day after the rainfall, a spokeswoman with the regional emergency service said.
The only missing person as of Wednesday afternoon was a 5-year-old boy who disappeared with his mother. The Civil Guard found the mother's body. Before floodwaters dragged her and the boy away, the woman reportedly managed to bring her 7-year-old daughter out of their vehicle, according to the Civil Guard.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Indonesia’s disaster agency said the nighttime quake was centered at sea, 34 miles northeast of Situbondo city, and also felt in Lombok. The U.S. Geological Survey said it had a 6.0 magnitude.
The agency said the worst affected area was in Sumenep district, East Java where three people died in one village and several homes were damaged.
Some tourists and residents on Bali went outdoors as a precaution but then back to sleep when there was no tsunami warning.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Supercharged by abnormally warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the Category 4 storm crashed ashore in the early afternoon near Mexico Beach, a tourist town about midway along the Panhandle, a 200-mile stretch of white-sand beach resorts, fishing towns and military bases.
After it ravaged the Panhandle, Michael barreled into south Georgia as a Category 3 hurricane — the most powerful ever recorded for that part of the neighboring state. It later weakened to a Category 1 hurricane, and there were reports it spawned tornadoes.
News media in Macon reported that by early evening Wednesday, tornadoes had touched down near Roberta, Perry and Fort Valley in Georgia’s mid-state region.
After roaring through Georgia, Michael is expected to then cross the Carolinas and move off the Mid-Atlantic coast by early Friday.
In north Florida, Michael battered the shoreline with sideways rain, powerful gusts and crashing waves, swamping streets and docks, flattening trees, shredding awnings and peeling away shingles. It set off transformer explosions and knocked out power to more than 388,000 homes and businesses.
A Panhandle man was killed by a tree that toppled on a home, Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Anglie Hightower said. But she added emergency crews trying to reach the home were hampered by downed trees and debris blocking roadways. The man wasn’t immediately identified.
Emergency officials said late Wednesday that the toll of damage and death was expected to grow.
Damage in Panama City was extensive, with broken and uprooted trees and power lines down nearly everywhere. Roofs were peeled off and homes split open by fallen trees. Twisted street signs lay on the ground. Residents emerged in the early evening to assess damage when rains stopped, though skies were still overcast and windy.
Vance Beu, 29, was staying with his mother at her apartment, Spring Gate Apartments, a small complex of single-story wood frame apartment buildings. A pine tree punched a hole in their roof and he said the roar of the storm sounded like a jet engine as the winds accelerated. Their ears even popped as the barometric pressure dropped.
“It was terrifying, honestly. There was a lot of noise. We thought the windows were going to break at any time. We had the inside windows kind of barricaded in with mattresses,” Beu said.
Kaylee O’Brien was crying as she sorted through the remains of the apartment she shared with three roommates at Whispering Pines apartments, where the smell of broken pine trees was thick in the air. Four pine trees had crashed through the roof of her apartment, nearly hitting two people. Her 1-year-old Siamese cat, Molly, was missing.
“We haven’t seen her since the tree hit the den. She’s my baby,” O’Brien said, her face wet with tears.
In Apalachicola, Sally Crown rode out the storm in her house. The worst damage — she thought — was in her yard. Multiple trees were down. But after the storm passed, she drove to check on the cafe she manages and saw breathtaking destruction.
“It’s absolutely horrendous. Catastrophic,” Crown said. “There’s flooding. Boats on the highway. A house on the highway. Houses that have been there forever are just shattered.”
Gov. Rick Scott announced soon after the powerful eye had swept inland that “aggressive” search and rescue efforts would get under way as conditions allow. He urged people to stay off debris-littered roads.
“If you and your family made it through the storm safely, the worst thing you could do now is act foolishly,” he said.
The governor said the state had heard reports of two “devastating” tornadoes in Gadsden County and that they could still be possible elsewhere.
Michael was a meteorological brute that sprang quickly from a weekend tropical depression, going from a Category 2 on Tuesday to a Category 4 by the time it came ashore. It was the most powerful hurricane on record to hit the Panhandle.
More than 375,000 people up and down the Gulf Coast were urged to evacuate as Michael closed in. But the fast-moving, fast-strengthening storm didn’t give people much time to prepare, and emergency authorities lamented that many ignored the warnings and seemed to think they could ride it out.
Some residents, however, said they lacked the financial resources to escape Michael’s path, lamenting that they couldn’t afford to fill their cars’ gas tanks let alone pay for multiple nights at a motel.
Diane Farris, 57, and her son walked to a high school-turned-shelter near their Panama City home, where about 1,100 people crammed into a space meant for about half as many. Neither she nor her son had any way to communicate because their lone cellphone got wet and quit working.
“I’m worried about my daughter and grandbaby. I don’t know where they are. You know, that’s hard,” she said, choking back tears.
In Panama City, plywood and metal flew off the front of a Holiday Inn Express. Part of the awning fell and shattered the glass front door of the hotel, and the rest of the awning wound up on vehicles parked below it.
“Oh my God, what are we seeing?” said evacuee Rachel Franklin, her mouth hanging open. The hotel swimming pool had whitecaps.
Hurricane-force winds extended up to 45 miles from Michael’s center at the height of the storm. Forecasters said rainfall could reach up to a foot in spots. And then there was the life-threatening storm surge.
A water-level station in Apalachicola, close to where Michael came ashore, reported a surge of nearly 8 feet.
Based on its internal barometric pressure, Michael was the third most powerful hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland, behind the unnamed Labor Day storm of 1935 and Camille in 1969. Based on wind speed, it was the fourth-strongest, behind the Labor Day storm (184 mph), Camille and Andrew in 1992.
Forecasters said it would unleash damaging wind and rain all the way into the Carolinas, which are still recovering from Hurricane Florence’s epic flooding. They said Michael is expected to become a tropical storm sometime this morning.
At the White House, President Donald Trump said, “God bless everyone because it’s going to be a rough one. A very dangerous one.”
Later, at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Trump told supporters he was “totally focused” on the hurricane.
“All of America sends its unwavering love and support,” he said at the rally. “We will spare no effort, no expense, no resource to help these great fellow citizens of ours who are going through a tough time right now.”
In Mexico Beach, population 1,000, the storm shattered homes, leaving floating piles of lumber. The lead-gray water was so high that roofs were about all that could be seen of many homes.
Hours earlier, meteorologists watched satellite imagery in complete awe as the storm intensified.
“We are in new territory,” National Hurricane Center Meteorologist Dennis Feltgen wrote on Facebook. “The historical record, going back to 1851, finds no Category 4 hurricane ever hitting the Florida panhandle.”
The storm is likely to fire up the debate over global warming.
Scientists say global warming is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme weather, such as storms, droughts, floods and fires. But without extensive study, they cannot directly link a single weather event to the changing climate.
(Jay Reeves & Brendan Farrington, ASSOCIATED PRESS; THE MIAMI HERALD)
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Drawing energy from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the storm strengthened rapidly into a potentially devastating Category 3 during the day and just kept getting stronger in the hours ahead of an expected landfall today. Forecasters said Michael was expected to strengthen further overnight and become a Category 4 brute before slamming ashore.
The core of the storm was expected to crash ashore around midday today near Panama City Beach, along a lightly populated stretch of fishing villages and white-sand spring-break beaches.
Florida officials said that roughly 375,000 people have been urged or ordered to evacuate. Those evacuations stretched across 22 counties from the Florida Panhandle down into north central Florida. But there were fears, however, that some people weren’t heeding the calls to get out despite predictions of a life-threatening storm surge.
Franklin County Sheriff A.J. Smith said his deputies had gone door to door in some places along the coast to urge people to evacuate. “We have done everything we can as far as getting the word out,” Smith said. “Hopefully more people will leave.”
While Florence took five days between the time it turned into a hurricane and the moment it rolled into the Carolinas, Michael gave Florida what amounted to two days’ notice. It developed into a hurricane on Monday, and by Tuesday, more than 180,000 people were already under mandatory evacuation orders.
“We don’t know if it’s going to wipe out our house or not,” Jason McDonald, of Panama City, said as he and his wife drove north into Alabama with their two children, ages 5 and 7. “We want to get them out of the way.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Fueled by warm tropical waters, fast-strengthening Michael could gain major hurricane status with winds topping 111 mph before its anticipated landfall Wednesday on the Panhandle or Big Bend area of Florida, forecasters have warned.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott called Michael a “monstrous hurricane” with devastating potential from high winds, storm surge and heavy rains.
He declared a state of emergency for 35 Florida counties from the Panhandle to Tampa Bay, activated hundreds of Florida National Guard members and waived tolls to encourage those close to the coast to evacuate inland.
In the small Panhandle city of Apalachicola, Mayor Van Johnson Sr. said the 2,300 residents are frantically preparing for a major strike.
“We’re looking at a significant storm with significant impact, possibly greater than I’ve seen in my 59 years of life,” he said of the city, which sits on the shore of Apalachicola Bay, an inlet to the Gulf of Mexico famed for producing about 90 percent of Florida’s oysters.
By Monday night, lines had formed at gas stations and grocery stories as people sought emergency supplies even as the anticipated evacuations would be intensifying in coming hours. Mandatory evacuation orders were issued for residents of barrier islands, mobile homes and low-lying coastal areas in Gulf, Wakulla and Bay counties.
In a Facebook post Monday, the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office said no shelters would be open because Wakulla County shelters were rated safe only for hurricanes with top sustained winds below 111 mph. With Michael’s winds projected to be even stronger than that, Wakulla County residents were urged to evacuate inland.
“This storm has the potential to be a historic storm, please take heed,” the sheriff’s office said in the post.
Since the storm will spend two to three days over the Gulf of Mexico, which has warm water and favorable atmospheric conditions, “there is a real possibility that Michael will strengthen to a major hurricane before landfall,” Robbie Berg, a hurricane specialist at the Miami-based storm forecasting hub, wrote in an advisory.
In neighboring Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey signed an emergency declaration for her entire state Monday in anticipation of widespread power outages, wind damage and heavy rain from the storm getting set to cross the eastern Gulf of Mexico in coming hours.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In October 2017, state and local officials lacked the resources to quickly clear still-smoldering toxic debris from 4,500 homes destroyed by a wildfire in and near Santa Rosa. So the Army was called in.
The Army was in charge of awarding $1.3 billion in cleanup contracts to three contractors, which hired dozens of smaller companies to haul away the debris and dispose of it in landfills. The hauling companies were paid by the ton. The more they hauled, the more they earned.
The first complaints started almost as soon as the first dump truck was loaded in November. Homeowners said workers dug too deep and took too much dirt from their lots. Driveways, retaining walls and sidewalks that had not been damaged ended up damaged or removed, the homeowners said.
By the summer, nearly 1,000 homeowners had flooded the Army, state and local officials with complaints. After contractors hauled away 2 million tons of debris, the U.S. Army Corps declared that its mission had been accomplished and left without responding to homeowners’ complaints, Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane said.
Corps spokesman Mike Petersen said no evidence of fraud has been reported. He said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was preparing an explanation.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.
The report “is quite a shock, and quite concerning,” said Bill Hare, an author of previous IPCC reports and a physicist with Climate Analytics, a nonprofit organization. “We were not aware of this just a few years ago.” The report was the first to be commissioned by world leaders under the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact by nations to fight global warming.
The authors found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, the atmosphere will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels by 2040, inundating coastlines and intensifying droughts and poverty. Previous work had focused on estimating the damage if average temperatures were to rise by a larger number, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), because that was the threshold scientists previously considered for the most severe effects of climate change.
The new report, however, shows that many of those effects will come much sooner, at the 2.7-degree mark.
Avoiding the most serious damage requires transforming the world economy within just a few years, said the authors, who estimate that the damage would come at a cost of $54 trillion. But while they conclude that it is technically possible to achieve the rapid changes required to avoid 2.7 degrees of warming, they concede that it may be politically unlikely.
For instance, the report says that heavy taxes or prices on carbon dioxide emissions — perhaps as high as $27,000 per ton by 2100 — would be required. But such a move would be almost politically impossible in the United States, the world’s largest economy and second-largest greenhouse gas emitter behind China. Lawmakers around the world, including in China, the European Union and California, have enacted carbon pricing programs.
President Donald Trump, who has mocked the science of human-caused climate change, has vowed to increase the burning of coal and said he intends to withdraw from the Paris agreement. And on Sunday in Brazil, the world’s seventh-largest emitter of greenhouse gas, voters appeared on track to elect a new president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has said he also plans to withdraw from the accord.
The report was written and edited by 91 scientists from 40 countries who analyzed more than 6,000 scientific studies. The Paris agreement set out to prevent warming of more than 3.6 degrees above pre-industrial levels — long considered a threshold for the most severe social and economic damage from climate change. But the heads of small island nations, fearful of rising sea levels, had also asked scientists to examine the effects of 2.7 degrees of warming.
Absent aggressive action, many effects once expected only several decades in the future will arrive by 2040, and at the lower temperature, the report shows. “It’s telling us we need to reverse emissions trends and turn the world economy on a dime,” said Myles Allen, an Oxford University climate scientist and an author of the report.
To prevent 2.7 degrees of warming, the report said, greenhouse pollution must be reduced by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, and 100 percent by 2050.
It also found that, by 2050, use of coal as an electricity source would have to drop from nearly 40 percent today to between 1 and 7 percent. Renewable energy such as wind and solar, which make up about 20 percent of the electricity mix today, would have to increase to as much as 67 percent.
“This report makes it clear: There is no way to mitigate climate change without getting rid of coal,” said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University and an author of the report.
The World Coal Association disputed the conclusion that stopping global warming calls for an end of coal use. In a statement, Katie Warrick, its interim chief executive, noted that forecasts from the International Energy Agency, a global analysis organization, “continue to see a role for coal for the foreseeable future.”
Warrick said her organization intends to campaign for governments to invest in carbon capture technology. Such technology, which is currently too expensive for commercial use, could allow coal to continue to be widely used.
Despite the controversial policy implications, the United States delegation joined more than 180 countries on Saturday in accepting the report’s summary for policymakers, while walking a delicate diplomatic line. A State Department statement said that “acceptance of this report by the panel does not imply endorsement by the United States of the specific findings or underlying contents of the report.”
The State Department delegation faced a conundrum. Refusing to approve the document would place the United States at odds with many nations and show it rejecting established academic science on the world stage. However, the delegation also represents a president who has rejected climate science and climate policy.
“We reiterate that the United States intends to withdraw from the Paris agreement at the earliest opportunity absent the identification of terms that are better for the American people,” the statement said.
The report attempts to put a price tag on the effects of climate change. The estimated $54 trillion in damage from 2.7 degrees of warming would grow to $69 trillion if the world continues to warm by 3.6 degrees and beyond, the report found, although it does not specify the length of time represented by those costs.
The report concludes that the world is already more than halfway to the 2.7-degree mark. Human activities have caused warming of about 1.8 degrees since about the 1850s, the beginning of large-scale industrial coal burning, the report found.
The United States is not alone in failing to reduce emissions enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change. The report concluded that the greenhouse gas reduction pledges put forth under the Paris agreement will not be enough to avoid 3.6 degrees of warming.
The report emphasizes the potential role of a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. “A price on carbon is central to prompt mitigation,” the report concludes. It estimates that to be effective, such a price would have to range from $135 to $5,500 per ton of carbon dioxide pollution in 2030, and from $690 to $27,000 per ton by 2100.
By comparison, under the Obama administration, government economists estimated that an appropriate price on carbon would be in the range of $50 per ton. Under the Trump administration, that figure was lowered to about $7 per ton.
Americans for Prosperity, the political advocacy group funded by the libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch, has made a point of campaigning against politicians who support a carbon tax.
“Carbon taxes are political poison because they increase gas prices and electric rates,” said Myron Ebell, who heads the energy program at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-funded Washington research organization, and who led the Trump administration’s transition at the Environmental Protection Agency.
The report details the economic damage expected should governments fail to enact policies to reduce emissions. The United States, it said, could lose roughly 1.2 percent of gross domestic product for every 1.8 degrees of warming.
In addition, it said, the United States along with Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam are home to 50 million people who will be exposed to the effects of increased coastal flooding by 2040, if 2.7 degrees of warming occur.
(Coral Davenport, NEW YORK TIMES)
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The official toll hit 1,948, mostly in the hard-hit city of Palu, said Jamaluddin, an official from the disaster task force who uses one name. He corrected the number during a news conference in Jakarta after initially saying it was 1,944. He said a navy ship had docked in the area and opened a field hospital.
Willem Rampangilei, head of the National Board for Disaster Management, said there could be as many as 5,000 victims still buried in deep mud in Balaroa and Petobo, two of Palu’s hardest-hit neighborhoods. But he added that number must be verified by his teams because it is an unofficial figure that came from village heads in the area. The Sept. 28 quake caused loose, wet soil to liquefy there. It is too soft to use heavy equipment for recovery, and decomposition of bodies is already advanced.
“It is impossible to rebuild in areas with high liquefaction risk such as Petobo and Balaroa,” he said, adding villages there will be relocated.
Talks were under way with religious authorities and surviving family members to decide whether some areas could be turned into mass graves for victims entombed there with monuments built to remember them.
Officials reiterated that the search is expected to end on Thursday. However, the deadline could be extended if needed.
Rampangilei said life is starting to return to normal in some areas affected by the disaster. Immediate food and water needs have been met, and the local government has started to function again. Many schools have been destroyed, but he said classes will resume where possible. However, many students are still too scared to return.
Disaster-prone Indonesia, part of the Pacific Basin’s “Ring of Fire,” is an archipelago of about 17,000 islands sitting atop numerous fault lines that have produced some of the largest and most deadly earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions in recorded history.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The U.S. Geological Survey said the epicenter of the aftershock was 9.8 miles north-northwest of Port-de-Paix, the city hard hit by Saturday night’s 5.9 magnitude earthquake. Sunday’s aftershock had a depth of 6.2 miles.
“It was an aftershock. It was at the same location,” said Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the USGS. “This is the first significant aftershock.”
The tremors caused panic on streets where emergency teams were providing relief to victims of Saturday’s quake, which toppled cinderblock homes and rickety buildings in several cities.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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A trickle of emergency aid is only now reaching parts of Sulawesi island, five days after the destructive quake that killed more than 1,400 people, and some increasingly desperate survivors are taking matters into their own hands.
“We came here because we heard there was food,” said Rehanna, a 23-year-old student, wearing a red motorcycle helmet. “We need clean water, rice.”
Elsewhere in the hard-hit city of Palu, residents clapped and cheered as they swarmed a truck that was finally delivering aid.
“I’m so happy,” said Heruwanto, clutching a box of instant noodles. The 63-year-old man, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, added: “I really haven’t eaten for three days.”
Indonesian authorities have been struggling to get relief to survivors who have been left without food, water, fuel and medicine after Friday’s magnitude 7.5 quake and tsunami that smashed homes and businesses, downed communications and made roads impassable on Sulawesi.
The official death toll rose to 1,407 on Wednesday, with thousands injured and more than 70,000 displaced, said national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho. He said the number of dead would increase, but that rescue crews had reached all affected areas.
The Sulawesi coastline spreading out from Palu was a surreal landscape of debris, beached boats, overturned cars and the foundations of obliterated houses. Wrecked houses still standing were spray painted with appeals for aid. The wall of one dwelling was scrawled with the message “Help us Mr. President.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Most of those killed were in the badly hit city of Palu, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman of Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency, said in a news conference Sunday. But just 11 deaths were reported from Donggala, a town of 300,000 that has been largely cut off from rescuers, with poor communications. Officials have warned that the death toll could rise to the thousands.
“The death toll is believed to be still increasing since many bodies were still under the wreckage” and others were out of reach, Nugroho said. The dead, he said, either drowned when the tsunami hit or were killed by collapsed buildings and rubble. Many thousands remain missing.
Photos on his Twitter page account show bodies lined up in body bags, as police begin the grim task of identifying them and reporting the deaths to families. Victims are being buried in mass graves, but all victims will later be “buried properly,” Nugroho said.
A 7.5-magnitude earthquake triggered the massive tsunami on Friday evening that crashed into Palu, Donggala and the surrounding settlements. Officials on Sunday shared chilling videos and photos on social media of land “liquefaction” in the wake of the disaster, where the soil turns into something akin to quicksand and drags buildings along with it.
Even as relief efforts were under way, questions remained about the apparent failure of an early warning system and a tsunami alert that was quickly dropped by the Indonesian geophysics agency.
In Palu city, rescue teams were evacuating almost 50 people trapped in the ruins of the Roa-Roa Hotel, a 50-room, eight-story hotel that collapsed after the earthquake. Several were pulled out alive, and rescuers could hear the screams and cries of others throughout the night, and lights shining from cellphones underneath the rubble. A correspondent for a local newspaper said on his Facebook page that at least three other hotels with guests in it have also collapsed. Heavy equipment able to move rubble was on its way to the city.
Traumatized victims, many of whom were sleeping in tents and being treated for injuries outside their homes, continued to be shaken by aftershocks. At least 200 have hit the area since the quake, according to local officials.
Whenever there are aftershocks, people have “become panicked, running away with some yelling ‘Tsunami!’,” said Radika Pinto, a manager in Palu for World Vision, a Christian aid group.
Hungry survivors have been looting unstable shopping centers for food, clothing and water. Adding to the chaos, local media has reported that a prison wall collapsed, setting free hundreds of prisoners inside.
The head of Palu Penitentiary, Adhi Yan Ricoh, told Indonesian magazine Tempo that more than half of the 560 inmates at the prison escaped.
“At that time, the electricity went out, and there were only a few officers,” Adhi said. “They also panicked and tried to save themselves.”
Nugroho, the disaster agency’s spokesman, said a Hercules C-130 plane was deployed to the area to evacuate the hordes of people racing to get out of the city. Water, he added, was an urgent need.
“The water turned turbid, and cannot be consumed. Clean water is an urgent need for the people of Palu,” he said.
Thousands of homes, hotels, shopping centers, hospitals and other public facilities were damaged, Nugroho said. Hospital patients in Palu are being treated outside to avoid the danger of potential aftershocks.
International relief agencies were just starting to reach the area on Sunday, after hours-long overnight drives through landslide-prone areas and badly damaged roads. Dozens of calls made to residents and hotels in Palu were unsuccessful, an indication that widespread communications outages continue there.
(Ainur Rohmanh, NEW WASHINGTON POST)
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The proposal would not eliminate the mercury regulation entirely, but it is designed to put in place the legal justification for the Trump administration to weaken it and several other pollution rules, while setting the stage for a possible full repeal of the rule.
Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who is the acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is expected in the coming days to send the proposal to the White House for approval.
The move is the latest, and one of the most significant, in the Trump administration’s steady march of rollbacks of Obama-era health and environmental regulations on polluting industries, particularly coal. The weakening of the mercury rule — which the EPA considers the most expensive clean air regulation ever put forth in terms of annual cost to industry — would represent a major victory for the coal industry. Mercury is known to damage the nervous systems of children and fetuses.
The details of the rollback about to be proposed would also represent a victory for Wheeler’s former boss, Robert E. Murray, chief executive of the Murray Energy Corp., one of the nation’s largest coal companies. Murray, who was a major donor to President Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, personally requested the rollback of the mercury rule soon after Trump took office, in a written “wish list” he handed to Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
The proposal would also hand a victory to the former clients of William Wehrum, the EPA’s top clean air official and the chief author of the plan. Wehrum worked for years as a lawyer for companies that run coal-fired power plants, and that have long sought such a change.
A spokesman for the EPA did not respond to a request for comment.
The proposal also highlights a key environmental opinion of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the embattled Supreme Court nominee, whose nomination hearings have gripped the nation in recent days.
The coal industry initially sued to roll back the mercury regulation, and in 2014 its case lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Kavanaugh, however, wrote the dissenting opinion in that case, highlighting questions about the rule’s cost to industry.
Should the legal battle over the proposed regulatory rollback go before the Supreme Court, some observers expect that Kavanaugh, if elevated to a seat on the high court, would side with the coal industry.
Specifically, the new Trump administration proposal would repeal a 2011 finding made by the EPA that when the federal government regulates toxic pollution such as mercury from coal-fired power plants, it must also, when considering the cost to industry of that rule, take into account the additional health benefits of reducing other pollutants as a side effect of implementing the regulation. Under the mercury program, the economic benefits of those health effects, known as “co-benefits,” helped to provide a legal and economic justification for the cost to industry of the regulation.
For example, as the nation’s power plants have complied with the rule by installing technology to reduce emissions of mercury, they also created the side benefit of reducing pollution of soot and nitrogen oxide, pollutants linked to asthma and lung disease.
The Obama administration estimated that it would cost the electric utility industry an estimated $9.6 billion a year to install that mercury control technology, making it the most expensive clean air regulation ever put forth by the federal government. It found that reducing mercury brings up to $6 billion annually in health benefits — a high number, but not as high as the cost to industry. However, it further justified the regulation by citing an additional $80 billion in health benefits from the additional reduction in soot and nitrogen oxide that occur as a side effect of controlling mercury.
The new proposal directs the EPA to no longer take into account those “co-benefits” when considering the economic impact of a regulation.
Should the proposal become final, it would mean that the mercury rule would, on paper, incur far greater economic cost than it would provide quantifiable health benefits. The Trump administration would then be legally justified in weakening the rule.
And that change could also give companies like Murray Energy a legal justification to sue for its deletion entirely, while giving the EPA the legal basis to craft weaker pollution regulations that no longer take into account the co-benefits of eliminating additional pollutants.
(Coral Davenport, NEW YORK TIMES)
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The Upper Neuse Riverkeeper and the Waterkeeper Alliance said a coal ash spill at Duke Energy’s retired H.F. Lee Plant in Goldsboro is the source of the arsenic contamination in the river. The organizations said they also found elevated levels of lead and other heavy metals in lab analysis conducted by Pace Analytical in Raleigh.
Duke Energy strongly disputed the activists’ findings, saying its own lab tests show the Neuse River is not contaminated by flooding from Hurricane Florence. Duke further said the riverkeeper activists are fomenting fear to increase public pressure to haul away all coal ash, even from locations where the waste is not posting a public health risk.
One reason for the disparity in the lab results from Charlotte-based Duke and the activists is that they took water samples in different locations of the Neuse River. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality has also taken water samples, but the results have not been released.
(TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE)
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The earthquake, its aftershocks and tsunami have claimed many victims, a disaster official said this morning, as rescuers raced to reach the region and an AP reporter saw numerous bodies in a hard-hit city.
Disaster officials hadn’t released an official death toll but reports from three hospitals seen today by The Associated Press listed 18 dead.
Dawn revealed a devastated coastline in central Sulawesi where the 10-foot tsunami triggered by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake Friday smashed into two cities and several settlements.
Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said there are “many victims.”
In Palu, the capital of Central Sulawesi province, a large bridge spanning a coastal river had collapsed and the city was strewn with debris.
The city is built around a narrow bay that apparently magnified the force of the tsunami waters as they raced into the tight inlet.
An AP reporter saw bodies partially covered by tarpaulins and a man carrying a dead child through the wreckage.
Indonesian TV showed a smartphone video of a powerful wave hitting Palu, with people screaming and running in fear. The water smashed into buildings and a large mosque already damaged by the earthquake.
Communications with the area are difficult because power and telecommunications are cut, hampering search-and-rescue efforts.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said U.N. officials were in contact with Indonesian authorities and “stand ready to provide support as required.”
Indonesia is prone to earthquakes because of its location on the “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.
In December 2004, a massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra in western Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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And, in future decades, as the ocean warms even more because of rising greenhouse gas concentrations from human activity, the study projects “even higher numbers of major hurricanes.”
Considering the toll of the 2017 hurricane season, which unleashed 10 hurricanes in 10 weeks, and three of the five costliest hurricanes on record in Harvey, Irma, and Maria, it is difficult to imagine the implications of similar circumstances repeating with even greater frequency.
The authors, led by Hiroyuki Murakami of NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, conducted high-resolution modeling experiments to draw this ominous conclusion.
Active Atlantic hurricane seasons, like 2017, are often linked to the presence of La Niña events in the Pacific Ocean. They’re cyclical, coming around every few years, and are generally hospitable for hurricanes. El Niño events, their opposite, introduce hostile winds that tend to suppress hurricane development.
But, based on the results of their modeling experiments, study researchers ruled out La Niña as the main driver of the 2017 hurricane onslaught. The warm Atlantic ocean, instead, was the more important player.
“We show the increase in the 2017 major hurricanes was not primarily caused by La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean, but mainly by pronounced warm sea surface conditions in the tropical North Atlantic,” the study said. Major hurricanes are those rated at least Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale.
The 2017 storms were able to gain so much strength not just because the Atlantic ocean temperatures were warm but also because they were substantially warmer, compared to normal, than the rest of the global ocean, the study said.
In an interview, Murakami explained that when the Atlantic is much warmer than other oceans, the atmosphere becomes more unstable and major hurricane activity tends to flourish. But when ocean temperatures are warmer than normal everywhere, major hurricanes in the Atlantic become less likely.
The study’s modeling results show that in future decades the Atlantic will frequently be warmer (relative to normal) than other oceans. “We find the Atlantic gets much warmer than other open ocean,” Murakami said. This, he said, will increase the risk of major hurricanes in the Caribbean, near the U.S. East Coast and over the open Atlantic waters.
Murakami linked the abnormally warm ocean temperatures in 2017 in the Atlantic to both climate warming from human activities and natural variability. In the future, he said he expects human-induced climate change to play a more dominant role.
(Jason Samenow, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Authorities urged up to 8,000 people in Georgetown County, on the South Carolina coast, to be prepared to flee from potential flood zones. A “record event” of up to 10 feet of flooding was expected to begin today near parts of the Pee Dee and Waccamaw rivers, county spokeswoman Jackie Broach-Akers said.
Residents along the Waccamaw braced for water predicted to peak Wednesday at 22 feet near Conway. That’s twice the normal flood stage and far higher than the previous record of 17.9 feet, according to charts published Monday by the National Weather Service.
Most of the Carolinas have seen the worst of the flooding, but people need to remain cautious, said Todd Hamill, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service’s Southeast River Forecast Center. With most rivers having crested, that water is moving toward the coast, he said.
There was some good news: Interstate 95 was reopened to all traffic Sunday night for the first time since the floods.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Emergency officials went door to door informing people to leave the small community of Bondurant and surrounding areas, Sublette County Sheriff’s Sgt. Travis Bingham said. Other communities that were under the evacuation order included Rim Ranches, Sgt. Lane, Rim Station, Flying “A” Ranch to Cline Ranch, and Black Butte.
A 50-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 191 was closed between the communities of Daniel and Hoback Junction as the fire advanced toward the roadway.
Authorities had previously decided to expand the evacuation zone if the highway were threatened. At least an additional 20 residences were evacuated Sunday, and that figure was growing rapidly in the afternoon, Bingham said.
Bondurant is a community of about 100 people centered around a post office and cafe along the highway — “really a concept more than a place,” fire spokeswoman Larisa Bogardus said.
It was unknown if any structures were immediately threatened. The evacuation included residences and summer homes across a large area, Bogardus said.
Before Sunday’s flare-up, the Roosevelt Fire already had burned more than 60 square miles and destroyed at least three houses.
It was not clear how it ignited Sept. 15 in dense timber and rugged terrain about 30 miles south of Jackson.
The blaze was partially contained.
A second fire burning to the southeast prompted authorities to ask hikers, hunters and other backcountry recreationists to evacuate portions of the Bridger-Teton National Forest.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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That’s why, in between discussing how to tackle wars, poverty and deadly diseases around the world, leaders will be devoting substantial time in New York this week to the question of global warming and how to rein it in.
There’ll be talk of emissions targets and the need to adapt to the inevitable changes already underway when small island states take the floor at the annual gathering. Ministers from major economies, meanwhile, will be meeting behind closed doors to discuss who will pay to help poor countries avoid the worst effects of global warming — and prevent a wave of climate refugees in future.
Outside the confines of the United Nations, campaigners and business people will meet during New York Climate Week, while Wednesday will see the second edition of French President Emmanuel Macron’s One Planet Summit.
About the only leader not expected to dwell on climate change is President Donald Trump, who last year announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris accord. He says it represents a bad deal for the American people.
His stance isn’t shared by the governors, mayors and businesspeople who met recently in San Francisco for the Global Climate Action Summit, an event designed to show that parts of America are firmly behind the Paris agreement, with its ambitious goal of limiting the worldwide temperature rise by 2100 to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and as close as possible to 1.5 degrees C.
“These meetings are incredibly important for building confidence and cooperation,” Svenja Schulze, Germany’s environment minister, told reporters on a recent conference call from Canada, where she was meeting with her counterparts from other Group of Seven countries.
By December, leaders need to agree on what’s known as the Paris rulebook, which sets out how countries will track their climate efforts in a way that is transparent, fair and meaningful, Schulze said. “All the conferences are building blocks leading up to that,” she said.
Like many European countries, Germany experienced an unusually dry summer this year, forcing the government to bail out thousands of farmers whose livelihoods were threatened by crop failures. Still, Europe’s largest economy keeps burning coal, considered the most harmful of all fossil fuels.
Failure to reach an agreement by the time the annual climate meeting is held in Katowice, Poland, would mark a major setback for the 180 countries that have ratified the Paris accord.
If the combined glamour, wealth and power assembled in New York don’t do the trick, the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, being released at the beginning of October might well focus minds.
The report, condensing the findings of the world’s top climate scientists, is expected to say that the toughest target set in Paris three years ago — of keeping warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius — will be almost impossible to meet. Average global temperatures have already risen by almost 1 degree Celsius since the start of the industrial age, and the existing amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere mean a further rise is inevitable.
(Franks Jordans, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Thousands of dead and dying fish littered Interstate 40 in North Carolina over the weekend, stranded there as floodwaters ebbed. Just days before, that same stretch of highway in Pender County had been submerged, and people traveled along it in boats.
“It dumped 30 inches of water in our immediate area, which is why you saw the intense flooding that caused these fish to be in places they shouldn’t have been,” said Samantha Hardison, a volunteer firefighter at the Penderlea Fire Department, which was tasked with clearing the fish off part of the key highway.
Some of the carcasses were quite large, Hardison said — “the size of a man’s thigh” — and would have posed a threat to drivers as the road began to reopen.
“Well, we can add ‘washing fish off of the interstate’ to the long list of interesting things firefighters get to experience,” Hardison wrote in a post to the department’s Facebook page Saturday.
Elsewhere, thousands of residents remained on edge Sunday, told they may need to leave their homes because rivers are still rising.
About 6,000 to 8,000 people in Georgetown County, S.C., were alerted to be prepared to evacuate ahead of a “record event” of up to 10 feet of flooding expected from heavy rains dumped by Florence, county spokeswoman Jackie Broach-Akers said. She said flooding is expected to begin Tuesday near parts of the Pee Dee and Waccamaw rivers and that people in potential flood zones should plan to leave their homes Monday.
More than 40 people have died since Hurricane Florence made landfall about 10 days ago.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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But causes for many of California’s worst blazes of the past decade remain a mystery.
The Associated Press reviewed state data on the 10 largest wildfires and 10 most destructive in terms of homes and buildings burned for each year dating to 2008. Lightning was the most common cause, accounting for about a quarter of those fires, followed by incidents involving power lines.
However, investigators could not determine a cause for about a third of those fires. Experts say each is a missed opportunity to learn something new.
“If we don’t know what causes a fire, we don’t know how to prevent them,” said Carrie Bilbao, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center who investigated wildfires in Idaho for 26 years.
Finding the trigger aids criminal prosecutions and helps determine liability. It also guides campaigns to change behavior, like avoiding mowing on hot afternoons when fire threat is high. And it leads to safety enhancements.
It’s estimated human activity — from untended campfires to sparks from vehicles — causes more than 80 percent of all wildfires in the United States, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
So far in 2018, wildfires have scorched more than 2,000 square miles in California. More than 2,000 homes and buildings have been destroyed, and at least 11 people killed.
The Mendocino Complex fire that burned for nearly two months, killing one firefighter and destroying more than 150 homes, is the largest ever recorded in the state at 720 square miles, an area more than twice the size of New York City. No cause has been determined yet, nor has one been pinpointed for the Ferguson fire, which prompted the closure of much of Yosemite National Park.
The Holy fire, southeast of Los Angeles, was quickly determined to be arson.
Arson was pegged as the cause for only five of California’s most destructive or largest fires of the last decade, according to state records, though officials say the true number likely is much higher. That’s because for arson to be the cause, no other possibility can exist.
So, for example, even if investigators believe an arsonist was responsible for a fire next to a rail line, they may leave the cause undetermined because they can’t rule out a spark from a passing train.
Finding causes that can lead to preventive measures has become more urgent in drought-plagued California. Even as climate change extends the fire season and feeds record-breaking infernos, more homes are being built in rugged areas where fire danger is high. And the most dangerous months for California wildfires are still to come.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The proposal signed by Brown boosts government fire protection efforts by $1 billion over the next five years, providing funds that could help clear thousands of acres of dense, dry forests and brittle coastal brush. The bill’s combination of cash and regulatory relief mark a major escalation in addressing what’s been called the “new normal” of fire danger for the state, far beyond what’s been spent on immediate emergency responses.
“Wildfires in California aren’t going away, and we have to do everything possible to prevent them,” the governor said in a written statement. “This bill is complex and requires investment — but it’s absolutely necessary.”
Negotiations over the details of the 112-page law dominated the state Capitol during the final weeks of the legislative session. The proposal’s fine points emerged just hours before the final vote on Aug. 31. While many lawmakers found parts of the proposal unpalatable, few were willing to be seen as not having done everything they could to protect the lives and property of their constituents.
“This new law is the most comprehensive wildfire prevention and safety package the state has passed in decades,” said state Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, the bill’s co-author.
The new law links together two distinct challenges for changing the trajectory of California’s fire future: controlled growth of fire-prone vegetation and reduced financial exposure for utility companies. In a less combustible year, opposition to either could have doomed the effort. But the topic was hard to ignore during a summer marked by a number of deadly blazes and weeks of wildfire smoke choking the skies above Sacramento.
Lawmakers from the state’s most threatened regions — rural foothills with forests overgrown from decades of fire suppression, and coastal communities with kindling-like chaparral — were adamant about expanding efforts to remove fire fuels. They pushed for $1 billion in funding, paid over five years from proceeds of California’s cap-and-trade climate program, so that government and landowners alike had the money needed to carry out the work.
Cal Fire officials will oversee those dollars, generally divvied into two categories: $165 million a year for fire prevention grants to landowners and for community prevention efforts, and another $35 million to continue Cal Fire’s year-round prescribed burns, research and monitoring.
Under the law signed by Brown, landowners will have new permission and help to reduce overgrowth by cutting down more small and mid-sized trees — a historic change, given California’s logging limits on privately owned lands date back to 1973.
Timber harvesting permits for small landowners will be made cheaper, and some property owners will be allowed to build temporary roads to reach otherwise inaccessible overgrown areas. In some instances, both small and large landowners will have new permission to sell that timber to help offset the costs of the fire-prevention activity.
Property owners who apply for new conservation easements — to preserve natural landscapes in exchange for tax incentives — will have to ensure that the density and health of their trees doesn’t exacerbate fire danger. The new law also allows a streamlined state review for tree-removal efforts on federal lands.
California’s Board of Forestry and Fire Protection will have an expanded role in setting regulations to lower fire risk while hiring more technical experts to ensure the rules actually work. Many of the new law’s provisions will expire in five years unless the Legislature decides to continue or expand the programs.
The tree and brush removal provisions of SB 901 were subject to intense lobbying by environmental groups. But those disagreements paled in comparison to the bitter brawl over its concessions to municipal and investor-owned utilities.
Downed power lines have sparked devastating fires across the state in previous years. Two of the state’s largest electricity providers — San Diego Gas & Electric and Pacific Gas & Electric — both face steep costs related to past wildfires. PG&E has yet to finish tallying the damages it must pay from fires in Napa and Sonoma counties last fall.
SB 901 makes two significant changes to determining how much utilities must pay. First, it enhances the wildfire mitigation plans that companies must file with the California Public Utilities Commission. Utilities will have to provide new details on vegetation removal and electricity shut-off plans. Regulators will have to formally sign off on the wildfire mitigation plans, ensuring more accountability in the aftermath of a devastating blaze.
“The bill requires independent evaluation of utility compliance with mitigation plans, and doubles the amount of fines that can be levied upon a utility for failure to comply,” Dodd said during legislative debate last month.
Second, utility regulators will be given new guidelines to help determine a company’s liability. For fires that begin in 2019 and beyond, utility companies will be able to shift some fire-related costs to consumers — but only to the extent that regulators determine the company wasn’t negligent.
For fires that burned in 2017 — a year in which state investigators have linked PG&E equipment to at least a dozen Northern California fires — the utility will be allowed to borrow billions of dollars using ratepayer fees to pay it back, even if it was found to have acted improperly. The amount charged to customers would be determined after an independent analysis of the company’s finances.
Utility officials have given a general rule of thumb: $1 billion in borrowing would result in a $5 annual surcharge for most customers, assessed every year until the loan is paid off. Some lawmakers insisted it will amount to an unfair “bailout” of companies.
Brown, who originally pushed for a more generous plan to lessen the industry’s fire liabilities, insisted the state’s energy needs would be threatened by the specter of utility bankruptcy without some kind of concessions.
“The utilities have to stay in business,” Brown said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times last week. “They have to make enough return to be a viable corporation.”
Brown and lawmakers from both major political parties insisted the package of new laws are important but only a first step toward preparing Californians for longer dangerous fire seasons in the years to come.
“This year alone, 1.3 million acres of California have burned,” said Assembly Republican Leader Brian Dahle, R-Bieber. “The loss of life and property has been staggering. We are taking steps to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”
(John Myers, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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On Friday, Duke Energy shut down a power plant near Wilmington after a dam breach between 100 and 200 feet wide, at the south end of Sutton Lake, allowed floodwaters to swamp two basins containing huge stockpiles of arsenic-laced ash.
Duke’s L.V. Sutton facility has been a focus of increasing concern for environmentalists and regulators since last week, when rains from Hurricane Florence caused a coal ash landfill at the site to erode, spilling waste onto a local roadway.
Coal ash is the powdery substance that remains after burning coal. The Environmental Protection Agency links the substances it contains — including heavy metals like arsenic and lead — to nervous-system problems, reproductive issues and cancer.
It was not immediately clear how much ash was released. The extent of the threat will depend on how quickly the breach can be stopped, state officials said.
A significant spill could endanger the water supply for the southeastern part of the state, which is still reeling from record-breaking flooding that has closed many of the region’s roads, including a long stretch of Interstate 95 south of the Virginia border.
And the danger of more flooding remains. The Cape Fear River is scheduled to crest this morning at 31.3 feet, more than 7 feet above its historic flood stage. Water levels will remain high through Tuesday.
Coal ash is not the only pollutant to cause North Carolina woes in the wake of Florence. The state is home to 9.7 million pigs that produce 10 billion gallons of manure each year. Most of that manure is stored in large earthen lagoons; a growing number of those lagoons are flooding.
As of midday on Friday, at least 54 lagoons have discharged their waste into the environment, another 76 are at risk of doing so, and six have some form of structural damage that may have led to the release of pig feces. The number is expected to increase.
State inspectors, who conducted a drone survey of the area on Friday, said there appeared to be “no structural issues” with the basins’ inner containment walls, or impoundments, said Bridget Munger, spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
They are monitoring the situation in “real time” and plan to conduct an investigation into the causes of the failure once the situation has stabilized, Munger said in an email.
“This is a crisis that we’re addressing but it’s in the context of a huge state emergency, so that’s just part of the big picture for us,” Munger said.
Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina said in a statement on Friday that, “a thorough investigation of events will soon follow to ensure that Duke Energy is held responsible for any environmental impacts by their coal ash facilities.”
A representative for the Environmental Protection Agency said the agency had not been out to the site, and that it would lend its support to state officials at their request.
The breach of the dam imperils two unlined coal ash ponds on site, which contain a combined 2.1 million cubic yards of coal ash, according to a report prepared for Duke Energy this year. That amount of coal ash would fill a large sports stadium.
(Glenn Thrush & Kendra Pierre-Louis, NEW YORK TIMES)
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The slide surged down on about 30 houses in two rural villages after daybreak in Naga, police Chief Roderick Gonzales said as he helped supervise the search and rescue. Seven injured villagers were rescued from the huge mound of earth and debris.
Naga Mayor Kristine Vanessa Chiong said at least 64 people were missing.
The landslide hit while several northern Philippine provinces are still dealing with deaths and widespread damage wrought by Typhoon Mangkhut, which pummeled the agricultural region Saturday and left at least 88 people dead and more than 60 missing.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Religious leaders and government officials recalled how Puerto Rico was ravaged by the storm that killed an estimated 2,975 people and caused more than an estimated $100 billion in damage.
Tens of thousands remain without adequate shelter or reliable electrical power, a sad fact that Gov. Ricardo Rossello noted on Thursday.
“After that catastrophic experience, we acknowledge how complex and difficult it is to prepare for a hurricane of that magnitude and fury,” Rosello said. “The best tribute we can give these people, these brothers that we’ve lost, is to build a better Puerto Rico for their sons, their grandsons and their families.”
While the U.S. government has invested billions of dollars to help clean up and repair the U.S. territory, much work remains. Major power outages are still being reported, tens of thousands of insurance claims are still pending, and nearly 60,000 homes still have temporary roofs unable to withstand a Category 1 hurricane.
“I think it’s inexplicable,” Kumi Naidoo, Amnesty International’s secretary general, told The Associated Press during a visit to the island Thursday. “There’s no justifiable reason I can see for this gross level of negligence.”
Across the island, people marked the first anniversary with gatherings large and small, solemn and anger-tinged — and at times, even hopeful.
In the coastal fishing and farming village of Yabucoa, the strains of one of Puerto Rico’s most beloved songs filled the air at 6:15 a.m., the exact moment the storm made landfall there one year ago.
In San Juan, the crowd of worshippers gathered at the 230-year-old San Cristobal fort sang and prayed along with pastors and musicians onstage, with music echoing through the fort’s heavy walls as the sun slowly sank into the sea behind them.
Government officials argue that many changes have been made to better prepare Puerto Rico for future storms, but they acknowledge that significant obstacles remain.
Jose Ortiz, director of Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority, told reporters that 20 percent of repairs made to the power grid need to be redone. He said crews didn’t have access to the best materials at the time or were forced to rely on temporary fixes, such as using trees as makeshift power poles after Maria destroyed up to 75 percent of transmission lines.
In addition, municipal officials have complained that reconstruction efforts are too slow. Ariel Soto, assistant to the mayor of the mountain town of Morovis, said that 220 families there remain without a proper roof.
“We’re still waiting for help,” he said. “This hit us hard.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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With reconstruction slow from the 2017 quake, relatives of the dead and quake victims gathered at vacant lots where buildings once stood. A year later, their search for justice has been fruitless, with none of the owners or builders of collapsed structures having been convicted.
Fernando Sanchez Lira stood on the lot where both his mother and sister died when a five-story downtown office building collapsed in last year’s magnitude 7.1 quake killing at least 15 people. Overall, the temblor killed 228 people in the capital and 141 more in nearby states.
Sanchez Lira said the building had been unsafe since another temblor 12 days earlier. He said authorities allowed a heavy cellphone tower to be built on the roof years ago that may have contributed to the collapse.
“The building was really bad. The owner knew it,” said Sanchez Lira, who quit his job to pursue legal action against the owners. “It continued operating because of corruption, and there are a lot of buildings in that situation, that keep operating with bribes.”
“This continues. We have learned nothing,” he added. The legal case has made little progress, he said, noting that “the owners are powerful people. They could buy the legal system.”
Moments later, the quake alarm siren sounded mournfully during an anniversary drill. Mourners held their arms aloft in a signal that was used by rescuers after the quake to call for silence and has since become a symbol of remembrance and solidarity.
A weeping Arturo Gomez, his arm aloft, shouted, “We miss you a lot!” He referred to Maria Elena Sanchez Lira, his wife of 39 years and the sister of Fernando Sanchez Lira, who died in the quake.
Elsewhere, victims’ relatives gathered at the site of a seven-story office building in Mexico City’s Condesa district that collapsed last Sept. 19, killing 49 people. The rubble was long ago cleared, but the site remains blocked off with plywood. Friends and family of victims have posted signs with messages of love on the fencing.
“It’s difficult. All the memories come flooding back of everything. I can’t find words,” said Consuelo de Luna, whose son died in the collapse.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Of the 40 to 50 miners and their families believed inside the chapel, there is a “99 percent” chance that they all were killed, said Mayor Victorio Palangdan of Itogon, the Benguet province town that was among the hardest hit by the typhoon that struck Saturday.
Mangkhut already is confirmed to have killed 66 people in the Philippines and four in China, where it weakened to a tropical storm as it churned inland Monday.
Palangdan said rescuers have recovered 11 bodies from the muddy avalanche, which covered a former bunkhouse for the miners that had been turned into a chapel.
Dozens of people sought shelter there during the storm despite warnings it was dangerous.
“They laughed at our policemen,” he said. “They were resisting when our police tried to pull them away. What can we do?”
Police and soldiers were among the hundreds of rescuers with shovels and picks searching for the missing along a mountainside as grief-stricken relatives waited nearby, many of them praying quietly. Bodies in black bags were laid side by side. Those identified were carried away by relatives, some using crude bamboo slings.
Palangdan said authorities “will not stop until we recover all the bodies.”
Many of those who sought cover in the two-story building thought it was sturdy, but the storm was just too severe, with the avalanche covering it “in just a few seconds,” Ullani said.
Environmental Secretary Roy Cimatu said the government will deploy soldiers and police to stop illegal mining in six mountainous northern provinces, including Benguet, to prevent such tragedies.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Florence is gone, devolving into a wet atmospheric blob drifting toward the Northeast, and the sun has finally come out in many areas. But life has not returned to normal. The Carolinas are rattled and anxious amid rising waters. Going anywhere in a vehicle is still perilous. Hundreds of thousands of people have no electricity, and many schools remain shuttered.
The number of closed and impassable roads climbed to 1,500 in North Carolina, the U.S. Transportation Department said. Interstates 40 and 95, two of the state’s main transportation arteries, are only partially open. Many communities are isolated, including this storm-battered city wedged between the coast and the Cape Fear River.
Thousands of people remain in emergency shelters across the state. First responders have rescued 2,600 people and 300 animals, Gov. Roy Cooper said at a news conference.
“Catastrophic flooding and tornadoes are still claiming lives and property. For most parts of North Carolina, the danger is still immediate,” Cooper said. Authorities in North Carolina said late Monday that 25 people in the state had died from storm-related causes, while officials in South Carolina said they had confirmed six deaths linked to the storm. Officials in Chesterfield County, Va., linked one fatality to the remnants of Florence after a building partially collapsed during an apparent tornado that spun off from the storm Monday afternoon.
Among the dead was 1-year-old Kaiden Lee-Welch, whose body was found Monday in Union County, N.C., the sheriff’s office said. Officials said the child’s mother drove past barricades Sunday night and hit rushing water. She managed to get the baby out of a car seat, but the violent flood carried the boy away.
“I know people are eager to get back to work and get back to school,” the governor said. “I urge you, if you don’t have to drive, stay off the road.”
As the region’s waters rise, numerous environmental hazards are materializing in the Carolinas. The North Carolina Pork Council reported a manure lagoon breach on a small farm in Duplin County but said the solids remained contained.
“While there are more than 3,000 active lagoons in the state that have been unaffected by the storm, we remain concerned about the potential impact of these record-shattering floods,” the council said on its website.
Many hog ponds in eastern North Carolina were damaged during Hurricane Floyd in 1999, and the bacteria-laden liquid and solid waste flowed downstream to estuaries, inciting algae blooms and fish kills.
Duke Energy’s two Brunswick nuclear reactors remain stable, but the isolation of the facilities by floodwaters, and the difficulty workers faced going to and from the site, led the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the weekend to declare a “hazardous event.” Duke Energy said no employees are stranded, and there is no flooding at the site.
In a number of locations in eastern North Carolina, the sewer- and drinking-water systems have been damaged or overwhelmed.
“We do have observed releases of wastewater from manholes, from overtopped sewer areas in the impacted zone,” Reggie Cheatham, the Environmental Protection Agency’s director of emergency management, said in a teleconference with reporters.
Cheatham said the wastewater treatment system in Jacksonville, N.C., which experienced storm surge during Florence’s landfall on Friday morning, suffered a “catastrophic” failure.
“They basically had to deal with the storm surge, loss of power, and obviously shut down pumps, and the system completely depressurized, and they haven’t been able to bring that back up,” he said.
He said the wastewater system in Wilmington had released partially treated water into the Cape Fear River. Other sites experiencing releases of wastewater include the eastern North Carolina communities of Princeton and Kenansville, Cheatham said.
Many people flooded out of their homes will not be able to return quickly. Some rivers in the Piedmont have hit their high-water mark and will begin to drop. But the story is different in the flat marshlands to the east, where the rivers will crest and then stay at elevated levels for many days, said Trent Ferguson, the South Atlantic Division water manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“You’re probably going to see seven to 10 days at a flat, constant stage, and then it will slowly drain,” Ferguson said.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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More than 2.4 million people had been evacuated in southern China’s Guangdong province by Sunday evening to flee the massive typhoon, and nearly 50,000 fishing boats were called back to port, state media reported. “Prepare for the worst,” Hong Kong Security Minister John Lee Ka-chiu urged residents.
That warning came after Mangkhut’s devastating march through the northern Philippines, where the storm made landfall Saturday on Luzon Island with sustained winds of 127 miles per hour and gusts of 158 mph. National police said 64 people had died there as of Sunday, mostly due to landslides and collapsed houses, with two additional deaths reported in China.
Landslides caused by the pounding storm hit two villages in Itogon town in the Philippine mountain province of Benguet. Police Superintendent Pelita Tacio said 34 villagers had died and 36 were missing.
Itogon Mayor Victorio Palangdan told The Associated Press by phone that at the height of the typhoon’s onslaught Saturday afternoon, dozens of people, mostly miners and their families, rushed into an old three-story building in the village of Ucab.
The building — a former mining bunkhouse that had been transformed into a chapel — was obliterated when part of a mountain slope collapsed. Three villagers who managed to escape told authorities what happened.
“They thought they were really safe there,” the mayor said Sunday. He expressed sadness that the villagers, many of them poor, had few options to survive in a region where big corporations have profited from gold mines.
The rescue work halted for the night before resuming this morning. Men used pikes and shovels to dig into the mud because the soaked ground was unstable and limited the use of heavy equipment on-site.
Mangkhut made landfall in the Guangdong city of Taishan at 5 p.m. Sunday, packing wind speeds of 100 miles per hour. State television broadcaster CGTN reported that surging waves flooded a seaside hotel in the city of Shenzhen.
The storm shattered glass windows on commercial skyscrapers in Hong Kong, sending sheets of paper pouring out of the buildings, fluttering and spiraling as they headed for the debris-strewn ground, according to videos on social media.
Mangkhut also felled trees, tore scaffolding off buildings under construction and flooded some areas of Hong Kong with waist-high waters, according to the South China Morning Post.
Casinos on Macau were ordered closed for the first time due to the typhoon. A red alert, the most severe warning, was issued for densely populated southern China, which the national meteorological center said would face a “severe test caused by wind and rain.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The storm continued to crawl westward, dumping more than 30 inches of rain in spots since Friday, and fears of historic flooding grew. Tens of thousands were ordered evacuated from communities along the state’s steadily rising rivers — with the Cape Fear, Little River, Lumber, Waccamaw and Pee Dee rivers all projected to burst their banks.
In Wilmington, with roads leading in and out of the city underwater and streams still swelling upward, residents waited for hours outside stores and restaurants for basic necessities like water. Police guarded the door of one store, and only 10 people were allowed inside at a time.
Woody White, chairman of the board of commissioners of New Hanover County, said officials were planning for food and water to be flown into the coastal city of nearly 120,000 people.
“Our roads are flooded,” he said. “There is no access to Wilmington.”
About 70 miles from the coast, residents near the Lumber River stepped from their homes directly into boats floating in their yards; river forecasts showed the scene could be repeated in towns as far as 250 miles inland as waters rise for days.
Downgraded overnight to a tropical depression, Florence was still massive. But with radar showing parts of the storm over six southeastern states and flood worries spreading into southern Virginia and West Virginia, North and South Carolina were still in the bull’s-eye.
In North Carolina, fears of what could be the worst flooding in the state’s history led officials to order tens of thousands to evacuate, though it wasn’t clear how many had fled or even could.
The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brock Long, said officials were focused on finding people and rescuing them.
“We’ll get through this. It’ll be ugly, but we’ll get through it,” Long told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
President Donald Trump said federal emergency workers, first responders and law enforcement officials were “working really hard.” As the storm “begins to finally recede, they will kick into an even higher gear. Very Professional!” he said in a tweet.
The storm’s death toll climbed to at least 17 when a 3-month-old child was killed when a tree fell across a mobile home in North Carolina. Earlier, officials said three people died in separate, weather-related traffic accidents in South Carolina.
Victor Merlos was overjoyed to find a store open for business in Wilmington because he had about 20 relatives staying at his apartment, which still had power. He spent more than $500 on cereal, eggs, soft drinks and other necessities, plus beer.
“I have everything I need for my whole family,” Merlos said.
Nearby, a Waffle House restaurant limited breakfast customers to one biscuit and one drink, all take-out, with the price of $2 per item.
Kenneth Campbell had donned waterproof waders intending to check out his home in Lumberton, but he didn’t bother when he saw the Coast Guard and murky waters in his neighborhood.
“I’m not going to waste my time. I already know,” he said.
As rivers swelled, state regulators and environmental groups were monitoring the threat from gigantic hog and poultry farms located in low-lying, flood-prone areas.
The industrial-scale farms contain vast pits of animal feces and urine that can pose a significant pollution threat if they are breached or inundated by floodwaters.
In previous hurricanes, flooding at dozens of farms also left hundreds of thousands of dead hogs, chickens and other decomposing livestock bobbing in floodwaters.
Stream gauges across the region showed water levels rising steadily, with forecasts calling for rivers to crest Sunday and today at or near record levels. The Defense Department said about 13,500 military personnel had been assigned to help relief efforts.
Authorities ordered the immediate evacuation of up to 7,500 people living within a mile of a stretch of the Cape Fear River and the Little River, about 100 miles from the North Carolina coast. The evacuation zone included part of the city of Fayetteville, population 200,000.
John Rose owns a furniture business with stores less than a mile from the river. Rain-soaked furniture workers helped him quickly empty more than 1,000 mattresses from a warehouse in a low-lying strip mall.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever had to move anything like this,” Rose said. “If the river rises to the level they say it’s going to, then this warehouse is going to be under water.”
Fayetteville city officials, meanwhile, got help from the Nebraska Task Force One search and rescue team to evacuate 140 residents of an assisted-living facility to a safer location at a church.
Rainfall totals were stunning.
In Swansboro, N.C., nearly 34 inches of rain had fallen by Sunday afternoon and 20 other places in North Carolina had at least 20 inches, according to the National Weather Service. Another 30 sites in North Carolina had at least 10 inches.
Water on the Cape Fear River near Chinquapin got so high that electronic instruments used to monitor flooding quit working after it became submerged, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The same thing happened on the Trent River.
Still, there was some good news: Power outages in the Carolinas and Virginia were down to about 580,000 homes and businesses after reaching a high of about 910,000 as the hurricane plowed into the coast. Utilities said some outages could last for weeks.
In Goldsboro, N.C., home of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, roads that frequently flood were already closed Saturday by rushing water.
Dozens of electric repair trucks massed to respond to damage expected to hit central North Carolina as rainwater collected into rivers headed to the coast.
Duke Energy said heavy rains caused a slope to collapse at a coal ash landfill at a closed power station outside Wilmington late Saturday, but there was no indication contamination had drained into the nearby Cape Fear River.
The company initially estimated that about 2,000 cubic yards of ash were displaced at the landfill, enough to fill about 180 dump trucks. Sheehan said that estimate could be revised.
Near the flooded-out town of New Bern, where about 455 people had to be rescued from the swirling flood waters, water completely surrounded churches, businesses and homes. In the neighboring town of Trenton, downtown streets were turned to creeks full of brown water.
The rain was unrelenting in Cheraw, a town of about 6,000 people in northeastern South Carolina. Streets flooded and police Chief Keith Thomas warned people not to drive, but the local food and gas store had customers.
“As you can tell, they’re not listening to me,” he said.
(Chuck Burton, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The typhoon made landfall before dawn in the coastal town of Baggao in Cagayan province on the northern tip of Luzon Island, a breadbasket of flood-prone rice plains and mountain provinces often hit by landslides. More than 5 million people were at risk from the storm, which the Hawaii-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center downgraded from a super typhoon but still punching powerful winds and gusts equivalent to a category 4 Atlantic hurricane.
There were no immediate reports of major damage or casualties in the region, where a massive evacuation from high-risk areas was carried out over two days.
Associated Press journalists in a hotel in Cagayan’s capital city of Tuguegarao saw tin roof sheets and other debris hurtle through the air and store signs crash to the ground. Cars shook as wind gusts pummeled a parking lot.
With a huge raincloud band 560 miles wide, combined with seasonal monsoon rains, the typhoon dumped intense rain that could set off landslides and flash floods. Storm warnings have been raised in almost all the provinces across the Luzon, including the capital, Manila, restricting sea and air travel.
A few hours after landfall, the eye of the typhoon was nearing the western coast of Luzon facing the South China Sea.
Before it hit land, Mangkhut packed sustained winds of 127 miles per hour and gusts of up to 158 mph, forecasters said.
In Tuguegarao, residents braced for the typhoon’s fury by reinforcing homes and buildings and stocking up on food. More than 15,300 people had been evacuated in northern provinces by Friday afternoon, the Office of Civil Defense said.
Concerns over massive storm surges that could be whipped inland by the typhoon’s winds prompted wardens to move 143 detainees from a jail in Cagayan’s Aparri town to nearby towns, officials said.
The typhoon hit at the start of the rice and corn harvesting season in Cagayan, a major agricultural producer, prompting farmers to scramble to save what they could of their crops, Cagayan Gov. Manuel Mamba said. The threat to agriculture comes as the Philippines tries to cope with rice shortages.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The storm, whose destructive power was unlike any the area has seen in a generation, had already caused at least five fatalities as of Friday afternoon, and rescue crews across a wide region were attempting to pluck distressed residents from rooftops. The victims included a mother and her infant in Wilmington, N.C., who were killed when a tree fell on their house, the police department said.
Rescuers spent hours trying to reach the mother and infant, who were trapped by the tree and a portion of the roof that had collapsed on them, said Deputy Fire Chief J.S. Mason.
Downed trees also delayed crews responding to a 911 call from the home of a woman who died of a heart attack Friday morning in Hampstead, an unincorporated area of Pender County, N.C., officials said. Another two people, both in their 70s, were killed in Lenoir County, one while trying to connect two extension cords outside in the rain, and the other when he went outside to check on his hunting dogs and was blown down by wind, authorities said.
Rescue teams had to suspend some operations because of powerful winds in South Carolina’s Horry County, which includes the coastal cities of Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach.
“We have now halted emergency responses until storm conditions allow for personnel to respond safely,” said Jay Fernandez, the director of public safety for North Myrtle Beach, describing winds so strong that rescuers were at risk.
“We put the message out that most likely we will not be able to respond to you,” he said. “We will do everything we can, and we give them advice.”
Winds of up to 90 mph downed majestic trees, tore statues from their moorings and knocked out power for 650,000 people in towns along North Carolina’s coast on Friday. In Carolina Beach, water coursed through the streets, carrying tree limbs and debris.
The 400-mile-wide hurricane, a Category 1 when it made landfall, was downgraded to a tropical storm on Friday. By evening, it was about 50 miles west-southwest of Wilmington, and its winds had dropped to 70 mph. It is expected to drift southwest into South Carolina before turning north.
But state officials and federal weather authorities warned that the next few days, with an expected rainfall of up to 40 inches, hold new and serious hazards from the storm.
With many roads impassable, Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina urged people not to return home and emphasized that there were many days of rain in the forecast.
“If the storm hasn’t reached you yet, it’s coming,” he said.
The forecasts, Cooper said, were predicting 1,000-year rainfall in some areas — rainfall so severe it has a 1-in-1,000 chance of occurring in any given year.
President Donald Trump is expected to visit areas affected by the storm next week, once it is determined that his travel will not disrupt any rescue or recovery efforts, according to White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.
Officials said it was too early to gauge the hurricane’s cost, but one expert, Gregory Daco at Oxford Economics, estimated the infrastructure damage at $30 billion to $40 billion, which would make Florence one of the 10 costliest hurricanes in U.S. history.
As the storm took its toll, even some emergency shelters housing evacuees closed: 100 people were transferred elsewhere after the roof in a Lenoir County shelter was damaged by the wind, said Roger Dail, the county’s emergency services director.
Many rescue efforts relied on an aquatic approach to save stranded residents from flooded homes. As residents called 911 and posted messages on social media pleading for help, Christian Dreyer, a rescuer working in Washington, N.C., said his crew extracted some people in vehicles, but in other cases they had to drive boats up to the front door.
In nearby New Bern, one of the hardest-hit towns in the path of the hurricane, more than 360 residents who were trapped in homes, cars and on their roofs had been rescued by Friday evening, while 140 were awaiting assistance.
But the continued rainfall did not bode well for that tally.
“With the deterioration of the weather, people are calling back and saying, ‘The water is creeping back into my home,’” said Colleen Roberts, a spokeswoman for the city, late Friday afternoon. “‘Can you please come get me?’”
Florence made landfall at 7:15 a.m. at Wrightsville Beach, on the eastern edge of Wilmington, where roads were lined with tree limbs, street signs and other debris. By 9:45 a.m., sheets of rain were pelting homes and parked cars. Trees were bent over, their limbs scraping the soggy ground. Motorists slowed at blockages, flashing their headlights as they eased past split tree trunks and severed power lines.
With electricity out since the early morning hours, the hum of generators cut through the roar of swirling winds. Neighborhood streets were deserted as those residents who chose to stay home hunkered down inside. Along North Fifth Street, a major artery in downtown Wilmington, live oaks and magnolias had toppled over, blocking sections of the road.
Weather forecasters said the ground, already saturated by recent rains, could easily lead to flash flooding as the storm moved inland.
The Cape Fear and Lumber rivers are expected to rise, causing potentially catastrophic floods. More flooding is expected in eastern North Carolina, as well as from Fayetteville to Charlotte, including areas that have not flooded previously. Rains were also expected to start this weekend in western North Carolina, where they could lead to landslides.
In a sign of the storm’s scope and length, the authorities in cities far from the coastline said they were bracing for prolonged trouble. Many feared a reprise of Hurricane Matthew, which spared much of the shoreline from severe damage only to deluge small towns in North Carolina’s river-veined coastal plain. Officials in Charlotte, North Carolina’s largest city, said schools and municipal government offices would be closed on Monday.
Stacy Stewart, a senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, said some areas would continue to see wind gusts greater than 74 mph and that the storm would spawn tornadoes.
“We’re moving from a coastal threat of storm surge flooding and strong winds to more of a heavy rainfall — very heavy rainfall,” Stewart said.
The coast has been battered, and the mountains appear to be next. The remnants of Florence are expected to hit the peaks of western North Carolina in a couple of days. National Hurricane Center meteorologist Joel Cline said the mountains will wring water out of the moist tropical air: “It’s like running into a wall, and that moisture has to go somewhere, and it goes up, creates rain, and you have torrential rain in that area.”
Cline said July was the wettest ever in that part of North Carolina, and the water table rose 21 inches higher than normal. Florence could add another six to 10 inches of rainfall this weekend. Flash floods can materialize within minutes of intense rain as the water rushes down hillsides.
“You evacuate from water,” Cline said. “That’s why we’ve been preaching to people that you have to get away from the water.”
(Jack Healy, Amy Harmon & David Zucchino, NEW YORK TIMES)
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More than 4 million people live in areas at most risk from the storm, which the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Hawaii categorized as a super typhoon with powerful winds and gusts.
Typhoon Mangkhut could hit northeastern Cagayan province on Saturday. It was tracked on Thursday about 450 miles away in the Pacific with sustained winds of 127 miles per hour and gusts of up to 158 mph, Philippine forecasters said.
With a massive rain cloud band 560 miles wide, combined with seasonal monsoon rains, the typhoon could bring heavy to intense rains that could set off landslides and flash floods, the forecasters said. Storm warnings have been raised in 25 provinces across the main northern island of Luzon, restricting sea and air travel.
Office of Civil Defense chief Ricardo Jalad told an emergency meeting led by President Rodrigo Duterte that about 4.2 million people in Cagayan, nearby Isabela province and outlying provincial regions are vulnerable to the most destructive effects near the typhoon’s 77-mile-wide eye. Nearly 48,000 houses in those high-risk areas are made of light materials and vulnerable to Mangkhut’s ferocious winds.
Across the north on Thursday, residents covered glass windows with wooden boards, strengthened houses with rope and braces and moved fishing boats to safety.
Cagayan Gov. Manuel Mamba said by telephone that evacuations of residents from risky coastal villages and island municipalities north of the rice-and corn-producing province of 1.2 million people have started, and school classes at all levels have been canceled.
“The weather here is still good, but we’re moving them now because it’s very important that when it comes, people will be away from peril,” Mamba said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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At the same time, residents and emergency personnel throughout inland North and South Carolina were working under the grim assumption that the storm’s pounding of the coastline would be only the first powerful punch in a fight that could go many rounds and last for many days. It will play out not only among stilted beach cottages and seaside resorts, but also in towns and cities much farther west.
“This may be the first time we’ve experienced such a two-punch from these kind of conditions,” said South Carolina’s governor, Henry McMaster, at a news conference Thursday, speaking about evacuations along the coast as well as the possibility of rain-triggered landslides in the mountains.
Florence is proving to be a lumbering giant, with cloud cover as large as the Carolinas themselves. If, as expected, it dawdles over the region, the storm could drop rainfall of 20, 30 or even 40 inches in some areas. Anxiety is especially high over the fate of all of that water, which will have to go somewhere.
That means a cascading series of complications for a city like Greenville, a college town of 92,000 people set on the banks of the Tar River.
Greenville lies far inland, a few score miles west of the Atlantic Ocean, but it is connected to the sea by the Tar River, which eventually becomes the Pamlico River as it widens out and flows into the Atlantic.
On Thursday, as billowing, dark clouds loomed overhead, the city’s spokesman, Brock Letchworth, said Greenville’s first concern is that Florence could drop enough water to create immediate flash flooding.
But he said the city was also worried about a massive salty storm surge roaring westward up the river from the Atlantic. Finally, there is the problem of all the rainfall on the rest of the state, which would have to eventually drain eastward out toward the ocean.
City and county officials have stationed swift-water rescue groups in place, including teams of wildlife officers from Indiana. Police have begun going door to door in the lowest-lying areas suggesting that residents get out. Some 300 people were already using five Pitt County shelters.
But Mayor P.J. Connelly said the river flooding might not occur for days, if at all, given how capricious the storm’s track had proved to be. For the moment, the future for Greenville seemed as if it was written on water.
“A lot of what we do afterward is based on what the storm brings,” Connelly said, “which could be a lot of uncertainty.”
The drama was considerably more tangible Thursday in the coast-hugging city of Wilmington, where, at midday, winds whipped ocean spray across sand dunes on nearby barrier islands. City streets began to empty as residents made final preparations. The storm was expected to make landfall around 8 a.m. today near Wrightsville Beach, on Wilmington’s eastern shoulder.
“The winds of Hurricane Florence are upon us,” said Steven Still, director of emergency management for New Hanover County, which includes Wilmington.
By early this morning, winds were expected to increase to 100 mph or more, “and will stay with us for a considerable period of time,” Still said.
Emergency officials said they were particularly concerned about the powerful storm surge, predicted to reach 9 to 10 feet on North Carolina’s barrier islands, possibly producing dangerous flooding of rivers, bays, sounds and estuaries throughout the region.
Officials continued to urge people to stay inside their homes and to leave low-lying areas prone to flooding.
“We’re not going to be able to come out and get you if you have an emergency during the storm,” said Mayor Bill Saffo of Wilmington.
Saffo warned that the effects of the storm could last for several days or more, with widespread power outages, flooded roads and homes and mountains of windblown debris.
“It’s going to pound us for quite some time,” he said.
In South Carolina, state officials urged residents to follow evacuation orders as the storm begins to make landfall, and to take Florence seriously, even though its winds had weakened some.
“These are your last few hours of safe evacuation,” said Katie Geer, a spokeswoman for the South Carolina Department of Insurance. “You should not pay attention to the category of the storm. Just because it’s weakening does not mean it’s not posing a serious threat.”
Authorities said 3,917 people have moved into shelters in South Carolina with three shelters completely occupied. The state still has space for more than 31,000 people across 60 shelters.
Rick Luettich, director of the University of North Carolina’s Institute of Marine Sciences, who has a front-row seat for the storm in Morehead City, N.C., said the story of Florence would almost certainly play out in other areas farther inland.
“We think about the front-facing beaches, and those are the front lines,” he said. “But they oftentimes have sand dunes and other protections that can hold.”
“As you get up into the estuaries, as you work your way up into the coastal plain there’s no defense,” he said. “The water from the ocean backs up into those systems.”
Some areas that may feel they were spared when the hurricane first passes, might experience serious flooding from the winds on the back end of the storm, which will still be pushing water up into the North Carolina coastline.
In Greenville, they know the storm is coming. Although some residents have already been asked to evacuate their Greenville homes there are others — perhaps hundreds of them — who might not be advised to leave their homes until long after the hurricane is gone — and the water finally comes flowing back down the Tar River, headed for the ocean.
“We’ve got time. We’ve probably got about a week, which seems strange,” said Eric Griffin, the fire rescue chief for the city of Greenville. “What you will have is, the storm will come through, it’ll be nice and sunny and bright, and all of a sudden you’ll say, well, ‘What’s going on?’ And we’ll say, ‘The water’s rising.’ And the water rises pretty quickly. You could see maybe a foot every couple of hours or so.”
Letchworth, the city spokesman, said the possibility of immediate flash flooding seemed to be getting worse in recent years, the result of a building boom spurred in part by the expansion of the 29,000-student East Carolina University. That has meant more pavement and other impermeable surfaces, he said, and more places that flood that have not flooded before.
(Richard Faust, Campbell Robertson & David Zucchino, NEW YORK TIMES)
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In morning tweets, Trump took issue with the findings of a sweeping report released last month by George Washington University that estimated there were 2,975 “excess deaths” in the six months after the storm made landfall in Puerto Rico in September 2017.
Trump said on Twitter that “they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths” when he visited the island about two weeks after the storm.
“As time went by it did not go up by much,” Trump wrote. “Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000. This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!”
Trump’s tweets — which came as Hurricane Florence churned toward the Carolinas — misrepresented the nature of the study and were harshly criticized by Democrats in Congress, as well as by some Republicans.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., told reporters that she thinks the figure of nearly 3,000 is sound.
“What kind of mind twists that statistic into, ‘Oh, fake news is trying to hurt my image’?” she said. “How can you be so self-centered and try to distort the truth so much? It’s mind-boggling.”
Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott, whose U.S. Senate bid has been endorsed by Trump, said in a tweet that he disagreed with the president, relaying that “an independent study said thousands were lost” and that he had been to Puerto Rico seven times and “saw the devastation firsthand.”
In a statement, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, called on Trump to “resign at once.”
“The fact that the President will not take responsibility for his Administration’s failures and will not even recognize that thousands have perished shows us, once again, that he is not fit to serve as our President,” Thompson said in a statement.
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, who until recently had gone out of his way to avoid conflicts with Trump, also expressed frustration.
“The victims and the people of Puerto Rico should not have their pain questioned,” he said during an interview on MSNBC. “These are certainly statements that are wrong.”
Rosselló added that Puerto Rico would be treated differently if it were a state rather than a U.S. territory.
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who publicly pleaded with Trump for a stronger response to the storm, also criticized the president.
“President Trump’s statement, questioning the deaths in Puerto Rico, shows a lack of respect for our reality and our pain,” she said in a statement. “He simply is unable to grasp the human suffering that his neglect and lack of sensibility have caused us. 3000 people died on his watch and his inability to grasp that makes him dangerous.”
During a news conference on Capitol Hill later Thursday morning, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., avoided directly criticizing Trump but said he had no reason to dispute the study’s findings.
“This was a function of a devastating storm hitting an isolated island, and that is really no one’s fault,” Ryan said. “The casualties mounted for a long time, and I have no reason to dispute those numbers.”
Carlos Santos-Burgoa, the principal investigator of the GWU study and a professor in the School of Global Health, said Friday afternoon that he and his colleagues were unbiased in their work and received no political pressure from Democrats or anyone else to come up with a high estimate of storm-related deaths.
“We stand by the science underlying our study. It is rigorous. It’s state-of-the-art. We collected the data from the official sources. Everything can be validated,” Santos-Burgoa said. “We didn’t receive any pressure from anybody to go this way or that way. We wouldn’t do it. We are professionals of public health.”
In his tweets, Trump mischaracterized how the GWU researchers came up with the figure of 2,975 excess deaths. They did not, as the president claimed, attribute any specific individual’s death to Hurricane Maria. Given the methodology, there was not an opportunity to misclassify someone who died of old age.
Rather, the GWU study looked at the number of deaths from September 2017 to February 2018 and compared that total with what would have been expected based on historical patterns. They factored in many variables, including the departure of hundreds of thousands of island residents in the aftermath of Maria.
A clear pattern emerged from the analysis: The mortality rate spiked in the months after the storm, particularly in the poorest areas of Puerto Rico, and among elderly males.
The unusually high death rate never completely reached the normal level even after six months, the researchers found — a sign of Puerto Rico’s continued struggle to deal with the effects of the hurricane.
Had the GWU researchers attributed any death to Maria, the six-month death toll from the hurricane would have been 16,608.
The study’s methodology was designed to overcome the lack of information contained in the death certificates of people who died in Puerto Rico during those six months. This approach also captured the human health consequences of the island’s devastation, which included power outages lasting for months, disease outbreaks, water insecurity and a lack of adequate health care.
The researchers have acknowledged the limitation of this kind of statistical study. They did not knock on doors or learn the individual stories of who died, and when, and why. That kind of in-depth investigation would be worthy, the GWU researchers said.
The government of Puerto Rico has accepted the 2,975 figure as the official death toll from Maria. For much of the past year, officials had acknowledged only 64 deaths from the storm.
Earlier this week, Trump hailed his administration’s response to Maria as “an incredible, unsung success.”
It was “one of the best jobs that’s ever been done with respect to what this is all about,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as he was receiving a briefing on Hurricane Florence.
(John Wagner & Joel Achenbach, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Florence’s maximum sustained winds weakened late Wednesday, taking it down to a Category 2 hurricane, but it simultaneously expanded in size. Its hurricane-force winds extend 70 miles from the center of the eye, and its cloud field is four times the size of Ohio. On Wednesday, a satellite detected an open-ocean wave generated by Florence that appeared to be at least 50 feet high.
The National Hurricane Center on Wednesday tweaked the projected track for Florence to show a turn to the southwest when the storm nears Cape Fear in extreme southeast North Carolina. Florence could potentially drift toward South Carolina while remaining just offshore, as if looking for a port. A long stretch of the Carolinas remains inside the storm track’s “cone of uncertainty.”
“It could sit there ... right offshore for a day,” said Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. “That would not be good. If it gets close to the coast and just hits the coast or is just slightly inland, but then just sits there, it’s like pressing pause at the most violent part of the landfall.”
The storm might even reverse direction early next week and head north as a weakened but soggy system dropping rain on already saturated Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia and Pennsylvania. These areas are vulnerable to flooding and downed trees after heavy rains this summer.
The forecast calls for 20 to 30 inches of rain in parts of coastal North Carolina, with localized amounts of 40 inches or greater. The hurricane could generate a storm surge as high as 13 feet.
In Myrtle Beach, Sandra Lopez-Garcia can’t believe her bad fortune. She survived Hurricane Maria when it hit her hometown of Bayamon, Puerto Rico, a year ago. She rode out the storm in her concrete home there, sheltering in a bathroom with her therapy dog.
Now she’s in an emergency shelter — Conway High School — just outside of this South Carolina city.
“I really don’t know what my luck is,” she said. “I don’t think this happens to someone very often.”
She said she wishes she were back in her hometown in Puerto Rico.
“Because I would like to share with my people the anniversary. They’d been hungry for so long,” she said, her voice shaking. “Our island is not the same. We don’t have leaves on trees yet.”
Lopez-Garcia said she’s confident that local and state government officials have adequately prepared for Hurricane Florence. But when asked about President Donald Trump’s assurance that the federal government is “totally prepared,” she responded with shock and shook her head.
Florence is poised to be the most devastating storm to hit this part of the coast since Hurricane Hugo in 1989. The National Weather Service office in Wilmington, N.C., wrote that this is likely to be the “storm of a lifetime” for stretches of the Carolinas, “and that’s saying a lot given the impacts we’ve seen from hurricanes Diana, Hugo, Fran, Bonnie, Floyd, and Matthew.”
The uncertainties gnaw at government officials who must decide where to order evacuations and where to dispatch emergency responders. The result can be mixed signals, as was the case in South Carolina, where on Tuesday Gov. Henry McMaster canceled mandatory evacuation orders for several counties along the state’s southern coast. But then came the Wednesday revision in the storm track.
“As we have been predicting, this hurricane is unpredictable,” McMaster said at a briefing. He said residents in low-lying areas should still leave, even without mandatory evacuation orders, and encouraged those already under such orders to flee.
“Once that hurricane hits, once those high winds get here ... it will be very difficult if not impossible for anybody to come rescue you if you are in harm’s way in one of those zones,” he said.
That was echoed Wednesday by officials in Beaufort County, home to Hilton Head Island.
“Now is the time to move,” Lt. Col. Neil Baxley of the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office said. He said that residents normally would evacuate to central South Carolina but that this time people should flee to the states to the south.
“Georgia and Florida, wide open, sunshiny, good shape,” Baxley said.
But meanwhile, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal declared an emergency in all of his state’s 159 counties, citing the revised forecast of the storm.
Aside from the punishing winds that could strafe the coast for more than a day, the rains expected after landfall could inundate a massive area and trigger widespread flooding. Duke Energy estimated that as many as 3 million people could lose power in the Carolinas because of the storm.
“This is no ordinary storm, and people could be without power for a very long time,” said David Fountain, president of Duke Energy North Carolina. “Not days, but weeks. We won’t even be able to get to some areas for several days.”
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Gov. Ricardo Rossello said two warehouses filled with water and food are operating in the island’s north and south coasts, and that two more will open soon. Prior to Maria, there were none.
He also said the government now has lists that identify vulnerable populations, including those who live in nursing homes, something considered key given that many of the estimated 2,975 people who died as a result of Maria were elderly people. In addition, five direct emergency lines have been installed in nursing homes and other places.
“The people of Puerto Rico should know that there have been significant changes,” Rossello said.
He said there are plans to buy 168 generators for Puerto Rico’s water and sewer company, which is still relying on several generators given the ongoing power outages nearly a year after Maria destroyed Puerto Rico’s power grid.
Crews also have installed satellite communication systems in several hospitals and all of Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities, and placed nearly half of 500 miles worth of optic fiber underground, Rossello said.
But problems persist nearly a year after the Category 4 storm hit. Ten municipalities still have intermittent Internet and phone service, said Sandra Torres, president of the island’s telecommunications regulatory board. And nearly 60,000 households across Puerto Rico still don’t have a proper roof capable of withstanding a Category 1 storm, said Fernando Gil, the island’s housing secretary.
“Significant obstacles still remain,” Rossello said, acknowledging that emergency protocols in place prior to Maria were inadequate. “That was the reality. It wasn’t only us. The federal government was not prepared for that kind of storm.”
However, Rossello’s administration has not made public a government emergency response plan that officials revised after Hurricane Maria.
Puerto Rico is facing the peak of hurricane season, with Tropical Storm Isaac expected to drop heavy rain as it passes south of the island between Thursday and Friday.
Isaac is one of three storms barreling through the Atlantic. Hurricane Florence is churning ahead of Issac, and is expected to make landfall late Thursday or early Friday in the U.S. Southeast. Behind Isaac is Hurricane Helene, which is predicted to head northeast in the Atlantic before veering toward Europe.
With Florence bearing down, President Donald Trump on Tuesday turned attention back to the federal government’s response to Maria in Puerto Rico a year ago, deeming it “incredibly successful” even though a recent federal report found that nearly 3,000 people died.
The administration’s efforts in Puerto Rico received widespread criticism. But after visiting the island last September, Trump said that Puerto Ricans were fortunate that the storm did not yield a catastrophe akin to the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast.
All told, about 1,800 people died in that 2005 storm. Puerto Rico’s governor last month raised the U.S. territory’s official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to 2,975. The storm is also estimated to have caused $100 billion in damage.
“I actually think it was one of the best jobs that’s ever been done with respect to what this is all about,” Trump said Tuesday of the response in Puerto Rico, suggesting that it was made more difficult by the “island nature” of the storm site.
The president praised the response to the series of storms that battered the United States last year, saying, “I think Puerto Rico was an incredible, unsung success. Texas, we’ve been given A-pluses for. Florida, we’ve been given A-pluses for.”
Rossello, however, called Maria “the worst natural disaster in our modern history” and said work still remained before they could move on to other stages of recovery.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Mangkhut, classified by the Hong Kong Observatory as a super typhoon, is forecast to pack maximum winds of 143 miles per hour by Friday before gradually weakening.
The typhoon, expected to be closer to south China by the weekend, will bring heavy rains and storm surges on its trail.
Mangkhut is forecast to hit the disaster-prone Philippines today just as another storm left. The Philippines sees about 20 cyclones pass each year.
The strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year is threatening the farmlands in Northern Luzon just before the rice and corn harvest. The staple grain is the second-biggest item in the Philippine consumer basket, and record prices boosted inflation to 6.4 percent in August, the fastest pace since 2009.
The storm may damage as many as 156,793 metric tons of rough rice and 257,100 metric tons of corn in the Philippines worth as much as $250 million, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Pinol wrote on his Facebook account Tuesday.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Tropical-storm-force winds are expected to arrive in southeast North Carolina by Thursday morning. The National Hurricane Center said Tuesday that “life-threatening storm surge is now highly likely” along the North Carolina and South Carolina coasts, and government officials have issued evacuation orders covering more than 1.5 million residents there as well as in Virginia.
Forecasters said Tuesday afternoon that the eye of the massive storm would most likely make landfall during the middle of the day Friday on a stretch of the North Carolina coast between Wilmington and Jacksonville, home to the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune. The Hurricane Center warned that the storm was “getting better organized and increasing in size,” and predicted that, despite some modest weakening before landfall, it would strike the U.S. as a Category 3 hurricane with 120 mph sustained winds.
Coastal North Carolina could receive upward of 30 inches of rain near the storm’s landfall, which could combine with storm surge to exacerbate flooding for days, forecasters warn. They add that higher terrain in the Appalachian Mountains and the Piedmont — including much of Virginia — already is saturated from unusual summer rainfall and can’t soak up any more. Major flooding could affect areas as far from the projected landfall as Maryland, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania and the Ohio River Valley.
“This storm presents us with multiple threats, multiple hazards,” Jeffrey Byard, an associate administrator with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in a teleconference Tuesday. He urged coastal residents to evacuate immediately if advised to do so by local officials: “Don’t wait until the last minute and see what happens.”
President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters after a briefing from FEMA administrator William “Brock” Long, encouraged people to flee the hurricane’s expected path: “I would say everybody should get out. ... Once this thing hits, it’s going to be really, really bad along the coast.”
This is the first major challenge of the 2018 hurricane season for FEMA, which a government audit last week described as “overwhelmed” in 2017 when three major hurricanes hit the U.S. in the span of a few weeks. FEMA was caught short on supplies and qualified staffers when Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, a storm that devastated and debilitated much of the island and has been blamed for nearly 3,000 deaths.
“We are absolutely and totally prepared,” Trump told reporters.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Tuesday announced the mandatory evacuation of the state’s popular and fragile barrier islands, including the Outer Banks, which often take the brunt of Atlantic storms.
“Even if you’ve ridden out storms before, this one is different,” Cooper said. “It’s an extremely dangerous, life-threatening, historic hurricane.”
Dare County officials warned that ocean overwash already was spilling onto low-lying roads and slowing evacuations there along the North Carolina coast. The storm has forced the closure of hundreds of schools throughout the region. Boeing and Volvo shut down their factories in Charleston, S.C., idling thousands who build jetliners and sedans.
In Virginia, officials said inland flooding could test the James River flood walls in Richmond, the state capital. The Navy commander of the Mid-Atlantic region authorized an emergency evacuation order for personnel who live in the low-lying area under mandatory evacuation, and corrections officials said they had evacuated a prison in that area. The mayor of the District of Columbia joined Maryland’s governor in declaring an emergency days before the rains have even begun.
The wave of disruptions spread Tuesday to the sporting world, when the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University in Raleigh canceled football games planned for Saturday.
Forecasters had expected this to be a calm hurricane season — and it largely had been until a tropical depression off the African coast strengthened into a storm and then a full-blown hurricane named Florence. It, too, appeared unthreatening at first, because it was seen as likely to make a harmless clockwise circuit of open water in the Atlantic Ocean.
But Florence has defied historical patterns.
Hurricanes can pivot at the last minute, and there continues to be uncertainties about Florence. But the forecast track is ominously similar to what happened last year with Hurricane Harvey, which lost forward momentum as it moved out of the Gulf of Mexico and hit the Texas coast, parking itself over the Houston area and dropping up to 50 inches of rain, triggering historic flooding that continues to affect residents a year later.
The National Hurricane Center on Tuesday predicted that Florence would slow to just 3 to 5 mph once it hits land. The storm would quickly lose its violent windfield, and within 48 hours would be expected to be downgraded to a tropical depression. But as it stumbles toward the mountains, it would continue to dump massive amounts of rain — as much as 30 inches on the coast.
That would break North Carolina’s record for a tropical storm — 24 inches — set near Wilmington during Hurricane Floyd in 1999, said Greg Carbin, chief of forecast operations for the NOAA Prediction Center of the National Weather Service.
He said forecasters anticipate 15 to 20 inches will fall from Florence as it moves inland. In some places, so much rain already has fallen this summer that the water table is nearly at the surface.
“They can’t really take any more rain in Virginia,” Carbin said.
In Wilmington, the city was boarding up and shutting down Tuesday. At the Bridge Tender Marina, just three boats remained from the usual fleet of 70, said dock master Tripp Brice. The rest had sailed to safer ports to the south, he said — and the final three would soon be on their way as well.
Lines had formed at a Home Depot in Wilmington, where residents have been buying plywood to nail over their windows. In the parking lot, Donald Smith, 92, pushed a cart with two pieces of plywood. He said that if it were up to him, he’d do nothing at all to prepare for the storm.
His children, who live in New York, want him and his wife of 65 years, Peggy, to evacuate along with their three dogs and two cats. He won’t budge. He’d prefer to just “go with the flow,” he said.
Officials in New Hanover County, North Carolina, which includes Wilmington, urged residents to leave Tuesday or else be ready to remain self-sufficient for seven days without access to public utilities or commercial stores.
“If you can leave, you need to leave,” said county commission chairman Woody White.
County workers reached out to medically fragile residents to ensure that they are safe or have a way to leave town, officials said.
White, who has been through five hurricanes in the area, said Florence has incited a level of alarm he’s never seen before.
“This is not the time to go out and party and have fun,” he said. “This is a time to look out for your family and pets.”
Traffic slowed to a crawl on the main interstate connecting Charleston and Columbia in South Carolina. In downtown Charleston, Sandra Mackey was among 100 people gathered Tuesday in a former Piggly Wiggly supermarket parking lot to take advantage of free sand and sandbags the city is providing. She knows what a hurricane can do because she survived Hugo in 1989. It was harrowing, with 140 mph winds.
“I swore, ‘never again’,” she said.
But she’s staying this time, she said, because her husband had a stroke and she doesn’t want him to have to endure an evacuation. A central feature of her plan: She believes the storm will strike somewhere other than Charleston.
(Patricia Sullivan, Jason Samenow & Joel Achenbach, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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“If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change,” Guterres said at U.N. headquarters in New York.
“Climate change is the defining issue of our time, and we are at a defining moment,” he said. “Scientists have been telling us for decades. Over and over again. Far too many leaders have refused to listen.”
His remarks came with countries around the world far short of meeting the goals they set for themselves under the 2015 Paris accord to reduce the emissions that have warmed the planet during the last century. The next round of climate negotiations is scheduled for this year in Poland.
One of the big tests at those talks, which start Dec. 3 in Katowice, will be whether countries, especially industrialized countries that produce a large share of global emissions, will set higher targets for reducing their emissions.
“The time has come for our leaders to show they care about the people whose fate they hold in their hands,” Guterres said, without taking questions from reporters. “We need to rapidly shift away from our dependence on fossil fuels.”
Guterres’ speech came days before a high-level climate meeting in San Francisco, spearheaded by Gov. Jerry Brown, meant to demonstrate what businesses and local leaders have done to tackle climate change.
The U.N. chief seems to be taking a page from Brown’s playbook. He, too, is looking beyond national leaders to make a difference. He has invited heads of industry and city government leaders to his September 2019 climate change forum in an apparent effort to increase pressure on national governments.
The Paris Agreement aims to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels in order to avoid what scientists call the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.
But few countries are even close to meeting the targets they set under the Paris pact. And an assessment by the U.N. found that country targets so far would achieve only one-third of the global target.
Guterres sought to make the case that a shift away from fossil fuels like oil and coal would create jobs and bolster economies. Rebutting critics who argue that such a shift would be costly, he called that idea “hogwash.”
He cited the steps private companies are taking to wean themselves away from polluting fossil fuels — including a hat tip to the insurance company Allianz, which has promised to stop insuring coal-fired power plants — though he said such actions are plainly insufficient.
“These are all important strides,” Guterres said. “But they are not enough. The transition to a cleaner, greener future needs to speed up.”
He warned that governments were not meeting their Paris Agreement commitments and goaded world leaders to step up.
“What we still lack, even after the Paris Agreement, is leadership and the ambition to do what is needed,” he said.
Guterres did not mention any countries or any heads of state by name. But looming large over his remarks was the leader of the world’s most powerful country: President Donald Trump, who has dismissed climate science and vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord.
(Somoni Sengupta, NEW YORK TIMES)
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Communities along a stretch of coastline that’s vulnerable to rising sea levels due to climate change prepared to evacuate the storm, which forecasters expect to be close to Category 5 strength by today. The South Carolina governor ordered the state’s entire coastline to be evacuated starting at noon today and predicted that 1 million people would flee. And Virginia’s governor ordered a mandatory evacuation for some residents of low-lying coastal areas.
The storm’s first effects were already apparent on barrier islands as dangerous rip currents hit beaches and seawater flowed over a state highway.
For many people, the challenge could be finding a safe refuge: If Florence slows to a crawl just off the coast, it could bring torrential rains to the Appalachian mountains and as far away as West Virginia, causing flash floods, mudslides and other dangerous conditions.
The storm’s potential path also includes half a dozen nuclear power plants, pits holding coal-ash and other industrial waste, and numerous hog farms that store animal waste in massive open-air lagoons.
Airlines, including American and Southwest, have started letting passengers change travel plans that take them into the hurricane’s possible path.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Fork fire started just before noon Sunday above Azusa on Highway 39 at the junction of East Fork Road, according to Nathan Judy, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service. There is zero containment.
Two campgrounds were evacuated, as were recreational visitors near streams and creeks, Judy said. Highway 39, two miles north of Sierra Madre Boulevard, was closed through Monday.
There have been three minor injuries to firefighters, two of them heat related and one from a falling rock, Judy said. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
In Northern California, firefighters are continuing to battle the Delta fire, which had forced the shutdown of a stretch of Interstate 5. As of Monday morning, the fire had burned 47,110 acres and was 5 percent contained, according to Cal Fire.
More than 2,000 firefighters are battling the blaze, according to Cal Fire officials.
The I-5 between Redding and Mount Shasta was reopened Monday morning, with travel reduced to one lane in each direction for 17 miles.
So far, traffic hasn’t been too heavy on the I-5 as cars and trucks return to the highway, said Lt. Kyle Foster, commander of the California Highway Patrol’s Mount Shasta office.
Even though one lane of the freeway was open in both directions, exits remained closed — even to local residents — between the Vollmers and Sims Road exits. The closed lanes were being saved for firefighters, Caltrans workers and contract crews.
Over the last few days, as drivers were routed around the I-5, traffic backed up for several hours along Routes 299 and 89 — roads not built for the level of traffic seen on the 5. On Thursday, traffic worsened on Route 299 when a car and a semitruck collided near Oak Run, leaving the truck jackknifed across both lanes of one of the main detours around I-5.
“We always want to avoid detouring traffic as much as possible because Interstate 5 on any given day has 20,000 vehicles travel down it,” Foster said.
Just as CHP cautions passengers during a winter weather advisory to have plenty of water, food and fuel before leaving home, the agency warned travelers taking the detour to do the same.
In Burney, a town of about 3,200 on Route 299, USA Gasoline had to close its diesel pumps due to low fuel levels. One store worker who lives on Route 89 had to leave home an hour early just to get to work on time. The store ran out of several drinks as customers stuck in traffic streamed inside.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The legions of dead fish were reported in a 20-mile stretch of coastline from Clearwater to St. Petersburg, environmental officials with Pinellas County told the Tampa Bay Times.
County workers roamed beaches and trawled offshore to collect the fish carcasses to head off decomposition as some beachgoers turned back. Rotting fish and the strong odor of the algae has previously repelled locals and imperiled Florida’s vital tourism sector for much of the summer.
The toxic algae has claimed countless fish, hundreds of sea turtles, dozens of bottlenose dolphins and even a 26-foot whale shark in the last few months. The algae stretches in varied density for about 120 miles of coastline, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said.
In August, Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency and released funds to help with the massive cleanup effort and help businesses recover from lost profits. The algae has affected the coast in some way for 10 months — and has become a key political issue in the midterms for Scott, a U.S. Senate hopeful.
A red tide is a natural phenomenon that develops miles offshore before making its way to the coast, where it feeds on a variety of pollutants, including phosphorus and nitrogen from fertilizer, along with other runoff and wastewater. The toxins can aerosolize in the wind that drifts ashore, triggering respiratory problems or worsening conditions such as asthma.
What is not clear is whether climate change and pollution from humans near the shore has made this outbreak severe and prolonged. Scientists have found that the algae thrive in warmer waters and increased carbon dioxide levels.
Until this past week, the red tide lurked south of Tampa Bay, the Times reported. But samples of high concentration of the algae have been found in waters near Clearwater Beach in the past few days.
The sudden approach of the algae bloom and dead fish washing ashore surprised beachgoers on Saturday. Andres and Veronica Bernal said that they had checked county websites for alerts before leaving Tampa in the afternoon.
Their two children were horrified to see dead fish littered on the beach. They opted to play in the sand instead as the smell of rotting fish lingered.
Scientists are trying to figure out why, exactly, the current red tide along the Gulf Coast has been so protracted and deadly to wildlife. State officials and scientists point out that, at base, this is a natural phenomenon. Fish die-offs were noted by Spanish explorers in the 1500s and have been well documented since the 1840s.
The crisis has become a political issue in the upcoming midterms as Scott, a Republican, challenges Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, for his seat. Both men have blamed the prolonged crisis and delayed responses on each other.
They have also attacked each other over the severity of a different type of algae that is choking rivers and plaguing Lake Okeechobee, the state’s largest freshwater lake.
(Alex Horton, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Caltrans said Sunday afternoon that the 45-mile section of I-5 north of Redding will remain closed indefinitely. The Delta fire has destroyed thousands of trees — some 70 feet tall — that could fall onto the highway that runs from Mexico to Canada and serves as a main artery for commerce.
Trucks and other traffic were using a smaller road that has added 100 miles or more and up to eight hours to the journey.
The stretch of highway was closed Wednesday as flames flanked the roadway and left it littered with burnt and abandoned trucks.
Although the wrecks have been cleared, the 41,000-acre Delta fire remained a threat as it chewed through timber and brush in and around Shasta-Trinity National Forest. The blaze had devoured 63.9 square miles and was only 5 percent contained on Sunday.
Meanwhile to the south, another fire that began Saturday in remote Napa County woodlands prompted evacuations and threatened about 180 homes. The Snell fire had burned 2,500 acres and was 10 percent contained Sunday.
The Delta fire was just the latest of several enormous fires that have ravaged the north end of the state in recent weeks. The fire was moving into an area already burned by a larger blaze called the Hirz fire. That blaze, burning in oak woodlands, was 95 percent contained.
The Delta blaze also was close to the Carr fire, which killed eight people and burned about 1,100 homes before it was contained last month. That blaze and another in the Mendocino area — the two largest wildfires in the state so far this year — destroyed or damaged 8,800 homes and 329 businesses.
Firefighters were working Sunday to reach full containment of the Mendocino Complex fire, more than six weeks after it started, officials said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Red flags flying on beaches warned swimmers to stay out of waters already roiled by the distant storm, and cruise ships and Navy vessels were set to be steered out of harm’s way. People rushed to buy bottled water, plywood and other supplies.
Florence crossed the 74 mph threshold from tropical storm to hurricane Sunday morning, and by evening its winds were up to 85 mph as the National Hurricane Center warned it was expected to become an extremely dangerous major hurricane by today and remain that way for days.
On Sunday evening, Florence was centered about 720 miles southeast of Bermuda, moving west at 7 mph. Drawing energy from the warm water, it could be a fearsome Category 4 with winds of 130 mph or more by Tuesday, the Miami-based center said.
Forecasters said it is too early to know the exact path the storm will take but warned that it could roll ashore in the Carolinas by Thursday.
Forecasters urged residents from South Carolina to the mid-Atlantic to get ready — and not just for a possible direct blow against the coast. They warned that Florence could slow or stall after coming ashore, with some forecasting models showing it could unload a foot or two of rain in places, causing devastating inland flooding. Forecasters also warned that the threat of a life-threatening storm surge was rising.
“Pretend, assume, presume that a major hurricane is going to hit right smack dab in the middle of South Carolina and is going to go way inshore,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said.
In Charleston, S.C., along the coast, city officials offered sandbags to residents. Myrtle Beach Mayor Brenda Bethune urged people to secure their homes but said it’s too early to know if evacuations will be ordered.
Florence’s effects were already being felt along the coast, with dangerous swells and rip currents in some spots.
The University of North Carolina at Wilmington encouraged its students to leave campus for a safer location. The university said Sunday that it has issued a voluntary evacuation for students starting at midday today, noting classes would be canceled.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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It could be the third tropical weather system to affect the islands, following hurricanes Hector and Lane, in what has been an exceptionally active year for storms in the central Pacific Ocean.
Olivia is centered about 1,400 miles east of the Big Island and is headed to the west at 16 mph in its general direction.
The Category 3 storm, packing winds of 115 mph, has weakened some since Thursday, when it was briefly a Category 4. Additional, steady weakening is predicted by the National Hurricane Center over the next five days.
By the time it approaches the Hawaiian islands on Wednesday from the northeast, its peak winds are forecast to ease to 65 mph, meaning it would be downgraded to a tropical storm.
Bob Henson, who pens Weather Underground’s Category 6 blog, notes there is “no precedent” for a tropical storm or hurricane to strike Hawaii from the east-northeast direction.
Only four tropical storms or hurricanes on record have directly passed over the islands (many more have come close) in historical records, and they’ve all come in from the south or southeast.
Because the storm is still five to six days away, it’s not possible to know which, if any, islands it might directly pass over and hit hardest. And its exact intensity is also a tough call.
But the storm has the potential to bring more heavy rain and gusty winds to the islands just over two weeks after they were sideswiped by Hurricane Lane. That storm unloaded over 50 inches of rainfall on the Big Island, the second most for any tropical weather system to affect the United States.
Climate change models project the number of hurricanes affecting Hawaii to increase in future decades. Two of the four tropical storms and hurricanes to directly cross over the islands have happened in the last four years: Tropical Storm Darby in 2016 and Tropical Storm Iselle in 2014, both on the Big Island.
While Hawaii monitors Olivia and the East Coast watches Florence, Guam may need to brace for Typhoon Mangkhut which could unleash serious wind, rain and waves on the island early next week.
“Globally, this is a remarkable day,” tweeted Eric Blake, a forecaster at the National Hurricane Center. “I can’t find another example of a hurricane/typhoon nearing Guam, Hawaii & the eastern United States at almost exactly the same time.”
(Jason Samenow, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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The magnitude 6.7 quake early Thursday unleashed scores of landslides that buried homes in avalanches of soil, rock and timber on the country’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido. In Atsuma, a town of 4,600 people, 26 were still unaccounted for.
The landslides ripped through some homes and buried others. Some residents interviewed by national broadcaster NHK described awakening to find their relatives and next-door neighbors gone.
“The entire thing just collapsed,” said one. “It’s unbelievable.”
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said nearly half of the nearly 3 million households on the island had their power restored after a day of island-wide blackouts.
“The forecasts are for rain, and that could bring more landslides, so please continue to exercise extreme caution,” he said.
The regional government said the bullet train to the provincial capital, Sapporo, was due to reopen later in the day. The city’s regional airport also was beginning to resume operations after hundreds of flights had been canceled, stranding thousands of travelers, due to Thursday’s power outage and light quake damage.
Hokkaido is Japan’s northern frontier and a major farming region with rugged mountain ranges and vast forests, and its people are accustomed to coping with long winters, isolation and other hardships.
It is sparsely populated compared to the rest of Japan, but disruptions were widespread. Many roads were closed and some were impassable.
In Sapporo, the regional capital and home to 1.9 million people, casualties were relatively light. But damage to some parts of the city was severe, with houses atilt and roads crumbled or sunken. A mudslide left several cars half buried, and the ground subsided, leaving drainpipes and manhole covers protruding by more than a yard in some places.
“I was on the 9th floor when it hit. I was about to go to sleep. Then, all of sudden, there came a big tremor. I never experienced such big tremor since I was born. So, I was really surprised,” Sayaka Igarashi, 20, told The Associated Press.
“People are saying there could be aftershocks. I’m worried that another big one will hit,” said Ryota Kitsui, 29.
Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko told reporters today that it would take at least a week to fully restore power to all communities due to damage at a thermal power plant at Tomato-Atsuma that supplies half of Hokkaido’s electricity.
“We’re trying to do it faster, but it will likely take a week,” Seko said. He urged residents to conserve power by keeping lights off, unplugging unused appliances and having family members stay together in one room.
“This will help us to restore power to more places,” he said.
The last few months have brought a string of calamities in Japan. The quake came on the heels of a typhoon that lifted heavy trucks off their wheels and triggered major flooding in western Japan, and damaged the main airport near Osaka and Kobe. The summer also brought devastating floods and landslides from torrential rains in Hiroshima and deadly hot temperatures across the country.
(Haruka Nuga & Mari Yamaguchi, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In a video, a passenger in a vehicle screams: “Oh my God, I want to go!” as nearby trees burst into flames.
“I can’t breathe,” the woman says, sobbing. “Please, guys, come put it out.”
The fire erupted Wednesday afternoon in a rural area and devoured timber and brush on both sides of Interstate 5 as it nearly tripled in size overnight to 15,300 acres, officials said Thursday. Authorities said 45 miles of the major north-south trucking corridor will remain closed until at least this morning.
About 17 big-rigs were abandoned along the interstate, and at least four caught fire, Lt. Cmdr. Kyle Foster of the California Highway Patrol’s Mount Shasta office told the Los Angeles Times. At least two trucks were partially melted.
U.S. Forest Service workers helped the driver of one flaming truck to safety. Truckers, firefighters and others aided more drivers.
Elsewhere in the state, a fire raging in the Sierra Nevada had grown to more than 7 square miles after shutting down stretches of U.S. 395, State Route 108 and the Pacific Crest Trail along the eastern spine of California.
The Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, campgrounds and other areas were evacuated Wednesday. Ranchers were told to prepare to move livestock out of the area in Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck southern Hokkaido at 3:08 a.m. at the depth of 24 miles, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said. The epicenter was east of the city of Tomakomai but the shaking buckled roads and damaged homes in Hokkaido’s prefectural capital of Sapporo, with a population of 1.9 million.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that two people had been confirmed dead. He did not give details.
The Japanese national broadcaster NHK, citing its own tally, reported that 125 people were injured and nearly 40 are feared missing. Hokkaido’s local disaster agency put the number of injured at 48.
Several people were reported missing in the nearby town of Atsuma, where a massive landslide engulfed homes in an avalanche of soil, rocks and timber.
Reconstruction Minister Jiro Akama told reporters that five people were believed to be buried in the town’s Yoshino district. Some of the 40 people stranded there were airlifted to safer grounds, NHK said.
Aerial views showed dozens of landslides in the surrounding area, with practically every mountainside a raw slash of brown amid deep green forest.
Airports and many roads on the island were closed following the early morning quake. NHK showed workers rushing to clean up shattered glass and reinstall ceiling panels that had tumbled down in the region’s biggest airport at Chitose.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that 25,000 troops and other personnel would be dispatched to the area to help with rescue operations.
NHK showed the moment the quake struck the city of Muroran, with its camera violently shaking and all city lights going black moment later. In Sapporo, a mudslide on a road left several cars half buried.
Power was knocked out for Hokkaido’s 2.9 million households. Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko told reporters that the extensive power outage was caused by an emergency shutdown of the main thermal power plant at Tomato Atsuma that supplies half of Hokkaido’s electricity.
The hope had been to get power back up “within a few hours,” Seko said. However, damage to three generators at the Tomato Atsuma plant meant that the restoration of power could take more than a week.
Seko said utilities were planning to start up several other thermal and hydroelectric plants to provide at least some power.
In the meantime, authorities sent power-generator vehicles to hospitals so enable them to treat emergency patients, he said.
Reacting quickly to the disaster, troops deployed water tanker trucks in Sapporo, where residents were collecting bottles to tide them over until electricity and tap water supplies come back online.
(Mari Yamaguchi, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Jebi, reportedly the strongest typhoon to make landfall in Japan since 1993, headed north across the main island of Honshu toward the Sea of Japan. It was off the northern coast of Fukui on Tuesday evening with sustained winds of 78 miles per hour and gusts up to 110 mph, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
More than 700 flights were canceled, according to Japanese media tallies. High-speed bullet train service was suspended from Tokyo west to Hiroshima, though service partially resumed later Tuesday when the typhoon left the region.
More than 1.6 million households remained without power in Osaka, Kyoto and four nearby prefectures late Tuesday, according to Kansai Electric Power Co.
High seas poured into Kansai International Airport, built on artificial islands in Osaka Bay.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Tropical Storm Gordon strengthened some in the final hours as it neared the central Gulf Coast, clocking top sustained winds of 70 mph. The National Hurricane Center said Gordon’s tight core was about 75 miles southeast of Biloxi, Miss., or about 70 miles south of Mobile, Ala., where heavy rains and winds picked up shortly before nightfall.
More than 18,000 customers were without power Tuesday night as Gordon began pushing ashore. Those outages were split about evenly between coastal Alabama and the western tip of the Florida Panhandle around Pensacola, with a few hundred in southeastern Mississippi. The number of outages rose rapidly after dark Tuesday night as Gordon’s wind and rain began to take a toll on the Gulf Coast’s power grid.
Skies quickly turned dark gray as storms overshadowed Mobile, a port city. Metal chairs were lashed together atop tables outside a restaurant in what’s normally a busy entertainment district, and a street musician played to an empty sidewalk just before the rain began. Conditions were expected to deteriorate westward to New Orleans as the storm closed in on the coast, possibly becoming the second hurricane to hit the region in less than a year.
Families along the coast filled sandbags, took patio furniture inside and stocked up on batteries and bottled water ahead of Gordon.
John and Robin Berry, vacationing on Dauphin Island, Ala., went to the beach to see the roaring surf before the rain began. Accompanied by their dog Bentley, the couple had to evacuate the beachfront home they had rented for the week because of Gordon, but they didn’t go very far.
“There are no dunes and there’s no protection, so the realty company we rented from moved us across the street and down so that we would be safe,” said Robin Berry.
Visiting from Nashville, Tenn., the couple planned to stay on the island despite the storm. Katrina cut the narrow island in half more than a decade ago, but John Berry wasn’t very worried about Gordon.
“It’s awesome. It’s so beautiful,” he said of the pounding waves.
About 20 miles away on the mainland, dozens of brightly colored shrimp boats were tied up to docks in Bayou La Batre, a seafood town that processes oysters, shrimp and crabs from across the Gulf of Mexico.
A hurricane warning was in effect for the entire Mississippi and Alabama coasts with the possibility Gordon would become a Category 1 storm.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Gordon formed into a tropical storm near the Florida Keys early Monday as it moved west-northwest at 17 mph. The storm is expected to reach hurricane strength when it hits the Gulf Coast, including coastal Mississippi, by late today. From there, it is forecast to move inland over the lower Mississippi Valley on Wednesday.
The National Hurricane Center said Monday night that the storm was centered 50 miles west-southwest of Fort Myers, Fla. Maximum sustained winds were clocked at 50 mph.
A hurricane warning was put into effect for the area stretching from the mouth of the Pearl River in Mississippi to the Alabama-Florida border. As much as 8 inches of rain could fall in some parts of the Gulf states through late Thursday.
The Miami-based center said the storm is also expected to bring “life-threatening” storm surge to portions of the central Gulf Coast. A storm surge warning has been issued for the area stretching from Shell Beach, La., to Dauphin Island, Ala. The warning means there is danger of life-threatening inundation. The region could see rising waters of 3 to 5 feet.
“The deepest water will occur along the immediate coast near and to the east of the landfall location, where the surge will be accompanied by large waves,” the center said.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency Monday and said 200 National Guard troops will be deployed to southeastern Louisiana.
The storm’s predicted track had shifted slightly east as of Monday evening, meaning Louisiana is currently just outside the area under the hurricane warning. Still, the southeastern part of the state remains under a tropical storm warning and residents need to be prepared for the storm to shift west, Edwards said.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell held an afternoon news conference and said the city has “the pumps and the power” needed to protect residents. But authorities issued a voluntary evacuation order for areas outside the city’s levee protection system, including the Venetian Isles, Lake Saint Catherine and Irish Bayou areas.
Miami Beach Police said via Twitter that the Labor Day holiday was “NOT a beach day,” with rough surf and potential rip currents. Red flags flew over Pensacola-area beaches in Florida’s Panhandle, where swimming and wading in the Gulf of Mexico was prohibited. More than 4,000 Florida Power & Light customers lost power Monday due to weather conditions.
The National Weather Service said conditions were “possible” for tornadoes in the affected parts of South Florida on Monday night.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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That is the takeaway from an analysis of summer sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Maine by a marine scientist with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland. The average sea surface temperature in the gulf was nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average during one 10-day stretch in August, said the scientist, Andy Pershing, who released the work Thursday.
Aug. 8 was the second warmest day in recorded history in the gulf, and there were other sustained stretches this summer that were a few degrees higher than the average from 1982 to 2011, Pershing said. He characterized this year as “especially warm” even for a body of water that he and other scientists previously identified as warming faster than 99 percent of the global ocean.
“We’re seeing really unusual conditions all over the planet this year. Wildfires and heatwaves. Unusual conditions. The Gulf of Maine is part of that story,” Pershing said.
The Gulf of Maine is a body of water that resembles a dent in the coastal Northeast, and it touches Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Atlantic Canada. It’s the nerve center of the U.S. lobster fishing industry, an important feeding ground for rare North Atlantic right whales and a piece of ocean that has attracted much attention in recent years because of its rapid warming.
The gulf warmed at a rate of about 0.1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 30 years, which is more than three times the global average, Pershing said. That rate has jumped to more than seven times the global average in the past 15 years, he said.
The warming of the gulf is happening at a time when the center of the U.S. lobster population appears to be tracking northward. America’s lobster catch is still high, but rising temperatures threaten to “continue to disrupt the marine ecosystem in this region,” said John Bruno, a marine ecologist with the University of North Carolina who was not involved in Pershing’s work.
“Warming in the GOM has been pushing out native species like cod, kelp and lobster, and fostering populations of species typically found in the Carolinas,” Bruno said. “Although it’s an extreme example, it mirrors what we’re seeing across most of the world.”
The gulf has seen temperatures above the 90th percentile for more than five consecutive days this year, which constitutes a “marine heatwave,” Pershing said. It has set 10 daily temperature records this summer after setting 18 over the winter, he said.
The warming is bad news for the rare right whales because it impacts the availability of tiny organisms they eat, said Jeffrey Runge, a research scientist with Gulf of Maine Research Institute and the University of Maine.
It’s symptomatic of warming oceans all over the world, Runge said.
“There are very large, not regional, drivers for this change,” he said. “Until we work on the global drivers of warming, I don’t see any way to stop this.”
(Patrick Whittle, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Authorities on Long Island say heat appeared to be a factor in Tuesday’s death of an 11-year-old girl found in a vehicle with the windows closed. The heat index was past 100.
In Massachusetts, nearly two dozen school districts canceled classes or sent children home early Wednesday in response to heat that reached 98 degrees, breaking the Aug. 29, 1953, record of 96. With the added high humidity, it felt like 107 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
“Our schools were simply not designed for the sustained heat and humidity we are experiencing since many do not have air conditioning or sufficient cooling systems,” said Mike Morris, superintendent of the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District, in a message to parents.
School districts in Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Virginia also had early dismissals Tuesday and Wednesday. Philadelphia already announced an early dismissal for today.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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She’s had to dip into retirement savings to cover a $300,000 shortfall in her homeowner’s insurance coverage.
“We just kind of thought we were taken care of,” Sharp, 54, said about her insurance policy. “If I had to do it over again, I’d probably change my mind and move.”
The wildfire that tore through Northern California in October 2017, killing 22 people and destroying more than 5,500 structures, left many people in Sharp’s position: Underinsured and having to scramble for money to build a new home on their property.
Santa Rosa was the hardest-hit city, with neighborhoods burned to ashes. But as of late August, only nine of nearly 2,700 single-family homes lost here had been rebuilt, according to figures from the city’s permitting office.
Another 520 or so were under construction.
Many homeowners say they are locked in negotiations with insurance companies for additional money to cover the cost of building a home at the edge of the Bay Area, where a technology boom has sent home prices skyrocketing. That, coupled with competition among neighbors for construction crews and materials, has left many homeowners hundreds of thousands of dollars in the red.
For Santa Rosa native Alex Apons, 34, the insurance shortfall on his home in the tidy Coffey Park neighborhood was $200,000. He and his wife wanted to stay because they had a baby on the way and both have deep family roots in the area.
They used every insurance dollar they received to pay off the mortgage of their 4-year-old home that burned. There was nothing left for a down payment on construction.
“We had to drain our bank account,” said Apons, now father to a 5-month-old boy, Etienne. “After everything is built, we’re looking at a monthly payment on that loan that’s $1,000 more than what our mortgage was before.”
Besides the Santa Rosa blaze, several other major wildfires the same month took out thousands of homes elsewhere in Sonoma County and in neighboring Napa County.
As of April, nearly two-thirds of those fire victims wanted to rebuild, but most had yet to settle insurance claims for their property and belongings, according to a survey by United Policyholders, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that helps people understand their insurance policies. Two-thirds of respondents reported being underinsured by an average of $317,000.
Insurance industry experts warn that many Californians whose homes have been destroyed in this year’s wildfires also will discover their policies will not cover the cost of a new home, leading to similar rebuilding delays.
So far in 2018, wildfires have scorched at least 1,000 square miles in various parts of California. More than 1,200 homes have been destroyed, and nine people have died.
Insurance companies Jim and Sheila, St. Paul’s Villa Residents value homes using factors including their size, purchase price and the price of homes around them. Few homeowners update their policies annually to keep up with inflation, labor and material costs and home upgrades that increase the value. Insurance companies want to keep premiums low to compete with rivals and attract customers.
When Apons’ wife, Heather, called their insurance company this month to request a new homeowners’ insurance quote, the agent provided a figure that would pay them $340,000 less than the current price tag to reconstruct their house. The agent said better coverage would raise their premium considerably, she recalled.
“I’m like, ‘I don’t care. I don’t ever want to be underinsured again,’” she said.
After massive fires across Southern California over the past decade, the state Department of Insurance found that insurance companies often understated replacement costs to potential customers and omitted or misrepresented fees for permitting, architects, labor and zoning, California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said.
A false sense of security is common among the insured because most rely on insurance companies for details, said Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, an advocacy group for insurance consumers.
Bach said out-of-town insurance adjusters often fail to properly value homes in the San Francisco area. In Sonoma County, property values increase about 10 percent every year, according to Pacific Union Real Estate, a leading real estate group in the region.
Jim Whittle, chief counsel for trade group the American Insurance Association, said it’s up to consumers to make sure they have enough insurance. After mass catastrophes, “there’s almost always going to be situations where people don’t have quite what they wanted or expected,” Whittle said.
Sharp and her husband, Paul, held hands on a recent morning as they surveyed construction of their new home on the Santa Rosa property where they raised their kids, held backyard parties and enjoyed the sunset.
They know their use of retirement savings to fund the project will make it harder to live comfortably and travel as they age.
“Our life from here on out is very different going into our retirement years,”
Cheri Sharp said.
(Lorin Eleni Gill, LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The new estimate of nearly 3,000 dead in the six months after Maria devastated the island in September 2017 and knocked out the entire electrical grid was made by researchers with the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.
“We never anticipated a scenario of zero communication, zero energy, zero highway access,” Gov. Ricardo Rossello told reporters. “I think the lesson is to anticipate the worst. Yes, I made mistakes. Yes, in hindsight, things could’ve been handled differently.”
He said he is creating a commission to study the hurricane response, and a registry of people vulnerable to the next hurricane, such as the elderly, the bedridden and kidney dialysis patients.
Rossello acknowledged Puerto Rico remains vulnerable to another major storm. He said the government has improved its communication systems and established a network to distribute food and medicine, but he noted that there are still 60,000 homes without a proper roof and that the power grid is still unstable.
“A lesson from this is that efforts for assistance and recovery need to focus as much as possible on lower-income areas, on people who are older, who are more vulnerable,” said Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken institute.
Tuesday’s finding is almost twice the government’s previous estimate, included in a recent report to Congress, that there were 1,427 more deaths than normal in the three months after the storm.
The George Washington researchers said the official count from the Sept. 20 hurricane was low in part because doctors were not trained in how to classify deaths after a disaster.
The number of dead has political implications for the Trump administration, which was accused of responding half-heartedly to the disaster. Shortly after the storm, when the official death toll stood at 16, President Donald Trump marveled over the small loss of life compared to that of “a real catastrophe like Katrina.”
Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005, was directly responsible for about 1,200 deaths, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The White House issued a statement on Tuesday noting that it sent 12,000 personnel to Puerto Rico for response and recovery efforts, and said it would continue to support the island’s government and its communities in their recovery for years to come.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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It’s still too early to quantify the extent of the damage, but it runs the gamut from flooded homes to washed-out roads, said Kelly Wooten, spokeswoman for the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency.
“We don’t really have any numbers or statistics back yet,” she said. Assessment teams began surveying the damage Sunday.
The storm caused damage, mostly on the Big Island, where rivers raged near Hilo and nearly 40 people had to be rescued from homes.
There were no deaths from the storm, which had the potential to cause much more destruction.
Some 200 people have called to report some kind of damage, mostly on the east side of the Big Island, said county Managing Director Wil Okabe.
“What we’re concerned about is the mold — when it goes into the drywall, the rug, stuff like that,” Okabe said.
The storm named Lane was barreling toward the Hawaiian Islands as a powerful Category 5 hurricane in the middle of the week. But then it slowed down, moving as slow as 2 mph at times.
While it slowed, the storm’s outer bands hovered over the east side of the Big Island, allowing Lane to drop 51.53 inches of rain, the National Weather Service said Monday.
On Sunday, state Sen. Kai Kahele surveyed flood damage at Waiakea Elementary School in Hilo on the Big island. Six classrooms for preschool, special education and kindergarten students flooded, and the smell of mildew was settling in, he said.
“I think it’s reflective of what you see all over east Hawaii,” he said. “Four feet of water in three days overwhelmed even the best infrastructure and the best storm drains and plans.”
As the island continued to clean up from the storm, some people were feeling like it could have been worse if Lane remained a hurricane and unleashed destructive winds.
Catarine Zaragoza-Dodge, owner of The Locavore Store in Hilo, was feeling grateful her shop fared better than others. The store got some flooding Thursday night, and they were able to mop up waterproof vinyl floors on Friday to re-open by Saturday.
Parts of Hawaii were still seeing the effects of Lane, said National Weather Service Meteorologist Vannesa Almanza.
The entire state was under a flash-flood watch through today. Kauai and northwest Big Island were under a flash-flood warning.
“We’re expecting some dryer air to move in Tuesday night into Friday,” Almanza said, which could bring some relief to the Big Island, where it continued to pour Monday morning.
“People just want the rain to stop,” Kahele said. “People are tired of being wet.”
(Jennifer Sinco Kelleher, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The earthquakes in Iran’s Kermanshah province come as some still remain homeless after a major 7.3 magnitude earthquake in November struck the same region, killing over 530 people.
On Sunday, the quakes began after 2:30 a.m. with the magnitude 6 striking near the city of Javanrud, some 285 miles west of the capital, Tehran. There were then three apparent aftershocks.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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There were no deaths from the storm, which had the potential to cause much more destruction.
The storm was barreling toward the Hawaiian Islands as a powerful Category 5 hurricane in the middle of the week. But then it slowed down, moving as slow as 2 mph at times.
As it lingered, the storm’s outer bands were already over the Big Island, allowing Lane to drop 51.53 inches of rain, according to preliminary figures from the National Weather Service.
That puts it in third place for the most rain from a storm in the United States since 1950. Hurricane Harvey, which stalled over Houston last year, dropped the most rain in that span with 60.58 inches. Hurricane Hiki dropped 52 inches in Hawaii in 1950, and Amelia produced a 48-inch rainfall in 1978.
Rain was still falling on the Big Island late Sunday, and the total could still increase.
While the Big Island took the brunt of the storm, the worst of fears never materialized as Lane quickly fell apart.
The storm moved in the central Pacific along a high-pressure ridge last week, when there wasn’t much wind shear to affect the hurricane.
But then the storm began moving north toward Hawaii around the high-pressure ridge, and that’s when its winds died down and it lost speed.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Madison and the rest of surrounding Dane County are struggling to recover after torrential storms settled over the area on Monday night, dumping more than 11 inches of rain in some areas.
The deluge flooded streets, causing power outages and sending cars floating away. A 70-year-old Madison man was killed when he got out of his car and was swept underwater by the current.
Outlying municipalities in the county were hardest hit, with brown water as high as truck cabs filling streets. Preliminary estimates put the damage at $108 million, countywide.
The rain has caused long-lasting problems on Madison’s isthmus, a narrow strip of land that runs between lakes Mendota and Monona and is home to the Capitol building and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The rain has driven both lakes to historic levels, Mayor Paul Soglin said at a news conference Friday. City workers have been trying to release water from Lake Mendota through a lock-and-dam into Lake Monona and the Yahara River, but low-lying streets remained flooded as of Friday afternoon. Soglin predicted commuters will struggle with road closures for days and urged people to work from home through Wednesday.
National Weather Service forecasts called for showers and thunderstorms to dump between a quarter-inch and half-inch of rain in the area on Friday night. Sunday night could bring the same amount.
Soglin said 5 inches of rain or more would force mass evacuations around the lakes. Two to 3 inches of rain would likely result in isolated evacuations, the mayor said.
About a dozen Wisconsin National Guard troops as well as Wisconsin prison inmates worked Friday to fill sandbags, Soglin said. City crews still spent the day taping flyers on the doors of some 1,700 homes warning that the houses are in danger of flooding and residents should be prepared if told to evacuate, the mayor said.
He also warned residents to move important items out of their basements and stop buying perishable food for the next few days in case they lose power and can’t refrigerate it.
(Todd Richmond, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Employees of the Sheraton Waikiki resort on the famed beach filled up sandbags as shuttered stores stacked them against the bottom of their glass windows to prepare for heavy rain, flash flooding and damaging surf on Oahu, the most populated island.
Hurricane Lane already lashed the Big Island with nearly 20 inches of rain in nearly 24 hours and was moving closer to Hawaii, a shift that will put the Big Island and Maui “in the thick” of the storm, National Weather Service meteorologist Melissa Dye said. The agency says the storm has weakened to a Category 3 but can still cause major damage.
The hurricane with winds from 111 to 129 mph was expected to move close to or over portions of the main islands later Thursday or today, bringing dangerous surf of 20 feet and a storm surge of up to 4 feet, forecasters said.
Lane was not projected to make a direct hit on the islands, but officials warned that even a lesser blow could do significant harm. Some areas could see up to 30 inches of rain.
“Rain has been nonstop for the last half hour or so, and winds are just starting to pick up,” said Pablo Akira Beimler, who lives on the coast in Honokaa on the Big Island. “Our usually quiet stream is raging right now.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The National Weather Service said tropical-storm-force winds began hitting the Big Island late Wednesday.
“We’re planning on boarding up all our windows and sliding doors,” Napua Puaoi of Wailuku, Maui, said after buying 16 pieces of plywood from Home Depot. “As soon as my husband comes home — he has all the power tools.”
Meteorologist Chevy Chevalier in Honolulu said its winds had slowed overnight from 160 mph to 155 mph, prompting a downgrade from a Category 5 to a Category 4 hurricane.
He said it may drop to a Category 3 by this afternoon but that would still be a major hurricane.
“We expect it to gradually weaken as it gets closer to the islands,” Chevalier said. “That being said, on our current forecast, as of the afternoon on Thursday, we still have it as a major hurricane.”
With winds anticipated to 130 mph, the hurricane could cause catastrophic damage.
Residents rushed to stores to stock up on bottled water, ramen, toilet paper and other supplies as they faced the threat of heavy rain, flash flooding and high surf.
Public schools on the Big Island and in Maui County closed Wednesday until further notice.
Hawaii Gov. David Ige said employees on Hawaii and Maui islands who work in disaster response as well as in hospitals and prisons were required to report to their jobs.
The Navy was moving its ships and submarines out of Hawaii.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The shallow, magnitude 6.9 quake that hit just after 10 p.m. Sunday was one of multiple powerful earthquakes in the northeast of the island that also caused landslides. The nighttime quake was followed by strong aftershocks.
An Associated Press reporter in Sembalun subdistrict, in the island’s northeast in the shadow of Mount Rinjani, said the latest quake caused panic, but many people were already staying in tents after the deadly quake in early August and its hundreds of aftershocks.
There was no immediate official information about casualties.
The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said power was cut across the island, hampering efforts to assess the situation. Some houses and other buildings in Sembalun had collapsed, it said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The downpours that started Aug. 8 have triggered floods and landslides and caused homes and bridges to collapse across Kerala, a picturesque state known for its quiet tropical backwaters and beautiful beaches.
Thousands of rescuers were continuing efforts to reach out to stranded people and get relief supplies to isolated areas by hundreds of boats and nearly two dozen helicopters, said P.H. Kurian, a top disaster management official in Kerala. He said weather conditions had improved considerably, he and expected the nearly 10,000 people still stranded to be rescued by Monday.
An estimated 800,000 people have taken shelter in some 4,000 relief camps across Kerala, Kurian said.
Weather officials have predicted more rains across the state through this morning.
In several villages in the suburbs of Chengannur, one of the worst-affected areas, carcasses of cattle were seen floating in muddy waters as water began receding. However, vast rice fields continued to be marooned, and many vehicles were submerged.
In some villages, floodwaters up to 10 feet high had entered homes.
Officials have called it the worst flooding in Kerala in a century, with rainfall in some areas well over double that of a typical monsoon season.
Officials estimate that more than 6,200 miles of roads have been damaged. One of the state’s major airports, in the city of Kochi, was closed last Tuesday due to the flooding. It is scheduled to remain closed until Aug. 26.
The Indian government said a naval air base in Kochi would be opened for commercial flights starting this morning.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Missoulian newspaper reported Sunday that officials say protecting the highway through the park is their priority, with firefighters installing hoses and sprinklers to prevent it from spreading there.
If that happens, operations chief Rocky Gilbert says destabilization could lead rock and trees to fall for years.
Part of the road is closed. Officials evacuated the Fish Creek Campground and told residents in the small town of Apgar on Lake McDonald that they might have to leave.
Other campgrounds, the historic Lake McDonald Lodge and private cabins along Going-to-the-Sun Road are already under evacuation orders.
It comes as the Ferguson Fire that consumed nearly 100,000 acres of Mariposa County and shrouded spectacular Yosemite Valley for much of the summer in clouds of smoke was declared 100 percent contained.
Firefighters will continue to battle “interior islands of vegetation that will continue to ignite,” but they are not a threat to containment lines, according to a U.S Forest Service statement.
“While we have reached a significant milestone there is still more work to be done,” the agency said. “Firefighters will continue to patrol, mop up and repair fire lines.”
Nearly 900 firefighters continued to battle the blaze that broke out on July 13, forcing the closure of Yosemite Valley to visitors.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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“Kerala state is facing its worst flood in 100 years,” the top state elected official, Pinarayi Vijayan’s office tweeted.
With heavy rains stopping after a week, rescuers moved quickly to take those marooned by floods to 1,500 state-run camps. They used more than a dozen helicopters and about 400 boats across the state, relief officials said.
Vijayan told reporters that at least 324 people had died and more than 220,000 had taken refuge in the camps.
Heavy rains over the past eight days triggered flooding, landslides and home and bridge collapses, severely disrupting air and train services in Kerala state, a popular tourist destination with scenic landscapes, waterfalls and beautiful beaches.
The New Delhi Television news channel reported that the state was facing a new crisis with some hospitals facing shortages of oxygen and gas stations running short of fuel.
Monsoon rains kill hundreds of people every year in India. The season runs from June to September.
The monsoon flooding has severely hit 12 of Kerala’s 14 districts, with thousands of homes damaged since June. Crops on 80,300 acres of land have also been damaged, the Home Ministry said.
The international airport at Kochi, a major port city, suspended flight operations until today after the runway was flooded. Authorities also asked tourists to stay away from the popular hill station of Munnar in Idukki district because of flooding.
More than 1,000 people have lost their lives in seven states since the start of the monsoon season in June.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The jolts damaged balconies, cracked walls and collapsed some uninhabited houses in the Molise region in south-central Italy, just inland from the Adriatic Sea, authorities said.
No injuries were directly blamed on the quake, but civil protection officials told Italian state radio that a young boy was slightly hurt when he leaped from his home’s balcony.
But residents “should regain their tranquility as soon as possible because despite the legitimate fright and fear, for now there is just light damage and cracks,” Molise Gov. Donato Toma advised. He later said some uninhabited homes had collapsed.
Italy’s national seismology agency INGV said in a statement that the strongest quake measured 5.1 and struck at 8:19 p.m. That jolt was followed in rapid succession by eight more tremors, with the strongest measuring at 4.4.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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NOAA’s forecast comes as monitoring stations in Northern California show that grasses, brush and other fire “fuels” are reaching record-dry levels, following a July that was the state’s hottest month on record. There’s also a chance that strong “Diablo winds” — like those that fanned the deadly fires last fall in Sonoma and other counties — could return in coming months.
“During August we typically don’t see those events, but they can return in the September and October time frame,” said Tim Brown, director of NOAA’s Western Region Climate Center in Reno, Nev.
Diablo winds refer to a wind from the northeast that compresses and warms as it blows over ridge tops and down slopes. Suburban homeowners can partially protect themselves in advance by clearing brush and dead limbs from around houses. Authorities say they should also pay attention to wind forecasts, avoiding yard work — which can ignite sparks — during strong winds.
As of Thursday, there were eight major fires burning in California, including the 364,000-acre Mendocino Complex blaze, the largest wildfire in California history, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. More than 80 others were burning nationwide, including 17 in Alaska, 15 in Montana, 13 in Arizona, 11 in Idaho and 9 in Washington state.
The multitude of blazes has renewed debate on the degree that global climate change is intensifying the West’s natural patterns of drought and fire. In a recent commentary, three leading climate and fire scientists — Daniel Swain, Crystal Kolden and John Abatzoglou — called climate change a “threat multiplier” that has lengthened the fire season and contributed to more-explosive blazes.
The interior secretary rejected the climate change link.
“This has nothing to do with climate change,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told KQED on Sunday, referring to California’s recent wildfires. “This has to do with active forest management.”
Yet several of the West’s most destructive recent blazes have occurred in places where forest management doesn’t occur. These include the Tubbs fire in Sonoma and Napa counties last year, which raged through suburbs and oak grasslands, as opposed to forests where land managers have the option of thinning trees and brush.
(MCCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE)
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As of Wednesday, the Ranch Fire had consumed about 315,000 acres and was 64 percent contained. It has destroyed 147 homes so far. One firefighter, Matthew Burchett, 42, of Draper City, Utah, has died battling the fire.
The Ranch fire is one of two fires that form the Mendocino Complex Fire. Firefighters were still monitoring the smaller of the two, the River Fire, which as of Monday was 100 percent contained.
Residents around Clearlake have been allowed to return home, but new evacuation orders were announced in the last few days for communities to the east and west of Mendocino National Forest, including Stonyford, Lodoga and Potter Valley.
Meanwhile, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed the state’s wildfires on “environmental terrorist groups.”
During a radio interview with Breitbart News, Zinke said that “environmental terrorist groups” are preventing the government from managing forests and are largely responsible for the severity of the fires. But fire scientists and forestry experts pointed out that climate change is the main factor behind the problem.
Zinke claimed during the interview that an overabundance of fuel load — things like twigs and leaves that make it possible for fires to burn — make fires more intense.
“There have been a number of instances where environmental groups have submitted petitions to the Bureau of Land Management, halting companies from removing dead and dying timber until the BLM can sort through each petition point,” Department of the Interior spokesman Faith Vander Voort said in an email. “These actions halt proper forest management and leave the West vulnerable to incredible devastation.”
But Monica Turner, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said this argument doesn’t address the bigger problem.
“Making minor changes in the fuels (which) you then have to do repeatedly for many years is not going to solve the bigger problem of having to face climate change,” she told The Washington Post. “We cannot clear or thin our way out of this problem.”
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Cal Fire said Monday evening that it was “deeply saddened” to report the death of a firefighter battling the Mendocino Complex fire. The firefighter was not named.
The series of firestorms that erupted across the state amid scorching heat and bone-dry conditions have taken a devastating toll on fire crews.
A Redding firefighter, a bulldozer operator and a Pacific Gas & Electric utility worker have died during the Carr fire, which has destroyed more than 1,000 homes in Shasta County.
Two more firefighters died while battling the Ferguson fire at Yosemite National Park, which is expected to reopen today after a two-week closure.
A mechanic with Cal Fire who had been assigned to the Carr fire also died in a vehicle crash in Tehama County.
By Monday evening, the Mendocino Complex fire, made up of the Ranch and River fires, had scorched more than 328,000 acres, destroyed 139 homes and left two firefighters injured. It was 67 percent contained.
It’s been an explosive summer in California, adding to a year of unprecedented fire destruction.
Since last fall, thousands of homes have been lost and more than 40 people killed from wine country down to Ventura County.
In addition to the lost firefighters, four civilians — including two children — died in the Redding fire.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Temperatures are cooling slightly, and humidity is inching upward due to a weakened high-pressure system that forecasters say will persist through Tuesday.
Though conditions remain far from ideal, they’re an improvement from just a few days ago and a welcome respite from the scorching, high-risk conditions that fueled some of the biggest, most destructive fires in California history.
“We’re fortunate that we don’t have the triple-digit temperatures, we don’t have the single-digit humidity, and we don’t have the howling wind,” said Kathy Hoxsie, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. “It’s still hot, it’s still dry, the winds aren’t light, but it could be much, much worse.”
Officials said that even small improvements, like temperatures dropping into the normal summer range and humidity climbing out of bone-dry territory, will allow quicker progress on 11 major blazes more than 13,000 firefighters are battling across the state.
“Firefighters are going to take full advantage of this opportunity to get the lines reinforced and build more containments,” said Lynne Tolmachoff, spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
To date, the fires have burned more than 695,000 acres, an area more than twice the size of the city of Los Angeles. More than 12,000 residents remain under evacuation orders, fire officials said.
In Southern California, firefighters were making headway on the Holy Fire burning in the Cleveland National Forest near Lake Elsinore, raising the fire’s containment to 41 percent on Sunday. But those efforts could be complicated by the changing weather, which was also bringing a chance of thunderstorms and wind gusts in Southern California mountain areas.
Firefighters also made progress on the Mendocino Complex Fire, the largest recorded in California history, which had burned more than 331,000 acres as of Sunday. The blaze, which is made up of the Ranch and River fires, has destroyed 146 homes and is now 70 percent contained.
In Redding, containment of the 191,000-acre Carr Fire increased to 59 percent on Sunday. That fire has destroyed 1,881 structures, including 1,077 homes and other residential structures, and threatened 528 others.
Meanwhile, Yosemite Valley is on schedule to reopen to the public on Tuesday after nearly a three-week closure due to the 96,000-acre Ferguson Fire, which was at 83 percent containment Sunday.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The strong aftershock, measured at magnitude 5.9 by the U.S. Geological Survey, caused panic, damage to buildings, landslides and injuries. It was centered in the northwest of the island and didn’t have the potential to cause a tsunami, Indonesia’s geological agency said.
Videos showed rubble strewn across streets and clouds of dust enveloping buildings.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
NB: This news clips seems a bit misleading regarding the death toll. The aftershock ADDED 3 to the previously existing death toll of nearly 300. It did NOT
CAUSE 300 fatalities.
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Hurricane Maria cut through the island on Sept. 20, knocking out power and initially killing about a dozen people. The government’s official count eventually swelled to 64, as more people died from suicide, lack of access to health care and other factors. The number has not changed despite several academic assessments that official death certificates did not come close to tallying the storm’s fatal toll.
But in a draft of a report to Congress requesting $139 billion in recovery funds released Thursday, the Puerto Rican government admits that 1,427 more people died in the last four months of 2017 compared with the same time frame in the previous year. The figures came from death registry statistics that were released in June, but which were never publicly acknowledged by officials on the island.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Firefighters fought a desperate battle to stop the Holy fire from reaching homes as the blaze surged through the Cleveland National Forest above Lake Elsinore and its surrounding communities. They were trying to keep the flames from devouring neighborhoods and taking lives, as gigantic fires still burning in Northern California have done.
“Our main focus this afternoon was getting everyone out safely,” said Thanh Nguyen, a spokesman for the crews battling the Holy fire.
Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for Orange and Riverside counties because the fire threatened thousands of homes. The proclamation directs state agencies to provide help to local governments.
As flames raged closer, some residents ignoring evacuation orders stood in driveways or on top of roofs and used garden hoses to keep their homes wet and to fight the flames as smoke billowed around them.
Joe Rodriguez was using a power washer to wet down his patio in the McVicker Canyon Park neighborhood on Thursday morning.
Although the neighborhood is under an evacuation order, the 38-year-old Rodriguez told the San Bernardino Sun that he decided to stay to help save his home.
“Until this thing is barking at my door, I’m going to stick with it,” he said.
He said a line of fire retardant dropped on the hill above his house has so far checked the fire’s advance, along with helicopter water drops.
Rodriguez’s wife and two daughters evacuated.
As flames flickered behind Ana Tran’s McVicker Canyon home, she and her friend rushed to their car and sped past firefighters who were heading toward the chaos.
When Tran returned to her neighborhood later in the day, she found her home — still standing — under an eerily smoky sky.
“It feels like a war zone,” Tran said, ash collecting on her forehead as she snapped photos of flames igniting behind a row of homes.
“I don’t even recognize the neighborhood,” added her friend, Bao Vinh.
Lake Elsinore Mayor Natasha Johnson and her family were among the families evacuating Thursday, Councilman Bob Magee said at a community meeting about the fire.
Earlier in the day, Johnson told residents in a video posted on Twitter to stay vigilant and listen to evacuation orders.
“Stay safe,” she said as smoke billowed behind her. “God bless.”
Magee told residents at the community meeting to follow the mayor’s example and listen to evacuation warnings and orders.
“I also want to remind you not to panic,” he said. “We are in great hands, the best in the world.
“Pray for our town. Pray for our people,” he said.
Fire crews worked in 100-plus-degree heat. Aircraft dumped bright pink lines of fire retardant to wall off the fire from homes. The 16-square-mile blaze was only 5 percent contained.
The fire is named for Holy Jim Canyon, where it erupted Monday and burned a dozen cabins.
A resident of the canyon, 51-year-old Forrest Gordon Clark, was charged Thursday with arson and other crimes that could send him to prison for life.
Clark refused to go to court Thursday and his arraignment was postponed to today. It’s unclear whether he has an attorney.
In an interview with a reporter before his arrest, Clark said he had no idea how the fire started. “I was asleep, I had two earplugs in,” Clark said, according to a video obtained by ABC 7 Eyewitness News.
Winds gusting to nearly 20 mph at times drove the fire through dense chaparral on the foothill slopes and along ridge tops, sending up an enormous column of smoke that smeared the sky for miles around.
The fire threatened communities near the inland resort of Lake Elsinore in Riverside County.
Hot temperatures, erratic and gusty winds, and tinder-dry vegetation are the same conditions that caused wildfires in Northern California to explode into deadly conflagrations in the space of two weeks.
North of San Francisco, fire crews continued making progress in corralling the twin fires known as the Mendocino Complex. Since starting on July 27, the fires — which are being fought together as a single incident — have destroyed more than 100 homes near Clear Lake and become the largest fire in recorded state history.
The area burned by the blaze is now larger than the cities of Los Angeles. The fires were 51 percent contained.
In the Redding area, the year’s deadliest fire was nearly half surrounded and was burning into remote and rugged forest land but grass, brush and trees there are so dry from years of drought and recent heat that the potential remained for the fire to grow, state fire officials said.
The Carr fire, as it’s called, killed six people, including two firefighters, and burned more than 1,000 homes. Two other people — a state fire heavy equipment mechanic assigned to the fire and a utility worker trying to restore power near the fire — have died in car accidents.
In Los Angeles County, two men were charged with setting a separate brush fire near the Morris Dam, a reservoir in the San Gabriel Mountains. Christopher Paul Ortega, 20, of Glendora and Santino Francisco Gnaulati, 21, of Covina each face one felony count of arson of a structure or forest.
Sheriff’s deputies and prosecutors say the men, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, started the fire near Highway 39 in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Glendora early Tuesday morning. Firefighters quickly got a handle on the blaze, which only burnt a quarter of an acre.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES, ASSOCIATED PRESS, LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The national disaster agency stood by its latest death toll of 131 from Sunday’s quake despite other government agencies, including the military, reporting much higher figures.
The governor of the province that includes Lombok, where the quake was centered, the military, the national search and rescue agency and regent of North Lombok issued different death tolls that ranged from 226 to 381.
But disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said in a statement the information from those sources was incomplete and hadn’t been cross-checked for duplication. He has said several times that the number of deaths will increase. An interagency meeting will be held today to compare information, Nugroho said.
As the aid effort stepped up, volunteers and rescue personnel erected more temporary shelters for the tens of thousands left homeless on Lombok by the magnitude 7.0 quake.
Water, which has been in short supply due to a prolonged dry spell on the island, as well as food and medical supplies were being distributed from trucks. The military said it sent five planes carrying food, medicine, blankets, field tents and water tankers.
Still, government assistance was barely a trickle in the west Lombok village of Kekait where Zulas Triani, an elementary school teacher who was sharing a tent with 30 others, said they had received only a basket with three noodle packets, five eggs and a small ration of water.
“My house was flattened. We are all frustrated to live like this — in a tent without certainty. Where should we go if we have no house anymore, nowhere to live?” said the mother of 15- and 9-year-old girls.
More than 156,000 have been displaced due to the extensive damage to thousands of homes.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The blaze north of San Francisco has grown to the size of Los Angeles since it started two weeks ago, fueled by dry vegetation, high winds and rugged terrain that made it too dangerous for firefighters to directly attack the flames now spanning 470 square miles.
Crews, including inmates and firefighters from overseas, have managed to cut lines around half the fire to contain the flames, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. The blaze about 100 miles north of San Francisco around the resort region of Clear Lake has destroyed 116 homes and injured two firefighters.
Those lines have kept the southern edge of the fire from spreading into residential areas on the east side of the lake. But Cal Fire said the flames are out of control to the north, roaring into remote and unpopulated areas of thick forests and deep ravines as firefighters contend with record-setting temperatures.
California is seeing earlier, longer and more destructive wildfire seasons because of drought, warmer weather attributed to climate change and home construction deeper into the forests.
The Mendocino Complex, which will take months to put out, is one of 18 burning throughout the state Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the Holy fire in the Cleveland National Forest pushed closer to some homes Wednesday, prompting a new round of mandatory evacuations.
(U-T NEW SERVICES)
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The blaze is sending high plumes of smoke across the Algarve region’s famous beaches and bringing criticism of authorities for failing to halt the flames.
A strong seasonal wind from the north known as a “nortada” was driving the fire south toward Silves, a town of about 6,000 people, after it narrowly missed the smaller town of Monchique. Several hundred people were evacuated, and 29 were hurt, one seriously, officials said.
Almost 1,200 firefighters supported by 16 aircraft and 358 vehicles were deployed around Monchique, a town of 2,000 people about 155 miles south of Lisbon, where the blaze came within 500 yards of the local fire station.
An unknown number of homes — believed to number in the dozens, according to local reports — in the forested hills have burned.
With so many resources deployed, many residents asked why the fire was still burning, especially after 95 percent of it was under control on Monday.
Firefighters also publicly questioned the wisdom of the strategy to counter the flames, with some claiming poor organization was thwarting the operation. Monchique was identified as a high-risk area months ago.
Firefighting is coordinated by the Civil Protection Agency, a government body overseen by the Ministry for the Interior, which oversees national defense.
The National Association of Professional Firemen and the Professional Firemen’s Trade Union issued a joint statement saying that the government’s recent reorganization of firefighting capabilities need to be reassessed and rethought. The organizations asked for a “very urgent” meeting with the minister of the interior.
The minister, Eduardo Cabrita, told reporters authorities were switching coordination of the Monchique fire from the local Civil Protection Agency to the department’s national operational command in Lisbon.
He declined to criticize the firefighting operation, saying the effort had been “notable.”
Portugal beefed up its wildfire response over the winter after 109 people died last year in forest blazes amid a severe drought.
Vitor Vaz Pinto, the Civil Protection Agency’s district commander, said the weather forecast around Monchique was “unfavorable,” with a gusting wind from the north, known as a “nortada.”
Temperatures were forecast to reach 95 degrees, normal for August in southern Portugal.
The Iberian peninsula endured some record heat last weekend, with temperatures exceeding 113 degrees, which parched large areas.
Spanish emergency services said a wildfire Tuesday near Valencia, on the Mediterranean coast, was almost under control after two dozen aircraft were brought in. The blaze forced the evacuation of around 2,500 people.
The high temperatures moved northward to France. The hottest weather was expected in central and northeastern France, with temperatures that could reach 104 degrees.
Dutch authorities evacuated four campsites as a brush fire swept through parched countryside in the eastern Netherlands, where temperatures were in the mid-90s. The regional security service said that firefighters from three provinces were battling the blaze Tuesday in Wateren, 85 miles northeast of Amsterdam.
(Barry Hatton, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Portuguese Civil Protection Agency said firefighters had contained 95 percent of the blaze in rolling hills by the country’s southern Algarve coast, though they were wary of re-ignitions and changes in the wind.
The news brought relief for locals and tourists who spent tense hours after dark Sunday as the huge blaze passed by the outskirts of Monchique, a town of 2,000 people about 155 miles south of Lisbon.
High plumes of black smoke from the wildfire could be seen from the famous beaches of Portugal’s Algarve region.
As the smoke gradually cleared Monday, 13 aircraft swung into action, including two large Canadair water-dropping planes sent by Spain. More than 1,100 firefighters were deployed to fight the blaze.
Authorities said 44 people required medical assistance, including a 72-year-old woman who was seriously hurt.
The blaze erupted amid a heat wave caused by a mass of hot air from North Africa that sent temperatures in Portugal and Spain over 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) over the weekend.
The rest of Europe has also felt the torrid recent weather.
In France, where four nuclear reactors have been temporarily closed due to the heat, three cities banned the most polluting cars from the roads because of heat-linked ozone pollution. In Paris and Strasbourg, the ban concerned vehicles that are 12 years and older, while in Lyon only cars with a clean air sticker were allowed.
The heat wave in France was expected to last until Thursday, with temperatures peaking today.
In Norway, authorities warned motorists to watch out for reindeer and sheep taking shelter from the heat in highway tunnels. The country has an estimated 220,000 reindeer and more than 800,000 sheep.
Neighboring Sweden has been fighting an uncommon number of wildfires this summer, even above the Arctic Circle, and a European Union official pointed his finger at climate change.
“We are facing a new reality,” EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Christos Stylianides said. As a result, the EU must become “collectively better prepared and stronger in responding to multiple disasters across the continent.”
Over the weekend, Lisbon broke a 37-year-old record to notch its hottest temperature ever and new heat records were set in 26 places around Portugal.
That extreme heat was easing a bit Monday but parts of south and northeast Portugal remained at “extreme risk” of wildfires, according to the national weather agency.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, Japan is considering implementing daylight savings time in 2019 and 2020 to cope with the intense summer heat, after soaring temperatures this year cast doubt over the ability of the country to safely host the 2020 Olympics, the Sankei newspaper reported.
The government and ruling parties are seeking to pass a bill this autumn, according to the report, which cited unidentified government officials. Under the plan, clocks would be pushed forward two hours in June, July and August for a test period in 2019 and then again in 2020 for the Olympics.
The Games start on July 24 and the plan would allow the marathon event, scheduled to start at 7 a.m., to effectively begin at 5 a.m. when temperatures are coolest.
Japan had a deadly heat wave of record proportions this summer, raising concerns over the risk of heatstroke for athletes and volunteers.
More than 57,000 people have been hospitalized with heatstroke, with more than 120 deaths in the three months through the end of July, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency.
The government has not decided on any such plan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a news briefing Monday, but it is working on various ideas, such as moving event times earlier, to combat the heat.
(Barry Hatton, ASSOCIATED PRESS; BLOMBERG NEWS)
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At a vineyard in Loerzweiler, south of Mainz in southwestern Germany near the Rhine River, workers started plucking white grapes off rows of vines on Monday.
The first grapes go to make Federweisser, a young wine that gives the first clues about the potential quality of a vintage. The main harvest is expected to start in late August or early September.
According to the German Wine Institute, it’s the earliest start yet to the country’s grape harvest. The previous record was Aug. 8, in 2007, 2011 and 2014. Last year, the grapes stayed on the vine until Aug. 16.
“I grew up at a winery around here. I am 52 years old and in these 52 years I have never seen us harvest the first grapes around the first weekend in August,” winegrower Mathias Wolf said.
He’s hopeful that this won’t just be an early year but a good one for wine. But even the sun-loving vines could use at least some rain soon.
“At the moment it’s very good — the quality looks like it will be good, though the next few weeks will be really decisive, whether we get rain or no rain,” he said. “But the conditions are there for a good vintage.”
German Wine Institute spokesman Ernst Buescher said, with the sunny weather, “we have very healthy grapes, which is very positive for the quality of the wine, but we need some rain.”
He said without rain soon the leaves could wither and hurt the quality of the wine.
Many other German farmers would be glad to have such concerns. The national farmers’ association has said it expects the grain harvest to come in millions of tons short of initial expectations after a spring and summer of blue skies and barely any rain in large swathes of the country.
It has called for 1 billion euros ($1.15 billion) in emergency aid for farmers. In addition to the damage to crops, livestock farmers are also facing shortages of feed.
Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner, while stressing that she is “very concerned” about the effects of the drought on farmers, says the federal government wants to see a full report on the harvest in late August before committing any money.
In Germany, state governments are primarily responsible for such aid.
Kloeckner said last week “the current heat wave is endangering the harvest,” but noted that conditions vary widely among regions.
The German Wine Institute’s Buescher sees a rosy future for the industry in one of Europe’s more northerly wine-growing regions.
“The future of German wine is really good because, due to the weather changes, the quality of the wines — and especially even the red wines — is getting better and better,” he said.
(Christoph Nettling, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The 7.0-magnitude temblor on the island of Lombok claimed at least 98 lives and injured another 236 people. It left at least 20,000 people homeless and sent thousands of tourists fleeing.
No tourists were reported killed. But the earthquake Sunday, which struck at 6:46 p.m. local time, was felt as far away as the neighboring island of Bali, where two people died.
And it was followed by more than a dozen aftershocks, including one Monday morning that registered a magnitude of 5.4.
Long lines formed at the airport of Lombok’s main town, Mataram, as tourists cut short their holidays. The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said 18 extra flights had been added for departing tourists.
“I was at the rooftop of my hotel and the building started swaying very hard,” said Gino Poggiali, a 43-year-old Frenchman who was with his wife and two children at the airport. “I could not stand up.”
The Indonesian Red Cross said on Twitter it had helped a woman give birth at a health post after the quake. One of the names she gave the baby boy was “Gempa,” which means earthquake.
The earthquake and dozens of aftershocks have left many people jumpy and unwilling to stay indoors.
In Mataram, the main city on Lombok, which is just east of Bali, many hundreds of people slept in fields or their cars Monday evening.
Some slept in tents that are usually used by hikers who climb Mount Rinjani, which was hit hard by a 6.4-magnitude quake on July 29. That earthquake killed 17 people and injured more than 160.
Some even slept in the street, thinking that would be safer than staying in their homes.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The two fires burning a few miles apart and known as the Mendocino Complex are being treated as one incident. It has scorched 283,800 acres (443.4 square miles), fire officials said Monday.
The fires, north of San Francisco, have burned 75 homes and are only 30 percent contained.
The size of the fires surpasses a blaze last December in Southern California that burned 281,893 acres (440.5 square miles). It killed two people, including a firefighter, and destroyed more than 1,000 buildings before being fully contained on Jan. 12.
Hotter weather attributed to climate change is drying out vegetation, creating more intense fires that spread quickly from rural areas to city subdivisions, climate and fire experts say. But they also blame cities and towns that are expanding housing into previously undeveloped areas.
In his first remarks on the vast wildfires that have killed at least seven people and forced thousands to flee, President Donald Trump blamed the blazes on the state’s environmental policies and inaccurately claimed that water that could be used to fight the fires was “foolishly being diverted into the Pacific Ocean.”
State officials and firefighting experts dismissed the president’s comments, which he posted on Twitter. “We have plenty of water to fight these wildfires, but let’s be clear: It’s our changing climate that is leading to more severe and destructive fires,” said Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director of Cal Fire, the state’s forest fire agency.
“The idea that there isn’t enough water is the craziest thing in the world,” said Peter Gleick, president emeritus of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland. “There’s absolutely no shortage.”
More than 14,000 firefighters are battling over a dozen major blazes throughout California, state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Scott McLean said.
Separately, authorities have evacuated cabins in two communities in the Santa Ana Mountains in Orange County because of a fast-moving wildfire.
Jeanna Smith with the U.S. Forest Service said that firefighters are attacking the fast-moving Holy Fire with a DC-10 air tanker and helicopters.
She said crews are “hitting it hard with everything we’ve got” in hopes of stopping the fire at the top of a ridge and keeping it from reaching homes a couple miles away.
The fire began around 2 p.m. Monday and quickly grew to more than a square mile.
Smith said about a dozen people have been evacuated from weekend cabins in the communities of Holy Jim and Trabuco Canyon.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Hurricane preparations were under way just as lava from the last active eruption site in a Big Island neighborhood decreased dramatically over the weekend and fewer earthquakes were felt.
“Basically the system appears to have almost shut down completely over the course of a couple of days,” said Tina Neal, scientist-in-charge at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. She likened it to turning off a spigot.
The significance of the change was not yet clear, scientists said, and they were trying to figure out why it’s happening.
Meanwhile, a tropical storm watch was in effect Monday for waters south of the Big Island as Hurricane Hector was expected to pass tonight and Wednesday as it moved westward.
Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim said officials would be prepared for whatever nature brings. Neighborhoods that would likely feel the brunt of the storm have been covered by the ongoing lava flow, he said.
“The volcano, Madam Pele, has totally wiped out all the homes that would have been in danger,” he said, referring to the Hawaiian volcano goddess.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Carr fire has scorched Northern California with singular intensity since it broke out on July 23, displacing thousands of people in Shasta County and decimating parts of the bucolic town of Redding.
The fire took a particularly nightmarish turn when what locals are calling a fire tornado, documented in video footage and first-person accounts, tore through neighborhoods in Redding, which has a population of more than 90,000.
Powerful winds pulled trees out of the ground, flung cars and engulfed nearby buildings in flames. All that was left were petrified trees and hollowed-out homes. In some areas, the heat and wind grew so intense that there is no more soil on the ground, just charred bedrock. The winds, according to the National Weather Service, reached speeds “in excess of 143 mph.”
The Carr fire is still burning and it is only 43 percent contained, shifting westward from Redding. Residents are slowly being allowed to return and assess the damage. Some have lost everything.
The scale of the destruction is hard to comprehend. Nearly 40,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes at the height of the wildfire’s assault on Redding. It has burned more than 160,000 acres, destroying 1,073 homes and damaging an additional 190. Six fatalities have been reported, though that number could rise once a complete assessment of the damage can be conducted.
The Lake Keswick Estates area, among the worst hit in Redding, is barely recognizable. All that is left in some homes are burned-out refrigerators, washing machines and bed frames.
Outside many homes, in backyards and driveways, a few trappings of domestic life survived. A complete patio set, a swimming pool, a basketball hoop. Tattered, charred American flags sat stiffly in the former entryways of several homes. The homes themselves were largely gone. The heat from the fire was enough to melt a children’s slide.
Justin Sanchez, who lives in the Lake Keswick Estates area, said that his neighbors had been on edge in the days before the fire. Many packed their belongings and watched weather reports obsessively, he said. But Sanchez didn’t think the fire would reach his house. “None of us would have ever thought it would jump the river and come this way,” he said.
On the day the fire hit the town, he said, nobody could have anticipated its force. “It was this massive tornado headed straight for our neighborhood packed in with shrapnel flying around,” he said. “Within a matter of 10 minutes or so it was right on the edge of my neighborhood.”
The evacuation was chaotic, he said. The bottlenecked traffic exacerbated his family’s panic. At one point, they feared they would not make it out alive.
When Sanchez returned Thursday, one week after the evacuation, his entire home had been reduced to rubble.
In the moments before his family evacuated, Sanchez began pulling photos off the walls and loading them into his dad’s truck. The force of the wind, he said, blew them out of his hands. He jumped in the back of the truck, laying on top of the pictures to keep them from flying away.
Today, that’s all they have left.
“I just knew this thing was going to take our whole neighborhood,” he said. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
Sanchez, who has been staying in a motel with his family, including two children, said he’s not sure what comes next. “It’s going to be chaotic. We’re just going to have to work through it,” he said. “We just have to take it day by day.”
(Jose A. Del Real, NEW YORK TIMES)
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It was the second deadly quake in a week to hit Lombok. A July 29 quake killed 16 people and damaged hundreds of houses, some of which collapsed in Sunday evening’s magnitude 7.0 temblor, killing those inside.
Video showed screaming people running in panic from houses in a Bali neighborhood and vehicles rocking. On Lombok, soldiers and other rescuers carried injured people on stretchers and carpets to an evacuation center.
National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the death toll had risen to 82, with hundreds others injured and thousands of homes damaged.
“People panicked and scattered on the streets, and buildings and houses that had been damaged by the previous earthquake had become more damaged and collapsed,” he said in a statement.
Many victims were treated outdoors because hospitals were damaged in the quake while the nighttime search and rescue effort had been hampered by electricity and communications blackouts.
“The estimate of victims continues to grow,” Sutopo said.
The quake, measured at 7.0 magnitude by Indonesian authorities and a still-powerful 6.9 by the U.S. Geological Survey, struck early Sunday evening at a depth of 6 miles in the northern part of Lombok and triggered a tsunami warning.
Frightened people poured out of their homes to move to higher ground, particularly in North Lombok and Mataram, the capital of West Nusa Tenggara province.
The tsunami warning was lifted after waves just 6 inches high were recorded in three villages, said Dwikorita Karnawati, the head of Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency.
“I was watching TV when I felt a big shake,” said Harian, a Lombok woman who gave one name. “The lamp was shaking, and people were shouting ‘Get out.’ I ran out into the dark because the power cut off.”
The Bali and Lombok airports continued operating Sunday night, according to the director general of civil aviation. There had been a half-hour evacuation at the Lombok airport after the quake.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Typically, any one of those breaks could have halted the spread of wildfire. But shifting winds and brittle-dry vegetation sent flames — up to 300 feet long in some areas — leapfrogging in all directions in three counties on both sides of Clear Lake, past the man-made and natural obstacles. The erratic conflagration chewed through more than 266,000 acres in 10 days, making it the fourth-largest wildfire on record in California history.
“It is extremely fast, extremely aggressive, extremely dangerous,” said Scott McLean, a deputy chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “Look how big it got, just in a matter of days. … Look how fast this Mendocino Complex went up in ranking, that doesn’t happen. That just doesn’t happen.”
The progression has been relentless. The Ranch and River fires, which may join at Clear Lake and are together known as the Mendocino Complex, are tearing through tens of thousands of acres a day, including overnight when fires normally calm down.
The complex, which was 33 percent contained Sunday night, is raging in remote areas and therefore hasn’t been as destructive to property as some of the other dozen-plus wildfires burning across the state. But its sheer size and rate of spread is the latest signal of a remarkable fire year for California.
“We’re at the mercy of the wind,” said Garden Grove Fire Capt. Thanh Nguyen, who is acting as a spokesman for Cal Fire in Middletown. “Tragically this whole area is really dry and once you get the lighter fuel going, that preheats the denser fuel, and then it’s really difficult for them to put out.”
Lake County has been particularly hard hit by wildfire in the last five years. Two years ago, the Clayton fire tore through almost 4,000 acres and 300 structures, many of them mobile homes and rentals. The blaze hit the town of Lower Lake particularly hard, destroying a 150-year-old church and a Habitat for Humanity office. The wildfire followed three that ripped through Lake County in 2015, including the Valley fire, which destroyed more than 1,300 homes and killed at least four people.
UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain cited several factors for the destruction in Lake County: Explosively flammable vegetation, warm overnight temperatures and the lingering impact from years of drought.
“This is a part of the state that I think that overnight temperatures have played an enormous role,” Swain said. “It’s sort of this middle elevation where you’re above marine layer but you’re not high enough in the mountains to really cool down either. So you’re sort of in this zone where fires can burn, with the increase in temperatures, as we’ve seen, all day and all night.”
A decade ago, some scientists would warn against making broad conclusions linking an extraordinary heat wave to global warming. But the pace of temperature records being broken in California in recent years is leading more scientists to assertively link climate change to unrelenting heat that is only expected to worsen as humans continue putting greenhouse gases in the air.
Over the weekend, fire crews tried laying contingency lines behind their fire lines, in the hope to slow the spread of the fire. On Saturday, flames jumped a line of bulldozer-scraped dirt on Long Valley Ridge meant to protect the lakeside community of Lucerne in a breach that set off a scramble of firefighters to get down Highway 20 to protect the community.
Fire crews began bulldozing a second containment line outside the town, and firefighters were trying Sunday afternoon to hold the line at High Valley Road.
“It’s really taking off in a huge way,” Swain said.
The fire Sunday moved into sparsely populated ridges to the north and east in the Mendocino National Forest and crossed into Colusa County, prompting emergency officials in adjacent Glenn County to issue an evacuation advisory for people living a dozen miles away. Two fingers of the Ranch fire made a run toward the tiny Leesville, hopping bulldozer lines, creeks and roads in its path.
At a reservation along the northern end of Clear Lake, an area that has been buffeted by major fires since 2015, including the devastating Wine Country fires last summer that blitzed through Napa Valley, some four dozen members of the Robinson Rancheria tribe of Pomo Indians took a stand against the burning mountain, plowing fire lines and cutting brush.
They were armed with two tractors, weed whackers, borrowed water tanks and hoses — some of which were supplies left behind by the Red Cross from the last fires.
Most of the men and women who stayed behind at the 720-acre reservation vowed to stay and fight if the fire crested Hogback Ridge and came at them, the casino, the gas station, gym and cluster of 55 houses. The Rancheria is wedged between the ridge and the lake, and at one point with fire to the north and south, was in danger of being cut off from the non-burning world.
Farther north, near Redding, residents began returning to neighborhoods ravaged by the Carr fire, which has been linked to seven deaths, destroyed more than 1,000 homes and consumed more than 160,000 acres.
Crews have reached 43 percent containment, but have been hampered by steep, rugged terrain, blistering temperatures and bone-dry fuels.
More than 15,000 firefighters are battling 18 large wildfires across the state that have burned more than 559,000 acres and are threatening 17,000 homes.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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They also warned of worsening conditions throughout the region.
Winds in the “fire whirl” created July 26 near Redding reached speeds of 143 mph, a speed that rivaled some of the most destructive Midwest tornadoes, National Weather Service meteorologist Duane Dykema said. The whirl uprooted trees and tore roofs from homes, Dykema said.
The whirl measured a 3 on the five-level Enhanced Fujita scale, which scientists use to classify the strength of tornadoes, he said. California has not recorded a tornado of that strength since 1978.
That fire continues to burn about 100 miles south of the Oregon border as firefighters there and throughout Northern California brace for worsening conditions this weekend.
The weather service issued warnings for critical fire weather conditions into today, saying a series of dry low-pressure systems passing through the region would bring afternoon wind gusts.
“This is a particularly dangerous situation with extremely low humidity and high winds. New fires will grow rapidly out of control, in some cases people may not be able to evacuate safely in time should a fire approach,” the weather service said in its bulletin for the Mendocino area north of San Francisco.
Forecasters said areas with the highest threat include the massive blaze near Redding and two fires burning next to each other around Clearlake about 100 miles north of San Francisco.
The Redding fire has grown to 206 square miles and has destroyed 1,060 homes and many other structures.
Two firefighters and four other people have been killed since the blaze, which ignited July 23, raced with extraordinary fury toward the region’s largest city. More than 1,300 homes remained threatened.
Wildfires typically create whirls but rarely of the strength of the one recorded July 26, Dykema said.
Whirls are created when hot air rises and twists tightly, he said. The hotter the fire, the faster the air rises and the tighter it twists until it takes off as a tornado.
To the southwest of Redding, new evacuations were ordered late Thursday at the Mendocino Complex, where twin fires have ravaged a combined 250 square miles, destroyed 41 residences and threatened 9,200 homes.
The combined fires have prompted about 15,000 people to evacuate their homes.
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokeswoman Jane LaBoa said wildfire remains several miles from the evacuated communities along the eastern shore of Clear Lake, about 100 miles northwest of Sacramento. But she said trajectory and the weather forecast prompted officials to evacuate the communities Friday out of an abundance of caution.
“It looks like there’s dicey weather on the way,” LaBoa said.
The wildfire has grown to 175 square miles and is a few miles from connecting with a second blaze that has grown to 64 square miles.
The twin fires have destroyed 41 homes.
In the Sierra Nevada, firefighters achieved 41 percent containment of a 115-square-mile forest fire that has shut down Yosemite Valley and other adjacent portions of Yosemite National Park at what is normally the height of summer tourism.
The fire has reached into remote areas of the country’s third-oldest national park. Workers who live in Yosemite’s popular Valley region were ordered to leave Friday because of inaccessible roads.
The fire also killed two firefighters.
(Paul Elias, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The torrid weather meant that public services were put on alert in Spain and Portugal. Temperatures were forecast to reach 111 degrees Thursday in the Portuguese city of Evora, 81 miles east of the capital of Lisbon, and in the Spanish province of Badajoz, across the border.
A hot air mass was moving northward from Africa, authorities said, warning that the mercury could peak at 116 degrees this weekend in the southern Portuguese town of Beja.
Portuguese authorities issued a nationwide health warning, including for dust from the Sahara Desert. Warnings were also issued for 40 of Spain’s 50 provinces.
(U-T NEW SERVICES)
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As of Thursday, there were 18 wildfires burning across the state. Although a number of them had scorched fewer than 100 acres, those smaller fires are contributing to the drain on critical resources, especially as firefighters from around the state and nation are being called to battle the big blazes.
A red-flag warning was issued Thursday for parts of Northern California, including Redding, which has already been devastated by the massive Carr Fire. The warning, covering the fire’s entire burn area, began at 8 p.m. Thursday and will be in effect until 11 p.m. Saturday, according to the National Weather Service. Red-flag conditions are declared when sustained winds are predicted to reach around 15-20 miles per hour, combined with high heat and low humidity.
The Carr Fire, the largest fire now burning in California, grew to 125,842 acres overnight and remained 35 percent contained as of Thursday. The fire has killed six people in Shasta County, including two firefighters, and destroyed 1,555 structures.
The Ferguson Fire, which started three weeks ago near Yosemite National Park, is expected to burn more intensely as an inversion layer that has hovered over the central Sierra Nevada lifts this weekend.
The northern tip of the 68,610-acre fire grew overnight toward Moss Creek, nearing the Merced Grove.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The figure, published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is based on mortality data from Puerto Rico’s vital statistics system that was not previously available.
It’s among the higher estimates of hurricane-related deaths to emerge since the storm hit on Sept. 20, and it’s within the range reported in May by a team from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Their conclusion, based on face-to-face interviews of nearly 3,300 Puerto Rican residents, was that between 793 and 8,498 people died as a result of the storm, with 4,645 being the most likely number.
Some deaths were a direct consequence of Hurricane Maria, including residents who drowned in flooded streets or who were crushed in collapsing buildings. Other fatalities occurred days or weeks later as patients were forced to go without necessary medications, lost access to equipment such as dialysis machines or were unable to call for an ambulance following an otherwise treatable emergency as Puerto Rico struggled to recover from the storm.
For the new study in JAMA, demographer Alexis Santos-Lozada of Pennsylvania State University and researcher Jeffrey Howard of the University of Texas at San Antonio examined official death counts for Puerto Rico between January 2010 and December 2017.
Government officials have said they expect the number of deaths to be higher than 64.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The latest outbreak was the 10th time that Ebola, a contagious affliction that can quickly spread out of control, has menaced the Democratic Republic of Congo, a sprawling Central African country about twice the size of Texas. The virus, which causes fevers and fatal hemorrhaging, first appeared in the country in 1976.
The health minister, Dr. Oly Ilunga Kalenga, said in a statement that the authorities in North Kivu province had notified his ministry Saturday of 26 suspected cases of Ebola, including the 20 deaths. Samples from the six survivors were analyzed Tuesday in Kinshasa, the capital, and four tested positive for the virus.
“The Democratic Republic of Congo is facing a new epidemic,” the minister’s statement said.
In April, Ebola afflicted an area of Equator province that included Mbandaka, a river port with more than a million inhabitants. The location raised alarms that the virus could infect other parts of Central Africa.
That outbreak, which killed at least 33 people, was contained within a few months and was officially declared over on July 24.
Public health officials considered the response to that outbreak a notable success, aided in part by the use of a new Ebola vaccine and aggressive action by the World Health Organization, which quickly sent aid and helped identify who had been exposed to prevent the disease from spreading further.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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“Whatever resources are needed, we’re putting them there,” Gov. Jerry Brown said at a news conference. “We’re being surprised. Every year is teaching the fire authorities new lessons. We’re in uncharted territory.”
Just a month into the budget year, the state has already spent more than one-quarter of its annual fire budget, at least $125 million, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Mike Mohler said.
Cal Fire said another 488 buildings, including barns and warehouses, have also been destroyed by the fire, which is now the sixth most destructive in California history.
The 121,000-acre Redding-area blaze, which started July 23, forced 38,000 people from their homes and killed six. It has scorched 189 square miles and is 35 percent contained.
At least three new fires erupted Wednesday in the Sierra Nevada region, including a blaze in Placer County that had consumed 1,000 acres.
North of San Francisco, a fire threatened homes in an old ranching and farming area near Covelo. About 60 homes were ordered evacuated as the blaze erupted late Tuesday and winds whipped flames through brush, grass, oak, pine and fir near the Mendocino National Forest, officials said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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When the flames approached the western part of the city, Shasta County officials issued mandatory evacuation orders. But those warnings may not have reached everyone amid the chaos. A woman and her two great-grandchildren were trapped in their home when the fire hit. She placed a wet blanket on the kids and huddled over them, but that was no match for the Carr fire. All three died.
Authorities said they did everything they could to alert residents to the coming danger — using social media, reverse 911 calls and public announcements. But, officials acknowledged, there may have been shortfalls given the ferocious nature of the fire that night.
“It’s highly possible they didn’t get a notification,” said Sherry Bartolo, operations manager for Shasta County’s emergency dispatch system. “In my 38-year career, I’ve never had anything that was that devastating to my staff. Now I know what Napa and Santa Rosa and those agencies went through. I couldn’t imagine it until I went through it.”
The four civilian deaths in the Carr fire — including a man Sunday with serious medical problems whose family said he was unable to get out without assistance — add to an unprecedented year of loss.
With temperatures ever warming and blazes burning faster and hotter, California has never recorded a more destructive fire year: More than 10,000 homes have been lost and dozens of people killed since October. More than 40 died that month when fires swept through wine country, sparking debate about why the government could not do more to warn people in the path of the flames. Similar concerns were voiced in January, when mudslides killed more than 20 in Montecito, an area primed for devastation after the Thomas fire burned through a month before.
Officials and experts say California needs to figure out how to improve its emergency alert system.
“This is not a perfect world, but people like me think there’s a way to lessen the loss of life,” said Richard Rudman, vice chair of California’s Emergency Alert System. “We need an overall learning strategy so everyone is reading out of the same playbook.”
Officials are still assessing the evacuation process for the Carr fire, but the disasters in wine country and Santa Barbara County revealed serious flaws in the warning systems.
A state report released last year found that Sonoma County emergency managers failed to use all means possible to warn residents during October’s deadly fire siege. Evacuation orders went to only a fraction of residents, and managers quickly lost track of the fast-moving blazes, leaving entire communities in the dark about their danger.
A Los Angeles Times investigation of the fire response found problems that included a lack of coordination among various agencies and vendors, the use of outdated landline lists to send emergency calls and serious flaws with a federal cellphone alert system.
In the wake of the disasters in Sonoma and Santa Barbara counties, lawmakers have pushed for reforms, including mandates that authorities use up-to-date warning systems and a plan to automatically enroll residents in emergency notification systems, leaving it to residents to opt out.
When the Carr fire moved toward Redding, authorities sent out updates through reverse 911 calls — a method that has proved unreliable in the past — as well as text messages to residents who had subscribed to the county’s emergency warning system. When they had time, authorities posted the latest news to social media. The county used Amber Alert-style messages three times, records show.
But not everything worked out as planned. A citywide evacuation order was issued for Shasta Lake, though only the community of Summit City on the town’s west side was notified, authorities said.
Farther south, along Quartz Hill Road in Redding, Ed Bledsoe said he never got word that he and his family were supposed to flee. Not long after he left his home to run errands July 26, he got a frantic call from his wife back in their trailer. The fire was fast approaching her and their great-grandchildren, and they begged Bledsoe to come back to rescue them.
But he was too late.
The fire, driven by gale-force winds and feeding on timber dried out by days of triple-digit temperatures, overwhelmed Bledsoe’s neighborhood. His family was lost.
Elizabeth Barkley, acting commander of the California Highway Patrol’s Northern Division, was in the area when the fire shifted its direction to the northwest. Officials began mass evacuations about 7 p.m., she said, and she raced door-to-door imploring people to leave. Traffic was sent out of the city on wrong-way lanes. Dispatchers began fielding 911 calls for rescues.
Officials left one flag at the front of homes where residents agreed to leave and two flags if they didn’t or if no one was home, said Shasta County Undersheriff Eric Magrini. Bledsoe’s property was too badly scorched Wednesday to determine if it had been visited.
“I know we were in that area conducting evacuations. We had saturated that area, everybody was leaving,” Magrini said. “It was very chaotic. But we were managing the chaos at the time.”
But he also stressed that the area was faced with an unprecedented situation. “If you told me a week ago that this fire in the French Gulch area was going to downtown Redding, I would’ve called you a liar,” Magrini said. “I’ve never see anything like it. I hope I never see anything like it again.”
The Bledsoes lived in a hideaway kind of neighborhood, in oak-and-hill country of northwest Redding.
Their property, like many others in the area, was large and decorated with vintage farming equipment fronting a slender two-lane road.
The night the fire arrived, its embers quickly leapfrogged from house to house as the oak trees that gave them shade this time of year became fuel.
Several structures on the property were reduced to piles of twisted metal siding, brick and shattered pottery.
Among the few things unscathed by the firestorm were half a dozen basketballs and kickballs — some of them decorated with silver stars — stacked beneath a tree. A few feet away, a 10-speed bicycle leaned against the skeletal remains of a shade tree.
The areas hardest hit by natural disasters in the state last year relied mostly on third-party companies to handle their emergency messaging and operated on a subscriber-based model that has little success reaching the majority of the public.
If residents want to be safe during an emergency, Rudman said, public agencies need to clearly communicate where the disaster is located and residents need to take them seriously.
“When these things happen in the middle of the night — social media, emergency alerts — short of knocking on your door, those may not work,” he cautioned. “And lives will be lost.”
Being faced with the unexpected is something Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea knows about. Last year, he was given about an hour’s notice to evacuate the county when authorities feared a structure at the Oroville Dam was going to fail and flood the town.
“No matter how much you prepare, there’s always the possibility that there will come along an event that outpaces your resources,” Honea said. “The best plan often doesn’t survive first contact. You’ve got to be prepared for the situation to change.”
Since then, the county has revamped its entire evacuation process, setting up safety zones and giving residents specific meeting points.
“These kinds of potential mega-disasters seem to be happening with greater frequency, and law enforcement, fire, EMS and our public safety agencies I think have to look at public safety in a much broader context,” Honea said. “When I first got into this business, I thought my job was to enforce the law, investigate crimes and arrest criminals. But it’s so much broader than that.”
(Joseph Serna & Louis Saharan, LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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Some regions in Germany sweltered as the mercury hit 102 degrees.
Rivers like the Rhine and the Elbe have soaked up so much heat that fish are beginning to suffocate.
“I’m expecting a tragedy as soon as next week,” Philipp Sicher from the Swiss Fishery Association told German news agency dpa.
In Hamburg, authorities collected 11,000 pounds of dead fish from ponds over the weekend, dpa reported. Firefighters have started pumping fresh water into some ponds and lakes in a bid to raise oxygen levels.
Scientists say the record heat seen in Europe but also North America and parts of Asia this year points to the influence of man-made climate change and could become more common.
Several of Germany’s nuclear power stations are reducing energy output because rivers used to cool the power plants are too warm.
The low water levels have also made shipping more difficult, with a complete ban imposed on boats on the Oder river in eastern Germany.
Meanwhile, the country’s Farmer’s Association is asking the government for $1.17 billion in financial aid to help cover losses from this year’s poor harvest.
Association President Joachim Rukwied said German farmers expect the grain harvest to be 20 percent smaller than last year, with rapeseed crops down 30 percent, as it has barely rained during the past 12 weeks, dpa reported.
A group representing potato farmers said they’re expecting harvests to be 25 percent smaller than last year and warned that the losses may lead not only to more expensive but also shorter French fries — because the spuds are so small this year.
The oceans, too, have been affected.
Authorities in Poland last week banned swimming at over 50 beaches along its Baltic Sea coast, after hot weather led to the growth of toxic bacteria in the unusually warm sea. Water temperatures in the Baltic Sea exceeded 73 degrees in some places. Emergency water rescuers told vacationers on hot, sandy beaches — from Swinoujscie in the west to Gdynia in the east — not to enter the sea, where thick, green-brown cyanobacteria colonies have grown and pose a health threat.
Police in western Germany, meanwhile, rushed to where callers overnight reported hearing frantic screaming from a woman — but it turned out that a hospital had opened its windows because of the heat and several women there were in labor.
Police dogs in the Swiss city of Zurich have been getting special shoes to prevent them from burning their paws on the scorching streets. Swiss authorities have also canceled traditional fireworks displays in some areas during today’s national holiday celebrations, citing the high risk of forest fires.
Across Europe, forest fires have already caused major damage. On July 23, at least 91 people died in a wildfire in Greece — the deadliest in Europe for decades.
Temperatures of up to 113 degrees are forecast for Spain and Portugal today and authorities are preparing for the mercury to climb even higher through Sunday, increasing the risk of emergencies.
In Spain, 27 of the country’s 50 provinces are at “extreme risk” from heat beginning Thursday, the national weather agency said. In neighboring Portugal, the General Directorate for Health warned about dust blowing in from North Africa and authorities said almost 11,000 firefighters and 56 aircraft are on standby to tackle forest fires.
On the other side of the continent, Banak peninsula in northern Norway reported temperatures Monday of 90 degrees — highly unusual for the Arctic Circle.
Some are benefiting from the simmering heat.
Beer brewers in Germany have seen sales rise 0.6 percent, or 7.92 million gallons, in the first half of 2018 compared to the same period last year.
“Especially the alcohol-free types are currently very much sought after,” said Marc-Oliver Huhnholz, from the German Brewer-Association.
In Denmark, where the Meteorological Institute reported that the month of July has been the sunniest since they started recording data in 1920, sales of alcoholic beverages dropped in favor of non-alcoholic beers, sodas and white wine, the country’s TV2 reported.
(Kirsten Grieshaber, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Temperatures in the region reached a peak for the year of 118 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday and 122 degrees on Thursday, said Manuel Colima, head of the meteorology division of Mexico’s National Water Commission in Mexicali. The temperatures have since fallen, with a high Monday registered at 113 degrees, he said.
Mexicali’s Civil Protection Office has issued an alert, urging people to stay away from desert areas such as the Laguna Salada, Cerro Centinela and sand dunes outside Algodones, “as the temperatures can be deadly in summer.”
Capt. René Rosado, Mexicali’s longtime Civil Protection chief said “last summer was very difficult, but we think that this summer will be worse.” The city had not seen such a stretch of searing temperatures since 2005, he added, when 29 people died of heat stroke.
More than 1,200 individuals had received assistance at municipal shelters since they were opened on June 21, said Alfredo Vega, a city spokesman. Those receiving assistance have included indigents as well as families who lack the proper conditions at home to withstand the high temperatures.
Humans have not been the only ones suffering from the heat. Residents from several parts of Mexicali last week called in reports of pelicans that had fallen from the sky onto streets, medians and trees. According to an account in the Mexicali newspaper, La Cronica, staff from Mexico’s environmental protection agency, Profepa, responded to calls of eight pelicans showing signs of weakness, disorientation and dehydration.
Veterinarians at the Bosque de la Ciudad, the municipal zoo, determined that they were dehydrated and underweight. Most did not survive, according to news reports.
(Sandra Dibble, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The county had its own set of remarkable temperatures that stressed both plants and people.
The city of San Diego had its hottest July in a dozen years and its fifth hottest since 1874. The month was 5 degrees warmer than normal, and the 96 degrees recorded on July 6 was the third highest reading ever in July.
On July 6, Ramona hit 117 degrees. That broke the all-time record in town — for any day of the year — by 6 degrees. Escondido and El Cajon peaked at 112 that day, records for the date and one degree shy of the cities’ all-time highs.
Ramona and Escondido had their warmest July on record. Weighing the highs and the lows, the cities were more than 6 degrees hotter than normal.
Looking for causes
Climatologists pin much of the blame for the extreme heat in many areas of the globe on a locked-in jet stream. The jet stream is the high-altitude winds, which generally move west to east, that influence much of the weather around the world.
Cooler weather is generally to the north of the jet, and warmer weather is to the south. The jet usually wobbles north and south like a high-pressure hose left unattended, bringing warm air to a region for a while when the jet is to the north, then cooler air as the jet migrates south.
This summer, the jet has generally been locked in place, which has allowed heat to build up over a region for several weeks.
The cause of the locked-in jet stream is open to debate, but many climatologists believe it is due to climate change. The loss of ice in the Arctic has reduced the temperature contrast between northern and southern latitudes, and the loss of that contrast could be making the jet more stationary.
Local explanations
Besides the locked-in jet stream, the July heat in San Diego County appeared to have been due to two regional factors, according to National Weather Service forecaster Alex Tardy.
The main force has been the location, strength and persistence of a ridge of high pressure. The high compresses hot air from above and pushes it down to the surface.
In the normal summer pattern, that ridge would be centered near or over the Four Corners region and Texas. This year, the high has been much farther west.
“It’s been positioned over us,” Tardy said. “That can explain the heat in Escondido and Ramona.”
The heat wave on July 6 — when Ramona hit 117 and San Diego shot up to 96 — had an added, somewhat rare atmospheric component.
“I call it monsoonal offshore pattern,” said Ivory Small, Tardy’s colleague at the National Weather Service’s Rancho Bernardo office. “It can create something like a Santa Ana wind, and it can be moist, too.”
Small, who studied and wrote about a similar heat spike in July 2006, said strong high pressure over the region combines with an “easterly wave,” a pulse of moisture and energy from the east. Besides the extreme temperatures, the condition can create powerful winds that worsen fire conditions, and bring a threat of thunderstorms and flash flooding — all in the same day. It’s a rare combination in Southern California.
At the coast, the high pressure alone doesn’t explain the warmth. Much of the month, an onshore flow counteracted the influence of the ridge of high pressure.
The culprit at the coast was the water temperature.
“Ocean temperatures have been four to six degrees above normal,” Tardy said. “That directly affects our nighttime lows.”
San Diego had 19 days when the low temperature never dipped below 70 degrees, and three days never got below 74. The average low in July is 65.4.
Lifeguards in Del Mar reported ocean temperatures above 80 degrees several days in July.
Tardy said the locked-in jet stream, which caused elevated temperatures on land, did the same over the ocean, and that could have played a role in the higher ocean readings locally.
Impacts
Like much of the rest of California and the planet, San Diego County had its own set of wildfires to deal with. The West fire, which started July 6 in eastern Alpine, destroyed 56 structures and burned 504 acres. The Pasqual fire, which started July 27, torched 365 acres west of Ramona, and the Rock fire, which started July 28, burned 207 acres in Fallbrook.
Cal Fire Capt. Isaac Sanchez said the county saw 121 fire starts in July, compared with the five-year average of 102. But last year, there were 174 fire starts in July.
“I think there’s a misconception that because it’s hot, we get fires,” Sanchez said. “We’re getting fires because there’s ignition. You can get ignition in 50-degree weather.”
Once fires start, however, it’s a different story. Backcountry vegetation is extremely dry, thanks to sparse rain in the fall and winter; San Diego is having its second-driest rainfall year ever. In June and July, firefighters saw plant-moisture conditions they normally wouldn’t see until August or September, Sanchez said.
Closer to home, backyards have also suffered because of the record-breaking heat. Vincent Lazaneo, an urban horticultural adviser emeritus at the UC Cooperative Extension, said when temperatures get far above 100, there’s not much that a conscientious gardener can do, especially for nonnative plants.
“Most plants just physically can’t move the water up fast enough (from the soil) to make up for what’s being lost from the leaves,” Lazaneo said.
Many landscapes are suffering, especially trees, he said, because people have tried to cut back on watering during the drought. The heat also accelerates the life cycle of insects, which can mean more pests attacking garden plants, more mosquitos buzzing around and more ants invading homes more frequently.
Part of a trend
The weather service’s Alex Tardy said the 117 degrees in Ramona was something he never thought he’d see in his lifetime, but taken as a one-time event, it was not necessarily alarming.
What is alarming is the warmth the region has experienced over the last several years, he said. Until May, San Diego had gone 4½ years without a cooler-than-normal month, and many months during that span were record-setters or near-record-setters.
“Now we’re seeing extreme events as part of a persistent pattern,” he said. “Four of the last 10 years were among the top 10 hottest years.”
(Robert Krier, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The death toll from the blaze some 18 miles east of Athens rose to 92.
The coast guard has mobilized massive resources in its search for potential victims of the July 23 fire, the deadliest in Greece’s recent history. Coast guard patrol vessels, helicopters and a navy frigate have scoured the southern Euboean Gulf since some people trying to escape fast-moving flames raced to the water.
They have been joined by coast guard special operations forces, which include divers able to reach depths of 360 feet and using underwater scooters to cover greater distances.
A research vessel equipped with specialized sonar and a remotely operated underwater vehicle also was deployed, while dozens of civilian and retired naval divers have joined the search as volunteers.
Fanned by high winds, the blaze gutted seaside resorts where many Athens residents and retirees have holiday homes. The high death toll has prompted criticism of the government over the absence of access roads, warning systems and other civil protection measures in residential areas surrounded by forest and at high risk of wildfires.
A government spokesman said more than 3,500 homes had been damaged in the deadly blaze and a second fire near Athens, with more than 1,000 of the affected structures considered uninhabitable and slated for demolition.
More than 500 people gathered outside Greece’s parliament late Monday to attend a candlelight vigil for the victims of the wildfire.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Ed Bledsoe told CBS News he did not receive any warning to evacuate his home in the city of Redding before the flames came through last week and killed his wife, Melody, and his great-grandchildren, 5-year-old James Roberts and 4-year-old Emily Roberts.
“If I’d have any kind of warning, I’d have never, ever left my family in that house,” Bledsoe said.
Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko told the network there’s an investigation into whether the Bledsoe home received a warning call or a knock on the door. The sheriff cited evidence that door-to-door notifications were made in the area. Bosenko did not return a message from The Associated Press on Monday.
The dispute came as authorities on Sunday ordered evacuations around twin fires in Mendocino and Lake counties, including from the 4,700-resident town of Lakeport, a popular destination for bass anglers and boaters on the shores of Clear Lake, about 120 miles north of San Francisco. The blazes have destroyed seven homes and threaten 10,000 others. So far, the flames have blackened more than 68,000 acres — well over 100 square miles — with minimal containment.
By early evening, the town of Lakeport seemed to be completely deserted, while a few miles away embers, ash and smoke swirled through vineyards where at least one home had gone up in flames. Firefighters set blazes at the bottom of hills in order to burn up the tinder-dry brush before flames cresting the ridge tops could feed on it and surge downhill. A fleet of aircraft made continuous water and fire retardant drops on the blaze.
Those fires were among 17 burning across the state, where fire crews were stretched to the limit.
“We have experienced fires the last four years, and so we’re very aware of what can happen with fires and the damage they can cause,” Lake County Sheriff Lt. Corey Paulich said.
Derick Hughes II did not heed the order and remained behind at his property in Nice, where he ran sprinklers on his roof and removed yard plants that could catch fire.
The 32-year-old Marine Corps veteran sent his wife and two daughters to safety along with three carloads of belongings. But he said he had too much at stake to leave himself. He bought his three-bedroom house last year using a loan from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“This is everything I bled for, and I’ve worked really hard to get to where I am, and I’m just not willing to give it up so easily,” he said over the phone. “Some people may think that’s selfish of me, and I have insurance. But the way things go, I’d rather not start over.”
Hughes said about five of his neighbors also disobeyed the evacuation text alert they got Sunday evening to protect their homes and keep looters out.
Farther north, police said five people were arrested on suspicion of entering areas evacuated due to the explosive wildfire around Redding.
That blaze is believed to be the ninth most destructive in state history, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Scott McLean said.
The blaze, which killed two firefighters and four civilians including two children, has destroyed 818 homes and 311 outbuildings and damaged 165 homes, McLean said.
More than 27,000 people remained evacuated from their homes although another 10,000 were allowed to return Monday as fire crews reinforced lines on the western end of the blaze.
Fire officials were hopeful that they could make progress containing the blaze, which was 23 percent contained.
The fire’s northwestern end continued to be active.
“It’s still putting up a fight,” McLean said.
The fire that threatened Redding — a city of about 92,000 — was ignited by a vehicle problem a week ago about 10 miles west of the city. On Thursday, it swept through the historic Gold Rush town of Shasta and nearby Keswick, fueled by gusty winds and dry vegetation. It then jumped the Sacramento River and took out subdivisions on the western edge of Redding.
“It wasn’t expected to travel that far that fast,” said CalFire spokesman Scott Mclean.
The fire slowed down as winds subsided, and crews were able to get into neighborhoods to prevent embers from taking out additional homes, he said.
Bledsoe said he did not know his home was in danger when he left his wife and great grandchildren to run an errand on Thursday. He said he received a phone call from his wife 15 minutes after he left saying he needed to get home because the fire was approaching. He said one of the children told him the blaze was at the back door. When he tried to return, the road was blocked and flames prevented him from returning on foot.
The sheriff has said the fire was moving fast, but authorities still alerted residents in a variety of ways, including going door-to-door and using loudspeakers on emergency vehicles.
Authorities also use electronic warning systems, including an emergency alert system that is repeated by local news media and an automated calling system that can be targeted to phones within a geographic area. Another method known as the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System can be directed to any cellphone within reach of a particular transmission tower, said Sherry Bartolo, operations manager for the Shasta County dispatch center.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez & Sudhin Thanawala, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“There’s a lot going on up here, endless fires, and they’re all characteristically pretty much the same — windy, hot and dry,” firefighter James Sweeney said before heading out for a meal and a nap.
Sweeney, from St. Petersburg, Fla., is a “hotshot,” part of an elite team of highly trained wildland firefighters who spend fire season battling the fiercest blazes in the country.
Weary after more than a day on the fire lines, the 43-year-old said when his Gila, N.M.-based crew does leave California, he expects to go north into Oregon, where new fires are kicking up.
“These days it’s crazy,” he said.
“We give up our whole life all summer.”
Crews made progress this weekend on the Carr fire near Redding, about 230 miles north of San Francisco.
But it was still threatening thousands of homes and was not expected to be fully contained until mid-August at the earliest.
Fighting wildfires is almost always dangerous and grueling, but experienced firefighters said the Carr Fire has been even hotter, drier and more erratic than they are accustomed to.
For many of the firefighters slamming down 9,000-calorie meals between shifts, the nonstop effort has become routine.
Last year, a fast-moving series of fires in Santa Rosa and elsewhere in Northern California killed 44 people and destroyed more than 8,000 structures. Last December’s Thomas Fire near Santa Barbara burned almost 282,000 acres, becoming the largest wildfire in California history.
In his 19 years on the job, Cal Fire Capt. Chris Anthony said the most significant change is that hotter, drier conditions now mean that firefighters are trained to take a “tactical pause” to reconsider before charging in against the flames.
“Fire has become a lot more unpredictable,” he said. “In the past, we could plan, but these days a fire can take a sudden and deadly turn.”
That’s what happened Thursday, when the fire near Redding pivoted and exploded in size, taking down hundreds of homes and killing five people, two of them firefighters. Another firefighter was killed earlier in the month battling a giant fire near Yosemite National Park.
Firefighter Jason Campbell was on the front lines Thursday near Yosemite when the Carr Fire destroyed his home, an RV and a boat near Redding. Redding Police Chief Roger Moore also lost his home.
Capt. Jarrett Grassl, a 19-year veteran who works for the Higgins Fire District in Northern California, said his crew ran into homeowners trying to save their own properties.
The threat to homes reflects the shrinking divide between wilderness and urban areas.
“Every year it seems to be a bigger problem,” Grassl said Saturday, in 110-degree weather with zero precipitation.
Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said he can see the fatigue on the faces of the firefighters when they come in to refuel.
“What really helps to encourage them is a ‘thank you,’ ” Bosenko said Sunday. “Maybe something posted near the fence that gives them encouragement that is a big plus for the firefighters that are coming in to recover.”
(Martha Mendoza, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“It shows the spirit of humanity,” Yen Saisamon, a 17-year-old Laotian volunteer, said Friday at a relief center in the town of Attapeu, where cardboard boxes of instant noodles and condiments were labeled in Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese.
Yet if foreigners are helping now, they also share a piece of the blame. The accident at the billion-dollar Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy hydroelectric project last week has cast a harsh spotlight on the default agenda of the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party: selling natural resources to foreign companies while evading scrutiny for investment projects that exacerbate rural poverty — or, in this case, kill innocent villagers.
Laos’ one-party communist government and the international financial institutions that support it have long embraced a “high-wire act” of prioritizing investment over stronger regulation, said Keith Barney, an expert on Laos at the Australian National University. But in the accident’s wake, “the potential pitfalls of poor regulation are now evident for everyone to see,” he said.
The South Korean company that is the main builder of the hydroelectric project has admitted that it knew the dam was deteriorating a day before it failed.
Barney said the accident at the dam, part of the hydroelectric project, was perhaps the biggest challenge to the ruling party’s legitimacy since its handling of the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98, which led to rapid inflation. Officials may now face more pressure to incorporate social and environmental protections for rural people in the push for development, he said.
“Their response could either build confidence in the government or undermine it,” Barney said.
In the decades since the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party came to power in 1975, the government has pursued an economic model that prioritizes selling off land, timber, minerals and other resources to giant conglomerates from China, Thailand, Vietnam and elsewhere. A high-profile example is a continuing project by Chinese engineers to drill hundreds of tunnels and bridges through Laos to support a railway that will eventually connect several Asian countries.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The quake damaged more than 1,000 houses and was felt in a wider area, including on Bali, where no damage or casualties were reported.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake struck at a depth of only 4.4 miles. Shallow earthquakes tend to do more damage than deeper ones.
East Lombok district was the hardest hit with 10 deaths, including a Malaysian tourist, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for Indonesia’s Disaster Mitigation Agency. The number of casualties could increase as data was still being collected from other locations on the island, he said.
At least 162 people were injured, including 67 hospitalized with serious injuries, Nugroho said.
The quake caused blackouts in East Lombok and North Lombok districts.
NB: The US Geological Survey reported that this earthquake had a magnitude of 6.4. The quake occurred on Saturday, 7/28 at 22:47 UTC (Sun 7/29 6:47 local time). The hypocenter was at 6.4 km depth. Many aftershocks followed, including a M 5.4 19 min after the main shock.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In Mariposa County, where firefighters have spent weeks battling the Ferguson fire, officials reported that a firefighter based at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks died after being struck by a falling tree.
Meanwhile, crews attacking the Carr fire in and around Redding said they had located another body — the fourth civilian to perish in that blaze.
Firefighters are battling 17 wildfires across the state, which have consumed more than 200,000 acres combined in terrain stretching from Southern California to the Oregon border, said Jonathan Cox, battalion chief and information officer with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. With so many burning near populated areas, “resources are obviously stretched thin,” he said.
“We’ve had 17 fires before,” Cox said. “But these are impacting communities — and they’re large fires, not small.”
About 12,000 firefighters have responded to the wildfires from within California. An additional 800 personnel have been deployed by the California National Guard. And 150 fire engines were on the way from as far away as Florida, officials said Sunday. “There’s a finite number of resources in California, and obviously we’re employing them at the highest-priority incidents,” Cox said.
The Carr fire — the largest wildfire burning — has consumed more than 95,000 acres, destroyed 874 structures — including 657 homes — and damaged 175 others. Six people, including a 70-year-old woman and two of her great-grandchildren, were killed in the fast-moving fire. Two belonged to the crews fighting the fire.
The devastation astounded Shasta County Supervisor Leonard Moty, who represents much of the area that burned. “I’ve been a lifelong resident of this community. I’ve never seen a fire with such destruction here in this area ever before,” said Moty, appearing at a news conference with other public safety officials.
One of those who experienced the destruction firsthand was Redding resident Hannalora Lewis, who was woken up by her mother Thursday morning and told to evacuate.
While her parents grabbed photos and corralled their dogs, the 16-year-old scooped up her phone, an outfit and a new pair of sneakers she bought while back-to-school shopping. She said she almost grabbed a box of mementos — trinkets, diaries, ticket stubs from her favorite movies — but then thought it would take up too much room in the car.
Within days, she learned the family’s house had been destroyed. “I didn’t think for a second that we would lose our home,” she said.
Firefighters on Sunday offered their first optimistic assessment of their battle against the Carr fire, which has forced more than 38,000 residents to evacuate. Cal Fire unified incident commander Bret Gouvea said cooler temperatures and increased humidity had given firefighters a window of opportunity to attack the massive fire.
The blaze, which was 17 percent contained Sunday evening, was mostly burning north into remote and inaccessible areas. Fire crews also managed to halt the spread of the Carr fire within the city of Redding, Gouvea said.
“We’ve had no movement on the fire over the last day inside the city limits, so things are looking very good,” he added.
Craig Shoemaker, a meteorologist in the National Weather Service’s Sacramento office, said temperatures over the fire are expected to reach highs of up to 105 degrees today, a few degrees cooler than it would have been without thick smoke acting as a cloud cover.
“An incredible amount of smoke has been put into the air, and that’s helping to hold down temperatures a little bit,” said Tom Dang, another meteorologist with the weather service.
While the smoke provided some relief for crews on the ground, it complicated the aerial assault being waged by helicopters and air tankers, limiting their visibility. “There’s a lot of low-level smoke, which means missions are having to be aborted,” said Cox, the Cal Fire spokesman.
Investigators said Sunday they had recovered the body of a sixth person from the Carr fire. Although he declined to identify the person, Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said the latest fire victim had been in a location where residents had been told to clear out for their safety.
“We have confirmed that the person did receive evacuation notices and did not evacuate,” he said.
Officials also said there have been two fatalities in the Ferguson fire, which has consumed more than 54,000 acres near Yosemite. That fire, which started July 13, claimed the life of a Cal Fire bulldozer operator, whose vehicle tumbled down a hillside during the building of a defensive line.
On Sunday, Brian Hughes, captain of the Arrowhead Interagency Hotshots, was killed when he was struck by a tree while he and his team were setting a backfire in an area with many dead trees on the east side of the fire, according to the National Park Service. He was treated at the scene but died before he could be taken to a hospital. He was 33.
Hughes, who was originally from Hilo, Hawaii, had worked with the Arrowhead hotshots for four years. They are an elite crew of 20 firefighters based at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
“They go into the steepest of the steep, the most rugged of the rugged areas,” said Mike Theune, a spokesman with the parks. The Arrowhead team, one of two hotshot crews within the National Park Service, was working on a two-week rotation when Hughes was killed, he said.
“The team at Sequoia and Kings National Parks is devastated by this terrible news,” parks Supt. Woody Smeck said in a statement. “Our deepest condolences go out to the firefighter’s family and loved ones. We grieve this loss with you.”
The Ferguson fire has left seven others injured. Yosemite National Park remains closed while thousands of structures are threatened.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The blaze, dubbed the Pasqual fire, erupted for unknown reasons about 1:30 p.m. near state Route 78, Cal Fire spokesman Issac Sanchez said. It spread on both sides of the highway along the eastern end of the San Pasqual Valley, moving southeast away from the Safari Park.
By 7 p.m., all active flames were extinguished, the forward spread of the fire had been halted and the burn area was 5 percent contained, Sanchez said. The fire burned an estimated 240 acres, though more exact mapping using GPS technology was expected overnight.
Amid temperatures that reached as high as 102 degrees at 3 p.m. in Ramona, the fire spread quickly, growing to its full size by 4:30 p.m.
No structures were damaged and no injuries were reported.
State Route 78 remained shut down along a roughly 7-mile stretch as of Friday night. Upon first responding to reports of the fire, CHP officers quickly closed the highway between Ramona Highlands and Bandy Canyon Road.
Officers later stretched the closure farther to the east, essentially shutting down the highway between San Pasqual Academy on the western side to Haverford Road in Ramona on the eastern side.
Cal Fire issued evacuation orders around 3:30 p.m. for residents living on more than a dozen streets in the area, many of them in the gated Highland Hills neighborhood west of the Ramona Airport. Those evacuation orders remained active as of 7 p.m., though they were expected to be lifted shortly thereafter, Sanchez said.
The evacuated streets were Rangeland Road, Oak Grove Road, Highland Hills Drive, Horizon View Drive, Maggiore Drive, Cinque Terre Drive, Corniglia Drive, Via Cuesta, Via Vista Grande, Prestige Street, Rancho Villa Road, Weekend Villa Road, Day Star Way and Rustic Villa Road.
All evacuees were directed to Ramona High School at 1401 Hanson Lane in Ramona.
Winds in the area were not strong Friday, mostly blowing from the west and northwest between 10 and 20 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
Fire officials knew early in the afternoon that the winds were not expected to strengthen or change direction, but they still warned residents to stay alert.
“When we have a fire like this, the potential we’ve got, and the kind of fuel conditions we have, every community that’s in the area in any direction should be very cognizant of what’s going on,” said Deputy Chief Kelly Zombro from the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.
Officials also held out hope in the afternoon that helpful weather would arrive later in the day.
“With any luck, the marine layer is going to come in,” Zombro said around 4 p.m.. “But right now, (the fire) is off to the races.”
Investigators at one point taped off a dirt turnout on the south side of Route 78 near San Dieguito Park’s Clevenger South trailhead where they believe the blaze may have originated.
The investigators did not immediately say what might have sparked the flames.
Air tankers dropped water and retardant on the fire with a focus on a ridge of mountains to the south of state Route 78. Over that ridge were the large homes, vineyards and wineries in the private Highland Hills neighborhood.
While aircraft attacked the flames from above, two bulldozers plowed a containment line on the west edge of the burn area between it and the Safari Park a few miles to the west.
The San Diego Zoo Safari Park remained open throughout the day as the blaze moved away from the park, San Diego Zoo spokeswoman Darla Davis said.
The Safari Park, formerly named the San Diego Wild Animal Park, is an extension of the San Diego Zoo, has a breeding program and keeps many large and endangered animals in free-range enclosures.
Safari Park officials have a protocol that involves crating some animals and moving others to an on-site hospital or barn during a fire, but none of those steps were taken Friday, Davis said.
The San Diego Humane Society tweeted that its Animal Rescue Reserve unit was on standby and “ready to help transport horses, livestock or even household pets to safety.”
“In the event of a disaster, leave early and take your pets with you if you can,” the Humane Society tweeted.
Crews from Cal Fire, the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, San Diego County Fire Authority and Cleveland National Forest all responded. Cal Fire and SDFD coordinated the battle.
(Alex Riggins, Harry Jones, Pauline Repard & Gary Warth, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Evacuating his neighbors in the River Ridge neighborhood, Redding Police Chief Roger Moore saw a towering coil of fire sucking debris in the sky like a tornado.
“It was just destroying everything in its path,” he said. “It was making a sound like a jet engine.”
As the Carr fire raced eastward, driven by fierce wind, it rushed down brushy canyons, up dry-grass ridges, through neighborhoods thick with trees and across the Sacramento River.
By Friday, two firefighters were killed and more than 100 homes were destroyed, including Moore’s. Officials identified one of the victims as Redding fire inspector Jeremy Stoke.
The Carr fire had burned more than 44,000 acres and was only 3 percent contained, officials said at a news briefing. About 38,000 people were evacuated in Shasta County.
“This fire was whipped up into a whirlwind of activity,” uprooting trees, moving cars and dislocating parts of roads, said Ken Pimlott, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Northern California will see high heat and low humidity over the next week to 10 days, he said, which will increase the likelihood of new fires starting and firefighters wearing out as they battle new and existing blazes. The agency has more than 7,000 firefighters working across the state, battling 45 to 50 fires per day, he said.
Firefighters struggle to contain fires when they face steep terrain, hot weather, dry brush and other vegetation that can fuel a fire, said Greg Bertelli, an incident commander at Cal Fire.
“Any one of those factors will make containing a fire extremely difficult,” Bertelli said. “The Carr fire, at times, experienced all three combined. This fire is moving, at times, three or four different directions.”
Three Marin County firefighters were trapped when a stand of pinyon pines lit up.
Holed up in the fire engine as the fire roared through, they suffered minor to moderate burns to their hands, face, ears and nose, said Marin County fire Chief Jason Weber. One was taken to UC Davis Medical Center’s burn center.
Temperatures in Redding were expected to hit 110 degrees today before a slight dip to 105 degrees by Tuesday, meteorologist Chris Hintz said.
The fire continues the most destructive span of fires in California history.
In October, the state’s deadliest firestorm hit Northern California’s wine country, killing 44 people. In December, the Thomas fire became the state’s largest fire on record, burning 281,893 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Few parts of the state have been unaffected this year.
Yosemite National Park is closed as the Ferguson fire burns well into its second week, taking a firefighter’s life and consuming 45,000 acres. And the Cranston fire has forced the evacuation of thousands of people in and around Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains.
In Redding, the searing summer heat rising from the Sacramento Valley has been pulling air coastal air over the mountains, creating a hard westerly wind.
The fire started in the Trinity Mountains on Monday and didn’t cause much alarm until Wednesday night, when dry wind drove it to Whiskeytown Lake, burning boats in a marina.
The next night it was poised to run into the west edge of Redding, a city of 90,000 just south of Shasta Lake.
Erica Bade and her family didn’t think they were in danger as they sat at the dinner table after watching the news. The fire was on the other side of the Sacramento River, about a mile away.
Then the power went out, an eerie sign the fire was coming.
Erica, a 17-year-old incoming freshman at UC Santa Barbara, started grabbing whatever clothes she saw and shoving them in a suitcase. She looked out the window.
“I see flames, there’s fire!” she screamed.
She loaded the car in a cloud of smoke as ash drifted down.
Police officers shouted at residents to leave immediately.
Frantically, Bade and her family kept packing, making sure to take important documents, laptops and the family computer that stored many childhood photographs. Finally, an officer walked into their home through the garage and told them they had to go.
The Bade family drove away in tears, watching their rear-view mirrors as the flames reared up behind their home.
Erica figured it would be the last time she saw it standing. “It was just huge flames,” she said. “It did not look good at all.”
Just a few hours later, a Redding detective and family friend sent a photograph and called the family to deliver the news — save for a front porch pillar, the home was gone.
“We don’t really know what we’re going to do,” Erica said Friday. “We’re just trying to get through the day. It’s surreal to us all. We’re just going through the day, taking it as it comes.”
Like many in a fire country, Rick Plummer, director of marketing for Dignity Health’s Mercy Medical Center, had imagined evacuating so many times before but couldn’t believe how hard it was.
“I don’t think you can 100 percent appreciate walking through your home and deciding what to take and what not to take,” Plummer said, his voice cracking with emotion.
He drove to work, where he watched doctors, nurses and hospital administrators work through the night even as they got word their own homes had burned.
The fire was still moving through other parts of the city on Friday. In southwest Redding, a spot fire broke out in the hills above the city. Residents watched nervously as they packed in the 101-degree heat. Helicopters thrummed as a voice from the loudspeaker of a police cruiser told residents to get out.
“I just kept watching things,” said Crystal Harper, who stood in her driveway with the car packed. “And it’s time.”
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Steve Rice, who has lived here for 55 years.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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Authorities ordered residents to leave Idyllwild, home to about 12,000 people, and surrounding forest communities in the San Jacinto Mountains east of Los Angeles. At least four homes burned as crews used aircraft to attack the flames that quickly burned nearly 5 square miles of dry brush and timber in inaccessible terrain. No injuries were reported.
Officers detained a motorist for questioning after people called 911 to report a suspicious vehicle near the fire’s starting point in Riverside County, the California Highway Patrol said.
As his neighbors tried to corral dogs and horses, William Blodgett fled when flames hopped a highway near his home in Idyllwild.
“We were all peeling out of there as fast as we could,” he told KNBC-TV. “It was apocalyptic.”
The fire is one of several across California amid a statewide heat wave. To the north, in the San Francisco Bay Area, at least one home burned in a fast-moving blaze in Clayton, where houses are spread out around windy roads.
Yosemite Valley, the scenic heart of the national park, was closed at noon Wednesday during the height of tourist season as smoke cast a pall on the region from a fire in the Sierra Nevada. The closure was heartbreaking for travelers, many of whom mapped out their trips months in advance to hike and climb amid the spectacular views of cascading waterfalls and sheer rock faces.
“We had one guest who planned a weeklong trip,” said Tom Lambert, who owns a vacation rental property near Yosemite Valley. “It was a father-daughter trip, for her high school graduation. Now it’s done. It’s sad.” Another guest had to delay plans to climb Half Dome.
The closure has also been a financial blow to Lambert and other businesses that rely on the summer tourist traffic.
Most people left the valley Tuesday, when officials reluctantly announced the closure, park spokesman Scott Gediman said. The remaining campers packed up their gear Wednesday, joining the exodus that has been mostly orderly.
“People have been very understanding,” Gediman said.
Officials emphasized that Yosemite wasn’t in imminent danger from the fire. Authorities decided on the shutdown to allow crews to perform protective measures such as burning away brush along roadways without having to deal with traffic in the park that welcomes 4 million visitors annually.
Yosemite Valley will be closed until at least Sunday, along with a winding, mountainous, 20-mile stretch of California’s state Route 41 that leads into the area, Gediman said.
(Joel Achenbach & Angela Fritz, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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The massive Cranston fire is believed to have been set by an arsonist, a troubling detail in an effort that has enlisted nearly 700 firefighters and threatened hundreds of homes.
“It’s the scariest feeling you can have because you’re helpless,” said resident Tamara Friemoth, 56, about the moment she watched the fire curl around the mountains in front of the gas station and auto shop she owns with her husband.
Friemoth has lived in the area for four decades and although she ran home to grab clothes and family heirlooms, she kept her business open for firefighters seeking drinks and snacks.
By Thursday afternoon, the fire was 7,500 acres and 5 percent contained, easily spotted by the billowy plumes of smoke expanding into the sky.
A dusting of crimson retardant atop a ridge marked where the flames had retreated from Idyllwild, an enclave of artists and musicians and a tourist draw. But officials worried the triple-digit weather coupled with a shift in wind could build momentum and undo any progress, even sending the blaze back on top of firefighters and into the beloved town.
Chief Patrick Reitz of the Idyllwild Fire Protection District said his biggest concern was whether the fire might push past a fire line or fuel break.
Over the last several years, staff from local, state and federal agencies have actively worked to build and maintain fuel breaks in the area. Those, mixed with an aggressive air assault team and firefighters on the ground, have helped slow down the fire and save most of Idyllwild, where five structures were destroyed.
“It was a lot of work yesterday and tremendous effort, and it paid off,” Reitz said.
But the mushroom-like cloud that formed nearby has added another element to the usual volatility of fighting fires. Pyrocumulus clouds form from fire and collapse onto themselves, causing the weather conditions to change.
“It’s all heat, toxins and smoke,” said Capt. Scott Visyak of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Fed by dry fuel on steep slopes, the fire headed into Apple Canyon and Bonita Vista, and new evacuations were announced for McCall Park, south of Pine Wood, Cedar Glen, Pine Cove and Fern Valley.
Steve and Suzanne Coffer were on their way to San Diego to hit the casinos when approaching flames made them return home to hurriedly pack up their belongings. They spent the night in their car with their cat, parked near a church.
When they saw their house again, it was coated in retardant. The mess was no matter for Steve Coffer, who had moved to Idyllwild 40 years ago, yearning for a place far from the city.
The elation at finding his home still standing was difficult for him to express.
“I can’t put it into words.”
Many residents were without power, including Ruth Kleefisch, 52, who drove from her home in Pine Cove to Idyllwild in an attempt to charge her cellphone and try to get reception.
Kleefisch’s husband has liver cancer and has been unable to eat for the last four days. She was desperate to reach his doctor to ask what she could do to help her husband’s nausea.
She said she was less concerned about the fire, which hadn’t reached Pine Cove, and more concerned about being without power, especially if it lasted more than a few days.
“The neighborhood’s quiet, everything is quiet. There’s nobody here. Once all the tourists leave, there’s not that many left of us, really.”
Authorities said Thursday that they had arrested an arson suspect identified as Brandon McGlover of Temecula.
Lt. Eric Dickson, a spokesman for the Police Department in Hemet, said the department’s officers found McGlover driving in his car after they were alerted to look out for a white Honda sedan that could be connected to the fires.
Fires have also struck Northern California, where firefighters worked in brutal 110-degree temperatures on the northern edge of the Sacramento Valley. Crews scrambled when a shift in the winds pushed the Carr fire three miles east in four hours, catching residents in Whiskeytown on their heels.
The blaze reached the edge of Whiskeytown Lake, where local news outlets reported that 40 boats were burned along with a number of homes.
Authorities placed 192 homes under mandatory evacuation orders, most of those in Whiskeytown and the community of French Gulch, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
The blaze was 20,000 acres and 10 percent contained on Thursday. But most of that containment was on the fire’s west and northwestern edge, not on its southern face where the residents are, said spokesman Chad Carroll. The blaze has been running along the north side of Highway 299 since a vehicle malfunction sparked it Monday afternoon, he said.
While the Carr fire has been fueled by wind and topography, the Ferguson fire outside Yosemite National Park has been decidedly different, said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Jacob Welsh.
Crews in the rugged forests in Mariposa County have been dealing with an inversion layer that has put the Ferguson fire’s smoke right on top of Yosemite Valley and other low-lying areas. Poor air quality and visibility have limited the ability of planes and helicopters to help fight the fire, Welsh said. At the same time, that smoky blanket keeps the fire from “getting a breath of fresh air” and growing, Welsh said.
One of the biggest obstacles to containing the fire continues to be the terrain, a mix of steep cliffs with deep, inaccessible canyons loaded with vegetation and slopes of standing dead trees — victims of a bark beetle infestation that’s killed 129 million trees since 2010.
The Ferguson fire was 43,299 acres and 27 percent contained, officials said.
The strategy with the Cranston fire is to hack away at flammable vegetation along its perimeter to cut off the fuel supply, said Kate Kramer, a spokeswoman with the San Bernardino National Forest.
Farther out from the fire line, she said, firefighters are clearing flammable brush to prevent it from spreading.
The blaze is being directly attacked in areas covered in extremely dry grass, where the fire burns quickly and stays low enough to be extinguished safely.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove & Laura Newberry, LOS ANGELES TIMES; NEW YORK TIMES)
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Authorities ordered residents to leave Idyllwild, home to about 12,000 people, and surrounding forest communities in the San Jacinto Mountains east of Los Angeles. At least four homes burned as crews used aircraft to attack the flames that quickly burned nearly 5 square miles of dry brush and timber in inaccessible terrain. No injuries were reported.
Officers detained a motorist for questioning after people called 911 to report a suspicious vehicle near the fire’s starting point in Riverside County, the California Highway Patrol said.
As his neighbors tried to corral dogs and horses, William Blodgett fled when flames hopped a highway near his home in Idyllwild.
“We were all peeling out of there as fast as we could,” he told KNBC-TV. “It was apocalyptic.”
The fire is one of several across California amid a statewide heat wave. To the north, in the San Francisco Bay Area, at least one home burned in a fast-moving blaze in Clayton, where houses are spread out around windy roads.
Yosemite Valley, the scenic heart of the national park, was closed at noon Wednesday during the height of tourist season as smoke cast a pall on the region from a fire in the Sierra Nevada. The closure was heartbreaking for travelers, many of whom mapped out their trips months in advance to hike and climb amid the spectacular views of cascading waterfalls and sheer rock faces.
“We had one guest who planned a weeklong trip,” said Tom Lambert, who owns a vacation rental property near Yosemite Valley. “It was a father-daughter trip, for her high school graduation. Now it’s done. It’s sad.” Another guest had to delay plans to climb Half Dome.
The closure has also been a financial blow to Lambert and other businesses that rely on the summer tourist traffic.
Most people left the valley Tuesday, when officials reluctantly announced the closure, park spokesman Scott Gediman said. The remaining campers packed up their gear Wednesday, joining the exodus that has been mostly orderly.
“People have been very understanding,” Gediman said.
Officials emphasized that Yosemite wasn’t in imminent danger from the fire. Authorities decided on the shutdown to allow crews to perform protective measures such as burning away brush along roadways without having to deal with traffic in the park that welcomes 4 million visitors annually.
Yosemite Valley will be closed until at least Sunday, along with a winding, mountainous, 20-mile stretch of California’s state Route 41 that leads into the area, Gediman said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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At least several people were killed, and nearly 7,000 were forced to flee their homes as the surging water inundated six poor, rural villages on Monday, the official Lao News Agency reported.
Photos and videos from the scene showed murky, brown water covering a vast area, with residents seeking refuge on rooftops that barely remained dry. Others could be seen walking knee deep in water out of the flooded area or escaping on boats with only a few possessions in hand.
The dam was part of a billion-dollar hydropower project that the Laotian government sees as critical for economic development. Opponents argued that the risks to local people and to fisheries did not justify the economic benefits.
The failure of the structure, one of the smaller of more than a half-dozen dams being built on three tributaries of the Mekong River in Laos, released about 175 billion cubic feet of water, washing away homes in the southern province of Attapeu, near the border with Vietnam and Cambodia.
The state news agency did not give an exact death toll, but it is feared the number will grow, with the search for victims in the devastated area still in its early stages.
Though the flooding was widely described as the result of a dam collapse, the South Korean company building the dams, SK Engineering & Construction, said it was investigating whether the structure failed or whether water swept over it as a result of heavy rain. The rainfall was three times heavier than normal, according to the Yonhap News Agency in South Korea.
The company sent helicopters, boats and personnel to aid rescue operations, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The project — which includes three major dams in addition to at least three smaller auxiliary dams, or saddle dams, like the one that failed — is designed to generate electricity from the water of three rivers, which all ultimately flow into the Mekong.
The electricity is to be produced in southern Laos, but 90 percent is to be purchased by Thailand. The project, begun in 2013, was scheduled to begin operation next year.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The number of victims appeared set to go even higher, with crews checking charred homes and vehicles and the coast guard scouring beaches and deeper waters. There was no definitive count of the missing.
Fueled by 50 mph winds that frequently changed direction, the fires — one to the west of Athens near the town of Kineta and another to the northeast near the port of Rafina — spread at speeds that surprised many, trapping hundreds on beaches and cutting off escape routes.
All the casualties appeared to be from the fire near Rafina, a popular seaside area that is a mix of permanent residences and vacation homes. The blaze broke out Monday afternoon during a hot, dry spell but the cause was not immediately clear. Aerial photos showed charred swathes of forest and homes.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras declared three days of national mourning. Apart from the dead, which included children, hospitals treated 187 people, most for burns, with 10 listed in serious condition.
Although it had abated by Tuesday afternoon, the blaze was far from extinguished and more than 230 firefighters were still trying to put it out, helped by volunteers and water-dropping aircraft. Another five fires continued to burn, with flare-ups reported in the blaze near Kineta. Authorities ordered the evacuation of some communities as a preventive measure.
Authorities urged the public to contact them about the missing. Many took to social media, posting photos and what was believed to be their last location before the fires hit.
Twenty-six of the dead were found after dawn Tuesday, huddled in a compound near the sea in the community of Mati, the worst-hit area near Rafina, about 30 miles west of Athens.
Red Cross rescuers said they appeared to be families or groups of friends because they were found hugging in groups of threes and fours.
Hundreds of homes and cars were believed to have been burned. Many vehicles were found with the keys still in the ignition and doors open, a sign of the urgency with which their occupants sought to flee the flames. Narrow roads quickly became jammed, forcing many to try to escape on foot. The ferocity of the fire melted cars’ metal hub caps.
Many ran to beaches, but even there the fire got so close and the smoke was so thick that dozens swam out to sea despite the rough weather.
Coast guard and private boats picked up more than 700 survivors from beaches and the sea — but also recovered six bodies.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Yosemite Valley will be closed for at least four days beginning at noon today, along with a winding, mountainous, 20-mile stretch of State Route 41, park spokesman Scott Gediman said.
At least a thousand campground and hotel bookings will be canceled — to say nothing of the impact on day visitors, park workers and small businesses along the highway, Gediman said.
“We’re asking people here tonight to leave tomorrow morning,” he said. “And anyone that’s incoming tomorrow will get an email or phone call stating that their reservation is canceled.”
The last time the 7.5-mile-long valley was closed because of fire was 1990, he said.
Yosemite wasn’t under imminent danger from the Ferguson fire, officials were quick to point out. Authorities decided on the closure to allow crews to perform protective measures like burning away brush along roadways without having to deal with traffic in the park that welcomes 4 million visitors annually.
Yosemite Valley is the centerpiece of the visitor experience, offering views of landmarks such as Half Dome, Sentinel Dome, Bridal Veil Fall, El Capitan and Yosemite Falls. The glacial valley’s grand vista of waterfalls and shear granite faces has been obscured by a choking haze of smoke from a nearby fire.
Visitors are advised to “limit activity during the periods of poor air quality,” the park said in a statement. “Some facilities and services are closed or diminished.”
Over nearly two weeks, flames have churned through more than 57 square miles of timber in steep terrain of the Sierra Nevada just west of the park. The fire was 25 percent contained Tuesday morning.
Mandatory evacuations are in place in several communities, while others have been told to get ready to leave if necessary.
More than 3,300 firefighters are working the fire, aided by 16 helicopters. One firefighter was killed July 14, and six others have been injured.
In the state’s far north, a nearly 4-square-mile wildfire has forced the evacuation of French Gulch, a small Shasta County community that dates to the Gold Rush.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“It’s hotter than hell,” said Taylor, who works in the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association office in Borrego Springs. “I think that’s the official statement.”
The temperature peaked at 118 degrees at Borrego Springs on the second day of a heat wave that is expected to last until Thursday, when it fades, like air leaking from a balloon.
The deserts were insufferable Tuesday, even if you caught their maroon hue at dawn and dusk.
The 118 degrees in Borrego Springs broke the July 24 record of 116, set in 2014. Nearby Ocotillo Wells hit 121.
The heat moderated as you wandered west, but not by much.
Campo hit 107 degrees, Valley Center 105, Ramona 103, Poway and Alpine 101, and Escondido 100. Farther west, Del Mar hit 86, San Diego reached 85, and Oceanside clocked in at 78.
Campo, Ramona and San Diego tied all-time-high records.
No one got too bent about it; these sorts of heat waves happen several times each summer. But everyone likes to talk about the weather, even though our neighbors from Arizona roll their eyes and say, “You haven’t seen anything.”
For the record, Tuesday was an icky-sticky day in San Diego County, thanks to a high-pressure system that baked the state. But a strong south swell rolled ashore along the entire coastline, and the ocean was like bathwater, inching above 75 degrees.
Surfer Gary Austin rolled into Carlsbad State Beach and surrendered to the beauty of it all.
“I’m down here beating the heat,” Austin said. “I’ve got chairs and the umbrella and the scooter. It’s the only way to fly, no parking problems.”
Daniel Lorch showed up at Windansea Beach in La Jolla and gave his hosannas:
“I’m from up north near Ventura, so the water is like a Jacuzzi down here,” Lorch said. “I’m dying out here on the beach, and the water ain’t cooling me down all that much. It’s still nice, though.”
Todd Prodanovich also gave thanks at Ponto Beach, saying, “This is one of the biggest south swells we’ve had this summer, with most of the North County spots breaking well overhead. Pair that with an outgoing tide, and you’re gonna get some strong rip currents, for sure.”
The electric grid across the state appeared to handle the hot weather pretty well.
As of 4 p.m. Tuesday, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), which oversees the grid for about 80 percent of California’s electricity consumers, forecast a peak demand of 46,907 megawatts. The highest single-day peak was 50,270 megawatts, on July 24, 2006.
CAISO on Tuesday reported 54,716 megawatts of available capacity from electricity generators but officials said figures can vary due to conditions such as a wildfire outbreak or a utility power outage.
Demand for power peaks at about 6 p.m.
“People are coming home from work and they’re turning on their air conditioners, turning on their lights, charging their electric vehicles,” CAISO spokeswoman Anne Gonzales said.
Another reason for the 6 p.m. peak? That’s when the sun starts to set and results in a loss of solar energy production.
CAISO has issued Flex Alerts through Wednesday, asking the public to voluntarily reduce power consumption between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Officials at San Diego Gas & Electric said the utility has secured “sufficient electricity supplies” for the coming days.
SDG&E’s highest demand day occurred in 2014, hitting about 4,800 megawatts, SDG&E communications manager Allison Torres said. The utility forecast about 4,100 megawatts for Tuesday and today. Torres said demand hovers around 3,000 megawatts on a typical day.
The weather service has not issued any fire-related watches or warnings for San Diego County, despite the heat inland. National Weather Service forecaster Brandt Maxwell said the humidity levels are higher than they were during the last hot spell earlier this month, and the winds are expected to be light.
But the length of the current heat wave is a concern. Temperatures should remain well above normal in the inland valleys through Thursday, and because the nighttime lows may not drop below 70 degrees in many areas, there could be little escape from the heat.
The desert could see lows in the 90s.
“What tends to happen when it gets like this, you’ll open the door at 10 o’clock (at night), and a wall of hot air hits you,” said Taylor, the Borrego Springs resident. She said it could still be 100 degrees at 10 p.m.
An excessive heat warning is in effect for the entire county, except the coastal strip, through 8 p.m. Thursday. The weather service recommends rescheduling strenuous activities to early morning or evening, wearing lightweight and loose-fitting clothing when possible, and drinking plenty of water.
Matt Clark, president of El Cajon Roofing and ECR Logistics, said his approximately 35 roofers know to take electrolyte tablets and drink extra water. Crews are getting an hour for lunch instead of the usual half hour. If it gets too hot, he said, the workers are pulled from the roofs in the afternoon and return in the cooler evening.
“We tell them to take it easy but still get the job done,” Clark said.
The weekend should bring some relief from the heat, with highs at the coast around 80 while the inland valleys reach the low 90s and the desert drops below 110. Thunderstorms are possible in the mountains on Sunday as another wave of monsoonal moisture arrives.
(Gary Robbins, Cliff Kapono, Rob Nikolewski & Robert Krier, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The mercury hit 41.1 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit) in Kumagaya, a city in Saitama prefecture about 40 miles northwest of Tokyo, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. That broke the previous record of 41.0° C in Ekawasaki on the island of Shikoku on Aug. 12, 2013.
Two lingering high pressure systems have trapped warm and humid air above the region, bringing record-high temperatures for nearly two weeks. More than 40 people have died in Japan and about 10 in South Korea.
“It is so hot these days that I cannot figure out whether I am in (South Korea) or in Southeast Asia,” said Kim Sung-hee, a student in downtown Seoul, where the temperature rose to 35.7°C (96°F).
Ten people have died in South Korea of heatstroke and other heat-related causes this summer, seven of them last week, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday. About 1,040 people have fallen ill because of hot weather from May 20 to July 21, an increase of 61 percent over the same period last year, it said.
South Korea’s highest-ever morning low was recorded in the city of Gangneung, where the temperature was 31°C (88°F) at 6:45 a.m. The morning low in Seoul was 29.2°C (84.6°F), a record for the country’s capital, according to South Korea’s weather agency.
The mercury hit 39.9°C (103.8°F) in the southeastern town of Hayang, the highest temperature in the country so far this year.
In North Korea, residents fanned themselves on crowded trolleys or protected themselves from the sun with brightly colored parasols as temperatures in Pyongyang, the capital, reached 34°C (93.2°F). Weather reports said higher temperatures were recorded on the country’s eastern coast.
Thousands of people in Japan have been rushed to hospitals with heat stroke symptoms during the heat wave. Kyodo News agency has tallied more than 40 deaths. Many of the victims have been elderly people who were not using air conditioning.
On Monday, nine people died from heat-related causes across Japan, Kyodo said. NHK national television tallied seven deaths.
The temperature reached 39°C (102°F) on Monday in central Tokyo, the highest temperature this year. The worst of the heat wave is expected to be over this week.
Tourists in Tokyo’s historic Asakusa district struggled with the heat. Cosett Romero from Mexico said she and her family were getting headaches.
“It’s difficult to us because we don’t have this heat in Mexico,” she said.
Authorities warned people to stay inside and use air conditioning.
“The weather recently in Tokyo and across Japan is like being in a sauna,” Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike said at a news conference that highlighted the 2020 Summer Olympics, which open in Tokyo two years from Tuesday.
Tokyo’s postwar high temperature in August averages 31.5°C (88.7°F). That is about the same as the average high during the August 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, but exceeds those of the past three August Olympics: 30.6°C (87.0°F) during Beijing 2008, 23.5⪚C (74.3°F) in London 2012 and 26.3°C (79.3°F) in Rio de Janeiro, according to meteorological agency statistics.
Koike said the city has been working to address heat concerns for both spectators and athletes.
The marathon and some other outdoor Olympic events will start early in the morning. Other steps include developing road pavement that emits less surface heat, setting up mist sprays and planting tall roadside trees.
Koike also cited traditional ways of cooling in Japan, such as hanging straw screens and spraying water on road surfaces.
(Mari Yamaguchi & Hyung-jin Kim, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In California, a fire just west of Yosemite National Park expanded to nearly 36
square miles on Friday. More than 2,700 firefighters aided by a fleet of helicopters were battling the Ferguson fire but only 7 percent of its perimeter was contained.
Ground crews dealt with high heat and rugged terrain with little to no access by
roads, officials said. Thunderstorms with gusty winds were also a concern.
Several areas were under mandatory evacuation orders, but no homes had been
damaged or destroyed. Yosemite remained open but one of its scenic routes,
Glacier Point Road, was closed indefinitely Thursday night to stage firefighters.
Glacier Point overlook offers one of the park’s grand views, including Yosemite Valley and such landmarks as Half Dome and Yosemite Falls.
Wildfires burned or smoldered elsewhere in the state.
The National Weather Service warned that an extended period of high heat
was brewing for a large swath of the state.
In Montana, specially trained firefighters wore respirators as they tackled a
blaze near where asbestos-tainted vermiculite was mined for decades. The forest fire was first discovered Thursday afternoon near the now-closed W.R.GraceMine.
It had burned about 50 acres by Friday morning.
Asbestos still lingers in the trees and soil around the mine. Breathing the fibers
can lead to mesothelioma or lung cancer. The Forest Service requires firefighters to
use respirators if they are going to work near the mine site.
A fast-growing wildfire in the parched sage lands of central Washington state
grew to more than 109 square miles on Friday, and closed a portion of eastbound Interstate 90, the state’s main east-west highway, for half the day.
There were no reports of injuries or any structures lost in the sparsely populated
area.
“This is the busiest (wildfire) season we’ve ever seen in Washington,” state Lands
Commissioner Hilary Franz tweeted, with more than 400 fires reported this year.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency authorized the use of federal
funds to help with costs for a wildfire burning in Grant County,Wash..
That fire started Thursday and has burned some 1.6 square miles of state and private land, and was 10 percent contained.
There were six other large fires burning uncontrolled within Washington, and multiple others across the border in Oregon.
Authorities in Oregon said Friday that a 60-year-old homeless man found
dead inside the perimeter of a wildfire in the southwest corner of the state had died
in the blaze. Robert Lee Walker’s body was found Thursday but his cause of
death had been unclear.
Also in Oregon, crews on Friday battled a major wildfire in north-central Oregon
that had grown to 109 square miles. The Substation Fire, near The Dalles, was about
15 percent contained on Friday, fought by about 300 fire-fighters. It was blamed for the death of a farmer.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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There were no immediate reports of any deaths or injuries, but the intensity of the fires and the extreme weather conditions earlier in the year have prompted anguished debate among some Swedes who have described the conflagrations in apocalyptic terms and linked them to global warming.
“It’s very, very dry in most of Sweden,” Jonas Olsson, a hydrologist at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, said Thursday. “The flows in the rivers and lakes are exceptionally low, except in the very northern part of the country. We have water shortages.”
Rainfall was only around a seventh of the normal amount — the lowest since record-keeping began in the late 19th century, he said.
“It has been a very strange year,” Olsson added, referring to the swing from thick snow in winter, to a sudden warming in May to “very big” spring floods. “Surely, it’s an unusual situation. It is in line with what we would expect from a global warming perspective that we would see these extremes.”
Last year, parts of Europe sweltered under a heat wave that residents in France, Italy and Spain called “Lucifer.” Deadly fires swept Portugal and Spain.
The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter said that some 49 fires were burning in many parts of the country.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The newly built, two-lane stretch of road in Big Sur opened two days ahead of schedule, the California Department of Transportation said.
Big Sur, with miles of rugged coast, cliffs and wilderness about 150 miles south of San Francisco, features spectacular views of the ocean and accommodations at high-end resorts.
The slide along the highway linking Northern and Southern California has stymied visitors and hurt businesses, including Ragged Point Inn and Resort, which saw business cut in half.
“We are beside ourselves,” resort spokesman Rori Cosma said about the highway reopening. “We’re extremely happy and desperate to hire people.”
Cosma said the parking lot was packed Wednesday with drivers circling for a spot. And after more than a year of disappointing foreign tourists with news that the highway was closed, he said he was thrilled to tell visitors of the early reopening.
Highway 1 has been dogged by slides since late 2016. But the one that hit Mud Creek near Ragged Point in Big Sur in May 2017 was monumental. Millions of tons of earth moved, displacing 75 acres of land.
The debris slid well out into the ocean, creating 15 acres of new coastline about 9 miles north of the Monterey-San Luis Obispo county line.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The flames near the city of The Dalles started Tuesday and expanded Wednesday to more than 56 square miles as the fire spread into vast fields of wheat while desperate farmers tried to salvage their crops in the midst of the harvest season.
One person was found dead Wednesday a short distance from a burned-out tractor. The person was likely trying to use the heavy farm machinery to create a fire break to hold back flames, the Wasco County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Firefighters crept into the fields in water trucks and attempted to douse the leading edges of the fire from behind as it burned through acres of wheat, with everything behind the flames charred black.
The news of the fatality also came as authorities on Wednesday ordered additional mandatory evacuations in the small communities of Moro and Grass Valley.
The conflagration about 80 miles east of Portland doesn’t bode well for a Pacific Northwest fire season that’s expected to be worse than normal, with drought conditions in many areas and above-average temperatures forecast through September, the center said.
It comes as other states across the American West, including California and Colorado, have struggled with massive blazes that have torn through land gripped by drought.
In Oregon, very low humidity, high temperatures and winds gusting up to 30 mph made the flames explosive in thin grasses and wheat fields, said Robin DeMario, a spokeswoman for the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center.
“These light fuels go up very quickly,” DeMario said. “The grassy stalks are very dry, they have lost the moisture in those stalks, and so if a fire start begins, we call it ‘flashy fuels’ because it burns very fast and very hot.”
The Columbia River Gorge separating Oregon and Washington is still recovering from a wildfire last year that scorched 75 square miles, ravaged popular hiking trails and marred stunning vistas.
It burned in the western end that’s home to the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, which attracts more than 3 million tourists a year and holds North America’s largest concentration of waterfalls.
The landscape further east along the river transitions to grasslands and flat, open vistas dotted with wheat fields — where the fire was burning Wednesday.
In California, a deadly forest fire was spreading west of Yosemite National Park, keeping a key route into the park shut down during tourist season.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Normally, temperatures in Scandinavia during July warm to the comfortable 60s and 70s. This week, they have soared into the mid-80s to lower 90s.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The boat was off the island’s eastern coast on Monday morning when the volcano sent what officials said was a basketball-sized “lava bomb” through the boat’s roof and peppered it with volcanic debris.
The Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency said that of the 23 injured, four were taken by ambulances to the hospital, including a 20-year-old woman who was seriously injured after fracturing her femur.
Photos posted by Hawaii county officials showed a manhole cover-sized hole in the boat’s metal roof. A woman who answered the phone at Lava Ocean Tours confirmed that it was the company’s boat that suffered the explosion but declined to comment further. Video posted by reporters on social media showed a large explosion of lava into the air.
The tour boats typically depart from Hilo, the county seat for the island in the early morning for three hours tours that cost $225-250.
“Lava Ocean Tours Big Island lava boat tours are an exciting way to experience the molten hot lava entering the sea,” the company says on its website. “See, Hear & Feel the heat from your front row seat onboard one of our world class catamarans.”
According to Hawaii News Now, the boat had left with 49 passengers and three crew members on board and had been touring the area around Kapoho, an unincorporated section near the island’s coastline where the lava explosions from ongoing eruptions at the Kilauea volcano have destroyed hundreds of homes and completely filled in a popular tide pool bay last month. But with timely evacuations and public attention, few have been injured seriously.
A video posted by Hawaii News Now reporter Mileka Lincoln taken from another lava tour boat captures a massive lava explosion in the water that she said affected the other boat.
“It’s unclear how close Turpin’s tour boat was to the Kapoho lava ocean entry when the explosion happened, but eyewitnesses report the boat appeared to be ‘very close,”’ she wrote, noting that the Coast Guard recently changed the mandatory safety perimeter required around ocean lava entries from 100 to 50 meters for the tour operators.
State officials and police said they were investigating the incident. The U.S. Geological Survey volcanologist Wendy Stovall told USA Today that lava bombs can result from the interaction between lava with the ocean, as water turns into steam and causes the lava to explode. Government officials have also been warning about the dangers of laze, potentially dangerous mix of hydrochloric acid, steam and tiny glass particles in the air that results from the interaction of the lava and the water.
Shane Turpin, the captain of the boat in the incident, told the Associated Press that the group had been about 250 yards away from the lava.
“As we were exiting the zone, all of a sudden everything around us exploded,” he said. “It was everywhere.”
He said that the crew didn’t pick up on any warning signs before the explosion.
The Coast Guard in May instituted a safety zone where lava flows into the ocean off the Big Island. It prohibits vessels from getting closer than 300 yards from ocean-entry points.
The agency allows experienced boat operators to apply for a special license to get up to 50 yards from where lava sizzles into the sea.
The volcano’s eruption on Hawaii has been an ongoing emergency on the island since May, sending thousands of residents from their homes, destroying hundreds of structures, and captivating the world through arresting images showcasing the Earth’s raw destructive power. The lava also created a small island meters off the coast this week.
(Eli Rosenberg, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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On either side of the Merced River, south of California Highway 140, hillsides are filled with trees that have been killed by five years of drought and a bark beetle infestation, according to state maps. The ground is carpeted with bone-dry pine needles.
As crews battle to keep the 9,366-acre fire from spreading into these ready-to-burn hillsides, some worry that it could unleash the destructive power of last year’s Detwiler fire, which burned for five months through dead forest and destroyed 63 homes.
“The dry needles help with ladder fuels and the burn upwards. When the needles fall, that puts fuel on the ground, pushing the fire through,” said Heather Williams, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The Detwiler fire started a few miles east of the current Ferguson fire. It’s the last major fire Williams could recall that ran through dead forests like the current blaze has the potential to do. That fire burned on the edge of Mariposa and in a swath of the Sierras hit hard by California’s sustained drought and huge bark beetle infestation. The fire burned hotter than crews had encountered in years and sent smoke as far north as Idaho, according to reports at the time.
The Ferguson fire, which began Saturday, was 2 percent contained by Monday.
The fire is traveling along the south fork of the Merced River, between groves of trees that have died in the past two years (about 89 million in 2016 and 2017), according to a state tree mortality map. Since then, the trees’ leaves and needles have dried up and fallen to the ground, creating a flammable layer that has not been touched by recent fires, officials said.
The dead or dying fuels mixed with fire poses an amplified hazard for firefighters, Williams said.
“The biggest overall risk is that these dead trees have an increased risk of falling — themselves and their limbs falling on firefighters,” she said.
But crews may have to trek into those dangerous patches of land if it means protecting nearby homes, Williams said.
Fire officials planned to set up containment lines along the fire’s southern flank to prevent it from reaching the groves of dead trees, but they’ll face headwinds to do it, according to the National Weather Service.
Thus far, the fire has not damaged any structures. More than 100 buildings were threatened and evacuations remained in place in Briceburg, Cedar Lodge and Mariposa Pines north of Bear Clover.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The blaze that broke out Friday scorched more than 6 square miles of dry brush along steep, remote hillsides on the park’s western edge. It was burning largely out of control, and officials shut off electricity to many areas, including Yosemite Valley, as a safety precaution.
Guests were ordered to leave Yosemite Cedar Lodge on Saturday as flames crept up slopes and the air became thick with smoke.
“You can’t see anything, it’s so smoky outside. It’s crazy,” said front desk clerk Spencer Arebalo, one of a handful of employees who stayed behind at the popular hotel inside the park.
He said it was surreal to see the property empty at the height of tourist season.
“We’re counting on being closed at least one more day,” Arebalo said.
Evacuations also were ordered in rural communities just outside the park, and people in nearby lodges and motels were told to be ready to leave if flames approach. A stretch of state Route 140 into Yosemite was closed, and motorists were urged to find alternate routes.
Spiking temperatures and inaccessible terrain was making it difficult for crews to slow the flames, U.S. Forest Service fire Capt. Mike Seymour said.
Heavy fire equipment operator Braden Varney, 36, died early Saturday on the fire line, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. Varney was driving a bulldozer to create a gap in vegetation to keep the flames from extending into a nearby community, according to Cal Fire Fire Chief Nancy Koerperich.
Varney’s body likely won’t be retrieved until today at the earliest because it’s in a “precarious location” and conditions were too dangerous over the weekend, Cal Fire Deputy Chief Scott McLean said.
The wildfire is one of several burning across the state and among 56 large blazes that are active in the U.S., most in the American West, a region that is struggling with drought and heat.
A blaze near the California-Oregon border that killed a 72-year-old resident and injured three firefighters was almost entirely contained after burning more than 60 square miles of dry brush.
Crews got full control over a stubborn fire that scorched 142 square miles of brush and destroyed 20 structures in Yolo and Napa counties. Investigators said an electric livestock fence that was improperly installed sparked the flames.
In the fire near Yosemite, investigators were trying to find out more details about Varney’s death Saturday, but they believe he was working his way out of the fire area when he was killed, Koerperich said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Despite repeated Trump administration efforts to play down federal failures in responding to a humanitarian crisis on the island territory, the new report is a public acknowledgment of systemic failures during what was one of the most destructive hurricane seasons — and costliest disaster responses — in the nation’s history.
It shows that responses to Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida taxed the agency and left it understaffed and out of position for the catastrophe that unfolded in Puerto Rico, where millions of U.S. citizens suffered through widespread communication blackouts, massive infrastructure failures and lengthy power outages.
FEMA officials said Thursday that the responses to back-to-back mainland hurricanes sapped federal disaster resources and left an extraordinarily short window to prepare and build up for Maria. Once Maria hit, they said, they had difficulties with logistics and had a hard time coordinating with local officials in Puerto Rico, who were themselves victims of the storm.
The sobering report runs counter to the White House narrative that President Donald Trump presented at the time, when he praised FEMA’s performance and characterized the devastation on the island as not being “a real catastrophe like Katrina.”
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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So far, 34 homes, one business and 21 accessory buildings like barns and sheds have been destroyed. An additional 15 homes and five accessory buildings were damaged.
“No one gets used to seeing the devastation and knowing people are returning to nothing,” Cal Fire Capt. Kendall Bortisser said. “This was one of those times that firefighters just couldn’t get in there and defend every home, and it hurts.”
County officials made it clear the numbers were preliminary and could change as damage assessment teams continue their work in the field and with residents.
The fire was mostly surrounded by Sunday afternoon, reaching 92 percent containment as about 75 firefighters continued to mop up hot spots. The remaining road closures were lifted along with the evacuation orders.
Bortisser said getting people back into their homes and restoring power and gas were top priorities.
A San Diego Gas & Electric spokeswoman said crews, assisted by helicopters, are working to repair and replace power poles that were damaged by the fire. As of Sunday afternoon, about 130 customers were still without power. It’s unclear when that power will be restored.
“We’re working as quickly and as safely as we can to get everything repaired,” spokeswoman Sabra Lattos said.
Utility crews were also in the area helping residents turn their gas back on.
The county will open a Local Assistance Center at the Alpine Branch Library starting Monday to aid displaced residents with the recovery and the rebuilding process. It will operate from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. until further notice, officials said.
Residents can also call a county hotline at (858) 495-5200, review resources at sdcountyrecovery.com or send questions to countyfirerecovery@sdcounty.ca.gov to receive more information.
The blaze, dubbed the West Fire, started Friday off Willows Road and Interstate 8 near the Alpine Oaks Estates mobile home park. It was the largest of several brush fires that broke out during a record-breaking heat wave.
The Building Fire, which started in the East County community of Dulzura, burned about 10 acres and destroyed one home and one accessory structure, fire officials said. It was 100 percent contained as of Sunday afternoon.
Fire crews are continuing to make progress containing two fires that are burning on Camp Pendleton in North County, base officials said Sunday.
The larger fire, dubbed the Horno Incident, had burned 1,200 acres and was 30 percent contained, base officials said Saturday. The smaller fire, named the Vandegrift Incident, had burned about 560 acres and was about 70 percent contained. Base officials didn’t have updated acreage and containment numbers on Sunday.
According to the National Weather Service, relief from the heat is in sight. Temperatures slowly began to decrease Sunday afternoon and are expected to continue to do so over the next few days. Monsoonal moisture will bring a chance of showers and thunderstorms, mostly over the mountains and deserts, with a chance for more significant rainfall on Tuesday and Wednesday.
(Lindsay Winkley, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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More than 3 million people were told to move to safer places such as school buildings or municipal shelters.
Some residents in Hiroshima prefecture said they were caught off guard as the region was not used to torrents of rainfall, which began Friday and worsened through the weekend. Rivers overflowed, turning towns into lakes, leaving dozens of people stranded on rooftops. Military paddle boats and helicopters were bringing people to dry land.
In Hiroshima, water streamed through a residential area, strewn with fallen telephone poles, uprooted trees and mud. Some homes were smashed. Others were tilting precariously.
“It gives me a chill thinking what could have happened,” said Eiko Yamane, who recalled realizing how suddenly water was seeping the tires of the car she was driving. She was able to escape.
“Hiroshima prefecture is normally blessed with mild weather and has few natural disasters so people here have never experienced a situation like this. I guess they’re in a panic.”
At least 34,000 homes in western Japan were without power, and recovery work was difficult because many roads were cut off by landslides.
The assessment of casualties has been difficult because of the widespread area affected by the rainfall, flooding and landslides. Authorities warned that landslides could strike even after rain subsides as the calamity shaped up to be potentially the worst in decades. They also advised people to wait for disaster professionals before venturing into damaged homes because of the dangers of exposed electric lines and hazardous material.
“Rescue efforts are a battle with time,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters. “The rescue teams are doing their utmost.”
The Japan Meteorological Agency said three hours of rainfall in one area in Kochi prefecture reached an accumulated 10.4 inches, the highest since such records started in 1976.
A couple was found dead in a farmhouse buried in a mudslide in Kagoshima prefecture today, while earlier a woman who was reported as missing after getting trapped in her car was found dead, Kyodo news service reported. Kochi prefecture, on Shikoku, issued landslide warnings almost over the entire island.
The Japanese government set up an emergency office over the weekend, designed for crises such as major earthquakes.
Japan has sent troops, firefighters, police and other disaster relief. People have also taken to social media to plead for help.
(Haruka Nuga & Yuri Kageyama, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The blaze on the California-Oregon state line known as the Klamathon fire grew to 48 square miles and lept into Oregon overnight. It was 25 percent contained.
The fire, one of many in the drought-ridden U.S. West, killed one person in their home and destroyed 72 structures, including houses.
It also injured three firefighters, including one who had severe burns to his face, according to a Gofundme page that has raised more than $28,000.
More than 2,300 firefighters continued to fight the fire Sunday amid low humidity and strong winds. Crews were hoping to keep it from jumping a river and threatening additional communities.
“They made some really good headway on holding the fire so we’re just hoping we can keep it there,” said Suzi Brady, a spokeswoman for the crews fighting the fire.
The state’s largest blaze, the 138-square-mile County fire, was 57 percent contained. It has destroyed 10 structures since it broke out June 30.
Elsewhere, a new wildfire sparked in Northern California, briefly shutting down a highway Sunday night.
The 500-acre Grant fire flared up near Interstate 580 at the Altamont Pass, about 40 miles east of Oakland. Cal Fire officials say the blaze is 20 percent contained.
Meanwhile in heat-stricken Southern California, crews have built at least 80 percent containment on two major wildfires — one that destroyed 20 homes in Santa Barbara County and a central San Diego County fire that burned 18 structures.
Other major fires in the state were close to being fully contained.
In southern Colorado, firefighters were making progress Sunday on a wildfire that has burned more than 130 homes and blackened nearly 170 square miles.
Investigators say an illegal campfire sparked the blaze east of Fort Garland on June 27, and it has since become the third-largest in state history. It also forced the evacuation of more than 2,000 homes. The fire is 55 percent contained.
Meanwhile, firefighters were taking advantage of rain showers and increased humidity in their battle against a wildfire that has been burning for more than a month near Durango in southwestern Colorado. That fire has scorched about 85 square miles and is 50 percent contained.
Firefighters are dealing with several major wildfires across Colorado.
In neighboring Utah, more residents were allowed back into their homes Sunday after being driven out by a wind-fueled fire. The blaze burning near a popular fishing lake 80 miles southeast of Salt Lake City is now 30 percent contained, according to Duchesne County Sheriff’s officials. The wildfire has charred about 75 square miles and destroyed 90 structures, including homes, since starting July 1.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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No other details were released about the death blamed on the fire that threatened 300 homes near Hornbrook, a town of 250 people about 14 miles south of the Oregon border. It’s not clear [if] the flames burned homes or other structures like barns.
It was one of dozens of fires across the dry American West, fueled by rising temperatures and gusty winds that were expected to last through the weekend. Heat spreading from Southern California into parts of Arizona, Nevada and Utah threatened to worsen flames
that have forced thousands of people to evacuate and destroyed hundreds of homes
across the West.
On the California-Oregon border, the fire ignited Thursday and moved swiftly through the region that is home to many retirees, said Ray Haupt, chairman of the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors.
“It moved so fast I’m not sure how much time lagged between the evacuation and when it hit Hornbrook,” he said. “It hit there pretty quick. We know we’ve lost homes and lots of structures, including livestock and horses as well.”
California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency, citing “extreme peril” to people and property. Farther north in Oregon, authorities urged hikers and other outdoor enthusiasts to avoid forests near the state line. Although the flames have not crossed into Oregon, officials are concerned people in remote areas can’t be reached in
case they need to quickly evacuate. The areas of concern include the Pacific Crest Trail,
Mount Ashland and the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. Fire danger could prohibit rescuers from looking for anyone, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office said.
Elsewhere in California, a massive blaze northwest of Sacramento had destroyed nine homes, officials said. Firefighters had begun inspecting the fire zone, which covers an area nearly three times the size of San Francisco.
The fire, spanning 140 square miles, was partially contained, but crews struggled in steep, rugged terrain. With the weather getting hotter and drier, officials said the fire could grow. East of Los Angeles, a wildfire in the San Bernardino National Forest
prompted mandatory evacuations for the entire community of Forest Falls, which has about 700 homes and about 1,000 residents.
In contrast, rain helped slow the growth of wildfires in Colorado that have burned dozens of homes. But the threat of a deluge raised the possibility of flooding at a stubborn blaze in the southwestern corner of the state.
Officials issued a flash-flood watch for the 85-square-mile area burned by a fire that started June 1. They say it is just smoldering,and rain over the coming days should keep it from spreading.
Rain helped a fire in the heart of ski country that has destroyed three houses, including the home of a volunteer fire fighter battling the flames near the resort town of Aspen. Gov. John Hickenlooper visited the area Friday.
It also offered relief in the southern Colorado mountains where a blaze has destroyed over 130 homes and forced the evacuation of at least 2,000 properties. The Spring Creek fire became the third-largest in state history at 165 square miles.
In a Utah mountain area, a wildfire that destroyed 90 structures and forced more than 1,100 people to flee was growing, but fire officials hoped to gain more control after their work Friday. Many homes and cabins likely burned, while others may be sheds or garages.
The fire spans about 75 square miles near a popular fishing reservoir about 80
miles southeast of Salt Lake City, according to the Utah Division Forestry Fire State
Lands.
It has forced a 35-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 40 to close since Wednesday, said
Sonya Capek, a fire spokeswoman. Officials believe human activity sparked the
blaze, but an exact cause hasn’t been determined.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The largest one hop-scotched through parched canyons in Alpine, destroying 20 structures and scorching more than 400 acres, officials said. One firefighter was taken to a hospital with facial burns and reported in good condition.
At Camp Pendleton, 750 homes on the base were evacuated as flames burned 350 acres near Lake O’Neill. No injuries were reported.
Smaller fires burned in Dulzura, where one large building was destroyed, and on the far eastern edge of the Miramar Marine Air Corps Station. Again, no injuries.
The cause of the fires has not been determined, officials said.
Aided by helicopters and airplanes dropping water and retardant, firefighters appeared to have the upper hand on the flames by nightfall, and temperatures were expected to cool today.
But the hours-long siege was a warning of what may be in store for later this year. Historically, most of the county’s biggest brush fires have occurred in September and October.
The blaze in Alpine, dubbed the West fire, was first reported at about 11:20 a.m. south of Interstate 8 near the West Willows Road off-ramp. Pushed by winds gusting up to 19 mph, it had consumed 150 acres by 1 p.m. and 350 acres by 2:30 p.m.
Citing high temperatures, low humidity and erratic winds — “conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property” — Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency because of the fire.
Several of the homes lost were at Alpine Oaks Estates, a 66-space mobile home park on Alpine Boulevard near the Cleveland National Forest. Officials said an as-yet-undetermined number of other houses were destroyed and damaged along the community’s winding roads, many of them set alight in spot fires caused by swirling embers.
“There are homes that are perfectly untouched, and others that are burned to the ground,” said Bill Paskle, chief of the Alpine Fire Protection District.
Evacuations were ordered and roads closed, including a shutdown of some lanes of eastbound Interstate 8 that left traffic backed up as far as Peutz Valley Road and caused anxious motorists to go the wrong way down freeway on-ramps.
An overnight shelter was set up at Los Coches Creek Middle School on Dunbar Lane.
“We just grabbed everything you can’t replace or re-buy,” said Ben Stanfill, who was at the shelter late in the day after a frantic evacuation of his mother’s house. “My grandma’s photographs, the cat, my sister’s Mickey Mouse teddy bear she’s had since she was little.”
The house was not in the mandatory evacuation zone, but the family just wanted to be safe, Stanfill said. He didn’t know how close the flames had come.
“Now we just wait and see,” he said, sitting on a rock outside the shelter, sweating.
County animal control workers evacuated as many as 60 horses from Secret Hills Ranch in Alpine and another 16 from a ranch on Alpine Boulevard. They were taken to the Lakeside Rodeo grounds. Other crews pulled cats, dogs and goats out of harm’s way. The smaller animals were taken to the Bonita shelter.
As many as 3,500 people lost power during the fire after flames damaged two circuits and a third was shut down for safety reasons. San Diego Gas & Electric officials said electricity was eventually restored to about 1,500 of the customers.
By early evening, officials said they had stopped the forward spread of the flames and were working on spot fires in the area. They reported containment at 5 percent.
“We’re making good progress, but there is still a lot of work to be done,” said Capt. Kendal Bortisser, a Cal Fire spokesman.
At Camp Pendleton, fire broke out about 11:30 a.m. and led officials to order evacuations of housing in De Luz and O’Neill Heights, as well as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service office and the De Luz Child Development Office.
Officials said the fire was about 40 percent contained.
Early in the evening, another fire was reported at the base. It had burned about 20 acres.
The fire in Dulzura started about 10:30 a.m. off state Route 94 along Community Building Road and burned 10 acres before aerial and hand crews got it under control. At least one large building was destroyed. Marron Valley Road, Community Building Road south, and Route 94 were closed for more than an hour.
What had been an afternoon of training for the Miramar Fire Department turned into the real thing after smoke was reported on the base about 3 p.m. Crews battled a fire that eventually reached about 100 acres near the Stonebridge Estates neighborhood in Scripps Ranch.
By early evening, containment was reported at 20 percent.
Weather was a factor in all the fires, with temperatures hitting 108 in Alpine, 105 at Camp Pendleton and 103 in Dulzura. In Ramona, it was a 115, passing the all-time record of 111 set on Aug. 31 of last year.
Brandt Maxwell, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said temperatures today will drop 5 to 10 degrees in most places.
“It will be cooler because we’ll have a little more moisture (in the air),” he said.
Historically, July is not a big fire month in San Diego County, but there have been exceptions.
In 2013, also on July 6, the Chariot fire broke out and burned for several days, ravaging the nearly century-old Al Bahr Shriners Camp on Mount Laguna. The lodge, dining hall and more than 100 cabins were destroyed.
In July 2002, the Pines fire burned almost 62,000 acres, destroyed 37 homes, 116 other buildings and 165 vehicles in and around Julian.
(John Wilkens, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The Cedar Creek and Three Sisters Falls trails east of Ramona in the Cleveland National Forest are under an emergency closure order effective now through Monday because of the anticipated heat wave and considerable public health and safety concerns, forest officials announced recently.
The Iron Mountain and Mount Woodson trails in Poway will also be shut down today and Saturday for the same reasons, though there are no plans to deny access to Mount Woodson (and nearby Potato Chip Rock) from the east side of the mountain off state Route 67.
Rene Carmichael, a spokeswomen for Poway, said the city started shutting down the two trails last year after one busy weekend in July.
“The city decided we were putting rescue personnel at risk and letting visitors be at risk, so we started implementing the closures,” she said.
She said between the summers of 2016 and 2017, the Poway Fire Department responded to 37 calls relating to hikers in distress around Iron Mountain and Lake Poway. The Iron Mountain and Mount Woodson (via Lake Poway) trails were shut down three times in 2017. So far this year, Poway Fire responded to 30 hiker-related calls.
The city’s policy is to close those popular trails when heat is expected to be 100 degrees or higher and when a heat advisory has been issued.
The National Weather Service has issued an extreme heat advisory for the county between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. today.
The Cleveland National Forest has been shutting down the Cedar Creek Falls and Three Sisters Falls trails for several years now during hot weather. Both trail systems have been the scene of many rescues and a number of fatalities. In 2017, Cal Fire helicopters conducted 66 air rescues, mostly in the area of the falls between Ramona and Julian. So far this year, there have been 31 rescues.
“The majority of the rescues they are responding to from a helicopter standpoint is at Three Sisters Falls,” said Cal Fire Spokesman Kendal Bortisser. “There have been times when they average one or two times a week.”
Bortisser said sometimes the missions require dropping firefighters into an area who then have to hike to a victim. They will then carry the hiker a distance until they can be hoisted out by air.
“Some of those hoist rescues can be a lengthy ordeal,” he said. Bortisser said by far the most common situation Cal Fire helicopter personnel encounter with hiker rescues is heat-related. “Hikers in distress because of dehydration.”
Sheriff’s ASTREA Sgt. Scott Bligh agreed. “In the summertime, we have the heat-related injuries which we take very seriously, because you can die really quickly with that stuff,” he said.
“In the summertime, our crews are aware they need to have enough hydration because if they have to land out there, they don’t want to wither up and be a casualty themselves. We often bring extra ice packs and water for whoever we might come across who might be in a world of hurt.”
Heat-related illnesses are the body’s response to being dehydrated and overheated, officials said. Heat exhaustion occurs from dehydration if water isn’t replaced quickly. Symptoms include headache, nausea, decreased sweating and urination, dizziness, headache, impaired judgment, loss of coordination and muscle cramps. Left untreated, the condition rapidly deteriorates into life-threatening heat stroke.
“The most common thing our firefighters hear from the hikers is that they just weren’t prepared,” Poway Fire Chief Mark Sanchez said.
He said responses to heat-related illnesses take away resources from other emergencies and put the city’s first responders in danger in the high heat.
Officials say hiking in the summer and fall can be dangerous. They recommend paying attention to weather forecasts and hiking early in the day.
Clothing should be loose and light and should include a cap or hat. Shoes should be appropriate for the terrain, and sunscreen should be used and packed.
A cell phone should also be carried in case of an emergency, and people should not hike alone, authorities suggest.
Just as important: keeping hydrated is key to safety.
On hot days, the body can lose large amounts of water through perspiration. The general rule is that a person can sweat roughly a quart of water every hour, and even more when hiking uphill or in direct sunlight.
(Harry J. Jones, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Dr. David Kaiser, the senior physician at Montreal’s public health agency, said that most of those who had died from the heat in Montreal were 65 or older, had histories of health problems or mental illness and had been living without air-conditioning.
He said that disadvantaged people who had chronic illnesses or were living alone were particularly vulnerable. “While we are an advanced industrialized economy, these deaths reflect that there are serious social inequalities,” he said, adding that many wealthy countries the world over had been hit by heat waves associated with climate change.
Public health authorities in Quebec have made a concerted effort to improve the reporting of heat-related deaths. They set up a special liaison program with hospitals and emergency rooms to monitor heat-related illnesses and mortality, Kaiser said, which may explain why the number of deaths seems high compared to elsewhere in the nation.
On Thursday, as temperatures in Montreal rose to 93 degrees — 23 degrees above the average daily temperature for July — local residents sought refuge in park fountains or remained inside in air-conditioned homes or offices. Some elderly residents canceled appointments and stayed at home, eager to avoid the stifling heat outside.
Home appliance stores have been mobbed in recent days with residents trying to buy air-conditioners, only to discover that all the units are sold out. At a sprawling Home Depot store in central Montreal, about 20 shoppers were seen fighting this week over the last remaining air-conditioner. “It’s survival of the fittest,” said Victor Perchet, who managed to get it.
Environment Canada has issued a heat warning for southern Quebec, much of Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Canadians were expected to get some relief from the heat wave, which began on June 29, when temperatures fall today. The forecast in Montreal for today is a high of about 73 degrees.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Large areas of high pressure or heat domes scattered around the hemisphere led to the sweltering temperatures.
No single record, in isolation, can be attributed to global warming. But collectively, these heat records are consistent with the kind of extremes expected to increase in a warming world.
Here’s a look at the recent hot-weather milestones:
North America
A massive and intense heat dome has consumed the eastern two-thirds of the United States and southeast Canada since late last week. It’s not only been hot but also exceptionally humid. Here are some of the notable records set:
Denver tied its all-time high-temperature record of 105 degrees on Thursday.
Mount Washington, N.H., tied its all-time warmest low temperature of 60 degrees on Monday.
Burlington, Vt., set its all-time warmest low temperature ever recorded of 80 degrees on Monday.
Montreal recorded its highest temperature in recorded history, dating back 147 years, of 97.9 degrees on Monday. The city also posted its most extreme midnight combination of heat and humidity.
Ottawa posted its most extreme combination of heat and humidity on Sunday.
Europe
Excessive heat torched the British Isles late last week. The stifling heat caused roads and roofs to buckle, the Weather Channel reported, and resulted in multiple record highs:
Scotland provisionally set its hottest temperature on record. The U.K. Met Office reported Motherwell, southeast of Glasgow, hit 91.8 degrees on Thursday, passing the previous record set in August 2003 at Greycrook. Additionally, Glasgow had its hottest day on record, hitting 89.4 degrees.
In Ireland, on Thursday, Shannon hit 89.6 degrees, its record.
In Northern Ireland, Belfast hit 85.1 degrees on Thursday, its record, and Castlederg hit 86.2 degrees on Friday, its record.
Eurasia
A large dome of high pressure has persistently sat on top of Eurasia over the past week, resulting in some extraordinarily hot weather:
In Tbilisi, Georgia, on Wednesday, the capital city soared to 104.9 degrees, its all-time record.
In Yerevan, Armenia, on Monday, the capital city soared to 107.6 degrees, a record high for July and tying its record for any month.
Several locations in southern Russia topped or matched their warmest June temperatures on record last Thursday.
Middle East
Quriyat, Oman, posted the world’s hottest low temperature ever recorded on June 28: 109 degrees.
These various records add to a growing list of heat milestones set over the past 15 months:
In April, Pakistan posted the hottest temperature ever observed on Earth during the month of 122.4 degrees.
Dallas had never hit 90 degrees in November before, but it did so three times in four days in 2017.
In late October, temperatures soared to 108 degrees in Southern California, the hottest weather on record so late in the season in the entire United States.
On Sept. 1, San Francisco hit 106 degrees, smashing its all-time hottest temperature.
In late July 2017, Shanghai registered its highest temperature in recorded history, 105.6 degrees.
In mid-July, Spain posted its highest temperature recorded when Cordoba Airport (in the south) hit 116.4 degrees.
In July 2017, Death Valley endured the hottest month recorded on Earth.
In late June 2017, Ahvaz, Iran, soared to 128.7 degrees — that country’s all-time hottest temperature.
In late May 2017, the western town of Turbat in Pakistan hit 128.3 degrees, tying the all-time highest temperature in that country and the world-record temperature for May.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Authorities said that a fire near Fort Garland, about 205 miles southwest of Denver, had destroyed 104 homes in a mountain housing development started by multimillionaire publisher Malcolm Forbes in the 1970s. The damage toll could rise because the burn area is still being surveyed.
Tamara Estes’ family cabin, which her parents had built in 1963 using wood and rocks from the land, was among the homes destroyed.
“I think it’s sinking in more now. But we’re just crying,” she said. “My grandmother’s antique dining table and her hutch are gone.”
“It was a sacred place to us,” she added.
Andy and Robyn Kuehler watched flames approach their cabin via surveillance video from their primary residence in Nebraska.
“We just got confirmation last night that the house was completely gone. It’s a very sickening feeling watching the fire coming towards the house,” the couple wrote in an email Tuesday.
The blaze, labeled the Spring fire, is one of six large wildfires burning in Colorado and is the largest at 123 square miles — about five times the size of Manhattan. While investigators believe it was started by a spark from a fire pit, other fires, like one that began burning in wilderness near Fairplay, were started by lightning.
Nearly 60 large, active blazes are burning across the West, including nine in New Mexico and six each in Utah and California, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
In Utah, authorities have evacuated 200 to 300 homes because of a growing wildfire near a popular fishing reservoir southeast of Salt Lake City amid hot temperatures and high winds. Several structures have been lost since the fire started Sunday, but it’s unclear how many, said Jason Curry of the Utah Division of Forest, Fire and State Lands.
Darren Lewis and his extended family planned to spend the Fourth of July at a cabin built nearly 50 years ago by his father and uncle in a wilderness area nestled between canyons and near a mountain river.
Instead, Lewis and his family will spend the holiday nervously waiting to hear if a half-century of family memories go up in smoke because of the fire, which has grown to 47 square miles.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The fast-moving fire that started over the weekend northwest of Sacramento grew dramatically to about 94 square miles by Monday night, largely burning out of control in rugged terrain with a few cattle and horse ranches and sending smoke and ash as far south as San Francisco.
State fire officials said 700 homes and other buildings were threatened, but none had burned.
The fire that started Saturday about 100 miles northeast of San Francisco spread as strong winds pushed smoke south, dusting cars and homes with a thin layer of gray ash. About 300 people were told to flee their homes. No injuries were reported.
The flames were chewing through tinder-dry grass, oak and brush in the hills outside of the tiny town of Guinda, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Gabe Lauderbale said.
“This fire is absolutely, extremely fast-moving,” he said.
The hot, windy conditions fueling the fire and others across the West were expected to persist through the end of July in Utah and parts of California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, U.S. fire officials said. The Southwest, which has been struggling with drought, should get enough rain in early July to reduce the risk of major blazes in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico, the National Interagency Fire Center said Sunday.
In Colorado, more than 2,500 homes were under evacuation orders as firefighters battled more than a half dozen wildfires.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The fast-moving blaze that broke out Saturday in western Yolo County charred at least 34 square miles of dry brush and threatened more than two dozen structures in ranchland northwest of Sacramento. No injuries were reported, and the exact number of people evacuated was unclear. There was no containment.
Autumn Edens marveled as a huge plume blocked the sun while she drove to her job as manager of the Corner Store in Guinda, a town of about 250 people just north of the fire.
“You can see the smoke, and you can see an orange-red glow from the flames. It looks like a movie,” she said. “I’ve never seen a fire like that up close, and it’s an intense feeling.”
It was one of two major wildfires in the northern part of the state, where temperatures were soaring, humidity was dropping and winds were steady.
A blaze burning for several days to the west in Lake County jumped containment lines Saturday, prompting additional evacuation orders. That fire was more than 70 percent contained after charring about 22 square miles of brush and destroying at least 20 structures.
Smoke from the Yolo County fire was contributing to poor air quality in Napa, Sonoma, San Mateo and San Francisco counties, according to the National Weather Service.
The haze settling on areas to the south and west rattled nerves near wine country communities that were devastated by deadly wildfires late last year.
“A lot of friends and family were texting today and saying they were having some PTSD,” said Savannah Kirtlink, who evacuated her Napa home during the blazes in December. She took photos of the smoke moving in this weekend and told KGO-TV she empathized with her neighbors to the north who were forced to flee their homes.
“I’m imagining what they’re going through,” she said.
A dusting of ash fell as far away as San Francisco, where tourists snapped pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge enveloped in an orange shroud of fog and smoke.
Across the bridge in Marin County, some customers coughed as they stopped for gas at the Shell station in Sausalito, employee Sergio Garcia said.
“The sky is very dark, even in the middle of the day,” he said. “It’s a little scary.”
Officials urged people not to call 911 about smoke unless they see actively burning fire.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In Colombia, a peace deal between the government and the country’s largest rebel group paved the way for a rush of mining, logging and farming that caused deforestation in the nation’s Amazon region to spike last year.
And in the Caribbean, hurricanes Irma and Maria flattened nearly one-third of the forests in Dominica and a wide swath of trees in Puerto Rico last summer.
In all, the world’s tropical forests lost roughly 39 million acres of trees last year, an area roughly the size of Bangladesh, according to a report Wednesday by Global Forest Watch that used new satellite data from the University of Maryland.
That made 2017 the second-worst year for tropical tree loss in the satellite record, just below the losses in 2016.
The data provides only a partial picture of forest health around the world, since it does not capture trees that are growing back after storms, fires or logging. But separate studies have confirmed that tropical forests are shrinking overall.
The new report comes as ministers from forest nations around the world meet in Oslo, Norway, this week to discuss how to step up efforts to protect the world’s tropical forests, which host roughly half of all species worldwide and play a key role in regulating Earth’s climate.
“These new numbers show an alarming situation for the world’s rainforests,” said Andreas Dahl-Jorgensen, deputy director of the Norwegian government’s International Climate and Forest Initiative. “We simply won’t meet the climate targets that we agreed to in Paris without a drastic reduction in tropical deforestation and restoration of forests around the world.”
Trees, particularly those in the lush tropics, pull carbon dioxide out of the air as they grow and lock that carbon in their wood and soil. When humans cut down or burn trees, the carbon gets released back into the atmosphere, warming the planet.
But figuring out precisely where forests are vanishing has long been a challenge. For decades, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has relied on ground-level assessments from individual countries to track deforestation. Yet not all tropical countries have adequate capacity to monitor their forests and the measurements can be plagued by inconsistencies.
In 2013, scientists at the University of Maryland unveiled a fresh approach. Using satellite data recently made free, they have been tracking changes in tree canopy area around the world. This method has its own limits: More work is still needed to distinguish between trees that are being intentionally harvested in plantations and those that are being newly cleared in older, natural forests. The latter is a much bigger concern for habitat loss and climate change.
(Brad Plumer, THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The blaze started Sunday on Saddleworth Moor, an expanse of hills cloaked in purple heather that is popular with hikers and home to bird species including the endangered golden plover and curlew and the common red grouse. It has since spread over an area of 7 square miles, and firefighters have requested help from the military.
“It’s dry as a tinderbox up there,” said Brenda Warrington, leader of Tameside Council at a news briefing in the early afternoon. “A lot of wind is fanning the flames.” She said the situation was very changeable because wind had risen again in the area since the morning.
Southern parts of Europe have seen large expanses of dry forests ablaze during hot summer months in recent years, but large wildfires rarely hit Britain.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Severe drought has already forced officials in several western states to close national parks as precautions against wildfires and issue warnings throughout the region to prepare for the worst.
In California, officials said unusually hot weather, high winds and highly flammable vegetation turned brittle by drought helped fuel the fires that began over the weekend, the same conditions that led to the state’s deadliest and most destructive fire year in 2017.
Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday declared a state of emergency in Lake County, where the biggest fire was raging about 120 miles north of San Francisco, a rural region particularly hard-hit by fires in recent years. The declaration will enable officials to receive more state resources to fight the fire and for recovery.
Jim Steele, an elected supervisor, said the county is impoverished and its fire-fighting equipment antiquated. He also said the county has just a few roads into and out of the region, which can hinder response time. Steele said the area has also been susceptible to fire for many decades because dense brush and trees in the sparsely populated area, but the severity of the latest blazes is unexpected.
“What’s happened with the more warming climate is we get low humidity and higher winds and then when we get a fire that’s worse than it’s been in those 50 years,” Steele said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Pawnee fire that broke out Saturday near the community of Clearlake Oaks has destroyed 12 buildings and threatened an additional 600 as it burned out of control across about 12 square miles. Authorities ordered people to evacuate all homes in the Spring Valley area, where about 3,000 people live.
“What we’re stressing is that people, when they get the evacuation order, they heed it immediately and get out and stay out until it is safe to return,” state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Battalion Chief Jonathan Cox said. “This is one of four large fires burning in Northern California. It’s a good reminder that fire season is upon us.”
Erratic wind and heat gripping a swath of California from San Jose to the Oregon border drove the flames, which were north of the wine country region where devastating wildfires killed 44 people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses in October.
Farther north, a fire spanning about three-quarters of a mile in Tehama County destroyed “multiple residential and commercial buildings,” Cal Fire said. But firefighters appeared to be making good progress — the Stoll fire was halfway contained and some evacuees were allowed to return home, authorities said.
A second fire in Tehama County consumed 5.5 square miles, but no buildings were reported burned. The so-called Lane fire threatened 200 structures and some homes had been evacuated, Cox said. It was 10 percent contained.
A fire in neighboring Shasta County grew to 1.6 square miles and was 20 percent contained. The so-called Creek fire had damaged no structures but did prompt evacuations.
The cause of each blaze was under investigation Sunday. No one was reported hurt.
More than 230 firefighters using helicopters, bulldozers and other equipment were battling the Pawnee fire in a rugged area that made it difficult to get equipment up close.
“It’s kind of the worst possible combination,” Cox said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The six main dams supplying the city are at 38.1 percent of capacity, compared with 31.8 percent a week earlier and just 23 percent a year ago, the city said on its website on Monday.
City authorities warned earlier this year that they may be forced to switch off the taps and residents would have to collect a daily ration of about 6 gallons of water from distribution points unless the three-year drought broke and consumption was curtailed.
While water cuts are no longer on the table, the authorities say three years of above-average rainfall are needed to adequately replenish the dams and have maintained strict curbs on usage, including bans on using potable water to irrigate gardens and wash cars.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The magnitude 6.1 earthquake that struck the area early Monday damaged buildings and left many homes without water or gas. The quake also grounded flights in and out of Osaka and paralyzed traffic and commuter trains most of the day.
By evening, bullet trains and some local trains had resumed operation, and stations were swollen with commuters trying to get home, many of them waiting in long lines. An exodus of commuters who chose to walk home filled sidewalks and bridges.
Some commuters took refuge in nearby shelters instead of going home.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The body of a 75-year-old man was recovered about 60 feet from his pickup truck in a ditch along a flooded road Sunday in White River, the Ashland County Sheriff’s Office said Monday. Sheriff’s officials said the investigation was ongoing but that the death was flood related.
Heavy rains flooded roads in northern areas of Wisconsin and Michigan, causing some sections to collapse and trapping vehicles. In parts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where there were reports of up to 7 inches of rain, water washed up large chunks of concrete and asphalt, littering roads with debris and making them impassible.
“The majority of us can’t even get home. Roads are collapsed. Bridges are collapsed. Roads are covered in water. Whatever roads aren’t collapsed it depends on how heavy of a vehicle you drive whether or not you are able to drive on those roads,” Tom Cowell, who lives in Chassell, a community on a peninsula in Lake Superior, told local television station WLUC.
“This is a pretty wild experience that we are having here,” he said.
Some residents used boats to get around, though the U.S. Coast Guard warned people to stay out of recreational waterways because of the amount of storm debris. The agency also warned that the water is still very cold and could be deadly.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Carlotta, the third named storm of the Pacific hurricane season, was meandering just off Mexico’s coast, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
It said that Carlotta had maximum sustained winds near 50 mph. Officials say the storm threatens torrential rains for the coastline of the southern states of Guerrero and Oaxaca, with up to 10 inches possible in some areas. Flash flooding and mudslides are also possible.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The tops of palm trees whipped about in the gale and waves pounded the sand. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said tropical storm-force winds had reached the peninsula even as Bud’s center was still about 30 miles east-northeast of Cabo San Lucas.
Memories are still fresh of the extensive damage done in 2014 by a direct hit from Category 3 Hurricane Odile, and hotel operators were taking no chances.
Workers at the Marquis Los Cabos hotel in San Jose del Cabo spent the last three days battening down the hatches — anchoring palm trees and using tarps to cover large windows that had all shattered during Odile. On Wednesday evening they removed beach chairs and umbrellas, and workers said the hotel had a safe room for guests if necessary.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The fire 13 miles north of Durango is in the Four Corners Region where Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah meet — the epicenter of a large U.S. Southwest swath of exceptional drought, the worst category of drought.
Moderate to extreme drought conditions affect larger areas of those four states plus parts of Nevada, California, Oregon, Oklahoma and Texas, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. This week, authorities in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico closed recreational areas and enacted fire restrictions because of the high fire danger.
The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, reported there were 1,746 people responding to fight six active wildfires in the region. Firefighting costs have reached $12 million since June 1 for the Durango-area wildfire alone, according to the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center in suburban Denver.
In southwest Colorado, officials told residents of nearly 350 homes to be prepared to leave if dry thunderstorms, high heat and gusty winds spread a wildfire that has blackened more than 50 square miles and is seen as extremely dangerous for firefighters.
“With the storms comes the lighting and those gusty winds. We’re definitely asking the firefighters to keep their eyes open and their heads up and pay attention to any changes in the weather,” fire team spokesman Jamie Knight told The Durango Herald.
About 1,900 homes have been evacuated since the fire began June 1, though 560 homes were declared safe late Wednesday, allowing some residents to return.
“We were just happy to get back. We were tired of living out of suitcases. You can imagine four people and two large Labs in small hotel rooms,” Joe Hardman told the Herald after going home with his wife, two daughters and two Labrador retrievers.
The fire forced Colorado’s San Juan National Forest tourist destination to close but hasn’t destroyed any homes. More than 1,050 firefighters backed by air tankers and water-dropping helicopters had contained 15 percent of the blaze, said Cameron Eck, spokesman for the Rocky Mountain Incident firefighting team.
Just west of the Continental Divide, Summit County officials said they stopped a 90-acre fire from reaching 1,300 homes in the Colorado town of Silverthorne, a popular jumping-off point for ski resorts. That fire was human caused, and an investigation was ongoing, Summit Fire Chief Jeff Berino said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Mark Lowcock said in a statement that these levels haven’t been seen since a crisis in 2012 “and the most critical months are still ahead.”
He said the rapid deterioration in recent months in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal “reveals an urgent need for more donor support.” He said U.N. plans to respond to the crisis in the six countries are only 26 percent funded and he urged donors for additional support.
Lowcock said the crisis was triggered by scarce and erratic rainfall in 2017, “resulting in water, crop and pasture shortages and livestock losses.”
In early May, three U.N. agencies warned that drought, conflict and high food prices would drive millions of people in the Sahel into malnutrition and further insecurity without immediate aid.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Bud was a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph and was centered about 310 miles south-southeast of Cabo San Lucas at the peninsula’s southern tip.
Earlier it had just barely crossed the threshold of wind strength to be classified a Category 4 storm.
Bud was moving northwest at about 3 mph and was forecast to approach Baja California Sur on Thursday as a tropical storm.
“Further weakening, possibly rapid at times, is expected during the next 48 hours, and Bud is forecast to weaken below hurricane intensity by Wednesday night,” the center said.
The center said the hurricane still could generate dangerous surf and rip currents over the coming days, with heavy swells reaching the peninsula later Tuesday.
Rainfall of 3 to 6 inches, with isolated patches of 10 inches, was possible over much of the region.
The Civil Defense agency for the state of Michoacan reported minor damage to some coastal dwellings.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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National forests and parks in Arizona and New Mexico have already been shut down as precautions.
San Juan National Forest officials in southwestern Colorado planned to close hundreds of miles of trails and thousands of miles of back roads to hikers, bikers, horseback riders and campers as soon as today to prevent the possibility of an abandoned campfire or any other spark from starting a wildfire. It’s the first full closure of a national forest in Colorado since 2002, which was another very dry year.
The closure will remain until sufficient precipitation eases the fire danger.
The move comes as the residents of more than 2,000 homes have been forced to evacuate because of a fire that started June 1 in the forest.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“We’ve pretty much thrown everything at this event” since a series of lava fissures began emerging from cracks in neighborhoods last month, Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency Administrator Talmadge Magno said Monday. “Some aspects of it can kind of start to scale down as the volcano somewhat runs into a stable situation.”
Magno participated in a briefing Monday that the U.S. Geological Survey has been providing daily for reporters. He had been too busy previously, he said.
His definition of stable means that lava continues to flow along a path toward the ocean that isn’t threatening new areas. It was flowing north and then east toward a community the lava wiped out last week.
Lava has destroyed more than 600 homes.
There was “not a lot of change” to the lava flow, said Janet Babb, a geologist with the USGS’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
Lava was shooting into the sky from one vent and there was “weak” activity at two other fissures, which weren’t producing much of a flow and not advancing very far, Babb said.
It’s possible a new fissure will open or vigorous flows could emerge from vents that have been inactive. Magno said additional workers can be called in if conditions change.
In the meantime, fewer workers are needed to staff a 24-hour operations center and officials are reducing checkpoints, Magno said. Half of the residents of a subdivision that had been ordered to evacuate after a fissure opened there on May 3 were being allowed to return starting last week. Only residents are allowed there.
The other half of the residents in a more vulnerable area are allowed back during the day if conditions are safe.
At Kilauea’s summit, there continue to be explosions that shoot plumes of ash into the sky. There were two small blasts Monday, including one after a magnitude-5.4 earthquake, scientists said.
A National Weather Service radar unit has been helping provide data about the heights of the ash plumes and the direction of ash fall. But the unit has been broken since Thursday. A part for repairs was expected soon, said Robert Ballard, science and operations officer for the weather service in Honolulu.
Ash expelled during explosions may cause poor visibility and slippery conditions for drivers.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Conred, the national disaster agency, said climatic conditions and still-hot volcanic material were making it dangerous for rescuers, and it was also taking into account the fact that 72 hours had passed since Sunday’s eruption.
That’s the window beyond which officials earlier said it would be extremely unlikely to find any survivors amid the ash, mud and other debris that buried homes up to their rooftops.
“It rained very hard yesterday. The soil is unstable,” said Pablo Castillo, a police spokesman.
Guatemalan prosecutors ordered an investigation into whether emergency protocols were followed properly, as many residents were caught with little or no time to evacuate.
Troublesome downpours and more volcanic activity had been hindering searches, but when teams have been able to work in the hardest hit areas, the death toll has continued to rise. It was officially still at 99 with nearly 200 more believed to be missing.
Oscar Chavez trekked over a mountain with his father and younger brother to search for his brother Edgar, sister-in-law Sandra and 4-year-old nephew Josue in the hamlet of San Miguel Los Lotes, which was almost entirely wiped out by the volcanic flows. They have not been heard from since the eruption.
“We looked for them in shelters, hospitals, everywhere, but we did not find them,” said Chavez, 34, wiping a tear from his eye as the others used sticks and bits of broken boards to dig at the collapsed, ash-filled home. “So, better for us to come here.”
A group of police officers saw what the family was doing and came to lend shovels and help with the digging.
A dozen other families also arrived to search the homes. Before Thursday they had been unable to access the area while rescuers were working.
The United States announced it was sending emergency aid, including financial resources, to help meet food, water and sanitation needs. Washington also dispatched aircraft to help transport burn victims to Florida and Texas.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The fast-moving lava poured into the low-lying coastal Hawaii neighborhoods in just two days this week, destroying hundreds of homes.
“Lava continues to enter the ocean along a broad front in Kapoho Bay and the Vacationland area and it continues to creep north of what remains of Kapoho Beach Lots,” said USGS geologist Janet Babb.
As the lava marched toward the bay, it vaporized Hawaii’s largest freshwater lake in Kapoho Crater. That land in the bay is now owned by the state, but the peninsula won’t look like the farmland that dominates that region of the Big Island anytime soon.
Depending on climate, rainfall and other variables, new vegetation could start growing soon, but it would take much longer for the fertile land and lush rainforests to build back up.
“How soon vegetation comes back on a lava flow really depends on the type of lava it is, and how much rainfall there is in the area,” said Babb. “There are flows on the Kona side of the island that are much older than some flows on east Hawaii, they are much older but they have far less vegetation and that’s just a reflection of the difference in rainfall.”
But the land is still highly unpredictable, and once the lava cools and hardens it will leave behind a jagged, scorched landscape with razor-sharp shards of volcanic rock.
Any new land masses that are formed by lava within the national park become federal land, and any ocean entries outside the park becomes state land.
People that owned private property in those areas will still own their land, though it will need to be reassessed once the lava stops flowing.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Scientists reported Thursday that NASA’s Curiosity rover has found potential building blocks of life in an ancient Martian lake bed. Hints have been found before, but this is the best evidence yet.
The organic molecules preserved in 3.5 billion-year-old bedrock in Gale Crater — believed to once contain a shallow lake the size of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee — suggest conditions back then may have been conducive to life. That leaves open the possibility that microorganisms once populated our planetary neighbor and might still exist there.
“The chances of being able to find signs of ancient life with future missions, if life ever was present, just went up,” said Curiosity’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
Curiosity also has confirmed sharp seasonal increases of methane in the Martian atmosphere. Researchers said they can’t rule out a biological source. Most of Earth’s atmospheric methane comes from animal and plant life, and the environment itself.
The two studies appear in the journal Science. In a companion article, an outside expert describes the findings as “breakthroughs in astrobiology.”
“The question of whether life might have originated or existed on Mars is a lot more opportune now that we know that organic molecules were present on its surface at the time,” wrote Utrecht University astrobiologist Inge Loes ten Kate of the Netherlands.
Kirsten Siebach, a Rice University geologist who also was not involved in the studies, is equally excited. She said the discoveries break down some of the strongest arguments put forward by life-on-Mars skeptics, herself included.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Thousands of people displaced by the eruption have sought refuge in shelters, many of them of[sic?] with dead or missing loved ones and facing an uncertain future, unable to return to homes destroyed by the volcano.
Firefighters said the chance of finding anyone alive amid the still-steaming terrain was practically nonexistent 72 hours after Sunday’s volcanic explosion. Thick gray ash covering the stricken region [sic] was hardened by rainfall, making it even more difficult to dig through the mud, rocks and debris that reached to the rooftops of homes.
“Nobody is going to be able to get them out or say how many are buried here,” Efrain Suarez said, standing amid the smoking holes dotting what used to be the village of San Miguel Los Lotes on the flanks of the mountain.
“The bodies are already charred,” the 59-year-old truck driver said. “And if heavy machinery comes in they will be torn apart.”
Once a verdant collection of canyons, hillsides and farms, the land is now a barren moonscape. Rescuers poked metal rods into the ground, sending clouds of smoke pouring into the air in a sign of the super-hot temperatures still remaining below the surface, which firefighters said reached as high as 750 to 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit in some places.
At a shelter in the Murray D. Lincoln school in the city of Escuintla, about 10 miles from the volcano’s peak, Alfonso Castillo said he and his extended family of 30 had lived on a shared plot in Los Lotes where each family had its own home.
The volcano is one of Central America’s most active, and everyone was accustomed to rumbling and spewing smoke, so at first nothing seemed abnormal Sunday, the 33-year-old farmworker said. But then a huge cloud of ash came pouring out.
“In a matter of three or four minutes the village disappeared,” Castillo said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Molten rock entirely covered Vacationland and only a few buildings remained in the nearby Kapoho subdivision, officials with the U.S. Geological Survey said.
“The bay is completely filled in and the shoreline is at least 0.8 miles out from its original location,” said Geological Survey geologist Wendy Stovall. “Vacationland is gone, there is no evidence of any properties there at all. On the northern end of that, there are just a few homes in the (Kapoho) beach lots area.”
Resident Mark Johnson is hopeful that his home on a citrus farm is one of those still standing. His ocean-view property sits on a ridge near the base of Kapoho crater, and he thinks the lava could have missed it.
“Basically we are up on that hill, so we’re still OK right now,” Johnson said.
County officials said the two subdivisions have 279 homes, and most are feared destroyed from the most recent lava flows in the low-laying area.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“My cousins Ingrid, Yomira, Paola, Jennifer, Michael, Andrea and Silvia, who was just 2-years-old,” the distraught woman said — a litany that brought into sharp relief the scope of a disaster for which the final death toll is far from clear.
What was once a collection of verdant canyons, hillsides and farms resembled a moonscape of ash, rock and debris on Tuesday in the aftermath of the fast-moving avalanche of superheated muck that roared into the tightly knit villages on the mountain’s flanks, devastating entire families.
Two days after the eruption, the terrain was still too hot in many places for rescue crews to search for bodies or — increasingly unlikely with each passing day — survivors.
By afternoon, a new column of smoke was rising from the mountain and Guatemala’s disaster agency said volcanic material was descending its south side, prompting an evacuation order and the closure of a nearby national highway. Rescuers, police and journalists hurried to leave the area as a siren wailed and loudspeakers blared, “Evacuate!”
The new evacuation order set off a panic even in areas that were not under it. Dozens of people could be seen walking down roadsides carrying children or a few belongings beside paralyzed traffic in parts of Escuintla township south of the volcano.
A lucky few, like retiree Pantaleon Garcia, was able to load his grandchildren into the back of a pickup with a jug of water and some food, to go to stay with relatives in another town.
“You have to be prepared, for the children,” he said.
Even in more distant central Escuintla, which hosts most of the shelters for those evacuated from other areas, businesses were closed as people left.
On Sunday, when the volcano exploded in a massive cloud of ash and molten rock, Hernandez said her brother and sister ran to check on their 70-year-old grandmother on the family’s plot of land in the village of San Miguel Los Lotes.
“She said that it was God’s will, she was not going to flee,” Hernandez said. “She was unable to walk. It was hard for her to get around.”
Her brother and sister made it to safety, but their grandmother has not been seen again.
Hernandez and her husband, Francisco Ortiz, survived because they moved out of Los Lotes just two months ago to begin a new life on a small plot of land.
The couple has been staying at a Mormon church in the nearby city of Escuintla and going to a morgue there to await news. So far only the body of one relative, her 28-year-old cousin, Cesar Gudiel Escalante, has been recovered and identified.
“The people ended up buried in nearly 3 meters of lava,” Ortiz said. “Nobody is left there.”
Other families experienced similar tragedies.
As President Jimmy Morales toured the area and met with survivors on Monday, a woman begged him to help her loved ones in Los Lotes.
“Mr. President, my family is missing. Send a helicopter to throw water over them because they are burning,” she said. “I have three children, a grandchild, and all my brothers, my mother, all my family are there. More than 20 have disappeared.”
The fast-moving flows with temperatures as high as 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit and hot ash and volcanic gases that can cause rapid asphyxiation caught many off guard.
On Tuesday, it was clear that the official death toll was sure to climb, and fears spread that anyone still stuck in the buried houses was dead and would remain entombed there.
Guatemala’s National Institute of Forensic Sciences raised the death toll Tuesday evening to 75. The institute said that 23 of those recovered bodies had been identified.
At a roadblock, Joel Gonzalez complained that police wouldn’t let him through to see his family’s house in the village of San Juan Alotenango, where his 76-year-old father lay buried in ash along with four other relatives.
“They say they are going to leave them buried there, and we are not going to know if it’s really them,” the 39-year-old farmer said. “They are taking away our opportunity to say goodbye.”
A spokesman for Guatemala’s disaster agency, Conred, said that once it reaches 72 hours after the eruption, there will be little chance of finding anyone alive.
(Sonia Perez D. & Mark Stevenson, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Janet Snyder, a spokeswoman for Hawaii County, said that the authorities were still seeking to get a definitive number of homes destroyed in recent days. “But it’s safe to say that hundreds were lost in Kapoho Beach Lots and Vacationland overnight,” Snyder added, referring to largely rural communities on the island’s far eastern edge that had been largely evacuated before the lava’s powerful new advance.
Mayor Harry Kim’s second home was among the residences destroyed overnight, Snyder said.
Kilauea has been erupting with greater intensity since early May in parts of the Big Island, forcing thousands to evacuate while dealing a severe blow to the island’s tourism industry. Until the overnight destruction, a total of 117 homes had been razed in recent weeks by the eruption, which has also spewed ash thousands of feet into the air.
In addition to devastating residential neighborhoods, lava from Kilauea is reshaping the coastline of the island, the largest in the archipelago that makes up the state of Hawaii. Officials with the U.S. Geological Survey posted stunning video of lava filling in and beginning to forge a delta in the now dryland location that had been known as Kapoho Bay.
“Destruction from the flow is just off the scale,” said Ikaika Marzo, 34, a tour operator on the Big Island who has gained a large following on social media by meticulously documenting Kilauea’s eruption. Marzo said that a type of flow involving broken lava blocks called clinkers, had covered the entirety of Kapoho Bay.
Parts of Kilauea have been erupting continuously since early 1983. But with the latest releases of lava showing few signs of subsiding, residents are bracing for the possibility that the month-long phase of the eruption could stretch for weeks or even months.
Officials warned on Tuesday that a large plume of laze, a toxic lava haze composed of hydrochloric acid and tiny shards of volcanic glass, was blowing inland along the coastline, released with the ongoing inundation of Kapoho Bay.
The eruption has also been triggering earthquakes, including a 5.5-magnitude tremor early Tuesday morning at Kilauea’s summit. Scientists with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said that no tsunami was expected from the quake.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The number of missing after the Fuego volcano’s eruption was still unclear, according to officials with Guatemala’s natural disaster commission, known as CONRED.
Volunteer firefighters waded though layers of ash that reached knee-deep in places, only to find the charred remains of those who had been unable to flee the torrent of burning rock and ash that poured down the slopes of the volcano, whose name means “fire.”
“We saw bodies totally, totally buried, like you saw in Pompeii,” said Otto Mazariegos, president of the Association of Municipal and Departmental Firefighters.
The death toll was expected to rise, “probably in the hundreds,” Mazariegos said. Rescue workers had yet to reach sites on the south side of the volcano, which were inaccessible.
As the day wore on, officials were forced to suspend some rescue operations because of the fear that the volcano might erupt again. The deep ravines on the volcano’s slopes were already filled with lava, Mazariegos said, and there was no way to tell how a new flow might spread.
Published photos from morning visits to the disaster zone showed images of ordinary life frozen under a coat of gray dust. In one house, balloons and chairs were arranged for a child’s birthday party.
The stillness belied the chaos of the day before, as people fled in terror before a roaring wave of destruction.
Survivors who went back to the village of San Miguel los Lotes on Monday morning encountered a village turned to rubble by the force of the eruption.
“My mother is buried there,” Inés López told a Guatemalan newspaper, Prensa Libre, standing amid the wreckage of his home. “All our family is here, buried,” he said waving his hand over the ruins.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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National Disaster Coordinator Sergio Cabanas said four people died when lava from the Volcan de Fuego set a house on fire in El Rodeo village, and two children were burned to death as they watched the volcano’s eruption from a bridge. Another victim was found in the streets of El Rodeo but died in an ambulance.
Officials said 3,100 people had evacuated nearby communities, and the eruption was affecting an area with about 1.7 million people.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Rescue crews searching in and around Ivy Creek found the body of one of two occupants of a Toyota Prius that was washed off the road Wednesday night, Albemarle County police said. A search continued late Thursday afternoon for the second person but paused the search overnight because of dangerous conditions. Farther north in Madison County, the sheriff’s office said rescuers were searching for a female reported missing in water the night before.
The storm, already blamed for at least four deaths in the U.S. earlier in the week, was pushing across the Great Lakes on Thursday. But the National Weather Service said the potential for more rainfall and flash flooding would continue for the Southeast, the Ohio Valley and the mid-Atlantic through the end of the week.
Since making landfall on Memorial Day in the Florida Panhandle, Alberto’s heavy rains have been widespread, with flooding reported from Alabama through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, the Carolinas and West Virginia.
Elsewhere in the Southeast, the storms triggered flooding and mudslides.
In North Carolina, four dams being closely watched by a state team of special engineers were holding up, Gov. Roy Cooper said. But Cooper declared a state of emergency for his hard-hit mountain counties, saying the forecast for the rest of the week calls for isolated heavy rain storms that could instantly cause flooding in areas that have had 20 inches of rain in the past 15 days.
“This storm isn’t yet over. I’m urging people to keep a close eye on forecasts,” Cooper said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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More than 25,000 power outages were reported in Alabama, many caused by trees rooted in soggy soil falling across utility lines.
But while forecasters said the subtropical depression could dump as much as 6 inches of rain inland, few major problems were reported by Tuesday evening.
“We’ve had a lot of rain, but we got lucky. It was a constant rain but not a heavy rain,” said Regina Myers, emergency management director in Walker County northwest of Birmingham.
Subtropical storm Alberto rolled ashore Monday afternoon in the Florida Panhandle and then weakened overnight to a depression. Beachcombers had returned to the white sands of the Northern Gulf by Tuesday morning, but forecasters still warned of dangerous currents.
In Cuba, flooding damaged an oil refinery and caused crude oil to spill into Cienfuegos Bay as the remnants of Alberto continued to drench the island in heavy rain.
State-owned TV showed authorities using barriers Tuesday to try to contain the spill from the Cienfuegos refinery in central Cuba about 150 miles southeast of Havana.
U.S. forecasters said rain could still cause dangerous flash floods in the coming days in northern Alabama and large areas of Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas.
In North Carolina, a television news anchor and a photojournalist were killed Monday while covering the weather, when a tree became uprooted from rain-soaked ground and toppled onto their SUV, authorities said.
WYFF-TV of Greenville, S.C., said news anchor Mike McCormick and photojournalist Aaron Smeltzer were killed.
“Two journalists working to keep the public informed about this storm have tragically lost their lives, and we mourn with their families, friends and colleagues,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said in a statement.
Alberto was more of a rainstorm than a wind threat, but the National Weather Service said at least one tornado had been confirmed.
The weather service said its meteorologists confirmed a weak tornado with maximum winds of 85 mph hit an area around Cameron, S.C., on Monday afternoon. No one was hurt.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Residents of Puerto Rico died at a significantly higher rate during the three months after the hurricane than they did in the previous year, according to the results of a new study by a group of independent researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and other institutions.
The researchers say their estimate, published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, remains imprecise, with more definitive studies still to come. But the findings, which used methods that have not been previously applied to this disaster, are important amid widespread concerns that the government’s tally of the dead, 64, was a dramatic undercount.
Winds, flooding and landslides swept away homes and knocked out power, water and cellular service, which remained largely unrepaired for months.
Researchers for this latest study visited more than 3,000 residences across the island and interviewed their occupants, who reported that 38 people living in their households had died between Sept. 20, when Hurricane Maria struck, and the end of 2017. That toll, converted into a mortality rate, was extrapolated to the larger population and compared with official statistics from the same period in 2016.
Because the number of households surveyed was relatively small in comparison to the population’s size, the true number of deaths beyond what was expected could range from about 800 to more than 8,000 people, the researchers’ calculations show.
About 15 percent of the people interviewed reported that someone in their household was unable to get medicine for at least a day after the storm. Roughly 10 percent said that a household member had trouble using breathing equipment, which often relies on electricity. Fewer than 10 percent reported closed medical facilities, and 6 percent said doctors were unavailable. The study estimates that about a third of the deaths were caused by a delay in medical care or the inability to obtain it.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Forecasters, who downgraded the system to a subtropical depression after it came ashore, warned that heavy downpours increased the potential for life-threatening flash floods across north Florida, much of Alabama and large areas of Georgia — and elsewhere around the Southeast.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Alberto was centered about 50 miles west-northwest of Dothan, Ala., at 8 p.m. Monday. With maximum sustained winds of 40 mph, Alberto was crawling north at 10 mph.
Authorities did not have any reports of deaths or injuries directly related to Alberto. But in North Carolina, a television news anchor and a photojournalist were killed Monday when a tree that had been uprooted from rain-soaked ground toppled on a TV vehicle as the two reported on severe weather on the fringes of the huge system.
More rain is on the way in the area. Between 4 and 8 inches of rain could soak the Florida Panhandle, Alabama, and western Georgia before the storm moves on. Isolated deluges of 12 inches also are possible.
Meanwhile, potentially life-threatening rough surf and rip currents continued on the northern Gulf Coast after Alberto rolled up big waves and tides. Lifeguards posted red flags along the white sands of Pensacola Beach, where swimming and wading were banned as Alberto disrupted long holiday weekend plans for millions.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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You can also add “vog” to the mix.
Scientists say higher sulfur dioxide emissions recorded at the volcano’s summit in recent days are creating the potential for heavier than usual vog, or volcanic smog. So far, trade winds have been mostly blowing the gray haze offshore.
Volcanic smog, or air pollution, is created by vapor, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide gas released from Kilauea. It reacts in the atmosphere with oxygen, sunlight, moisture and other gases and particles. In a matter of hours or days, it converts to fine particles that scatter sunlight, creating a haze that can be seen downwind of Kilauea, according to The Interagency Vog Dashboard, which is made up of Hawaii, U.S. and international agencies.
The U.S. Geological Survey said sulfur dioxide emissions from the volcano have more than doubled since the current eruption began.
Kilauea’s summit was belching 15,000 tons of the gas each day, up from 6,000 tons daily prior to the May 3 eruption. People living miles from the eruption are paying attention to the amount of noxious fumes pouring out of the volcano because it creates potential for more vog.
“Everyone is having symptoms now on some level,” said Dr. Josh Green, a state senator and emergency room physician who has been volunteering in communities where lava fissures have opened in neighborhoods.
Symptoms for generally healthy people can include burning eyes, headaches and sore throats. But those with asthma or other respiratory problems can end up hospitalized.
Vog can affect areas far from the volcano summit, including the western side of the Big Island and even other islands.
But lately, trade winds have been blowing most of the vog offshore. The National Weather Service said it expected trade winds to slow this weekend, creating hazardous air quality.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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News outlets showed photos and video of sudden and violent floodwaters surging down Main Street in Ellicott City, some 13 miles west of Baltimore. The community, set along the west bank of Maryland’s Patapsco River, was also stricken by deadly flash flooding in July 2016.
This time, witnesses say, the flash flooding came with a roar of onrushing water amid a pelting rain that had soaked the region around Baltimore.
After the floodwaters receded, emergency officials had no immediate reports of fatalities or injuries. But by nightfall first responders and rescue officials were still going through the muddied, damaged downtown, conducting safety checks and ensuring people evacuated.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who declared a state of emergency for the flooded community, traveled there late Sunday for a firsthand look at the destruction.
Footage of Sunday’s flash flooding showed the seething floodwaters engulfing cars and pickups. The Howard County Fire & EMS agency tweeted that water was above the first floor of some buildings at the height of the flood.
The disaster came as the National Weather Service said a flash flood warning had been issued for what it described as an “extremely dangerous situation.” A meteorologist said about 8 inches fell in Ellicott City in a 6-hour period.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The storm disrupted long holiday weekend plans from Pensacola in the Florida Panhandle to Miami Beach on Florida’s southeastern edge. Lifeguards posted red flags along the white sands of Pensacola Beach, where swimming and wading were banned amid high surf and dangerous conditions.
It also triggered mandatory evacuations of some small, sparsely populated Gulf Coast barrier islands in one Florida county. The Florida Division of Emergency Management said in a statement Sunday that a mandatory evacuation had been issued in Franklin County for all barrier islands there and those in the county living directly on the coast in mobile homes or in recreation vehicle parks.
Alberto got an early jump on the 2018 hurricane season, which doesn’t officially start until June 1. The storm prompted Florida, Alabama and Mississippi to launch emergency preparations over the weekend amid expectations Alberto would reach land sometime today. Rough conditions were expected to roil the seas off the eastern and northern Gulf Coast region through Tuesday.
“These swells are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions,” the National Hurricane Center in Miami said in a statement.
Gusty showers were to begin lashing parts of Florida on Sunday, and authorities were warning of the possibility of flash flooding.
Sunday evening, Alberto was centered about 195 miles west of Tampa and had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph — up from 50 mph earlier. Forecasters said Alberto has most recently taken a north-northwest track that would bring it over the northern Gulf of Mexico during the night and make landfall on or in the vicinity of the Florida Panhandle today.
A subtropical storm like Alberto has a less defined and cooler center than a tropical storm, and its strongest winds are found farther from its center. Subtropical storms can develop into tropical storms, which in turn can strengthen into hurricanes. Forecasters cautioned that heavy rain and tropical storm conditions could reach the northern Gulf Coast well ahead of the center of Alberto making landfall.
Mark Bowen, the Bay County Emergency management director, said Sunday that the concern isn’t with storm surge due to the timing of landfall and the tides. He said Alberto’s biggest threat will be its heavy rains, with forecasts of anywhere from 4 to 12 inches of rain in some areas.
The hurricane center said Sunday that a tropical storm warning was in effect from Bonita Beach, Fla., to the Mississippi-Alabama border.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Cyclone Mekunu caused flash flooding that tore away whole roadways and submerged others in Salalah, Oman’s third-largest city, stranding drivers. Strong winds knocked over street lights and tore away roofing.
Rushing waters from the rain and storm surges flooded typically dry creek beds. The holiday destination’s now-empty tourist beaches were littered with debris and foam from the churning Arabian Sea.
Three people, including a 12-year-old girl, died in Oman, and another two bodies were recovered from the Yemeni island of Socotra. More than 30 people were still missing in Socotra, including Yemeni, Indian and Sudanese nationals.
Yemeni officials also reported damage in the country’s far east, along the border with Oman. Rageh Bakrit, the governor of al-Mahra province, said on his official Twitter account late Friday that strong winds had blown down houses and taken out communication lines and water services. He said there were no fatalities in the province.
India’s Meteorological Department said the storm packed maximum sustained winds of 105-111 miles per hour with gusts of up to 124 mph. It called the cyclone “extremely severe.”
Portions of Salalah, home to some 200,000 people, lost power as the cyclone made landfall.
Branches and leaves littered the streets. Several underpasses became standing lakes. Some cars were left abandoned on the road. Electrical workers began trying to repair lines in the city while police and soldiers in SUVs patrolled the streets. On the outskirts of the city, near the Salalah International Airport, what once was a dry creek bed had become a raging river.
The airport, closed since Thursday, will reopen early today, Oman’s Public Authority for Civil Aviation said. The Port of Salalah — a key gateway for the country and for Qatar amid a regional diplomatic dispute — remained closed, its cranes secured against the pounding rain and winds.
Omani forecasters said Salalah and the surrounding area would get at least 7.87 inches of rain, over twice the city’s annual downfall. It actually received nearly three times its annual rainfall.
Authorities remained worried about flash flooding in the area’s valleys and potential mudslides down its nearby cloud-shrouded mountains. In nearby Wadi Darbat, the storm’s rains supercharged its famous waterfall.
Police and others continued their rescue efforts even as the winds and rains calmed. Capt. Tarek al-Shanfari of the Royal Oman Police’s public relations department said there had been at least three fatalities in the storm, including the death of a 12-year-old girl who was hit in the head by a door flung open by the wind.
(Jon Gambrell, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Cuba was being pounded by rain along its western coast, raising the threat of flash floods and mudslides. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the island’s rain totals could reach 10 to 15 inches — and even 25 inches in isolated areas.
Heavy downpours were expected to begin lashing parts of Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama today. Tropical storm warnings have been issued for parts of Florida and Alabama, saying tropical storm conditions are possible there by early Monday.
The governors of Florida, Alabama and Mississippi all declared states of emergency ahead of the storm Saturday.
About 5 to 10 inches of rain are possible along affected areas in eastern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, western Tennessee and the western Florida Panhandle. Isolated areas could see as much as 15 inches.
Under overcast skies and occasional drizzle, several Gulfport, Miss., residents lined up to fill 10- and 20-pound bags with sand they will use to block any encroaching floodwater expected as a result of Alberto.
Tommy Whitlock said sandbagging has become a usual event in his life since he lives next to a creek.
“I’m doing this because every time we have a hard rain, it floods at my house,” Whitlock said. “We get water from other neighborhoods, and water can get up to a foot deep in some places.”
Alberto — the first named storm of the 2018 hurricane season that officially starts June 1 — is expected to strengthen until it reaches the northern Gulf Coast, likely on Monday night.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Engbring walked past small ravines where wind quickly could carry embers and by the charred remains of a campfire, finally reaching the spot where John Dobson had been living among ponderosa pines in Arizona’s Coconino National Forest.
He spotted Dobson earlier as he was leaving the forest with his bicycle and issued a warning that he’ll likely repeat over the busy Memorial Day weekend as tourists flock to Arizona’s cooler mountainous areas to hike, bike, camp and fish.
“The area is closed now, and I can’t allow you to go back in,” he said.
Many parts of the West are dealing with drought, but nowhere else has more state and federal land been closed to recreation than in Arizona where conditions are ripe for large-scale wildfires. Portions of the Apache-Sitgreaves, Coconino, Kaibab and Tonto national forests are closed because the dry vegetation quickly can go up in flames, firefighters would have a hard time stopping it, and homes and water resources are at risk.
In neighboring New Mexico, fire restrictions are in place, but no forests have closed. Forest officials in the western part of that state have suspended woodcutting permits, including ceremonial wood gathering by Native American tribes. They’ve also warned the public to look out for hungry bears.
Forests in southern Colorado and southern Utah are open but officials are limiting campfires to developed areas.
“A lot of our rural, small communities depend on recreation and access to public land, so it’s on the table but really an option of last resort,” said Holly Krake, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service region that includes Colorado.
Weather over the next six weeks is expected to be in line with the typical onset of fire season: increasingly hot, breezy and dry. Then the monsoonal system that carries heavy rain should kick in.
“The bottom line is it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” said Rich Naden, fire weather meteorologist with the Southwest Coordination Center. “But this time of year is always like that. It’s almost like clockwork.”
Widespread forest closures in Arizona are rare. The 1.8 million-acre Coconino National Forest shut down completely because of fire danger in 2006 for nine days. A 2002 shutdown lasted nine weeks, encompassing the Memorial Day and July 4 holidays. Other national forests had closures in 2002 as well.
The current closures are affecting a small percentage of national forests in Arizona, and the general guidance for tourists is to check ahead of time to see what’s open and whether campfires are allowed.
Beyond inconveniencing campers and hikers, the drought’s effects and forest closures are being felt by ranchers who can’t graze cattle in the forest and researchers who can’t conduct studies. Forest thinning projects also are delayed.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Indian meteorologists expected the “very severe” cyclone to strike Oman on Saturday near Salalah, the sultanate’s third-largest city and home to some 200,000 people near the country’s border with Yemen.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Nighttime photos released Wednesday by the U.S. Geological Survey show the flames spouting from cracks in the pavement in the Leilani Estates neighborhood where the volcano has been gushing lava on the big island of Hawaii for the past three weeks.
The volcano produces methane when hot lava buries and burns plants and trees.
“The methane gas will flow through the ground, through the cracks that are already existing, and will come up wherever there’s a place for them to come up,” said Wendy Stovall, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
The methane can seep through cracks several feet away from the lava. It can also cause explosions when it’s ignited while trapped underground. These blasts can toss blocks several feet away, Stovall said.
Hawaii County has ordered about 2,000 people to evacuate from Leilani Estates and surrounding neighborhoods since the eruption began on May 3.
The volcano has opened more than 20 vents in the ground that have released lava, sulfur dioxide and steam. The lava has been pouring down the flank of the volcano and into the ocean miles away.
The eruption has destroyed 50 buildings, including about two dozen homes. One person was seriously injured after being hit by a flying piece of lava.
Stovall said lava spatter from one of the vents was forming a wall that was helping protect a nearby geothermal plant.
Lava from that vent was shooting farther into the air and producing the highest lava wall of all the vents, which was blocking molten rock from flowing north toward the plant.
Officials shut down Puna Geothermal shortly after the current eruption began.
On Tuesday, officials finished plugging wells that bring up hot liquid and steam to feed a turbine generator.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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As the number of suspected Ebola cases continued to rise, experts emphasized that more community engagement is needed to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.
Three patients left on their own accord from the isolation zone of the Wangata hospital in Mbandaka city between Sunday and Tuesday, said Henry Gray, emergency coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres.
One patient had been about to be discharged, he said. “The two others were helped to leave the hospital by their families in the middle of the night on Monday. One of the men died at home and his body was brought back to the hospital for safe burial with the help of the MSF teams; the other was brought back to the hospital yesterday morning and he died during the night,” Gray said in a statement.
Hospital staff made every effort to convince the patients and their families not to leave and to continue treatment, Gray said.
Three Ebola deaths have been confirmed since Congo’s health ministry announced the current outbreak of the often lethal hemorrhagic fever on May 8. It was not immediately clear if the two deaths reported by MSF were confirmed Ebola ones.
Congo’s health ministry on Wednesday announced six new suspected cases in the rural Iboko health zone in the country’s northwest and two in Wangata. There are now 28 confirmed Ebola cases, 21 probable ones and nine suspected. Overall the death toll stands at 27.
“We’re on the epidemiological knife’s edge of this response. The next few weeks will really tell if this outbreak is going to expand to urban areas or if we’re going to be able to keep it under control,” Dr. Peter Salama, the World Health Organization emergencies chief, told a World Health Assembly session Wednesday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“Right now, they’re in a safe state,” Mike Kaleikini, senior director of Hawaii affairs for the Puna Geothermal Venture plant, said of the wells. There also were plans to install metal plugs in the wells as an additional stopgap measure.
The wells run as deep as 8,000 feet underground at the plant, which covers around 40 acres of the 815-acre property. The plant has capacity to produce 38 megawatts of electricity, providing roughly one-quarter of the Big Island’s daily energy demand.
Lava destroyed a building near the plant, bringing the number of structures overtaken in the past several weeks to nearly 50, including dozens of homes. The latest was a warehouse adjacent to the Puna plant, covered by lava on Monday night, Hawaii County spokeswoman Janet Snyder told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Puna Geothermal, owned by Nevada’s Ormat Technologies, was shut down shortly after Kilauea began spewing lava on May 3. The plant harnesses heat and steam from the Earth’s core to spin turbines to generate power. A flammable gas called pentane is used as part of the process, though officials earlier this month removed 50,000 gallons of the gas from the plant to reduce the chance of explosions.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Government officials did not confirm the figure but exhorted residents of Karachi, a city of 15 million, to take precautions because of the heat.
Faisal Edhi, a member of the family that runs the Edhi Foundation, which runs an ambulance service and Karachi’s central morgue, said that of the 160 bodies received in the past three days, 65 were of people who had died because of the heat wave.
On Monday, a temperature of 111.2 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded in Karachi, which often is referred to as a concrete jungle because it lacks large areas of plants or trees. In recent years, heat waves have claimed hundreds of lives.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Authorities on Sunday warned the public to stay away from the cloud that formed by a chemical reaction when lava touched seawater.
Further upslope, lava continued gushing out of large cracks in the ground in residential neighborhoods in a rural part of the Big Island. The molten rock made rivers that bisected forests and farms as it meandered toward the coast.
The rate of sulfur dioxide gas shooting from the ground fissures tripled, leading Hawaii County to repeat warnings about air quality. At the volcano’s summit, two explosive eruptions unleashed clouds of ash. Winds carried much of it toward the southwest.
Scientists said the steam clouds at the spots where lava entered the ocean were laced with hydrochloric acid and fine glass particles that can irritate skin and eyes and cause breathing problems.
The lava haze called “laze” from the plume spread as far as 15 miles west of where the lava met the ocean on the Big Island’s southern coast. It was just offshore and running parallel to the coast, said U.S. Geological Survey scientist Wendy Stovall.
Scientists said the acid in the plume was about as corrosive as diluted battery acid. The glass was in the form of fine glass shards. Getting hit by it might feel like being sprinkled with glitter.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Kilauea volcano began erupting more than two weeks ago and has burned dozens of homes, forced thousands of people to flee and shot up ash clouds from its summit that led officials to distribute face masks.
Lava flows have picked up speed in recent days, spattering molten rock that hit a man in the leg.
He was outside his home Saturday in the remote, rural region affected by the volcano when the lava “hit him on the shin and shattered everything from there down on his leg,” Janet Snyder, Hawaii County mayor’s spokeswoman, told the Hawaii News Now TV station.
Lava that’s flying through the air from cracks in the Earth can weigh as much as a refrigerator and even small pieces can be deadly, officials said.
The injury came the same day that lava began streaming across a highway and flowing into the ocean.
The interaction of lava and seawater has created a cloud of steam laced with hydrochloric acid and fine glass particles that can irritate the skin and eyes and cause breathing problems.
The lava haze, or “laze,” extended as far as 15 miles west of where the lava gushed into the ocean on the Big Island’s southern coast. It was just offshore and running parallel to the coast, said U.S. Geological Survey scientist Wendy Stovall.
Authorities warn that the plume could shift direction if the winds change. The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory says sulfur dioxide emissions also have tripled.
He said residents can’t do much but stay informed and be ready to get out of the way.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“This is a major, major game-changer in the outbreak,” Dr. Peter Salama, the World Health Organization’s deputy director-general of emergency preparedness and response, warned on Thursday.
A single case of Ebola was confirmed in Mbandaka, a densely populated provincial capital on the Congo River, Congo’s Health Minister Oly Ilunga said late Wednesday. The city is about 90 miles from Bikoro, the rural area where the outbreak was announced last week.
Late Thursday, Congo’s Ministry of Health announced 11 new confirmed Ebola cases and two deaths tied to cases in the country’s northwest, including one in a suburb of Mbandaka.
A total of 45 cases of Ebola have now been reported in Congo in this outbreak: 14 confirmed, 21 probable and 10 suspected, the ministry said.
There has been one new death in Bikoro, where the first death took place. That new death had epidemiological ties to another case. The other death was a suspected case in Wangata, a suburb of Mbandaka on the Congo River, the ministry said. No details were given on the death’s links to the newly confirmed case.
Only one of the 25 dead has been confirmed as Ebola, it said, adding that no new health professionals have been contaminated. One nurse had died, and three others were among suspected cases since the outbreak began.
Medical teams have been rushing to track down anyone thought to have had contact with infected people, while WHO is shipping thousands of doses of an experimental vaccine.
Mbandaka, a city of almost 1.2 million, is in a busy travel corridor in Congo’s northwest Equateur province and is upstream from the capital, Kinshasa, a city of about 10 million. It is an hour’s plane ride from Kinshasa.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The explosion at the summit of Kilauea came shortly after 4 a.m. following two weeks of volcanic activity that sent lava flows into neighborhoods and destroyed at least 26 homes. Scientists said the eruption was the most powerful in recent days, though it probably lasted only a few minutes.
Geologists have warned that the volcano could become even more violent, with increasing ash production and the potential that future blasts could hurl boulders the size of cows from the summit.
Toby Hazel, who lives in Pahoa, near the mountain, said she heard “a lot of booming sounds.” Those came after days of earthquakes.
“It’s just time to go — it really, really is,” she said, preparing to leave town. “I feel so sorry for the people who don’t go, because they don’t have the money, or don’t want to go to a shelter and leave their houses.”
Residents as far away as Hilo, about 30 miles from Kilauea, were starting to notice the volcano’s effects. Pua’ena Ahn, who lives in Hilo, complained about having labored breathing, itchy, watery eyes and some skin irritation from airborne ash.
The National Weather Service issued an ash advisory and then extended it through early evening, and county officials distributed ash masks to area residents. Several schools closed because of the risk of elevated levels of sulfur dioxide, a volcanic gas.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Nearly 20 of the fissures have opened since the Kilauea volcano started erupting 12 days ago, and officials warn it may soon blow its top with a massive steam eruption that would shoot boulders and ash miles into the sky.
A fissure that opened Sunday led authorities to order 10 people to flee their homes, Hawaii County Managing Director Wil Okabe said. Overall, nearly 2,000 people have been told to evacuate since May 3, and lava has destroyed more than two dozen homes.
The U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said the flow from the crack that emerged Sunday was heading on a path that would take it to the ocean, about 2 miles away. No homes or roads were threatened by the flow.
Lava on Sunday spread across hundreds of yards of private land and loud explosions rocked the neighborhood not far from the Leilani Estates subdivision, where more than a dozen other active vents opened over the past week.
Nearby resident Richard Schott, 34, watched from a police checkpoint as the eruption churned just over a ridgeline and behind some trees.
“I’ve actually seen rocks fly over the tree line, and I can feel it in my body,” Schott said. “It’s like a nuclear reaction or something.”
Few fissures, ground deformation and abundant volcanic gases indicate eruptions on the eastern flank of Kilauea are likely to persist, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The World Health Organization said there have been 39 confirmed and suspected cases of Ebola over the past five weeks as the virus spreads across three rural areas covering nearly 40 miles in the northwest part of the country. Among the dead were three health-care workers. Health officials are following up with nearly 400 people identified as contacts of Ebola patients.
The global health agency announced last week its plans to send the vaccine, developed in 2016 by the pharmaceutical company Merck.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The Hawaii County Civil Defense issued an alert that an 18th fissure was discovered along a road west of a major highway on the Big Island. Residents on that road were being told to evacuate, and two nearby community centers were serving as shelters for people and pets.
The fissures, ground deformation and abundant volcanic gases indicate eruptions on the eastern flank of Kilauea are likely to continue.
The latest opening came the morning after two other fissures opened on Saturday. Most of the lava outbreaks have occurred in and around the Leilani Estates neighborhood, where molten rock has burst through the ground, destroying more than two dozen homes and resulting in evacuation orders for nearly 2,000 people.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the 17th fissure, which opened Saturday night, was spattering, but no flow had formed. The 16th fissure had spilled lava into an open field earlier in the day.
The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory reported the fissures opened just east of the Puna Geothermal Venture energy conversion plant, where steam and hot liquid are brought up through underground wells and the steam feeds a turbine generator to produce electricity. Plant workers last week as a precaution removed 50,000 gallons of a flammable gas stored at the site.
For those who don’t live in Hawaii, the volcano eruption seems to be viewed by some as a potential Pompeii-like disaster that could destroy the island. Images of lava seeping across streets, engulfing cars and swallowing up homes — leaving piles of hardening black lava still smoldering and smoking in its wake — have exacerbated worries among tourists.
President Donald Trump on Friday declared it a major disaster, freeing up federal assistance in affected areas.
David Mace, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency who was on the ground in Hawaii, said the agency staff would be there “as long as it takes.”
Leslie Gordon, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey, felt compelled to provide perspective and quell uncertainty among travelers who were planning to go to Hawaii.
“The hazard is pretty localized just to Kilauea volcano,” she said. “Not to the rest of the island and certainly not to the rest of the state.”
However, other geologists warn that Kilauea’s summit could have an explosive steam eruption that would hurl rocks and ash miles into the sky.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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But most of the rest of the island is free of volcanic hazards, and local tourism officials are hoping travelers will recognize the Big Island is ready to welcome them.
Rachel Smigelski-Theiss is among those who have shifted gears. She had intended to visit Kilauea’s summit with her husband and 5-year-old daughter and stay in Volcano, a town a few miles from the crater. Now they’ve canceled their trip. She’s worried potential flight disruptions would strand them on the island.
“My equivalent of this — and I’m from South Florida where we have hurricanes — is driving quite literally into a hurricane,” she said.
Hawaii officials have had a busy month pleading with travelers to keep their plans even as dramatic images of natural disasters afflicting the islands have bombarded televisions and social media feeds.
In April, floods on Kauai Island made travelers nervous. Then last week, it was Kilauea volcano sending 2,200-degree lava bursting through cracks into people’s backyards in the Leilani Estates neighborhood. Then as Kilauea’s magma shifted underground, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake rocked the Big Island.
Since the quake, there have been frequent aftershocks. More than a dozen fissures oozing lava have opened in the ground. Adding to the distress, of the 36 structures destroyed, 26 were homes.
And now, scientists are warning that an explosive eruption may occur at the summit crater within weeks.
Tina Neal, the scientist-in-charge at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory, said geologists don’t expect the summit eruption to be life-threatening so long as people stay out of the national park. Volcano and other nearby communities may be showered by pea-sized fragments or dusted with nontoxic ash, but they aren’t expected to get hit by large boulders, she said.
Robert Hughes, the owner of Aloha Junction Bed and Breakfast in Volcano, said he’s had “tons” of cancellations since Wednesday, when geologists first warned of the explosive eruption.
But Hughes, a 45-year resident of the village of some 2,500 people, suspects he’ll soon hear from adventurers and photographers who want to see the eruption up close.
“I’m not too worried about it because I’ve lived here so long and I’ve seen it go through lots of different episodes,” Hughes said.
The town, which is nestled in a lush rainforest a few miles from the crater, is a popular overnight spot for park visitors.
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park’s decision to close Friday due to the risk of an explosive eruption will discourage travelers, said Janet Coney, the office manager at Kilauea Lodge, an inn in Volcano. The lodge, which has 12 rooms and 4 cottages, has had a handful of cancellations. Coney is anticipating more depending on what happens.
There are also further potential risks where lava has been erupting 25 miles east of the crater in Leilani Estates. Scientists said the molten rock there could start moving faster if fresher, hotter magma emerges from the ground.
Neal said a chemical analysis of the lava that’s erupted since last week indicated it’s from magma that had been stored in the ground since a 1955 eruption. It’s been sluggish and somewhat cooler as a result, she said. But Kilauea could release hotter, faster-moving and more voluminous lava because magma has moving into the area from further up the volcano, she said.
The CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, the agency that markets Hawaii to the world, said Kilauea is being monitored around the clock to provide the public with the best information. But George Szigeti noted that the Big Island is “immense” and there are large parts of the island unaffected by the volcano.
Like the town of Kamuela, which is home to vast cattle ranches and Hawaii’s own cowboys, called paniolo. The coffee farms on the Kona side of the island, which is more than 100 miles away from where lava is erupting. There’s also the night sky visible from the 13,803-foot summit of Mauna Kea, the island’s tallest peak and the location of some of the world’s most advanced telescopes.
Ross Birch, the executive director of the Island of Hawaii Visitors Bureau, said officials “walk the fine line.”
“We know what people are going through in Leilani Estates. And we don’t want to seem callous and inconsiderate in our messaging and our promotion of the island,” he said. At the same time, tourism is the island’s biggest industry and people’s livelihoods are dependent on visitors coming, he said.
“We want to make sure that everybody is still working and people have jobs to go back to,” Birch said.
(Audrey Mcavoy& Jae C. Hong, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The alert said at the end of a nearly two-minute-long message that it was a test. But not all listeners and viewers received that information, officials said.
The National Tsunami Warning Center said there was no threat. It said the message was a routine test sent at about 7 a.m.
Susan Buchanan, a National Weather Service spokeswoman, said the center’s test message was properly coded but somehow re-transmitted in an abbreviated format. That stripped the test coding and caused activation of the Emergency Alert System that sends messages to TV and radio stations.
She said it’s not clear why that happened, the agency was investigating and could not immediately provide further details. The tsunami warning center is part of the National Weather Service.
The message was sent just months after a civil defense official in Hawaii mistakenly sent an alert indicating a missile was inbound to the islands, prompting changes in how such alerts were issued. The employee who sent the false alert was fired.
In Washington state, officials said a false tsunami warning earlier this week in Clallam County was the result of a Jefferson County official testing a new cellphone app.
A real tsunami warning in Alaska earlier this year included alerts sent to cellphones, something that didn’t happen Friday.
Rosemary Dunn, who lives in Anchorage, said she was more curious than panicked when the warning came through.
“I couldn’t find any earthquakes and was really perplexed,” she said.
She went online and then discovered the alert was not real.
“They said it was misinterpreted. I’d really like to know what’s behind that, who misinterpreted that,” she said.
Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman for the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said there is a time limit for how long emergency alert system messages can last. This was a longer message, and from reports officials have gathered, the information indicating it was a test was cut off for some listeners and viewers, he said.
He said other Alaskans heard the test information.
Often, the message says it’s a test at the beginning. It’s not clear why the version heard by Alaskans didn’t say it was a test until the end. Zidek said the message Friday was intended to be an internal test message.
Tsunami-vulnerable communities were notified by the state emergency operations center that there was no tsunami warning, the state emergency management agency said.
(Becky Bohrer, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“The water has caused huge destruction of both life & property,” Lee Kinyanjui, governor of Nakuru County, where the disaster occurred, wrote on Twitter. “The extent of the damage is yet to be ascertained.”
He visited two villages “that were swept away,” he wrote later. Authorities were doing their best to evacuate families and to provide victims with medical attention, he added.
Forty people were reported missing and about 500 families were displaced, government and aid officials said. Four people were hospitalized and another 42 were treated for injuries, Fred Matiang’i, Kenya’s secretary for the interior, said at a news conference Thursday.
The casualty figures rose repeatedly Thursday as search and rescue missions continued, and officials cautioned that it could be some time before they knew the full toll.
The flooding struck about 9 p.m. Wednesday in and around Solai, a cluster of villages about 110 miles northwest of the capital, Nairobi. The Red Cross said the two villages hit hardest were called Energy and Nyakinyua.
The failed structure was a privately owned earthen dam on a large farm, according to local officials.
“Just a few days ago, the local residents complained that the walls were leaking and they could see cracks” in the dam, said Koigi Wamwere, a former lawmaker from the area.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Health Minister Oly Ilunga said seven people with the hemorrhagic fever were hospitalized in Bikoro as of Thursday. He says four new cases and one death also have been reported in the town of Ikoko Impenge. He says three nurses are among those infected.
Ilunga says 17 deaths that drew the attention of health officials over the weekend to the region had not yet been confirmed as resulting from Ebola. He says the situation calls for an immediate and energetic response.
The World Health Organization and officials from other international health groups are in the area to help contain the spread of the deadly virus, authorities said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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That is an increase of 28 people and four states — Florida, Minnesota, North Dakota and Texas — since the most recent CDC update May 2. The number of people sickened in this outbreak has climbed steadily since federal authorities began investigating a month ago, making it the worst since the 2006 baby spinach E. coli outbreak in which 205 people became ill and five of them died.
This strain of E. coli produces a toxin that causes vomiting and diarrhea and potentially other severe symptoms, including in some cases kidney failure. Of 129 people, 64, or 50 percent, have been hospitalized, including 17 people who developed severe kidney failure. One death in California has been reported. The ill people range in age from 1 to 88 years old. About 65 percent of those sickened are women. The most recent illness started April 25. But there is a time lag in reporting and confirming these cases. People who have gotten sick in the last two or three weeks may not yet be reported.
California leads the nation with 30 cases, followed by Pennsylvania with 20, and Idaho with 11.
The outbreak has proved to be a complicated case for federal investigators. They have identified one farm in Yuma, Ariz., as having grown whole-head lettuce linked to cases of food poisoning in an Alaska prison, but they do not know where that lettuce became contaminated. The rest of the cases involve chopped lettuce that did not come from the Yuma farm, according to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. Many of the people sickened across the country ate chopped lettuce that had been sold in bagged form to restaurants.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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The U.S. Geological Survey said the risk will rise if the lava drops below the groundwater level beneath the summit’s caldera.
An influx of water inside could cause steam-driven explosions. There’s also potential for ash, steam and sulfur dioxide emissions.
Kilauea is one of the world’s most active volcanoes.
It has destroyed 36 structures since it began releasing lava into fissures that opened in a Big Island residential neighborhood last week.
Since the eruptions began, 14 such fissures have opened in a subdivision and destroyed dozens of structures, including 26 homes.
In the weeks ahead, the volcano could eject blocks up to two yards in diameter less than a mile away, the USGS said. It may also send pebbles shooting into the air several miles away, the USGS said.
In the Leilani Estates subdivision, police went door-to-door Tuesday to roust residents near two new volcanic vents emitting dangerous gases in areas where lava has poured into streets and backyards.
Authorities previously ordered nearly 2,000 residents to leave the two communities in the mostly rural district of Puna on Hawaii’s Big Island last Thursday. But some ignored the order and stayed to watch over their property.
The emergence of the two new vents prompted Hawaii County to issue a cellphone alert ordering stragglers to leave.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Congo’s Health Ministry said that of the five samples sent to the National Institute of Biological Research in Kinshasa, two came back positive for the Zaire strain of Ebola in the country’s Equateur Province.
The samples were gathered after the Equateur Province Health Ministry notified Kinshasa on May 3 of some 21 cases of a hemorrhagic fever in the Ikoko Impenge area, including 17 deaths, according to the World Health Organization and Congo’s government. There are various hemorrhagic fevers.
A team was sent by the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders over the weekend to investigate and strengthen coordination. The five new cases were then identified and sent to the laboratory, Congo’s government said.
Since that time, no deaths have been reported among those hospitalized or among health workers treating the ill, it said.
A team of experts will go to Bikoro today to implement measures to avoid further spread of the disease, said the ministry statement. The team will also investigate how the outbreak first started, it said.
This is the ninth Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976, when the deadly disease was first identified. Congo has a long track record with Ebola, WHO said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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By Monday, the emission of lava from multiple fissures had become minimal, the U.S. Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said, but “this is likely only a pause in activity; additional outbreaks or a resumption of activity are anticipated as seismicity continues in the area.”
Lava flows had advanced slowly northward throughout Sunday in the Leilani Gardens neighborhood, in large part fueled by a fissure that had been spewing lava fountains to heights of more than 200 feet, the U.S. Geological Survey said. A lava flow from that crack moved about 0.6 miles to the northeast before it stopped.
Video published by the USGS showed asphalt roads being slowly consumed by a moving wall of molten rock, with thick red-hot lava glowing underneath, as black smoke billowed upward. USGS helicopter footage showed a river of ash cut through lush tropical forest, with a lava fountain that had been active Sunday billowing red hot molten rock around the charred landscape.
At least 10 fissures have developed since Kilauea began a fresh eruption Thursday in the Leilani Estates neighborhood, about 25 miles east of the summit of Kilauea, one of the world’s most active volcanoes and Hawaii Island’s youngest.
Ground cracks have begun to emerge crossing Highway 130, west of the eruptions, the USGS said. Fluctuating and intermittent eruptions are likely to continue along the volcano’s eastern shoulder, known as the lower East Rift Zone, and scientists warned that although Leilani Estates remains at highest risk, other areas in the region could also fall at risk if the eruption continues.
There was no way to say for certain how long the current eruption would continue. In 2014, lava spilled out from the volcano and authorities worried for months that the town of Pahoa would be inundated. In the end, the supply feeding the lava shut down and it never inundated the town; just one home was destroyed.
In 1990, lava flows of up to 80 feet buried the town of Kalapana, known for its historical sites and black sand beaches. A church, a store and roughly 100 homes were destroyed.
The last time Kilauea opened up fissures in a residential area was in 1960, just outside the town of Kapoho. Lava fountains in that eruption were higher — up to 330 feet. When the crack began to seal up, the lava fountain that resulted was even taller.
Efforts to divert the lava away from homes during that event failed. Kapoho managed to survive for two weeks after the first eruption, but its fortunes changed when less viscous lava spilled out. In the end, Kapoho was destroyed.
An estimated 1,800 people live in the affected area of the current eruption, and many have sought housing in shelters, with friends or on surrounding islands.
Hawaii County officials have allowed some residents to return to their homes briefly to retrieve items and pets left behind during the sudden evacuation Thursday. Lava flows have been disrupting electricity and water supply, and officials were working to build a temporary bypass water line to restore water to Kapoho, Vacationland and Pohoiki.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The U.S. Geological Survey said at least nine quakes of magnitude 4.3 or greater struck the region beginning in the morning, including three of magnitude 5.2 to 5.6.
Civil defense director Jorge Melendez said at a news conference that 11 homes were destroyed and considerable damage was done to 180 more. Most of the structures affected were made of bahareque, a material composed of cane or sticks mixed with mud and straw.
The government was transporting tents to the zone to shelter residents left homeless.
An alert was declared for some municipalities in the departments of Chirilagua, San Miguel and La Union.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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National Weather Service meteorologists said Sunday that the desert city hit the 106-degree mark just after noon.
With an excessive heat warning in effect, meteorologists predicted Phoenix could hit 108 degrees before the afternoon was over. But they reported that thick clouds kept temperatures down.
The previous record high for May 6 was 105 degrees in 1947.
At 106, it's 14 degrees above normal for the date.
The Salvation Army activated heat relief stations to provide water and cooling for people.
Maricopa County Department of Public Health officials say there have been nearly 1,000 heat-associated deaths since Arizona's most populous county began its heat surveillance project in 2006.
Phoenix fire officials rescued at least three overheated hikers as of Sunday.
Thermal, in Imperial County, reached 110 degrees, breaking its record of 107 set in 1963 and tying Death Valley for the hottest spot in the U.S.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The eruption of the island’s most active volcano changed everything.
Shortly after Kilauea erupted Thursday, the ground split open on the east side of Leilani Estates, exposing an angry red beneath the lush landscape. From the widening gash, molten rock burbled and splashed, then shot as high as 80 to 100 feet in the air.
The Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency called it “active volcanic fountaining.” Some residents insisted it was Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess, come to reclaim her land. Residents there were ordered to flee amid threats of fires and “extremely high levels of dangerous” sulfur dioxide gas.
Soon, another such fissure had formed less than three streets to the west. Then another, and another. From the vents, hot steam and noxious gases rose before magma broke through and splattered into the air.
As of Sunday night, at least 10 such fissure vents were reported in the neighborhood, including two that had opened anew late Saturday night, and at least 26 homes had been destroyed, according to the county civil defense agency.
The fissures are forming along a northeast-southwest line in the rift zone, and not all of the older fissures are actively spewing lava, said Wendy Stovall, a volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
“As the eruption progresses, there will become a preferred pathway for the magma to go through,” Stovall said.
“Some of the outer vents along this fissure line will start to close up and congeal because the lava is going to essentially harden.”
Once that happens, lava fountains from the remaining open vents can shoot even higher — reaching up to 1,000 feet, Stovall said. On Saturday, lava from one of the newer fissures spurted as high as 230 feet into the air, according to the USGS.
More outbreaks are likely to occur along the rift zone, officials said.
Drone footage showed lava spouting along the fissures that had formed, creeping toward Leilani Estates homes and leaving lines of smoldering trees in their wake. The flows destroyed or cut off several streets in the neighborhood, typically home to about 1,700 people before most of them evacuated last week.
Meanwhile, over the past few days some photographers have followed the fissures, posting dramatic photos and videos of lava spattering into the air or oozing across roads. Officials have urged everyone to leave Leilani Estates, where a mandatory evacuation order remains in force.
The county civil defense agency announced Sunday that certain Leilani Estates residents might be able to return briefly to their homes to retrieve pets, medicine or important items left behind, but would need to leave immediately afterward because of “the very unstable conditions of air quality and of the roads.”
At least nine homes in the subdivision have been destroyed by fire, according to Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim.
“This is a very fast-moving situation,” Hawaii County Mayor Harry told Hawaii News Now. “This is unfortunately not the end.”
Kilauea first erupted Thursday, sending fountains of lava gushing out of the ground and billowing clouds of steam and volcanic ash into the sky on the eastern side of the island.
Three days later, some residents there continue to suffer through a triple whammy of threats. From below, lava has spewed forth from an increasing number of fissures that have opened up in the ground, oozing toward homes.
Several earthquakes, including the strongest to hit Hawaii in more than four decades, have jolted the Big Island’s residents, some as they were in the midst of evacuating.
And in the air, noxious fumes from the volcano are what some officials say could be the greatest threat to public health in the wake of its eruption.
After the eruption Thursday, the island shook at regular intervals, but especially about midday Friday: A 5.6-magnitude quake hit south of the volcano about 11:30 a.m., followed about an hour later by a 6.9-magnitude temblor, according to the USGS.
Videos posted to social media showed homes visibly shaking, items clattering to the floor at supermarkets and waves forming in swimming pools as the quake rattled.
“I think the whole island felt it,” said Cori Chong, who was in her bedroom with her foster dog, Monty, when the earthquake struck, frightening both of them. Even though Chong lives on the Hamakua coast, about an hour north of the earthquake’s epicenter, the shaking in her home was so violent that it caused furniture to move and glass to shatter.
David Burlingame, who lives about 2 miles west of Leilani Estates, told The Washington Post that he and a friend ran outside when the earthquake hit “and watched my house just shake back and forth.”
“Everybody is kind of on edge,” Burlingame said Saturday of both the potential for additional earthquakes and the unpredictability of the lava flows. “The worst part is kind of waiting to see, because you really never can tell what can happen.”
The earthquakes also prompted the rare closure of Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park after they damaged some of the park’s trails, craters and roads. The first earthquake triggered a cliff to collapse into the ocean, and fissures began to appear in the ground at a popular overlook near the Jaggar Museum.
Park officials said they canceled hikes Friday and evacuated about 2,600 visitors, along with all nonemergency employees.
“Safety is our main priority at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, and it is currently not safe to be here,” Park Superintendent Cindy Orlando said in a statement. “We will monitor the situation closely, and reopen when it is safe to do so.”
The county civil defense agency reported that the threat of a tsunami was low after the earthquakes, although officials warned that residents were not in the clear.
“Everything is still elevated,” Civil Defense Agency Administrator Talmadge Magno said, according to Hawaii News Now. “It kind of gets you nervous.”
Thursday’s eruption prompted the County of Hawaii’s managing director, Wil Okabe, to issue a state of emergency declaration. Gov. David Ige also issued an emergency proclamation and activated Hawaii’s National Guard to help with evacuations.
“Please be safe,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, wrote on Twitter.
Jordan Sonner, a Big Island Realtor, was on another part of the island taking pictures for an upcoming listing Thursday when she “got the call that there was lava in Leilani” and rushed back to her home just outside Leilani Estates.
“To describe it in a single word: chaos,” Sonner said of the evacuation in an interview with The Washington Post on Saturday. “My immediate threat was not the lava. It was the sulfur dioxide gas.”
It took Sonner about an hour and a half to reach her home, grab important documents and her pets — four dogs and a chinchilla — and scramble back out, she said. She’s now staying with a friend in Mountain View, 20 miles northwest of Leilani Estates, and expects it could be a long while before it’s safe for residents to return.
“We kind of just have to sit and wait to see what direction the lava is going to flow in and what other fissures are going to open up. This is far from over,” Sonner said.
Asked whether she was afraid she would lose her home, Sonner paused before describing the uniqueness of the community there.
“The way I kind of look at it is, the land doesn’t really belong to us. It belongs to Pele,” Sonner said, referring to the Hawaiian volcano goddess. “We get to live on it while we can, and if she wants it back, she’ll take it. I have good insurance.”
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, told CNN that, in some ways, the threat from the sulfur dioxide gas could be more dangerous than the lava flows, which had stopped in places after the eruption. If conditions worsened, even first responders would not be able to go into the affected neighborhoods to help trapped residents, she added.
“Sulfur dioxide gas can be so toxic and thick in some areas that it can be fatal, especially to those who have respiratory illnesses,” Gabbard said.
(Amy B Wang, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Officials ordered more than 1,700 people out of Big Island neighborhoods near Kilauea volcano’s newest lava flow, warning of the dangers of spattering hot rock and high levels of sulfuric gas that could threaten the elderly and people with breathing problems. Two homes have burned.
Adding to the chaos, the island’s largest earthquake in more than 40 years, a magnitude-6.9, struck near the south part of the volcano, the largest of more than 100 earthquakes in just 24 hours.
Officials said highways, buildings and utility lines were not damaged, but residents said they felt strong shaking and more stress as they dealt with the dual environmental phenomena. Several residents reported power outages.
Communities in the mostly rural Puna district, which sits on Kilauea’s eastern flank, know it is one of the world’s most active volcanoes and have seen its destruction before.
Julie Woolsey evacuated her home late Thursday as a volcanic vent, or an opening in the Earth’s surface where lava emerges, sprouted up on her street in the Leilani Estates neighborhood.
Lava was about 1,000 yards from her home, which Woolsey built on a lot purchased for $35,000 11 years ago after living on Maui became too expensive.
“We knew we were building on an active volcano,” she said, but added that she thought the danger from lava was a remote possibility.
She said she thought it was remote even days ago when she began packing and preparing to evacuate.
“You can’t really predict what Pele is going to do,” Woolsey said, referring to the Hawaiian volcano goddess. “It’s hard to keep up. We’re hoping our house doesn’t burn down.”
She let her chickens loose, loaded her dogs into her truck and evacuated with her daughter and grandson. She’s staying at a cabin with her daughter’s in-laws.
Two new volcanic vents, from which lava is spurting, developed Friday, bringing the number formed to five.
Scientists were processing data from the earthquakes to see if they were affecting the eruption, Hawaiian Volcano Observatory spokeswoman Janet Babb said.
“The magma moving down the rift zones, it causes stress on the south flank of the volcano,” she said. “We’re just getting a series of earthquakes.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The storm damaged communities in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, where more than 400 people were injured as thunder pierced the sky and visibility plummeted. Cities and villages in at least four other states lost power, authorities said.
Witnesses described being shocked by the storm’s speed and the devastation left in its path.
A resident of the village of Khakhawali in Rajasthan, who goes only by the name Surendra, said that within a few short minutes, “dust gathered with such speed” that it was impossible to see “millimeters away or keep my eyes open.”
“There was the clanking sound of tin roofs being blown away and motorcycles getting dragged,” he said. “Utensils, clothing, it seemed like everything was flying away. We found it hard to stay rooted. The whooshing sound of the wind made our children howl.”
Damage was caused by flying debris, lightning and rain as wind speeds in some areas reached 100 mph.
By the end of the storm, a young girl who was buried under rubble in the village had died, and a woman nearly lost her arm after she was struck by a tin rooftop that had been dislodged by the wind.
Hemant Gera, who oversees disaster management in Rajasthan, said the storm was the worst to hit the state in nearly three decades. Many people died in their sleep after their homes were destroyed, he said.
“The storm struck when people were all at home,” he said. “Mud walls collapsed, burying them under it. In many places, trees were uprooted and people were hit by the trunks and branches, resulting in injuries.”
Gera said that the families of those killed would each be given about $6,000 in compensation.
Mahesh Palawat, a meteorologist at Skymet Weather Services, a private forecaster, called the storm a “freak incident,” telling The Hindustan Times that dust storms were not usually as large or intense as the one that hit the country Wednesday. Other meteorologists said abnormally high temperatures in parts of northern India had contributed to the storm’s formation.
The Indian National Disaster Management Authority provided updates on Twitter, writing that the worst-hit district was Agra, home to the Taj Mahal, where at least 36 people were killed. Over 150 animals also died during the storm, the government agency said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his condolences, writing on Twitter that he was “saddened by the loss of lives.” He directed officials to assist those who had been affected by the storm.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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But the rain in early May should prove too little, too late to prevent another bad fire season as the year progresses, fire experts say.
“We get into an endless cycle of ‘the worst fire season ever,’ ” said San Diego Fire-Rescue Battalion Chief John Fisher. “I don’t want to paint that picture, because it depends on what happens later in the year.
“But it’s extremely dry out there. Everyone is in agreement — it’s going to be a very bad year.”
The May rain, the first appreciable precipitation in the region in six weeks, is welcome but not nearly as valuable to back country and backyard vegetation as winter rains. The longer daylight hours in May and the higher sun angle make it harder for plants to soak up the moisture before it evaporates.
And a quick warm-up expected this weekend, when inland temperatures could climb back to 90 degrees, will further speed the evaporation.
Alex Tardy, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Ranch Bernardo office, said this week’s rains could make grasses pop up on some hillsides, but any benefits will be short-lived.
“For the trees, it’s already too late for them,” Tardy said. “Trees need the rain in December, January and February. Things are all out of whack.”
Fall and early winter this year, the start of San Diego’s rainy season, were the driest on record. The city recorded just 0.09 of an inch of rain from Oct. 1 to Jan. 7. Normally the city would get more than 3 inches of rain during that period.
That extremely dry stretch put unprecedented stress on native vegetation. Plant moisture reached the lowest levels ever recorded locally in December, when the Lilac fire spread quickly in North County and a swarm of wildfires ravaged both Northern and Southern California.
San Diego’s dry streak ended on Jan. 8, when 1.75 inches fell over three days. But the region fell back into far-below-normal rainfall for the rest of the winter, and the stresses on plants returned.
April was exceptionally dry, even with the tiny bit of rain on the last night of the month on Monday. The monthly total was just 0.02 of an inch — 0.76 of an inch below normal.
Through April 30, San Diego’s total of 3.2 inches was the second-lowest rainfall on record for this late in the season. Only 2001-02, with 2.99 inches through the end of April, was drier.
Fire ignition risk
Shyh-Chin Chen, a meteorologist for the U.S. Forest Service who is studying fire and fuels at the Pacific Southwest Research Station in Riverside, said the scant rains the region received this spring have been sufficient to keep the chances of fire ignition low, in the short term.
But the long-term picture does not look so rosy, he said. San Diego County hasn’t had any massive, back country wildfires since 2007, and plenty of dead vegetation has built up on the hillsides and in the canyons.
“The available fuel is out there,” Chen said. “We’re just waiting for the right weather conditions to ignite those fuels.”
From a fire standpoint, that means winds. In May 2014, record-breaking heat, coming in the middle of a drought, accompanied strong Santa Ana winds in San Diego County. A series of fires that month, including the Cocos fire in San Marcos, caused nearly $30 million in property damage in the area.
Before this week’s rains, conditions were very dry in the county’s open spaces, although not quite as dry as they were in May 2014. Hillside grasses this year quickly turned from green to brown after a mid-April heat spell, with temperatures in the mid-90s in many locations.
“Everything dried and died,” Tardy said.
In the back country, many chaparral plants are showing little or no new growth. Fisher said meager growth is a reflection not only of this exceptionally dry year, but of the previous dry years. The long-range drought pattern, interrupted only by the wet year in 2016-17, has left soil moisture depleted, which affects the plants.
“The plants are still alive, but they have a lot of dead wood,” Fisher said.
In the garden
The dry year has had a big impact in the garden, too.
“Our water demands for the fall and winter were off the charts,” said Sean Peer, who has worked at El Plantio Nursery in Escondido for 30 years.
In a normal winter, with cloudier skies and more rain, the nursery would need to water its inventory every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Peer said.
“This winter was so dry, and there was so much sunshine, we had to water every day, which is crazy,” he said. “I even gave my natives a little extra water, which I never do.”
In February, customers brought in plant samples damaged after a strong Santa Ana. The wind damage was exacerbated by the dryness, he said.
Although the last month and a half have been very dry, many of the nights have been cool, and that has caused what Peer calls “cold wilt” on many warm-season plants. Many trees have also delayed their usual spring growth.
“Our sycamore is usually budding out in February. It’s just now budding,” Peer said. “A lot of people’s apricots and plums haven’t even popped out yet.
“It’s been a very different year.”
(Robert Krier, SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE)
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Rescue workers, soldiers and volunteers in helicopters, jeeps and rubber boats and on foot frantically searched for the missing teenager as night fell in Wadi Tzafit, a popular hiking destination in dry weather that can become a death trap with little warning in a rainstorm.
Two youths were hospitalized for hypothermia and other injuries, and 13 were rescued unharmed, officials said. The fatalities were reported by Zaka, an Israeli rescue and recovery organization. Eight of the teenagers who died were women and one was a man, according to Israeli media reports.
A lack of regulatory oversight of the academy that arranged the field trip led quickly to recriminations between the Defense and Education ministries, which share responsibility for approving such programs. The Israeli news media published text messages in which some of the teenagers expressed fears about the outing, and organizers reassured the doubters that they were well prepared and had the authorities’ approval to go ahead with it.
“I can’t believe I’m actually going on a trip in this weather,” one girl wrote in Hebrew to her friends on WhatsApp, according to the news site Mako, which said she was among those killed. “It doesn’t make sense that we go to a place that’s all floods. It’s tempting fate. We will die, I’m serious.”
The trip was led by Bnei Zion, a Tel Aviv-based leadership academy for high school graduates waiting to be called for military service.
About 25 young people had been hiking in the riverbed in a canyon with “very deep slopes,” said Nadav Eylon, chief security officer for the Central Arava Regional Council, which oversees an area south of the Dead Sea.
Eran Doron, head of the nearby Ramat Negev Regional Council, described the site as “a canyon where the moment a flash flood comes, there is no way out.”
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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University of California researchers in essence found that California’s highly volatile climate will become even more volatile as human-caused climate change tinkers with atmospheric patterns over the eastern Pacific Ocean.
The long-term average of annual precipitation in California won’t change much, they predicted.
"Yet despite that, we see a big increase in extremes," said University of California Los Angeles climate scientist Daniel Swain, lead author of a paper published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. "We expect to see more really wet years and also more really dry years."
The recent past offers a glimpse of California’s future.
The state veered from years of record-breaking drought that emptied reservoirs and prompted unprecedented urban conservation to a parade of atmospheric rivers that dumped record precipitation on Northern California during the 2016-2017 rainy season.
Portions of the main spillway at Lake Oroville, the state’s second largest reservoir, collapsed and the state narrowly escaped a dam disaster that would have sent a wall of water roaring through downstream towns.
Such sudden swings between severe drought and intense storms will increase the threat to aging dams and flood-control networks, accentuate the wildfire threat and make management of the state’s complex waterworks even more daunting.
The key ingredient of last year’s deadly wildfires in the wine country and the huge Thomas fire, which set the stage for devastating debris flows in Montecito, was high winds, not the drought-flood seesaw that researchers describe. But the scientists do predict the kind of dry autumn that contributed to the intensity of the Thomas fire, which burned its way into the record books in December.
“We really need to be thinking seriously about what we’re going to do about these risks,” Swain said.
"It’s a little bit hard to exaggerate how disastrous a repeat of the 1862 flood would be in California," he added, referring to statewide flooding that followed weeks of storms. That is "something that will very plausibly happen in the next 40 years," sending floodwater rushing across the Los Angeles basin and other major urban areas, he said.
The study results, based on climate model simulations, are consistent with other research findings, said Daniel Cayan, a climate researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who was not involved in the study.
"I think they’ve pushed the envelope forward in elucidating how the extremes on the wet and dry side have increased," he added. "The thing that I think is really nice about this paper is that they identify a period in which there could be a really profound wet spell. That’s very important."
By the end of the century, California will experience a 100 percent to 200 percent increase in very wet years similar to the 2016-2017 rainy season that broke the state’s five-year drought, the scientists found.
The frequency of serial storms on the scale of 1862 will increase 300 percent to 400 percent.
At the same time, the rainy season will shorten as less precipitation falls in the autumn and spring.
That will make it harder for dam managers, who on the one hand will have a shorter season to capture water for storage, and on the other will need to maintain reservoir space for greater storm runoff.
"Increasingly wide swings between dry and wet conditions will threaten to upset the already precarious balance between competing flood-control and water-storage imperatives in California," the researchers wrote. In Southern California, the frequency of extremely dry years is expected to rise 200 percent, compared with a 150 percent increase in very wet seasons. Overall, the region’s average annual precipitation should remain the same.
In addition to accentuating the whiplash between dry and wet, global warming is shrinking the state snowpack, which acts as nature’s reservoir. “Climate change is creating a water-storage problem for California,” said UCLA atmospheric sciences professor Alex Hall, a co-author of the paper.
"We need to think more carefully about how we capture water and how we store it," he added, advocating greater efforts to recharge groundwater basins with storm flows.
"That’s certainly where I would start," he said.
(Bettina Boxall, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP)
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At least three deaths were blamed on the storm system, which stretched from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes. Storms also knocked down trees, caused airport delays and dropped hail on the Carolinas.
At Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where more than 13 inches of snow had fallen, 230 flights were canceled Sunday. Two runways were open, but winds were still strong, and planes were being de-iced, spokesman Patrick Hogan said. On Saturday, the storm caused the cancellation of nearly 470 flights at the airport.
The wintry grip on the Twin Cities continued to keep the boys of summer off the diamond, forcing the postponement of the third straight Twins-White Sox game.
In Michigan, freezing rain that began falling overnight had left roads treacherous and cut power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses by midday Sunday, even as more than a foot of heavy snow was forecast for parts of the state’s Upper Peninsula by early today.
The airport in Charlotte, N.C., tweeted Sunday that severe weather had caused a ground stop and forced air traffic controllers to leave their tower. Meanwhile, television stations in Charlotte were posting images of large hail.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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On the southern high plains, Oklahoma remains ground zero for the worst drought conditions in the United States. About 20 percent of the state is facing exceptional drought conditions — the worst possible classification.
Most of Colorado also is under severe drought and almost all of the Texas Panhandle is seeing extreme drought or worse conditions.
The federal drought map shows dry conditions have expanded in Arizona and intensified across northern New Mexico.
Royce Fontenot, a senior hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, said the drought has developed rather quickly thanks to a dry winter.
Some areas of Union and Colfax counties in northeastern New Mexico have received less that 5 percent of normal precipitation over the past six months, leaving wheat crops in poor shape. Many areas went more than 100 days without moisture.
“That’s incredible, even for New Mexico,” Fontenot said during a briefing Thursday.
Most of the storms that have crossed the region have been what Fontenot calls “dust cutters” rather than drought busters. In other words, they haven’t produced meaningful snow or rain.
Overall, nearly half of New Mexico and Arizona are facing extreme drought or worse conditions while about 60 percent of Utah is under severe drought, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center.
Utah’s drought can be traced to a 12-week stretch of low precipitation this winter, when the mountains saw some of the lowest snow totals in recent history — also an ominous sign for the state’s renowned skiing sites.
“People come here to ski Utah powder, and when you don’t have it snow-making has to take over,” said Brian McInerney, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service. “Snow-making is not as good as what you get naturally from the atmosphere.”
Much of Utah’s water reserves were replenished last winter, after a bruising period from 2012 to 2016 that nearly depleted the state’s water reserves.
As a result, lack of water isn’t a concern now, McInerney said. But danger of forest fires will be elevated as the hot summer edges closer, he said.
Fire danger across much of the region was elevated Thursday by strong winds that prompted red-flag warnings and other advisories as 50 mph gusts in some places kicked up dry soil and reduced visibility.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Records compiled by the Center for Biological Diversity showed state violations ranging from severe corrosion to failed and missing tests required to gauge the strength of wells. No civil penalties were issued for any of the violations, according to a spokesman for the state agency responsible for overseeing oil operations.
The group said the problems could pose a serious threat to the environment if aging infrastructure fails and spills oil on beaches near major cities.
“Knowing these facilities have been out there decades upon decades upon decades is a sign you’re going to see a lot of corrosion and disrepair,” said Kristen Monsell, an attorney for the center. “We need to start getting all of this dirty decaying infrastructure out of our ocean for good.”
The findings come three years after a corroded 2-foot-wide pipe owned by Plains All American Pipeline ruptured on land and spilled 120,000 gallons of offshore crude that flowed toward the Santa Barbara coast. More than a fifth of the oil ended up in the ocean.
The group produced its findings based on a California Public Records Act request filed with the Department of Conservation for all violations notices issued to offshore oil operations by the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources since 2015.
The agency regulates oil and gas drilling and production throughout the state and in waters up to three miles from shore. The violations don’t include platforms in federal waters, where President Donald Trump intends to expand oil and gas drilling.
Of the 381 violations, about 290 were racked up by the state’s biggest oil and gas producer, California Resources Corp., and two subsidiaries, THUMS Long Beach Co. and Tidelands in Long Beach and the Huntington Beach areas. A spokeswoman for the California Resources Corp. said the company and its affiliates believe they were in “substantial compliance” with well integrity testing practices.
Most of the violations were for missing integrity tests required at least every five years. The environmental group found long lapses— some exceeding 20 years — between tests. Most of the missing and failed tests by THUMS on islands owned by the city of Long Beach were for injection wells used to stimulate oil and gas production or dump waste waters from the drilling process.
“THUMS and Tidelands and their affiliates operate thousands of wells and work proactively with stakeholders to ensure safe and environmentally responsible operations,” spokeswoman Margita Thompson said. “Our active injection wells are in compliance with the five-year DOGGR injection well integrity test.”
Don Drysdale, a spokesman for the state regulatory agency, said Tuesday that the division was still trying to verify that mechanical integrity tests were completed and passed by THUMS and Tidelands. He said no civil penalties were issued.
Critics of the agency have long said regulators were too cozy with oil interests and had gone easy on enforcement. The current administration has acknowledged failings and vowed to be more proactive about oversight.
“Years and years had gone by without any record of those tests being performed by the company,” Monsell said. “That is also emblematic of DOGGR’s lack of enforcement and not taking sufficient action when it does act.”
Hours after the group’s results were published, regulators issued the largest fine in the division’s history.
Greka Oil& Gas was hit with a $12.5 million fine for nearly 1,500 violations at an inland oil field in Orange County.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“This is the new gold standard for habitat protection,” said Geoff Shester, California program director for the conservation group Oceana, one of the organizations that drafted the proposal. “I think we own it now in California.” The Pacific Fishery Management Council placed the waters around the Channel Islands from San Diego to Point Conception off limits to trawling, a fishing technique that involves dragging large nets across the sea floor. The process is used to catch rockfish, but can damage deep sea corals and other sensitive habitat. As part of the decision, the council also reopened large, productive fishing grounds previously closed to rockfish fleets.
“I think it’s going to protect some important habitat while providing the fleet access to some less sensitive areas,” said Shems Jud, Pacific regional director for the Environmental Defense Fund’s oceans program. “It’s a win-win for fishermen, for habitat and future fisheries.”
The end result, he said, is improved protection for high-priority habitat, the rocky outcroppings, reefs, coral gardens and sponge beds that harbor rich biodiversity and serve as nurseries for young rockfish and other species — the very fish that anglers depend on.
Although much of the sea floor around the world is bare, sandy bottom, the sea floor off Southern California features rocky folds and ridges that harbor unique sea life. Recent research has revealed underwater oases of coral fans, brittle stars and anemones teeming with juvenile fish. Protecting those from damage was a priority for conservationists.
At the same time, Jud said, the collaborative group tried to create additional opportunity for the fleet. They reviewed sandy and soft-bottomed areas that are less fragile, but still productive fishing grounds. Those areas had been closed to prevent overfishing, but changes in fishery management allowed regulators to reopen them. Previous rules pitted fishermen against each other to catch as much as possible, and led to waste when boats hauled in unwanted fish, or “bycatch.” New rules allocated each boat a share of the total fishery, and ensured that all fishing vessels have observers to verify their catch, while scientific stock estimates offered a better measure of how many fish they could take without disrupting the population.
“Now we know down to the pound what the catch is for every species,” Jud said. “A blunt tool is no longer necessary when you have a razor-fine means of ensuring that mortality stays within limits.”
That allowed them to reopen valuable fishing areas off Fort Bragg and Big Sur to trawling, said David Crabbe, vice chair of the fishery council and a longtime squid fisherman. The result, he said, was a reversal of what some saw as restrictive fishing rules.
“Fishermen a lot of times feel that once they close an area, they’ll never get it back,” he said. “And I feel like this was finally a change to that thinking. Due to better information and better data, fishermen are able to access some historical fishing grounds while still avoiding high value habitat.”
The trawl closure area is the largest essential fish habitat conservation area off the West Coast, and is nearly 20 times larger than the total size of all the state’s existing marine protected areas approved in 2010, Shester said.
Shester noted that the areas slated for closure Monday aren’t currently used for trawling, so the plan is precautionary, and wouldn’t affect existing operations. And it would still allow other fishing methods used by ground-fish anglers, such as traps and hook and line. As researchers explore the closure areas they may reopen some that are less ecologically sensitive.
An additional 123,000 square miles of the deepest habitat—ocean floor below 3,500 meters, or about two miles — is also off-limits to trawling.
While passage of the marine-protected areas was marked by acrimony between fishing and environmental groups, the new rockfish habitat area came about through a collaboration between groups who have sometimes been at odds.
Fishermen sat down at the table with conservation groups, along with federal scientists from the National Marine Fisheries Service, tribal leaders and state representatives from California, Oregon and Washington, to hash out a plan they could all live with. “We have an epic ocean backyard here,” Shester said, adding that the new rules will keep it that way. “This is something that will pay dividends for marine conservation, climate resilience, biodiversity creation and productive fisheries. This is a gift to future generations.”
(Deborah Sullivan Brennan, S. D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Recent heavy rainfall has led to problems for a state recovering from devastating wildfires, forcing people to flee their homes repeatedly for fear of debris flows tearing down hillsides stripped bare by flames. But the downpours also have provided relief as parts of California plunged back into drought less than a year after a historic dry stretch.
Rain was falling throughout much of Northern California on Friday, leading Yosemite National Park to ban all visitors as it expects flooding in its tourist-heavy valley. Visitors were barred from entering Yosemite Valley on Friday, and those already there were asked to leave by 5 p.m. The opener of the San Francisco Giants-Los Angeles Dodgers weekend series was rained out, the first at the Giants ballpark in 12 years.
A couple of hundred miles northwest in wine country, scorched during October wildfires, the National Weather Service predicted 4 to 6 inches of rainfall through Sunday.
The city of Santa Rosa, one of the hardest-hit burn areas, brought in extra firefighters and emergency personnel, fire department spokesman Paul Lowenthal said.
It’s not the amount of rainfall worrying city officials but the rate at which it falls, he said. Workers have been monitoring hundreds of storm drains, especially those protecting neighborhoods destroyed by fire.
“When we start talking about half an inch of rain or more an hour, that’s where we’re more susceptible to mudslides and debris flow in and around our burn zones,” Lowenthal said. The weather service issued several flood warnings throughout Northern California ahead of the expected “atmospheric river,” a long plume of subtropical moisture stretching to areas near Lake Tahoe. Some places in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco could see up to 8 inches of rain over a three-day period, leading forecasters to warn of possible flooding, mudslides and rockslides.
To the north, state officials warned this week that they may have to use the partially rebuilt spillway at Oroville Dam for the first time since repairs began on the badly damaged structure last summer.
Behind the dam, Lake Oroville has been filling up all winter, and more water was coming in than flowing out Friday. The water level was last at 793 feet and dropping. If it reaches about 830 feet, water managers say they will open the gates to the spillway.
In February 2017, a massive crater opened up in the 3,000-foot concrete chute that releases water from Lake Oroville, California’s second-largest reservoir.
Crews shut down the spillway for inspections just as a major storm dumped a torrent of rain. The lake quickly filled, and water began flowing over an emergency spillway that had never been used.
The water eroded the barren hillside beneath the spillway, leading to fears it would collapse and release a wall of water that could swamp communities downstream. Authorities ordered nearly 200,000 people to flee, but the crisis was averted.
California officials say they hope to avoid using the main spillway but are confident it can safely function.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Preliminary storm data Friday showed some stunning totals for the three-day storm, including more than 10 inches of rain at some locations in the Sierra Nevada and on the central coast, and 31 inches of snow at Tuolumne Meadows in the Sierra.
In coastal Santa Barbara and Ventura counties northwest of Los Angeles, where drought conditions have been characterized as severe to extreme, many locations reported well over 5 inches of rain from the storm.
Any addition to the Sierra snowpack is welcome: Runoff from the 400-mile-long range supplies about a third of the water used by Californians each year, but the most recent measurement found its water content to be less than 40 percent of normal.
For counties like Santa Barbara, the rain will help fill reservoirs that are vital to local water supplies even though the storm forced thousands to evacuate their homes due to the threat of destructive debris flows, which fortunately did not materialize.
A little more than a year ago, years of drought had reduced a major reservoir there to less than 10 percent of capacity before the historic rains of 2017.
In the San Joaquin Valley — part of the Central Valley agricultural heartland of California — the storm brought pluses and minuses.
“It’s making it messy,” said Joe Del Bosque, owner of Del Bosque Farms on the west side of the San Joaquin, where the rain interrupted his asparagus harvest for two days and when it resumed, workers had to walk the crop out of the fields because tractors couldn’t be used. In addition to lost wages for workers, the storm will delay planting of his melons and other farmers’ tomatoes, which in turn will delay those harvests, he said.
On the positive side, the moisture the storm put into the ground will help his almond and cherry trees, which have finished blooming and are leafing out.
It will also help develop cover crops that are plowed into the ground where organic melons are grown.
Runoff will also help recharge groundwater on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley that has been depleted through pumping during years of drought, Del Bosque said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The first full day of the season included scenes of snow falling on blooming daffodils in suburban Philadelphia, New Yorkers twisting to fix blown-out umbrellas, tractor-trailers stuck on snowy highways and kids making their first snowman of spring.
“I want warm! I’m done with the cold,” said Yana Damoiseau, a pedestrian in New York City.
Airlines canceled more than 4,000 flights, tens of thousands of customers lost power from West Virginia northward, and school districts throughout the Northeast called off classes ahead of the storm. At least two traffic deaths were reported in New Jersey and on New York’s Long Island.
Up to 8 inches of snow had fallen in some Philadelphia suburbs by the evening, and more than a foot near Allentown, Pa. New York had at least 5 inches and braced for a total of 6 to 12. Forecasters said Boston could get 6 inches as the storm moved into New England. “Winter will not relent,” said Pancho Ortega, who was clearing the sidewalk outside his soon-to-open restaurant in Philadelphia. “I don’t like the shoveling part. I’m ready for it to kind of go away.”
Roberto Sims expressed frustration with how quickly his just-cleared Philadelphia sidewalks became snow-covered once again.
“I give up and now the corner store doesn’t have any salt left,” he said. “I’ll just have to take my chances and hope for someone else on the block to do it later.”
More than 1,200 flights in the New York City area alone were canceled, with a ripple effect on air travel around the country. On the ground, Amtrak scaled back service on the Northeast corridor between Washington and Boston, and some states banned trucks from major highways.
The storm also unloaded snow on Virginia and West Virginia as it pushed into the Northeast. Virginia reported more 240 traffic accidents since midnight. In West Virginia, more than 5,000 customers were without power in the evening. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency for New York City and its suburbs and said 5,500 utility workers and 300 National Guard members were standing by. The state also sent generators, light towers, plows and salt to areas that have already endured multi-day, storm-related power outages this month. Cuomo said he was told the utilities were better prepared this time. “We have had assurances,” he said. “Frankly, I’m not satisfied with the assurances.”
(Ted Shaffrey & Michael Hill, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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High winds and blowing snow led meteorologists to categorize the storm as a blizzard in parts of New England, including Boston. By afternoon, power outages climbed to more than 250,000 just in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.
“We’re not out of winter yet, that’s for sure,” Paul Knight, of Portland, Maine, said as snow accumulated on his eyebrows during a stroll. “The groundhog was right. Six more weeks of winter, and probably then some.”
Boston’s usually-packed subway trains were nearly empty as many workers stayed home and schools closed. Amtrak suspended all service Tuesday between Boston and New York City.
The storm disrupted road and air travel. The flight-tracking site FlightAware reported more than 1,500 canceled flights on Tuesday. At Boston’s Logan International Airport, the terminals were mostly empty with airport workers and the cleaning crew outnumbering passengers.
More than a foot of snow was reported in parts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut and Rhode Island on Tuesday afternoon with the storm expected to continue dumping snow.
Some areas got more than 2 feet, meteorologists said.
Not everyone complained. Andrew Gesler, who was walking in Portland with his son in a stroller and his dog alongside, said he was happy to see another big storm.
“I think it may be one of the last ones so I’m out here appreciating it,” Gesler said. “I love the white stuff, always had ever since I was a kid.”
Janice James’ Osterville house on Cape Cod was in the dark again after losing power for three days in the last storm. James and her four children spent Tuesday eating baked goods she made before the storm and hoping the lights and heat come back soon.
“We are freezing,” the 39-year-old said. Joe Rotella ducked into a train station as he tried to find his way to a hotel that’s hosting a convention where he’s speaking. Organizers were scrambling to establish video links to speakers whose planes were delayed or canceled, said Rotella, chief medical officer with the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.
“As a visitor to Boston, I’ve been looking forward to this for months, and this is kind of an adventure for me,” the Louisville, Ky., man said. “I didn’t have to go through the last two nor’easters so this still feels like fun.”
Miami residents Ashley Pozo, 21, and Ray Milo, 25, who we visiting friends in Boston, were stuck at the airport after their Tuesday flight was canceled. Rather than risk getting stranded in the city, they plan to stay another night in the airport, sleeping on chairs.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“We are making steady progress but realize if your power is out, those milestones don’t mean anything to you. We completely get that,” said Christine Milligan, a spokesman for utility National Grid in Massachusetts.
Power crews were working to restore electricity to more than 200,000 customers in the Northeast on Friday night. That was down from 300,000 earlier in the day. New Jersey and Massachusetts had the most outages, according to the poweroutage.us website, which compiles statistics from utilities across the nation.
National Grid tried to assure its Massachusetts customers it had hundreds of crews working on restorations and that power would return to the hardest hit areas, including the Merrimack Valley, by midnight Sunday. The company used helicopters on Friday to assess the damage of sub-transmission lines, which were located deep in the woods. Milligan said the wet, heavy snow caused a lot of damage. Wednesday’s storm came on the heels of an earlier nor’easter that brought damaging high winds.
“We know that customers want their power. We’re working as quickly as we can,” she said. “We’ve had to prioritize because we’ve had so much widespread damage.”
But there still were complaints about the pace of the restorations. “It is completely unacceptable that our citizens have to bear another night without heat or power,” Mayor Jim Fiorentini of Haverhill, Massachusetts, posted Friday on Facebook. He said he contacted National Grid and demanded more crews. “Please plan to be without power for multiple days as we work through this significant restoration,” Eversource posted on Twitter. The utility serves customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
That was little consolation to some residents.
“It’s colder in the house than it is outside,” Salem, Mass., resident Cindy Peters told The Eagle-Tribune newspaper. Robert Nixon, 83, sat in his running car to keep warm on Thursday after the senior housing complex where he lives in Norton, Mass., lost power.
He also had to throw out all the food in his fridge. “When you’re on Social Security, that stuff hurts,” he told The Boston Globe.
People without power piled into relatives’ homes, hung out at the local coffee shop or went to “warming centers” that some towns opened in libraries or senior centers.
The rush is on to restore power as forecasters monitor another system that could move up the coast Monday. Some weather models, however, have the storm missing the mark.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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With many schools closed for a second day, forecasters tracked the possibility of another late-season snowstorm to run up the coast early next week. “The strength of it and how close it comes to the coast will make all the difference. At this point it’s too early to say,” said Jim Nodchey, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Massachusetts. “We’re just looking at a chance.” At least two deaths were blamed on the storm. Snow still was falling Thursday in places including Vermont, where storm warnings were still in effect.
More than 800,000 customers were without power in the Northeast, including some who have been without electricity since last Friday’s destructive nor’easter. Thousands of flights across the region were canceled, and traveling on the ground was treacherous.
A train carrying more than 100 passengers derailed in Wilmington, Mass., after a fallen tree branch got wedged in a rail switch. Nobody was hurt. Tory Mazzola, a spokesman for Keolis Commuter Services, which runs the system for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, said the low-speed derailment remains under investigation. In New Hampshire, Interstate 95 in Portsmouth was closed in both directions because of downed power lines, leaving traffic at a standstill for hours.
Amtrak restored modified service between New York City and Boston on Thursday after suspending it because of the storm. New York City’s Metro-North commuter railroad, which had suspended service on lines connecting the city to its northern suburbs and Connecticut because of downed trees, restored partial service Thursday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The nor’easter knocked out electricity to hundreds of thousands of customers and produced “thundersnow” as it made its way up the coast, with flashes of lightning and booming thunder from the Philadelphia area to New York City. A New Jersey middle school teacher was struck by lightning but survived.
Officials urged people to stay off the roads.
“It’s kind of awful,” said New York University student Alessa Raiford, who put two layers of clothing on a pug named Jengo before taking him for a walk in slushy, sloppy Manhattan, where rain gave way to wet snow in the afternoon. “I’d rather that it be full-on snowing than rain and slush. It just makes it difficult.”
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning into this morning from the Philadelphia area through most of New England. The storm unloaded snow at a rate of 2 or 3 inches an hour, with some places in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut getting well over a foot by Wednesday night. Butler, N.J., got 22 inches, Sloatsburg, N.Y., 23 inches and Newtown, Conn., 14 inches.
More than 2,600 flights across the region — about 1,900 in the New York metro area alone— were canceled.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The system by midweek also was expected to cause more problems for the Northeast, which is dealing with the aftermath of a destructive and deadly nor’easter. Parts of the Dakotas were expected to get more than a foot of snow by the time the system moved east today, with Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa also getting significant amounts, according to the National Weather Service. Snowfall reports from the agency on Monday totaled as much as 6 inches in South Dakota and 9 inches in North Dakota and Minnesota.
State transportation officials advised against travel in parts of the upper Midwest, and a 211-mile stretch of Interstate 90 in southeastern South Dakota was shut down. I-29 also was set to shut down Monday evening from the North Dakota border to Iowa.
The storm system rolled in from the Pacific and is making its way to the East Coast. By Wednesday it could be causing more problems for the Northeast, which is cleaning up from a weekend nor’easter, said Frank Pereira, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md.
The nor’easter knocked out power to more than 2 million homes and businesses, flooded coastal towns and forced a number of school districts to cancel classes.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Skies were clear Sunday over much of the Northeast hit by the storm, which was blamed for nine deaths, including two children struck by trees. But many communities faced major challenges restoring power and cleaning up debris. In Scituate, Mass., a hard-hit coastal town near Boston, heavy construction vehicles worked to clear away several feet of sand that had covered roads near Peggotty Beach. Town officials planned to deploy a drone to help assess coastal damage.
Further north, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker inspected storm damage in other battered coastal communities. While perched on a sea wall in Gloucester — something officials have urged people not to do — the Republican got soaked by a strong wave, WBZ-AM reported.
“People should not stand on sea walls, correct,” Baker said sheepishly. “However, I did want to get a look at what things were like on the other side, which I did get a look at before I got hit by the wave.”
As of late Sunday, more than 180,000 customers remained without power in Massachusetts. More than 230,000 were in the dark in Pennsylvania, and large-scale outages also continued in New York, New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland.
In New Jersey, officials said some areas might not have their electricity restored until Tuesday or Wednesday. Among those affected was John Thompson, of Morris Township, whose family has been staying with in-laws.
“We have two young girls, so staying in a home without electricity wasn’t an option,” Thompson said Sunday while having breakfast with his family. “I know (the utility crews) are working as hard and fast as they can, but it’s still frustrating that it’s taking so long.”
In the Philadelphia suburbs, the Lower Merion School District said one high school and one elementary school remained without power and would not open today unless it was restored.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The storm submerged cars and toppled tractor-trailers, sent waves higher than a two-story house crashing into the Massachusetts coast, forced schools and businesses to close early and caused a rough ride for passengers aboard a flight that landed at Dulles Airport outside Washington.
“Pretty much everyone on the plane threw up,” a pilot wrote in a report to the National Weather Service.
The Eastern Seaboard was hammered by gusts exceeding 50 mph, with winds of 80 to 90 mph on Cape Cod. Ohio and upstate New York got a foot or more of snow. Boston and Rhode Island were expected to get 2 to 5 inches.
The storm killed at least five people, including a 77-year-old woman struck by a branch outside her home near Baltimore. Fallen trees also killed a man and a 6-year-old boy in different parts of Virginia, an 11-year-old boy in New York state and a man in Newport, R.I.
Floodwaters in Quincy, Mass., submerged cars, and police rescued people trapped in their vehicles. High waves battered nearby Scituate, making roads impassable and turning parking lots into small ponds. More than 1,800 people alerted Scituate officials they had evacuated, The Boston Globe reported.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker activated 200 National Guard members to help victims.
Airlines canceled more than 2,800 flights, mostly in the Northeast. LaGuardia and Kennedy airports in New York City were brought to a near standstill. Amtrak suspended service along the Northeast Corridor, from Washington to Boston.
The federal government closed all offices in the Washington area for the day. Smithsonian museums also shut their doors.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Dozens of rescuers and rescue dogs rushed to the scene after an avalanche hit the Squaw Valley Ski Resort near Lake Tahoe near the Nevada state line. Video showed them digging out a man from the snow.
One man was hospitalized with a serious lower body injury, another person was treated for injuries and released while three other people escaped injury, the resort said in a statement. The skiers and snowboarders were within areas open to skiing at the time and the guests had been warned of the potential danger, resort spokeswoman Liesl Hepburn said.
The resort used explosives and other tools to knock down snow to prevent avalanches throughout the day but the snowfall was heavy, she said.
The avalanche occurred hours after the body of a missing snowboarder was found at the same resort. Wenyu Zhang, 42, vanished Thursday as the region was hit by a blizzard packing winds gusting to nearly 150 mph over the ridge tops. It dumped 3 feet of snow in the mountains.
About 300 miles south, rain fell in the coastal foothill communities of Santa Barbara County, where thousands of people had been told to flee out of concern that the approaching storm might send huge swathes of fire-scarred slopes rushing down on them. But the rain that moved through Southern California on Thursday night and Friday spared Montecito, which saw hundreds of homes destroyed in January mudslides. Evacuation orders affecting up to 30,000 people on the south Santa Barbara County coast were lifted at mid-morning.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Heavy snow and high winds halted all flights in and out of Dublin Airport, with authorities saying they are unlikely to resume until Saturday. Irish Rail said no trains are likely to run until Saturday.
Forecasters said a new storm will bring blizzards, 60 mph winds, freezing rain and thunderstorms to Ireland, southwestern England and Wales. They predicted zero visibility and deep pockets of snow.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar urged people to get home by 4 p.m. Thursday and stay there until the storm has passed.
“The risk to life and limb presented by severe weather conditions should not be underestimated,” said Varadkar.
The World Health Organization warned Thursday that the cold weather poses particular risks to vulnerable people such as the elderly, children and those with chronic diseases or disabilities.
Swedish media reported that a woman who had left her home at an asylum center with her daughter and son, ages 8 and 9, was pronounced dead in the hospital after being found in a forest.
The Aftonbladet daily newspaper reported the woman was “poorly dressed” and her daughter was in intensive care. The son was found safe and sound Wednesday afternoon when temperatures in the region were about 14 Fahrenheit.
Danish police said an 84-year-old woman with dementia became the second person to die in the country because of the cold weather. She left her home Wednesday evening and was found Thursday in a park in Roskilde, west of Copenhagen, police said.
It was travel chaos at Europe’s airports and on its highways. Geneva’s airport closed after the Swiss city was hit with about 5 inches of snow over a three-hour period early Thursday. It reopened several hours later after extensive de-icing of the runway, planes and facilities.
Snow also shut down Glasgow and Edinburgh airports in Scotland, and there were cancellations at Heathrow and other airports in Britain. Airports in the southern French cities of Montpellier and the Atlantic beach resort of Biarritz were also affected.
Around the Paris region, about two dozen officials braved Arctic temperatures for a night outdoors to call attention to the plight of the homeless after at least 13 died from exposure since Jan. 1.
Dragging blankets and sleeping bags, officials from an array of political parties wearing their blue, white and red sashes hunkered down near Austerlitz train station as snow began falling early Thursday. The city was blanketed in white by daybreak.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The federal government will reimburse most of the costs, but the state will still need to come up with about $371 million on top of the state’s existing wildfire budget, the Legislative Analyst’s Office told the Senate Budget Committee. That shouldn’t be a problem because state revenue has far exceeded expectations so far this fiscal year and the general fund is flush with cash.
“The 2017 wildfire season in California was nothing short of catastrophic,” said Mark Ghilarducci, director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
Nearly $1.5 billion was spent fighting fires and on recovery north of San Francisco in October, including debris removal and infrastructure repair. A series of fires in Wine Country and other areas killed 44 people and destroyed 8,800 buildings, prompting $10 billion in insurance claims. The state spent about $300 million on December fires in Southern California, including the largest blaze in state history, which swept through Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. The preliminary numbers are likely to increase as officials get a better account of spending.
Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed spending $35 million in next year’s budget to backfill lost sales, property and hotel tax revenue for local governments and to repair infrastructure. He also proposed spending $350 million from the state’s tax on carbon emissions for forest management on fire prevention, new helicopters, fire engines and other purposes.
Meanwhile, fire chiefs from around the state are asking lawmakers for $100 million to boost the state’s mutual aid system for sharing resources across departments.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Gov. Ricardo Rossello said federal officials reduced the amount to $2 billion without providing an explanation nearly five months after Congress approved the loan. He warned the move puts Puerto Rico in a “dangerous financial dilemma” and that his administration could be forced to cut some essential services as the island continues to struggle after Hurricane Maria. “Any material interruption to Puerto Rico’s public services will only exacerbate outmigration of its population to the mainland and further deepen and prolong Puerto Rico’s decade-old fiscal and economic crisis,” he said.
Tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans fled to the U.S. mainland after the Category 4 storm, which hit as the island was struggling to restructure a portion of its $73 billion public debt load amid an 11-year recession.
Rossello said it seems the Treasury imposed certain loan restrictions to make it “extremely difficult for Puerto Rico to access these funds when it needs federal assistance the most.” He also said Treasury officials told his administration last week that they do not intend to forgive the loan.
Congress had approved the loan in October to help Puerto Rico recover from the storm, which killed dozens of people and caused up to an estimated $94 billion in damage. Some 15 percent of power customers remain in the dark, and more than 700 families are still living in hotels across the island. Last week, Puerto Rico’s power company obtained a $300 million emergency loan that will help keep it operating only through late March.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Sonoma County officials requested the state review after their response times were criticized. The unprecedented wildfires sparked in the early morning and eventually killed 44 people in several counties and destroyed 8,900 buildings. Many residents reported finding out about the fires from neighbors or relatives, rather than official alerts. The report, which was released Monday by California’s Office of Emergency Services, concludes that multiple alert systems in Sonoma County, overlapping responsibilities and a failure to map out roles in an emergency “appear to have resulted in duplication, inconsistency and some confusion in messages transmitted to the public.”
Counties were operating separately as different employees struggled to cope with hundreds of incoming reports of fires and smoke at numerous locations, leaving them unsure of who was in charge of what, OES investigators found. Two jobs related to sending evacuation and fire warnings even had similar titles: alert originator and alert operator.
“Checklists or detailed procedures for deciding what warnings to issue, when, and in what form appeared to be almost entirely absent, except for a widely shared understanding that the basic required criterion was ‘imminent threat to life, health or property,’” the report said.
Documents released by the county show it targeted more than 55,000 telephone numbers over SoCoAlert, and the county also sent more than 6,000 text and email messages on that system. The county sent another 38,000 messages through its voluntary Nixle cellphone text alert system, which only went to residents who had signed up in advance.
SoCo Alerts, which also require recipients to sign up for email and cellphone notification, was launched just last year. During the first hours of the fire, it failed to connect with more than half the telephone numbers in its database, according to county officials.
While some officials had been trained on the overlapping warning systems, they had no prepared alerts for fire emergencies, the report said. Instead, all the alerts were focused on flood emergencies or evacuations, leaving officials to figure out how to write the alerts on the fly as they simultaneously worried about traffic congestion and feared unnecessarily panicking people.
The county’s failure to clearly define roles “in such a rapidly developing situation left a number of individuals in the position of assuming responsibility for framing evacuation messages without adequate training, information, or in coordination with other elements of government.”
The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa reported last week that former Emergency Services Manager Christopher Helgren had been reassigned to a new job. The newspaper said Helgren was chiefly responsible for a decision about a year before the fires that ruled out sending mass wireless alerts to cellphones to warn residents of an emergency.
Mark Ghilarducci, director of the state emergency services office, stressed in a letter accompanying the report that it is not an investigation into the specific decisions behind the emergency notification process, nor is the report meant to provide “conclusive findings” about the actions of any individual, according to the Press Democrat.
Sonoma County spokeswoman Briana Khan did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
The report makes 11 recommendations, starting with creating an updated emergency plan that addresses how each of the warning systems should be used in an emergency. It also says many employees need much more training.
“It is also worth noting that public expectations for emergency information from government have risen in recent years,” the report adds. “The availability (of) social media, 24-hour news services, and personal wireless devices have led citizens to assume that they will receive prompt and useful information about current events, including disasters. In some cases, this heightened expectation may have exceeded actual government capabilities.”
(Juliet Williams, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The system that stretched from Texas to the Canadian Maritime provinces had prompted several emergency declarations even before the dangerous storms arrived.
In southwestern Michigan, the body of a 48-year-old man was found floating in floodwaters Sunday in Kalamazoo, city Public Safety Lt. David Thomas said. Police were withholding the release of his name until notifying relatives. Thomas said the death didn’t appear suspicious, but the cause wasn’t known. An autopsy was planned as early as today. Kalamazoo was hard hit by flooding from last week’s heavy rains and melting snow.
In Kentucky, authorities said three people died. Two bodies were recovered from submerged vehicles in separate incidents Saturday.
A body was recovered from a vehicle that was in a ditch in in western Kentucky near Morganfield, the Henderson Fire Department said on its Facebook page. The body has been sent to a medical examiner for an autopsy.
And a male’s body was pulled from a vehicle in a creek near the south central Kentucky community of Franklin on Saturday, the Simpson County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. The victim’s identify was being withheld pending notification of relatives.
About 20 miles away, Dallas Jane Combs, 79, died after a suspected tornado destroyed her Adairville home earlier Saturday, the Logan County Sheriff’s Office told media outlets. Sheriff officials said Combs was inside the home when it collapsed on her. Combs was pronounced dead at the scene.
Authorities said Combs’ husband was outside putting up plastic to keep rain out of the home when he was blown into the basement area. He sustained minor injuries.
The fifth death was in northeast Arkansas, where an 83-year-old man was killed after high winds toppled a trailer home. Clay County Sheriff Terry Miller told KAIT-TV that Albert Foster died Saturday night after the home was blown into a pond.
About 50 miles away, the National Weather Service said the roof was blown off a hotel in Osceola, about 160 miles north of Memphis, Tenn.
In Middle Tennessee, the National Weather Service on Sunday confirmed an EF-2 tornado with maximum winds of 120 mph hit Clarksville on Saturday. Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Sandra Brandon said at least four homes were destroyed and dozens of others were damaged, while 75 cars at a tire plant parking lot had their windows blown out or were tossed onto one other.
“To look at what I’m looking at and know we didn’t lose anybody is just a miracle,” Montgomery County Mayor Jim Durrett told The Leaf-Chronicle.
At Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, a teenage girl was hit by falling debris at a college basketball game after an apparent lightning strike knocked a hole in the arena’s roof Saturday night.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In an agreement described as the first of its kind, the Indian Ocean nation popular with tourists is designating nearly a third of its waters as protected areas, aiming to ensure the longevity of its unique biodiversity.
The archipelago’s 115 islands have been isolated by continental land masses for millions of years. The Aldabra atoll, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is home to the world’s largest population of giant tortoises, critically endangered sea cows and spawning grounds for a number of rare species. But overfishing has hurt.
The government on Wednesday signed a bill restricting nearly all human activity in the waters around Aldabra and overall setting aside more than 81,081 square miles as protected areas. The areas around Aldabra will ban all extractive uses such as fishing and petroleum exploration; the rest will be restricted to sustainable practices. The plan will be completed by 2021.
“A great honor and privilege,” the country’s environment minister, Didier Dogley, said at the signing.
The deal with the country’s creditors was brokered by U.S.-based The Nature Conservancy and involved a $1 million grant by the foundation of actor Leonardo Di-Caprio. At the height of its debt crisis in the late 2000s, the Seychelles was one of the world’s top debt-ridden countries. Its sovereign debt peaked at nearly $1 billion, according to the World Bank. Today the debt stands at less than half of that, according to the finance ministry.
The deal allows for a certain amount of money to be repaid into a trust fund to support conservation-related projects, organizers said. While welcoming the deal, the CEO of the Seychelles National Parks Authority warned that certain threats to the Seychelles remain beyond control. “Like climate, for example,” Flavien Joubert said.
The new agreement has worried some who say their livelihoods will be severely restricted.
“If you protect everywhere, where (will) we go fishing?” Elvis Simon Dingwall said. He echoed others who said they have to bear the brunt of the government’s past economic failures.
The head of the Seychelles’ state-owned oil and gas exploration entity, Patrick Joseph, said Petro Seychelles initially was resistant to the plan but now is cautiously optimistic. “Provided this is done properly, we choose the right companies and we do a proper impact assessment before we drill, I feel like the country will definitely benefit from oil and gas resources,” Joseph said.
The Seychellois government is already benefiting from the confidence the deal has inspired in its creditors, with a separate bond deal now being finalized with the World Bank to help finance a transition to sustainable fisheries.
“The Seychelles is leading the way in terms of how it is going to manage its ocean territory in a sustainable fashion,” said Benoit Bosquet, the World Bank’s practice manager for environment and natural resources.
(Adelle Kalakouti, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The storm system started pushing heavy rain, snow and ice into the region this week. The weather has already been blamed for hundreds of car crashes and several fatalities, including a crash that killed four people along a slippery interstate in Nebraska.
About 19 people had been evacuated from homes in Elkhart, where emergency crews used boats and an armored vehicle to respond, Mayor Tim Neese said early Wednesday. Schools were closed in the northern Indiana city because of the flooding, and an emergency shelter was set up, The Elkhart Truth newspaper reported.
“This city has not seen flooding like this in the last 45 years,” Neese said. “We also had record snowfall in addition to consistent rain.”
In Elkhart and nearby Goshen, local officials declared a state of emergency and asked that traffic be limited to first responders and emergency personnel. Homes and streets also were flooded in the South Bend area, and forecasters predicted that the swollen St. Joseph River wouldn’t crest until today.
Evacuations grew elsewhere across the Midwest after heavy rains and snowmelt sent rivers and streams out of their banks.
Authorities in Lansing, Mich., recommended the evacuations of at least six neighborhoods Wednesday ahead of the expected cresting of the Grand River at more than 3 feet above flood stage tonight. Firefighters in Lake Station, Ind., about 30 miles southeast of Chicago, evacuated some residents Wednesday after about 2 to 3 feet of water surrounded 15 to 20 homes.
In Illinois, authorities issued an evacuation order Wednesday for residents in the city of Marseilles who live near the Illinois River. The fear of rising water along the river forced the evacuation late Tuesday of the LaSalle County Nursing Home in Ottawa.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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On Monday and Tuesday, the northernmost weather station in the world, Cape Morris Jesup at the northern tip of Greenland, experienced more than 24 hours of temperatures above freezing, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute. “How weird is that?” tweeted Robert Rohde, a physicist at UC Berkeley. “Well it’s Arctic winter. The sun set in October and won’t be seen again until March. Perpetual night, but still above freezing.”
This thaw occurred as a pulse of extremely mild air shot through the Greenland Sea.
Warm air is spilling into the Arctic from all sides. On the opposite end of North America, abnormally mild air also poured over northern Alaska on Tuesday, where the temperature in Utqiag vik, previously known as Barrow, soared to a record high of 31 degrees, 40 degrees above normal.
The warmth over Alaska occurred as almost one-third of the ice covering the Bering Sea off Alaska’s West Coast vanished in just over a week during the middle of February, InsideClimate-News reported.
Temperatures over the entire Arctic north of 80 degrees latitude have averaged about 10 degrees above normal since the beginning of the calendar year, sometimes spiking over 25 degrees above normal.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Two weak tornadoes hit North Texas early Tuesday, demolishing at least one mobile home and damaging about a dozen others in a rural area near Joshua and damaging the roofs of homes in the Dallas suburb of DeSoto. At least two people were injured. The weather service said they were EF0 tornadoes with winds ranging from 65 to 85 mph. The storms occurred in advance of a strong cold front that threatened to bring wintry precipitation and freezing temperatures to parts of North Texas.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Just three weeks ago, officials were predicting that Cape Town would reach Day Zero — a first for a major city in modern times — in late April, forcing its 4 million residents to line up at collection points to receive water rations from trucks. Now, after three postponements, the city predicts that it will reach that crisis point on July 9.
Even more striking, the city’s announcement of the new deadline, posted online, says that as water conservation efforts intensify, “Defeating Day Zero is in sight.” Cape Town has cut its water consumption to 523 million liters a day — about 139 million gallons, and less than half of what it was four years ago, before the drought began. Farmers in Western Cape province have also diverted enough water to supply the city, South Africa’s second largest, for 19 days at the current rate.
As a result, the city may reach the Southern Hemisphere winter, which begins in June, without taps going dry. But there is no guarantee that the season will bring the usual rainfall, and the reservoirs behind the city’s dams are at 24 percent capacity, and falling.
The city is building a network of desalination plants, but it is not clear when those will go into service.
Last year, the city limited residents to using 87 liters of water, about 23 gallons, per person, per day, for all uses including bathing, drinking, cooking, cleaning and toilet flushing. On Feb. 1, it lowered that limit to 50 liters, and it is fining violators.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Authorities believe more bodies could be buried at the Hulene garbage dump on the outskirts of Maputo, and a search was underway. The garbage in the poor, densely populated area where the disaster happened rose to the height of a three-story building, according to the Portuguese news agency Lusa.
Lusa and Radio Mocambique both reported 17 deaths. Half a dozen homes were destroyed, and some residents in the area fled for fear of another collapse.
“The mountains of garbage collapsed on the houses, and many families were still inside these residences,” Fatima Belchoir, a national disaster official, told Lusa. Authorities are trying to help people who lost their homes, she said.
The Hulene garbage dump is the largest such facility in Maputo. People often comb through the garbage, searching for food and items to sell.
Health workers have long raised concerns about the impact of the fumes, flies and other hazards of the dump on the surrounding community. Municipal officials have previously discussed the closure of the dump.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The blaze scorched more than 2,000 acres of chaparral and shrub oak in the small town of Bishop on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada that is popular for hiking, fishing, climbing and hunting. Officials ended most evacuations that were ordered near the town but warned that strong winds were expected in the area and urged residents to remain vigilant.
It comes as California has seen some record-high temperatures and little rain after emerging from a five-year drought, helping fuel some of the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in state history late last year. U.S. drought monitors this month declared parts of Southern California back in severe drought.
In the most recent fire, several communities and campgrounds in the Pleasant Valley Reservoir area had been told to leave, said Cathey Mattingly, spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
It’s not clear how many people had to evacuate after the blaze started Sunday, Inyo County sheriff’s spokeswoman Carma Roper said. But hundreds of structures were threatened, including the Laws Railroad Museum, a railroad station built in the 1880s, Mattingly said.
She said at least 400 firefighters are working to contain the flames north of Bishop, a former mining town of about 3,800 that still celebrates mules each year with country music concerts, mule chariot races, log skidding and parades. The fire broke out near the Pleasant Valley Reservoir and quickly grew to 900 acres.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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An essential ingredient in lithium-ion batteries that power millions of smartphones as well as plug-in electric cars, cobalt is in heavy demand.
But just as the silverish-gray metal has established itself as a critical element in the growth of the market in electric vehicles (EVs), cobalt has also become a source of serious ethical and economic concerns.
Most notably, the majority of the world’s cobalt production is concentrated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where in many cases children work in hazardous conditions mining the metal.
And once extracted, there are questions whether enough long-term supplies of cobalt can be established to fulfill the hopes of policymakers in places like California who want to transform the transportation system from gasoline-powered vehicles to EVs.
Supporters think the problems associated with the mining of cobalt can sort themselves out, but even the most ardent acknowledge human rights as well as supply-chain issues need to be resolved. For many consumers, the connection between cobalt and clean-car technology may come as a surprise.
“There’s absolutely an educational process really that comes with all technology,” said Blaine Townsend, a senior vice president at the Foster City-based investment firm Bailard Wealth Management who has written about cobalt’s supply-chain problems.
“I think it’s really difficult for the average consumer to understand all the science and the rare earth minerals that go into” the production of batteries for EVs, smartphones and computers.
Why cobalt is so important
The cathodes in lithium-ion batteries typically used in EVs are made of metal oxides that contain a combination of cobalt and other elements.
Cobalt helps the cathodes concentrate a lot of power in a confined space. Without the element’s energy density, batteries in EVs without cobalt tend to perform worse.
It’s harder to recycle electric car batteries than lead-acid batteries used in gasoline- powered vehicles because of the number of materials involved and differences in how manufacturers build them.
As the EV sector attempts to move from niche-market status to mainstream acceptance, cobalt demand is surging. California policymakers have pushed zero-emissions vehicles as essential to meet the state’s mandates to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Gov. Jerry Brown has set a target of 1.5 million clean-energy vehicles on California’s roads by 2025. In his final State of the State address last month, Brown ratcheted the number even higher — to 5 million zero-emission vehicles by 2030.
The United Kingdom and France have announced plans to phase out gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by 2040. All 16 states in Germany — home of Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi — passed a non-binding resolution to ban the sale of new gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2030. While no date was set, a government official in China last year announced the country’s intention to ban the sale of cars using fossil fuels. China represents the auto industry’s largest market in the world, even bigger than the U.S.. Automakers are making their own moves. Tesla has begun rolling out its Model 3, with a stripped-down base price of $35,000, marketed as an EV for the masses.
Traditional carmakers have also made commitments, including:
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“It was awful,” said Mercedes Rojas Huerta, 57, who was sitting on a bench outside her home in Mexico City’s trendy Condesa district, too frightened to go back inside. “It started to shake; the cars were going here and there. What do I do?”
She said she was still scared thinking of the Sept. 19 earthquake that caused 228 deaths in the capital and 141 more in nearby states. Many buildings in Mexico City are still damaged from that quake.
Mexican Civil Protection chief Luis Felipe Fuente tweeted that there were no immediate reports of major damage from Friday’s quake. In Oaxaca, Gov. Alejandro Murat said via Twitter that damage was being evaluated, but there were no deaths reported so far. The Red Cross said the facade from a building collapsed in Mexico City’s Condesa neighborhood, which was hit hard on Sept. 19.
The U.S. Geological Survey put the quake’s preliminary magnitude at 7.2 and said its epicenter was 33 miles northeast of Pinotepa in Oaxaca state. It had a depth of 15 miles. About an hour after the quake, a magnitude 5.8 aftershock centered in southern Mexico caused tall buildings in Mexico City to briefly sway again.
USGS seismologist Paul Earle said Friday’s earthquake appeared to be a separate temblor, rather than an aftershock of a Sept. 8 earthquake also centered in Oaxaca, which registered a magnitude of 8.2. The Sept. 19 earthquake struck closer to Mexico City. The Sept. 8 quake killed nearly 100 people in Oaxaca and neighboring Chiapas, but was centered about 273 miles southwest of Friday’s earthquake, Earle said.
In Mexico’s capital, frightened residents flooded into the streets in Condesa, but there were no immediate signs of damage.
“I’m scared,” Rojas Huerta said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Temperatures could subsequently cool down if carbon dioxide is somehow removed from the air later in the century, the document notes. But that prospect is questionable at the massive scales that would be required, it observes.
The 31-page draft, a summary of a much-anticipated report on the 1.5 degrees Celsius target expected to be finalized in October, was published by the website ClimateHome on Tuesday, which said the document had been “publicly available on the US federal register over the past month.” Last month, several news outlets including Reuters quoted from the draft but did not publish it in full.
The 1.5°C target is crucial to small island nations worried about rising seas, and other nations particularly vulnerable to warming, and was explicitly included in the Paris climate agreement as the more ambitious of two climate goals, the other being 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The draft document states that there is a “very high risk” of the planet warming more than 1.5 degrees above the temperature seen in the mid to late 19th century. Maintaining the planet’s temperature entirely below that level throughout the present century, without even briefly exceeding it, is likely to be “already out of reach,” it finds.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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It is the largest oil spill in decades, but the disaster has unfolded outside the glare of international attention that big spills have previously attracted. That is because of its remote location on the high seas and also the type of petroleum involved: condensate, a toxic, liquid byproduct of natural gas production.
Unlike the crude oil in better-known disasters like the Exxon Valdez and the Deepwater Horizon, condensate does not clump into black globules that can be easily spotted or produce heart-wrenching images of animals mired in muck. There’s no visible slick that can be pumped out.
Experts say the only real solution is to let it evaporate or dissolve. Absorbed into the water, it will remain toxic for a time, though it will also disperse more quickly into the ocean than crude oil. Experts say there has never been so large a spill of condensate; up to 111,000 metric tons has poured into the ocean. It has almost certainly already invaded an ecosystem that includes some of the world’s most bountiful fisheries off Zhoushan, the archipelago that rises where the Yangtze River flows into the East China Sea.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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At the current rate, the world’s oceans on average will be at least 2 feet higher by the end of the century compared to today, according to researchers who published in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.
Sea level rise is caused by warming of the ocean and melting from glaciers and ice sheets. The research, based on 25 years of satellite data, shows that pace has quickened, mainly from the melting of massive ice sheets. It confirms scientists’ computer simulations and is in line with predictions from the United Nations, which releases regular climate change reports. “It’s a big deal” because the projected sea level rise is a conservative estimate and it is likely to be higher, said lead author Steve Nerem of the University of Colorado.
Of the 3 inches of sea level rise in the past quarter century, about 55 percent is from warmer water expanding, and the rest is from melting ice. But the process is accelerating, and more than three-quarters of that acceleration since 1993 is due to melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the study shows. Like weather and climate, there are two factors in sea level rise: year-to-year small rises and falls that are caused by natural events, and larger long-term rising trends that are linked to man-made climate change.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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It turned out to be a false alarm, a computer glitch. The damage? An erosion of trust.
“Now I have to check every single time, God forbid, there’s a tornado warning, a tsunami alert, pick your poison,” said Grosso, 25, a social media manager from Stamford. “I have to look at it and go, ‘Is it a test? Was it sent in error?’ And I could be wasting precious time in case it was real.”
Last month’s bogus ballistic missile warning in Hawaii and, now, this week’s tsunami snafu have highlighted trouble spots and prompted calls for change in the nation’s increasingly complex system for alerting Americans about dangerous weather, active shooters, kidnapped children, plant explosions and other emergencies. Both incidents have prompted calls for reform, including better training for emergency workers in charge of sending alerts.
More than 1,000 federal, state and local government agencies have the ability to issue emergency alerts through an array of federally managed communications networks. It is a patchwork system that usually works as intended but can wreak havoc when it doesn’t.
In the Senate, legislation introduced last week in response to the false missile alert would establish standards for state and local agencies’ participation in the national alert system, require federal certification of their incident management systems, and recommend steps for avoiding false alarms.
Additionally, the Federal Communications Commission has ordered wireless providers to do a better job of targeting emergency alerts to only those in the affected area, with a geographic “overreach” of no more than one-tenth of a mile.
Aside from the false alarms, emergency agencies have been criticized for sending alerts to too many people or too few. In Alaska, for instance, a tsunami warning triggered by an undersea earthquake in January reached residents of Anchorage even though the city wasn’t in danger. In Northern California wine country, where wildfires killed dozens of people in October, some residents complained that authorities failed to send an emergency alert to their phones.
“The emergency alerting system is really a whole collection of systems, and there are various places where it can break down,” said Dan Gonzales, a scientist at RAND Corp. who studies emergency alert systems. “With so many organizations involved, it’s difficult to make it foolproof.”
The risk of too many false alarms, Gonzales said, is that “people will ignore warnings if they believe they’re not accurate or not relevant.”
That was on vivid display Tuesday when AccuWeather, the private forecasting service, took what was intended to be a routine, monthly National Weather Service test message and sent it as a real warning to subscribers up and down the East Coast, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.
AccuWeather, based in State College, Pa., blamed the weather service, saying the government agency miscoded the test message.
The weather service insists its message was coded properly.
(Michael Rubinkam, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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As the fire moved east, homes south of the canyon along Chollas Parkway were evacuated including those on Dwight, Spa, Day and Hughes streets. Twenty-three structures were evacuated.
About two acres were charred, Muñoz said. Firefighters with help from a firefighting helicopter stopped the fire’s progress at about 6:10 p.m.
Fire officials could not confirm whether arson was suspected, but witnesses told officers that three teenagers were seen running from the fire soon after it started, San Diego police said.
An unidentified person of interest was taken into custody about 6:20 p.m.
No homes were damaged.
(Lyndsay Winkley, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is telling owners of the 1,700 other hydroelectric dams it regulates nationally that it expects them to look equally hard at their own organizations and aging dams, in the wake of the sudden collapse of much of first one, then both spillways last February at the 770-foot-tall Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest.
Given that the average dam in the United States is in its 50s, like Oroville, it’s critical that owners and monitors of America’s 90,580 dams act on a main lesson of the near-disaster, dam officials nationally say: Is the way a dam was built in the Cold War-era or earlier good enough to protect lives in 2018 and beyond?
The crisis in California, a state that had been recognized nationally for its dam safety program, “makes very clear that just because a project has operated successfully for a long period of time, does not guarantee that it will continue to do so,” the federal dam regulators wrote late last month in an unusual, blunt open letter to U.S. dam operators.
Last Feb. 12, residents across parts of three counties in the Sierra Nevada foothills fled their homes. Despite evacuation orders for nearly 200,000 people, however, the feared uncontrolled release of massive amounts of Oroville’s reservoir did not happen.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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They carry out bicycles, furniture, doors and windows, drawers spilling with clothes— anything they can get their hands on. Some camp in the street, intent on guarding their belongings, refusing to leave the neighborhood where they have lived for more than three decades.
“This used to be my terrace. It had such a nice view,” said Ulises Cárdenas, 53, as he stepped through the shell of his two-story concrete block house, now filled with cracks and stripped of its contents. “This used to be my street,” he added, glancing at the pile of crumpled roadway just below.
The collapse that started late last month and continued through last weekend has devastated this neighborhood of working-class families south of downtown Tijuana. Angry, frightened and uncertain of the future, residents have been demanding answers and action from government officials.
“I was born here, I was raised here,” one tearful woman told Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum when he visited the neighborhood on Tuesday together with Gov. Francisco Vega de Lamadrid. “We didn’t just lose a house, we lost a life.”
There have been no reports of fatalities or injuries, as houses already had been evacuated following a series of cracks that began around Jan. 18, and gradually spread across the hillside. As of Thursday, 96 dwellings had been labeled uninhabitable by the city’s Civil Protection Office — either already destroyed or in imminent danger of collapse. As a result, close to 400 people have lost their homes.
Many of Tijuana’s hillside neighborhoods are vulnerable to similar scenarios, as rain, temblors, leaks of underground utility lines and illegal discharges can overburden the unsteady surfaces where many of the city’s residents have built their houses.
“Every landslide has its particularities, there are many unanswered questions still,” said Juan Manuel Rodríguez Esteves, a geographer at the Colegio de La Frontera Norte who has studied the phenomenon. “But if you analyze all the landslides, you will see that the common denominator is unstable soils.”
Antonio Rosquillas, director of Baja California’s Civil Protection Office, has seen more than his share of these landslides, and estimates 80 over the past three decades. “Tijuana sits on soil that is very young, with steep slopes, ones that are unstable, without well-compacted soil,” Rosquillas said.
About 20 are categorized as major incidents, with Lomas del Rubí among the largest the city has seen. “This is the first landslide where there is clear evidence of what caused it,” he said.
In the case of Lomas del Rubí, scrutiny has fallen on a developer that has been building houses at the foot of the hillside, Grupo Melo. Authorities are looking at whether the company weakened the hillside by making improper cuts at its base. They said the developer is cooperating with the investigation and has worked to shore up the foundation at the city’s request.
City Hall has assembled a team of experts to pinpoint the cause of the landslide, and a preliminary report is expected in the next few days, Alejandro Lomelín, the city’s secretary of urban development and ecology, told reporters on Wednesday.
Lomelín said that the project’s construction permits were in order, but there was no overall “geotechnical study” done of the surrounding area, a large swath of the city whose topography has made it vulnerable to landslides, he said. Tijuana’s soil conditions “demand surgical precision,” Lomelín said. “You need to tread very carefully so as not to detonate activity.”
A study published in 2014 of hillside instability in Tijuana by a group of Spanish researchers stated that “over 30 percent of the city’s population resides on hillsides where terrain instability is a constant threat and where landslide hazards acquire unpredictable levels.”
Their report in the professional journal “Engineering Failure Analysis,” looked at the collapse of 11 houses in 2010 in the upscale Tijuana neighborhood of Laderas de Monterrey, where another eight buildings suffered significant damage.
Among the study’s conclusions: “Land-use legislation governing the region does not adequately take into account the risks, and there are no regulations governing construction on or near slopes.” Rosquillas, the state civil protection chief, agreed with that assessment. “This landslide should be the watershed so that there can be very clear and rigorous rules that prevent developers from building in the few remaining areas of the city’s urban core,” he said. “Because any cut that is made is going to present danger for the upper part of the hillside.”
Like so many other neighborhoods across the city, Lomas del Rubí was settled by squatters. Led by a man named Gilberto Portugal, they arrived in the mid-1980s and were able to purchase their plots from the landowner, Fraccionadora El Rubí, according to a longtime resident. As they acquired legal title to their properties, the government hooked them up to electricity, running water and sewer connections.
Cárdenas, who works as an inspector of aqueducts for the state public utility, CESPT, said he bought his property on Calle Reforma from a brother-in-law.
As the family’s needs grew, so did the house, which expanded to include five bedroom and two bathrooms. His ailing mother-in-law stayed in a room on the second floor. He built a terrace and a front room with a large picture window, where he would drink coffee every morning as the sun rose.
“This is where my children grew up,” he said, momentarily turning away to regain his composure. While they wait for answers and demand compensation, Cárdenas and his family have found temporary lodging at a house borrowed from a friend. “First and foremost is our lives,” he added. “We thank God that nobody died.”
For those with few alternatives, the city has opened a shelter, but many residents say it is too far away, and they are determined to stay and protect their remaining possessions.
Wilbert Hernández, 30, earned a living collecting scrap metal, but he lost that job a week ago. A friend lets him use the rooms that he shares with the mother of his youngest child and her four older children in a building filled with cracks.
Earlier this week, looking out over the destruction below, Luz Guizar held their 11-month-old daughter. “We don’t have anywhere to go, and money is pretty tight,” she said. “We’re all scared.”
(Sandra Dibble, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Early today, officials put the toll at eight dead, ranging in age from 37 to 66, and 63 others missing. Many of the missing were believed to be trapped in the 12-story Yun Men Tsui Ti building, which housed a small hotel, apartments and a hot-pot restaurant. About 196 people have been rescued so far from that building and three others. About 800 people went to bed in shelters on Wednesday: nearly 500 at the Hualien Gymnasium and more than 300 at the Chunghwa Primary School. Their homes had been destroyed or damaged, or they were fearful about the frequent and occasionally strong aftershocks that have regularly jolted the area since the quake.
At the school, people slept bundled up in heavy blankets and wearing coats and caps.
“It wasn’t a normal earthquake, there have been more than 100 aftershocks,” said Wu Ching-hua, 62, a native of Hualien who woke early today at the school. “We’ve had bigger quakes here many times before, but the aftershocks taper off gradually. Right now we don’t know what will happen.”
Wu’s daughter persuaded him to leave his home, in a five-story building next to a taller structure that she feared might topple.
Taiwan sits at the intersection of the Philippine Sea tectonic plate, which is moving west at about 3 inches a year, and the Eurasian plate, which extends east from mainland China. It experiences frequent seismic activity.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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A hotel employee died in Hualien county when the ground floor caved in at the Marshal Hotel, and another person died in a residential building, the national fire and rescue service reported.
A maintenance worker who was rescued after being trapped in the hotel’s basement said the force of the earthquake was unusual.
“At first it wasn’t that big. We get this sort of thing all the time and it’s really nothing. But then it got really terrifying,” Chen Minghui said after he was reunited with his son and grandson. “It was really scary.”
Other buildings shifted on their foundations due to the magnitude-6.4 quake late Tuesday and rescuers used ladders, ropes and cranes to get residents to safety.
Taiwanese media reported that a separate hotel known as the Beautiful Life Hotel was tilting. The agency also posted photos showing a road fractured in several parts.
Bridges and some highways were closed pending inspections after buckling due to the force of the quake.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The CDC programs, part of an initiative known as global health security, train front-line workers in outbreak detection and strengthen laboratory and emergency response systems in countries where disease risks are greatest. The goal is to stop future outbreaks at their source.
Most of the funding comes from a one-time, five-year emergency package that Congress approved to respond to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. About $600 million was awarded to CDC to help countries prevent infectious disease threats from becoming epidemics. That money is slated to run out by September 2019. Despite statements from President Donald Trump and senior administration officials affirming the importance of controlling outbreaks, the administration has not budgeted additional resources, according to global infectious disease experts.
Two weeks ago, the CDC began notifying staff and officials abroad about its plan to downsize these activities because officials assume there will be “no new resources,” said a senior government official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss budget matters. Notice is being given now to CDC country directors “as the very first phase of a transition,” the official said. There is a need for “forward planning,” the official said, to accommodate longer advance notice for staff and leases and property agreements. The downsizing decision was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The CDC plans to narrow its focus to 10 “priority countries,” starting in October 2019, the official said. They are: India, Thailand and Vietnam in Asia; Jordan in the Middle East; and Kenya, Uganda, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal in Africa; and Guatemala in Central America.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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“It’s not nearly where we’d like to be,” Frank Gehrke, a state water official, said after separately carrying out manual measurements of winter snowfall in the Sierra Nevada, which helps supply water to millions of Californians.
Overall, the vital snowpack stood at less than a third of normal for the date.
California lifted a drought state of emergency less than a year ago. A rainy winter snapped a deep five-year drought that forced water conservation.
The figures from the federal agency came amid growing concern among state officials about another dry winter.
The dry spell is acute in Southern California. San Diego, Los Angeles and some surrounding areas have received only one significant storm in nearly a year. The region is now seeing record-setting heat. At the peak of California’s recently ended five-year drought, Gov. Jerry Brown ordered 25 percent water conservation in cities and towns.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The staggering number exceeds the total insurance claims from the top 10 previously most costly wildfires in California. Until last year, California’s most expensive single fire was the 1991 Oakland Hills blaze that prompted $2.7 billion in claims in today’s dollars, according to data from the Insurance Information Institute.
If treated as one disaster, the combined fires in October and December 2017 “represent one of the most damaging natural catastrophes in California history,” Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said at a news conference in Los Angeles.
For comparison, insured losses from the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the costliest quake to strike the United States, were nearly $26 billion in 2017 dollars, according to data from the insurance institute.
Nearly $1.8 billion of the 2017 insurance claims stem from fires that swept through Southern California in December, a rare winter fire whipped by fierce winds. A fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties became the largest by acreage in state history, charring 282,000 acres — larger than the city of San Diego.
The figures for Southern California are likely to grow as more people get through the time-consuming process of filing a claim.
The totals do not include claims related to mudslides that buried homes and vehicles in Montecito when torrential rain fell on hillsides burned in the December fires.
Insurance claims from a series of October fires grew to $10 billion, nearly all of them in Northern California’s wine country.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Rivers swollen by France’s heaviest rains in 50 years have engulfed romantic quays in Paris, swallowed up gardens and roads, halted riverboat cruises — and raised concerns about climate change.
The national weather service Meteo France said Monday that January has seen nearly double normal rainfall nationwide, and that the rains in the past two months are the highest measured for the period in 50 years.
“I’m amazed. I’ve come to Paris since 1965, most years, and I’ve never seen the Seine as high,” said Terry Friberg, visiting from Boston. “I love Paris with all my heart, but I’m very worried about the level of the river.”
Flood monitoring agency Vigicrues said the water levels in Paris hit a maximum height of 19 feet, 2 inches on the Austerlitz scale early Monday.
That’s below initial fears last week, and well below record levels of 28 feet, 3 inches in 1910, but still way above normal levels of about 4 1⁄2 feet on the Austerlitz scale. And the waters are expected to stay unusually high for days or weeks.
That’s bad news for tourists hoping to cruise past Paris sites on the famed “bateaux mouches” riverboats, or visit the bottom floor of the Louvre Museum, closed since last week as a precaution. Riverside train stations along the line that serves Versailles are also closed, and will remain that way for several more days.
Overall, Paris is better prepared than when it was last hit by heavy flooding in 2016, and Parisians have largely taken disruptions in stride this time.
Other towns on the surging Seine have seen it much worse. The floods have caused damage in 242 towns along the river and tributaries already, and more warnings are in place as the high waters move downstream.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The winds also pushed temperatures 15 degrees higher than average in many parts of the county, including at the coast, where summer-like weather prevailed from Oceanside to Imperial Beach. Oceanside was particularly toasty, with the high temperature hitting 90.
The National Weather Service says the Santa Anas will return early today, gusting 40 mph to 50 mph in places like Alpine and Ramona, and 20 mph or higher along the coast. A red-flag fire weather warning will be in place for much of the county until tonight.
Today’s high is expected to reach 83 degrees at San Diego International Airport, which would set a record for the date. Vista, Chula Vista, El Cajon and Ramona all set or tied daily records on Sunday.
The winds arrived in force early Sunday, gusting to 89 mph at Sill Hill, a remote peak in East County, while hitting 63 mph in Alpine, along eastern Interstate 8. Winds gusted up to 29 mph on the bluffs of Torrey Pines early Sunday on the last full day of the golf tournament.
With high winds in the forecast, San Diego Gas & Electric Co. shut down power to 2,500 homes and businesses in several North and East County communities as a precaution.
About 500 customers in communities near Lake Wohlford and Valley Center also were without power for weather-related reasons. The utility company was investigating another outage that left an additional 650 customers in the same areas without power.
The winds, combined with high temperatures and low humidity, elevated the wildfire danger countywide. The danger also was influenced by dry conditions.
Since the rainy season began on Oct. 1, San Diego International Airport has received only 1.87 inches of precipitation, which is roughly 3 inches below average.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNON TRIBUNE)
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The fire, which began Dec. 7 off the west side of Interstate 15 a half-mile south of Route 76, burned 4,100 acres in Bonsall, destroying 157 structures.
County officials opened a Local Assistance Center shortly after the blaze last month to help fire victims with services, including crisis counseling, short-term housing referrals and a mobile medical clinic.
The federal center, operated in coordination with the California Office of Emergency Services in the Bonsall Community Center, picks up where that left off. It will provide help with the next phases of recovery, including federal grants and loans for rebuilding, rental assistance and aid with loss of jobs, income or agricultural properties.
“You can think of this as a one-stop shop for the disaster survivor,” said FEMA spokesman Victor Inge. “It brings resources that remove the barriers to recovery. If they need help with the farm, we have the (U.S. Department of Agriculture) here. If they have lost work, disaster unemployment is here.”
A FEMA van was parked out front, and representatives from the different agencies set up information tables inside the community center. Before noon, 10 residents had shown up to seek disaster relief services.
Judy Davis, whose home at Rancho Monserate Country Club was one of 75 in that community that were destroyed in the fire, stopped by the center to drop off paperwork for a loan she needs to replace her mobile home. “We had already registered with FEMA,” she said. “They called us this morning and wanted additional information.”
FEMA is offering grants to people whose homes were damaged or destroyed, to make their homes “safe, sanitary and livable,” he said. The agency has already approved over $1 million in loans to assist 1,600 people who lost properties in last year’s fires in Bonsall, Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara. Those grants are capped at $34,000, Inge said, though many are smaller.
For more extensive repairs, the U.S. Small Business Administration provides low-interest loans up to $200,000 and $40,000 for personal property, at 1.75 percent interest, said spokesman Bill Koontz.
(Deborah Sullivan Brennan, S.D. UNON TRIBUNE)
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Just before the hurricane, Puerto Rico had made plans to pay creditors a total of $3.6 billion through 2022. That was a fraction of the amount due, had the island, a U.S. territory, not gone into default.
Now, Puerto Rico expects its budget to be $3.4 billion in the red this year — a deficit that will take five years to close — because of the storm’s toll. On Wednesday, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said measures were needed to help the island’s government achieve a balanced budget, as required by the federal oversight board that controls Puerto Rico’s troubled finances. Without the economic reforms, the deficit would be closer to $8 billion, Rosselló’s administration estimated.
After years of propping up a struggling economy with unsustainable borrowing, Puerto Rico’s financial reckoning was inevitable. The hurricane’s long-lasting impact, a new plan shows, will only make matters worse and extend the suffering of the island’s workers and businesses. The five-year debt moratorium was part of an updated fiscal plan that Puerto Rico was required to submit to the board Wednesday. An earlier draft had been approved, with certain exceptions, before Hurricanes Irma and Maria slammed into the Caribbean island in September. But that plan had to be reworked in light of Maria’s vast devastation, which prompted tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans to flee the island amid job layoffs and power blackouts. Nearly a third of customers remain without electricity, more than four months after the storm.
“We already had a recession in Puerto Rico,” Rosselló said. He added that the hurricane’s “social impact was significant, because of the exodus and population decrease we’ve had in Puerto Rico, and expect to have in the future.” The government projects its population will shrink by 19.4 percent over the next five years, with a total exodus of more than 600,000 people. In the new fiscal plan, the government relies heavily on federal money both to repair damage and rekindle the economy, which the plan estimates contracted by 11.2 percent, nearly triple what the government estimated last year. It calls for receiving $35.3 billion in public assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But the island hopes to receive “significantly more” in assistance, having requested $94.4 billion in disaster aid from Congress.
Whether Congress will agree to the disaster aid request remains in question.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Sheriff’s deputies drove vans full of evacuees back to their homes. The owners of those that were heavily damaged or destroyed were allowed to briefly search the rubble for precious belongings.
Curtis Skene fought back tears as firefighters uncovered old photographs of his father in the ruins of his home.
“You have to be grateful you’re OK,” Skene said. “It’s just stuff.” Eric and Pamela Arneson found their home still standing. While he dug through their refrigerator, throwing away spoiled food and chuckling at how bad it smelled, she took notes on each item to submit to their insurance company.
The couple initially remained in their home after the mudslides but later stayed with friends and in a hotel when their electricity was shut off a few days later.
“We can’t feel sorry for ourselves. Our lives are OK. Our house is OK,” Eric Arneson said.
The town’s narrow streets were clogged with bulldozers and utility trucks as crews remove mud and boulders and rebuild drainage pipes and power lines. Utility workers are also busy restoring water and sewage pipes, gas service and electricity.
Montecito was hit by debris-laden flash floods on Jan. 9. A 17-year-old boy and 2year-old girl remain missing.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Such extreme rain amounts — which only have a 1 in 1,000 chance of happening in a given year — covered an enormous area, an accompanying geographic analysis showed.
“It is unlikely the United States has ever seen such a sizable area of excessive tropical cyclone rainfall totals as it did from Harvey,” the report said. By one estimate, the storm dispensed more than 33 trillion gallons of water over Texas and the southern United States.
The report confirmed that peak rainfall totals reached record-crushing levels, just over 5 feet near Nederland and Groves, Texas, near Port Arthur.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Mount Mayon spewed lava up to 2,000 feet high at times Tuesday and early today, and its ash plumes stretched up to three miles above the crater. Lava flows in two gullies had advanced down the volcano’s slopes more than a half mile, and pyroclastic flows — superheated gas and volcanic debris — had reached three miles from the crater in one area, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said this morning.
An explosion from the crater at nightfall Tuesday was capped by one of the most massive lava displays since Mayon started erupting more than a week ago. Authorities on Monday expanded the no-go zone to five miles from the crater and have warned a violent eruption may occur in hours or days.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The monster waves never materialized, but people who fled endured hours of tense waiting at shelters before they were cleared to return home.
“This was a win as far as I could tell,” said Marjie Veeder, clerk for the city of Unalaska, which is home to the international fishing port of Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. “We got advance warning and were so thankful for that.” The magnitude 7.9 quake in the Gulf of Alaska triggered the jarring alert that roused people shortly after midnight Tuesday. Fleeing motorists clogged some highways in their rush to higher ground. Many took refuge at schools or other shelters.
Even for Alaskans accustomed to tsunami threats and tsunami drills, the phone message was alarming. It read: “Emergency Alert. Tsunami danger on the coast. Go to high ground or move inland. Listen to local news.”
There were no reports of damage, not even on Kodiak Island, the closest land to the epicenter.
Elsewhere in the United States, Washington state, Oregon, California and Hawaii were under tsunami watches, which eventually were lifted.
In British Columbia, sirens blared and officials banged on doors to wake people from their sleep as a tsunami warning was issued along a large swath of the Canadian province’s coastline.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton called out the National Guard to help stranded motorists, the Star Tribune reported.
The National Weather Service said more than 10 inches of snow fell on North Platte in western Nebraska. In southern Minnesota, the storm dumped 17 inches near Owatonna by late afternoon Monday. Dozens of school districts in Minnesota canceled classes.
Weather service meteorologist Bill Borghoff in Minnesota said the storm started brewing Saturday night over Nebraska and spread to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He called it “a very classically developed winter storm,” with widespread heavy snow on its northern end. Transportation officials lifted a no-travel advisory for parts of southwest Minnesota, but advised motorists that blowing snow was still a problem. Winds were gusting up to 40 mph, Borghoff said.
“If you don’t have to travel, don’t travel,” Borghoff said. Statewide the Minnesota State Patrol reported nearly 200 crashes and nearly 300 spinouts as well as 30 jackknifed semis by late Monday afternoon.
Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport reported more than 400 cancellations by Monday afternoon, with average delays of about six hours, Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman Pat Hogan said. “It’s really a tough day at the airport,” Hogan said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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U.S. Highway 101 has been cleaned of mud in Santa Barbara County, and workers are clearing drainage areas and stabilizing embankments so it can reopen, Tim Gubbins of the California Department of Transportation said.
Officials should know today whether they can meet their goal of a Monday reopening, but Gubbins would only say it would be open in the next few days.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen new teams of search dogs are set to arrive today to join hundreds of firefighters in the search for three people still missing since the Jan. 9 slide. They are 2-year-old Lydia Sutthithepa, 17-year-old John Cantin and 28-year-old Fabiola Calderon.
“We’re searching deeper, we’re searching wider,” said Anthony Stornetta, a county fire battalion chief.
The three missing people are all from the same Olive Mill neighborhood of Montecito, where dogs and their handlers have been getting stuck in mud as they search, Sheriff Bill Brown said.
Only after the 101 is open, the search for the missing is completed and utilities are restored to the town will thousands of evacuees from Montecito be allowed to return to their homes, Brown said.
The devastation occurred in the early morning hours when torrents laden with boulders and debris swept down through neighborhoods, destroyed or damaged 430 homes and killed 20 people.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered about 48 miles north-northeast of Loreto, in the waters between the states of Baja California Sur and Sonora.
Yolanda Vallejo, owner of Rivera del Mar RV Park in Loreto, said the quake didn’t even give her a start.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The Dutch national weather service recorded wind gusts of up to 87 mph in the southern port of Hook of Holland as the storm passed over.
Amsterdam’s Schiphol briefly halted flights for an hour in the morning, and airline KLM scrapped more than 200 flights even before the storm arrived. Trains were halted across the nation and in Germany.
Social media in the Netherlands was flooded with images of people being blown from their bicycles, cargo containers falling off a ship and damage to buildings, including a roof that peeled off an apartment block in Rotterdam.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Authorities across the South urged drivers to stay off treacherous roads. Louisiana highways remained closed and New Orleans residents were avoiding showers to restore pressure to a system plagued by frozen pipes. Atlanta was slowly returning to normal after being frozen in its tracks by about an inch of snow.
All this raises a familiar question: Why do severe winters seem to catch Southerners unprepared? Experts on disaster planning say it’s tough to justify maintaining fleets of snowplows when the weather’s only occasionally nasty.
“People are putting their money, their resources and their planning time where it’s most necessary, and that has to do with an understanding of what the risks are in any place,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.
Still, “if you get even a modest amount of snow, you can’t be caught completely unprepared for that either,” he said.
North Carolina is accustomed to getting some snow, but people were surprised at the ferocity of this storm, which dumped as much as an inch per hour from the mountains to the coast and piled a foot of snow in parts of Durham County.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The extraordinary heat dove-tailed with a year of climate extremes in which residents in places like California didn’t need data sets to observe the floods and fires that are expected to become only more common as the Earth gets hotter.
“We can just look back to the last year” to see the dangers of climate change, said Rachel Licker, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which advocates for actions to counter global warming. “These kinds of events could increase in frequency, and that’s certainly cause for alarm in the West.”’
NASA reported Thursday that 2017 was the second-warmest year in the 138 years of record-keeping, following only 2016. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that 2017 was the third-warmest year, trailing 2015 and 2016. The discrepancy resulted from using different data sources.
In any case, scientists at both agencies marveled over the heat that endured last year in the absence of an El Niño weather pattern and amid an emerging and opposite La Niña cooling pattern. If such short-term influences are factored out, 2017 was the hottest year on record, the scientists said.
“This really brings it home, the warmth that we’re seeing,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
The nearly 2-degree temperature rise recorded by federal scientists since the 1800s is both severe and daunting. The trend is said to be driving sea level rise, melting ice caps, prompting mass extinctions and contributing to increasingly extreme weather.
Last year’s flooding in Northern California and the deadly firestorm in Wine Country were among several weather-related events that made 2017 the nation’s costliest for disaster response since reliable record-keeping began in 1980.
Thursday’s joint report by NASA and NOAA, which attributes global warming to human-generated greenhouse gases, is the most significant update on climate change since President Donald Trump mocked the phenomenon in a December tweet. Trump has in the past referred to climate change as a Chinese hoax.
“In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against,” Trump wrote. “Bundle up!”
The administration’s policies have fiercely diverged from its science. Trump has vowed to abandon the international deal struck in Paris to reduce greenhouse gases and has promised to repeal Obama’s Clean Power Plan to control emissions.
“The climate has changed and is always changing,” said White House principal deputy press secretary Raj Shah in a statement in response to the new temperature findings. “To address climate change as well as other risks, the U.S. will continue to promote access to affordable and reliable energy and support technology, innovation and the development of modern and efficient infrastructure in order to reduce emissions and effectively address future climate related risks.”
The Department of Energy also responded to the findings. “This report does not affect (Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s) beliefs on climate change,” said Shalyn Hynes, press secretary at the Department of Energy. “He is already on record saying that he believes that the climate is changing and that man is having an impact. As the secretary of energy he is focused on the ways we can use innovation and technology to expand American energy production in a cleaner way so that the United States can continue to lead the world in our reduction of emissions.”
The joint report comes as the Trump administration moves to open new areas for oil drilling and rolls back regulations that sought to reduce global warming, most prominently by moving to repeal the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. Federal scientists said Thursday it’s not their job to develop the nation’s climate strategy. But they made the expectation that curbing the release of greenhouse gases would slow the alarming trend.
“All of the warming in the last 60 years is attributable to human activities,” said Schmidt. “Carbon dioxide emissions are the No. 1 component of that.” With the United States taking little initiative on climate change amid scientific consensus that consequences will worsen if temperatures rise more than 3.6 degrees above preindustrial times, the effort to reduce heat-trapping emissions has fallen upon states like California.
“The science and reality of climate change keeps getting stronger,” Gov. Jerry Brown said in an email Thursday. “How much longer can Washington deny and delay?”
Under Brown, California has adopted an ambitious goal of reducing its greenhouse gases 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. The state has introduced regulations designed to hit that target, including a cap-and-trade program that seeks to limit harmful emissions by requiring businesses to buy permits to pollute.
Several states and local governments have joined California in pledging to support the Paris climate agreement.
“California has asserted itself as a leader both domestically and internationally, and hopefully it will inspire others,” Licker said.
But without commitment from the White House, Licker and others said, keeping temperatures below the targeted 3.6-degree mark will be nearly impossible.
“Obviously nothing replaces the catalyst that comes from federal leadership,” Licker said. In Thursday’s report, NASA said 2017’s temperature averaged 1.62 degrees above the 1951-to-1980 mean. NOAA reported that last year’s temperature was 1.51 degrees above the 20th century average.
The measurements come from thousands of weather stations on land and sea. The NASA calculation differs from NOAA’s in that it includes a stronger influence from the Arctic, which is warming at a faster pace than most other spots.
According to both data sets, the past four years were the four hottest on record. Seventeen of the 18 warmest years have occurred since 2001.
The slight cooling in 2017 comes with the ebbing El Niño, essentially a warming of Pacific equatorial waters and a change-up in tropical trade winds that tends to increase global temperatures.
With El Niño’s exit came the entrance of La Niña, a phenomenon marked by cooler ocean temperatures in the tropics and generally lower worldwide temperatures.
Also Thursday, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center released its seasonal forecast, suggesting that the same La Niña is likely to reduce precipitation in the southern tier of the U.S. over the next three months, including Southern California.
The forecast bodes poorly for California’s snowfall, which is critical to the state’s water supply, though a dry year would be partly offset by the ample supplies that came with last winter’s near-record storms.
With La Niña expected to fade by spring, federal scientists said, the planet will probably see another hot year.
“It will almost certainly be a top-five year and possibly a top-two year,” Schmidt said of 2018. “The long-term trends are clear.”
(Kurtis Alexander, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE; WASHINGTON POST)
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Icicles hung from a statue of jazz musicians in normally balmy New Orleans, and drivers unaccustomed to ice spun their wheels across Atlanta, which was brought to a near-standstill by little more than an inch of snow. The beach in Biloxi, Miss., got a light coating. And the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill canceled classes as the storm unloaded at least 8 inches of snow in Durham and Greensboro.
Even the best drivers had trouble: Retired NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt Jr. tweeted that he had just used his winch to help pull a car out of a ditch when he drove off the road and into a tree in North Carolina.
“NC stay off the roads today/tonight. 5 minutes after helping these folks I center-punched a pine tree,” he reported. A spokesman said Earnhardt was not hurt and his pickup had only minor damage. Thousands of schoolchildren and teachers got the day off. Many cities canceled meetings and court proceedings, and some businesses closed. Slippery runways and the need to de-ice planes forced cancellations and delays in New Orleans; Memphis, Tenn.; and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Electricity usage surged as people struggled to keep warm.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“It is not until you can see the damage with your own eyes that you can come to understand the magnitude of the incident, the response that is necessary, but most importantly the impact to the citizens and families of Santa Barbara County,” said Jim Shivers, a spokesman for the California Department of Transportation. Nearly a week after the disaster, President Donald Trump sent his condolences to those affected in his first public statement on the catastrophe.
The two-sentence statement was released by the White House press secretary on Monday.
“The President has been briefed and will continue to monitor the mudslides in California. The President and First Lady extend their deepest sympathies to the families affected, their appreciation for the first responders saving lives, and their prayers for those who remain missing.”
The number of people missing in the mudslides was cut to three Monday after a 53-year-old man was found safe. John “Jack” Keating was located in Ventura with his dog Tiny, Santa Barbara County sheriff’s spokeswoman Kelly Hoover said.
Keating, a transient, was not in the flood zone during the storm, as was feared, she said.
Those still missing are Faviola Benitez Calderon, 28; John “Jack” Cantin, 17; and 2-year-old Lydia Sutthithepa.
Officials were aiming to reopen U.S. 101 on Jan. 22, nearly two weeks after it was shut down when lanes became a river of muck, Shivers said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The sole fatality was a man crushed by a falling rock, officials said. They said many of those injured were in Caraveli province, a coastal area dependent on fishing and mining that is popular with tourists.
Sixty-five people were injured, the national chief of civil defense, Jorge Chavez, said.
The 7.1 earthquake destroyed 171 homes, displacing the same number of families, Peru’s National Emergency Operations Center said on its website Sunday night. It added that 736 families had been affected in some way by the tremor. Emergency crews responded by bringing in tents and mattresses to displaced families, officials said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Even those who didn’t lose their homes in the disaster that left at least 18 people dead were told to leave for up to two weeks so they wouldn’t interfere with the rescue and recovery operation.
It was another frustrating turn for those living in the Southern California town that has been subject to repeated evacuation orders in recent weeks, first because of a monster wildfire last month, then because of downpours and mudslides.
Cia Monroe said her family was lucky their home wasn’t ruined and they were all healthy and safe, though her daughter lost one of her best friends.
But Monroe said it was stressful after evacuating three times during the Thomas fire, which was declared 100 percent contained Friday, to be packing up a fourth time and looking at spending up to $3,000 a week for a hotel.
“Where do you go when you’re a family of four and you don’t have a second house?” Monroe asked, noting that some residents of the town have third and fourth homes. “Financially that’s a burden.”
More than 1,200 workers had flooded into the town of about 9,000 residents for the search and cleanup effort.
The presence of curious and concerned citizens who had trudged through the mud Thursday to view the devastation was replaced with more firefighters in bright yellow rain gear and utility crews in orange safety vests working with chain saws and jackhammers.
A backhoe scooped up mud and rocks around buckled and flattened homes, while bulldozers cleared roads of tangled trees, muck and boulders. Tanker trucks were being used to haul off floodwaters siphoned off U.S. Highway 101, the crippled coastal route connecting Santa Barbara to Ventura.
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said residents who had stayed behind or tried to check on damage in neighborhoods where homes were leveled and car-size boulders and trees blocked roads and littered properties had hindered the recovery effort.
Residents who remained in town Friday were either seen packing up their cars with clothing and other belongings for their latest evacuation or staying out of sight.
Rescue crews were busy sticking poles into thick muck, swollen creeks and tangled trees in search of five missing people while dogs sniffed for bodies.
The 18th victim, Joseph Bleckel, 87, was found dead in his home near Romero Canyon before noon, Brown said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A wall of mud and boulders as big as pickup trucks crashed toward Gower’s house, sweeping the couple out the front door. Gower, 69, clung to the door frame. Her boyfriend reached for her hand. Neither could hold on.
Her boyfriend, Norm, was pinned against a fence, buried in mud up to his neck. She was swept away and died.
“He was in the mud calling her name for hours,” said Alastair Haigh, Gower’s 37-year-old son-in-law. More than two full days after mudslides ravaged the coastal town, the search for the missing became an increasingly desperate exercise Thursday, with growing doubts about whether anyone would be found alive. Seventeen people from ages 3 to 89 were confirmed dead, and more than 40 others were unaccounted for.
By the time tons of mud and debris started flowing down fire-scorched hillsides and into Montecito neighborhoods early Tuesday, it was too late for most residents still inside their homes, and there was no way to escape.
Officials had been warning for days that heavy storms could produce strong mudflows.
But when the rains moved in and the storm proved much worse than forecasters predicted, emergency agencies struggled to get the word out to residents on their cellphones about the urgent danger.
Just after 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, the National Weather Service sent a cellphone push alert for people near the fresh Thomas fire burn scar: flash flood warning.
But in the Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management, where workers were waiting for the predicted deluge, only a few people’s phones buzzed with the alert. Others got nothing.
Robert Lewin, director of the emergency management office, knew that couldn’t be good.
“I said, ‘Uh oh, what’s going on?’” Lewin said.
The county followed up with its own flash flood push alert at 2:46 a.m. — but only for residents who had proactively signed up for official notices or were actively monitoring social media.
It wasn’t until 3:50 a.m. Tuesday that Santa Barbara County officials sent an alert through a federal wireless system that buzzes every cellphone within range of a working tower, similar to an Amber Alert.
But by then, the deadly debris flow had already begun.
Many questions remain about what could have been done to keep people out of harm’s way. But several factors combined to create problems: issues with the warning systems, the unwillingness of some residents to evacuate for a second time after the Thomas fire, and a deluge that defied expectations.
Jeff Gater, the county’s emergency manager, said that more than 200,000 text messages, emails and other warnings were sent out to people who subscribed to such messages but that officials decided not to use the cellphone push alert system out of concern it might not be taken seriously.
“If you cry wolf, people stop listening,” he said. Lewin criticized the federal wireless emergency alert system, saying it “is broken.” The alerts appear to have not reached phones on the Verizon network, he said.
Heidi Flato, a Verizon spokesperson, said storm-related power outages were causing service interruptions in parts of Montecito. Spokespeople for T-Mobile and Sprint said they had minimal disruptions.
Robert Villegas, a spokesman for Southern California Edison Co., said that power poles and telephone lines suffered extensive damage but that crews were positioned in the area well ahead of time because they knew the storm would be bad.
Five days before the storm, forecasters began notifying emergency managers, the media and the public about the approaching system, which was predicted to pound the Thomas fire burn area. After the Thomas fire, the U.S. Geological Survey studied the burn area to determine its vulnerability for flash floods, mudslides and debris flows. The agency found that a rainfall rate of half an inch per hour would trigger debris flows, officials said.
On Tuesday morning, the storm far exceeded that threshold when it dumped 0.54 of an inch of rain on Montecito within five minutes, said Robert Munroe, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
Munroe said such an extreme rainfall rate is usually seen once every 200 years.
The day before the storm hit Montecito, about 60 Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputies and search and rescue workers spent hours roving the community’s foothill neighborhoods, trying to persuade people living in the shadow of scorched mountains to leave.
County officials also issued mandatory evacuation orders for about 7,000 people living north of Highway 192 in areas closer to where the Thomas fire had burned. Voluntary orders were issued for 23,000 others as the storm approached. Residents in those areas were not visited by sheriff’s deputies, officials said.
Tom Fayram, a deputy public works director, said that whether the county issues mandatory or voluntary evacuation orders, they should be taken seriously.
“Voluntary evacuation doesn’t mean you don’t have a problem,” he said. “If we felt they did not have a problem, we would not have issued a warning at all.”
Some of the hardest-hit areas were in the voluntary evacuation zone south of Highway 192, and it’s clear many residents there stayed in their homes.
The upscale town — home to such celebrities as Oprah Winfrey — is situated between the Pacific Ocean and Los Padres National Forest. The Montecito Fire Protection District’s wildfire protection plan, released in February 2016, notes that the town’s semi-rural character — its narrow and steep roads, addresses not clearly visible from the street, and unlit roads and intersections — pose problems for emergency responders and evacuating residents.
The town has “an extensive history” of wildfires and threats of post-fire floods, and emergency responders often issue evacuation orders in the area, the report says. “Some residents believe a secondary evacuation order will be issued prior to conditions becoming truly life threatening,” the report says.
Meanwhile, there were reports of rescues on Thursday.
Santa Barbara fire Capt. Gary Pitney said most if not all rescues conducted Wednesday and Thursday were of people who were safe but just wanted to get out of the area.
“These were people that were sheltered in place that had needs that just took a while to get to some of them,” Pitney said. “They were OK but they wanted to get out.”
After a better look at the damage, officials lowered the number of destroyed homes from 100 to 64 and raised the number of damaged ones from 300 to 446.
(Joseph Serna & Hailey Branson-Potts, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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As firefighters dug through battered homes, helicopters searched from the sky for hundreds who were unhurt but trapped behind roads made impassable by downed power lines and waist-high muck. In the Romero Canyon area above Montecito, scores have been marooned since Tuesday morning.
As of late Wednesday, 17 people remained missing. Officials fear the death toll could rise because firefighters have not yet been able to access some areas in the path of the debris flows. Intense rain Tuesday morning pounded steep terrain burned by the Thomas fire just weeks earlier, unearthing a wall of mud, rocks and debris that raced down creek beds so quickly that residents didn’t have time to get out of harm’s way. Although no victims have been formally identified, the dead include some children.
The deluge destroyed at least 100 single-family homes and damaged another 300 residences. An additional eight commercial properties had been wiped out as the mud flowed down through the upscale hillside community and onto Highway 101, which is expected to remain closed through next week.
With gas, water and electricity knocked out in most of the area, rescue workers were concerned that many of those trapped could run short on supplies.
“A majority of Montecito and that whole area is in the Stone Age right now,” said Mike Eliason, public information officer for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department. “We’re actively pursuing trying to get in there as quick as we can to get those people to safety.”
Frantic family members and friends of the missing took matters into their own hands.
With a shovel in one hand, a man who asked to be identified only as Mikey smoked a cigarette and began removing mud and debris from the intersection of Hot Springs and Sycamore Canyon roads.
He had been out since 5 a.m. looking for his girlfriend’s missing sisters, Morgan and Sawyer Corey.
“They are good people,” he said with tears in his eyes. “I’m hoping to find them.”
As he waded through deep mud, Montecito resident Ben Ekler said his friend’s mother and two children were swept away during Tuesday morning’s deluge. The mother and one of the children were found and are recovering at a hospital, he said. But the other child is still missing.
“I thought we could help and do something,” Ekler said. “But nothing remains of their house.”
Social media posts sought information about a missing woman, Fabiola Benitez, and her son. Friends said the woman’s house was destroyed in the deluge. Benitez’s husband and another son were taken to a hospital, but the woman and her younger child had not been found. Some of the searches had happy endings. Sally Mobraaten, 56, arrived at an evacuation center at Santa Barbara City College on Monday night desperately looking for her missing 86-year-old mother. She believed her mother had been evacuated but could not find her.
Nearly in tears, Mobraaten spoke with a Red Cross volunteer outside the shelter.
“I’m not sure where she could be,” the volunteer said.
Mobraaten decided to head toward a Vons on Coast Village Road where the National Guard had been dropping off people.
Along the way she called hotels in Santa Barbara to see if her mother was there. She had no luck. But in the Vons parking lot she saw an elderly woman wearing a red rain coat and a white hat.
“That’s my mother!” she shouted.
With the engine of her SUV still running, Mobraaten jumped out, ran to her mother and gave her a kiss.
The mudslides began around 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, when residents in their path were likely asleep. A number of homes were ripped from their foundations, with some pulled more than half a mile by water and mud before they broke apart.
Some of the hardest hit areas in Montecito were outside the burn scar of the Thomas fire and not subject to mandatory evacuations, Eliason said. Soil scorched by wildfires is less able to absorb water, which increases the chance it will be dislodged and cause a mudslide.
Helicopters and rescue workers from the U.S. Coast Guard and National Guard, as well as firefighters and helicopters from fire departments in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties, have all descended on Montecito since Tuesday, Eliason said. An airship with night-vision capabilities hovered over the damage late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, as rescue crews refused to spare a minute in their search.
Many were concerned that last month’s wildfires had made the area ripe for dangerous mudslides. But some residents said the exhaustion of being chased from their homes made them hesitant to evacuate a second time.
Along Eleven Oaks Lane, David Cradduck, 66, was trying to shovel shin-high mud away from his home. In 34 years living in Montecito, he had never seen anything like Tuesday morning’s deluge.
“Mother Nature came back and dealt us a big blow, but it’s our fault,” he said. “We should have heeded the warning.”
When she first stepped out of her condo Tuesday, Maude Feil said Montecito looked “like an apocalypse happened.”
Feil had to evacuate during the Thomas fire and said she was worried that survivors who managed to get through the wildfire unscathed may have lost everything they own in Tuesday’s debris flows. “I’ve never been so close to a fire in my whole entire life, then this,” she said. “People who didn’t lose their house in the fire — they just lost huge things in the mud.”
As she moved around the area, careful not to slip in the mud, she recalled a grim discovery she made Tuesday among the wreckage. As she tried to look around her battered neighborhood, Feil said she spotted what she initially thought was a mannequin beneath railroad tracks.
“It was a woman’s body,” she said.
(Brittny Mejia & Melissa Etehad, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP)
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In Sydney, temperatures swelled to 117 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, the hottest it has been since 1939.
That oppressive heat, a side effect of climate change, has made life hard for the country’s humans. Heat waves result in 10 percent more calls for ambulances and 10 percent more deaths, local experts said.
For some animals, it has been nearly unbearable. “Anytime we have any type of heat event, we know we’re going to have a lot of animals in need,” animal specialist Kristie Harris told the BBC. It was so hot that possums burned their paws on roofs and roads. Koalas around the region were being sprayed down to keep them cool.
And at least 500 flying fox bats died because of the heat.
Animal rescuers in Sydney described “heartbreaking” scenes of dozens of dead baby bats piled on the ground. “It was unbelievable. I saw a lot of dead bats on the ground and others were close to the ground and dying,” volunteer Cate Ryan told the Guardian. “I have never seen anything like it before.”
The species’ pups are particularly vulnerable, she said. “They have less heat tolerance,” Ryan said. “Their brain just fries, and they become incoherent.” Often, she said, they will simply get too hot and fall to the ground while the adults seek out precious shade.
The flying fox is the most populous bat species in Australia, though conservation groups say it is vulnerable to extinction. The bats live in woods and swamps along Australia’s east coast. They play an important role in pollination and seed transportation.
More than 500 flying foxes have died of heat stress, according to the New South Wales Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service. At least 120 flying fox pups were brought in for hydration before being returned to their mothers. “Just like human babies, they’re really vulnerable when they’re young,” Harris told the BBC.
Researchers warn that warming temperatures will only make bats more vulnerable. In 2008, an article in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences found that climate change was contributing to species decline.
“Temperature extremes are important additional threats to Australian flying foxes and the ecosystem services they provide, and we recommend close monitoring of colonies where temperatures exceeding 42 degrees Celsius (108 degrees Fahrenheit) are predicted,” they wrote.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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There were no early reports of serious damage or casualties on land after the quake struck shortly before 7 p.m. PST. Officials in Honduras said shaking was registered across much of the nation and there were some reports of cracks in homes in Colon and Atlantida provinces along the northern coast and Olancho in eastern Honduras.
Tsunami centers issued advisories and warnings for Puerto Rico, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, Jamaica and other Caribbean islands as well as on the coasts of Mexico and Central America, cautioning that sea levels could rise from a foot to 3 feet above normal, but no tsunami materialized.
The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at a preliminary magnitude of 7.6. The temblor struck in the sea about 125 miles north-northeast of Barra Patuca, Honduras, and 188 miles southwest of George Town, Cayman Islands. The temblor occurred about 6 miles below the surface.
The northern coast of Honduras closest to the quake’s epicenter is sparsely populated, with much of it covered by nature reserves. The temblor was about 25 miles east of Honduras’ Swan Islands, which are unpopulated except for a small navy post. Tuesday’s quake was one of the largest to hit the Caribbean in recorded history. The 2010 quake that devastated Haiti was magnitude 7.0.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The deluge that washed over Santa Barbara County early Tuesday was the worst-case scenario for a community ravaged by the Thomas fire only a few weeks earlier.
In just a matter of minutes, pounding rain overwhelmed the south-facing slopes above Montecito and flooded a creek that leads to the ocean, sending mud and boulders rolling into residential neighborhoods, according to Santa Barbara County Fire Department spokesman Mike Eliason.
At least 25 other people were injured, authorities said at an afternoon news conference. Crews rescued 50 people by air and dozens more from the ground.
“It’s going to be worse than anyone imagined for our area,” Eliason said in a phone interview Tuesday. “Following our fire, this is the worst-case scenario.”
The deaths came after a heavy band of rain struck around 2:30 a.m., causing “waist-high” mudflows, Eliason said.
The mudslide struck a section of the city south of the Thomas fire’s burn area and was not subject to a mandatory evacuation, Eliason said. Rescue personnel have yet to even make it north of Highway 192, which is closer to soil scorched by last month’s wildfire. Burned areas are less capable of absorbing water, making them even more susceptible to flooding and mudslides.
Officials had no estimate on how many people could be trapped or how many homes were damaged. The search for survivors was still under way late Tuesday, with many places inaccessible.
The founder of St. Augustine Academy in Ventura was among those killed early Tuesday morning when a powerful mudslide swept him and his wife from their Montecito home.
Roy Rohter was identified by officials at Thomas Aquinas College, from which his daughter graduated in 2000. His wife, Theresa, was rescued and is in stable condition, officials said.
Friends remembered Rohter as an energetic leader and generous benefactor of the college.
“Roy Rohter was a man of strong faith and a great friend of Catholic education,” Michael McLean, president of the college, said in a statement posted on the school’s website. “He played a pivotal role in the lives of countless young Catholic students — students who came to a deeper knowledge and love of Christ because of his vision, commitment, and generosity.”
Emergency crews spent the first hours of light making rescues in voluntary evacuation zones near Montecito Creek north of U.S. Route 101. In the 300 block of Hot Springs Road, crews rescued six people and a dog after four homes were destroyed. The mud lifted one home off its foundation and carried it into trees, where it then collapsed, Eliason said. Firefighters cut their way into the home where a firefighter heard muffled cries for help from a 14-year-old girl, Eliason said.
A rescue dog pinpointed the girl’s location and two hours later, the mud-covered girl was pulled free. A second 14-year-old girl was also rescued from the same neighborhood.
The U.S. Coast Guard also sent rescue helicopters into the area Tuesday morning, hoisting several people from collapsed homes or rooftops that stood above swirling mud and water. Rescue personnel were also able to save a young boy who was swept more than half a mile south from his house after the building was lifted from its foundation in Montecito, authorities said.
The boy was found alive under a U.S. 101 overpass, authorities said. But his father remains unaccounted for.
On Hot Springs Road Tuesday afternoon, a dozen sheriff’s deputies carried a body on a gurney from a collapsed house as muddy water raced down the street. The deputies surrounded the body in silence for several moments before placing it gently into an emergency vehicle.
The highest preliminary rainfall total appeared to register at roughly 5 inches in a gauge north of Ojai in Ventura County, in the burn area of the Thomas fire, which forced evacuations and destroyed homes last month, according to the National Weather Service in Los Angeles. With heavy showers still forecast, flash flood warnings remained in effect for Santa Barbara County and southern Ventura County, according to the NWS.
U.S. 101 was shut down in both directions for more than 30 miles in the Thomas fire burn area because of flooding and debris flow, spanning an area from Santa Barbara to Ventura, according to the California Highway Patrol. Sections of state Routes 33 and 150 were also closed in Ventura County, according to the Sheriff’s Department. There was no estimate for when the roadway might reopen, a California Department of Transportation spokesman said Tuesday afternoon.
Santa Barbara County officials evacuated nearly 7,000 residents from foothill communities shortly before the heaviest surge hit the area, according to Kelly Hoover, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.
About 3 a.m., she said, the storm became ferocious. “We just had a deluge, a power surge of rain. And we had a report of a structure fire burning in the Montecito area, the San Ysidro area. And it just kept going downhill from there,” she said. “We have people stuck in their homes, stuck in their cars. There’s downed power lines, flooded roadways, debris.”
Hoover said the shutdown of U.S. 101 was heavily hindering rescue efforts. “There’s no way to get from Ventura here, no way for us to get south,” Hoover said. “We’re encouraging people to stay off the roads if they’re in an evacuation area.”
Santa Barbara County officials put a boil water notice in effect for the entire Montecito Water District on Tuesday afternoon. In Los Angeles County, there was “mudslide activity” on Country Club Drive in Burbank, where police ordered evacuations. The Burbank Police Department released footage of water surging across a roadway and urged people not to attempt to drive over it. Some vehicles were picked up and moved by the surge, and a few homes suffered minor damage, but no one had been injured, according to Sgt. Derek Green, a Burbank police spokesman.
The torrent of mud and debris sheared at least three fire hydrants, pumping another 130,000 gallons of water onto the debris flow, said Bill Mace, an assistant general manager of water systems for Burbank Water and Power.
(James Queally & Joseph Serna, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP)
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While property damage and flooding were limited, the downpour flushed sewage-tainted pollution from Tijuana into South Bay beaches as far north as Coronado.
The first major storm of [the] season brought more than 2 inches of precipitation and winds up to 55 mph along parts of the coast and as much as 4 inches in the mountains with 70 mph gusts.
The California Highway Patrol reported 364 crashes throughout the county on Tuesday as of 3 p.m. An average day sees about 140 such incidents, according to the agency. The San Diego County Department of Environmental Health closed the shoreline from Border Field State Park through Imperial Beach and up the Silver Strand due to “sewage-contaminated flows” from the Tijuana River.
A brown plume stretched from the Tijuana River Valley past the Imperial Beach Pier, said Paloma Aguirre, coastal and marine director with the local nonprofit Wildcoast.
“It’s not your typical river where it’s just stormwater, maybe car oil,” she said “We’re up against bacterial, viral pathogens, toxic waste, chemicals, you name it. We’re getting pummeled.”
The Imperial Beach shoreline is closed more than a third of the year on average as a result of water pollution from south of the border.
County health officials also issued standard beach advisories for the rest of the coastline following the unexpectedly large downpour. San Diegans are encouraged to wait 72 hours after it stops raining to use the beach because of pollution from urban runoff.
About 6,600 homes and businesses lost power due to the storm throughout the county, including about 4,000 homes in Oceanside, according to San Diego Gas & Electric. Electricity was restored to all but roughly 350 customers as of 5:45 p.m.
A man sailing in the San Diego Bay was forced to abandon his 65-foot boat around 10 a.m. after it started taking on water during the storm. Lifeguards rescued him about 200 yards offshore in a small dinghy amid choppy waves. The sailboat eventually sank and came to rest in shallow water.
The San Diego River saw moderate flooding, but no major damage was reported in the city, according to spokesperson Anthony Santacroce.
“City staff were successful in preparing for the storm and responding to issues during the rain. Thankfully, we came out of it without major incident.”
Santacroce said the city received just 21 calls for issues such as flooded streets, fallen tree branches and malfunctioning streetlights. The city had about half a dozen crews operating about 20 water pumps to prevent storm drains from overflowing.
In National City, winds toppled a sign over the Bay Theatre on National City Boulevard early Tuesday morning. The collapse destroyed the awning of the former movie theater. Nobody was reported injured.
SeaWorld San Diego shut its doors due to the inclement weather. It’s expected to reopen today, according to park officials.
North County escaped major weather-related problems, though road crews were kept busy and traffic accidents abounded throughout the region. Around 4 p.m., debris on state Route 78 between Escondido and Ramona just east of San Pasqual Valley was causing problems. Out east, Sunrise Highway near the Mount Laguna general store was blocked to all traffic because of a large tree that had fallen across the roadway, according to the California Highway Patrol.
At 4:30 p.m., a 5-foot-wide boulder had fallen onto state Route 76 in Pala blocking the westbound lanes.
Officials said there have been no significant problems in Bonsall near the Lilac fire burn area beyond limited mud runoff and minor flooding by late afternoon. A mudslide temporarily blocked the southbound lane of Mussey Grade Road at Mahogany Ranch Road in Ramona and three basketball-sized boulders fell onto the northbound lane of state Route 67, temporarily blocking the lane about a mile north of Poway Road.
Forecasters believed that a tamer storm from the Gulf of Alaska would drop south and pick up a bit of sub-tropical moisture, giving the region a decent soaking during the first storm of winter. Instead, the storm grabbed enormous amounts of warm, moist air from the region between Baja California and Hawaii, and dropped much of it in Southern California, especially along the San Diego coastline.
Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at UC San Diego, said despite Tuesday’s rain, the storm system might account for only 15 percent of the area’s yearly total. It appears that San Diego will be dry for at least the next week to 10 days, which doesn’t bode well for seasonal rainfall. Despite Tuesday’s storm, Ralph’s center estimates that there’s a 19 percent chance that San Diego County will receive its average rainfall this year.
(Joshua Emerson Smith & Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The National Weather Service predicted that up to an inch of rain along the coast, and roughly twice that in the mountains, would soak the region starting late Monday night into this morning. Foothill communities above 5,000 feet could see light snow flurries.
The city of San Diego, which saw homes severely damaged during downpours in 2016, is dispatching about half a dozen maintenance crews to areas prone to flooding.
Officials said 20 portable pumps will be placed in storm drains with a history of backing up, from Sorrento Valley to Mission Valley to Ocean Beach.
“We are ready,” said spokesman Anthony Santacroce. “The city of San Diego, specifically stormwater operations, has been preparing since before the New Year.”
If flooding occurs, residents are urged to heed warning signs, Santacroce added. “Do not drive or walk through floodwaters, standing or moving. It’s a very dangerous thing to do.”
The rain was expected to hit hardest between 4 a.m. and 10 a.m. today.
The winds could gust more than 30 mph in Oceanside, 40 mph in San Diego and 50 mph or more in Julian, Alpine and Palomar. Borrego Springs could experience gusts close to 70 mph.
Cities across the county are asking residents to clear their property of trash and debris, which can clog storm drains and pollute waterways. Those with trash service today should ensure lids are fully closed before putting bins by the street.
“When it’s this dry this late in the season, you end up with a lot of leaf fall,” said National City Mayor Ron Morrison. “We have extra street sweeping going on, and crews are going to the drains to make sure there’s no buildup going on.”
Storm conditions will likely also pollute beaches and bays throughout the region. Urban runoff flushes chemicals, heavy metals and fecal waste into creeks and rivers, triggering beach advisories for 72 hours after it stops raining. At the same time, even light precipitation can cause sewage spills in Tijuana that routinely flood South Bay beaches with pollution. Such pollution closes down beaches in Imperial Beach more than a third of the year on average.
Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina said the city’s preparing to deal with such contamination in coming days.
“We’ve already been smelling sewage the last few weeks in Imperial Beach,” he said. “I think there’s more than ever coming out of the area.”
Free sandbags are available in many cities prior to storm events and are usually limited to 10 per resident. Information about pickup locations can be found at the website 211sandiego.org. Unlike the fire-ravaged areas in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, the weather service has not issued a flash flood watch for northern San Diego County, where the Lilac fire burned more than 4,100 acres last month.
“The terrain isn’t very steep so we don’t think we’ll need a watch,” said Phil Gonsalves, a forecaster at the National Weather Service. The storm could make the morning and evening commutes treacherous for drivers and generate potentially damaging winds. “We’re getting a cold front that will produce heavy rain early, then there will be a secondary pulse that will occur between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.,” Gonsalves said.
The incoming storm “is a one-shot deal,” said Brandt Maxwell, a weather service forecaster. “Once it’s over, we won’t get any more rain for at least four or five days, and the next low pressure system doesn’t look that strong.”
San Diego International Airport has received only 0.09 inches of rain since Oct. 1, when the rainy season started. That’s about 3.5 inches below average.
(Gary Robbins & Joshua Emerson Smith, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The U.S. had 16 disasters last year with damage exceeding a billion dollars, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday. That ties 2011 for the number of billion-dollar disasters, but the total cost blew past the previous record of $215 billion in 2005. Costs are adjusted for inflation.
Three of the five most expensive hurricanes in U. S. history hit last year.
Hurricane Harvey, which caused massive flooding in Texas, cost $125 billion, second only to 2005’s Katrina, while Maria’s damage in Puerto Rico cost $90 billion, ranking third, NOAA said. Irma was $50 billion, mainly in Florida, for the fifth-most-expensive hurricane.
Western wildfires fanned by heat racked up $18 billion in damage, triple the U.S. wildfire record, according to NOAA. Besides Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina all had more than $1 billion in damage from the 16 weather disasters in 2017.
“While we have to be careful about knee-jerk cause-effect discussions,(many scientific studies) show that some of today’s extremes have climate change fingerprints on them,” said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd, a past president of the American Meteorological Society.
The U.S. averages six of the billion-dollar weather disasters each year, costing a bit more than $40 billion annually.
The increase in billion-dollar weather disasters is likely a combination of more flooding, heat and storm surge from climate change along with other non-climate changes, such as where buildings are put, where people move and how valuable their property is, said Deke Arndt, NOAA’s climate monitoring chief.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The National Weather Service said Worcester, Mass., which fell to minus 9, and Providence, R.I., which dropped to minus 3, also set record lows, as did Hartford, Conn., where the temperature dropped to minus 9, smashing a 1912 record. Boston tied a low-temperature record set more than a century ago in 1896 of minus 2.
Record-low temperatures were also set in parts of West Virginia. The extended period of severe cold has begun to get on the nerves of even the flintiest of New Englanders.
Evan Premo, of Marshfield, Vt., stopped into a Capitol Grounds coffee shop in Montpelier for lunch Sunday with his two sons, aged 5 and 3.
“We’ve been stir crazy because we spend so much time outside always so yeah, it’s a challenge,” said Premo.
Cleveland has also been dealing with two weeks of frigid temperatures.
Arthur Bassett, who manages a coffee shop in downtown Cleveland, said Sunday the cold temperatures are what people in northeastern Ohio have come to expect.
“Clevelanders have toughness ingrained in them,” Bassett said. “You deal with this.”
The good news is the bone-numbing air is set to push out of the region.
By today, Boston temperatures should return to a more seasonable low 30s. The mercury will continue to rise and Boston could see temperatures in the mid-40s by Thursday and as high as the low-50s on Friday.
Many Northeast residents endured jaw-clenching temperatures and brutal wind chills over the weekend as cleanup continued from the storm that dropped as much as 18 inches of snow in some places on Thursday.
As aviation crews at South Carolina’s busiest airport, Charleston International Airport, struggled to clear runways of snow and ice so they could be reopened, in New England water-main breaks, frozen hydrants and burst pipes created new headaches for officials.
The temperature registered minus 37 Saturday at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire, one of the coldest places on the planet. The wind chill was minus 93. It tied with Armstrong, Ontario, as the second coldest spot in the world.
Meteorologist Mike Carmon said people at the observatory were “layering up as a much as we can.” The chilly winter blast did not spare Florida, where rescuers rushed to save hundreds of young sea turtles stunned by the cold. State wildlife officials said they had rescued more than 100. The Gulf World Marine Institute in Panama City Beach said it had treated 200 turtles by Thursday evening.
And in Atlanta, forecasters warned a mix of low temperatures and precipitation could create icy road conditions there, where the College Football Playoff National Championship will be held tonight.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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From the Spanish moss-canopied sidewalks of Savannah, Ga., to icy villages in coastal Maine, emergency officials reckoned with the rages, whims and remains of a storm that shut down schools for more than a million children, flooded roadways, filled homeless shelters and forced the cancellations of thousands of flights.
Yet the storm, notable for a steep drop in atmospheric pressure that prompted some forecasters to describe it as a “bomb cyclone,” was but one act in a prolonged run of misery that has already enveloped millions of people in a wintry torment of arctic air and snow-blown streets.
Wind chills are expected to repeatedly plunge below zero in some areas for the next several days, at least, and utility companies scrambled Thursday to restore electricity to tens of thousands of homes and businesses.
All along the Eastern Seaboard, roads — iced-over, snow-covered or slush-filled — were treacherous on Thursday and likely to remain that way for a few days. Some states, including New York, imposed restrictions on some roads and limited truck travel.
The storm’s path through some of the busiest air travel corridors in the country prompted airlines to cancel more than 4,000 flights, according to FlightAware, an aviation tracking website. Carriers have already abandoned plans for more than 600 flights today.
A 3-foot tidal surge pushed floodwaters into the Long Wharf area of downtown Boston, turning one of the city’s popular tourist destinations into a slushy mess filled with flashing firetrucks and a red inflatable raft. The water flowed into buildings and down the steps of the aquarium mass transit station, and firefighters rescued one person from a car trapped in the water nearly up to its door handles, according to Joseph Finn, the commissioner of the Boston Fire Department.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen the water come this high in the downtown area,” Finn said, as the flooded roads turned slushy behind him and the wind whipped heavy snow through the air.
Finn said firefighters were inspecting flooded buildings to see which ones could pose a fire risk. He said firefighters had made a small number of additional rescues in coastal areas of the city, helping people out of stranded cars in the icy water.
“The tough part of this is it’s going to repeat itself at 12:30 tonight,” Finn said, referring to the next high tide.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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The high winds played havoc on transport, derailing trains in Switzerland and Germany and leaving hundreds of thousands of homes across France, Switzerland, Britain and Ireland without power.
Officials said one skier was killed in the French Alps after being hit by a falling tree in Morillon in Haute-Savoie.
Eight people suffered mostly minor injuries when a train was blown off the tracks near Lenk, a town south of Bern, the Swiss capital, according to police. In western Germany, a train derailed near Luenen when it crashed into a tree that had fallen onto the tracks. No injuries were reported.
The storm forced the cancellation of flights at Zurich and Basel airports and toppled a truck on a Swiss highway. Thousands of households at Lake Zurich were left without power, and firefighters were called to help with toppled trees blocking streets and flooding due to heavy rain.
In England, the storm brought hail and lightning. Overturned vehicles forced officials to close portions of three major highways. Some bridges were also shutdown.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Forecasters warned that the same system could soon strengthen into a “bomb cyclone” as it rolls up the East Coast, bringing hurricane-force winds, coastal flooding and up to a foot of snow. At least 17 deaths were blamed on dangerously cold temperatures that for days have gripped wide swaths of the U.S. from Texas to New England.
A winter storm warning extended from the Gulf Coast of Florida’s “Big Bend” region all the way up the Atlantic coast. Forecasters said hurricane-force winds blowing offshore today could generate 24-foot seas. Schools in the Southeast called off classes just months after being shut down because of hurricane threats, and police urged drivers to stay off the roads in a region little accustomed to the kind of winter woes common to the Northeast.
In Savannah, snow blanketed the city’s lush downtown squares and collected on branches of burly oaks for the first time in nearly eight years. Dump trucks spread sand on major streets in Savannah ahead of the storm and police closed several bridges, overpasses and a major causeway because of ice.
Airports shut down in Savannah, Charleston and elsewhere as airlines canceled 500 flights Wednesday, and at least 1,700 more were canceled today.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The cold has been blamed for at least a dozen deaths, prompted officials to open warming centers in the Deep South and triggered pleas from government officials to check on neighbors, especially those who are elderly, sick or who live alone.
In St. Louis, where temperatures dipped 30 degrees below normal, Mayor Lyda Krewson warned it was “dangerously cold.” “It’s important that people look out for anyone in need of shelter,” she said.
The National Weather Service issued wind chill advisories and freeze warnings covering a vast area, from South Texas to Canada and from Montana to Maine. The arctic blast was blamed for freezing a water tower in Iowa, halting a ferry service in New York and even trapping a swan in a Virginia pond.
At the same time, a heatwave swept into the country’s northernmost state: Anchorage, Alaska, tied a record high on Tuesday of 44 degrees — at the same time Jacksonville, Fla., was a mere 38 degrees.
Indianapolis Public Schools canceled classes after the city tied a record low for the day — set in 1887 — of minus 12 degrees. The northwest Indiana city of Lafayette got down to minus 19, shattering the record set in 1979. Many local residents noticed a hum, which Duke Energy said was caused by extra power surging through utility lines to meet electricity demands.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The National Weather Service issued wind chill advisories covering a vast area from South Texas to Canada and from Montana and Wyoming through New England. Dangerously low temperatures enveloped much of the Midwest, yet didn’t deter hundreds of people from ringing in the new year by jumping into Lake Michigan.
Despite sub-freezing temperatures and a warning of potential hypothermia from the local fire chief, throngs of people took part in the annual tradition in Milwaukee, warming up later with chili or heat from a beach fire pit.
A similar event was canceled from the Chicago lakefront, where temperature dipped below zero as thick white steam rose from the lake Monday. Organizers said the arctic blast made jumping into the lake too dangerous.
“I’m not happy about it. But I was down by the lake and, gosh, if you were dropped in there, it’d take you 10 minutes to get out,” Jeff Coggins, who helped organize the thwarted Chicago event, told WBBM-TV.
Instead, would-be Chicago plungers had their pictures taken while jumping on the frozen beach — in their swimsuits.
Temperatures plunged below zero elsewhere in the Midwest, including in Aberdeen, S.D., where the mercury dropped to a record-breaking minus 32. The previous New Year’s Day record had stood for 99 years.
In Nebraska, temperatures hit 15 below zero before midnight Sunday in Omaha, breaking a record low dating to 1884. Omaha officials cited the forecast in postponing the 18th annual New Year’s Eve Fireworks Spectacular that draws around 30,000 people.
It was colder in Des Moines, where city officials closed a downtown outdoor ice skating plaza and said it wouldn’t reopen until the city emerged from sub-zero temperatures. The temperature hit 20 below zero early Monday, with the wind chill dipping to negative 31 degrees.
In northeastern Montana, the wind chill readings dipped as low as minus 58. And in Duluth, Minn., a city known for its bitter cold winters, the wind chill dipped to 36 below zero.
Plunging overnight temperatures in Texas brought rare snow flurries as far south as Austin, and accidents racked up on icy roads across the state. In the central Texas city of Abilene, the local police chief said more than three dozen vehicle crashes were reported in 24 hours.
It’s even cold in the Deep South, a region more accustomed to brief bursts of arctic air than night after night below zero. Frozen pipes and dead car batteries were concerns from Louisiana to Georgia as overnight temperatures in the teens were predicted across the region by Monday night.
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s office said two bodies found Sunday showed signs of hypothermia. They included a man in his 50s found on the ground in an alley and a 34-year-old man. Police believe the cold weather also may have been a factor in the death of a man in Bismarck, N.D., whose body was found near a river.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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