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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This does not mean that Phaethon posed any immediate danger. Potential space hazards are matters of cosmic perspective: On Dec. 16, the nearest Phaethon has been since the 1970s, it was 6 million miles from us. The moon, for comparison, is 240,000 miles away.
In Puerto Rico, the Arecibo Observatory watched Phaethon’s passage. The world’s second-largest radio telescope has not had an easy year. Hurricane Maria roughed up the observatory, destroying a 40-foot dish and damaging other instruments. All told, the hurricane caused between $4 million and $8 million in damage, National Science Foundation acting assistant director James Ulvestad told The Washington Post.
But the telescope escaped total devastation.
The observatory, once back online, captured the best-resolution images of Phaethon ever taken, which NASA released in late December. The asteroid has a curious dark splotch near one of its poles. “The dark feature could be a crater or some other topographic depression that did not reflect the radar beam back to Earth,” said Patrick Taylor, a scientist at Arecibo Observatory and the Universities Space Research Association, in a news release. The new, detailed inspection of Phaethon showed that it is shaped like a ball, though it has a depression along its middle.
Radar revealed that the asteroid was 0.6 miles wider than thought, at 3.6 miles in diameter. If an asteroid of Phaethon’s size hit Earth, the impact would be so devastating it would destroy the ozone layer several times over.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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The agency spent $2.4 billion battling wildfires in fiscal 2017, which ended Sept. 30. And that doesn’t even include the Forest Service’s share of the $170 million Thomas fire, which is still burning in Los Padres National Forest.
Only halfway through the state fiscal year, Cal Fire has already spent $699 million fighting wildland blazes that turned California’s 2017 fire season into the deadliest and most destructive on record.
The rising costs are sucking funds from other Forest Service programs, such as recreation and maintenance. And the longer fire season has pushed state officials to spend more taxpayer money expanding California’s year-round firefighting staff.
There have been some years of respite, but in general, firefighting costs have been climbing since 2000.
“It’s just getting worse and worse,” Forest Service spokeswoman Jennifer Jones said. This is the fifth year since 2006 that national burn acreage topped 9 million, with 2015 setting a modern record at 10.1 million acres.
In California, the wind-driven Thomas fire roared to the head of the state’s 85-year-old list of large wildfires. This is the third year in the past decade that flames charred more than 1 million acres in the state.
At one point, more than 8,600 federal, state and local firefighters were attacking the Thomas blaze, and in October, more than 11,000 firefighters battled the Northern California fire siege, which claimed 45 lives.
“We’re seeing sieges happen more frequently” and fire seasons are growing longer, said Cal Fire director Ken Pimlott.
That has prompted his department to beef up permanent staffing.
Cal Fire, which is responsible for fire protection in rural areas, traditionally kept 10 fire stations open all year in Southern California and staffed others around the state during the fire season.
Starting this year, an additional 42 Cal Fire stations throughout the state will remain open year-round, each with an engine that can be dispatched at a moment’s notice.
“This is the state recognizing that conditions are changing,” Pimlott said. “As this becomes the new norm we will continue to look at what it takes to keep pace.”
Cal Fire’s overall budget — $2.1 billion this fiscal year — includes a category for fighting large wildfires. But the actual costs usually exceed the budgeted amount.
With six months left in this fiscal year, the state firefighting bill is already the highest on record and tops the budgeted amount by $ 272 million.
Some of the state’s firefighting expenses are eventually reimbursed by the federal government. But one way or another, taxpayers pick up the tab.
The Legislature in 2011 imposed an annual fee on homeowners in areas protected by Cal Fire, but that paid for fire prevention activities, such as brush clearance inspections and hazardous fuel reduction, not firefighting operations.
And the $150 per-home fee, which raised about $74 million a year, proved so contentious that lawmakers this year suspended it until 2031.
In its place, Cal Fire is getting prevention money from the state’s cap and trade program, in which companies that emit greenhouse gases buy pollution credits. The Forest Service, meanwhile, has been forced in many years to borrow money from the agency’s other programs to cover ballooning firefighting expenses. While those programs are repaid, the transfers disrupt and postpone work in national forests.
Total fire spending — including firefighting, training, and hazardous fuel reduction — is eating up more of the agency’s budget. A decade ago, it amounted to 42 percent of the total Forest Service budget. In fiscal 2017, it consumed 57 percent. By 2021, Jones said, the agency expects fire to amount to roughly two-thirds of its budget.
That leaves the agency with less to spend on other forest projects, including road and trail maintenance and recreational activities.
From 1998 to 2016, the number of Forest Service employees working in fire programs more than doubled to 12,000. At the same time, Jones said, staffing for some other programs declined 39 percent.
In 2009, Congress created another firefighting fund, but that failed to solve the Forest Service’s money problems.
The Obama administration subsequently proposed a system of budget adjustments when the agency was hit by major wildfire costs, but that went nowhere.
Now Forest Service officials are trying to come up with a fix that would treat the costliest wildfires as a natural disaster, meaning they would be paid for outside of the agency’s annual appropriation. Neither federal nor state officials expect the wildfire threat to diminish, as the forces that drive big burns are escalating.
In California and the West, development continues to push into fire-prone wildlands. Twentieth century policies thwarted the natural fire cycle on public lands, leaving many forests overgrown. Drought and climate change are extending the fire season. “We all have to come to the understanding that fire is a part of the landscape in California,” Pimlott said. “We will never be able to stop these 60-mile-an-hour, wind-driven, intense fires that move the length of a football field in a minute.”
(Bettina Boxall, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP)
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The National Weather Service reported International Falls and Hibbing, Minn., set record low temperatures on Wednesday morning. International Falls, the self-proclaimed Icebox of the Nation, plunged to 37 degrees below zero, breaking the old record of 32 below set in 1924. Hibbing bottomed out at 28 below, breaking the old record of 27 below set in 1964.
Wind chill advisories or warnings were in effect for much of New England, northern Pennsylvania and New York. Those places and states in the northern Plains and Great Lakes were projected to see highs in the teens or single digits and lows below zero for the rest of the week and into the new year.
The National Weather Service said wind chills in many areas today could make temperatures feel below zero.
Meanwhile, Erie was recovering from a storm that brought 34 inches of snow on Christmas Day, smashing the daily snowfall record for the Great Lakes city of 8 inches, and 26.5 more inches on Tuesday. More than 65 inches have fallen on the city since Christmas Eve, with several more inches falling Wednesday as residents dug out in frigid temperatures.
Strong westerly winds over Lake Erie picked up moisture, developed into snow and converged with opposing winds, dumping snow in a band along the shore from Ohio to New York, said Zach Sefcovic, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Cleveland.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Officials have continued the practice even amid a temporary housing shortage in Texas, where almost 8,000 applicants are still awaiting federal support nearly four months after Hurricane Harvey landed in the Gulf Coast.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency briefly halted trailer sales following Harvey but resumed them in November, online records show. Since then, at least 115 units manufactured this year have been sold for pennies on the dollar, and many of the online auctions have listed such things as dirty mattresses, missing furniture, pet odors or loose trim as the lone damage. “I don’t care what shape it’s in, it beats sleeping on a dirt floor,” said Christy Combs, who moved with her husband, four children and five dogs into a tent after their rented apartment in Aransas Pass, Texas, was left uninhabitable by floodwater.
FEMA has no written policy or regulation requiring disposal of used trailers, but an official confirmed to AP that it’s a longstanding internal policy and that seldom are the housing units given to another family in need after the initial 18-month stint.
“Because of the challenges associated with damaged units, and the costs of life-cycle maintenance, and because we are required to maintain a ready reserve for disasters, FEMA, by practice, doesn’t return used units to our reserve inventory,” said Jenny Burke, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA.
Burke was unable to explain why FEMA leases new units for only 18 months before consigning them to the General Services Administration’s online auction.
The agency’s experience after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 could provide one explanation for a strict policy governing what kind of housing can go to storm victims. Some 144,000 FEMA trailers became symbols of the troubled federal response after some victims who lived in them for years won millions of dollars from lawsuits claiming the units leached high levels of cancer-causing formaldehyde.
FEMA spokesman Bob Howard stressed the units being used now are much higher quality than those and don’t have formaldehyde problems, meeting U.S. Housing and Urban Development standards for mobile homes. Harvey survivors in Texas have received 859 trailers so far, but another some 7,900 applicants are in need of some type of temporary housing assistance, whether rent, home repairs or trailers, Howard said.
FEMA’s policy of selling off its used trailers left the agency with a standing inventory of only 1,700 units as an unusually active hurricane season battered southeast Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands this year. Federal records show that FEMA has awarded about $278 million in competitive-bid contracts to trailer manufacturers even as it has continued to sell off used units. One record showed an expected delivery date of February 2018.
In September, when AP first reported on the auctions, officials said the units sold had all been used to house survivors of the 2016 floods in Southern Louisiana, who returned them with damage that made them unfit for redeployment.
More than 100 2017-model trailers were sold in the two days leading up to Harvey’s landfall Aug. 25, the AP reported.
On Aug. 28, FEMA ordered the auctions halted “to evaluate the overall condition of recently deactivated units,” said Burke, adding that some were eventually deployed to support disaster response, although none that “required refurbishment.”
“If you’re living in a tent, you really don’t care about the trim,” said Samantha McCrary, the owner of a catering business in Rockport, Texas, who since the storm hit Aug. 25 has allowed people to camp on her 3.5-acre property.
At its height, the Rockport Relief Camp hosted around 80 people in tents and trailers, and served 1,000 meals per day.
McCrary, her husband and other southeast Texas volunteers have accepted donated used trailers and fixed them up for tent-dwellers.
“They’re rough, but the water and the heat works. They’ve got plywood for a windshield, plywood for doors, and people are thrilled to death to get them,” McCrary said.
Other slightly used FEMA trailers have resurfaced on Craigslist.
A Harvey survivor in Houston is living in a 2017-model trailer that her church pooled money to buy from retired North Texas fire chief Shan English. English purchased it for $10,000 in June from the online auction site, and advertised it on Craigslist for $18,000.
“It was a brand new unit that hadn’t been lived in. They bought it and set it up for her— she’s just as happy as you can imagine,” English said.
(Emily Schmall & Michael Sisak, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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With snow falling at a rate of up to 3 inches per hour, the National Weather Service reported Erie, Pa., picked up at least 58 inches of snow since the storm began on Christmas Eve. The bulk of that fell in a 30-hour period from Christmas morning into Tuesday.
Erie officials have declared a state of emergency and are pleading with motorists to stay off city streets and nearby highways, including Interstates 90 and 79. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf was also expected to call up some national guardsmen because so much snow has fallen that there is concern ambulances will not able to reach some patients.
“They don’t have vehicles high enough, so we are currently working with the national guard to be able to deploy Humvee ambulances to assist them,” said Richard Flinn, the secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Emergency Management. “We will also provide the state police with Humvees in case they need it.”
According to the National Weather Service, Erie received 34 inches on Christmas Day, easily topping its previous 24-hour snowfall record.
After another 24 inches piled up from midnight through 5 p.m. Tuesday, the National Weather Service said Erie had broken Pennsylvania’s previous all-time two-day state snowfall record, set in 1958 when Morgantown received 44 inches.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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A blizzard warning was issued Monday for portions of Maine and New Hampshire, with forecasters saying snow of up to 10 inches and wind gusts up to 50 mph could make travel “dangerous to impossible.”
States from Montana and the Dakotas to Wisconsin expected wind chill temperatures in places at 40 below zero, the National Weather Service said. The upper half of Iowa and northern Illinois also braced for subzero temperatures.
Minnesota was experiencing its most frigid Christmas Day since 1996, with wind chills as cold as 35 degrees below zero, KSTP-TV reported. The National Weather Service warned that those whose skin was exposed in such conditions could get frostbite in as little as 15 minutes. Snow amounts in the Midwest were not large for this time of year. A storm system that swept from Nebraska through Iowa dropped around 2 inches of snow on Chicago, the weather service said.
That was just enough to provide a picturesque backdrop for those gathering for Christmas dinners. But it wasn’t enough to cause havoc either on roadway or airport runaways.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The situation is a major turnaround from last year, when Northern California was battered by a series of “atmospheric river” storms that helped end the state’s five-year drought. When it was over, California’s northern Sierra Nevada experienced the wettest winter on record, with some ski resorts staying open through the summer.
The dry conditions are partly to blame for the worst fire season on record in California. Low humidity and lack of rain coupled with high winds fueled destructive wildfires from Mendocino down to San Diego this fall. In wine country, more than 40 people died and more than 10,000 homes were lost. To the south, the Thomas fire in Ventura and
Santa Barbara counties became the largest wildfire on record in California. If the trend continues, forecasters say California could see, come spring, a light Sierra Nevada snowpack, a key source of water for the state during the dry summer.
The weather station in California with the longest record of recording rainfall, San Francisco, has measured just 3.4 inches of rain since the start of July. That’s only 44 percent of average for this time of year, said meteorologist Jan Null.
So far this December, San Francisco has received only 0.15 inches of rain.
San Francisco is already close to the halfway point in its rainy season: Jan. 19. In an average year, the city would have received 11.83 inches by then, halfway to the annual average of 23.65 inches, Null said.
Null said he analyzed rain records going back to the oldest precipitation record on file for California, the 1849-50 season in Gold Rush-era San Francisco. He found that there were 22 years in which San Francisco at this point in the season had similar anemic — but not abysmal — rainfall, between 2.9 inches and 3.9 inches.
And what Null found was bad news: Of those 22 years, only four of them caught up in the remainder of the rainy season and finished above the average.
“Those aren’t very good odds,” Null said. As in Southern California, San Francisco has also been struggling with a giant mass of high pressure that is deflecting storms away from California — a pattern that has remained consistent throughout December.
“How long this will continue, I don’t think anyone knows,” Null said. The situation is even more grim in Southern California.
San Diego International Airport averages 1.57 inches of precipitation in December, and 3.11 inches from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31. That three-month period is close to ending, and the airport has received only 0.2 of an inch of rain. The only time it was drier during those three months was in 1929, when the region recorded only a trace amount of precipitation.
It’s part of a larger weather trend for Southern California: Over the last seven years, maximum temperatures during the fall have gotten hotter and there has been less rain.
This October and November were the hottest in 122 years of record keeping for the region.
“We’d have to have a dramatic turnaround to have a wet winter,” said climatologist Bill Patzert of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge.
“It’s certainly not an auspicious start,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.
The longer that California sees the late fall and winter go by without seeing some decent storms, the worse the outlook is for a wet winter, much less an average one.
“Essentially in California, especially Southern California, we’re reliant on a pretty small number of precipitation events to bring most of the water,” Swain said. “And it’s easy to miss out on just a couple of events and have a dry year.”
And the outlook continues to be dry and mild, setting up a boring time for meteorologists in Southern California. The forecast for San Diego between Christmas and New Year’s Eve calls for partly cloudy or sunny skies, with highs mostly in the 70s.
San Francisco is also not expected to see significant storms for the next week.
In contrast to San Diego, Northern California did have somewhat of a decent November, depending on your perspective. San Francisco received 2.83 inches of rain, close to the average November amount of 3.16 inches.
That resulted in snow in the Sierra Nevada, home to the state’s greatest mountain range that not only provides powder for ski resorts but stores California’s water supply as ice to be used during the dry season.
But unfortunately, the one major storm that did get through was relatively warm. So although precipitation in the Sierra is close to average, much of it is falling as rain in the lower elevations where snow would normally accumulate, said meteorologist Scott McGuire of the National Weather Service’s Reno office.
That means that the snowpack is pretty small; the amount of water contained in the snowpack is only about 34 percent of average for this time of year because snow is accumulating only at the highest elevations.
“The low elevations don’t have a big snowpack at all, they’re well below average for this time of year, so the snowpack has suffered as a result,” McGuire said. “We’ve only had one major storm — it brought us an abundance of precipitation — but it wasn’t good for the snow cycle.”
If things don’t change soon, McGuire said, “we’ll start to worry about the low snowpack.”
(Rong-Gong Lin II, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP)
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Tropical Storm Tembin strengthened into a typhoon before moving into the South China Sea. Most of the dead and missing were reported in the hard-hit provinces of Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur and on the Zamboanga Peninsula.
Intense rainfall in the mountains most likely caused landslides that blocked rainwater, said Marina Marasigan of the government’s disaster-response agency. When the naturally formed dams broke from the pressure, torrents of rainwater smashed into the villages below.
Mayor Bong Edding of Sibuco town blamed logging operations in the mountains for flash food that swept away houses with more than 30 residents. Five bodies have been recovered so far in the village and a search and rescue was continuing.
A large number of dead and missing was also reported in Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur provinces, where floodwaters from a mountain washed away several riverside houses.
Marasigan asked the public to heed storm warnings and evacuation orders to avoid casualties. “We’re really sad that we have this news especially because our countrymen were looking to celebrate Christmas,” Marasigan told a televised news conference.
Thousands of villagers fled to emergency shelters and more than 500 passengers remained stranded in airports and seaports after the coast guard prohibited ferries from venturing out in the rough seas and several flights were canceled as the storm raged Saturday.
The typhoon was packing maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour and gusts of up to 90 mph.
An inter-island ferry sank off northeastern Quezon province Thursday after being lashed by fierce winds and big waves, leaving at least five people dead. More than 250 passengers and crewmen were rescued.
Earlier in the week, another tropical storm left more than 50 people dead and 31 others missing, mostly due to landslides, and damaged more than 10,000 houses in the central Philippines.
Among the areas battered by the latest storm was Marawi, a lakeside city in Lanao del Sur that is still recovering from a five-month siege by pro-Islamic State group extremists that left more than 1,000 people dead and displaced its entire population of about 200,000 people.
(S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Most of the deaths from Tropical Storm Tembin were in the hard-hit provinces of Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur and on the Zamboanga Peninsula, according to an initial government report Saturday.
It was the latest disaster to hit the Philippines, which is battered by about 20 typhoons and storms each year, making the archipelago that lies on the Pacific typhoon belt one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.
A search and rescue operation was under way for more than 30 people swept away by flash floods in the fishing village of Anungan, Mayor Bong Edding of Zamboanga del Norte province’s Sibuco town said by phone.
Five bodies have been recovered in the village.
“The floodwaters from the mountain came down so fast and swept away people and houses,” Edding said. “It’s really sad because Christmas is just a few days away, but these things happen beyond our control.”
Edding blamed years of logging in the mountains near Anungan for the tragedy that unfolded, adding that he and other officials would move to halt the logging operations.
The rest of the deaths were reported in Lanao del Norte, where floodwaters from a mountain also swept away several riverside houses and villagers, and Lanao del Sur, police and officials said.
Lanao del Norte officials reported the highest death toll at 64 with 139 missing followed by Zamboanga del Norte province, where officials reported at least 29 storm deaths with 19 others missing. The storm left 21 dead and one missing in the lakeside province of Lanao del Sur, according to the Department of Interior and Local Government.
Thousands of villagers moved to emergency shelters and thousands more were stranded in airports and seaports after the coast guard prohibited ferries from venturing out in the rough seas and several flights were canceled.
An inter-island ferry sank off northeastern Quezon province Thursday after being lashed by fierce winds and big waves, leaving at least five people dead. More than 250 passengers and crewmen were rescued.
The storm, known locally as Vinta, strengthened into a typhoon and picked up speed late Saturday, packing maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour and gusts of up to 90 mph. It struck the southern section of western Palawan province late Saturday and is forecast to blow away from the southern Philippines today toward the South China Sea.
“It is unfortunate that another tropical cyclone, Vinta, made its presence felt so near Christmas,” presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said, adding that food packs and other aid were being distributed in storm-hit communities.
Earlier in the week, a tropical storm left more than 50 people dead and 31 others missing, mostly due to landslides, and damaged more than 10,000 houses in the central Philippines before weakening and blowing into the South China Sea.
Among the areas battered by the storm was Marawi, a lakeside city in Lanao del Sur that is still recovering from a five-month siege by pro-Islamic State group extremists that left more than 1,000 people dead.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Days before Christmas, and three months after Hurricane Maria made landfall, parts of Puerto Rico are still without water, and more than 1 million people are in the dark. Hundreds of residents remain in shelters, unable to return home. Schools that have been able to resume classes are still without power.
But in towns around the island, residents are trying to keep holiday traditions alive, despite the circumstances. The group in Guaynabo had arrived at the home of Juan Pablo González for a parranda, a Puerto Rican Christmas tradition that brings friends together to sing carols, usually in the middle of the night. González’s home was still without power, so people used cellphones and flashlights to see one another and read song lyrics.
“I couldn’t allow the pessimism that is everywhere, that is covering us, to also wither the culture, the traditions,” said Lorraine Martínez, one of the singers. “We bring our happiness.”
In Old San Juan, Marta Cirino performed Christmas songs with Caiko y Los del Soberao, an Afro-Puerto Rican music group. The neighborhood is usually crowded with tourists, but on a recent night, it was full of locals who sang and danced to the music.
“At the beginning, I thought there was not going to be Christmas,” said Franklin Lanzó, the musical director of the group, who lost his home during the storm. “But these are things that happen, and I was not going to stop for it.”
The Eugenio María de Hostos School in Canóvanas has been used as a shelter for weeks, and is currently home to 94 people. Mildred Rodriguez, a resident at the shelter, brought an artificial Christmas tree salvaged from the debris at her home, and decorated it with what she could find.
“We are not going to have a Christmas, at least me,” said Ana J. Almarante Vázquez, a resident at the shelter. “I am far away from my family, I don’t have anyone else here. What good time am I going to have?”
Workers cleaned and decorated the Escuela del Pueblo Trabajador, a Montessori institution near Trujillo Alto. The school decided to continue a decadeslong tradition and hold a holiday celebration for the children after parents asked for it. The area has been without power since Hurricane Irma made landfall a few weeks before Maria swept over the island, but the school reopened in early October.
In previous years, only one Puerto Rican flag would hang near the Three Kings altar at the school, but this year dozens of flags were integrated in the decoration. The academic director of the school, Marlyn Souffront, wanted to focus on reaffirming the island’s cultural identity.
“People are depressed and have suffered all their losses, and need a moment and a space where they could celebrate,” Souffront said. “So we decided we were going to do it.”
(Erika P. Rodriguez, NEW YORK TIMES)
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Cal Fire and County Fire Authority Chief Tony Mecham said investigators know exactly where the Lilac fire began off the west side of Interstate 15 on Dec. 7, roughly a half-mile south of state Route 76.
“We’ve narrowed it down to a one-square-foot area where it started, but we didn’t find anything,” Mecham said Friday. “There was nothing there that we could tie to a heat source.”
There were no electric lines in the area, no lightning and no evidence of an arson device or a cigarette butt or carbon from a vehicle’s exhaust, he added.
“Unless we get a tip through the public or some other type of followup, we may never know.”
Numerous motorists who saw the fire when it was very small have come forward, but none has told authorities they saw any vehicle or person near the point of origin.
Mecham said it’s very possible that whoever started the fire has no idea they are responsible. He said perhaps a truck dragging a metal chain that was throwing off sparks could have started the blaze, which began about 11:15 a.m. during extremely high-risk fire weather with humidity levels in the single digits and strong Santa Ana winds beginning to howl.
The Lilac fire burned 4,100 acres in Bonsall, destroyed 157 structures and damaged 64 others. It is still unclear how many of those structures were homes as opposed to agriculture buildings such as greenhouses and barns.
Forty-six horses were killed or went missing at the San Luis Rey Downs training facility in Bonsall.
Although there is no reason to suspect arson, Mecham has asked anyone with information about the origin of the fire to call Cal Fire’s Arson Tip Line at (800) 468-4408.
“The fire is still under investigation,” Mecham said. “We’re not ruling anything out. It was something related to the freeway. What we’ll probably end up with is a designation of ‘undetermined.’”
(J. Harry Jones, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The fire eclipsed the 2003 Cedar fire in San Diego County, which burned 273,246 acres.
The milestone reaffirmed 2017 as the most destructive fire season on record in the state.
In October, a series of fires in wine country burned more than 10,000 homes and killed more than 40 people. Those blazes, along with the Thomas fire, were fueled by dry conditions and intense winds.
Despite its size, the Thomas fire has been less destructive than either the wine country fires or the Cedar fire, which destroyed 2,820 structures and killed 15 people.
The Thomas fire has destroyed more than 1,000 structures and has been associated with one death.
The inferno has claimed just over 1,000 structures since it started on Dec. 4, and San Diego fire engineer Cory Iverson died fighting the fire last week.
The fire consumed tens of thousands of acres a day in its first week but is now nibbling up vegetation at a relatively slow pace — 288 acres on Wednesday, 770 on Thursday.
Any new growth of the fire will likely be the result of controlled burns by firefighters.
“The main fire itself will not have any growth,” said Capt. Brandon Vaccaro of the California City Fire Department. “Any growth that we see or is reflected in the acreage will be based on the control burns.” Firefighters set the speed of the burn, he said, using bulldozers, fire engines and hand tools. A train of personnel moves along setting the fire, making sure no fire jumps the control line or gets out of hand, Vaccaro said.
The improving conditions allowed officials to lift many evacuation orders on Thursday.
Depending on wind and weather conditions, firefighters plan to start a controlled burn with hopes that winds from the north will push the flames away from the highway and south toward the main body of the fire.
The burn operation could scorch up to 20,000 acres before it connects with the larger blaze, officials said.
(Micahel Livingston & Javier Panzar, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP)
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The fire, which began near Santa Paula in the foothills above Thomas Aquinas College on Dec. 4, has burned through 272,000 acres as of Tuesday evening, making it the second-largest wildfire in modern California history.
On Tuesday, the Thomas fire surpassed the lightning-sparked Rush fire, which burned 271,911 acres in Lassen County in 2012.
The Thomas fire was 50 percent contained, and fire officials do not anticipate full containment until Jan. 8, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The Ventura County Fire Department on Tuesday reported “another productive day,” but with shifting winds on the mountaintops.
Forecasters predict a new blast of Santa Barbara’s notorious sundowner winds, which blow down the canyons to the coast, late this afternoon and Thursday morning. The winds could create crucial fire conditions for the western side of the blaze in southern Santa Barbara County.
Northerly gusts will likely exceed 40 mph, with isolated gusts of up to 60 mph possible, according to the National Weather Service. The Santa Barbara County side of the fire will be affected by the strong winds first this afternoon and evening. Winds will then pick up on the Ventura County side tonight and Thursday morning, said Joe Sirard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
While winds pick up in Ventura County, they will decrease in Santa Barbara County, he said. “It is a very large fire, so you’re going to have different wind effects over different parts of the fire,” Sirard said.
High fire danger will exist in Los Angeles County this week as well, he said.
The winds should die down a bit Friday, Sirard said, but another round will return Saturday night and Sunday.
Sirard said the Thomas fire had burned a remote automatic weather station in the Montecito hills. The instruments provided data about wind speed, air and soil temperature and humidity.
There was minimal fire activity overnight Monday, allowing fire crews to strengthen their containment lines, according to Cal Fire. Fuel in the area remains critically dry, posing an especially acute danger when the winds pick up. Firefighters are “not quite done” on the southern edge of Montecito, where the fire pushed up against 1,300 homes and damaged 15, said Rudy Evenson, a spokesman for the multi-agency firefighting effort. Crews late Tuesday were planning to burn a section of Los Padres National Forest in an attempt to further contain the fire, he said.
“We want to manage it as lightly as we can,” Evenson said.
Helicopter water drops were planned in an area near Fillmore called Bear Heaven. The threat to the city of Fillmore has decreased because firefighters were able to complete a control line from the town to Devil’s Gate, fire officials said.
On the fire’s north and east sides, it continues to burn farther into the Matilija and Sespe wilderness and toward the Sespe Condor Sanctuary, according to Cal Fire.
As the blaze becomes more contained, fire departments from other jurisdictions will start traveling home, Evenson said. “It’s drastically ramping down right now,” he said. “It’s nowhere near the scale that it’s been the past two weeks.”
Some evacuation orders were being lifted in Carpinteria and Montecito.
(Nicole Santa Cruz & Hailey Branson-Potts, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP)
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Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said officials talked about areas “where things are not moving as quickly as they could,” speaking during a one-day trip to the U.S. territory with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
Nielsen said federal officials will look into how to help get more supplies to Puerto Rico to speed up power restoration as well as provide federal assistance more quickly and possibly open more recovery centers across the island.
She noted that the number of people who registered for financial assistance in Puerto Rico after the Category 4 storm is greater than all those from hurricanes Katrina, Irma and Sandy combined. On Sept. 20, Maria ripped across the island with winds of up to 154 mph, killing dozens of people and causing damages estimated at up to $ 95 billion. “This was an unprecedented storm,” Nielsen said. “We will not rest until the families here are back in their repaired homes, until parents are back at work, children are back at school and communities are back to life.”
Nielsen and Carson did not visit any areas affected by the storm and instead met with local and federal officials to talk about the recovery process that many Puerto Ricans have complained has been inadequate and slow. Power generation is at 65 percent of normal, with nine of Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities still completely in the dark, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has estimated power will not be fully restored across Puerto Rico until May, more than eight months after the hurricane hit. In addition, more than 200,000 homes were damaged and more than 30,000 people have lost their jobs, sparking an exodus of more than 200,000 people to Florida alone.
Federal officials said they would focus recovery efforts on power restoration and housing, with Carson pledging to do what is needed to help Puerto Rico get back on its feet. He said his agency is considering practical steps to get people back into their homes, such as moving them into the first floor while the second floor is being repaired.
“We do recognize that the situation is different here than it is in Texas or Florida or many other places,” he said, adding that he understands the need to provide urgent housing. “We’re quite willing to look at the regulatory burden and present appropriate waivers and changes.” Gov. Ricardo Rossello has requested flexibility in how community development block grants could be used, among other things, as the U.S. territory awaits nearly $5 billion in funds pledged by Congress.
The governor said a lot more financial assistance is needed as he praised the visit by federal officials and said they were committed to establishing a sense of urgency especially with power restoration: “Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, and we deserve equal treatment in the aftermath of this event.”
Separately, Rossello urged Congress to address issues in the Republican tax bill that he said would harm the island’s economy.
A provision in the tax bill that is meant to keep companies from shifting profits to other countries to avoid paying taxes would affect Puerto Rico because the U.S. territory is considered a foreign jurisdiction for tax purposes, even though its 3.4 million residents are American citizens.
Rossello said the provision designed to prevent shifting of profits — a process known as “base erosion” — amounts to a new tax that Puerto Rico cannot afford.
“There is an opportunity to set things straight, to give Puerto Rico an opportunity and to eliminate this just weird application of the base-erosion provision to a jurisdiction of the United States,” Rossello said. He urged lawmakers to attach an exemption from the tax for Puerto Rico to a year-end spending bill they are writing. Rossello also said Puerto Rico’s Medicaid funding could run out as soon as February, leaving millions of residents without health insurance coverage, unless Congress acts soon.
(Danica Coto, ASSOCIATED PRESS; REUTERS)
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Officials will look again at all deaths attributed to natural causes after the hurricane, which made landfall Sept. 20 and knocked out power to 3.4 million Puerto Ricans — and to their hospitals and clinics. Parts of the island are still without power almost three months later, and the power grid is operating at only 70 percent of capacity.
The prolonged blackout hampered critical medical treatment for some of the island’s most vulnerable patients, including many who were bedridden or dependent on dialysis or respirators. But if they died as a result, the storm’s role in their deaths may have gone officially unrecorded.
“This is about more than numbers, these are lives: real people, leaving behind loved ones and families,” Rosselló said in a statement.
The governor acknowledged on Monday that the death toll “may be higher than the official count certified to date” — an apparent about-face for his administration, which has spent months stubbornly defending its counting method, even as it became obvious that it did not reflect the unusually high death rate in Puerto Rico after the storm.
Several news organizations, including The New York Times, conducted independent analyses and found that the number of deaths traceable to the storm was probably far higher than the official count of 64. The Times’ review, based on daily mortality data from Puerto Rico’s vital statistics bureau, found that 1,052 more people than usual had died across the island in the 42 days after Maria struck. The analysis compared daily figures for 2017 with an average of figures for the corresponding days in 2015 and 2016. Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism reached a similar estimate, that 1,065 more people than usual had died in September and October. CNN compiled figures from half the island’s funeral homes to report that funeral directors believed that 499 more deaths than the official count were tied to the hurricane.
Rosselló had previously said that his government would look into questionably attributed deaths reported by the media. Pressure mounted last week when two Democratic members of Congress, Nydia Velazquez of New York and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, asked the Government Accountability Office to review the hurricane death toll in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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The Thomas fire has scorched 271,000 acres of drought-parched chaparral and brush in the coastal mountains, foothills and canyons of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties northwest of Los Angeles.
The burned zone encompasses an area about a third of the size of the state of Rhode Island.
More than 1,000 homes and other buildings have gone up in flames, and some 18,000 other structures remained threatened from a late-season firestorm that kept firefighters on the defensive for the better part of two weeks.
One San Diego firefighter, Cory Iverson, lost his life, succumbing to smoke inhalation and burns last Thursday near Fillmore in Ventura County.
A mix of lighter winds, rising humidity and cooler air temperatures prevailed for a second day on Monday, affording crews the greatest weather break they had seen yet, said Lynne Tolmachoff, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “Everybody is breathing a sigh of relief that this will give those firefighters a chance to get in there and do some good work, and not just be constantly chasing things,” she told Reuters by telephone.
A firefighting force of 8,500 had carved containment lines around 50 percent of the blaze’s perimeter as of Monday night.
(REUTERS)
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The nonprofit group visited the U.S. territory in recent weeks to survey needs and review the response by local and federal officials in the aftermath of the Category 4 storm, marking the first time it has organized a mission to a U.S. jurisdiction. In a report shared with the Associated Press, the group said its team was shocked by poor coordination and logistics across the island that have caused delays in aid. It noted the island is still in emergency mode and requires more help.
“There was a failure of leadership and a failure to appreciate the magnitude of the situation and the need for extraordinary action by U.S. officials,” Eric Schwartz, the group’s president and a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, said in a phone interview. “These people are our fellow Americans. The response of the federal authorities should have been and should be much stronger than it was and much stronger than it is."
Officials with the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency did not return a request for comment Sunday. Puerto Rico is still struggling to recover from the Sept. 20 storm that killed dozens of people and caused up to an estimated $95 billion in damage during a 12-hour rampage across the island with winds of up to 154 mph. Power generation is currently at 69 percent of normal, and 5 percent of utility customers still don’t have water service. Nearly 600 people remain in shelters, and more than 130,000 have left for the U.S. mainland.
Those who remain behind face a lack of supplies and problems, including limited access to tarps and a delayed response to requests for financial assistance, the report said.
“Compared to international disaster settings, I couldn’t believe how slow the response was two months later,” said Alice Thomas, climate displacement program manager for Refugees International who visited Puerto Rico.
She called for an improved strategy for delivering aid. “It has to happen now. There is still an emergency going on,” she said.
The report noted that it took five days before any senior U.S. officials visited Puerto Rico after the storm.
(Danica Coto, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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But with the Thomas fire burning nearby for a second week, Casa Dorinda was eerily quiet on Friday morning as the region continued to choke on smoke and ash.
“The place is empty,” said one resident, 90-year-old Sam Fordyce. “A lot of people left.” With fire crews continuing their battle against the fourth-largest wildfire in modern California history, smoke inhalation has become a major concern for residents in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Though the skies cleared a bit on Friday, officials warned that erratic Santa Ana winds could make conditions difficult to forecast. It could mean more smoke and the potential for fire in residential areas.
Dangerous air quality in the region persisted Friday, forcing some from their homes and others to stay inside much of the time.
Speaking at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans this week, a group of scientists suggested wildfires might be responsible for thousands of deaths in the United States each year due to the tiny particles they put into the atmosphere.
Wildfires fill the air with the byproducts of combustion, including dangerous small particles called PM2.5, which can get into the lungs and bloodstream. A growing body of research has demonstrated that these particles degrade health and can become fatal by causing respiratory, cardiovascular and other health problems.
“If this is the new norm for California . . . and people in California are being exposed to these smoke events regularly, then we would expect this to have an impact on the average lifetime of people in California,” said Jeffrey Pierce, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who presented his preliminary results at the meeting.
Casa Dorinda in Montecito has been in voluntary evacuation for about a week. According to Chief Executive Brian McCague, about 150 of the 225 independent-living residents have left the premises, compared with just a few of the assisted-living or skilled-nursing residents. Given the heavy smoke, those with serious respiratory issues have been moved to the medical center, where they can be more closely monitored, McCague said. In addition to safety, he has made sure to keep residents informed.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Hurricane-force gusts pushed the flames over highways that should have been barriers and into neighborhoods so quickly that officials said they were helpless to protect the homes in their path.
The Wine Country fires that ravaged Northern California in October and the firestorm in Southern California this month have capped the most destructive year for fires in state history.
The Wine Country fires have been far more destructive, killing 41 people and wiping out more than 10,000 homes. By contrast, the Southern California fires have destroyed about 1,000 homes and left two people dead, with the massive Thomas fire continuing to rage amid strong winds.
Southern California took key lessons from the disaster in the north. Issues that have caused much debate since the Wine Country fires — a lack of communication and warnings, limited firefighting resources and the possible role of electric lines in sparking the blazes — were addressed in the early stages of the Southern California fires.
Getting the word out
In Northern California, there were fewer broad public warnings of the match-ready conditions.
In Mendocino County’s Redwood Valley, where nine people would die, a major vineyard owner went to sleep the night of the fire unaware of the hazardous conditions — only to wake up hours later in the midst of a panicked evacuation through mountain trails.
“Had he known, he could have turned the sprinklers on,” said Chris Boyd, a retired deputy fire marshal from Orange County who lives in Redwood Valley. The watered vineyard would have provided a safe spot to shelter in place.
Sonoma County is still the focus of sharp criticism for failing to use a federal alert system to loudly buzz cellphones and send alerts the night of the fire to wake those in jeopardy.
County officials have said they feared causing a broad panic that would gridlock evacuation routes. Similarly, in Mendocino County, sheriff ’s officials said they held off evacuation orders until they could decide where it was safe to send fire refugees.
Both counties relied on messaging systems to which only a small fraction of residents subscribed, and which broke down when cell towers themselves fell to the blazes. Fire officials also repeatedly underestimated the speed of the fires, attempting to evacuate neighborhoods the blazes had already jumped while those in their path were without notice.
Aware of these problems, California state emergency officials decided last Wednesday to send unprecedented cellphone warnings to some 12 million residents in seven Southern California counties.
“We saw the potential for a similar firestorm to what we saw in Santa Rosa — the most severe part was going to be happening in the overnight hours when people were sleeping. That’s when people died,” said Kelly Huston, deputy director of crisis communications for the California Office of Emergency Services.
The warnings were timed to arrive at 8:30 p.m., after Southern California residents were home and settled but before they went to bed — with the idea of raising fire awareness so they would pay attention if local evacuation orders came. Huston said the broad alert is considered a success and will be added to the toolbox for future conditions.
Oceanside resident Scott Butler said there were no fires within 50 miles when he got the alert, but by Thursday his home in the eastern part of the city was under evacuation orders from the Lilac fire. “The early warning kept everyone vigilant,” he said.
Getting to the source
The Northern California fires began as falling trees brought down power lines and transformers blew. In addition to 14 fires large enough to be named, dispatchers reported the start of many more small blazes. The regional utility, PG&E, turned off power to lines at the request of firefighters seeking access to blazes already in progress. Though the cause of the Tubbs fire is still under investigation, numerous residents who lost homes have sued PG&E, saying that power lines downed by the winds sparked the blaze. PG&E has suggested the fire might have been caused by third-party power lines not owned by the utility.
When fires broke out Thursday in San Diego County, San Diego Gas & Electric was proactive. It powered down lines in rural areas ahead of the blazes — catching some criticism for preventing firefighters from tapping groundwater supplies because electric pumps were inoperable, but also preventing downed lines from igniting new spot fires like those in Northern California that sapped already limited resources.
Fighting the flames
Federal meteorologists placed both regions under red flag warnings for fire, triggered by forecasts of extremely low humidity and extremely high winds. In Northern California, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection put bulldozer crews on standby, but it did not pre-stage any firefighting resources. Instead, the agency sent a fire crew south to stand ready for blazes there.
As the Wine Country fires exploded, it quickly became clear the rural counties didn’t have the resources to put up a fight.
Throughout that first night, fire commanders sent out mutual aid requests for resources that weren’t available or had already been sent to neighboring counties that called for help first. It would take days for the state to send fire crews from across California. For the all-important first night, rural counties such as Mendocino relied primarily on volunteer fire departments that sent single engines or two.
On the ground, departments diverted precious resources to try to pin down reports of more fires, leaving stations bare. One firefighter grabbed an agency pickup truck, drove to the Redwood Valley fire and wound up fending off the flames with his mother’s garden hose. As the sun rose, he joined state troopers to look for bodies. Nine people died. Southern California simply has more resources at the ready, and it showed. The Thomas fire was the responsibility of the Ventura County, with five battalions and more than 600 firefighters at the ready before mutual aid began to roll in. Ventura also had access to firefighters from Los Angeles city and county, as well as numerous suburban fire agencies.
By the third day of both fire sieges, the state had more than 2,700 firefighters on the ground. In Southern California, they were batting three fires covering some 70,000 acres. But in Northern California, that same staffing was spread across 19 fires covering 328,000 acres.
Difference of scope
Though both firestorms generated great attention, experts said the Wine Country blazes were worse for many reasons. From a single sunset to sunrise in early October, 14 wildfires started across a seven-county area. The greatest death toll came from the Tubbs fire, which started on the outskirts of rural Calistoga and swept west down mountain valleys into suburban Santa Rosa. It ultimately decimated housing subdivisions that officials had thought safe from the reach of a wildland fire.
The Southern California fires kicked off in slower succession, taking a week to spawn half as many blazes and, after the first, providing area residents a clear idea of what to expect from the brittle-dry terrain and hot winds. The Tubbs fire ignited at 9:45 p.m., while the Lilac fire in Bonsall started about 11:20 a.m., and the Thomas fire in Ventura was reported at 6:23 p.m., growing slowly enough that firefighters were able to go door-to-door to move people out of a mobile home park in harm’s way. The difference in timing proved key to making people aware of the fires and getting them out of their homes.
“People are up, they’re paying attention, they’re aware … as opposed to waking up out of a dead sleep,” said Cal Fire spokesman Scott McLean.
(Paige St. John & Sonali Kohli, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP)
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Public Utilities Commission president Michael Picker called the regulations adopted unanimously by the board “a major rewrite” of the state’s fire-prevention rules for utilities as climate change drives up wildfire risks in much of California.
The board’s action comes as fire officials look for the causes of wildfires currently burning in Southern California, including a 380-square-mile fire that has become the fourth-largest in state history. The Los Angeles Times on Thursday quoted a witness as saying she saw arcing power lines throwing sparks at the of one of the fires in the San Fernando Valley.
Fire officials also are looking at any role that sparks from wind-whipped power lines played in October’s wildfires in Northern California, which killed 44 people and caused more than $9 billion in property damage, more than any fire recorded in the United States, according to insurance industry figures.
The new state rules for utilities, power lines and vegetation concentrate on areas deemed of higher fire risk. The changes increase the minimum space among power lines and between power lines and vegetation, and speed up timetables for patrols and repairs in areas of higher fire risks.
The agency first began considering the issue after a series of Southern California wildfires in 2007. Those fires were tied to swaying and arcing power lines, some of which fell during heavy winds.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Thomas fire, already the state’s fifth-largest wildland blaze on record, remained a threat to the communities of Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, Summerland and Montecito as darkness fell and winds picked up, fire officials said.
“Very high fuel loading, critically low fuel moistures, above average temperatures and single-digit relative humidities will continue to support fire growth on the west, east and north sides of the Thomas incident,” the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said in a statement.
“Firefighters will remain engaged in structure defense operations and scout for opportunities to establish direct perimeter control,” the department said.
The Thomas fire, which broke out on Dec. 4 near the community of Ojai, has traveled 27 miles, blackening more than 371 square miles in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, an area larger than New York City.
The conflagration has destroyed 709 single-family homes, damaged 164 others and displaced more than 94,000 people. It was 30 percent contained as of Wednesday evening.
On Tuesday, nearly 8,000 firefighters battling the blaze took advantage of the lighter winds to set controlled burns in a canyon near Carpinteria to deprive the flames of fuel, Cal Fire Captain Steve Concialdi told reporters.
(REUTERS)
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Elsewhere, fire officials announced that a cooking fire at a homeless encampment sparked a blaze last week that destroyed six homes in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles.
They are among a half-dozen fires that flared in Southern California last week and were driven by fiercely gusting Santa Ana winds.
Red Flag warnings for fire danger due to Santa Ana winds and a critical lack of moisture were extended into the week, with a possible increase in gusts Thursday into Friday.
Arson investigators determined that the Bel Air fire near the world-famous Getty museum was started by an illegal fire at a camp near a freeway underpass, city fire Capt. Erik Scott said.
The camp was empty when firefighters found it, but people apparently had been sleeping and cooking there for at least several days, he said.
Northwest of Los Angeles, firefighters protected foothill homes while much of the fire’s growth occurred to the north in unoccupied forest land, Santa Barbara County Fire Department spokesman Mike Eliason said.
“There were a couple of flare-ups in the hills that put on a light show last night, but they were expected. For now the teams are fighting the fire on their own terms,” he said, adding that shifting winds were always a danger.
Tens of thousands of people remain evacuated, including many from the seaside enclaves of Montecito, Summerland and Carpinteria and the inland agricultural town of Fillmore.
Residents near a Carpinteria avocado orchard said the trees could end up saving their homes.
“You have a thick layer of leaves underneath the bottom, and they are watered regularly, so it’s like a sponge,” Jeff Dreyer, who lives nearby, told KEYT-TV. “So the fire gets to the sponge full of water and it slows it down. It takes a long time for it to burn.”
Poor air quality kept dozens of schools closed. As ash rained down and smoke blew through streets, regulators urged people to remain inside if possible and avoid strenuous activity.
Officials handed out masks to those who stayed behind in Montecito, an exclusive community that’s home to stars such as Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bridges and Drew Barrymore. Actor Rob Lowe was among residents who evacuated over the weekend.
The blaze — known as the Thomas fire — has destroyed more than 680 homes, officials said. It was just partially contained after burning more than 360 square miles of dry brush and timber. The fire has been burning for more than a week.
The fire is in an area of California that has remained in at least moderate drought even after last winter’s powerful rains and heavy mountain snowfall eliminated drought symptoms in much of the rest of the state.
To the north, San Francisco Bay Area firefighters quickly contained blazes Tuesday that destroyed at least two homes in hills east of Oakland — the site of a 1991 firestorm that killed 25 people.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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North Atlantic right whales are among the rarest marine mammals in the world, and they have endured a deadly year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there are only about 450 of the whales left and 17 have died in 2017.
The situation is so dire that American and Canadian regulators need to consider the possibility that the population won’t recover without action soon, said John Bullard, the northeast regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries. The high year of mortality is coinciding with a year of poor reproduction, and there are about 100 breeding female North Atlantic right whales left.
“You do have to use the extinction word, because that’s where the trend lines say they are,” Bullard said. “That’s something we can’t let happen.”
“The current status of the right whales is a critical situation, and using our available resources to recover right whales is of high importance and high urgency,” he said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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It was part of a winter storm that hit the Deep South over the weekend and left thousands of people without power in the region.
In Florida, the news website northescambia.com posted a photograph of the sign that welcomes travelers to the state, covered in a sprinkle of snow.
Elsewhere in the normally warm state, flurries were reported in Destin and Miramar Beach, while temperatures in St. Petersburg were 48 degrees. Miami was a positively chilly 61 degrees Sunday afternoon.
“It does look like it’s going to get a little colder tonight,” Marc Austin, a forecaster from the National Weather Service in Ruskin in the Tampa Bay area, said Sunday. “Tonight will be the coldest night in Florida this week. Probably the coldest night it’s been since last winter.”
Austin added that the region’s cold temps are due to an arctic air mass followed by a high pressure system. Wind died down and that allowed for the normally mild south to cool. Areas north of Tampa were expected to get freezing temperatures Sunday night, even down in the 20s, he said.
Over the weekend, North Carolina had ice warnings, Georgia saw school and business closings, and on Friday, Jackson, Miss., had its highest snowfall since 1982.
Part of Asheville, N.C., received 8 inches of snow on Friday and Saturday, making the storm the 15th greatest since 1946, when the weather service started keeping records of snowfall in the city.
Nearly 8,000 customers were without power Sunday afternoon in the western counties of North Carolina and South Carolina. Power was expected to be restored late Sunday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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With the northern and eastern fronts of the fire moving mainly into uninhabited areas of the Los Padres National Forest, fire officials concentrated Sunday on protecting the beach city of Carpinteria and Montecito, the wealthy enclave to its west.
Throughout the day, the fire moved down the mountains north of Carpinteria into foothills several miles from its downtown. The flames chewed rapidly through hillsides thick with vegetation.
“The fuels in there are thick and they’re dead, so they’re very receptive to fire,” said Steve Swindle, spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department.
The blaze, which had already destroyed more than 750 buildings, leveled six more in Carpinteria, said Ray Navarro, chief of the Carpinteria-Summerland Fire District. As of Sunday evening, the blaze was about 4 miles from Montecito.
As the fire moved, those people living in the foothills near Carpinteria and Montecito were ordered to leave immediately, and fire officials urged all residents to begin preparing to leave.
Retired LAUSD teacher May Osher, 66, packed photo albums and pet supplies into her car Sunday afternoon, but said she didn’t plan to leave her Carpinteria neighborhood unless ordered to by police.
“I’m staying until it’s time to go,” Osher said.
Fire officials identified dry creek beds as a particular hazard. If the blaze moved into the arroyos, officials warned, it could create a chimney-like effect that would send flames exploding down the creek path and into undefended terrain.
Winds that had gusted to 50 mph overnight weakened Sunday afternoon, allowing helicopters to drop water on fires in the foothills. Lower down, bulldozers sliced fire breaks in the heavy brush.
“Contingency strike teams” were dispatched throughout Carpinteria in case the blaze manages to cross fire lines, said Newport Beach firefighter Jude Olivas, a spokesman for the Thomas fire response.
Even with the fire miles away, there was no escaping its effect. Plumes of putty-colored smoke churned over the coastline, and people in Carpinteria donned face masks to run errands.
Concerned residents walked through ash to get to a Sunday evening meeting at nearby San Marcos High School. The crowd in the the packed auditorium clapped for the firefighters.
The Santa Barbara Zoo was closed to the public Sunday and its 500 animals confined to their night quarters.
The zoo was outside the evacuation area and not in immediate danger, but there was smoke and ash on the 30-acre property.
“We drill for and are prepared for emergencies,” zoo director Nancy McToldridge said in a Facebook post. “We are taking all precautions to ensure the safety of our animals and our staff.”
The animal care staff was providing “enrichment,” including toys, treats and puzzles, to prevent the zoo residents from becoming bored inside, said director of marketing Dean Noble.
“The gorillas like music,” Noble said.
As many as 85,000 customers in Santa Barbara County were without power, according to Southern California Edison.
Officials expected weaker winds today but anticipated the fire continuing its westward march toward Montecito.
In that tony community, where Oprah Winfrey, Al Gore and other celebrities have homes, some chaparral-covered hillsides vulnerable to fire are dotted with luxury estates.
Since it erupted on Dec. 4, the Thomas fire has forced 88,000 people to flee their homes.
By Sunday evening, the fire was 10 percent contained. The cause is under investigation.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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Firefighters assisted by helicopters spent the day dousing hot spots left in the wake of the 4,100-acre fire, which — at last count — destroyed 151 structures and damaged 56 others. “The fire’s looking really good, despite the wind,” said Cal Fire Battalion Chief Henry Herrera. “If we can get through (Sunday) I think we’ll be in pretty good shape for the remainder of this incident.”
At 4 p.m. Sunday, Cal Fire announced that all residents could return to their homes, and by evening, the fire was 75 percent contained.
The weather should be on their side as firefighters continue working. The region’s red flag warning came to an end Sunday night, and powerful gusts that ripped through the county over the weekend have moved on.
“For the most part, we’re going to have light to moderate winds after today, with very low humidity,” National Weather Service meteorologist Brandt Maxwell said. “For the Lilac fire, it looks the winds will be not that strong after (Sunday.)” Most of the shelters that opened for fire evacuees on Thursday have since closed, except for the Bostonia Park and Recreation Center in El Cajon and one at Palomar College in San Marcos, where 50 to 70 people remain, said San Diego Red Cross spokesman Dave Maloney.
The Bostonia shelter is slated to close today, while the Palomar one will remain open until there is no demand for the service.
A number of school districts and county facilities that closed when the fire ignited were expected to reopen today.
Seven school districts plan to be closed: Bonsall Unified School District, Fallbrook Union Elementary School District, Fallbrook Union High School District, Mountain Empire Unified School District, St. Peter the Apostle Catholic school, Spencer Valley School District and Valley Center Pauma Unified.
Roughly 9,000 county homes were without power Sunday evening, including about 7,500 customers who had their power turned off to reduce the risk of fire, said San Diego Gas & Electric.
As residents return home, others will begin navigating the sometimes daunting recovery process.
Today, the county will open a Local Assistance Center at the Vista Library on Eucalyptus Avenue to assist in those efforts.
The center will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and will offer a variety of services that include crisis counseling, short-term housing referrals and assistance applying for tax relief and replacement records. Information about rebuilding will also be provided.
Despite the long road ahead, residents still took time to show their gratitude. Signs thanking firefighters were placed up and down West Lilac Road where the fire swept through avocado groves and farms Thursday in the initial hours of the blaze.
At least one woman apparently tried to capitalize on the chaos. Deputies patrolling the fire zone arrested a woman suspected of stealing from a Bonsall home on Disney Lane Saturday afternoon.
No cause identified yet
Investigators are trying to determine the cause of the fire, which began about 11:15 a.m. off the western edge of southbound Interstate 15 and roughly a half-mile south of state Route 76.
Larry Wickern, of Valley Center, spotted the fire as he was driving along Old Highway 395, west of I-15. The blaze was “no bigger than a double-wide bed” across the small valley.
“I was the only car on the road at the time, and I glanced over to the left and I saw the flames,” he said.
“I was thinking that doesn’t look right because it was all out there by itself. The wind really hadn’t started yet. The flames were probably a foot high. It looked really harmless.”
Wickern said he saw the fire burn away from the freeway.
About the same time, Herman M. Brown was driving from his Oceanside home to the Pechanga Resort & Casino, where he works as an internal affairs investigator. He was on state Route 76 bridge over I-15 when he looked to the right and saw the fire.
“I was looking down at it,” Brown said. “It was right off the road, almost like a thin line of fire and it was just starting to burn. At that point it was maybe 5 or 6 feet wide and within a few inches narrow. It was like a perfect little line of fire coming up.”
Brown said he thinks he missed the start of the fire by just minutes. While there were many cars heading south on the freeway, he said, he didn’t see anybody or any vehicle where the fire was burning.
Initial reports of the fire were called in by passing motorists, according to the California Highway Patrol. One caller said a citizen had given up trying to put the fire out by himself.
Among the first firefighters on the scene was Cal Fire Division Chief Nick Schuler, who works out of the Deer Springs station a few miles to the south. Schuler confirmed the fire began just off the freeway and was perhaps only two to three acres when he arrived.
One acre is roughly the size of a football field, including the end zones.
Officials said the blaze quickly spread into the small valley between the freeway and Old Highway 395 and then jumped the highway heading west. The first populated area it hit was the Rancho Monserate Country Club, a retirement mobile home park where dozens of trailers were destroyed.
Residents, animals find shelter
Hundreds of evacuees booked hotels outside the fire zone, including the Welk Resort in Escondido.
George Ross, 65, of Fallbrook, stayed at the resort two days with his wife, son and two granddaughters. His son is Marine Corps Sgt. Jason Ross, a double amputee who uses a wheelchair and has been profiled by the Union-Tribune.
The family lives in a Fallbrook home donated by the Gary Sinise Foundation designed to help the wounded soldier get around easier. The Ross family had to abandon the home during the fire, even though it had not burned down.
“I thought, two nights (in a hotel) should do it. It didn’t,” said George Ross.
The family stayed at Welk for a few nights before moving to a hotel in Murrieta. George Ross said the family would like to get back home, but for now his granddaughters are enjoying the hotel.
“Of course, they think the pool is the greatest thing,” he said. “Nothing else matters.”
As owners fled, dozens of animals also had to be housed as well — including a 400-pound pig.
Animal services employees used a bucket filled with rocks or food to lure the swine to safety from his owners’ home in Fallbrook on Thursday afternoon.
The pig’s owners had a trailer that they used to get out two miniature donkeys and a goat, but needed help with the pig, said Dan DeSousa, director of the county’s animal services department.
“You can’t move a pig if it doesn’t want to,” he said. “They will follow that bucket wherever it goes.”
The department took the pig to the San Diego Humane Society’s Escondido campus, where she has been mostly sleeping and eating since arriving. She was a family pet, not livestock.
More than 30 animals have been rescued by the department since the start of the fire, but this was the only pig.
Three kittens found in a box were rescued Friday by San Diego County sheriff’s deputies patrolling a burned area of Bonsall.
At least 35 thoroughbred horses died when the fire tore through the San Luis Rey Downs horse-training facility Thursday. Trainer Martine Bellocq suffered severe burns and remains critically injured and is being treated at the UC San Diego Medical Center.
The California Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Foundation is collecting donations for her at CTHFcares.org.
Staff writer Sandra Dibble and City News Service contributed to this report.
(Philip Molnar, J. Harry Jones & Lyndsay Winkley, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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A review by The New York Times of daily mortality data from Puerto Rico’s vital statistics bureau indicates a significantly higher death toll after the hurricane than the government there has acknowledged.
The Times’ analysis found that in the 42 days after Hurricane Maria made landfall Sept. 20 as a Category 4 storm, 1,052 more people than usual died across the island. The analysis compared the number of deaths for each day in 2017 with the average of the number of deaths for the same days in 2015 and 2016.
Officially, just 62 people died as a result of the storm that ravaged the island with nearly 150-mph winds, cutting off power to 3.4 million Puerto Ricans. The last four fatalities were added to the death toll Dec. 2.
“Before the hurricane, I had an average of 82 deaths daily. That changes from Sept. 20 to 30. Now I have an average of 118 deaths daily,” Wanda Llovet, director of the Demographic Registry in Puerto Rico, said in a mid-November interview. Since then, she said Thursday, both figures have increased by one.
Data for October are not yet complete, and the number of deaths recorded in that month is expected to rise.
Record-keeping has been delayed because Puerto Rico’s power grid is operating at less than 70 percent of its capacity, and swaths of the island still do not have power.
The deadliest day was Sept. 25, the day Gov. Ricardo Rosselló of Puerto Rico warned that a looming humanitarian crisis could prompt amass exodus from the island.
President Donald Trump responded that night by taking to Twitter to say the island had to deal with its massive debt: “Food, water and medical are top priorities — and doing well. #FEMA.” It was over 90 degrees, and power was out on most of the island, even in most hospitals.
Bedridden people were having trouble getting medical treatment, and dialysis clinics were operating with generators and limiting treatment hours. People on respirators lacked electricity to power the machines.
On that day, 135 people died in Puerto Rico. By comparison, 75 people died on that day in 2016 and 60 died in 2015.
The Times estimates that in the three weeks after the storm, the toll was 739 deaths. If all those additional deaths were to be counted as related to the hurricane, it would make Maria the sixth-deadliest hurricane since 1851.
(Frances Robles; NEW YORK TIMES)
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No one was injured in the fire, which was started when an area resident set fire to a pile of trash, Tijuana Fire Chief Carlos Gopar said at a news conference on Friday. Some 500 people had to be evacuated as firefighters fought the flames, he said.
“Twenty-one families lost their homes because someone had the great idea to burn trash,” Gopar said.
Of the 70 people left homeless by the fire, 23 were minors, Gopar said. Most were taken in by friends and relatives. Five families with nowhere to go were taken to a shelter, Levantando Corazones, where they were provided with food, blankets and mattresses.
Also Thursday, a brush fire in eastern Tijuana off the thoroughfare known as Bulevar 2000 threatened the Natura housing development, and “we analyzed the possibility of evacuation,” Gopar said. But as winds shifted, “it was much safer to keep people in their houses,” he said.
From Tuesday through 9 a.m. Friday, firefighters responded to 311 incidents. Most were brush fires, city officials said, but there were also several dozen residential fires.
(Sandra Dibble; S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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As darkness fell, the fire was little changed from 18 hours earlier: 4,100 acres burned and 105 structures destroyed along the state Route 76 corridor that stretches west from Interstate 15 through Bonsall and Fallbrook. But officials cautioned that dry, swirling Santa Ana winds are expected to return today and Sunday and could kick up embers that might start new fires.
They announced that the fire was 15 percent contained. President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency and ordered federal assistance for California, which also has major brush fires burning in Ventura, Los Angeles and Riverside counties.
Some roads in North County were still closed and evacuation orders remained in place for most of the day for an estimated 10,000 people, many of whom filled Red Cross emergency shelters in Oceanside, Carlsbad and San Marcos while others stayed with friends and relatives or in hotels. They anxiously watched TVs for footage showing whether their homes had survived and waited for word on when they could go home.
Late Friday afternoon, evacuation orders were replaced with evacuation warnings for more than a dozen streets, cutting the evacuation zone by about half. Cal Fire urged those returning to be careful of hazards, especially around burned structures, and to be ready to leave again.
At least 65 of the houses lost were at the Rancho Monserate Country Club, a mobile-home community near where the flames leapt to life late Thursday morning. The blaze took off on a fast-paced rampage that also killed 35 horses at the fabled San Luis Rey Downs thoroughbred training facility and injured two firefighters and four civilians, including a horse trainer burned over 50 percent of her body.
Among those coping with their losses was Jon Stecker, who stood alongside what had been his two-story, 2,700-square-foot home on Olive Hill Road in Bonsall as the sun began to set Friday.
“It’s gnarly, huh?” he said.
He lost not just his home, but two other houses on the 1.2-acre property he’s owned since 1992. He’d been at work in San Diego when the fire hit, but said he knew the home was gone because his wife had told him she saw a solid wall of burning trees across the street as she fled.
Stecker, 53, pointed to what had been his deck, now just a pile where a tiny orange flame or two stubbornly flickered. “Want a tub?” he asked, motioning to a buried bathtub, which on Thursday morning had been in a second-floor bathroom.
He said he lost a horse and a pig in the fire, but his wife had been able to get their dogs out. They also lost three vehicles, now just metal shells.
Waiting for his insurance agent, he said he’s resigned to rebuilding.
“What can you do?” he said. Around the bend, neighbor Carrie Underwood found better news. Her home of 14 years had survived, as had a second home on the property. But two barns with rows of stalls where her nine horses had been — she got them to safety Thursday — were badly damaged. A total loss, she thinks. She also lost a hay barn and two golf carts.
“It’s mind-boggling,” she said, standing next the remains of a wheelbarrow. Nearby, a pile of wood shavings remained untouched. “I don’t know what to think.”
Underwood, 41, thought she was fine as she watched television coverage of the blaze.
“Then all of the sudden, the wind changed,” she said. She rushed to evacuate, leaving behind many of her birds, including macaws, toucans and parakeets, in their outdoor cages.
A friend told her Thursday night that trees along the road were on fire after she left. “That’s how I went to bed,” Underwood said. “I did fall asleep thinking I was going to see my birds on the bottom of the cages.”
She arrived back home not long after 6 a.m. Friday to find them still alive.
“I saw the house standing and I was just shocked— tears of joy,” she said.
Another test
At a news conference Friday, county Supervisor Dianne Jacob remembered earlier firestorms in the county, in 2003 and 2007. “Our region is once again being tested in a big way,” she said.
But the overall mood as the day unfolded was one of relief and optimism and at an afternoon press conference Supervisor Bill Horn described it as “miraculous” that the devastation hadn’t been worse, noting that so far there have been no reports of fatalities.
Friday afternoon, Lane Woolery, a battalion chief with a San Diego Fire strike team, stood on a hill in Bonsall. He’d spent the previous night fighting the flames as they roared up ravines choked with brush. Now he was waiting to see what the wind would do, and he sounded confident.
“It’s going to do one of two things,” he said. “It’s going to turn onshore and stay kind of calm and variable, or it’s going to return to the Santa Ana direction. I’m prepared for either of those things.”
The milder, single-digit-speed winds, down from around 40 mph on Thursday, and the humidity that went in the other direction, up to nearly 30 percent, enabled fire crews to concentrate on cutting brush and putting out spot fires.
“Thankfully, the wind died down and we could get a lot of work done,” said Bryan Carter, crew chief for a 12-member state Department of Corrections inmate firefighting team from Nevada City in Northern California. They were among the 800 to 1,000 firefighters working the lines. They spent Thursday night clearing vegetation and moved on Friday to tackling spot fires. But luck was only part of it, officials said. Jacob noted the county has spent about $460 million on improved emergency communications, fire station staffing, firefighting helicopters and vegetation management since the earlier wildfires.
“We have more resources available than ever,” she said.
Some of that was visible in the sky Friday: 15 helicopters and seven air tankers in nearly continuous use. San Diego Gas & Electric’s huge helitanker, which can drop 6,500 gallons of water at once, was among them. Four military helicopters — two from the Navy, two from the Marine Corps — joined the fight. Two San Diego Fire-Rescue Department choppers that can make water drops at night were also in play.
The air attack was a welcome sight to area residents like Kathleen Hamilton of Oceanside. Her apartment was outside the evacuation zone, but she had a “go bag” ready, just in case. She said the dry brush around her complex made her nervous, especially because she had recently visited family in Napa County, which was ravaged by its own fires in October.
“I’m still feeling stressed,” she said. “It’s always in the back of your mind that things can change in an instant.”
Anxiety was in the air at the evacuation centers, too. About 900 people stayed in the Carlsbad and Oceanside shelters Thursday night, filling them, and another one was opened Friday at Palomar College in San Marcos.
Mark McClenahan evacuated to Palomar College with his wife, but their neighbors had stayed behind. He was checking in on them by phone. “The neighbors are being headstrong,” he said, quoting one as saying the fire didn’t smell much more threatening than a barbecue. “I said, ‘Don’t you think it’s time to leave?’” Although those in the shelters were anxious to get home, Sheriff Bill Gore said evacuation orders and warnings would remain in place until it’s safe. “I know it can be frustrating,” he said. “We will repopulate those areas as fast as we can.”
Seriously injured
Among those injured Thursday was Martine Bellocq, a trainer at San Luis Rey Downs, who suffered second- and third-degree burns over 50 percent of her body as she tried to rescue six horses, according to Alan Balch, executive director of the California Thoroughbred Trainers.
She was airlifted to UC San Diego Medical Center and placed in a medically induced coma, Balch said.
Bellocq was among several trainers, groomers and staff who tried to evacuate hundreds of thoroughbreds as the fire roared toward the sprawling, 200-acre, 500-stall training facility Thursday afternoon. In the rush to get horses to safety, many were simply allowed to run free once the flames began to sweep through the barns. Many of the 35 horses killed there perished in their stalls.
Hundreds of surviving horses were taken to the Del Mar Fairgrounds, joining others that had been evacuated from ranches and homes. Officials said there were 850 horses in the stables there Friday morning.
The plight of the horses drew hundreds of volunteers to the fairgrounds throughout the day. They donated carrots, apples, shavings, bottles of water and pitchforks. “It’s been pretty overwhelming, the response we’ve been getting,” said Jacqueline Kimmey, a volunteer.
One man walked through the morning crowd with a picture of his friend’s missing racehorse, which had been at San Luis Rey Downs. By late afternoon, he’d found the horse.
There was other good animal news in Bonsall, where sheriff ’s deputies patrolling an area scorched by the fire found three kittens in a box under a house.
SDG& E crews were out working in neighborhoods across the county where about 19,000 customers had their power shut off in a proactive measure. High winds can sometimes cause electrical lines to fall, sparking fires. By late in the day, crews had restored power to about half the customers. Utility officials said power may remain out for several days in some areas.
“Based on preliminary reports regarding the origin of the fire and performance of the company’s system, the company has no indication that its facilities were a source of ignition,” SDG&E said in a statement.
The National Weather service said dry Santa Ana winds will roar back to life in San Diego County over the weekend, and some of the strongest gusts could hit the area where the fire is.
“The winds will begin to gradually pick up on Saturday afternoon, mostly in the East County foothills, from Julian to Alpine,” said forecaster Alex Tardy.
“By sunrise Sunday, the winds could be gusting 55 to 65 mph in the foothills. Then the winds will spread out. It looks like they’ll gust 20, 30 and maybe 40 mph where the Lilac fire is. And some of the winds will spread all the way to the coast.”
The conditions have led the weather service to extend a red flag fire weather alert to 8 p.m. on Sunday for the region from the mountains to the sea.
(John Wilkens, Pauline Repard & Teri Figueroa, with contributions from Paul Sisson, Deborah Sullivan-Brennan, Rob Nikolewski, Kate Morrissey, David Hernandez, J. Harry Jones, Gary Warth and Gary Robbins; S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The wildfire was spread on Thursday afternoon by Santa Ana winds out of the east. Today, the Santa Anas will collide with newly forming winds out of the west.
“The collision of these winds could make things very swirly for the firefighters,” said Mark Moede, a weather service forecaster. “The west wind will reach the coast at about 10 a.m. Friday, and they should begin blowing across the Lilac-Bonsall areas about 1 p.m. The on-shores will only be blowing 8-16 mph, but that’s still enough to spread a wildfire.”
The National Weather Service has extended the red flag warning for San Diego County to Sunday, meaning the region will experience Santa Ana winds for a full week, possibly longer.
The winds will fade today and remain light early Saturday. But they’re expected to regain strength Saturday night and early Sunday. The Santa Anas have been blowing, on-and-off, since Monday.
“This is a once-in-a-decade event,” said Alex Tardy, a forecaster for the National Weather Service in Rancho Bernardo.
“Since Monday, we’ve had very low humidity and high winds, and Santa Anas usually don’t last that long. We haven’t had something like this since 2015, and we haven’t had Santa Anas that last a week or more since the big wildfires of 2007.”
He was referring to the series of large wildfires that hit the county in October 2007. For example, the Harris fire consumed more than 90,000 acres and killed eight people. The Witch Creek fire burned 250,000 acres and killed two.
The newly extended red flag warning means wildfires could break out anywhere from the coast to the mountains.
Thursday has turned out to be the windiest day so far, with gusts of nearly 90 mph at Sill Hill near Descanso in East County. The winds also whipped to more than 50 mph along eastern Interstate 8, and overturned a large trailer near the Japatul exit.
The high winds caused a large branch to fall from a tree at Holiday Park in Carlsbad, killing a 70-year-old man Thursday.
Carlsbad Fire Chief Mike Davis said the man had just stepped out of his car at about 10:30 a.m. near Pine Avenue and Eureka Place.
The man was pronounced dead about 15 minutes after paramedics arrived, Davis said. His name has not been released.
“During high-wind events, whether it’s a winter storm with gale-force winter winds off the coast or Santa Anas like right now, it’s very important to observe our surroundings and be really careful,” Davis said.
Here is a sample of Thursday’s wind gusts:
The fire arrived at the sprawling 500-stall complex on Camino Del Rey about 1 mile east of Highway 76 a bit before 2 p.m., causing ever-more-frantic calls over the public-address system to move the horses to the facility’s 1-mile track.
At first, the barn evacuation was orderly, with trainers doing all they could to coax the glossy and muscular bunch up a slight rise that connected the stables to the track.
But the wind picked up suddenly, causing embers to surge westward onto barn roofs, engulfing the whole area in thick smoke, whinnies escaping through the gloom interspersed with frantic calls of “behind you” from trainers trying to keep their friends and colleagues from ending up underneath unpredictable hooves. Now and then, small herds of horses would gallop from the smoke-shrouded barn bloc, sometimes bolting up to the main track and comparative safety, sometimes opting to keep circling their fiery homes, a maelstrom of confused and panicked horseflesh with no clear compass.
Trainer Linda Thrash of Bonsall was in the middle of that confusion, trying to lead the 41 horses that the company she works for stables in barn L at the facility to safety.
“We tried to keep up with it, stomping on embers and using the hose, but it just started coming so fast that we just couldn’t stay with it,” Thrash said. “Eventually, we just had to turn them loose. There was not time to do anything else.”
Barns, she noted, tend to be full of flammable material that makes keeping up with a wind-driven blaze more difficult.
As dozens, then hundreds of horses were turned out of their stalls, trainers and other personnel tried frantically to get them under control. Eventually, most calmed down enough to be loaded onto trailers destined for the stables at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. But there was a time in the middle of the action where it seemed like many of the horses would never stop moving long enough to be coaxed in the right direction.
With visibility very low, and thousand-pound animals moving in often-random directions, trampling was a very real possibility. But that did not appear to have happened Thursday afternoon. A Downs employee who declined to give his name said he was unaware of any cases where people were run down.
The horses were not so lucky. Trainer Brian Kozak said he saw several had collapsed on the track and more died in the barns.
“There’s a lot of dead horses,” he said. “A lot of them just didn’t get out of their stalls and got asphyxiated.”
No official casualty count was available Thursday night, though it did seem judging by the sheer numbers of four-hooved fire victims moving throughout the area, that the quick work of skillful horse experts managed to save the lives of hundreds.
The biggest challenge, Thrash added, was not necessarily flames or smoke, but the nature of the horses themselves.
“The problem is, to the horses, their barn is home. Even though you shoo ’em out, they want to go back,” Thrash said.
San Luis Rey Downs is no home for hobby horses.
Covering 205 acres, horses have access to an equine pool, arena, paddock and other amenities. Many trainers use San Luis Rey as a full-time home for their horses and then van them to Del Mar, Santa Anita and Los Alamitos for races.
San Luis Rey Downs has been home to some of the best thoroughbreds in America, with four horses who had early training at the facility going on to win the Kentucky Derby: Sunday Silence, Ferdinand, Gato del Sol and Fusaichi Pegasus. Cigar, who at the time of his retirement was North American racing’s leading money winner, was trained early in his career at San Luis Rey Downs. The facility was the regular home to Azeri during her career, which included horse of the year honors for 2002. According to a 2013 story in the Daily Racing Form, San Luis Rey Downs was built in the late 1960s to be a parimutuel racing facility by C. Arnholt Smith and John Alessio, who intended to “wrest the choice summer racing dates away from the track at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.”
It never worked out for them, and the facility went through multiple ownership changes through the years before it was purchased by the Stronach Group, which also owns Santa Anita in Arcadia, among other racetracks.
San Luis Rey Downs was bolstered by $5 million worth of improvements in 2013.
(Paul Sisson; S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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By 8 p.m., the Lilac fire had grown to 4,100 acres and had zero containment, adding to the conflagration of wildfires wreaking havoc across Southern California this week.
At least three people trying to evacuate were injured in the blaze, which roared through Bonsall — a rural community of horses, livestock and agricultural lands — and into Oceanside. Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in the county.
“We are in no way near the end of this,” warned Ron Lane, the county’s deputy chief administrative officer who oversees public safety.
Large swaths of Bonsall and Oceanside were evacuated, and authorities warned residents to be on high alert overnight.
“It’s incumbent on all the people in this area to stay alert, stay informed and, if you feel it’s important, self-evacuate and get out of the way of this fast-moving fire,” said Sheriff Bill Gore. “Don’t necessarily wait for that deputy to knock on your door. There aren’t that many of us out there.”
Authorities confirmed 20 structures have been destroyed and 12 damaged, but witness accounts and news footage made it clear the count was much higher.
As night fell, a shopping center was being consumed by the blaze.
At the Rancho Monserate Country Club, a swath of upscale mobile homes bordering a golf course had already been reduced to ash and twisted metal. Flames roared through horse barns at the San Luis Rey Downs Training Center. Trainers tried to corral the horses but in the end simply let the panicked animals free — at the risk of being trampled themselves. Several of the horses died in the fire.
Streets were choked with good Samaritans hauling horse trailers, offering their services to help others evacuate their animals. Horses were being accepted at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.
Some residents decided to stay behind to do what they could. Susie and Michael Lynn stood on the dirt road leading to their home, putting out small spot fires with garden hoses.
The couple were working at the horse training center when they saw a huge cloud of smoke billowing near their neighborhood.
“We saw it getting the better of the firemen and it was heading our way,” said Susie Lynn.
Many roads were closed, including portions of state Route 76 and Old Highway 395.
Eleven school districts will be closed Friday:
By Thursday evening, the Thomas fire had consumed 115,000 acres, destroyed 427 structures in Ventura and damaged at least 85 more, authorities said. An additional 12 structures were destroyed in unincorporated areas of Ventura County. “Until the wind stops blowing, there’s really not a lot we can do as far as controlling the perimeter,” Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen said as crews battled flames for the third day. “This is a fight we’re going to be fighting probably for a couple of weeks.”
That grim outlook came just hours after authorities said they discovered the body of a woman in a burn area, and after heavy winds prompted residents to flee the coastal community of Faria Beach. As smoke billowed overhead and palm trees burned, a police officer drove through the settlement with a megaphone blaring: “Mandatory evacuation” and “Please go the other way, the road is closed.”
In Ojai, 40 mph winds pushed flames to within a mile of the city.
“We are mounting an aggressive aerial assault,” Ventura County Fire Capt. Robert Welsbie said as he observed the flames from Ojai. “The fire is suddenly widespread due to the velocity of erratic winds.” The Thomas fire, which is believed to have destroyed hundreds of homes, was one of a half-dozen wildfires burning in Ventura, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego counties Thursday.
Though it is not rare for Santa Ana winds to blow this time of year, weather experts say it’s unusual for them to be combined with such dry conditions.
With relative humidity in the single digits along the coastal mountains, the air is the driest it’s been here in recorded history, said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.
“The (relative) humidities right now along the coast are much drier than what you’d normally see in the interior desert in the summertime,” Swain said. “Once you get down to 1 percent or 2 percent, you’re down almost as low as is physically possible.”
Firefighters are concerned that the Thomas fire will push into Santa Barbara County and threaten the city of Carpinteria, said Ventura County fire spokesman Rich Macklin.
“We’re going to start moving with it,” Macklin said of the flames, adding that about 2,000 firefighters are battling the blaze.
Crews are concerned about erratic winds near the water that are reaching between 30 and 40 mph, he said, with gusts of 45 to 50 mph.
As he spoke, plumes of smoke shifted toward the ocean, obscuring visibility so badly that it was difficult to see a few hundred feet ahead. Distant booms went off in the distance— what Macklin attributed to “a tank of something releasing.”
The National Weather Service predicted winds of 28 to 35 mph with gusts up to 50 mph in the Faria Beach area until 5 or 6 p.m. today, meteorologist Todd Hall said. “If they get through the afternoon portion, it’ll start turning around,” Hall said. A mild onshore breeze could help firefighters battle flames at Faria Beach late Thursday night, he said, but the rest of Southern California can expect sustained Santa Ana winds for the rest of the day.
Authorities also urged residents to evacuate forested areas near Ojai, at the wildfire’s northern front. In forested areas near Ojai, tornadoes of flame began climbing the slopes of a remote box canyon that Jayson Kaufman calls home. To the chagrin of Ventura County sheriff’s deputies who issued a mandatory evacuation order the previous night, Kaufman was among 15 to 20 Matilija Canyon dwellers who refused to leave their rustic cabins and geodesic domes tucked in dry brush.
“We’re monitoring the situation — and the clarity of the air — closely,” Kaufman said, eyeing clouds of smoke filling the skies on both ends of the densely forested canyon. “This morning, the sky was super clear until about 10 a.m. Now, we’re playing it by ear.”
That kind of talk rankled authorities, who were concerned about the status of the holdouts but unable to divert equipment and firefighters into the 5-mile-long canyon Thursday because Highway 33 north of Ojai was strewn with downed power lines, telephone poles and boulders.
It also worried other Matilija Canyon residents who had heeded the evacuation order but could not check the status of the holdouts because communications systems were not working. “I left the canyon almost immediately after sheriff’s deputies banged on our door and told us to get out,” said Michael Kampman, 31, among a half-dozen people gathered at a roadblock down mountain, awaiting word of the status of their neighbors. “I know several people who stayed behind.”
A woman’s body was found Wednesday night at the site of a car accident on Wheeler Canyon Road. The cause of death and the woman’s identity have not been determined, Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Kevin Donoghue said. Throughout Southern California, winds that officials feared would blow over trees, knock down power lines and push fires closer to endangered communities were not as strong as anticipated Wednesday night and Thursday, the weather service said.
But the winds were still dangerous and erratic, and powerful enough to drive major fires in the area.
“A lot of these signals that we look at are not quite as impressive as we’d seen earlier,” said meteorologist David Sweet. “Gusts of 80 mph are now gusts of 60 to 65 mph. It’s not that much of a difference, but I guess anything downward is a good thing.”
Early Thursday afternoon, a fire erupted in Murrieta, destroying one structure and triggering evacuations.
The blaze, reported about 1:15 p.m. near Los Alamos and Liberty roads, scorched 300 acres in about three hours. About 300 firefighters were tackling flames moving through heavy fuel at a moderate to rapid rate of spread. By 4:25 p.m., the blaze was 5 percent contained.
In Sylmar, where the Creek fire is burning, 12,605 acres had been destroyed and the blaze was 10 percent contained by Thursday. Authorities have confirmed 15 structures destroyed and another 15 damaged, with 2,500 structures still threatened. There are 110,000 people evacuated because of the fire, Los Angeles Fire Capt. Branden Silverman said.
The Skirball fire in Bel-Air, which has destroyed four homes and damaged 11 others, remained at 475 acres with 20 percent containment as of Thursday. Everyone in the 3.2-square-mile evacuation zone — about 700 homes — was still being told to stay away, said L.A. Fire Department spokesman Peter Sanders.
(Ruben Vives & Sarah Parvini, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP)
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As fires raged out of control across Southern California, a new blaze erupted in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, near iconic landmarks like the UCLA campus and the Getty Museum, home to old masters paintings and ancient Roman statues.
It burned up to the edges of the 405 freeway, the nation’s busiest highway carrying about 400,000 vehicles a day, where the northbound lanes were closed for much of the day and commuters drove through a shower of ash with flames rising in the horizon.
Forty miles to the north, the largest of several fires under way had consumed by Wednesday night 90,000 acres and at least 150 structures — probably many more, fire officials said — and threatened 12,000 others in the city of Ventura and neighboring communities, and was 5 percent contained.
“We stand a good chance of a challenging night and day tomorrow,” California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, spokesman Tim Chavez said Wednesday in Ventura, adding that there’s potential for fire growth on the northwest side and a high probability of spot fires. “It’s going to be a difficult night and day.”
The focus Wednesday, officials said, was keeping the fire out of the Ojai Valley while assessing the devastation in the cities of Ventura and Santa Paula.
The hot Santa Ana winds that drove the fire at remarkable speed Tuesday had lessened greatly Wednesday. However, they were predicted to increase again today.
“We are in the beginning of a protracted wind event,” said Cal Fire Chief Ken Pimlott in Los Angeles.
“There will be no ability to fight fire in these kinds of winds,” Pimlott said. “At the end of the day, we need everyone in the public to listen and pay attention. This is not ‘watch the news and go about your day.’ This is pay attention minute by minute. Keep your head on a swivel.” Other major fires were burning in the northern San Fernando Valley and the rugged region north of Los Angeles.
The fires compounded the suffering of what has already been one of the state’s worst fire seasons on record, including the blazes that ravaged the wine country north of San Francisco in October. The new outbreaks have forced nearly 200,000 people in the Los Angeles and Ventura areas to evacuate, officials said, and extremely high winds are likely to make matters worse on Wednesday night and today. Fire season usually peaks in October in California, but officials suggested that with climate change, more fires are occurring later in the year.
“These are days that break your heart,” Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles said at a news conference. “These are also days that show the resilience of our city.”
It was a day in which smoke from the fires ringing the region could be spotted from the Santa Monica Pier, the streets of downtown and the beaches of Santa Catalina Island. By Wednesday evening, the fire in Bel-Air consumed at least 475 acres and a handful of structures, small figures compared with some of the other blazes. But in such a densely populated area, the prospect of warm, dry Santa Ana winds whipping the flames into other neighborhoods had many residents of Los Angeles’ west side preparing for possible evacuation. Officials ordered 700 homes in Bel-Air evacuated.
A gray-brown pall, tinted orange in places, hung across a region that is home to millions of people, and the regional air quality agency warned that the air posed a health hazard in places.
At least four houses burned in hilly Bel-Air, where sprawling villas costing tens of millions of dollars are home to celebrities and other wealthy Angelenos.
Winds could still reach 80 mph, said Pimlott. “These will be winds where there will be no ability to fight fires,” he said. Wind blowing from the northeast raised fears that the fire could jump the freeway, into the area around the Brentwood neighborhood and where the sprawling Getty sits on a hilltop overlooking Interstate 405.
The fires in total have destroyed more than 300 homes, businesses and other buildings.
Fire and smoke forced the closing of the 101 freeway — the main coastal route north from Los Angeles. More than 1,700 firefighters were working on the blaze there.
Hundreds of schools were ordered closed for the rest of the week because of the thick blanket of smoke filling the skies. At the University of California Los Angeles, officials said an electrical failure in the area left the campus without power. The student health center was distributing masks to students to help protect them from the smoke wafting over the campus.
Garcetti declared a local state of emergency because of the Skirball fire, as the blaze in Bel-Air is called. Gov. Jerry Brown issued a similar call for the Ventura fire on Tuesday. The declarations asked for rapid aid from state and federal officials.
Sam Grosslight, 24, of Bel-Air, was woken up by her mother, Carolyn, early Wednesday morning telling her to grab her phone and her computer. The family piled as much as they could, from Carolyn Grosslight’s newly purchased makeup to her father’s ashes, into her Jeep.
“People say you’ll know what you need when you get to the moment, but really you have no idea and you just start grabbing stuff and you’re all over the place,” Carolyn Grosslight said.
She stood at a highway overpass in her dad’s old red sweatshirt — Hell Freezes Over, it read — as plumes of smoke churned above her neighborhood.
“It’s the weirdest feeling to not know when you can go back home again. That’s supposed to be the one place you can always go, and right now it’s just not,” she said.
In 1961, a fire ripped through Bel-Air and destroyed almost 500 homes, including many belonging to celebrities, and prompted the adoption of new fire codes, including rules about clearing brush around buildings.
“We’ve all been through this before,” said Abe Hagigat, 61, on Wednesday, as he packed up his car outside his home in Bel-Air and watered his roof. “We stay calm, do what they tell us, and pray.”
His wife and daughter had filled the car with photographs. “That’s really all that really matters,” he said.
The strong winds that are driving the fires are a normal feature of late fall and winter in Southern California. What is different this year — and what is making the fires particularly large and destructive — is the amount of bone-dry vegetation that is ready to burn.
“What’s unusual is the fact that fuels are so dry,” said Thomas Rolinski, a senior meteorologist with the U.S. Forest Service. “Normally by this time of year we would have had enough rainfall to where this wouldn’t be an issue.”
The situation in Southern California is similar to what occurred in Northern California in October, when high, hot winds fueled fires that killed 40 people and destroyed thousands of homes. But while Northern California has since had a lot of rain that has essentially eliminated the fire threat, the south has remained dry. “We haven’t had any meaningful precipitation since March,” Rolinski said.
Helping to spread the fires are the Santa Ana winds, which occur as cold, high-pressure air over Nevada and Utah descends into Southern California, accelerating and warming. Typically, Santa Ana conditions occur on roughly one-third of the days in December and January, Rolinski said. To the west of the 405 freeway, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles was closed to the public for a second day on Wednesday because of the wildfires, museum officials said.
No artwork has been evacuated from the museum or its grounds, said Ron Hartwig, the museum’s vice president of communications, who added that the museum was designed to protect against natural disasters like wildfires.
(Jennifer Medina & Richard Perez-Peña, NEW YORK TIMES; LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The utility has sent a power generator to Julian, positioned work crews so they can pounce on outages, and brought in a heavy-lift helicopter that can drop 2,500 pounds of water on any wildfires that might erupt in the arid back country.
The chopper has about eight times the capacity of other helicopters used to fight wildfires. SDG&E says it also might be forced to temporarily turn off power in certain areas of the county to protect the integrity of the electric system. The company temporarily did that to about 87 customers in the Descanso area earlier in the week.
The National Weather Service expected the offshore winds to pick up late Wednesday night and accelerate at about dawn today, with gusts of 80 to 90 mph along some of the peaks in East County.
Other inland areas will be lashed by 35 to 45 mph winds, with spikes to 55 mph, notably in places like Alpine, Pine Valley, Julian, San Diego Estates and Campo.
The winds also will gust 20 to 30 mph along the coast, from roughly Point Loma to Camp Pendleton.
“This could be the worst wind storm since the ones that caused about a dozen fires in 2014,” said Alex Tardy, a forecaster at the National Weather Service. “The parameters are the same: The landscape is dry, the winds will be fast and widespread, and the humidity will be really low.
“If a wildfire starts ... it’s going to be a real problem, because winds will be blowing all the way to the coast, and we’ll have off-shores until the weekend, which drags things out.”
Tardy’s colleague Stephen Harrison said, “San Diego County will be the windiest place in Southern California, and that could bring problems.”
Much of San Diego County will remain under a red-flag fire weather warning until 8 p.m. on Saturday, and a high wind warning will be in place for most of the rest of the region through late Friday afternoon.
Forecasters say that no significant rain is expected in San Diego County through mid-December.
The incoming windstorm and possible power outages prompted Julian Union Elementary School District, Julian Union High School District, Spencer Valley School District and Warner Unified School District to close their schools today. Julian Pathways, a before- and after-school program, will also be closed, according to its Facebook page. Julian Union High School District Superintendent Patrick Hefflin said school officials decided it would be better to cancel classes than risk an outage — especially with wild weather on the horizon.
“Without power, it would be impossible for us to communicate to parents if we needed to send students home early,” she said.
All extracurricular activities at Julian district schools will also be canceled today, Patrick said.
School officials have not yet decided if schools will be closed on Friday. Julian area schools will, at the very least, be starting late that day, Patrick said.
(Gary Robbins & Lyndsay Winkley, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The study, by Patrick Brown and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford examined the high-powered climate change simulations, or models, that researchers use to project the future of the planet based on the physical equations that govern the behavior of the atmosphere and oceans.
The researchers then looked at what the models that best captured current conditions high in the atmosphere predicted was coming. Those models generally predicted a higher level of warming than models that did not capture these conditions as well.
The study adds to a growing body of bad news about how human activity is changing the planet’s climate and how dire those changes will be. But according to several outside scientists consulted by The Washington Post, while the research is well-executed and intriguing, it’s also not yet definitive.
“The study is interesting and concerning, but the details need more investigation,” said Ben Sanderson, a climate expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. Brown and Caldeira are far from the first to study such models in a large group, but they did so with a twist.
In the past, it has been common to combine the results of dozens of these models, and so give a range for how much the planet might warm for a given level of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. That’s the practice of the leading international climate science body, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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In Ventura, the Thomas fire consumed dozens of stucco-and-tile homes along tidy streets and cul-de-sacs. Propane tanks exploded and fan palms became ragged torches lofting fiery debris hundreds of yards.
By morning, an estimated 150 structures were destroyed in scenes reminiscent of the deadly October firestorm that tore through Santa Rosa.
But late Tuesday, Cal Fire officials said the number of homes burned in Ventura County could grow by hundreds.
As other fires erupted throughout the region, officials were quickly facing a triage situation.
The Creek fire broke out in the San Gabriel Mountain foothills before dawn and forced thousands to flee the Sylmar and Lake View Terrace sections, burning 30 homes and quickly becoming one of the largest fires in modern Los Angeles history.
Authorities closed almost 20 miles of the 210 freeway to allow additional firefighting crews to stream into the area, as thick smoke from 11,000 acres of charred chaparral billowed over the San Fernando Valley and prompted unhealthy air warnings as far away as Santa Monica and Malibu.
By 10 a.m., a third fire ignited, this time in the Santa Clarita Valley, north of Los Angeles. It did not threaten homes but prompted the closure of Interstate 5. At 1 p.m. a fire in the San Bernardino foothills threatened the city’s California State University campus and prompted the closure of the 215 freeway. Smaller fires broke out in Riverside and Ontario.
Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in Ventura County. “This fire is very dangerous and spreading rapidly, but we’ll continue to attack it with all we’ve got,” Brown said. “It’s critical residents stay ready and evacuate immediately if told to do so.”
As of Tuesday evening, no fatalities had been reported. Two firefighters in the Sylmar area suffered injuries. Officials said they had zero containment on the two most destructive fires, the Thomas and Creek. And the forecast was bleak, with seasonal dry winds, caused by high pressure over the Great Basin, not expected to relent until Thursday.
The National Weather Service called it “the strongest and longest duration Santa Ana wind event we have seen so far this season.”
The last time powerful Santa Ana winds lasted three days, the agency said, was in 2007, when wildfires destroyed thousands of homes and killed 10 people as they swept down foothills from Santa Barbara to Baja California.
Although Southern California had a relatively quiet fire season until Monday, the state has suffered its deadliest year to date because of the fires in Northern California’s wine country in October that killed at least 44 people and burned down 10,000 structures.
That backdrop sharpened the anxiety of residents in evacuation zones Tuesday. In upper Kagel Canyon, north of Los Angeles, Scott Wells woke up before dawn to the smell of smoke.
When he looked outside, brush was burning all around his house.
“It was pretty scary,” Wells said. The family had had close calls with fire before, but it was always coming from one side or another of their home. This time, he said, “it was all around us.”
In the mountains and foothills above Ventura, the Thomas fire burned 50,500 acres, forcing 27,000 people to flee as it burned toward the heart of the historic coastal city.
In its path, staff at a canyon psychiatric hospital that specializes in treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder hastily had to evacuate patients in cars.
By Tuesday morning, at least two buildings of the campus lay in smoldering heaps of stucco and broken clay.
“I burst into tears,” said Sandy Case, 75, who lives next to Vista del Mar Hospital. “It broke my heart.”
“There’s a huge need for this facility,” said Roger Case, 76, who is on the hospital’s advisory board.
He said it serves about 80 patients at a time and employs about 230 people.
“There are all these people who are now unemployed,” Roger Case said.
The Case family’s home — a white colonial estate built in 1915 — was spared.
Such was the haphazard path of destruction so common in wind-driven fires.
A fusillade of embers inevitably finds random openings in some homes — gaps under doors, poorly covered vents, open windows, flimsy doggy-doors — but not others. Once inside a house or garage, the embers can ignite all types of flammable material, from laundry to curtains to stacks of newspapers, quickly setting fire to walls and rafters. One burning house often sets off a chain reaction to neighboring homes, as the heat and flames shatter windows and catch eaves on fire.
Hundreds of firefighters worked through Monday night and Tuesday to prevent the fire from spreading as they were confronted by wind gusts of up to 60 mph.
The Hawaiian Village Apartments in Ventura collapsed about 4 a.m.
Water gushed down North Laurel Street as firefighters worked to put out the flames in the complex and residents watched, holding cameras and cellphones. The sound of bursting propane tanks filled the air.
The Thomas fire started about 6:25 p.m. Monday in the foothills near Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula. It ballooned to more than 15 square miles in the hours that followed, roughly following Foothill Road to Ventura, churning through canyons with thick vegetation that hadn’t burned in decades, said Ventura County Fire Sgt. Eric Buschow.
Some residents hoped the worst might be over in the early hours of the morning when the wind died down. But it roared up again around daybreak, with 70mph gusts in the mountains.
As the wind downed power lines and poles, more than 260,000 customers of Southern California Edison lost electricity.
Firefighters did not have a single flank of the fire contained, with 1,000 men and women fighting it and more on the way, said Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Tim Lochman. One helicopter was dropping water, and authorities were hoping winds would die down so they could deploy fixed-wing aircraft.
But firefighters found that some hydrants did not work because they required pumps that had lost power in the blackouts.
In Ojai, the entire water system went down — including hydrants and drinking water — when the pumping system itself was damaged by the fire.
Crews were working Tuesday to fix it.
In the canyons just outside Ojai, Marie McTavish and her family watched the flames crawl down Sulphur Mountain toward their ranch.
For more than 30 years, McTavish, 65, and her husband, Mike, 70, have owned a boarding stable for dozens of horses.
As the smoke blotted out the sun and the light turned an eerie magenta, the family knew the horses had to go.
They loaded more than 20 of them into trailers, headed to fairgrounds in Ventura and Santa Barbara. By the afternoon, three horses remained — the toughest and balkiest to get into trailers.
When the couple were ordered to evacuate around noon, they started to pack up their keepsakes, but looked at their barn — maroon, low-slung, half-century old, with a dozen horse stalls inside. “Our barn is our lifeblood,” Marie McTavish said. “We have to fight, to save our barn.”
Her granddaughter Makayla Beverage, 13, grabbed a hose and soaked the bam and house, then filled up two trash cans on both roofs, hoping they might help firefighters if flames reached the structures.
“We could never rebuild it,” McTavish said. “I’m more worried about the barn than my house. It’s a landmark.”
(Laura J. Nelson & Matt Hamilton, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP)
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Obama, who did not mention Trump by name, made a quick appearance at the conference hosted by his former chief of staff, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. He said it was an “unusual time” with the U.S. as the only country to walk away from the Paris agreement, but it was a chance for local leaders to come together and fulfill promises the country has made.
“Ultimately the work is done on the ground,” Obama said. “Cities and states and businesses and universities and nonprofits have emerged as the new face of American leadership on climate change.”
Chicago officials billed the North American Climate Summit, which began Monday evening, as the first of its kind for the city. Leaders elsewhere have taken similar action, despite Trump’s announcement earlier this year that the U.S. would pull out of the 2015 Paris agreement, which involves nations setting benchmarks to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases. The U.S. won’t officially back out until 2020 because of legal technicalities.
The Chicago charter calls for mayors to achieve a percentage reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that’s equal to or more than what is outlined in the Paris agreement.
Mayors from 51 cities, including Paris, Mexico City, San Francisco and Phoenix, attended the summit.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Fire officials said the blaze was rapidly increasing in size and that firefighting resources had been ordered from all over the region.
Four helicopters were going to begin making water drops after crews determined that it was safe to fly as the blaze grew rapidly in a southwest direction.
As of 9 p.m., it was unclear if any residences had been damaged by the blaze.
Firefighters were getting in place to protect homes along Highway 150 just north of Santa Paula, said Ventura County Fire Capt. Stan Ziegler. Flames were reported on both sides of the highway.
The agency staffed an extra 100 or so firefighters in anticipation of strong winds that triggered a red flag warning in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Weather officials said those regions could see wind gusts of 50 to 70 mph overnight and into today.
A command post was set up at a local fire station, and Santa Paula police were also calling in officers to assist.
Evacuation shelters were set up at the Ventura County Fairgrounds and Nordhoff High School in Ojai. The Red Cross said it will have meals, water and hygiene items for families affected by the evacuations. It also will have a place where residents to can wait to receive updates on the fire.
Thomas Aquinas College, located between Santa Paula and Ojai, said via Twitter that all students had been taken off campus as a precaution. The students were taken to nearby homes for safety. Santa Paula City Council member Jenny Crosswhite said city leaders were at a meeting when the fire broke out. They adjourned the council meeting early because of the blaze. “Right now, the wind is blowing it west,” Crosswhite said from her home in the middle of town. “From here, all I can see is the glow.”
She had not heard from many residents yet. “I think right now a lot of people are just focused on trying to figure out what’s going on,” she said. “Since we still have power, a lot of people are listening to scanners and watching the live TV coverage.”
Authorities reported that the downtown area was heavily congested with firefighters headed to fight the blaze. Power outages were reported in the Upper Ojai.
Flames were first reported at about 6:25 p.m. Within an hour, the fire grew from 50 to 500 acres.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Forecasters say the dry, offshore winds should begin to pick up speed today into Tuesday.
The winds are expected to gust 35-50 mph today across inland valleys, and could be especially strong in Ramona, Escondido, Alpine and Campo. Forecasters say the winds will surpass 50 mph in many inland spots on Tuesday, and could hit 20-30 mph at the coast, especially in North County.
“The relative humidity is going to drop on Monday, and by Tuesday it will be only 5-15 percent for most of the county,” said Brett Albright, a weather service forecaster.
Santa Ana winds are usually associated with hot weather. However, temperatures will be in the 60s and 70s across most of the county.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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It has about 600 homes at beach level on the northern end of the city. They include some of San Diego County’s most expensive properties, including a home owned by Kim Fletcher, a member of one of San Diego’s pioneering families who lives with his wife in a beachfront house on land his grandfather bought in the 1940s.
But rising sea levels are putting the Pacific perilously close to those low-lying homes. As a result, the state Coastal Commission says all cities must devise a plan that addresses the inevitable decline of the shoreline.
One of the strategies the state is pushing is something called “managed retreat.” The concept calls for abandoning land threatened by coastal erosion, removing any structures such as houses or seawalls, and allowing the beach to return to its natural state. It is an option that is not sitting well with residents of the small community, such as the 90-year-old Fletcher.
“If you lose the houses on the beach, you’re going to flood everything back to the railroad tracks,” Fletcher said. “The topography is terrible.”
Homeowners worry that their property values would plummet, insurance rates would skyrocket, and mortgages would be harder to obtain if word gets out that the city is considering retreat. Instead, they say, the city should find more ways to pump sand onto its eroding beaches.
Much more popular with Del Mar residents is the idea of sand replenishment, which has been used for years to fortify beaches along the San Diego County coast.
“We want to stress that beach nourishment and sand replenishment ... is the best sea-level rise adaptation strategy,” said Jon Corn, an attorney for Del Mar property owners.
He and his 30 or more clients in the newly formed Del Mar Beach Preservation Coalition were pleased to see that the city had deleted the retreat strategy from the latest version of its sea-level rise adaptation strategy that was released last week, he said. The proposed strategy is expected to go to the City Council for approval in February, and to the California Coastal Commission next summer.
“We are very happy with the direction that it’s taken,” Corn said.
Residents strongly opposed the retreat option when it was discussed over the summer at meetings of the city’s Sea-Level Rise Stakeholder Technical Advisory Committee. As a result, the committee decided to exclude that strategy from the plan.
“It’s too soon in the process to consider retreat in Del Mar,” Principal Planner Amanda Lee said Tuesday.
“The city has many options available,” Lee said. “Retreat is a costly choice. The best option is sand replenishment and sand replacement.”
The Coastal Commission requires all cities on the coast to develop strategies for adapting to rising sea levels.
Mid-range predictions call for the average sea level to rise 5 inches by 2030 in Del Mar, 12 inches by 2050 and more than 3 feet by 2100, according to a draft report released by the city last week.
The prediction is based on averages, so flooding and destructive waves are much more likely to occur during high tides and storm surges.
Most of San Diego County’s coastal communities are built atop or behind sandstone bluffs 60 to 80 feet tall or more. Except for a relative few homes at the edge of the bluff-tops, those communities are not immediately threatened by sea-level rise, so the idea of managed retreat has been less of an issue for them. Del Mar is different. It has hundreds of low-lying homes on the northern end of the city, south of the outlet of the San Dieguito River.
The average annual income in those households is $102,664, and the average property value is $3.5 million, according to the city’s report. Homes facing the beach average more than $10 million each, and one sold several years ago for $35 million, setting a record for San Diego County. Some of those homes date to the 1920s and ’30s. Almost all were built before the Coastal Act was passed in 1976, which limits development on vulnerable coastal lands. The Fletchers’ home on Sandy Lane was built in 1951 for $10,000, Kim Fletcher said.
Along with sand replenishment, strategies for adapting to rising sea levels include seawalls, which are widespread in San Diego County, and elevating structures on stilts or posts, a practice more common on the East Coast. Retreat is generally considered a last resort.
Still, the Coastal Commission and environmental groups such as the Surfrider Foundation recommend managed retreat be considered among the possible strategies. Each option has its downside. Seawalls have been shown to contribute to shoreline erosion, and the Coastal Commission discourages their use. Sand replenishment is costly and temporary and likely to be less effective as sea levels continue to rise. Many environmentalists see retreat as the only logical long-term solution.
A Coastal Commission representative this week declined to comment on the Del Mar decision. “For now, we are monitoring the situation, but we do plan on providing more formal comments before the city takes any final action,” said commission Public Information Officer Noaki Schwartz. Surfrider policy manager Julia Chunn-Heer said retreat needs to be considered as an option in DelMar. “I don’t think sticking our head in the sand is going to do anyone any favors,” Chunn-Heer said.
“Beach nourishment is a great first option, and hopefully that will work,” she said. “But that may not be enough, so we want to have all the tools on the table.”
No one wants anybody to lose their home, she said. But science shows sea levels will continue to rise, probably at a more rapid rate in the future, and there could come a time when hard choices must be made.
One of the retreat options sometimes discussed is for a city or other public agency to buy the private beachfront property, lease the structures or rent them as vacation property until the purchase costs are recovered, then demolish the buildings before the ocean destroys them.
Retreat will be considered for a few low-lying public facilities, the Del Mar report states. Those include the city fire station and nearby public works yard, both on Jimmy Durante Boulevard near the San Dieguito River, that could be moved to higher ground.
Coastal Del Mar homeowner Laura DeMarco said that won’t work for private property, where the owners have no higher ground to move to. Also, the high property values limit potential buyers. “It works in areas where there is a lot less development,” said DeMarco, a Del Mar resident for 30 years.
Only about 80 of the 600 low-lying homes in Del Mar are beachfront property, she said.
Most of the homes are east of the beach tightly packed in a sort of bowl that’s several feet lower than the beachfront properties, most of which are protected by 10to 15-foot seawalls.
“Those walls protect not just the (beachfront) structures themselves, but everything behind them,” De-Marco said. Rising sea levels or even powerful winter storms have the potential to turn the residential neighborhood into a swamp.
Yet DeMarco and many of her neighbors prefer to take an optimistic view of rising sea levels, noting there is a wide range of possibilities over the years ahead.
“I don’t think anyone is denying it,” she said of climate change and the resulting rise in sea levels. “But the magnitude is in dispute.”
Beach erosion is largely a man-made issue, she said, the result of inland development that blocks the flow of sand down rivers and streams, and the creation of artificial harbors and jetties that disturb the coastal ocean currents.
For decades now, there have been local and regional efforts to pump sediment from harbors, lagoons and offshore deposits to replace what’s lost from the beaches as the result of coastal and upstream development. De-Marco said it’s time to pick up the pace.
“We can do other things to improve the beach and capture more sand,” she said.
For example, sand excavated from inland construction projects could be trucked to the shore and used to beef up the beaches.
Del Mar’s neighbors to the north, Solana Beach and Encinitas, are working together on a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-led sand replenishment project that will widen their beaches by 100 to 200 yards over the next 50 years.
The federal government is paying 65 percent of the costs, estimated at more than $135 million over the life of the project, with the rest of the money from state and local governments.
(Phil Diehl, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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In a report to its clients Tuesday, Moody’s Investors Service explained how it incorporates climate change into its credit ratings for state and local bonds. If cities and states don’t deal with risks from surging seas or intense storms, they are at greater risk of default.
“What we want people to realize is: If you’re exposed, we know that. We’re going to ask questions about what you’re doing to mitigate that exposure,” Lenny Jones, a managing director at Moody’s, said in a phone interview. “That’s taken into your credit ratings.” In its report, Moody’s lists indicators it uses “to assess the exposure and overall susceptibility of U.S. states to the physical effects of climate change.” They include the share of economic activity that comes from coastal areas, hurricane and extreme- weather damage as a share of the economy, and the share of homes in a flood plain.
Based on those overall risks, Texas, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi are among the states most at risk from climate change. Moody’s didn’t identify which cities or municipalities were most exposed.
Bond rating agencies such as Moody’s are important both for bond issuers and buyers, as they assign ratings that are used to judge the risk of default. The greater the risk, the higher the interest rate municipalities pay.
If repeated storms and floods are likely to send property values — and tax revenue — sinking while spending on sea walls, storm drains or flood-resistant buildings goes up, investors say bond buyers should be warned.
(BLOOMBERG NEWS)
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The lawsuit, brought by the city in 2015, alleges that the St. Louis-based corporation should bear at least part of that cost. Lawyers for the city contend that Monsanto knew for decades before the federal government banned PCBs in 1979 that the chemicals would result in widespread contamination and negative impacts to human and environmental health.
The company has maintained that it scaled back and then completely stopped making the PCBs as information came to light about their hazardous effects. The company produced the chemicals in the United States from 1929 to 1977.
The case hinges on a novel legal strategy that could have widespread implications for corporate America. A law firm representing the city, Baron& Budd, has also brought similar lawsuits on behalf of a number of other municipalities, including Long Beach, San Jose, Berkeley, Oakland, Portland, Ore., Seattle and Spokane, Wash. “We’re just excited to move towards trial on all the cases,” said John Fiske, an attorney with the legal team working on the cases. “We want to try as many of these as possible, because we think that’s where we’ll receive the most justice for the taxpayers and the ratepayers who will be bearing the cost of removing PCBs.”
Monsanto made motions to dismiss in nearly all the cases. The motions rested heavily on a technical argument that a municipality had no legal standing to bring a public nuisance claim against the company.
U.S. District Court Judge William Hayes in San Diego denied the corporation’s motion last week, after a string of similar decisions up and down the West Coast. “The court finds that the city has alleged sufficient facts to establish that it has a property interest injuriously affected by the nuisance and that Monsanto assisted in the creation of the public nuisance,” Hayes wrote in his recent ruling.
After the decision, Monsanto released this statement: “This ruling is inconsistent with the court’s prior rulings on similar issues, but it doesn’t affect the substance of our arguments in this case. We will continue to aggressively defend ourselves. … The city’s case is without merit, and we are confident we will ultimately prevail.”
PCBs were largely designed to insulate electrical equipment but were also used in everything from highway paint to pesticides. Scientists believe the chemicals’ rapidly spreading nature has contaminated nearly every human, fish and creature on the planet to some degree.
Over the decades, PCBs have increasingly been linked to cancer, neurological damage, thyroid problems and reproductive complications. Monsanto is the only known manufacturer of PCBs in the United States. The port of San Diego has also brought a similar claim against Monsanto, choosing to represent itself using its own legal team. A motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by the port was denied last year. The cases aren’t expected to go to trial before late 2018, according to the lawyers for the plaintiffs.
If successful, the strategy against Monsanto could expand California’s public nuisance case law as it applies to corporate accountability where standard product liability cases wouldn’t apply.
(Joshua Emerson Smith, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Mount Agung has been hurling clouds of white and dark gray ash about 9,800 feet into the atmosphere since the weekend. Video released by the national disaster agency showed a mudflow of volcanic debris and water known as a lahar moving down the volcano’s slopes.
Bali’s airport was closed early today after tests indicated ash had reached its airspace and authorities raised the volcano’s alert to the highest danger level.
Flight information boards showed rows of cancellations as tourists arrived at the busy airport expecting to catch flights home.
Airport spokesman Air Ahsanurrohim said 445 flights were canceled, stranding about 59,000 travelers. The closure is in effect until Tuesday morning though officials said the situation will be reviewed every six hours. Bali is Indonesia’s top tourist destination, with its gentle Hindu culture, surf beaches and lush green interior attracting about 5 million visitors a year.
Geological agency head, Kasbani, who goes by one name, said the alert level was raised because the volcano has shifted from steam-based eruptions to magmatic eruptions. However he said he’s still not expecting a major eruption.
“We don’t expect a big eruption but we have to stay alert and anticipate,” he said on Indonesian TV.
The volcano’s last major eruption in 1963 killed about 1,100 people.
The exclusion zone around the crater was widened to 6 miles from roughly 3.5 miles.
Ash a quarter of an inch thick has settled on villages around the volcano and soldiers and police distributed masks on the weekend. In Karangasem district that surrounds the volcano, tourists stopped to watch the towering plumes of ash as children made their way to school.
Indonesia sits on the “Pacific Ring of Fire” and has more than 120 active volcanoes.
Mount Agung’s alert status was raised to the highest level in September following a dramatic increase in tremors from the volcano, which doubled the exclusion zone around the crater and prompted more than 140,000 people to leave the area. The alert was lowered on Oct. 2.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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While on his way to the recent world climate conference in Germany, Brown huddled with Bjørn Otto Sverdrup, senior vice president for corporate sustainability for Statoil in Norway, according to the news website Axios.
While offshore wind farms are becoming a common sight in Europe, none have been built on the West Coast and only one has been completed in the U.S. — off the shores of Block Island in Rhode Island.
“It’s great, all that wind blowing, if we can get it, if the price is right, if the technology is there, if we can get through appropriate analysis,” Brown told Axios last week in Bonn, Germany.
“I think it may have real potential, but there’s lots of issues there.”
Because the continental shelf plunges steeply off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington, it’s impractical to bolt turbines into the seabed. As a result, constructing floating wind turbines is considered necessary.
Earlier this year, Statoil opened the first floating wind farm in the world, off the coast of Scotland and estimated to power about 20,000 homes. Based in Oslo, Statoil is 67 percent owned by the Norwegian government and has been aggressively moving into wind power generation. Last year, the company applied to the U.S. government for a lease of nearly 56 square miles at Morro Bay.
But Statoil is not the only competitor for the Morro Bay lease.
Seattle-based Trident Winds has hopes to build a floating array of about 100 wind turbines some 33 miles from the shore by 2025.
Wind energy analysts believe offshore facilities have huge potential. It’s estimated that nearly a terrawatt of electricity will be generated off the coast of California, 13 times more capacity than all the land-based wind farms across the country generate.
In May 2016, Brown called on the U.S. Department of the Interior to establish a state task force in coordination with Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to identify promising areas for wind energy off California’s coastline.
(Rob Nikolewski, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Puerto Rican flags flapped in the wind as speakers — one after another — gave impassioned pleas for funding and support for Puerto Rico, which is still recovering from the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. The hurricane made landfall in September and devastated the U.S. territory of 3.4 million people.
By afternoon, hundreds had amassed in front of the Lincoln Memorial as part of the Unity March for Puerto Rico. Many more had showed up in the morning to march from the U.S. Capitol, down Independence Avenue toward the Lincoln Memorial.
Among the demonstrators was “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, who demonstrated along with the nonprofit Hispanic Federation.
Two months after the hurricane, more than half of the island is still without power, according to a Puerto Rican government website tracking disaster relief. About 10 percent of the island’s residents still lack access to running water.
“And so today we march. Peacefully and with purpose,” Miranda, the Tony-Award-winning playwright, tweeted.
Rafael Martinez, 55, arrived from New York City early Sunday morning with his wife, Jay Ortiz, and their two young daughters to help demand government support for the island.
“This is (President) Trump’s Katrina,” Martinez said. “Enough is enough. People are starving, they don’t have clean water and some don’t even have roofs. We need to help these people.”
On its website, the Hispanic Federation listed a number of pleas: aid for Puerto Rico proportionate to that given for disaster relief to the mainland United States, where Hurricanes Harvey and Irma battered cities in Texas and Florida; stronger infrastructure in Puerto Rico that can outlast future hurricanes; swift delivery of supplies to residents in need; elimination of the Jones Act, which limits how many ships can be sent to Puerto Rico; and forgiveness of Puerto Rico’s $73 billion debt.
Puerto Rico has asked Congress for $94 billion in disaster relief aid, including$18 billion to rebuild the island’s power grid and $31 billion for housing. The White House asked Congress last week for $44 billion in disaster aid for hurricane-ravaged areas in Texas, Puerto Rico and Florida. The amount was decried by lawmakers as too small, according to AP.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Crews shut down the pipeline Thursday morning and activated emergency response procedures after a drop in pressure was detected resulting from the leak south of a pump station in Marshall County, Trans-Canada said in a statement. The cause was being investigated.
Discovery of the leak comes just days before Nebraska regulators are scheduled to announce their decision Monday whether to approve the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, an expansion that would boost the amount of oil Trans-Canada is now shipping through the existing line, which is known simply as Keystone.
The expansion has faced fierce opposition from environmental groups, American Indian tribes and some landowners. Brian Walsh, an environmental scientist manager at the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources, said the state has sent a staff member to the site of the leak in a rural area near the border with North Dakota about 250 miles west of Minneapolis.
“Ultimately, the cleanup responsibility lies with TransCanada, and they’ll have to clean it up in compliance with our state regulations,” Walsh said.
TransCanada said in its statement that it expected the pipeline to remain shut down as the company responds to the leak.
It did not offer a time estimate, and a spokesman didn’t immediately return a phone call.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Several people were reported missing after several hours of torrential rain fell Tuesday night, although it was unclear whether they had fallen victim to the floods or had sought refuge elsewhere. More rain was forecast for the next few days.
The fire service said it had received hundreds of calls from Greeks whose homes were submerged. As highways turned to rivers, the emergency services rescued people who had been trapped in their cars and stranded on buses. On Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras declared a day of national mourning.
“This is a very difficult time for Greece,” he said in a statement. “All the necessary measures are being taken to tackle the extreme weather conditions across the country.”
Military facilities and other public venues will be made available to those left homeless by the floods, he added.
According to Greek media, at least 13 people had been killed in or around Mandra, a suburb west of Athens, and that most of the 17 reported injured were suffering from hypothermia. Among the dead were people found inside or in the yards of their inundated homes while Greek coast guard officers recovered the bodies of who victims were swept out to sea by floodwaters. While severe storms prompted the flooding, analysts said the devastation may have been exacerbated by the illegal construction of homes on the fringes of Athens.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The fires had only a minimal effect on the area’s wineries, according to the Wine Institute, an advocacy and policy group. Of the 1,200 wineries in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino, about 10 were destroyed or heavily damaged, and 90 percent of this year’s harvest already was complete, the institute said.
Most vineyards were spared due to their high moisture content, and some even helped save surrounding structures by acting as fire breaks.
But many operators are now grappling with other long-term effects from the fires that killed 43 people and wiped out 8,900 buildings: making up for losses from being closed at the busiest time of year, assessing the impact of smoke and other environmental damage on this year’s vintage, and persuading tourists to return after weeks of news coverage of the fires’ devastation.
One of the most graphic scenes of destruction to emerge was that of the Signorello Estate winery engulfed in flames. Lost in the fire was the Napa winery’s signature stone hospitality building. A kitchen, corporate offices, a wine lab and owner Ray Signorello Jr.’s home also were destroyed.
“We lost all our servers, systems, computers, the things we used to do business,” Signorello said. But he plans to rebuild and says he’s “trying to get people back to work.”
At Cardinale Winery in Oakville, where just one Cabernet Sauvignon vintage is made from prized mountain appellations each year, winemaker Chris Carpenter is eying the grapes cautiously. He was a rare winemaker willing to say the fires’ effects would be felt for years, noting there also will be environmental issues to contend with.
Only 50 percent of Cardinale’s harvest was finished when the fires erupted, and he’s worried about smoke tainting what remains.
“All the questions are unknown right now, and we hope to have a handle on that after fermentation,” Carpenter said. Carpenter said he had a chance to try some smoke-tainted wines in 2008, and they were not very pleasant — like a bacon-flavored wine.
“If we sense any of that, we won’t bottle,” he said. Things already appeared to be returning to normal for guests at Sonoma’s Gundlach Bundschu winery, where dozens of tourists soaked up the sun outside the tasting room a few weeks after the fires. Nearby blackened hills were the only visible reminder of what recently occurred.
The winery celebrated its reopening with a community party that raised $16,000 for a fund to help fire victims, said sixth-generation vintner Katie Bundschu, who oversees marketing and sales.
“It was a place to come and give each other hugs,” said Bundschu, whose own family has been dealing with the loss of her parents’ home.
Now the push is on to lure visitors back to the three counties, which together saw more than $3.7 billion in tourism spending in 2016.
Wineries are filling the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle with ads. “We are open and welcome you back to Napa!” read one. Some are donating their tasting room fees to wildfire relief charities.
The state’s tourism commission, Visit California, is spending $2 million on an advertising campaign to encourage visitors to return.
“Tourism is the wine country’s lifeblood,” said president and CEO Caroline Beteta. If the groups hosting fundraisers spread their goodwill across the region, she said, “I think they will be back and running and be able to host the world as they were before.” Once people understand everything is not burned down, tourism will return within a few months, said Eric Luse, the winemaker and owner of Eric Ross Winery in Glen Ellen.
Standing outside his empty tasting room and looking at passing cars, he mused, “If you’re not optimistic, you are in the wrong business.”
(Eric Risberg, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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George Banks, special adviser to President Donald Trump on international energy issues, led a panel with top U.S. energy executives to promote coal, natural gas and nuclear power as answers to driving down global greenhouse gas emissions. It is a point of view sharply at odds with many key participants in U.N. climate negotiations, who generally believe the world must move away from coal and oil and toward reliance on cleaner energy sources.
Trump, who ran on a pledge to revive the U.S. coal industry and whose Cabinet includes a number of prominent oil and gas enthusiasts, sent his team here with a clear message.
“Without question, fossil fuels will continue to be used, and we would argue that it’s in the global interest to make sure when fossil fuels are used that they be as clean and efficient as possible,” Banks said. “This panel is controversial only if we chose to bury our heads in the sand.”
Before the Trump team could make its case, however, the panel was disrupted for more than 10 minutes by scores of chanting and singing demonstrators. The protesters then walked out, leaving the room half empty. Throughout the remainder of the presentation, audience members shouted down and mocked White House officials who tried to explain away Trump’s stated view that global warming is a hoax.
It was a rude reception for the Trump administration at the first major U.N. climate conference since Trump took office and declared that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord signed by more than 195 nations in 2015. Trump has filled top environmental posts with officials who have expressed doubt about established climate science, including studies published by numerous federal agencies.
The U.S. presentation — the only scheduled public appearance by top Trump administration officials at the two-week meeting — came the same day that a new study showed that emissions were rising worldwide after three years on a plateau. Researchers said the emissions growth was driven largely by increased burning of coal in China and India.
“The question is not if we will continue to use coal, but how,” said Holly Krutka, vice president of coal generation and emissions technologies at Peabody Energy.
Michael Bloomberg, a former New York mayor who has spent tens of millions of dollars on a campaign to shut down coal plants, said, “Promoting coal at a climate summit is like promoting tobacco at a cancer summit.”
(THE NEW YORK TIMES )
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The quake, recorded at 9:18 p.m. Sunday, was felt as far away as Turkey and Pakistan. The epicenter was near Ezgeleh, Iran, about 135 miles northeast of Baghdad, and had a preliminary magnitude of 7.3, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Seismologists in the country said it was the biggest quake to hit the western part of Iran.
Photographs from the region — a patchwork of farms and home to many Kurds, a large ethnic minority in Iran — posted on the Internet showed collapsed buildings, cars destroyed by rubble and people sleeping in the streets in fear of aftershocks. At least 445 people were killed and 7,370 people were injured in Iran, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency, which gave an estimate significantly higher than the death toll of 407 that officials had announced earlier.
At least eight people were killed on the Iraqi side of the border, according to Dr. Saif al-Badir, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, and at least 535 were hurt. In Tehran, hundreds of people waited in line to donate blood in response to a call from the government. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, delivered a message of condolence Monday, urging rescue workers to keep searching for survivors.
“The officials should hasten in these first hours with all their might and determination to help the injured, especially those trapped under the rubble,” his office reported.
By evening, however, Iranian officials said that the rescue mission was nearly over, according to the state news media.
Particularly hard hit was Sarpol-e-Zahab, a city in the western Iranian province of Kermanshah, according to the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES )
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The Baghdad government did not immediately give word on damage or casualties in that country.
The 7.3 magnitude quake was centered 19 miles outside the eastern Iraqi city of Halabja, according to the most recent measurements from the U.S. Geological Survey. It struck at a depth of 14.4 miles, a shallow depth that can have broader damage. Magnitude 7 earthquakes on their own are capable of widespread, heavy damage.
The quake was felt as far west as the Mediterranean coast. Its worst damage appeared to be in Iran’s western Kermanshah province, which sits in the Zagros Mountains that divide Iran and Iraq. Residents in the rural area rely mainly on farming to make a living.
Iranian social media and news agencies showed images and videos of people fleeing their homes into the night. Some 50 aftershocks have followed.
The state-run IRNA news agency disclosed the increase in casualties early today and said rescue work was continuing overnight and would accelerate during the daytime.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered his condolences this morning and urged rescuers and all government agencies to do all they could to help those affected, state media reported.
The semi-official ILNA news agency said at least 14 provinces in Iran had been affected by the earthquake.
Officials announced that schools in Kermanshah and Ilam provinces would be closed today because of the temblor.
Iranian state TV also said Iraqi officials reported at least six people dead inside Iraq, along with more than 50 people injured.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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Delhi has notoriously noxious air but even by the standards of this city, this week’s pollution has been alarming, reaching levels nearly 30 times what the World Health Organization considers safe. On Tuesday, the government decided to close primary schools and on Wednesday the closures were extended to all public and most private schools.
For those of us living here, the air pollution is sickening. Many people feel nauseated all day, like from a never-ending case of car sickness. The air tastes smoky, and in some neighborhoods, it smells like paint.
Even if you have air filters in your house, as some of us do, a faint lingering chemical smell always seems to find its way in, through air conditioner vents, open windows and cracks in the doors.
Manish Sisodia, the deputy chief minister of Delhi state, said he was driving to a meeting Wednesday morning when he passed a school bus and saw two children throwing up out of the window. “That was shocking for me,” he said. “I immediately told my officers to pass the order to close all the schools.”
In some parts of the city, the levels of PM 2.5 — insidiously small particles that can settle deep in the lungs — had climbed to more than 700 micrograms per cubic meter, which is considered hazardous to breathe, according to data provided by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee. Scientists estimate these particles have killed millions.
Sadly accustomed to toxic air, many of Delhi’s people are donning masks of one sort or another. It’s not unusual to see a man whizzing by on a motorcycle with a T-shirt wrapped over most of his face. On Wednesday, we saw one young woman standing on a sidewalk clutching a clump of her long dark hair over her mouth to act as a veil.
Hanging low and thick, the smog looks like a blend of white smoke and fog. It is a combination of vehicle emissions, industrial pollution and smoke from crop burning in nearby farming areas. The colder weather at this time of year packs the pollution together, making it even worse.
The smog is so heavy that drivers often can’t see cars slowing down in front of them, causing serious accidents and several highway pileups. The problem seems to be spinning further out of control as India’s government struggles to get in front of it. The decentralized governance system here complicates things because the rural areas burning the crops fall under different jurisdictions than the urban areas suffering the smog. In a statement released Wednesday, Sisodia said the air pollution had “engulfed the city.” Pollution levels will be reassessed over the weekend, he said, and a decision made about whether schools should remain closed for longer.
For now, more than 4 million children are getting a long holiday. Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, has called Delhi “a gas chamber.
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(Kai Schultz & Hari Kumar, THE NEW YORK TIMES )
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Syria announced during United Nations climate talks Tuesday that it would sign the Paris agreement on climate change. The move, which comes on the heels of Nicaragua signing the accord last month, will leave the United States as the only country that has rejected the global pact.
According to several people who were in a plenary session at the climate talks in Bonn, Germany, a Syrian delegate announced that the country was poised to send its ratification of the Paris agreement to the United Nations.
“This is the very last country that actually announced, so everyone has joined, and the U.S. is now so isolated,” said Safa Al Jayoussi, executive director of IndyAct, an environmental organization based in Lebanon that works with Arab countries on climate change.
A White House spokeswoman, Kelly Love, pointed reporters to a statement the administration made when Nicaragua joined the pact, noting there had been no change in the United States’ position.
“As the president previously stated, the United States is withdrawing unless we can re-enter on terms that are more favorable for our country,” the statement said.
President Donald Trump announced in a Rose Garden speech this summer that the United States would quit the deal, calling it bad for the U.S. economy.
The Paris agreement, struck in 2015 under former President Barack Obama, calls on nearly 200 countries to voluntarily curb greenhouse gas emissions. At the time, only Nicaragua and Syria did not join, for very different reasons. Nicaraguan leaders argued that the deal did not go far enough toward keeping carbon emissions at safe levels and helping vulnerable countries protect themselves from the effects of climate change.
But last month Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s president, and Rosario Murillo, his vice president and wife, said in a joint statement that the country would sign anyway. “The Paris agreement, despite not being the ideal agreement, is the only instrument that currently allows this unity of intentions and efforts,” they said. Syria has been mired in a civil war since 2011. And because the Syrian government is subject to European and U.S. sanctions, its leaders were unable to send representatives abroad to negotiate or sign the pact.
It is not clear what has changed, and the Syrian delegate who spoke Tuesday did not offer an explanation for the government’s decision.
Syria has not yet submitted targets for cutting greenhouse gases. Syria produces only a tiny fraction of global emissions, but every country that is party to the accord, including poverty-stricken and war-torn nations and tiny islands, has produced a plan for cutting carbon output.
“With Syria’s decision, the relentless commitment of the global community to deliver on Paris is more evident than ever,” said Paula Caballero, director of the climate change program at the World Resources Institute. “The U.S.’s stark isolation should give Trump reason to reconsider his ill-advised announcement and join the rest of the world in tackling climate change.”
Under the rules of the Paris agreement, the United States cannot formally withdraw until late 2020. Until then, administration officials have said, they will continue to negotiate the terms of the deal.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES )
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For Arvind Kumar, a chest surgeon for more than three decades, the situation is adding to a growing health crisis in the region. “I don’t see pink lungs even among healthy, nonsmoking young people,” he said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “The air quality has become so bad that even if you are a nonsmoker you are still suffering.”
The thick, acrid fog is not new to Delhi, where it settles around this time every year, covering the capital in vehicle emissions and smoke from the burning of crops in neighboring states and from fireworks from Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. But in recent years, the problem appears to have worsened.
On Tuesday, levels of the most dangerous air particles, called PM 2.5, reached more than 700 micrograms per cubic meter in parts of the city, according to data from the U.S. Embassy. Experts say that prolonged exposure to such high concentrations of PM 2.5 is equivalent to smoking more than two packs of cigarettes a day.
Officials have struggled to control pollution in the National Capital Region, which includes Delhi and is home to more than 45 million people. A ban on the sale of firecrackers before Diwali in October appeared to keep the problem in check, but the illegal burning of crops, which contributes significantly to pollution at this time of the year, has just started.
The situation prompted the state’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, to say on Twitter: “Delhi has become a gas chamber. Every year this happens during this part of year. We have to find a solution to crop burning in adjoining states.”
Imran Hussain, the environment minister of Delhi, said on Twitter in August that he had written to officials in the states of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh requesting a reduction in agricultural fires, but no action had been taken, a government spokesman said on Twitter on Tuesday.
The fires, combined with car exhaust, smokestack emissions and the burning of garbage, contribute to pollution levels that often hover in the “severe” category, the highest level designated by the Central Pollution Control Board.
An article last month in the medical journal The Lancet found that pollution was responsible for up to 2.5 million deaths in India in 2015, more than in any other country.
Manish Sisodia, the deputy chief minister of Delhi, said on Tuesday that “all options” for reducing pollution were being considered. At a news conference late Tuesday, Sisodia announced that classes at primary schools would be suspended today, and possibly longer.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES )
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Scuba divers found the bodies of two men inside a home’s flooded basement where they were seeking shelter Sunday during a tornado warning in Erie, Pa., authorities said.
Six people were hurt, though none seriously, at a restaurant in the western Ohio city of Celina on Sunday when a tornado touched down. Gaping holes could be seen in the concrete walls and roof of a nearby factory that makes heavy equipment.
“I’ve seen a lot of hard hit areas with storms, even as far as having relatives down in the hurricanes,” Celina Mayor Jeffrey Hazel told WHIO-TV. “I can say this is pretty tremendous damage in this area.”
The National Weather Service said Monday that at least six tornadoes hit northern and western Ohio, including one that began in Indiana and hopped along nearly 40 miles before hitting Celina. Several large livestock barns were flattened and neighbors pitched in to save nearly 400 cows at one farm in Mercer County.
The other tornadoes in Ohio touched down in Ashland, Crawford, Sandusky and Erie counties. In Indiana, survey teams confirmed at least three other tornadoes hit the cities of Salem, Muncie and Springville.
A falling tree landed on an SUV near Muncie, injuring a family of four, including a 44-year-old father who was in critical condition.
Close to 40,000 people near Cleveland and Akron were without power Monday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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“The last I checked,” City Manager Jeff Epp said, “(utilities director Chris Mc-Kinney) was collecting aluminum cans and bottles from Lake Wohlford Road in an attempt to raise the necessary funding for the project. He still has $27,999,996.80 left to raise.”
Joking aside, McKinney said it’s more like between $22 million to $25 million that remains unfunded, but he is confident the city will be allowed to borrow that money from the state at low interest rates next year.
It was 11 years ago that tests determined the top portion of the Wohlford dam was unfit and could collapse in the event of a sizable earthquake.
The original, earthen part of the dam was built in 1885, then reinforced and made taller in 1924 using different material. It’s the younger, taller section that is no longer reliable.
Lake Wohlford sits about 900 feet higher than and east of the city, and the concern is that a dam collapse could flood half of Escondido.
Immediately, the water kept in the lake was reduced by more than 50 percent so that it was held back only by the original dam.
After years of studying what to do, city engineers decided it made the most sense to build an entirely new replacement dam just west of the existing one. Once constructed, the top of the old dam would be removed and a large hole would be made in the older earthen dam to allow water to flow to the new structure.
The old dam would be submerged beneath the lake, which would be restored to its original 6,000 acre-feet of storage capacity, McKinney said.
In 2012, Escondido received a $15 million matching grant from the state, money that was required to be used within five years. That hasn’t happened, but an extension has been granted. The city has also set aside $8.5 million toward the project, which means a loan of between $22 million and $25 million, depending on the ultimate construction bids, is needed before the funding is secured and the project can begin.
About a year and a half ago, the city thought it was about to qualify for a $25 million loan from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund program. But the California Department of Water Resources informed officials that their application had been rejected.
McKinney said officials discovered “buried deep in the regulations” of the loan rules that the money specifically couldn’t be used to build or replace a dam.
Now the city is counting on qualifying for another state loan from a different source without such restrictions.
“The city water fund has good credit so we don’t anticipate problems obtaining the loan,” McKinney said.
Environmental documents for the project are being finalized and are expected to be approved by the City Council within a few months. The city will then apply for the loan; at the same time, it will apply for various permits that are still needed.
McKinney said if all goes according to plan, construction of the first phase of the project could begin by next summer. The first phase is the realignment of Oakvale Road, which runs next to the dam, and the digging of a big hole where the new dam will be built.
Restoring the lake to its past capacity is important for several reasons, McKinney said.
“Water storage is always a wonderful thing,” he said. “It allows an agency to ride through periods of drought and it will also improve the water quality. The water quality in a deeper lake is going to be better than in a shallower lake like we have now.”
Lake Wohlford stores water that is used by Escondido customers as well as customers of the Vista Irrigation District. Each year 15 to 30 percent of the water consumed in those areas comes from local supplies. That lessens the amount of costly water that must be imported to those communities and therefore reduces water bill increases.
(J. Harry Jones, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE )
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To the surprise of some scientists, the White House did not seek to prevent the release of the government’s National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by law. The report affirms that climate change is driven almost entirely by human action, warns of potential sea-level rise as high as 8 feet by the year 2100, and details climate-related damage across the United States that is already unfolding as a result of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming since 1900. “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the document reports. “For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”
The report’s release underscores the extent to which the machinery of the federal scientific establishment, operating in multiple agencies across the government, continues to grind on even as top administration officials have minimized or disparaged its findings. Federal scientists have continued to author papers and issue reports on climate change, for example, even as political appointees have altered the wording of news releases or blocked civil servants from speaking about their conclusions in public forums. The climate assessment process is dictated by a 1990 law that Democratic and Republican administrations have followed.
The White House on Friday sought to downplay the significance of the study and its findings.
“The climate has changed and is always changing. As the Climate Science Special Report states, the magnitude of future climate change depends significantly on ‘remaining uncertainty in the sensitivity of Earth’s climate to [greenhouse gas] emissions,’ ” White House spokesman Raj Shah said in a statement. “In the United States, energy related carbon dioxide emissions have been declining, are expected to remain flat through 2040, and will also continue to decline as a share of world emissions.”
Shah added that the Trump administration “supports rigorous scientific analysis and debate.” He said it will continue to “promote access to the affordable and reliable energy needed to grow economically” and to back advancements that improve infrastructure and ultimately reduce emissions. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and President Donald Trump have all questioned the extent of humans’ contribution to climate change.
One of the EPA’s web pages posted scientific conclusions similar to those in the new report until earlier this year, when Pruitt’s deputies ordered it removed. The report comes as Trump and members of his Cabinet are working to promote U.S. fossil-fuel production and repeal several federal rules aimed at curbing the nation’s carbon output, including ones limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, oil and gas operations on federal land and carbon emissions from cars and trucks. Trump has also announced he will exit the Paris climate agreement, under which the United States has pledged to cut its overall greenhouse-gas emissions between 26 percent and 28 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2025.
The report could have considerable legal and policy significance, providing new and stronger support for the EPA’s greenhouse-gas “endangerment finding” under the Clean Air Act, which lays the foundation for regulations on emissions.
“This is a federal government report whose contents completely undercut their policies, completely undercut the statements made by senior members of the administration,” said Phil Duffy, director of the Woods Hole Research Center.
The government is required to produce the national assessment every four years. This time, the report is split into two documents, one that lays out the fundamental science of climate change and the other that shows how the United States is being affected on a regional basis. Combined, the two documents total more than 2,000 pages. The first document, called the Climate Science Special Report, is now a finalized report, having been peer-reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences and vetted by experts across government agencies. It was formally unveiled Friday.
“I think this report is basically the most comprehensive climate science report in the world right now,” said Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers who is an expert on sea-level rise and served as one of the report’s lead authors.
It affirms that the United States is already experiencing more extreme heat and rainfall events and more large wildfires in the West, that more than 25 coastal U.S. cities are already experiencing more flooding, and that seas could rise by 1 to 4 feet by the year 2100, and perhaps even more than that if Antarctica proves to be unstable, as is feared. The report says that a rise of over 8 feet is “physically possible” with high levels of greenhouse-gas emissions but that there’s no way right now to predict how likely it is to happen.
When it comes to rapidly escalating levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the report states, “there is no climate analog for this century at any time in at least the last 50 million years.”
Most striking, perhaps, the report warns of the unpredictable — changes that scientists cannot foresee that could involve tipping points or fast changes in the climate system. These could switch the climate into “new states that are very different from those experienced in the recent past.”
Some members of the scientific community had speculated that the administration might refuse to publish the report or might alter its conclusions.
Yet multiple experts, as well as some administration officials and federal scientists, said that Trump political appointees did not change the special report’s scientific conclusions. While some edits have been made to its final version — for instance, omitting or softening some references to the Paris climate agreement — those were focused on policy.
(Chris Mooney, Juliet Eilperin & Brady Dennis, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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The figure represents claims for homes and businesses insured by 15 companies and is more than triple the previous estimate of $1 billion. Jones said the number will continue to rise as more claims are reported.
The amount of claims now reported means that the fires caused more damage than California’s 1991 Oakland Hills fire, which was previously the state’s costliest, with $2.7 billion in damages in 2015 dollars, according to the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America.
Forty-three people were killed in the October blazes that tore through Northern California, including the state’s renowned winemaking regions in Napa and Sonoma counties. They destroyed thousands of buildings as more than 100,000 people were forced to evacuate. It was the deadliest series of fires in California history.
The fires are now nearly contained.
“Behind each and every one of these claims are ordinary people, Californians who lost their homes, lost their vehicles, in some cases whose family members lost their lives,” said Jones, a Democrat who is running for attorney general.
Jones said there were just over 10,000 claims for partial home losses, more than 4,700 total losses and about 700 for business property. There were 3,200 claims for damaged or destroyed personal vehicles, 91 for commercial vehicles, 153 for farm equipment and 111 for watercraft.
The figures do not reflect uninsured losses, including public infrastructure and the property of people who were uninsured or underinsured.
Meanwhile, a man facing arson charges for a wildfire that destroyed two homes south of the San Francisco Bay Area had an ominous message for a prosecutor during a court hearing Tuesday: “You're next.”
Marlon Coy, 54, uttered the words while glaring at Santa Cruz County District Attorney Jeffrey Rosell while he explained four of the felony charges Coy is facing.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Storm Herwart, whose gusts reached 112 mph, also caused electricity blackouts in hundreds of thousands of homes in the Czech Republic, Austria and other countries.
A Lufthansa flight from Houston to Frankfurt made an emergency landing in the southwestern German city of Stuttgart early Sunday because of the strong winds.
Two people died in Poland, including a man who drove his car into a tree that had been knocked down by the storm, fire department spokesman Pawel Fratczak said. The second man was killed when a tree fell on his car in southwestern Poland and his passenger was hospitalized, Polish media reported.
Two others were killed in the Czech Republic when they were hit by falling trees, local television reported.
A 63-year-old camper was swept away in a flash flood and drowned at Jadebusen on Germany’s North Sea coast, the German news agency dpa reported.
In Berlin, one man was severely injured by falling roof tiles and another was hit by scaffolding blown off a home.
Two people were injured when their cars slid off the A20 highway, which was covered with 2 inches of hail, in northeastern Germany. Train connections in several northern German states were shut down, including links to and from Berlin, because of the danger from branches falling on the tracks. Germany rail company Deutsche Bahn opened stationary trains to travelers left stranded by the cancellations.
In the northern German city of Hamburg, the Elbe River flooded a parking garage, the city’s famous fish market and several streets. Firefighters had to rescue seven cows from the Zoos in Prague, Berlin and the eastern German city of Rostock closed because of the danger of falling trees and the Austrian capital of Vienna shut down operations at its main train station.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The announcement by Ricardo Ramos came hours after Gov. Ricardo Rossello urged the utility to scrap the deal for Whitefish’s help in rebuilding the electrical system.
“It’s an enormous distraction,” Ramos said of the controversy over the contract. “This was negatively impacting the work we’re already doing.”
The current work by Whitefish teams will not be affected by the cancellation and that work will be completed in November, Ramos said. He said the cancellation will delay pending work by 10 to 12 weeks if no alternatives are found.
Ramos said he had not talked with Whitefish executives about his announcement. “A lawsuit could be forthcoming,” he warned.
Whitefish spokesman Chris Chiames told The Associated Press that the company was “ very disappointed” in the governor’s decision, and said it would only delay efforts to restore power.
He said Whitefish brought 350 workers to Puerto Rico in less than a month and it expected to have 500 more by this week. Chiames said the company completed critical work, including a project that will soon lead to a half million people in San Juan getting power.
“We will certainly finish any work that (the power company) wants us to complete and stand by our commitments,” he said.
Roughly 70 percent of the U.S. territory remains without power more than a month after Maria struck. The cancellation is not official until approved by the utility’s board. Ramos said it would take effect 30 days after that.
Federal investigators have been looking into the contract awarded to the small company from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s hometown, and the deal is being audited at the local and federal level.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Across the United States, the year’s first freeze has been arriving further and further into the calendar, according to more than a century of measurements from weather stations nationwide.
Scientists say it is yet another sign of the changing climate, and that it has good and bad consequences for the nation. There could be more fruits and vegetables — and also more allergies and pests.
“I’m happy about it,” said Karen Duncan of Streator, Ill. Her flowers are in bloom because she’s had no frost this year yet, just as she had none last year at this time either. On the other hand, she said just last week it was too hot and buggy to go out — in late October, near Chicago.
The trend of ever later first freezes appears to have started around 1980, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of data from 700 weather stations across the U.S. going back to 1895 compiled by Ken Kunkel, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
To look for nationwide trends, Kunkel compared the first freeze from each of the 700 stations to the station’s average for the 20th century. Some parts of the country experience earlier or later freezes every year, but on average freezes are coming later.
The average first freeze over the last 10 years, from 2007 to 2016, is a week later than the average from 1971 to 1980, which is before Kunkel said the trend became noticeable.
This year, about 40 percent of the Lower 48 states have had a freeze as of Oct. 23, compared with 65 percent in a normal year, according to Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private service Weather Underground.
Duncan’s flowers should be dead by now. According to data from the weather station near her in Ottawa, Ill., the average first freeze for the 20th century was Oct. 15. The normal from 1981 to 2010 based on NOAA computer simulations was Oct. 19. Since 2010, the average first freeze is on Oct. 26. Last year, the first freeze in Ottawa came on Nov. 12.
Last year was “way off the charts” nationwide, Kunkel said. The average first freeze was two weeks later than the 20th century average, and the last frost of spring was nine days earlier than normal.
Overall, the United States freeze season of 2016 was more than a month shorter than the freeze season of 1916. It was most extreme in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon’s freeze season was 61 days — two months — shorter than normal.
Global warming has helped push the first frosts later, Kunkel and other scientists said. Also at play, though, are natural short-term changes in air circulation patterns, but they too may be influenced by man-made climate change, they said. This shrinking freeze season is what climate scientists have long predicted, said University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Jason Furtado.
A shorter freeze season means a longer growing season and less money spent on heat. But it also hurts some plants that require a certain amount of chill, such as Georgia peaches, said Theresa Crimmins, a University of Arizona ecologist. Crimmins is assistant director of the National Phenology Network. Phenology is the study of the seasons and how plants and animals adapt to timing changes.
Pests that attack trees and spread disease aren’t being killed off as early as they normally would be, Crimmins said.
In New England, many trees aren’t changing colors as vibrantly as they normally do or used to because some take cues for when to turn from temperature, said Boston University biology professor Richard Primack.
Clusters of late-emerging monarch butterflies are being found far further north than normal for this time of year, and are unlikely to survive their migration to Mexico.
(Seth Borenstein, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The latest fire erupted about 70 miles southeast of Los Angeles even as firefighters neared full containment of the month’s devastating infernos in Northern California and authorities made an arrest in connection with a blaze south of San Francisco.
The fire began in the Wildomar Off-Highway Vehicle Area. A dirt bike on an off-road trail crashed into a tree and gasoline ignited, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported. The 18-year-old rider had minor injuries. Southern California weather continued to run very warm and dry due to high pressure aloft and weak offshore flow, but the dangerous Santa Ana winds that had been gusting just days earlier were absent.
At the peak of the firestorm, there were 21 major wildfires that burned a combined total of more than 383 square miles, forced 100,000 people to flee their homes, destroyed 8,800 structures and took 42 lives.
South of San Francisco, authorities announced the arrested of a man they alleged started a fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains that destroyed two homes and injured seven firefighters.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart said Marlon Coy, 54, was arrested on suspicion of arson, looting, burglary, causing great bodily injury to firefighters, and destroying forests.
Coy intentionally started the fire on the night of Oct. 16 after getting into a dispute with a neighbor, Hart said.
Deputies first detained Coy last week after he was allegedly spotted stealing from evacuated homes. It wasn’t immediately known if Coy had retained a lawyer.
It took firefighters 10 days to contain the blaze that scorched 400 acres in the mountain range south of San Francisco and killed a pet cat.
Officials are still investigating what started the huge blazes that burned in Napa, Sonoma, Yuba and Mendocino counties.
(John Antczak, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The deal, reached in December 2015, was a major diplomatic achievement for former President Barack Obama, committing almost every country in the world — 195 in all — to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, a leading cause of climate change. It was the first agreement of its kind.
But in June, President Donald Trump said in a Rose Garden speech that the United States would withdraw from the accord, fulfilling one of his frequently repeated campaign promises. Trump had long argued that the agreement was excessively onerous and hampered U.S. businesses.
Nicaragua, however, was critical of the deal as insufficiently ambitious. In a 2015 interview with the news program Democracy Now, Paul Oquist, Nicaragua’s chief climate negotiator, said the accord would not do enough to avert a potential temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The territory’s Education Department said students will return to class at 119 campuses in the island’s capital, San Juan, and in Mayaguez, on the west coast. Students at an additional 26 schools, which are still under repair, will be transferred to nearby schools that are ready to accept students. Teachers returned to class Monday to prepare their classrooms.
Before the storm hit Sept. 20, the island had more than 1,100 schools that educated 347,000 students, nearly all of whom qualified for free meals. Officials expect that many students have left the island and enrolled in schools in Miami, Orlando, New York and other areas with large populations of Puerto Ricans.
Julia Keleher, the education secretary in Puerto Rico, said it remains unclear when the department will be able to reopen the remainder of the schools and said that it may decide to shutter some permanently.
The agency had opened some schools as service centers, places where children could take half-day classes and where teachers and families could meet with federal officials. Today is the first time any school will host a full day of classes, albeit without electricity, since Hurricane Maria.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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For nearly a decade California utilities have helped delay the mapping effort that critics said could have led to stronger power poles and better maintenance before the recent catastrophic fires, The Mercury News reported.
The causes of fires that killed at least 42 people and destroyed more than 8,000 structures in Northern California this month are under investigation. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is looking into whether PG&E’s equipment sparked some of the blazes, the utility said last week.
The Public Utilities Commission has been working on the mapping and tighter regulations since high winds knocked down power lines and sparked disastrous fires in San Diego in 2007. Proposals in the works could be costly for utilities, telecommunication companies and Internet providers, among others.
PG&E has been among utilities that have repeatedly sought delays, arguing in July that proposed regulations would “add unnecessary costs to construction and maintenance projects in rural areas.”
A 2015 state Senate subcommittee report said the commission’s efforts had been “bogged down” for six years and documented five scheduling delays from 2012 to 2015. It said PG&E and other utilities wouldn’t agree to stricter construction standards until maps were completed.
“The sad part is the future didn’t arrive before these fires,” said state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-Redwood City, a critic of PG&E and the utilities commission. “It’s an outrageous example of negligence by a regulatory agency.”
The commission expects the process to be completed early next year.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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It is a Halloween reminder that, for many, getting help to recover from Hurricane Harvey remains a long, uncertain journey.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Roberts, 44, who put together the display after waiting three weeks for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to send someone to look at her flood-damaged home in southwest Houston. “I think it’s beautiful how much we’ve all come together, and that’s wonderful, but I think there’s a lot of mess-ups, too.”
Outside the White House this month, President Donald Trump boasted about the federal relief efforts. “In Texas and in Florida, we get an A-plus,” he said. FEMA officials say that they are successfully dealing with enormous challenges posed by an onslaught of closely spaced disasters, unlike anything the agency has seen in years. But on the ground, flooded residents and local officials have a far more critical view.
According to interviews with dozens of storm victims, one of the busiest hurricane seasons in years has overwhelmed federal disaster officials. As a result, the government’s response in the two biggest affected states — Texas and Florida — has been scattershot: effective in dealing with immediate needs, but unreliable and at times inadequate in handling the aftermath, as thousands of people face unusually long delays in getting basic disaster assistance.
FEMA has taken weeks to inspect damaged homes and apartments, delaying flood victims’ attempts to rebuild their lives and properties. People who call the agency’s help line at 1-800621-FEMA have waited on hold for two, three or four hours before they speak to a FEMA representative.
Nearly two months after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas on Aug. 25, and six weeks after Hurricane Irma hit Florida on Sept. 10, residents are still waiting for FEMA payments, still fuming after the agency denied their applications for assistance and still trying to resolve glitches and disputes that have slowed and complicated their ability to receive federal aid.
Brian and Monica Smith, whose home in the northern Houston suburb of Kingwood had 2 feet of water inside after Harvey, said they had received more help from their church, their neighbors and their relatives than from FEMA. A $500 payment from FEMA to help them with their immediate needs was delayed by three weeks. And they waited 34 days for the agency to inspect the damage to their home, pushing back repairs.
“You feel abandoned,” Brian Smith, 42, said. “You feel like it came and went, and everybody’s focused on the storm in Florida and now in Puerto Rico.”
Ron and Rita Perreault, a retired couple whose South Florida mobile home was damaged by the flooded Imperial River, call FEMA twice a day to check on the status of their application and inspection. Rita Perreault said she had spent so many hours on the phone on hold that she learned, as other callers have, to put the phone on speaker and go about her day.
“I thought I was going to get brain cancer,” Rita Perreault said. “They give you the runaround.” One of the most significant problems FEMA has had in Texas and Florida is the backlog in getting damaged properties inspected. Contract inspectors paid by the agency must first inspect and verify the damage in order for residents to be approved for thousands of dollars in aid. FEMA does not have enough inspectors to reduce the backlog, and the average wait for an inspection is 45 days in Texas and about a month in Florida, agency officials said.
The officials, including Brock Long, FEMA administrator, acknowledged the long waits for both inspections and phone assistance. They said they were in the process of hiring hundreds of people in the next few weeks, including more contract inspectors. They attribute the delays to “staffing challenges” after three major hurricanes in quick succession struck the Gulf Coast and the Southeast, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, as well as the devastating wildfires in California.
“Resources are stretched, particularly when it comes to inspections,” Long said. “Obviously it’s frustrating.”
The wait times for the help line and inspections far exceed those during past disasters.
People who called FEMA in the immediate aftermath of Katrina waited an average of 10 minutes before speaking with a representative, and weeks later that wait dropped to five minutes, according to a 2006 report by the inspector general’s office for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA.
In addition, the report stated, the agency has historically tried to complete the entire inspection-and-approval process within 10 days after an application is filed. After Hurricane Rita in 2005, many home inspections were completed less than two weeks after homeowners applied.
But given the extraordinary impact of three major storms, many experts say FEMA’s relief efforts deserve high marks. “I think they have done a terrific job,” said Paul M. Rosen, who worked in the Obama administration as the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security. “You just have to tune out the political noise and let them do their jobs.”
In 2005, FEMA became the face of the bungled federal response to Hurricane Katrina, and the agency’s poor handling of the disaster in New Orleans led to the resignation of Michael Brown, the director at the time. FEMA has since improved its image, and former federal officials praised its response in recent weeks to a staggering string of hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters. Overall, 8,200 people in FEMA’s nearly 10,000-person workforce are deployed in the field, responding to more than 20 natural disasters around the country.
“The whole response-and-recovery industry is maxed out,” said Michael Coen, former chief of staff at FEMA in the Obama administration.
In some ways, hard-hit areas in Texas and Florida have made progress since Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. In Texas alone, nearly 7.5 million cubic yards of debris has been collected and more than 120,000 people have visited FEMA’s disaster recovery centers.
The agency has supplied money, housing and other resources to residents as well as local governments. In Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, FEMA has provided about $2 billion in individual assistance to residents.
Yet in other ways, the rebuilding seems to have only just started. Three shelters remain open in Texas, and Florida closed its last one Saturday. As part of a FEMA program, 61,135 people in Texas are staying in hotels. Some residents are living in their moldy, half-repaired or even condemned homes and apartments.
Other residents remain uprooted. Shirlene Hryhorchuk, a high school teacher in the East Texas town of Deweyville, sleeps several nights each week on a cot in her home-economics classroom while her house undergoes repairs.
Some residents are angry after being turned down by FEMA for assistance, often for reasons that they dispute. Of the 2.9 million applications for individual assistance the agency has received after Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, FEMA has denied 23 percent of them— 678,160 — with the majority of those denials in Florida, where 432,000 applications out of 1.8 million have been rejected after Irma.
FEMA officials say the number of denials in Florida is high because the agency determined that many homes were not significantly damaged by the storm.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Scripps has placed cameras at 19 locations across the county, and their constantly updated feeds can be viewed at hpwren.ucsd.edu/cameras. The cameras are part of the so-called HPWREN network.
The National Weather Service says the county could face a critical wildfire danger Sunday through Tuesday due to a combination of strong winds, high temperatures and low humidity.
A fire weather watch will be in effect for the valleys, mountains and foothills from 6 a.m. on Sunday to 6 p.m. Tuesday. An excessive heat advisory will be in place for the coastal zone from 8 a.m. Monday to 6 p.m. on Tuesday.
“The Santa Ana winds could begin blowing in the valleys late Saturday, but they won’t pick up until Sunday,” said Brandt Maxwell, a weather service forecaster.
The strongest winds are expected early Tuesday. Temperatures will begin to rise on Sunday; areas close to the coast will reach the 80s, and the valleys and foothills will get into the 90s. The heat will increase on Monday and Tuesday. In some spots, temperatures will be up to 25 degrees above average.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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By almost any metric, that would be defined as a natural disaster — except the one used by Congress to draw up the federal budget.
The way in which Washington pays to put out wildfires throughout the West is making a dangerous situation even more so. It’s a rare point of bipartisan agreement in Congress that a fix is urgently needed, particularly as fires grow in duration and intensity.
But partisan feuds over climate change, clear-cut logging and bedrock federal environmental policies are undermining efforts to confront the rapidly swelling fire money dilemma.
The root problem: The U.S. Forest Service is strapped for cash. Its firefighting budget amounts to a fraction of what it actually costs to fight fires. Not sending firefighters is hardly an option. Even in the wine country blazes, which are not on federal land, the service has sent 1,500 firefighters to help out the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, along with dozens of fire engines, air tankers, helicopters and water scoopers.
The Forest Service has no choice but to pay for the assistance by raiding funds from other programs in its budget — many of them oriented toward preventing the very fires it is fighting. Prevention efforts are put aside as dollars are funneled toward putting out flames.
To put it in perspective: About 56 percent of the agency’s budget now gets consumed fighting fires. In 1995, not even a sixth of its budget was spent there. That is a lot of fire prevention work going undone.
“We have a dangerous, worsening cycle,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said on the Senate floor just before California’s wine country became an inferno. “Shoddy budgeting today leads to bigger fires tomorrow, and it needs to stop ... This battle has gone on for years.”
It is not the way Washington confronts other disasters. Hurricane, tornado and earthquake assistance and relief come from emergency funds that can be accessed without robbing other programs.
State officials are growing increasingly anxious that wildfires are treated differently. The bipartisan Western Governors’ Association warned congressional leaders in November that the financial shell game had “allowed severe wildfires to burn through crippling amounts of the very funds that should instead be used to prevent and reduce wildfire impacts, costs, and safety risks to firefighters and the public.”
Cal Fire just last week expressed concern about the reliability of federal help in the future if the financial chaos persists. Within four years, more than two-thirds of the Forest Service budget will be consumed by firefighting costs if Congress does not act.
But Congress can’t seem to figure out how, amid feuding about the science and economics of wildfires. Many Republicans are demanding that any solution involve intensifying the amount of logging on public land, allowing clear-cuts as large as 10 or 15 square miles in federal forests, and altering the National Environmental Policy Act, the 1969 landmark law that drives much of federal conservation policy.
The changes are nonstarters for Democrats, who brandish research findings that climate change — not too little commercial logging — is a major driver of the intensifying fires. Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris of California last week sent President Donald Trump a letter as fires raged in Northern California imploring him to support fixing the Forest Service money problem in a stand-alone measure, and then deal with the broader disputes over forestry management.
The White House has gone in the other direction. Its budget director, Mick Mulvaney, wrote in a letter to congressional leaders that “active forest management and other reforms must be part of the solution to curb the cost and destruction of wildfires.” The posture has emboldened Republicans in their push for more logging.
Among them is Rep. Tom McClintock of California, who in a floor speech this month mocked the science Democrats point to showing climate change is a big factor in the worsening wildfires.
One such study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year, found that climate change-induced hotter, drier weather in the West has doubled the amount of forestland hit by wildfires since 1984. McClintock made clear he doesn’t buy it. He instead blamed the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. Their “endlessly time-consuming and cost-prohibitive restrictions,” he said, have driven away the timber companies that had previously helped clear the driest and most-stressed wood from forests.
“Well, after 45 years of experience with these environmental laws — all passed with the promise that they would improve our forest environment — I think we are entitled to ask: How’s the forest environment doing?” McClintock said. “All around us, the answer is damning. These laws have not only failed to improve our forest environment, but they are literally killing our forests.”
Democrats and environmentalists say the House measure that McClintock and other Republicans favor to fix the funding problem is less about fighting fires than creating a big giveaway for logging interests.
“We don’t think completely eliminating environmental safeguards will solve the problem or make us safer,” said Megan Birzell, national forests campaign manager at the Wilderness Society. “We don’t need 10,000-acre clearcuts in the back country to solve this.” The continued fight, for now, leaves the Forest Service in the lurch as resources from its prevention programs are drained to fight increasingly bigger and hotter fires.
Wyden called it “the longest-running battle since the Trojan War.” “The West,” he said, “cannot wait any longer for Congress to break this dangerous cycle that defies common sense, short-changes wildfire prevention, and does it year after year.”
(Evan Halper, CALIFONRIAN NEWS GROUP)
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Nearly 200,000 were ordered to evacuate, but disaster was averted. Construction crews are excavating unstable dirt, replacing it with concrete and topping it with rebar-reinforced concrete that is anchored into the bedrock. The project has required far more excavation and concrete than expected, said Jeff Petersen, a Kiewit vice president who is directing the project.
The state has also revised plans to shore up the emergency spillway, doubling the amount of concrete it will require. Kiewit was hired in April to lead the repair work through Jan. 1, 2019. The company will rebuild the main spillway, place a 65-foot underground wall to stop erosion on the emergency spillway and lay concrete at least 10 feet thick between the cutoff wall and a concrete weir that holds water in the lake.
Barring a major storm or equipment failure, Kiewit’s 700 workers and subcontractors are on track to finish pouring concrete on the main spillway by Nov. 1, Petersen said. That will give the surface a month to cure and be ready for use in December.
“I don’t want to jinx it, but we’re ahead of schedule,” Petersen told reporters during a tour of the job site Thursday.
The cost for emergency response during the evacuation and its immediate aftermath is estimated between $140 million and $160 million, Mellon said. State officials hope the Federal Emergency Management Agency will foot up to 75 percent of the repair bill.
(Jonathan J. Cooper, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Now, they say, it’s your turn.
“We will never be your Plan A,” said Tony Mecham, Cal Fire San Diego Unit Chief. “We are your Plan B.”
Plan A? “Be prepared,” said county Supervisor Dianne Jacob. “Preparedness starts with all of us.”
Yet, a survey conducted on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Witch Creek, Harris and Guejito fires indicates that San Diego County residents are less ready for a disaster than they were in 2007.
That year, 74 percent of respondents said they were ready to evacuate their homes within 15 minutes. Today, that figure has dropped to 50 percent.
And while half of the 2007 respondents had an emergency plan, only 38 percent can make the same claim today.
“That’s not good news,” said Jacob. “We’re really going in the wrong direction.”
Coming just four years after the massive Cedar and Paradise fires ravaged the county, the 2007 fires prompted officials to spend more than $406 million on new equipment and reforms. In the last decade:
“As we know,” Faulconer said, “fires don’t recognize any jurisdictional boundaries.”
Despite these and other high-tech advances — at readysandiego.org, residents can request emergency alerts to their cellphones — officials warned that the danger is growing.
Fires fueled by a lethal combination of high temperatures, low humidity and high winds are becoming more common, said Chief Fennessey. The world, he noted, has recently seen a series of wildfires of unparalleled destructiveness.
Faced with this growing threat, Fennessey and other officials urged residents to take common sense precautions. Cut away tree branches that overhang roofs; store firewood away from the walls of your house; install mesh screens on homes’ vents, so flying embers aren’t sucked inside.
And be ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice. Michelle and Gregg Grimaldo fled their Jamul home well ahead of the Harris fire, taking shelter in a friend’s home. Hours later, as flames swept even closer, they fled that refuge, too. While Gregg tried to round up some horses, Michelle and her mother drove down Honey Springs Road — where their path was blocked by flames.
“I got out of my car and mother got out of hers. We hugged each other and said goodbye,” Michelle said, tearing up. “We thought we were not going to make it.”
Then Gregg arrived and led the women to a vacant field. There, they watched fire on all sides until morning, when firefighters saved them.
“To this day,” Michelle said, “I wish I could go to those firefighters and say thank you again.”
That was a decade ago, and San Diego County has not seen wildfires on this massive, terrifying scale since. But local residents are not out of the woods — even if they don’t live in a wooded area.
“Fires are something that no longer stay in the backcountry,” Cal Fire’s Mecham said. “This is the new normal we live in.”
(Peter Rowe, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office also released the names of two more Santa Rosa fire victims: Monte Neil Kirven, 81, and Marilyn Carol Ress, 71.
After more than a week of warm days and extremely dry air that helped keep the fires raging, a cooler weather pattern blanketing the wine country’s valley floor with fog began to settle in.
The combination of light winds, increased moisture and lower temperatures has aided firefighting efforts across the region, Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said.
“We’re hoping ... to see even some rainfall by tomorrow,” Berlant said Wednesday morning.
Firefighters took advantage of the favorable conditions to conduct firing operations Tuesday night.
A back-burning operation on the north end of the Pocket fire, the smallest but least contained of the fires in the region in north Sonoma County, has stymied the blaze’s potential to race out of control, officials said.
Cal Fire operations Chief Steve Crawford told crews that Wednesday was the day to push the fire’s containment deeper into itself until it burns itself out. The Pocket fire has burned 12,430 acres and is 63 percent contained.
Fire crews also burned vegetation in the path of the 54,423-acre Nuns fire, Berlant said, burning in the hills connecting Sonoma and Napa counties.
The Nuns fire has claimed two lives — one in Sonoma County and one in Napa County.
Overnight, an offshoot of on the Nuns fire that ignited Saturday — the Oakmont fire — connected with the rest of the blaze on the northwest flank. Crawford told crews to patrol the area for any new flames in the steep mountainous terrain.
The fire was 80 percent contained Wednesday.
Firefighters were taking a more direct approach with the Tubbs fire to the south, Crawford said. Crews on foot and by air directly attacked flames creeping downhill east toward Napa Valley.
The deadliest of the blazes, the Tubbs fire, was mostly under control by Wednesday. After scorching 36,432 acres and leveling much of the city of Santa Rosa, it was 91 percent contained.
Firefighters are essentially in a mop-up phase for much of the area, where crews are patrolling for hot spots that could rekindle and chew through unburned vegetation, Crawford said.
“There’s a lot of cautious optimism in terms of final containment, but we’re still not there,” Sonoma County spokesman Barry Dugan said. “We also understand that these fires can be volatile and weather can change.”
(Joseph Serna & Sonali Kohli, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP)
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Firefighters on the ground and in the air raced to protect the observatory and nearby communications towers from a growing brush fire northeast of L.A. The blaze had spread to about 30 acres and was 25 percent contained by Tuesday evening. The observatory, which has been evacuated, opened in 1917 and houses the 100-inch Hooker Telescope, one of the most advanced telescopes of the first half of the 20th century.
Farther north, a fire that sprang up late Monday in the mountains near Santa Cruz blackened at least 225 acres and threatened 150 homes, which prompted evacuation orders. As of Tuesday evening the blaze had destroyed four structures. Four firefighters battling the blaze suffered minor to moderate injuries traversing the steep terrain.
Winds remained light, but conditions were also dry. Crews dropped water on the blaze, which started as a structure fire of some kind.
“The idea is to hit it pretty hard with aircraft and hit it with ground resources at the same time,” said Rob Sherman, a division chief at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Five firefighters suffered minor injuries, including one who slipped down a ravine.
In the state’s wine-making region, tens of thousands of people began drifting back to their neighborhoods. Some returned to find their homes gone.
The deadliest wildfires in California history have been burning for more than a week, killing at least 41 people and destroying nearly 6,000 homes. About 34,000 people remained under evacuation Tuesday, down from 40,000 on Monday.
“It’s never going to be the same,” said Rob Brown, a supervisor in Mendocino County, where all 8,000 evacuees were cleared to go home Monday.
The thousands of calls coming from concerned residents in neighboring Sonoma County “have shifted from questions about evacuation to questions about coping,” Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane said.
“Many people who call are sad and worried. The shock has worn off,” and depression is setting in.
As a former grief therapist, she advised people with a family member or loved one who has lost everything to understand they can’t fix this, but they can offer support.
“Provide a compassionate listening ear right now, and let them feel whatever they’re feeling,” Zane said.
And those who must rebuild from nothing are in for a changed life. “You’re in for decades,” Brown said. “You’ll see benefits within years, but you’re literally in for decades of recovery.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In neighboring Spain, wildfires have also killed at least four people and prompted the evacuation of thousands in the northwest region of Galicia, as the remnants of winds from Hurricane Ophelia fanned the flames along Iberia’s Atlantic coast. The fires returned to Portugal four months after a summer blaze claimed 64 lives in one night. The year’s current total of 99 deaths is far higher than the previous annual record of 25, in 1966.
A baby was among the dead, the Civil Protection Agency said Monday. The infant’s body was found near Tabua, some 120 miles north of Lisbon. The parent’s bodies reportedly were found nearby. A Civil Protection Agency spokeswoman said the death toll could rise.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The national weather service, Met Eireann, issued its first red alert for severe weather for the entire country Sunday night, warning of “violent and destructive gusts” and of “potential loss of life.”
By Monday afternoon, at least three people had been killed, officials said. One was a motorist in her 20s who died when a tree crashed through her windshield near the town of Aglish in County Waterford. A passenger, a woman in her 50s, was also injured.
The second fatality was a man in his 30s who died in what officials described as a chain-saw accident while removing a fallen tree near Cahir in County Tipperary. The third was a man who was hit by a falling tree while driving in the village of Ravensdale north of Dundalk near the border with Northern Ireland, police said.
The storm, the remnants of Hurricane Ophelia, also left hundreds of thousands without power across the island. Strong winds ripped the roofs off buildings in Ireland’s two largest cities, Dublin and Cork, and pushed seawater over coastal defenses in the western city of Galway.
The national police force, An Garda Siochana, said Monday afternoon that the storm would “bring further violent and destructive winds” and flooding that would endanger life and property throughout the night.
“This is a national red alert,” Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said at a news conference Monday. “It applies to all cities, all counties and all areas.”
Varadkar said the last time a storm this powerful had hit Ireland was in 1961 when Hurricane Debbie left 11 people dead.
Winds reached 109 mph at Fastnet Rock, the country’s most southerly point, the weather service said Monday morning. And the storm’s effect was felt as far away as London, where the sky turned a smoky shade of orange from dust from Sahara sandstorms and wildfires in Portugal and Spain carried north by Ophelia’s powerful winds.
Ophelia, classified as a Category 3 hurricane over the weekend, was downgraded Monday to a posttropical cyclone by the National Hurricane Center in the United States. Nevertheless, Met Eireann said it was the most powerful storm ever recorded this far east in the Atlantic. It was the 10th hurricane of the 2017 Atlantic storm season. The storm churned north across Ireland on Monday and was expected to move toward Britain early today, according to Britain’s national weather service, the Met Office, which called the storm “ex-Hurricane Ophelia.”
Ophelia’s effect was already being felt in Britain. Schools were closed in Pembrokeshire in southwestern Wales, and flood warnings and alerts were issued for the northwestern and southwestern coasts of England.
Ireland was mostly shut down Monday as the storm made landfall in the southwestern counties of Cork and Kerry around 7 a.m. local time, lashing coastal towns with heavy rain.
The national electricity provider, the Electricity Supply Board, said an estimated 385,000 customers were without power by Monday afternoon, roughly 17 percent of the population. The utility said it could take several days to restore service.
Schools, universities, courts and hospital outpatient facilities were all closed Monday. Richard Bruton, Ireland’s education minister, said schools would remain closed today “in the interests of child safety.”
Public transportation, ferries and flights were canceled, and people were advised to stay indoors.
Shane Ross, Ireland’s transportation minister, said at a news conference Monday that even after the storm passed, “The roads will not be safe.”
(Douglas Dalby & Liam Stack, NEW YORK TIMES)
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The Wilson fire began around 1 p.m. Sunday near Volcan View Way and Montezuma Valley Road in Ranchita, southeast of Warner Springs, said Cal Fire spokesman Kendal Bortisser.
The blaze charred 25 acres and was considered 70 percent contained around noon Monday. No structures were damaged.
Investigators on Sunday said the cause of the fire was gunfire in the area.
“The folks who started the fire are the ones who called 911 and said they started the fire,” Bortisser said. “They were responsible adults, and they called and said they had started the fire.”
Recreational target shooting has been restricted on federal land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management since late May in several California counties because of fire danger.
Bortisser said he did not think there were such restrictions in place on private property, but he said fire officials discourage people shooting on hot, dry and windy days on any land because of the heightened risk of fire.
He said the shooters who sparked the Wilson blaze will not face criminal charges.
(Karen Kucher, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The winds that bedeviled firefighters Saturday were mostly calm Sunday, allowing them to go back on the offense after a day of new evacuations. Humidity levels were also forecast to increase up above 20 percent, with temperatures expected to hit a high of 85 in Santa Rosa.
Officials said they are making good progress on the massive Tubbs and Atlas fires, which are more than 50 percent contained. Firefighters will increase their focus on the Nuns fire, which is 30 percent contained and continues to threaten communities on its eastern and western flanks.
At a Sunday afternoon briefing, Cal Fire Cmdr. Bret Gouvea told reporters that “overall things are feeling optimistic for us — we are very cautious about that.”
But while firefighters have made significant progress on several fronts, Gouvea said some spots have proved stubborn.
“We have some areas out there that are just fighting us, they are bucking us,” Gouvea said. “We have good resources on them, we have a lot of aircraft on them, but they are just bucking us back. They’re not going down easy, but we are getting them, and we feel a lot better about that.”
The Atlas fire, which has burned more than 51,000 acres in mountain areas east of Santa Rosa, is 56 percent contained, fire officials said.
“Most of the fire is pretty much blacked out,” Battalion Chief Chris Waters told crews early Sunday as they prepared to head into the wilderness. “It was a really good night.”
More than a dozen fixed-wing aircraft focused on the Atlas fire can be diverted to the 47,000-acre Nuns fire. The fire is burning southeast of Santa Rosa and officials worry it could merge with the Tubbs fire. “We have shifted resources from other incidents over to the Nuns fire to bolster support,” said Chris Anthony, a division chief with Cal Fire.
Residents were being allowed to go back home in areas no longer in harm’s way, and the number of those under evacuation orders was down to 75,000 from nearly 100,000 the day before. The fires have destroyed about 5,700 homes and other structures. Cal Fire and Napa County officials announced that mandatory evacuation orders were lifted for Calistoga residents who live east of the Tubbs fire and locals who live south of Lake Curry, east of the Atlas fire.
Over the next few days, weather conditions are expected to improve significantly, said Charles Bell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Winds from the southwest could bring cooler temperatures and more moisture.
There is a 70 percent chance of rain forecast for Santa Rosa on Thursday evening, with relative humidity in the area expected to increase to more than 90 percent ahead of the rain system, Bell said.
“It will bring more moist air, which is extremely beneficial for the firefighters,” he said. “It’s a big change that’s going to happen.”
Fire officials warned that while winds have died down, the fire could still behave erratically, sending embers up to a quarter-mile away to ignite new fires. They also said fire continues to threaten the outskirts of Sonoma.
Sonoma County officials on Sunday released the names of four fire victims. They are Sharon Rae Robinson, 79, of Santa Rosa; Daniel Martin Southard, 71, of Santa Rosa; Lee Chadwick Roger, 72, of Glen Ellen; and Carmen Colleen Mc-Reynolds, 82, of Santa Rosa.
As of Sunday afternoon, 174 people were still missing in Sonoma County, according to the sheriff’s office joint information center.
Another major concern of officials is a fast-moving wildfire near the Oakmont area of Santa Rosa. The fire ignited early Saturday and has more than doubled in size to more than 700 acres, pushing east and west and burning at 15 percent containment.
“It’s giving us trouble,” said Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner. “We’re doing everything we can. We’ll get there — I promise you, we’ll get there.”
The fires are among a series of blazes burning across Northern California that have scorched more than 220,000 acres since they began Oct. 8. As many as 10,000 firefighters from throughout California and surrounding states have battled the fires around the clock. “I know a lot of you are hurting, bleeding,” Cal Fire Cmdr. Gouvea told firefighters at a Sunday morning briefing at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. “It’s been a long road. You couldn’t do any more for us, and I sincerely appreciate the effort. We are going to get this done, very shortly.”
The death toll from the fires has hit 40, but officials believe that number will rise as searchers make their way through the neighborhoods in Santa Rosa that burned down as well as mountain communities across wine country.
It’s delicate, sensitive work. On Saturday, more than two dozen law enforcement officials converged in Santa Rosa’s Fountaingrove neighborhood, along a street where every home had been destroyed. Two officers opened the trunk of their patrol car, retrieved a drone, and launched it above the wreckage.
The drone hovered above the crumbling walls and destroyed homes, slowly rotating in midair. Later, two officers stepped into the crumbling remains of a garage, where the burned-out shell of a car was barely visible from a distance. One officer knelt next to the vehicle, and began delicately handing fragments from the scene to his partner.
Officials with the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office later confirmed that one of two additional deaths reported Saturday had been found in Fountaingrove, but did not say where.
Twenty-two people have died in the Tubbs fire in Sonoma County, eight in Mendocino County, four in Yuba County and six in Napa County.
Of 224 people initially unaccounted for in Napa County, 146 have been found safe, four have been identified as dead and 74 remain missing, Napa County spokeswoman Molly Rattigan said.
More than 10,000 firefighters from California and other states are fighting the fires in Northern California, said Cal Fire’s Dave Teter, and officials were readying more crews in Southern California, where red flag warnings were in place through Sunday. Firefighting efforts include 880 fire engines, 134 bulldozers, 224 hand crews and 138 water tenders, Teter said.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The federal government spent more than $2.7 billion on firefighting in its most recently finished budget year, a record that far surpassed the previous high point of $2.1 billion set just two years ago.
In California, firefighting costs have already chewed through more than half of the state’s $469 million emergency fund for big fires just three months in — and that doesn’t include the costs of the recent catastrophic fires that have claimed dozens of lives and thousands of buildings.
California officials said Friday they expect the cost of fighting those fires will be hundreds of millions of dollars.
With pressure increasing on lawmakers and forest managers to find new ways to pay for firefighting and for fire prevention, here’s a look at some of key questions:
Why are costs going up?
The U.S. is seeing more and bigger wildfires, and the wildfire season is getting longer. The reasons are hotter, drier weather and a buildup of dead and dying trees because of past fire-suppression practices, said Jennifer Jones, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates firefighting nationwide.
The old practice of putting out all fires led to overgrown forests, some with huge tracts of trees that died at about the same time, leaving them prone to fast-moving blazes, researchers say.
Some climate and forestry experts say global warming is a factor in the increasing number of fires because it’s contributing to the hot, dry weather.
Who pays to fight fires?
The federal government, most states and some local agencies have firefighting budgets. Who gets the bill for any one fire depends on where it starts and whether it burns on land owned by the federal government, a state or local government or a private individual.
The U.S. Forest Service is the nation’s primary wildfire - fighting agency, but the Interior Department also pays hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fire costs.
Before 2000, the U.S. government’s firefighting costs never reached $1 billion. Since 2000, they have topped $1 billion 14 times, and they exceeded $1.5 billion 10 times, according to Forest Service records.
Many fires burn across public and private lands. When that happens, everyone involved negotiates a cost-sharing deal, sometimes leading to disputes. In July, California accused the federal government of stiffing the state $18 million for fighting fires on federal land. The Forest Service said it had paid $14 million of that and was trying to resolve differences over the rest.
Where does the money come from?
The Forest Service budgets firefighting money each year, based on the average spent over the most recent 10 years. That was about $1.9 billion in the budget year that just ended.
Because fires are getting worse, they are eating up a bigger and bigger chunk of the overall Forest Service budget. In 1991, it was 13 percent; in 2017, it was 57 percent, Jones said.
California officials say they have more flexibility than the federal government. CalFire, the state firefighting agency, has a $1 billion firefighting budget in addition to the $469 million emergency fund for big fires.
What happens when costs go over budget?
The Forest Service dips into other programs, leaving less money for activities like clearing out dead and diseased trees that could help reduce the number and size of fires, Jones said.
Other programs suffer, too, including recreation and habitat for fish and wildlife, she said.
The Forest Service firefighting budget ran about $500 million over in the most recently finished budget, about 25 percent more than what was set aside.
Is there a better way to pay for firefighting?
The Forest Service and its parent agency, the Department of Agriculture, have long argued that big wildfires should be treated like hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters and be paid for out of the federal Disaster Relief Fund. That would stabilize the Forest Service budget and help preserve money for fire-prevention programs.
Many members of Congress agree — but they disagree on how to go about making the change. Two bills are before Congress to fix the funding. Both would pay for at least some big fires from the Disaster Relief Fund. But one also calls on the Forest Service to manage its woodlands more actively, including thinning dense stands of trees and removing dead trees to reduce fires. Some argue that pushing management practices is unnecessary and ineffective.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Under withering criticism from Puerto Ricans for his administration’s flawed response to the devastation there, Trump sought to hold the territory responsible for its own plight because of chronic mismanagement — prompting an immediate backlash from Puerto Ricans and mainland lawmakers in both parties.
More than a month after Hurricane Irma swept ashore and three weeks after Hurricane Maria delivered a crushing blow, much of Puerto Rico remains without power, and many of its 3.4 million residents still are struggling to find clean water, hospitals are short on medicine, commerce is slow and basic services are unavailable.
In a trio of Thursday morning tweets, Trump declared, “Electric and all infrastructure (in Puerto Rico) was disaster before hurricanes.” He said it would be up to Congress to determine how much federal money to appropriate for recovery efforts — and warned that relief workers would not stay “forever.”
“We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!” Trump tweeted.
On the island, residents and elected officials responded to Trump’s Thursday tweets with outrage and disbelief. Radio disc jockeys gasped as they read aloud the presidential statements, while political leaders charged that he lacked empathy and pleaded for help from fellow U.S. citizens on the mainland.
“The U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico are requesting the support that any of our fellow citizens would receive across our Nation,” Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossell&oactue;, who has publicly praised Trump’s handling of the crisis, tweeted in apparent response to the president.
In Washington, D.C., Trump administration officials sought Thursday to reassure Puerto Ricans that the U.S. government remained fully committed to the territory’s long-term recovery, despite the president’s tweets.
John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, said Trump’s tweets were meant to communicate his hope that Federal Emergency Management Agency workers and the military can withdraw and hand off efforts to the Puerto Rican government “sooner rather than later.”
Trump’s threats to limit the emergency-worker footprint in Puerto Rico come as the House voted Thursday by an overwhelming margin, 353 to 69, to pass a $36.5 billion disaster aid package that includes provisions to avert a potential cash crisis in Puerto Rico prompted by Maria. The Senate is expected to take up the measure next week.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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In Santa Rosa, the hardest hit by the fires, officials said they were stunned by the scale of the destruction. An estimated 2,834 homes were destroyed in the city of Santa Rosa alone, along with about 400,000 square feet of commercial space, Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey said in a news conference Thursday afternoon.
Flames left entire neighborhoods and commercial districts in ruins and even destroyed the city’s newest fire station, on Fountaingrove Parkway.
Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano told reporters that another person was found dead in his county as search crews and cadaver dogs began sifting through debris for the first time Thursday.
Later Thursday, officials confirmed the discovery of several more bodies. Of the total 31 deaths, 17 were in Sonoma County, eight were in Mendocino County, four were in Yuba County and two were in Napa County, according to Sonoma County, Cal Fire and Yuba County officials.
The wildfires in wine country together have now exceeded the death toll in the 1991 Oakland Hills fire, which totaled 25. The Cedar fire, which swept through San Diego County in 2003, killed 15 people and destroyed more than 2,800 structures.
The Sonoma County Sheriff ’s Office identified 10 people who died in that county. They were: Carol Collins-Swasey, 76, of Santa Rosa; Lynne Anderson Powell, 72, of Santa Rosa; Arthur Tasman Grant, 95, of Santa Rosa; Suiko Grant, 75, of Santa Rosa; Donna Mae Halbur, 80, of Larkfield-Wikiup; Leroy Peter Halbur, 80, of Larkfield-Wikiup; Valerie Lynn Evans, 75, of Santa Rosa; Carmen Caldentey Berriz, 75, of Apple Valley; Michael John Dornbach, 57, of Calistoga; and Veronica Elizabeth McCombs, 67, of Santa Rosa.
Giordano said officials were still investigating hundreds of reports of missing people and that recovery teams would begin conducting “targeted searches” for specific residents at their last known addresses.
The searches can take hours, and identification will be difficult, he said at the briefing.
“So far, in the recoveries, we have found bodies that were almost completely intact and bodies that were nothing more than ash and bone,” he said, noting that in the latter cases, sometimes the only way to identify someone is through a medical device, like a metal hip replacement, that has an ID number. “We will do everything in our power to locate all the missing persons, and I promise you we will handle the remains with care and get them returned to their loved ones,” Giordano said.
It could be weeks or even months before all the bodies are identified, he said.
Asked whether he expected the death toll to rise, Giordano said, “I’d be unrealistic if I didn’t.” At the same time Thursday, state and local officials expressed optimism that milder-than-expected winds and additional firefighting crews from across California were allowing them to make progress against the worst of the fires.
“We need to hit this thing hard and get it done,” Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tom Gossner told hundreds of firefighters battling the devastating Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa. “It’s time to finish this thing.”
Fire authorities had feared that 40 mph winds predicted for early Thursday morning would further stoke flames and carry embers to residential areas that so far had escaped fire. But those winds never materialized in the vicinity of Calistoga, where mandatory evacuation orders had forced 5,000 residents from their homes the previous afternoon. Cal Fire spokesman Richard Cordova said the lull allowed crews to establish a 10 percent containment around the 34,200-acre Tubbs fire. On Thursday morning, Calistoga was still a ghost town, apart from a few dozen residents who stayed behind and a Cal Fire incident command center at the town’s Old Faithful geyser. Motorcycle officers wearing masks were circling the deserted streets. Everything was closed in the downtown area— the art galleries, wine tasting rooms, cafes. Thick smoke hung like fog. Roads leading into town were closed.
There is still concern for Calistoga and elsewhere, as officials expect stronger seasonal winds over the weekend, Cal Fire spokeswoman Heather Williams said. Firefighters were battling the Tubbs fire around Mount St. Helena on Thursday morning, but they started pulling back before noon. The fire had hopped state Route 29, which runs adjacent to the mountain north of evacuated Calistoga.
“It’s so thick (with vegetation), it’s so steep. The fire is unpredictable,” said Amy Head, a Cal Fire spokeswoman on the scene. “We don’t want to get trapped on this mountain.”
Firefighters had been setting backfires to try to ward off further damage, and contractors were trucking up tanks of water to resupply them. At noon Thursday, the air was thick with smoke.
Those who return “are on your own,” said Calistoga Mayor Chris Canning, warning residents not to expect personal fire protection because crews needed to focus on the blazes and had no time to save people.
“If you are trying to visit Calistoga, you are not welcome if you are not a first responder,” Canning said. “To the Calistogans out there, stay strong.”
A few residents left behind cookies for fire crews with signs reading, “Please save our home!”
About 10 miles away from the city at Napa Valley College, a Red Cross shelter swelled with hundreds of evacuees.
Crews also managed to start a containment line for the 43,000-acre Atlas fire —good news for Napa residents who were warned Wednesday afternoon that they might have to evacuate eastern sections of town closest to the fire.
The Atlas fire, which began in Napa and moved into Solano County, has put the Green Valley area in danger, Williams said. That area had mandatory evacuations earlier in the week.
“Additional resources are starting to give us the upper hand,” said Cal Fire deputy incident commander Barry Biermann in Napa.
Firefighters in Napa and Solano counties were warned Thursday morning that critical “red flag” conditions remain, with strong winds, low humidity and “extremely receptive fuels,” according to Thursday morning’s Cal Fire incident management plan for the Atlas and neighboring fires. With cooler daytime temperatures and relatively light winds Thursday, fire authorities had a generally productive day.
By Thursday evening, mandatory evacuations were lifted in the areas of Silverado Country Club, Monticello Park and the Avenues, along with areas west of Silverado Trail, between Hardman Avenue and state Route 128.
While that may give firefighters hope, tens of thousands of residents throughout the region were still reeling from the devastation.
Many of the flames still burned out of control, and the fires grew to more than 180,000 acres, an area as large as New York City.
Beneath choking smoke-filled skies that made the morning sun appear deep orange, upscale neighborhoods on the northern edges of Santa Rosa were in ashes, along with gas stations, big-box stores and vineyards. Charming country towns of little more than a few antique shops, the post office and a grocery store remained emptied by evacuation orders.
Road closures are turning routine drives into long, circuitous routes across a landscape with fires burning and columns of smoke rising in almost every direction.
“It may be several days or more than a week before people who’ve been displaced can start the process of healing and rebuilding,” said Cordova, the Cal Fire spokesman. “That cannot happen until we remove all the hazards out there: downed power lines, toppled trees, smoldering hot spots and power outages.”
Thousands of people forced from their homes remain gathered in Red Cross shelters, and some still don’t know whether they have a home to return to.
Some in need are staying away from the shelters, afraid that officials will ask about immigration status.
Giordano, the Sonoma County sheriff, assured the public Thursday afternoon that while shelters will ask for names as a way to keep track of people and aid in finding missing persons, they cannot ask about immigration status.
“No one involved in this process is going to ask any immigration questions. It’s not appropriate, it’s not going to happen,” Giordano said. “We’re only asking names, your immigration status is irrelevant. ... Help is there for everyone.”
(LOS ANGELES TIMES; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Effective immediately, civilians are prohibited from launching, flying or landing a drone within three miles of a blaze and other areas that are designated as off-limits during situations in which a law enforcement helicopter or drone may be used.
Violations will be considered a misdemeanor, according to county officials. News organizations are exempt as long as their drones don’t interfere with the emergency response. The ordinance was passed unanimously as peak fire season — when grounds are driest and winds are strongest — continues.
Cal Fire officials have said drones hovering over or near a blaze can cause mid-air collisions with firefighting aircraft. When a drone is spotted, air tankers and helicopters are grounded until the unmanned aircraft is no longer in the sky.
(S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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For Paul Lowenthal, assistant fire marshal in Santa Rosa, there was only one answer. When he saw smoke and flames dart across the land toward the heart of the city with astonishing speed Sunday night, there was no time for phone alerts or Facebook postings. He called the local police department to order an evacuation, and then he drove through the nearest neighborhood with his sirens blaring, yelling at people to get up and get out.
“The smoke and ash and embers were raining down, sparking spot fires,” he recalled in an interview Wednesday. “It didn’t take but moments for people to look out their front doors and see what was happening.”
The deadly wildfires racing unpredictably across Northern California this week have exposed the difficulties that persist for authorities trying to communicate emergencies to vulnerable residents, even in the hyper-connected 21st century.
It is now standard for fire departments, county emergency management offices and police and sheriff’s departments to have multiple Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, programs that allow residents to sign up for realtime text alerts and systems that can robo-dial home phones.
But all that technology wasn’t enough, as the fires caught authorities and residents off guard, claiming at least 21 lives and untold homes from Sonoma County to Mendocino County.
The fires incinerated or damaged more than 70 cell towers, including a major communications hub, leaving many people without any ability to communicate or receive warning messages. Some people reported getting text evacuation warnings long after they had left their homes, while others who said they had signed up for the critical alerts didn’t get them at all.
Many residents said they found the lack of information from local authorities frustrating, particularly the silence regarding which communities might be vulnerable to the flames, although the high winds made predicting the fire’s path difficult.
Janet Balatti saw flames Sunday night in Santa Rosa probably before authorities even knew of the unfolding catastrophe. She watched the sky and packed belongings before fleeing with her husband from the now-devastated Fountaingrove section of the city, but they did that on their own.
“No official alert was put out as far as I know,” she said.
Michael Desmond, 59, a retired homeland security investigator, said he was lying in bed Sunday night skimming news stories on his iPad when he heard a commotion outside. Finally, he heard what a firefighter was saying: “Firestorm. Get out of here now! Take nothing! Just go!”
“So I got my dog. I got my wallet. Got my keys. And left,” he said Wednesday, as he walked down the street of his neighborhood carrying a charred mailbox, one of the few things he was able to salvage from his home destroyed by wildfire. “I think they were totally unprepared for this.”
A few blocks away, high school teacher Anna Solano, 50, said she also received no phone warning.
Solano, who on Wednesday sifted through the ashes of her home looking for keys to equipment lockers and classrooms, had smelled smoke earlier Sunday evening but thought there was just a house fire in the area. About 2:30 a.m. Monday, a man knocked on her door and kept banging, waking up Solano’s dog, who eventually woke her up. “That gentleman saved our lives. A stranger,” she said. “We saw the fire coming. We left here in five minutes.”
Other evacuees were also awakened by a neighbor or law enforcement officer pounding on the door. William DeLeon, a machinist who was home Monday morning with his wife, daughter and her guinea pig, isn’t sure whether he ever got an alert; a police officer woke his family up telling them to flee.
An announcement came over the public address system at Spring Lake Village in Santa Rosa, “but you couldn’t really understand it,” said Jean Kalsted, 79. Residents at the senior community had run emergency drills, she said, so they went into action, leaving for the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, which is an emergency shelter.
Imad Mouline, chief technology officer of Everbridge, a private company that provides text and other emergency notifications for local jurisdictions around the country, said the company looked into reports in Northern California that some of the messages through their Nixle program were delayed during the fire.
They concluded it was because of a bottleneck in communications caused by the damaged towers and the large number of people trying to use cellular services, Mouline said.
Sonoma County officials said it will take time to determine the reach of the alerts they tried to issue. “I don’t know how effective that was,” said Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano. “It’s going to take a long time until we understand that.”
One danger is that people sometimes receive emergency alerts but turn them off or simply tune them out, said Keith Gilless, dean of the College of Natural Resources at the University of California at Berkeley.
“My biggest worry is that people find warnings annoying and either don’t want to regard them anymore or fiddle around with settings on their phones,” he said. “You don’t sign up for systems, or you try to mute them on their phone.”
Some people can become overloaded with information, and others might be communicating — or searching for communications — when they should be evacuating, said Meg Krawchuk, an assistant professor at the Oregon State University’s College of Forestry. Other times, the information just can’t get out fast enough, particularly with an unpredictable situation— leaving residents with little to go on.
“We don’t always have information as quickly as we think we might, given what we think of as our sophisticated culture when it comes to tech,” she said. “There are weak links in that culture that don’t do what we think they should be able to do.”
At a news conference Wednesday, Giordano said one challenge is that some notification systems rely on landlines. One such system, Reverse 9-1-1, allows public safety organizations to use public databases to send robo-calls to residential phone lines.
But Giordano said it was critical for residents who primarily use their cellphones to sign up for a system called So-CoAlert, which can deliver emergency information via text, phone call and social media.
“The world has changed,” he said. “People don’t have landlines anymore.”
However, getting people to opt-in to such systems might not be so easy. As of June, about 10,500 people were signed up for the alerts, according to the SoCoAlert website. There are 500,000 people living in Sonoma County.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Three days after the fires began, firefighters were still unable to gain control of the blazes that had turned entire Northern California neighborhoods to ash and destroyed at least 3,500 homes and businesses.
“We are literally looking at explosive vegetation,” said Cal Fire Chief Ken Pimlott. “It is very dynamic. These fires are changing by the minute in many areas.”
The entire historic town of Calistoga, population 5,000, was evacuated. In neighboring Sonoma County, authorities issued an evacuation advisory for Geyserville, part of the town of Sonoma and the community of Boyes Hot Springs. By that time, lines of cars were already fleeing.
“That’s very bad,” resident Nick Hinman said when a deputy sheriff warned him that the driving winds could shift the wildfires toward the town of Sonoma proper, with 11,000 residents. “It’ll go up like a candle.”
Napa city officials issued evacuation advisories for neighborhoods along the eastern edges of the city, warning residents to be prepared to leave. Meanwhile, a red-flag warning forecasting dangerous fire conditions took effect Wednesday evening in the San Francisco Bay Area. Combined with dry fuels and low humidity, fires have the potential to spread quickly, according to the National Weather Service. “It’s a good heads-up to all the firefighters and emergency management that the conditions are going to be pretty bad in terms of the fire behaviors,” said Will Pi, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. State and federal officials portrayed an all-out effort to fend off the devastating wildfires at a news conference at a state emergency operations center outside Sacramento.
“It’s an extremely stressful and challenging time,” said Mark Ghilarducci, director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. “We are all hands on deck.”
They said 8,000 firefighters and other personnel were battling the blazes. Statewide, 30 air tankers, nearly 75 helicopters and 550 fire engines had already been pressed into action. State officials requested more than 300 additional engines from other states and the federal government. “We have had big fires in the past. This is one of the biggest, most serious, and it’s not over,” Gov. Jerry Brown said at a news conference. Brown made formal emergency declarations for eight counties.
The wildfires have burned through more than 170,000 acres of urban and rural areas and rank as the third deadliest and most destructive in state history.
Until now, crews have focused on “life safety” rather than extinguishing the blazes, partly because the flames were shifting with winds and targeting new communities without warning.
High winds and low humidity made conditions ideal for fire to spread virtually anywhere on ground or brush that was parched from years of drought.
Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said 22 wildfires were burning Wednesday, up from 17 the day before. As the fires grow, officials voiced concern that separate fires would merge into even larger infernos. The situation remains dangerous, officials said.
“We’re not going to be out of the woods for a great many days to come,” said Cal Fire Director Ken Pimlott. The state is still feeling the effects of the drought despite a recent wet winter, and there’s “explosive vegetation” fueling the blazes.
Crews launched a desperate effort to extinguish key hot spots before heavy, fire-stoking winds could kick back up later in the day.
Officials fear that strong winds forecast for today will spread embers from the deadly Tubbs fire to populated areas of Santa Rosa and Calistoga that have so far been spared the flames and new evacuation orders were issued.
“We are facing some pretty significant monsters,” Cal Fire incident commander Bret Couvea told a room of about 200 firefighters and law enforcement officials at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds staging area Wednesday morning.
Exhausted and sore firefighters fanned across scorched mountainsides attacking hot spots, chopping shrubs and using shovels and axes to clear smooth paths down to bare soil roughly 4 feet wide.
They were taking advantage of a lull in erratic winds to extinguish as many embers as possible and contain portions of fires burning out of control near populated areas before north winds were expected to pick up after midnight.
Forecasts call for winds of up to 35 mph on mountaintops and heavily forested ridgelines north of Santa Rosa and Calistoga.
In a worst-case scenario, the winds would shoot embers into still-green terrain, igniting walls of flame that could march back into already devastated communities such as Santa Rosa.
“The clock is ticking, so we’re giving it everything we’ve got — hand crews, fire engines, bulldozers, air support — to keep the fire within the perimeter,” Cal Fire Division Chief Ben Nicholls said, while using a razor-sharp blade to slice through dry grass and stubborn roots.
“We like fighting massive fires,” he added. “A lot of what we’re doing isn’t that sexy. It’s called mop-up, and right now it is critical.”
Winds were projected to be light, less than 5 mph, from the north this morning. They will increase to about 15 mph in the afternoon in the valleys, officials said.
At night, however, “the return of the north wind will have a strong influence on the southern portions of the Tubbs fire,” a Cal Fire weather report said.
“Winds will be 25 to 30 miles per hour after 2 a.m. These strong winds have the potential to push the fire south back towards Calistoga and Santa Rosa, especially where the fire was active yesterday (Tuesday) on the north side.” On Wednesday, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office issued an advisory evacuation order for residents of Middletown — which was heavily damaged in the Valley fire just two years ago and rebuilt — as the Tubbs fire approached from the south.
Firefighters took advantage of the lull in the winds Wednesday morning and afternoon to attack hot spots and put out as many embers as possible before they can be revived and blown into areas that haven’t burned yet, they said.
By Wednesday, the Tubbs fire had reached 28,000 acres with no containment. Other fires ranging in size from 1,800 to 21,000 acres burned throughout the area and in surrounding counties.
Sonoma County had received about 300 reports of missing persons and had confirmed that 110 of those people were safe, said Sonoma County Sheriff’s Deputy Brandon Jones.
Though some evacuation orders in Yuba and Nevada counties were lifted, officials estimated that upward of 50,000 people were still out of their homes. More people in Sonoma and Napa counties were asked to leave their homes Tuesday night.
Napa County Supervisor Diane Dillon said Cal Fire commanders decided in the middle of the night to evacuate nearly half of the valley town of Calistoga, and by 3:30 a.m., Dillon and town officials along with police crews were walking house to house in the thick smoke, knocking on doors and telling occupants to leave.
“I was stunned to hear Cal Fire was recommending a massive, for Calistoga, evacuation,” Dillon said. “When we went out to talk, people were already leaving. People were alert to the situation.”
During a packed community meeting with emergency officials inside the Santa Rosa High School gym Tuesday evening, Sonoma County residents battered by the deadly wildfires were told that a red-flag warning forecasting potentially hazardous fire conditions had been issued for Wednesday. This comes after cooler weather allowed firefighters to gain ground Tuesday morning, only to see the flames flare up again with afternoon winds.
“This is nowhere near over. This is still very dangerous,” Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano said Tuesday night.
Officials hope, though, that they won’t again face the 80 mph winds that stoked fires so quickly Sunday night.
In Southern California, cooler weather and moist ocean air helped firefighters gain ground against a wildfire that has scorched nearly 14 square miles. Orange County fire officials said the blaze was 60 percent contained, and full containment was expected by Sunday, although another round of gusty winds and low humidity levels could arrive late today.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In a matter of minutes Monday, they had rounded up their five children — ages 11 months to 11 years — and two huskies, packed them into a recreational vehicle, and headed to a relative’s home in Fullerton.
Less than 24 hours later — after the blaze had ballooned to 8,000 acres, destroyed several homes and prompted evacuation orders in Anaheim, Tustin and Orange — the Pops were back, trying to find out what they had lost.
“I know the evacuation is still in place, but we just had to check,” said Rebecca, 35, as her husband steered their SUV past the orange cones authorities had placed to block Santiago Canyon Road — a key route leading to the hills where many tract homes had been threatened or scorched by the wind-fed flames.
“Like everyone,” she said, “we need to know what’s going on, and we need to share our thanks.”
As residents continued to worry about their homes, fire crews said they were making “fantastic progress” Tuesday against a sprawling wildfire that had shrouded Disneyland in smoke and prompted air-quality warnings in parts of Los Angeles County just a day earlier.
The dry, fire-friendly Santa Ana winds had shifted to moist, ocean breezes, allowing fire crews to begin attacking the blaze directly, fire officials said.
The Orange County Fire Authority said the blaze had been 40 percent contained as of Tuesday evening. Fire crews had managed to halt the blaze’s westward progression, and were focusing on stopping its eastern advance, officials said.
Evacuation orders remained in place through Tuesday afternoon for Orange and Tustin. Anaheim fire officials said residents in affected areas would be allowed to return Tuesday evening. It was unclear when evacuation orders would be lifted in other areas, and officials said the cause of the fire remains under investigation.
On Monday, Orange County fire officials evacuated more than 5,000 homes in three cities as the fast-moving fire grew. At least 14 structures were destroyed after the fire raced up a hillside, according to the fire authority. An additional 22 homes sustained fire damage, he said. More than 1,100 firefighters were called to the scene, stretching state firefighting resources thin as officials also battled a series of raging fires in Northern California that have claimed 17 lives and burned more than 100,000 acres.
The Canyon 2 fire also forced the closure of nine schools Tuesday, many of which were expected to remain closed today, school district officials said.
For residents attempting to return to their homes, Tuesday was about estimating the damage and thanking the firefighters who, in many cases, helped keep that damage minimal.
Once Rebecca and Adrian Pop were able to confirm their home was safe, they began to drive around in a golf cart loaded with two boxes of ham and cheese croissants. They wanted to give the food out to any firefighters they could find as they checked on their neighbors.
“We have a lot of neighbors who refused to leave, but we had to get the kids out. This air is absolutely not healthy,” said Adrian, a 47-year-old optometrist.
“We are like a big family here. We care for each other,” his wife added. “When one of us is hurt, we’re all hurt.”
After dropping off some croissants with an Urban Search & Rescue truck, the couple drove their golf cart down the road and came upon a crowd of stunned residents who were pointing at the sprawling ruins of a neighbor’s home. The nameplate showed it had been the “Deacon home,” comfortable, complete with stables, gazebo and a beloved tree swing.
“I have always wanted to go on that swing,” said Lisa Duquette, a nearby resident who works in the health insurance industry. “Everybody knows this house. It was an adorable house. And it’s tragic because for a lot of us who live here, we hike here. We recognize all the spots in the area and it becomes a part of us.”
Firefighters said a wood pile stacked outside the home aided the fire’s spread to the structure.
“It was so green just a week ago — everything was green around us,” Adrian Pop said, a wistful note in his voice. “It’s unbelievable what disappeared and what survived.”
(Anh Do, Victoria Kim & James Queally, LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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State and local officials warned that with many people still missing and unaccounted for — and some areas still out of reach of emergency crews — those figures are almost certain to rise.
Sonoma County alone has received about 200 reports of missing people since Sunday night, and sheriff’s officials have located 45 of those people, said county spokeswoman Maggie Fleming.
The majority of the fatalities are from Sonoma County, where huge swaths of Santa Rosa were leveled by the Tubbs fire. Eleven people have died in Sonoma County, Fleming said. Two people have died in Napa County, three in Mendocino County and one in Yuba County, Cal Fire officials said.
Vice President Mike Pence said in a visit to California’s emergency management headquarters that President Donald Trump has approved a “major disaster declaration” for California.
About 20,000 people heeded evacuation warnings, fleeing on foot and by car as the fires overtook their towns. In Sonoma County alone, 5,000 people took shelter in evacuation centers on Monday night, the county reported, and new evacuation orders were issued Tuesday.
Seventeen wildfires raged Tuesday across parts of seven counties, burning about 100,000 acres. The two biggest blazes — the Tubbs fire and the Atlas fire in Napa County — had scorched 27,000 and 25,000 acres, respectively, said Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant.
Both fires were propelled on Sunday night and Monday by 50-mph winds, he said. The winds died down on Tuesday, but the fires were still uncontained.
The cool and quiet of night did not stymie the progress of the Atlas fire, which stretched across the hills east of Napa and sparked a chain of more fires to the west.
“They continue to move. They were moving all night,” burning more structures in their wake, Cal Fire incident commander Kevin Lawson said Tuesday morning.
On Tuesday, the Atlas fire moved down the east side of a ridge into Solano County and threatened residents of Green Valley.
The Partrick fire southwest of Napa pushed toward heavily populated areas, and emergency planners warned that the fire could grow.
A few miles north, the community of Glen Ellen continued to be threatened by the Nuns fire burning in the Mayacamas Mountains.
Fire behavior specialist Jon Heggie told crews heading out at dawn Tuesday to be prepared for the fires to turn north and east into dry brush “with 80 percent to 90 percent probability of ignition.”
Several thousand firefighters from across the state— including some from San Diego County — are battling the blazes, Berlant said. The California National Guard has deployed six additional helicopters to aid firefighting efforts.
Evacuees will not be able to return to their homes for some time, he said.
“Many of these fires, it’s going to take several more days, even potentially more weeks, before we have full containment,” Berlant said.
Still, some tried to get back to their houses Tuesday.
It took Brady Harvell almost two hours to find what he was looking for in the rubble of his parents’ home on the northwest corner of Santa Rosa.
Using a small spade to move ashes aside, Harvell had been searching for the Army dog tags he gave his father in 2013 when he returned from deployment in Iraq. At 12:40 p.m., he reached down and pulled it out of a gray pile. Harvell held it up and shouted: “Got it! Oh, my God! Got it!”
Marveling over the discolored and misshapen treasure in the palm of his hand, he said: “I grew up here, all my memories are from this very spot. It’s where I played and learned right from wrong. But the fire destroyed every photograph my mother and father had of me. It took all our memories, except this one.”
Harvell reached into his pocket and pulled out a cellphone and dialed.
“Love you, Brady,” his father said at the other end of the line. “Love you, Dad,” Harvell
replied. Leaping from ridge top to ridge top in grass and oak woodlands, flames raced across the heart of the California wine country, claiming houses, hotels, at least one winery and a dairy. In Santa Rosa, the Tubbs fire leveled an entire neighborhood, burned a Hilton hotel, turned big-box stores into smoking ruins and prompted the evacuation of two hospitals — Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital and Kaiser’s Santa Rosa Medical Center.
At the Fountaingrove Inn, the fire left behind only the steel frame, now crooked in many places, and parts of the stonewalls.
A mess of tangled rebar, broken piping and blackened tree limbs lay strewn above piles of rubble. Water pipes hung askew and broken glass littered the hedges.
Amazingly, at the far side of the inn, a dry fountain, two wooden tables and about a dozen wooden chairs sat intact.
Farther up the hill at the sprawling Hilton site, small fires still smoldered and occasional pieces of debris rained down. On the far end of the property the pool and sitting area around it were untouched.
Although the conditions that fed the blazes — high winds from the interior, dried-up vegetation and low humidity— are more typical of Southern California’s fall fire season, the north has seen its share of horrific autumn wildfires.
The state’s second-deadliest blaze is the October 1991 Tunnel fire in the Oakland and Berkeley hills, which erupted on a quiet Sunday and killed 25 people.
The Tunnel fire also ranks as the most destructive wildfire in California history, consuming 2,900 structures.
Two years ago, the Valley fire roared across Lake, Napa and Sonoma counties, killing four people and destroying 1,995 buildings.
Survivors’ accounts and sheriff’s dispatch recordings tell harrowing tales of the chaos that struck Sunday night.
Eric Anderson managed a narrow escape from his home on Mark West Springs Road, where the flames swooped down just before 10 p.m. and exploded into the town below, destroying hundreds of homes. “It just came through there, like a blowtorch,” said Anderson, a contractor. “I saw fire trucks racing up Martin West and then, five minutes later, I saw them racing down. I said, time to get out of here.”
Anderson said residents in the wooded area, which is dotted with million-dollar homes, had little warning. As he loaded the last box of possessions into his car, a flurry of embers flew overhead, setting off spot fires throughout the hillside community.
Meanwhile in Napa County, terror that swept in with the wind-driven fire over those living on Atlas Peak was evident in the chaos that erupted in a span of less than 10 minutes over the Napa County sheriff’s dispatch radio late Sunday night. The distress calls, crackling over the radio since 10 p.m., arrived in rapid fire by 10:42 p.m.
“Parents trapped in garage,” one officer radioed in to the central dispatcher, giving an Atlas Peak Road address, followed by another warning: “The fire is moving quickly through here.”
Two minutes later, the dispatcher sent help to a second house on the road: “Two people trapped.”
Barely a minute later, a call came in for another house on the road: “An elderly lady trapped.”
At the same time, an officer on scene radioed in the loss of a nearby house. “It is on fire now, it looks like they evacuated,” he said.
The dispatcher sent out an all-points request for “any units in the area.”
“Two people called, advising their house is on fire, and they need help evacuating.”
A minute later, she repeated the call. “Is anybody able to go to 2232 for two people trapped in a house on fire?”
Two deaths have been confirmed from the fire that tore through the neighborhood. Charles and Sara Rippey, ages 100 and 98. One woman died as she was trying to flee the Cascade fire in Yuba County, county spokesman Russ Brown said.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES)
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At least six structures had been damaged or lost, and one firefighter had to be treated for smoke inhalation.
The fire put an added strain on state firefighting resources as first responders battled more than a dozen blazes that erupted in Northern California on Sunday night, leaving 10 dead and destroying at least 1,500 structures.
By today,“we’re gonna be as stretched as we can be,” said Steven Beech, an incident commander with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Orange County fire officials evacuated at least 1,000 homes as the fast-moving fire grew to nearly 6,000 acres, spitting smoke into the air that was visible over Disneyland and caused officials to issue air quality warnings in parts of Los Angeles County.
Some residents found themselves racing out of their homes as the flames licked the edges of their neighborhood.
Dio Compolongo, 22, said he operated “on total instinct” when he noticed the blaze was creeping close to his family’s residence. He rushed to stir his two younger sisters, both of whom were home sick from school, as he frantically checked websites to find an evacuation route.
“How do you know what to do in situations like this?” he asked after escaping to an evacuation center around noon Monday.
Fire crews had not been able to contain any portion of the blaze by Monday evening, Wyatt said, and strong winds were making it difficult to figure out where the flames might jump next. “With the wind-driven event, this fire can change behavior very rapidly,” he said during a news briefing. At least 500 firefighters from multiple fire task forces are battling the blaze. Beech said he expected that figure to grow to more than 1,000 by this morning.
Evacuations were ordered south of the 91 Freeway and west of the 241 toll road.
Because of the speed of the fire, responders were not attacking the blaze directly, focusing instead on moving people out of its path, Beech said. Firefighters hoped to take a more direct approach against the blaze if conditions become more favorable late Monday or early today, he said.
Winds were likely to calm down overnight, Wyatt said, but officials feared that low humidity and a return of strong gusts could pick back up and fuel the blaze today.
“We’re hoping that the weather goes in our favor,” he said.
(Anh Do, Victoria Kim & James Queally, LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The Sonoma County Sheriff ’s Office reported seven fire-related deaths late Monday. In addition, two died because of the Atlas fire in Napa County, said a Cal Fire spokesperson. One person died as result of the Redwood Valley fire in Mendocino County.
In Sonoma County, the dead were found “in the hot spots” of the fire, an official said.
“We are a resilient county; we will come back from this,” said Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane. “But right now, we need to grieve.”
The vast devastation over just a few hours made this firestorm one of the worst in California history, with Gov. Jerry Brown declaring a state of emergency. Officials said the fires in Northern California have scorched 73,000 acres.
Local hospitals were treating those injured while others are unaccounted for, officials said. Additional fatalities were possible as search efforts continued.
One of the raging fires had Santa Rosa under siege Monday morning, with a large swath of the city north of downtown under an evacuation order.
The area of Fountaingrove appeared to be particularly hard hit, with photos showing numerous homes on fire. The Fountaingrove Inn, a Hilton hotel and a high school also burned. Officials said homes were also lost in the community of Kenwood and at a mobile home park off Highway 101.
Coffey Park, a large Santa Rosa subdivision of dozens of homes, was burned to the ground.
“It’s fair to say it’s been destroyed,” Cal Fire Director Ken Pimlott said of Santa Rosa’s Fountaingrove neighborhood.
“Late last night starting around 10 o’clock you had 50 to 60 mph winds that surfaced — really across the whole northern half of the state,” he said. “Every spark is going to ignite.”
Northern California has seen its share of horrific wildfires — the state’s second- deadliest is the October 1991 Tunnel fire in the Oakland Hills, in which 25 people died. That fire also ranks as the most destructive, charring 2,900 buildings.
But the combination of high winds, dried-up vegetation and low humidity driving flames into neighborhoods is more typical of Southern California. “This is exactly what you would expect in the Southern California fall fire season,” Pimlott said.
Despite a wet winter, he said vegetation still hasn’t recovered from California’s punishing drought, and at the end of the summer dry season, was ready to burn.
Firefighters were hopeful the winds will calm, but red-flag fire conditions will persist into today.
The city of Santa Rosa imposed a curfew starting at 6:45 p.m. Monday until sunrise today to prevent looting of empty homes in the evacuation zone, said acting Santa Rosa police Chief Craig Schwartz.
“We have had a number of reports in the evacuation zone and the fire zone of people driving around and suspicious behavior,” Schwartz said.
While many evacuation centers were set up, some were filled to capacity due to the large number of people fleeing.
The Tubbs fire near Santa Rosa has burned more than 35,000 acres as of 6:40 a.m., Napa County Supervisor Diane Dillon said during a televised news conference Monday morning. Officials said the other large fire in Napa County — Atlas Peak — had reached 25,000 acres.
Schools throughout the Napa and Sonoma valleys were closed for the day, and cellphone service has been affected in Napa County, where residents and businesses are experiencing power outages and trees have been knocked down by the wind, officials said.
More than 50 structures, including homes and barns, have burned in the Atlas Peak fire alone, Napa County Fire Chief Barry Biermann said during the news conference.
Residents described running from the approaching flames early in the morning.
Late Sunday night, Ken Moholt-Siebert noticed the smell of the smoke from his Santa Rosa vineyard just off U.S. Highway 101.
It was not until midnight that he spotted the flames: a small red glow growing a couple of ridges to the east, off Fountaingrove Parkway.
He ran up the hill on his property to turn on a water pump to protect the ranch his family has been raising sheep and growing grapes on for four generations.
Before the pump could get the water fully flowing, a small ember from the Tubbs fire landed nearby. With the wind picking up, the ember sparked a spot fire about 50 feet in diameter. Then it was 100 feet in diameter.
“There was no wind, then there would be a rush of wind and it would stop. Then there would be another gust from a different direction,” Moholt-Siebert, 51, said. “The flames wrapped around us.”
He ran for cover.
“I was just being pelted with all this smoke and embers,” he said. “It was just really fast.” Moholt-Siebert retreated through a 150-year-old redwood barn on his property — where his son’s wedding reception had been held in June. He jumped a fence back toward his house and fell to the ground to catch gulps of less smoke-contaminated air before reaching his home. As he fled with his wife Melissa in their Ford sedans, the flames reached their vineyard full of pinot noir grapes and crept toward a 200-year-old oak tree on the property — the namesake for the family winery, Ancient Oak Cellars.
As he drove through falling embers and smoke, he thought about what he left behind. The sheep on his ranch, he thought, would be safe since they were on shortly cut wet grass. He left behind family mementos and furniture from his grandparents.
The property was dotted with old valley and black oak as well as some California ash trees.
“That is probably all gone,” Moholt-Siebert said. “I have a feeling there is not going to be much left.”
Smoke from the fires drifted into the Bay Area, into San Francisco and as far south as San Jose.
“The smell of smoke is everywhere throughout the county,” Napa County spokeswoman Kristi Jourdan said.
In Santa Rosa, Kaiser Permanente Hospital and Sutter Hospital were evacuated.
“We have safely evacuated the Santa Rosa medical center due to fires burning in the area. Many patients were transported to Kaiser Permanente in San Rafael and other local hospitals,” Kaiser spokeswoman Jenny Mack said in an email. “All scheduled appointments and surgeries have been canceled for the day in Santa Rosa and the Napa medical offices.”
The Santa Rosa fire began around 10 p.m. Sunday. The cause of the fires is still under investigation.
Upward of 300 firefighters are battling the blazes in Napa County, she said. There are three evacuation centers for Napa County residents, though one — the Crosswalk Community Church — is full, she said. The other two are the Calistoga Fairgrounds and at Napa Valley College. Those who evacuated described a chaotic scene.
Around 2 a.m., the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office ordered evacuations around Kay Drive and Mark West Station Road in Windsor. Jen Ancic, 31, fled with her two young sons and boyfriend.
As the family drove north on U.S. Highway 101, Ancic said she could see buildings and trees burning.
“The whole town was on fire,” she said. “It was crazy.”
A Santa Rosa native, Ancic said that fires in the mountains are not uncommon, but “nothing like this has happened in Santa Rosa.”
Weather conditions — strong winds and high temperatures — made conditions ripe for a major inferno.
“We also had really gusty winds and really warm temperatures,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Mehle. “This time of year it does happen quite a bit. For the San Francisco Bay Area, our summer is late September to early October; that’s when we have our warmest and driest conditions.”
The destructiveness of the fires shocked officials. The worst fire in recent California history was the Cedar blaze in San Diego County in 2003, which destroyed more than 2,800 homes. The 2007 Witch Creek fire, also in San Diego County, destroyed more than 1,600. Both of those fires occurred in October.
“This time of year is when historically the state’s largest, most damaging and most deadly fires have occurred,” Upton said. “Critical fire conditions fanned by high winds” act as “a fuse for sparks,” she said.
A key reason why the fires burning through Napa and Sonoma counties became so devastating was that the ignitions happened at the worst possible moment: extremely dry conditions combined with so-called Diablo winds that fanned flames on the ridge tops with gusts as high as 70 mph. It’s similar to the conditions that caused one of the most destructive blazes in Northern California history, the October 1991 firestorm that struck the Oakland and Berkeley hills that killed 25 people and destroyed more than 3,300 homes.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The 7.1 magnitude quake killed 369 people and completely collapsed at least 38 structures, mostly apartment buildings. About a half-dozen others were partially collapsed.
But Mexico City’s construction safety chief, Renato Berron, said hundreds of other buildings suffered serious structural damage. He said some will be repaired or reinforced, but the priority will be to demolish structures that are endangering neighboring buildings or passersby.
“We will give priority to those buildings that are creating a risk for inhabitants, neighbors, pedestrians, drivers, and those structures that endanger neighboring buildings Why? Because they are becoming a problem of public order. That’s the truth,” he said.
Berron said the city had begun demolishing three of 11 structures already approved for demolition, and that dozens more will follow in the coming weeks. He declined to say how much the demolition would cost or how long it would take; many fear legal appeals by some residents.
It may be a difficult, almost surgical procedure in many cases; many apartment buildings in Mexico City are built with gaps of less than 6 inches between neighboring structures, and the quake caused some apartment blocks to lean until they are actually resting on a neighboring structure.
Berron said 90 percent of the collapsed and damaged structures were built prior to the 1985 earthquake, after which building standards were tightened.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Nate — the first hurricane to make landfall in Mississippi since Katrina in 2005 — quickly lost strength, with its winds diminishing to a tropical depression as it pushed northward into Alabama and toward Georgia with heavy rain. It was a Category 1 hurricane when it came ashore outside Biloxi early Sunday, its second landfall after initially hitting southeastern Louisiana on Saturday evening.
The storm surge from the Mississippi Sound littered Biloxi’s main beachfront highway with debris and flooded a casino’s lobby and parking structure overnight.
By dawn, however, Nate’s receding floodwaters didn’t reveal any obvious signs of widespread damage in the city where Hurricane Katrina had leveled thousands of beachfront homes and businesses. No storm-related deaths or injuries were immediately reported.
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant praised state and local officials and coastal residents for working together to avoid loss of life. Lee Smithson, director of the state emergency management agency, said damage from Nate was held down in part because of work done and lessons learned from Katrina. “If that same storm would have hit us 15 years ago, the damage would have been extensive and we would have had loss of life.” Smithson said of Nate. “But we have rebuilt the coast in the aftermath of Katrina higher and stronger.”
Nate knocked out power to more than 100,000 residents in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida, but crews were working on repairs. As of Sunday afternoon, Alabama Power said more than 62,000 customers remained without power, while utilities and cooperatives in Mississippi said more than 21,000 were without electricity. In Louisiana, there were scattered outages during the storm, while Florida Gov. Rick Scott said 6,800 customers had lost power in his state. Mississippi’s Gulf Coast casinos got approval to reopen in midmorning after closing Saturday as the storm approached.
Sean Stewart, checking on his father’s sailboat at a Biloxi marina after daybreak, found another boat had sunk, its sail still fluttering in Nate’s diminishing winds. Stewart was relieved to find his father’s craft intact.
“I got lucky on this one,” he said. Before Nate sped past Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula late Friday and entered the Gulf of Mexico, it drenched Central America with rains that left at least 22 people dead. But Nate didn’t approach the intensity of Harvey, Irma or Maria — powerful storms that left behind massive destruction during 2017’s exceptionally busy hurricane season. “We are thankful because this looked like it was going to be a freight train barreling through the city,” said Vincent Creel, a spokesman for the city of Biloxi.
The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the four hurricanes that have struck the U.S. and its territories this year have “strained” resources, with roughly 85 percent of the agency’s forces deployed. “We’re still working massive issues in Harvey, Irma, as well as the issues in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and now this one,” FEMA Administrator Brock Long told ABC’s “This Week.”
The federal government declared emergencies in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Two weeks after Hurricane Maria, thousands of Puerto Ricans are cramming onto the small number of scheduled flights and charter jets and are fleeing for the mainland United States, rather than endure months more without power, cellphone service or regular running water.
“Nothing is beautiful any more,” said Glenda Gomez, 31, who is planning to leave for Miami today with her three children.
So people are selling their cars, abandoning wrecked houses and leaving their property in the hands of relatives who are staying behind. Some expect to return after a few months on the mainland; others say they are going for good.
Puerto Rican airports have become scenes of tearful goodbyes as families send their children, spouses and parents to live with relatives in Orlando, Fla., New York, Washington — wherever.
On the mainland, cities and states with large Puerto Rican populations are preparing for the influx by trying to help people find housing, work and schools. Florida alone — already home to 1 million Puerto Ricans — anticipates as many as 100,000 arrivals to the Orlando and the Tampa Bay area.
In the two weeks since the storm gutted Gomez’s home on the eastern coast of Puerto Rico and ruined her dreams of renting rooms to tourists, Gomez said, her family has been surviving on canned food and boxed milk, paid for with the only cash they had on hand — her three children’s private-school fees. Her husband has been waiting in line for hours to buy fuel for their generator. She has been making two-hour trips to buy groceries from a swampy supermarket. Finally, she decided: Enough. Relatives in Miami offered to buy plane tickets for her and the children, and Gomez made plans to use the last few gallons of gasoline in her car — it was just enough for the drive to the San Juan International Airport.
Puerto Ricans have streamed off the island for so many decades and in such numbers that migration is woven into Puerto Rico’s identity and culture. One aching anthem pines that “I’m leaving, but one day I’ll return to find my love, to dream again, in my Old San Juan.”
Now, the exodus of families like the Gomezes is accelerating a decade-long slump in population that has seen Puerto Rico lose about 400,000 people during a period of economic strain. Experts say the new wave of migration raises concerns about who will be left to rebuild the island’s shattered infrastructure, and how an economy suffocated by $73 billion in debt and 10 percent unemployment will rebound if tens of thousands more residents suddenly leave.
“It’s going to be a stampede,” said Jorge Duany, a professor at Florida International University who studies migration to and from the island — and has left the island himself. “I thought I’d go back and retire. But now it looks like it’s going to take a little longer.”
Duany said it was too early to say how many were migrating on the packed planes leaving San Juan, or how many might boomerang back if Puerto Rico heals and life eases back to normal sooner than expected.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz led the attack on the administration’s response on Friday, criticizing an official’s description of relief efforts as a “good news story” and urging Trump to act more decisively. Trump fired back at Cruz on Twitter, accusing her of “poor leadership.”
It is not clear if the two will meet today. “She (Cruz) has been invited to participate in the events tomorrow, and we hope those conversations will happen and that we can all work together to move forward,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Monday. Trump will spend “significant time” on the island today, Sanders said. He is due in Las Vegas on Wednesday to meet with people affected by Sunday’s mass shooting.
Early Monday, Puerto Rico’s governor reported some progress in getting fuel supplies to the island’s 3.4 million inhabitants as they faced a 13th day largely without power after Maria.
At least 5.4 percent of customers in Puerto Rico had their power restored by midmorning on Monday, according to the U.S. Energy Department, with San Juan’s airport and marine terminal and several hospitals back on the power grid. It said the head of Puerto Rico’s power utility expects 15 percent of electricity customers to have power restored within the next two weeks.
Mobile phone service is still elusive. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Monday 88.3 percent of cellphone sites — which transmit signals to create a cellular network — were out of service, virtually unchanged from 88.8 percent on Sunday.
FEMA Administrator Brock Long told reporters on a call on a trip to Puerto Rico Monday that things were improving with traffic moving and businesses reopening.
“I didn’t see anybody in a life-threatening situation at all,” he said. “We have a long way to go in recovery” and he said rebuilding Puerto Rico is “going to be a Herculean effort.”
Nearly two weeks after the fiercest hurricane to hit the island in 90 years, everyday life was still severely curtailed by the destruction. The ramping up of fuel supplies should allow more Puerto Ricans to operate generators and travel more freely.
“We’ve been increasing the number of gas stations that are open,” Gov. Ricardo Rossello said at a news briefing, with more than 720 of the island’s 1,100 gas stations now up and running.
Puerto Rico relies on fuel supplies shipped from the mainland United States and distribution has been disrupted by the bad state of roads. Within the next couple of days, Rossello expects 500,000 barrels of diesel and close to 1 million barrels of gasoline to arrive on the island. All of Puerto Rico’s primary ports have reopened but many still have restrictions, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. At least four tankers carrying fuel are waiting to unload with two more on the way, according to shipping data.
“The flow is coming, gasoline is getting here,” Rossello said. “We have been able to reduce the time that it takes to get gasoline and diesel at different stations.”
He said 47 percent of water and sewer service is up but there is variation across the island.
Federal and local authorities were working together to keep 50 hospitals operational, and Rossello said the Navy hospital ship Comfort would arrive in Puerto Rico between today and Wednesday.
As it tries to get back on its feet, Puerto Rico is in danger of running out of cash in a matter of weeks because the economy has come to a halt in the hurricane’s aftermath, Rossello told the local El Nuevo Dia newspaper in an interview published on Monday.
After filing for the largest U.S. local government bankruptcy on record in May, Puerto Rico owes about $72 billion to creditors and an additional $45 billion or so in pension benefits to retired workers before it even accounts for the extra expense of recovery. “There is no cash on hand. We have made a huge effort to get $2 billion in cash,” Rossello said in the interview. “But let me tell you what $2 billion means when you have zero collection: It’s basically a month government’s payroll, a little bit more.”
(Robin Respaut & Gabriel Stargardter, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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President Donald Trump cleared the way for more supplies to head to Puerto Rico by issuing a 10-day waiver of federal restrictions on foreign ships delivering cargo to the island. And House Speaker Paul Ryan said the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief account would get a $6.7 billion boost by the end of the week.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke declared that “the relief effort is under control.” “It is really a good news story, in terms of our ability to reach people,” she told reporters in the White House driveway. Outside the capital, San Juan, people said that was far from the truth.
“I have not received any help, and we ran out of food yesterday,” said Mari Olivo, a 27-year-old homemaker whose husband was pushing a shopping cart with empty plastic gallon jugs while their two children, 9 and 7, each toted a large bucket. They stood in line in a parking lot in the town of Bayamon near the hard-hit northern coast, where local police used hoses to fill up containers from a city water truck.
“I have not seen any federal help around here,” said Javier San Miguel, a 51-year-old accountant.
Trump tweeted later: “FEMA & First Responders are doing a GREAT job in Puerto Rico.” He also took issue with media coverage of the administration’s response, writing: “Wish press would treat fairly!” Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, called for the U.S. military to immediately provide security and distribution of aid in remote areas. “As was said after Hurricane Andrew: ‘Where the hell is the cavalry?’” he said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, presidential spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said 10,000 government workers, including more than 7,000 troops, were helping Puerto Rico recover.
“The federal response has been a disaster,” said lawmaker Jose Enrique Melendez, a member of Gov. Ricardo Rossello’s New Progressive Party. “It’s been really slow.” He said the Trump administration had focused more on making a good impression on members of the media gathered at San Juan’s convention center than bringing aid to rural Puerto Rico.
Trump and his advisers defended the administration’s response to the hurricane, which destroyed much of the island’s infrastructure.
“The electric power grid in Puerto Rico is totally shot. Large numbers of generators are now on Island. Food and water on site,” Trump tweeted early in the day.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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They sleep on couches, in makeshift shelters and in their cars; wear borrowed clothes and hand-me-downs from donation piles; and, separated from their kitchens, rely on others’ cooking, each plate a reminder of their restless, unanchored state.
The earthquake on Sept. 19 killed at least 337 people in central Mexico and injured thousands of others. But it also created another class of victims: the displaced.
They number in the many thousands and count among them the very rich and the very poor, from city dwellers who lived in luxury high-rises to farmers in adobe huts. They include those whose buildings collapsed, but also those whose buildings have been declared structurally unsound and, while standing for now, face the likelihood of demolition.
Still others occupy an even less certain place: Their homes are fine save for the fact that they abut a building at risk of collapse.
“I still cry often,” said Elizabeth Flores, 50, a property manager who owns an apartment in a five-story walk-up in Mexico City that was heavily damaged. She has since been staying with a friend.
“This was my home,” Flores said. “Just that morning I had eaten breakfast there and made my bed. We went from modest comfort to having not just our homes but our lives in ruins.” It remains unclear exactly how many buildings in Mexico were damaged by the earthquake last week, or how many people have been forced from their homes.
Federal officials said Wednesday that the quake on Sept. 19, and one on Sept. 7 that struck mainly the southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, damaged more than 153,000 homes, with more than 24,000 destroyed and more than 46,000 damaged so severely as to be uninhabitable.
In Mexico City, at least 38 buildings collapsed in the quake. The city’s mayor has said about 500 have been deemed “high risk” and would have to be demolished or have major reconstruction before people could return. Most of those buildings are residential.
Public and private efforts to help displaced people with housing and reconstruction needs have begun to take shape. On Tuesday, the authorities in Mexico City announced a plan to provide low-interest loans and other financial assistance to homeowners, depending on their needs and the conditions of their homes. The city has also promised financial assistance for renters.
President Enrique Peña Nieto has promised that the government would “directly support families with resources and materials” to repair damage and build new homes, and he announced Wednesday that his administration would help the country’s most powerful business leaders obtain private-sector assistance for reconstruction through a newly created fund.
Nobody believes that the process will be quick, particularly if the aftermath of the devastating 1985 earthquake is any indication.
Rebuilding in some areas of Mexico City took more than a decade.
(Marina Franco & Kirk Semple, NEW YORK TIMES)
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Claudia Sheinbaum, the borough president of the southern Mexico City district where the school went down in the 7.1 magnitude quake, told a news conference Tuesday that the school appeared to have its paperwork in order, at least according to documents filed by architects and engineers who supposedly inspected the structure. She said an investigation was being launched to look for any abnormalities not revealed in those documents.
“We can’t stop just with the paperwork,” Sheinbaum said. “We are going to do a review of the building itself.”
Authorities said that the owner of the privately owned Enrique Rebsamen school built an apartment for herself on top of the collapsed wing, which local media said included a Jacuzzi, and were looking into whether the extra weight may have played a role in the collapse.
Sheinbaum said she didn’t know if that was true, but said the owner, Mónica García Villegas, had a permit dating back to 1983 to build a school and apartments on the lot, though it was unclear whether she had permission to add a third story to the section of the school that collapsed.
The school was just one of dozens of buildings that collapsed in the Sept. 19 quake that killed at least 333 people, 194 of them in Mexico City. Questions have been raised about whether new building standards put in place after a 1985 quake that killed 9,500 people had been adequately followed.
Although construction began on the school in 1983 — two years before the new codes went into effect — it was expanded over the next 34 years with no evidence of noncompliance, Sheinbaum said. She said the only immediately evident paperwork problems during that time were two cases of unregistered expansion work, and Garcia Villegas paid a fine for not registering the work and was allowed to proceed.
Phone calls to a number registered to Garcia Villegas — who was pulled alive from the rubble — rang unanswered.
Seismologists and engineers say the Mexico City buildings most at risk in a quake are those, like the school building, that were built atop an Aztec-era lake bed, where the muddy soil can amplify earthquake waves.
But, although an architect signed a document certifying the school was structurally sound, experts questioned the method used to evaluate it, which Sheinbaum said involved piling sandbags on its upper floors to simulate 85 percent of the structure’s maximum design-carrying weight, and then measuring the resulting floor sag.
Kit Miyamoto, a structural engineer and California Seismic Safety Commissioner, said sandbags can’t test for earthquake resistance.
“Seismic is a lateral force, so if you just put a whole bunch of sandbags it is not going to tell you the story of the seismic capacity of the building at all,” Miyamoto said. “You can do testing, to determine what kind of reinforcement” a building has, including ground-penetrating radar or exposing rebar.
The school’s first wing was built in 1983, but other additions and floors were added over the years, said Francisco Garcia Alvarez, president of the Mexican Society of Structural Engineers, who evaluated the school site after its collapse.
A third floor appeared to have been added recently to the original 1983 structure that was toppled in the quake, raising questions about what construction permits, if any, the school had obtained, how recently it had been inspected and what architectural plans were submitted in the first place. Paperwork filed as recently as June by a private architect working for the school asserted that the parcel had not been modified in a way that would violate the permitted land use.
The quake, whose epicenter was only about 100 miles from the capital, hit the city’s south side where the school is located with a force much stronger than the original school structure was built to withstand in the early 1980s, Garcia Alvarez said.
That caused a failure in the building’s joints where the columns met the beams, he said, noting that the addition of a third floor would have added more weight to the structure. Still, he said, its possible role in the collapse needed further study.
The school’s collapse killed 19 children and seven adults, leaving behind a pile of wreckage still visible in a cordoned-off street of the leafy neighborhood manned by soldiers.
(Garance Burke, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The risk of delayed collapse is real: The cupola of Our Lady of Angels Church, damaged and cracked by the Sept. 19 quake, split in half and crashed to the ground Sunday evening. There were no injuries.
Nervous neighbors continued calling in police on Monday as apparently new cracks appeared in their apartment blocks or existing ones worsened, even as the city struggled to get back to normality.
Officials said they had cleared only 103 of Mexico City’s nearly 9,000 schools to reopen Monday and said it could be two to three weeks before all were declared safe — leaving hundreds of thousands of children idle.
Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said at least seven schools were among the buildings thought to beat risk of tumbling.
At several points in the city, employees gathered on sidewalks in front of their workplaces Monday refusing to enter because they feared their buildings could collapse.
“We are afraid for our own safety,” said Maribel Martinez Ramirez, an employee of a government development agency who, along with dozens of co-workers, refused to enter their workplace. “The building is leaning; there are cracks.”
Mancera said 360 “red level” buildings would either have to be demolished or receive major structural reinforcement. Another 1,136 were reparable, and 8,030 of the buildings inspected so far were found to be habitable.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Five days after the Category 4 storm slammed into Puerto Rico, many of the more than 3.4 million U.S. citizens in the territory were still without adequate food, water and fuel. Flights off the island were infrequent, communications were spotty and roads were clogged with debris. Officials said electrical power may not be fully restored for more than a month.
In Washington, officials said no armada of Navy ships was headed to the island because supplies could be carried in more efficiently by plane. The Trump administration ruled out temporarily setting aside federal restrictions on foreign ships’ transportation of cargo, saying it wasn’t needed. The government had waived those rules in Florida and Texas until last week.
Though the administration said the focus on aid was strong, when two Cabinet secretaries spoke at a conference on another subject — including Energy Secretary Rick Perry, whose agency is helping restore the island’s power — neither made any mention of Puerto Rico or Hurricane Maria.
Democratic lawmakers with large Puerto Rican constituencies back on the mainland characterized the response so far as too little and too slow. The confirmed toll from Maria jumped to at least 49 on Monday, including 16 dead in Puerto Rico.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Among the families of the missing, there are periodic moments when spirits lift. A flurry of activity, or relatives are summoned to the search site, raising hopes that someone has been found.
But despair deepens when the work slows or even stops, when rain or an aftershock threatens the stability of the tottering pile, and as day after day passes without their loved ones emerging.
For the family of Adrian Moreno, a missing 26-year-old human resources worker at an accounting firm, the emotional roller coaster is getting to be too much. Moreno’s mother has a look of anguish and has largely stopped being able to speak. His boyfriend, Dario Hernandez, also looks lost, his gaze tear-stained and unfocused.
“Just hearing the earthquake alarm was horrible,” Hernandez said of a siren that rang during a 6.1 quake Saturday that was an aftershock of an earlier and bigger temblor on Sept. 7. “Something moves and ” he said, his voice trailing away at the unspeakable thought the whole pile could suddenly collapse. “There is a lot of nervousness, a lot of desperation. This is the worst thing I have ever seen in my life, the worst.” A total of 38 buildings in the Mexican capital — mostly apartment blocks or office buildings — collapsed in the Sept. 19 earthquake, and the first days saw a dramatic scramble with picks, shovels and bare hands to reach survivors.
Mexican marines, the lead force in many of the rescue efforts, said they had recovered 102 bodies and rescued 115 people alive from buildings toppled by the quake, which has killed 320 people including 182 in the capital alone, according to the latest death toll announced Sunday.
Thousands more have been left homeless because their houses or apartment buildings, while still standing, have been rendered too dangerous to remain. Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera reported that 7,649 properties have been examined and 87 percent of those are safe and require only minor repairs. But that means about 1,000 left standing have been deemed uninhabitable — and the number seemed likely to rise as more are inspected.
Mancera also said Saturday night on Twitter that nearly 17,000 people have been “attended to” at 48 shelters, though it’s not clear how many of those are being housed there. Many are bunking with family or friends.
Inspections of the city’s nearly 9,000 public and private schools have only barely begun. Federal Education Secretary Aurelio Nuno said Sunday that only 103 schools had been approved to resume classes today.
One by one the searches have closed down in recent days, after sniffer dogs were sent in and didn’t find life and thermal imaging devices turned up no body heat signatures. Then heavy machinery moved in to begin removing the mountains of debris. Empty lots began to appear where just days ago a building stood.
Now hopes were focused solely on concrete slabs at two sites: the former office block in the Roma Norte neighborhood, where around 40 people were believed to be missing, and an apartment building on the south side where searchers were looking for five people.
At the latter site, members of a Japanese search and rescue team pulled a small white dog from the rubble alive Sunday afternoon, cradling and petting it as they brought it down.
Expert search teams that flew in from other countries including the United States and Israel have worked alongside their Mexican counterparts this week to help tunnel, measure and direct the removal of chunks of concrete. At the Roma Norte site, after Saturday’s aftershock passed, work began again, grim, controlled, purposeful. An enormous crane lifted huge chunks of concrete slab. Previously, rescuers carved reinforced vertical tunnels into the heart of the wreckage, and from there crawled into the narrow, claustrophobic horizontal spaces left between the collapsed floors.
Work stopped again for about an hour Sunday afternoon after the mound of debris shifted, resuming after experts checked the pile for stability.
The last time someone was found alive was Wednesday, when a woman was pulled from the rubble. A couple of bodies were found Friday.
Volunteer rescue worker Johny Yebra said the smell of death was heavy directly atop the rubble heap, and by Sunday afternoon, occasional gusts of wind were blowing it outside the immediate search site.
“All of us are doing the most we can,” Yebra said.
Beyond the barricades and the ring of floodlights that lit the area overnight lay a makeshift collection of tents and tarps where anxious family members have endured rain, cold, grief and sleeplessness.
“It has been many days. Four, five we can only wait and bear what happens,” said Enrique de Luna, the uncle of another missing man, Said Guzman.
(Maria Verza, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“The devastation in Puerto Rico has set us back nearly 20 to 30 years,” said Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Jenniffer Gonzalez. “I can’t deny that the Puerto Rico of now is different from that of a week ago. The destruction of properties, of flattened structures, of families without homes, of debris everywhere. The island’s greenery is gone.”
Engineers on Sunday planned to inspect the roughly 90-year-old Guajataca Dam, which holds back a reservoir covering about 2 square miles in northwest Puerto Rico. The government said it suffered a large crack after Maria dumped 15 inches of rain on the surrounding mountains and that it “will collapse at any minute.” Nearby residents had been evacuated but began returning to their homes Saturday after a spillway eased pressure on the dam.
Puerto Rico’s National Guard diverted an oil tanker that broke free and threatened to crash into the southeast coast, said Gov. Ricardo Rossello, and officials still had not had communication with nine of 78 municipalities.
“This is a major disaster,” he said. “We’ve had extensive damage. This is going to take some time.” The death toll from Maria in Puerto Rico was at least 10, including two police officers who drowned in flood waters in the western town of Aguada. That number was expected to climb as officials from remote towns continued to check in with officials in San Juan. Authorities in the town of Vega Alta on the north coast said they had been unable to reach an entire neighborhood called Fatima, and were particularly worried about residents of a nursing home.
Across the Caribbean, Maria had claimed at least 31 lives, including at least 15 on hard-hit Dominica.
Mike Hyland, a spokesman for the American Public Power Association, which represents the Puerto Rican power agency, said Sunday that restoration is a long ways off. The organization is working with U.S. Energy Department crews as well as New York Power Authority workers sent down by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to fly over the island and assess damage.
Crews hoped to get helicopters and drones in the air over the next two days to assess the damage, but Hyland said they need to be patient and let the military continue rescuing people before focusing on restoring power. “We are trying to get an understanding of the extent of the damage over the next 48 hours to then begin to work with our federal partners to get the right crews and equipment down to Puerto Rico,” Hyland said.
Large amounts of federal aid have begun moving into Puerto Rico.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“Close to 70,000 is the estimate of people that could be affected in the case of a collapse,” the governor, Ricardo Rosselló, said about the Guajataca Dam, which is operated by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. “We don’t know the details. It’s time to get people out.” The news about the dam was a dramatic sign that the scale of troubles left behind by the storm was just beginning to be understood. Power remained out, and phone service was still limited. On Friday night, the governor was flying to the dam area to see how serious the risk might be, said a spokeswoman for the Puerto Rico Emergency Management Agency.
A flash flood warning was previously issued by the National Weather Service for the municipalities of Isabela and Quebradillas, in the immediate areas of the dam. “This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation,” the service said in an advisory.
Messages sent to the power authority about the condition of the dam were not immediately returned.
The National Guard has been activated in the area, the governor said.
“It’s been hard to see infrastructure deteriorate in Puerto Rico,” he said, “but it been harder to meet citizens who have lost it all.”
Officials in Puerto Rico were corralling incoming aid as rescue and recovery efforts continued after the storm, Rosselló said on Friday.
“There’s still some rain and, of course, the soils are saturated, so it’s still not safe to go outside,” he said. “We’re still on emergency protocol, and our main objective right now is making sure people are safe.” Rosselló said that the island was getting generators, mattresses, food and water from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and from others in the private sector.
Officials have established a logistics center, which will receive all incoming aid and then distribute it to 12 zones throughout the island, he said.
“The people of Puerto Rico are really being tremendous under these circumstances,” he said.
Some elderly residents had been found in rural areas without food and necessary medication, Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, said on CNN on Friday.
“My biggest fear is that we don’t get to those that need it,” she said. “If we get to an elderly home too late, the situation of care will be disastrous.”
Elsewhere, the Dominican Republic appeared to have been spared the storm’s full force. Early reports indicated there was minimal damage to the country.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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That decline was primarily driven by what the authors call a “culling of the least healthy fetuses” resulting in a “horrifyingly large” increase in fetal deaths and miscarriages. The paper estimates that among the babies conceived from November 2013 through March 2015, “between 198 and 276 more children would have been born had Flint not enacted the switch in water,” write health economists Daniel Grossman of West Virginia University and David Slusky of Kansas University.
In April 2014, Flint decided to draw its public water supply from the Flint River, a temporary measure intended to save money while the city worked on a permanent pipeline project to Lake Huron. Residents immediately began complaining about the odor and appearance of the water, but well into 2015 the city was still assuring residents that the water was safe to drink.
Subsequent testing by Flint authorities and outside agencies turned up lead levels that in some cases were dozens or hundreds of times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety threshold. A September 2015 study showed that the proportion of Flint children with high lead levels in their blood had roughly doubled after the water change.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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News media, officials and volunteer rescuers all repeated the story of “Frida Sofia” with a sense of urgency that made it a national drama, drawing attention away from other rescue efforts across the quake-stricken city and leaving people in Mexico and abroad glued to their television sets.
But she never existed, Mexican navy officials now say.
“We want to emphasize that we have no knowledge about the report that emerged with the name of a girl,” navy Assistant Secretary Angel Enrique Sarmiento said Thursday. “We never had any knowledge about that report, and we do not believe — we are sure — it was not a reality.”
Sarmiento said a camera lowered into the rubble of the Enrique Rebsamen school showed blood tracks where an injured person apparently dragged himself or herself, and the only person it could be — the only one still listed as missing — was a school employee. But it was just blood tracks — no fingers wiggling, no voice, no name. Several dead people have been removed from the rubble, and it could have been their fingers rescuers thought they saw move.
Twitter users quickly brought out the “Fake News” tag and complained that the widespread coverage had distracted attention from real rescue efforts where victims have been pulled from the rubble — something that hasn’t happened at the school in at least a day.
Viewers across the country hung on the round-the-clock coverage of the drama Wednesday from the only network that was permitted to enter. The military, which ran the rescue operation, spoke directly only to the network’s reporters inside the site.
The Associated Press and others reported about the search for the girl, based on interviews with rescue workers leaving the scene who believed it was true. The workers had been toiling through the night, and the chance of rescuing the girl appeared to give them hope and purpose despite their exhaustion.
Reports about the trapped girl led to the donations of cranes, support beams and power tools at the school site — pleas for help quickly met based on the urgency of rescuing children. It was unclear if that affected other rescue operations going on simultaneously at a half dozen other sites across the city.
Despite all the technology brought to bear at the school, including thermal imaging devices, sensors, scanners and remote cameras, the mistake may have come down to a few over-enthusiastic rescuers who, one-by one, crawled into the bottom of shafts tunneled into the rubble looking for any signs of life. “I don’t think there was bad faith involved,” security analyst Alejandro Hope said. “You want to believe there are children still alive down there.”
Rescuers interviewed by the AP late Wednesday at a barricade that blocked most journalists from reaching the site believed the story of the girl implicitly. Operating on little sleep and relying on donated food and tools, rescuers were emotionally wedded to the story, and the adrenaline it provided may have been the only thing keeping them going.
Rescue worker Raul Rodrigo Hernandez Ayala came out from the site Wednesday night and said that “the girl is alive, she has vital signs,” and that five more children had been located alive. “There is a basement where they found children.”
In retrospect, the story of “Frida Sofia,” had some suspicious points from the start.
Officials couldn’t locate any relatives of the missing girl, and no girl with that name attended the school. Rescuers said they were still separated from her by yards of rubble, but could somehow still hear her.
(Gisela Salomon & Maria Verza, THE ASSOCIATED)
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But it was the rescue operation at the Enrique Rebsamen school, where 25 people including 21 children perished, that was seen as emblematic of Mexicans’ rush to save survivors before time runs out.
Helmeted workers spotted the girl buried in the debris early Wednesday and shouted to her to move her hand if she could hear. She did, and a rescue dog was sent inside to confirm she was alive. One rescuer told local media he had talked to the girl, who said her name was Frida.
Many hours later the crews were still laboring to free her, as images of the rescue effort were broadcast on TV screens nationwide. Workers in neon vests and helmets used ropes, pry-bars and other tools, frequently calling on the anxious parents and others gathered around to be silent while they listened for any other voices from beneath the school. At one point, the workers lowered a sensitive microphone inside the rubble to scan for any noise or movement. A rescuer said they thought they had located someone, but it wasn’t clear who.
“It would appear they are continuing to find children,” said Carlos Licona, a burly sledge-hammer wielding volunteer who came to help in any way he could. Asked if that made him optimistic, he said, “I hope so.”
Optimism ran strong but no survivors had been found all day at the school. However, four more corpses were found, volunteer rescue worker Hector Mendez said. Mendez said cameras lowered into the rubble suggested there might be four people still inside, but it wasn’t clear if anyone beside the girl was alive.
It was part of similar efforts at the scenes of dozens of collapsed buildings, where firefighters, police, soldiers and civilians wore themselves out hammering, shoveling, pushing and pulling debris aside to try to reach the living and the dead. By mid-afternoon, 52 people had been pulled out alive since Tuesday’s magnitude 7.1 quake, Mexico City’s Social Development Department said, adding in a tweet: “We won’t stop.” Among them were 11 people rescued Tuesday at the Enrique Rebsamen school.
More than 24 hours after the collapse, the debris being removed from the school began to change as crews worked their way inside: from huge chunks of brick and concrete, to pieces of wood that looked like remnants of desks and paneling, to a final load that contained a half dozen sparkly hula-hoops.
A helicopter overflight of some of the worst-hit buildings revealed the extent of the damage wrought by the quake: three mid-rise apartment buildings on the same street pancaked and toppled in one Mexico City neighborhood; dozens of streets in the town of Jojutla, in Morelos state, where nearly every home was flattened or severely damaged and a ruined church where 12 people died inside.
The death toll included 100 people killed in Mexico City, 69 in Morelos state just south of the capital and 43 in Puebla state to the southeast, where the quake was centered. The rest were in Mexico State, which borders Mexico City on three sides, Guerrero and Oaxaca states, according to the official Twitter feed of civil defense agency head Luis Felipe Puente. President Enrique Peña Nieto declared three days of national mourning even as authorities made rescuing the trapped and treating the wounded their priority. “Every minute counts to save lives,” Peña Nieto tweeted.
In the town of Jojutla, dozens of buildings collapsed, including the town hall. One building was rocked off its foundations and part way into a river.
Town residents who had spent Tuesday night on the streets next to homes that were severely damaged or flattened outright, wrapped in blankets or on mattresses, walked past shattered buildings and picked through what was left when daylight came “It was an ugly and horrible experience. Our house used to be two floors and it ended up a total loss. I thank God that my 83-year-old mother, my daughter-in-law with her baby, we all escaped with scratches,” said a tearful Maria Elena Vargas, 54, adding that everything they had was in the rubble. “I hope that the government helps us because this block is destroyed, that they do not just profit from others’ pain. Now we have to lift ourselves up, with or without the government,” Vargas added.
At a wake for Daniel Novoa, a toddler killed when his home collapsed, family members bent over a white child-size coffin surrounded by a crucifix and images of Mexico’s patron, the Virgin of Guadalupe. Alongside was a larger open coffin for the child’s aunt, Marta Cruz.
Peña Nieto visited Jojutla and said brigades would be going door-to-door to make sure homes are safe.
In Atzala in Puebla state, villagers mourned 11 family members who died inside a church when it crumbled during a baptism for a 2month-old girl. People at the wake said the only ones to survive were the baby’s father, the priest and the priest’s assistant. Power was being restored in some Mexico City neighborhoods that had been left in darkness overnight, and officials reported that the sprawling Metro system was running at near-normal capacity. Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said there were 38 collapsed buildings in the capital alone, down from the 44 he had announced previously.
People rallied to help their neighbors in a huge volunteer effort that included people from all walks of life in Mexico City, where social classes seldom mix. Doctors, dentists and lawyers stood alongside construction workers and street sweepers, handing buckets of debris or chunks of concrete hand-to-hand down the line.
Even Mexico City’s normally raucous motorcycle clubs swung into action, using motorcades to open lanes for emergency vehicles on avenues crammed with cars largely immobilized by street closures and malfunctioning stoplights.
(Christopher Sherman & Peter Orsi, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Officials estimated that 70 to 80 percent of Dominica’s structures had sustained storm damage, ranging from ripped-off roofs to near-total destruction. All intact public buildings were being converted into emergency shelters for scores of homeless residents.
Americans, Canadians and others were waiting to be evacuated off the devastated island, officials said.
Aerial footage showed debris fields strewn across the island in the wake of Maria, which struck late Monday as a Category 5 cyclone with sustained winds above 160 mph. “Tremendous loss of housing and public buildings. The main general hospital took a beating. Patient care has been compromised,” Hartley Henry, an adviser to Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, wrote in a dramatic statement calling for international relief.
He said that “little contact has been made with the outer communities but persons who walked 10 and 15 miles towards the (capital) city of Roseau from various outer districts report total destruction of homes, some roadways and crops.”
A former British colony and a member of the Commonwealth, Dominica, with a population of about 72,000, was Maria’s first major victim as it blazed a deadly path through the Caribbean on the heels of two other brutal storms, Irma and Jose. The island is famous for its 365 rivers. Yet the same geography that has made it so picturesque has also made Dominica susceptible to severe flooding and mudslides.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Leaving at least 10 people dead in its wake across the Caribbean, Hurricane Maria blew ashore in the morning near the southeast coastal town of Yabucoa as a Category 4 storm with winds of 155 mph. It punished the island of 3.4 million people with lifet-hreatening winds for several hours, the second time in two weeks that Puerto Rico has felt the wrath of a hurricane.
“Once we’re able to go outside, we’re going to find our island destroyed,” warned Abner Gomez, Puerto Rico’s emergency management director. “The information we have received is not encouraging. It’s a system that has destroyed everything in its path.” Officials reported one death on the island. As people waited in shelters or took cover inside stairwells, bathrooms and closets, Maria brought down cell towers and power lines, snapped trees, tore off roofs and unloaded at least 20 inches of rain.
Widespread flooding was reported, with dozens of cars half-submerged in some neighborhoods and many streets turned into rivers.
Felix Delgado, mayor of the northern coastal city of Catano, told The Associated Press that 80 percent of the 454 homes in a neighborhood known as Juana Matos were destroyed. The fishing community near San Juan Bay was hit with a storm surge of more than 4 feet, he said.
“Months and months and months and months are going to pass before we can recover from this,” he said.
Gov. Ricardo Rossello imposed a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. daily until Saturday to allow rescue crews and officials to respond to the hurricane’s aftermath.
“We are at a critical moment in the effort to help thousands of Puerto Ricans that urgently need aid and to assess the great damage caused by Hurricane Maria,” he said. “Maintaining public order will be essential.”
Maria was expected to pass off the northeastern coast of the Dominican Republic late Wednesday and today. Even before the storm, Puerto Rico’s electrical grid was crumbling, and the island was in dire condition financially.
Puerto Rico is struggling to restructure a portion of its $73 billion debt, and the government has warned it is running out of money as it fights against furloughs and other austerity measures imposed by a federal board overseeing the island’s finances.
Rossello urged people to have faith: “We are stronger than any hurricane. Together, we will rebuild.”
He asked President Donald Trump to declare the island a disaster zone, a step that would open the way to federal aid.
Many people feared extended power outages would further sink businesses struggling amid a recession that has lasted more than a decade.
“This is going to be a disaster,” said Jean Robert Auguste, who owns two French restaurants and sought shelter at a San Juan hotel. “We haven’t made any money this month.”
(Danica Coto, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Dozens of buildings tumbled into mounds of rubble or were severely damaged in densely populated parts of Mexico City and nearby states. Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said buildings fell at 44 places in the capital alone as high-rises across the city swayed sickeningly.
Hours after the magnitude 7.1 quake, rescue workers were still clawing through the wreckage of a primary school that partly collapsed in the city’s south looking for any children who might be trapped. Some relatives said they had received Whatsapp messages from two girls inside.
President Enrique Peña Nieto visited the school late Tuesday and said 22 bodies had been recovered there, two of them adults. He added in comments broadcast online by Financiero TV that 30 children and eight adults were still reported missing. Rescuers were continuing their search and pausing to listen for voices from the rubble.
The quake is the deadliest in Mexico since a 1985 quake on the same date killed thousands. It came less than two weeks after another powerful quake caused 90 deaths in the country’s south.
Luis Felipe Puente, head of the national Civil Defense agency, reported Tuesday night that the confirmed death toll had been raised to 149.
His tweet said 55 people died in Morelos state, just south of Mexico City, while 49 died in the capital and 32 were killed in nearby Puebla state, where the quake was centered. Ten people died in the State of Mexico, which borders Mexico City on three sides, and three were killed in Guerrero state, he said.
The count did not include one death that officials in the southern state of Oaxaca reported earlier as quake-related.
The federal government declared a state of disaster in Mexico City, freeing up emergency funds. Peña Nieto said he had ordered all hospitals to open their doors to the injured.
Mancera, the Mexico City mayor, said 50 to 60 people were rescued alive by citizens and emergency workers in the capital. Authorities said at least 70 people in the capital had been hospitalized for injuries. The federal interior minister, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, said authorities had reports of people possibly still being trapped in collapsed buildings. He said search efforts were slow because of the fragility of rubble.
“It has to be done very carefully,” he said. And “time is against us.”
At one site, reporters saw onlookers cheer as a woman was pulled from the rubble. Rescuers immediately called for silence so they could listen for others who might be trapped.
Mariana Morales, a 26-year-old nutritionist, was one of many who spontaneously participated in rescue efforts.
She wore a paper face mask and her hands were still dusty from having joined a rescue brigade to clear rubble from a building that fell in a cloud of dust before her eyes, about 15 minutes after the quake.
Morales said she was in a taxi when the quake struck, and she got out and sat on a sidewalk to try to recover from the scare. Then, just a few yards away, the three-story building fell.
A dust-covered Carlos Mendoza, 30, said that he and other volunteers had been able to pull two people alive from the ruins of a collapsed apartment building after three hours of effort.
“We saw this and came to help,” he said. “It’s ugly, very ugly.”
Alma Gonzalez was in her fourth floor apartment in the Roma neighborhood when the quake pancaked the ground floor of her building, leaving her no way out — until neighbors set up a ladder on their roof and helped her slide out a side window.
Gala Dluzhynska was taking a class with 11 other women on the second floor of a building on trendy Alvaro Obregon street when the quake struck and window and ceiling panels fell as the building began to tear apart.
She said she fell in the stairs and people began to walk over her, before someone finally pulled her up.
“There were no stairs anymore. There were rocks,” she said. They reached the bottom only to find it barred. A security guard finally came and unlocked it. At the Clínica Gabriel Mancera in Mexico City, more than a dozen hospital beds had been set up on the patio outside as a triage center on Tuesday afternoon. Leticia Gonzalez, a 45-year-old maid in a nearby apartment building, said she tried to race out of the building but that concrete crashed down as she fled. Her right leg was wrapped in a bandage as she grimaced in pain outside the hospital.
“We were all running like crazy,”she said. “This was the worst earthquake I’ve ever seen.”
The quake sent people throughout the city fleeing from homes and offices, and many people remained in the streets for hours, fearful of returning to the structures.
Alarms blared and traffic stopped around the Angel of Independence monument on the iconic Reforma Avenue.
Electricity and cellphone service was interrupted in many areas and traffic was snarled as signal lights went dark.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.1 quake hit at 1:14 p.m. and was centered near the Puebla state town of Raboso, about 76 miles southeast of Mexico City.
Puebla Gov. Tony Gali tweeted there were damaged buildings in the city of Cholula, including collapsed church steeples. In Jojutla, a town in neighboring Morelos state, the town hall, a church and other buildings tumbled down, and 12 people were reported killed.
The Instituto Morelos secondary school partly collapsed in Jojutla, but school director Adelina Anzures said the earthquake drill that the school held in the morning was a boon when the real thing hit just two hours later.
“I told them that it was not a game, that we should be prepared,” Anzures said of the drill. When the shaking began, children and teachers filed out rapidly and no one was hurt, she said. “It fell and everything inside was damaged.”
Earlier in the day, workplaces across Mexico City held earthquake readiness drills on the anniversary of the 1985 quake, a magnitude 8.0 shake that killed thousands of people and devastated large parts of the capital.
In that tragedy, too, ordinary citizens played a crucial role in rescue efforts that overwhelmed officials.
Market stall vendor Edith Lopez, 25, said she was in a taxi a few blocks away when the quake struck Tuesday. She said she saw glass bursting out of the windows of some buildings. She was anxiously trying to locate her children, whom she had left in the care of her disabled mother.
Local media broadcast video of whitecap waves churning the city’s normally placid canals of Xochimilco as boats bobbed up and down.
Mexico City’s international airport suspended operations and was checking facilities for damage. Much of Mexico City is built on former lake bed, and the soil can amplify the effects of earthquakes centered hundreds of miles away.
The new quake appeared to be unrelated to the magnitude 8.1 temblor that hit Sept.
7 off Mexico’s southern coast and also was felt strongly in the capital.
U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Paul Earle noted the epicenters of the two quakes were 400 miles apart and said most aftershocks are within 60 miles.
There have been 19 earthquakes of magnitude 6.5 or larger within 150 miles of Tuesday’s quake over the past century, Earle said.
The Earth usually has about 15 to 20 earthquakes this size or larger each year, Earle said.
Initial calculations showed that more than 30 million people would have felt shaking from Tuesday’s quake.
(U.T. NEWS SERVICES; ASSOCIATE PRESS, WASHINGTON POST)
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“I’ve been doing this nearly 40 years, and I don’t know that I’ve seen the fuel as stricken and as in dire need of moisture as it is now,” San Diego Fire Chief Brian Fennessy told the City Council’s public safety committee on Monday.
Fennessy said other reasons for concern are that significant rain isn’t expected until after November, and that forecasters predict humidity will also be low this fall.
Reasons for optimism, he said, are tropical weather in recent weeks that brought moisture to communities on the coast and rain to inland areas.
In addition, lessons learned during the 2003 and 2007 wildfires have put San Diego in better position regarding staffing, equipment and efforts to limit flammable brush in wildland-urban interface zones.
Other fire officials across the region have painted a less-dire picture of the upcoming fire season than Fennessy, declining to characterize the level of risk as higher than a typical year.
But even the most optimistic officials warn that powerful Santa Ana winds could create blazes too large and powerful for firefighters to contain.
Fennessy said he expects local fire risk, which he characterized as the region’s No. 1 threat, to continue rising in coming years. “The reality is the climate has changed, the fuels are drier, the fire spread is faster and the threat to life and property has never been greater,” said Fennessy. “We prepare for earthquakes, terrorism — you name the emergency— but if you look over history the property loss, the life loss has largely occurred during wildland fire.”
The key difference this year, Fennessy said, is thick brush and grass in many areas because of the heavy rains from last November through April.
He said fires could start in such brush or grass and spread into thicker brush and decaying trees that have been dead and bone dry since a multiyear drought that ended last year.
To fight wildfires, San Diego has 82 traditional fire engines, 21 ladder trucks and 12 off-road engines tailored specifically for wildfires.
The Fire Department also has added — since the 2003 and 2007 fires — two special state fire engines, two helicopters that can drop 375 gallons of water and a “heli-tanker” funded by San Diego Gas & Electric with a 2,600-gallon capacity.
“It is a giant helicopter that drops huge amounts of water and foam,” Fennessy said.
The city also began in 2007 inspecting each of the roughly 45,000 houses inside the wildland-urban interface, to make sure excess brush and other fire hazards are limited or removed.
The program’s seven employees allow the city to visit about 13,000 homes per year, requiring between three and four years to inspect every home at least once.
Deputy Chief Doug Perry said an additional eight workers, which the department has previously requested, would allow the city to inspect every home in the interface at least once every 18 months.
San Diego may also benefit during this fall’s fire season from California’s commitment to “mutual aid,” where firefighters from other areas come to San Diego during a major fire and vice versa. But Fennessy said the program’s benefits to San Diego are limited by geography, and many departments deciding to offer up fewer firefighters to ensure that they have enough on hand if a fire breaks out locally.
“Where we are challenged is we live in the cul de sac of the state,” he said, noting that mutual aid can essentially only come to San Diego on Interstate 5 or 15 because the city is surrounded on three sides by a desert, a foreign country and the ocean.
He said San Diego has been sending fewer firefighters in recent years to fight fires in other areas, because they might suddenly be needed here if a local wildfire breaks out.
“We are very judicious about what we send out of the city,” Fennessy said.
Local residents are encouraged to create a household disaster plan that covers use of fire extinguishers, evacuation routes and related issues. Details are available at sandiego.gov/fire.
Deputy Chief Perry said it’s crucial that residents evacuate immediately when instructed by law enforcement.
“Your house is replaceable — you and your family aren’t,” he said.
(David Garrick, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The storm’s eye was expected to pass near Dominica during the night and then brush past many of the islands already wrecked by Hurricane Irma and head toward a possible direct strike on Puerto Rico on Wednesday.
Officials on nearby Guadeloupe said the French island would experience extremely heavy flooding and warned that many communities could be submerged overnight.
In Martinique, authorities ordered people to remain indoors and said they should prepare for cuts to power and water. Schools and non-essential public services were closed. With Puerto Rico appearing destined for a hit, officials in the U.S. territory warned residents of wooden or otherwise flimsy homes to find safe shelter. “You have to evacuate. Otherwise you’re going to die,” said Hector Pesquera, Puerto Rico’s public safety commissioner. “I don’t know how to make this any clearer.”
The U.S. territory imposed rationing of basic supplies including water, milk, baby formula, canned food, batteries and flashlights. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Maria had maximum sustained winds of 160 mph Monday evening.
“Maria is developing the dreaded pinhole eye,” the center warned.
That’s a sign of an extremely strong hurricane likely to get even mightier, said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian Mc-Noldy. Just like when a spinning ice skater brings in her arms and rotates faster, a smaller, tighter eye shows the same physics, he said.
Maria’s eye shrank to a narrow 10 miles across.
“You just don’t see those in weaker hurricanes,” McNoldy said.
Hurricane warnings were posted for the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St. Kitts, Nevis and Montserrat. A tropical storm warning was issued for Antigua and Barbuda, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Maarten, St. Lucia, Martinique and Anguilla.
The current forecast track would carry it about 22 miles south of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands late today and early Wednesday, territorial Gov. Kenneth Mapp said.
“We are going to have a very, very long night,” Mapp said as he urged people in the territory to finish any preparations.
St. Thomas and St. John are still recovering from a direct hit by Hurricane Irma, which did extensive damage and caused four deaths on the two islands.
Farther north, long-lived Hurricane Jose continued to head northward well away from the U.S. East Coast but causing dangerous surf and rip currents.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Nothing seems to curb America’s appetite for life near the sea, especially in the warmer climates of the South. Coastal development destroys natural barriers such as islands and wetlands, promotes erosion and flooding, and positions more buildings and people in the path of future destruction, according to researchers and policy advisers who study hurricanes.
“History gives us a lesson, but we don’t always learn from it,” said Graham Tobin, a disaster researcher at the University of South Florida in Tampa. That city took a glancing hit from Hurricane Irma — one of the most intense U.S. hurricanes in years — but suffered less flooding and damage than some other parts of the state.
In 2005, coastal communities took heed of more than 1,800 deaths and $108 billion in damages from Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst disasters in U.S. history. Images of New Orleans under water elicited solemn resolutions that such a thing should never happen again — until Superstorm Sandy inundated lower Manhattan in 2012. Last year, Hurricane Matthew spread more deaths, flooding and blackouts across Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. From 2010-2016, major hurricanes and tropical storms are blamed for more than 280 deaths and $100 billion in damages, according to data from the federal National Centers for Environmental Information.
Harvey, another historically big hurricane, flooded sections of Houston in recent weeks. Four counties around Houston, where growth has been buoyed by the oil business, took the full force of the storm. The population of those counties expanded by 12 percent from 2010 to 2016, to a total of 5.3 million people, the AP analysis shows.
During the same years, two of Florida’s fastest-growing coastline counties — retirement-friendly Lee and Manatee, both south of Tampa — welcomed 16 percent more people. That area took a second direct hit from Irma after it made first landfall in the Florida Keys, where damage was far more devastating.
Overall growth of 10 percent in Texas Gulf counties and 9 percent along Florida’s coasts during the same period was surpassed only by South Carolina. Its seaside population, led by the Myrtle Beach area of Horry County, ballooned by more than 13 percent.
Nationally, coastline counties grew an average of 5.6 percent since 2010, while inland counties gained just 4 percent. This recent trend tracks with decades of development along U.S. coasts. Between 1960 and 2008, the national coastline population rose by 84 percent, compared with 64 percent inland, according to the Census Bureau. In Horry County, where 19 percent growth has led all of South Carolina coastline counties, Irma caused only minor coastal flooding.
The county’s low property taxes are made possible by rapid development and tourism fees, allowing retirees from the North and Midwest to live more cheaply. Ironically, punishing hurricanes farther south in recent years has pushed some Northerners known locally as “half-backers” to return halfway home from Florida and to resettle in coastal South Carolina.
Add the area’s moderate weather, appealing golf courses, and long white strands — the county is home to Myrtle Beach — and maybe no one can slow development there. “I don’t see how you do it,” said Johnny Vaught, vice chairman of the county council. “The only thing you can do is modulate it, so developments are well designed.”
Strong building codes with elevation and drainage requirements, careful emergency preparations, and a good network of roads for evacuation help make the area more resilient to big storms, said the council chairman, Mark Lazarus. Such measures give people “a sense of comfort,” said Laura Crowther, CEO of the local Coastal Carolina Association of Realtors.
Risk researchers say more is needed. “We’re getting better at emergency response,” said Tobin at the University of South Florida. “We’re not so good at longterm control of urban development in hazardous areas.”
(Jeff Donn, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Keys residents were allowed to visit Monroe County for the first time since Hurricane Irma struck a week ago. Elsewhere, residents are waiting for electricity, cleaning up from floods or just trying to take a breath and remember what normal is like.
Officials are still tallying the damage, which includes everything from homes to grapefruit groves to mom-and-pop attractions like Pirate’s Town in Orlando, which was a replica of an 18th-century sailing vessel that offered dinner theater to tourists. In Miami, schools are expected to open today, even though some don’t have air conditioning. Also today, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Purdue is expected to take a helicopter tour of Florida’s hard-hit crops in the central core of the state. Nowhere, save for the Panhandle, was untouched.
Julie Botteri and her husband had been anxiously waiting to return to their home and rental property in Marathon. They arrived Saturday morning to find minimal damage other than outdoor repairs including a fence that needs to be replaced. They know they’re among the lucky ones. Friends whose home was red tagged and have no power are staying with them. The island chain is a close-knit community, especially during storm clean-up. Her husband, who manages a local dive shop, was out Sunday assessing the roof there and whether the boat still runs.
The attitude throughout the island is work, work, work.
“It’s a busy scene, there’s utility crews everywhere, everyone is working tirelessly to get everyone back with power, back with running water, clean water,” Botteri said during a phone interview Sunday.
“Everybody is just pitching in. It will be a beautiful island chain again.”
Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Brock Long says the government response to Hurricane Irma has shifted from saving lives to recovery. There were more than 40 storm-related deaths.
Long said at a briefing Friday that good progress is being made in getting people back into their homes or into temporary housing such as apartments or hotels. About 4,000 people remain in emergency shelters, and 675,000 accounts — both residential and commercial — are still without power.
Federal officials are focused on restoring electrical power and getting gasoline into areas suffering fuel shortages. Long said the lack of electricity has affected supplies because many gas stations have not been retrofitted to run their pumps on generator power.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who appeared with Long, urged people still without electricity in Florida and other affected states to be patient. He said the severe damage from Irma’s winds will require that parts of the power grid to effectively be rebuilt.
Perry said 60,000 utility workers from the U.S. and Canada are working to get power back on. But electricity wasn’t the only concern.
In Jacksonville, officials worried about pollution in runoff mingling with floodwaters. In Naples, in the southwest corner of the state, residents of one mobile home park are living in condemned homes because they have nowhere else to go. And in Pasco County, north of Tampa, thousands were urged to evacuate a week after Irma’s rains overflowed the Withlacoochee River.
(Kelly Kennedy & Tamara Lush, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The temblor broke on the east side of state Route 76, along the shore of Lake Henshaw. It appears that the quake was produced by the Elsinore fault, which regularly generates small quakes in that part of the county.
Shaking was felt in Julian, Ramona, Escondido, La Mesa, Spring Valley and Valley Center.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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City of San Diego officials said the breaks may have been related, the result of a chain reaction of failures prompted by changes in water pressure.
Water began flooding the freeway near Hotel Circle South around noon when a concrete water main that measured 8 inches in diameter burst.
At one point, water from the broken line gushed up to 25 feet in the air. Soon afterward, an 8-foot-wide hole formed on the freeway shoulder and in one of the traffic lanes, the California Highway Patrol said.
Hundreds of motorists were left stranded on the freeway, stuck between Taylor Street and Interstate 5. They remained there for more than an hour until they could be diverted off the road, CHP Officer Jim Bettencourt said.
By 1:20 p.m., officers were sending those drivers off the freeway, many of them exiting up the Taylor Street onramp. Water to the broken pipe was shut down around 2:30 p.m.
CHP officers closed ramps to eastbound I-8 in both directions from Interstate 5 as well as the on-ramps to I-8 from Rosecrans and Morena Boulevard. Hotel Circle South also was closed. That caused traffic to back up on I-5, state Route 163 and other busy roadways as rush hour approached. By 6 p.m., Caltrans crews had evaluated the lanes closest to the median on eastbound I-8 and determined that the pavement was not damaged. They reopened two of the four lanes, as well as the onramps from I-5.
City officials said there were breaks in four water mains Thursday, with the first one reported around 9:30 a.m. along Morena Boulevard near Savannah Street. Over the next few hours, two other mains on Morena also broke, including one at Frankfurt Street and one at Knoxville Street, said water spokesman Arian Collins.
“All three are part of one long pipeline,” Collins said. “The Morena Boulevard ones are definitely related. It is too much of a coincidence. We think the one at Hotel Circle may be as well. It may be that a pressure change caused a chain reaction.”
Collins explained that when crews were trying to shut off water at one of the earlier breaks, it may have caused a pressure change that triggered the main under the freeway to burst.
The Hotel Circle pipe runs underneath I-8 and connects one side of Mission Valley to the other. Several hotels were reported without water after the break, Collins said. “The pipe (under the freeway) itself may have been disintegrating already, we don’t know for sure,” he said. “This will all be part of the investigation.”
For now, city water crews will focus on working on repairing the pipes and restoring service.
“We have every available crew member working right now,” he said. “They will be working through the night. … Most likely, it will be tomorrow before all four of them are repaired.” Caltrans spokeswoman Cathryne Bruce-Johnson said state repair crews would begin their work after the city finishes repairs to its water main. Workers will be assessing the sinkhole and the condition of the freeway to determine what work is needed.
“The city crews will have to do their repairs before Caltrans maintenance crews can go in and determine the scope of the repairs that are needed for the highway, and then we can proceed with our part of the work,” Bruce-Johnson said.
She had no estimate as to when repairs would be finished or when all freeway lanes would be reopened.
(Karen Kucher, David Hernandez, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The deaths, which prompted a criminal investigation on Wednesday, were what many feared might happen after Irma knocked out power for millions of people in Florida, which is known for its extreme heat. Without the respite of air conditioning, the heat poses a particular threat to Florida’s large population of elderly residents, who are more susceptible to heat-related illnesses.
The Broward Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed the eight deaths at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills Wednesday afternoon.
Police said 115 seniors were also evacuated after sweltering for days — the center’s backup generator does not power the air conditioner, the facility’s administrator, Jorge Carballo, said through a representative Wednesday.
Nursing homes like Hollywood Hills are the places licensed to take the sickest disabled and elderly Floridians — people who can’t walk, are in the last stages of dementia or can’t breathe on their own. They are also among the most vulnerable when a hurricane knocks out power, officials said. “We met with Broward in early March,” said Florida Power & Light spokesman Ron Gould. “This facility was not listed as a top-tier critical infrastructure facility.”
The victims were identified as Bobby Owens, 84; Manuel Mario Medieta, 96; Miguel Antonio Franco, 92; Estella Hendricks, 71; Gail Nova, 71; Carolyn Eatherly, 78; Betty Hibbard, 84; and Albertina Vega, 99.
Regulators do not require nursing homes like Hollywood Hills to have generators, and there are still 150 nursing homes in the state without power.
State Sen. Gary Farmer, whose district includes the center, said the county is now checking with every nursing home and every assisted living facility every two hours to find out if they have power.
Farmer said he also wants to know who was in charge at the facility as conditions worsened. “The reports we’re getting now are there was no one from ownership or management in the facility,” he said. Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a former hospital chief executive, called the situation at the Hollywood nursing home “unfathomable.”
“I am going to aggressively demand answers on how this tragic event took place,” Scott said in a statement. “Every facility that is charged with caring for patients must take every action and precaution to keep their patients safe — especially patients that are in poor health.” Scott said he directed two state agencies — the Department of Children and Families and the Agency for Health Care Administration— to work with local authorities on the investigation, and he warned that “if they find that anyone wasn’t acting in the best interests of their patients, we will hold them accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
According to Scott’s office, the facility had reported as recently as Tuesday afternoon that it had power and access to fans and spot coolers.
The deaths came as people trying to put their lives back together in hurricane-stricken Florida and beyond confronted a multitude of new hazards in the storm’s aftermath, including tree-clearing accidents and lethal generator fumes.
Not counting the nursing home deaths, at least 17 people in Florida have died under Irma-related circumstances, and six more in South Carolina and Georgia, many of them well after the storm had passed. The death toll across the Caribbean stood at 38.
At least six people died of apparent carbon monoxide poisoning from generators in Florida. A Tampa man died after the chain saw he was using to remove trees recoiled and cut his carotid artery.
In the battered Florida Keys, meanwhile, county officials pushed back against a preliminary estimate from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that 25 percent of all homes in the Keys were destroyed and nearly all the rest were heavily damaged.
“Things look real damaged from the air, but when you clear the trees and all the debris, it’s not much damage to the houses,” said Monroe County Commissioner Heather Carruthers.
The Keys felt Irma’s full fury when the hurricane roared in on Sunday with 130 mph winds. But the extent of the damage has been an unanswered question for days because some places have been unreachable.
President Donald Trump plans to visit Naples, on Florida’s hard-it southwestern coast, today.
In the Caribbean, the last of the late-summer tourists were gone Wednesday from the U.S. Virgin Islands, ferried away from the wreckage of Irma in cruise ships bound for Puerto Rico and Miami. Most part-time residents — and anyone else who didn’t have to stay — had cleared out as well, back to homes on the mainland with water, power and Internet, and where food isn’t scarce.
Those left behind on St. Thomas and St. John were surviving on whatever they could find as they tried to repair or secure their houses with whatever materials were available. They had to dodge downed power lines that snaked through hills that were a deep green before the storm but now so stripped of leaves and trees that they are brown and desolate.
Many people were surviving on military rations handed out by Marines and the National Guard or at a local church that is serving 500 people a day.
“What I see are people coming who are hungry, who are tired, who are thirsty and need help,” said the Rev. Jeff Neevel, pastor of the St. Thomas Reformed Church in the Virgin Islands capital of Charlotte Amalie. “It’s a destruction zone. Everything is destroyed. Everything.”
His church got power Tuesday for the first time since the storm hit a week earlier, thanks to it being designated an official food distribution center. Neevel said one of the most critical needs he sees is for tarps to protect the many homes that have lost roofs.
People are also desperate for power and water so they can get back to work and return to some sense of normalcy.
“The village where I live is devastated,” said Dominique Olive from French Town on St. Thomas’ southern coast. “There are people I’ve known for many, many years. Everything they have is gone.”
Olive said there has been some “disgusting” looting and desperation but also hopeful signs. “We are helping each other. It doesn’t matter which color you are, we are all helping each other,” he said as he walked through Charlotte Amalie shortly after the curfew was lifted at noon.
(Anthony Man & Erika Pesantes, SUN SENTINEL; WASHINGTON POST; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The EERI team also says in the study to be made public today that the quake could cause an offshore canyon to collapse, producing a tsunami that would swamp the Silver Strand and send waves surging into San Diego Bay.
The tsunami would strike before the public could be widely notified of the threat, making it particularly deadly, said the study team, which is mostly composed of scientists, geologists and engineers from EERI’s San Diego chapter.
The study further says the quake could badly damage San Diego International Airport, Naval Air Station North Island, and older buildings in Balboa Park. Nearly 200,000 buildings countywide would suffer moderate to severe damage, and 33,000 families would be displaced.
The shaking would break scores of water and sewer lines, possibly causing wastewater to spill into San Diego and Mission bays.
The damage estimates are contained in an earthquake scenario study that the EERI began developing in 2015 for the benefit of the government, emergency responders and the public.
Scientists have produced similar scenarios for faults that pose a threat to such cities as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. In California, the research has led to more aggressive efforts to retrofit older buildings that are susceptible to quake damage. “There’s a low probability of something happening on the Rose Canyon fault, but the consequences of a big quake would be very high,” said Jim Gingery, a San Diego engineer who is part of the EERI study team. “The fault runs through the heart of San Diego. We’re really vulnerable to damage.”
Scientists do not fully understand the threat posed by Rose Canyon, a fault that begins beneath the seafloor off the Carlsbad-Oceanside area and stretches southeast, coming ashore in La Jolla. The fault then snakes through Old Town and downtown San Diego before it heads back into the ocean.
Researchers did not realize until 1991 that the fault is active. It’s since become clear that Rose Canyon periodically produces moderate quakes, and sometimes major ones— temblors measuring 6.9 or larger.
Some of the most compelling evidence came in June when San Diego State University published a study that says the fault generates a 6.5 to 6.8 quake roughly once every 700 years. That’s about twice as frequent as previously believed.
The fault last produced a notable quake in 1862. Scientists think the magnitude was 6.0, but no one is sure. And researchers are struggling to define the size of larger events that occurred before that date.
Figuring things out won’t be easy. Unlike the San Andreas system, most of the Rose Canyon fault lies beneath the seafloor or has been paved over. Even so, there’s growing pressure to clarify the threat.
Earlier this year, UC San Diego reported that the Rose Canyon and Newport-Inglewood faults represent a single seismic system that could produce a quake in the 7.3 to 7.4 range. Such a quake could cause devastating damage in San Diego and Orange counties.
At the moment, EERI is mainly focused on Rose Canyon and the damage it could produce in San Diego. Efforts also are being made to gauge the potential impact on Tijuana.
“There are a lot of older concrete buildings in San Diego that could have a problem in a quake,” said Anthony Court, an engineer at A.B. Court & Associates, which is helping with the EERI study.
“The buildings are heavy, brittle, and don’t resist seismic energy well.”
The study put together by EERI is the largest ever done on the Rose Canyon fault. It’s not a worst-case scenario, but it’s close, largely because it envisions that the initial shaking would produce a tsunami.
In the scenario, the quake would erupt off Carlsbad and rip to the southeast, rupturing 43 miles of the earth’s surface. Scientists estimate that the quake would produce 10 to 30 seconds of strong shaking that would be felt across much of Southern California.
“The quake (would) produce widespread liquefaction along Mission Bay, Mission Valley, the airport area, Coronado and the South Bay cities of Chula Vista, National City and Imperial Beach,” Court said. He added that, “The earthquake is expected to produce ground surface ruptures with more than 6 feet of displacement along most of the major water, sewer and gas fuel lines crossing the fault.”
Researchers say the severe shaking would cause a massive landslide at Coronado Canyon, a submarine canyon 12 miles west of San Diego. The landslide would displace seawater, producing a tsunami that would reach Silver Strand Boulevard in 10 minutes or less. The tsunami waves would enter San Diego Bay within 14 minutes, creating strong currents that could rip boats from their moorings.
The tsunami would produce waves that were 3 feet to 5 feet higher than the tide level at the time, according to Mark Legg, a Huntington Beach geophysicist who is helping with the EERI study.
The study estimates that 1,000 to 2,000 people would be killed during the event, and that the tsunami would be responsible for more than half of the deaths. The projected property damage has been placed at $30 billion to $40 billion.
By comparison, the 6.7 quake that struck Northridge in 1994 killed 57 people and caused at least $20 billion in property damage.
The Northridge quake occurred on an unknown fault, which limited the amount of preparation people made.
The EERI team is trying to avoid something similar in San Diego.
“The goal of the scenario study is to raise the awareness of the earthquake risks among the public and policy makers, and to encourage long-term planning to mitigate risks, reduce the social and economic impacts, and strengthen the region’s disaster resilience,” Court said.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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In a memo, Zinke said the Trump administration will take a new approach and work proactively to prevent fires “through aggressive and scientific fuels reduction management” to save lives, homes and wildlife habitat.
Wildfires are chewing across dried-out Western forests and grassland. To date, 47,700 wildfires have burned more than 8 million acres across the country, with much of the devastation in California, Oregon and Montana, Zinke said.
As of Tuesday, 62 large fires were burning across nine Western states, with 20 fires in Montana and 17 in Oregon, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Nearly half the large fires in the West reported zero acreage gains on Monday, helping firefighters across the West make progress toward containing them, the agency said.
The Forest Service and Interior Department have spent more than $2.1 billion so far this year fighting fires — about the same as in all of 2015, the most expensive wildfire season on record.
Those figures do not include individual state spending. In Montana, where more than 90 percent of the state is in drought, the state has spent more than $50 million on fire suppression since June, with fires likely to burn well into the fall.
Oregon has spent $28 million but expects to be reimbursed for part of that by the federal government and others.
Exacerbated by drought and thick vegetation, wildfires are “more damaging, more costly and threaten the safety and security of both the public and firefighters,” Zinke said. “I have heard this described as ‘a new normal.’ It is unacceptable that we should be satisfied with the status quo.”
Zinke’s memo did not call for new spending, but he said federal officials “must be innovative” and use all tools available to prevent and fight fires. “Where new authorities are needed,” he added, “we will work with our colleagues in Congress to craft management solutions that will benefit our public lands for generations to come.” The Interior Department oversees more than 500 million acres supervised by the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies. The Forest Service, a unit of the Agriculture Department, is the nation’s largest firefighting agency, with more than half its budget devoted to wildfires.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Western lawmakers have complained that the current funding mechanism— tied to 10-year averages for wildfire — makes it hard to budget for wildfires, even as fires burn longer and hotter each year.
“I believe that we have the right processes and the right procedures of attacking and fighting fires,” Perdue said in a speech last week. “But if you don’t have the resources and the means of dependable funding, that’s an issue.”
(Matthew Daly, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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As crews labored to repair the lone highway connecting the Keys, residents of some of the islands closest to Florida’s mainland were allowed to return and get their first look at the devastation.
“It’s going to be pretty hard for those coming home,” said Petrona Hernandez, whose concrete home on Plantation Key with 35-foot walls was unscathed, unlike others a few blocks away. “It’s going to be devastating to them.” But because of disrupted phone service and other damage, the full extent of the destruction was still a question mark, more than two days after Irma roared into the Keys with 130 mph winds.
Elsewhere in Florida, life inched closer to normal, with some flights again taking off, many curfews lifted and major theme parks reopening. Cruise ships that extended their voyages and rode out the storm at sea began redo, turning to port with thousands of passengers.
The number of people without electricity in the steamy late-summer heat dropped to 9.5 million — just under half of Florida’s population. Utility officials warned it could take 10 days or more for power to be fully restored. About 110,000 people remained in shelters across Florida. The number of deaths blamed on Irma in Florida climbed to 12, in addition to four in South Carolina and two in Georgia. At least 37 people were killed in the Caribbean.
“We’ve got a lot of work to but everybody’s going to come together,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott said. “We’re going to get this state rebuilt.”
Irma’s rainy remnants, meanwhile, pushed through Alabama and Mississippi after drenching Georgia. Flash-flood watches and warnings were issued across the Southeast.
While nearly all of Florida was engulfed by the 400-mile-wide storm, the Keys — home to about 70,000 people — appeared to be the hardest hit. Drinking water and power were cut off, all three of the islands’ hospitals were closed, and the supply of gasoline was extremely limited.
Search-and-rescue teams made their way into the more distant reaches of the Keys, and an aircraft carrier was positioned off Key West to help. Officials said it was not known how many people ignored evacuation orders and stayed behind in the Keys.
Monroe County began setting up shelters and food-and-water distribution points for Irma’s victims in the Keys.
Crews also worked to repair two washed-out, 300-foot sections of U.S. 1, the highway that runs through the Keys, and check the safety of the 42 bridges linking the islands. Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Brock Long said preliminary estimates suggested that 25 percent of the homes in the Keys were destroyed and 65 percent sustained major damage.
“Basically, every house in the Keys was impacted,” he said.
The Lower Keys — including the chain’s most distant and most populous island, Key West, with 27,000 people — were still off-limits, with a roadblock in place where the highway was washed out.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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It is not clear how far the toxic waters have spread. But Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña said over the weekend that there had been breaches at numerous waste treatment plants. The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that 40 of 1,219 such plants in the area were not working.
The results of the Times’ testing were troubling. Water flowing down Briarhills Parkway in the Houston Energy Corridor contained Escherichia coli, a measure of fecal contamination, at a level more than four times that considered safe.
In the Clayton Homes public housing development downtown, along the Buffalo Bayou, scientists found what they considered astonishingly high levels of E. coli in standing water in one family’s living room — levels 135 times those considered safe — as well as elevated levels of lead, arsenic and other heavy metals in sediment from the floodwaters in the kitchen.
“There’s pretty clearly sewage contamination, and it’s more concentrated inside the home than outside the home,” said Lauren Stadler, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University who participated in the Times’ research.
“It suggests to me that conditions inside the home are more ideal for bacteria to grow and concentrate. It’s warmer and the water has stagnated for days and days. I know some kids were playing in the floodwater outside those places. That’s concerning to me.”
The Associated Press and CNN last week reported high levels of E. coli contamination, but did not specify where the samples were taken.
The EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality have expressed concern about toxic floodwaters, but have not made public the results of sampling they may have done. Residents and medical professionals said they are seeing infections that likely resulted from exposure to the dirty floodwaters.
Dr. Beau Briese, an emergency room physician at Houston Methodist Hospital, said he had seen a doubling in the number of cases of cellulitis — reddened skin infections — since the storm. He said it was a more modest increase than he had expected, and that the infections had been successfully treated with antibiotics.
Dr. David Persse, chief medical officer of Houston, said residents caring for children, the elderly and those with immune disorders should try to keep them out of homes until they have been cleaned.
“Everybody has to consider the floodwater contaminated,” Persse said. He also warned residents to avoid letting cuts and scrapes come into contact with the floodwaters, which can cause infection.
Brad Greer, 49, developed two scabby infections on each of his legs where rain boots had irritated his skin. He took antibiotics, but on Saturday, he said, he started feeling lightheaded and weak as he and his brother-in-law tried to move possessions from Greer’s flooded home.
He went to the emergency room at Houston Methodist, where he was put on an intravenous drip and given another antibiotic prescription. Greer said swimming pools around his neighborhood are rank.
“All the pools are just giant toilets you’re unable to flush,” he said.
The lab analysis was paid for by the Times. The sampling was conducted by a team from Baylor Medical College and Rice University, working with the Houston health department’s Bureau of Pollution Control and Prevention.
(Sheila Kaplan & Jack Healy, THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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To the east, in the Leeward Islands known as the playground for the rich and famous, governments came under criticism for failing to respond quickly to the hurricane, which flattened many towns and turned lush, green hills to a brown stubble.
Residents have reported food, water and medicine shortages, as well as looting.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson defended his government’s response to what he called an “unprecedented catastrophe” and promised to increase funding for the relief effort. Britain sent a navy ship and almost 500 troops to the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos islands that were pummeled by the hurricane.
The U.S. government said it was sending a flight Monday to evacuate its citizens from St. Martin, one of the hardest-hit islands. Evacuees were warned to expect long lines and no running water at the airport.
A Royal Caribbean Cruise Line ship was expected to dock near St. Martin to help in the aftermath, and a boat was bringing a 5-ton crane capable of unloading large shipping containers of aid. A French military ship was scheduled to arrive today with materials for temporary housing. About 70 percent of the beds at the main hospital in the French portion of St. Martin were severely damaged, and more than 100 people needing urgent medical care were evacuated. Eight of the territory’s 11 pharmacies were destroyed, and Guadeloupe was sending medication.
Dutch King Willem-Alexander flew to St. Maarten, which shares the island with the French dependency of St. Martin, to see the devastation wreaked by Irma and express gratitude to relief workers. Dutch news outlets showed the king touring the badly damaged Princess Juliana International Airport, which was named for his grandmother.
French President Emmanuel Macron was scheduled to arrive today in St. Martin to bring aid and fend off criticism that he didn’t do enough to respond to the storm.
The storm also exposed simmering racial tensions on the island, with some black and mixed-race residents complaining that white tourists were given priority during the evacuation.
It was the type of anger that has long plagued France’s far-flung former colonies — especially its Caribbean territories, where most of the population identifies as black and is poorer than the white minority.
Johana Soudiagom was disturbed to find herself among a tiny handful of nonwhites evacuated by boat to nearby Guadeloupe after Irma devastated the island.
“It’s selective. Excuse me, but we saw only mainlanders,” she told Guadeloupe 1ere television, visibly shaken. “That’s a way of saying, ‘I’m sorry, only whites. There are only whites on the boat.”’ It’s common practice for tourists to be evacuated first from disaster zones for practical reasons, as they are staying in hotels and not in their homes and tend to have fewer resources such as food and vehicles. The French prime minister insisted Monday that the only people being prioritized were the most vulnerable.
In the U.S. Virgin Islands, residents of the capital of Charlotte Amalie reported long lines for dwindling supplies of basics such as water, food and gasoline. “You get nothing from the city. Nothing. No food. No water. Everything is closed,” said Rene Concepcion, who waited for up to three hours to get water.
Complicating the situation is a noon-to-6 p.m. curfew that usually gives people just enough time to get only one essential item, said Gladys Collins.
“That period of time is the time that we have to do whatever we need: water, food, gasoline,” she said. “Everywhere that you go is a long line.” Also hit hard was Cuba, where central Havana neighborhoods along the coast between the Almendares River and the harbor suffered the worst flooding. Seawater penetrated as much as one-third of a mile inland in some places. Cuban state media reported 10 deaths despite the country’s usually rigorous disaster preparations. More than 1 million were evacuated from flood-prone areas.
(Andrea Rodriguez & Desmond Boylan, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Foreign Relations Department said 95 people had died nationwide in Thursday’s quake. Then Chiapas state civil defense director Luis Manuel Garcia Moreno said the number of deaths there had risen from 15 to 16.
Oaxaca Gov. Alejandro Murat said in a statement that the toll in his state increased to 76, and officials have reported that four people were killed in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. As funerals continued for the disaster’s victims, teams of soldiers and federal police with shovels and sledgehammers fanned out to help demolish damaged buildings across the southern city of Juchitan, which was hit particularly hard.
Volunteers, many of them teens from religious or community groups in surrounding towns that came through in better shape, turned out in force to distribute water and clothing or lend a hand. At a technological school turned into a shelter, a couple hundred people have been sleeping in classrooms or on thin mattresses laid out under trees since the quake last week.
Everyone cited fear of aftershocks as their reason for staying, including those whose homes were still standing. But Juchitan awoke Monday after its first night without an aftershock, and that was enough for some to contemplate going home.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Major streets remained underwater in cities from Miami to Jacksonville, with even more roads snarled by debris. As many as 13 million Floridians remain without power, and the chief executive of a major utility, Florida Power & Light, said that it could take weeks to restore full service.
Officials were still assessing Irma’s impact in the Florida Keys, which may have borne the worst of the storm. After a survey of the islands, Gov. Rick Scott told reporters that he had seen crippling damage there, including countless overturned trailers and many boats washed ashore. Recovery in the Keys would be a “long road,” he said.
“I just hope everybody survived,” Scott said. “It’s horrible, what we saw.”
Later Monday, the Defense Department said that damage to the Keys was so extensive that it might be necessary to evacuate the 10,000 residents who rode out the storm on the islands.
The Navy dispatched the Iwo Jima, New York and the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to help with search and rescue and other relief efforts.
The Keys are linked by 42 bridges that have to be checked for safety before motorists can be allowed in, officials said.
Three other states — Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama — issued storm and tornado warnings as they prepared for their own brush with Irma, which was downgraded to a tropical storm Monday as its winds slowed. The Georgia Emergency Management Agency alerted residents to “historic levels of flooding” on the Atlantic Coast and urged people to take shelter, if they had not already evacuated. By Monday afternoon, about 1 million people in Georgia and South Carolina had lost power.
On Isle of Palms, S.C., a small barrier island and beach destination near Charleston, Irma caused serious flooding on Monday and threatened more extensive damage with the next high tide overnight. Mayor Dick Cronin said most people on the island did not evacuate, because they saw the storm moving westward. He estimated that half the island’s roads were at least partially submerged, and some were impassable.
“We’re hunkered down and riding it out at the moment,” Cronin said.
Insurance experts began offering projections Monday for the total cost of the storm’s damage, with initial estimates running as high as $50 billion.
Throughout Florida, local officials implored residents to be cautious about returning to their homes. Conjuring images of surprise floods and electrocution by downed power lines, they asked residents not to misinterpret their state’s less-severe- than-expected ordeal as a sign that life could quickly and easily snap back to normalcy.
In harder-hit areas of the state, emergency responders were still in rescue mode, fielding calls from people stranded in cars or in houses with structural damage. In Jacksonville, Mayor Lenny Curry said that neighborhoods could be flooded throughout the week. “We will be moving to a recovery stage soon,” he said, “but we are in a rescue stage at this point.”
“We need you to heed our warnings,” Curry pleaded. “This is potentially a weeklong event, with water and the tides coming and going.”
Jacksonville found itself caught between three water threats, city officials said: High tides, the storm surge driven by Irma’s winds and the torrential rains over the weekend that have swollen rivers and streams.
The surge brought some of the worst flooding ever seen in Jacksonville, with at least 46 people pulled from swamped homes.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office warned residents along the St. Johns River to “Get out NOW.”
“If you need to get out, put a white flag in front of your house. A T-shirt, anything white,” the office said on its Facebook page. “Search and rescue teams are ready to deploy.”
While much of Central Florida was spared the worst of Irma’s fury, a low-slung pocket of Orange County, which includes Orlando, woke up to furious flooding. Before dawn, National Guard troops and Orange County Fire Rescue crews worked to rescue nearly 150 people and an unknown number of family pets, in some cases from water that had reached 3 to 6 feet.
Urgent calls for help began coming just before 2 a.m. Monday as streets in the area turned to streams. Robert Jenkins and his family were rescued around 9 a.m.
“We woke up to a lake outside in my yard, and 3 feet of floodwaters inside my man-cave,” said Jenkins, a doughnut maker. “Everywhere you looked, there was water.”
On Marco Island, near Naples, where the eye of the storm came ashore Sunday afternoon, Capt. Dave Baer of the island’s police department said that rescuers had pivoted Monday to what he called “well-being checks,” as people who were off the island during the storm inquired about friends and relatives who had not been heard from or who needed assistance.
Some Florida communities that had braced for a severe pummeling escaped with extensive but temporary disruptions, as the storm tracked to the west, avoiding a direct and lingering strike on Miami and largely sparing Tampa and some other cities along the Gulf of Mexico. In Miami Beach, a city of some 90,000 that was under an evacuation order, Mayor Philip Levine said there was a pervasive sense of relief.
“We didn’t dodge a bullet, we dodged a cannon,” Levine said Monday. “And we’re very happy about that.”
Jake Love, a resident of East Naples on Florida’s west coast, returned to his mobile home on Monday to find about a foot of water in his driveway and a piece of his siding bent upward, but no more ruinous damage than that. Love said he had moved to Florida just a month ago from Minnesota with his parents, and had taken shelter Saturday night at Temple Shalom in Naples.
When the storm’s path shifted to the west, Naples was expected to be among the worst-stricken cities in Florida, but it was spared some of the more severe blows. Love said he had worried that he might not be able to bring home his father, Richard, who is disabled, but a couple that he befriended at the shelter volunteered their pickup truck to help.
“I was thinking we were going to come back, and it was going to be gone,” Love said of his new home. “This is the best I could hope for, for this category of hurricane.”
Power losses appeared to be the state’s most widespread affliction. In news conferences up and down the state, mayors and utility executives delivered the dispiriting statistics: In densely populated Pinellas County west of Tampa, about 70 percent of Duke Energy’s customers, or 395,000 people, were without electricity, with no immediate restoration in sight. Mayor Tomás Regalado of Miami said a similar fraction of his city was dark, with roads left impassable and traffic lights not working. In Orlando, about half the city’s utility customers had no service.
At the White House, Thomas Bossert, the president’s Homeland Security adviser, said repairing the electrical system would require “the largest-ever mobilization of line restoration workers in this country, period.”
Medical facilities and nursing homes reported struggles with power supplies. Though utility companies make restoring service to hospitals a priority, some were still lacking normal service Monday. As of Monday night, 36 Florida hospitals were closed, and 54 were operating on backup generators, according to data from the Florida Department of Health.
Millions of people in less mortal danger still faced the bleak prospect of doing without air-conditioning and electric appliances for days or even weeks to come. Some families took refuge in their cars to escape the heat and humidity, but their vehicular respite may prove fleeting: Many gas stations across South Florida were closed for want of power, fuel or both, leaving some motorists driving for miles in a futile search for gasoline.
Still, areas that had braced for a lethal catastrophe felt lucky to get away with just prolonged discomfort and a mess to clean up.
Six deaths in Florida have been blamed on Irma, along with three in Georgia and one in South Carolina. At least 35 people were killed in the Caribbean.
(Alexander Burns, THE NEW YORK TIMES; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The San Francisco Chronicle reports that three straight days of triple-digit temperatures in the winemaking regions around San Francisco dehydrated the wine grapes, sometimes causing some vines’ entire metabolic process to shut down. Watering the vines can help counteract the dehydration, but many winemakers try to avoid irrigation too close to harvesting for fear of diluting the berries’ flavors.
“I’ve been making wine for 34 years, and I don’t think Napa’s ever seen this excessive heat at this stage of ripeness,” said Pam Starr, co-owner of Crocker & Starr Wines in St. Helena, where temperatures exceeded 110 degrees three days in a row. “I thought we were going to make it through without a lot of repercussions, but that’s not the case.”
She said she was able to save some of her parched grapes with watering, but she estimates that some blocks on her vineyard lost as much as 50 percent of their crop due to raisining.
Although September heat waves are not uncommon for California wine regions, it was nearly unprecedented to have one this early and close to the point of ripeness for wine grape varieties like cabernet sauvignon. Winemakers said they’ll have to put grapes that taste overripe into a lower-quality, less-expensive wine blend or sort out the raisins before the berries get to the fermenter.
“Sorting and capturing delicious fruit — that’s the goal,” Starr said, “and letting the raisins go into cereal boxes.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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But Irma, which struck Florida’s coastline twice and then tore through the state with a fury, is anything but a run-of-the-mill hurricane. It was wider than the peninsula itself. There was hardly anywhere in the state to escape its blustery wrath.
Certainly not in the tiny islands of the Keys, which found themselves nearly underwater Sunday after Irma zeroed in on Cudjoe Key, Fla., just after 9 a.m.
Not in the shimmering high-rises of Miami, where hurricane winds partially knocked down two construction cranes. Not in and around the tourist havens of Orlando and Tampa, where theme parks were shuttered.
Even the most northern pockets in Tallahassee, the capital, and the small towns along the Florida-Georgia line, were cowering with the rest of the state for a thorough pummeling from tropical- force winds.
To try to escape Irma, Floridians scattered across the state on clogged interstates. They slept on cots in side high schools, on narrow beds in roadside motels, on friends’ couches and wherever they could reach on a tank of gas. The questions for everyone were whether to go, and then where to go, to best outlast the winds.
Irma’s ruinous march was, for a while, aimed directly at South Florida, prompting much of the population, with memories of Hurricane Andrew and fresh scenes from Hurricane Harvey, to flee to the north and west.
But by Saturday morning, the storm had shifted west. And suddenly, Naples, Fort Myers and Tampa, a collection of Gulf Coast cities particularly vulnerable to storm surge, found themselves in harm’s way. For days, that part of the state had been considered for some a haven; all of a sudden it was the bull’s-eye.
“I feel like the storm is chasing us,” said Antonella Giannantonio, 51, who wasted no time last week packing her family, including her octogenarian parents, into two cars, then driving from North Miami Beach to Naples, then Tampa.
Wearing a Navy cap, Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, stood before a bank of microphones as the storm crept closer, sounding the alarm in brutally direct sound bites: Evacuate. Leave now. Get out. His plain-spoken words and Irma’s promise of devastation forced one of the largest evacuations this country has seen.
On Sunday, as Irma’s winds left millions of Floridians in the dark, Scott’s message was even more sobering, as if there might be little else to say: “Pray.”
In Key West, a place so vulnerable that the authorities had said to remain was the most foolhardy of moves, Richard Peter Matson stayed anyway, and slept little as Irma neared. Even with a Category 4 storm bearing down on his home, he defended his decision to stay put, despite what he described as a challenging night. “I kept tossing, turning,” said Matson, an 81-year-old artist. “Things kept smashing and banging,” he said.
When the winds moved on, the Key West holdout stepped outside to briefly inspect his street, now strewn with debris and branches, broken shutters and windows. He saw a downed cable and remembered the voices of friends who had warned him he’d be electrocuted if he stayed behind.
If there is an opposite of a storm-chaser, it would be Brian Plate, a Key West boat captain who spent the past few days on the run. Plate, 36, took a cat and a friend and hit the road about 2:30 a.m. Thursday, headed for St. Petersburg, a seemingly safe 400 miles away. Two hours into the seven-hour ride, he was so tired that he pulled over to take a nap. He awoke the next morning to grim news: Irma, then a Category 5 storm, was now headed for St. Petersburg.
He hit the road again, and about eight hours later, pulled into a friend’s farm in Sale City, Ga., carrying 100 pounds of rice and beans, plenty of tortillas, a generator and a portable stove. He learned there that the storm is headed for Georgia, too — but he is done running.
“My nerves are completely shot,” he said, expressing worry for his friends who stayed “down there.”
After ramming Key West, Irma marched north Sunday, eventually coming ashore again at Marco Island, Fla., near Naples, around 3:30 p.m. In Miami, which escaped a direct hit, the storm nonetheless intensified enough to make a solid five-story hotel vibrate. Rain fell hard, the wind howled, and the daytime sky grew dark. In many places, water made the pavement disappear.
Behind the Element hotel by the Miami International Airport, a lake overflowed, sending water into the parking lot and up to the sandbags protecting the lobby.
The guests were a mix of residents of surrounding neighborhoods, stranded airline passengers and crew, and cruise-ship travelers who were brought back to port early and left to ride out the storm. Among the crowd was Ana Matia, who lives in the Brickell neighborhood of Miami. She felt safe in her building, she said, but worried about being cut off with her daughter, Alejandra, 5, for days on end. So they decamped to the hotel. Matia had friends who fled west, only to hear about the storm’s trajectory and flee back east again.
Four days before Irma hit, the Stovall family left their Coconut Grove cottage for St. Petersburg to escape the worst of the storm. John and Colleen Stovall; their son, Chaille; and their two cats made the 270-mile journey.
Colleen Stovall, 57, the producing artistic director of Shakespeare Miami, who also lived through Hurricane Andrew, rescued her grandmother’s silver, some jewelry and her own beloved 2nd edition of The Norton Shakespeare.
“We are feeling a little snake-bit,” Stovall, said while a crew worked furiously to cover the 80 windows of her brother-in-law’s three-story house in a historic St. Petersburg neighborhood, six blocks from the bay. “We are eating breakfast, and my brother-in-law says: ‘I have good news and bad news. The good news is, your house won’t be destroyed. The bad news is, it’s coming for us.’” Before Irma, Randy Rogers and Chuck Anderson, retirees, neighbors and fishing buddies, were accustomed to taking their identical 22foot Hurricane deck boats out on the Caloosahatchee River in Fort Myers in pursuit of sea trout, redfish and snook. As Irma’s driving rain swept across the windows of the hotel where they took refuge Sunday, the two men wondered what would be left of that life after the storm. Even if the water somehow spared their homes and boats, Rogers said, the wind probably would not.
(Audra D.S. Burch & Jess Bidgood, THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The massive storm, which had menaced Florida for days, and triggered evacuation orders covering 5.6 million people, made two official landfalls on Sunday.
The first, at about 9:10 a.m. Eastern, was over the Florida Keys, an isolated string of islands that had rarely felt more alone than on Sunday. Irma hit them as a Category 4 hurricane, with sustained winds near 130 miles per hour.
Little was heard from the islands for hours afterward because residents here had no way to connect with the outside world. Though hit with lengthy periods of hurricane conditions that led to significant flooding in well-known tourist areas, Key West was largely spared the onslaught that many feared. But the island was left with no power, water or cellphone service.
After the Keys, Irma crossed over warm waters and hit the U.S. mainland at last, about six hours later, near the beach town of Marco Island. By 5 p.m., the storm was hitting Fort Myers, moving north toward low-lying, vulnerable Tampa as a still-potent Category 2 storm.
But it was misleading to speak of this storm as “hitting” one city.
On Sunday, Irma was all of Florida’s storm. Irma was everywhere.
In the east, the hurricane’s spiraling rainbands were so wide that they caused tornadoes and flooding in Miami, on Florida’s opposite coast. In the west, winds were so powerful that they bent the Gulf of Mexico itself to Irma’s shape. In Naples, and in Tampa Bay, water actually disappeared from Gulf beaches, because Irma’s counterclockwise winds were pulling it out to sea.
But not for long.
“MOVE AWAY FROM THE WATER,” the National Hurricane Center warned, as curious onlookers climbed out onto the mysteriously dry seabed, moving so fast that it left manatees forlornly stranded. Later, after Irma’s eye had passed, the same forces drove the water back in powerful surges.
By the end of the day Sunday, Florida officials said there were shelters open in 64 of Florida’s 67 counties — 573 shelters across the state, holding 155,000 people. More than 3.4 million customers, a third of the state, were without power as of 9 p.m. Eastern.
Irma’s arrival as a Category 4 hurricane — the second-most powerful category, with sustained winds of at least 130 miles per hour — made history. Hurricane Harvey also hit Texas as a Category 4 storm, which marked the first time on record that two storms that powerful had made landfall in the U.S. in a single year. Scientists say that climate change is now making such intense hurricanes more likely, since hurricanes draw strength from warmer ocean waters.
And Irma seems likely to make more history before she is finished.
As the storm headed for Georgia, the city of Atlanta — hundreds of miles from any coast, and more than 600 miles north of the place where Irma first hit the mainland — was placed under its first-ever tropical-storm warning. The storm is forecast to arrive there today, with wind gusts predicted at up to 63 miles per hour. Late Sunday, President Donald Trump signed a disaster declaration that should speed federal funding to damaged areas in Florida. For residents of South Florida, Irma was a storm they’d spent the past week waiting for.
But it didn’t arrive in the place they’d been waiting for it.
For days, as Irma battered Caribbean islands and fattened up on warm waters, it had seemed most likely to hit Miami and then target cities along the Atlantic Coast. Evacuations were issued there, sending people streaming north and west. Some people fled across the state, to the Tampa area.
Everyone watched the storm, and waited for the turn.
At some point, meteorologists said, prevailing winds would knock into Irma like a giant pool ball, redirecting it to the north. But where, exactly, would that turn happen?
Overnight Saturday, they finally knew. “Irma has made its long-awaited turn,” reported the National Hurricane Center in its 5 a.m. advisory. Instead of aiming the storm’s eye at Miami, the turn left Irma tracking further west, on a path up the state’s Gulf Coast toward cities including Naples, Fort Myers and eventually Tampa and St. Petersburg.
By that point, for people on the state’s west side, the storm was practically on them. Winds were gusting up to 63 miles per hour in Naples by 9 a.m. The turn had put the state’s southwest corner directly in Irma’s path. “People have asked what can we do, the first thing I tell them is: pray,” Gov. Rick Scott said in a morning interview with Fox News. “Pray for everybody in Florida.”
The storm hit Cudjoe Key at about 9:10 a.m. Key West — farther south, at the end of the chain — endured hours of unrelenting rain and high winds, which seemed to peak at about 7 a.m. Though the hurricane felled many trees on the small island and caused some property damage, predictions of potentially catastrophic storm surges and flooding didn’t materialize.
Low-lying areas of Key West, especially in the tourist-heavy streets near the Key West Bight, flooded on Sunday, with deep standing water along Caroline and Front streets. Some areas had three feet of water and were impassable by car, but there were many areas of the island that saw no flooding at all. One apartment complex lost its roof.
Officials estimated that about 25 percent of Key West’s residents stayed through the storm despite evacuation orders. Several people on the island said they felt like they got lucky because the storm wasn’t as bad as expected, but they also now are in the dark: There was no power, water or cellphone service as of Sunday evening, meaning there was almost no way to communicate with the outside world.
It is unclear how long it will take for Key West to regain those essential services.
After it blasted the Keys, the storm moved into open water again, headed for Florida’s mainland.
Its next target was Marco Island and Naples. Irma spent all morning and part of the afternoon getting there. Across the state, the outer bands of the storm were hitting downtown Miami, breaking signs and sending debris soaring in the wind. Two construction cranes collapsed, and their broken pieces dangled dangerously above the street. Major streets flooded as the storm pushed ocean water up and out of the Miami River that runs through downtown.
It rained everywhere; some areas of the state got between 10 and 14 inches of it.
Back in the hurricane’s direct path, Irma was getting closer. At 3 p.m. in Naples, winds were gusting to 82 miles per hour. The water levels dropped four feet below normal. Beaches went dry. The water was out there someplace. Then: landfall again.
By 4:35 p.m. in Naples, the gusts were at 142 miles per hour. And the water was rising again: one gauge showed a 5-foot rise in 40 minutes. In Estero, just up the coast from Naples, palm trees began to blow sideways.
By 6 p.m., the storm had weakened to a Category 2 hurricane, with sustained winds of 110 miles per hour. The storm itself was moving at an excruciating 14 miles per hour, up the coast toward Tampa and St. Petersburg — a metro area of 3 million people. The Tampa area is particularly vulnerable to hurricanes because of its flat geography and sea-level rise. Tampa spent all day on Sunday waiting, unsure of what Irma would be when it arrived.
“We’ve asked people to get to know their neighbors, if you don’t already,” said Jason Penny, a spokesman for Tampa Fire Rescue. “We’re trying to put out a message of community, we’re all in this together. We could use help from about anyone right now.”
The Tampa Bay region has dodged a direct hurricane hit for nearly a century, but Penny said “reality has settled in.”
“Now we realize that it’s our turn,” he said.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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On St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, “people there are roaming like zombies,” said Stacey Alvarado, a bar owner who managed to leave for the mainland. Her husband, who is still there, told her Sunday that residents and tourists are in shock. “They don’t know what to do. The island was wiped out. It’s like the walking dead down there.” Other islanders sent social media messages pleading for help, decrying looting and a series of armed burglaries.
“We need help,” wrote St. John blogger Jenn Manes. “We need the United States government to step up. We need military. We need security.”
In Cuba, where the government said it had evacuated 1 million residents, Hurricane Irma’s driving winds and pelting rains sent roofs flying, knocked over trees, wrecked buildings and caused large-scale flooding along the northern coast. Officials in Havana warned of flooding that would last through today. In the city of Santa Clara, the Associated Press reported that 39 buildings had collapsed.
As streets turned into rivers, authorities took to inflatable rafts to access coastal neighborhoods. Some Cubans had even sought shelter in caves. The brutal storm struck Cuba along a coast studded with resorts that are among the pillars of the island’s economy. Authorities warned of heavy damage from the storm, which has killed at least 25 people across the Caribbean.
“The hardest-hit provinces are Camaguey, Villa Clara, Sancti Spiritus and to some extent Matanzas, the resort area of Varadero, which was directly in the path of the hurricane and where all the tourists were evacuated,” Richard Paterson, the CARE organization’s representative in Cuba, said by phone from Havana.
“Power has been turned off throughout the city, in fact, throughout the country,” he said. “The electricity infrastructure received extensive serious damage.”
European governments came under fire as critics accused them of being slow to respond to crises in their Caribbean territories, where massive damage left thousands homeless as looting broke out in the streets.
On Sunday, the French government announced that President Emmanuel Macron would travel to St. Martin, an island split between France and the Netherlands, on Tuesday. The French have already deployed more than 1,000 personnel to the Caribbean region in an aid-and- relief effort.
Irma passed through the island a Category 5 storm.
A truck drove through damaged neighborhoods distributing water, and authorities expected to set up distribution points today. Plans to do so were initially delayed by Hurricane Jose, which roared toward the region as a Category 4 storm Saturday but turned north without doing much further harm.
“Everything has been destroyed where I work. There’s nothing there,” Manon Brunet-Vita said as she walked through the streets of Grand Case. “When I got to this neighborhood, I cried.”
More than 1,000 tons of water and 85 tons of food have been shipped to the French Caribbean territories of St. Martin and St. Barts, and additional deliveries are expected, according to government officials in the nearby island of Guadeloupe.
Authorities announced the reopening of St. Martin’s Marigot port and said a boat was expected to dock today with a 5-ton crane capable of unloading large containers of aid.
The evacuation of U.S. citizens from the Dutch side resumed Sunday, according to State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert. Priority is being given to those needing urgent medical care, she said. Residents in the devastated British Virgin Islands used Facebook in frantic calls for help.
One user, Lanein Blanchette, echoed many others still looking for word from relatives and friends whom they had not heard from since Irma began belting the region last week.
“There is absolutely no news about East End on any of these pages,” she wrote. “I’ve posted over 10 times asking for assistance as to whether anyone has seen my uncle Kingston ‘Iman’ Eddy, and not one person has replied. I am lost for words at this point. I honestly don’t know what else to do.”
At the same time, dramatic tales of escape began to emerge. Lauren Boquette, a 48year-old restaurant manager on St. John, said his family had barricaded themselves in the bathroom of their home. When they emerged, he said, they saw a scene of total destruction.
“It was beyond rough times, it was end-of-the-world times. Everything normal to us has been destroyed,” he said.
Authorities in the devastated island nation of Antigua and Barbuda faced a historic effort ahead to rebuild. The island of Barbuda suffered damage to almost 100 percent of its structures. “In Barbuda, where they evacuated everybody, now they have to figure out where to start, how to construct basic need services, how to figure out what to do with families that lost their homes,” said Jan Gelfland of the International Federation of the Red Cross.
(Anthony Faiola, THE WASHINGTON POST; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Days later, his house is uninhabitable, at least 10 people have died on the island, water and power have been knocked out, and half of the homes have lost their roofs.
But instead of thinking about the long and painful recovery to come, De Windt was still in his office Friday, bracing for yet another catastrophe: the next major hurricane was already on its way. “We are surviving, but we aren’t recovering by any means,” said De Windt, the publisher of The Daily Herald, a newspaper on St. Martin. “ We are just waiting for Jose.”
At least 20 people died when Hurricane Irma, one of the most powerful storms to ever lash the Atlantic, battered the Caribbean this week, obliterating houses and leaving thousands of people homeless with its terrifying winds.
But the region had barely taken stock of its losses before another huge storm threatened to slam into the very islands that had been hit the hardest. On Friday, Hurricane Jose, a powerful storm barreling across the Atlantic in Irma’s wake, was upgraded to a Category 4, bringing with it winds up to 150 mph.
On Barbuda, along the easternmost edge of the Caribbean, authorities were evacuating the entire population of 1,600 people to the sister island of Antigua before the next hurricane struck. Irma had already“completely destroyed” the majority of homes and businesses on the island, the prime minister’s office said, leaving residents with nothing to protect them from the onslaught to come.
In Anguilla, where as much as 90 percent of the homes were damaged this week by Irma, local authorities wondered how they could withstand another devastating storm. The ports and the airport remained closed because of damage, they said, so evacuations were impossible.
“Everything is destroyed, every building has received damage; it’s been catastrophic,” Darrell Gumbs, a constable in the Royal Anguilla Police Force, describing the damage from Irma as “total devastation.”
Back-to-back hurricanes in the Caribbean are not uncommon at this time of year, according the National Hurricane Center. But the strength of Hurricane Irma, which pelted the region with 185 mph winds, was unlike anything these particular islands have seen for decades, many residents said.
“We get hurricanes here a lot, so basically we are usually prepared for what to expect,” De Windt said. But this time was different, he said: “The regular measures for hurricanes did not suffice at all.”
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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By the time the earthquake’s tremors finally faded, at least 36 people in the city, Juchitán de Zaragoza, were dead.
“It’s a truly critical situation,” Óscar Cruz López, the city’s municipal secretary, said Friday. “The city,” he said, and then paused. “It’s as if it had been bombed.”
Overall, the earthquake — the most powerful to hit the country in a century — killed at least 60 people in Mexico, all of them in the southern part of the country that was closer to the quake’s epicenter off the Pacific Coast.
The earthquake, which had a magnitude of 8.1 and struck shortly before midnight Thursday, was felt by tens of millions of people in Mexico and in Guatemala, where at least one person died as well.
In Mexico City, the capital, which still bears the physical and psychological scars of a devastating earthquake in 1985 that killed as many as 10,000 people, alarms sounding over loudspeakers spurred residents to flee into the streets in their pajamas.
The city seemed to convulse in terrifying waves and made street lamps and the Angel of Independence monument, the capital’s signature landmark, sway like a metronome’s pendulum. But this time, the megalopolis emerged largely unscathed, with minor structural damage and only two of its nearly 9 million people reporting injuries, neither serious, officials said.
In the southern part of the country, however, at least 12 people died in Chiapas state and four in neighboring Tabasco, including two children: one when a wall collapsed and the other after a respirator lost power in a hospital, officials said.
Chiapas officials said that more than 400 houses had been destroyed and about 1,700 others were damaged.
Rodrigo Soberanes, who lives near San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, said his house “moved like chewing gum” during the quake.
In Oaxaca state, at least 45 people were killed, including the 36 in Juchitán, a provincial city of 100,000 that was devastated. “A total disaster,” Mayor Gloria Sánchez L&oactue;pez declared in a telephone interview in which she appealed for help. “Don’t leave us alone.”
President Enrique Peña Nieto flew to the region Friday afternoon to assess the damage and meet with officials. And several leaders in Latin America and elsewhere offered assistance to Mexico, including the presidents of Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Spain. Mexico is also facing the additional threat of Hurricane Katia, which made landfall north of Tecolutla in Veracruz state late Friday amid intense rains.
“You can count on us,” President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia said on Twitter.
Residents spent the morning using backhoes and their bare hands to dig through the wreckage of collapsed buildings and pull the injured, and the dead, from the rubble.
By early afternoon, the efforts had mostly turned from rescues to a cleanup operation, though the municipal secretary, Cruz, said workers were still trying to claw through the mounds of debris left by the collapse of the City Hall to reach one last victim. Nobody knew if the person was still alive.
“It is a nightmare we weren’t prepared for,” Pamela Teran, a member of the City Council, said in an interview with a local radio station. She estimated that 20 percent to 30 percent of the houses in the city were destroyed.
“A lot of people have lost everything, and it just breaks your heart,” she added, bursting into tears.
With the hospital — the region’s main medical center— destroyed, officials converted a grade school into a makeshift clinic and moved the hospital’s patients and the hundreds of injured survivors there.
Local officials appealed to state and federal governments for aid to help with the recovery. “It’s impossible to resolve this catastrophe, to respond to something of this magnitude, by ourselves,” Cruz said.
Aftershocks continued through the day Friday, unnerving the city’s residents, many of whom spent much of the day out in the street rather than return to their homes, said Juan Antonio García, the director of the Juchitán news website Cortamor taja.
Reports of damage elsewhere in the region continued to emerge throughout the afternoon. In Union Hidalgo, just to the east of Juchitán, the mayor reported that about 500 houses had been destroyed.
Schools in at least 10 Mexican states and in Mexico City were closed Friday as the president ordered an assessment of the damage nationwide.
“We are assessing the damage, which will probably take hours, if not days,” Peña Nieto said in televised comments to the nation two hours after the quake. Throughout the day Mexicans lined up at emergency collections centers around the country to donate food, water and other supplies for delivery to the earthquake victims.
Mexico is situated near the colliding boundaries of several portions of the Earth’s crust. The quake Thursday was more powerful than the one in 1985 that flattened or seriously damaged thousands of buildings in Mexico City. While the quake Thursday struck nearly 450 miles from the capital and off the coast of Chiapas state, the one in 1985 was much closer to the capital proved much more deadly.
After the 1985 disaster, construction codes were reviewed and stiffened. Today, Mexico’s construction laws are considered as strict as those in the United States or Japan.
In 1985, there was one earthquake sensor in Mexico; today there are about 100 solar- powered sensors throughout the country. When a quake is detected, these sensors send automatic alerts to a network of 8,000 alarms, intended to provide about a minute of warning before the shock waves reach Mexico City.
Since the early 1990s, there have been various alarm systems in use in Mexico, including radio announcements, and by 2014 Mexico City had installed its current loudspeaker system, said Juan Manuel Espinosa, director of the Center of Instrumentation and Seismic Registry, a nonprofit civil society group.
While preparations have improved, Espinosa said that becoming complacent is dangerous and that the government should continue to expand the alert network.
“I don’t want to give the impression that we are prepared and doing enough for a disaster. There are building standards that must be observed. There are many factors,” he said. “If this earthquake had been half the distance between Chiapas and Mexico City, the scenario that we would be living through now would be totally different.”
Though many Mexicans have grown accustomed to earthquakes, taking them as an immutable fact of life, Thursday’s quake left a lasting impression on residents of the capital for both its force and duration.
“The scariest part of it all is that if you are an adult, and you’ve lived in this city your adult life, you remember 1985 very vividly,” said Alberto Briseño, a 58-year-old bar manager. “This felt as strong and as bad.” “Now we will do what us Mexicans do so well: take the bitter taste of this night and move on,” he added.
Mexico’s government issued a tsunami warning off the coast of Oaxaca and Chiapas after Thursday’s quake, but neither state appeared to have been adversely affected by waves. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the largest wave recorded on Mexico’s Pacific Coast measured less than 4 feet.
In Guatemala, the military was out Friday morning assessing the damage, found mainly in the western part of the country.
In Huehuetenango, bricks and glass were strewn on the ground as walls in the city collapsed. Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second-largest city, which was beginning to recover from a tremor in June, suffered more damage to its historic center.
In Veracruz, tourists abandoned coastal hotels as winds and rains picked up ahead of Hurricane Katia’s expected landfall. Workers set up emergency shelters and cleared storm drains, and forecasters warned that the storm threatened to bring torrential rainfall, high winds and a dangerous storm surge off the Gulf of Mexico.
Katia had maximum sustained winds of 105 mph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. “The arrival of #Katia may be particularly dangerous for slopes affected by the earthquake. Avoid these areas,” Peña Nieto tweeted.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Mexican authorities have called it the largest earthquake in the country in 100 years. Data from the United States Geological Survey shows more than 40 earthquakes in Mexico or just offshore with a magnitude of more than 7 in the past century, but just four with a magnitude above 8. The most notorious took place in 1985, when an 8 magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of Michoacan state. That earthquake ended up causing chaos in Mexico City, the country’s highly populated capital, with a death toll ranging from 5,000 to 40,000 and thousands of buildings severely damaged.
That earthquake sparked major political change in the country. Many were incensed by the lackluster response of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to the disaster, and real political opposition formed to challenge Mexico’s entrenched one-party system, ultimately leading to the PRI’s ouster in 2000.
Going back further, there have been earthquakes of even larger magnitude: One quake that took place in 1787 had an estimated magnitude of 8.6 and caused a tsunami along 310 miles of the coast that swamped areas as far as 3.7 miles inland, though it produced few deaths in an area that was then sparsely populated.
As a country, Mexico is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes: The country is in a region where a number of tectonic plates butt up against each other, with huge amounts of energy waiting to be unleashed. The epicenter of Thursday’s quake was near where two plates— the Cocos and the North American — collide. USGS notes that within 155 miles of this area, there have been eight other earthquakes with a magnitude higher than 7.
Mexico City itself is also unusually vulnerable to earthquakes. A 2008 blog post by Horst Rademacher of Berkeley’s Seismology Lab explains how the problem goes back to the Aztecs, who founded their capital, Tenochtitlan, on an artificial island in the middle of a shallow lake in the region’s central plateau. The lake was later drained and the city became Mexico City, but the core vulnerability of the site to earthquakes remained.
“A lake bed in a basin ... is one of the worst grounds for constructing a building,” Rademacher wrote. “While hard rock simply shakes with the same frequency and amplitude as seismic waves, the unconsolidated sediments of an ancient lake bed react differently: They can amplify the shaking and even worse, they can lose their consistency and become a liquid.”
The 1985 quake made obvious the risks posed by this factor, as many buildings simply collapsed as the ground shifted beneath it— despite the fact that the earthquake was centered more than 200 miles away.
Thursday night’s quake doesn’t appear to have caused considerable damage in Mexico City, though it was felt there and caused some electricity failures and other damage. The capital has implemented a variety of measures since the 1985 quake to try to limit potential damage, including a seismic sensor system, warning sirens and significant changes to building codes to strengthen new structures.
(Adam Taylor, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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“It’s holding down our afternoon high temperatures by nearly 10 degrees,” said Bryan Henry, assistant manager of prediction services for the National Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates wildfire-fighting.
The lower temperatures keep humidity higher, Henry said. The vegetation absorbs the moisture — grasses more quickly than trees — and makes it less flammable.
Moist air also helps firefighters because it’s more stable than dry air, Henry said. Moist air tends to rise more slowly than dry air does when it warms up.
“It’s a shame when it gets where the smoke is literally so bad it actually helps you,” he said.
Any help is welcome amid a fire season on track to be at least the third-worst in a decade. Crews were trying to control 82 major fires in 10 Western states on Friday, up from 76 fires in nine states the day before, the interagency fire center said.
The fires were burning on about 2,300 square miles. Montana had 26 large fires, Oregon 18 and California 14.
Wildfire smoke has clouded the region since last weekend, when a high-pressure system moved in, said Bill Wojcik, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Boise, Idaho.
The high-pressure system held the smoke against the ground and spun it slowly in a clockwise direction, Wojcik said. No rain fell to cleanse the air, and no winds blew to move the smoke out.
“It didn’t really have a chance to move anywhere, just circulate around that big high,” Wojcik said.
In the daytime, the smoke reflected some solar radiation back into the atmosphere, the same way clouds do, and that kept temperatures down, Wojcik said. But unlike clouds, smoke does not trap heat against the ground at night, instead letting it radiate away.
The smoke is starting to clear as the high pressure moves east and a low-pressure system moves in from the west, Wojcik said. Winds from the south are beginning to flush the smoke out of Idaho and eastern Oregon with cleaner air, he said.
The health effects are still being added up, and state and local officials say they have mostly anecdotal reports so far.
“People are getting sick. That’s the whole long and short of it,” said Sarah Coefield, an air quality specialist at the Missoula City-County Health Department in western Montana.
Wildfire smoke is especially dangerous to people with chronic heart and lung problems, said Julie Fox, an environmental epidemiologist with the Washington State Department of Health.
(Dan Elliott, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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With the clock ticking, some counties issued curfews for today, and more shelters were opened to absorb the crush of people seeking cover from one of the most powerful hurricanes to hit Florida.
Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, described Hurricane Irma as “a threat that is going to devastate the United States, either Florida or some of the southeastern states.”
The storm has already flattened a chain of Caribbean islands, including Anguilla, Barbuda and the U.S. Virgin Islands, killing at least 20 people.
Eric Silagy, chief executive of Florida Power and Light Co., said in a news conference that power losses were expected to affect 4.1 million customers, or 9 million people in the state. He said that every part of Florida would be affected and that people could lose power for an extended period, possibly weeks. The number of customers affected in the state could be the largest ever.
Airports and airlines raced to get flights off the ground Friday. Airport parking garages in Miami, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale were full, and officials warned people of long lines and disrupted flights. At least 875 arriving and departing flights had been canceled by midday at those airports.
There was one bit of good news: Gas prices have stabilized, mainly because Florida declared a state of emergency, which restricted abusive price increases. Georgia, too, declared a state of emergency. Hurricane Irma stands apart in one way from other storms, including Hurricane Andrew, the Category 5 storm that in 1992 devastated south Miami-Dade County: It is huge. Florida, surrounded by water on three sides, is only about 140 miles wide. The storm, now a Category 5, stretches over 300 miles. Every part of the state is expected to feel its wrath.
And for all the warnings to evacuate, the time to flee was quickly narrowing.
“It’s limited gas, and overcrowded exit paths,” said Pete DiMaria, fire chief of Naples. “The decision to evacuate and move upstate had to be done a few days ago.”
Packing 160-mph winds, the storm is strong enough to tear roofs off buildings and snap trees and power poles. The storm might drop as much as 20 inches of rain in some areas. But it is the expected storm surge that most frightens officials across the state. Several counties expanded their evacuation orders to cover more ground, anticipating surges in some places as high as 12 feet if the storm hits at high tide.
Mayor Philip Levine of Miami Beach made one request to his city’s residents and visitors: “I beg them please leave Miami Beach; you don’t want to be here.”
“This hurricane is a nuclear hurricane,” he added. “It has so much power.”
In the eastern Caribbean, residents in Barbuda and St. Martin, islands that suffered extensive damage from Irma, wearily prepared for Hurricane Jose, a Category 4 storm that could hit those islands within the next two days.
But while those islands braced for more destruction, Jose, for now, does not pose much of a threat to the U.S. mainland.
Many gas stations around Miami have been out of fuel for days, complicating evacuation plans, and, in a city known for flash, bottled water has become the hottest commodity. Amid mounting alarm, Miami took on the feel of a ghost town. Roads and highways were largely clear, at least in South Florida, where most people were beginning to hunker down. Traffic jams had shifted farther north. Restaurants and nightclubs were closed. While the sun was still shining, the beaches were empty. The thump of Latin music on South Beach was replaced with the whir of mechanical saws as workers scrambled to cover windows with plywood.
Defiant messages were scrawled on many storefronts, addressing the storm personally. “You Don’t Scare Us,” wrote a group of students from the University of Miami.
But all evidence suggested otherwise. Even for the holdouts who refused to leave low-lying and coastal areas from Key West to North Florida, there was dread — both for the storm and for what are likely to be painful times afterward, when many expect to have no power, water or food for days.
“It’s gonna be worse than Andrew, and Andrew was the worst one ever to hit Florida,” said Rob Davis, owner of two small hotels just off Ocean Drive who said he was not leaving.
The evacuation was called the largest in Florida history, but many, after agonizing deliberations, decided to stay put.
Just off Old Cutler Road in southwest Miami, Alberto Valdes estimated that he was half a block from the shore of Biscayne Bay. But despite pleas from his neighbors — including a broadcast reporter who had covered the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew — nothing could convince him to abandon his one-story home.
“How can you abandon your stuff?” the 63-year-old New Jersey native asked, gesturing to the home he has owned for 20 years. “You work so hard to have it, and then walk away? It’s not an easy decision.”
He ticked off the preparations: the door already barricaded behind aluminum shutters, a generator, food, water, the furniture brought inside and tied down. If the storm surge gets too close, Valdes said, he would leave in his red truck or on an inflatable raft. “I don’t foresee anything happening,” Valdes said. But, he acknowledged, “it’s a bad one.”
Others in battle-tested Florida were taking no chances. Some had flown out days ago, or braved countless hours of traffic to go north, anywhere north.
The traffic of Irma escapees stretched up to South Carolina, with minivans and pickup trucks packed with people, pets, bedding and even furniture crawling north up I-95. “We left at 4 in the morning; as far as we’ve gone, it’s been bumper to bumper,” said Linda Caldwell as she idled at a gas station in Ridgeland, S.C. The 259-mile journey to that point from her home in Daytona Beach, she said, had taken 12 hours. Her destination was Roanoke, Va.
On Miami Beach, as with every other evacuation zone, mandatory is not really mandatory. People are not forced to leave, if they do not want to go.
“We let them know there will be no police or fire responding to you when the winds rise above 39 miles per hour,” said Elpido Garcia, a Miami Beach police officer.
The combination of Florida’s geography, the pattern of urban settlement in narrow bands along the coasts and the projected northerly path of the hurricane presents a particularly ominous picture. “This is a large storm coming from the south,” said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the National Hurricane Center. “That’s the worst-case scenario, because it takes in the entire Gold Coast population, and you have the greatest impact from storm surge from that direction.”
(Lizette Alvarez & Marc Santora, THE NEW YORK TIMES; THE WASHINGTON POST)
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The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 8.0 and its epicenter was 102 miles west of Tapachula in southern Chiapas state not far from Guatemala. It had a depth of 22 miles. The U.S. Tsunami Warning System said widespread hazardous tsunamis were possible on the Pacific coasts of several Central American countries. It said waves were possible within three hours after the quake for Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras and Ecuador. There was no tsunami threat for the U.S. West Coast.
The quake was so powerful that frightened residents in Mexico’s distant capital city fled apartment buildings, often in their pajamas, and gathered in groups in the street. Sections of Mexico City were without electricity.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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But if a similar-sized hurricane were to strike Florida today in the same spot, it would be far more catastrophic — causing up to $100 billion in damage, according to a recent analysis by Swiss Re, the reinsurance firm. That is even after accounting for the fact that South Florida has strengthened its building codes since Andrew. The reason is simple: Central and South Florida have grown at a breathtaking pace since 1990, adding more than 6 million people. Glittering high-rises and condominiums keep sprouting up along Miami Beach and other coastal areas. A lot more valuable property now sits in harm’s way.
With Hurricane Irma — currently a Category 5 storm and one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic — set to pummel Florida this weekend, the state is confronting the fact that rapid development has made its coastline far more vulnerable to hurricane damage than it used to be. “Florida has exploded in the last 40 years,” said Megan Linkin, a natural hazards expert at Swiss Re. “If you look at images of Miami Beach from 1926” — when the Great Miami Hurricane, a Category 4 storm, devastated the city with a direct hit — “it’s almost unrecognizable today.”
A similar dynamic is playing out across the United States, from Florida to Louisiana to Texas. In 2016, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that hurricanes currently cause about $28 billion, on average, in annual damage nationwide. But those costs are projected to rise 40 percent between now and 2075, after adjusting for inflation.
Nearly half of that projected increase, the CBO said, is because global warming and sea-level rise are expected to make hurricanes and storm surges more severe, though the exact effects are still a source of debate among scientists.
But half of the expected rise in hurricane costs is the result of expected increases in coastal development. Today, according to the CBO, roughly 1.2 million Americans live in coastal areas at risk of “substantial damage” from hurricanes — defined as damage of at least 5 percent of average income. By 2075, that number is forecast to rise to 10 million.
Population growth can also increase hurricane risks by adding newcomers who are unfamiliar with big storms or by clogging roads during evacuations, experts said.
In 1960, Hurricane Donna raged through the Florida Keys as a Category 4 storm before turning northwest to hit Naples and Fort Myers, causing roughly $7.4 billion in damage in today’s dollars. According to a model developed by Roger Pielke and Christopher Landsea, a similar storm today would cause $46 billion in damage, after accounting for population growth, and increased property values.
Swiss Re estimates that a storm like the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 would inflict more than $200 billion in damage today if it struck Miami and Miami Beach directly — exceeding the $160 billion in damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, adjusted for inflation. (Officials are still calculating the cost of Hurricane Harvey to Texas, but estimates today range as high as $180 billion.) Nearly $80 billion of those potential losses in Florida would not be covered by insurance, the Swiss Re report said, which would “undoubtedly” affect South Florida’s economic growth “over several years, hindering its capability to recover.”
Those stark numbers, Pielke said, suggest that even before considering the effects of climate change, “more $100 billion disasters are probably in our future — and we need to think harder about how to prepare for them.”
In response, some cities like Miami have been taking precautions against future storms, such as stricter building codes — though so far that has not included a slowdown in development.
(Brad Plumer, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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About 95 percent of the tiny island of Barbuda sustained damage, according to Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda. Ghastly photos and videos from St. Martin and St. Barthelemy, also known as St. Barts, showed buildings in ruin and cars and trucks almost submerged in the storm surge.
Irma’s death toll reached 10, a figure expected to rise as its punishing winds hit Hispaniola and moved closer to a potentially disastrous assault on Cuba. Islands ripped apart by its Category 5-force winds were left with little time to regroup. The National Hurricane Center warned that Jose was churning toward the Leeward Islands, expected to threaten them as a major hurricane by Saturday.
When Craig Ryan, a 29year-old tourism entrepreneur who lives in Antigua, reached Barbuda by boat Thursday morning, the scene of residents flocking onto the beach seeking help struck him as a “Caribbean version of Dunkirk,” the famous evacuation of Allied troops from a French coastal city during World War II.
“It’s such a level of devastation that you can’t even see structures standing,” he said in a telephone interview.
In Florida, the race to flee Irma became a marathon nightmare as more than a half-million people were ordered to leave. Hurricanes have teased South Florida many times, but officials here at the National Hurricane Center said this is shaping up as a once-in-a-generation storm. Forecasters adjusted their advisory late Thursday, projecting Irma to hit the tip of the peninsula, slamming the population centers of South Florida before grinding northward.
“This storm has the potential to catastrophically devastate our state,” Gov. Rick Scott said in a late-day news briefing. Earlier, he implored people to evacuate. “If you live in any evacuation zones and you’re still at home, leave.”
The state’s highways were jammed, gas was scarce, airports were deluged and mandatory evacuations began to roll out as the first official hurricane watches were issued for the region. Irma, which has been ravaging the Caribbean islands as it sweeps across the Atlantic, is expected to hit the Florida peninsula with massive storm surges and crippling winds that could affect nearly every metropolitan area in South Florida.
The hurricane center said Thursday afternoon that should Irma’s eye move through the center of the state, extreme winds and heavy rains could strafe an area that has millions of residents, from Miami in the east to Naples on the Gulf Coast. Because the eastern side of the storm is the most powerful, numerous cities along the east coast could face extreme conditions.
Miami-Dade County ordered some mandatory evacuations, including for Key Biscayne and Miami Beach, as well as for areas in the southern half of the county that are not protected by barrier islands.
“EVACUATE Miami Beach!” Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine tweeted, later noting in a news release that once winds top 40 mph, first responders will no longer be dispatched on rescue missions here.
Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief said evacuations in coastal areas were ordered Thursday. Lee County, on the Gulf Coast, announced Thursday afternoon that all the barrier islands — Sanibel, Captiva, Pine Island, Bonita Beach and Fort Myers Beach — will be under mandatory evacuation orders today. Scott on Thursday night ordered that all state offices, public schools, state colleges and state universities be shut down from today through Monday “to ensure we have every space available for sheltering and staging.”
Scott has declared a statewide emergency and warned that in addition to potentially forcing large-scale evacuations, Irma could batter areas that last year were flooded by Hurricane Matthew. States of emergency also were declared in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. On Thursday, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal expanded his declaration from six coastal counties to 30 total counties, issuing a mandatory evacuation for some areas.
Residents in Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C., began to barricade their homes and flee the coast Thursday. Gov. Henry Mc-Master warned South Carolinians that a mandatory evacuation of the state’s coastline will probably come Saturday morning at 10 a.m. Such an evacuation would come with a reversal of all eastbound lanes of four major roadways, including Interstate 26, which would be converted for a westbound escape from Charleston to Columbia.
Irma on Thursday remained a Category 5 storm, with 175 mile-per-hour sustained maximum winds, and it is a big storm, with hurricane-force winds extending 60 miles from its center. If the eye does not make landfall, many of the people who haven’t evacuated from South Florida could find themselves in hurricane conditions anyway, forecasters
say.
Residents are closely watching the “the spaghetti” — the dozens of computer models showing possible storm tracks, which vary widely. Computer models say that by Sunday, Irma will make a hard right turn, heading due north into Florida.
The timing of that turn will make all the difference.
If sooner, the storm’s center could stay offshore, between Miami and the Bahamas. If later, it could blow through the Florida Keys and come up the southwest side of Florida. Or it could find a middle path straight up through the Everglades and the central spine of the peninsula.
“The wild card here is the turn. Anytime a hurricane makes a turn it introduces uncertainty,” Mark De-Maria, acting deputy director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, told The Washington Post. He noted that the computer models have fluctuated modestly, with adjustments in the consensus track of only 50 miles or so every day. “But 50 miles onshore versus right of the coast makes a huge difference in impact,” he said.
The combination of Florida’s geography, the pattern of urban settlement in narrow bands along the coasts and the projected northerly path of the hurricane presents a particularly ominous picture. “This is a large storm coming from the south,” said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the hurricane center. “That’s the worst-case scenario because it takes in the entire Gold Coast population and you have the greatest impact from storm surge from that direction.” Irma’s sustained winds were the strongest recorded for an Atlantic hurricane making landfall, tied with the 1935 Florida Keys hurricane.
“Look at the size of this storm,” Gov. Scott said. “It’s powerful and deadly.”
(Joel Achenbach & Patricia Sullivan, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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As flames erupted this week in the Columbia Gorge, horrified Oregon residents mourned the devastation of beloved day trails, swimming holes and dozens of crystalline waterfalls that are an easy day trip from Portland.
The Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area attracts more than 3 million tourists a year and holds North America’s largest concentration of waterfalls — including 77 named cascades. It is also home to 800 wildflower species, including 16 found nowhere else in the world.
The gorge’s winding trails are lush with ferns, hidden pocket waterfalls and stunning vistas of the mighty Columbia River. They are most cherished by Oregonians, who feel a deep connection to an area that’s often referred to as Oregon’s “crown jewel.”
As the flames spread through the gorge’s forests at an alarming rate, social media lit up with posts recalling favorite hikes, memories of gorge weddings and worries about what will remain when the smoke clears.
“Everybody has this visceral attachment to what they care about there, and that all feels like it’s slipping through our fingers,” said Kevin Gorman, executive director of Friends of the Columbia Gorge. “We literally are waiting until the smoke clears to go out and assess what’s there, what we’ve lost and then try to move on from there.”
On Wednesday, two fires merged to form a blaze of more than 50 square miles. The fire has closed a 30-mile stretch of nearby Interstate 84 and forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes. Authorities say the fire was started by a 15-year-old boy who tossed fireworks into the woods.
After an all-night battle, fire crews saved the historic Multnomah Lodge, a 92-year-old information center, bar and restaurant at the base of Multnomah Falls. That waterfall, visible and easily accessible from Interstate 84, alone attracts more than 2 million visitors a year.
Authorities sought to reassure the public even as they lamented the devastation.
Lt. Damon Simmons, a spokesman with the Oregon Fire Marshal, on Wednesday drove the historic Columbia River Highway, a winding, two-lane road that parallels the river on the Oregon side and offers majestic viewpoints from the gorge’s steep cliffs. He came back with a hopeful message.
“The gorge still looks like the gorge,” he said. “It’s not a wasteland. It’s not a blackened, destroyed no man’s land.”
( ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Already one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, Irma could become one of the most destructive as well, depending on its path, and officials from Turks and Caicos to Florida pleaded with people to heed advisories to evacuate to shelters and higher ground. The National Hurricane Center described the storm as “potentially catastrophic.”
The hurricane made direct hits on Barbuda, St. Barthélemy, St. Martin, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands, and raked the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico with hurricane-force wind and torrential rain. Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, said Irma had destroyed 90 percent of the structures on Barbuda, an island with about 1,600 people.
Authorities confirmed that the hurricane had killed at least one person in Antigua and Barbuda; one on Anguilla, a British possession; and two in French territory, which includes St. Barthélemy and the northern part of St. Martin. Another died in Puerto Rico while preparing for the storm.
Irma “will bring life-threatening wind, storm surge and rainfall hazards” to the northern coast of Hispaniola, which includes the Dominican Republic and Haiti, today, the Hurricane Center warned. It will pass directly over — or very near — the low-lying islands of Turks and Caicos, a British possession, and parts of the Bahamas today and Friday, the center forecast, and push a storm surge of seawater 15 to 20 feet high. The surge could put large parts of the islands underwater.
Across the islands that were hit on Wednesday, people posted videos and photos online of the hurricane’s fury: debris flying sideways in near-zero visibility, roofs ripped off structures, waves surging into buildings, downed trees and utility poles, and streets that had turned into raging currents carrying away cars and trucks.
The French interior minister, Gérard Collomb, said the four sturdiest buildings on St. Martin had been destroyed, “which means that in all likelihood the more rustic buildings are probably totally or partially destroyed.”
With phone lines and electricity cut in many places, and roads impassable, President Emmanuel Macron of France and other officials said it was far too early to assess the true toll, in either lives or property.
The aftermath of the storm will be “harsh and cruel,” Macron said after a crisis meeting at the Interior Ministry in Paris. “We will have victims to lament, and the material damage on the two islands is considerable.”
The devastating winds left many people scrambling for safety.
Carmen Caballero, a 69-year-old retired doctor, was unsure at first whether to vacate her two-story home in San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico. It is made of concrete but has a metal roof that she feared might be ripped away. Then the power went out, the pelting rain and howling wind began, and she could hear debris crashing into things around her house and see tree branches falling into the streets.
She packed some water bottles, nuts, medicines, linens and other supplies in her car and drove to the shelter at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum. “All my neighbors left, too,” she said over the phone from there. “I wasn’t going to stay alone in my house!”
Nearly 900,000 people were without power and 50,000 without water across Puerto Rico, officials said..
On Culebra, a small, rustic Puerto Rican island east of the main island, José Pérez, the municipality’s director of emergency management, took shelter with about 65 other people at a public high school Wednesday afternoon. Like many people there, he said, he lives in a wooden home.
“Right now we are feeling the fury of this hurricane,” Pérez said in Spanish by phone. “I was 13, and I obviously remember Hurricane Hugo, but this is something incomparable. This is something terrible, an experience out of this world.” Irma hit just days after Hurricane Harvey caused record flooding in Texas.
With two other storms now reaching hurricane status — José, trailing behind Irma, and Katia, in the Gulf of Mexico — meteorologists noted the unusual occurrence of three hurricanes forming at once in the Atlantic basin. Hurricane Irma’s maximum sustained winds of 185 mph have been matched by only three other Atlantic storms; the last, Hurricane Wilma, was in 2005. By Wednesday afternoon, Irma had kept that wind speed for over 24 hours, the longest period ever recorded.
Florida residents began to prepare for the hurricane’s wrath. Residents picked store shelves clean, and long lines formed at gas stations Wednesday.
Monroe County, which includes the Florida Keys, issued a mandatory evacuation order on Wednesday. An estimated 25,000 people or more heeded the order, causing bumper-to-bumper traffic on the single highway that links the chain of low-lying islands to the mainland.
Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, advised people to evacuate some areas. In South Florida, which has millions of people and only two major highways, Interstates 95 and 75, to take people farther north, traffic and fuel shortages were already becoming problems as people tried to get out of the storm’s path.
Forecasters said Irma could strike the Miami area by early Sunday, then rake the entire length of the state’s east coast and push into Georgia and the Carolinas.
But because of the uncertainty in any forecast this far out, state and local authorities in Miami and Fort Lauderdale held off for the time being on ordering any widespread evacuations there. Even so, more evacuation orders and advisories are expected in other parts of the region, and officials urged people to follow them.
Republican Gov. Rick Scott waived tolls on all Florida highways and told people if they were thinking about leaving to “get out now.” But in the same breath, he acknowledged that “it's hard to tell people where to go until we know exactly where it will go.”
Scott said Wednesday he was activating another 900 members of the Florida Air and Army National Guard to prepare for the Category 5 storm, in addition to the 100 members activated Tuesday across the state.
All 7,000 members will report for duty today morning, though Scott said he is willing to activate additional National Guard members throughout the week “as needed.”
(Frances Robles, Kirk Semple & Richard Pérez-Peña, THE NEW YORK TIMES, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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It was one of dozens of wildfires burning in western states that sent smoke into cities from Seattle to Denver — prompting health warnings and cancellations of outdoor activities for children by many school districts.
The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, a federal agency that coordinates wildfire-fighting, said 80 large fires were burning on 2,200 square miles in nine Western states.
The 16-square-mile fire east of Portland forced hundreds of home evacuations. Embers from the fire drifted in the air across the Columbia River — sparking blazes in neighboring Washington state.
The wildfire grew rapidly late Monday and overnight, giving authorities just minutes to warn residents on the Oregon side of the river to leave their homes.
A closure of one section of Interstate 84 because of thick smoke and falling ash was extended 30 miles east of Portland because flames reached the roadway, said Dave Thompson, a spokesman for Oregon’s Department of Transportation.
“If it jumps the road, you’d be driving through a wall of flame,” he said. “It’s just not safe.”
People in Oregon covered their faces to shield themselves from the smoke and the ashes falling on them.
Elsewhere, a fast-moving wildfire in northern Utah swept down a canyon Tuesday morning — destroying structures, forcing evacuations and closing highways.
A least one home burned and more than 1,000 people were evacuated as high winds fed the flames in the canyon north of Salt Lake City. Thick black smoke closed parts of two highways as firefighters struggled to fight the blaze fueled by gusts at up to 40 mph.
In Northern California, a fire destroyed 72 homes and forced the evacuation of about 2,000 people from their houses. The fire burned 14 square miles in the community of Helena about 150 miles south of Oregon.
Air quality alerts were issued for parts of Idaho as well.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“We have to prepare for an event that we have never experienced here,” Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said at a news conference, as he went on to call the hurricane’s arrival imminent and its potential catastrophic.
Packing winds of up to 185 mph, Irma threatened havoc and widespread destruction across Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory of 3.4 million people, the nearby island of Hispaniola (home to the Dominican Republic and Haiti), Antigua, St. Kitts and Nevis, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, among others. Cuba is also threatened. The storm is expected to rake or sideswipe Puerto Rico today.
“This is not an opportunity to go outside and try to have fun with a hurricane,” U.S. Virgin Islands Gov. Kenneth Mapp warned. “It’s not time to get on a surfboard.”
Bahamas Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said his government was evacuating the six islands in the south because authorities would not be able to help anyone caught in the “potentially catastrophic” wind, flooding and storm surge. People there would be flown to Nassau starting today in what he called the largest storm evacuation in the country’s history.
“The price you may pay for not evacuating is your life or serious physical harm,” Minnis said.
President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands on Tuesday.
Hurricane Irma is one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, according to the National Hurricane Center and Bryan Norcross, the hurricane specialist at The Weather Channel. The hurricane center said Irma had winds of up to 185 mph as it approached the Leeward Islands. There have been other storms with comparable winds in the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico, where the warm waters fuel particularly dangerous hurricanes.
With Harvey’s destruction in Texas and Louisiana still fresh on people’s minds, Florida hustled into action. Gov. Rick Scott activated the state National Guard to help with hurricane preparations and suspended tolls. The governor declared a state of emergency on Monday and spoke with Trump, who offered “the full resources of the federal government,” Scott wrote on Twitter. Most of the latest projections have Irma slamming into the state by Sunday, although it is unclear where it would make landfall. The Florida Keys, an especially vulnerable chain of islands, moved quickly to prepare for the crushing wind and its expected tidal inundation. Today, schools will be closed and mandatory evacuations will begin, county officials said. The Keys’ three hospitals started to evacuate patients on Tuesday.
Miami-Dade, the state’s largest county, announced that schools would close Thursday as officials kicked emergency plans into gear.
But it is Puerto Rico and the nearby northern Leeward Islands that are expected to face Irma’s potentially catastrophic winds first. It has been nearly a century since Puerto Rico was hit by a Category 5 storm, Norcross said.
Puerto Rican officials have warned that the island’s fragile electrical grid could be shut down for days, weeks or even months in some areas. In his news conference, Rosselló and emergency officials warned that with such powerful winds expected to thrash the island, infrastructure, houses and the phone system will inevitably be damaged.
The National Weather Service said Puerto Rico had not seen a hurricane of Irma’s magnitude since Hurricane San Felipe in 1928, which killed 2,748 people in Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico and Florida. “The dangerousness of this event is like nothing we’ve ever seen,” Puerto Rico’s Rosselló said. “A lot of infrastructure won’t be able to withstand this kind of force.”
For Puerto Rico, the hurricane could not have come at a worse time. The island is deep in the throes of an economic crisis and does not have money for the long process of rebuilding.
“This is not going to be easy,” said Héctor Pesquera, the superintendent of public security in Puerto Rico.
Abner Gómez Cortés, the head of Puerto Rico’s emergency agency, warned that coastal zones were particularly vulnerable — not so much because of rain, as with Harvey, but because of high storm surges of up to 20 feet.
On Tuesday, the lines for fast-dwindling gas, food, water and hardware were interminable, and anxiety mounted. One hardware store in San Juan had been nearly picked clean by afternoon.
“This has been like this for the last three days,” said Juan Carlos Ramirez, the store manager. “We’ve sold all of the most necessary items— flashlight, batteries, plywood.”
People standing in line said one of their biggest worries was the expected loss of electricity for long periods. “The infrastructure can’t cope with a hurricane,” Ashley Albelo, a shopper, said.
Outside a Sears, Maria Ruiz could not help but remember Hurricanes Hugo (1989) and Georges (1998), which badly damaged Puerto Rico. “Destruction,” she said. “That is what we can expect based on past experiences, and it’s already a Category 5.” Similar frantic scenes played out on other nearby islands.
In Antigua, southeast of Puerto Rico, many businesses were closed. Supermarkets were overrun, and gas stations were packed. Some island residents sounded stoic and battle-tested. In Guadeloupe, Coralice Line, who was attending the front desk at the Le Creole Beach Hotel & Spa, said she was not particularly distressed. “We are not too worried because we are accustomed to it,” she said by phone from the hotel. “Hurricanes are part of life in the Caribbean islands.” At the Sugar Bay Club hotel in St. Kitts and Nevis, Ophelia Gardiner, the front desk supervisor, said that while some guests had fled the island on an American Airlines flight, others had decided to stay and ride out the storm.
“Everything is boarded up and put away, and all we have to do is wait and see what happens,” Gardiner said. She laughed nervously. “I don’t know how you can prepare for a hurricane of that magnitude, but we’re doing our best.”
In Miami-Dade County, which is still haunted by the ferocity and wreckage of 1992’s Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm, residents worried and began to prepare earlier than usual. For some, a sense of panic began to set in. Many hotels across Florida had already been booked for the weekend by hurricane-wary residents. Most stores had run out of water, flashlights and other key supplies. Gas stations ran out of fuel.
Hurricane Harvey in Texas also weighed heavily on people’s minds.
“I think because of Texas, people are freaking out,” said Yoseyn Ramos, 24, a Miami resident who said she was worried because she could not find gas anywhere.
In Brickell, a Miami neighborhood that abuts both the Atlantic and the Miami River, Lucas Mattout, 22, was dashing around Publix supermarket looking for water. “They are all sold out,” he said. “Of course, with Harvey, no one wants to take a chance.”
Every storm, though, has its rebels. Jose Fonseca, 52, a Coral Gables resident who works at the Mandarin Oriental on Brickell Key, said he had not done or bought anything to prepare for the storm. “I think people are panicking because of the news from Texas day after day,” he said. “I will buy some water.” Then, he added, “And some beer, of course.”
(Ivelisse Rivera & Lizette Alvarez, THE NEW YORK TIMES; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The storm’s center was 450 miles east of the Leeward Islands as of late Monday. It has maximum sustained winds of 140 mph and is moving west at 13 mph.
Emergency officials are warning that Irma could dump up to 10 inches of rain, unleash landslides and dangerous flash floods and generate waves of up to 23 feet as the storm draws closer. A hurricane warning has been issued for Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Martin, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Maarten and St. Barts. A hurricane watch is in effect for Puerto Rico, Vieques, Culebra, the British and U.S. Virgin Islands and Guadeloupe.
“We’re looking at Irma as a very significant event,” said Ronald Jackson, executive director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. “I can’t recall a tropical cone developing that rapidly into a major hurricane prior to arriving in the central Caribbean.”
The storm’s center was forecast to move near or over the northern Leeward Islands late today and early Wednesday, the hurricane center said.
U.S. residents were urged to monitor the storm’s progress in case it should turn northward toward Florida, Georgia or the Carolinas.
“This hurricane has the potential to be a major event for the East Coast. It also has the potential to significantly strain FEMA and other governmental resources occurring so quickly on the heels of (Hurricane) Harvey,” said Evan Myers, chief operating officer of AccuWeather.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The dozens of fires burning across the West and Canada have blanketed the air with choking smoke from Oregon, where ash fell on the town of Cascade Locks, to Colorado, where health officials issued an air quality advisory alert.
A fire in Montana’s Glacier National Park emptied the park’s busiest tourist spot as wind gusts drove the blaze toward the doorstep of a century old lodge. The 14-square-mile fire that consumed a historic Glacier backcountry chalet last week was about a mile away from Lake McDonald Lodge, a 103-year-old Swiss chalet-style hotel.
The lodge’s setting on the lake as the Going-to-the-Sun-Road begins its vertigo-inducing climb up the Continental Divide has made it an endearing park symbol for many visitors.
Rangers evacuated tourists and residents from 55 homes near the lake on Sunday as firefighters laid hoses and sprinklers around the hotel.
Outside Yosemite National Park, a wind-fueled fire on Sunday drove deeper into a grove of 2,700-year-old giant sequoia trees. Officials said the fire had gone through about half the grove, and had not killed any trees.
There are about 100 giant sequoias in the grove, including the roughly 24-story-high Bull Buck sequoia, one of the world’s largest. Fire crews also wrapped 19th-century cabins in shiny, fire-resistant material to protect them from the flames.
The fire threatening the grove was one of several in the area — one of which closed some trails in Yosemite. A road leading to the park’s southern entrance was also closed.
Elsewhere in Northern California, a fire destroyed 72 homes and forced the evacuation of 2,000 people from their houses. The fire has burned 14 square miles in the community of Helena about 150 miles south of the Oregon border.
In Los Angeles, a fire that destroyed four homes and threatened hillside neighborhoods is no longer actively burning, but firefighters remained at the scene in case the wind reignited the blaze, Fire Department Chief Ralph Terrazas said.
Still, Terrazas said Monday that wind conditions could reignite the blaze, so fire officials were not reducing the number of firefighters at the scene.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Some returned to public housing complexes inundated with sewage and mud. More than 50,000 went to government-paid hotels, some far away from homes and schools. Others moved in with family and friends.
Harvey did not discriminate, inundating exclusive neighborhoods and low-lying apartments for the poor, and was blamed for at least 60 deaths. Most of the evacuees at the George R. Brown Convention Center were lower-income, but some were from wealthier areas. Now, about 1,500 remain at the convention center, and several said they were homeless, disabled or from public housing. About 2,800 were at the NRG Center, another convention center that opened after George R. Brown reached double its original capacity.
Mayor Sylvester Turner has declared Houston “open for business,” and offices and restaurants across downtown are expected to reopen today after the Labor Day holiday.
Concerns about further explosions at a damaged chemical plant eased after officials on Sunday carried out a controlled burn of highly unstable compounds at the Arkema plant in Crosby. Three trailers had previously caught fire after Harvey’s floodwaters knocked out generators.
Authorities said it was safe for residents of a 1.5-mile evacuation zone around the Arkema plant to return. They were forced to leave Aug. 29.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said 53,630 residents displaced by Harvey are currently staying in government-funded hotel rooms.
FEMA says it has about 560,000 families registered for its housing assistance program.
The temporary housing has been provided for 18,732 households, said FEMA spokesman Bob Howard. Once people are granted the assistance, there is a minimum allotment of 14 days, but that can be extended on a case-by-case basis.
FEMA officials also are weighing other options such as mobile homes should the need arise.
On Monday night, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that FEMA had granted his request for Community Disaster Loan assistance for areas hard-hit by the storm. Cities can obtain loans to help keep their operating budgets intact.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In Oregon, crews rescued about 140 hikers forced to spend the night in the woods after fire broke out along the popular Columbia River Gorge Trail. Wildfires also burned in a 2,700-year-old grove of giant sequoia trees near Yosemite National Park, forced evacuations in Glacier National Park and drove people from homes in parts of the West struggling with blazing temperatures.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti declared a local emergency. At the state level, Gov. Jerry Brown did the same for the county after the wildfire destroyed three homes and threatened hillside neighborhoods. More than a thousand firefighters battled flames that chewed through more than 9 square miles of brush-covered mountains.
Authorities eased evacuation orders for Burbank and Glendale later Sunday and were considering doing the same for Los Angeles as easing temperatures and a bit of rain helped the 1,000 firefighters slow the flames’ progress.
All but 10 percent of the 1,400 people ordered out of their homes in that fire had returned, Garcetti said.
“That can change in a moment’s notice, and the winds can accelerate very quickly,” Los Angeles Fire Capt. Ralph Terrazas cautioned. “There is a lot of fuel out there left to burn.” Officials were keeping an eye on thunderstorms in the mountains to the north, which could bring welcome rain but also the risk of flash floods, mudslides and lightning.
Burbank resident George Grair was not in the evacuation zone but watched uneasily as flames blackened a hillside in the near distance.
“It’s very difficult to feel safe. I’ve got kids in the house,” he told KABC-TV. “I probably slept two hours all night.”
The high at Los Angeles International Airport reached 97 degrees Sunday, topping the previous Sept. 3 record of 92, set in 1982. Records were also set in parts of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, where the temperature hit 101 degrees.
San Francisco residents, meanwhile, stifled under a third day of a rare heat wave in the coastal city, although highs in the San Francisco Bay Area fell Sunday from records in the 100s set the previous two days.
“I went to Home Depot, Walgreens, Office Depot, Target. They were sold out!” downtown office worker Alganesh Ucbayonas said Sunday, detailing her unsuccessful search for an electric fan. “CVS!” she remembered.
On Sunday, Ucbayonas sat at her desk in a building lobby squarely between two fans, both scrounged from her office building’s storage and trained straight at her face.
Fires burning up and down the Sierra Nevada and further to the northwest cast an eerie yellow and gray haze over much of California, and much of the state was under alerts because of poor air quality.
California authorities ordered evacuation for a third small town Sunday in one of the wildfires, a blaze that has burned 9-square-miles near Yosemite National Park.
Firefighters battling that blaze were making it a priority to safeguard the ancient grove of giant sequoia and a pair of historic cabins at the foot of the trees, fire spokeswoman Anne Grandy said. Fire crews had wrapped the two 19th-century cabins and an outhouse in shiny, fire-resistant material to protect them from the flames that had entered the Nelder Grove, Grandy said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Beaumont’s dire situation and the uncontrolled chemical fire near Crosby, Texas, provided vivid reminders of the cascading effects of a natural disaster: wind, storm surge, torrential rain, floodwaters, and all the secondary consequences, including industrial accidents, environmental contamination and broad concerns about sickness and disease.
Residents remain evacuated from a 1.5-mile radius of the Arkema chemical plant. The plant lost power and its backup generators were flooded earlier this week, leaving workers unable to maintain refrigeration of volatile organic peroxides. The chemicals combust if not kept cool.
As an emergency measure, the chemicals were moved into nine box trailers, one of which burned Thursday. Residents reported Friday hearing more popping sounds. Company officials said later that they were helpless to stop further burning.
Daryl Roberts, Arkema’s vice president of manufacturing, said that even as areas of the flooded site become accessible, the company can’t restart refrigeration because the electrical infrastructure there has been underwater for a week.
“We’re not in a position to quickly establish cooling,” Roberts said. “We believe that right now, the scenario that is available to us is to let that material burn out.”
Then more chemicals ignited Friday afternoon in a spectacular blaze. Smoke from the Arkema fire is unusually acrid, a state environmental commission reported.
The chemical plant’s crisis has brought attention to the heavy industry in the flood zone, and the U.S. Chemical Safety Board on Friday warned oil and gas companies to be extremely cautious in starting up refineries that had been shut down as a result of the storm.
The EPA late Friday said it already was flying a surveillance aircraft “through the current fire at the Arkema plant.” As it had done earlier in the week, the plane was monitoring for any airborne toxic chemicals. EPA officials said the agency expected to have data back from its sampling Friday evening.
“Everyone in the area should follow the safety instruction of local authorities, specifically staying out of the evacuation zone, avoiding smoke and floodwaters,” the agency said in a release.
Conditions in two large shelters holding 1,400 storm survivors in Beaumont became so dodgy Friday that officials were forced to evacuate as many people as possible. The officials said they couldn’t take care of people without access to water.
Many of Beaumont’s 118,000 residents had tried to leave this week but had been blocked by high water when Harvey, still a tropical storm and making a second landfall, turned the city into an island. They had no choice but to turn back, often choosing to drive the wrong way on flooded Highway 90. Government resources for Beaumont appeared to be slow to arrive Friday, and tempers flared as people scoured grocery stores for whatever food was left. “When you take water out of the picture, people start to panic a bit,” said Halley Morrow, a police spokeswoman.
At the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, where 7,500 people have taken refuge, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported treating 420 people, many complaining of diarrhea or vomiting that could be associated with contaminated floodwater or a virus.
The convention center has seen a number of drug overdoses, and people have arrived seeking methadone, or other opioid-addiction treatments, and have been told that there are none available. CVS and Walgreens have set up mobile pharmacies there, with limited supplies of medication.
Statewide, tens of thousands of people have taken refuge in shelters. Countless more are dislocated, staying with friends, family and strangers. On Friday, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner called for residents near the Addicks and Barker reservoirs to evacuate as the Army Corps of Engineers continues to release water from the reservoirs.
President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Texas and Louisiana today, and his trip is slated to include a stop in Houston, said his spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Texas is gradually switching from search-and-rescue mode to recovery mode. As of midday Friday, officials across Texas had recorded at least 45 deaths confirmed or suspected of being stormed related.
Gasoline, or the lack of it, has become a preoccupation, as motorists in many cities, even far from the major flood zone, have found stations sucked dry. Gov. Greg Abbott blamed media reports about gas shortages and an ensuing rush on the filling stations.
“There’s plenty of gasoline in the state of Texas,” Abbott said. “Don’t worry, we will not runout, and we will be back to our normal pattern before you know it.”
The weather has cooperated late this week, with bright sunshine replacing days of downpour. A ridge of high pressure in the atmosphere should keep any developing tropical system in the Gulf of Mexico far away from Texas — an improved outlook since Thursday.
Most of the people who lost power in the storm have it back. But American Electric Power, a Texas utility company, estimated that the cities of Rockport, Fulton and Aransas Pass would not have power fully restored until Friday— two weeks after Harvey first made landfall. At least 185,000 homes had been damaged, according to the latest tally from the Texas Department of Public Safety, but that number does not include heavily affected Beaumont and densely populated Houston. Some 440,000 Texans have registered for FEMA disaster assistance, the governor’s office said.
In Port Arthur, a city ringed by refineries, the floodwater that rose so dramatically earlier in the week, and which had required frantic evacuations, was taking its time to recede Friday. Some neighborhoods still had waist-deep water. Convenience stores and gas stations had started to reopen, and signs of normalcy began to appear under the harsh sun.
Some residents had begun getting texts from FEMA alerting them that they were eligible for free hotel room vouchers. Some in Beaumont managed to fly out of town after an initial attempt to leave by bus was stymied by high water. Others left shelters and returned home. Aline of hundreds of cars snaked along a highway frontage road as motorists queued up for water being handed out by the city and donated by the Texas grocery chain H.E.B.
The city took on a ghostly quality. Grocery stores and restaurants appeared open at first glance, and in the evening were illuminated and seemed inviting. Motorists circled them, but there was no going inside. Store aisles were empty, the doors locked and protected by sandbags.
With no running water, there was little cooking that could be done, and noway for employees to wash their hands. No fresh produce or supplies could be delivered to Beaumont through the floodwaters encircling the city.
The odor of flood rot began to permeate the air. Pamela Starks, 59, pushed her cart inside the Walmart Superstore, getting lucky enough to nab four cases of water.
“They got water?” another woman shopper asked anxiously.
“It’s gone,” Starks replied.
Outside, Angela Williams, 48, stood with her sister, son, daughter-in-law and two toddler grandchildren in the scorching sun. The family had been rescued from their flooded homes in Port Arthur three days earlier.
Their first shelter flooded. They moved to a second shelter, but there was no food and no water. Now they were crowded — 13 people all told — into the small home of a friend who also had no running water.
It was midafternoon and they had just had their first meal of the day: one doughnut for each person.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Air quality has been rated unhealthy across the region because of blazes that show no signs of abating. Officials said Friday that one of the worst U.S. wildfire seasons in terms of land burned is likely to keep scorching Western states and blanketing them with smoke until later this fall.
People in small towns to the populous San Francisco Bay Area have had enough.
“Last night, I went to sleep with the windows open and woke up with a stomachache and a headache,” said Tresa Snow, who owns a hair salon in Brookings, Ore., near a large wildfire. “I knew before I could even smell it that the fire was back. And you can hear my voice, kind of raspy. We’re all kind of like that.”
She said business has been down in the town near the California border.
“Businesses are closing because they don’t have their help,” Snow said. “People have been evacuating.”
The National Interagency Fire Center said more than 25,000 firefighters and personnel are spread out across the Western U.S. fighting 56 large uncontained wildfires, 21 of them in Montana and 17 in Oregon.
Fire center spokesman Jessica Gardetto said Friday that besides one of the most destructive wildfire seasons, 2017 is turning into one of the longest, starting in the spring in Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico.
“Some of these firefighters have been working on fires for six months now,” she said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Lidia spread rains over a broad swath of Mexico, including Mexico City, where it was blamed for flooding that briefly closed the city’s airport. An enormous sinkhole about 30 feet in diameter opened on a street in downtown Mexico City because of an accumulation of water.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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“ We have such a caring community in San Diego County that wants to help those in need during a crisis, like this latest natural disaster that’s taking such a toll in Texas and Louisiana,” District Attorney Summer Stephan said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, some people use times of crisis to take advantage of others,” she said. “People who want to help the victims of Hurricane Harvey by donating to charities can protect themselves from scammers by watching out for red flags.”
Those wishing to contribute should not respond to direct solicitations, especially over the telephone.
Instead, contributors should deal with charities that they know are certain to be helping out in these kinds of emergency situations. When in doubt, she warned, make sure to do a background check on who is doing the solicitation by checking with Charity Navigator, which has published a list of organizations that are collecting on behalf of storm victims.
The Federal Trade Commission has provided tips to make sure your money is going to where it was intended, including asking detailed information about the charity, searching the name of the organization, calling the charity to see if it is collecting for the victims of Hurricane Harvey and whether the charity is registered by contacting the National Association of State Charity Officials.
The National Do Not Call Registry gives you a way to reduce telemarketing calls, but it exempts charities and political groups. However, if a fundraiser is calling on behalf of a charity, you may ask not to get any more calls from, or on behalf of, that specific charity.
If you think you’ve been the victim of a charity scam or if a fundraiser has violated Do Not Call rules, you may file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.
(S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Meanwhile, today more than 70 San Diego Unified schools with little or no air conditioning will close early for the second time this week as a result of an ongoing heat wave.
Also, state energy officials are calling on the public to conserve energy starting this afternoon. The FLEX alert issued by Cal-ISO will be from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m.
In the coming days, the county is in a position to get remnants from tropical storm Lidia, a system that has been picking up a lot of moisture as it has moved across warm waters along the coast of Mexico.
Lidia still represents a puzzle for forecasters. But National Weather Service forecaster Brett Albright said, “It looks like all areas of San Diego County will be at risk of getting rain, with Labor Day being the most likely time for showers.”
“The moisture will begin to inch in on Sunday, mostly in the form of clouds. We won’t have a good fix on this until the weekend.”
The storm is not expected to send big surf to San Diego. San Diego Unified shortened the day at dozens of schools on Tuesday because of the heat. The district has a full list of schools that will let out early today online at www.sandiegounified.org/hot-weatherschool-list.
Under San Diego Unified policy, the district may call for a half day at schools where less than 80 percent of classrooms are air conditioned on days when the temperature is expected to be 95 degrees or higher. The district plans to have air conditioning at all schools by the summer of 2019.
Schools may decide to make changes to instructional programs or find alternative locations for instruction as part of the district’s hot weather plan.
Extracurricular activities also are kept at a minimum, and parents have been asked to have students dress in loose-fitting clothing to stay cool and send water with them to school so they stay hydrated during the day.
Superintendent Cindy Marten said earlier this week that the district is reluctant to shorten school days, but said it is being done to protect the health and safety of students.
She added that extreme heat isn’t conducive to effective teaching and learning.
(Gary Robbins&Gary Warth, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Up and down changes in intensity are possible over the next few days, forecasters said, but the storm is expected to remain a major hurricane that could become a Category 4 storm in four days. What impacts Irma poses to land remain unclear. Models are notoriously unreliable more than five days away, and Irma is not expected to near the Leeward Islands until sometime next week.
Thursday afternoon, forecasters said Irma became an “impressive” hurricane with a tight spin around its small center eye. The storm underwent a remarkable 57 mph increase in wind speed since Wednesday, they said, and satellite images indicate the storm may already be undergoing an eyewall replacement, a shift that occurs in intense storms.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Thousands of people have been driven from their homes amid hot weather in Oregon, Montana and California, where a blaze burned 10 homes and threatened 500 more near a hard-hit community and another kept a popular road to Yosemite National Park closed. A wind-driven wildfire ripped through parched forest and grasslands in southeastern Montana on Thursday, threatening 35 homes and structures and forcing the evacuation of an undetermined number of residents scattered in the area.
The fire that started in Custer National Forest about 35 miles northwest of Broadus on Wednesday burned at least 47 square miles in a single day. Another fire about 60 miles south of the Canadian border, destroyed five cabins and five other structures and threatened 130 more buildings Thursday in the mountains south of Havre.
In Northern California, more than 1,000 firefighters were able to slow the growth of a nearly 5-square-mile wildfire overnight near the town of Oroville, an area already hard-hit by fire and a massive evacuation earlier this year caused by damage to sections of the nation's tallest dam.
The fire was partially contained, but about 500 homes remained in its path.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Flooded sewers are stoking fears of cholera, typhoid and other infectious diseases. Runoff from the city’s sprawling petroleum and chemicals complex contains any number of hazardous compounds. Lead, arsenic and other toxic and carcinogenic elements may be leaching from two dozen Superfund sites in the Houston area.
Porfirio Villarreal, a spokesman for the Houston Health Department, said the hazards of the water enveloping the city were self-evident.
“There’s no need to test it,” he said. “It’s contaminated. There’s millions of contaminants.”
He said health officials were urging people to stay out of the water if they could, although it is already too late for tens of thousands. “We’re telling people to avoid the floodwater as much as possible. Don’t let your children play in it. And if you do touch it, wash it off,” Villarreal said. “Remember,this is going to go on for weeks.”
Flooding always brings the danger of contamination and disease, though epidemics from floods in the United States have been rare. This inundation, which put nearly 30 percent of the nation’s fourth-largest city underwater, will pose enormous problems, both immediately and when the waters finally recede.
Dr. David Persse, Houston’s director of Emergency Medical Services, said officials were monitoring the drinking water and sewer systems, both of which he said were intact so far. But hundreds of thousands of people across the 38 Texas counties affected by Hurricane Harvey use private wells, according to an estimate by Louisiana State University researchers, and those people must fend for themselves.
“Well water is at risk for being contaminated,” Persse said, “and the well owner is really the one who is responsible. In the city of Houston, we have folks that use well water but we strongly recommend against it — and this will sound awful — we don’t take responsibility for it.”
Harris County, home to Houston, hosts more than two dozen current and former toxic waste sites designated under the federal Superfund program. The sites contain what the Environmental Protection Agency calls legacy contamination: lead, arsenic, polychlorinated biphenyls, benzene and other toxic and carcinogenic compounds from industrial activities many years ago.
Kathy Blueford-Daniels grew up just a block away from one of those sites, a wood-treating facility that used cancer-causing creosote and other toxins. As a young girl, she would try to avoid the plant and the pungent, oil-like goo that lined the ditches around it.
Now 60, Blueford-Daniels still lives on the same block, in Houston’s 5th Ward. So when Harvey’s rains started to pour into her neighborhood, she immediately began to wonder what the rising waters would carry off the old industrial property.
“I wasn’t so fearful of the storm. But I’m scared of that site,”she said. “I thought:This is going to be a travesty. The contamination could be going anywhere.”
An EPA spokesman, David Gray, said in a statement that the agency would inspect two flooded Superfund sites in Corpus Christi, but he did not specify which ones or say whether additional sites elsewhere in Texas would be checked. Houston also lies at the center of the nation’s oil and chemical industry, its bustling shipping channel home to almost 500 industrial sites. Damaged refineries and other oil facilities have already released more than 2 million pounds of hazardous substances into the air this week, including nitrogen oxide as well as benzene and other volatile organic compounds, according to a tally by the Environmental Defense Fund of company filings to state environmental regulators.
“We’re very concerned about the long-term implications of some of the emissions,” said Elena Craft, a senior health scientist and toxicologist at the Environmental Defense Fund in Texas. “As well as the flooding and the impact on pipelines, there’s underground and aboveground storage tanks,” she said. “It’s a suite of threats.”
Houston’s sewer systems have also long struggled with overflows, drawing scrutiny from federal regulators who worry about raw sewage seeping into groundwater. Like dozens of cities across the country, Houston has been negotiating a consent decree with the EPA that would require the city to upgrade its pipes and overhaul its maintenance regimen.
“Houston’s had problems with their sewer system in the past. They already had cracks and leaks that were allowing stormwater to get into the sewers,” said Erin Bonney Casey, research director at Bluefield Research, a water-sector consultancy based in Boston. “When it rains, the sewer pipes get infiltrated with stormwater. The pipes exceed their capacity and you get discharge of a mix of sewer water and stormwater,” she said. “As you can imagine, this raises major concerns around disease and contamination of local water supplies.”
(Hiroko Tabuchi & Sheila Kaplan, THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The wildfire sparked Tuesday near the town of Oroville, a region already hard-hit by fire and a massive evacuation earlier this year caused by damage to sections of the nation’s tallest dam. It’s one of many wildfires burning across the West, including blazes in and around California’s Yosemite National Park that have closed a popular road into the park, shuttered the iconic Wawona Hotel and forced the evacuation of nearby towns. Some 58 homes near the park have been destroyed.
In the blaze near Oroville, three more communities were evacuated, and firefighters struggled to contain the fast-moving flames Wednesday as temperatures surged into triple digits. The West is struggling with heat that is making the battle against wildfires difficult.
The fire 70 miles north of Sacramento was not at all contained, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. Cal Fire investigators arrested John Ballenger, 29, of Oroville, on suspicion of starting an illegal campfire.
“All campfires pose a risk of escaping,” Cal Fire spokesman Darren Read said. “A campfire should never be left unattended and must be extinguished completely before everyone leaves.”
The wildfire is about 20 miles east of Oroville Dam. Tens of thousands of residents downstream fled in February when the dam’s spillways crumbled and led to fears of catastrophic flooding. Waters receded before they breached the dam, and water officials said repairs are 20 percent complete.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“We’ve got a male floating in the water,” the Harris County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher said. “Oh no,” said Bob Goerlitz, the deputy behind the wheel. “A DOA,” said Andrew King, his partner in the passenger seat. Dead on arrival.
Goerlitz flicked on the wipers and hit the gas of their Hummer.
What they knew was an address. What they didn’t know was a name, or whether the location was reachable, or whether the person had been dead for hours or days. And what they feared was that this type of dispatch, their first since Hurricane Harvey hit the coast, was about to become more and more frequent. The floodwaters were only now beginning to recede, and perhaps for weeks and months ahead, the nighttime scanner calls like this would slowly unearth the true extent of the hurricane’s toll.
The body, the dispatcher said, was somewhere on the farthest end of their district, where the concrete of Houston gave way to mobile homes, some farmland, a few fast-food joints and discount stores. The area was ringed by overloaded rivers and lakes, so flooded that it was off limits to all but the heaviest-duty vehicles. On previous nights, this had meant Goerlitz and other officers could churn through feet of water in their Hummers and other trucks, rescuing people from half-submerged apartment complexes or neighborhoods otherwise cut off. But now, it meant a different mission: The death count from Harvey had been steadily rising, and now the officers drove east to look for the next body.
They headed out just after sunset, past a grocery store where scattered red shopping carts poked up from the water, past a flooded onramp, past a carwash where Goerlitz said, “I can’t tell you how many shootings I’ve worked at that place.” They turned down a small commercial street, where there was still a gas station with the lights on, and then made one more turn down a straightaway that took them into a landscape of darkness and silhouettes.
Whoever had lived here was gone. On one side of the road, elevated just enough to be dry, a few street signs and mailboxes rose from the water. But there were no other cars. Goerlitz drove for a mile.
The water level kept rising — up to the tires, and then up to the front grill. It was hard to tell where the road turned into the median. It was hard to tell where the median turned into a yard. It was hard to tell where a yard might give way to a house, or a car, or a boat.
“A body or a boat,” Goerlitz said, quietly, and then King, looking out the passenger’s window, said, “Look, there’s a car.” They pulled up and shined a flashlight at a hatchback, nose just above the water, windshield fogged. “Shine the flashlight,” Goerlitz said, because three days earlier, they’d come upon a similar car, and when they looked inside, a hand of a person begging for rescue suddenly appeared. But this time, King aimed and saw nothing. “Ain’t nobody in there,” he said.
“The water is getting deeper,” Goerlitz said. “It’s a little hairy.”
There were a few more roads to search, but they couldn’t go farther.
“I’m thinking, just wait until daylight,” Goerlitz asked.
Then Goerlitz’s phone buzzed. A text message. “Body found.”
(Chico Harlan, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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“It’s been a constant stream of trucks in,” Steven Bouie, a FEMA employee in an orange vest, said as he checked in a long line of trucks arriving. “Now we’re working on a big push to get it all out to people who need them.”
Disaster planners have been preparing for years for a storm like Hurricane Harvey, and repeated hurricanes on the Gulf Coast have given them plenty of practice, but the scale of this storm has pushed many emergency workers beyond their limits. Operators at the 911 system were overwhelmed, sending trapped residents to turn to social media. Police and firefighters got help from an armada of citizen bass boats and Jet Skis.
Nearly 35,000 people are in more than 200 shelters across Texas, but FEMA cautioned that the number would likely rise sharply. More than 50 counties in Texas and Louisiana have been impacted in some way by flooding, FEMA said. The Coast Guard continues to receive more than 1,000 calls an hour for help. More than 210,000 people have registered for FEMA assistance.
The military has sent in helicopters, cargo planes, trucks, amphibious vehicles, even special operations Marines in inflatable rafts, and were mobilizing hundreds of other troops.
Federal authorities say lessons learned from the often glaring missteps in the response to Katrina in 2005 have helped them to better prepare for the disaster unfolding in Texas. But many were reluctant to tout the accomplishment with the storm still swirling. “I think we don’t know what we don’t know.” said Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan of the Army, as he walked into the command briefing of Army North, the military command in charge of homeland defense. So far, he said, troops and federal aid workers were doing all they could.
At a long table surrounded by maps and video screens, an Army North team took turns briefing the general on the military response: 400 deep water trucks moving through Houston’s flooded neighborhoods; a fleet of Black Hawk helicopters running night rescues when civilian aircraft often cannot fly; satellite communications teams moving in to crucial locations.
Crews had whisked hundreds of stranded people to dry land. Air Force planes were getting ready to evacuate hospitals in storm-crippled neighborhoods. Looting remained low, but the National Guard was ready to step in to help police if necessary.
“We’ve got Ospreys,” a Marine officer said, referring to tilt-rotor aircraft that flies like an airplane but can land vertically. “We’ll stage them in Florida in case we need them when the storm hits Louisiana.”
The general nodded silently as he absorbed each fact, then looked up. “It’s bad and is probably going to get worse. When the rain stops we’ll find out,” he said. “It’s not just rescue, it’s recovery. We need to be looking 10 days out to see what we are going to encounter.” The storm presents a challenge for federal authorities on a scale rarely seen: The nation’s fourth-largest city paralyzed, an unknown number of houses destroyed, tens of thousands of people displaced, shelters running low on supplies, the storm still hovering.
Federal officials say they are poised to help where needed and are taking their lead from local leaders. In the disaster relief chain-of-command, mayors, governors, police chiefs and other local authorities have run the show in recent years. FEMA and the military stand by to provide resources to help. Federal officials say local officials know best what is needed and where.
“We don’t want to go running to the guns with everything we’ve got and just become part of the problem,” Buchanan said. This is a marked departure from the era of Hurricane Katrina, when federal authorities were more likely to impose control from above, said Gary Webb, a professor of emergency management at the University of North Texas.
“Katrina’s failures were a wake up call that really changed how emergency response is done,” said Webb, who gave authorities high marks on their response so far. “It forced federal agencies to be more nimble, and to really follow the lead of local authorities.”
After Katrina, he said, federal and local authorities strengthened joint training to ensure smooth operations. Congress passed laws to dismantle bureaucratic road blocks that kept agencies from working together, and require administrators to have considerable emergency response experience.
Local authorities have shown that they are much more willing to ask for help from ordinary citizens, Webb said. “In the past the practice was to tell people to stay out of the way,” he said. “But in a disaster of this scale, local authorities could never be prepared for the needs.”
(Dave Philipps, NEW YORK TIMES)
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Harvey, which had swung out into the Gulf of Mexico again, came ashore at dawn near the Texas-Louisiana border. Its rain bands preceded it, pounding Texas towns including Orange, Port Arthur and Beaumont with more than two feet.
City officials said much of Port Arthur — a city of 55,000 — was underwater. A shelter for flood victims flooded. One official estimated that water had entered one-third of the city’s buildings.
“We need boats. We need large trucks, and we need generators,” said Tiffany Hamilton, a former city council member in Port Arthur who was helping to coordinate relief efforts in a city that also is without electricity. “The entire city has been flooded.”
About 80 miles to the west, the Houston area was just beginning to recover from the biggest rainstorm in the recorded history of the continental United States.
Nearly 35,000 people were in shelters. Thousands of homes were still submerged. At least 37 people were dead, and that number was climbing as water receded, revealing the storm’s awful toll.
In Harris County, which includes Houston, authorities finally located a van, containing six members of a family, that had been washed off the road days earlier. All six were dead.
A few miles away, authorities discovered the bodies of two friends who had gone out in a boat Monday, trying to rescue neighbors. They lost control in the current, and drifted toward the sparks of a downed power line. They jumped in, to avoid the current. The electricity was in the water, too.
Three other men, including two journalists from a British newspaper, suffered electrical burns but survived by clinging to a tree above the water. On Wednesday afternoon, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said 20 people remained missing in the city. At one point, that figure was as high as 47, but Acevedo said 27 people have been found alive and removed from the list.
By late Wednesday, the remnants of Harvey had moved into Louisiana, traveling at 8 mph to the northeast. Its peak winds decreased to about 40 mph and the storm was downgraded to a tropical depression Wednesday night.
Louisiana officials, who had worried that Harvey might devastate their state as well, said the threat of flooding seemed to be lessening.
“Somewhere between being complacent and being panicked is the right place” to be, said Gov. John Bel Edwards. “That’s where we’re going to ask the people of Louisiana to settle.”
More than 50 inches of rain fell onto Houston over four days, turning the country’s fourth-largest city into a sea of muddy brown water, boats skimming along what had been neighborhood streets in search of survivors.
At the height of the flooding, between 25 and 30 percent of Harris County— home to 4.5 million people in Houston and its near suburbs — was flooded as of Tuesday afternoon, said Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist with the Harris County Flood Control District. That is an area as large as New York City and Chicago combined.
More than 210,000 people have registered for federal assistance, a number that is expected to increase, said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. William “Brock” Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), said it will take “many, many years” before the full scope of Harvey’s effect is clear, he said.
Elaine Duke, the acting homeland security secretary, said at the same briefing Wednesday: “We expect a many-year recovery in Texas, and the federal government is in this for the long haul.” President Donald Trump has pledged swift federal aid in response to Harvey’s devastation. On Wednesday, Abbott said that given the sheer number of people and the geographic area affected, he expects the government’s aid package “should be far in excess” of the roughly $120 billion allotted for Gulf Coast recovery after Katrina.
Trump could request emergency funding as soon as next week, a senior administration official said, reshuffling the political agenda as the White House scrambles to deal with the storm’s aftermath.
The funding package is expected to be only a partial down payment and serve in part to backstop depleted reserves that FEMA had on hand to respond to disasters.
No final decision about the funding has been made, and the amount could fluctuate based on conversations with lawmakers. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said the aid package request could be as much as $200 billion.
Tens of thousands of Houston-area residents were living in shelters as they waited out the storm. After the George R. Brown Convention Center took on nearly 10,000 evacuees, a county official asked to use the NRG Field south of downtown.
“They called up our CEO yesterday, and said: ‘Hey, we need you to do the shelter,’” said Frederick Goodall, director of marketing for the nonprofit Baker-Ripley Neighborhood Center.
That call was Tuesday morning. By the same time Wednesday, the NRG Center was lined with cots and thousands of volunteers. By the afternoon, 900 people had been bused in from other shelters, and nearly twice that many were expected to arrive by the end of the day. Six days after the storm first made landfall, residents were still unsure how long they would be out of their homes or what they would find when the waters receded.
Some of Houston’s bayous began to retreat inside their banks — although Buffalo Bayou, Houston’s main river, was still rising in some sections because of the release of water from upstream reservoirs.
“The watersheds are falling, and while most of them remain well over their levels, and some remain at record levels, the water levels are going down,” Lindner said. But he cautioned that some homes already underwater may “degrade.”
Across Texas, the storm shut down 11 oil refineries and curtailed production at nine others, while causing damage that led to at least 45 releases of harmful chemicals.
Meanwhile, it was the first day of the rest of Houston’s history, where millions of lives had been reshaped and burdened by the flood’s destruction.
Cleanup doesn’t begin to describe what’s next. Electricity was out. Debris littered the city. When a house caught fire in West Houston, firefighters couldn’t get water pressure to fill their hoses. Instead, they turned to the water around them and used a jet boat engine. They pointed the back of the boat toward the house, fired up the engine, and sprayed a massive water stream toward the blaze.
On highways that allowed for some traffic, large pickup trucks hauling boats made up the majority of those who dared to travel. Grocery stores, doughnut shops and Mexican-food restaurants reopened.
For those lucky enough not to be in a shelter, it was a day to take stock of what Harvey left behind.
“I feel like I’m dreaming,” said Julie Steptoe, who ventured Wednesday morning to an intersection in Kingwood, north of Houston. Never taking her eyes off the water that engulfed the area, she continued: “I don’t know what to think. I’m hoping it turns out OK for everyone.”
(Todd C. Frankel, Avi Selk & David A. Fahrenthold, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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According to the United Nations, at least 41 million people in Bangladesh, India and Nepal have been directly affected by flooding and landslides resulting from the monsoon rains, which usually begin in June and last until September. And while flooding in the Houston area has grabbed more attention, aid officials say a catastrophe is unfolding in South Asia.
In Nepal, thousands of homes have been destroyed and dozens of people swept away. Elephants were pressed into service, wading through swirling waters to rescue people, and aid workers have built rafts from bamboo and banana leaves.
But many people are still missing, and some families have held last rites without their loved ones’ bodies being found.
“This is the severest flooding in a number of years,” Francis Markus, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said by phone from Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital.
Nepal’s flooded areas are the poorest parts of the country, where most families live in bare mud houses and rely on subsistence farming, he said. Those farms are now underwater and thousands of people are stuck living under plastic tarps in camps for displaced people where disease is beginning to spread.
Asked how the situation in Nepal compared to that in Houston, Markus said, “We hope people won’t overlook the desperate needs of the people here because of the disasters closer home.”
India has also suffered immensely. Floods have swept across the states of Assam, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal and other areas.
This weekend, Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew over the devastation in Bihar, where more than 400 people are believed to have died in floods in recent weeks. He pledged millions of dollars in assistance and urged insurance companies to send in assessors as soon as possible to help farmers cope with their loses.
And the rain keeps coming.
On Tuesday, Mumbai, the sprawling financial capital, was soaked to the bone. Nearly all day, the rain drummed down. As people scurried up the sidewalks, the wind tore umbrellas out of their hands.
The sky seemed to fall lower and lower, pressing down on the building tops, cutting visibility to a few blocks, then a few yards. By mid-afternoon, it was so dark it felt like nightfall.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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But, after more than 50 inches of rain over four days, Houston was less of a city and more of an archipelago: a chain of urbanized islands in a muddy brown sea. All around it, flat-bottomed boats and helicopters were still plucking victims from rooftops, and water was still pouring in from overfilled reservoirs and swollen rivers.
Between 25 and 30 percent of Harris County — home to 4.5 million people in Houston and its near suburbs — was flooded by Tuesday afternoon, according to an estimate from Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist with the county flood control district. That’s at least 444 square miles.
President Donald Trump flew to the state on Tuesday, assuring Texans that “we are here to take care of you” and promised a “better than ever before” relief effort.
During visits first to Corpus Christi on the Gulf Coast, southwest of the worst-hit areas of Houston and its environs, and then to the state capital of Austin, Trump repeatedly praised federal, state and local officials. But he said little about victims who had lost their homes and loved ones in the storm.
“The world is watching and the world is very impressed with what you are doing,” Trump told officials at the Texas Department of Public Safety operations center in Austin who were coordinating rescue and shelter operations.
In Corpus Christi, Trump mounted a ladder between two fire trucks to address the crowd outside.
“We love you, you are special; we are here to take care of you,” he said. “It’s going well.”
“What a crowd, what a turnout,” he said. “It’s historic, its epic, but I tell you, it happened in Texas, and Texas can handle anything.”
The crowd cheered as Trump waved a Texas flag.
Houston officials, meanwhile, imposed an overnight curfew beginning at midnight Tuesday for an indefinite period amid incidents of looting, armed robberies and people impersonating police officers.
The curfew will run from midnight until 5 a.m. It originally was due to begin at 10 p.m. but the city pushed the start back two hours to allow volunteers to continue working, Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a statement. The city is also bringing additional police from other regions.
“You cannot drive, nor be in any public place. We have had problems with armed robberies, with people with guns and firearms,” said Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo.
On Tuesday morning authorities discovered the body of a Houston police officer who had drowned in his patrol car two days earlier, at the storm’s height. Sgt. Steve Perez, a veteran officer, was on his way to work on Sunday morning — spending 2 1⁄2 hours looking for a path through rain-lashed streets when he drove into a flooded underpass.
Acevedo said that Perez’s wife had asked him not to go in that day. He went, Acevedo said, “because he has that in his DNA.”
In all, authorities said at least 22 people had been confirmed dead from the storm. But they said it was difficult to know how many more were missing, and they anticipated more bodies would be found. They also said it is too early to assess the total number of homes and other buildings damaged, in part because rescue crews were still having trouble even reaching some areas because of flooded or flood-damaged roads, said Francisco Sanchez, spokesman for the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
“We’re still in the middle of the response,” he said.
Authorities said more than 13,000 people had been rescued from floodwaters, according to the Associated Press, but that number was surely low. Many had been rescued by strangers with boats, who had rescued so many that they themselves had lost count. They left behind homes that could be flooded for days, or weeks, and perhaps lost forever.
Officials said more than 13,300 people were already in shelters. Federal authorities estimated that 30,000 people could be forced from their homes in Texas and surrounding states.
All around Houston on Tuesday, the helping and the helpless repeated the same thing.
This doesn’t happen here.
“I’ve lived here since 1994, and it’s never been this high,” said Bonnie McKenna, a retired flight attendant living in Kingwood, along the raging San Jacinto River on Houston’s northeast side.
McKenna’s house was dry, but down the street rescue boats were unloading neighbors rescued from flooded streets nearby. McKenna didn’t have a boat.
But she did have a blanket.
She cut it into quarters, and offered them to soggy evacuees when they got off on dry land.
“I’m thankful it didn’t come to my house, but I’m very sad for the people who have just lost everything,” Mc-Kenna said.
The Department of Labor on Tuesday announced that it had approved an initial $10 million grant to help with cleanup efforts in Texas. Trump on Monday declared “emergency conditions” in Louisiana, where the storm was headed next.
Before Harvey struck this weekend, the biggest recorded rainstorm in the continental U.S. had been Tropical Storm Amelia, which dumped 48 inches on Texas in 1978.
Harvey, which drifted out of the jet stream and spun around Houston like a top, smashed the record. By Tuesday afternoon, a rain gauge near Mont Belvieu, 40 miles east of Houston, had recorded 51.9 inches of rain.
Over Harris County alone, Lindner estimated that more than a trillion gallons of rain fell. That was like letting Niagara Falls run full-blast onto Houston for 15 days straight.
The water rushed off the concrete of the expanding city, and overwhelmed the meandering bayous that were its natural path to the sea. The hardest-hit areas were often in the south and southeast, the downstream end of the waterways. But the water was everywhere: a map of flooded streets, compiled by the Houston Chronicle, showed a city dotted with blue. There were concentrations to the west of the city, too, where water had filled up two enormous upstream reservoirs, named Addicks and Barker, that were built to shield the city from floods like this.
Officials released water from those reservoirs to ease the pressure, but at least one of the reservoirs still overtopped its banks. More than 3,000 homes were flooded around the reservoirs.
They may remain flooded for some time. The Army Corps of Engineers said it would continue to release water from the reservoirs for weeks, to make room in case another rain comes.
“We’re still in tropical storm season,” said Edmond Russo, an official with the Corps of Engineers.
Across Texas, the storm has shut down 14 oil refineries, causing damage at some that released harmful chemicals.
In Crosby, Texas, a fertilizer plant was in critical condition Tuesday night after its refrigeration system and inundated backup power generators failed, raising the possibility that the volatile chemicals on the site would explode.
Arkema, a maker of organic peroxides, evacuated all the personnel from the plant and was attempting to operate the facility remotely. The material must be kept at low temperatures to avoid combustion.
Around the city, schools and universities were closed, with some unable to say when they would reopen.
The George R. Brown Convention Center downtown had taken in 10,000 people as of Tuesday morning, said Turner. That number is double the center’s capacity of 5,000.
The convention center is the landing site for all air evacuations, Charles Maltbie, a regional disaster officer for the Red Cross, and bus evacuations are being diverted to other shelters. When asked what the center’s top capacity is, he said: “We will meet the need.”
Some of the evacuees at the center will be moved to a new shelter at the Toyota Center, Turner said.
About 250 miles to the north, the city of Dallas was preparing to take at least 6,000 evacuees from the Houston area, according to Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, the county’s top official. There were showers. Phone-charging stations. There was a dining hall manned by volunteers, including the Texas Baptist Men and local Israeli-American and Muslim-American groups.
(Kevin Sullivan & Arelis R. Hernandez, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Growth that is virtually unchecked, including in flood-prone areas, has diminished the land’s already-limited natural ability to absorb water, according to environmentalists and experts in land use and natural disasters.
And the city’s drainage system — a network of reservoirs, bayous and, as a last resort, roads that hold and drain water — was not designed to handle the massive storms that are increasingly common.
Certainly, the record-shattering rainfall on Houston and its surrounding area this week would have wreaked havoc even if stricter building limits and better runoff systems were in place. And local officials have defended the city’s approach to development.
But the unfolding disaster is drawing renewed scrutiny to Houston’s approach to city planning and its unique system for managing floodwater.
“You would have seen widespread damage with Harvey no matter what, but I have no doubt it could have been substantially reduced,” said Jim Blackburn, co-director of Rice University’s research center on severe storm prediction and disaster evacuation.
Over many years, officials in Houston and Harris County have resisted calls for more stringent building codes. Proposals for large-scale flood-control projects envisioned in the wake of Hurricane Ike in 2008 stalled. City residents have voted three times not to enact a zoning code, most recently in 1993.
Rather than impose restrictions on what property owners can do with their land, Houston has attempted to engineer a solution to drainage. The region depends on a network of bayous — slow-moving streams that run east into Galveston Bay — and concrete channels as the main drainage system. Streets and detention ponds are designed to carry and hold the overflow. In previous public comments, the leaders of the Harris County Flood Control District have rejected the idea that the city’s growth is responsible for massive flooding. They also have disputed the scientific assessments. Those officials were not available this week.
Bill St. John, a retired civil engineer and former project manager for the district, said in an interview: “There are people who would turn around and say there needed to be stronger rules and regulations. And in hindsight, it’s real easy to say that. But the rules and regulations were what they needed to be at the time. There was no scientific proof it needed to be stronger at the time, so it wasn’t.”
But in a city built on a low-lying coastal plain, on “black gumbo,” clay-based soil that is among the least absorbent in the nation, many experts say those approaches no longer suffice. They say that new homes should be elevated and that construction should be prohibited in some flood-prone areas. At least 4,000 residential and commercial properties in Harris County have been built since 2010 in the official flood plain the federal government designated as the 100-year flood plain, according to a Washington Post review of areas at the greatest risk of flooding. Some other cities also allow building in flood plains, with varying degrees of regulation.
“Houston is the Wild West of development, so any mention of regulation creates a hostile reaction from people who see that as an infringement on property rights and a deterrent to economic growth,” said Sam Brody, director of the Center for Texas Beaches and Shores at Texas A& M University. “The stormwater system has never been designed for anything much stronger than a heavy afternoon thunderstorm.”
At the same time, severe storms are becoming more frequent, experts said. The city’s building laws are designed to guard against what was once considered a worst-case scenario — a 100-year storm, or one that planners projected would have only a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year. Those storms have become quite common, however. Harvey, which dumped up to 50 inches of rain in some places as of Tuesday afternoon, is the third such storm to hit Houston in the past three years.
In May 2015, seven people died after 12 inches of rain fell in 10 hours during what is known as the Memorial Day Flood. Eight people died in April 2016 during a storm that dropped 17 inches of rain.
Like other coastal areas, Houston and its surrounding areas have repeatedly turned to federal taxpayers for help rebuilding.
Harris County has received about $3 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for losses in the past four decades, federal data show. It ranks third in the amount paid by the National Flood Insurance Program, behind Orleans and Jefferson parishes in Louisiana, which sustained significant damage during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In the 1940s, the Army Corps of Engineers built two massive reservoirs that serve as holding areas during big downpours. In the following decades, the city carved out additional concrete channels and lined bayous with pavement to shunt water away.
“The system is dependent on bayous that have been there forever and had a certain capacity,” said Gerry Galloway, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Maryland and a visiting professor at Texas A& M. “Over the years, that was probably a reasonable way to deal with this. As the city grew, and there was more development, there was less and less capacity to carry the runoff.”
Houston’s population climbed to 2.2 million in 2015, a 25 percent increase from 1995. Harris County had an even bigger bump over that time, 42 percent, and now has 4.4 million residents. As the population grew, the city expanded, covering fallow land that had served as a natural sponge.
Between 1992 and 2010, 30 percent of the surrounding county’s coastal prairie wetlands were paved over, according to a 2010 report from Texas A& M. Projects to widen the bayous and build thousands of retention ponds for excess water have not kept pace with the new rooftops, roadways and parking lots needed to accommodate about 150,000 new residents a year, experts say. As a backup, roads were built below grade and designed to take on excess water when storm drains overflow.
“The philosophy was: Wouldn’t you rather have water in the street than in your house?” said D. Wayne Klotz, a water resources engineer and senior principal at RPS Klotz Associates and a former national president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
When the streets fill up, though, evacuation becomes more difficult.
In the days before Harvey struck, city officials urged residents to stay put. On social media, local officials knocked down predictions that as many as 50 inches of rain were expected — reports that overstated the forecast at the time but turned out to align more closely with the eventual rainfall.
When the rain came, roads turned into waterways, requiring door-to-door boat rescues.
In many areas of the city, especially the older parts, water that breaches the roadways flows into homes that sit on ground-level slabs. Blackburn said that requiring higher elevations of homes in flood-prone areas — the current requirement is one foot above the level of a “100-year storm” — would have stemmed the losses from Harvey and past storms.
John Jacob, director of the Texas Coastal Watershed Program and a professor at Texas A& M, said he was particularly incensed to hear about a nursing home in Dickinson, southeast of Houston, where residents in wheelchairs were sitting in waist-deep water. They were rescued after photos of them went viral on social media.
“That should never have been built,” Jacob said of the nursing home that sits across the street from the floodplain boundary. “We’re putting people in harm’s way.”
Jacob lives in a neighborhood east of downtown called Eastwood that he said was spared from flooding damage because many lots are above street level, and homes have been built on “pier and beam” foundations that include a crawl space of a few feet. That adds thousands of dollars to the cost and isn’t required by city or county building codes.
(Shawn Boburg & Beth Reinhard, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Three 18-wheelers, several box trucks and trailers left San Diego late Saturday by caravan. The group of 45 took six boats, including two inflatables, to help rescue people from floodwaters that have submerged highways, shopping centers and entire neighborhoods in the Houston area and beyond.
At least eight people in southeast Texas have died in the storm.
“Once they are in San Antonio they will be tasked with their operational assignment and then given a location for them to set up,” said San Diego Fire-Rescue Battalion Chief Dave Gerboth.
The group, deployed as California Task Force 8, has 43 firefighters, a Sharp Healthcare doctor and a structural specialist from the city of San Diego, with members representing 13 local agencies.
The crew was headed to Fort Worth but were redirected to a staging area in San Antonio. Gerboth said they’ll find “a good place to stay dry” as they set up to do rescues, probably in the Houston area.
The National Weather Service said parts of Harris County has received 30 inches or rain and an additional 15 to 25 inches is expected in some areas.
Gerboth said the group took enough food and other supplies to be self sufficient for up to a week.
The line of trucks that traveled in the caravan left from a warehouse at the San Diego Fire-Rescue Training Academy off North Harbor Drive.
(S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Much of the same is expected today, when many San Diego schools will shift to a half-day schedule because of the heat.
“The sea breeze has had a positive influence at the coast, but it’s really hot inland,” said Phil Gonsalves, a forecaster at the National Weather Service.
“It still looks like things will peak on Tuesday, but there won’t be much difference in temperatures on Wednesday.”
Through 4:30 p.m. Monday, the temperature had hit 114 in Ocotillo Wells, 110 in Valley Center, 105 in Ramona and 104 in Campo. It was 99 in El Cajon and 98 in Santee. San Diego International Airport hit 78.
Brief thunderstorms drifted through parts of the county late Monday afternoon, and forecasters say more are possible west of the mountains the rest of the work week.
More than 80 schools in the San Diego Unified School District will let out early today and possibly other days this week because of the heat wave.
Superintendent Cindy Marten announced Monday afternoon that the district will implement its hot-weather plan in anticipation of temperatures up to 95 degrees for certain schools with no or little air conditioning.
After-school programs at each campus will help care for the students during the shortened day.
Of the schools that will have shortened schedules, 22 have no air conditioning, and the rest have air conditioning on less than 80 percent of their campus.
The list includes elementary, middle and high schools, and families can check their school’s websites or expect a notifications to learn when classes will let out.
The district’s hot-weather policy allows schools with shortened days to adjust class schedules so basic skills are taught before the day’s end. Recess activities and physical education are limited or rescheduled for later. A list of schools affected by the shorten is available at sandiegounified.org/hot-weather-school-list .
More details about the district’s hot-weather procedures can be found at sandiegounified.org/hotweather.
(Gary Robbins & Gary Warth, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Federal Office for the Environment director Marc Chardonnens said by telephone that experts were looking into exact causes for the break-off of rock face that tumbled in a gooey sludge into the village of Bondo last week, including possible tectonic and geological factors as well as climatic ones.
Chardonnens said Switzerland must do more to brace for the effects of climate change, citing the “weakening of the permafrost” atop many Alpine peaks as an example. His office said that the Alpine country has experienced an average temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degree Fahrenheit) since record-keeping began in 1864.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The new rule, announced in March and put into effect Monday, also means that garbage bags will be taken off supermarket shelves and visitors entering Kenya will be required to leave their duty-free shopping bags at the airport.
Kenya joins more than 40 other countries including China, the Netherlands and France that have introduced taxes on bags or limited or prohibited their use.
In Rwanda, plastic bags are illegal, and visitors are searched at the airport. Britain introduced a 5-pence charge at stores in 2015, leading to a plunge of more than 80 percent in the use of plastic bags. There are no nationwide restrictions on the use of plastic bags in the United States, though states like California and Hawaii ban non-biodegradable bags.
Kenyan shoppers are thought to use 100 million plastic bags a year, according to the United Nations, and the new rules created some worries in the capital, Nairobi, when they were announced.
Fruit and vegetable sellers were at a loss for how to market their produce, and some residents mistook ordinary traffic controllers for law enforcement officials looking to punish consumers who violated the new law. In informal settlements, where most of the city’s residents live, plastic bags are used as “flying toilets”— holding human waste in the absence of a proper sewage system.
Judy Wakhungu, Kenya’s environment minister, tried to allay people’s fears, telling Reuters that the ban was primarily aimed at manufacturers and suppliers. “Ordinary wananchi will not be harmed,” she said, using a Kiswahili word for “common person.”
The new regulations call for a fine of $19,000 to $38,000 or a four-year jail term for those manufacturing or importing plastic bags in Kenya. Plastics used in primary industrial packaging are exempt, according to the National Environment Management Authority, although it said that the new regulation would prohibit retailers from selling garbage bags.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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The nation’s fourth-largest city was still mostly paralyzed by one of the largest downpours in U.S. history. And there was no relief in sight from the storm that spun into Texas as a Category 4 hurricane, then parked over the Gulf Coast. With nearly 2 more feet of rain expected on top of the 30-plus inches in some places, authorities worried that the worst might be yet to come.
Harvey has been blamed for at least three confirmed deaths, including a woman killed Monday in the town of Porter, northeast of Houston, when a large oak tree dislodged by heavy rains toppled onto her trailer home. A Houston television station reported Monday that six family members were believed to have drowned when their van was swept away by floodwaters.
The KHOU report was attributed to three family members the station did not identify. No bodies have been recovered.
Police Chief Art Acevedo told The Associated Press that he had no information about the report but said that he’s “really worried about how many bodies we’re going to find.”
According to the station, four children and their grandparents were feared dead after the van hit high water Sunday when crossing a bridge in the Greens Bayou area.
The driver of the vehicle, the children’s great-uncle, reportedly escaped before the van sank by grabbing a tree limb. He told the children to try to escape through the back door, but they were unable to get out.
The disaster unfolded on an epic scale in one of America’s most sprawling metropolitan centers. The Houston metro area covers about 10,000 square miles, an area slightly bigger than New Jersey. It’s crisscrossed by about 1,700 miles of channels, creeks and bayous that drain into the Gulf of Mexico, about 50 miles to the southeast from downtown.
The storm is generating an amount of rain that would normally be seen only once in more than 1,000 years, said Edmond Russo, a deputy district engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers, which was concerned that floodwater would spill around a pair of 70-year-old reservoir dams that protect downtown Houston.
The flooding was so widespread that the levels of city waterways have equaled or surpassed those of Tropical Storm Allison from 2001, and no major highway has been spared some overflow.
The city’s normally bustling business district was virtually deserted Monday, with emergency vehicles making up most of the traffic. Rescuers continued plucking people from the floodwaters. Mayor Sylvester Turner put the number rescued by police at more than 3,000. The Coast Guard said it had also rescued more than 3,000 by boat and air and was taking more than 1,000 calls her hour.
Chris Thorn was among the many volunteers still helping with the mass evacuation that began Sunday. He drove with a buddy from the Dallas area with their flat-bottom hunting boat to pull strangers out of the water.
“I couldn’t sit at home and watch it on TV and do nothing since I have a boat and all the tools to help,” he said.
They got to Spring, Texas, where Cypress Creek had breached Interstate 45 and went to work, helping people out of a gated community near the creek.
“It’s never flooded here,” Lane Cross said from the front of Thorn’s boat, holding his brown dog, Max. “I don’t even have flood insurance.”
A mandatory evacuation was ordered for the low-lying Houston suburb of Dickinson, home to 20,000. Police cited the city’s fragile infrastructure in the floods, limited working utilities and concern about the weather forecast.
In Houston, questions continued to swirl about why the mayor did not issue a similar evacuation order.
Turner has repeatedly defended the decision and did so again Monday, insisting that a mass evacuation of millions of people by car was a greater risk than enduring the storm.
“Both the county judge and I sat down together and decided that we were not in direct path of the storm, of the hurricane, and the safest thing to do was for people to stay put, make the necessary preparations. I have no doubt that the decision we made was the right decision.”
He added, “Can you imagine if millions of people had left the city of Houston and then tried to come back in right now?”
The Red Cross quickly set up the George R. Brown Convention Center and other venues as shelters. The center, which was also used to house Hurricane Katrina refugees from New Orleans in 2005, can accommodate roughly 5,000 people. By Monday evening, it was nearly full. At the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, the Army Corps started releasing water Monday because water levels were climbing at a rate of more than 6 inches per hour, Corps spokesman Jay Townsend said.
The move was supposed to help shield the business district from floodwaters, but it also risked flooding thousands more homes in nearby subdivisions. Built after devastating floods in 1929 and 1935, the reservoirs were designed to hold water until it can be released downstream at a controlled rate.
In the Cypress Forest Estates neighborhood in northern Harris County, people called for help from inside homes as water from a nearby creek rose to their eaves. A steady procession of rescue boats floated into the area.
Harvey increased slightly in strength Monday as it drifted back over the warm Gulf, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Forecasters expect the system to stay over water with 45 mph winds for 36 hours and then head back inland east of Houston sometime Wednesday. The system will then head north and lose its tropical strength.
Before then, up to 20 more inches of rain could fall, National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini said Monday. That means the flooding will get worse in the days ahead and the floodwaters will be slow to recede once Harvey finally moves on, the weather service said.
Sometime today or early Wednesday, parts of the Houston region will probably break the nearly 40-year-old U.S. record for the biggest rainfall from a tropical system — 48 inches, set by Tropical Storm Amelia in 1978 in Texas, meteorologists said.
The amount of water in Houston was so unprecedented that the weather service had to update the color charts on its official rainfall maps to indicate the heavier totals.
In Louisiana, the images of the devastation in Houston stirred up painful memories for many Hurricane Katrina survivors. “It really evoked a lot of emotions and heartbreak for the people who are going through that now in Houston,” Ray Gratia said as he picked up sandbags for his New Orleans home, which flooded during the 2005 hurricane.
In Washington, President Donald Trump’s administration assured Congress that the $3 billion balance in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster fund was enough to handle immediate needs, such as debris removal and temporary shelter for displaced residents.
The White House announced that Trump planned to visit Texas today.
Harvey was the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in 13 years and the strongest to strike Texas since 1961’s Hurricane Carla, the most powerful Texas hurricane on record.
(Michael Graczyk & David Phillip, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In general, if people are safe, they shouldn’t move. In their updates on the storm’s progress Sunday, the Hurricane Center underscored in capital letters its warning to “not attempt to travel if you are in a safe place.”
Yet some New Orleans residents who decided to stay put in their homes during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 ended up dying in their attics, while others were trapped there for days awaiting rescue.
Former National Hurricane Center directors Neil Frank and Max Mayfield fear casualties from Harvey could rise over the next few days if stir-crazy residents decide to venture outside their homes and into the high waters.
“This is going to go on a lot longer than most people think,” Mayfield said.
Gregory Waller, coordinating meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s West Gulf River Forecast Center in Fort Worth, Texas, especially worries about people going out at night.
“The dangerous time would be the overnight hours when you just can’t see the magnitude or the impact of the floodwaters,” Waller said.
Although Harvey has spawned a number of tornadoes, they are far less dangerous and less likely than the flooding, Mayfield said. So he said it is still best to get high above the water than worry about going to the basement to avoid tornadoes.
The National Weather Service is predicting 20 to 25 inches of more rain for southeast Texas with some parts of Houston expected to accumulate as much as 50 inches of rain.
“It just really is a disaster that is only now beginning to unfold,” said meteorologist Patrick Burke of the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center. “I think we’re going to run out of words to describe this, honestly.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Over 24 hours, the greater Houston and Galveston area received 24.1 inches of rain. The National Weather Service warned of “additional catastrophic, unprecedented and life-threatening flooding” into the next week, and placed flash-flood emergencies for all of Southeast Texas.
As the much-anticipated storm pummeled the country’s fourth-largest city — overwhelming the 911 system and sending some residents, against the advice of officials, into their attics to flee floodwaters — many asked the question: Should Houston have been evacuated? If so, why wasn’t it?
At least one official thought it should have been.
At a Friday news conference, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott encouraged residents in low-lying and coastal areas of the state to evacuate, even if a mandatory evacuation order had not been issued.
“Even if an evacuation order hasn’t been issued by your local official, if you’re in an area between Corpus Christi and Houston, you need to strongly consider evacuating,” Abbott said. “What you don’t know, and what nobody else knows right now, is the magnitude of flooding that will be coming.
“You don’t want to put yourself in a situation where you could be subject to a search and rescue.”
The governor’s warning was in sharp contrast to the advice local and county officials had been dispensing for days: to shelter and stay in place. And it set off a scramble by local officials on social media to tell their residents otherwise.
“LOCAL LEADERS KNOW BEST,” Francisco Sanchez, spokesman for the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, tweeted in response to Abbott’s warning. There were no evacuation orders in Houston, and ones only in a few communities in Harris County, Sanchez stressed.
In a follow-up tweet, Sanchez urged residents to heed the advice of local officials like Harris County Judge Ed Emmett and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, rather than Abbott.
On Saturday morning, as Hurricane Harvey’s powerful winds and rain caused severe damage to coastal communities, the Houston mayor warned people there would be heavy rain and flooding in the city for the next four to five days — but once again emphasized they did not need to evacuate.
Turner also addressed concerns that Abbott and local officials had sent conflicting messages about what was safer: fleeing or staying in place.
“I think the governor and I both agree that this is a serious and unprecedented storm,” Turner said Saturday on “Good Morning America.” While everyone had agreed the Southeast Texas cities of Victoria and Rockport needed to be evacuated, as they were in the direct line of the hurricane, Houston and Harris County were different.
“For Houston, Harris County, the county judge and I both agreed that for us this was a major rainfall event and so there was no need to evacuate. We are asking people to stay off the streets,” Turner said. “Quite frankly, leaving your homes, getting on the streets, you’ll be putting yourself in more danger and not making yourself safer. And so, we’re just asking people to hunker down.”
However, reports and images from Houston and Harris County showed it was increasingly difficult for people to do so.
“This disaster’s going to be a landmark event,” FEMA administrator Brock Long said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “This is a storm that the United States has not seen yet.”
Houston-area officials who urged people to stay home before the storm may have been remembering that the city government was strongly criticized after the disastrous evacuation before Hurricane Rita in 2005.
In the hours before Rita struck the Houston area in September 2005, government officials issued an evacuation order, and some 2.5 million people hit the road at the same time, according to the Houston Chronicle. More than 100 people died in the mass exit from the city — almost as many as were killed by the hurricane itself.
Dozens were injured or died of heat stroke waiting in traffic for nearly a full day. Fights broke out on clogged highways. A charter bus carrying people from a nursing home exploded on the side of Interstate 45, killing 24 people inside.
Meanwhile, the fear from Hurricane Rita turned out to be unfounded. It weakened from a Category 5 churning in the Gulf of Mexico to a Category 3 by the time it made landfall in East Texas and resulted in a fraction of the damage and deaths as Hurricane Katrina, which had ravaged New Orleans three weeks earlier.
After Hurricane Rita, many in Houston returned to their homes after hours of languishing on the highway “and found the house was fine and the street wasn’t flooded,” according to Madhu Beriwal, the president and CEO of IEM, a disaster planning and prevention company who has worked in Harris County.
In evacuation planning, public officials are trying to find “the course of least regret,” Beriwal said. Traveling by car has inherent risks, and any evacuation order comes with the grim understanding that people will die trying to get out, he added.
“We know that there’s going to result in a certain number of deaths just by having so many people on the road,” Beriwal told The Washington Post. “When you have evacuation traffic, it’s even more difficult, because you have people that are very vulnerable traveling. ... The people that tend to die in bigger numbers (during evacuations) are generally the elderly — people that wouldn’t normally be on the road anyway.”
But no matter which path officials decide to take, Beriwal said, “It is always better to speak with one voice so people know what the officials think is the best thing to do.”
After Rita, officials began changing laws and government programs to improve future evacuations. The state’s emergency management division began to work more closely with municipalities to coordinate hurricane response plans, the Texas Tribune reported, “including finding ways to restore power sooner.”
Lawmakers amended statutes to make it easier for emergency workers from other parts of the state to help during a crisis, the Tribune reported, and removed liability worries that hindered mutual aid. And now, state and local authorities participate in drills to reverse the traffic flow on the highway to “ensure various agencies stay familiar with the process.”
(Amy B Wang & Cleve R. Wootson Jr., THE WASHINGTON POST)
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“Over 1,000 perished in the mudslide and flood disaster, and we will never know the exact number now,” Elenoroh Jokomie Metzger, the head of the women of Regent, said. Regent is an area on the outskirts of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, where the mudslide hit. Hundreds of burials have taken place, while rescue and recovery efforts have continued through rain that could bring fresh tragedy due to unsafe housing conditions.
Thousands of people living in areas at risk during heavy rains have been evacuated.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Across the nation’s fourth-largest city and suburbs many miles away, families scrambled to get out of their fast-flooding homes. Rescuers — in many cases neighbors helping neighbors — in fishing boats, huge dump trucks and even front-end loaders battled driving rains to move people to shelter.
Some used inflatable toys to ferry their families out of inundated neighborhoods, wading through chest-deep water on foot while the region was under near-constant tornado watches.
By Sunday afternoon, the National Weather Service, which tweeted the “beyond anything experienced” description that morning, was predicting that parts of Texas could receive nearly 50 inches of rain, the largest recorded total in the state’s history.
It also warned that Harvey’s relentless downpours were expected to continue until late in the week and that flooding could become much more severe. More than 82,000 homes were without electricity in the Houston area by Sunday night as airports shuttered and hospitals planned evacuations.
Thousands of rescue missions have been launched across a large swath of Texas, and Gov. Greg Abbott said Sunday that more than 3,000 National Guard troops had been deployed to assist with relief efforts. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said federal agencies have more than 5,000 employees working in Texas.
Officials said Houston, a major center for the nation’s energy industry, had suffered billions of dollars in damage and would take years to fully recover. Oil and gas companies have shut down about a quarter of oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. Spot prices for gasoline are expected to jump today, but the full extent of damage will not be clear for days, companies and experts said.
Harvey’s sheer size also became apparent Sunday as heavy rains and flooding were reported as far away as Austin and even Dallas. What started with a direct impact on the tiny coastal town of Rockport on Friday night has turned into a weather disaster affecting thousands of square miles and millions of people.
In Austin, the Wilhelmina Delco Center, one of two Red Cross shelters in the city, had about 200 evacuees. Rain continued to fall steadily in Austin on Sunday, and river levels continued to rise. Precautionary sandbags were stacked against the shelter’s entrance.
Bristel Minsker, communications director for the Red Cross Central and South Texas region, said “things are changing quickly” as the organization prepares to scale up operations in the areas between Austin and Houston. Still, much of the nation’s focus remained squarely on Houston, where the massive scale of the flooding and the potential for it to get much worse in the days ahead was reminding many spooked residents of the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans.
Mayor Sylvester Turner and other officials pleaded with residents to “shelter in place” and to make calls to overwhelmed 911 operators only in life-threatening emergencies. They urged people to climb to their roofs to await shelter if water was rising in their homes, and local TV news anchors reminded people to stay out of attics where they might be trapped by water or to take an ax to hack their way to the roof.
Police began to ask people with high-water vehicles and boats to assist in rescue efforts on streets where abandoned cars were completely submerged. Brays Bayou, a huge waterway crossing the southwestern part of the city, rose between 10 and 20 feet overnight and by Sunday morning was flowing over bridges in its path.
The Texas National Guard has deployed across the state, including engineers in Corpus Christi and an infantry search-and-rescue team in Rockport. Another search-and-rescue unit was staging in San Antonio and was likely to be deployed to affected areas shortly, officials said. As the extent of the disaster became clear at daylight Sunday, some criticized Houston officials for not calling for an evacuation of the city. Turner defended the decision not to evacuate, noting that it would be a “nightmare” to empty out the population of his city and the county all at once.
“You literally cannot put 6.5 million people on the road,” Turner said at a news conference.
President Donald Trump praised the way the city’s officials were handling the flood, tweeting at 8:25 a.m. that the “Good news is that we have great talent on the ground.” Trump signed a disaster proclamation for Texas on Friday. He plans to visit Texas on Tuesday.
The disaster unfolding in Houston appeared suddenly, starting with severe storms Saturday evening that came with slashing, sideways rain and almost uninterrupted lightning. By morning, a city that had been largely spared by Harvey’s initial pounding of coastal communities was flooded to devastating levels.
By 7 a.m., the National Weather Service had recorded close to 25 inches of rain around Houston. Warnings for flash flooding and tornadoes remained across the region, and storm surges were expected along the coast, bringing flooding to typically dry areas.
The weather service said Sunday that at least five people had been reported dead because of Harvey. Local officials have confirmed that at least three people have died as a result of the storm, and officials in the hardest-hit counties expect that as the waters recede the number of fatalities will rise.
The first reported death came Saturday in Rockport. Officials said one person was killed after becoming stuck inside a house that caught fire during the storm.
About 9:15 p.m. on Saturday, rescuers in southwest Houston recovered the body of a woman thought to have driven her car into floodwaters before attempting to escape on foot. Just two minutes earlier, police about 40 miles southeast in La Marque found the body of a 52-year-old homeless man in a Walmart parking lot where there had been high water.
“No city can handle these kind of deluges. In our case, 23 inches overnight,” LaMarque Mayor Bobby Hocking said Sunday, noting that the police department rescued 30 families and brought them to city offices. “I have since secured hotel rooms for them. They were thankful and cried tears of joy,” he said.
As it scrambled to open shelters across Texas, the Red Cross command center in Houston was “physically isolated” because of floodwaters, said Paul Carden, district director of Red Cross activities in south Texas, which includes Corpus Christi.
“The advice is, if you don’t have to be out, don’t be out,” said Bill Begley, a spokesman with the Joint Information Center in Houston. He said most of the calls for help the center had received had come from residents who tried to drive through the storm and got stuck in high water.
Both of Houston’s major airports were closed, and many tourists and visitors found themselves stranded in hotels with no hope of leaving anytime soon.
Southwest Airlines flight attendant Allison Brown said at least 50 flight attendants, a number of pilots, airport staff and hundreds of passengers have been stranded at William P. Hobby Airport since at least 1 a.m. Sunday.
Brown said the airport flooded so quickly that shuttles were unable to get them out. They were told by police that it would be unsafe to attempt to leave. “Luckily, we have the restaurant staff, or else we would’ve been stuck with no food,” Brown said. “Waters in the road are around 4 feet — minimum— surrounding the airport.”
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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The men touched down in an emptied traffic lane. They unhooked from each other. Seconds later, the rescuer and his helicopter were off again. And Robert Durbin, 33, was left to find his wife, Danielle, who had been airlifted in her pajamas minutes earlier. Shoeless, he ran through the parking lot that had sprung up on the interstate, searching, his eyes scanning the cars and vans. He soon found her in a television crew’s vehicle.
They had been on the roof of their home since about 8 a.m., and they expected all of their possessions, except those in the attic, would be lost. “That was insane,” Robert Durbin said of his family’s ordeal.
The Durbins, whose first task after being reunited was to retrieve their daughters, who were at a relative’s house, were hardly alone in being plucked to safety. Houston on Sunday was a study in desperate improvisation, streets and highways turned into rivers, boats and helicopters more useful than cars, and dramatic rescues taking place virtually everywhere one looked.
The National Guard and a flotilla of private boat operators swarmed Houston in search of residents in distress, many of whom had been frantically calling authorities for help all day long. Stranded residents mounted the backs of some soldiers, who waded through thigh-high waters to take evacuees to trucks that would drive them to safety.
During a break from Sunday’s rain, the unflooded stretch of interstate near the Meyerland Plaza shopping center in southwest Houston became an impromptu staging area for emergency responders and volunteers offering up powerboats, kayaks and rafts.
On the highways, some motorists, stalled themselves, got out and tried to push others to safety. People searched their phones for traffic alerts and safe passages. Even National Guard soldiers traveling in civilian vehicles were left to consult Google Maps.
Once residents were rescued, whether by emergency officials or volunteers, they were typically unsure of where they would spend Sunday night and beyond.
National Guard soldiers used a Chevrolet van to ferry rescued passengers across still more flooded water to another dry area, where they would be relocated once again.
“They’re going to take you from there to a shelter or something like that,” Maj. Randy Stillinger of the Texas Army National Guard told some of his passengers. “I’m not sure, but it’s better than being here.”
He added, “I wish I could do so much more for you.”
During one ride, a woman asked if she would be safe in her eventual destination: “It’s high enough that we’re not going to drown?”
The rescues and searches played out all day.
Raoul Njobi earlier in the afternoon had shouted to the men launching a small motorized boat into a flooded-out section of interstate. Begging for help, he explained that his sister was trapped in her car. He thought she was nearby, but her phone’s battery had died.
“She’s got a Ford Fiesta, white,” Njobi said as the men tried to back their boat into the floodwaters.
“There’s people stranded left and right,” said the pilot of the boat where Njobi made his plea. “There’s kids and pregnant women all over.”
Njobi, in what looked like a swimsuit, anxiously told his tale.
“I was talking to her, but now the communication doesn’t work,” he said. “Her phone is dead, and we aren’t able to communicate.”
The last time the two spoke, Njobi said, the water had begun to come into his sister’s car.
“I told her to stay on the top of the car and wait and wave so people can see her,” he said. “Now we don’t know what’s going on exactly.”
The men in the boat listened, then backed the boat off the trailer and into the water on what is ordinarily an exit lane for South Post Oak Road. Then they floated off in the direction Njobi pointed, as Njobi stood on a patch of dry land and watched.
At midday Sunday, nine National Guard vehicles were parked along the stretch of interstate. Soldiers in life jackets and camouflage pants were scrambling into a boat to make rescues in a nearby area, and they expected to be kept busy for hours.
Beatriz Abelenda sat in the front seat of a National Guard van, her poncho dry and the vehicle’s emergency flashers clicking. Her home, close to Interstate 610, had not flooded. But she could not get to it.
“I was just trying to get home, and here we are,” said Abelenda, whose son had managed to get to the house around lunch time and reported that it was still on dry land. Abelenda, who has lived in Houston her entire life, said that even in Harvey’s early assault on Houston, she had never seen a storm so bad. Not Tropical Storm Alison in 2001. Not Hurricane Ike in 2008.
“I would say it’s the worst,” she said. “I’m worried. I’m worried it’s just going to get worse. It doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better.”
(Alan Blinder, THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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After the storm pounded the Texas coast, it crept inland and then stopped moving, as if mired in mud, and its torrential rains are not expected to abate until mid-week. Rising rivers were triggering evacuations across a broad section of the state, and computer models are forecasting record flooding.
Officials confirmed one fatality near the small coastal town of Rockport, which took a direct hit from the storm, as search and rescue operations continued in ravaged areas that are still largely inaccessible. Officials said Rockport could receive as much as 60 inches of rain through midweek.
“We’ve been devastated,” Rockport Mayor C.J. Wax said in a telephone interview. “There are structures that are either significantly disrupted or completely destroyed. I have some buildings that are lying on the street.” In the nearby island town of Port Aransas, officers conducted a search and rescue mission for eight people who have been reported missing, an Aransas County sheriff’s deputy said.
In the coming days, forecasters expect the storm to meander south and east, and possibly slip back out over the warm gulf waters, allowing it to restrengthen to some extent. All the while, it will dump what could be historic quantities of rain — 15 to 30 inches in many areas, with as much as 40 inches in isolated areas, according to the National Weather Service. As many as 300,000 people across the state were without power Saturday afternoon, and wastewater and drinking-water treatment plants were offline. The National Weather Service predicted “major flood” conditions at some 49 river locations across a vast expanse of coastal Texas.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he had declared 50 counties disaster areas. With the storm now ashore, he said that “our primary concern remains dramatic flooding.” He urged residents to follow the familiar advice: “Turn around, don’t drown.”
Many coastal Texans ignored mandatory evacuation orders and hunkered down for Harvey. “We’ve always stayed. Daddy taught us well how to ride out a storm,” said Melissa Stewart, 41, of Victoria. “It’s always better to stay than to run.”
That city was directly in the line of fire of Harvey and emerged Saturday looking trashed, with the streets deserted and trees and power lines down all over the city.
The once-stately oaks in the public square by the historic courthouse had lost many of their limbs. On the main drag through town, the Exxon station looked demolished, along with a Valero station nearby. Plywood that had been nailed to storefronts littered the streets. Shingles had been blown off roofs.
Bryan Simons, spokesman for the Victoria County Sheriff’s Office, warned that more devastation was coming.
“There will be life-threatening, catastrophic flooding here,” he said. The Tres Palacios River has risen more than 20 feet near Midfield, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The San Bernard River near the town of Sweeny is expected to rise more than 10 feet above its 1998 record flood stage. The Brazos River is expected to break a flood record set last year, and officials have ordered mandatory evacuations in low-lying areas of Fort Bend County.
Among the cities at risk of major flooding is Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest, with a population in excess of 2 million. Saturday evening, the city was buffeted by mammoth rains and nonstop lightning. The National Weather Service was keeping much of the area under tornado watch into the evening.
In the southwest part of the city, Brays Bayou was swelling with fast-flowing, debris-filled brown water, and a tornado touched down in a suburban neighborhood.
Montry Ray was staying up late to ride out the storm with his wife and two children when the roaring sound of the tornado sent them running for cover in a bathroom. Just as they bolted from the master bedroom, the storm exploded through its wall, embedding bricks in the drywall across the room. The storm ripped open the roof.
“You know how they say you hear the train noise?” said 12-year-old Caden Hill, who lives down the street. “I heard it.”
He, along with about 50 neighbors, turned out Saturday morning to help clean up. Volunteers chopped fallen trees, hauled away crumpled fences and gathered debris while roofers went to work. To the west, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg urged residents to continue to stay off the roads as Harvey neared the city and brought wind gusts of up to 60 mph and heavy rain. The city is under a flash flood watch and tropical storm warning.
“We don’t want anyone in San Antonio to let their guard down,”Nirenberg said.
The city closed 10 roads because of high water, and officials expect that number to grow. Key oil and gas facilities along the Texas Gulf Coast were also temporarily shut down, virtually assuring gasoline prices will rise in the storm's aftermath. Even before Harvey made landfall late Friday, dozens of oil and gas platforms had been evacuated, at least three refineries had closed and at least two petrochemical plants had suspended operations.
How soon they reopen depends on the severity of flooding and the resumption of power to the areas. Experts say it's still too early to say, with the storm still moving through the region Saturday evening. But they believe gas prices will increase 5 cents to 25 cents per gallon.
The storm made landfall at 10 p.m. Central Time on Friday with 130 mph winds — the first Category 4 storm to hit the United States since Charley in 2004. By late morning Saturday, it had lost some of its punch, but still had hurricane-force winds of 80 mph, having drifted to about 25 miles west of the inland city of Victoria. Shortly after noon, the National Hurricane Center downgraded Harvey to a tropical storm, with sustained winds of 70 mph.
Weather officials took to social media and the airwaves Saturday in an effort to persuade people not to become complacent because of the relatively muted impact so far in places away from the Rockport area.
In Galveston, a city that lived through the last big Texas hurricane — Ike, in 2008 — residents seemed unconcerned Saturday morning.
At the packed Waffle House — one of the few businesses open in the area — residents Dottie and Kevin Bowden ate breakfast with their 16-year-old granddaughter, Savannah Stewart.
All the houses in their neighborhood are built on stilts, so the Bowdens and their neighbors weren’t worried about flooding, and local officials did not issue a mandatory evacuation order.
“We’re not crazy,” said Dottie, 63, who runs a business cleaning rental properties. “If they told us to leave, we would have.” Farther east, the hurricane has put officials in New Orleans and across Louisiana on alert, and Gov. John Bel Edwards said Saturday that it could be a week before the state has to cope with flooding. He said the pumping system in New Orleans, which flooded earlier this month after a heavy downpour, is steadily improving.
“We’re a long ways from being out of the woods, but we are very thankful it hasn’t been more severe up to now,” he said of the storm.
President Donald Trump signed a disaster proclamation for Texas on Friday night after Abbott, the governor, sent him a written request saying that “Texas is about to experience one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the state.” White House aides said Trump will visit Texas soon.
Trump said in a series of tweets Saturday morning that he is closely monitoring the situation from Camp David and that federal officials have been on the ground since before the storm hit. He urged residents to “be safe” and pledged a thorough federal response. “We are leaving nothing to chance,” he wrote. “City, State and Federal Govs. working great together!”
(Tim Craig, Kevin Sullivan & Joel Achenbach, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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Temperatures started rising on Friday to the mid-70s. The high is expected to be 77 today, 83 on Sunday, 86 on Monday, 89 on Tuesday and 86 on Wednesday.
“The beaches will be in the 80s during the heat wave, but if you go just a mile inland you’ll quickly get into the 90s,” Taeger said. “On Monday, El Cajon will get to 101, Escondido will get up to 102, and Ramona will hit 106.”
Taeger said there will be offshore winds on Monday, “but we won’t see any crazy Santa Ana wind condition.”
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The plan, adopted by the flood-control board for the Central Valley, a 500-mile swath from Mount Shasta to Bakersfield that includes the state’s two largest rivers and the United States’ richest agricultural region, emphasizes flood plains, wetlands and river bypasses as well as levees.
Backers say the changing strategy will better handle the rising seas and heavier rain of climate change, which is projected to send two-thirds more water thundering down the Central Valley’s San Joaquin River at times of flooding.
The idea: “Spread it out, slow it down, sink it in, give the river more room,” said Kris Tjernell, special assistant for water policy at California’s Natural Resources Agency.
Handled right, the effort will allow farmers and wildlife — including native species harmed by the decades of concrete-heavy flood-control projects—to make maximum use of the rivers and adjoining lands as well, supporters say.
They point to Northern California’s Yolo Bypass, which this winter again protected California’s capital, Sacramento, from near-record rains. Wetlands and flood plains in the area allow rice farmers, migratory birds and baby salmon all to thrive there.
For farmers, the plan offers help moving to crops more suitable to seasonally flooded lands along rivers, as well as payments for lending land to flood control and habitat support.
Farmers, environmental leaders and sporting and fishing groups joined in praising the plan Friday, a rarity in California’s fierce water politics. “Savor the moment,” Justin Fredrickson of the California Farm Bureau joked.
(Ellen Knickmeyer, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The National Hurricane Center said the eye of the Category 4 hurricane made landfall about 10 p.m. about 30 miles northeast of Corpus Christi between Port Aransas and Port O’Connor, bringing with it 130 mph sustained winds and flooding rains.
Harvey’s approach sent tens of thousands of residents fleeing the Gulf Coast, hoping to escape the wrath of an increasingly menacing storm set to slam an area of Texas that includes oil refineries, chemical plants and dangerously flood-prone Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warned that the monster system would be “a very major disaster,” and the predictions drew fearful comparisons to Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest ever to strike the U.S.
“We know that we’ve got millions of people who are going to feel the impact of this storm,” said Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman and meteorologist for the National Hurricane Center. “We really pray that people are listening to their emergency managers and get out of harm’s way.” As night fell, punishing winds already had begun to cause damage in downtown Corpus Christi, the city closest to the center of the storm. A trash can lid skipped across a parking lot behind hotels on the seawall. In the city of 325,000 residents, a traffic light post was toppled but still lit, its wires unearthed.
Fueled by warm Gulf of Mexico waters, Harvey grew rapidly, accelerating from a Category 1 early Friday morning to a Category 4 by evening. Its transformation from an unnamed storm to a life-threatening behemoth took only 56 hours, an incredibly fast intensification.
Harvey came ashore as the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in 13 years and the strongest to strike Texas since 1961’s Hurricane Carla, the most powerful Texas hurricane on record. Based on the atmospheric pressure, Harvey ties for the 18th strongest hurricane on landfall in the U.S. since 1851 and ninth strongest in Texas.
Aside from the winds of 130 mph and storm surges up to 12 feet, Harvey was expected to drop prodigious amounts of rain — up to 3 feet. The resulting flooding, one expert said, could be “the depths of which we’ve never seen.”
At least one researcher predicted heavy damage that would linger for months or longer.
“In terms of economic impact, Harvey will probably be on par with Hurricane Katrina,” said University of Miami senior hurricane researcher Brian Mc-Noldy. “The Houston area and Corpus Christi are going to be a mess for a long time.” Before the storm arrived, home and business owners raced to nail plywood over windows and fill sandbags. Steady traffic filled the highways leaving Corpus Christi, but there were no apparent jams. In Houston, where mass evacuations can include changing major highways to a one-way vehicle flow, authorities left traffic patterns unchanged.
Federal health officials called in more than 400 doctors, nurses and other medical professionals from around the nation and planned to move two 250 bed medical units to Baton Rouge, La. Other federal medical units are available in Dallas.
Just hours before the projected landfall, the governor and Houston leaders issued conflicting statements on evacuations.
After Abbott urged more people to flee, Houston authorities told people to remain in their homes and recommended no widespread evacuations.
In a Friday press conference that addressed Houston officials’ decision to not have a voluntary or mandatory evacuation, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said there might be a “greater danger” in having people who don’t need to be evacuated on roads that could flood. Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said that because the hurricane was not taking direct aim at Houston, the city’s primary concern was heavy flooding.
“We are not having a hurricane,” said Emmett, the top elected official for the county, which encompasses Houston. “We are having a rain event.”
At a convenience store in Houston’s Meyerland neighborhood, at least 12 cars lined up for fuel. Brent Borgstedte said this was the fourth gas station he had visited to try to fill up his son’s car. The 55-year-old insurance agent shrugged off Harvey’s risks. “I don’t think anybody is really that worried about it. I’ve lived here my whole life,” he said. “I’ve been through several hurricanes.”
Scientists warned that Harvey could swamp counties more than 100 miles inland and stir up dangerous surf as far away as Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, 700 miles from the projected landfall.
It may also spawn tornadoes. Even after weakening, the system might spin out into the Gulf and regain strength before hitting Houston a second time Wednesday as a tropical storm, forecasters said.
All seven Texas counties on the coast from Corpus Christi to the western end of Galveston Island ordered mandatory evacuations from low-lying areas. Four counties ordered full evacuations and warned there was no guarantee of rescue for people staying behind.
In the coastal town of Rockport, Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Rios offered ominous advice, telling KIII-TV those who chose to stay put “should make some type of preparation to mark their arm with a Sharpie pen,” implying doing so would make it easier for rescuers to identify them.
Voluntary evacuations were urged for Corpus Christi and for the Bolivar Peninsula, a sand spit near Galveston where many homes were washed away by the storm surge of Hurricane Ike in 2008.
People in the town of Port Lavaca, population 12,200, appeared to heed the danger. The community northeast of Corpus Christi was a ghost town Friday, with every business boarded up. But at a bayside RV park that looked vulnerable, John Bellah drove up in his pickup to have a look at an RV he had been told was for sale. He and his wife planned to ride out Harvey.
“This is just going to blow through,” said Bellah, 72, who said he had been through Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Carla in 1961. He described those storms as “much worse.”
State officials said they had no count on how many people actually left their homes.
The storm posed the first major emergency management test of President Donald Trump’s administration.
The White House said Trump was closely monitoring the hurricane and planned to travel to Texas early next week to view recovery efforts. The president was expected to receive briefings during the weekend at Camp David, and signed a federal disaster declaration for six coastal counties Friday night.
Trump’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, Tom Bossert, said the administration was “bringing together the firepower of the federal government to assist the state and local governments, but the state and local governments are in the lead here.”
The last Category 4 storm to hit the U.S. was Hurricane Charley in August 2004 in Florida. Superstorm Sandy, which pummeled New York and New Jersey in 2012, never had the high winds and had lost tropical status by the time it struck. But it was devastating without formally being called a major hurricane.
The heavy rain from Harvey threatened to turn many communities into “essentially islands” and leave them isolated for days, said Melissa Munguia, deputy emergency management coordinator for Nueces County. Rain was expected to extend into Louisiana, driven by counter-clockwise winds that could carry water from the Gulf of Mexico far inland. Forecasts called for as much as 15 inches in southwest Louisiana over the next week, and up to 6 inches in the New Orleans area.
Harvey would be the first significant hurricane to hit Texas since Ike in September 2008 brought winds of 110 mph to the Galveston and Houston areas, inflicting $22 billion in damage.
It’s taking aim at the same vicinity as Carla, which had wind gusts estimated at 175 mph and inflicted more than $300 million in damage. The storm killed 34 people and forced about 250,000 people to evacuate.
(Michael Graczyk & Frank Bajak, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Similarly, researchers have expressed concerns about the massive amounts of methane trapped on the ocean floor. As seas warm, an ice-like substance called methane hydrate breaks down, and freed gas has the potential to bubble up to the surface.
That would likely be catastrophic for the planet. While methane dissipates much faster than carbon dioxide, its roughly 25 times more potent, according to scientists.
That scenario is thankfully not too likely, according to new research from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Rochester.
A study of ice samples from Antarctica — published this week in the journal Nature — found that surging emissions during the end of the last ice age didn’t come from an explosive release of underwater methane.
The report also found that human-caused emissions of methane, as opposed to from natural deposits of oil and gas, are likely playing a larger role than previously thought. The finding doesn’t change annual emissions estimates.
Both findings suggest that humanity has more leverage than previously thought to keep warming under control.
“The potential to mitigate the increase of methane ... in the atmosphere and through that to mitigate global warming is ... larger than we thought,” said Vasilii Petrenko an assistant professor at the University of Rochester.
Petrenko conducted the study in collaboration with his former professor Jeff Severinghaus, who leads the study of ice-core records at Scripps.
For the study, the scientists traveled to Taylor Glacier in Antarctica, where they could most easily dig up thousands of pounds of frozen water dating back roughly 12,000 years. The researches worked on the glacier for about two months, melting ice and vacuuming into storage canisters the ancient air samples contained within.
“What we’re showing is the old methane didn’t make it into the atmosphere,” Petrenko said.
(Joshua Smith, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Second, the mountain is one of the centers of a national “squatter” crisis, with more than 700,000 people illegally living on its slopes.
An estimated 6 million people live in illegally constructed homes across Italy, the result of decades of state mismanagement, ranging from ineptitude to outright corruption. Italy urbanized rapidly in the mid-20th century, and the state proved incapable, or unwilling, to alter its laws to facilitate the necessary construction or city planning. Instead, developers rapidly built shoddy homes that met public demand, even if they didn’t meet public building codes. Italians often cite the city of Palermo as an example of the cultural damage wrought by this process in the 1950s and 1960s. Instead of restoring the war-damaged city for a growing population, mafia-run construction firms paved over much of the historical city and built unsightly and unregulated high-rises on top of it.
The Italian government’s traditional response to this self-imposed problem has been to tacitly encourage — and, for a price, even explicitly collude in — a circumvention of its own rules and regulations. For decades, developers have been expanding Italy’s cities by building wherever they liked, including on land unfit for housing like Vesuvius.
Terzigno, a small town on the outskirts of Naples, is an unassuming emblem of these anarchical building norms. It is an idyllic commune where, on Sundays, much of the town amiably lingers in the central piazza after church service, and if you ask someone for directions, he might invite you to lunch with his family. At the same time, Terzigno and its charming neighboring towns are located on the slopes of one the world’s deadliest volcanoes. It is one of the 25 full-fledged towns that make up Vesuvius’ evacuation zone.
Unfettered urbanization now makes Vesuvius one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, according to Lucia Pappalardo, a volcanologist at Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology. She warns that a catastrophic eruption is possible and unpredictable. “Since we cannot calculate when a serious eruption would take place, the salvation of the population is only guaranteed by a preventative evacuation of the entire area at risk, which is extremely complicated because the area is densely populated and lacks adequate escape routes,” Pappalardo explains.
The Italian state consciously overlooked these obvious dangers for decades. Much of today’s population was born when building and living on this volcano were completely unrestrained. Only recently has the Italian Parliament attempted to pass laws to deal with dangerous illegal housing, but even these have been toothless.
Urban growth around Vesuvius was not restricted by the state until the 1980s, when the government enacted the first in a series of housing condemnations in an official zona rossa (“red zone”). But the condemnations came with a hazardous loophole that allowed residents to continue building new homes in the potentially deadly zone in exchange for amnesty payments to the state. Families had been living in the hazardous region long before their homes were considered illegal— and many paid to expand in their hometowns. The population of the red zone actually grew after the condemnations were passed.
(Ladan Cher, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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The National Hurricane Center said Air Force Hurricane Hunter planes had spotted Hurricane Harvey strengthening in the Gulf of Mexico, with about 80 mph winds off the southern coast of Texas on Thursday. A hurricane warning, meaning hurricane conditions are expected, had been in effect from Port Mansfield in far southern Texas to Matagorda, about 100 miles southwest of Houston.
In an update on Thursday evening, the center said that Hurricane Harvey would make landfall tonight or early Saturday.
Parts of Louisiana and the lower Mississippi Valley were also in the path of hurricane conditions from the storm system, the hurricane center said. Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana said Thursday that Hurricane Harvey was expected to hit Corpus Christi early Saturday as a Category 3 hurricane, but its outer bands of rain could be felt earlier. The impact on Louisiana was expected early next week, he said. “It is getting more and more serious as time goes by,” Edwards said in a news conference. He said the weather service has told him there was some possibility that the hurricane could make landfall in Texas, then re-enter the Gulf before moving eastward to Louisiana, he said.
The movement of the hurricane was expected to slow down while over land, meaning it could drop more rain. “This is going to play out over the next week or so,” Edwards said. “This is a very serious storm.”
In some areas, the storm could unleash heavy rain of at least two feet of accumulation that could cause “flooding catastrophe” through the weekend, a meteorologist said.
Texas and Louisiana have been bracing for the storm to affect populated areas for several days after the National Hurricane Center predicted this week that it could make landfall, affecting Corpus Christi, Houston and New Orleans, among other cities.
When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issues a hurricane warning through its hurricane center, it means conditions including sustained winds of 74 mph or higher are expected in the next 36 hours, allowing for preparations by state authorities and residents.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced he was preemptively declaring a state of disaster, a formal declaration that allows Texas to quickly deploy resources for any emergency. He encouraged Texans to get ready.
And late Thursday afternoon, President Donald Trump weighed in on Twitter, urging people to plan ahead as Hurricane Harvey intensifies.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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Starting just a few feet below the surface and extending tens or even hundreds of feet down, it contains vast amounts of carbon in organic matter — plants that took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere centuries ago, died and froze before they could decompose. Worldwide, permafrost is thought to contain about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere.
Once this ancient organic material thaws, microbes convert some of it to carbon dioxide and methane, which can flow into the atmosphere and cause even more warming. Scientists have estimated that the process of permafrost thawing could contribute as much as 1.7 degrees to global warming over the next several centuries, independent of what society does to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and other activities.
In Alaska, nowhere is permafrost more vulnerable than here, 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle, in a vast, largely treeless landscape formed from sediment brought down by two of the state’s biggest rivers, the Yukon and the Kuskokwim. Temperatures 3 feet down into the frozen ground are less than half a degree below freezing. This area could lose much of its permafrost by midcentury.
That, said Max Holmes, senior scientist and deputy director of the research center, “has all kinds of consequences both locally for this region, for the animals and the people who live here, as well as globally.
“It’s sobering to think of this magnificent landscape and how fundamentally it can change over a relatively short time period,” he added.
But on this wide, flat tundra, it takes a practiced eye to see how Alaska is thawing from below.
At one of the countless small lakes that pepper the region, chunks of shoreline that include what had been permafrost have calved off toward the water.
Nearby, across a spongy bed of mosses and lichens, a small boggy depression likely formed when the ice in the top layers of the permafrost below it melted to water.
In July, the Woods Hole scientists, along with 13 undergraduate and graduate students working on projects of their own, set up a temporary field station on a nameless lake 60 miles northwest of Bethel, which with a population of 6,000 is the largest town in the region. They drilled permafrost cores with a power auger, took other sediment and water samples and embedded temperature probes in the frozen ground. Later, back in the lab at Woods Hole, they began the process of analyzing the samples for carbon content and nutrients.
The goal is to better understand how thawing permafrost affects the landscape and, ultimately, how much and what mix of greenhouse gases is released.
“In order to know how much is lost, you have to know how much is there,” said Sue Natali, a Woods Hole scientist and permafrost expert.
Even in colder northern Alaska, where permafrost in some parts of the North Slope extends more than 2,100 feet below the surface, scientists are seeing stark changes. Vladimir Romanovsky, a permafrost researcher at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, said that temperatures at a depth of 65 feet have risen by 3 degrees Celsius (about 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over decades.
Near-surface changes have been even greater. At one northern site, he said, permafrost temperatures at shallow depths have climbed from minus 8 degrees Celsius to minus 3.
“Minus 3 is not that far from zero,” Romanovsky said. If emissions and warming continue at the same rate, he said, near-surface temperatures will rise above freezing around the middle of the century.
(Henry Fountain, NEW YORK TIMES)
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The Toscano family’s happy ending brought cheers from the dozens of firefighters who worked through the night to extricate the two boys and their infant brother, trapped alone for hours after their father was rescued and their pregnant mother managed to free herself from their collapsed apartment in the hard-hit town of Casamicciola.
“I don’t know how to define it if not a miracle,” the boys’ grandmother, Erasma De Simone, said after the family was reunited at a hospital. “We were all dead, and we are reborn.” Though relatively minor in magnitude, the quake Monday night killed two people, injured another 39 and displaced some 2,600 people in Casamicciola and the neighboring town of Lacco Ameno on the northern end of the island.
The damage in Ischia focused attention on two recurring themes in quake-prone Italy: seismically outdated old buildings and illegal new construction with shoddy materials. One woman was killed by falling masonry from a church that had suffered damage in a quake centered in Casamicciola in 1883 that killed more than 2,000 people. Another died in the same apartment complex where the family was saved.
Rescuers hailed the courage of the older boys, who spent 14 and 16 hours respectively waiting to be freed, talking with firefighters all the while, eventually receiving water and a flashlight. One official credited the older boy, 11-year-old Ciro, with helping save his 8year-old brother, Mattias, by pushing him out of harm’s way under a bed.
The boys’ grandmother described Ciro as shaken by the ordeal. While Mattias was scared, he also “was sorry because he lost the money in his piggy bank, and lost his toys,” she told the ANSA news agency.
When the quake struck just before 9 p.m. Monday, the boys’ father, Alessandro Toscano, said he was in the kitchen while his wife, Alessia, was in the bathroom and his two older sons in their bedroom.
His wife managed to free herself through the bathroom window, Toscano told RAI state television, while he was rescued soon afterward by firefighters. But the three boys remained trapped when the upper story of the building collapsed.
In their bedroom, Ciro pushed Mattias under the bed.
“The gesture surely saved them both,” said Andrea Gentile of the Italian police. “Then with the handle of a broom he knocked against the rubble, making them heard by rescuers.”
The baby, 7-month-old Pasquale, was in the kitchen in a playpen, and the first to be rescued around 4 a.m., seven hours after the quake struck. He cried as rescuers passed him to safety, but looked alert in his still-white onesie.
Firefighters said reaching the two older boys was more delicate, requiring them to create a hole in the collapsed ceiling without destabilizing the structure.
Mattias was extricated first, emerging seven hours after his baby brother, covered in cement dust in his underwear as he clung to firefighters. He was quickly strapped onto a stretcher and whisked into an ambulance.
Finally came Ciro, who rescuers said kept the conversation going throughout the ordeal even though one of his legs was immobilized by the rubble. At the hospital emergency room entrance, his parents awaited his arrival, his mother, who is five months’ pregnant, sitting in a wheelchair alongside his father, whose hand was bandaged from a fracture.
“It was a terrible night. I don’t have words to explain it,” Alessandro Toscano told RAI television.
Despite their ordeal, hospital officials say the three children were in remarkably good condition. The two older boys were being treated for dehydration and Ciro for a fracture to his right foot. They were expected to be discharged from the hospital today.
(Colleen Barry, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Italy’s national volcanology institute said the temblor struck a few minutes before 9 p.m., just as many people were having dinner. The hardest-hit area was Casamicciola, on the northern part of the island.
There was great discrepancy in the magnitude reported: Italy’s national volcanology agency put the initial magnitude at 3.6, though it later revised it to a 4.0 sustained magnitude. It put the epicenter in the waters just off the island and a depth of 3 miles. The U.S. Geological Survey and the European-Mediterranean Seismological Center gave it a 4.3 magnitude, with a depth of 6 miles. While such discrepancies and revisions are common, Italian officials complained that the Italian agency’s initial low 3.6-magnitude greatly underestimated the power of the temblor.
At least one hotel and parts of a hospital were evacuated. A doctor at the Rizzoli hospital, Roberto Allocca, told Sky TG24 that some 26 people were being treated for minor injuries at a makeshift emergency room set up on the hospital grounds. He said the situation was calm and under control. Salerno confirmed one woman was killed by falling masonry from a church.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Millions of Americans gazed in wonder at the cosmic spectacle, with the best seats along the so-called path of totality that raced 2,600 miles across the continent from Oregon to South Carolina. “It was a very primal experience,” Julie Vigeland, of Portland, Ore., said after she was moved to tears by the sight of the sun reduced to a silvery ring of light in Salem.
It took 90 minutes for the shadow of the moon to travel across the country. Along that path, the moon blotted out the midday sun for about two wondrous minutes at any one place, eliciting oohs, aahs, whoops and shouts from people gathered in stadiums, parks and backyards.
It was, by all accounts, the most-observed and most-photographed eclipse in history, documented by satellites and high-altitude balloons and watched on Earth through telescopes, cameras and cardboard-frame protective eyeglasses.
In Boise, Idaho, where the sun was more than 99 percent blocked, the street lights flicked on briefly, while in Nashville, Tenn., people craned their necks at the sky and knocked back longneck beers at Nudie’s Honky Tonk bar.
At the White House, despite all the warnings from experts about the risk of eye damage, President Donald Trump took off his eclipse glasses and looked directly at the sun. Trump tilted his head upward and pointed toward the sky, prompting a White House aide standing beneath the balcony to shout, “Don’t look.”
Passengers aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean watched it unfold as Bonnie Tyler sang her 1983 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
The path of totality, where the sun was 100 percent obscured by the moon, was just 60 to 70 miles. But the rest of North America was treated to a partial eclipse, as were Central Americans and the top of South America.
Skies were clear along most of the route, to the relief of those who feared cloud cover would spoil the moment. “Oh, God, oh, that was amazing,” said Joe Dellinger, a Houston man who set up a telescope on the Capitol lawn in Jefferson City, Mo. “That was better than any photo.”
Separately, power system officials across California reported no major reliability issues, even though solar power took a dramatic dip as the moon obscured a large portion of the sun Monday morning.
Officials at San Diego Gas & Electric did not report any problems on Monday either.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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At least 122 of the victims are children, and a similar number have been orphaned by the disaster, the aid group Save the Children said.
Sayo Jalloh, who lost a son, a brother and 15 other family members, has been too numb to mourn. At a camp for those made homeless in the hard-hit Regent neighborhood, she has been having trouble sleeping and pleads with her traumatized daughter to eat.
Burials have begun in a cemetery that holds victims of the 2014-15 Ebola outbreak that killed thousands in the West African country.
Many people have been unable to find loved ones and victims often are too mangled and decomposed to be identified. But the government has vowed to hold burials for all. “The death toll is climbing by the day,” Elhadj As Sy, secretary- general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told reporters in Geneva, adding that the disaster is “way beyond the capacity of the government alone.”
The threat of further mudslides continues. The government has warned residents to evacuate a mountainside where a large crack has opened. Rainfall is in the forecast for the coming days, slowing recovery efforts. The government’s main focus right now is getting people away from areas still under threat, said Zuliatu Cooper, the deputy minister of health and sanitation.
To the east, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a landslide likely killed more than 200 people, based on estimates from the number of households submerged, the vice governor of Ituri province said on Friday.
The landslide struck the village of Tora, a seismically active zone in the western Rift Valley, on Thursday.
“There are many people submerged whom we were unable to save,” said Pacifique Keta, the vice governor of Ituri province, where Tora lies. “The rescue is very complicated because there are mountains everywhere, which makes it very difficult to have access.”
Many parts of west and central Africa are vulnerable to landslides, because land is heavily deforested and communities crowd into steep hillsides.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The season — which runs from June to November — has already seen above-average activity this year. Storms with the capacity to cause the most damage are statistically more likely to develop from late August to early October, originating from thunderstorms and low pressure from the Caribbean Sea to the west coast of Africa. “The tropical Atlantic is currently the third warmest for this time of year since 1950, so that’s bullish for activity,” said Todd Crawford, chief meteorologist at The Weather Company in Andover, Mass.
Warm ocean temperatures are the lifeblood of hurricanes. Meanwhile, wind shear and dry air from the Sahara, both of which can slow storm development, aren’t as pronounced at this time. Atlantic storms can wreak havoc with U.S. natural gas and oil production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, while Florida, the world’s largest orange juice producer behind Brazil, is also vulnerable.
So far this year, seven storms have been named in the Atlantic, two of which have become hurricanes.
Over the long-term average, the second hurricane doesn’t usually form until Aug. 28 and the seventh storm doesn’t appear until Sept. 16, according to the National Hurricane Center. Storms get names when their winds reach 39 miles per hour and reach hurricane strength at 74 mph.
The current burst of activity is also being helped by a global pattern called the Madden-Julian Oscillation, which is making conditions even more conducive for storms to develop. That will probably fade by early September, when there could even be a bit of a lull. “As we move into September, we expect a less favorable environment for development, so that peak of the season may not be as ‘peaky’ as usual,” Crawford said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The government hired 600 gravediggers for individual burials taking place in a cemetery that already holds victims of the 2014-15 Ebola outbreak, which killed thousands in the West African nation. “We all share the agony which has befallen the nation,” President Ernest Bai Koroma told mourners at the cemetery.
“They had their hopes and aspirations, a bright future — like the six innocent children who went to study in the home of one of their brightest colleagues, like the young man who was due to get married tomorrow, like the husband who has worked so hard to get his family a new home and had just moved them to this new and lovely home,” he said.
Dr. Owiss Koroma, the government’s chief pathologist, said the confirmed death toll from the mudslide and flooding was at least 350, a third of them children. The bodies of many victims were too mangled and decomposed to be identified.
“I lost my sister and mother. The water took away my mother and sister and they have buried them today. That’s why we are here, to mourn and go back home,” said Zainab Kargbo, who was among those at the cemetery.
Thousands lost their homes in poor, low-lying areas of Freetown and surrounding communities.
With more rain forecast for the coming week, further mudslides were a threat. The Office of National Security warned people of the danger from the newly opened crack on the side of a mountain and urged residents to evacuate.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Survivors and volunteers dug through the mud and debris at times with their bare hands in a desperate search for missing relatives, and military personnel were deployed to help with the rescue operation in the West African nation.
Sierra Leone’s national broadcaster announced late Monday that the death toll had risen above 300. Initial Red Cross estimates said as many as 3,000 people were left homeless by the disaster and that figure was expected to rise. Communications and electricity also were affected. The mortuary at Connaught Hospital was overwhelmed by the number of dead, and bodies had to be spread out on the floor, coroner’s technician Sinneh Kamara said. The toll did not include the untold numbers buried alive in their homes as they slept. More bodies also were expected to be found as floodwaters receded.
In an interview with the Sierra Leone National Broadcasting Corp., Kamara urged the health department to deploy more ambulances to bolster the four belonging to the hospital.
The broadcaster interrupted regular programming to show scenes of people trying to retrieve the bodies of relatives, and some were shown carrying the dead to the morgue in rice sacks.
The president’s office released a statement encouraging people to relocate to safer parts of Freetown and sign up at registration centers. The office made no mention of the death toll.
“The government is fully seized of the situation and in collaboration with our development partners, is undertaking a coordinated response to provide emergency services to our affected compatriots,” it said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Over 4,000 firefighters were battling more than 250 wildfires in Portugal, which requested assistance from other European Union nations.
On Corsica, fires that have raged since Thursday forced the evacuation of 1,000 people, authorities said.
The latest blaze in Greece started Sunday afternoon in a pine forest and had damaged as many as 20 houses by night in a town north of the capital. Kalamos, a town 27 miles north of Athens, is a favorite vacation spot for Athenians. Authorities said they have shut down a large portion of the local road network as the blaze expanded in several directions, including toward Athens. They also evacuated two children’s campgrounds.
Portugal Civil Protection Agency spokeswoman Patricia Gaspar said the country set an annual single-day record for new fires on Saturday, when 268 separate fires started. That surpassed the previous year-to-date high mark of 220 fires reached Friday.
While the weather isn’t helping, nature was responsible for igniting a minority of the blazes, Gaspar said. “We know that more than 90 percent of the fires have a human cause, whether intentional or from negligence. Both are crimes,” she said.
Authorities believe a series of fires raging on several fronts on the western Greek island of Zakynthos were started deliberately.
The country’s fire service said there were “well-founded suspicions of foul play” after five fires broke out late Saturday and early Sunday, followed by another three later on Sunday morning.
Greek Justice Minister Stavros Kontonis, who is also the local member of parliament, said of the multiple blazes while visiting the island: “This is planned.”
The fire service said 10 of the 12 fires burning on Zakynthos were still unchecked, with high winds making it difficult to control the flames.
A total of 53 wildfires broke out in Greece on Saturday and several more did on Sunday, including on the island of Kefalonia, next to Zakynthos.
Trouble controlling flames and forecasts calling for more hot and dry days ahead prompted Portugal’s government to ask other countries in Europe for help, Minister of Internal Administration Constanca Urbano de Sousa said. Portugal has been especially hard hit by wildfires, including one that killed 64 people in June, during a summer marked by high temperatures and a lack of rain. Wildfires in Portugal this year have accounted for more than one-third of the burned forest in the entire 28-country European Union.
The EU’s Emergency Management Service said the amount of forestland blackened in Portugal as of Aug. 5 was about five times larger than the average recorded in the country between 2008 and 2016.
(Joseph Wilson & Demetris Nellas, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The city scrambled to repair fire-damaged equipment at a power plant and shore up its drainage system less than a week after a flash flood from torrential rain overwhelmed the city’s pumping system and inundated many neighborhoods.
Annie Hutchins says she’s “traumatized” every time she sees clouds in the sky since an Aug. 5 flood. She had to walk through knee-high water to get to her house in the Treme neighborhood.
“It’s a little bit unnerving that we were told everything was working, and the next day the story was a little bit different, and then the next day the story was a lot different,” she said. “I’m the kind of person that trusts anyone until they prove otherwise. So, I don’t feel like I have a lot of reason to trust what I’m being told anymore.”
A control panel on one of two working turbines had been fixed by Friday morning, but the system remains well below full power, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at a morning news conference. The turbine powers some of the city’s pumps.
“We remain at risk until additional turbines are back up,” Landrieu said, adding that he hopes that will happen by the end of the month. Still, he said, “Panic is not where we need to be right now.”
He said the latest to go offline will be powered up over 24 hours. Meanwhile, Landrieu said, 26 generators have been ordered and will remain through hurricane season.
He also said a location was set up Friday for residents to get sandbags should they want to take the extra precaution of sandbagging their homes. Schools closed for the week, and the mayor urged residents to park their cars on high ground.
Gov. John Bel Edwards described his emergency declaration Thursday as a precautionary measure.
The National Weather Service forecast a 60 percent chance of rain Friday, with a chance that heavy rainfall could lead to more flooding.
The city’s infrastructure had been crumbling for years before the devastation unleashed in 2005 by levee breaches in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath. The federal government earmarked billions of dollars for repairs and upgrades after the hurricane, but the problems have persisted. Streets are pockmarked with potholes and sinkholes. The city’s water system has been plagued by leaks from broken pipes and power outages leading to boil water advisories.
New Orleans’ municipal pumping system is supposed to move water out of the low-lying city. Having the system crippled in August, the middle of hurricane season, could not come at a worse time for New Orleans.
But officials feared that even a common thunderstorm would test the system’s reduced capacity.
(Janet McConnaughey, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Park rangers also planned to lead out 39 other hikers who were staying in backcountry campsites near fires that broke out after a passing lightning storm on Thursday, Glacier spokeswoman Lauren Alley said.
It’s peak tourist season at the Montana park, and the stone chalet built more than a century ago is a top attraction in one of the busiest parts of Glacier. There are typically between 40 and 50 guests and 10 staff members at the chalet each night, with most visitors arriving by foot or horse along a steep trail nearly 7 miles from Lake McDonald Lodge on the park’s main roadway.
A lightning strike ignited a fire in the forest somewhere between the lodge and the chalet. Neither structure is threatened, but park officials determined that it was unsafe for those at the chalet to return by the same trail Friday.
Thirty-nine of the 42 guests staying at the Sperry Chalet decided to hike out and three stayed behind, said Suzie Menke, the office manager of Benton Chalets Inc., which runs the chalet.
They must take a rugged trail more than 13 miles long that crosses two mountain passes and can take eight to 10 hours to walk.
That trail ends up on the eastern side of the park, on the other side of the Continental Divide from Lake McDonald Lodge. For those who stay, the chalet has running water, a full-service kitchen and 17 private rooms — but it doesn’t have electricity and only spotty cellphone coverage.
“The good news is they got resupplied yesterday,” Alley said.
At least eight small fires or suspected fires broke out in Glacier park on Thursday, according to fire officials. The one affecting Sperry Chalet is the largest at about 10 acres.
Despite the sudden outbreak of fires, most areas of the park are still open to the record number of tourists who are flocking to Glacier this year. More than 1 million people visited the park in July, the first time so many people have been in Glacier over the course of a single month.
Dozens of fires are burning across the West, and federal and state fire managers planned to raise the National Fire Preparedness Level to its highest point on Friday.
That Level 5 signals most firefighting resources are being used and that assistance may be needed from military and other nations. The level was last raised to 5 in 2015.
(Matt Volz, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Urged on by breathtaking photographs and nature documentaries, the Parisians said, they looked forward to serene walks along trails where pine trees threw shadows across streams and picturesque meadows teemed with wildlife.
When they arrived at the park on Saturday, Celloto, 31, and Humbert, 29, were greeted by the reality: diesel smoke, honking horns and miles-long processions of buses and cars.
It was close to 10 a.m. when Humbert, her face long and her voice desperate, approached a ranger. “Please, sir, do you know a place to park? You can’t imagine how upset we are.”
The ranger was sympathetic, but not much help: “Keep looking; you might get lucky.”
Despite promises of a “far less cluttered and confused Yosemite” made in a 2013 management plan — an effort to address the congestion without limiting the number of tourists — more vehicles than ever, up to 8,200 on a summer day, are clogging the valley known for its granite cliffs and waterfalls On especially busy weekends, visitors who must wait just to pay an entrance fee of $30 per car may find themselves diverted to alternative routes away from the valley or back out of the park.
On the day Celotto and Humbert arrived, signs at the park’s main entrances warned of delays three hours or longer. Traffic in a new roundabout near Yosemite Valley Lodge had slowed to a crawl. Nearby, dozens of cars were parked haphazardly in a quarter-acre site designated off-limits because it was being restored to meadowland.
Along a two-mile stretch of Highway 41 leading from the world-famous Tunnel View down to the valley floor, hundreds of cars were stranded in gridlock.
“Very significant traffic congestion is a truly hard dilemma we’re faced with,” said Chip Jenkins, acting superintendent of Yosemite National Park. “Getting stuck in a line of cars for two to three hours after entering the gate is not the kind of quality experience we want people to have.”
The statistics are not comforting. In 1986, the number of people visiting Yosemite was about 3 million. It took until 2015 to reach 4 million. A year later, the number had soared past 5 million. But with only 6,500 available parking spaces, according to officials, incidents of road rage and reported traffic accidents are up — along with miserable experiences shared on Yosemite’s Facebook page. “Traffic jams are choking one of our most cherished natural wonders,” said John Buckley, executive director of the nonprofit Central Sierra Nevada Environmental Resource Center. “Maybe it’s time for a federal court judge to decide whether Yosemite is violating its own management plan.” But adjusting the flow of visitors in a national park only a five-hour drive from 18 million people in Southern California seemingly defies simple solutions. And tourism in Yosemite— the heart of the Sierra Nevada economy — generates an annual cumulative benefit to the region of about $686 million, officials said, directly supporting nearly 8,000 jobs.
Buckley, like many conservationists, supports the creation of staging areas outside the valley where visitors could park and board shuttle buses. However, Mark Thornten, a former member of the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors, dismisses that concept as impractical, even un-American.
“Traveling through Yosemite is supposed to be an adventure experienced by people in their own cars and on their own schedule,” he said. “To be blunt: Buses are socialism and cars are free choice.”
Yosemite’s traffic problems date to the late 1950s, when thousands of motorists began jamming the valley to view the “fire fall”— a spectacle in which a cascade of hot coals was shoved over Glacier Point to the valley floor 3,000 feet below.
The show was canceled in 1968, mainly in an attempt to ease congestion. Later, a one-way traffic pattern was established in the valley, a reservation system was adopted for campgrounds and free shuttle buses were introduced inside the park.
In 1980, the National Park Service quietly shelved a controversial proposal to remove all auto traffic from the valley in favor of a park-and-ride mass transit system.
This summer, officials launched an experimental program that makes 150 parking spaces near Yosemite Falls available by reservation during the four weekends in August— the park’s busiest month. The daylong reservations can be booked online for a $1.50 service fee.
Yosemite is one of a growing number of national parks experimenting with transportation strategies to reduce crowding.
At Utah’s Zion National Park, where tens of thousands of visitors once fought over 400 available parking spaces each day during the peak season, a mandatory shuttle system began operation in 2000.
Later this year, Arches National Park in Utah is expected to approve a traffic congestion plan that calls for more shuttles to curb habitat destruction caused by double- and triple-parking. In September, Southern California’s Joshua Tree National Park plans to begin a long-awaited shuttle service.
“The ultimate answer to the groundswell of disappointment among visitors,” said Kathleen Morse, Yosemite’s chief planner, “is going to require a lot of hard work and public involvement.”
In the meantime, with no place to park, many of the 50,000 visitors a day who roam Yosemite Valley’s geological wonders on summer weekends will be forced to take snapshots through the windshields of their cars to prove they were there.
Then there’s Ernest Smith, 63, who photographed the rivers of cars streaming into Yosemite Valley from a vantage point normally used to capture souvenir images of Half Dome and El Capitan.
Scrolling through the images on his digital camera, the San Diego resident offered this summation: “This place is insane.”
(Louis Sahagun, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP)
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“If we get the heavier-than-expected rainfall, time will be of the essence,” Edwards said. “This is a serious situation, but it’s not something to be panicked about.”
Before dawn Thursday, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu shocked city residents when he announced that a substation fire had knocked out a primary source of power for the city’s network of drainage pumps. The outage is diminishing electricity for the pumps that serve the East Bank of the city, which includes much of central New Orleans, including downtown and the French Quarter.
With three other turbine stations also out of service for repairs or scheduled maintenance, New Orleans was left with just one primary source of electricity to power its pumps.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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“We really have been whipsawed here in the Pacific Northwest,” Nick Bond, Washington state climatologist said Wednesday. “It was a very wet spring — in some places, record amounts of rain on the heels of more winter we’ve had in the last few years.
“And boy, the switch was turned or something. We’ve obviously really dried out,” he said.
You won’t hear any complaints from Helena Baker.
“I love it,” said the financial counselor, who has been getting outside more with her kids, working on her tan and generally enjoying the lack of rain. The wet spring made her depressed, she said.
Mario Kohsmann, however, prefers Seattle’s cooler seaside climate. He moved from New Orleans more than a decade ago partly for that reason.
“It’s horrendous for me,” the 46-year-old said of the dry streak. “This summer has been unseasonably warm. I don’t mind rain.”
It comes as unusual heat last week sent temperatures climbing to triple digits in parts of the Pacific Northwest, a place where many people don’t have air-conditioning.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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At least five of the dead were tourists, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said. At least 28 people had serious injuries, according to the Aba prefecture government in Sichuan province.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for rapid efforts to respond to the quake and rescue the injured. Authorities sent medical teams, rescuers and other resources.
The quake around 9:20 p.m. Tuesday struck a region bordered by the provinces of Sichuan and Gansu. The area is on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau and home to many Tibetan and other ethnic minority villages. It’s also near Jiuzhaigou, or Jiuzhai Valley, a national park known for spectacular waterfalls and karst formations. The U.S. Geological Survey said it was magnitude 6.5. The China Earthquake Networks Center measured the earthquake at magnitude 7.0.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The draft report by scientists from 13 federal agencies, which has not yet been made public, concludes that Americans are feeling the effects of climate change right now. It directly contradicts claims by President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet who say that the human contribution to climate change is uncertain and that the ability to predict the effects is limited.
“How much more the climate will change depends on future emissions and the sensitivity of the climate system to those emissions,” a draft of the report states. A copy of it was obtained by The New York Times.
The report was completed this year and is part of the National Climate Assessment, which is congressionally mandated every four years. The National Academy of Sciences has signed off on the draft and is awaiting permission from the Trump administration to release it.
One government scientist who worked on the report, and who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity, said he and others were concerned that it would be suppressed. The report concludes that even if humans immediately stopped emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the world would still feel at least an additional 0.50 degree Fahrenheit (0.30 degree Celsius) of warming over this century compared with today. A small difference in global temperatures can make a big difference in the climate: The difference between a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and one of 2 degrees Celsius, for example, could mean longer heat waves, more intense rainstorms and the faster disintegration of coral reefs.
Among the more significant of the study’s findings is that it is possible to attribute some extreme weather to climate change. The field known as “attribution science” has advanced rapidly in response to increasing risks from climate change.
The report finds it “extremely likely” that more than half of the global mean temperature increase since 1951 can be linked to human influence.
In the United States, the report finds with “very high” confidence that the number and severity of cool nights has decreased, while the frequency and severity of warm days has increased since the 1960s. Extreme cold waves, it says, are less common since the 1980s, while extreme heat waves are more common.
The study examines every corner of the United States and finds that all of it was touched by climate change. It said the average annual rainfall across the country has increased by about 4 percent since the beginning of the 20th century. Parts of the West, Southwest and Southeast are drying up, while the Southern Plains and Midwest are getting wetter.
With a medium degree of confidence, the authors linked the contribution of human- caused warming to rising temperatures over the Western and Northern United States. It found no direct link in the Southeast.
The Environmental Protection Agency is one of 13 agencies that must approve the report by Sunday. The agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt, has said he does not believe that carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming. “It’s a fraught situation,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geoscience and international affairs at Princeton University who was not involved in the study. “This is the first case in which an analysis of climate change of this scope has come up in the Trump administration, and scientists will be watching very carefully to see how they handle it.” Scientists say they fear the Trump administration could change or suppress the report. But those who challenge scientific data on human- caused climate change say they are equally worried that the draft report, as well as the larger National Climate Assessment, will be publicly released. “The National Climate Assessment seems to be on autopilot because there’s no political that has taken control of it,” said Myron Ebell, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He was referring to a lack of political direction from the Trump administration. The government scientists wrote that surface, air and ground temperatures in Alaska and the Arctic are warming at a frighteningly fast rate — twice as fast as the global average.
“It is very likely that the accelerated rate of Arctic warming will have a significant consequence for the United States due to accelerating land and sea ice melting that is driving changes in the ocean, including sea level rise threatening our coastal communities,” the report says.
Human activity, it goes on to say, is a primary culprit.
(Lisa Friedman, THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers outlined its tentative plan in a report that had been scheduled for release in February but was delayed by the Trump administration, drawing criticism from members of Congress and environmental groups. It analyzes options for upgrading the Brandon Road Lock and Dam near Joliet on the Des Plaines River, part of an aquatic chain that connects Lake Michigan to the Asian carp-infested Mississippi River watershed. The Brandon Road complex is considered a bottleneck where defenses could be strengthened against fish swimming upstream toward openings to the lake at Chicago. Scientists say if the large, voracious carp became established in the Great Lakes, they could devastate the region’s $7 billion fishing industry by out-competing native species.
The Army corps said the plan outlined in the 488-page document is intended to block the path of invasive species “while minimizing impacts to waterway uses and users.” Elected officials and business leaders in Illinois and Indiana have said that significant changes to the Brandon Road complex could hamper cargo shipment on the busy waterway.
Among technologies the report endorses is using sound systems to create “complex noise” underwater that would deter fish from the Brandon Road area, plus installing a new approach channel and placing an electric barrier at its downstream end that would repel fish and stun them if they get too close. Brandon Road is several miles downstream from an existing barrier network in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.
Other measures would include installing water jets to wash away “small and stunned fish” that might be caught up around barges, plus a new lock where floating invasive species could be flushed away and rapid-response boat mooring and launch spots. The report says the federal government would pay 65 percent of the project’s costs, with the rest coming from an unidentified “nonfederal sponsor,” which Illinois officials said probably meant their state. If the corps project were implemented, “Illinois taxpayers would be on the hook for over $95 million in construction cost and another $8 million in annual operation and maintenance costs,” Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Hanson, an ecologist, could not have been more delighted. “Any day out here is a happy day for me, because this is where the wildlife is,” he said with a grin.
On cue, a pair of birds appeared, swooping through the air and alighting on dead trees to attack them like jackhammers. They were black-backed woodpeckers, adapted by millions of years of evolution to live in burned-out forests. They were hunting grubs to feed their chicks.
The black-backed woodpecker is one of the rarest birds in California, and lately it has become something more: a symbol of a huge scientific and political debate over the future of fire in U.S. forests. Scientists at the cutting edge of ecological research, Hanson among them, argue that the century-old U.S. practice of suppressing wildfires has been nothing less than a calamity. They are calling for a new approach that basically involves letting backcountry fires burn across millions of acres. In principle, the federal government accepted a version of this argument years ago, but in practice, fires are still routinely stamped out across much of the country. To the biologists, that has imperiled the plants and animals — hundreds of them, it turns out — that prefer to live in recently burned forests.
Human lives are at stake, too. Firefighters die, more than a dozen in some years, putting out fires that many scientists think should be allowed to burn. Conversely, a shift toward letting more fires rage is certain to raise fears about public safety in communities bordering forests.
The question coming into focus is simple, but answering it in the age of global warming will be a lifetime challenge for a rising generation of forest managers: How much fire is enough? Scientists are still trying to figure out how regularly forests burned in what is now the United States in the centuries before European settlement, but reams of evidence suggest the acreage that burned was more than is allowed to burn today — possibly 20 million or 30 million acres in a typical year. Today, closer to 4 million or 5 million acres burn every year.
Scientists say that returning forests to a more natural condition would require allowing 10 million or 15 million acres to burn every year, at least.
Over the past decade or so, the research has crystallized into a new understanding of the role of fire in forests. Hundreds of species can live in recently burned forest, researchers have learned, and many of them prefer these charred forests above any other habitat. Some beetles even have heat-sensing organs to detect forest fires from miles away, rushing toward them to lay their eggs in the just-burned trees. Far from being calamities, fires are now seen by many experts as essential to improving the long-term health of the forests, thinning them and creating greater variability on the landscape.
The battle over forest management may come to a climax in the next few years, though — and the tiny black-backed woodpecker could be one reason. In cooperation with another group, the Center for Biological Diversity, Hanson’s group in 2012 filed a petition to list the black-backed woodpecker as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. They argued that fewer than 1,000 breeding pairs might be left across Oregon and California.
Under the Obama administration, biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared that protection for the bird might be warranted, but it is unclear what the Trump administration will do with the proposal. It faces a Sept. 30 deadline. If the petition is turned down, the environmental groups are likely to sue. A listing for black-backed woodpeckers would almost certainly require a new approach to forest fires that would include allowing some fires caused by lightning to burn.
The lucrative, and scientifically controversial, practice of logging trees just after a fire might well be banned across large areas, since those dead trees turn out to be important habitat for many types of creatures, including the woodpeckers.
(Justin Gillis, THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Temperatures dropped significantly in some areas, bringing relief after reaching more than 104 F last week. Slovenia’s STA news agency reported that the storms “caused havoc” across the country overnight Sunday to Monday.
Thousands of households were left without electricity, as hail and winds flooded dozens of houses, collapsed trees and damaged cars and crops and crops. In Serbia, sudden heavy rains hit a mountainous region in the west late Monday before spreading to other parts of the country.
On Sunday, two men were killed in separate incidents in northern Italy when strong winds toppled trees that crushed them. In another incident, a hiker slipped to her death from a muddy path. A lightning strike killed a man walking in a forest in a fourth incident Sunday.
Meanwhile, officials in neighboring Romania retrieved the bodies of two teenage boys who drowned while bathing in a river to cool off during the heat wave.
Officials in the northeast county of Neamt said they pulled out the bodies of a 15-year-old on Sunday and a 16-year-old on Monday morning. They had been swimming in the Siret river.
Emergency services spokesman Adrian Rotaru said that “these teens went into the river to cool off due to the heat wave. We do not recommend bathing in unsupervised areas.”
Romanian authorities issued a flood warning for parts of western Romania on Monday after heavy rain followed the heat wave.
Meteorologists say the heat wave will return later in the week.
At the other end of Europe, Portugal’s airport management company said that almost 15,000 passengers had their travel plans disrupted by strong winds that forced the cancellation of 101 flights to and from the Madeira Islands over the weekend through Monday.
Winds gusting up to 80 kph battered the island over the weekend.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In Tulsa, Okla., a rare late summer tornado smashed into a shopping district early Sunday just hours after it was packed with people, sending more than two dozen people to hospitals including two with life-threatening injuries, many of them from restaurants that were either preparing to close or were still open. No deaths were reported from the tornado that struck shortly after 1 a.m. in the midtown area of Tulsa, according to city spokeswoman Kim Meloy.
National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Teague said the tornado was rated an EF2, with wind speeds of 111-135 mph and that two smaller tornadoes with winds of 65-85 mph were seen shortly afterward on radar near Inola and Claremore, about 25 miles east and northeast of Tulsa.
St. Francis Hospital spokeswoman Lauren Landwerlin said about 30 people were treated at the hospital. Meloy said many people were taken to hospitals by private vehicles.
The estimated one-square-mile area remained blocked off Sunday while crews worked to remove the debris, Meloy said. More than 17,000 customers were without power at one point and about 4,200 remained without electricity Sunday afternoon, according to Public Service Company of Oklahoma.
The weather service said thunderstorms with dangerous lightning [being] the most likely threat were expected to continue through today.
And in New Orleans, heavy rainfall overwhelmed the municipal pump stations, leaving parts of the community flooded. Some neighborhoods saw 8 to 10 inches of rain over a few hours Saturday. City officials said that was too much for the Sewerage & Water Board’s 24 pump stations to cope with even though all were operating.
Some cars got stuck, with water covering their wheels, and people slogged through water that was knee deep and even hip deep in some places. There were also reports of businesses and homes getting water damage.
Council members questioned whether the city’s pumping stations were working correctly.
The Sewerage and Water Board has maintained that they are.
“There is no drainage system in the world that can handle that immediately,” the Sewerage & Water Board’s Executive Director Cedric Grant said.
City homeland security director Aaron Miller said that with more heavy rain predicted for this afternoon, the city’s pumping capacity could be overwhelmed again.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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But the State Department’s announcement doesn’t formally start the process of the U.S. getting out of the voluntary agreement. That’s still to come.
Still, the department described its communication as a “strong message” to the world, following President Donald Trump’s decision in June to leave the accord.
“The State Department is telling that U.N. what the president already told the world on June 1 and it has no legal effect,” said Nigel Purvis, who directed U.S. climate diplomacy during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.
Purvis said countries can’t withdraw from new international agreements, including the Paris climate one, until three years after they go into effect. The Paris agreement went into effect on Nov. 4, 2016.
Then the process takes a year. The State Department cited the same timeline, saying it can officially start withdrawing as soon as November 2019. That means the earliest the U.S. can be out of the climate agreement is Nov. 4, 2020 — the day after the next presidential election.
In a statement, the State Department said the U.S. will continue to participate in international meetings and negotiations on current and future climate change deals. The next meeting is in Bonn, Germany, in November.
Trump is “open to re-engaging in the Paris Agreement if the United States can identify terms that are more favorable to it, its business, its workers, its people and its taxpayers,” the department said. Under the agreement, countries set their own national plans for cutting climate emissions. That means Trump can come up with different targets for the United States than those set by President Barack Obama. But Trump can’t unilaterally change the text of the Paris deal.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric confirmed that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres received “a communication” from U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley “expressing the intention of the United States to exercise its right to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, as soon as it is eligible to do so under the Agreement, unless it identifies suitable terms for re-engagement.”
(Seth Borenstein, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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State Route 78 two to three miles east of Yaqui Pass Road was closed after water rushed across the road in the early afternoon. National Weather Service meteorologist Brandt Maxwell said radar indicated that as much as 2 inches of rain may have fallen in the region in an hour.
At nearby Mount Laguna, 1.63 inches of rain was recorded in about 90 minutes.
The weather service issued both a flash-flood warning and a severe thunderstorm warning for the storm, meaning it was capable of 60 mph winds, penny-sized hail and intense downpours. At its peak, the clouds reached 55,000 feet high, which happens about once a year in the county, Maxwell said.
A separate thunderstorm, which developed over northern Mexico, drifted over the southeastern corner of the county about a couple of hours later, around 3 p.m. A flashflood warning also covered that storm, which was east of Campo.
Thunderstorms also hit the county on Wednesday, dropping heaving rain on Palomar Mountain. Maxwell said conditions should be much calmer and drier today, because no more monsoonal moisture from the southeast is expected.
High humidity that plagued much of the county this week should also ease today, Maxwell said.
(Robert Krier, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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By 3:30 p.m., the National Weather Service had recorded 488 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, most of them occurring from Alpine south to the U.S-Mexico border. Heavy rain also fell in that region. The wettest spot was the La Jolla Indian Reservation on the south slope of Palomar Mountain, which received 2.25 inches of rain in little more than an hour Wednesday.
Thunderstorms also rolled through Ramona and Julian, and heavy rain fell on Mount Laguna.
Wednesday’s weather represented one of nature’s grand spectacles.
Forecasters said moist, unstable air from the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of California and the eastern Pacific Ocean streamed into Southern California. The air was pulled into the region by a low-pressure system off Santa Barbara.
That provided the ingredients for thunderstorms, along with sticky humidity. At 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, the relative humidity was 80 percent or higher in many parts of the county. Similar conditions are expected today, the National Weather Service said.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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In the United States, however, a gaping partisan divide pushed climate change to third-most severe perceived threat, after ISIS and cyber-warfare. Just 56 percent of Americans surveyed identified global warming as the most serious threat to the country, compared to 71 percent for cyber-warfare and 74 percent for Islamic State attacks.
The U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russia used cyber-weapons to interfere with the presidential election last year, perhaps accounting for the heightened sense of threat. The Trump administration has consistently played down the dangers of a warming climate and has withdrawn the United States from the Paris accord on climate change signed by nearly 200 nations. Jacob Poushter, Pew’s senior researcher and a coauthor of the study, said that in most countries terrorism and climate change were seen as the most pressing dangers. The United States was an exception, he said.
“The stark partisan divide between those on the left and the right means there is a large portion in the United States that doesn’t see climate change as a threat,” Poushter said.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Officials said the fire in Istres was brought under control later Tuesday. There have been no reported injuries.
Meanwhile, Florian Vautrin of the Alpes-Maritimes regional authority said that the fire near the town of Cabris was “more spectacular than serious,” with giant plumes of smoke visible for miles.
In a tweet, the Alpes-Maritimes authorities said that some 260 firefighters, four Canadair planes and three helicopters are tackling the blaze.
Last week, dangerous wildfires broke out in southeastern France and Corsica, forcing the evacuation of more than 10,000 people.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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So unaccustomed is Seattle to scorching heat that, in 2015, only one-third of the housing units in its metropolitan area had air conditioning.
That’s going to make this week dangerous. The National Weather Service is predicting “wide-spread record highs” as a heat wave engulfs the Pacific Northwest. An excessive heat warning is in effect from 2 p.m. Tuesday through 9 p.m. Friday. Seattleites weathered temperatures in the mid-80s to lower 90s on Tuesday. Today will be in the 90s. And that three-digit barrier? Thursday may break it, with highs potentially “near 104.”
In Portland, Ore., the second-largest city in the region, highs of 104 to 107 are expected today and Thursday, threatening the record of 107 degrees set in 1965. Friday, too, is expected to reach 100, which would make this week only the seventh time since 1940 that Portland has had three consecutive days of triple-digit heat. And with a forecast of 99 degrees on Tuesday, the city is flirting with a four-day streak, something that has happened only twice since 1940.
Extreme heat has become more common worldwide because of climate change. More than 1,000 people died in Karachi, Pakistan, when a searing heat wave hit during Ramadan in 2015. This May, the remote town of Turbat, Pakistan, recorded a high of 129.2 degrees, a possible a record for Asia.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Forecasters said monsoonal moisture from Baja California is expected to flow into the region and could push west over the mountaintops, something that rarely happens in San Diego County.
Computer weather models show that the thunder and lightning could start as early as 6 a.m. today and that some cells could cause heavy downpours.
On its website, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says:
The risk of each type of natural disaster varies from place to place — there’s minimal chance of a tsunami in East County’s hills but fast-moving wildfires are a real threat, for example — so different precautions are required at different locations.
To that end, Emergency Services has launched Know Your Hazards website (http://www.readysandiego.org).
“We call on every San Diegan to know your hazards,” Supervisor Dianne Jacob said. “Know your hazards on your property where you live, know the hazards where you are doing business.”
The tool, which is available in both English and Spanish, allows people to enter an address, and learn the extent of risk of wildfire, earthquake, major flooding and tsunami at each location. It also gives them advice on how to prepare before a disaster happens, and what to do if one occurs.
“The preparation that we have today is really unprecedented, and it applies to any kind of an emergency, the kind of emergencies that we’re talking about in looking at this map,” Jacob said.
The site relies on mapping technology and allows users to see which areas are most prone to various disasters. It includes details about the entirety of San Diego County, except for Camp Pendleton.
County emergency officials encourage residents to use the website as soon as possible to figure out the risks they face.
“We recommend that every resident takes action to prepare themselves and their families for the hazards that we face here in San Diego county, because almost all of our hazards are no-notice,” said Holly Crawford, the Emergency Services director.
This year there is an unusually high risk of wildfires, said Tony Mecham, CalFire San Diego Union Chief and the head of the County Fire Authority.
(Joshua Stewart, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The 25-foot whale was first spotted on Saturday morning along the coast of Rancho Palos Verdes.
NOAA officials caught up with the whale about four miles off the coast in northern San Diego County, where they attached flotation devices to the animal to keep it from swimming away or diving.
The team then approached the whale in an inflatable boat and used “flying” knives attached to long poles to slice through most of the fishing gear.
“In this case, we had to slow the whale down and attach our large floats to help keep the whale at the surface and access it,” said Justin Viezbicke, who led the rescue and works as marine mammal stranding coordinator for NOAA. The humpback whale was last seen continuing to head south with a fishing line still attached to the right side of its mouth.
The rescue efforts involved NOAA, SeaWorld San Diego, the Los Angeles-based group Marine Animal Rescue and the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach.
Earlier this month, a veteran fisherman was killed by a North Atlantic right whale after he helped to free the marine mammal off the coast of New Brunswick in Canada.
“These animals are very large and very dangerous,” Viezbicke said. “There’s potential for anything.”
A week ago, another entangled whale was spotted off coast of Point Loma. NOAA officials are still trying to track down that animal.
Still another whale was rescued two weeks ago off the coast of Crescent City, just south of the California-Oregon border.
About 10 entangled humpback whales have been confirmed so far this year.
Last year, 71 whales were reported entangled off the West Coast, marking the highest number of such reports since 1982, when NOAA started keeping records. Officials believe a steady rise in spottings of entangled whales in recent years is due to heightened awareness about the issue — and that reporting still falls short of the total number of whales that become ensnared each year.
Whales and sea turtles can slowly die after becoming tangled up in fishing gear, often dragging traps and buoys for miles over weeks or even months.
(Joshua Smith, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Tropical Storm Haitang struck Monday on the heels of Typhoon Nesat, which made landfall on Taiwan’s northeastern coast Saturday. With gusts over 100 mph, Nesat sent trees crashing into cars, toppled motorbikes and kicked up broken glass and other debris that caused injuries, authorities said.
No deaths had been reported as of Monday, which the authorities attributed to early warnings and evacuations that began Friday. But the government said more than 100 people were injured by Nesat, many of them rescue workers who were struck by debris. One man in Yilan County, on the northeastern coast, was injured when a utility truck flipped.
By Monday, more than 100 people remained trapped by floodwaters, mostly in the country’s southern counties, according to the government’s Central Weather Bureau.
More than 400 flights have been canceled since Saturday, and more than half a million people were without electricity Monday, according to statistics published by the Central Disaster Emergency Operation Center.
After passing over Taiwan, Typhoon Nesat made landfall in mainland China on Sunday. More than 70,000 people were evacuated from the southeastern province of Fujian, according to news reports.
Authorities in Taiwan warned that the heavy rains increased the risk of landslides, urging residents to beware of “falling rocks, mudslides and flash floods.”
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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However, the greatest source of dangerous pathogens flowing from these urban waterways into the ocean may actually be coming from human waste. That’s according to a newly released study commissioned by the area’s top water-quality regulators in collaboration with the city and county of San Diego.
The report’s authors said cleaning up sources of human feces — such as leaky sewer pipes and homeless encampments near rivers and streams — is the cheapest way to improve public health at beaches and bays following periods of precipitation.
Human waste carries significantly more pathogens that can cause gastrointestinal illness and other infections than waste from other warmblooded animals, including raccoons, coyotes, horses and dogs, according to scientists.
“I was personally surprised at the extent of human waste that we’ve observed in our monitoring,” said Todd Snyder, manager of the watershed protection program for the county of San Diego. “The preliminary results that we’re seeing is that this human waste is everywhere — upstream in the watershed, downstream in the watershed, tributaries, the main stem of the San Diego River.”
The San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board has required cities under its jurisdiction to limit bacterial pollution at specific locations during dry-weather conditions by 2021 and during rain events by 2031. The program stretches through more than a dozen watersheds, from Chollas and Scripps to San Marcos and Laguna Beach.
The new report looked at the most cost-effective ways to meet state standards for cleaning up fecal bacteria at 20 of the most impacted beaches, rivers and creek segments in San Diego and southern Orange counties.
Following release of the cost analysis, environmental groups expressed concern that local governments would try to use the findings to delay compliance with broader water-quality regulations. But they agreed that leaking sewer pipes and other sources of human waste could be the primary culprit polluting beaches with harmful bacteria. “While we question the motives behind the study and some of its methodology, to the extent this study allows our governments to reverse years of poor planning and fix aging wastewater infrastructure, we hope it can be useful,” said Matt O’Malley, executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper.
According to the report, for every $1 million spent by public agencies to reduce human waste in rivers and beaches, about 152 fewer people a decade on average would get sick from associated pathogens.
A different analysis — the Surfer Health Study commissioned last year by the city and county of San Diego — found that adults who went surfing 72 hours after it rained were more likely than dry-weather beachgoers to suffer gastrointestinal illnesses. For every 1,000 surfers who went into the ocean within three days of a rain event, 30 fell ill on average, according to the Surfer Health analysis. That’s compared with 25 out of 1,000 surfers who got sick after getting in the water during dry-weather conditions.
The Surfer Health examination, which was conducted by UC Berkeley and the Surfrider Foundation, also found that while higher rates of illness were correlated with wet-weather conditions, the increase didn’t exceed water-quality guidelines established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. At this point, San Diego County officials are trying to pinpoint where the human sewage in watersheds is coming from. The potential sources are wide-ranging: broken septic tanks, illegal dumping by RVs, transients camped in creek beds and cracking wastewater pipes.
“We’re doing more water-quality monitoring to see where are the highest concentrations, so we can go after those and dig in further,” said Snyder, the watershed protection manager. ”For sewer pipes, we just need to keep working our way upstream to figure out where those hotspots are.”
Community advocates for river and creek rehabilitation projects said homeless encampments are a significant source of pollution in urban waterways.
“One of the large problems is transient populations in the creek, all up and down the watershed,” said Leslie Reynolds, executive director of Groundwork San Diego.
On Friday, she was standing next to a section of Chollas Creek at Market Street and Euclid Avenue that her nonprofit group has helped restore dramatically, including a walking path, interpretive signage and native vegetation.
The revamped creek also had at least half a dozen homeless people congregating in and around it Friday, including 64-year-old Marcel Smith. He said people sleep in a culvert in the dry creek bed and that some relieve themselves in the area.
“We have Starbucks across the street, so a lot of times if a person needs to go to the bathroom, that’s where we go,” Smith said. “You find a lot that go over to the Starbucks and then you find the ones that don’t. It varies.”
The newly released cost-analysis report for reducing fecal bacteria comes as part of a debate about how — and to what extent — to improve water quality throughout the region. Should cities and counties follow traditional metrics that look at particular types of contamination, such as harmful bacteria? Or should they embrace broader approaches that seek to restore entire rivers and streams? Or should they concentrate on improving only aspects of watershed health that directly affect people?
Water-quality regulators have long pressured cities in San Diego County to clean up pollution through improvements to their stormwater systems. River contamination is worsened by rains, which flush everything from cigarette butts and industrial chemicals to lawn fertilizers and pet feces into waterways. Municipalities have submitted extensive plans for meeting these goals, and in the past decade have started limiting hardscape surfaces in targeted areas — because they speed up runoff flows — and tightening rules on new housing and commercial development to require filtration systems that enable more urban runoff to soak into the ground.
All the while, cities have routinely pushed back on the huge price tags associated with larger river restoration projects and major overhauls of public stormwater systems. The collective cost runs into the billions of dollars over time.
After accounting for financial benefits associated with recreation, public health and other factors, the expense associated with cleaning up bacterial pollution in the region’s rivers, creeks and beaches during and after storms would amount to about $34.6 million a year for the next 65 years, according to the new report.
In light of the latest findings, city and county officials have a chance to petition the regional water quality board to revise its overall approach and extend timelines for compliance.
While focusing efforts on human waste wouldn’t necessarily satisfy the board’s standards for limiting overall bacterial pollution, it would be cheaper — requiring about $20.7 million annually for the next 65 years.
The new report also said if the deadline for wet-weather compliance were postponed until 2051, municipalities could reach compliance by spending only $7.8 million on average for the next 65 years.
Environmental advocates have strongly rejected a longer timeline for compliance, arguing that the water quality board has already extended its deadline for wet-weather standards from 10 years to two decades.
They have pushed for even more expensive changes, calling for large-scale rehabilitation of urban rivers and streams. They believe such investments would create lush, clean and inviting spaces that would also boost home values.
The new report found that incorporating more restoration strategies along with upgrading stormwater systems would have by far the greatest benefits — including millions of dollars of savings in public health costs and higher revenues associated with recreation.
But wide-scale rehabilitation of rivers and comprehensive restoration of wetlands would also end up costing the most money in the long run. To meet the regional water quality board’s standards for limiting bacteria, it would cost on balance about $60.4 million a year for the next 65 years. Elected officials in San Diego and Orange counties will have a chance to submit their latest proposals to the water quality board later this year. The board will then likely make a determination of how to proceed in early 2018.
(Joshua Emerson Smith, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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“It’s a sign of abundance, but also it’s a sign of power,” said Guido Giordano, a geologist who specializes in water at University Roma Tre. “Since the foundational myth of Romulus and Remus coming from the river, water is inherent to the foundation of Rome.” And now it is indicative of its latest fall. A severe drought and sweltering temperatures have led city officials to consider rationing drinking water for eight hours a day for 1.5 million Rome residents.
The water crisis has become yet another sign of man’s being at the mercy of an increasingly extreme climate, but also of once-mighty Rome’s political impotence, managerial ineptitude and overall decline. Rome’s embattled mayor, Virginia Raggi, has vowed to prevent the rationing, even as smaller towns have already resorted to closing some taps. Raggi, whose administration has been widely criticized as ineffective, seems aware that depriving Romans of their drinking water could potentially sink her. Since May, the city-controlled water utility, Acea, has rushed to repair 2,000 of its 7,000 kilometers of water pipes, recovering 100 liters of water per second.
Even as the Acea website boasts “Roma, Regina Aquarum” (Rome, Queen of the Waters), its system has become so decrepit that about 44 percent of the water is stolen, spills out underground or pools onto the street. The city has lowered water pressure to aid conservation, forcing residents of top-floor apartments to lug buckets up to their bathrooms and kitchens. “Faucets at risk. A run on bottled water,” news programs have blared.
This week, Italy’s health minister spoke anxiously about the havoc water rationing would wreak on hospitals and the sick. On Thursday, Italy’s minister for the environment appeared in the Senate to express his grave concerns about the drought’s impact on lakes, and suggested that authorities should look into cases of water theft. On June 22, after criticism of her inaction, Raggi braved the opposition and decided to start a staggered closing of the 2,500 iconic “nasone” — or big nose — drinking fountains throughout the city. As of Wednesday, she had closed 200 of them, according to the water utility.
The city is also fighting a deadline from the Latium region, to which Rome belongs, to stop draining fresh water from nearby Lake Bracciano. The lake provides 8 percent of Rome’s water and has sunk nearly 5 feet.
(Jason Horowitz, NEW YORK TIMES)
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France’s prime minister, visiting the area, predicted a grim day ahead. Large swaths of Mediterranean forest have been left bare and blackened after three days of fires. About 250 trailer homes, a hangar, an atelier and several vehicles were burned in the blazes, but no one has been injured so far, the prefect of the Var region said.
Residents and tourists were evacuated early Wednesday after a ferocious fire whipped by strong Mistral winds spread from La Londe-Les-Maures to dense forests around the picturesque hilltop town of Bormes-Les-Mimosas. About 60 people were evacuated by boat from nearby Cap Benat. “There will be more fires tomorrow,” Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said. He traveled to Bormes on Wednesday night, flew over the devastated region and met with firefighting personnel.
Firefighting aircraft made more than 500 drops of water or retardant on Wednesday, Phillipe said, and only three fires remained active in the Var region — out of dozens that started Wednesday.
But “the situation remains difficult, I must say it. Like me, you feel the wind is blowing,” the prime minister said.
Further south of the French mainland, flames ate through 24,950 acres of forest on the northern end of the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, in what was the largest blaze in France.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The study — released last week by researchers from UC Santa Barbara, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and the University of Georgia — represents a landmark effort to quantify the amount of plastic introduced into the environment since the material came into use in the last century. The authors say it’s “the first global analysis of all mass-produced plastics ever manufactured.”
Although plastics seem ubiquitous in today’s world, they’re a relative novelty, and only came into common use in the 1940s and ’50s, following World War II, the report stated. Since then, they’ve mushroomed in modern homes and workplaces, where they’re used in housewares, industrial equipment, packaging and synthetic fabrics such as polyester.
“The ensuing rapid growth in plastics production is extraordinary, surpassing most other manmade materials,” the report stated. Across the world, production of plastic products soared from 2.2 million tons in 1950 to 418 million tons in 2015 — an annual growth of 8.4 percent per year.
As production of plastic has risen, so has concern about its omnipresence in landfills and in marine systems. Public outrage grew after scientists found soupy mixtures of plastic particles circulating in the Pacific garbage patch, a gyre of marine debris particles in the central North Pacific Ocean.
“The same properties that make plastics so versatile in innumerable applications — durability and resistance to degradation — make these materials difficult or impossible for nature to assimilate,” the report stated.
Unlike other man-made products such as paper, plastics don’t biodegrade, but only disintegrate into smaller particles in landfills or the natural environment, the report stated. The only way to permanently dispose of them is to incinerate them, or to use a high-temperature process called pyrolysis to melt them into liquid fuel.
“Thus, near-permanent contamination of the natural environment with plastic waste is a growing concern,” the report stated.
As of 2015, only 9 percent of the plastic ever produced had been recycled, 12 percent was incinerated, and 79 percent accumulated in landfills or the natural environment, the study found. If that trend continues, more than 13 billion tons of plastic will be dumped in the ground or ocean by 2050, researchers projected.
The researchers purposely declined to discuss solutions in the study, in order to emphasize the magnitude of the problem, said author Roland Geyer, an industrial ecologist at UC Santa Barbara. “We didn’t want to tell the world what needs to be done, but we wanted to point out how large the challenge is, to hopefully spark off a greater discussion,” Geyer said.
However, he noted that among the triad of waste reduction practices known as “reduce, reuse, recycle,” reducing plastic, including single- use packaging, should be the first priority. “I think the simplest and most effective strategy is to reduce the amount of plastic we make and use,” Geyer said. “Currently we aren’t doing a good job doing that.”
California has taken some steps to cut plastic waste, said Eben Schwartz, marine debris program manager for the California Coastal Commission.
“We’ve passed a state-wide plastic bag ban, we have many municipalities across the state that have banned (plastic foam) food ware, and taken other steps to reduce the amount of single- use plastic that is being consumed, and therefore have the opportunity to potentially become marine debris,” he said. “But there’s clearly much more work that we need to do.”
(Deborah Brennan, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Seventeen hikers, including a young child, were stranded Sunday in a scenic canyon on the outskirts of Tucson, just over a week after floodwaters killed 10 members of an extended family more than 140 miles to the north.
In southern Arizona, two final hikers were lifted to safety Monday morning from Tanque Verde Falls after they spent the night stuck on the side of a cliff in a rocky, narrow canyon, authorities said. One woman suffered minor leg injuries that did not require medical attention, officials said.
The rescue was a reminder of the dangers of flash flooding during Arizona’s monsoon, a weather phenomenon that brings powerful and unpredictable storms each summer with bursts of heavy rain that can quickly overwhelm usually calm waterways.
When rains ease triple-digit summer temperatures, people often go hiking, but that’s when the danger of flash flooding has skyrocketed, authorities said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“Everything else is obliterated,” Crawford said. “It’s just a feeling of complete devastation and loss.”
Crawford said she and her husband, Jai Crawford, packed two cars with clothes, photographs, family heirlooms, their four pugs and one hound dog and fled Tuesday after the blaze burning in the hills near Yosemite National Park doubled in size. Their son hiked to the area in Mount Bullion the following day and took photographs that showed their three-bedroom home and at least five other nearby houses destroyed in their neighborhood.
The aggressive wildfire sweeping through Northern California foothills covered with dense brush and dead trees destroyed 58 homes and 60 other buildings. But it spared Mariposa, a historic Gold Rush-era town popular with tourists bound for the park.
Firefighters lifted an evacuation order for residents of Mariposa and reopened Highway 140 between the town and Yosemite, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Andy Isolano said.
The wildfire that has scorched 115 square miles threatened at least 1,500 homes and forced almost 5,000 people to evacuate.
Roughly a dozen of the destroyed homes had dotted hills 10 miles west of Mariposa. Residents a few miles to the north also saw damage.
Crawford, 56, said there have been wildfires near her community in Mariposa County. But this was the first time they had to flee.
“We saw a video that showed the blaze coming from two different directions at one time, and it just looked like a fire storm,” she said. “It was such an erratic fire coming from all direction that there wasn’t anything firefighters could do.”
She said she hopes to clean up the area and buy a modular home to put on their land. Relatives have started a GoFundMe page to help the couple rebuild.
Firefighters were battling 17 blazes across California.
A boy who had been smoking marijuana was arrested for investigation of starting a small wildfire Thursday outside Sacramento, officials said. The fire burned 12 acres in the Auburn area. No homes were damaged and no injuries were reported.
In the fire near Mariposa, officials were investigating an injury accident involving a fire engine. No further details were available.
The fire was 15 percent contained after nearly $11 million was spent to battle the blaze, officials said. The cause remained under investigation.
The blaze had crept within a half-mile of Mariposa, but crews were able to stop it by dropping red fire retardant and using bulldozers and hand crews to build fire brakes, said Cal Fire spokesman Jason Motta.
Retiree Suzie Ummels, 61, who lives in Mariposa, said she learned through a friend that her home was spared. Still, she’s going stir-crazy in an evacuation center as she longs for the comforts of home.
“I don’t know whether I’m blessed or lucky or a combination of both,” she said. “I just want to go home.” The blaze came within 35 miles of Yosemite, where campgrounds were open, park spokesman Scott Gediman said.
(Scott Smith & Olga R. Rodriguez, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The aggressive blaze, which was 10 percent contained, has forced more than 4,000 residents to flee their homes and triggered evacuations for the historic Gold Rush towns of Mariposa and Coulterville.
State fire officials revealed late Thursday that 99 structures have now been destroyed, 50 of them homes. Eleven homes and five other structures have been damaged. The wildfire is threatening at least 1,500 homes.
More than 3,100 firefighters tackled 2- to 4-foot flames, and observed some flares up to 25 feet tall, said Jeff Marshall, a fire behavior analyst with the Cal Fire Incident Management. As the conflagration moves east, he said, flames are encroaching on areas where trees have been killed off by bark beetles. That availability of fuel has led to volatile fire behavior.
Weather conditions in the fire zone will do little to assist firefighters. Winds driven by the rugged, steep terrain and low humidity “will create favorable conditions for continued fire growth,” the National Weather Service in Hanford said in a statement.
Weather satellites spotted “explosive fire behavior” near Lake McClure, the weather service said.
Smoke from the wildfire, which could be detected as far away as Idaho, continued to affect the Sierra Nevada, Yosemite and foothill communities, according to the weather service.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The 4-day-old blaze nearly doubled in size overnight from about 40 square miles to more than 70 square miles, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
At its closest, the blaze was still about 35 miles from the boundary of Yosemite, where campgrounds are open, park spokesman Scott Gediman said. The fire closed one of several roads into the park during its busy summer season, and rangers warned visitors with respiratory problems to be mindful of the haze, Gediman said.
Among park visitors Gediman talked to, “people understand fire is a naturally occurring thing,” he said. “Nobody was upset about it.”
Yosemite does not appear at risk from the fire, which was moving south Wednesday, away from the park, California fire spokesman Jordan Motta said. The fire has forced more than 4,000 people from homes in and around a half-dozen small communities, officials said. Heavy smoke hung in the air over Mariposa, a town of 2,000 with century-old wooden buildings, including what’s touted as the oldest active courthouse west of the Rocky Mountains.
Downtown Mariposa was empty except for firefighters and other emergency workers. Fierce flames were visible on slopes about a mile away.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In France, fires raged Tuesday less than 10 miles from the resort city of Nice. In Croatia, fires have damaged homes in the historic city of Split. And in Montenegro, authorities have asked NATO for assistance in dealing with fires that had forced evacuations along the coast.
Firefighters, backed by planes spraying fire retardant materials, were trying to contain a blaze in the southern French town of Castagniers, just north of Nice. Significant fires were also reported in the Provence region of southeastern France, and on the French
island of Corsica.
The fire near Nice began Monday evening but was “under control” by midday Tuesday, said Jean-Gabriel Delacroy of the Alpes-Maritimes administrative department, adding that no homes had been damaged. The fires that threatened Split, the second-largest city in Croatia, were also largely under control after a dozen houses burned along the coast.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Crews, meanwhile, spent four hours Tuesday searching for 27-year-old Hector Miguel Garnica, whose wife, three young children and extended family members were killed in the flood.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The 19,600-acre Detwiler fire, which is burning east of Lake McClure, grew overnight as more than 700 firefighters trudged through steep terrain to reach flames in overgrown vegetation, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
By noon Tuesday, the Mariposa County Sheriff ’s Office extended evacuation orders to residents in the town area of Mariposa, east of Merced. An evacuation center was set up at Mariposa Elementary School.
“The communities of Hunters Valley, Bear Valley, and Hornitos continue to be threatened as the fire encroaches on culturally and historically sensitive areas,” Cal Fire said.
Along the southern flank of the blaze, flames threatened power lines that supply Yosemite National Park, Cal Fire said.
Firefighters were facing volatile fire behavior, mostly due to dry, breezy and hot conditions, said meteorologist Christine Riley of the National Weather Service in Hanford.
Temperatures should cool by as much as four degrees today, but humidity will remain the same and windy conditions will persist.
The blaze, which was only 5 percent contained, has destroyed one structure and damaged another.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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At least 100 tourists have been forced to evacuate from a coastal area in Montenegro that has been the hardest hit by the blaze. Fueled by strong winds and dry weather, the fire on the Lustica peninsula in southern Montenegro has spread near to homes and camping zones.
“Our forces are not enough to put out a fire of such proportion,” said Stevan Katic, the head of Herceg Novi municipality.
The state Montenegrin TV reported that the Interior Ministry asked for international help through the European Union disaster relief system. The navy also stepped in to help evacuate the area by sea, officials said.
Canadian fires force 40,000 from homes
Fast-moving wildfires in British Columbia have forced nearly 40,000 people to leave their homes and residents are flooding into crowded evacuation centers amid a provincial state of emergency.
Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale announced Monday that Ottawa was deploying military aircraft and Australia was sending 50 firefighters to battle the wildfires. A group of elite Nova Scotia firefighters will also join the front lines.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The Detwiler fire, which started just before 4 p.m. Sunday, scorched 11,000 acres Monday about 40 miles east of Modesto, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. The fire destroyed one structure and damaged another.
Mariposa County sheriff’s officials ordered the evacuation of all homes on three roads as flames crept closer to residential neighborhoods.
The fire attracted onlookers to the fire lines, prompting the Sheriff’s Office to warn: “Please stay out of the area.”
“Lots of people out there trying to take photos but we would like to remind everyone that fire can be a very fast moving changing situation, it is very important to keep the roads clear for emergency traffic,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Farther north in Mendocino County, about 450 firefighters took on the 900-acre Grade fire. Burning five miles northwest of Redwood Valley, the fire triggered evacuation warnings in the Baker Creek subdivision.
The wildfire started about 2:50 p.m. Sunday along Highway 101 and threatened nearby homes and structures, according to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.
Elsewhere, the 18,311-acre Whittier fire continued to burn into the Santa Ynez Mountains north of Goleta in Santa Barbara County. The fire was 49 percent contained.
The fire, which started July 8 in the Lake Cachuma area, destroyed 30 outbuildings and 16 homes.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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Oceana’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles last week, alleges that the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to follow correct procedures for rejecting the protections. It asks the court to reinstate the tentative rules, which set caps on the number of marine mammals and turtles that fishermen can catch, and shut down gill net fisheries for two years if they exceeded that.
If we want to keep a sustainable domestic swordfishery and grow it, but it’s not acceptable to harm marine mammals and turtles, we need to crack down on the gill net fishery and authorize a clean alternative,” said Geoff Shester, California program director for Oceana.
He said conservationists want swordfishing fleets to convert to newer fishing gear that uses deep lines to catch swordfish and virtually eliminates harm to other animals.
The national fisheries service, however, has said that the rule capping the number of whales and turtles caught is unnecessary, because improvements to gill net fishing have already significantly cut catch of unintended species.
“We concluded that the cost to the fishery could be very significant, without a lot of associated environmental benefit, because there already have been a number of improvements in the way the nets are used and the technology around them that have dramatically improved the effect of the gill nets on whales, dolphins and turtles,” said Michael Milstein, a spokesman for the agency.
The proposed rule would have closed drift gill net fisheries for swordfish if two endangered whales or sea turtles were killed or injured within a two-year period. It also set triggers for shutting down the fishery if short-finned pilot whales or bottlenose dolphins were seriously hurt or killed in the nets. The Pacific Fishery Management Council, the decision- making body for West Coast fisheries, approved those limits, called hard caps, in 2015. The national fisheries service initially agreed with the plan and published the proposed rule in October 2016. On June 12, however, the agency reversed that decision and withdrew the rule, arguing that the economic costs exceeded the environmental benefits. Oceana sued on Wednesday to force the agency to reinstate the proposed rule.
“We believe it’s illegal under federal fisheries law,” said Shester, noting that federal law delegates fishery management to the regional councils of scientists, fishermen and other stakeholders from coastal states. “They need to respect the council’s authority and expertise.”
Milstein said the rule would impose unnecessary conditions on swordfishing fleets, noting that fishermen are already taking action to prevent entanglement of other animals.
In recent years, fishermen have installed devices called “pingers”on gill nets that emit noise warning whales to steer clear of the hazard, Milstein said. And they set their nets at least 36 feet below the surface, to avoid traffic of whales, dolphins and turtles, which tend to swim closer to the surface. Those improvements, he said, have already reduced by-catch of marine mammals and turtles.
For instance, in 1991, drift gill nets entrapped nearly 400 short-beaked common dolphins, the species that most frequently gets tangled in the nets, according to a technical paper from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency of the fisheries service. By 2015, they caught fewer than 10 of the dolphins. Similarly, there were an estimated 16 leatherback turtles entrapped in drift gill nets in 1993, but that dropped to fewer than one per year after 2010.
“At one time there was a very high toll, but that fishery has really cleaned up its act and brought the numbers way down,” Milstein said.
The Oceana lawsuit is part of an ongoing struggle between conservation groups and the Trump administration, which has vowed to repeal environmental regulations that it deems unfavorable to business.
In other actions the administration has announced plans to expand offshore oil drilling and to revoke a rule that gives the Environmental Protection Agency broad authority over pollution of streams and rivers. Those measures, Shester said, have left environmental groups “playing defense right now.” In the case of swordfish, however, he said, there’s a win-win alternative that could protect marine life and fishing jobs.
Fishermen typically set nets at night when swordfish are near the surface hunting prey, Shester said, but that puts them in close proximity to other fish, turtles and marine mammals. Scientists have worked with fishermen to develop “deep-set buoy gear” that allows them to fish during daytime, when swordfish are feeding in solitude 1,000 feet below the surface.
The method nearly eliminates by-catch, he said, and yields a better product. Fish caught on the deep lines are landed immediately, resulting in fresher meat that fetches higher prices at market.
“We shouldn’t be using this destructive method, when we’ve got cleaner methods that are ready to go,” Shester said.
Milstein said the fisheries service has funded some of the trials for deep-set buoy gear, and is optimistic about its prospects, but they’re not sure the method can replace other swordfishing techniques yet. “It’s been very promising so far,”he said. “We’re expanding the pilot testing of that to include more vessels. The question is, can it be scaled up to a point where it can replace some of the drift gill net fishing?”
(Deborah Brennan, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Gila County Sheriff’s Detective David Hornung said Sunday that the group from the Phoenix and Flagstaff areas had met up for a day trip along the popular Cold Springs swimming hole near Payson in central Arizona and were playing in the water Saturday afternoon when muddy floodwaters came roaring down the canyon.
The group, ranging in age from 2 to 60, had set out chairs to lounge on a warm summer day when miles upstream an intense thunderstorm dumped heavy rainfall on the mountain.
Disa Alexander was hiking to the swimming area where Ellison Creek and East Verde River converge when the water suddenly surged. She was still about 2 miles away when she spotted a man holding a baby and clinging to a tree. His wife was nearby, also in a tree. Had they been swept downstream, they would have been sent over a 20-foot waterfall, Alexander said.
Alexander and others tried to reach them but couldn’t. Rescuers arrived a short time later.
“We were kind of looking at the water; it was really brown,” she said. “Literally 20 seconds later you just see like hundreds of gallons of water smacking down and debris and trees getting pulled in. It looked like a really big mudslide.”
Video she posted to social media showed torrents of water surging through jagged canyons carved in Arizona’s signature red rock.
“I could have just died!” Alexander exclaimed on the video, which shows the people in the tree and then rescuers arriving on the scene.
Search and rescue crews, including 40 people on foot and others in a helicopter, recovered the bodies of five children and four adults, some as far as 2 miles down the river. Authorities did not identify them. Four others were rescued Saturday and taken to Banner hospital in nearby Payson for treatment of hypothermia.
Rescuers got to the four victims quickly after the crew heard their cries while they were nearby helping an injured hiker.
The flash-flooding hit Saturday afternoon at Cold Springs canyon, about 100 miles northeast of Phoenix, a popular recreation area reached by relatively easy hiking paths. Some know it was as Ellison Creek or Water Wheel swimming holes.
Hornung said the treacherously swift waters gushed for about 10 minutes before receding in the narrow canyon. He estimated floodwaters reached 6 feet high and 40 feet wide. The National Weather Service, which had issued a flash-flood warning, estimated up to 1.5 inches of rain fell over the area in an hour. The thunderstorm hit about 8 miles upstream along Ellison Creek, which quickly flooded the narrow canyon where the swimmers were.
“They had no warning. They heard a roar, and it was on top of them,” WaterWheel Fire and Medical District Fire Chief Ron Sattelmaier said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Annual Greenhouse Gas Index also shows that global emissions of greenhouse gases that lead to warming, primarily driven by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity, increased 40 percent between 1990 and 2016, a significant measure of man’s influence on the climate.
Unlike most news releases accompanying the index during the Obama administration, NOAA’s announcement this year does not directly link human activity to emissions.
“The role of greenhouse gases on influencing global temperatures is well understood by scientists, but it’s a complicated topic that can be difficult to communicate,” NOAA officials said in releasing the index. That is a notable shift from last year’s release, in which NOAA declared that “human activity has increased the direct warming effect of carbon dioxide.”
The current announcement calls greenhouse gases “long-lived.” It acknowledges those emissions influence the climate but sidesteps the scientific consensus that humans are primarily responsible for them.
Scientists noted that emissions tend to rise more quickly during an El Niño weather pattern. The El Niño phenomenon, which was unusually strong in 2015-16, warms the Pacific Ocean, bringing heavy rains and droughts to different parts of the world. Scientists say the increase in sea surface temperatures that occurs during an El Niño causes less carbon dioxide to be dissolved in the oceans and, as a result, more accumulates in the atmosphere.
The report comes as the Trump administration dismantles many of former President Barack Obama’s climate change policies and scrubs most mentions of global warming from government websites.
NOAA, however, continues to maintain social media accounts devoted to climate change, and its website Thursday said the “U.S. saw second warmest year to date on record and warmer-than-average June.” The greenhouse gas index says the growth in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution is “mainly the result of human activity.”
NOAA’s greenhouse gas index was intended to provide a straightforward way to understand the warming influence of greenhouse gases and how it changed year to year. The steady increase since 1990 underscores how little society has done to reduce the planet-warming pollutants.
Calculated using air samples from the nearly 80 remote sites NOAA operates around the world, the measurement accounts for the five major greenhouse gases accompanying the index. “As expected, CO2 dominates the total forcing,” scientists wrote in the index, referring to the effect of higher concentrations of warming gases in the atmosphere. Methane and ozone-depleting gases known as chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, are becoming relatively smaller contributors, the report states.
Stephen A. Montzka, a NOAA research chemist who worked on the index, said the spike between 2015 and 2016 — the largest incremental increase in greenhouse gases since 1988 — was largely caused by El Niño. The jump between 1987 and 1988, which came in at a slightly higher 2.8 percent, was also linked to an El Niño.
(Lisa Friedman,NEW YORK TIMES)
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Officials on Wednesday downgraded the number of structures threatened by a Northern California fire from several thousand to roughly 600. Authorities surveying the damage said at least 41 homes and 55 other buildings had been destroyed near the town of Oroville.
Some residents had returned home after fleeing the flames in the grassy foothills of the Sierra Nevada, about 60 miles north of Sacramento, but thousands remained evacuated as the fire entered its fifth day.
The blaze burned nearly 9 square miles and injured four firefighters. Containment was more than half.
Crews were making progress against dozens of wildfires across the western U.S.
In Colorado, crews were winding down the fight against a wildfire that temporarily forced hundreds of people to evacuate near the resort town of Breckenridge. Firefighters built containment lines around at least 85 percent of the blaze.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A crack more than 120 miles long had developed over several years in a floating ice shelf called Larsen C. Scientists carefully tracked it in recent months, and images shot by a NASA satellite on Wednesday morning showed that a 2,200-square-mile chunk had finally broken loose.
There is no scientific consensus over whether global warming is to blame. But the event fundamentally changes the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula, according to Project Midas, a research team from Swansea University and Aberystwyth University in Wales that had been monitoring the rift since 2014.
“The remaining shelf will be at its smallest ever known size,” said Adrian Luckman, a lead researcher for Project Midas. “This is a big change. Maps will need to be redrawn.”
Larsen C, like two smaller ice shelves that collapsed before it, was holding back relatively little land ice, and it is not expected to contribute much to the rise of the sea. But in other parts of Antarctica, similar shelves are holding back enormous amounts of ice, and scientists fear that their future collapse could dump enough ice into the ocean to raise the sea level by many feet. How fast this could happen is unclear.
In the late 20th century, the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out from the main body of Antarctica and points toward South America, was one of the fastest-warming places in the world. That warming had slowed or perhaps reversed slightly in the 21st century, but scientists believe the ice is still catching up to the higher temperatures.
Some climate scientists believe the warming in the region was at least in part a consequence of human-caused climate change, while others have disputed that, seeing a large role for natural variability — and noting that icebergs have been breaking away from ice shelves for many millions of years. But the two camps agree that the breakup of ice shelves in the peninsula region may be a preview of what is in store for the main part of Antarctica as the world continues heating up as a result of human activity.
“While it might not be caused by global warming, it’s at least a natural laboratory to study how breakups will occur at other ice shelves to improve the theoretical basis for our projections of future sea level rise,” said Thomas P. Wagner, who leads NASA’s efforts to study the polar regions.
In frigid regions, ice shelves form as the long rivers of ice called glaciers flow from land into the sea. The result is a bit like a clog in a drain pipe, slowing the flow of the glaciers feeding them. When an ice shelf collapses, the glaciers behind it can accelerate, as if the drain pipe had suddenly cleared.
“We’re going to be watching very carefully for signs that the rest of the shelf is becoming unstable,” Martin O’Leary, a Swansea University glaciologist and member of the Project Midas team, said in a statement.
At the remaining part of Larsen C, the edge is now much closer to a line that scientists call the compressive arch, which is critical for structural support. If the front retreats past that line, the northernmost part of the shelf could collapse, possibly within months.
“At that point in time, the glaciers will react,” said Eric Rignot, a climate scientist at the University of California Irvine who has done extensive research on polar ice. “If the ice shelf breaks apart, it will remove a buttressing force on the glaciers that flow into it. The glaciers will feel less resistance to flow, effectively removing a cork in front of them.” According to Rignot, the stability of the whole ice shelf is threatened.
“You have these two anchors on the side of Larsen C that play a critical role in holding the ice shelf where it is,” he said. “If the shelf is getting thinner, it will be more breakable, and it will lose contact with the ice rises.”
Ice rises are islands that are overridden by the ice shelf, allowing them to shoulder more of the weight of the shelf. Scientists have yet to determine the extent of thinning around the Bawden and Gipps ice rises, though Rignot noted that the Bawden ice rise was more vulnerable.
“We’re not even sure how it’s hanging on there,” he said. “But if you take away Bawden, the whole shelf will feel it.”
The collapse of the Antarctic Peninsula’s ice shelves can be interpreted as fulfilling a prophecy made in 1978 by a renowned geologist named John H. Mercer of Ohio State University. In a classic paper, Mercer warned that the western part of Antarctica was so vulnerable to human-induced climate warming as to pose a “threat of disaster” from rising seas.
He said that humanity would know the calamity had begun when ice shelves started breaking up along the peninsula, with the breakups moving progressively southward.
Mercer died in 1987, and thus did not live to see his prophecy fulfilled. The Larsen A ice shelf broke up over several years starting in 1995; the Larsen B underwent a drastic collapse in 2002; and now, scientists fear, the calving of the giant iceberg could be the first stage in the breakup of Larsen C.
“As climate warming progresses farther south,” Rignot said, “it will affect larger and larger ice shelves, holding back bigger and bigger glaciers, so that their collapse will contribute more to sea-level rise.”
(Justin Gillis, Jugal K. Patel, NEW YORK TIMES)
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Police officer Tumme Amor said the mudslide quickly buried at least six homes in Laptap village in Arunachal Pradesh state, giving occupants little time to escape.
The state’s top elected official, Pema Khandu, said five bodies have been recovered so far in the village in Papumpare district, and relief camps have been set up for people evacuated from mudslide-prone hilly areas.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Cal Fire officials said a passing vehicle’s exhaust system started the blaze off east I-8 about 1:40 p.m.
As flames roared across a mountainous stretch of land between Lake Jennings Park and Harbison Canyon roads, a number of homes and schools in the area were evacuated.
All homes on Viewside Lane — about 15 — were evacuated. Five homes were threatened by the flames, until firefighters stopped the spread of the flames about 5 p.m.
Students taking part in an after-school program at Creekside Elementary School on Harbison Canyon Road were evacuated to Joan MacQueen Middle School on Tavern Road in Alpine.
Evacuated residents were being directed to the middle school or Granite Hills High School, where temporary shelters were set up.
Firefighters faced steep, rocky terrain as they battled flames that one witness described as more than 10 feet tall, said Cal Fire Capt. Issac Sanchez. Seven air tankers and four helicopters doused the hillside with water and retardant. While crews worked, I-8 was closed in both directions between Lake Jennings Park and Tavern roads for hours, transforming what is usually a 10 minute drive between Lakeside and Alpine into a trek of more than an hour, officials said.
West I-8 reopened about 5 p.m. One eastbound lane was reopened two hours later.
(Lyndsay Winkley & Pauline Repard, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Eugene, hundreds of miles west of the southern tip of Baja, was expected to be downgraded to a tropical storm early today.
Waves should increase to the 5- to 8-foot range, with occasional 10-footers, today and Wednesday.
The surf was expected to produce dangerous rip currents along the entire coastline, leading the weather service to issue a beach hazard advisory. The advisory was slated to be in effect from 6 a.m. today until 10 a.m. Wednesday.
The largest waves were expected to hit North County breaks, especially in the Oceanside area.
Sea-surface temperatures currently vary a great deal in San Diego County, ranging from 64 to 69 degrees.
Hurricane Eugene peaked as a Category 3 storm before weakening Monday as it moved over cooler waters. It was forecast to stay well offshore along Baja California.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Authorities said at least 10 of more than 200 fires burning across the province were close to residential communities. Some 93,900 acres had been ravaged as of midday on Monday. No deaths or serious injuries have been reported, but some 14,000 people have been forced from their homes.
West Fraser Timber Co. said it had temporarily suspended operations at 100 Mile House, Williams Lake and Chasm. Vancouver-based EnGold Mines Ltd. said it had suspended exploration in British Columbia, home to all of its operations.
The province’s main electricity distributor BC Hydro and Power Authority said more than 170 power poles and 29 transformers had been damaged, and it expected the damage to increase.
British Columbia on Friday declared its first state of emergency since 2003 because of the fire.
(REUTERS)
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Wilsey returned to his ranch home in Oroville on Monday, relieved to learn it had been spared by the wildfire, just as he had stayed clear of troubles brought on by a damaged spillway at a nearby dam five months ago.
“I don’t know what’s worse— fire, or water — it’s a toss-up,” Wilsey, 53, told The Associated Press after re- turning to his home on Monday afternoon.
He and his family were among the more than 5,000 people evacuated as flames raced through grassy foothills in the Sierra Nevada, about 60 miles north of Sacramento. Most of those evacuations remain in effect, though Wilsey and others have been allowed to return home.
The blaze burned nearly 9 square miles of grass, injured four firefighters and destroyed at least 17 structures. It was 35 percent contained late Monday.
Crews were making progress against that fire and dozens of others across California.
In Southern California, at least 3,500 people remained out of their homes as a pair of fires raged at different ends of Santa Barbara County. The larger of the two charred more than 45 square miles of dry brush and threatened more than 130 rural homes. It was 15 percent contained.
The fires broke out amid a blistering weekend heat wave that toppled temperature records. Slightly cooler weather is expected to give crews a break in the coming days.
California officials said the extraordinarily wet winter caused thick spring blooms that are now dried out and burning, making for unpredictable fire behavior.
“You see rapid fire growth in a lot of these fires, larger acreage consumption, which makes it very difficult to firefighters to fight,” said Bennet Milloy, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Departments in San Diego, Poway, Chula Vista and Coronado all sent engines as part of two strike teams. A federal agency also lent resources.
The San Diego Fire-Rescue Department deployed six engines, said spokeswoman Monica Muñoz. Three of the engines are primarily used to defend structures while the other three are used to help surround brush fires.
Each engine is manned by a crew that can fulfill leadership, paramedic and communication needs.
“Our engine crews assigned to these Strike Teams are responding as part of the statewide mutual aid system, and they possess the experience and training to support the current fire suppression effort in San Luis Obispo,” San Diego Fire Chief Brian Fennessy said in a statement.
The Alamo fire started on Thursday off state Route 166. The flames threatened more than 130 structures, but had none burned as of Sunday afternoon. An unknown number of residents were evacuated.
The cause of the blaze is under investigation.
(Lyndsay Winkley, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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More than 4,000 people were under a mandatory evacuation order as the Wall fire in a remote part of Butte County tore through 5,000 acres and destroyed at least 10 structures. The blaze is threatening an additional 5,400 structures, prompting Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency and devote additional resources to the fire.
State Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokeswoman Mary Ann Aldrich said additional homes were destroyed overnight. An inspection team was trying Sunday to determine the extent of the damage.
Four people have been injured by the fire, which was 17 percent contained late Sunday, according to Cal Fire.
Along the Central Coast, firefighters battled two major blazes on opposite ends of Santa Barbara County, and efforts Sunday focused on protecting mountain peaks that hold crucial communication and electrical infrastructure.
At more than 23,680 acres, the Alamo fire, near state Route 166 in northern Santa Barbara County, was the largest active fire burning in the state and was 15 percent contained, Cal Fire officials said. About 1,000 firefighters from across the state rushed to help control the blaze, which prompted at least 200 people to evacuate from a remote area east of Santa Maria.
About 35 miles south in Santa Barbara County, more than 3,500 people have been evacuated because of the Whittier fire near Lake Cachuma, which was burning just north of Goleta. The blaze had scorched about 7,800 acres by Sunday evening, according to officials with Los Padres National Forest.
The fire, which started about 2 p.m. Saturday, was burning on both sides of state Route 154 and initially left some 80 campers trapped at the Circle V Ranch Camp. But U.S. Forest Service firefighters reached the group, which was sheltering in place, said Capt. Dave Zaniboni of the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.
On Sunday, firefighters were aided by lower temperatures and favorable winds blowing in from the Pacific that halted the spread downhill toward Goleta.
The blaze was moving east and west along the Santa Ynez Mountains into areas that were badly burned by two wildfires in the last decade, limiting the available fuel.
Officials said the firefighting effort in Santa Barbara County is in need of additional hot-shot fire crews with the kind of rugged engines that can navigate the steep dirt terrain where the fire is burning.
A third fire in the Central Coast, the Stone fire, ignited Sunday just before 2 p.m. about 30 miles east of Morro Bay, and quickly grew to 340 acres. Numerous structures in the area were threatened, and the fire was 10 percent contained as of Sunday evening, Cal Fire said.
Elsewhere across California, firefighters contended with harsh heat as they battled flames. The Winters fire in Yolo County, which had a high of 104 degrees on Sunday, had burned 2,269 acres and was 85 percent contained as of Sunday evening, officials said. No new evacuation orders were in place, Cal Fire said. The cause of the blaze that ignited Thursday afternoon remained under investigation.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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“While we hope there won’t ever be an ultimate ‘test’ of our personal preparedness for a natural or man-made emergency, the county urges you to take 10 easy steps that will help you be ready if disaster strikes,” says a dispatch from San Diego’s County News Center.
The county urges people to review a checklist and view 10 short videos that break down vital things residents should do to be prepared in case of an evacuation or the need to survive for a minimum of three days in a major disaster.
The videos also explain how to find official information on emergency conditions, evacuation and recovery centers, reduce the risk for wildfire around your home, and create a disaster plan that includes pets.
In addition to the ever-present wildfire threat, seismic experts and the news media increasingly have warned that a major Southern California earthquake is inevitable eventually. They’re also recommending what you can do.
The county asks residents not to delay. “Put personal preparedness at the top of your list and Earn the Perfect 10!”
Here’s the county’s checklist to prepare for disaster:
Over the long Fourth of July weekend one more person died and two others went missing, according to the Los Angeles Times. And on Saturday crews pulled out the body of a swimmer lost to the raging waters more than a week earlier.
As the winter’s heavy snowfall melts, the river dubbed the “Killer Kern” has become dangerously swift with cold mountain runoff.
“This has been an epic year,” said Sgt. Steve Williams, a search and rescue coordinator for the Kern County Sheriff’s Office.
The county has relied on 50 trained volunteers to help save swimmers caught in powerful currents and recover the bodies of those who have drowned, the newspaper said.
A volunteer team based on the Lower Kern has already logged more than 3,000 mission hours this year, according to Sheriff’s Sgt. Zachary Bittle. The team based on the Upper Kern is nearing that number, volunteer captain Tony Talbott said.
Several years of drought had severely depleted the Kern, a popular whitewater rafting destination known for its dramatic rapids. But this year’s wet winter created a record Sierra Nevada snowpack, and the melt has engorged the waterway.
Believing the river to be as calm as it was last summer, they have flocked with inflatable rafts and tubes meant for the placid water of a pool or lake. Most who have gotten into trouble were not wearing proper life vests, officials said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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It’s 65 percent contained; full containment of the western portion was expected Sunday evening. Campers, fishers and swimmers can visit Panguitch Lake, but several nearby communities remain under evacuation orders.
Authorities are reopening roads but warned drivers to be on watch for possible falling rocks and debris.
The wildfire was started June 17 by a man burning a pile of weeds.
In Arizona, meanwhile, baby deer are among those saved by the elite crews fighting a stubborn wildfire.
The Forest Service posted photos and a video on Facebook showing the Friday night rescue, where Hotshots rounded up two deer fawns.
The baby animals were found too close to the spreading blaze in the dense Prescott National Forest and around Prescott, a mountain city about 100 miles north of Phoenix.
The rescuers are among 1,200 firefighters at the scene.
The fire started June 24, burning about 43 square miles of land. It was 53 percent contained as of Sunday.
While crews made gain on those fires this weekend, foresters said Utah, Arizona and other parts of the Southwest could face more big wildfires this summer and fall, while hot and dry weather has also put the northern Great Plains at risk.
The National Interagency Fire Center’s four-month outlook showed elevated danger of significant fires in parts of Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah, as well as eastern Montana and the western Dakotas.
In addition to the Utah and Arizona blazes, fires are burning in Washington state, California, Colorado and New Mexico.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Because of the excess carcasses, Baker stopped picking up from farms, leaving farmers without a place to send their dead animals.
To handle the problem, Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties had to take the unusual step of giving dairies permission to bury or compost the animals on-site under a strict set of temporary rules outlined by state water and agricultural agencies. The three counties declared a state of emergency, clearing the way for the disposal methods.
Baker normally processes about 1 million pounds of animal flesh a day, said Wayne Fox, division manager of environmental health at Fresno County Department of Public Health.
The company had ratcheted up its capacity to 1.5 million pounds per day before a daylong machinery malfunction significantly slowed the rendering process, said Fresno County Board of Supervisors Chairman Brian Pacheco, who is a dairy farmer. “They’ve worked through it, but they have been getting further and further behind,” Pacheco said.
Once the animals decompose to a certain point, they can’t be rendered, Pacheco said.
This isn’t the first time there has been a heat-related disaster for livestock owners, according to the newspaper. San Joaquin Valley farmers went through a similar crisis in 2006 when nearly $300 million in losses were reported because of the heat. In Kings County, 1,834 milk cows valued at $3.7 million died.
It is too soon for county officials to know how many animals died in this heat wave.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Wildlife managers in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Oregon and Washington also reported higher losses of animals in the wake of one of the coldest and snowiest winters in decades. Parts of the Rockies saw snowfall as late as mid-June.
“This year we kind of had all the factors that we don’t want — we had deep snow, we had periods of fairly cold weather, subzero, and then we also had some crusting on top of that snow,” said Roger Phillips, spokesman for the Idaho Fish and Game Department.
Wildlife managers have been assessing the damage using radio collars and surveys of herds after a winter in which many parts of the West saw record snowfall, including places where deer, pronghorn antelope and elk migrate each fall to escape the harsher mountain winters.
Prolonged snow cover on winter grounds made it difficult for wildlife to find food, and spells of bitter cold made matters worse for the weakened animals by hardening the snow.
Mule deer in several Rocky Mountain states and elk in eastern Washington were hit hard. Wyoming was expecting above-normal losses among antelope as well, although it didn’t have an accurate accounting yet.
Wyoming last saw comparable wildlife deaths over three decades ago, said Bob Lanka, supervisor of statewide wildlife and habitat management program with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.
“It’s been a long, long time since we experienced this kind of loss,” he said.
Meteorologist David Lipson of the National Weather Service in Riverton blamed the rough winter on “unusually strong rivers of moisture” flowing into the West from the Pacific Ocean, where a weak and unusually short-lived La Ni&nitlde;a occurred.
In California, the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, which is listed as an endangered species, lost an estimated 40 to 60 animals.
“We’re not including any predation or normal mortality or any other kind of losses; that’s just from the snow, from getting trapped up in the snow and not having food, some of them starving and then some of them directly impacted by avalanches,” said Jason Holley, supervising wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Biologists say the wildlife herds eventually should recover with the help of reduced hunting and a return to at least normal weather conditions next winter. However, forecasters say it’s too early to predict how next winter will play out.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The fire cut a wide swath of destruction, blackening more than 92 square miles, but left other parts of the mountainous area green and untouched.
“The damage just takes your breath away,” said Julie Saemisch, who was at her granddaughter’s fifth-grade graduation when she was told she could not return to her home in the ski resort town of Brian Head and was evacuated to a campground a few miles away.
Her home was saved, but more than a dozen others caught in the fire’s path as it radiated out from Brian Head were destroyed. Started June 17 by someone burning weeds, the fire is about 20 percent contained and is one of several fires burning in western U.S. states.
In Arizona, crews on Friday reopened a major route through the small town of Mayer that barely escaped destruction when a massive wildfire threatened the area about 100 miles north of Phoenix.
Authorities were also expected to lift more evacuations after that blaze forced thousands from their homes, campgrounds and summer camps ahead of the long Fourth of July holiday weekend, though some people could be prohibited from returning for a few more days.
Friday also marked the fourth anniversary of a wildfire that killed 19 elite firefighters near the Arizona town of Yarnell, about 45 miles southwest of the current blaze.
In New Mexico, a lightning-sparked fire grew to nearly 11 square miles on Friday and threatened at least one railroad bridge. The fire is burning grass and brush on private land south of Albuquerque and was about 40 percent contained.
Firefighters were also battling wildfires in California and Washington state.
Near the Utah fire zone, Brian Head’s annual Independence Day celebrations will be quieter, more thankful and fireworks-free, said Mark Wilder, a spokesman for the Brian Head Resort.
Hundreds of people still evacuated from a lakeside community near Brian Head were being allowed home for about 30 minutes at a time to gather belongings, said Denise Dastrup with the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Smoke and flames caused traffic to slow through the area.
Motorists started calling 911 about 9:30 a.m. to report fire in the brush east of Santo Road. At least one person said a vehicle’s tire blow-out sparked the blaze, but officials said the cause was a catalytic converter.
San Diego Fire-Rescue crews on about a dozen fire rigs and two helicopters worked on the flames. The forward spread of the fire was stopped in about half an hour.
(Pauline Repard, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Rolling hills covered in dry grass provided fuel for the blaze, but its spread slowed considerably in the moist overnight air. No evacuations were ordered.
“There’s minimal threat to homes right now,” Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Larry Kurtz said late Thursday afternoon.
Crews were setting backfires to clear brush that could endanger homes generally east of Richard T. Steed Memorial Park, along Cristianitos Road, Avenida Pico, Avenida Vista Montana and Avenida La Pata.
Kurtz said the blaze crossed the Orange County line into San Clemente about 2 a.m. Thursday. By sunrise, it was about 10 percent contained, with more than 200 firefighters on the lines. By 4 p.m, the fire was 70 percent contained, Kurtz said.
“The relative humidity and the marine layer helped slow the fire to a crawl,” Kurtz said.
The fire started on the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base north of the San Mateo Campground along Cristianitos Road about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. The cause of the fire remains under investigation, Kurtz said.
Flames quickly consumed dry grass and brush at the campground and spread from 10 acres to 250 acres in half an hour, according to Twitter posts by Camp Pendleton officials. It was reported at 400 acres by 10 p.m.
Camp Pendleton and Orange County fire crews were assisted by Cal Fire, the U.S. Forest Service, San Diego County Fire Authority and numerous city fire agencies, as well as several air tankers and helicopters, Kurtz said.
He said wind has not been a problem, but flames have followed the hillsides to move the fire north.
“The spread has been dictated by the topography and a lot of grasses — light, flashy fuels. The fire burns less intensely but moves very quickly,” Kurtz said.
(Pauline Repard, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The Kemper plant, which has cost $7.5 billion so far, has been supplying customers with electricity by running on natural gas for three years, but its once-promising carbon capture and coal gasification technology has been $4 billion over budget and three years behind schedule.
The plant was once held up as an example of promising technologies that could help fight climate change. In 2014, then-Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz flew to see the plant and declared, “I consider seeing this plant a look at the future.”
Instead, Kemper has imposed financial burdens on taxpayers and local households.
Thanks to legislation passed by the Mississippi legislature, Southern has been able to pass along about $800 million of those costs to ratepayers, the company said.
In addition, the Kemper plant has received $382 million in federal Energy Department grants, according to the company.
The news complicates the Trump administration message during the week they’ve dubbed “energy week” to promote the president’s plans, which include giving a boost to waning coal production.
Worried over the potential cost to ratepayers, the Mississippi Public Service Commission said last week that it would begin procedures to force the company to come up with an alternative plan or just continue relying on natural gas indefinitely.
The commission next meets July 6. Southern and its Mississippi Power subsidiary said Wednesday that they were “immediately suspending start-up and operations activities” involving the gasification of coal from a nearby lignite mine.
The plant will continue to run on natural gas.
The company has stumbled over equipment designed to cool synthetic gas from about 1,800 to 900 degrees before it strips out byproducts, including carbon dioxide.
The plant has operated on coal for more than 200 days, but the problem has not been solved, company officials have said.
“The cost overruns and operational challenges at Kemper reflect the difficulties of scaling up a new coal gasification technology, and are not caused by the plant’s carbon capture equipment,” said John Thompson, director of the fossil transition project at the Clean Air Task Force. “The specific carbon capture equipment at Kemper is a mature technology that’s been used at hundreds of chemical plants and industrial plants, since the 1960s. It’s a very mature technology.”
Suspending work was “the appropriate step to manage costs given the economics of the project and the Commission’s intent to establish a settlement docket to address Kemper-related matters including the future operation of the gasifier portion of the project,” a company statement said.
Mississippi Power has already written off $2.9 billion of the project cost, according to a June 23 Standard and Poor’s credit analysis.
Further large write-offs might have been necessary, it said.
(Steven Mufson, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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The fire is burning in communities around Prescott, a mountain city about 100 miles north of Phoenix that draws a mix of desert dwellers escaping the heat, retirees and visitors to its famed Old West-themed Whiskey Row.
Meanwhile, a brush fire Wednesday night was burning on the northwestern edge of Camp Pendleton, quickly spreading across 400 acres, authorities said.
About 350 firefighters, aided by several firefighting aircraft, were battling the blaze, which was moving away from the Marine base and toward San Clemente, Camp Pendleton and Orange County fire officials said. There was no immediate danger to buildings on the base or in San Clemente, but officials said crews were concerned that some structures in San Clemente could become threatened.
Elsewhere in California, a fire in the foothills north of Los Angeles burned right up to homes before the blaze was beaten back. Fifty homes were put under mandatory evacuation orders on the suburban edges of Burbank, where flames raced uphill through tinder-dry grass.
No homes were destroyed, and most evacuations were canceled after a few hours. In Central California, a wildfire destroyed the home of “Big Bang Theory” star Johnny Galecki on a ranch in the San Luis Obispo area.
The Arizona fire has charred 32 square miles while being fanned by winds ranging to 35 mph.
More than 500 firefighters were battling the blaze. A firefighter suffered a minor injury. The fire forced the evacuation of Mayer and Dewey-Humboldt along with several other communities, and one of the main roads into Prescott was closed. Dewey-Humboldt has about 4,000 residents; Mayer has about 1,400.
Many residents have painful memories of the 2013 wildfire that killed 19 members of an elite firefighting crew. “It’s scary because we’re coming up on the four-year anniversary of the Yarnell Hill fire — there’s still a lot of fresh memories,” said Arizona state Sen. Karen Fann, who lives in Prescott.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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A conservation group called that contention “shameful” and misleading, saying it fails to take into account climate change and drought.
In addition, a U.S. Forest Service researcher said logging probably would not have made a big difference in the high-altitude fire that is sending embers from tree-to-tree over long distances— normal for the ecosystem.
Utah state Rep. Mike Noel said Tuesday he wants to use the fire near the ski town of Brian Head and a popular fishing lake to highlight the imbalance of power afforded environmental groups under previous presidents and to ease bureaucratic and legal blockades for logging companies. He believes the Trump administration will provide a more receptive audience for his plea.
Meanwhile, crews in California battled fires.
A 300-acre wildfire in rugged foothills east of Los Angeles has prompted mandatory evacuations for dozens of homes in the town of Highland.
In neighboring Riverside County, a fire near the community of Beaumont was 20 percent contained at 5,800 acres and residents of nearby homes have been warned to be ready to evacuate if necessary.
In the Santa Margarita area, a 1,598-acre wildfire that burned at least one building was 60 percent contained.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Now one of those vessels is on its way to San Diego, where it will be open to the public this weekend. During that time, crew members are scheduled to be on hand to talk about their experiences.
A former 110-foot Coast Guard Cutter, the M/Y Farley Mowat is one of two vessels that participated in Operacion Milagro III, a recently concluded six-month campaign that involved patrolling areas of the upper gulf, collaborating with the Mexican government and a group of local fishermen.
Scientists say that gillnets are the main cause for the decline in population of the vaquita, a small and nearly extinct sea mammal endemic to the upper gulf and whose population is estimated at under 30.
The vaquita population has declined with the increase in illegal fishing for totoaba, a large fish whose swim bladders command high prices in Asia. The vaquitas, which must surface to breathe, end up in the totoaba nets and drown.
During the Milagro III campaign, crew members aboard the Farley Mowat and the MV/Sam Simon focused on retrieving the gillnets and other illegal gear in the vaquita refuge. The group also used radars and drones to detect poachers, calling in their locations to government authorities.
Over the course of the campaign, the ships removed 233 pieces of illegal fishing gear, including 189 totoaba nets, 27 shrimp and corvina nets and 17 long lines. It also came upon five dead vaquita among 1,195 dead animals— including sharks, dolphins, turtles and sea lions— and released 795 live ones.
The Farley Mowat tours are being offered free of charge from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday through July 4. It will be docked at 1492 North Harbor Drive, north of the San Diego Maritime Museum.
(Sandra Dibble, SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE)
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Forecasters said it appears Dora will continue to track west-northwest and weaken over cooler waters, returning to tropical storm status by tonight.
“It doesn’t look like Dora will get into Southern California’s ‘swell window’ and send waves to us,” said Joe Dandrea, a forecaster at the National Weather Service in Rancho Bernardo.
(Gary Robbins, SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE)
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What was a 2.2 millimeter per year rise in 1993 was a 3.3 millimeter rise in 2014, based on estimates of the mass changes of a number of key components of sea level rise, such as the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the study in Nature Climate Change found. That’s the difference between 0.86 and 1.29 inches per decade — and the researchers suggest further sea level acceleration could be in store.
The chief cause of the acceleration was the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which went from contributing less than 5 percent of all sea level rise in 1993 to contributing more than 25 percent in 2014, the study found. The loss of ice in Antarctica and smaller glaciers over the same time period also contributed to quicker sea level rise.
The increase in the rate of sea level rise “highlights the importance and urgency of mitigating climate change and formulating coastal adaptation plans to mitigate the impacts of ongoing sea level rise,” write Xianyao Chen of the Ocean University of China and Qingdao National Laboratory of Marine Science and Technology, and colleagues. Chen’s co-authors hailed from institutions in China, Australia and the United States. “We understand why the sea level is accelerating, and we’re understanding what the components are contributing,” said Christopher Harig, one of the study’s authors and a researcher at the University of Arizona.
Earlier this year, a different group of researchers found sea level rise was only about 1.1 millimeters per year before 1990, whereas in the period between 1993 through 2012 it was 3.1 millimeters per year. NASA, at present, puts the rate of sea level rise at 3.4 millimeters per year.
But while the individual estimates differ, the broader picture is that researchers generally agree that the rate of sea level rise is increasing — and that this will have major consequences for coastal regions, which will have less time to adapt if sea level rise acceleration continues.
“I think it’s gotten to the point where the observation is pretty robust,” said Harig.
The key components of sea level rise include thermal expansion of ocean water as it heats up — previously the dominant component but, as the study notes, not any more — and the melting of Greenland, Antarctica and smaller glaciers distributed across the globe.
The new study finds that losses of ice, and from Greenland in particular, are now becoming a bigger contributor to sea level rise than thermal expansion. The more Greenland and Antarctica contribute to sea level rise, the higher it can go, since these are the two largest sources of land-based ice on the planet.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Firefighters battled high winds Monday as they fought a fire that has grown to 72 square miles and burned 13 homes — larger than any other fire in the country now, state emergency managers said. Some flames reached 100 feet high, while fire crews faced dry, windy conditions Tuesday and a “high potential” for extreme fire behavior, officials said late Monday.
The estimated firefighting costs now top $7 million for a fire started June 17 near the Brian Head Resort by someone using a torch tool to burn weeds, they said. Investigators said they know who the culprit is, but they haven’t yet released the person’s identity or what charges will be leveled.
Meanwhile, a wildfire surging out of control on California’s Central Coast has forced about 250 people to evacuate from their homes.
The blaze broke out late Monday afternoon and within just a few hours had grown to about 500 acres, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
The evacuation order is for a string of homes along about five sparsely populated rural roads in and around the small town of Santa Margarita about 10 miles north of San Luis Obispo. The fire has grown to 1.5 square miles.
Another California wildfire sparked by a traffic accident on a remote stretch of highway 80 miles east of Los Angeles has grown to nearly 2 square miles in just a few hours.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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KUTV reported that a few Utah families were allowed back to their homes near the resort town of Brian Head to survey damage and retrieve essential items, but most were left waiting and wondering when they would be able to go home. The fire has also burned in the Dixie National Forest.
Evacuation orders were also issued for nearby mountain communities generally known for weekend getaway homes for Las Vegas residents. “This is a catastrophic fire, no two ways about it,” said Garfield County Sheriff Jim Perkins.
Fire officials said Sunday they were hoping that upper-level moisture would help them in their effort to douse the blaze that was 8 percent contained and destroyed at least 13 homes and eight outbuildings.
The Utah firefighters could face more challenges today because the National Weather Service warned of critical fire weather conditions with gusty winds, high temperatures and low humidity. There’s also a chance for thunderstorms that could add more sparks.
The Utah blaze was accidentally started June 17 by someone using a torch to burn weeds.
The fire in Santa Clarita started Sunday afternoon, prompting authorities to shut down all lanes of a highway and send crews to fight the blaze that quickly grew to more than a square mile, fed by tinder-dry brush and driven by winds in stifling heat. One structure was destroyed, but authorities did not say if it was a home. Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies were helping residents of some homes evacuate “out of an abundance of caution.” The sheriff’s office in a statement did not say how many people had been evacuated.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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As of late Sunday night, only three people — a couple and their month-old baby — had been rescued from the disaster site.
Sitting on the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau in Aba prefecture’s Mao County, Xinmo has in recent years become a tourism destination for its picturesque scenery of homes in lush meadows tucked between steep and rugged mountains. But after the landslide, the village was reduced to a vast area of rubble.
As heavy machines removed debris and men scoured the rubble for survivors on Sunday, relatives from nearby villages sobbed as they awaited news of their loved ones.
“It was as if strong winds were blowing by, or a big truck rumbled by,” Tang Hua, a 38-year-old woman from a nearby village, told The Associated Press. “The houses were shaking, as if there were an earthquake. We rushed out and saw massive smoke. With a thundering sound, the smoke suddenly lifted. We realized it was a landslide. “As we ran for safety, we looked this way and saw the village flattened.”
Tang has relatives in Xinmo, but she said little could be done at this point. “The whole village is done for,” she said.
The landslide carried an estimated 636 million cubic feet of earth and rock — equivalent to more than 7,200 Olympic-sized swimming pools — when it slid down from steep mountains. Some of it fell from as high as a mile.
Experts on state media said the landslide was likely triggered by rain.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The blaze is one of several burning in the U.S. West as extreme heat makes it difficult for firefighters to tamp down the flames. In Utah, new evacuations were ordered east of the fire’s epicenter in the tiny mountain town of Brian Head, with residents nearby and people visiting a popular fishing area also asked to leave to avoid danger, said Denise Dastrup of the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office.
More than 700 other people have been out of their homes since Saturday. Someone using a torch to burn weeds ignited the fire near the alpine community that is home to the Brian Head Resort and close to several national monuments and parks in Utah’s red rock country. The mountain bike and hiking trails, zip line and water tubing hill that lure summer visitors were closed while firefighters try to contain the blaze.
The resort, which is a ski area in the winter, said on its website that it still plans to carry out summer activities that include music concerts and Fourth of July events but that it doesn’t know when it will reopen.
One home has been destroyed and another damaged. It also caused minor damage at a Boy Scout camp.
The unidentified person accused of starting the fire could face charges. Firefighting costs could rise to more than $1 million, said Jason Curry of the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands. Anita DeLelles, a cabin owner in Brian Head, said she’s saddened, frustrated and angry that the action of one “careless person” is causing so much damage. She wasn’t there when the fire started, but people renting her cabin had to be evacuated.
She said she’s losing income from having to cancel reservations during busy summer months. But that’s secondary to her concern for what the town will look like when the fire is finally out.
“I’m saddened by the devastation of the beauty of the place,” said DeLelles, who lives about 85 miles south. “It’s almost surreal just thinking about how fast it’s grown.”
The fire had spread to 17 square miles by Thursday evening and was heading toward a lake used by recreationists and where some homes stand, said Erin Darboven of the Bureau of Land Management. Elsewhere, New Mexico authorities lifted the evacuation of more than 150 homes in the mountains east of Albuquerque as firefighters got a handle on fire that started Wednesday. It took crews a few hours to slow the flames, and families were allowed to return home by nightfall.
Another fire, sparked by lightning nearly three weeks ago, has charred more than 11 square miles, and crews have started rehabilitation work.
(Brady McCombs, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“It’s a cumulative effect of days on end of high heat,” she said.
Dr. Michelle Jorden, chief medical examiner for Santa Clara County, said hyperthermia and heat stress occurs when a person’s heat-regulation system can’t handle hot temperatures.
Like most of California, San Jose has been under a heat advisory for several days due to a dry, high-pressure system centered over the Southwest.
Across the Sacramento Valley and inland communities, temperatures soared past 100 degrees and hit a record-breaking 113 degrees in Redding. The previous high for Redding was 104 degrees, set in 1988. In Southern California on Tuesday, temperatures in the low desert communities were“among the highest ever recorded,” the weather service said. Death Valley hit 127 — seven degrees shy of the hottest temperature ever recorded on the planet.
A record high for San Diego County was set Tuesday in Ocotillo Wells, when the mercury hit 124 degrees.
However, cooling is expected today in the county, with high temperatures ranging from high 60s to mid-70s along the coast, to upper 80s in some inland areas and the low 100s in Borrego Springs.
Meanwhile, Phoenix suffered record-setting heat for the second consecutive day.
Phoenix hit 117 degrees Wednesday to top its previous record of 115 for the date, set in 2008. Tuesday’s high was 119 degrees, breaking the mark of 116 set last year and tying for the fourth-hottest day in the city’s recorded history.
Phoenix’s all-time high is 122 degrees, set on June 26, 1990.
To the south, about 100 firefighters battled a 2-square-mile blaze believed to have been ignited by lightning Tuesday in triple-digit temperatures in Sonoita, 45 miles southeast of Tucson. None of the wineries dotting the area was threatened.
In New Mexico, authorities say a brush fire destroyed sheds and vehicles on private property and sent two residents and a firefighter to the hospital for smoke inhalation and other minor injuries.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Ocotillo Wells, a few miles east of Borrego Springs, reached 123.7 degrees, which will go down in the books as 124 degrees.
Noel Isla, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Rancho Bernardo office, said another station in Ocotillo Wells showed 125 degrees, but that station’s accuracy has not been verified. The 124-degree reading is from a station monitored and verified by the weather service, Isla said.
The previous record high in San Diego county was 122 — reached exactly one year earlier, on June 20, 2016, and on June 25, 1990, both times in Borrego Springs.
Borrego unofficially reached 120 degrees Tuesday, but the actual number could be higher. Like last year, the official weather station, which is at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park headquarters, stopped transmitting data before the heat of the day.
Elsewhere in California, Death Valley reached 127 degrees — 7 degrees shy of the hottest day ever recorded on the planet — and Palm Springs hit 122, tying the record set last year.
Facing a full week over 120 degrees, officials at Death Valley National Park’s headquarters — 190 feet below sea level — are bracing for heat-related illness and injuries.
Earlier this month, a woman was transported to the hospital with third-degree burns on her feet.
“She’d lost her sandals in Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes and walked about a half-mile on the
hot sand,” Abby Wines, a spokeswoman for the park, said in a statement.
Ground temperatures over 200 degrees have been measured in Death Valley. “To put that into perspective,” Wines said, “160 degrees is sufficient to cook meat.” The highest air temperature ever recorded on Earth was in Death Valley on July 10, 1913 — 134 degrees.
National Park Service maintenance crew members had to follow strict safety protocols that include working for 10 minutes, then resting and hydrating for 20 minutes, before resuming the labor. All work had to cease when the temperature exceeded 119. The operator of California’s power grid called on residents and companies to conserve electricity during peak hours.
Cal ISO, the overseer of California’s electrical grid, issued a flex alert that started Tuesday and continues through today.
The alert means the public should voluntarily reduce its electricity usage, particularly during the afternoons when air conditioners are most likely to run at full speed.
Cal ISO is asking consumers to turn off all unnecessary lights and to use major appliances only before 2 p.m. and after 9 p.m. Residents are also being asked to set their air conditioners to 78 degrees or higher.
The heat wave is expected to ease a bit today with temperatures expected to be in the upper 90s and low 100s across San Diego County’s inland valleys and in the 70s along the coast. The county experienced an extraordinary 59-degree temperature gradient on Tuesday ranging from 124 in Ocotillo Wells to 65 in Del Mar.
Meanwhile, county animal control officials said Tuesday that the heat wave is “rousting” rattlesnakes from their homes, making it more likely that they’ll be seen by the public.
“Some 30 (rattlesnake) calls came in since last Wednesday,” Dan DeSousa, director of County Animal Services, said in a statement.
DeSousa advised residents in the county’s unincorporated areas or the cities of Carlsbad, DelMar, Encinitas, San Diego and Solana Beach to call Animal Control Services at (619) 236-2341 for help removing rattlesnakes from their properties.
“Otherwise, call the animal control agency for your city,” he said. Residents of Borrego Springs are taking the extreme heat in stride. The high is expected to be 117 today and at least 113 through Sunday. “There’s nothing you can do. Thank God for air conditioning,” said Sid Engle, who lives near a golf course about a mile from downtown Borrego Springs. “The only thing you can do is hang in there. You just have to wait a couple of months.”
Engel said the locals know to plan activities early in the morning before the severe heat kicks in. But in Ocotillo Wells, even that wouldn’t have helped much on Tuesday. The morning low was 96 degrees.
The extreme heat in the Southwest posed problems for air travelers with the grounding of more than 40 flights in Phoenix. With a high temperature of 119 degrees, it was too hot for some smaller jets to take off. Hotter air is thinner air, which makes it more difficult — and sometimes impossible — for planes to generate enough lift.
American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein said the carrier began limiting sales on some flights to prevent the planes from exceeding maximum weight for safe takeoff in the hot conditions.
“When you get in excess of 118 or higher, you’re not able to take off or land,” said Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for American Airlines, referring to the smaller aircraft.
Bigger jets like Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s have higher operating thresholds (126 and 127 degrees, respectively), he said. But even though bigger planes weren’t affected, he said, American decided to give passengers on any flight to or from Phoenix the option to change their trips.
Overall, that means more than 350 flights were potentially affected by the hot weather in Phoenix. Las Vegas also baked, reaching 117 degrees on Tuesday and tying a record that has happened only three other times in the city’s history.
Visitors tried to stay inside air-conditioned casinos, and some tourists lugged packs of bottled water around the Strip. Others went to a bar where the temperature is set at 23 degrees and glasses, walls and seats are sculpted from ice.
Tonya and Lavonda Williams traveled to Sin City from Orlando, Fla., to see the Backstreet Boys in concert. Walking on the Strip was too much to handle, even for people accustomed to heat.
“This is like the oven door is open,” Lavonda Williams said as the sisters walked from a pedestrian bridge into the Palazzo casino-resort.
“It’s too hot to even drink alcohol,” Tonya Williams added.
In Phoenix, which endured its fourth-hottest day ever and set a record for June 20, the main burn center warned people to be careful around car interiors and pavement and with their pets.
About 50 people went to a PetSmart store in a Phoenix suburb Tuesday to receive free elastic booties to put on their pets’ paws so they don’t burn on concrete and pavement.
Shelby Barnes, 48, picked up three sets of the booties for her dogs. She said she yells at people who walk their dogs without them in the afternoon heat.
“If you can’t put your foot on the sidewalk, neither can they,” she said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS, L.A. TIMES, N.Y. TIMES; contributions from Robert Krier and Gary Robbins, SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE)
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Despite the dangers, the weather may not be as bad as originally expected. The National Weather Service had been forecasting highs at 120 or higher in Phoenix for the past several days, a number not seen in the desert city in more than 20 years, but it now predicts 119.
Nonetheless, nearly 40 flights were canceled because soaring temperatures make it harder for airplanes to take off.
“That’s deadly heat no matter how you slice it,” weather service meteorologist Chris Breckenridge said.
Southern California is in the midst of a heat wave that sent the temperature to 119 degrees Monday in Palm Springs, tying a record for June 19, and to 117 degrees in Borrego Springs. Campo hit 103 degrees.
No records fell in San Diego County.
Today will be slightly warmer in San Diego County, with temperatures in the upper 70s and possibly low 80s at the coast. The high topped out at 79 on Monday at San Diego International Airport.
The county’s inland foothills and valleys should be in the 90s, with some spots hitting 100 or above, especially in places like Ramona. Phoenix and Las Vegas are used to 110-degree heat, but temperatures above 115 are rare. Phoenix hit 118 degrees Monday, tying the record for the date set last year.
The last time the city reached 120 was in 1995. A notorious heat wave in 1990 brought consecutive days at 120 degrees, including the record of 122. The heat is spread across California. The Central Valley has been baking in unusually bad heat, and the Northern California city of Redding hit a June 18 record of 110 degrees on Sunday — 19 degrees above normal.
It could be worse: Death Valley hit 125 on Monday and could see 124 degrees today.
Las Vegas visitors should be aware of a little-known fact about the temperatures: The Strip is often hotter than the rest of the city.
Weather service meteorologist Ashley Allen says the Strip’s tall, close buildings and long stretches of concrete cause the area to heat quickly and cool slowly.
She says it’s hard to predict exactly how hot the Strip will get because the weather service does not get official readings there, but temperatures could reach somewhere between 115 and 120 degrees, despite the city’s airport forecast to hit 114 Monday.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The fire has brought “a dimension of human tragedy that we cannot remember,” Prime Minister Antnio Costa said during a visit to the scorched area around Pedrgo Grande. The initial deadly blaze started Saturday, and the flames spread along four fronts with “great violence,” said Jorge Gomes, secretary of state for internal administration. By Sunday afternoon, five infernos were raging in central Portugal, he said. The death toll stood at 61, according to Lusa, the national news agency. Officials said they expected the toll to rise.
Nearly half of the people killed died in their cars, Gomes confirmed, after being hemmed in by the flames while driving along a road through the densely forested area between Figueirdos Vinhos and Castanheira de Pra.
Officials said they had found 17 bodies near the road, possibly those of people who had tried to escape on foot once they realized that there was no way to continue driving. Two people were also killed in a car crash related to the blaze.
Several houses were destroyed by the flames. Portuguese television showed people scrambling to leave their homes early Sunday, escorted by firefighters and other rescue teams, as huge flames engulfed hamlets across the dry, cracked terrain.
Several roads were cut off by flames and thick smoke as firefighters tried to prevent the fires from spreading.
The cause of the initial fire near Pedrgo Grande was not immediately clear. Officials had suggested that it was started by lightning during a dry thunderstorm, in which lightning strikes but there is no rain.
About 1,600 firefighters, assisted by airplanes and helicopters, were working to contain the damage.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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But some tourists welcome it as a bucket-list opportunity to experience Death Valley — famously the hottest place in America.
Many will get their chance in the days ahead as a vicious heatwave bakes parts of Arizona, California and Nevada.
Death Valley National Park’s hit 124 degrees Sunday could again this week as the sweltering system envelopes much of the region.
Officials also warned of excessive heat across southern portions of Arizona and Nevada, and throughout California’s Central Valley.
“There’s very few places on Earth to go to experience those temperatures, and Death Valley is one of those,” said John Adair, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
Business booms as temperatures soar in July and August at Panamint Springs Resort, near the entrance of Death Valley National Park.
“When it’s 120 to 125 (degrees), there’s more customers than there ever is,” said Mike Orozco, who works at the resort that includes a restaurant, gas station, camp sites and cabins.
Orozco said locals jokingly refer to the summer spike as “European season,” when a flood of tourists from Germany, France, Sweden and other places arrive in Death Valley to experience heat unheard of in Europe.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The engineering and onsite reviews are part of stepped-up inspections following February’s surprise failures of both spillways at California’s 770-foot-high Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest. Authorities ordered nearly 200,000 people to evacuate in that crisis.
Since then, regulators at California’s dam-safety division began reviewing their records on the 1,250 dams they monitor, focusing on 100 big, aging dams that have people downstream, supervising engineer Daniel Meyersohn said. The state has since written to owners of about 70 of the dams, ordering them to carry out a thorough review of the spillways’ engineering and, if necessary, on-site inspections of the soundness of the spillways and the rock supporting it. Meyersohn declined to identify the dams that had received the orders for extra inspections, saying some of the owners may not yet have received their notices.
Operators at Whale Rock dam near San Luis Obispo on the Central Coast received one of the letters this week.
In it, the state informs dam operators that the state believes the spillway “may have potential geologic, structural, or performance issues that may jeopardize its ability to safely pass a flood event.”
The state order mandates that dam operators fix any spillway problems they find before the next rainy season, which in California usually begins around November.
At Oroville, construction crews already are rushing to rebuild and anchor half-century- old spillways before November, as part of about $500 million in emergency response and repairs.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Nick Lyon is the highest-ranking member of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration to be snagged in a criminal investigation of how the city’s water system became poisoned after officials tapped the Flint River in 2014. Lyon, 48, the director of the Health and Human Services Department, is accused of failing to alert the majority-black population about an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the Flint area, which has been linked by some experts to poor water quality in 2014-15.
An involuntary manslaughter conviction carries up to 15 years in prison. “The health crisis in Flint has created a trust crisis for Michigan government, exposing a serious lack of confidence in leaders who accept responsibility and solve problems,” said state Attorney General Bill Schuette, who said his probe is moving to the trial phase and signaled that Snyder, who has apologized for his administration’s failures that led to and prolonged the crisis, may not be charged.
“We only file criminal charges when evidence of probable cause of a crime has been established. And we’re not filing charges at this time,” he said.
Lyon also is charged with misconduct in office for allegedly obstructing university researchers who are studying if the surge in cases was linked to the Flint River.
The others charged with involuntary manslaughter were: Darnell Earley, who was Flint’s emergency manager; Howard Croft, who ran Flint’s public works department; Liane Shekter Smith; and Stephen Busch. Shekter Smith and Busch were state environmental regulators.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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It was also felt in western Turkey, including in Istanbul, and on neighboring islands. Lesbos mayor Spyros Galinos and the fire service said the woman was found dead in the southern village of Vrisa that was worst-hit by the quake, which had its epicenter under the sea.
“Most houses in Vrisa have suffered severe damage,” Galinos said.
NB: This event was not well covered in the U.S. news. See also at Aljazeera and BBC.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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An evening bulletin from the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Calvin was making landfall on the coast of Oaxaca state. The storm’s center was about 50 miles east-northeast of Puerto Angel, and it was moving to the west-northwest at 5 mph. It had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph.
A tropical storm warning was in effect for Mexico’s Pacific coast between Punta Maldonado and Boca de Pijijiapan. That includes the beach city of Puerto Escondido and the Huatulco region.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Record snowfall on towering Western peaks this winter virtually eliminated California’s five-year drought and it is now melting rapidly.
But it has contributed to at least 14 river deaths and prompted officials to close sections of rivers popular with swimmers, rafters and fishing enthusiasts.
In Utah and Wyoming, some rivers gorged by heavy winter snowfall have overflown their banks, and rivers in Utah are expected to remain dangerously swollen with icy mountain runoff for several more weeks.
The sheer beauty of the rivers is their draw — and represents a big danger to people who decide to beat the heat by swimming or rafting with little awareness of the risks posed by the raging water.
This year’s velocity and force of the Merced River that runs through Yosemite Valley is similar to a runaway freight train, said Moose Mutlow of the Yosemite Swift Water Rescue Team. “You step out in front of it, it’s going to take you,” he said. “You’re not going to stop that, and that’s what people need to get their heads around.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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No injuries or structure damage were reported, although fire officials were concerned that some businesses could be threatened.
A vehicle’s catalytic converter, which can become hot, may have accidentally ignited all the spot fires, a San Diego fire official said.
Motorists and area residents called 911 when the first pair of fires broke out about 12:35 a.m. on the right shoulder of eastbound freeway lanes near Federal Boulevard, according to the California Highway Patrol.
One caller said the flames appeared to be near an unspecified building.
San Diego Fire-Rescue Department crews headed into the tall shrubs, trees and grasses on a slope below the freeway to hose down the flames.
CHP officers stopped all freeway traffic for some time, then set out cones and flares to protect the fire trucks taking up two right lanes.
Minutes later, one or two more fires ignited, east of the first ones, near College and Massachusetts avenues, a Heartland dispatcher said. He said more reports kept coming in, including eight additional spot fires all the way to state Route 125. Fires were noted between the freeway and Edco trash company, and behind Factory 2-U store in the Albertsons shopping center.
A San Diego fire helicopter was called in, along with Cal Fire crews. The fires were under control in San Diego’s in about an hour, and by 1:50 a.m. in Lemon Grove.
Crews continued to douse hot spots and one freeway lane remained closed for about another hour.
(Pauline Repard, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Following a meeting in Mexico City with the two men, President Enrique Pea Nieto announced a permanent ban on the use of gillnets in the turbid waters off the Baja California peninsula, where fewer than 30 vaquita are believed to still be alive. “Mexico understands its responsibility as one of the countries with greatest biodiversity,” Pea Nieto said in announcing the memorandum of understanding with Slim and DiCaprio.
The agreement states that within 30 days, Mexico will increase its enforcement of the gillnet ban and prosecution of this type of illegal fishing. It also calls for prohibition of nighttime fishing in the region and the establishment of monitored entry and exit points for fishing vessels.
“The main value of this memorandum is to offer encouragement. It’s saying we cannot give up, we have to move forward,” said Gustavo Danemann, executive director of Pronatura Noroeste, an office of Mexico’s oldest and largest environmental organization that’s one of several groups supporting the new partnership.
Critics have said an unprecedented two-year effort by Mexico, starting in 2015, has done little to discourage illegal fishing and protect the vaquita. Those measures, which are set to expire at the end of this month, have included a compensation program for local fishermen, a temporary gillnet ban and stepped up enforcement by Mexico’s navy. Yet as illegal fishing continued, the vaquita’s population has continued to drop.
Scientists said the main danger to the vaquita has been the rampant poaching in the region of another critically endangered species, the totoaba, a large fish endemic to the Gulf of California whose swim bladders command high prices in China, where consumers believe in their medicinal value. The world’s smallest cetacean, the vaquita become ensnared in the totoaba nets and drown.
“To make a permanent ban is great, but it’s only as good as the enforcement,” said Frances Gulland, a veterinarian and member of the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission. And while the vaquita is the species at greatest danger at the moment, the ban is important to save other marine species in the area, such sharks, turtles and sea lions, she said.
Critical to any plan will be winning support from thousands of fishermen in the region and coming up with vaquita-safe fishing methods that allow them to earn a livelihood.
“We are waiting for them to come up with fishing gear that (is) sustainable, that allows us to earn a living,” said Luis Albañez, a third-generation fisherman in the Baja California town of San Felipe. While Albañez is willing to make the switch, others have been eager to return to gillnet fishing and have been quick to deny the existence of the vaquita.
“The Gordian knot to untangle, is how do you get the community to buy in?” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., who studies illegal economies and wildlife trafficking.
Corruption and lax enforcement have compounded the problems, she said: “There are credible reasons to believe that enforcement is lacking in its execution,” said Felbab-Brown, who has studied the vaquita issue while writing her upcoming book on wildlife trafficking.
The connection between Peña Nieto and DiCaprio started last month with a tweet, when the actor and environmentalist urged his followers to back a World Wildlife Fund campaign petitioning Mexico’s president to “take strong action now” to save the vaquita.
The Mexican president answered, “I welcome @LeoDiCaprio and @World_Wildlife’s concern regarding the Vaquita Marina.”
Slim and DiCaprio are participating through their respective foundations. The agreement signed Wednesday does not state a specific financial contribution, but commits them to participating with the Peña Nieto administration in a working group that within the next month will prepare a draft strategy for achieving the memorandum’s objectives, including ways to finance them.
As Mexico moves forward on this pact, it plans to evaluate whether to go ahead with a desperate preservation effort that would involve capturing the elusive porpoises and holding them in pens in the upper gulf until they can be safely returned to open waters. The operation, being planned for October, is both unprecedented and high risk. The new agreement said the “parties will make a determination … regarding the feasibility of such a program.”
The announcement from Peña Nieto comes as the international environmental community has been increasing its pressure on Mexico to save the species.
On Wednesday, people who have long championed the vaquita cause, from scientists to conservationists, said the memorandum with Slim and DiCaprio is encouraging, bringing much greater visibility and hopefully more resources to the preservation campaign.
“This is something where there is going to be great attention and great accountability expected,” said Jan Vertefeuille, senior director of advocacy for the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C.
At the same time, she cautioned: “We also think that there are additional steps that are needed, and we will be engaging in the process to support this.”
(Sandra Dibble, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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“It was like a bomb was dropped off in our lap,” City Engineer Pam Cooksey said of the revised flood forecasts from the Army Corps of Engineers. The findings suggested that the bridge could act as a dam during bad storms, sending waves of backed-up floodwater into the refurbished business district.
Climate change is often seen as posing the greatest risk to coastal areas. But the nation’s inland cities face perils of their own, including more intense storms and more frequent flooding. Even as President Donald Trump has announced his intention for the U.S. to withdraw from a global climate agreement, many of the nation’s river communities are responding to climate change by raising or replacing bridges that suddenly seem too low to stay safely above water.
The reconstructed bridges range from multilane structures that handle heavy traffic loads to small rural spans traversed by country school buses and farmers shuttling between their fields. The bridges are being raised even in states such as Texas, where political leaders have long questioned whether climate change is real. In Milwaukee, bridges have been raised as part of $400 million in flood-management projects across a metro area with 28 communities. In Reno, Nev., officials spent about $18 million to replace a bridge over the Truckee River last year and plan to replace three more after flood-danger projections were increased by up to 15 percent.
Because the cities are inland, “A lot of these are not the kind of places that people are used to thinking of being in the forefront of climate change,” said Jim Schwab, manager of the Hazards Planning Center at the American Planning Association, which is working with nearly a dozen cities on flood-mitigation options.
Many communities are “still feeling their way through this particular problem,” he said.
No one tracks how many communities are raising bridges or replacing them with higher ones, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency says it’s routinely providing money for this purpose, although no dollar total is available. Typically, more than 1,500 bridges are reconstructed each year for an assortment of reasons.
Schwab said he’s sure hundreds and possibly thousands of bridge-raising projects have been completed recently or are planned. A cursory check by the AP in a handful of states found at least 20 locations where bridges have been raised or construction will begin soon.
FEMA is finalizing a rule that states floods “are expected to be more frequent and more severe over the next century due in part to the projected effects of climate change.” That could mean higher costs for a country that sustained more than $260 billion in flood damage between 1980 and 2013.
Given the Trump administration’s skepticism of climate change, however, a FEMA spokeswoman says the agency “has not determined what its next action will be” on the rule. The Corps of Engineers did not respond to requests for information on cities where flood risks have been reassessed.
Increasing humidity from the more than 1.5 degree increase in global temperatures since 1880 has resulted in more intense downpours, according to David R. Easterling, director of the national climate assessment unit at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“It causes day after day of rainfall, and that leads to flooding,” Easterling said.
In some cases, a city’s 100-year flood could be seen as twice what it was 40 years ago, with double the risk, as it was for Des Moines. A 100-year flood is the worst flood that can be expected to happen over a century. It has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year.
(Scott McFetridge, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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It looks like the aptly named “June gloom” weather pattern is expected to linger at the coast, probably for days.
The marine layer largely didn’t burn off Monday, and we’re not making any promises for today or beyond.
The National Weather Service said San Diego will experience seasonal highs — about 69 to 70 degrees — through Thursday. But on each of those days, the clouds are forecast to return in the evening and last through at least the morning rush hour, limiting the ability for substantial warming.
Inland areas won’t be that much warmer. Meteorologists said daytime highs in Escondido will likely be in the high 70s today through Thursday.
Overall, the “June gloom” pattern isn’t likely to change for another week.
As we said … ugh.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Last month, aerial observations showed that the crack had shifted toward the edge of the ice sheet and the open ocean, leading scientists to estimate that an iceberg more than 300,000 times the size of the one that sunk the Titanic could calve off as soon as summer.
The formation of the iceberg fits within a broader trend of shrinking ice shelves in the region, which scientists believe is linked to global warming.
The crack has grown an additional 11 miles in just the last week, according to observations released on Wednesday by Project MIDAS, a European research group that has been monitoring the region, making the iceberg’s separation imminent.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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He said the U.S. could try to re-enter the deal under more favorable terms or work to establish “an entirely new transaction.” But he indicated that was hardly a priority. “If we can, great. If we can’t, that’s fine,” he said.
Within minutes of the Trump’s remarks, the leaders of France, Germany and Italy issued a joint statement saying that the Paris climate accord was “irreversible” and could not be renegotiated.
Scientists say the Earth is likely to reach more dangerous levels of warming sooner as a result of the president’s decision because America’s pollution contributes so much to rising temperatures. Calculations suggest withdrawal could result in emissions of up to 3 billion tons of additional carbon dioxide a year — enough to melt ice sheets faster, raise seas higher and trigger more extreme weather.
By abandoning the world’s chief effort to slow the tide of planetary warming, Trump was fulfilling a top campaign pledge after weeks of building up suspense over his decision.
The White House indicated it would follow the lengthy exit process outlined in the deal. That means the U.S. would remain in the agreement, at least formally, for another 3 1⁄2 years, ensuring the issue remains alive in the next presidential election.
However, Trump declared, emphasizing every word: “As of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris accord.”
He is breaking from many of America’s staunchest allies, who have expressed alarm about the decision. Several of his top aides also opposed the action, including his daughter Ivanka Trump. Under former President Barack Obama, the U.S. had agreed under the accord to reduce polluting emissions by more than a quarter below 2005 levels by 2025. But the national targets are voluntary, leaving room for the U.S. and the nearly 200 other countries in the agreement to alter their commitments.
The leaders of France, Germany and Italy joined to “note with regret” the Trump decision.
“We deem the momentum generated in Paris in December 2015 irreversible, and we firmly believe that the Paris Agreement cannot be renegotiated, since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies,” wrote French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni. The White House said Trump spoke with the leaders of Germany, France, Canada and Britain Thursday to explain his decision and reassured them that the U.S. is committed to the trans-Atlantic alliance and “robust efforts to protect the environment.”
At home, the U.S. Conference of Mayors strongly opposed the decision and said the nation’s mayors will continue efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.
Responding to Trump’s pointing to his city, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto called the decision “disastrous for our planet, for cities such as Pittsburgh,” and a step that “has made America weaker and the world less safe.”
San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer criticized the decision, saying that the city “remains as committed as ever to implementing our landmark Climate Action Plan and being a national leader in solar, renewable energy use, water purification and green job creation. We cannot protect America’s interests without a seat at the table, so San Diego will continue to lead on environmental protection.”
In a rare statement on his successor’s policies, Obama said: “Even in the absence of American leadership; even as this administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future, I’m confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got.”
Business leaders, normally strong supporters of Republican initiatives, had vigorously appealed to Trump not to abandon the agreement. Many economists believe the accord would likely help create about as many jobs in renewable energy as it might cost in polluting industries.
The president, however, argued the agreement had disadvantaged the U.S. “to the exclusive benefit of other countries,” leaving American businesses and taxpayers to absorb the cost.
The immediate impact of Trump’s move could be largely symbolic. The White House said the U.S. will stop contributing to the United Nations Green Climate Fund and will stop reporting carbon data as required by the Paris accord, although domestic regulations require that reporting anyway. The decision has no direct impact on major U.S. regulations on power plants and car rules currently aimed at reducing carbon emissions, although those are currently under review by Trump as well.
“This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States,” Trump said.
Congressional Republicans applauded the decision, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky saying Trump had “put families and jobs ahead of left-wing ideology and should be commended.” But House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco called it “a stunning abdication of American leadership and a grave threat to our planet’s future.”
Trump spoke from the White House Rose Garden on a warm, sunny day. Seated in the front row were aides who had advocated for the withdrawal, including EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and chief strategist Steve Bannon. During Trump’s speech, the faint sounds of protesters could be heard in the distance banging drums.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had urged Trump to stay in the Paris deal, did not attend the ceremony, nor did Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, both close advisers to the president who supported staying in the agreement. A White House official said the couple instead attended service at synagogue for the Jewish holiday of Shavuot.
Business investors seemed pleased, with stock prices, already up for the day, bumping higher as he spoke and the Dow Jones industrial average rising 135 points for the day. As for the mechanics of withdrawal, international treaties have a four-year cooling off period from the time they go into effect
. Trump promised to stop implementation of the “non-binding” parts of the deal immediately. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon, following only China. Beijing, however, has reaffirmed its commitment to meeting its targets under the Paris accord, recently canceling construction of about 100 coal-fired power plants and investing billions in massive wind and solar projects.
(Jill Colvin & Julie Pace, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Aimed at protecting the vaquita porpoise that is endemic to the upper gulf, the measure includes compensation payments to local fishermen in Baja California and neighboring Sonora.
JosCalzada, who is Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food, SAGARPA, announced the extended gillnet ban in Ensenada on Wednesday, the day the ban was set to expire.
Mexico has taken unprecedented measures to protect the vaquita, yet the population has continued to dwindle, with fewer than 30 believed alive today.
The main reason, scientists say, is the continued use of gillnets by poachers who are searching for totoaba, a large fish whose swim bladder commands high prices in Asia, where they are thought to have medicinal value. The vaquitas end up as by-catch and drown.
With vaquita now on the brink of extinction, the issue has drawn much attention from the international environmental community, which maintains that only the enforcement of a permanent gillnet ban in the region can ultimately save the species.
Mexico has committed to coming up with “vaquita-safe” alternative gear for use by local fishermen, but no acceptable options have been presented by the National Fisheries Institute.
A statement from SAGARPA said that “the restriction on fishing in the upper Gulf of California will remain in place as long as there are no sustainable techniques and nets that protect species such as the vaquita and totoaba,” both of which are considered critically endangered.
Fishermen in the communities if San Felipe and Golfo de Santa Clara are hoping that the compensation payments can be extended through the end of the year, said Ramn Franco Daz, who heads a federation of fishing cooperatives.
Franco said that fishermen will need time to test any new vaquita-safe alternative gear approved by the government, “to make certain that it works.”
(Sandra Dibble, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Authorities in the affected districts of Cox’s Bazar and Chittagong evacuated 450,000 people in advance of Cyclone Mora, officials said. In the coastal border district of Cox’s Bazar, where the majority of the Rohingya in Bangladesh live, more than 17,000 houses were destroyed and more than 35,000 were damaged, said Mohammad Ali Hossain, deputy commissioner in Cox’s Bazar. Four people were killed in the Cox’s Bazar district and 60 were injured. Officials in Chittagong said there were no casualties reported as of Tuesday afternoon.
“The storm was really frightening,” said Rasel Uddin, an official with the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics in Cox’s Bazar. “The winds were so strong, I watched a giant eucalyptus tree, dozens of feet tall, getting bent to the point where it was almost flat on the ground. It would straighten again, then the winds would blow it back to the point where it was flat again.”
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, the Muslim minority community from Buddhist-majority Myanmar, have fled to Bangladesh in recent years, where they live in both official and makeshift refugee camps. The numbers have swelled since 2012, and in October and November of last year about 65,000 more arrived after a crackdown by Myanmar’s army.
The Rohingya refugees’ rickety houses offered little resistance to the storm’s high winds, officials said.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Billboards creaked over on their steel poles, trees crashed to the ground and roof tiles blew about like scraps of newspaper as gusts of at least 49 mph lashed the city.
The storm brought the worst spring wind to Moscow since 1998, when gusts killed nine people in a similar burst of natural fury.
Falling trees and construction materials caused the deaths.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The temblor appears to have occurred on the San Jacinto fault, a system that extends through parts of Imperial, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Initial reports say the quake was felt in Temecula, Hemet, and Cathedral City.
Small quakes are common on the fault, which has the potential to produce temblors of 7.0 or larger.
(Gary Robbins, SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE)
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Some towns were under 18 feet of water, and the Navy sent boats and armored vehicles to search for survivors. They moved about 2,000 residents to safer locations over the weekend.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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It was similar to the email he wrote in April, calling for several nearby spots on Bureau of Land Management properties to be closed to target shooting, fearing a bullet would start a fire. All of Alexander’s many emails during the last five years made the same plea: Shut them down.
On May 20, a fire broke out at a popular shooting spot on BLM land dubbed “Pink Gate” for the pastel fence that blocks vehicle traffic into the area. Cal Fire has not officially determined the cause of the fire, but a witness posted a video that seemed to show a group of nearby shooters accidentally starting it.
The fire charred more than 2,000 acres and prompted hundreds to evacuate a busy Jamul campground, and the community of Dulzura. It was the latest incident to stoke a years-long battle between some residents and federal authorities over whether a number of BLM properties in those communities should be permanently closed to target shooters.
“The Gate fire was really the last straw,” said county Supervisor Dianne Jacobs, who has long advocated for the spot to be closed. “Enough’s enough. We need action before something really bad happens.”
A dozen fires have started in the Marron Valley and Sycamore Canyon areas between 2011 and 2015, nine of them caused by shooters, according to BLM spokeswoman Samantha Storms.
Each one costs tens of thousands of dollars to extinguish. Cal Fire records show three fires caused by shooting in the area in 2012 and 2013 racked up nearly $200,000 in costs.
So why not just close off the Pink Gate? Because there are many people who go there for recreational shooting or hunting and don’t want to see it close. And Storms said the federal government would be required to go through a lengthy process to permanently ban shooting there.
The debate isn’t unique to the backwoods of San Diego County. It crops up wherever backyards butt up against BLM land, and where the paths of hikers and mountain bikers intersect with target shooters.
Alexander said while safety concerns are high on the list, there are other problems associated with the spots. Shooters can also damage the surrounding ecosystem by sending bullets into trees, and by leaving piles of trash in the area.
He regularly cleans up areas used for shooting and has found everything from bullet casings to bullet-pocked appliances.
“It’s like living in a war zone,” he said. Residents who use the space argue that there may be less of an issue if more of BLM’s properties were easier to access. Bobby Mathews has been hunting near Pink Gate for 15 years. He said some of the problems that plague the area could be addressed with better education.
“If they aren’t shooting there, they’ll just shoot somewhere else,” he said. “You can’t close it all, and without better education, you’ll just have the same problems somewhere else.”
Most nearby residents seem to agree something needs to be done, said Hannah Gbeh, who is on the Jamul Dulzura Community Planning Group.
She said she’s heard from people on both sides of the issue. While gun rights and having a place to exercise that right is important to many who live in East County, no one is blind to the devastation a wildfire can cause, she said.
“I don’t know what the solution is, but it’s a serious safety concern,” she said.
The issue is set to be discussed at the group’s next meeting on June 13. Storms said the agency has made a concerted effort over the years to come up with short-term solutions that would help keep the area safe, while keeping it accessible to those who use it.
Those measures included introducing a seasonal closure between June and December. On Friday, BLM announced all target shooting in San Diego County must cease until the end of fire season — several days earlier than its usual restriction.
The agency filled a long-vacant ranger position and is better collaborating with local law enforcement partners like the Sheriff ’s Department and the Border Patrol to help enforce the area, Storms said.
She explained that a number of steps need to take place before access to public land is blocked, and that local officials had not decided if that is the appropriate course of action.
Jacobs said those short-term solutions are starting to sound like excuses. She said she’s had a number of meetings with the federal agency, including two this year, and has seen little to no progress toward a closure.
Jacobs has sent a number of letters to the federal agency in recent years. Her most recent was sent on Wednesday, addressed to the U.S. Department of Interior.
“As far as I’m concerned, the BLM is responsible for the Gate fire and any other fires that start there for their refusal to take action - to do the right thing.”
(Lyndsey Winkley, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The East Bay Times quoted state officials Friday as saying the landslide was still moving, a week after more than a million tons of dirt and rock tumbled down a hillside along Highway 1.
Caltrans spokesman Jim Shivers says the agency might be able to construct a one-lane road, but “it may take up to a year before it is fully open.”
Last weekend’s landslide created a 40-foot layer of rock and dirt along the narrow, winding road. It is covering up about a quarter-mile stretch of Highway 1 in an area called Mud Creek.
Independent experts say the solution may require constructing a sprawling bridge over the slide or a tunnel deep in the ground beneath it, a prospect that could take years and would likely cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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It’s not just the dead trees and brush covering much of the region’s back country; it’s thigh-high grass that sprouted just about everywhere during an exceptionally wet winter, including urban canyons in highly populated areas.
The grass has already begun to dry out and is especially susceptible to catching fire, officials said. “This year’s rain has made our fire conditions far worse than they were last year,” local Cal Fire head and San Diego County Fire Authority Chief Tony Mecham said during a wildfire preparedness news conference Tuesday at Gillespie Field in El Cajon.
“We are still living with the effects of six years of drought,” he said. “We have substantial bug kill and disease that is affecting our trees. About 90 percent of the brush on the hillsides in San Diego County is dead.”
In just the past few days, an unusually large fire for this time of the year — the Gate fire — burned more than 2,000 acres of mostly grass near Jamul, and several other smaller fires burned in Santee, Escondido and on Camp Pendleton.
“This year we are going to have fires in every jurisdiction in this county,” Mecham said. It will likely be a few months before the forests and thick brush in rural eastern San Diego County have dried out enough to worry about wildfire megastorms, but smaller grass-fueled fires can threaten homes in a matter of minutes.
County Supervisor Dianne Jacob called the Gate fire “a reality check” and said it was a harbinger. She said we must all remember that a large part of the county hasn’t burned in more than 50 years.
“We have probably the worst risk of a major wildfire than we have had in a long, long time,” she said. “The good news is we have brought a lot of muscle to these fires.”
Since the 2003 firestorms, the county has invested $406 million to beef up its fire-fighting readiness, she said.
There are now 15 county fire stations, 32 Cal Fire and U.S. Forest Service stations, three county fire helicopters, two Cal Fire air tankers and five additional locally funded aircraft. The county also has unique agreements with the Marines and Navy to allow the region to request up to 30 additional aircraft during an emergency.
Mecham said the San Diego area is the best wildfire-prepared region anywhere in the United States. “On any given day, we have over 50 fire engines in the back country ready to respond to the incidents,” he said. “We have an unparalleled air force and air response.”
But both Jacob and Mecham cautioned residents that they, too, must do their job. There are more than 40,000 structures in areas described as high-risk wildfire zones, and each one of them needs to have at least 100 feet of clearance.
“If a fire engine crew has a choice to make between a house that has good defensible space and one that doesn’t, they are going to go to the one with good defensible space, because they have the best chance of saving that home,” Jacob said.
Mecham was more blunt.
“Firefighters have to make quick decisions,” he said. “If you do not do the clearance around your homes, I do not care to risk the lives of my firefighters to save your home if you have not done your part to give our folks a fighting chance.”
(J. Harry Jones, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The weekend slide in Big Sur buried a portion of Highway 1 under a 40-foot layer of rock and dirt and changed the coastline below to include what now looks like a rounded skirt hem, Susana Cruz, a spokeswoman with the California Department of Transportation, said Tuesday.
More than 1 million tons of rock and dirt tumbled down a saturated slope in an area called Mud Creek. The slide is covering up about a quarter-mile stretch of Highway 1, and authorities have no estimate on when it might reopen. The area remains unstable.
“We haven’t been able to go up there and assess. It’s still moving,” Cruz said. “We have geologists and engineers who are going to check it out this week to see how do we pick up the pieces.”
It’s the largest mudslide she knows of in the state’s history, she said.
One of California’s rainiest and snowiest winters on record has broken a five-year drought, but also caused flooding and landslides in much of the state and sped up coastal erosion.
“This type of thing may become more frequent, but Big Sur has its own unique geology,” said Dan Carl, a district director for the California Coastal Commission whose area includes Big Sur. “A lot of Big Sur is moving; you just don’t see it.”
Even before the weekend slide, storms have caused just over $1 billion in highway damage to 424 sites over the fiscal year that ends in June, Mark Dinger, also a spokesman for the state transportation agency, said Tuesday. That compares with $660 million last year, he said.
Big Sur has experienced an especially tough winter, state transportation spokesman Colin Jones said. Repeated landslides and floods have taken out bridges and highways, closed campgrounds, and forced some resorts to shut down temporarily or use helicopters to fly in guests and supplies.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The report reviewed all 31 species of the state’s native trout, salmon and steelhead — together known as salmonid fish — and concluded that 23 of those are likely to disappear within 100 years. Of those, 14 species could go extinct within 50 years, the report stated. Among the most imperiled is the Southern Steelhead, an oceangoing trout native to Southern California waterways, including several creeks and rivers in San Diego and Orange counties. Others include commercially important salmon runs in Central and Northern California.
The potential loss could damage the state’s salmon fisheries and $7 billion inland sport-fishing sector and herald broader environmental crises, said Curtis Knight, executive director of CalTrout. “If you love fish, you love to go fishing, that’s a concern,” he said, but added, “These are more than just resident fish. Their health indicates the health of our waters, which are important for all Californians.”
The report, titled “State of the Salmonids II; Fish in Hot Water,” built on a similar study of the fish conducted in 2008. It found that after the five-year drought and recent warming trend, their condition has deteriorated. The authors hope the report can serve as a starting point for conservation efforts that could include dam removal, protecting key rivers, improving fish habitat and restoring springs and meadows that serve as water sources.
“The impacts of climate change have become much clearer than they have been in the past,” said author Peter Moyle, professor emeritus in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology and Associate Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis. “Almost universally, California’s salmonids are worse off at this point in time.” “Salmon, trout, and their relatives are the iconic fishes of the Northern Hemisphere,” the report stated, adding that the fish thrive in “the region’s cold, productive oceans, rushing streams and rivers, and deep cold lakes. They are adapted for life in dynamic landscapes created by glaciers, volcanoes, earthquakes, and climatic extremes.”
One of the biggest threats to the fish is the lack of cold, clean water caused by rising temperatures, extended drought and decreased stream flow.
Loss of habitat caused by dams and cities, changes in the food web and shifting ocean conditions are also taking a toll. Changes in ocean current and ocean acidification related to climate change are reducing the food supply in the open ocean, where many of these species live and grow. And sea level rise is flooding coastal lagoons and estuaries that are important for young salmon and steelhead. Some wild fish are also breeding with hatchery stock, they said, creating hybrid fish that lack the diverse characteristics of the separate species.
To rate their status, the authors reviewed each species according to seven criteria, including the area they occupy, abundance of adult fish, their dependence on human intervention, tolerance for changes in water temperature and chemistry, genetic risk, climate change and other human-caused risk factors. They interviewed fishery experts and reviewed scientific literature to score the species’ risk of extinction. Only one species— the coastal rainbow trout—appeared to be at low risk. The rest were ranked at moderate, high or critical risk, with Southern Steelhead falling in the latter category.
The fish, listed as federally endangered, used to swim freely in creeks and rivers of coastal Southern California. Photos from the last century show anglers packed on stream banks during steelhead runs of up to 55,000 fish per year, according to estimates by the National Marine Fisheries Service. An ocean-going version of rainbow trout, steelhead are born in freshwater, travel to the sea and return to their birthplace to spawn. Despite their adaptability, the fish nearly vanished in the latter part of the last century and number fewer than 500 today.
Conservation groups have long sought to restore the fish to Southern California streams, but the effort, like the steelhead’s journey, has been an uphill climb.
In 2011, the California Coastal Conservancy canceled plans to bolster steelhead in San Mateo Creek, which cuts through Camp Pendleton to the Cleveland National Forest, after their efforts to control predatory frogs and nonnative fish failed. Farther north, plans to remove the Matilija Dam from part of the Ventura River to restore steelhead spawning grounds have been in the works for two decades.
However, the South Coast Steelhead Coalition is still trying to improve steelhead habitat on San Mateo Creek and the Santa Margarita and San Luis Rey rivers, according to CalTrout’s website. And the Escondido Creek Conservancy aims to rehabilitate and eventually reintroduce the fish to the urban creek.
(Deborah Sullivan Brennan, SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE)
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The U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego filed charges on Wednesday against David Mayorquin and his father, Ramon Torres Mayorquin, accusing them of conspiracy, false labeling and unlawful importation of wildlife. The men co-own the Arizona-based company Blessing Seafood.
This prosecution is the latest in ongoing efforts to crack down on the lucrative trade of sea cucumbers. The sausage-shaped marine animals are prized by some Asian communities as a culinary delicacy and folk-medicine ingredient.
Depending on the species, sea cucumbers can go for as much as $300 a pound in China and Hong Kong, with prices on the rise, according to authorities.
“Sea cucumbers are taking up quite a bit of our time down at the border,”said Erin Dean, resident agent in charge of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Southern California region.
“It’s a high-valued commodity that’s being smuggled in small quantities across the border, and then consolidated here in the U.S. and then, we believe, being shipped out to Asia,” she added.
Buying and selling sea cucumbers can be a legitimate business if people have the proper permits and operate in season. The Mayorquin family had a permit to do just that, but federal authorities said they also operated outside of the law.
Between 2010 and 2012, the family knowingly agreed to purchase roughly $13 million worth of illicitly harvested sea cucumbers from poachers operating off the Yucatan Peninsula, according to the indictment. They then allegedly imported the product and sold it to Asian markets for about $17.5 million.
According to federal prosecutors, Ramon Torres Mayorquin would receive the shipments in Tijuana and then smuggle them across the Otay Mesa Port of Entry into San Diego. David Mayorquin organized the sales to China and other locations.
To hide their trail, prosecutors said the men routinely falsified documents and even worked with conspirators to bribe Mexican officials. In one such case, they allegedly paid at least $32,000.
The authorities substantiated their claims with emails they obtained that purportedly show correspondence between the Mayorquin family and the alleged poachers. In recent years, scientists and environmental groups have raised concerns about the impact of illegal fishing on sea cucumber populations.
“We have over-fished and created a risk of extinction for many species (of sea cucumbers),” said Octavio Aburto, a marine ecologist with UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “There’s a lot of poaching, and prices are going up.”
Smuggling of sea cucumbers is one of the most high-profile wildlife crimes in Southern California, next to the illegal trade of totoaba fish bladders, according to Fish and Wildlife officials. The dried fish bladders are also sold to Asian markets, sometimes for as much as $30,000 apiece, according to a recent report.
(Joshua Emerson Smith, SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE)
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The mercury reached 92 degrees in Boston shortly after noon Thursday, breaking the old record of 91 degrees for May 18 set in 1936, according to the National Weather Service. The 81-year-old record for the day of 90 degrees also fell in New York City, where it was still 91 degrees in Central Park shortly before 4 p.m.
It was the second straight day of midsummer-like conditions in the Northeast, though forecasters said a cooling trend would move in today and return the region to more seasonable conditions.
The warmth came just days after much of the region endured a cold, rainy Mother’s Day Weekend.
Heat-starved locals in Jamestown, RI, took advantage of the warm weather Thursday to eat lunch at restaurants with outdoor patios.
Mary Ann Williamson and Peggy Schreiner went out to eat to celebrate Williamson’s recent retirement. Schreiner said the weather was “spectacular.” Not minding the heat, they chatted to extend their time outside.
“As long as it’s not a rainy summer, I’ll be happy. I was worried about that,” Williamson said.
Other places where records fell included Hartford, CT, where temperatures reached 94 degrees, and in Providence, RI, where it hit 93. In Maine, where records also fell throughout the state, the Department of Environmental Protection issued an air-quality alert through 11 p.m. Thursday.
In Boston, the National Park Service said on Twitter that the Bunker Hill Monument, a major Revolutionary War tourist attraction, was closed to visitors for a time because of the heat.
Alan Dunham, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts office of the weather service, said 90-plus degree heat in mid-May was unusual in the Northeast, but far from unheard of. And because dew points were low, Dunham said the heat did not feel nearly as oppressive as it might when humidity levels are much higher in July or August.
“As they say out west, it’s a dry heat,” he said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The twisters were among up to 29 that were reportedly spawned by powerful storms that raced through a swath of the central U.S. stretching from Texas to the Great Lakes on Tuesday evening, destroying dozens of homes, killing two people and injuring dozens of others.
The tornadoes, some of them still unverified a day later, touched down in five states: Wisconsin and Oklahoma, which each had one death and about 40 homes destroyed, and Texas, Kansas and Nebraska. The governors of Wisconsin and Oklahoma toured the destruction in their states Wednesday, and residents were allowed to sift through the wreckage.
In Elk City, a community of about 13,000 people roughly 110 miles west of Oklahoma City, Matt Bynum considers himself lucky. Most of his roof is intact, and he lost mainly windows.
The neighborhood buzzed Wednesday with chain saws, generators and a visit from Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, who called the damage “devastating.”
Bynum, 48, said he was doing what many people do when the weather picks up: watching it in his yard. Then he saw a funnel cloud and ran inside.
“I’ve lived in Oklahoma almost 50 years,” he said. “I was one of those people who thought, ‘Ah, it won’t happen to me.’ But never again.”
He said he’ll add one new feature to his redone home: a storm shelter, or safe room.
A tornado also ripped through a mobile home park near the northwestern Wisconsin city of Chetek, about 110 miles northeast of Minneapolis. It destroyed dozens of homes, killed a man.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“Why would he do that?” Thompson asked of her father’s ill-fated decision to drive through the water. “I was just wondering, ‘What was he thinking?’My dad was smarter than that. It just didn’t make sense.”
Such tragedies are all too common. Despite public service announcements, warning signs, barriers and even gates at flood-prone crossings, the majority of flood deaths in America involve people trying to drive through water on flooded roads.
“It is frustrating,” said Todd Shea, warning coordinator meteorologist for the National Weather Service in La Crosse, Wis. “It gets back to human nature. Sometimes you look at these cases and you just have to shake your head.”
Data compiled by Shea shows that 595 Americans have died in floodwater since 2011. A few fell into rivers or drowned while fishing on flooded waterways. And some children died playing too close to high water. But 61 percent of victims died in vehicles, often after driving around barriers or ignoring signs warning them to turn back.
Texas, with its vast rural areas and many waterways, has had more flood-related deaths than any other state since 2011. Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said too many people underestimate the power of water and “think emergencies and disasters happen to somebody else.”
When torrential rains in late April led to flooding across Missouri, five people, including Floyd, died driving onto flooded roads. The death toll would have been worse if not for hundreds of water rescues.
Among those rescues were nine calls in Joplin, the Missouri town devastated by a 2011 tornado that killed 161 people. Fire Chief Jim Furgerson said rescuers put their own lives on the line to save people in flooded cars.
“We take precautions with life vests, we have ropes, but you don’t know if there’s something hidden in the water that’s going to cut you or catch your ankle,” Furgerson said.
Kidd was involved in countless water rescues earlier in his career when he was a firefighter in San Antonio.
“We would ask people, ‘Why did you drive around a barricade?’ or, ‘Why did you drive into the water?’ ” he said. “The number one answer was, ‘I didn’t know any other way to get to where I was going.’ We’ve got to change that mindset.”
Officials throughout the U.S. are trying. Several state agencies and the National Weather Service have produced public service announcement videos warning that just a foot of water can sweep away a car and 18 to 24 inches of water can do the same to a larger vehicle. Several states place “When Flooded Turn Around Don’t Drown” warning signs provided by the weather service at flood-prone crossings.
Many cities and towns, including Joplin, have installed gates that block passage at flood-prone areas when the water rises. Missouri and other states use electronic highway billboards to warn drivers of dangerous areas. Flash flood alerts can be sent to cellphones.
Kim and Shea said they are hopeful technology will eventually go even further, such as phone alerts warning drivers they are approaching a flooded-out road.
Experts agree, though, that common sense must prevail.
Thompson still grapples with why her dad — a former Boeing worker and “master tinkerer” who could fix anything — opted to take back roads home from a wedding reception that night, driving down a steep gravel road into eventual disaster.
“When there’s ice and snow, you stay home. Why is rain so different? A road is still impaired,” she said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Cultivating the algae outdoors didn’t harm nearby populations of wild algae, the researchers said in a study published last week. Also, the algae retained their genetically engineered characteristics.
Sapphire Energy is developing algae for use as biofuel, while UC San Diego scientists led by Stephen Mayfield are studying algae as a source of food and drugs.
Researchers tested the freshwater algae Acutodesmus dimorphus for 50 days in outdoor pools. The algae was genetically engineered by adding two genes, one for enhanced biosynthesis of fatty acids and the other to make green fluorescent protein. Unmodified algae from that species were also grown.
Neither kind of algae was able to out-compete algae that’s native to the area, the study said.
Because algae can grow rapidly under a wide range of water conditions, from ocean to brackish to freshwater, researchers like Mayfield said they’re an ideal vehicle for bioengineered products. They can be produced in areas not suitable for agricultural production.
However, prospects for making algae-based biofuels commercially competitive with fossil fuels looks more distant than they once did several years ago. The stunning increase in production from fracking has let loose a torrent of inexpensive oil and natural gas that shows no signs of abating.
The outlook may be more promising for selling higher-value products, including pharmaceuticals and nutritional supplements.
The anti-biofuel group Biofuelwatch condemned the outdoor-growing experiment as risky.
“It is assumed, and these tests in fact confirmed, that (genetically engineered) micro algae will almost certainly escape into the wild from open air ponds,” the U.K.-based group said in a statement. “Once escaped, these single=celled organisms can become air- or water-borne and disperse widely, or even globally. There is no telling what impact they will have and no way to reverse their dispersal once it occurs.”
The study found no evidence for those concerns.
“We also observed that while the (genetically engineered) algae dispersed from the cultivation ponds, colonization of the trap ponds by the (genetically engineered) strain declined rapidly with increasing distance from the source cultivation ponds,” the study said. “In contrast, many species of indigenous algae were found in every trap pond within a few days of starting the experiment.
(S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Aerial footage in Rigaud, Quebec, west of Montreal, showed whole neighborhoods underwater. Rescue workers transported people on boats in Rigaud. The flooding in Montreal, which is centered on a group of islands at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers, began when waters breached dikes in the northern part of the city. The authorities declared a state of emergency in Montreal and other affected areas.
The flooding even reached the country’s capital, with hundreds of homes in Ottawa affected and at least 75 families displaced.
Unusually high rainfall in recent weeks has engorged the dams, reservoirs and rivers meant to handle the annual flood season, pushing Lake Ontario to a water level not seen since 1993, the Canadian Press news agency said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that frozen northern soils — often called permafrost — are unleashing an increasing amount of carbon dioxide into the air as they thaw in summer or subsequently fail to refreeze as they once did, particularly in late fall and early winter.
“Over a large area, we’re seeing a substantial increase in the amount of CO2 that’s coming out in the fall,” said Roisin Commane, a Harvard atmospheric scientist who is the lead author of the study. The research was published by 19 authors from a variety of institutions, including NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Meanwhile, top White House advisers are expected to discuss today whether the United States should withdraw from the landmark international climate deal.
Trump pledged during the presidential campaign to renegotiate the accord, but he has wavered on the issue since winning the presidency. His top officials have appeared divided about what to do about the deal, under which the United States pledged to significantly reduce planet-warming carbon emissions.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The system moved ashore late Saturday. By 4 p.m. Sunday, more than 2 inches of rain had fallen near Santa Ysabel, while Fallbrook reported 1.48 inches and Kearny Mesa received 1.02 inches.
The National Weather Service said that at least 10 inches of snow had fallen on Palomar Mountain by Sunday night, and about an inch in Julian. The Palomar reading broke the snow record for May 7 by 7.5 inches. The previous record was set in 1964.
San Diego had recorded 0.76 of an inch of rain by 9 p.m., breaking the May 7 record of 0.32 set in 1971.
“This is basically a winter storm that happens to be occurring in May,” said James Brotherton, a weather service forecaster.
“There’s snow in the mountains, rain everywhere else and cold air.”
The daytime high temperature only reached 59 degrees Sunday in San Diego — almost 10 degrees below its seasonal average. It was the coldest May day in 64 years, according to the National Weather Service. The high hasn’t been below 60 in May since May 15, 1953, when it was 58.
Last week, the region was in a warm spell. Sunday’s storm was was expected to last until about midnight. Today should be mostly dry after early-morning rain, but showers could return on Tuesday, forecasters said. The storm follows a wetter-than-average winter and should push fire season back further into the year, forecasters say.
The system formed off the Pacific Northwest and slid down the California coast, bringing significant rain to Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties before slumping into the San Diego area. Those counties also reported lightning.
The Padres had been scheduled to play the Los Angeles Dodgers at 1:40 p.m., but the team postponed the game until Sept. 2 because of the weather and the possibility that lightning would develop.
The Padres had not postponed a game at Petco since July 19, 2015 — or 134 games ago, the team said in a statement.
The storm varied greatly in intensity, with the heaviest precipitation occurring across inland valleys and foothills, with lesser amounts at and near the coast.
San Diego International Airport recorded 0.10 of an inch on Saturday and another 0.76 by Sunday night. The airport averages only 0.12 inches for the entire month of May.
Other May 7 records
The 0.98 of an inch of rain that fell in Alpine (by 5:30 p.m.) broke the record set there on that date in 2013. The record was 0.31.
El Cajon recorded 0.90, breaking its record of 0.23 set in 2013.
Vista got 0.84, breaking its record of 0.40 set in 2013. Chula Vista got 0.84, breaking its record of 0.34 set in 2013.
Escondido received 0.83, breaking its record of 0.78 set in 1912.
Palomar Mountain got 0.63, breaking its record by 0.01, set in 1964. And Campo got 0.63, breaking its record of 0.22 , set in 1948.
Rainfall totals
Sample of rainfall during 48-hour period ending 7 p.m. Sunday:
| Mesa Grande (near Santa Ysabel) | 2.36 inches |
| Mount Woodson | 2.26 |
| Pine Hills (near Julian) | 2.15 |
| Henshaw Dam | 1.81 |
| Descanso | 1.97 |
| Lake Cuyamaca | 1.73 |
| Fallbrook | 2.04 |
| Skyline Ranch | 1.72 |
| Bonsall | 1.57 |
| Poway | 1.27 |
| Valley Center | 1.20 |
| Rancho Bernardo | 1.24 |
| Kearny Mesa | 1.18 |
| Alpine | 1.94 |
| Ramona | 1.02 |
| Escondido | 1.20 |
| La Mesa | 1.15 |
| Santee | 0.99 |
The fire in total has burned 129,856 acres, and wind gusts and dry conditions were raising the risk of the fire spreading, the statement said.
Some 535 personnel had been assigned to fight the fire, along with 10 helicopters, 55 wildland fire engines, bulldozers and other equipment, the statement said. The fire is 12 percent contained.
The area, on the Georgia-Florida line, is also under a dense smoke advisory that is expected to impact visibility in the towns of St. George, Callahan, Ratliff and northern Duval County near Jacksonville International Airport. Some road closures were in effect, and the main entrance to the refuge was closed.
A temporary shelter has been opened in the gymnasium at the Folkston Elementary School. County Administrator Shawn Boatright said it will stay open indefinitely.
“We’re not sure what’s going to happen right now, so it’s open until further notice,” he said.
He encouraged residents to bring whatever personal items they might need for an extended shelter stay.
The wildfire was sparked by lightning April 6 and has since burned almost entirely within the Okefenokee refuge boundaries — and some public forest land in north Florida — for the past month.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Missouri State Highway Patrol said the 69-year-old man was trying to cross a flooded road across Dry Fork Creek when his car was swept away Thursday night. His body was recovered several hours later.
Heavy downpours that started last weekend have caused waterways to surge in Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois and other states. Six deaths are now blamed on flooding in Missouri, while four occurred in Arkansas.
Many rivers are subsiding and some evacuated residents are being allowed to return home, though the Mississippi River is still rising in some areas. The surging waters prompted the U.S. Coast Guard to close a 77-mile stretch of the river in southern Illinois from Chester to Cairo late Thursday. About 14.5 miles were closed earlier this week in St. Louis.
The closures mean barges carrying agricultural goods and other products have been sidelined. It’s unclear when the spans will reopen, though crests are expected along the river this weekend in communities south of St. Louis.
But there was encouraging news in an evacuated eastern Missouri town on Friday, where local officials were confident the area would stay dry even as more sandbags were piled on top of levees.
West Alton’s 500 residents live near the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers about 20 miles north of St. Louis. Both rivers were at major flood stage, but emergency officials were confident the levees would hold.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The outbreak that began Saturday over much of the U.S. Midwest and South included at least four tornadoes in Texas and severe flooding after more than a foot of rain fell in parts of Missouri. The storm even spawned a rare mid-spring snowstorm in Kansas.
It’s not over yet. More flooding and tornadoes are possible as storms roll eastward in a band stretching from Alabama into the Ohio River valley. A wind advisory was in effect over much of the South. Parts of the Florida Panhandle could be affected by severe thunderstorms or high winds and dangerous rip currents.
In Missouri, docile creeks swelled to dangerous levels, and river levels jumped after the downpours. The Missouri State Emergency Management Agency counted 143 water rescues statewide but acknowledged that countless others probably weren’t reported. Hundreds of people were evacuated, a levee was topped in a rural area northwest of St. Louis, and a 57-mile stretch of Interstate 44 was closed.
The Mississippi River was well above flood stage at several points, including Cape Girardeau, Mo., where it is expected to crest later this week within a half-foot of the all-time record of 48.9 feet.
Near Cape Girardeau, residents of tiny Allenville were urged to evacuate, but many did not, even as the town was surrounded by water. The only way in or out was by boat.
“The old-timers, they know how the river reacts,” Cape Girardeau County emergency management director Richard Knaup said. “They’re old swampers, let me tell you. They’re good country folks. They’d sooner take care of themselves than depend on the government.”
Hundreds of people spent Monday sandbagging Missouri towns along the Meramec River, just 16 months after record flooding along the suburban St. Louis waterway. Eureka police Sgt. David Sindel said 30 to 50 homes in his town are endangered, along with about a dozen businesses as the river is expected to reach within half a foot of the 2015 record.
“Unfortunately, it’s Mother Nature and I guess there’s not much we can do about it,” Sindel said.
Flash floods in Missouri were blamed in the deaths of a 77-year-old man, an 18-year-old man and a 72-year-old woman, whose husband desperately tried to save her before their car was swept away.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Tornadoes hit several small towns in East Texas, killing four people. Three people were killed by flooding and winds in Arkansas, with officials saying two more people are missing. Rushing water swept away a car, drowning a woman in Missouri; and a death was reported in Sunday morning storms that raked Mississippi.
Flooding closed part of Interstate 44 near Hazelgreen, Mo., and officials expected it would be at least a day before the highway reopened. Interstate 70 in western Kansas was closed because crews were waiting for snow falling at 3 to 4 inches an hour being blown by 35 mph winds to subside.
An Arkansas volunteer fire department chief was killed while working during storms in north-central Arkansas, state police said.
Cove Creek/Pearson Fire Chief Doug Decker died shortly before 4 a.m. Sunday after being struck by a vehicle while checking water levels on Highway 25 near Quitman, about 40 miles north of Little Rock, Trooper Liz Chapman said. His death will be included as a storm-related death. A 2-year-old girl in Tennessee died after being struck by a heavy, metal soccer goal post that was blown over by high winds, The Metro Nashville Police Department posted on its Twitter page on Sunday evening.
Melanie Espinoza Rodriguez was transported to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead, according to a second post from the department. Middle Tennessee was hit by a strong line of storms that knocked down trees and power lines earlier Sunday.
Rescuers in northwest Arkansas continued Sunday to look for an 18-mont-hold girl and a 4-year-old boy who were in a vehicle swept off a bridge by floodwaters in Hindsville, the Madison County Sheriff’s Office said.
In northwest Arkansas, a 10-year-old girl drowned in Springdale and the body of a woman who disappeared riding an inner tube Saturday was found in a creek in Eureka Springs. Also, a 65-year-old woman in DeWitt in the eastern part of the state was struck and killed in her home by a falling tree, officials said.
In Texas, search teams were going door to door Sunday after the tornadoes the day before flattened homes, uprooted trees and flipped several pickup trucks at a Dodge dealership in Canton.
“It is heartbreaking and upsetting to say the least,” Canton Mayor Lou Ann Everett told reporters at a news conference Sunday morning.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The state’s Ocean Protection Council has revised upward its predictions for how much water off California will rise as the climate warms. The forecast helps agencies in the nation’s most populous state plan for climate change as rising water seeps toward low-lying airports, highways and communities, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Discoveries that ice sheets are melting increasingly fast in Antarctica, which holds nearly 90 percent of the world’s ice, largely spurred the change. As fossil-fuel emissions warm the Earth’s atmosphere, melting Antarctic ice is expected to raise the water off California’s 1,100 miles of coastline even more than for the world as a whole.
“Emerging science is showing us a lot more than even five years ago,” council deputy director Jenn Eckerle said Thursday.
Gov. Jerry Brown has mandated that state agencies take climate change into account in planning and budgeting. The council’s projections will guide everything from local decisions on zoning to state action on whether to elevate or abandon buildings near the coast and bays. In the best-case scenario, waters in the vulnerable San Francisco Bay, for example, likely would rise between 1 foot and 2.4 feet by the end of this century, the ocean council said.
However, that’s only if the world cracks down on climate-changing fossil-fuel emissions far more than it is now.
The worst-case scenario entails an even faster melting of Antarctic ice, which could raise ocean levels off California a devastating 10 feet by the end of this century.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A bolt of lightning sparked the blaze April 6 inside the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. Strong winds over the weekend pushed the flames farther into areas of the swamp parched by drought, causing the fire’s footprint to grow by 76 percent between Friday and Monday.
So far, nearly all of the burning acreage has been confined to the Okefenokee refuge in southeast Georgia, as well as the neighboring Osceola National Forest and John M. Bethea State Forest in Florida. However, residents of small communities near the swamp edge have been warned to pack bags in case the flames creep close enough to trigger evacuations.
Firefighters working to contain the blaze expect the effort to last several months. Commanders estimate the fire may not be extinguished or completely contained until November, said Susan Granbery of the Georgia Forestry Commission.
“We’re waiting for a large storm event,” Granbery said. “A major rain event will be what it takes to put the fire out. They’re estimating that is generally sometime between June and November.”
Sheets of fire-resistant wrap and sprinkler systems have been used to protect historic sites inside the refuge.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered in the Pacific about 22 miles west of the port city of Valparaiso and hit around 6:40 p.m. Buildings swayed in Santiago, the capital 70 miles to the east.
The USGS revised the quake’s magnitude down from an initial reading of 7.1. Chile’s emergency services office said no damage to infrastructure was reported from the quake, which was felt more than 600 miles away in Cordoba province and other parts of neighboring Argentina.
Chile is earthquake-prone. A devastating 8.8-magnitude quake and the tsunami it unleashed in 2010 killed more than 500 people. It was among the strongest ever recorded.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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In a study published Wednesday in Science Advances, a group of researchers from the University of Cádiz in Spain and several other institutions show that a major ocean current is carrying bits of plastic, mainly from the North Atlantic, to the Greenland and Barents seas, and leaving them there — in surface waters, in sea ice and possibly on the ocean floor.
Because climate change is already shrinking the Arctic sea ice cover, more human activity in this still-isolated part of the world is increasingly likely as navigation becomes easier. As a result, plastic pollution, which has grown significantly around the world since 1980, could spread more widely in the Arctic in decades to come, the researchers say.
Andrés Cózar Cabañas, the study’s lead author and a professor of biology at the University of Cádiz, said he was surprised by the results and worried about possible outcomes.
“We don’t fully understand the consequences the plastic is having or will have in our oceans,” he said. “What we do know is that these consequences will be felt at greater scale in an ecosystem like this” because it is unlike any other on Earth.
Every year, about 8 million tons of plastic gets into the ocean, and scientists estimate that there may be as much as 110 million tons of plastic trash in the ocean. Though the environmental effects of plastic pollution are not fully understood, plastic pollution has made its way into the food chain.
Plastic debris in the ocean was thought to accumulate in big patches, mostly in subtropical gyres — big currents that converge in the middle of the ocean — but scientists estimate that only about 1 percent of plastic pollution is in these gyres and other surface waters in the open ocean. Another model of ocean currents by one of the study’s authors predicted that plastic garbage could also accumulate in the Arctic Ocean, specifically in the Barents Sea, located off the northern coasts of Russia and Norway, which this study demonstrates.
The surface water plastic in the Arctic Ocean currently accounts for only about 3 percent of the total, but the authors suggest the amount will grow and that the seafloor there could be a big sink for plastic.
The scientists sampled floating plastic debris from 42 sites in the Arctic Ocean aboard Tara, a research vessel that completed a trip around the North Pole from June to October 2013, with data from two additional sites from a previous trip.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Hundreds of people had been living in the working-class neighborhood on the fringe of the towering dump in Meetotamulla, a town near Colombo, when a huge mound collapsed Friday night during a celebration for the local new year, damaging at least 150 homes.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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That changed the Slims River from a 10-foot deep, raging river to something so shallow that it barely was above a scientist’s high-top sneakers at midstream. The melt from the Yukon’s Kaskawulsh glacier now flows mostly into the Alsek River and ends up in the Pacific Ocean instead of the Arctic’s Bering Sea.
It seemed to all happen in about one day — last May 26 — based on river gauge data, said Dan Shugar, a University of Washington Tacoma professor who studies how land changes. A 100-foot tall canyon formed at the end of the glacier, rerouting the melting water, Shugar and his colleagues wrote in a study published in Monday’s journal Nature Geoscience.
The term “river piracy” is usually used to describe events that take a long time to occur, such as tens of thousands of years, and had not been seen in modern times, especially not this quickly, said study coauthor Jim Best of the University of Illinois. It’s different from something like the Mississippi River changing course at its delta and it involves more than one river and occurs at the beginning of a waterway, not the end.
The researchers concluded that the rerouted flow from the glacier shows that “radical reorganizations of drainage can occur in a geologic instant, although they may also be driven by longer-term climate change.” Or, as a writer for the CBC put it in a story about the phenomenon last year, “It’s a reminder that glacier-caused change is not always glacial-paced.”
The underlying message of the new research is clear, said Shugar. “We may be surprised by what climate change has in store for us — and some of the effects might be much more rapid than we are expecting.”
The scientists had been to the edge of the Kaskawulsh glacier in 2013. Then the Slims River was “swift, cold and deep” and flowing fast enough that it could be dangerous to wade through, Shugar said. They returned last year to find the river shallow and as still as a lake, while the Alsek, was deeper and flowing faster.
“We were really surprised when we got there and there was basically no water in the river,” Shugar said of the Slims. “We could walk across it and we wouldn’t get our shirts wet. It was like a snake-shaped lake rather than a river.”
What had been a river delta at the edge of the Slims River had changed into a place full of “afternoon dust storms with this fine dust getting into your nose and your mouth,” Best said.
The lack of water in the Slims wasn’t because of changes in rainfall, Shugar said. They know that because it’s a river fed mostly by glacial melt, not rain, and the Alsek increased in amounts similar to what disappeared from the Slims.
The Kaskawulsh glacier covers about 9,650 square miles, about the size of Vermont. The front of the glacier has retreated nearly 1.2 miles since 1899, Shugar said.
The scientists calculate that there is only a 1 in 200 chance that the retreating glacier and river piracy is completely natural without man-made global warming. They used weather and ice observations and a computer simulation that models how likely the glacier retreat would be with current conditions and without heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
Several outside scientists praised the study as significant and sensible.
“This is an interesting study and reconfirms that climate change has large, widespread and sometimes surprising impacts,” Pennsylvania State University glacier expert Richard Alley, who wasn’t part of the study, said in an email.
(Seth Borenstein, ASSOCIATED PRESS; NEW YORK TIMES)
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Alaskan and federal officials have identified two leaks venting methane gas, a powerful greenhouse gas linked to climate change. While some crude has sprayed out of the well with the gas, BP said infrared cameras on a flight over the site appeared to confirm that the oil released was contained on the gravel pad surrounding the well head and did not reach the tundra.
By Sunday afternoon, crews had shut down one leak with a surface safety valve, but the second leak, although reduced, was still spouting gas, federal and state officials said. Specialists from Boots and Coots, a well control company, were arriving in the area on Sunday to assist in closing down the well.
This was just the latest in a series of leaks from petroleum operations that have plagued Alaska in recent months, although leaks have been rare on the North Slope.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The blaze is also affecting wildlife. On Sunday, Pembroke Pines Police reported that a group of teens caught a 13-foot python with burns on its skin in that South Florida community near the Everglades Wildlife Management Area. “Due to the brush fires in the Everglades, you may see a rise in wildlife entering residential areas to escape the smoke and flames,” the police department wrote on its Facebook page. It added photos of the snake, which was being treated at a wildlife park. Wildfires are burning on a total of more than 23,800 acres of land and have destroyed 19 homes, authorities said.
Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam said this is the most active wildfire season since 2011, with some 107 fires statewide. The largest blaze is the Cowbell Fire in South Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve, which has spread to more than 8,000 acres.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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After that first survey, Hughes tweeted: “I showed the results of aerial surveys of #bleaching on the #GreatBarrierReef to my students, And then we wept.” Coral bleaching occurs when unusually warm waters provide a stress to corals that in turn trigger a mass exodus of photosynthetic algae, called zooxanthellae, from their cells. The corals lose color and turn white, an outward indicator that their metabolism has been upended. The stronger the bleaching and the longer it goes on, the more likely corals are to die.
The Great Barrier Reef, the largest structure of its kind, is about 1,400 miles long. Nine hundred miles of that length have now experienced severe bleaching at some point during the past two years.
This year has seen the major bleaching shift southward, toward reefs just offshore of major population centers. The current survey encompassed 800 individual coral reefs— including many surveyed last year.
“Last year we lost 67 percent on average of the corals in the northern 700 kilometers (430 miles) of the barrier reef, between March and October,” Hughes said. “We’re likely to see something similar happen now in the middle third this year.” “That’s obviously an enormous loss over two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef,” he added. “I wouldn’t say the barrier reef is dying. But clearly, we’re measuring serious losses here. And the reason it’s happening is global warming.”
(Chris Mooney, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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And, astronomers recently discovered, it has an atmosphere. The finding, published in the Astronomical Journal, is the first detection of an atmosphere around a terrestrial “Earth-like” planet orbiting a red dwarf star— and it suggests there could be millions more.
Although the researchers call the planet “Earth-like,” the term is only applicable in its broadest sense. GJ 1132b is so close to its sun that it more likely resembles Venus than Earth. Astronomers estimate its average temperature to be about 700 degrees Fahrenheit, and that’s without taking into account the potential greenhouse effect of its atmosphere. It is also probably tidally locked, meaning that gravity keeps one side of the planet constantly facing the star, while the other is cast in permanent shadow. GJ 1132b would not make a cozy home for life — at least, not life as we know it.
But the presence of an atmosphere around the exoplanet could have consequences in the search for life on worlds beyond our own, according to lead author John Southworth, an astrophysicist at Keele University in the United Kingdom. Red dwarfs like the one GJ 1132b orbits are the most abundant type of star in the universe, and exoplanet surveys suggest that terrestrial planets around them are also common. If one of them has an atmosphere, then why not more?
“It shows that the huge number of planets in the universe which are like this could have atmospheres themselves and maybe life,” Southworth said.
More detailed observations will be required to determine what the atmosphere is made of.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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This picture revealed no new discoveries, unlike a Hubble image last fall that detected evidence of water vapor plumes from one of Jupiter’s moons. Nor did it capture the aftermath of some significant event, such as when a comet or asteroid collided with Jupiter’s atmosphere and left it “bruised.” Instead, Thursday’s picture was simply a reminder that, somewhere out there above the heavens, a decades- old space telescope is still doing what it has done best: capturing spectacularly detailed images of the universe to blow the minds of those on Earth.
The image it took Monday didn’t disappoint. Hubble was able to capture surface features that are just 80 miles across. “The final image shows a sharp view of Jupiter and reveals a wealth of features in its dense atmosphere,” NASA and the ESA, which cooperate on the Hubble project, said in a statement. The picture “reveals the intricate, detailed beauty of Jupiter’s clouds as arranged into bands of different latitudes.”
Clearly visible in the photo are Jupiter’s famous atmospheric bands, created by different-colored clouds. The lighter bands have higher concentrations of frozen ammonia in them, compared with the darker ones, the agencies said.
On the lower left side of the image is Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot, an ongoing larger-than-Earth storm on the gas giant planet’s surface. A smaller storm, dubbed “Red Spot Junior,” is visible farther south. Winds on the planet can reach up to 400 mph.
(Amy B. Wang, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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The governor’s executive order maintains the drought emergency for sites still desperate for deliveries of drinking water, including Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Tuolumne counties. Maintaining the designation allows the state to waive contracting rules that could slow down relief for such communities.
After five years of severely dry conditions, California is pressing forward with a dramatic overhaul of its conservation ethic for farms to cityscapes. This long-term framework for water conservation includes everything from minimizing pipe leaks, to requiring water suppliers to develop drought contingency plans, to submitting monthly data, to meeting permanent conservation targets.
“This drought emergency is over, but the next drought could be around the corner,” Brown said in a statement. “Conservation must remain a way of life.”
The head of the agency that formulates, rolls out and enforces the governor’s water-use orders made similar comments.
“This drought ... won’t be our last or our longest in the years to come,” Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, said at a news conference Friday. “It’s a wake-up call that we can’t hit the snooze button on.”
The governor’s new order directs the state water board to lift conservation targets on water use for California’s 400 urban water agencies so those suppliers no longer have to show they have enough inventory to last through three straight years of drought. However, urban suppliers will have to continue reporting water-use data as the state rolls out permanent and customized water budgets, which will likely include separate indoor and outdoor targets. These caps are expected to take into consideration a wide variety of factors, such as regional climate, geography, available water supplies and previous efforts to conserve.
“We are reviewing the governor’s long-term water-use framework released today,” said Mark Muir, board chair of the San Diego County Water Authority. “We have consistently advocated for state policies that include supply development and water-use efficiency, and it’s important the targets and measures in the governor’s framework support this balanced approach.”
During the past 18 months, many water agencies, including those in San Diego County, have consistently lobbied the state water board to loosen restrictions on water use.
Regulators adjusted caps last year in response to complaints that districts weren’t getting credit for previous efforts to cut consumption and develop drought-resistant supplies. Water managers from San Diego repeatedly argued that the newly built desalination plant in Carlsbad and reliance on water from the Colorado River should have resulted in more lenient conservation targets.
At the same time, California residents proved they could quickly meet the call for conservation — from taking shorter showers and limiting outdoor irrigation to using rain barrels and letting lawns go brown. Since the governor declared the drought emergency in June 2015, residents and businesses have saved a total of more than 846 billion gallons of water.
Notably, many homeowners and businesses ripped out water-thirsty lawns in favor of succulents and other drought-tolerant landscaping. A roughly $310 million turf-replacement program run by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California led to the removal of 160 million square feet of turf, saving more than 7 billion gallons of water a year, enough to serve 43,000 typical households.
“One of the silver linings of drought emergencies is that they enable us to identify areas for improvement so we are better prepared for the next drought,” said Ellen Hanak, director of the water policy center at the Public Policy Institute of California. “I expect we’ll look back and see this drought was a turning point in the shift toward water-wise urban landscapes.”
Prohibitions will stay in place for wasteful water use, such as washing cars with a hose that doesn’t have a shutoff nozzle, spraying off sidewalks and watering lawns right after it rains.
Brown is expected to release a legislative package later this year that establishes the state’s authority to impose the permanent water budgets. If everything goes as planned, the customized targets for all water suppliers would be completed by 2021 and then go into effect by 2025. The long-term rules would build on a 2009 law that called for reducing per capita water use by 20 percent by 2020. Thanks to the drought, the state has surpassed that benchmark, which was set at 159 gallons per person a day. Daily per capita use is now down to 133 gallons.
If the long-term regulations are finalized, urban water suppliers also would be required to have water-shortage contingency plans and conduct drought risk assessments every five years.
(Joshua Emerson Smith, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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States of emergency have been declared in numerous regions in the North Island, after rivers burst their banks following two days of heavy rain and gale-force winds.
Thousands of people have been evacuated in the Bay of Plenty, on the east coast of the North Island, and welfare centers established to feed and house those whose homes are now under water.
The town of Edgecumbe appears to be the worst affected, with brown water up to two meters high engulfing the town, after the Rangitaiki river burst its banks on Thursday morning.
Whakatane mayor Tony Bonne told Radio New Zealand the flood was a “once in 500-year” event. “There is danger, with the huge volumes of water coming down the river, we have grave concerns for the town of Edgecumbe,” he said. “This has all happened really quickly ... there is a wall of water going through Edgecumbe at the moment.”
Tractors, farm trucks and speed boats were being used to evacuate 2,000 residents from the stricken town, as flood water rose so quickly normal vehicles were unable to get in or out.
Deeana Tubb told the New Zealand Herald the water in Edgecumbe was already waist-deep this morning, with the river not expected to peak till mid afternoon Thursday.
“I went right through the cordons at Matata – nothing was stopping me getting to my babies,” she said. “When I got home the water was already waist-deep in the streets. I managed to get some valuable documents out of the house and everyone else and we headed to Awakeri.” “Now it looks like we’re about to lose everything.”
The New Zealand Defense Force and Red Cross has arrived to provide relief and assistance to local authorities, who have been working non-stop for days, sandbagging properties and key infrastructure, and clearing debris from roads to make way for emergency vehicles.
Power outages, major landslides and roads are closed right across the North Island, including in Auckland, which received a month’s worth of rain in 24 hours, and where many roads remain closed due to surface flooding.
Numerous flights out of Wellington, Auckland and regional North Island centers have also been delayed or diverted due to the conditions, with passengers bunking down in the airport after being unable to find accommodation in the city.
The South Island east coast town of Kaikoura, which is still recovering from November’s earthquake, has once again been cut off, after five mud and rock slides on State Highway One blocked access to the coastal town.
Drivers across the South Island are being asked to take care, with surface flooding, fallen trees and landslips widely reported.
Canterbury and Christchurch in the South Island were expected to bear the brunt of ex-cyclone Debbie, with rain expected to ease in the North Island later on Thursday.
(Eleanor Ainge Roy; theguardian.com)
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The proposed cuts, outlined in a 64 page budget memo revealed by The Washington Post on Friday, would roll back programs aimed at reducing lead risks by $16.61 million and more than 70 employees, in line with a broader project by the Trump administration to devolve responsibility for environmental and health protection to state and local governments.
Old housing stock is the biggest risk for lead exposure, and the EPA estimates that 38 million U.S. homes contain lead-based paint.
Environmental groups said the elimination of the two programs, which are focused on training workers in the safe removal of lead-based paint and public education about its risks, would make it harder for the EPA to address the environmental hazard.
One of the programs requires professional remodelers to undergo training in safe practices for stripping away old, lead-based paints.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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A powerful tornado toppled trees and downed power lines in rural Georgia and similar scenes played out in spots around Alabama and South Carolina amid drenching rain, high winds and scattered hail, some as big as baseballs.
The severe weather outbreak was the second to hit the South in less than a week, but no deaths or significant injuries were reported as of Wednesday night. Storms on Sunday and Monday killed five people, including a Mississippi woman who desperately called 911 from a car that plunged into a rain-swollen creek. Portions of Kentucky and Georgia were still under threat of tornadoes late Wednesday night, and flash flooding was possible in the Atlanta area, according to the National Weather Service.
Authorities in Johnston, S.C., a town of 2,300 that calls itself The Peach Capital of The World, reported a possible tornado there damaged about a dozen buildings. Crews couldn’t immediately check nearby peach orchards but authorities said those were already severely damaged by a late March hard freeze.
Johnston Mayor Terrence Cullbreath said he opened a local armory as a shelter and that lights were out and many streets were blocked by fallen trees. Thousands had lost power across the three states Wednesday, with utilities struggling to keep up.
“We need power back,” Cullbreath said by phone. “But there likely are more storms coming and they can’t get the power back in bad weather.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Although this is a time of year when it’s usually hot, the desperation among the public is palpable on the social networks, where they post their complaints, while scenes of people out on the streets bathed in sweat and national electric grids taxed to the max with increased air conditioning demand have become commonplace.
Honduran authorities said Tuesday that in the southern part of the country, where the heat is worst, there are reports of 104° F temperatures.
The drastic change in the weather has caused the incidence of respiratory diseases to skyrocket, mainly among children and the elderly, and electricity demand has spiked with users complaining about the periodic collapse of the power grid and blackouts lasting up to 12 hours.
In Panama, temperatures have reached a mind-numbing 117°F.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The 5.0 magnitude earthquake struck at 2:55 a.m. local time (0055 GMT) in a remote part of Botswana north of the capital, Gaborone, the US Geological Survey said.
The shallow tremor was only 6.2 miles (10 km) deep.
On Monday, Botswana was struck by its second-biggest recorded earthquake when a magnitude 6.5 tremor shook an isolated area 250 km (155 miles) northwest Gaborone. That earthquake was felt in the capital, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Swaziland.
Strong earthquakes are rare in southern Africa.
No immediate information was available as to how the communities fared, but some minor casualties and structural damages were reported as far as 130 kilometers away from the earthquake's epicenter.
Moiyabana village, 132 kilometers west of the quake's epicenter, was the only village reported to have been damaged by the quake. Students at the village's secondary school fled the school after the quake.
"As the earthquake happened during study time, a stampede broke out as everyone tried to escape and minor injuries were experienced," Tebogo Modiakgotla, spokesman for the local authority, said.
The spokesman could not say if there had been any damage to the mines, or their surrounding communities, near the towns of Jwaneng, such as the Gaghoo Diamond mine.
The last time the country experienced any such quake was in 1952 when a 6.7 magnitude earthquake hit Maun in the northern part of the country.
(DEUTSCHE WELLE, AFP, REUTERS)
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Jacqueline Williams, 52, was running a newspaper delivery route when her car slid off a road into a creek in her hometown of Florence before dawn Monday, authorities said. She dialed 911 from the car as it went down, said Rankin County Coroner David Ruth.
Ruth said Williams was trying to relay her location to a dispatcher as the car settled into the swirling waters. “She was trying to tell the dispatcher where she was, and she could actually hear the sirens,” Ruth said.
The two lost contact, and Ruth said a swift-water recovery team later found Williams’ body in the creek outside the car.
Florence Police Chief Richard Thomas said the current where Williams died was fast and strong.
He said authorities got a call from a woman saying her car was being swept into the water. Authorities immediately began looking but couldn’t find her in time. Records from the county’s 911 center show the first call came at 4:35 a.m., responders were dispatched within 17 seconds and arrived at 4:42 a.m. “It was really quick,” Thomas said.
In the tiny Mississippi Delta town of Glendora, the mayor’s wife died Sunday when strong winds toppled a tree onto the couple’s house. Mayor Johnny B. Thomas was briefly hospitalized with injuries after his wife Shirley was killed, said town clerk Aquarius Simmons.
Two other people died earlier in Louisiana, and a man died Monday in South Carolina after storms swept through the state.
Some schools in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama canceled or delayed the start of classes Monday so students wouldn’t travel in heavy rain or on flooded streets.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Forecasters said the strongest waves are snapping ashore in South County, with waves that periodically hit 7 feet at favored spots on Monday. They predict those waves to drop to 6 feet today and 5 feet on Wednesday.
In North County, the waves will be about 1 to 2 feet smaller.
People caught in a rip current should swim toward the nearest waves, moving parallel or diagonally to the rip current. A rip current is essentially an underwater river headed out to sea, but the motion of nearby waves can help push swimmers toward the shore and out of its grip.
In terms of overall weather in San Diego, a marine layer was drifting toward La Jolla on Monday afternoon, signaling the arrival of cooler conditions. Meteorologists said today’s daytime high along the coast will only reach the mid-60s.
They foresee a warming trend beginning on Wednesday.
(Gary Robbins, SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE)
NB: the advice to swim parallel to the rip current is controversial as it may take swimmers farther away from the beach. The recommendation is to swim parallel to the BEACH to try to get out of the rip current and then swim back to the beach.
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The epicentre of the quake, which hit at 19:40, was 238km northwest of Botswana's capital Gaborone, the US Geological Survey said.
It struck at a relatively shallow depth of 11km, and rumbled throughout the capital for about 30 seconds, an AFP correspondent said.
No reports on damages were immediately available.
The quake was also felt in several cities in South Africa as well as in Swaziland and Zimbabwe, several hundreds of kilometres from the epicentre, witnesses said.
"The bed started shaking, it was very scary, I didn't know what was going on," a resident of Durban, on the southeast coast of South Africa, told the News24 agency.
Earlier on Monday, a smaller quake with a magnitude of 4.6 was recorded in northwestern South Africa.
(NEWS24.COM)
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Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards put the entire state on “high alert” and warned residents to stay off the roads. He urged people to keep their cellphones charged and close by so that they could get severe weather alerts throughout Sunday night and this morning. “It is an extremely dangerous weather event,” he said.
Parts of Arkansas and Mississippi were also under a threat of tornadoes, but the bull’s-eye was on Louisiana. The system brought tornadoes to the state as well as heavy thunderstorms, large hail and flash flooding.
In the rural community of Breaux Bridge, about 50 miles west of Baton Rouge, St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Maj. Ginny Higgins told The Associated Press that a tornado touched down soon after a warning was issued.
“Seconds later it hit,” Higgins said. “It hit the trailer, flipped it and tore its side off. There was a mother and daughter inside and both were killed.”
Higgins said 38-year-old Francine Gotch and 3-year-old Neville Alexander were pronounced dead at the scene. Witnesses told KLFYTV that the father was out at the time and returned home to find the bodies amid the splintered debris.
Officials initially thought powerful straight-line winds destroyed the mobile home but later confirmed the tornado.
The agency warned that it was a “particularly dangerous situation,” which the governor noted was a rare high-level warning. Straight-line winds could reach upward of 80 mph winds. Hurricanes have at least 74 mph winds.
“This is a statewide weather event,” the governor said. “It’s likely to be an all-night event. We don’t expect the weather system to leave the state of Louisiana until sometime tomorrow morning.”
The storm also damaged homes and buildings and knocked down power lines in Alexandria, LA, which is about 100 miles north of Breaux Bridge.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Neighborhoods were left strewn with rocks, wooden planks, tree limbs and brown muck after heavy rain caused the three rivers that surround Mocoa to rise up and surge through the city of 40,000 Friday night and early Saturday as people slept. The deluge smashed houses, tore trees out by the roots and washed away cars and trucks.
Search-and-rescue teams combed through the debris and helped people who had been desperately clawing at huge mounds of mud by hand. Many had little left to search.
“People went to their houses and found nothing but the floor,” said Gilma Diaz, a 42-year-old woman from another town who came to search for a cousin. President Juan Manuel Santos declared the area a disaster zone Sunday and said the death toll stood at 210. But that was expected to rise because authorities said there were more than 200 injured, some in critical condition, and more than 200 others unaccounted for.
The disaster seemed to hit young people particularly hard. Santos said more than 40 of the dead identified so far were younger than 18, perhaps because youngsters were already in bed when the floodwaters struck.
Santos said the avalanche of water and debris also knocked out power in half of the province of Putumayo, where Mocoa is located, and destroyed the area’s freshwater network, creating dangerous and unsanitary conditions.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Late last year, and based in part on research conducted at Columbia University, EPA scientists concluded that exposure to the chemical that has been in use since 1965 was potentially causing significant health consequences. They included learning and memory declines, particularly among farmworkers and young children who may be exposed through drinking water and other sources.
But Dow Chemical, which makes the product, along with farm groups that use it, had argued that the science demonstrating that chlorpyrifos caused such harm is inconclusive — especially when properly used to kill crop-spoiling insects.
An EPA scientific review panel made up of academic experts in July also had raised questions about some of the conclusions the chemical safety staff had reached. That led the staff to revise the way it had justified its findings of harm, although the agency employees as of late last year still concluded that the chemical should be banned.
Pruitt, in an announcement issued Wednesday night, said the agency needed to study the science more.
“We need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on chlorpyrifos, while still protecting human health and the environment,” Pruitt said in his statement. “By reversing the previous administration’s steps to ban one of the most widely used pesticides in the world, we are returning to using sound science in decision- making — rather than predetermined results.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which works closely with the nation’s farmers, supported Pruitt’s action.
“It means that this important pest management tool will remain available to growers, helping to ensure an abundant and affordable food supply for this nation,” Sheryl Kunickis, director of the USDA Office of Pest Management Policy, said in a statement Wednesday.
Dow Agrosciences, the division that sells the product, also praised the ruling, calling it in a statement “the right decision for farmers who, in about 100 countries, rely on the effectiveness of chlorpyrifos to protect more than 50 crops.”
But Jim Jones, who ran the chemical safety unit at the EPA for five years, and spent more than 20 years working there until he left the agency in January when President Donald Trump took office, said he was disappointed by Pruitt’s action.
“They are ignoring the science that is pretty solid,” Jones said, adding that he believed the ruling would put farmworkers and exposed children at unnecessary risk.
The ruling is, in some ways, more consequential than the higher profile move by Trump on Tuesday to order the start of rolling back Obama administration rules related to coal-burning power plants and climate change.
In rejecting the pesticide ban, Pruitt took what is known as a “final agency action” on the question of the safety and use of chlorpyrifos, suggesting that the matter would not likely be revisited until 2022, the next time the EPA is formally required to re-evaluate the safety of the pesticide.
(Eric Lipton, NEW YORK TIMES)
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Snow in the Sierra Nevada begins melting this time of year as the weather warms, and California is already waterlogged after storms slammed the state in January and February, flooding communities and washing out roads. If more stormy weather hits the state and its mountains soon, snowmelt could speed up, putting pressure on reservoirs, some already brimming full and spilling over, officials said.
“It’s something that we pay very close attention to,” said Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, who led a small crew of surveyors into a snowy meadow surrounded by pine trees. “It’s going to depend on how the spring plays out.” The Sierra snowpack’s overall water content measured 164 percent of normal Wednesday, according to the state’s electronic monitors throughout the mountain range.
It was even higher at Phillips Station near Lake Tahoe where Gehrke’s manual measurement — plunging a rod into the snow nearly 8 feet deep — showed its water-content at 183 percent of normal. The snowpack stretches along 400 miles of the Sierra Nevada, creating an icy reservoir that provides roughly one-third of irrigation and drinking water to the nation’s most populous state during hot, dry months of the year.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Paramedic Lisa Smith said she was assessing the extent of flooding on Thursday on Rita Island, a coastal community near the town of Ayr in Queensland state that was lashed by Cyclone Debbie earlier this week. As she was approaching the edge of some receding floodwaters, she saw something strange and gray lying on the ground. At first, she thought it might be a dolphin and moved in for a closer look.
“Then I saw the fins,” she said. “And then I went — ‘Shark!’” The 3-foot bull shark was already dead when Smith found it. Exactly how it ended up there remains a mystery, though Smith wonders if perhaps the shark was chasing prey up a nearby swollen river and ended up stranded as the waters began to recede.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Cyclone Debbie, which slammed into the coast of Queensland state on Tuesday with winds up to 160 miles an hour, weakened quickly as it moved inland and was downgraded to a tropical low by this morning.
Australia’s military sent vehicles, aircraft and supplies to the region, and clean-up efforts were expected to begin later today. Around 60,000 houses were without power, and several communities remained isolated with no access to communications. Emergency workers were trying to reach those areas to ensure residents were safe, Queensland Police Commissioner Ian Stewart said.
“Nature has flung her worst at the people of north Queensland,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters. “It is now our job to make sure that every agency pulls together to provide support to the people of north Queensland who have had a very tough day and night.”
There were no reports of deaths from the storm. One man was injured after a wall collapsed in the town of Proserpine, Stewart said. He was in stable condition.
Proserpine was one of the worst-hit areas, along with the resort town of Airlie Beach and the town of Bowen. There was also serious damage to resorts on the idyllic Whitsunday Islands, a popular tourist destination, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said. Around 200 people vacationing on Daydream Island were awaiting evacuation, and water supplies were running low.
“There would be nothing more tragic than waking up and seeing walls that have come in from your houses, roofs that have gone off, and debris that is lying across your roads,” Palaszczuk told reporters.
At the port of Shute Harbour, 6 miles east of Airlie Beach, the storm tossed around 30 vessels onto the rocks, Whitsundays Regional Council Mayor Andrew Willcox said.
Queensland Fire and Rescue Service Commissioner Katarina Carroll said the state emergency services department had received 800 calls for help, and that number was expected to rise as power came back on in communities.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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On Tuesday, the Peruvian government raised the death toll from floods to 94 while relief agencies estimated that 700,000 people have been left homeless in 12 of the country’s 25 provinces. The cost to Peru’s economy in lost productivity has been estimated at $3.1 billion, or 1.6 percent of the country’s annual output of goods and services.
The price tag for fixing roads and bridges is at least $1 billion and will take two to three years to complete, transportation minister Martin Vizcarra said Tuesday.
Widespread damage to roads and highways has isolated many victims, hampering relief efforts. One affected city is the beach town of Catacaos, where floodwaters reaching 6 feet high have killed four and left much of the city inundated. Five hundred people there were evacuated Tuesday morning, with many others still awaiting rescue.
“We’re trapped, and we can’t get out,” said Carmela Calle, a 43-year-old housewife in Catacaos who spoke to the Los Angeles Times by phone. “Please help us. We are on the roof with a newborn baby and two elderly relatives. We are desperate and without food. We have lost everything.” The government’s meteorology service said there is little chance of a respite in the near future, as heavy rains are forecast to continue through this weekend. Rains have been unseasonably intense since January with the most severe damages reported in the country’s northwest coastal areas due to what has been described as a coastal El Niño.
Eight people have been reported killed in Lima, the capital, with 8,400 homes destroyed by the flooding. Some southern and central parts of the capital have gone six days without drinking water.
Damage was worse in the northwestern city of Piura, a metropolis of 1.8 million, where rising floodwaters reached the central square known as Plaza de Armas, killing four and forcing hundreds of families to abandon their homes. Four bridges connecting the center of town with outlying districts were reported washed out.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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Cyclone Debbie was upgraded overnight to a category four storm, just one rung below the most dangerous wind speed level. Authorities warned it could reach level five by the time it makes landfall late this afternoon.
Wind gusts of more than 135 mph lashed resorts in the Whitsunday Islands, where tourists waited out the storm in hotel rooms.
“We’re getting some reports already of roofs starting to lift, including at some of our own facilities in the Whitsundays,” Queensland Police Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski told Australian Broadcasting Corporation television.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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More than 700 water lines already have been replaced and work is ongoing, but the agreement would rid Flint’s roughly 100,000 residents of uncertainty over how to pay for the enormous task. Under the settlement, the state will set aside $87 million and keep another $10 million in reserve if necessary.
“The proposed agreement is a win for the people of Flint,” said Dimple Chaudhary, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is working with the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan to represent Flint residents.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The National Weather Service said the storms were forecast in parts of northern Texas and central Oklahoma, including the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. Residents of western Arkansas were also at risk, but to a lesser degree.
Forecasters weren’t ruling out tornadoes but expected the primary threats to be large hail and damaging wind gusts from thunderstorms in Oklahoma, said Patrick Marsh, the warning coordination meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
But thanks to the time of year, he said, the weather system could spare the region from a devastating storm because it lacks a key ingredient: moisture.
“It’ll be interesting to see how the storms interact with lesser amounts of moisture,” Marsh said Sunday. “If this system would have happened in May, the tornado threat may have been higher.”
The new threat comes as residents in the Deep South cleared branches and worked to restore power from weekend storms.
A tornado destroyed four mobile homes and damaged others near Cato, Ark., late Friday night. In northwest Louisiana, sheriff ’s officials said a church was destroyed by an apparent tornado, though no injuries were reported.
As the storms moved east, they toppled trees and power lines in Mississippi and Louisiana.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Light winds pushed the flames in the wooded area a couple of miles west of Pearl Street, the shopping and dining hub in the heart of the university city. Crews contained roughly half of the fire that had burned just over 60 acres, but officials worried that stronger gusts that could fan the flames might develop overnight.
The Boulder Office of Emergency Management said 426 homes were evacuated before dawn and residents of an additional 836 were warned to get ready to leave if conditions worsened. The evacuation orders will remain in place overnight, said Boulder County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Mike Wagner.
There were no reports of injuries or damage to homes, emergency officials said. Several aircraft were dropping water and retardant on the flames, and a community center opened as an evacuation shelter.
The fire started in the Sunshine Canyon area, which is dotted with a mixture of expensive homes and rustic mountain residences.
Boulder County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Mike Wagner said the area is used by hikers and by transients for camping, leading authorities to believe the blaze was human-caused. Wagner said officials ruled out any lightning strikes or downed power lines.
Wagner said fire crews will monitor the blaze overnight and focus on full containment and mop-up today. Seth Frankel, who was warned that he and his family may need to evacuate, said he had packed up “generations of things” that can’t be replaced and was ready to go if the air quality got worse.
He said smoke was pouring toward neighborhoods and many dead trees were combusting and sending black smoke into the air less than a half-mile from his home. But he and his wife, a Boulder native, and three daughters have dealt with fires and floods before.
“It’s always alarming and always on your mind, but it’s not an uncommon sensation around here,” said Frankel, who has lived in Boulder for 20 years.
In 2010, a wildfire destroyed nearly 200 houses in the mountainous area west of the city, home to the University of Colorado Boulder.
Frankel got word of the fire early Sunday from a neighbor who received a warning call, and he was outside with neighbors watching the f lames and smoke. But he let his daughters, 9, 11 and 13, sleep in.
“It’s still alarming, but there’s no panic,” Frankel said. “We will be long since gone when parents are no longer smiling.”
Much of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Nebraska are in drought conditions ranging from moderate to extreme.
Prairie fires stoked by high winds and tinder-dry vegetation raged across 1.5 million acres of the southern Great Plains early this month.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Security official Ahmed Mohamed told The Associated Press the pirates disembarked the ship, which was heading to Bossaso port, the region’s commercial hub, with its eight Sri Lankan crew members aboard.
Mohamed said the release occurred after negotiations by local elders and officials with the pirates, who seized the tanker on Monday. The pirates were not arrested but instead were given passage to leave once they disembarked, he said.
Naval forces from the semi-autonomous state of Puntland and the pirates had clashed earlier Thursday after the pirates opened fire. The hijacking of the Comoros-flagged tanker Aris 13 was the first such seizure of a large commercial vessel off Somalia since 2012. International anti-piracy patrols on the crucial trade route had calmed such attacks, which once numbered in the hundreds. Abdirizak Mohamed Ahmed, the director of Puntand’s anti-piracy agency, confirmed the release of the ship Thursday night and said naval forces had boarded it to escort it to port.
The European Union anti-piracy operation in the region had said the pirates had been holding the crew captive and demanding a ransom. The ship had been anchored off Somalia’s northern coast, known to be used by weapons smugglers and the extremist group al-Shabab.
Ahmed said the Puntland naval forces had been dispatched to the area not to free the ship by force but to cut off any supplies to the pirates.
Families of the crew members had tearfully pleaded for the men to be released unharmed. Somali pirates usually hijack ships and crew for ransom. They don’t normally kill hostages unless they come under attack.
The ship had been carrying fuel from Djibouti to Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, on Monday when it was approached by men in two skiffs and the tanker issued a call for help.
The pirates told authorities that the only reason they seized the ship was in protest of the illegal fishing in the area that has threatened livelihoods, not for ransom, Mohamed said.
Coastal Somalis, including pirates who quit as international patrols increased and became fisherman, have complained of growing harassment by illegal fishermen and attacks by large foreign trawlers.
They have blamed Yemeni, Chinese, Indian, Iranian and Djibouti-flagged fishing boats and trawlers, and some have threatened to return to a life of piracy to make money. Meanwhile, experts on piracy say some in the region have let down their guard as the number of hijackings decreased in recent years. In December, NATO ended its anti-piracy mission off Somalia’s waters.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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And early Thursday, it issued another fearsome blast, injuring at least 10 people who had been on the mountain to take a closer look, according to wire service reports.
A BBC science reporter on the scene described what happened in a series of tweets.
“Many injured — some head injuries, burns, cuts and bruises,” the BBC reporter, Rebecca Morrelle, wrote in describing a dramatic flight down the mountain amid a “huge explosion.”
“Running down a mountain pelted by rocks, dodging burning boulders and boiling steam — not an experience I ever want to repeat,” Morrelle wrote. An unnamed volcanologist on the mountain, she said, told her it was the “most dangerous incident experience in his 30-year career.”
Morrelle said a medical team had logged at least eight injuries, all minor, and that the BBC crew was unharmed. Emergency authorities reported other injuries later.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The intense rains and mudslides over the past three days have wrought havoc around the Andean nation and caught residents in Lima, a desert city of 10 million where it almost never rains, by surprise.
In one of the more dramatic incidents, stunned residents watched and took out cellphone cameras as a woman escaped after being swept into an avalanche of mud, wood debris and farm animals about 30 miles south of downtown Lima.
Evangelina Chamorro, 32, had just dropped her two daughters at school and was feeding her pigs alongside her husband when they were pulled into a landslide. Armando Rivera, Chamorro’s husband, told RPP radio they climbed a tree but the trunk broke. They held on to each other’s hands but Chamorro eventually lost his grip and got separated.
She emerged near a bridge, lifting herself from a current of wooden planks and walked toward the shore covered head to toe in mud.
“There’s a person there!” an onlooker cried out.
Chamorro collapsed as she reached land and was quickly carried by several men to an ambulance. She sustained only minor injuries.
Authorities said Thursday they expect the rains caused by El Niño, which generates a warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, to continue for another two weeks.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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But the reef, and the profusion of sea creatures living near it, are in profound trouble.
Huge sections of the Great Barrier Reef, stretching across hundreds of miles of its most pristine northern sector, were recently found to be dead, killed last year by overheated seawater. More southerly sections around the middle of the reef that barely escaped then are bleaching now, a potential precursor to another die-off that could rob some of the reef ’s most visited areas of color and life.
“We didn’t expect to see this level of destruction to the Great Barrier Reef for another 30 years,” said Terry P. Hughes, director of a government- funded center for coral reef studies at James Cook University in Australia and the lead author of a paper on the reef that is being published today as the cover article of the journal Nature. “In the north, I saw hundreds of reefs — literally two-thirds of the reefs were dying and are now dead.”
The damage to the Great Barrier Reef, one of the world’s largest living organisms, is part of a global calamity that has been unfolding intermittently for nearly two decades and seems to be intensifying. In the paper, dozens of scientists described the recent disaster as the third worldwide mass bleaching of coral reefs since 1998, but by far the most widespread and damaging.
The state of coral reefs is a telling sign of the health of the seas. Their distress and death are yet another marker of the ravages of global climate change.
If most of the world’s coral reefs die, as scientists fear is increasingly likely, some of the richest and most colorful life in the ocean could be lost, along with huge sums from reef tourism. In poorer countries, lives are at stake: Hundreds of millions of people get their protein primarily from reef fish, and the loss of that food supply could become a humanitarian crisis.
With this latest global bleaching in its third year, reef scientists say they have no doubt as to the responsible party. They warned decades ago that the coral reefs would be at risk if human society kept burning fossil fuels at a runaway pace, releasing greenhouse gases that warm the ocean. Emissions continued to rise, and now the background ocean temperature is high enough that any temporary spike poses a critical risk to reefs.
“Climate change is not a future threat,” Hughes said. “On the Great Barrier Reef, it’s been happening for 18 years.” Corals require warm water to thrive, but they are exquisitely sensitive to extra heat. Just two or three degrees Fahrenheit of excess warming can sometimes kill the tiny creatures.
Globally, the ocean has warmed by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 19th century, by a conservative calculation, and a bit more in the tropics, home to many reefs. An additional kick was supplied by an El Niño weather pattern that peaked in 2016 and temporarily warmed much of the surface of the planet, causing the hottest year in a historical record dating to 1880.
It was obvious last year that the corals on many reefs were likely to die, but now formal scientific assessments are coming in. The paper in Nature documents vast coral bleaching in 2016 along a 500-mile section of the reef north of Cairns, a city on Australia’s eastern coast.
Bleaching indicates that corals are under heat stress, but they do not always die and cooler water can help them recover. Subsequent surveys of the Great Barrier Reef, conducted late last year after the deadline for inclusion in the Nature paper, documented that extensive patches of reef had in fact died, and would not be likely to recover soon, if at all.
Hughes led those surveys. He said that he and his students cried when he showed them maps of the damage, which he had calculated in part by flying low in small planes and helicopters.
His aerial surveys, combined with underwater measurements, found that 67 percent of the corals had died in a long stretch north of Port Douglas, and in patches, the mortality reached 83 percent.
(Damien Cave & Justin Gillis, NEW YORK TIMES)
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The powerful nor’easter that paralyzed much of the Washington-to-Boston corridor Tuesday fell short of the predicted snowfall in many areas, but the 29.9 inches of snow that fell by Wednesday afternoon at the Burlington International Airport in Vermont was the second-most on record, about 3 inches shy of the high established in January 2010.
Many schools in New England remain closed or had delayed openings Wednesday, giving crews time to dig out from the storm, which followed a stretch of unusually mild winter weather.
In Albany, N.Y., streets were largely cleared Wednesday morning of the almost 2 feet of snow that fell a day earlier.
Most people heeded warnings to stay off the roads, preventing the multi-car pileups typically seen after a bad storm, but there were still deaths. A 16-year-old girl was killed when she lost control of her car on a snowy road and crashed into a tree in Gilford, N.H., police said. In East Hartford, Conn., an elderly man died after being struck by a snowplow truck. And, in Longmeadow, Mass., a public works employee was killed after the snowplow he was driving was hit by an Amtrak plow train clearing tracks.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The powerful nor’easter, which came after a stretch of unusually mild winter weather that had people thinking spring was already here, unloaded 1 to 2 feet in many places inland, grounded more than 6,000 flights and knocked out power to nearly a quarter million customers from Virginia northward.
By the time it reached Massachusetts, it had turned into a blizzard, with near hurricane-force wind gusting over 70 mph along the coast and waves crashing over the seawalls. Boston ended up with 6.6 inches of snow, less than the predictions of up to a foot.
It was easily the biggest storm in a merciful winter that had mostly spared the Northeast, and many weren’t happy about it.
“It’s horrible,” said retired gumball-machine technician Don Zimmerman, of Lemoyne, Pa., using a snowblower to clear the sidewalk along his block. “I thought winter was out of here. It’s a real kick in the rear.”
While people mostly heeded dire warnings to stay home and off the roads, police said a 16-year-old girl was killed when she lost control of her car on a snowy road and hit a tree in Gilford, N.H.
In East Hartford, Conn., an elderly man died after being struck by a snow plow truck. The storm closed schools in cities big and small, Amtrak suspended service and the post office halted mail delivery.
Philadelphia and New York City got anywhere from a few inches of snow to around half a foot before the storm switched over mostly to sleet; forecasters had predicted a foot or more. In New Jersey, which saw rain or just a little snow in many areas,
Gov. Chris Christie called the storm an “underperformer.” But officials warned of dangerous ice.
Inland areas, meanwhile, got hit hard. Harrisburg, Pa., and Worcester, Mass., received a foot or more of snow. The Binghamton, N.Y., area got over 2 feet, while Vernon, N.J., had at least 19 inches.
The storm came just days after the region saw temperatures climb into the 60s, and less than a week before the official start of spring. February, too, was remarkably warm.
“The winters seem to be upside down now. January and February are nice and then March and April seem to be more wintry than they were in the past,” said Bob Clifford, who ventured out on an early morning grocery run for his family in Altamont, near Albany, N.Y.
His advice: “Just hide inside. Hibernate.”
In the nation’s capital, non-essential federal employees were given the option of reporting three hours late, taking the day off or working from home. The city got less than 2 inches of snow.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The weather service’s office near Philadelphia called the storm “life-threatening” and warned people to “shelter in place.” Coastal flooding was also predicted.
Travel was sure to be dismal: As of late Monday afternoon, about 5,000 flights were canceled for today, Amtrak canceled and modified service up and down the Northeast Corridor and motorists were urged to stay off the roads.
In New York City, the above-ground portions of the subway system were being shut down from 4 a.m. today. Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy imposed a statewide travel ban beginning at 5 a.m.
The forecast prompted early decisions to close schools today in New York City, Philadelphia, Boston and many places in between.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio urged residents to avoid unnecessary travel and help keep the roads clear. “We’re preparing for a significant storm on Tuesday, and New Yorkers should also prepare for snow and dangerous road conditions,” de Blasio said.
Bank teller Jana White said her plans for riding out the storm include “lots of hot chocolate and a couple of sappy movies.” The 23-year old Trenton, N.J., resident said she expected to get today off work.
“It’s a reminder that winter is always ready to take shot at you, so you have to stay prepared,” she said. “We’ve got food and snacks and drinks, so as long as the power stays on we should be in good shape.”
The heaviest snowfall was expected this morning through the afternoon, with snowfall rates as high as 2 to 4 inches per hour. Coastal flood warnings were in effect from Massachusetts to Delaware.
Boston could get 12 to 18 inches, with isolated amounts of up to 2 feet across northeastern Massachusetts.
As the East Coast prepared, the Midwest was hit with snow, forcing a number of flight cancellations. In Chicago, the forecast called for 3 to 6 inches of snow, the city’s first significant snowfall since mid-December.
Southern portions of Minnesota got more than 9 inches of snow in some areas. In Michigan, utility crews worked in snow to restore power to those still without electricity following high winds that hit last week.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The National Weather Service issued a blizzard watch Sunday for coastal regions including New York City and surrounding areas of Long Island, Westchester County and Connecticut.
A winter storm watch was in effect for a larger area of the Northeast: New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New England.
In New York City, forecasters said the first snow is expected late today or just after midnight Tuesday, with up to 4 inches falling by dawn. Heavy snow the rest of the day could pile 10 to 14 inches more of white stuff, with sustained winds of about 30 mph and wind gusts of up to 50 mph. “This would certainly be the biggest snowstorm of the 2017 winter season in New York City,” said Faye Barthold, a weather service meteorologist based on Long Island.
On Long Island, a snowfall of 12 to 18 inches was forecast along with equally strong winds and visibility of a quarter mile or less.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday that the New York State Emergency Operations Center will be activated this evening, with stockpiles of sandbags, generators and pumps at the ready, as well as snow-removal vehicles and salt spreaders.
The New York City Department of Sanitation is taking similar action and also notifying additional workers to supplement staff if needed.
Once the nor’easter hits, motorists in New York state can call 511 or access 511ny.org to check on road conditions and transit information.
Other areas, including the lower Hudson Valley and northeastern New Jersey, also could get 12 to 18 inches of snow. But those areas were not under a blizzard watch because high winds and low visibility were not expected.
The severe weather would arrive just a week after the region saw temperatures climb into the 60s. Sunny days and T-shirt-wearing temperatures made it seem like winter had made an early exit. But the chilly weather and snow some areas got Friday may prove to be just a teaser.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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As Japan prepares to lift some evacuation orders on four towns within the more than 12-mile exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant later this month, officials are struggling to clear out the contaminated boars.
Wild boar meat is a delicacy in northern Japan, but animals slaughtered since the disaster are too contaminated to eat. According to tests conducted by the Japanese government, some of the boars have shown levels of radioactive element cesium-137 that are 300 times higher than safety standards.
Officials have also expressed concern that returning residents may be attacked by the animals, some of which have settled comfortably in abandoned homes and have reportedly lost their shyness to humans.
Photographs and video footage of the crisis-hit Japanese towns and villages are reminiscent of Chernobyl, where wildlife continues to thrive despite high radiation levels in the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986. With the absence of humans, Chernobyl, in Ukraine, has become a refuge for all kinds of animals, including moose, deer, brown bear, lynx and even wolves.
Since the nuclear crisis in Fukushima in 2011, video footage taken by journalists has shown packs of badly unkempt dogs scampering across roads. Rat colonies have overrun abandoned supermarkets. Farmland, transformed into grassland, has become a perfect habitat for wild boars and foxes. Boars have caused about $854,000 in damage to agriculture in Fukushima prefecture, the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri reported.
Local authorities in towns across Fukushima have hired teams of hunters to cull the boars. It is unclear whether those efforts will pay off, or whether they are enough to persuade former residents to return home. Authorities in the town of Tomioka say they have killed 800 so far, but officials there say that is not enough, according to Japanese media. The latest statistics show that in the three years since 2014, the number of boars killed in hunts has grown to 13,000 from 3,000.
And in a government survey last year, more than half of Fukushima’s former residents said they wouldn’t return, citing fears over radiation and the safety of the nuclear plant, which will take 40 years to dismantle.
The local Fukushima government recently published a guidebook of suggestions to help officials tackle the wild boar problem, including building special traps and using drones to ward off the animals. “It’s important to set up an environment that will make it tough for the boars to live in,” an official told the Yomiuri daily.
Elsewhere, the city of Nihonmatsu prepared three mass graves to dispose of 1,800 boars, but the local government says it is running out of land.
The city of Soma last year set up municipal incinerators specially designed to burn carcasses and filter out radioactive cesium. But authorities said they lack the staff to stuff the animal parts down the furnace.
“We need a strong hunting plan,” Hidekiyo Tachiya, mayor of Soma, told the Asahi Shimbun at the opening of an incinerator last year. “I wish for the day to come when we can eat wild game again.”
(Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, NEW YORK TIMES)
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Bill Bunting, forecast operations chief for the Oklahoma-based Storm Prediction Center, said Tuesday that the powerful wind gusts that fanned the wildfires in Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas should diminish to about 10 to 20 mph today. He said temperatures should top out in the 70s, with afternoon humidity low.
“These conditions will make it somewhat easier for firefighting efforts, but far from perfect. The fires still will be moving,” said Bunting. “The ideal situation is that it would turn cold and rain, and unfortunately that’s not going to happen.” In addition to those four states, conditions were ripe for fires in Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska. That followed powerful thunderstorms that moved through the middle of the country overnight, spawning dozens of suspected tornadoes, according to the National Weather Service.
Kansas wildfires have burned about 625 square miles of land. The largest evacuations were in Reno County, KS, where 10,000 to 12,000 people voluntarily left their homes Monday night, said Katie Horner, a state Department of Emergency Management spokeswoman.
In the Texas Panhandle, three fires burned about 500 square miles of land.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The incident began Tuesday afternoon when a large boulder fell on the highway, east of Bandy Canyon Road in the San Pasqual Valley and west of Haverford Road in Ramona. The boulder’s footing had been loosened by recent rains, officials said.
California Department of Transportation workers initially limited traffic to one-way only but later closed the road altogether fearing that other boulders might fall.
On Wednesday morning, crews dislodged other large rocks at risk of falling and allowed them to crash to the road below so that cleanup work could begin.
Caltrans Spokesman Hayden Manning said crews were preparing to break up the boulders with explosives Wednesday afternoon, but it was unclear if the work would be completed by nightfall.
It’s possible work will continue today.
“Right now they’re drilling holes in the rock,” in which electronic detonators and explosives will be placed, Manning said at 2 p.m.
Once the boulders, some of which weigh several tons, have been broken up, the pieces will be removed.
“It’s going to take some time to do all that,” he said.
Meanwhile, afternoon commuters heading to Ramona from cities to the west will have to take state Route 67, a highway that normally backs up several miles at rush hour and is considered as one of the most congested roads in the county — even when State Route 78 is open.
(J. Harry Jones, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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A series of storms that doused the state in the first two months of the year brought the water content of the snowpack up to a “pretty phenomenal” 185 percent of normal, well above the 84 percent of normal a year ago, said Frank Gehrke, the state’s chief snow surveyor.
Winter snowfall on the 400-mile mountain range provides roughly one-third of the water used in the nation’s most populous state as the snow melts over the spring and summer and fills reservoirs supplying farmers and city dwellers. Gehrke said the snowpack is nearing levels last seen in 1983. He noted that levels reached by April 1 area key marker because that’s the typical end to the wet season.
“We’ve busted through April 1 values pretty much at all snow courses throughout the state,” Gehrke said.
Gehrke took a manual measurement under clear blue skies Wednesday in a meadow at Phillips Station near Lake Tahoe. He found 10 feet of snow at a spot that had been bare of snow at the height of the drought.
Nearby road signs stood half-covered in snow, and roof peaks of homes sat nestled in deep snow with tunnels dug out for access to front doors. At the southern end of the Sierra Nevada — with the highest mountain peaks — more than double the normal amount of snow has piled up.
The deluge follows five years of drought, including two of the driest in the state’s recorded history.
In April 2015, Gov. Jerry Brown attended the monthly snowpack survey near Lake Tahoe, standing in a field that was barren of any measurable snow.
Brown later ordered residents to use less water at home — a first for California. In the state that leads the nation in producing fruits, vegetables and nuts, some farmers drew down wells to grow their crops; others left fields unplanted.
The bleak scenario began to ease last year. In recent weeks, heavy storms flooded some areas of California. For a time, officials feared Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest, could burst. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated.
Flood damage statewide reached an estimated $1 billion, officials said.
The snow, however, has been good news for skiers.
At Mammoth Mountain, a popular destination in Southern California, more than 43 feet of snow has fallen. Resort spokeswoman Lauren Burke said the venue plans to stay open through Independence Day.
Farther north, Lake Tahoe is at its highest level in more than a decade and ski resorts are extending the season to the end of April.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Today, state officials will end a program that has helped pay residents’ bills since a series of ill-fated decisions by state-appointed emergency managers left the city’s water system contaminated with lead.
Since that 2014 disaster, the state has spent roughly $41 million in credits to help offset local utility bills. Residents have gotten a 65 percent credit each month on their water use, while commercial accounts received a 20 percent credit.
Anna Heaton, a spokeswoman for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, said the credits are ending “because the city’s water meets all federal water quality standards under the Lead and Copper Rule and Safe Drinking Water Act, the same standards as other cities.” She said the threshold honors an agreement reached by Snyder, the Flint government and state lawmakers who originally appropriated money for the utility bill credits. Even so, she added, the state will continue to provide water filters and filter replacement cartridges “to assure residents that the water is safe for consumption even as lead service line replacement is underway.”
The news about the relief program is fueling another round of frustration in Flint, which has one of the highest water rates in the country.
At a recent news conference, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said the state should continue to pick up the tab for residents’ water until it is “tap-drinkable without a filter.”
“This is a trust issue, that’s what it is,” said Weaver, who criticized state officials for giving short notice about the credits ending. She had urged that they continue through March and possibly longer.
Now that Flint residents will be responsible for paying the full amount of their water bills, the number of delinquent accounts in the cash-strapped city is expected to rise. If that happens, it could further hamper local officials’ ability to pay for water from Detroit while working toward connecting to a more permanent water source. In addition, residents with delinquent accounts aren’t eligible to have their aging pipes replaced — despite many lines containing a significant source of lead.
(THE WASHINGTON POST)
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The storm dumped the most rain that San Diego had seen in 12 years and four months, according to the National Weather Service. “We got a real deluge,” said Steve Harrison, a forecaster with the agency.
San Diego lifeguards set up a raft and pulley system to save a woman who clung to a fence at Camino del Este, covered in flood waters off Camino de la Reina in Mission Valley about 6:15 a.m. Tuesday, the fire-rescue department said.
Then at 6:30 a.m., river rescue crews headed to Premier Inns on Hotel Circle North and Hotel Circle Place, where the parking lot and lobby were under 3 feet of San Diego River water. Hotel guests, some with suitcases and bags, sloshed through the water to reach lifeguards, who then ferried them across the parking lot by raft. In all, the crews rescued 62 adults, three children, two dogs and a cat, officials said. No one was injured.
The severe weather and flooding were blamed for several power outages around the county. The San Diego Gas & Electric Co. website showed 1,614 customers without power around Encinitas, Cardiff and Olivenhain as of 7 a.m. Tuesday. Other outages were reported Monday night and Tuesday morning in La Jolla, Clairemont, University City, Mission Valley, Kearny Mesa, Spring Valley and Borrego Springs.
Most of the outages were resolved by the late afternoon.
Downed trees also caused a variety of problems, including severe damage to a home on Riviera Drive in La Mesa shortly after midnight on Tuesday morning. A pine tree about 70 feet tall toppled onto the roof, but the two residents inside were not injured, a Heartland Fire spokesman said. Trees fell across Honey Springs Road in Jamul about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, blocking lanes in both directions, near Bratton Valley Road, according to a community newsletter.
Meanwhile, Lake Poway could soon spill over the concrete spillway designed to divert excess water into the canyons below. City officials said Tuesday afternoon there was no immediate threat to life or property, but that out of caution, they closed the Blue Sky Ecological Preserve and the hiking trails around the lake.
San Diego County received small amounts of rain Saturday and Sunday. Then the deluge came Monday, with a North Pacific storm tapping moisture from the subtropics.
San Diego International Airport recorded 2.34 inches of rain Monday — a figure that’s higher than the 2.19 inches the city averages for the entire month of February.
Here’s a sampling of rainfall totals at other local sites for the 72-hour period ending at 4 a.m. Tuesday
| Palomar Observatory | 9.04 inches |
| Mount Woodson | 7.70 inches |
| Henshaw Dam | 6.69 inches |
| Lake Cuyamaca | 6.39 inches |
| Ramona Airport | 5.13 inches |
| Valley Center | 4.72 inches |
| Miramar Lake | 4.69 inches |
| Lake Wohlford | 4.53 inches |
| Rancho Bernardo | 4.08 inches |
| La Mesa | 4.07 inches |
| Poway | 4.69 inches |
| Escondido | 4.01 inches |
| Kearny Mesa | 3.57 inches |
| Santee | 3.31 inches |
| Carlsbad | 3.24 inches |
| City Heights | 3.17 inches |
| San Ysidro | 3.11 inches |
| Del Mar | 2.84 inches |
| Encinitas | 2.79 inches |
| Fashion Valley | 2.72 inches |
| Alpine | 2.70 inches |
| El Cajon | 2.45 inches |
| Fallbrook | 2.15 inches |
| Chula Vista | 1.96 inches |
| Oceanside | 1.95 inches |
In a briefing on Monday, the U.N. health agency said its list is meant to promote the development of medicines for the most worrying drug-resistant bacteria, including salmonella and Staphylococcus aureus.
WHO said the most-needed drugs are for germs that threaten hospitals, nursing homes and among patients who need ventilators or catheters. The agency said the dozen listed resistant bacteria are increasingly untreatable and can cause fatal infections.
At the top of WHO’s list is Acinetobacter baumannii, a group of bacteria that cause a range of diseases from pneumonia to blood or wound infections.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 23,000 people die each year in the U.S. from infections caused by resistant bacteria.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The system spawned a narrow atmospheric river of moisture that flowed into San Diego and Riverside counties, causing widespread flooding in a region already saturated from a series of storms that began in mid-December. “ The storm tapped the subtropics, and the rain just kept coming and coming,” said Alex Tardy, a forecaster at the National Weather Service. “This was the wettest single day of rain we’ve had.”
By 7 p.m. on Monday, more than 7 inches of rain had fallen at Palomar Observatory, more than 5 inches fell at Mount Woodson, more than 3 inches hit Ramona and Poway. San Diego International Airport saw 1.7 inches, which pushed seasonal rainfall past 10.9 inches — more than San Diego averages (10.34) during a full year.
Daily rainfall records tumbled at Palomar, and in Escondido, Campo, Alpine, El Cajon, Vista, San Diego and Chula Vista.
The storm was expected to pass to the east today, but sporadic showers are possible this morning. Warmer, drier weather is expected to return on Wednesday.
Forecasters thought the storm would arrive in mid-morning Tuesday, but it appeared before dawn.
Motorists were particularly affected as they sloshed through slippery freeways and the dozens of flooded roads across the county.
The San Diego River breached its banks at Fashion Valley, creating delays for shoppers and commuters, particularly after the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System shut down the Fashion Valley Transit Center around 5:30 p.m.
The river crested above 12 feet Monday night, its highest level since December 2010 and 10th highest in the last 100 years. An overnight flood warning was in effect for the communities along the river. As it overflowed, several Mission Valley streets flooded and were closed, including Camino del Este, Qualcomm Way, San Diego Mission Road and Hotel Circle Place.
A landslide blocked state Route 78 at Banner Drive in Julian.
In San Diego, at the University Avenue off-ramp from state Route 163, passing motorists said the hillside was crumbling onto the lanes, according to the California Highway Patrol.
“We’re experiencing an interesting combo,” said Brett Albright, a weather service forecaster. “We’ve got a storm out of the west that’s tapping subtropical moisture to the south.”
Slippery conditions led to hundreds of crashes on freeways across the county, snarling traffic for commuters. Fortunately, no one was killed.
Vehicles hydroplaned into guardrails and concrete barriers, skidded down embankments and crashed into one other. The CHP said there were 509 crashes on freeways and unincorporated area streets between midnight and 4 p.m. On average, 140 crashes are reported on a good-weather day. Dozens of roadways were flooded, including Avenida del Rio at Camino de la Reina near Fashion Valley mall and Wildcat Canyon Road near Barona Resort.
Streets in Pacific Beach, La Jolla, Torrey Pines, Mission Valley, Sorrento Valley, Harmony Grove, San Marcos, Pine Valley, Ramona, Jamul, and Lakeside also flooded.
Several motorists found themselves stranded when they tried to pass through flooded areas.
The storm may have been to blame when two trees came crashing down in Scripps Ranch.
A number of mudslides were reported in the back country, including two that blocked Old Highway 395 — one at Gopher Canyon Road and another just south of state Route 76. Mudslides were also reported on South Grade Road and Highway 76 south of Palomar Mountain.
(Gary Robbins & Lyndsay Winkley, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Human-started fires nationwide accounted for 44 percent of the total area of 89,339,131 acres burned over the last two decades.
These fires have vastly expanded the area burned and the extent of the fire season, the researchers say. Intentionally set managed burns and agricultural fires were excluded from the study.
In California’s Mediterranean climate region, 89 percent of the total 5,921,861 acres burned was caused by human-started wildfires. The region extends along the California coast from the Mexican border to San Francisco, and inland to the Central Valley.
"Human-started wildfires accounted for 84 percent of all wildfires, tripled the length of the fire season, dominated an area seven times greater than that affected by lightning fires, and were responsible for nearly half of all area burned," stated the study. (Area measurements, given in hectares by the study, were converted to acres for this article).
One of the biggest wildfires in recent Southern California history, the 2003 Cedar Fire in San Diego County, was started by a lost hunter who said it was meant as a signal but got out of control.
Other large fires in California have been sparked by causes including arcing power lines, arson, lit cigarettes, fireworks or children playing with fire. Results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Jennifer K. Balch led the study, with Adam L. Mahood as senior author. It can be found at j.mp/humanfires.
Using federal and state records from 1992 to 2012, the team found that people added more than 40,000 wildfires a year across the United States. July 4 was the most common day for human-started fires, with 7,762 starting that day over the study’s 21-year period. The most common day for lightning-started fires was July 22nd.
Wildfires play an important natural role in the ecosystem, said Balch, director of CU Boulder’s Earth Lab. Moreover, and suppressing them has unintended bad effects, such as making the fires that eventually occur even more devastating.
“There are good fires, and there are bad fires,” Balch said. “This study looks at the wildfires that required some sort of suppression or emergency response. But there’s a lot of room for us to start the right kinds of fires: the prescribed fires, the controlled burns that many ecosystems, particularly in the Western states, need in order to be healthy ecosystems.”
Getting public support for increasing controlled burns is “a tricky problem,” Balch said.
“People don’t like smoke, and we don’t like the risk of a fire burning in our neighborhood,” she said. “But we’re already living with that risk, because we’re putting houses and people in flammable landscapes.
“We tried the failed experiment for over 100 years of suppressing fire and trying to get fire out,” Balch said. “And we didn’t win that war.”
Humans have caused increasing numbers of large wildfires occurring in the spring, the study said. In the summer, increasing numbers of wildfires were largely driven by lightning. A warmer climate in recent decades has helped extend the potential range of the fire season in the Western states, Balch said. But humans literally set the spark.
“People are providing the ignition during this longer fire season, and also contributing to large fires,” Balch said. “It’s not either people or climate, it’s both.”
By the end of the century, the number of lightning strikes is expected to increase by 50 percent due to global warming, the study stated.
But even if that happens, “humans would still remain the dominant ignition source across the majority of the United States land area,” the study stated.
(Bradley J. Fikes, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The Department of Water Resources said it will start gradually reducing outflows from the Northern California dam beginning this morning and completely halt them by the afternoon.
The outflow from behind the 770-foot-tall dam will be stopped for several days to allow workers to clear concrete, silt and other debris from a pool at the bottom of the spillway.
Removing the debris will protect a shuttered underground hydroelectric plant and allow it to eventually resume operations, the agency said.
“Once operational, the Hyatt Power Plant can discharge roughly 14,000 cubic feet per second, which will allow DWR to better manage reservoir levels through the remaining spring runoff season,” it said. The reservoir’s water level has been reduced nearly 60 feet since it reached capacity at 901 feet earlier this month, the department said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The latest spill started around Feb. 2 and was not contained until Thursday, the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission said in its report.
The spill apparently was caused by a rupture in a sewage collector pipe near the junction of Mexico’s Alamar and Tijuana rivers, the second of which drains into the Pacific Ocean on the U.S. side of the border.
The author of the report, Steven Smullen, operations manager for the commission, could not be reached for comment Friday evening.
Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina, who shared the report with the Union-Tribune after receiving a copy of it, criticized federal officials on both sides of the border for not alerting residents to the spill.
“It’s a major communication failure,” Dedina said. “It’s obviously something they knew for a very long time.” The mayor said he suspected something was wrong when Imperial Beach residents began noticing a foul smell earlier this month. “It became pretty bad,” Dedina said. Dedina wrote to the commission to inquire about a possible sewage spill. The mayor said his office will seek an investigation into the spill and its aftermath.
(David Hernandez, S. D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Winter storms have dumped enough rain and snow on the northern part of the state to end a five-year drought. But with the wet weather comes a host of problems for crumbling infrastructure.
A section of mountain highway between Sacramento and South Lake Tahoe has buckled, with repairs estimated to cost $6.5 million. In the Yosemite Valley, only one of three main routes into the national park’s major attraction is open because of damage or fear the roads could give out from cracks and seeping water, rangers said.
On Central California’s rain-soaked coast, a bridge in Big Sur has crumbled beyond repair, blocking passage on the north-south Highway 1 through the tourist destination for up to a year. Until it is rebuilt, visitors can drive up to view the rugged coastline, then turn back.
The total cost for responding to flooding, storm damage and repairs statewide in the first two months of 2017 will probably exceed $1 billion, Gov. Jerry Brown’s finance director, Michael Cohen, said Friday. Much of it will be covered by the federal government, which is helping the state recover from severe storms, he said.
The tally includes $595 million to clean up mudslides and repair state highways. Costs for evacuations and non-highway damage, as well as for repairs at Oroville Dam, whose spillways threatened to collapse and flood communities downstream, have not been precisely tallied, he said.
Early estimates put the fixes at the nation’s tallest dam as high as $200 million.
Several more weeks remain in California’s wet season, which brings the potential for more costly infrastructure damage.
The California Department of Transportation, which is responsible for maintaining highways, roads and overpasses, has a reserve fund of $250 million that’s far short of what it would cost to fix recent storm damage.
Storms across the state have wrecked more than 350 roads, shutting down traffic on at least 35 that await rebuilding or shoring up of stretches that washed out, sunk or got covered in mud and rocks, officials said.
Aside from emergency road repairs, Gov. Brown said Friday that California has $187 billion in unmet needs for water and transportation infrastructure. He suggested tax increases may be required, but he wasn’t prepared to offer “the full answer” to raising enough money to shore up infrastructure.
(Scott Smith, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Britain’s West Midlands Ambulance Service said the woman suffered serious head injuries in Wolverhampton, 140 miles northwest of London.
Rain, snow and strong winds of more than 90 mph from a weather system dubbed Storm Doris closed U.K. roads, canceled flights and for a time halted train travel to and from Euston Station, one of London’s main terminals. Heathrow Airport said about one in 10 flights was canceled.
An Icelandair flight from Reykjavik declared an inflight fuel emergency after aborted attempts to land at both Manchester and Liverpool airports in northwest England. It eventually landed successfully in Manchester.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Still, as she sorted through her water-logged possessions Thursday, she said she counts herself among the lucky.
The 57-year-old — one of thousands of people ordered to evacuate Tuesday — lost almost everything in her garage, but her second-floor condominium was dry. “It felt like an apocalypse. It was unreal,” said Najar, who found that her $10,000 leather couch, another pricey velvet couch, kitchen items and “other things I’ve had forever” were ruined in the garage.
All that was left was her bicycle, her daughter’s childhood tricycle and some family photographs that her now 37-year-old daughter, Katrina Santos, was spreading out to dry.
“I’m telling myself these things don’t matter, as long as our home is OK,” Najar said.
As she disposed of the damaged items, Najar said she was thinking of nearby homes that were flooded “all the way to the roof.”
About two-thirds of the 14,000 evacuated residents were being allowed to return home after Coyote Creek overflowed its banks then began to recede.
In one of San Jose’s hardest- hit neighborhoods, Khanh Nguyen lost everything. He spent Thursday hosing down and mopping up his ground floor apartment after removing his furniture, appliances and clothing, all destroyed by the flood. “I’m worried. I don’t have a place to live in,” said Nguyen, who for now is staying with relatives. People who went home were warned to be careful about hygiene and handling food that may have come into contact with floodwater.
“The water is not safe,” Mayor Sam Liccardo said. “There is contamination in this water and the contamination runs the gamut.”
Liccardo acknowledged Wednesday that the city failed to properly notify residents to evacuate and had to resort to going door-to-door in the middle of the night to order many people to leave.
Some people said they got their first notice by seeing firefighters in boats in the neighborhood. “We are assessing what happened in that failure,” the mayor said.
The city began alerting residents about flooding on Tuesday via social and mainstream media and sending emergency alerts to those who had signed up for it, city spokesman David Vossbrink said.
Officials sent firefighters late Tuesday to evacuate about 400 people from a low-lying residential area.
City officials said they did not believe the waters would spread to other neighborhoods and did not expand the evacuation orders. Flood warnings were in place until Saturday because waterways were overtaxed.
Councilman Tam Nguyen asked landlords to provide three months of free rent to victims of the floods in his working-class Latino and Asian district where 350 homes were flooded.
(Marcio J. Sanchez & Jocelyn Gecker, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Citing armed conflicts and climate change as part of the reasons for the food emergency, Guterres led a call for $5.6 billion in funding for humanitarian operations in the four countries this year, of which $4.4 billion is needed by the end of next month “to avert a catastrophe.”
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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City officials ordered more than 14,000 residents to evacuate as water from swollen Coyote Creek flooded homes and temporarily shut down a portion of a major freeway. Another 22,000 people near the creek had been encouraged but not required to evacuate.
“If the first time a resident is aware that they need to get out of their home is when they see a firefighter in a boat, that’s a failure,” Mayor Sam Liccardo said at a news conference. “We are assessing what happened in that failure.” Liccardo declined to go into detail, saying there would be time for reflection after the emergency was over.
With water levels receding later in the day, officials said some residents would be allowed to return home, although an evacuation order remained for parts of the city. Authorities warned residents to [be] careful about hygiene and handling food that may have come into contact with flood water that had traveled through engine fuel, garbage, debris and over sewer lines.
Updated maps showing the evacuation areas were being posted on the mayor’s website.
Flood warnings were in place until Saturday because waterways were overtaxed, and another storm was forecast Sunday. The city began alerting residents of the flood situation on Tuesday via social and mainstream media and sending emergency alerts to those who had signed up for it, said city spokesman Dave Vossbrink.
When water levels changed dramatically overnight, they sent police and firefighters door-to-door during the dramatic overnight evacuation. “It was scary,” said Irma Gonzalez, 59, whose two-story apartment complex is alongside the creek. She was awakened about 2:30 a.m. by police pounding on her door. “They were like, ‘You’ve got to hurry up and go! Move it!’” Gonzalez spent the night at her sister’s house and said she was thankful for the wake-up call and evacuation. “It’s better than to wake up and have water coming in.”
Several residents faulted the city for failing to provide proper warnings.
“The city dropped the ball on making sure that people were notified of the potential impact of this flood,” said resident Jean-Marie White, whose house and backyard were flooded. “Nobody had any clue.”
Another resident, Julie Smalls, said there was no warning from the water authority or the city that the flooding would be so intense. Her backyard, which slopes down to the creek, was submerged in about 20 feet of water and eventually flooded her basement, she said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The planets orbit a dwarf star named TRAPPIST-1, about 40 light-years, or 235 trillion miles, from Earth. By happy accident, the orientation of the orbits of the seven planets allows them to be studied in great detail.
One or more of the exoplanets in this new system could be at the right temperature to be awash in oceans of water based on the distance of the planets from the dwarf star. “This is the first time so many planets of this kind are found around the same star,” Michael Gillon, an astronomer at the University of Liege in Belgium and the leader of an international team that has been observing TRAPPIST-1, said during a telephone news conference organized by the journal Nature, which published the findings on Wednesday.
UC San Diego physicist Adam Burgasser was part of the effort, helping to figure out the nature of the star that the seven planets orbit. He and his team examined everything from the temperature and surface gravity of the star to what it’s made of.
“Finding more Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of any star is going to increase the overall number of potentially habitable worlds — and that there are many more of these very low-mass stars in our galaxy than sun-like stars suggests that there may be way more habitable worlds in our galaxy than we had previously imagined,” Burgasser said.
Cool red dwarfs are the most common type of star, so astronomers are likely to find more planetary systems like that around TRAPPIST- 1 in the coming years.
“You can just imagine how many worlds are out there that have a shot to becoming a habitable ecosystem,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate. “Are we alone out there? We’re making a step forward with this — a leap forward, in fact — towards answering that question.”
Telescopes on the ground now and the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit will be able to discern some of the molecules in the planetary atmospheres. The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch next year, will peer at the infrared wavelengths of light, ideal for studying TRAPPIST- 1.
Comparisons among the different conditions of the seven will also be revealing.
“The TRAPPIST-1 planets make the search for life in the galaxy imminent,” said Sara Seager, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not a member of the research team. “For the first time ever, we don’t have to speculate. We just have to wait and then make very careful observations and see what is in the atmospheres of the TRAPPIST planets.”
Even if the planets all turn out to be lifeless, scientists will have learned more about what keeps life from flourishing.
Astronomers always knew other stars must have planets, but until a couple of decades ago, they had not been able to spot them. Now they have confirmed more than 3,400, according to the Open Exoplanet Catalog. (An exoplanet is a planet around a star other than the sun.) The authors of the Nature paper include Didier Queloz, one of the astronomers who discovered in 1995 the first known exoplanet around a sunlike star.
While the TRAPPIST planets are about the size of Earth— give or take 25 percent in diameter — the star is very different from our sun.
TRAPPIST-1, named after a robotic telescope in the Atacama Desert of Chile that astronomers initially used to study the star, is what astronomers call an “ultracool dwarf,” with only one-twelfth the mass of the sun and a surface temperature of 4,150 degrees Fahrenheit, much cooler than the 10,000 degrees radiating from the sun. TRAPPIST is a shortening of Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope.
During the NASA news conference, Gillon gave a simple analogy: If our sun were the size of a basketball, TRAPPIST-1 would be a golf ball.
Until the last few years, scientists looking for life elsewhere in the galaxy have focused on finding Earthsize planets around sun-like stars. But it is difficult to pick out the light of a planet from the glare of a bright star. Small dim dwarfs are much easier to study.
Last year, astronomers announced the discovery of an Earth-size planet around Proxima Centauri, the closest star at 4.24 light years away. That discovery was made using a different technique that does not allow for study of the atmosphere.
TRAPPIST-1 periodically dimmed noticeably, indicating that a planet might be passing in front of the star, blocking part of the light. From the shape of the dips, the astronomers calculate the size of the planet.
TRAPPIST-1’s light dipped so many times that the astronomers concluded, in research reported last year, that there were at least three planets around the star. Telescopes from around the world then also observed TRAPPIST-1, as did the Spitzer Space Telescope of NASA.
Spitzer observed TRAPPIST- 1 nearly around the clock for 20 days, capturing 34 transits. Together with the ground observations, it let scientists calculate not three planets, but seven. The planets are too small and too close to the star to be photographed directly.
All seven are very close to the dwarf star, circling more quickly than the planets in our solar system. The innermost completes an orbit in just 1.5 days. The farthest one completes an orbit in about 20 days. That makes the planetary system more like the moons of Jupiter than a larger planetary system like our solar system. Because the planets are so close to a cool star, their surfaces could be at the right temperatures to have water flow, considered one of the essential ingredients for life.
The fourth, fifth and sixth planets orbit in the star’s “habitable zone,” where the planets could sport oceans. So far that is just speculation, but by measuring which wavelengths of light are blocked by the planet, scientists will be able to figure out what gases float in the atmospheres of the seven planets.
So far, they have confirmed for the two innermost planets that they are not enveloped in hydrogen. That means they are rocky like Earth, ruling out the possibility that they were mini-Neptune gas planets that are prevalent around many other stars.
If observations reveal oxygen in a planet’s atmosphere, that could point to photosynthesis of plants — although not conclusively. But oxygen together with methane, ozone and carbon dioxide, particularly in certain proportions, “would tell us that there is life with 99 percent confidence,” Gillon said.
(Kenneth Chang, NEW YORK TIMES; Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Farther north, farmers used tractors to shore up an endangered levee in California’s agricultural heartland, officials opened a spillway at the Don Pedro reservoir for the first time in 20 years, and a Sierra Nevada highway threatened to collapse after the latest downpours swelled waterways, leaving nearly half of the state under flood advisories.
In San Jose, at least 225 residents were taken to dry land and rinsed with soap and water to prevent them from being sickened by floodwaters from the Coyote Creek that had traveled through engine fuel, garbage, debris and over sewer lines, said San Jose Fire Capt. Mitch Matlow.
Rescuers went door-to-door searching for people who needed to leave the neighborhood. Only residents who could prove they had been cleaned of the floodwaters were allowed to board buses to shelters.
“The water started to seep in the driveway, and then it started to creep up into the front door. It kept getting worse and worse,” said Alex Hilario, who walked in knee-high water to get to his car and leave the area.
Bobby Lee, 15, said he was rescued with his brother and parents, who took clothes, electronics and some photos from their home in a neighborhood that ended up littered with submerged cars.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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People living along a section of the Carmel River in Monterey County were told to leave, as were those in a neighborhood of Salinas near Santa Rita Creek and a few people in rural Royal Oaks, where a mudslide encroached on a home.
No injuries were reported.
The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office sent rugged Humvees out to help with the evacuations.
The Carmel River, which has flooded several times in the past month, was expected to rise to nearly 11 feet by today, which would be a moderate flood stage, while the Salinas River near Spreckels could reach nearly to the moderate flood stage of 26 feet by tonight, which could inundate the Monterey-Salinas Highway, the Monterey Herald reported.
The Big Sur River reached its moderate flood stage of 10 feet Monday morning and was expected to crest at 12 feet, the paper reported.
The National Weather Service said heavy rain could persist into the evening as the latest in a serious of storms hovered over California’s northern and central areas, including the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Valley.
Weather watches and warnings were issued for nearly a dozen counties because of flooding concerns and gusty winds.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The precipitation was part of a broad, fast-moving system that generated even wilder winds and heavier rainfall across other parts of Southern California, including a 72 mph gust in the Long Beach Harbor area. Hundreds of flights were canceled at several airports, a person was electrocuted by downed power lines and a motorist was killed in a submerged car in Los Angeles.
The National Weather Service said altogether, the system could end up being the strongest storm to hit Southern California since 1995.
In San Diego County, the storm hit with unusual force at the coast. That was especially true of the winds, which snapped trees and whipped high-flying flags. At least one wind-blown eucalyptus tree fell across both lanes of north state Route 163 and landed on a vehicle south of Robinson Avenue in Hillcrest about 3:45 p.m.
In Point Loma, fire crews found a 70-foot palm tree that fell onto a house on Kellogg Street near San Antonio Avenue around 2:30 p.m. Shortly before 4 p.m., a tree toppled onto a duplex on Caminito Rio Brancho near Appaloosa Road in Scripps Ranch, San Diego police said. Another tree fell onto a house on Maryland Street near Monroe Avenue in University Heights about 5 p.m.
No one was hurt in those incidents.
The tempestuous weather also bedeviled San Diego State University and the University of San Diego, whose baseball teams managed to start home games but not finish them.
And the combination of concentrated rain and powerful winds led to a rash of accidents, particularly because the peak of the storm came ashore in San Diego County as commuters headed home from work Friday. Authorities reported a fatal vehicle crash on Interstate 15.
The National Weather Service said that the storm would release most of its energy before dawn today, but that sporadic and sometimes heavy showers are possible until late this afternoon. Thick columns of large surf are rolling ashore, posing a threat to people who linger on coastal rocks.
Forecasters said the system was expected to drop 1 inch to 2 inches of rain across San Diego’s coastal zone by noon today and up to 2.5 inches in some mountain areas.
San Diego was hit by an “atmospheric river,” the term forecasters for the long columns of moisture that sometimes track directly into California. This one arose in the western Pacific and drenched the whole state, including Northern California, where workers were monitoring a damaged spillway at Lake Oroville.
The storm swung into Ventura County, flooding part of the 101 Freeway at Seacliff, then did the same at the 405/90 Freeway interchange in West L.A. The system then slumped into Orange County, producing widespread flash flooding, before sinking farther south, where it swirled ashore at Camp Pendleton and Oceanside.
The winds shredded some trees and knocked others down, causing power outages in places like Point Loma, where Point Loma Nazarene University canceled classes for the day.
SDG&E also reported outages in many other spots, from Barrio Logan and Golden Hill to Ramona and Chula Vista.
Emergency workers were prepared for the onslaught.
Cal Fire said two swift-water rescue teams would be staged around the clock, one in North County and one in East County, until the greatest flooding risk has passed. Also, eight Cal Fire hand crews will be available to help stem floods by filling sand bags, building diversion dams or taking other actions. With the storm feeding on an atmospheric river of moisture stretching far out into the Pacific, precautionary evacuations of homes in some neighborhoods were requested due to the potential for mudslides and debris flows.
More than 300 arriving and departing flights were delayed or canceled at Los Angeles International Airport alone. In the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles, a falling tree downed power lines and hit a car. A 55-year-old man was electrocuted and pronounced dead at a hospital, police and fire officials said.
Winds gusting to 60 mph or more lashed the area. Heavy rains turned creeks and rivers into brown torrents and released slews of mud from hillsides burned barren by wildfires. Several stretches of freeways and highways were closed by flooding.
“It’s crazy,” said Robin Johnson, an academic adviser at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s just pouring down rain. The wind is just going nuts.”
“At one point the wind was so strong I’m surprised it didn’t blow my windows out,” retiree Phoenix Hocking said in a Facebook message from Carpinteria. “I now have a pond in my patio. And my dog is starting to grow flippers so he can go out and do his business.”
In the desert town of Victorville, several cars were washed down a flooded street. A helicopter rescued one person from the roof of a car but another motorist was found dead in a submerged vehicle, San Bernardino County fire spokesman Eric Sherwin said. Elsewhere in the county, a 20-mile stretch of State Route 138 in the West Cajon Valley was closed at the scene of a summer wildfire.
In Los Angeles’ Sun Valley, 10 cars were trapped in swift-moving water on a roadway and eight people had to be rescued, the Fire Department reported.
Using ropes and inflatable boats, firefighters rescued seven people and two dogs from the Sepulveda basin, a recreation and flood-control area along the Los Angeles River. One person was taken to a hospital with a non-life threatening injury.
The storm took aim at Southern California but also spread precipitation north into the San Joaquin Valley and up to San Francisco. It was not expected to bring significant rain in the far north where damage to spillways of the Lake Oroville dam forced evacuation of 188,000 people last weekend. Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park in Orange County closed because the weather. High surf pounded beaches.
By evening, Ventura County and northern Los Angeles County had seen 24-hour rain totals of up to 7.5 inches, with the San Marcos mountain pass in Santa Barbara County receiving nearly 8.5 inches.
Farther south, downtown Los Angeles had received about 1.5 inches of rain while some areas saw up to 4 inches.
The storm system was moving “very slowly” eastward and Los Angeles County was expected to see more rain through today, said Joe Sirard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
The city of Duarte, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles, ordered evacuation of 180 homes below a burn scar. Up the coast, evacuations were urged for parts of Camarillo Springs in Ventura County and around an 11.5-square-mile burn scar west of Santa Barbara.
Santa Anita Park near Pasadena canceled all its horse races Friday.
In Northern California, officials monitoring the stricken Oroville Dam on the Feather River said they were confident the reservoir would handle any runoff from expected storms because ongoing releases have been lowering the lake’s level since its spillways were damaged last week.
(Gary Robbins, Pauline Repard & David Hernandez, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Officials sent millions of gallons of water per minute down the massive reservoir’s main spillway. Engineers said that despite a huge gash that opened in the concrete channel a week ago, it was their best option for lowering the dangerously high lake level. They hoped lowering the water level will avoid further use of the emergency spillway, where damage was discovered Sunday afternoon.
“It was the lesser of two evils,” state Department of Water Resources spokesman Eric See said Monday. “We didn’t want to have more damage, but we needed to evacuate water.”
The emergency spillway suffered severe erosion Sunday, the day after water cascaded down the unpaved chute for the first time since the dam opened 49 years ago. This sparked consternation because officials were sending a much smaller amount of water down the spillway — 12,600 cubic feet per second — than its stated capacity of 450,000 cubic feet per second. Some also questioned why officials didn’t heed suggestions more than a decade ago to fortify the emergency spillway. When it appeared the erosion could quickly worsen Sunday afternoon and potentially undermine the spillway’s concrete lip — a scenario that could unleash a massive wall of water — officials ordered more than 180,000 people to evacuate the low-lying areas along the Feather River.
Racing against Mother Nature, Water Resources officials Monday sent water surging down the concrete main spillway — a move that lowered the lake level by several feet but threatened to widen the gash. Erosion on the main spillway so far was manageable, See said.
“I’ve been doing these flood battles since 1978,” state Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber. “This is the one with the greatest potential for damage of all the ones I’ve dealt with.”
Both spillways are separate from the Oroville Dam itself, which officials say is not in danger of collapse.
Officials said they want to lower the lake 50 feet by Wednesday to avoid another overflow on the damaged emergency spillway. If the head of the spillway crumbles, a 30-foot wall of water could go crashing down the hillside into the Feather River and toward Oroville, Marysville and Yuba City.
“Obviously, any rain this week is not helpful at all,” said Tom Dang, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sacramento.
On Monday, geysers of water shot from the placid lake and down the concrete spillway, like a water slide the width of a freeway.
Helicopters flew overhead, and dump trucks shuttled across the top of Oroville Dam, carrying loads of rock to be placed against the concrete lip that separates the reservoir from the auxiliary spillway. Without reinforcements, water could creep beneath the lip, causing it to crumble and allowing water to gush over the side. In a letter Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown asked the Trump administration for a federal disaster declaration, saying the problems were likely to be more than local and state officials can handle.
Brown told reporters that he spoke to a member of the president’s Cabinet on Monday, but declined to say which one. “My office has been in touch with the White House,” Brown said. “I think that will be sufficient.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, meanwhile, sent an eight-person team to the area to help California officials prepare for potential flooding.
“We are trying to plan for the worst-case scenario,” said Ahsha Tribble, acting regional administrator for FEMA’s Region 9, which includes California. “It’s not a wait-and-see game.” Lake Oroville is the keystone of the State Water Project, which sends Northern California water hundreds of miles south to the southern San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.
During much of a five-year drought, the lake level was far below normal, forcing officials to slash water deliveries. But an extraordinarily wet winter filled the lake so close to capacity that officials have been forced to release water to prevent flooding.
A series of powerful storms Tuesday sent runoff rushing into the reservoir, just as the hole appeared in the main spillway. Managers slowed the release of the water, and on Saturday, Lake Oroville overflowed.
Earth and weak rock near the top of the spillway started to erode, when flows were only a fraction of what the emergency spillway was designed to handle. The erosion happened so quickly that officials feared the concrete wall would be undermined, and ordered sweeping evacuations in Butte, Yuba and Sutter counties that remained in effect Monday night.
Bill Croyle, the acting director of the Department of Water Resources, said Monday that he was “not sure anything went wrong. This was a new, never-happened-before event.” But during 2005 re-licensing proceedings for Oroville Dam, several environmental groups argued that substantial erosion would occur on the hillside in the event of a significant emergency spill. In a filing, they asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to order the state to “to armor or otherwise reconstruct the un-gated spillway.”
State Water Project contractors, including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, were involved in the re-licensing. MWD general manager Jeffrey Kightlinger said Monday his agency deferred to the state and federal agencies on the matter.
“They did look at that issue, and they determined that (the existing emergency spillway) did meet the appropriate FERC guidelines,” Kightlinger said. “In the FERC guidelines, they talk about how you don’t put a lot of funding and concrete, etc. into emergency spillways because presumably they will rarely if ever be used.” “We did not say it was a cost issue,” he added. Brown, after meeting with advisers at the state’s emergency operations center near Sacramento, was asked by reporters about the concerns raised in 2005 about Oroville’s spillway system.
He said he welcomed calls for more scrutiny. “We’re in a very complex society where things can go wrong,” he said. “When they do, they ripple out and affect hundreds of thousands and in some cases millions of people.”
(Chris Megerian & Bettina Boxall, CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP, PUBLISHER OF UNION TRIBUNE AND LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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About 150 miles northeast of San Francisco, Lake Oroville is one of California’s largest man-made lakes, its level controlled by the 770-foot-tall Oroville Dam.
The evacuation was ordered Sunday afternoon over concerns the dam’s emergency spillway could fail. Over five hours later, hundreds of cars carrying panicked and angry people were sitting in bumper-tob-umper traffic.
“This is not a drill. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill,” the National Weather Service said. Authorities urged residents to contact neighbors and family members and reach out to the elderly and assist them in evacuating. “The police came and told us to evacuate,” said Kaysi Levias who was with her husband, Greg, at a gas station as they attempted to flee.
Officials warned residents that the spillway could fail within an hour.
“I’m just shocked,” Greg Levias said. “Pretty mad.”
“Not giving us more warning,” said Kaysi, finishing his sentence.
“We’ve never been through this before,” said Kaysi Levias. “We have two boys and our dog. All the stuff we could fit in the trunk — clothes and blankets.”
What they couldn’t fit they piled as high as they could in their downstairs Oroville apartment and joined the line of traffic attempting to leave the city where they had moved just three weeks ago.
The cities of Oroville, Gridley, Live Oak, Marysville, Wheat land, Yuba City, Plumas Lake, and Olivehurst were all under evacuation orders.
The evacuation order went out around 4 p.m. after engineers spotted a hole that was eroding back toward the top of the spillway.
The erosion at the head of the emergency spillway threatens to undermine the concrete weir and allow large, uncontrolled releases of water from Lake Oroville, the California Department of Water Resources said. Those potential flows could overwhelm the Feather River and other downstream waterways, channels and levees.
Officials said Oroville Lake levels had decreased by Sunday night as they let water flow from its heavily damaged main spillway but noted that water was still spilling over the dam.
Butte County Sheriff Koney Honea said engineers with the Department of Water Resources informed him shortly after 6 p.m. that the erosion on the emergency spillway at the Oroville Dam was not advancing as fast as they thought.
“Unfortunately they couldn’t advise me or tell me specifically how much time that would take so we had to make the very difficult and critical decision to initiate the evacuation of the Orville area and all locations south of that,” he said. “We needed to get people moving quickly to save lives if the worst case scenario came into fruition.” Honea said there is a plan to plug the hole by using helicopters to drop rocks into the crevasse.
Water began flowing over the emergency spillway at the Oroville Dam in Northern California on Saturday for the first time in its nearly 50-year history after heavy rainfall. Officials earlier Sunday stressed the dam itself was structurally sound and said there was no threat to the public.
Residents of Oroville, a town of 16,000 people, should head north toward Chico, and other cities should follow orders from their local law enforcement agencies, the Butte County Sheriff’s office said.
The Yuba County Office of Emergency Services asked residents in the valley floor, including Marysville, a city of 12,000 people, to evacuate and take routes to the east, south, or west and avoid traveling north toward Oroville.
The California Department of Water Resources said it is releasing as much as 100,000 cubic feet per second from the main, heavily damaged spillway to try to lower the lake. Department Kevin Dossey told the Sacramento Bee the emergency spillway was rated to handle 250,000 cubic feet per second, but it began to show weakness Sunday at a small fraction of that. Flows through the spillway peaked at 12,600 cubic feet per second at 1 a.m. Sunday and were down to 8,000 cubic feet per second by midday.
Unexpected erosion chewed through the main spillway during heavy rain last week, sending chunks of concrete flying and creating a 200-foot-long, 30-foot-deep hole that continues growing. Engineers don’t know what caused the cave-in, but Chris Orrock, a spokesman for the state Department of Water Resources, said it appears the dam’s main spillway has stopped crumbling even though it’s being used for water releases.
The lake is a central piece of California’s government-run water delivery network, supplying water for agriculture in the Central Valley and residents and businesses in Southern California.
The dam itself is structurally sound, officials said.
Video from television helicopters Sunday evening showed water flowing into a parking lot next to the dam, with large flows going down both the damaged main spillway and the emergency spillway. Officials feared a failure of the emergency spillway could cause huge amounts of water to flow into the Feather River, which runs through downtown Oroville, and other waterways. The result could be flooding and levee failures for miles south of the dam, depending on how much water is released.
The videos also showed lines of cars getting out of downtown Oroville. An evacuation center was set up at the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds in Chico.
Sergia Richard-Madrid, 62, was working her shift at Home Depot on Sunday afternoon when phones began to ring about the mandatory evacuation.
She rushed home, but the rest of her family had already left. Some fled north to Chico, but she headed south on Highway 70 and was diverted when authorities began evacuating low-lying Marysville as well, about an hour south of Oroville.
Near downtown Oroville, four people were standing on a bridge overlooking the river.
James Nash, 86, heard about the evacuation order from his apartment building manager. A retired chef and Korean War vet, he wasn’t sure where to go, and was upset that Oroville didn’t seem to be doing more. He couldn’t get to Chico on his bike. He had a small bag with shaving gear, washcloth and paper towels. “No blankets. No water.” He remembered the 1997 evacuation order, which he ignored and which did not result in flooding. He said he’s still pretty sure nothing will happen this time: “I don’t believe it’s going to happen.”
Diminished by years of drought conditions, Lake Oroville had become a symbol of the state’s worsening water crisis. But an unusually wet winter took the lake from nearly full to overflowing in less than a week.
At the same time, the nearly mile-long main spillway that the dam’s managers rely on to release excess water began to crumble, with erosion worsening as millions of gallons of water poured over it.
Realizing the lake might rise to a level that would trigger the use of an emergency spillway, state workers began clearing the area of trees and brush that could be sent hurtling downstream.
On Saturday morning, water began washing over the dam’s emergency spillway for the first time since it was completed in 1968. Photographs showed a torrent of water rushing downhill to join the Feather River.
On Sunday, officials said that although they expected the uncontrolled spill to end, they plan to continue using the concrete spillway to create more storage in the reservoir in anticipation of rainfall later in the week.
“We’re going to continue to flow water down the spillway and lower the lake,” See said. “You’re going to see the lake dropping over the next several days.”
Officials have estimated it could cost $100 million to $200 million to repair the damage to the spillway and other features.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES; ASSOCIATED PRESS; LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The late Friday quake with a magnitude of 6.5 roused residents from sleep in Surigao del Norte province, sending hundreds fleeing their homes. The quake was centered about 8 miles northwest of the provincial capital of Surigao at a relatively shallow depth of 11 kilometers (6.8 miles), said Renato Solidum of the Philippine Institute of Seismology and Volcanology.
Nearly 100 aftershocks were felt within hours, officials said, adding that schools were being reopened as evacuation centers for residents wary of returning to their damaged homes.
At least 15 people were killed, some after being hit by falling debris and blunt objects, provincial disaster-response official Ramon Gotinga said, citing hospital reports. At least 90 others were injured in Surigao city.
(U-T NEWS SERIVCES)
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The California Department of Water Resources significantly increased releases from Lake Oroville even though unexpected erosion chewed through the spillway earlier this week, sending chunks of concrete flying and creating a 200-foot-long, 30-foot-deep hole that continues growing.
State engineers expect that water flowing out of the dam will catch up with the torrent flowing in from recent storms by sometime today if they can continue the higher flows.
“Basically it’s going to be a triage situation. We know we’re going to have erosion going on but it’s in the best interest of the lake right now to be able to keep using the spillway to evacuate water,” said department spokesman Eric See.
That could save them from having to use an emergency spillway for the first time in the reservoir’s 48-year history.
They were still preparing for the possibility by clearing trees and brush from the emergency spillway down a steep ravine to minimize the debris that would flow into the Feather River.
They were reinforcing part of the overflow area with rocks stabilized with concrete and using helicopters to relocate power lines out of harm’s way.
Rescue efforts also continued for millions of hatchery-raised fish imperiled by muddy water flowing downstream alongside the damaged spillway after sections of its concrete walls collapsed earlier this week.
The cost could approach $100 million, though department spokesman Doug Carlson said the estimate by a department engineer is an early, ballpark figure. It is too soon to know with any certainty what it will cost, Carlson said.
Torrential rainwater flowed into the lake overnight Thursday nearly three times as quickly as it could be released, bringing the lake to within six feet of overflowing into the emergency spillway.
Water was still entering the lake twice as fast as it could be released Friday afternoon.
But the deluge was expected to continue easing into today, low enough that officials can begin reducing the lake level to prepare for future winter storms.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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“There’s going to be a significant event in the states of Maine and New Hampshire, no question about that,” said James Brown, a weather service meteorologist in Gray, Maine.
The heaviest snows were expected to begin Sunday.
Nathan Trimble looked around his Providence, R.I., street Friday and said it already looked like a wilderness scene from the Leonardo DiCaprio movie “The Revenant.” He did not like the idea of even more snow.
“I’m just not looking forward to digging out,” he said. But “I’ve lived in New England my whole life, so we’ll deal with it.” In Thursday’s storm, East Longmeadow, Mass., and East Hartford, Conn., hit the jackpot, each with 19 inches of snow. In New York, Voorheesville and New Scotland got 18 inches.
Friday’s cleanup meant turning the lights back on in many places, including Cape Cod, where a wind gust of 70 mph was recorded. Most major highways were cleared and planes began taking off again after thousands of flights were canceled across the region during the storm.
Many school districts, including in Boston, remained closed, however. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said he would allow people who shovel out parking spots to use makeshift space savers to reserve those spots, as has been the local tradition, but he would not tolerate the threats that often accompany the practice.
The storm came a day after temperatures soared into the 50s and 60s, giving millions a taste of spring.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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About 275 of the pilot whales were already dead when Morrison and two colleagues found them Friday on Farewell Spit at the tip of the South Island.
Within hours, hundreds of farmers, tourists and teenagers were racing to keep the surviving 140 or so whales alive in one of the worst whale strandings in the nation’s history.
Morrison, a magazine writer and editor, stumbled upon the whales after taking a pre-dawn trip with a photographer and a guide to capture the red glow of the sunrise.
“You could hear the sounds of splashing, of blowholes being cleared, of sighing,” she said. “The young ones were the worst. Crying is the only way to describe it.”
The adult and baby whale carcasses were strewn three or four deep in places for hundreds of yards, often rolled over on the sand with their tail fins still aloft.
Morrison’s group alerted authorities, and volunteers soon began arriving in wetsuits and carrying buckets. Dressed in her jeans and sandshoes, Morrison waded into the water and did what she could to try to maneuver the surviving whales upright so they could breathe more easily.
Volunteer rescue group Project Jonah said a total of 416 whales had stranded. When high tide came, volunteers managed to refloat about 50 of the surviving whales while the other 80 or 90 remained beached.
The volunteers then formed a human chain in the water to try to stop the creatures from swimming back and stranding themselves again. It will likely take a day or so to determine how successful their efforts have been.
Volunteers plan to refloat more whales today.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A powerful low-pressure storm system in the northern Atlantic has helped carry warm air up to the frozen north this week, sending temperatures in the Arctic soaring. Data from the Danish Meteorological Institute suggests that, as of Thursday, temperatures in the area above 80 degrees north latitude were already more than 20 degrees warmer than the average temperature for this time of year. As a graphic from Climate Reanalyzer shows, the most unusually warm region is right over the North Pole.
It’s at least the third such extreme winter-warming event for the Arctic this season —temperatures skyrocketed on two occasions in November and December as well. Similar incidents also occurred in December of 2015 and 2014.
Scientists believe that a number of different factors are feeding into these warming events, including the steady march of climate change and interactions between the air and Arctic sea ice, which global warming is melting a little more each year. And a good low-pressure system, like the one that barreled through this week, can help to jump-start these kinds of sudden warming events by carrying a large amount of warm air up to the North Pole all at once.
The presence of the storm itself isn’t exactly unusual, according to atmospheric physics expert Kent Moore of the University of Toronto. Each year, there are some storms that roll through the northern Atlantic. What’s uncommon is just how far north some of them have been making it lately.
“There’s these extratropical cyclones that appear to be tracking farther north than they usually do, and these low-pressure systems are bringing the heat up into the polar region,” he said. It’s unclear why this happens, he added. But when it does, temperatures can vault up above zero degrees, or in extreme cases, sometimes even above freezing.
In a recent paper published in December, Moore notes that these types of anomalous warming events have been recorded since the 1950s — but they usually only occur once or twice a decade. Scientists believe that factors related to climate change may now be making it easier for weather systems like this week’s storm to carry warm air into the Arctic.
Changes in Arctic sea ice extent are one major issue. As a result of global warming, temperatures in the Arctic are rising at about twice the global average rate, and one of the consequences is a reduction in Arctic sea ice. These changes are most obvious in the warm summer months, when sea ice is at a minimum anyway — but lately, scientists have been observing record lows for the frozen winter months as well, a time of year when the ice is actually expanding. But where it is missing, those parts of the ocean become warmer.
“As that sea ice moves northward, there’s a huge reservoir of heat over the North Atlantic,” Moore said. “As we lose the sea ice, it allows essentially this reservoir of warmth to move closer to the pole.”
(Chelsea Harvey, THE WASHINGTON POST)
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As the lake level continues to rise, officials are saying they'll likely release water from Oroville Dam's unpaved emergency spillway for the first time ever on Saturday. The emergency release has never been used, and crews are clearing trees and brush if it's needed.
The lake is now at 98 percent capacity.
Earlier this week, chunks of concrete flew off the nearly mile-long spillway, creating a 200-foot-long, 30-foot-deep hole. Engineers don't know what caused the cave-in that is expected to keep growing until it reaches bedrock.
The department does not expect the discharge from the reservoir to exceed the capacity of any channel downstream as the water flows through the Feather River, into the Sacramento River and on to the San Francisco Bay.
Officials say Oroville Dam itself is sound and there is no imminent threat to the public.
Erosion has created a 30-foot-deep hole in the concrete spillway of Oroville Dam and state officials say it will continue to grow as officials balance the need to release pressure from the filling reservoir.
State engineers on Thursday cautiously released water from Lake Oroville's damaged spillway as the reservoir level climbed amid a soaking of rain.
"Efforts are being made to release the needed amount of water to avoid use of the Emergency Spillway. It is expected for more erosion to occur on the spillway due to the water release," the Butte County Sheriff's Office wrote in a Facebook post accompanied by video of 35,000 cubic feet per second being released from the damaged spillway. Much of that water appeared to be passing through the gash in the structure and pouring over the surrounding hillside.
Social media posts Thursday afternoon showed damage that appeared to stretch the width of the spillway.
Situated in the western foothills of the Sierra, Lake Oroville is the second-largest man-made reservoir in California after Shasta. It's a key flood-control and water-storage facility within the California State Water Project, and its fresh water releases control salinity intrusion into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and protect the health of fish and wildlife.
The department closed the spillway Tuesday after noticing water was flowing irregularly. After stopping the flow, engineers found a gaping hole in the concrete chute.
At the fish hatchery below — one crucial to California's salmon industry, which produces some 7 million fish a season — workers were scurrying to snap up in nets 4 million fish in danger of dying and then trucking them miles downstream to safety. But nearly 5 million other fish and fish eggs couldn't be moved.
The turbidity, or cloudiness, of the water running into Feather River Hatchery in Butte County, roughly 75 miles north of Sacramento, was "off the charts," said Harry Morse, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Normal turbidity levels tend to be on a 5 to 10 scale, while Thursday's recordings soared into the 400s, he said.
"This is just uncharted territory," Morse said, adding that a team of scientists were working to rig up makeshift filtration systems inside the hatchery to protect the eggs in danger.
Workers were moving the millions of young fish, said to be about three months too young to safely release into the wild, about 10 miles down the river to Thermalito via giant tanker trucks, to a spot with existing fish infrastructure far enough off the river that they should survive, Morse said.
Workers are removing trees and debris from the corridor near the dam where water would flow in the event the emergency spillway is needed.
Officials say the giant hole does not pose a threat to the earthen dam or public safety.
After dipping down to record-low levels during the California drought, Oroville is now 80 percent full amid a winter of wet storms. The spillway dumps water into the Feather River.
(Amy Graff, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, SFGATE.COM; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The city’s emergency operations coordinator told the City Council on Tuesday that Chula Vista was one of the hardest-hit areas of the county by the series of wind and rain storms.
The council voted Jan. 26 to declare a local emergency and ask for any local, county, state and federal money to assist in the recovery.
As of Thursday, portions of Rohr Park are open to the public, and people have access into and around the park via the trail and golf course.
The high winds, rains and flooding caused about 700 eucalyptus, palm, Tipu and pine trees to uproot and fall over, or large branches were broken off, city officials said.
The storms also downed power lines, blocked roadways and caused gas leaks.
On Jan. 20, Chula Vista police dispatch was inundated with 475 emergency calls. Dispatch typically receives an average of 223 calls, city officials said.
The trees were damaged across medians and parkways and also in some of the city’s open-space districts.
Taller and older trees are more vulnerable to being toppled.
Residents might see chopped up trees with caution tape around them, because heavy equipment needed to cut and mulch the trees cannot drive on the park grounds until the area is dry and stable.
A spokeswoman said the city is removing downed trees from open-space areas and evaluating how many other trees may need to come down.
Chula Vista officials are estimating the cost of damage at more than $1.2 million for public safety response, cleanup and repair.
Residents who need to report a downed tree or have another non-emergency issue are asked to call the public works department at (619) 397-6000.
(Allison Sampite-Montevalvo, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Scores of accidents were reported as drivers confronted blowing snow and slick highways. Stretches of Interstate 95 in Rhode Island were closed in the afternoon after tractor-trailers got stuck, and dozens of motorists got stranded on New York’s Long Island after they couldn’t make it up icy ramps.
Schools closed in cities big and small, including New York City, Philadelphia and Boston, and government offices told non-essential workers to stay home.
More than 3,500 flights were canceled across the region and planes bound for New York’s Kennedy Airport were ordered held on the ground for hours while crews cleared the runways. A de-icing truck caught fire at Bradley Airport outside Hartford, Conn. In New York City, a doorman died after falling down a set of stairs and crashing through a plate-glass window while shoveling snow. Police said Miguel Angel Gonzalez, 59, of Bridgeport, Conn., suffered cuts on his neck and face. In Rhode Island, they got “thundersnow,” with whiteout conditions accompanied by the rumble of thunder. “It’s pretty nuts here,” Felecia White said as she and friends hunkered down in a restaurant in Newport, R.I.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The la niña episode lasted only four months and was among the weakest and shortest on record, coming on the heels of one of the strongest El niños, said Mike Halpert of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center.
La niña, a cooling of parts of the equatorial Pacific that changes weather patterns worldwide, often lasts a year or more, longer than El niños. la niña conditions were first detected in October and disappeared in January.
“Even though it was fairly weak and short-lived it did leave impacts,” Halpert said, pointing to unusual cold in Alaska, western Canada and U.S. Northern Plains in December and January.
Strong la niñas usually follow powerful El niños, which didn’t happen in this case, said University of Washington atmospheric scientist Mike Wallace.
Many computer models show an El niño forming later this summer or fall, but NOAA isn’t making a prediction yet, Halpert said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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At least his Yukon pickup truck would be OK, he thought: It was in a friend’s repair shop, 60 miles north.
Then his phone rang.
“The man called me this morning and said, ‘Man, the tornado hit your truck,’” Powell said.
That’s a bad joke to tell a friend who just lost his house, he told him.
But it wasn’t. The truck was slammed by another tornado that hit Donaldsonville, one of at least four confirmed twisters tearing up Louisiana on Tuesday as a line of severe weather moved across the Deep South.
“I’ve got to pick up the pieces and walk in faith. God is going to take care of me,” Powell said Wednesday.
The other tornadoes injured nine people in the Baton Rouge area and two north of Lake Pontchartrain, but nobody was killed, authorities said. Parts of the Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama also saw severe weather Wednesday, but no injuries.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a news release Wednesday that two people remain hospitalized, and that 78 people spent Tuesday night in a shelter, which remains open.
His statement also said that two-thirds of the 10,400 Entergy customers who lost power have had their electricity restored — and the rest may have to wait up to 5 days before getting their lights back on. National Weather Service teams fanned out Wednesday in Louisiana and Mississippi, which had one confirmed tornado, to analyze the destruction and estimate their power. They determined that the twister that struck eastern New Orleans was an EF3 on the enhanced Fujita scale, meaning its winds reached from 136 to 165 mph, capable of causing severe damage.
Tornado damage has a distinctive pattern, meteorologist Christopher Bannan said, unlike damage from a downburst, which radiates outward from a central point, and straight-line wind damage, which all points the same direction.
The state was counting the buildings damaged or destroyed, Mike Steele of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness said Wednesday. Powell had just finished restoring his house after buying it as blighted property.
“I was about to put my house on the market for sale this Friday. This Thursday, I was going to get homeowners and flood insurance,” he said. He and an employee saw the tornado from the back door, and moved to the front.
“All we heard was that train sound, WooWooWoo BOOM! In 15 seconds it was over,” he said. The front of the house was intact, but “the whole back is gone. The garage is gone. The kitchen gone.”
(Janet McConnaughey, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The fall armyworm, called such because it “marches” its way through swaths of crops, was first discovered in Africa last year. (It’s originally from the Americas.) Since then, it has wreaked havoc on staple maize crops in South Africa and Zimbabwe. There are reports the pest has also reached Zambia, Malawi, Namibia and Mozambique.
It could make an already untenable food situation even worse. Southern Africa is just beginning to recover from a scorching two-year drought that brought seven countries to the brink of starvation.
“We have a situation where about 40 million people are food insecure until the next harvest in two months,” David Chimimba Phiri of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization told Foreign Policy. “If the armyworm is not controlled it could have devastating impacts on food security,” he said, speaking from FAO’s regional office in Zimbabwe.
Southern Africa is the new line of defense against an invasive species that the FAO warned could quickly spread to Asia and the Mediterranean, becoming “a major threat to agricultural trade worldwide” if left unchecked. The FAO is convening a meeting with regional leaders to take stock of the new pest invasion next week. South Africa’s agricultural minister said his country is reacting “quickly” to confront the invasive species. Officials don’t yet know the full extent of the damage, though the Zambian government said the caterpillars already affected more than 10 percent of its crops.
Experts suspect the fall armyworm, native to North and South America, first slipped into Africa through food imports.
(S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The battered region braced for heavy rain forecast for today, when the risk of flooding will increase north of San Francisco along the swollen Russian River, which topped its banks during a series of storms last month, the National Weather Service said.
Mudslides blocked a Santa Cruz highway in more than a dozen spots and slammed against a family compound, destroying one house and damaging another.
Jennifer Ray said a mudslide knocked off her sister’s house from its foundation before dragging and overturning several of the family’s cars and damaging her own mobile home. Her family lives on an off-the-grid Los Gatos compound where her father also has a home.
“All we could do is watch as it all came down and trap my mom’s dogs in her car,” Ray told KNTV. The dogs are now safe.
Nearly 5 inches of rain fell in a 12-hour span Wednesday in the San Joaquin Valley, swamping roads and swelling waterways to critical levels.
The water levels at an earthen dam on Lewis Forks south of Yosemite National Park that authorities said was in imminent danger of failing Tuesday had receded by Wednesday evening. But with more rain expected on Thursday and Friday, things might get worse again, said Madera County sheriff’s Cmdr. Bill Ward.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In Marin County, north of San Francisco, authorities sounded the community emergency siren at 8 a.m. when heavy rain and high tide started to send roaring Corte Madera Creek over its banks at the town of Kentfield.
Flooding affected about 1,000 residents, Marin County Fire Battalion Chief Bret McTigue said. Emergency crews in boats and on foot carried out seven rescues for people trapped in their homes or cars as the water rose. About 40 homes had substantial amounts of water in them, McTigue said.
“This storm packed the biggest punch of all the storms we had this year,” McTigue said.
South of San Francisco, one of several rockslides and mudslides overturned a pickup on a state route near Santa Cruz.
The National Weather Service said more than an inch of rain could fall in the region this week.
In the state capital, the Sacramento River was expected to swell to just a few feet below flood stage. The storm also whipped up strong winds, with gusts topping 50 mph throughout the San Joaquin Valley.
It also dumped more than a foot of new snow in the Sierra Nevada, unleashed heavy rain that triggered flooding and mudslides in the valleys around Reno and Carson City, and pushed potentially damaging winds across much of western Nevada.
The National Weather Service issued avalanche, flooding and high-wind warnings up and down the eastern front of the mountains.
A 147-mph wind gust was reported over the ridge top at Alpine Meadows southwest of Tahoe.
Classes were delayed two hours at some schools around Lake Tahoe, where more than a foot of snow was reported at ski resorts. Mount Rose resort southwest of Reno received 20 inches of new snow over a 24-hour period, the weather service said.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or serious property damage.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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In a study published last month, they say the Atlantic circulation pattern that keeps Europe cozy is likely to collapse due to climate change.
The researchers estimate the circulation pattern, best known as the Gulf Stream, could switch off centuries in the future. If that happens, it could cause surface air temperatures in Europe to plunge more than 12 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, and drive intense storms in the Northern Hemisphere.
It’s a scenario scientists have raised before, and that inspired the disaster film “The Day After Tomorrow,” which depicts a Gulf Stream shutdown that provokes a new ice age.
The movie was panned as Hollywood hyperbole, and most scientists have considered the circulation system to be fairly stable. Xie and Liu’s calculations suggest, however, that the ocean pattern is more volatile than previously thought, and closer to the point of breakdown.
“Our contribution is to highlight the possibility that (Atlantic circulation) collapse might be underestimated,” said Xie, a climatologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and a lead author of the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Their research examined the ocean pattern that conveys warm tropical water toward Northern Europe, where it sinks, cools, and flows back to the equator. That cycle moderates weather in Europe, keeping it livable for the continent’s 740 million inhabitants. Turn it off, and Europe gets an icy blast.
“It carries lots of ocean heat northward and warms the European area,” Liu said. “If the circulation is shut down, the heat would shut down. It would bring extremely cold weather to the European countries.” They estimate that the system could collapse roughly 300 years after carbon dioxide levels double over 1990 levels, but note that the timeline could be shorter. That may not ring alarm bells today, but if it happens, the effects would be profound.
Without the warming current, temperatures in the United Kingdom, Iceland and Northwest Europe could drop 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit in winter, and sea ice would expand in the Greenland Sea. The increased temperature difference between North and South would fuel superstorms across the Northern Hemisphere, Xie said. “The storm tracks in the North Atlantic are quite intense,” Xie said. “The storms over the entire Northern Hemisphere will become bigger if the polar caps cool more than the general oceans.”
Meanwhile, the changes would push tropical rain belts southward, drying out parts of Africa and Central America.
That upheaval is likelier than researchers thought, Xie and Liu concluded, after calculating salinity changes in polar water. Salty water is heavier than freshwater, and sinks more readily, driving the Atlantic heat pump. As polar water gets fresher because of ice melt and precipitation, however, the cycle could shut off. “In the extreme case, if you’ve got enough rainfall, then water cannot be dense enough to sink to the bottom, so that would lead to the collapse of (Atlantic circulation,)” Xie said.
Liu’s calculations on salinity were key to that conclusion, Xie said.
“His contribution is to show that we are not far from the tipping point,” Xie said. “It just shows that much worse could happen.”
(Deborah Sullivan Brennan, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Drought, strong winds and high temperatures have stoked a series of fires in central Chile since November.
Environmentalists blame Chile’s unusually dry weather on climate change.
Things went from bad to worse when smaller brush fires converged into a massive wildfire that destroyed the town of Santa Olga Thursday evening, killing 10 people and reducing more than 1,000 buildings to smoldering rubble.
Central Chile is no stranger to natural disasters; it regularly endures floods and earthquakes. But this this different. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet called the fires “the greatest forest disaster” in the country’s history. In the past week, officials estimate the fire engulfed 680,000 acres of land — almost the size of Yosemite National Park in the United States — and it shows no signs of stopping.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The three-story La Hacienda tourist hotel in the southern Huancavelica region had been evacuated before the disaster and its collapse into the Sicra River was filmed by residents in the district of Angaraes.
According to the images captured by eyewitnesses, the foundation of the building was undermined by the rise in the river waters after an intense rainstorm lasting more than four hours.
After it had been confirmed that nobody was injured in the accident, Angaraes Mayor Balvino Zevallos told Canal N television that his office had not authorized the construction of the hotel. “We, at least in this administration, gave nobody permission or authorization to be able to build (in the area),” Zevallos said prior to blaming the prior municipal administration for allowing construction of the hotel and homes near the river.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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More than 11 inches of rain had been been recorded at the Palomar Observatory in North County over a five-day period. The northern and eastern portions of the county received the brunt of the rainfall, while about 2 inches was measured at San Diego International Airport as of early yesterday.
Though the sun peeked through the clouds early Tuesday morning and in the afternoon, rain continued throughout the region, along with snow in the upper elevations. Hail pelted urban East County and San Diego’s back country.
Forecasters said overnight temperatures were expected to drop into the low- to mid-30s in many areas.
A cold air mass will remain entrenched today across southwestern California, the weather service said in an advisory. Patchy frost is expected for portions of the Inland Empire and inland portions of the San Diego County valleys.
On Tuesday, icy highways and mudslides were causing crashes and traffic jams in San Diego County’s mountains and deserts. Interstate 8 was briefly closed in the mountains due to snowfall Monday night.
One man died late Monday night in Escondido after being struck by a car on south Interstate 15 near state Route 78. Authorities believe he was outside his SUV when another car spun out and hit him.
Black ice on the freeway appeared to be the cause of several crashes and spinouts. A 911 caller reported to the CHP that a lot of drivers were stopped on I-8, stuck in the ice and snow.
At least 15 big-rigs were stuck along San Felipe Road at Montezuma Valley Road in the Anza-Borrego desert early Tuesday, according to the California Highway Patrol.
A caller reported that the truckers were trying to take an alternate route around the snowy mountains, but couldn’t go any further because of the weather conditions.
The weather forced the closure of some back country school districts Monday and Tuesday. Today, Warner Springs Unified, Spencer Valley, Julian Union and Julian Union High School districts expect to reopen on a late-start schedule.
In Rainbow, the search continued for a young boy who is feared to have drowned in a swollen Rainbow Creek along with a family friend.
Authorities had not identified the victims, but relatives of the missing boy said he is 5-year-old Phillip Campbell, and the body found in the creek Sunday belonged to 73-year-old Roland Phillips. The two lived in Fallbrook with the boy’s grandmother and legal guardian.
The child was with Phillips on Sunday in a white Toyota Camry, and authorities believe the car was swept away as the driver attempted to cross the surging creek at Fifth Street in Rainbow around 4 p.m. Residents said the creek was as high as most had ever seen it, gorged by days of relentless rain. The car was found several hundred feet south of the street with Phillips’ body close by. There were no signs of the child.
Officials said the creek flows for more than 5 miles across northern Fallbrook until it dumps into the Santa Margarita River, which flows to the Pacific Ocean. Helicopters and drones were used by authorities Tuesday to look for the boy, but the creek remained much higher than normal, even though waters had receded a bit since the height of the storms. Anthony Campbell, the boy’s uncle and a Fallbrook private investigator, said the family is heartbroken. The child recently celebrated his 5th birthday.
Campbell said he didn’t know why the two were together Sunday and driving in such dangerous weather.
“Why they tried to cross that river, that’s one of my main questions,” Campbell said.
The boy reportedly attended the Mike Choate preschool in Fallbrook.
A spokesman for the school said they had not received confirmation from officials or the family that Phillip Campbell was the missing child, but did say they have heard such reports and were fielding questions from parents of other students.
The storms also claimed at least one other life. Adriana Toro, 23, died after being swept into the ocean by high surf Saturday near Santa Cruz Avenue and Bacon Street in Ocean Beach.
(Gary Robbins & Pauline Repard, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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“The windows exploded, the doors flew off the hinges, the sheetrock started to rip off the walls and fly out the windows,” Mitchell said. “The trailer started to lift up. And about that time a tree fell on the trailer, and I think that’s what held the trailer in place from flying away.” An unusual midwinter barrage of tornadoes and thunderstorms over the weekend was blamed for at least 20 deaths across the Deep South. Among them were three people killed at Big Pine Estates, the mobile home park in Albany where the Williams family lives.
A twister slammed into the southwestern Georgia city of 76,000 people on Sunday afternoon, carving a path of destruction a half-mile wide in places and leaving the landscape strewn with broken trees and mangled sheet metal. Few of the roughly 200 homes at the trailer park escaped damage from the tornado, which was rated by forecasters as at least an EF-2, meaning it packed winds of 111 to 135 mph.
In addition to the three dead at Big Pine Estates, a fourth body was discovered at a home just outside the trailer park.
Mitchell lost his home and marveled that he didn’t lose his life, too.
“Something helped us walk out the front door of the house,” he said. “There’s some people who weren’t fortunate enough to have a front door to walk out of.”
Georgia reported 15 deaths Sunday, and four people died Saturday in Mississippi. In northern Florida, a woman died after a tree crashed into her home in Lake City as a storm passed through.
The National Weather Service said 39 possible tornadoes were reported over the weekend. The agency sent out teams to examine the damage and confirm how many of the storms were twisters, which can happen any time of year but are far more common in the spring and early summer.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A man’s body was recovered Monday from a rain-swollen creek in North County, and rescue crews were still searching the area for a child who may have been swept away by the surging water. Meanwhile, authorities released the name of a woman who died Saturday after being swept into the ocean off the cliffs in Ocean Beach.
Days of torrential rain and high winds rendered several of the region’s roads impassable and knocked out power in many neighborhoods. The Santa Margarita River in Oceanside reached flood level, and some school districts in the county canceled classes because of the foul weather.
On Monday evening, eastbound Interstate 8 was shut down in both directions for a few hours near the Golden Acorn Casino & Travel Center because of heavy snow.
“It’s been a heck of a few days,” said Dan Gregoria, a forecaster at the National Weather Service. “We’ve had everything from falling trees to creeks overrunning their banks. This has had a big impact on Southern California.”
Late Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for several counties, including San Diego, dealing with an estimated tens of million dollars in damage from flooding, erosion and mud flows.
The emergency order clears the way for requesting federal emergency assistance funds for highway repairs and reconstruction.
In the rural Rainbow community, firefighters and search-and-rescue crews were called out at about 4:20 p.m. Sunday by residents who said a man and child may have been swept into the creek that flows behind the Rainbow Oaks Restaurant on Fifth Street.
The man’s body was found in the water about two hours later, but because the creek was too treacherous, rescue workers couldn’t recover it until Monday morning, said North County Fire Protection District spokesman John Buchanan.
As the creek receded, the wheels of an upside down white sedan were exposed roughly 25 feet from where the body had been found.
Authorities haven’t identified the victim, but a neighbor said he fears it may have been a man who lives nearby with his son.
Rain was intermittent throughout the day in Rainbow and across San Diego County, and hail was reported in several places, from Oceanside and Bonsall to Scripps Ranch and Jamul. The submerged car was about 100 feet downstream from the Fifth Street crossing, which residents said was closed as the Rainbow Creek surged Sunday afternoon.
Road closures haven’t stopped people from trying to cross that treacherous area in the past, said Rick Uhler, who lives just east of the creek.
“I’ve been here 15 years and have actually watched cars get washed off the road while they try to cross,” he said.
He and rescue officials estimated the creek was 8 feet higher than normal on Sunday.
“It was the worst I’ve ever seen,” Uhler said. “This is a tragedy.”
The powerful storms also produced 10-foot-plus waves along the coast. One wave swept two women into the sea at Sunset Cliffs on Saturday evening. One of the victims, identified as 23-year-old Adriana Toro on Monday, died at a hospital, officials said. A few trouble spots plagued San Diego County roads on Monday. Several streets in Mission Valley near the San Diego River flooded, and a chunk of East Alvarado Road in Fallbrook was washed away, prompting a closure.
A large tree fell into Friars Road near Rancho Mission Road, blocking three lanes. It took San Diego city crews about an hour to clear the mess.
There could be more messiness early today. Forecasters say the storm will drop more showers before it fully pushes off to the east. The system was also expected to drop 5 to 9 inches of snow in Julian, and up to 1 foot at Mount Laguna.
The weather should turn seasonal by Wednesday, with mostly sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-60s in San Diego. The county has been hit by three potent storms since Thursday — the wettest period the region has experienced since December 2010. The latest system caused a deluge on Sunday and early Monday in North County, which was hit harder than many other areas.
The system produced high winds on Sunday that snapped trees countywide. A large eucalyptus fell, crushing five vehicles in University City. It was similar to an incident that occurred at UC San Diego on Thursday. Downed eucalyptus trees also crushed a house and a car in Vista on Saturday.
(Gary Robbins, Lyndsay Winkley & J. Harry Jones, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The severe weather threat was still continuing Sunday night in some parts, extending into the Carolinas and north Florida. At least 14 people were killed Sunday in Georgia as the fast-moving storms tore across the state throughout the day, with at least one deadly tornado reported before dawn and violent storms still rumbling after nightfall.
Four people were killed Saturday in Mississippi when the system began its deadly assault. “There are houses just demolished,” said Norma Ford, who rushed out with other relatives Sunday evening after hearing a reported twister had overturned her nephew’s mobile home in the southwestern Georgia city of Albany, the region’s largest city with some 76,000 residents.
She said downed trees and power lines made roads impassable, forcing them to walk the 2 miles to the mobile home park to check on her relatives. She said her nephew was fine, but several of his neighbors’ homes were destroyed.
Georgia’s latest three deaths were confirmed Sunday evening in Dougherty County, where Albany is located, said Catherine Howden, spokeswoman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.
Sebon Burns, the county’s deputy chief for emergency management, said search and rescue efforts were continuing Sunday night following reports of injuries and extensive damage.
Yet the day’s deadliest toll came before daybreak Sunday when an apparent tornado blew through a mobile home park in south Georgia — about 60 miles southeast of Albany — shearing away siding, upending homes and killing seven people. Coroner Tim Purvis of south Georgia’s Cook County confirmed that seven people died at the mobile home park, where about roughly half of the 40 homes were “leveled.” Georgia state emergency officials initially reported an eighth death in that county, but Howden later said that was incorrect.
The other deaths in Georgia were reported elsewhere.
President Donald Trump said Sunday he had spoken with Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal and “expressed our sincere condolences for the lives taken.” “Tornadoes were vicious and powerful and strong, and they suffered greatly,” Trump said during a White House ceremony where he was swearing in aides. “So we’ll be helping out the state of Georgia.”
While the central part of the U.S. has a fairly defined tornado season — the spring — the risk of tornadoes “never really goes to zero” for most of the year in the Southeast, said Patrick Marsh of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. January tornado outbreaks are rare but not unprecedented, particularly in the South. Data from the Storm Prediction Center shows that, over the past decade, the nation has seen an average 38 tornadoes in January, ranging from a high of 84 in 2008 to just four in 2014.
The last time the prediction center issued a high-risk weather outlook — where forecasters are very confident of a tornado outbreak — was in 2014. Sunday marked only the third time since 2000 that any part of Florida had been at a high-risk for severe weather.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The significant low edged over the South Island late on Thursday afternoon, causing landslips and snow, and went on to lash the country throughout the weekend.
Auckland in the North Island suffered major power outages, while rivers on the west coast of the South Island rose rapidly in a matter of hours, lapping at road-sides and carrying large debris, including trees washed down from the Southern Alps.
Warnings and road closures are still in place in the central and southern parts of the South Island and the Southland farming town of Waikaia remains cut off, with soaked pastures threatening farm infrastructure and farmers urgently evacuating livestock to higher ground.
A landslip also buried the famous Sylvia Flats hot pools, and residents of Dunedin reported having to burn their fences to stay warm after being caught off guard by the unseasonal weather.
In Greymouth, which was hit by heavy rainfall, residents made the best of a wet situation.
The MetService said “extreme” weather events such as the weather bomb were becoming increasingly common in New Zealand, which already had challenging weather patterns because of its close proximity to Antarctica and its narrow, alpine environment.
“This weather bomb was caused by a burst of really hot air coming out of Australia and forming a low when it moved into the Tasman Sea, and then picking up moisture and increasing in intensity,” said Mads Naeraa-Spiers, a forecaster for the MetService.
“It brought heavy rain, gale-force winds and cold-wet southerlies. Cardrona snowfield looked like it should the middle of winter, not summer.”
Naerra-Spiers said rapid floods on the west coast were an ongoing concern, while high winds had flipped cars and caused “flying trampolines”.
“New Zealand is prone to extreme and rapid variations in temperature and it can get really cold regardless of the season because of our proximity to Antarctica. That said while it was snowing in the South Island some parts of the North Island were recording temperatures in the high 20s [deg C].”
On Monday afternoon the Met Service issued another severe weather warning for most parts of the South Island, expected to arrive by Tuesday afternoon and bring gales and heavy rains.
Naerra-Spiers said the unseasonable weather was set to continue for at least another couple of weeks, and warm, stable weather was not expected until February and March.
“We seem to be stuck somewhat in this pattern of systems coming out of Australia, we are not out of the woods yet,” he said. “New Zealand is an extreme place weather-wise but we do seem to be experiencing a lot more severe events and they do have quite a heavy impact on the country.”
(Eleanor Ainge Roy; theguardian.com)
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“As soon as I did that it seemed like we were flying in the air,” he recalled Saturday. Walls began to collapse and the house began to blow apart as his daughters screamed. But he held on tight.
When the tornado finished ripping its way through their Hattiesburg home he and the two girls were under a wall. Their house appears to be a total loss, bedding tossed 50 feet into a tree and their oldest daughter asking, “Is God mad at us?” But they’re alive.
“I don’t see how we survived this,” said his fiancée, Shanise. Across the tornado’s devastating path, families were taking stock of the damage, hugging friends and neighbors, grieving over the remains of their homes and in many cases mourning those killed.
Authorities said four people died when the twister touched down around 3:35 a.m. Saturday. Shannon Hefferan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said damage reports indicate it touched down in Lamar County before ripping into Forrest County and skirting south of downtown Hattiesburg — the state’s fourth largest city.
The tornado continued across the Leaf River into neighboring Petal. Emergency management officials said the severe weather also damaged Perry and Jones counties.
Teams are out assessing the damage. Already they know that the tornado was accompanied by a deluge of rain — 3.42 inches over a six-to-seven-hour period Saturday morning — Hefferan said.
And the bad weather isn’t over yet. The weather service anticipated another round Saturday night in parts of southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi, warning that hail, gusting winds and tornadoes were possible.
Forrest County Coroner Butch Benedict on Saturday afternoon released the names of the dead: Earnest Perkins, 58; Cleveland Madison, 20; David Wayne McCoy, 47; and Simona Cox, 72. Monica McCarty lost her father, Perkins, who died in the same trailer park where she and her boyfriend live, and her son, Madison, who was apparently crushed to death while in bed at her mother’s house, where he lived.
Standing amid the tornado’s carnage, McCarty wept as her boyfriend, Tackeem Molley, comforted her.
“They couldn’t get him out of the house. They said he was lying in the bed,” Mc-Carty said of her son.
Molley said he and Mc-Carty were in a trailer when the storm hit. Molley, whose bare foot was bandaged, said he climbed out through a hole in what had either been the trailer’s roof or wall.
“I had a little hole I could squeeze out of,” he said.
In the surrounding neighborhood, power company trucks ran up and down the streets and city backhoe plowed debris from the road. Dozens of homes were damaged.
Sheet metal was strewn everywhere. Trees turned into spindly sticks were lying across power lines. At least three nearby churches had sustained damage.
Mayor Johnny DuPree has signed an emergency declaration for the city, which reported “significant injuries” and structural damage.
Greg Flynn of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said “massive damage” was reported. At least 50 people have been treated for injuries at two area hospitals, he said.
Gov. Phil Bryant visited the damaged areas Saturday. Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney said insured damaged is likely to top $200 million. “You’ve got so many buildings that are for all practical purposes totally destroyed,” said Andy Case, a disaster recovery specialist with the Department of Insurance. Emergency management officials reported 16,000 customers were without power as power companies rushed to restore electricity where damage allowed.
(Jeff Amy & Rebecca Santana, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The county also was inundated with rain, as an inch to 2 inches fell in many areas as the second storm in two days slogged through the region.
The third storm is expected to hit Sunday, and could last until early Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.
It was a stressful day for almost everyone.
North County firefighters received a report that a man was struggling in Buena Creek, which runs between Carlsbad and Oceanside. The Coast Guard dispatched a helicopter crew, but no one was found. The search will resume when water levels subside.
In South County, four students at Chula Vista Middle School suffered minor injuries when a tree toppled onto the school grounds early in the afternoon. They were taken to a hospital as a precaution, authorities said.
Friday’s system blew ashore just before dawn and slickened freeways from Oceanside to Imperial Beach. The rain slowed traffic. But the bigger problems arose from the winds, notably at UC San Diego, where gusts toppled a eucalyptus tree, damaging five vehicles about 8:30 a.m.
The winds grew stronger in the afternoon, hitting 52 mph in Carlsbad and 48 mph at Coronado, making smaller cars shudder on the open-air span.
The weather service says winds were even stronger inland, reaching 72 mph in Burns Canyon, 60 mph at Palomar Mountain and 53 mph at Julian, which also was coping with heavy rain.
The weather was far more serene at the top of Mount Laguna, where snow steadily fell into the afternoon. Forecasters estimate that the mountain’s peak will have 12 to 18 inches of snow today.
The weather service projected surf today to reach 10 to 16 feet at some South County beaches. Waves slapped the bottom of the Ocean Beach Pier on Friday. Forecasters warned the public to stay off coastal rocks and jetties.
On Friday, rain and winds contributed to power outages in virtually every part of the county, from El Cajon/Granite Hills, Torrey Pines/University City and Spring Valley areas in the morning. San Marcos also was hit, as was Valley Center, Mira Mesa, Scripps Ranch, Sunset Cliffs, Del Mar and Oceanside.
The rains that drenched the county on Thursday and on Friday are likely to weaken the root system of some trees, making them more prone to fall if Sunday’s storm produces a lot of wind.
During the 72-hour period that ended at 3 p.m. on Friday, Mount Woodson received more than 3 inches of rain, and Bonsall got nearly as much, as did Skyline Ranch. Fallbrook reported 2.3 inches of precipitation, while Chula Vista received 1.4 inches.
Since the rainy season began on Oct. 1, San Diego International Airport has recorded 6.7 inches. Forecasters say there’s an outside chance that the airport will reach 10 inches by late Monday or early Tuesday — the amount that the city averages for a full year.
Street closures: La Jolla Boulevard; Mission Boulevard; Rancho Mission and Ward roads; San Diego Mission Road near Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala; Avenida del Rio (to south Fashion Valley mall); La Media and Airway roads in Otay Mesa; Saturn Boulevard; Carroll Canyon Road; Estuary Way and Roselle Street in the Carmel Valley area; and Sorrento Valley and Carmel Mountain roads.
Elsewhere in the county: Quarry Road in Spring Valley; Lemon Crest Road in Lakeside; and Country Club Road in San Marcos. Chains are required on much of the Sunrise Highway through the Laguna Mountains.
The California Highway Patrol reported that an oak tree fell in Fallbrook, at Old Highway 395 and East Mission Road. Another oak tree, reported as about 100 years old, fell and blocked traffic lanes at Harbison Canyon Road and East Noakes Street in the East County community of Harbison Canyon. A driver reportedly crashed into the tree, but no injuries were reported.
Dozens of crashes clogged the county’s freeways most of the day. Many small mudslides and boulders also blocked road lanes, including at Lyons Valley Road in East County. Forecasters say that coastal areas will get 1 to 1.5 inches of rain, the valleys and foothills will get up to 2, the mountains will get 2 to 4 and Mount Laguna will get 12 to 18 inches of snow. The white stuff is already falling on the summit.
The rain is expected to close Fashion Valley Road in Mission Valley today, due to runoff on the San Diego River.
(Gary Robbins & Pauline Repard, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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But for the loved ones of at least 16 others believed still trapped in the doomed mountain resort, the agonizing wait to learn their relatives’ fate dragged on.
Cheers of “Bravo! Bravo!” rang out early Friday as the first survivors were pulled from the debris, boosting spirits two days after the massive snow slide buried some 30 people. Four children were among those found alive.
“Today is a day of hope. There’s a miracle underway,” declared Ilario Lacchetta, mayor of the tiny town of Farindola, where the hotel is located.
The rescues buoyed spirits after four bodies were discovered earlier in the rubble of the luxury Hotel Rigopiano, 112 miles northeast of Rome, where the avalanche dumped 16 1⁄2 feet of snow on top of the resort Wednesday. Relatives of the missing rushed from the rescue operations center in the mountains to the seaside hospital where the survivors were taken for treatment in hopes that their loved ones were among the lucky few to be found.
First word of the survivors came around 11 a.m. when a boy wearing blue snow pants and a matching ski jacket emerged through a tunnel dug in the snow more than 42 hours after the avalanche struck.
It was Gianfilippo Parete, the 8-year-old son of Giampiero Parete, a chef vacationing at the resort who was outside the hotel when the deluge of snow hit and first sounded the alarm by calling his boss.
Emergency crews mussed the boy’s hair in celebration. “Bravo! Bravo!” they cheered.
Next to emerge was the boy’s mother, Adriana Vranceanu, 43, wearing red snow pants and appearing alert as she told rescuers that her 6-year-old daughter, Ludovica, was still trapped inside. Mother and son were taken by stretcher to a helicopter for the ride out.
They were then reunited with Parete at a hospital in the coastal town of Pescara, suffering from hypothermia and dehydration but otherwise in good health, hospital officials said. “They had heavy clothes,” said Dr. Tullio Spina, director of the hospital’s intensive care and anesthesia unit. “They had ski caps to cover themselves. They remained away from the snow and cold, they were always inside the structure. That’s why the hypothermia wasn’t severe.”
Little Ludovica was rescued several hours later and upon emerging asked for cookies: Ringos, an Italian version of Oreos, said Quintino Marcella, the restaurant owner who rallied the rescue after getting the phone call from her father.
Some 30 people were believed trapped inside the hotel in the Gran Sasso mountain range when the avalanche hit after days of winter storms that dumped nearly 10 feet of snow in some places. The region was also rocked by four earthquakes on Wednesday, though it was not clear if they set off the avalanche.
As the rescue work continued, relatives of the missing gathered anxiously at the Pescara hospital waiting for word of their loved ones.
“I just hope that my niece and her boyfriend will make it out of there,” said Melissa Riccardo. “We came to see if she was here.” A few erupted in frustration at an evening news conference.
“The only news I have has been from the Internet. They haven’t given me anything direct,” said Domenico Angelozzi, awaiting news of his sister and brother-in-law. Marco Bini, a member of a police squad participating in the rescue, said the team opened a hole in the hotel roof Thursday night but “heard nothing.” Still, they persisted, following a floor plan of the hotel until they found signs of life.
Upon seeing their rescuers, the survivors “called them angels,” he said. “They weren’t in a lot of space” but it was enough to survive, an area probably protected by the snow, Bini told Italian state TV. Late Friday, civil protection chief Fabrizio Cari said a total of 10 people had been found alive: Five who had been extracted, including four children. Rescuers were working to remove the rest, he said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Two people escaped the devastation at the Hotel Rigopiano in the mountains of central Italy and called for help. But it took hours for responders to verify their claims and arrive at the remote earthquake-stricken zone. They worked through the night, but hopes were dimming of finding survivors.
Days of heavy snowfall had knocked out electricity and phone lines in many central Italian towns and hamlets, and the hotel phones went down early Wednesday, just as the first of four powerful earthquakes struck the region. It wasn’t clear if the quakes triggered the avalanche. But emergency responders said the force of the massive snow slide collapsed a wing of the hotel that faced the mountain and rotated another off its foundation, pushing it downhill.
“The situation is catastrophic,” said Marshall Lorenzo Gagliardi of the alpine rescue service, who was among the first at the scene. “The mountain-facing side is completely destroyed and buried by snow: the kitchen, hotel rooms, hall.”
The hotel in the mountain town of Farindola in Italy’s Abruzzo region, is about 30 miles from the coastal city of Pescara, at an altitude of 3,940 feet. The area, which has been buried under snowfall for days, is located in the broad swath of central Italy that was jolted by Wednesday’s quakes, one of which had a 5.7 magnitude. Farindola Mayor Ilario Lacchetta estimated that more than 30 people were unaccounted for: the hotel had 24 guests, four of them children, and 12 employees onsite.
Accounts emerged of guests messaging friends for help Wednesday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Premier Paolo Gentiloni said it was a “difficult day” for Italy.
The first tremor, with a preliminary magnitude of 5.3, hit Montereale at about 10:25 a.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A second quake with a magnitude of 5.7 hit the same area about 50 minutes later, and 10 minutes later a third was measured at magnitude 5.3. Several hours later a 5.1-magnitude quake shook the same area.
Throughout the day, seismologists registered more than 100 aftershocks. Several towns and hamlets in the quake zone had already sounded the alarm in recent days that they were without electricity and were isolated from highways due to the unusually heavy snowfall that has blanketed much of central Italy. The quakes only made matters worse, knocking out some cellphone service, hampering emergency response and sending quake-weary residents into panic. The Defense Ministry promised to send in army units to help. A hotel in Abruzzo was hit by an avalanche and local media reported three people were feared missing. There were 20 people plus staff at the hotel, regional president Luciano D'Alfonso wrote on Facebook.
Twenty firemen, two mountain rescue teams, six ambulances and local police were heading for the site, but the weather could mean it took them hours to arrive, a civil protection agency spokesman said.
The only known fatality, a man aged about 82, was crushed after the snow and one of the tremors collapsed the roof of a farm building, a fire service spokesman said.
“The situation is really getting extreme,” said the mayor of Canzano, Franco Campitelli. “It’s snowing hard. We’re without electricity. We hope the army gets here soon with snow plows or we risk being completely isolated,” he told Sky TG24.
The quakes, which had their epicenters in the L’Aquila region, were felt as far away as Rome, 100 miles to the southwest.
In the Italian capital, the subway was closed for hours as a precaution, parents were asked to pick up their children from some schools, and offices, banks and shops were evacuated temporarily.
But elsewhere in Rome at the Vatican, Pope Francis’ Wednesday general audience went off without a hitch.
In the Umbrian pilgrimage town of Assisi, friars closed the Santa Maria degli Angeli basilica as a precaution. The basilica hosts the famed Porziuncola chapel, birthplace of the Franciscan order of the pope’s namesake, St. Francis of Assisi.
Three quakes in mountainous central Italy last year killed nearly 300 people in and around the medieval town of Amatrice and caused significant damage to older buildings. The tower of one of Amatrice’s churches toppled in Wednesday’s quakes.
L’Aquila itself suffered a devastating 6.3-magnitude earthquake in 2009 that killed more than 300 people.
Mayor Maurizio Pelosi of Capitignano, near the epicenter of Wednesday’s quakes, said even before the earth shook many roads into and out of the town were blocked due to the snow.
A hotel worker in town, Giuseppe Di Felice, told state-run RAI radio people couldn’t get out of their homes. “It’s apocalyptic,” he said.
(Nicole Winfield, ASSOCIATED PRESS; REUTERS)
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Ice storm warnings and winter weather advisories were in effect for parts of 10 states, stretching from New Mexico to Wisconsin from the storm that has clobbered the region since Friday, according to the National Weather Service.
Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri were particularly hard hit. The weather service also issued a tornado watch for large parts of Texas and a tornado warning for just west of Waco.
Temperatures will start to move above freezing beginning today for large parts of the region, said Chris Jakub, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wichita, Kan.
“When we get our significant freezing rain and icing in the Central Plains, it is usually a two- to three-day event,” Jakub added. “This is going to continue through Sunday night and into the morning.”
A quarter to a half inch of ice was forecast for most of Kansas, the Weather Service said. Ice downed trees and power lines, particularly in northwest Oklahoma, where thousands of people were without power.
At least three people died in traffic accidents in Missouri due to icy conditions, the Missouri Department of Transportation said. There was one weather-related traffic fatality in Kansas, local media reported, and another in Oklahoma.
(REUTERS)
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Winter storms are typically associated with heavy snowfall, but the one hammering the southern Plains and Midwest dumped freezing rain, a condition even harder for road crews to treat. A slick roadway was suspected in a fatal wreck in Missouri, where long stretches of Interstate 44 and Interstate 55 were ice-covered.
More freezing precipitation was expected in parts of the nation’s central corridor throughout most of the holiday weekend.
“There’s no mystery to driving on ice,” Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. Al Nothum said. “It’s impossible to do. You have to slow your speed down.”
Hundreds of schools were closed, including several college campuses. St. Louis closed all city operations as it braced for its worst ice storm in at least a decade. Several Missouri prisons halted visiting hours.
The forecast prompted the NFL to move Sunday’s AFC divisional playoff game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas Chiefs to Sunday evening to allow more time to treat roads and parking lots at Arrowhead Stadium. The game was scheduled to kick off a noon but will start at 7:20 p.m. The weather atmosphere was so turbulent that thunder rumbled as freezing rain fell in Joplin, Mo.
Several utility companies brought in all available crews who were working extended shifts in anticipation of heavy ice snapping trees and power lines. Scattered outages were reported, including about 2,500 in Springfield, Mo. The Kansas National Guard mobilized about 200 soldiers to help first responders and stranded motorists throughout the weekend.
Forecasters issued ice storm warnings from the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles into southern Illinois, with up to 1 inch of ice expected in some locations. Precipitation is forecast to fall in waves through Sunday. Residents were taking the warnings seriously. Grocery stores were selling out of bread, milk and other necessities, and hardware stores were running out of flashlights, batteries and alternative energy sources.
“They’re grabbing generators, and I’m sold out,” said Raymond Bopp, assistant manager of the Woodward Ace Hardware store in Woodward, Okla., about 140 miles northwest of Oklahoma City.
Several states activated emergency management procedures. In Oklahoma, Gov. Mary Fallin declared a disaster emergency. The state set up generators and supplies at temporary shelters in the northern part of the state. Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens and top cabinet officials manned an emergency operations center. Kansas officials were still waiting for the worst of it, with freezing rain in much of the state expected to arrive today.
Missouri Department of Transportation crews were working 12-hour shifts to treat roads and highways, said Linda Wilson Horn, a spokeswoman for MoDOT.
“It’ll be a long, constant battle for our crews,” Horn said.
(Jim Salter, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The weekly drought report by government and academic water experts showed 42 percent of the state free from drought. This time last year, 97 percent of the state was in drought.
Southern California, also receiving welcome rain from the storms, remains in drought but has experienced a dramatic reduction in the severity. Just 2 percent of the state, a swath between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, remains in the sharpest category of drought that includes drying wells, reservoirs and streams, and widespread crop losses. Forty-three percent of the state was in that direst category this time a year ago.
California will remain in a drought emergency until Gov. Jerry Brown lifts or eases the declaration he issued in January 2014 while standing in a bare Sierra Nevada meadow that one of the state’s driest stretches on record had robbed of all snow.
State officials said this week that Brown will likely wait until the end of California’s winter snow and rain season to make a decision on revising the drought declaration.
For Northern California, at least, the onslaught of storms that brought the Sierra its heaviest snow in six years and forced voluntary evacuations of thousands of people as rivers surged will likely make it a much clearer call for the governor, water experts said.
“It’s hard to say we have a drought here right now,” said Jay Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California at Davis, an area near Sacramento that was awash after its heaviest rain in 20 years.
Lund spoke on his way back from taking students to see flood gates on the Sacramento River, opened by state officials Tuesday for the first time in 12 years to ease pressure on river banks and levees.
The opened gates were spilling a 2-mile torrent of excess water onto public lands in the Sacramento Valley, alongside the equally raging Sacramento, the state’s largest river.
More storms Thursday raised fears of mudslides in Southern California and clogged commutes statewide. The Russian River in Northern California’s wine region was among the tributaries still in flood. Residents in the resort town of Guerneville used canoes and kayaks to get around flooded areas, and even inside their inundated homes.
Rain and snow continued into Thursday afternoon, but officials said the heaviest of the back-to-back systems fueled by an “atmospheric river” weather phenomenon had passed after delivering the heaviest rain in a decade.
“Everything is on the way down,” said Steve Anderson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Monterey. The past week’s storms were enough to double the snowpack in parts of the Sierra, runoff from which provides Californians with much of their year-round water supply. Stations up and down the mountain chain were reporting twice the amount of normal rain and snow for this time of year.
The state’s reservoirs were brimming above average for the first time in six years. “It’s been so wet in some places this winter we would do pretty well even if it tapered off right now,” said Daniel Swain, a fellow at the University of California at Los Angeles whose weather blog has been a closely watched chronicle of the drought.
(Ellen Knickmeyer, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Reports of the flooding started about 2 a.m. Wednesday as water from a quickly rising creek in the small rural town of Hollister deluged homes on a two-lane stretch of road called Lovers Lane. Torrents of rain gushed down the street even after rescuers finished evacuating residents more than seven hours later. Some homes had mud lines about five feet high, marking how far the water rose. The water by that time was receding but still waist-deep in places.
“It’s just a lot of water,” said Kevin O’Neill, emergency services manager for San Benito County. “Fields that look like lakes. The ground just can’t soak it up. Vehicles that are partly submerged, homes have water damage.” Lifelong Hollister resident Ted Zanella, 54, called the flooding a rare event.
“I feel bad for the people who were evacuated,” he said, “but in a weird way, it’s Mother Nature’s way.”
Forecasters said precipitation would continue through today, but the brunt of the back-to-back systems fueled by an “atmospheric river” weather phenomenon had passed after delivering the heaviest rain in a decade to parts of Northern California and Nevada.
The massive rain and snowfall that prompted a rare blizzard warning in parts of the Sierra Nevada mountains is helping much of Northern California recover from a six-year drought. The series of storms has also added 39 billion gallons of water to Lake Tahoe since Jan. 1. Stormy weather extended north where Portland and southwest Washington were slammed with a surprising foot of snow, unusual for an area that normally sees rain. Crater Lake National Park in Oregon closed Tuesday and into Wednesday with more than 8 feet of snow on the ground.
The staggering snow totals in the Sierra Nevada —up to 11 feet the past week at some ski resorts around Lake Tahoe — was great for easing drought conditions but bad for area ski enthusiasts as road closures and avalanche threats kept most resorts closed for the third day in a row Wednesday.
About 2,000 people in Wilton, a rural community near Sacramento, were asked to leave their homes Tuesday evening as emergency crews worked to try to bolster a levee alongside the Cosumnes River.
The river reached flood level early Wednesday, leaving some farmland flooded and roads blocked off.
“I haven’t heard of anyone who actually had damage yet, but the water is still coming downhill,” said Mary Campfield, 62, who has lived in Wilton for 31 years. “Outreach was good, and people are watching out for each other.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Emergency crews and officials worked through Tuesday to try to bolster the levee in Sacramento County along the Cosumnes River, before deciding to ask 2,000 residents of Wilton to voluntarily evacuate before dark.
Sacramento County emergency services official Mary Jo Flynn said water was expected to spill over the levee before midnight, flooding low-lying roads and buildings with up to 1 foot of water.
In the city of Sacramento, workers wrenched open more than a half-dozen century-old spill gates on the state’s biggest river, the Sacramento, to ease pressure on the swollen river and on levees there.
North of San Francisco, people were evacuated from businesses and homes in downtown San Anselmo after a rain-swollen creek broke its banks. The Corte Madera Creek was flowing 1 foot over flood stage Tuesday evening, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office said.
Some 3,000 Sonoma County residents were under an evacuation advisory as the Russian River rose again under pounding rain. Officials red-tagged seven homes, ordering residents out, when a rain-soaked embankment came crashing down.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Russian River in Sonoma rose to its highest level since 2006, spilling over its banks and forcing the closure of schools and roads.
The weekend storm dumped more than a foot of water on parts of Northern California, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate and leaving thousands without power. The system raised rivers over their banks and toppled trees, among them the fabled giant sequoia dubbed “Pioneer Cabin” that had a drive-thru tunnel carved into its base more than a century ago.
Another strong storm was bearing down on the region and expected to hit today.
Such gaps between storms are “what saves us from the big water,” Fire Chief Max Ming said in the Russian River town of Forestville, where rescuers launched rafts and used a helicopter to search for people cut off by rising water. “People hunker down and wait for it to get past.”
The back-to-back storms that hit California and Nevada since last week are part of an “atmospheric river” weather system that draws precipitation from the Pacific Ocean as far west as Hawaii. That kind of system, also known as the “pineapple express,” poses catastrophic risks for areas hit by the heaviest rain.
“It’s been about 10 years since we’ve experienced this kind of rainfall,” said Steve Anderson, a National Weather Service forecaster. “We’re getting a little bit of a break today, but we have another storm system arriving tomorrow that’s not quite as potent but could still cause problems.”
Avalanche concerns kept some California ski areas closed for a second day Monday in the Sierra Nevada. Forecasters said more snow and rain was on the way.
The Russian River is prone to flooding, but this year’s flood has been particularly worrisome because it threatened to topple trees weakened by six years of drought.
A flood warning for the Russian River was in effect, along with a high wind watch planned for this afternoon and evening, Anderson said.
Yosemite National Park will reopen the valley floor to day visitors today after it was closed through the weekend and Monday because of a storm-swollen river, park spokesman Scott Gediman said.
Over the weekend, trees crashed against cars and homes and blocked roads in the San Francisco Bay Area. Stranded motorists had to be rescued from cars stuck on flooded roads. The city itself got just over 2 inches of rain.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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On 9 January, the Continental Arctic (cA) air mass extended from Germany across the Balkans, resulting in deep snow in Greece and strong bora winds affecting Croatia in particular. In addition, heavy snow in central and southern Italy was the result of cold air flowing across the warmer Adriatic Sea. In total it has caused over 60 deaths.
During the first week of 2017, 46 (mainly homeless) people died from the cold in Poland, when temperatures fell below −20 °C (−4 °F).Free public transport was provided in Warsaw and Krakow because of the smog caused by the cold weather. Seven cold-related deaths have been reported in Italy, mainly of homeless people and parts of the country have experienced exceptional falls of snow, high winds and freezing temperatures. Several airports were closed, including those in Sicily, Bari and Brindisi. Ice formed on the Adriatic Sea, and schools in the south of the country were closed.
Eight deaths from the cold were reported in the Czech Republic, mainly of homeless people. The bodies of three migrants were found near the border between Bulgaria and Turkey. Doctor without Borders has raised concerns about the risk to migrants, especially around 2,000 people living in Belgrade. The Bosphorus was closed to shipping after a snowstorm that also affected services in Istanbul, Turkey, where more than 650 flights were grounded. Blizzards in Bulgaria also affected parts of Romania and Ukraine, and shipping on the Danube was suspended.
Deaths have also been reported from Russia and Ukraine. Temperatures in some parts of European Russia fell to below −40 °C (−40 °F) setting records across the region. About 100,000 residents of settlements in Moscow Oblast such as Lyubertsy, Lytkarino, Dzerzhinsky and Kotelniki have lost electricity due to extremely harsh temperatures.
7 January was reported to be the coldest Orthodox Christmas in Moscow in 120 years, at −29.9 °C (−21.8 °F). The lowest temperature in western Europe was recorded in the Swiss village of La Brévine, also at −29.9 °C (−21.8 °F) on 6 January. On 8 January a low temperature record for this day in Hungary was set in Tésa, at −28.1 °C (−18.6 °F).[18] On the same day a record low temperature in Tver Oblast, Russia, was −35.7 °C (−32.3 °F), which surpassed the previous 1987 record for that day.
(WIKIPEDIA, accessed 1/17/17)
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Forecasters expect light rain in the morning, then stronger showers in the afternoon, some of which could extend into the evening rush hour.
Inland valleys and foothill communities will receive slightly more rain, and the local mountains could receive a half-inch of rain, the weather service says. San Diego will feel just a trace of the conveyor belt-like plume of moisture that originated east-southeast of Hawaii and tracked into Northern and Central California. Forecasters also refer to the phenomenon as an atmosphere river. The system has dumped several feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada, which provides much of the water consumed in California.
The weather service says that more storms will cycle through Northern California later this week. San Diego is expected to receive showers on Wednesday, and possibly on Thursday and Friday.
Since the rainy season began on Oct. 1, San Diego International Airport has recorded 5.06 inches of rain, which is about 1.5 inches above normal.
(Gary Robbins, SD UNION TRIBUNE)
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Crews in California cleared trees and debris Sunday following mudslides caused by steady rain accompanying the system that could dump 15 inches in the foothills of the Sierra and heavy snow on the mountain tops before it’s expected to move east early today. Forecasters warned a second storm is expected to hit the already drenched area tonight.
In Nevada, emergency officials voluntarily evacuated 1,300 homes in a south Reno neighborhood Sunday afternoon as the Truckee River began to leave its banks and drainage ditches started to overflow south of U.S. Interstate 80.
No injuries had been reported, but high waters forced the closure of numerous area roads, a series of bridges in downtown Reno and a pair of Interstate 80 offramps in neighboring Sparks, where the worst flooding is expected to send several feet of water early today into an industrial area where 25,000 people work.
The storm surge stretching all the way from Hawaii — called an atmospheric river — comes as California enters its sixth year of drought. Each drop of rain is welcomed, but officials said several more big storms are needed to replenish depleted groundwater supplies.
In Northern California, toppled trees on Sunday crashed against cars and homes or blocked roads in the San Francisco Bay Area, and officials rescued stranded motorists from cars stuck on flooded roads on Sunday. A giant tree fell across the southbound lanes of Interstate 230 in Hillsborough, injuring one driver who couldn’t brake in time and drove into the tree. A woman was killed Saturday by a falling tree while she took a walk on a San Francisco Bay Area golf course.
There were mudslides and flooding throughout Northern California that led to road closures, especially in the North Bay, one of the areas hardest hit and where the Napa River jumped its banks.
Farther north, the U.S. 395 highway was temporarily closed in both directions in Mono County because of flooding.
Authorities were watching rising water levels of several rivers, including the Cosumnes, Truckee, Merced, American and Russian. All roads leading to Yosemite National Park’s valley floor remained closed amid fears that the Merced River could overflow its banks and cause major flooding.
Relatively mild temperatures were driving up the snowline to above 9,000 feet throughout the Sierra Nevada, causing runoff in the lower elevations, where the ground is already saturated. Forecasters said Sunday it was tracking pretty much as they expected.
“For forecasters who’ve been here a decade or more, this is one of the most impressive atmospheric setups that we have seen in a long time for potential flooding in the region,"
said Chris Smallcomb, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Reno.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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That storm was a prime example of what a new study suggests is a remarkable feature regarding Atlantic hurricanes and their impact: When climatic conditions favor a lot of hurricane activity, they also create a buffer zone that weakens the storms as they approach the coastal United States.
“It’s an incredibly lucky phenomenon,” said James Kossin, an atmospheric scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the author of the study, published Wednesday in Nature, which looked at hurricane data from 1947 to 2015. “It’s given us a really nice barrier and decreased our threats.”
On the other hand, the study points out, in periods of low hurricane activity, storms - especially major ones - are more likely to intensify before making landfall, potentially leading to more damage. The finding may help explain what has been described as a “hurricane drought” in recent years, in which, despite greater hurricane activity, fewer destructive storms have hit the Eastern United States. Some scientists think the Atlantic may now be entering a quieter period, which could result in more of the stronger storms making landfall.
It is unclear what impact global warming and the continuing rise in ocean temperatures may have on the trend.
Scientists say a longterm pattern of climate variability called the Atlantic meridional mode helps determine the level of hurricane activity. In one phase, the mode results in warmer surface water in the tropical Atlantic and less wind shear, or changes in wind speed with altitude. Both circumstances favor the formation of hurricanes. But at the same time, conditions near the coastal United States are the opposite: colder water, which provides less energy to a hurricane, and more wind shear, which tends to rip a storm apart. So although more hurricanes may form in the open ocean, as they approach land they are more likely to weaken. This protective barrier, as Kossin called it, does not exist in the Caribbean.
In a period of less hurricane activity, the mode shifts and opposite conditions prevail, both in the ocean and along the coast. That means fewer hurricanes but a greater likelihood of their intensifying near the United States. Kossin’s research found that in the most recent quieter period, from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s, hurricanes that did form were up to six times more likely to intensify rapidly near land, with wind speeds increasing more than 15 mph an hour over six hours.
Although it is difficult to single out any one factor in the evolution of a particular hurricane, Kossin said that Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm that devastated South Florida in 1992, was an example of a storm that intensified rapidly during the latest quiet period.
Suzana J. Camargo, a research professor at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who was not involved in the study, said it was an “interesting and important result.” But she said more research was needed to better understand why it was happening.
Kossin agreed that more research was needed, especially on how global warming might affect this protective buffer zone.
A lessening of the protective barrier during periods of greater activity would mean that even more damaging hurricanes could hit the Eastern United States. “That would be a very unsettling prospect,” Kossin said.
(Henry Fountain, NEW YORK TIMES)
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Towns and cities along the Baltic coast were flooded, from Kiel in the far north to the resort island of Usedom near the Polish border.
Sea levels were recorded in the port of Wismar at 1.83m (6ft) above normal overnight.
Severe winter conditions also hit Sweden and Finland.
The overnight temperature fell to -41.7°C at Muonio in Finnish Lapland, near the north-western border with Sweden, the coldest night of the winter so far.
Further west in northern Sweden, temperatures fell as low as -41.3°C and road conditions were treacherous in much of the country.
A passenger train became stuck without power and heating for several hours in the north-eastern Norrbotten region with outdoor temperatures at -38°C. Swedish media said no replacement buses were prepared to venture out because of the cold.
Some of the worst flooding in northern German was in the historic centre of Rostock and in Stralsund, as well as on Usedom, where major damage was reported. Outdoor staircases were washed away and snack bars badly affected.
"This is no children's tea party," said one local official. However, water levels were expected to fall in the coming hours.
Storm Axel was also responsible for the arrival of several hundred thousand plastic eggs on the island of Langeoog on Thursday.
Local reports said the eggs contained little toys with Russian messages inside and appeared to have come from a container that had fallen off a ship.
(bbc.com; accessed 1/17/17)
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(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Surveyors, however, took the reading at 6,000 feet near Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada as major cold and windy storms were expected to dump four to five feet of snow through Thursday in areas above 4,500 feet in Northern and Central California, while mountain areas below that could get two to three feet, forecasters said.
The storms should boost the snowpack, which provides roughly a third of California’s water in normal years for drinking, farming and wildlife when it melts in warm, dry months.
What surveyors find between now and April 1 will guide state water officials in managing the water supply of the nation’s most populous, agriculture-rich state.
Electronic monitors at elevations throughout the Sierra in late December showed the overall snowpack had a water content of 72 percent of normal.
At Tuesday’s reading at Phillips Station, the water content measured at 53 percent of normal, said Frank Gehrke, chief snow surveyor at the state Department of Water Resources.
Gehrke said the level “seems a little gloomy” as the state tries to avoid another year of drought. But he also called it a good start because higher elevations were showing a deeper snowpack.
Gehrke also pointed out that the survey was taken at an elevation below the snowline for December’s storms.
A year ago, the snowpack was slightly above normal levels, but Gehrke recalled that the rain and snow essentially stopped in February and March, leaving the state at a nearly average year for precipitation on April 1.
“This year, it looks like (storms are) lined up off the coast and will continue to increase the snowpack,” he said as he stood on about three feet of snow.
Elsewhere, rain was falling Tuesday in the San Francisco Bay Area. Winter storm advisories will be in effect from 4 a.m. today until 4 a.m. Thursday, forecasters said.
A second, stronger storm system was expected to hit over the weekend, bringing the possibility of as much as five additional feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada.
Southern California is expected to see light showers this week.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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