There’s a chance solar storms may bring northern lights to several northern U.S states just in time for the new year.
The sun expelled two bursts of plasma that are hurtling toward Earth and are expected to arrive early this week, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Once they arrive, they may spark colorful auroras through tonight in Alaska, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Parts of Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Iowa and New York may also get a piece of the view. The early-morning hours today while it’s still dark should have the best chance of producing a light show, NOAA space weather forecaster Shawn Dahl said.
The sun is at the maximum phase of its 11-year cycle, making solar surges and northern lights more frequent.
The active period is expected to last for at least another year, though scientists won’t know when solar activity peaked until months after the fact. NOAA is monitoring this week’s solar storms for possible minor disruptions to high-frequency radio communications, which are used by airlines and amateur radio operators.
In May, NOAA issued a rare severe geomagnetic storm warning — it was the strongest storm in more than two decades, producing light displays across the Northern Hemisphere. And in October, a powerful solar storm dazzled skygazers far from the Arctic Circle when auroras appeared in unexpected places, including Germany, the United Kingdom, New England and New York City.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Cleanup efforts were underway Monday after a strong storm system spawned hail, rain, high winds and tornadoes across the southern U.S. over the weekend, killing at least four people.
As of Monday afternoon, more than 30 tornadoes had been confirmed as crews worked through about 50 reports of tornado damage spanning from Texas to South Carolina, said Mark Wiley, an emergency response specialist with the National Weather Service’s Southern Region Headquarters.
The storms came over a busy holiday travel weekend, causing some treacherous
road conditions along with delays or cancellations at some of the busiest U.S. airports.
The storms first hit Saturday around the Houston area, where the National Weather Service by Monday had confirmed six tornadoes. Two of the twisters were rated EF3, with peak winds of about 140 mph, including one that hit Montgomery County in the Porter and New Caney areas.
About 50 homes in Montgomery County sustained major damage and 30 were destroyed, county official Jason Smith said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Officials assessed the damage on Sunday after a strong storm system moved across the southern U.S. over the weekend, spawning tornadoes and killing at least four people.
There were at least 45 reports of tornado damage across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, said Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center. Crews will do damage surveys to confirm tornadoes.
The storms during busy holiday travels caused some treacherous road conditions along with delays or cancellations at some of the busiest U.S. airports. As of Sunday afternoon, there were more than 600 flight delays affecting Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, according to flight tracker FlightAware.
“It’s not unheard of, but it is fairly uncommon to have a severe weather outbreak of this magnitude this late in the year,” said Frank Pereira, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center.
In the Houston area, National Weather Service storm survey crews confirmed that at least five tornadoes hit north and south of the city on Saturday. At least one person died. In Brazoria and Montgomery counties, nearly 100 homes and other building were damaged and about 30 homes destroyed, officials said.
In North Carolina, a 70-year-old man was killed Sunday in Statesville, just north of Charlotte, when a tree landed on the pickup truck he was driving. Two people were killed in storms in Mississippi, officials said. An 18-year-old died after a tree fell on her home Saturday night in Natchez in Adams County, officials said, while another person died in Lowndes County and at least eight more were injured across the state.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Severe weather across the nation on Saturday forced the delay or cancellation of thousands of flights and spawned devastating tornadoes.
More than 7,000 flights in, into or out of the United States were delayed and more than 200 others were canceled as of Saturday afternoon, according to data from FlightAware. The delays were not as extensive as the ones Thursday or Friday, and many passengers Saturday said their flights were still on schedule.
But for others, the delays meant missed connections and several headaches.
As of Saturday afternoon, 45% of the flights originating from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and 46% from George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston were delayed, according to FlightAware. About one-third of the flights were delayed at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta.
At New York’s Kennedy International Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration reported an average delay of more than two hours.
Inclement weather, or the threat of it, was affecting several different regions in the United States. In the West, large bands of moisture in the sky led to heavy rain and snow warnings in some areas. In the South, severe storms bringing the risk of tornadoes were expected over the weekend, and several tornadoes were already reported in the Houston area Saturday. A storm system moving toward the Northeast also threatened to bring rain and snow.
Travel out of Texas was particularly challenging. At the Dallas Fort Worth airport, one of the country’s busiest and the largest hub for American Airlines, the scheduling problems continued from this past week, when bad weather and a technical glitch briefly grounded flights from the airline. Dense fog and storms in the days since have caused more delays.
Dallas Love Field Airport was also affected, with 30% of flights from Southwest Airlines, the airport’s largest carrier, experiencing delays, according to FlightAware. In Houston, where at least six tornadoes touched down Saturday, the George Bush airport issued a ground stop for United Airlines flights in the afternoon.
The tornadoes killed one person, injured at least four others, damaged homes and flipped vehicles.
By Saturday afternoon, the storm system was moving east, into Louisiana, where tornado warnings were issued.
“These storms are probably going to get a lot worse this evening and overnight the further east you go,” said Josh Lichter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
One person died in the Liverpool area, south of Houston, and four people suffered injuries that weren’t considered critical, said Madison Polston, spokesperson for the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office. Polston said there were “multiple touchdown points” in the county between Liverpool and Hillcrest Village and Alvin. She said that so far they know of around 10 damaged homes but they are still working to determine the extent of the damage.
North of Houston, mobile homes were damaged or destroyed in Katy and Porter Heights, where the doors of a fire station were blown in, the weather service said.
At Dallas Fort Worth airport on Saturday morning, passengers sat on their luggage as they waited for postponements to end. Outside, rain fell and bolts of lightning flashed.
Other travelers stood in long lines at customer service counters to change their flights.
Ashley Allen, 55, boarded a plane from Las Vegas to Dallas just before midnight Friday, expecting that her connecting flight in Texas would bring her home to Fort Myers, FL, by midday Saturday. But while she was in the air, she found out that her flight home had been canceled. She has since been stranded in Dallas because the flight she rebooked was delayed. “They canceled our flight, put us on another flight and said we could change it if we wanted,” Allen said, laughing. “There are no other flights.”
After morning delays, the airport returned to normal operations, said Brian Brooks, a spokesperson for the airport.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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In a year full of extreme weather, experts say 2024’s spate of tornado outbreaks, in particular, set it apart.
From January through November (the latest month for which official counts are available), the U.S. recorded 1,762 tornadoes — the highest number in a decade, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The twisters tended to be strong and destructive, the records show, especially the unusually powerful tornadoes that spawned from Hurricane Milton in October.
“It was kind of like death by 1,000 paper cuts,” said Victor Gensini, a professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University. “We didn’t have an unprecedented number of violent tornadoes, and there wasn’t a month with absolutely stellar activity — outbreak after outbreak after outbreak — but when you start aggregating them all together, what you get is a pretty significant year for severe weather.”
Tornado outbreaks were among the nation’s costliest weather and climate disasters this year. As of Nov. 1, NOAA had tallied a total of 24 weather disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damage. Of those events, six were tornado outbreaks, including a cluster of storms over three days in July that produced more than 79 tornadoes across Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and New York. An outbreak that hit Iowa in May also made the list — it spawned a devastating tornado that killed five people and cut a 44-mile path across the southeastern part of the state.
The flurry of tornado activity adds to an already sizable and growing set of concerns about the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather. But unlike events like heat waves or wildfires, which have clear links to rising temperatures, researchers are still working to understand why this was such an exceptional tornado year, including possible connections to climate change.
Tornadoes are classified according to what’s known as the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale. The weakest tornadoes, or EF-0 and EF-1, have winds of up to 110 mph and typically cause relatively light damage. The most powerful, or EF-5, have winds above 200 mph and usually cause catastrophic damage.
The tornado that flattened a swath of Iowa in May was an EF-4 tornado, and one of the deadliest of 2024. It tore through the town of Greenfield, tossing cars and ripping homes from their foundations. The twister was just one of more than a dozen that cut through the state that day. As a whole, the cluster of storms caused $4.9 billion in damage, according to NOAA.
This year, at least 52 people were killed in tornado outbreaks through November, according to preliminary figures from NOAA. While significant, the number pales in comparison to some of the country’s worst tornado years, when hundreds of people died. The single deadliest tornado in U.S. history was an EF-5 twister that killed 695 people in 1925.
The country was lucky to escape a high death toll in 2024, said Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory. “There have been 27 killer tornadoes so far this year, and the most deaths out of a single event has been seven,” Brooks said. “It’s a little unusual to have that many killer tornadoes and not have any of them be a really big event.”
Still, the tornadoes that touched down caused extensive damage across some central and Southern states. The July outbreak of more than 79 tornadoes caused $2.4 billion in damage. And a tornado outbreak in late May — separate from the one in Iowa — produced more than 110 tornadoes, including an EF-3 in Texas, causing a total of $3.4 billion in damage. In such cases, most of the damage is from winds that can be powerful enough to level buildings, warp utility poles and hurl debris far afield.
Several tornado events this year also surprised experts. One came just a couple of weeks ago, when a rare tornado touched down north of Santa Cruz, California. The twister injured five people; it was later classified as an EF-1 with peak winds of 90 mph. The storm prompted the National Weather Service to issue its first-ever tornado warning for San Francisco.
Another surprise was 2024’s considerable uptick in the occurrence of strong tropical tornadoes — tornadoes produced in hurricanes. Hurricane Milton, which pummeled western Florida when it made landfall on Oct. 9, produced dozens of destructive tornadoes across the state as the storm neared land.
Tornadoes are not altogether uncommon during hurricanes, but they are typically weaker than the ones observed in connection to Milton. Of all recorded tornadoes produced by tropical systems that have made landfall in the U.S., less than 1% have been EF-3 or stronger. This year, four of the five hurricanes that made landfall in the U.S. produced tornadoes of EF-3 intensity.
“Milton will likely go down as the most prolific tornado-producing hurricane in history,” Gensini said. “Those tornadoes rivaled what you would see in Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska or the Great Plains. It’s highly unusual to see tornadoes of that strength and frequency with hurricanes.”
It’s not clear why Hurricane Milton churned out so many twisters, but a study published in June found that the number of tornadic storms could increase by as much as 299% by midcentury if fossil fuel emissions continue at their current pace.
However, scientists do not yet have a solid understanding of what influence, if any, climate change has on tornadoes overall. Thus far, research indicates that global warming can increase atmospheric instability, a key ingredient in the development of thunderstorms. Instability in the atmosphere often comes from differences in temperature and air density, which in turn fuels strong columns of rotating air within storms.
But many aspects of tornado science are still murky, including what causes some tornadoes to intensify while others break apart. Some studies have even found that climate change might suppress the formation of tornadoes by weakening vertical wind shear, a term that refers to the way winds increase and change direction at different atmospheric heights. Reduced wind shear could limit the amount of warm, rising air, making it less likely for storms to spawn tornadoes.
Given those lingering unknowns, teasing out any direct links between climate change and specific tornado outbreaks remains tricky. “We do understand that greater instability and warmer temperatures should promote larger hail, more tornadoes and that sort of thing,” Gensini said. “But for any individual tornado, it’s very hard to make those assessments at this time.”
With several days left until the year ends, tornado outbreaks are still possible.
“This last quarter has been pretty quiet for tornadoes, but it’s not unheard of to have tornadoes — and perhaps even strong ones — in late December, in the cool season,” Gensini said.
Indeed, more twisters may be on the horizon: Severe storms and tornadoes are possible across parts of the South and Gulf Coast over the weekend, and NOAA’s counts for the year do not yet include tornadoes that were reported Thursday in Louisiana.
(Denise Chow & Kathryn Prociv, NBC News)
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DALLAS, TX - Some flights were delayed or canceled in Texas on Thursday after a line of thunderstorms started moving across parts of the state in a system the National Weather Service predicted could bring high winds, hail and possible tornadoes.
More than 100 flights were delayed and dozens more canceled at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport on Thursday. Delays and thunderstorm-related cancellations also were reported at Dallas’ Love Field and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, according to
The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning late Thursday afternoon for parts of Texas northeast of Houston, meaning weather radar indicated there was a tornado in the area. There were no immediate reports of damage.
A tornado watch remained in effect through Thursday night for several counties in southeast Texas, including the Houston area. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott activated state emergency response resources because of the increased severe weather threat.
The greatest weather risk was forecast for a stretch of Texas east of Dallas, between Houston and portions of southern Arkansas and western and northern Louisiana, said Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.
Hurley said that he expected wind gusts generally between 60 and 80 mph, and hail 1 inch in diameter or greater. Hurley said the storms were likely push into Arkansas and Louisiana.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Persistent high surf and flooding threats along the California coast had residents on high alert a day after a major storm was blamed for one man’s death and the partial collapse of a pier, which propelled three people into the Pacific Ocean.
The National Weather Service on Tuesday warned of dangerous waves of up to 35 feet.
“Large waves can sweep across the beach without warning, pulling people into the sea from rocks, jetties and beaches,” the weather service said in a Christmas Eve bulletin.
In Santa Cruz, where a municipal wharf under construction partially collapsed Monday, most beaches were cordoned off as they were inundated with high surf and debris. Residents received an alert on their phones Tuesday morning notifying them to “avoid all beaches including coastal overlook areas such as rocks, jetties or cliffs.” It warned that powerful waves could sweep entire beaches unexpectedly. Local officials said there could be further damage to the wharf, but no more pieces broke off overnight. Building inspectors were looking at the rest of the pier’s structural integrity.
Some California cities ordered beachfront homes and hotels to evacuate early Monday afternoon as forecasters warned that storm swells would continue to increase throughout the day.
In Monterey Bay’s Watsonville, first responders were called to Sunset State Beach, a state park, around 11:30 a.m. Monday for a report of a man trapped under debris. The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office believes a large wave pinned him there. The man was pronounced dead at a hospital.
The storm’s high surf also likely pulled another man into the Pacific around noon Monday at Marina State Beach, nearly 13 miles south of Watsonville, authorities said. Strong currents and high waves forced searchers to abandon their efforts roughly two hours later as conditions worsened.
Further south in Carmel Bay, a man remained missing as of Tuesday afternoon after reports that someone was swept off the rocks into the ocean at Pebble Beach on Monday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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One of the world’s most active volcanoes spewed lava into the air for a second straight day on Tuesday.
The eruption of Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island has stayed within the mountain’s summit caldera inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. No homes were threatened.
Molten rock began shooting from the volcano before dawn on Monday when fissures opened in the caldera floor and propelled lava more than 290 feet into the air.
The red liquid formed tall fountains and then spread across 650 acres. The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory estimated the lava was about 1 yard thick.
Scientists expect activity to fluctuate in the coming days. The lava paused Monday afternoon but fountains reemerged Tuesday morning.
The eruption occurred in an area that’s been closed to the public since 2007 due to hazards including crater wall instability and rockfalls. Visitors to the park were able to watch the foundations at a distance from an overlook spot.
This eruption is the sixth in Kilauea’s summit caldera since 2020.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Drought is deepening in the Southwestern United States because of a lack of rain and persistent heat over the past several months. The parched conditions are most pronounced in Arizona, Nevada and southeastern California, where severe to extreme drought expanded in recent weeks.
As of Wednesday, Las Vegas has not had measurable rain in 158 days — the second-longest such streak for the city on record, according to the Brian Planz, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Las Vegas. The longest rain-free run was 240 days in 2020. “Measurable” rain is defined as .01 inch or greater.
“The last six months or so have been really unusually dry,” said Curtis Riganti, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, NE. That has combined with high evaporation from heat waves, especially in southern Nevada, Arizona and central and southeastern California, he said.
The rainfall deficits started to mount in many areas when the monsoon fizzled out this summer and have continued into December.
“We saw an early start to monsoon precipitation in late June, but thunderstorm activity really slowed down by late July,” Michael Crimmins, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona, said in an email. “By the end of September, most of the Southwest was behind in summer precipitation and short-term drought conditions crept back in.”
Extreme heat this summer and fall has accelerated the descent into drought, as the atmosphere draws more moisture from soil and plants. Both Phoenix and Las Vegas saw their hottest summers on record, as did other parts of the Southwest. An extraordinary heat wave in October brought record temperatures to Phoenix for 21 straight days. “The heat definitely had an exacerbating effect — driving up evapotranspiration levels and quickly drying out any soil moisture that was gained with summer rain,” he said.
Although the latest drought conditions are considered short-term, they are happening on top of the broader Southwest megadrought that has seen precipitation deficits over more than two decades, combined with warming temperatures.
Early-season mountain snowpack has been mixed, with much of the story this winter still to be written. It’s far below normal in much of the Southwest, including in Arizona and New Mexico. The picture is a bit brighter in the Upper Colorado River Basin — a region that is key to water supply for two major freshwater reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead — and where the snowpack is near to above normal.
A weak and short-lived La Niña is expected to develop over the next couple of months, and by some measures has already arrived. The climate pattern, which features cooler than normal water in the eastern tropical Pacific, can portend a dry winter for the Southwest.
“The weak La Niña outlook may give us some wiggle room for storms to sneak at some point in the upcoming season, but the climate models suggest otherwise and are bullish on continuing dry conditions,” Crimmins said.
So far this season, most storms are targeting the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, but there are growing signs that the storm track could dip south before the end of December.
If the winter ends up dry, however, that could quickly spell trouble for wildfire risk and water supply next year. The latest outlooks show drought expanding in the Southwest in the coming months.
“Couple that with the previous dry summer and ongoing above average temperatures and we could be in a really tough spot by the spring,” Crimmins said.
(Diana Leonard, WASHINGTON POST)
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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday announced an aggressive new climate goal for the United States, saying the country should seek to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 61% below 2005 levels by 2035.
The target is not binding and will almost certainly be disregarded by President-elect Donald Trump, who has called global warming a “scam.” But Biden administration officials said they hoped it would encourage state and local governments to continue to cut the emissions that are rapidly heating the planet, even if the federal government pulls back.
The announcement caps four years of climate policies from a president who has sought to make global warming a signature focus of his administration. In a video address from the White House, Biden said his efforts, including pumping billions of dollars into clean energy technologies and regulating pollution from power plants and automobiles, amounted to “the boldest climate agenda in American history.”
Biden said he expected progress in tackling climate change to continue after he had left office. “American industry will keep inventing and keep investing,” he said. “State, local and tribal governments will keep stepping up. And together, we will turn this existential threat into a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform our nation for generations to come.”
The new pledge of cutting emissions 61% to 66% below 2005 levels by 2035 is a significant update of commitments the United States had already made. In 2021, Biden promised that the country would cut its heat-trapping emissions at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030. Scientists have said that global emissions must drop by roughly half this decade to keep global warming at relatively low levels.
But while U.S. emissions have been trending downward, the country is not currently on pace to meet even the earlier goal. Last year, emissions were about 17% below 2005 levels, largely because electric utilities have retired many of their coal plants in favor of cheaper and cleaner gas, wind and solar power. But this year, emissions are expected to stay roughly flat, in part because rising electricity demand has led power companies to burn record amounts of gas, offsetting growth in renewable energy.
Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, every country agreed to submit a plan for curbing its greenhouse gas emissions, with the details left up to individual governments. Those pledges then get updated every five years. According to the Paris pact, countries are expected to issue a new round of plans before the next United Nations climate summit, scheduled for November in Belém, Brazil.
One recent study by the Rhodium Group, a research firm, estimated that the Biden administration’s policies — notably the hundreds of billions of dollars provided by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act for wind, solar, nuclear, electric vehicles and other low-carbon technologies — could help the country achieve a reduction of 38% to 56% below 2005 levels by 2035.
Going further than that would likely require additional measures, such as speeding up regulatory approvals for new transmission lines and low-carbon energy projects, as well as actions from both the private sector and state governments.
Biden’s latest target could prove much harder to achieve, however, if Trump follows through on his promises to reduce federal backing for clean energy and electric vehicles while repealing federal regulations such as those on methane, a potent greenhouse gas that can leak from oil and gas operations.
In a scenario where Trump rolled back most of Biden’s climate policies, U.S. emissions might only fall 24% to 40% below 2005 levels by 2030, the Rhodium Group found. Trump has also said he would once again pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, as he did during his first term.
(Brad Plumer & Lisa Friedman, NEW YORK TIMES)
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MAMOUDZOU, Mayotte — French President Emmanuel Macron arrived Thursday in the Indian Ocean island of Mayotte to survey Cyclone Chido’s destruction and was immediately confronted with a first-hand account of devastation across the French territory.
“Mayotte is demolished,” Assane Haloi, a security agent, told Macron after he stepped off the plane.
Macron had been moving along in a line of people greeting him when Haloi grasped his hand and spoke for a minute about the harrowing conditions the islands faced without bare essentials since Saturday when the strongest cyclone in nearly a century ripped through the French territory off the coast of Africa.
“We are without water, without electricity, there is nowhere to go because everything is demolished,” she said. “We can’t even shelter, we are all wet with our children covering ourselves with whatever we have so that we can sleep.”
Macron said it was a day he would not forget as he was embraced by some islanders and criticized for what others said was a slow response by France. He spoke of the emotion he had witnessed along with the anger and said he was impressed by the resilience of people after he spent the day touring a slum, visiting a hospital and viewing the damage from a helicopter. “It’s likely we’ll see tragic situations that we’re not aware of yet,” he said of casualties that are expected to rise.
At least 31 people have died and more than 2,000 people were injured, more than 200 critically, French authorities said. But it’s feared hundreds or even thousands of people have died. Macron arrived shortly after The Associated Press and other journalists from outside were able to reach Mayotte to provide accounts from survivors of the horror over the weekend when winds howled above 136 mph and peeled the roofs and walls from homes that collapsed around the people inside.
In the shantytown of Kaweni on the outskirts of the capital, Mamoudzou, a swath of hillside homes was reduced to scraps of corrugated metal, plastic, piles of bedding and clothing, and pieces of timber marking the frame where homes once stood.
“Those of us who are here are still in shock, but God let us live,” Nassirou Hamidouni said as he dug in the rubble of his former home. “We are sad. We can’t sleep because of all of the houses that have been destroyed.”
The cyclone battered the island’s infrastructure, knocking out power, leaving homes without water and putting a strain on the few places that could still provide essentials. Public health experts are concerned that a lack of access to clean water could lead to disease.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Vanuatu’s capital was without water on Wednesday, a day after reservoirs were destroyed by a violent magnitude 7.3 earthquake that wrought havoc on the South Pacific island nation, with the number of people killed and injured expected to rise.
The government’s disaster management office said early Wednesday that 14 deaths were confirmed, but hours later said nine had been verified by the main hospital. The number was “expected to increase” as people remained trapped in fallen buildings, a spokesperson said. About 200 people have been treated for injuries.
Two of those killed were Chinese nationals, according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency, which cited Gu Zihua, an official at the Chinese embassy in Vanuatu.
Frantic rescue efforts that began at flattened buildings after the quake hit early Tuesday afternoon continued 30 hours later, with dozens working in dust and heat with little water to seek those yelling for help inside. A few more survivors were extracted from the rubble of downtown buildings in Port Vila, also the country’s largest city, while others remained trapped and some were found dead.
A near-total telecommunications collapse meant people struggled to confirm their relatives’ safety. Some providers began to re-establish phone service but connections were patchy. Internet service had not been restored because the submarine cable supplying it was damaged, the operator said.
The earthquake hit at a depth of 35 miles and was centered 19 miles west of the capital of Vanuatu, a group of 80 islands home to about 330,000 people. A tsunami warning was called off less than two hours after the quake, but dozens of large aftershocks continued to rattle the country.
The Asia-Pacific head of the International Federation of Red Cross, Katie Greenwood, speaking to The Associated Press from Fiji, said it was not clear how many people were still missing or killed.
Clement Chipokolo, Vanuatu country director at the Christian relief agency World Vision, said health care services, already strained before the quake, were overwhelmed.
While power was out in swathes of Port Vila, the biggest fear among aid agencies was the lack of water. Two large reservoirs serving the capital were totally decimated, the National Disaster Management Office said.
Resident Milroy Cainton said people were joining large queues to buy water in stores, but could only purchase two or four bottles at a time. “People are not really concerned about electricity, they’re just concerned about water,” he said.
UNICEF was recording a rise in diarrhea among children, a sign that they had begun to drink tainted water, said the chief of the Vanuatu office, Eric Durpaire.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SAINT-DENIS, Reunion — French authorities on Tuesday announced an overnight curfew in Mayotte as they sought to stabilize the island territory in the aftermath of Cyclone Chido, the most intense storm to hit the Indian Ocean archipelago in 90 years.
The French military said it is sending four to five planes a day with up to 50 tons of assistance, including food, water and medicine. Hundreds of military personnel have arrived since the weekend in Mayotte, an island group off Africa that is France’s poorest territory.
The official death toll from Saturday’s cyclone rose to 22, according to the latest report from Mayotte Hospital quoted by Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, the mayor of the capital, Mamoudzou.
The newly appointed Prime Minister François Bayrou provided an update later on Tuesday saying that more than 1,500 people were injured, including more than 200 critically. However, authorities fear hundreds and possibly thousands of people have died.
French President Emmanuel Macron will travel to Mayotte on Thursday, his office said. “Our compatriots are living through the worst just a few thousand kilometers away, and I will be by their side in a few hours in Mayotte,” Macron said in a statement.
“The priority today is water and food,” Soumaila told RFI radio, adding that “there are people who have unfortunately died where the bodies are starting to decompose that can create a sanitary problem.”
The curfew requires people to stay in their homes between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. as authorities try to prevent looting of damaged buildings. “We don’t have electricity. When night falls, there are people who take advantage of that situation,” Soumaila said.
Speaking on France Inter radio Tuesday morning, Mayotte lawmaker Estelle Youssouffa described the challenges in accounting for victims, especially among migrants.
“The real toll of those swept away by the mud, winds and tin from shanty towns will never be known,” Youssouffa said. “This population, by definition undocumented migrants, are the main victims of this tragedy because they feared going to shelters.”
Youssouffa shared a harrowing account from an imam she spoke to on Monday, who reported burying more than 30 people in a single day in La Vigie, a makeshift settlement.
“I don’t even know if these figures are included in the official count,” Youssouffa said.
Soumaila, Mamoudzou’s mayor, said he planned to visit areas hit hardest by the cyclone on Tuesday, where survivors are still reeling from the destruction. Nearly 70% of Mayotte’s population has been impacted, with entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble.
The latest report from the French Interior Ministry says that 80% of telecom services were down, making communication on the archipelago difficult. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it has lost contact with more than 200 volunteers on the ground.
French military aircraft were delivering water and food daily. The island’s main hospital remains severely damaged, and a field hospital is expected to arrive Thursday. The head of the medical aid group Medecins du Monde (MDM) told The Associated Press he was concerned about the risk of a cholera epidemic in Mayotte. Earlier this year, the island was hit by an outbreak of a highly drug-resistant strain of the disease. “Cholera is circulating,” MDM Director Jean-François Corty said in a phone interview from Paris. “It might turn into an epidemic if there is no way to ensure efficient access to water.”
Only six health centers out of 20 in Mayotte are still functioning, making it a challenge to handle not just those injured in the cyclone, but also regular emergencies and chronic diseases, Corty said.
Meanwhile, the government released an initial $687,000 to finance urgent needs on the island. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has pledged $262,000 from the city’s emergency fund for recovery efforts.
Cyclone Chido is the deadliest storm to strike the territory in nearly a century.
(Adrienne Surprenant & Tom Nouvian, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A magnitude 7.3 earthquake that struck off Vanuatu killed at least 14 people, injured hundreds more and caused widespread damage across the South Pacific island nation, officials said early today.
Frantic rescue efforts got underway after the quake hit early Tuesday afternoon, and rescuers worked through the night, trying to reach people screaming for help from under the rubble.
The earthquake hit at a depth of 35 miles and was centered 19 miles west of Port Vila, the largest city in Vanuatu, a group of 80 islands home to about 330,000 people. A tsunami warning was called off less than two hours after the quake, which was followed by large aftershocks.
The Red Cross said early today that 14 had died, citing government information. Widespread damage to telecommunications and other infrastructure impeded the release of official reports and phone service remained down.
More than 200 people have been injured, said Katie Greenwood, Fiji-based head of the Red Cross in the Pacific, in a post on X. Vanuatu’s main hospital has been damaged, and there is no power or water.
The U.N. humanitarian office said access to the airport and sea port was “severely limited due to road damage.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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San Diego appears headed for the third-driest start to the rainy season in at least 152 years, a streak that would further elevate the risk of wildfires in an already parched county, the National Weather Service says.
The city has recorded only 0.13 inches of precipitation since the season began Oct. 1. If things remain unchanged through Dec. 31, the three-month period will officially be off to an unusually dry start.
The only years that have been drier from October through December were 1929, when San Diego received a trace of rain, and 2017, when it reached 0.09 inches.
The weather service says it is expecting no rain through Christmas Eve, and things could stay dry through New Year’s Eve.
The landscape is likely to get much drier. Weak to moderate Santa Ana winds will begin blowing in the mountains and foothills today and could last into Thursday, forecasters said. They won’t be nearly as strong as the Santa Anas that flipped over big rigs on Interstate 8 east of Alpine last week. But the winds could gust as high as 45 mph.
San Diego Gas & Electric said Monday it will not be notifying any customers of potential temporary power shutoffs to help reduce the chance of power lines sparking a fire. Last week, the utility notified more than 117,000 customers that they faced possible outages. SDG&E ended up turning off power to more than 50,000 households.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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France used ships and military aircraft to rush rescuers and supplies to Mayotte on Monday after the tiny French island territory off Africa was battered by its worst cyclone in nearly a century. Authorities fear hundreds and possibly thousands of people have died.
Survivors wandered through streets littered with debris, searching for water and shelter, after Cyclone Chido leveled entire neighborhoods Saturday when it hit Mayotte, the poorest territory of France and, by extension, the European Union.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he will declare a national mourning period and planned to visit in the coming days after “this tragedy that has shaken each of us.”
Mayotte resident Fahar Abdoulhamidi described the aftermath as chaotic. In Mamoudzou, the capital, destruction was total — schools, hospitals, restaurants and offices were in ruins. Roofs were ripped from homes, and palm trees were half-shorn from winds that exceeded 136 mph, according to the French weather service.
“Mayotte is totally devastated,” French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said, with the ministry estimating 70% of the population was gravely affected.
As of Monday evening, the ministry confirmed 21 deaths at hospitals, with 45 people in critical condition. But French Health Minister Geneviève Darrieussecq warned that any estimates were likely major undercounts “compared to the scale of the disaster.”
Electricity was down across the archipelago, with only the capital spared. Telecommunications were severely disrupted, with most antennas knocked out of service. Authorities were concerned about a shortage of drinking water.
The French Red Cross described the devastation as “unimaginable” and said rescuers were still searching for bodies. The damage, including to Mayotte’s sole airport, has left some areas inaccessible to emergency teams.
Many people ignored the cyclone warnings in the 24 hours before the storm hit, underestimating its power.
“Nobody believed it would be that big,” Abdoulhamidi said by phone. “Those who live in bangas stayed in despite the cyclone, fearing their homes would be looted,” he said, referring to the island’s informal settlements.
Even worse, many migrants avoided shelters out of fear of deportation, Abdoulhamidi said.
Mayotte is a densely populated archipelago between Madagascar and the African continent of more than 320,000 people, according to the French government. French authorities have estimated another 100,000 migrants live there from as far away as Somalia.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The death toll in the French territory of Mayotte from Cyclone Chido is “several hundred” and may run into the thousands, the island’s top government official said Sunday.
France rushed rescue teams and supplies to its largely poor overseas department in the Indian Ocean that has suffered widespread destruction.
“I think there are some several hundred dead, maybe we’ll get close to a thousand. Even thousands ... given the violence of this event,” Mayotte Prefect François-Xavier Bieuville told TV station Mayotte la 1ere. He had previously said it was the worst cyclone to hit Mayotte in 90 years.
Bieuville said it was extremely difficult to get an exact number of deaths and injuries after Mayotte was pummeled by the intense tropical cyclone on Saturday, causing major damage to public infrastructure, including the airport, flattening neighborhoods and knocking out electricity supplies.
The French Interior Ministry confirmed at least 11 deaths and more than 250 injuries earlier Sunday but said that was expected to increase substantially.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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A tornado near a mall in Central California swept up cars, uprooted trees and sent several people to the hospital. In San Francisco, authorities issued the first-ever tornado warning.
Elsewhere, inclement weather plagued areas of the U.S., with dangerous conditions including heavy snow in upstate New York, a major ice storm in Midwest states and severe weather warnings around Lake Tahoe.
The ice storm beginning Friday evening created treacherous driving conditions across Iowa and eastern Nebraska on Friday and into Saturday and prompted temporary closures of Interstate 80 after numerous cars and trucks slid off the road. In upstate New York, more than 33 inches was reported near Orchard Park, which is often a landing point for lake-effect snow.
On Saturday, a tornado touched down around 1:40 p.m. near a shopping mall in Scotts Valley, about 70 miles south of San Francisco. The tornado overturned cars and toppled trees and utility poles, the National Weather Service said. The Scotts Valley Police Department said several people were injured and taken to hospitals.
In San Francisco, some trees toppled onto cars and streets and damaged roofs. The damage was due to 80-mph straight-line winds, not a tornado, weather service meteorologist Dalton Behringer said Sunday.
Heavy snow fell at some Lake Tahoe ski resorts, and a 112-mph gust of wind was recorded at the Mammoth Mountain resort south of Yosemite National Park, according to the weather service’s office in Reno.
The severe weather in the Midwest resulted in at least one death. The Washington County Sheriff’s office in Nebraska said a 57-year-old woman died after she lost control of her pickup on Highway 30 near Arlington and hit an oncoming truck.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Atmospheric rivers brought feet of snow and a good soaking to Northern California over the weekend, but parched Southern California is still waiting for fire-season-ending rains.
This past week’s Franklin fire was a serious wind-driven fire that struck unusually late in the year. It forced the overnight evacuation of all of Malibu and shut down parts of the famed Pacific Coast Highway. As of Friday, the blaze had destroyed 14 structures, damaged 13 and charred more than 4,000 acres.
While cool, moist weather has helped firefighters with efforts to contain the Franklin fire, Southern California looks to remain in full-fledged fire season for most of December, if not longer.
That’s a dangerous scenario because the region’s Santa Ana winds, which tend to strengthen and become more frequent in winter, can whip up destructive fires if they arrive before significant rain.
“It’s really a big deal if we don’t get precipitation prior to really extreme Santa Anas,” said Dan Cayan, a climate scientist with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. “We’ve had virtually no rain and we got a pretty vigorous Santa Ana this last week. Unfortunately, an ignition occurred and away it goes.”
In Southern California, about 90% of the area burned by big fires after Sept. 1 happens before the arrival of meaningful rain, according to research led by Cayan. Large December fires are rare, but they are usually wind-driven.
Precipitation has been far below normal across Southern California so far this season, and that’s on the heels of an especially hot summer and fall. Since the start of the water year on Oct. 1, San Diego has received only about 8% of its normal rainfall and downtown Los Angeles only 7%. Many areas haven’t seen significant rain since March or April — well before the summer dry season.
“We’ve had really extensive, prolonged dryness. It’s been one of those years where we’ve developed this tinder keg,” Cayan said.
The federal Drought Monitor showed a broad expansion of “abnormal dryness” into coastal Southern California last week, marking the first signs of potential drought there since March 2023.
The moisture in live trees and shrubs is “at critically low levels across the region,” according to a December fire outlook for Southern California. Grasses also remain brown and flammable — there hasn’t been enough rain to usher in the seasonal “green-up” that marks the end of fire season.
Meaningful rain typically arrives in November in Southern California. Alex Tardy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego, said the city averages about 2 inches of rain in December. “The hotter-than-usual summer and fall — and now lack of rainfall — have created conditions like 2017 and 2020,” he said. Those years both saw fiery Decembers, with the 2017 Thomas fire scorching 281,893 acres in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, and the destructive 2020 Bond fire burning 6,000 acres in Orange County. Southern California also faced high fire danger in January 2021 because of hot, dry and windy weather combined with a lack of rainfall.
According to Cayan, Southern California’s largest wind-driven fires have happened in the latter part of the record, since 1984. There is no shortage of recent research pointing to the influence of climate change on California’s longer and more intense fire seasons. A recent report from Climate Central found that Southern California has seen a marked increase in fire weather days since the 1970s. A 2021 study found that the rainy season is starting later in California — consistent with climate model projections as greenhouse gas emissions rise. And fires driven by downslope winds in the West — like Santa Anas — are burning more area annually in part because vegetation is becoming drier, according to another recent study.
The region could remain vulnerable to wind-driven fires at least for the next few weeks, with warm, dry and windy weather ahead. Tardy said there were signs of a pattern change before Christmas but that has faded — though there is an active storm track just to the north. “It’s very close though, so it won’t take much to bring precipitation. And that’s why it’s been so wet for the north coast of California,” he said.
(Diana Leonard, WASHINGTON POST)
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DES MOINES, IA — Freezing rain was expected Friday for parts of the Midwest — especially Iowa, where forecasters warned about a weekend ice storm in one section of the state.
The National Weather Service said ice — combined with strong wind in places like Waterloo and Cedar Rapids — could be significant enough to bring down power lines and damage trees. “Travel could be nearly impossible as roads, and especially bridges and overpasses, will become slick and hazardous tonight into Saturday morning,” forecasters said.
Elsewhere, the latest round of lake-effect snow off the Great Lakes buried some New York communities near Buffalo with more than 3 feet of snow while leaving Buffalo’s business district and northern suburbs with just a dusting. Farther south, the town of Eden had the region’s highest snow total, with 42.5 inches falling from Wednesday through Friday, the National Weather Service said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency in advance of the storm. A winter weather advisory covered Iowa and southern Minnesota. Nebraska’s largest city, Omaha, was told to brace for freezing rain, starting Friday evening.
Meanwhile, in Kalamazoo County, MI, authorities expressed relief that no major injuries occurred Thursday when the driver of a box truck lost control on icy Interstate 94 and smashed into emergency vehicles parked on the shoulder to help with an earlier crash. The sheriff’s office posted video of the crash, which showed first responders fleeing to get out of the way after the box truck turned on its side and slid down the highway and hit their parked vehicles. A firetruck stayed upright but sustained some damage.
No one was injured other than the truck driver, who was treated for minor injuries. “Everyone appears to be unhurt, rattled maybe a little bit, but the good thing is you get to go home from being rattled,” Sheriff Richard Fuller said of first responders at the scene.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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MALIBU, CA - Weather conditions improved enough in Southern California for forecasters to say Wednesday that high fire danger had diminished significantly as crews struggled to contain a wind-driven blaze that forced thousands of people, including celebrities like Cher and Dick Van Dyke, from their homes in Malibu.
With much of the coastal city under evacuation orders and warnings, residents waited anxiously to see whether their properties had been spared by the fire, which erupted late Monday and grew to more than 6 square miles — about 3,840 acres. The blaze, dubbed the Franklin fire, was just 7% contained.
The National Weather Service said the week’s strongest Santa Ana winds, with
gusts that reached 40 mph, have passed. Forecasters said that all red flag warnings, which indicate conditions for high fire danger and Santa Ana winds, were discontinued.
Much of the devastation occurred in Malibu. Flames burned near horse farms, celebrities’ seaside mansions, and Pepperdine University, where students were forced to shelter in place on campus for a second night Tuesday.
Faculty members are determining how best to complete the semester, which ends this week. Final exams were postponed or canceled, depending on the class, university spokesperson Michael Friel said.
An early analysis showed little to no damage to structures on campus, the university said.
It’s unclear how the blaze started. Officials said seven structures had been destroyed and nine others had been damaged.
Lonnie Vidaurri’s four-bedroom home in the Malibu Knolls neighborhood is one of the seven destroyed. After evacuating to a hotel in Santa Monica with his wife and two young daughters, a neighbor called to tell Vidaurri that firefighters would need to break into his house.
“It’s pretty torched all around,” said Vidaurri, 53.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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PORTLAND, ME — The U.S. East Coast began a whiplash-inducing stretch of weather Wednesday with a deluge of rain, rapid snowmelt and powerful gusts, creating dangerous conditions, due in part to an atmospheric river and developing bomb cyclone.
Ski resort operators in the Northeast watched their snow turn to mush with a deluge of rain and unseasonably high temperatures — followed by damaging winds — all in the same day, part of a powerful storm system that stretched from Florida to Maine.
Utilities braced for widespread power outages with winds projected to exceed 60 mph through late Wednesday. Isolated severe thunderstorms were possible southward into portions of Florida. Elsewhere, heavy lake effect snow was expected through today in parts of Michigan, along the Lake Michigan shoreline, and dangerous cold enveloped parts of the Upper Midwest.
A key driver in the weather was an atmospheric river, which is a long band of water vapor that can transport moisture from the tropics to more northern areas, said Derek Schroeter, a forecaster with the National Weather Service. New England was bearing the brunt as the storm tapped moisture from the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the U.S. Southeast, and transported it to places like Maine, he said.
Forecasters also said the storm had the potential to include a process that meteorologists call bombogenesis, or a “bomb cyclone.” That’s a rapid intensification of a cyclone in a short period of time, and it has the ability to bring severe rainfall.
“Is that what they’re calling it?” said Jen Roberts, co-owner of Onion River Outdoors sporting goods store in Montpelier, VT. She lamented that a five-day stretch of snowfall that lured ski customers into the store was being washed way, underscoring the region’s fickle weather. “But you know, this is New England. We know this is what happens.”
Alex Hobbs, a Boston college student, hopes that the weather won’t interfere with her plans to return home to San Francisco soon. “I’m a little worried about getting delays with heavy wind and rain, possibly snow,” she said Wednesday.
In New England, the storm began with combination of fog and freezing rain Tuesday night into early Wednesday, making travel treacherous. A tractor-trailer carrying a load of oranges went off the Maine Turnpike in New Gloucester; the road was so treacherous that the oranges couldn’t be removed until a day later.
In New Hampshire, the Mount Washington Avalanche Center issued a special bulletin Wednesday for the Presidential Range of mountains, which received significant snowfall over the last two weeks. “Heavy rainfall could create dangerous and unpredictable avalanche conditions on steep snow-covered slopes,” the avalanche center warned.
Atop Mount Washington, wind gusts hit 89 mph. The location is one of the planet’s windiest spots, its highest gust recorded for 2023 was 132 mph.
(Patrick Whittle & David Sharp, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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LOS ANGELES, CA — A ferocious wildfire fanned by strong winds burned through Malibu on Tuesday, destroying homes, triggering power outages and forcing thousands to evacuate along the coast in the dark while firefighters struggled to contain the flames.
The eastern half of Malibu remained under an evacuation order Tuesday. The rest of the city and portions of unincorporated Los Angeles County were under an evacuation warning affecting roughly 18,000 people.The blaze, dubbed the Franklin fire, was reported shortly before 11 p.m. Monday along Malibu Canyon Road in the hills north of Pepperdine University. Fanned by strong Santa Ana
winds, the blaze moved at a fierce pace, exploding to more than 3,000 acres as of Tuesday evening with no containment, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said during a news conference Tuesday evening that a preliminary aerial assessment estimates that seven structures have been destroyed and eight structures damaged. He urged residents to limit the use of lawn sprinklers to maintain water pressure for firefighters.
More than 1,500 firefighters battled the fire on the ground Tuesday, building containment lines as air tankers dropped water on the blaze. The aircraft were able to fly through the night and into the early morning Tuesday even amid heavy winds, Marrone said. “We are going to have a coordinated air and ground assault on this fire for as long as it takes,” he said Tuesday morning.
The blaze jumped Pacific Coast Highway in the early morning hours and continued to march toward the city’s historic pier, which officials said was not damaged. A sheriff’s patrol car was destroyed in the fire, but the deputy driving it was not hurt.
Some residents were able to start assessing the damage in the light of day Tuesday.
Past the security gates of Serra Retreat is a small enclave of luxury properties that’s home to celebrities including Patrick Dempsey, Dick Van Dyke and at one time Mel Gibson. Overnight, the fire caught many in the area by surprise. Pets were killed and several cars and homes burned, residents say.
Van Dyke wrote on Facebook that he and his wife, Arlene Silver, evacuated from their home.
“Arlene and I have safely evacuated with our animals except for Bobo escaped as we were leaving,” he wrote, referring to his cat. “We’re praying he’ll be ok and that our community in Serra Retreat will survive these terrible fires.”
Alec Gellis, 31, was riding through the neighborhood on his e-bike checking on homes Tuesday afternoon. He and a friend stayed behind overnight to protect properties in the area. The fire, he said, broke out fast. Around 11 p.m. he was in his room when he heard people screaming outside and cars honking. “The sky was red and the whole canyon was lit up on the other side,” he said.
“We were surrounded by flames. Literally everywhere you looked there was fire.”
Fire crews working overnight were hampered by winds up to 50 mph, according to the National Weather Service. Around the time the fire ignited, winds were reported gusting up to 65 mph. Relative humidity was also extremely low at 5%.
The National Weather Service had issued a “Particularly Dangerous Situation” red flag warning for wide portions of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, which expired Tuesday afternoon as winds diminished.
This is the second time this fire season that the weather service had issued that type of red flag warning. The last time was on Nov. 5, and a day later, the Mountain fire ignited in Ventura County and, whipped by powerful winds, razed more than 240 buildings. It became the third-most destructive wildfire in Southern California since 2013. Mike Wofford, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said that there should be “considerably less” wind today.
Authorities are investigating the cause of the fire.
The state secured a Fire Management Assistance Grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help with fire suppression costs, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said Tuesday. “Fire season is not a season. It’s year-round in the state of California,” Newsom said during a news conference in Colusa County on Tuesday. “We’re in the middle of December and yet we’re experiencing another wildfire in Southern California.”
Power outages, which began in the Malibu area on Monday, continued Tuesday. Some electricity was cut off for firefighter safety, and other outages were part of widespread public safety power shutoffs — deliberate outages meant to limit the chances that damaged utility equipment could start a fire during strong winds, according to David Eisenhauer, a Southern California Edison spokesperson.
Students at Pepperdine University — in the heart of the evacuation area — were told by the university to shelter in the Tyler Campus Center or Payson Library overnight rather than try to leave campus. Around 3:30 a.m., the university said the worst of the fire had pushed past the school.
The campus lifted its shelter order early Tuesday after assessing conditions after sunrise. Spot fires continued to flare up around the campus, so officials encouraged students and staff to remain at the school and stay off Malibu roads for the day.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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San Diego County edged closer to drought Tuesday, whipped by fierce and damaging Santa Ana winds that further dried out a region that hasn’t gotten a long, deep soaking of rain since March.
The wind storm — which toppled big rigs on Interstate 8, fanned wildfires and canceled school in 10 rural districts — might be followed by weak Santa Anas on Sunday and again next Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.
There might be some brief drizzle Thursday. But forecast models suggest the region will otherwise be mostly dry until Christmas Eve, and perhaps all the way to New Year’s Eve. The jet stream is likely to prevent big storms up north from dipping into Southern California. “After the hot summer (we had), it could be a really slow start to the winter,” said Alex Tardy, a weather service forecaster.
Santa Ana winds usually arrive from the north-northeast, which isn’t conducive for funneling them all the way to the coast. But Tuesday’s winds largely came from the east and followed a fairly clear path almost all the way to the ocean. They squeezed through mountain passes that helped them gain speed.
“It’s like when you put your thumb over the end of a garden hose,” said John Suk, a weather service forecaster. “The water flows faster, then goes down not far away.”
That effect was on display on Viejas Mountain, where winds whipped the peak’s western flank Tuesday morning, rattling bushes near the 4,187-foot summit. Below in nearby Alpine, there was only a mild breeze. Sill Hill near Ramona reported a gust to 95 mph — just 1 mph shy of the force of a Category 2 hurricane. It was the highest gust reported Tuesday across all of Southern California, which the Santa Anas broadly hit.
The winds reached 71 mph along Interstate 8, east of Alpine, causing a nightmare for drivers.
Gusts toppled five big rigs, temporarily snarling traffic, and dozens more pulled over to wait out the wind. Doug Aguillard, a videographer for OnScene.TV, said he saw four of the big rigs that crashed Tuesday. “This is just nuts,” he said. “These truckers won’t stop. ... It is not even gusts. It is just constant.”
That part of the county also was the scene of a worrisome brush fire that broke out in late morning southwest of Barrett Junction, a small community off state Route 94 in East County.
Around 175 firefighters and at least four helicopters were sent to the so-called Border 79 fire burning on the northwest side of Tecate Peak.
Officials said it was too windy for tankers to get low enough to drop water or fire retardant.
Evacuations were briefly ordered south of SR-94 from Dulzura Summit to just east of Barrett Junction.
Even after the order was lifted, officials said residents should be ready to leave should conditions change.
Investigators are trying to determine what sparked the blaze, which charred 24 acres, a Cal Fire spokesperson said. Firefighters had the fire 50 percent contained by early afternoon.
The risk of wildfire was enhanced by low relative humidity, which had fallen to the 5% to 15% range by early afternoon.
Forecasters correctly predicted the onset and path of Tuesday’s storm.
San Diego Gas & Electric notified more than 117,000 of its customers over the weekend that it might temporarily shut off their power to reduce the threat of wildfires, and that outages could last a day or more. It calls such outages public safety power shutoffs — de-energizing power lines to reduce the risk that high winds could knock them down into dry vegetation and spark a wildfire.
It began to follow through on that warning Monday, leading to outages in more than 40 communities, including Alpine, Julian, El Cajon, Escondido, Lakeside and Ramona. By late Tuesday, more than 46,000 households remained without power, and they faced the possibility they might not get it back for a day or two.
Shortly after 4:15 a.m. Tuesday, as winds were kicking up, firefighters responded to a brush fire on Rangeland Road north of Highland Valley Road in the Ramona area. The fire, pushed by winds and burning in a grassy area, ran into a riparian creek area where its progress slowed, and firefighters were able to gain the upper hand, said Cal Fire Capt. Mike Cornette.
The power outages prompted Harrah’s Resort Southern California in the Valley Center area to close, but the casino and resort welcomed guests back Tuesday afternoon, with power restored.
(Gary Robbins & Karen Kucher, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; Maura Fox, Rob Nikolewski)
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U.S. wildlife officials announced a decision Tuesday to extend federal protections to monarch butterflies after years of warnings from environmentalists that populations are shrinking and the beloved pollinator may not survive climate change. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to add the butterfly to the threatened species list by the end of next year following an extensive public comment period.
“The iconic monarch butterfly is cherished across North America, captivating children and adults throughout its fascinating life cycle,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams said in a news release. “Despite its fragility, it is remarkably resilient, like many things in nature when we just give them a chance. Science shows that the monarch needs that chance, and this proposed listing invites and builds on unprecedented public participation in shaping monarch conservation efforts.”
The Endangered Species Act affords extensive protections to species the wildlife service lists as endangered or threatened. Under the act, it’s illegal to import, export, possess, transport or kill an endangered species. A threatened listing allows for exceptions to those protections.
In the monarch’s case, the proposed listing would generally prohibit anyone from killing or transporting the butterfly. People and farmers could continue to remove milkweed, a key food source for monarch caterpillars, from their gardens, backyards and fields but would be prohibited from making changes to the land that make it permanently unusable for the species. Incidental kills resulting from vehicle strikes would be allowed, people could continue to transport fewer than 250 monarchs and could continue to use them for educational purposes.
The proposal also would designate 4,395 acres in seven coastal California counties where monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains migrate for winter as critical habitat for the butterfly.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday banned two solvents found in everyday products that can cause cancer and other serious diseases. It was a move long sought by environmental and health advocates, even as they braced for what could be a wave of deregulation by the incoming Trump administration.
For decades, communities close to factories, airports, dry cleaners and other sites have lived with the consequences of exposure to trichloroethylene, or TCE, a toxic chemical used in cleaners, spot removers, lubricants and glue.
TCE is known to cause liver cancer, kidney cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and to damage the nervous and immune systems. It has been found in drinking water nationwide and was the subject of a 1995 book that became a movie, “A Civil Action,” starring John Travolta. The EPA is banning all uses of the chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which was overhauled in 2016 to give the agency greater authority to regulate harmful chemicals.
The EPA also banned all consumer uses of perchloroethylene, used in dry-cleaning and automotive-care products. Though it is less harmful than TCE, the solvent, also called perc, can cause liver, kidney, brain and testicular cancer, and can damage kidneys, the liver and the immune system.
The EPA’s ban of perc still allows for a range of industrial uses, including in aviation and defense, with the provision that strict rules must be in place to protect workers. Both bans were initially proposed in 2023.
“It’s simply unacceptable to continue to allow cancer-causing chemicals to be used for things like glue, dry cleaning or stain removers when safer alternatives exist,” said Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.
Looming over the new rules is the return of President-elect Donald Trump, who during his first term presided over an effort to weaken chemical regulations and named a former executive for the American Chemistry Council, an industry organization, as a top deputy at the EPA’s chemical safety office, raising concerns about corporate influence in the regulatory process.
Rules that have been put in place in the final stretch of the Biden administration, like this one, are also vulnerable to the Congressional Review Act, which allows an incoming Senate to overturn any regulation finalized near the end of a presidential term.
Yet Trump said on the campaign trail that he wanted “the cleanest air and the cleanest water.” He has also said he is committed to “getting dangerous chemicals out of our environment.”
That reflects a recognition that concerns over pollution cut across party loyalties, said Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, a legal nonprofit that advocated the TCE ban.
If the Trump administration tries to roll back the ban, Kalmuss-Katz said, “they’re going to encounter serious opposition from communities across the country that have been devastated by TCE, in both blue and red states.”
The EPA’s ban was welcomed by environmental advocates like Linda Robles of Tucson, AZ, whose daughter, Tianna, died in 2007 of a rare form of cancer and kidney failure, which Robles believes was caused by TCE and other chemicals from Tucson International Airport and nearby military facilities.
Federal authorities discovered in the 1980s that the groundwater in Tucson’s south side, where Robles lived with her family, was contaminated with TCE. The airport and military facilities are now Superfund sites undergoing government-led cleanup.
“They’ve been telling me for decades that they’re going to ban TCE, so it’s such a big deal it’s finally happening,” said Robles, who campaigns for cleaner water and air. Still, “I’ll never get my daughter back,” she said.
Industry groups have criticized the new restrictions. The American Chemistry Council said in a statement that “the rule as proposed would present multiple challenges that could have far-reaching impacts on various industries and the national economy.” The Dry Cleaning and Laundry Institute and the National Cleaners Association said in comments submitted to the EPA that “any future decision to reduce or phase out the use of perc in dry cleaning will put an oppressive burden on thousands of cleaners.”
(Hiroko Tabuchi, NEW YORK TIMES)
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An unusually powerful Santa Ana windstorm moved into San Diego County late Monday and was expected to intensify sharply today, potentially sparking wildfires, snapping trees and ripping apart holiday displays from the mountains to the sea.
San Diego Gas & Electric preemptively shut off power Monday evening to tens of thousands of households across eastern parts of the county from Campo to Valley Center, and schools were preemptively closed today in a number of districts across the county’s vast backcountry.
In a rarity, SDG&E had warned more than 117,000 customers over the weekend that it might temporarily shut off their power to reduce the threat of wildfires, and that outages could last a day or more. It calls such outages public safety power shutoffs — powering down transmission lines to reduce the risk that high winds could knock them into dry vegetation and spark a wildfire. It followed through on that warning Monday. By 8:20 p.m., more than 38,500 customers had their lines “de-energized” in more than 30 communities, including Alpine, Julian, El Cajon, Escondido, Lakeside and Ramona. That number was expected to have risen considerably by dawn today.
“The winter rains just haven’t shown up, and it’s creating some very critical fire weather conditions this year,” said Brian D’Agostino, SDG&E’s vice president of wildfire and climate science.
The potential for damage is also high because the winds were expected to be unusually strong, and the relative humidity will be very low. Winds could gust upward of 70 mph in the mountains, 50 mph to 60 mph along parts of Interstates 8 and 15, up to 40 mph on state Route 76 and 30 mph at the coast.
Forecasters said the winds would be well-established in East County by midnight and begin whipping some coastal areas by sunrise.
Some of the strongest gusts were likely to follow a corridor from the Ramona and Escondido areas all the way to Encinitas and Del Mar. Winds were also expected to sweep across Camp Pendleton and along a stretch of I-8 east of Alpine that’s well known for wind-related traffic accidents.
As a precaution, schools were closed today in six rural districts — Jamul- Dulzura, Julian Elementary, Julian High, Mountain Empire, Spencer Valley and Warner Unified.
The potential for widespread fires hasn’t been this high since the first week of December 2020, when fire broke out across many areas of the county. “The highest-risk areas for this particular event ... are going to develop (in) areas above 3,000 feet,” D’Agostino told reporters Monday morning, adding that gusts are expected to blow through wide stretches of rural and backcountry areas carpeted with chaparral, one of the country’s most flammable kinds of vegetation. “As we head up Boulder Creek Road towards the western slopes of Cuyamaca, we think winds there could easily hit hurricane force through this event,” D’Agostino said.
Last month, Santa Ana winds that reached 50 mph led to 1,263 SDG&E customers losing power — but this incoming windstorm appeared to be much stronger. The utility has already warned about five times the number of customers of potential outages from this series of Santa Anas.
“This is actually the highest fire potential we have seen in San Diego County in six years,” D’Agostino said. “We have to go back to the peak of our fire season in 2018,” he added, in order to see the last event that “scored this high in terms of our large fire potential for our region.”
The National Weather Service has issued a red-flag fire warning that will be in effect through early Wednesday east of I-15 in San Diego County. Relative humidity had already dropped below 20% in some areas late Monday, and forecasters expected it to fall further today and Wednesday to as low as 5%.
Such conditions are conducive to the spread of wildfire — especially since the area has received only a fraction of its typical seasonal rainfall. San Diego International Airport has been especially dry, recording only 0.13 inches of precipitation since Oct. 1. That’s about 1.5 inches below average.
Forecasters say the county is unlikely to get appreciable rain through Sunday, and probably through Christmas.
California has had several rain events since early November, but the storms have largely remained in the northern part of the state. Forecast models suggest that trend could last into January.
SDG&E officials say homeowners should bring outdoor patio furniture inside to reduce the risk of items such as chairs and umbrellas going airborne and making contact with power lines. Affected customers should prepare for outages that could last for multiple days, especially in areas in mountain foothills, D’Agostino said. “Damage that is seen on the electric system in many areas (is) going to require helicopters to patrol over different canyons where we can’t get to it by foot” to eventually restore power, he said.
(Gary Robbins & Rob Nikolewski, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Powerful Santa Ana winds will tear across much of San Diego County, but there are steps residents can take to prepare — including securing any freshly installed outdoor Christmas decorations.
A red-flag warning was issued for areas east of Interstate 15, and San Diego Gas & Electric preemptively shut off power to tens of thousands of customers.
Here’s how you can prepare — for the windstorm and for any potential power outages.
Secure your home
Before the winds pick up, make sure outdoor patio furniture and lightweight yard accessories are tied down or brought indoors.
Philip Gonsalves, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego, especially warns about outdoor umbrellas, which he says can “become projectiles” with strong gusts of wind.
Gonsalves also advises residents to safely fasten outdoor Christmas decorations. Lights that are securely attached to the roof should be fine, he said — but East County residents with lights and ornaments in trees and bushes may consider taking them down until the winds calm later this week.
And inflatable Christmas decorations are a definite no. You’ll risk seeing Santa Claus go “airborne with no sleigh,” as Gonsalves put it. “You’re gonna have to put those away,” he said. “Otherwise, you’ll have a miniature Macy’s (Thanksgiving) Day Parade scenario in your backyard or your neighbor’s backyard.”
Keep an eye on the trees
The National Weather Service recommends trimming tree branches away from your house and away from power lines.
Gonsalves says that should also be a regular part of residents’ yard maintenance year-round, along with checking for dead or weak branches. Residents with eucalyptus trees in or near their yard should also be on alert, since the trees are highly flammable and have shallow root structures.
“They burn like candles,” he said, “and they fall over in your average Santa Ana breeze.”
Prepare for possible power outages
Keep electronic devices charged in the case of a power outage, which SDG&E officials say could last for multiple days. The company suggests staying prepared with flashlights, extra batteries, a battery-operated radio and a phone that doesn’t need electricity. Consider putting together an emergency preparedness kit as well.
For customers affected by public safety power shutoffs, SDG&E also has community resource centers that offer water, Wi-Fi, phone and medical device charging stations, snacks and more. Find a location at sdge.com/wildfire- safety/community-resource-centers. Residents should report any downed power lines to SDG&E — but be careful never to touch a power line, as it could still be energized.
Take care of your health
This week’s Santa Ana winds are coupled with low humidity, so stay hydrated to combat the dryness. The dry air, coupled with an increase in particles and pollen flying around, may especially impact residents with allergies and respiratory issues.
Gonsalves also suggests residents avoid driving in a strong wind event. If you do drive, he advises steering clear of high-profile vehicles like semitrucks, which he says can be knocked over by strong gusts.
In general, stay indoors if possible. “If you don’t have to expose yourself to dust in your eyes or other flying objects, you’re probably better off not wandering outside when it’s windy,” Gonsalves said.
(Maura Fox, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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This year’s holiday season will feel very different for some San Diegans still trying to rebuild nearly a year after catastrophic flooding displaced thousands of families. Some spent Thanksgiving day separated from their families, with nowhere to gather. Others used the time off to work on rebuilding, in the hopes of returning home before Christmas. Others who are fortunate enough to have moved back home already still aren’t out of the woods.
And as the year winds to a close, Clariza Marin, who has been helping organize flood recovery efforts, worries about another cliff coming for flood victims. Some had to hurry to lease new homes at rents higher than they can afford — leases that may soon expire. Others’ rental subsidies and other financial aid is running dry.
Soon, those families will have exhausted their resources and once again be in search of an affordable place to live.
“There’s so many lessons to be learned,” Marin said.
Martha Navarro considers herself one of the lucky ones. She was able to move back into her Southcrest home with her husband, two sons and their dog at the end of July — but it hasn’t been an easy transition.
Theirs is one of the few families who have moved back into their homes on Beta Street, one of the streets hit hardest in January. Many neighbors are still rebuilding; other homes are up for sale or have recently sold.
Her family’s flood insurance helped cover the costs of home repairs but not those of damaged appliances and belongings. She estimates they’ve spent $20,000 to $25,000 already, but still lack many of the other key items that make up a home, like smaller kitchen appliances or cooking utensils. She’s bought only her essentials — things like pots, pans and a coffee maker. “It was little things like that that made me upset, because I’m not trying to buy everything all over again, or remember exactly what I had,” she said.
Dozens of other families face similar situations or worse, explained Marin, who earlier this year became chief financial officer for the Harvey Family Foundation to help with its flood recovery efforts.
Although Marin hopes to return to her regular, full-time job soon, she and the nonprofit’s leader, Armon Harvey, say there is still so much work left to do to help flood victims.
“We’re doing outreach, door-knocking and ... we’re still finding more houses that still need help,” Marin said. “There’s families with children sleeping on the floor with mold.” More than 300 families have gotten financial aid since the county gave the San Diego Housing Commission $4.2 million to create a program to help eligible homeowners, landlords and tenants fix their homes or find new ones.
But there were specific parameters on how the aid could be disbursed. Only people who lived in the city of San Diego and had used the county’s hotel voucher program as of May 23 were eligible. So community groups like the Harvey Family Foundation created an aid program of their own, offering help with the construction, labor and materials needed to rebuild, mainly for people who didn’t get county housing support. The foundation has spent $530,000 helping dozens of families — 39 who have finished rebuilding and another 22 whose work is in progress — and has helped facilitate other donations, like free paint jobs and appliance donations.
At least another two dozen families are still awaiting assistance through the program. Marin says the foundation expects to have 70% of homes completed within the next three weeks. Each family has gotten as much as $25,000, depending on how much work they’ve needed and how much aid they got from elsewhere, and another $10,000 is allocated for certain homes facing extreme circumstances.
The housing commission was slated to give the foundation’s program up to $660,000 to aid in their efforts, but the foundation had only gotten about $250,000 as of last week. “To continue housing restoration assistance without disruption, SDHC is advancing $100,000 in SDHC funds to the Harvey Family Foundation while we work with them on the reimbursement process for city funds, which requires documentation such as invoices, estimates, proof of payments, receipts, etc.,” commission spokesperson Scott Marshall said.
The remaining $300,000 or so will only be paid once the foundation submits financial reports.
Marin fears this will further delay recovery efforts — she says it’s too large an amount for the nonprofit to front. “We’re trying to jump through all this red tape and figure it out,” Marin said, adding that they are hoping to get as many families as possible home by Christmas.
Since the housing commission’s own financial aid program closed in August, more than $4.5 million has been distributed to 313 families, with another $275,000 projected to be distributed through March, per the commission’s most recent report as of Nov. 13. Nearly all of the 359 households who were eligible from having participated in the county’s hotel voucher program applied, and all but 32 say they have since found stable housing. An additional 252 applied but were deemed ineligible.
Of the more than 300 who got aid, more than half opted for lump-sum payments of up to $15,100, which required less paperwork. Most of the rest are getting up to six months of rent subsidies. The housing commission program also reimbursed some families for hotel or moving expenses, helped some with their security deposits and offered some landlords $1,500 leasing incentives.
In a recent update to the City Council on flood recovery efforts, the commission’s president and CEO Lisa Jones said that about $900,000 in unused and uncommitted funding would go to helping flood victims who had applied but been deemed ineligible because they had not participated in the county’s hotel voucher program.
Those households will each get lump-sum payments of up to $5,500.
Down the street from the Navarros’ house, the Southcrest home that Ashley Manzano and four family members used to share — a home her 89-year-old grandmother has owned for half a century — is one of many still vacant.
She and some of her family members participated in the county’s hotel voucher program for a time, but Manzano has been couch-surfing between friends’ homes since May — first with a friend in Los Angeles, then another in Temecula. “It’s kind of hard, because sometimes your time can expire within a home — you stay there a little too long,” Manzano said. “So it’s just been stressful.” She says it’s been even harder for other members of her family, especially those with disabilities who need additional support. One who has mental health issues is now living on the streets in National City.
Manzano has recently developed health issues of her own that have prevented her from working — including one that’s led her to start losing her eyesight. She’s leaned on a friend and an aunt for financial help. She’s begun selling some of her belongings. She’s been moving from couch to couch, two duffel bags with everything she owns in tow, knowing she could need to leave on short notice. Her family has yet to finish rebuilding.
(Emily Alvarenga & Maura Fox, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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A 7.0 magnitude earthquake shook a large area of Northern California on Thursday, knocking items off grocery store shelves, sending children scrambling under desks and prompting a brief tsunami warning for 5.3 million people along the West Coast.
The quake struck at 10:44 a.m. west of Ferndale, a small town in coastal Humboldt County, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It was felt as far south as San Francisco, some 270 miles away, where residents described a rolling motion for several seconds. It was followed by multiple smaller aftershocks.
There were no immediate reports of major damage or injuries from the quake, one of the most powerful temblors to hit California since a 7.1-magnitude quake hit Ridgecrest in 2019.
The tsunami warning was in effect for roughly an hour. Issued shortly after Thursday’s quake struck, it covered nearly 500 miles of coastline, from the edge of California’s Monterey Bay north into Oregon.
The region was struck by a 6.4 magnitude quake in 2022 that left thousands of people without power and water. The northwest corner of California is the most seismically active part of the state because it’s where three tectonic plates meet, seismologist Lucy Jones said on the social media platform BlueSky.
Shortly after the quake, numerous cities urged people to evacuate to higher ground as a precaution.
The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District stopped traffic in all directions through the underwater tunnel between San Francisco and Oakland, and the San Francisco Zoo’s visitors were evacuated.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said he has signed off on a state of emergency declaration to quickly move state resources to impacted areas along the coast.
Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal said residents experienced some cracks in their homes’ foundations, as well as broken glass and windows, but nothing severe.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Snow squalls — sudden bursts of heavy snow and gusty winds — created whiteout conditions in parts of the northeast during a storm that brought even more snow to the Great Lakes region Thursday. Two people died from heart attacks after shoveling snow in upstate New York, officials said.
The deaths were recorded Wednesday in western New York’s Erie County, which has seen steady snowfall since the end of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, well ahead of when winter officially starts on Dec. 21. Numerous schools in Buffalo and surrounding towns were closed Thursday, and vehicle accidents backed up traffic on highways after several inches of snow fell overnight and into the morning.
In Ohio, travel bans were in place Thursday in the northeast corner of the state along Lake Erie, where up to 5 feet of snow was on the ground from storms earlier in the week and more was in the forecast. Part of Pennsylvania along the lake is under a blizzard warning until early Saturday, with speed reductions in effect on interstates. Surrounding counties in the region were under lake-effect snow warnings.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine declared a state of emergency in four counties ahead of the next round of lake-effect snow, which could bring another foot of snow through today, according to the National Weather Service. Crews in Ashtabula, Ohio, along Lake Erie, were busy brushing snow off roofs before the next round piles on top. The city’s fire chief said the department has responded to more than 100 snow emergencies, including collapsed roofs, downed power lines and trees, and people who needed medical care.
Power outages were starting to rise Thursday. Pennsylvania recorded more than 14,000 out of power Thursday morning, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages throughout the nation. As the storm made its way to New England, Connecticut saw nearly 11,000 customers without electricity. Farther south, high winds knocked out power to more than 12,000 customers in Virginia.
“All of the outages we’re seeing are storm-related, mostly trees down on lines. Our crews are working to make repairs and restore power at numerous locations around the state as quickly and safely as possible,” said Eversource spokesperson Sarah Paduano in Connecticut.
The storm dumped up to 8 inches of snow in parts of northern Connecticut, according to weather service reports. Parts of northwestern Massachusetts saw around 9 inches of snow.
Skiers at the Stowe Mountain Resort in Stowe, VT, were taking advantage of the wintry weather.
“It’s awesome to see some snow in the mountains right now,” said Cyrus Schenck of Burlington, VT. “I know it’s early December and usually it’s hit or
miss, but everything’s covered and trees included. It’s not just where they blew snow.”
Other winter-weary residents already were fed up even though the official start of the season is still two weeks away. An Ohio man could face charges after he tossed a shovel-full of snow on a plow driver through his open window after the truck pushed a snow pile into his driveway, police in Lake County said.
(Kathy McCormack, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Environmental Protection Agency enhanced enforcement efforts this year, doubling financial penalties issued to polluters and issuing the first-ever arrest for a climate change-related crime, the agency said in a report Thursday.
The EPA said it concluded more than 1,850 civil cases, a 3.4% increase over 2023, and charged 121 criminal defendants, a 17.6% increase over the previous year. The “revitalized enforcement and compliance efforts” resulted in the reduction or elimination of more than 225 million pounds of pollution in overburdened communities, the agency said in its final report on Biden-era enforcement actions before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
The agency said it issued $1.7 billion in fines and penalties, more than double the 2023 total and the highest level in seven years.
Bolstered by 300 new employees hired since last year, the enforcement program focused on “21st century environmental challenges,” including climate change, environmental justice and chemical waste, said David Uhlmann, EPA’s assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance. More than half the agency’s inspections and settlements involved poor and disadvantaged communities long scarred by pollution, reflecting the Biden administration’s emphasis on environmental justice issues.
Enforcement efforts included first-ever criminal charges for a climate change-related crime. A California man was charged in March with smuggling climate-damaging air coolants into the United States. The case involved hydrofluorocarbons, a highly potent greenhouse gas also known as HFCs, a gas once commonly used in refrigerators and air conditioners. A 2020 law passed by Congress prohibits importation of HFCs without allowances issued by the EPA. The law is part of a global phaseout designed to slow climate change. Uhlmann called enforcement of the HFC law a high priority for the United States and the world.
In other highlights, engine maker Cummins Inc. paid more than $2 billion in fines and penalties — and agreed to recall 600,000 Ram trucks — as part of a settlement with federal and California authorities. Cummins was found to use illegal software that let Ram trucks — manufactured by Stellantis — skirt diesel emissions tests for nearly a decade. The fine is the largest ever secured under the federal Clean Air Act.
The EPA and Justice Department also reached a $241.5 million settlement with Marathon Oil for alleged air quality violations at the company’s oil and gas operations on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. The settlement requires Marathon to reduce climate- and health-harming emissions from those facilities and will result in over 2.3 millions tons worth of pollution reduction, officials said.
Uhlmann, who was confirmed as head of the enforcement office last year, said in an interview that with the help of a spending boost approved by Congress, the agency has made “consequential changes in how we approach enforcement at EPA.”
(Matthew Daly, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HONG KONG, China — China said Tuesday that it would begin banning the export of several rare minerals to the United States, an escalation of the tech war between the world’s two biggest powers. The move comes a day after the Biden administration tightened Chinese access to advanced American technology.
The ban signals Beijing’s willingness to engage in supply chain warfare by blocking the export of important components used to make valuable products, like weaponry and semiconductors.
Sales of gallium, germanium, antimony and so-called superhard materials to the United States would be halted immediately on the grounds that they have dual military and civilian uses, China’s Ministry of Commerce said. The export of graphite would also be subject to stricter review.
China is central to many global supply chains, but it generally refrained from clamping down on its own exports during the first Trump administration, preferring instead to take more limited actions like buying soybeans from Brazil instead of the United States. But senior Chinese officials are worried that President-elect Donald Trump plans more stringent policies during his coming term in office.
Trump has promised to put hefty tariffs on goods from China and further sever the trading relationship between the countries. The move on Tuesday — one of the most aggressive steps China has taken to counter increasingly restrictive policies from the U.S. government — could foreshadow more economic conflict as Trump enters the White House.
China produces nearly all the world’s supply of critical minerals needed to make advanced technologies such as semiconductors. Beijing has been tightening its grip on the materials to retaliate for clampdowns on American technology exports to China over the past two years.
China created a legal framework last year for controlling exports of gallium and germanium, which are used in semiconductors, and on Sept. 15 China added antimony, which is used in military explosives. In October, China began requiring its exporters of rare earth metals, used in everything from advanced semiconductors to smart bombs, to disclose, step by step, how the minerals would be used in Western supply chains.
China’s exports of gallium and germanium briefly halted a year ago until officials in Beijing devised a system for approving such transactions. Shipments to the United States have never fully recovered, forcing the United States to rely more on the purchase of semi-processed materials from other countries like Japan that buy directly from China.
The Chinese ban on superhard mineral exports could provoke particular unhappiness in the U.S. national security community. That ban appeared to be aimed at Chinese exports of tungsten, which is vital for making armor-piercing bullets and shells, said Oliver Friesen, the CEO of Guardian Metal Resources, a London company that is planning to mine tungsten in Nevada.
It will take close to three years to establish a new tungsten mine in Nevada, he said, adding: “We’re moving things along quite quickly.”
When the Biden administration broadened tariffs in September that Trump imposed in his first term, it added a 25% tariff on imports of tungsten from China — part of an effort to persuade tungsten users in the United States to find more dependable suppliers elsewhere.
Even before China instituted the ban Tuesday, it had begun limiting its overall antimony exports tightly enough that global prices for the material have doubled in the past three months.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, China has been supplying 54% of the germanium used by the United States, a material used in infrared technology and fiber optics. The United States has not mined its own gallium, used in semiconductors, since 1987. Japan supplies 26% of American imports of gallium, China 21% and Germany 19%, along with several smaller suppliers.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Even more snow could be on the way for places in the Great Lakes region that are still digging out after days of storms caused deadly wrecks, collapsed a barn on top of 100 cows and buried some towns under nearly 6 feet.
While cleanup was still taking place Tuesday around parts of western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan — where some places saw just an inch or two of snow while others were hit with several feet — areas in New York were still seeing snowfall and a lake-effect snow warning remained through much of Tuesday. Some spots could get another 4 to 8 inches of snow, according to the National Weather Service.
More than 5 feet of snow blanketed the area east of Cleveland along Lake Erie
and more was expected later in the week, with a winter storm watch in place from the weather service beginning tonight into Friday.
Todd Brainard used a roof rake to scrape several feet of snow from the top of his house in North Perry, Ohio. “I just don’t want to take the chance of having the roof cave in on my kids or wife or any one of us,” he said Tuesday. “A lot of people haven’t seen this amount of snow in a long time.”
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine declared a state of emergency in four counties on Tuesday, noting that more snow squalls and high winds were expected in the coming days.
In neighboring western Pennsylvania, another 3 to 9 inches could fall from late tonight through Thursday morning. Many school districts in the western part of the state remained closed Tuesday after several days of lake-effect snow.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Snow continued to fall Monday around parts of the Great Lakes region, where storm-weary residents who have plowed and shoveled for days faced the prospect of even greater accumulations.
Lake-effect snow fell on parts of western New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio that were already blanketed with a foot or more over the past four days. By Monday, more than 5 feet of snow had fallen east of Lake Ontario in the past four days, according to the National Weather Service. More snow was forecast through today in the largely rural area south of Buffalo.
“It was so much, so quick, that we got buried,” said Rebecca Chamberlin, who lives in the village of Cassadaga, NY, east of Lake Erie with her husband and two sons. She has been struggling to keep up with the bands of sometimes wet and heavy snow. “If it had been, you know, over a period of a week or more, it wouldn’t have been so bad.”
In Ohio, the quaint village of Geneva-on-the-Lake had more than 4 feet of snow, and more is in the forecast through the rest of the week, according to the National Weather Service. “At this point, it’s just annoying,” said Ryan Colby, who lives a snowball’s toss from Lake Erie in the Ohio village. “We’ve just been getting hit left and right with it.”
The mayor of Geneva-on-the-Lake has been using a backhoe almost nonstop since Thursday to clear the snow. “Every business down here has been shut down the last four days,” Mayor Dwayne Bennett said. “You can’t even get in the front doors.”
Lake-effect snow warnings were in effect through tonight in parts of Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania.
Winter storm warnings or advisories also were posted through today in Michigan, up and down the Lake Michigan coast, where as much as a foot of snow was predicted.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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San Diego received only a trace of rain in October, just 0.13 inches in November, and there’s no significant precipitation in sight through Dec. 11.
Is this the prelude to an abnormally dry winter that will bring drought and the prospect of widespread wildfires?
Forecaster’s aren’t sure, but they don’t like the way things are unfolding.
“We’re off to a dry start and as the weeks go by you begin to think uh-oh are we going to have a dry winter,” said Brandt Maxwell, a forecaster at the National Weather Service.
The worry is running a little deeper than usual because the Pacific is giving birth to La Niña, a natural, periodic climate phenomenon that’s associated with dry winters in Southern California.
That’s not a guarantee that things will stay dry locally. Two years ago, San Diego experienced a wet winter in the presence of La Niña.
But the combination of La Niña and Santa Ana winds have sparked horrific fires, causing concern among forecasters and first responders.
San Diego’s weather is expected to remain calm and dry into Thursday, when weak Santa Ana winds are expected to begin blowing through inland canyons. The winds might intensify on Friday, forecasters said.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Diplomats at a United Nations conference in Busan, South Korea, failed to reach agreement on the world’s first treaty to tackle plastic pollution Sunday. They said they would reconvene in future months to try again.
At what was supposed to be the final round of talks, nations struggled to bridge wide differences that remained over critical issues, including whether the treaty should include limits on plastics production itself.
Some of the world’s largest producers of petroleum had vehemently opposed any measure that would restrict plastic production. The vast majority of the world’s plastic is made from petroleum.
Representatives from those countries argued, instead, that the treaty should stay focused on improving recycling and waste management.
Delegates gathered at the conference also remained far apart on the need to phase out some of the harmful chemicals used in plastic, as well as who should bear the costs of implementing the treaty.
Juliet Kabera, a delegate for Rwanda, which had led the push for a wide-ranging treaty, said a “small number” of countries had remained “unsupportive of the measures necessary to drive real change.”
“Rwanda cannot accept a toothless treaty,” Kabera said.
Saudi Arabia, which joined Russia, Kuwait and other oil-producing countries to oppose plastic production curbs, said nations needed to consider other approaches.
“If we address plastic pollution, there should be no problem with producing plastics,” said Abdulrahman Al Gwaiz, a Saudi delegate. “The problem is pollution itself, not plastics.”
Environmental groups urged nations to adopt an ambitious, legally binding treaty.
Earlier in the weeklong negotiations, protesters in Busan rallied around a model of a sperm whale stuffed with plastic waste, displaying slogans including “Courage not compromise.”
The world produces nearly a half-billion tons of plastic each year, more than twice the amount produced two decades ago. Images of plastic trash on coastlines and river banks prompted calls for a global treaty to address the problem of plastic waste.
As of late Sunday in Busan, no date nor place had been announced for the next round of talks.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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Heavy snowfall and numbing temperatures kept parts of the U.S. in a deep freeze Sunday as the Thanksgiving holiday weekend drew to a close.
In the remote Tug Hill region of upstate New York, where lake-effect snow off Lake Ontario can dump several feet of snow at a time, there was up to 46 inches in the Barnes Corners area.
Lake-effect snow is caused when warm, moist air is blown across a body of water and mixes with colder, drier air, creating narrow bands of often heavy snow on land. Pileups can be quick: The U.S. military’s Fort Drum, near hard-hit Watertown, NY, issued an alert saying up to 19 inches of snow could fall Sunday.
Commercial vehicles remained banned in both directions of Interstate 90 in western New York along a nearly 134-mile stretch to the Pennsylvania line.
In Buffalo, NY, officials with the NFL’s Bills had sought stadium snow shovelers for the season, including ahead of Sunday night’s game against the San Francisco 49ers. The team said it would pay $20 per hour and provide food and hot drinks.
The lake-effect storm began hitting the area Saturday near the Bills’ stadium in Orchard Park, NY. Flurries began to fall more heavily just before kickoff. The game was played in chilly conditions with the game-time temperature at 27 degrees, with the wind chill making it feel like 17 degrees.
Another 1 to 2 feet of snow were possible in western New York, and another 2 to 3 feet were possible in northern New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said Sunday.
A blast of Arctic air last week brought bitter temperatures of 10 to 20 degrees below average to the Northern Plains, the National Weather Service said. Frigid air was expected to move over the eastern third of the U.S. by today, with temperatures about 10 degrees below average.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed a disaster emergency proclamation Saturday and said parts of Erie County in the northwest received nearly 2 feet of snow, with more expected through tonight.
Parts of Michigan were battered by lake-effect snow as bands rolling off Lake Superior buried parts of the Upper Peninsula under 2 feet or more, said Lily Chapman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
There were 27 inches of snow northeast of Ironwood, in the Upper Peninsula’s western reaches. Over a foot could fall over the eastern Upper Peninsula through this morning, Chapman said Saturday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has released a new plan to protect the state’s iconic Joshua trees, which are imperiled by wildfires, human development and climate change.
The 294-page draft plan includes calls for avoiding or minimizing direct and indirect impacts from overgrazing, pesticide use and unauthorized off-roading; relocating trees when projects require their removal or could harm them; and identifying and protecting lands where they could thrive in a future projected to be drier and hotter.
“In many ways, it’s a good comprehensive plan of the things we need to do if the western Joshua tree is going to survive the very, very difficult decades ahead,” said Brendan Cummings, conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit that in 2019 petitioned to list the western Joshua tree as threatened under the state’s Endangered Species Act.
The conservation plan is a requirement of the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act that passed last year, making it the first law in the state to protect a species from the threats of climate change. The law also prohibits anyone from killing, damaging or removing a tree without a state permit.
The plan lists criteria and attributes to help identify land that should be prioritized for conservation, such as large areas with Joshua trees or areas with a high density of healthy and adult trees. It also suggests protecting regions where there is low risk of such threats as fires, invasive species and development, and where pollinators like moths or small mammal seed dispersers exist. It aims to identify these lands by December 2025 and permanently protect 70% of them by 2033.
The plan also calls on land managers and wildfire responders to create procedures to reduce and fight wildfires that threaten the species and their habitat, and develop measures to minimize impacts from rehabilitating burned areas. That includes protecting trees, replanting lost ones and other native species, and controlling invasive species.
But as the proposed plan notes, its effectiveness and the survival of the trees will depend largely on whether humanity can limit and reduce the planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, oil and gas that are causing climate change.
Under a business-as-usual scenario, climate change could wipe out most, if not all, of the tree’s habitat, Cummings said.
“Assuming we can keep to a mid-level emissions trajectory, we have a very good chance of saving the species if all the things outlined in this plan are carried out,” he said. “And primarily that’s doing what we can to protect as many of them as possible.”
The draft plan will have to be approved by the California Fish and Game Commission.
(Dorany Pineda, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A lake-effect storm in the Great Lakes region that was bringing heavy snow to parts of northern New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania on Friday prompted the closure of highways, disrupting travel after the Thanksgiving holiday, as forecasters warned the storm would “bury” some areas east of lakes Erie and Ontario.
Lake-effect snow closed a section of westbound Interstate 90 from Hamburg, NY, to the Pennsylvania line, the Departments of Transportation for Pennsylvania and New York said.
The storm, which began earlier in the week, had brought more than 8 inches of snow to portions of Marquette County in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula by Friday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.
Portions of western New York, such as Mayville on the northern end of Chautauqua Lake about 22 miles north of Jamestown, had recorded 17 inches of snow by midafternoon Friday, according to forecasters.
Watertown, NY, where less than an inch of snow had fallen Friday afternoon, was forecast to get close to 6 feet of snow over the next three days.
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York declared a state of emergency for 11 counties Friday.
“We are so accustomed to this kind of storm,” Hochul said in an interview with Spectrum News on Friday. “We don’t love it, but it is part of who we are as New Yorkers, especially western New York and the North Country.”
The weather service in Buffalo said prolonged lake-effect snow “will bury some areas east of both lakes Erie and Ontario.”
“There will be localized areas that will be paralyzed from the lake snow, with some interstates also being greatly impacted,” it added.
The weather service warned of extreme impacts from the lake-effect storm through Monday.
The severity of the storm could make driving extremely dangerous or impossible in parts of those regions.
Representatives of hotels near Erie, PA, said they were experiencing cancellations from guests who were unable to reach their destinations.
Chris Smith, who works at a Homewood Suites in Erie, near the Interstate 90 closure, said his hotel was “starting to fill up” as drivers left the snow-covered highways.
Lake-effect storms occur when cold air moves across a large body of warmer water. They typically happen in late fall and early winter.
“The lakes started out at basically a record warm for late November,” said David Roth, a forecaster with the weather service.
“Even in areas that are used to it, this is their first real lake-effect of the season,” he added. “They’re going to feel this. This will be a ‘welcome to winter’ for them.”
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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Mammoth Mountain has experienced its snowiest November since 2010, with a huge storm dumping nearly 50 inches on the Eastern Sierra resort earlier this week, the National Weather Service said Thursday.
The system that passed through the area Nov. 23 to 26 brought nearly 50 inches of snow. In all, the mountain has received 62 inches this month, the resort said. That’s one inch more than November 2022, which kicked off a record-setting winter season at the resort.
“This is definitely significant — the first big storm of the season,” said weather service meteorologist Gigi Giralte.
Thanksgiving weekend will be a dry one on the mountain: Giralte said no snow is forecast through Sunday. That means the 88 inches of snow Mammoth received in November 2010 will remain the record for the month during this century.
In Southern California, mild weather will remain through the weekend, with highs in the low-to mid-70s. On Sunday, it could hit about 80 degrees, said weather service meteorologist Ryan Kittell.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season comes to a close today, bringing to an end a season that saw 11 hurricanes compared to the average seven, and death and destruction hundreds of miles from where storms came ashore on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Meteorologists called it a “crazy busy” season, due in part to unusually warm ocean temperatures. Eight hurricanes made landfall, in the U.S., Bermuda, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Grenada.
Here is some of what made the 2024 season stand out:
Hurricane Beryl became the first Category 4 hurricane on record to form in the month of June, slamming into the island of Carriacou in Grenada. In Jamaica it went on to destroy crops and houses and left two dead. The last time the island was scraped by a Category 4 hurricane was Dean in 2007, making it “pretty rare,” said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami. The storm then intensified into the earliest Category 5 hurricane ever in the Atlantic on July 1.
Major hurricanes — Category 3 and above — are not usually seen until Sept. 1, according to the National Hurricane Center.
In September, Hurricane Helene caused catastrophic damage across the southeastern U.S. and was the deadliest storm to hit the U.S. mainland since Katrina in 2005. More than 200 people died. North Carolina estimates the storm caused at least $48.8 billion in direct or indirect damages with houses, drinking water systems and farms and forests destroyed. Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia also sustained extensive damage.
In October, Hurricane Milton rapidly intensified and the storm’s maximum wind speeds hit a screaming 180 mph, making it one of the strongest hurricanes by wind speed ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico. The only one stronger by that measure was Hurricane Rita in 2005.
The areas where Helene and Milton struck saw as much as three times their usual rainfall for September and October, the heart of the Atlantic hurricane season. For Asheville, Tampa and Orlando, the two-month period was the wettest on record.
In November, Hurricane Rafael reached 120 mph and was nearly the strongest November hurricane on record in the Gulf of Mexico. Rafael made landfall in Cuba as it was trying to recover from widespread blackouts caused by Hurricane Oscar in October.
Scientists say planet-warming gases like carbon dioxide and methane released by transportation and industry are causing oceans to rapidly warm. Several factors contribute to the formation of hurricanes, but unusually warm oceans allow hurricanes to form and intensify in places and times we don’t normally anticipate, McNoldy said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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At least 15 people have died and 113 others are missing after landslides buried homes in six villages in eastern Uganda, police said Thursday. An additional 15 injured people have been rescued and admitted to Buluganya Health Center.
The Uganda Red Cross Society said Thursday that 13 bodies had been recovered after landslides buried 40 homes and the rescue effort was continuing. Local media reported that authorities expect the death toll could rise to 30.
Heavy rains triggered landslides in the mountainous district of Bulambuli, about 170 miles east of Kampala, the capital, on Wednesday night.
Meanwhile, seven people have died in a landslide triggered by torrential rains in Indonesia’s Sumatra island, officials said Thursday, adding to the death toll from landslides in the region this week.
Rescuers recovered the bodies of the victims, including a driver and passengers from a tourist bus that was covered by trees, mud and rocks in the landslide on the road from Medan city to Berastagi town in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province. The route is the main access from the capital Medan to other districts in the region.
More than 10 people were also injured and have been evacuated to the hospital in Medan.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The biggest November snowstorm to hit South Korea’s capital in more than a half century blanketed the capital on Wednesday, grounding hundreds of flights, disrupting commuter traffic and leaving at least two dead.
South Korea’s weather agency said 7.8 to 10 inches of snow fell in northern areas of Seoul and nearby areas. The agency said it was the heaviest snowstorm Seoul has experienced in November in 52 years. A storm on Nov. 28, 1972, dumped 4.7 inches.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said one person died and four others were injured in a five-vehicle accident. Another person was killed when a tent-type garage collapsed.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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LA PAZ, Bolivia — A landslide caused by heavy rains after a prolonged drought in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, flooded dozens of homes early Sunday, local authorities said. It swept away a young girl, spurred evacuations and left parts of the city without electricity.
Torrential rain on Saturday caused a river to spill its banks, dislodging mud from a southwestern La Paz neighborhood where low-slung, shoddily built dwellings dot the hillside.
The torrent of rocks and soil surged down a narrow ravine early Sunday, wrecking some two dozen homes and flooding an additional 40, said Juan Carlos Calvimontes, Bolivia’s deputy civil defense minister.
Hours after the rain subsided, rescuers were still searching for a missing 5-year-old girl in the inundated neighborhood of Bajo Llojeta. Emergency workers trudged through the boot-sucking mud Sunday, pulling at least six residents — suffering from hypothermia, their hair matted with sludge — from the collapsed hillside. Soldiers helped clear mud from the streets.
“My daughter was with her cousins when the mud came,” said Grover Mendoza, the missing girl’s father. “The neighbors rescued my nephews, but my daughter was missing.”
La Paz Mayor Iván Arias blamed the poor construction of houses perched on the hillside without permits. In a visit to the site, President Luis Arce delivered aid to flood victims and vowed to hold people responsible for the illegal construction that exacerbated the damage.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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WINDSOR, CA — Another round of wintry weather could complicate travel leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday, according to forecasts across the U.S., while California and Washington state continue to recover from storm damage and power outages.
In California, where two people were found dead in floodwaters on Saturday, authorities braced for more rain while grappling with flooding and small landslides from a previous storm.
The National Weather Service office in Sacramento issued a winter storm warning for the Sierra Nevada through Tuesday, with heavy snow expected at higher elevations and wind gusts potentially reaching 55 mph. Total snowfall of roughly 4 feet was forecast, with the heaviest accumulations expected today and Tuesday.
The Midwest and Great Lakes regions will see rain and snow today, and the East Coast will be the most impacted on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, forecasters said.
A low pressure system is forecast to bring rain to the Southeast early Thursday before heading to the Northeast. Areas from Boston to New York could see rain and breezy conditions, with snowfall possible in parts of northern New Hampshire, northern Maine and the Adirondacks. If the system tracks farther inland, there could be less snow and more rain in the mountains, forecasters said.
A rapidly intensifying “bomb cyclone” hit the West Coast last Tuesday, bringing fierce winds that toppled trees and power lines and damaged homes and cars. Hundreds of thousands lost electricity in Washington state before powerful gusts and record rains moved into Northern California. Fewer than 25,000 people in the Seattle area were still without power Sunday evening.
Two bodies were found Saturday in Sonoma County wine country, north of San Francisco, authorities said. Someone walking on a trail near Santa Rosa found the body of a man in a swollen creek, according to the Sheriff’s Department. Hours later, rescue crews recovered a body inside a vehicle bobbing in floodwaters in nearby Guerneville, Deputy Rob Dillion said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Planet Earth is parting company with an asteroid that’s been tagging along as a “mini moon” for the past two months. The harmless space rock will peel away today, overcome by the stronger tug of the sun’s gravity. But it will zip closer for a quick visit in January.
NASA will use a radar antenna to observe the 33-foot asteroid then. That should deepen scientists’ understanding of the object known as 2024 PT5, quite possibly a boulder that was blasted off the moon by an impacting, crater-forming asteroid.
While not technically a moon — NASA stresses it was never captured by Earth’s gravity and fully in orbit — it’s “an interesting object” worthy of study. Currently more than 2 million miles away, the object is too small and faint to see without a powerful telescope.
It will pass as close as 1.1 million miles of Earth in January, maintaining a safe distance before it zooms farther into the solar system while orbiting the sun, not to return until 2055.
First spotted in August, the asteroid began its semi jog around Earth in late September.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A new draft of a deal on cash to curb and adapt to climate change released Friday at the United Nations climate summit pledged $250 billion annually by 2035 from wealthy countries to poorer ones. The amount pleases the countries who will be paying, but not those on the receiving end.
It’s more than double the previous goal of $100 billion a year set 15 years ago, but less than a quarter of the number requested by developing nations struck hardest by extreme weather. But rich nations say it’s realistic and about the limit of what they can do.
It struck a sour note for developing countries, which see conferences like this one as their biggest hope to pressure rich nations because they aren’t part of meetings of the world’s biggest economies.
“Our expectations were low, but this is a slap in the face,” said Mohamed Adow, from Power Shift Africa. “No developing country will fall for this. They have angered and offended the developing world.”
The proposal came from the top: the presidency of the climate talks — called COP29 — in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev, Azerbaijan’s deputy foreign minister, said the presidency hopes to push countries to go higher than $250 billion, saying “it doesn’t correspond to our fair and ambitious goal. But we will continue to engage with the parties.”
Brazil responded with a higher number taken from a report by an expert financial panel appointed by the United Nations secretary-general. Brazil Environment Minister Marina Silva proposed $300 billion a year until 2035, when the number would jump to $390 billion a year.
Brazil is set to host next year’s COP30. When asked whether lack of an ambitious agreement at COP29 would put Brazil in a bad position next year, Silva said the consequences were bigger than that.
“More than just hurting COP30, it will hurt the life of all of us and hurt the conditions that give us life on Earth,” she said.
Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare, a veteran negotiator, said the presidency’s figure is likely just the first of two or three proposals.
“We’re in for a long night and maybe two nights before we actually reach agreement on this,” Hare said.
Just like last year’s initial proposal, which was soundly rejected, this plan is “empty” on what climate analysts call “mitigation” or efforts to reduce emissions from or completely quit coal, oil and natural gas, Hare said.
Tina Stege, Marshall Islands’ climate envoy, called the drafts “shameful.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HEALDSBURG, CA — Heavy downpours fell over much of Northern California on Friday, causing small landslides, overflowing a river and flooding some streets, including in parts of San Francisco. Meanwhile tens of thousands of people were still without power in the Seattle area after several days in the dark.
The storm arrived in the Pacific Northwest earlier this week, killing two people and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands, mostly in the Seattle area, before moving through Northern California, where several roads were closed due to flooding and strong winds toppled trees.
Forecasters warned about the risk of flash flooding and rockslides in areas
north of San Francisco from this season’s strongest atmospheric river — a long plume of moisture that forms over an ocean and flows through the sky over land.
In Humboldt County, the sheriff’s office downgraded evacuation orders to warnings for people near the Eel River after forecasters said the waterway would see moderate but not major flooding. Officials urged residents to prepare for storm impacts throughout the week.
Flooding closed scenic Highway 1, also known as the Pacific Coast Highway, in neighboring Mendocino County north of Point Arena near the Garcia River, and there was no estimate for when it would reopen, according to the California Department of Transportation.
Santa Rosa saw its wettest three-day period on record with about 12.5 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service in the Bay Area.
Gale warnings were issued off Washington, Oregon and California, and high wind warnings were in effect across parts of Northern California and Oregon. There were winter storm warnings for parts of the California Cascades and the Sierra Nevada.
The National Weather Service in Reno, Nev., reported a 128 mph gust of wind in the morning at the top of Palisades Tahoe ski resort, about 10 miles northwest of Lake Tahoe, where some runs were open. Gusts up to 86 mph were recorded at Mt. Rose, which closed due to the weather.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A volcano in southwestern Iceland that has roared back to life after eight centuries of silence has erupted for the seventh time since December, sending molten lava flowing toward the Blue Lagoon spa, a major tourist attraction.
The eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula started with little warning at 11:14 p.m. Wednesday and created a fissure about 1.8 miles long. The activity is estimated to be considerably smaller than the previous eruption in August, according to Iceland’s meteorological office, which monitors seismic activity.
Most of the previous eruptions have subsided within days.
While the eruption poses no threat to air travel, authorities warned of gas emissions across parts of the peninsula, including the nearby town of Grindavík, which was largely evacuated a year ago when the volcano came to life after lying dormant for 800 years.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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A major storm moving through Northern California on Thursday toppled trees and dropped heavy snow and record rain after damaging homes, killing two people and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands in the Pacific Northwest. Forecasters warned that the risk of flash flooding and rockslides would continue, and scores of flights were canceled at San Francisco’s airport.
In Washington, nearly 265,000 people — mostly in the Seattle area — remained without power as crews worked to clear streets of electrical lines, fallen branches and debris. Utility officials said the outages, which began Tuesday, could last into Saturday.
The National Weather Service extended a flood watch into Saturday for areas
north of San Francisco as the region was inundated by the strongest atmospheric river — a long plume of moisture that forms over an ocean and flows through the sky over land — this season.
The system roared ashore Tuesday as a “bomb cyclone,” which occurs when a cyclone intensifies rapidly. It unleashed fierce winds that toppled trees onto roads, vehicles and homes, killing at least two people in the Washington cities of Lynnwood and Bellevue.
Communities in Washington opened warming centers offering free internet and device charging. Some medical clinics closed because of power outages.
Up to 16 inches of rain was forecast in southwestern Oregon and California’s northern counties through today. Santa Rosa saw 6.5 inches of rain in 24 hours, marking the wettest day on record since 1998, according to Joe Wegman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
The Sonoma County Airport got more than 11 inches over 48 hours.
Dangerous flash flooding, rockslides and debris flows were possible, especially where hillsides were loosened by recent wildfires, officials warned.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A major storm swept across the Northwest, battering the region with strong winds and rain, causing widespread power outages, closing schools and downing trees that killed at least two people.
The Weather Prediction Center issued excessive rainfall risks through Friday and hurricane-force wind warnings were in effect as the strongest atmospheric river — a large plume of moisture — that California and the Pacific Northwest has seen this season overwhelmed the region. The storm system that hit starting Tuesday is considered a “bomb cyclone,” which occurs when a cyclone intensifies rapidly.
The heaviest rain Wednesday soaked a strip of the California coast that starts at the Oregon border and stretches hundreds of miles south to the North Bay region, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. Wind gusts in some places exceeded 90 mph — equivalent to the winds of a hurricane.
The weather service extended a flood watch into Saturday for areas north of San Francisco. Up to 16 inches of rain was forecast in Northern California and southwestern Oregon through Friday. Dangerous flash flooding, rock slides and debris flows were possible, officials warned.
A winter storm watch was in place for the northern Sierra Nevada above 3,500 feet, where 15 inches of snow was possible over two days. Wind gusts could top 75 mph in mountain areas, forecasters said.
Heavy, wet snow was expected to continue along the Cascades and in parts of far Northern California. Forecasters warned of blizzard and whiteout conditions and near impossible travel at pass level due to accumulation rates of 2 to 3 inches per hour and wind gusts of up to 65 mph.
Falling trees struck homes and littered roads across western Washington. In Lynnwood, a woman died Tuesday night when a large tree fell on a homeless encampment, South County Fire said in a statement. In Bellevue, east of Seattle, a tree fell onto a home, killing a woman Tuesday night, fire officials said.
Tracy Meloy of Issaquah, WA, felt well-prepared for the storm Tuesday afternoon, with dinner prepped and lanterns ready. But then she spent the night listening to wind-whipped debris hit her home, including a particularly loud “thump” around 9 p.m. On Wednesday morning she ventured outside to survey the damage to her neighborhood about 17 miles east of Seattle.
“Now that I’m standing here in front of the house, I can tell it’s the tree that was across the street,” Meloy said. The tree pulled down the power lines in front of her home. Limbs, leaves and other plants were strewn all over the road.
“It looks like a forest floor instead of a street,” she said.
The number of power outage reports in Washington fluctuated wildly Tuesday evening, but steadily declined to about 460,000 by Wednesday afternoon, according to poweroutage.us.
More than a dozen schools were closed in Seattle alone.
About 2,800 customers were reported to be without power Wednesday in Oregon, 38,000 in California and 10,000 around Carson City and Reno, NV. Three Reno schools were closed and semitrucks were prohibited on the main highway between the two cities due to high winds. All chairlifts were shut down at the Mt. Rose Ski Resort near Lake Tahoe.
The first significant snow of the season in the Dakotas and Minnesota led to accidents and slippery roadways. The weather service said up to 16 inches of snow could fall in the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota, and Minot could get up to 8 inches of snow. Winds were expected to be problematic in parts of Montana and Nebraska, with gusts up to 60 mph, the weather service said.
Officials briefly advised no travel throughout northern North Dakota due to the wintry weather. State troopers in northern Minnesota responded to several accidents, including tractor-trailers that jackknifed on Interstate 94 after the roadway became slippery from snow and ice. The storm was contributing to high wind conditions in Juneau, Alaska, where gusts of up to 60 mph were expected.
The weather service warned people on the West Coast about the danger of trees during high winds, posting on X, “Stay safe by avoiding exterior rooms and windows and by using caution when driving.”
Southbound Interstate 5 was closed for an 11-mile stretch from Ashland, OR, to the border with California on Wednesday morning due to extreme winter weather conditions in Northern California, according to the Oregon Department of Transportation. It was expected to be a long-term closure, the department said.
The weather service issued a flood watch for parts of southwestern Oregon through Friday evening, while rough winds and seas halted a ferry route in northwestern Washington for part of the day.
Robert and Lisa Haynes, of Issaquah surveyed the damage in their neighborhood Wednesday. Fallen branches or trees blocked driveways and roads, and they were stuck at home.
“It’s like a snow day,” Robert Haynes said, “but with no snow.”
(Martha Bellisle, Hallie Golden & Lisa Baumann, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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What was expected to be one of the strongest storms in the northwest U.S. in decades arrived Tuesday evening, knocking out power and downing trees across the region.
The Weather Prediction Center issued excessive rainfall risks beginning Tuesday and lasting through Friday as the strongest atmospheric river — a large plume of moisture — that California and the Pacific Northwest has seen this season bears down on the region. The storm system is considered a “bomb cyclone,” which occurs when a cyclone intensifies rapidly.
The areas that could see particularly severe rainfall will likely reach from the south of Portland, OR, to the north of the San Francisco area, said Richard Bann, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center.
“Be aware of the risk of flash flooding at lower elevations and winter storms at higher elevations. This is going to be an impactful event,” he said.
Hurricane-force winds, which are gusts above 75 mph, could be felt along the Oregon coast, according to the National Weather Service in Medford, OR. And near Seattle, conditions for a “mountain wave” were shaping up, bringing large, low elevation wind gusts that could cause widespread power outages and downed trees, said Larry O’Neill, director of the Oregon Climate Service and Oregon State University associate professor.
“This will be pretty strong in terms of the last 10 or 20 years,” he said. “We’ve only seen a couple storms that have really been this strong.”
More than 106,000 customers had lost power in Washington as of Tuesday evening, according to poweroutage.us. More than 11,000 had lost power in Oregon and nearly 12,000 in California.
The National Weather Service in Seattle said a peak wind speed of 68 mph was recorded at Crystal Mountain near Mount Rainier. A wind speed of 53 mph was
also recorded at Ediz Hook, a 3-mile-long sand spit northwest of Seattle that extends from the northern shore of the Olympic Peninsula at Port Angeles into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Winds were expected to increase in western Washington throughout the evening, the weather service said.
In Northern California, flood and high wind watches were in effect, with up to 8 inches of rain predicted for parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, North Coast and Sacramento Valley.
A winter storm watch was issued for the northern Sierra Nevada above 3,500 feet, where 15 inches of snow was possible over two days. Wind gusts could top 75 mph in mountain areas, forecasters said.
“Numerous flash floods, hazardous travel, power outages and tree damage can be expected as the storm reaches max intensity” today, the Weather Prediction Center warned.
In Northern California’s Yolo County, crews spent Monday clearing culverts, sewers and drainage ditches to avoid clogs that could lead to street flooding. Mesena Pimentel said she hoped the efforts would prevent a repeat of floods last February that inundated her property near Woodland.
“We had about 10 inches of water in our garage, had a couple gophers swimming around,” Pimentel told KCRA-TV. Woodland city officials set up two locations where residents could pick up free sandbags. Authorities urged people to stock up on food and charge phones and electronics in case power goes out and roads become unpassable.
(Hallie Golden & Christopher Webber, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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It’s a scene that’s become routine with big blazes in the West. A plane dips low over a smoldering ridgetop and unleashes a ribbon of fire retardant, coating the hillside a bright pink. Onlookers cheer the display of firefighting prowess.
The U.S. Forest Service and other agencies each year drop tens of millions of gallons of fire retardant, mostly an ammonium phosphate-based slurry called Phos-Chek, around wildfires to coat vegetation and slow the spread of flames.
But a new study by researchers at USC has found that a popular variety is laden with toxic metals, and estimates retardant use has released 850,000 pounds of these chemicals into the environment since 2009. The results suggest the ecological consequences of retardant use merit further study, and that finding a cleaner product is probably worthwhile, said Daniel McCurry, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at USC and one of the study’s authors.
The findings add to long-running concerns from environmentalists about the effects of retardant drops. But fire officials say the practice saves lives, and that the benefit of protecting ecosystems by minimizing fire spread outweighs the potential harms.
The debate is expected to intensify as wildfires increase in size and severity, in part because of climate change.
“There’s a pretty clear trend that wildfire frequency and intensity seems to be increasing, and the management of these wildfires, as far as I can tell, will continue to include aerial firefighting for the foreseeable future,” McCurry said.
Orange County Fire Authority Chief Brian Fennessy acknowledged drawbacks to use of retardant, including harm to aquatic life if it spills into waterways. But he said there’s simply no substitute for retardant when it comes to fighting wildfires.
The viscous substance is more effective than water — it hangs up on the vegetation and retains its flame-slowing properties even when it dries, he said. If his crews were no longer able to use it, he said, “I think you’d see fires get bigger — that’s the basic answer.”
“I think there’s a trade-off there and a balance, and each situation being a little bit different, those considerations need to happen and they need to be talked about,” Fennessy said.
In the USC study, published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, McCurry and his fellow researchers tested 14 fire suppressants. All were purchased on the open market because manufacturers declined to provide samples, he said.
Each contained at least eight heavy metals. One in particular — Phos-Chek LC-95W — had “potentially alarming” concentrations of several metals, including chromium, cadmium and vanadium, he said, adding that the substance could be classified as hazardous waste under federal and California regulations.
Chronic exposure to these metals has been linked to cancer, kidney and liver diseases in humans, but the potential ill effects on the environment are likely of more concern, particularly when retardant enters waterways, he said.
McCurry described the retardant his team tested as the colorless version of the bright-pink Phos-Chek that’s dumped from aircraft. The pink stuff, LC-95A, is not available for consumers to purchase.
Perimeter Solutions, which manufactures Phos-Chek, said in a statement that the products are chemically different, and that LC-95W has never been used in aerial applications. All Phos-Chek retardants used in aerial firefighting must be fully qualified by the Forest Service, which requires extensive testing to meet strict safety standards, the statement said.
The Forest Service said it has used Phos-Chek LC-95W in aerial firefighting, albeit rarely. The formulation has been approved for both aerial and ground applications after passing multiple safety tests, including a toxicity characteristic leaching protocol developed by the Environmental Protection Agency to simulate how much of a substance’s toxic contents would be released into a landfill, the agency said.
The findings offer a new clue to a phenomenon geochemists have documented for years: heavy metal concentrations in streams and rivers tend to spike after nearby wildfires. For instance, after the Station fire burned in Angeles National Forest in 2009, researchers measured cadmium concentrations up to 1,000 times greater in the Arroyo Seco.
“There are lots of hypotheses for what the source of those metals could be, and this adds another dimension,” said Josh West, professor of earth sciences and environmental studies at USC. West was not involved in McCurry’s study but provided feedback before it was published.
There’s still more work to be done to learn the extent to which retardants leach into waterways and how much they contribute to these elevated metal levels, West said. It’s possible that they are one of several sources. His research has suggested that metals in air pollution settle on vegetation and are released into soils and waterways when that vegetation is burned.
McCurry’s team is working to learn more about whether the metals in retardant percolate into groundwater or run off into streams and rivers. One technique involves sampling soil from the San Gabriel Mountains, applying Phos-Chek, conducting controlled burns in a laboratory and using a student- built rainfall simulator to model how the metals travel.
They’re also trying to drill down on the source of heavy metal concentrations in streams after wildfires by using unique isotopic fingerprints to connect the chemicals to either retardant or other sources.
And in order to test the Phos-Chek formulation that’s not commercially available, his researchers have traveled to burn sites, including those scorched by the Post fire near Gorman and last year’s Highland fire near Aguanga, to sample soils that were sprayed with retardant, with plans to test the metal content.
Andy Stahl, executive director of environmental group Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, said the study bolsters fears of heavy metal concentrations in Phos-Chek that had until recently been supported by circumstantial evidence. For instance, a Washington air tanker base was in 2016 cited by the state Department of Ecology for violating the cadmium, chromium and vanadium limits set by its waste discharge permit. A Forest Service report said it could not rule out potential heavy metal impurities in retardant, which was hosed down from firefighting planes.
Stahl’s group has sued the Forest Service over its retardant use multiple times dating back to 2003, resulting in the agency agreeing to map out buffer zones around vulnerable species habitat and waterways where it would refrain from dropping retardant absent a risk to public safety.
Most recently in 2022, the nonprofit filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Montana after the Forest Service reported it had dropped more than 1 million gallons of retardant into those exclusion areas from 2012 through 2019.
As part of the lawsuit, the nonprofit sought to have the agency’s aerial retardant use suspended until it obtained a Clean Water Act permit to cover discharges into waterways, a process the EPA estimated would take 2 1/2 years.
The judge last year ruled that the Forest Service must obtain a permit but that retardant drops could continue in the meantime because they are necessary to protect lives and property.
During the litigation, hundreds of pages of documents, including what purported to be an EPA list of contaminated air tanker bases, were left anonymously on the front porch of FSEEE’s lawyer in Missoula, Mont., Stahl said. An accompanying letter, claimed to have been written by a long-tenured Forest Service employee, called the presence of heavy metals such as cadmium and chromium in Phos-Chek “one of the worst kept secrets of the retardant industry.”
The threat of heavy metals in retardant may pose new regulatory challenges for the EPA as it writes the Forest Service’s Clean Water Act permit, Stahl said, adding that his group is looking at whether additional legal action is warranted based on the findings.
“We’re adding a potentially significant amount of toxic heavy metals when we dump retardant, no matter where we dump it in the watershed,” he said.
(Alex Wigglesworth, LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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MANAUS, Brazil — President Joe Biden pledged new financial help to protect the Amazon, the planet’s largest tropical rainforest, during a visit to Brazil on Sunday, making one final push to combat climate change before President-elect Donald Trump returns to power in January.
After an aerial tour of one of the world’s most diverse ecosystems, Biden signed a proclamation declaring every Nov. 17 to be International Conservation Day
and vowed that the United States would spend millions of dollars across the Amazon on restoring land, planting native tree species, supporting biodiversity efforts and increasing fertilizer efficiency programs. It was the first time a sitting U.S. president had visited the Amazon.
“It’s often said that the Amazon is the lungs of the world,” Biden said during a brief stop in Manaus, a bustling city of 2 million nestled in the heart of the rainforest. “But in my view, our forest and national wonders are the heart and soul of the world,” he added. “The Amazon rainforest was built up over 15 million years. Fifteen million years history is literally watching us now.”
Flying low in his Marine One helicopter across the vast canopy of trees, Biden traveled along the Rio Negro, where its dark waters met the murky brown of the main Amazon River. From his helicopter, Biden could see a wildlife refuge, shore erosion, fire damage and grounded ships, according to a map of the area provided by the White House.
But his initiatives may be short-lived. Environmental activists are bracing for a drastic shake-up in U.S. foreign policy under Trump, who has loudly opposed international cooperation on climate change. He has vowed to abandon global commitments and undo many of Biden’s environmental pledges.
Trump has said he will withdraw the U.S. — for a second time — from the landmark Paris Agreement, which aims to curb planet-warming emissions and rein in rising temperatures. He has promised to “drill, drill, drill” for oil and gas and nominated Chris Wright, a fossil fuels executive who has claimed “there is no climate crisis,” to lead the Department of Energy.
Top White House environmental officials said Sunday that some of the federal financing to protect the Amazon would go forward before Trump takes office, but not all of it.
In his remarks, Biden acknowledged the threat from Trump without using his name directly. But he expressed confidence that even his successor would not be able to stop efforts to protect the climate that also promote jobs and help make life better for people around the world.
“It’s true that some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that’s underway in America,” Biden said. “But nobody — nobody — can reverse. Nobody.”
“The question now,” he said, “is which government will stand in the way and which will seize the enormous economic opportunity.”
A U.S. rejection of the global climate agenda would come at a crucial time in the struggle to contain rising temperatures. Research shows that Earth has already warmed significantly, with the past decade being the hottest on record.
Biden has urged wealthy countries responsible for the bulk of the world’s emissions to help fund programs in poorer countries, where the effects of climate changes are often at their most severe.
In 2021, the U.S. was among more than 140 countries that vowed to end deforestation by 2030. Last year, Biden also pledged $500 million over five years to fight deforestation in Brazil, although the plan has met resistance from Congress and, so far, the South American nation has received only about 10% of the funding.
“The president has spoken frequently about the importance of U.S. leadership in protecting the Amazon and other tropical forests,” said Nigel Purvis, CEO of Climate Advisers, a consulting firm.
The Amazon rainforest plays a crucial role in regulating the planet’s climate. Likened by scientists to a “giant air conditioner,” the Amazon lowers temperatures, generates rainfall and stores vast quantities of planet-warming gasses.
After Biden landed in Manaus on Sunday, he came off the plane under scorching midday sun, looking relaxed and upbeat. He was accompanied by his daughter, granddaughter and aides, and lingered on the tarmac before boarding one of seven helicopters waiting to take him on the aerial tour.
Biden took in the vastness of the rainforest at the Museum of the Amazon, an exhibition space and botanical garden in Manaus. He was greeted by three Indigenous women in traditional headdresses who chanted and shook rattles to the beat of an ancestral song. Overhead, macaws swept over the canopy, their noisy squawks echoing across the rainforest.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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MANILA, Philippines — A powerful typhoon wrecked houses, caused towering tidal surges and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee to emergency shelters as it cut across the northern Philippines on Sunday in the sixth major storm to hit the country in less than a month.
Typhoon Man-yi slammed into the eastern island province of Catanduanes on Saturday night with sustained winds of up to 125 miles per hour and gusts of up to 149 mph. The country’s weather agency warned of a “potentially catastrophic and life-threatening situation” in provinces along its path.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the typhoon, which was forecast to blow northwestward on Sunday across northern Luzon, the archipelago’s most populous region. The capital region of metropolitan Manila would likely be spared from a direct hit but was placed, along with outlying regions, under storm alerts and warned of dangerous coastal storm surges.
The entire province of Catanduanes had no power after the typhoon knocked down trees and electricity posts, and disaster-response teams were checking how many more houses were damaged in addition to those impacted by previous storms, said Roberto Monterola, a disaster-mitigation officer.
“We need tin roofs and other construction materials, aside from food. Villagers tell us here that they still haven’t gotten up from the past storm and were pinned down again by this typhoon,” Monterola said. Nearly half of the island province’s 80,000 people were sheltering in evacuation centers.
Catanduanes officials were so concerned as the typhoon approached that they threatened vulnerable villagers with arrest if they did not follow orders to evacuate to safer grounds. More than 750,000 people took refuge in emergency shelters, including churches and a shopping mall, due to Man-yi and two previous storms mostly in the northern Philippines, Assistant Secretary Cesar Idio of the Official of Civil Defense and other provincial officials said.
The rare number of back-to-back storms and typhoons that lashed Luzon in just three weeks left more than 160 people dead, affected 9 million people and caused such extensive damage to residential communities, infrastructure and farmlands that the Philippines may have to import more rice, a staple food for most Filipinos. In an emergency meeting as Man-yi approached, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. asked his Cabinet and provincial officials to brace for “the worst-case scenario.”
At least 26 domestic airports and two international airports were briefly shut and inter-island ferry and cargo services were suspended due to rough seas, stranding thousands of passengers and commuters, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippine and the coast guard.
The U.S., along with Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei provided cargo aircraft and other storm aid to augment the government’s overwhelmed disaster-response agencies.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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POTRERILLOS, Honduras — Tropical Storm Sara on Sunday weakened to a tropical depression after making landfall in Belize, where forecasters expected heavy rain to cause flash flooding and mudslides.
The storm hit Belize after drenching the northern coast of Honduras, where it stalled since Friday, swelling rivers and trapping some people at home.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center expected Sara to continue to lose strength as it moved farther inland Sunday over the Yucatan Peninsula.
Portions of Belize, El Salvador, eastern Guatemala, western Nicaragua and Mexico’s state of Quintana Roo could see up to 5 inches of rain, with localized totals reaching 15 inches. The conditions “will result in areas of flash flooding, perhaps significant, along with the potential of mudslides,” according to the Hurricane Center.
Meanwhile, northern Honduras was not in the clear yet. The center expected Sara to drop up to 3 inches of rain there, but some areas could see 40 inches, with “catastrophic and life-threatening flooding” still possible.
Residents of the Potrerillos community, which sits in a tropical lowland in northwest Honduras, were evacuated from their homes due to the weather system, and some sought refuge at a school-turned-shelter.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Firefighters in New York said Sunday that a voluntary evacuation overnight helped them protect more than 160 homes from a stubborn wildfire near the New Jersey border as officials in much of the Northeast coped with hundreds of brush fires in tinder-dry and windy conditions.
Communities in New England dealt with a similar surge in late fall fires, and many parts of the Northeast remained under red flag alerts over the weekend. Across the country, California made good progress against a 32-square-mile fire in Ventura County that has destroyed more than 245 structures, most of them houses. The Mountain fire was 95% contained.
Windy conditions renewed a wildfire Saturday that escaped a containment line and prompted emergency officials to enact the voluntary evacuation plan affecting about 165 houses in Warwick, N.Y., near the New Jersey border. No structures were in danger as of Sunday afternoon as firefighters worked to tame the Jennings Creek blaze, New York Parks Department spokesperson Jeff Wernick said. The voluntary evacuation will remain in place at least until today, Wernick said.
The wildfire had burned 7.5 square miles across the two states as of Friday and was burning primarily in New York’s Sterling Forest State Park, where the visitor center, the lakefront area at Greenwood Lake and a historic furnace area remained open. Woodland activities including hunting were halted, Wernick said.
It was 90% contained on the Passaic County, N.J., side of the border, and about 88% contained in Orange County, N.Y., where a state of emergency was extended on Sunday, officials said. New York Army National Guard and state police helicopters dropped water on the blaze to support ground crews’ efforts.
“Residents in the voluntary evacuation area are asked to continue sheltering so that crews can effectively suppress the fire,” according to a statement posted on Facebook by village officials in Greenwood Lake, N.Y., where schools will be closed today.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The nation’s northernmost town — Utqiagvik, Alaska — is about to descend into months of darkness. Think of it this way: By the time the sun rises again, a new president will occupy the White House.
The town of Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow, has a population just shy of 5,000 people. It is situated along Alaska’s North Slope on the Arctic Ocean and sits at 71.17 degrees North latitude — some 330 miles north of the Arctic Circle. That means that, for about two months every year, the sun stays below the horizon, leading to a prolonged “polar night.”
The sun will set at 1:27 p.m. local time today, and it won’t re-emerge from its long slumber until Jan. 22. That’s when the sun will rise at 1:15 p.m. in the south, and set just 48 minutes later. The days grow longer rapidly after that.
Until then, the sky might take on shades of azure or violet, part of astronomical and civil twilight, but daylight won’t progress beyond dusk.
The months of darkness contribute to a brutal, unforgiving climate.
One quarter of all days in Utqiagvik don’t go above zero degrees, and temperatures breach freezing only 37% of the time. The darkness also fosters the development of the stratospheric polar vortex, a whirlpool of cold, sinking air over the North Pole that influences the northern hemisphere’s weather.
On the winter solstice, which falls at 2:02 a.m. Pacific time Dec. 21, the sun will still be 4.7 degrees below the horizon at noon.
Because of Earth’s tilt on its axis, regions in the Arctic Circle can remain facing away from the sun for days, weeks or even months at a time between the fall and spring equinoxes. The effect is greater as one gets closest to the poles.
(WASHINGTON POST)
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A Pakistani province declared a health emergency Friday due to smog and imposed a shutdown in two major cities.
Smog has choked Punjab for weeks, sickening nearly 2 million people and shrouding vast swaths of the province in a toxic haze.
A senior provincial minister, Marriyum Aurangzeb, declared the health emergency at a news conference and announced measures to combat the growing crisis.
Time off for medical staff is canceled, all education institutions are shut until further notice, restaurants are closing at 4 p.m. while takeaway is available until 8 p.m. Authorities are imposing a lockdown in the cities of Multan and Lahore and halting construction work in those two places.
“Smog is currently a national disaster,” Aurangzeb said. “It will not all be over in a month or a year. We will evaluate the situation after three days and then announce a further strategy.”
Average air quality index readings in parts of Lahore, a city of 11 million, exceeded 600 on Friday. Anything over 300 is considered hazardous to health.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Cities in Asia and the United States emit the most heat-trapping gas that feeds climate change, with Shanghai the most polluting, according to new data that combines observations and artificial intelligence.
Nations at U.N. climate talks in Azerbaijan are trying to set new targets to cut such emissions and figure out how much rich nations will pay to help the world with that task. The data come as climate officials and activists alike are growing increasingly frustrated with what they see as the world’s inability to clamp down on planet-warming fossil fuels and the countries and firms that promote them.
Seven states or provinces spew more than 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, all of them in China, except Texas, which ranks sixth, according to new data from an organization co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and released Friday at COP29.
Using satellite and ground observations, supplemented by artificial intelligence to fill in gaps, Climate Trace sought to quantify heat-trapping carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, as well as other traditional air pollutants worldwide, including for the first time in more than 9,000 urban areas.
Earth’s total carbon dioxide and methane pollution grew 0.7% to 61.2 billion metric tons with the short-lived but extra potent methane rising 0.2%. The figures are higher than other datasets “because we have such comprehensive coverage and we have observed more emissions in more sectors than are typically available,” said Gavin McCormick, Climate Trace’s co-founder.
Many big cities emit far more than some nations.
Shanghai’s 256 million metric tons of greenhouse gases led all cities and exceeded those from the nations of Colombia or Norway. Tokyo’s 250 million metric tons would rank in the top 40 of nations if it were a country, while New York City’s 160 million metric tons and Houston’s 150 million metric tons would be in the top 50 of countrywide emissions. Seoul, South Korea, ranks fifth among cities at 142 million metric tons.
“One of the sites in the Permian Basin in Texas is by far the No. 1 worst polluting site in the entire world,” Gore said. “And maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but I think of how dirty some of these sites are in Russia and China and so forth. But Permian Basin is putting them all in the shade.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Tropical Storm Sara formed Thursday in the Caribbean Sea and began lashing the sparsely populated Caribbean coast of Honduras with heavy rain.
Sara was expected to cause life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides across portions of Central America, including Honduras, forecasters said.
The storm, which had sustained winds that were maxing out at nearly 40 mph, was expected to stall and meander near the coast of Honduras through the weekend, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
By Sunday Sara could strengthen slightly and approach the coast of Belize. Heavy rain also is forecast for Belize, El Salvador, eastern Guatemala and western Nicaragua.
Mexican authorities warned it could cause “intense rains” over the resort-studded Yucatan peninsula.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Typhoon Usagi made landfall in the Philippines on Thursday as authorities warned that the storm could cause widespread flooding and landslides in the north of the country.
Usagi, called Ofel in the Philippines, is the fifth major storm to hit the country in the past three weeks. The other four killed more than 100 people and caused heavy damage and destruction. This week, four tropical storms churned at once in and around the South China Sea and the North Pacific, the first time that had happened in the region in November since records began.
The government said Usagi hit Luzon, the most-populous island in the Philippines, around 1:30 p.m. More than 24,000 people in the province of Cagayan have been evacuated, including people who fled from earlier storms, Reuters reported.
After leaving the Philippines, the storm is forecast to head toward Taiwan, where the Central Weather Administration issued a sea and land typhoon warning for today.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The Northeast kept a wary eye on dozens of fires that killed at least one person and continued to burn Tuesday amid bone-dry weather, while much larger and more destructive fires came under relative control in California.
Firefighters in Massachusetts worked to contain several fires as strong winds and drought conditions continued. The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for much of the state and parts of Connecticut, saying conditions were critical and fires could rapidly spread.
Massachusetts officials said all of the 200 or so fires they have dealt with this month were caused by human behavior, and Gov. Maura Healey urged people to avoid lighting fires.
“Now is not the time to burn leaves. Now is not the time to go outside and light a fire,” she told reporters in Middleton.
Some firefighters have been injured, and one blaze near the New York-New Jersey border killed a parks employee over the weekend. The fire had grown to more than 7.5 square miles — about 4,800 acres — and was 10% contained Tuesday afternoon.
No evacuations were ordered, though some people left voluntarily, and there was no immediate threat to property. Winds that are forecast as high as 25 mph are expected to dissipate today, officials said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday announced fire restrictions that are in effect through the end of November.
The ban prohibits bush fires used to dispose of debris and bonfires higher than 3 feet. Contained campfires are still allowed in most of the state, though outdoor grilling has already been banned in New York City.
Most of the East Coast has seen little rainfall since September, and experts say the fires will persist until significant precipitation or frosts occur.
In California, firefighters made further progress against a blaze in Ventura County that broke out last week and quickly exploded in size because of the dry Santa Ana winds.
The 20,000-acre blaze, dubbed the Mountain fire, was about 50 percent contained Tuesday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A New York parks employee died battling one of a number of wildfires in New Jersey and New York amid dry conditions that have prompted air quality warnings in both states, authorities said Sunday.
The worker died when a tree fell on him Saturday afternoon as he battled a brush fire along the New York-New Jersey border, officials said.
“Rip brother your shift is over job well done,” the New York State forestry services post said.
New York State Police said they were investigating the death amid the fire in Sterling Forest in Greenwood Lake and identified the victim as Dariel Vasquez, an 18-year-old state Parks and Recreation aide employed by the New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation Department.
Jeremy Oldroyd, a forest ranger with New York state, said that Vasquez died “assisting with fire line construction.”
New Jersey’s state forest fire service said Sunday that the blaze — dubbed the Jennings Creek Wildfire — was threatening 25 structures, including two New Jersey homes. It had grown to 4.7 square miles [3,000 acres] and was 10% contained as of Sunday night.
Health advisories were issued for parts of New York, including New York City, and northeastern New Jersey due to unhealthy air quality due to smoke from the fires.
Meanwhile, New Jersey officials reported 75% containment of a 175-acre fire in the Pompton Lakes area of Passaic County that was threatening 55 homes, although no evacuations had been ordered, as well as progress made on other fires burning in the state amid bone-dry conditions.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Fire authorities on Sunday described battling fierce, howling winds and rescuing people in a fast-moving Southern California wildfire that forced thousands of people to flee and destroyed at least 168 structures and damaged 67.
Crews increased containment of the Mountain fire to 31% in Ventura County northwest of Los Angeles, up from 26% on Sunday morning. The fire’s size remains around 32 square miles [20,500 acres].
“I am grateful for the number of lives that were saved and the fact that we have zero reported fatalities,” said an emotional Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner at a community meeting Sunday night.
“I know we suffered great damage, but thousands of homes were saved and hundreds of lives were rescued. I know we made mistakes, but we will learn from those mistakes,” he said.
Ventura County public safety officials said they prepared for dry, warm and gusty northeast Santa Ana winds. But the fire that broke out Wednesday morning exploded in size with winds gusting at 80 mph and embers that flew from orchards 2.5 miles away to residential neighborhoods around the community of Camarillo.
The cause of the fire is under investigation. Inspection teams continue to assess damage.
Firefighters made 136 active rescues, authorities said Sunday.
Evacuation orders were downgraded Saturday to warnings for residents in several areas of Ventura County as winds subsided and firefighters were aided by mild temperatures and low humidity.
Agriculture officials assessing the toll on farmland sown with avocado, citrus and berries estimated the damage at $2.4 million, the Ventura County Star reported.
Another round of northeast winds was expected Tuesday, but humidity should rise and gusts are not forecast to surge as high as those that fanned the fire, National Weather Service meteorologist Ryan Walbrun said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Fire crews were able get a handle on a fast-moving brush fire in North County on Friday, stopping the spread of a blaze that had threatened homes and prompted evacuations.
Although the progress of the fire was stopped at 48 acres, crews were still working to get the burn area surrounded and to tamp down hot spots. By the late afternoon, some evacuations had been lifted, but others remained in place.
The Garden fire was first reported about 1 p.m. and in less than two hours had
burned 48 acres, chewing through heavy but brittle brush, Cal Fire officials said.
Cal Fire Captain Mike Cornette said firefighters had battled the blaze with ground crews, fire engines and dozers, as well as a full aircraft response.
“It’s steep, challenging terrain with heavy brush and a lot of houses in the area,” Cornette said early in the afternoon.
At one point early on, North County Fire District officials said it had the potential to grow to 100 acres, citing a moderate to dangerous rate of spread.
The [fire] was first reported in the area of Lake Garden Drive east of Gird Road. Evacuations orders for the neighborhoods north of state Route 76 and near Pala Mesa Drive remained in effect as of 4 p.m. Friday. Evacuation warnings were also issued for homes near Laketree Drive and Secret Lake Lane, as well as for homes west of Pala Mesa Golf Course.
An evacuation site was set up at Riverview Church at 4980 Sweetgrass Lane. The orders issued for homes east of Gird Road had been lifted as of 4 p.m.
California Highway Patrol closed Gird Road at Pala Mesa Road, and is prepared to close Gird further south at state Route 76 if needed, CHP Officer Hunter Gerber said. North County fire officials asked people to avoid Gird Road from Reche Road to state Route 76, and to avoid Pala Mesa Road from Gird Road to Wilt Road.
(Caleb Lunetta, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Almost the entire United States faced drought conditions during the last week of October.
Only Alaska and Kentucky did not have at least moderate drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a record in the monitor’s history.
The past four months were consistently warmer than normal over a wide swath of the country, said Rich Tinker, a drought specialist with the National Weather Service. But in June, while roughly a quarter of the country was dry to some degree, he said, now 87% of the nation is.
“Drought in many parts of the country and the world is becoming more frequent, longer and more severe,” said Erica Fleishman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute and a professor at Oregon State University.
Dry conditions over the past few months led New York City last week to urge residents to start conserving “every drop possible.”
Last month was the driest October since record-keeping began in 1869, according to the city, which issued a drought watch for the 9.8 million people who rely on the city’s water supply. A watch encourages voluntary water conservation and ensures city agencies are ready with conservation plans.
Rohit Aggarwala, the city’s chief climate officer and commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, said city’s upstate reservoirs are below two-thirds full, and they are normally more than three-quarters full in the fall.
Even after Hurricane Helene dropped huge amounts of destructive rain across the Southeast, that region is experiencing drought. Not much rain has fallen since the storm and warmer temperatures mean higher evaporation rates and drier soils.
Drought doesn’t just come from a lack of precipitation like rain or snow. Drought conditions are driven by abnormally high temperatures that can quickly suck moisture from the atmosphere and the ground.
Even if the total amount of precipitation stays the same or increases a bit, drought can occur. That is especially true as rain events get more episodic, with heavier deluges over a smaller number of events. When all the water comes at once, it’s more difficult for soil to soak it up or for water storage to contain it.
(Austin Gaffney & Mira Rojanasakul, NEW YORK TIMES)
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Hurricane Rafael swirled Friday through the Gulf of Mexico where it was expected to break apart after plowing through Cuba, knocking out the country’s power grid and collapsing hundreds of houses.
On Friday afternoon, the now Category 2 hurricane was 230 miles north-northeast of Progreso, Mexico. It had maximum sustained winds of 100 mph and was moving northwest at 9 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
It was forecast to move westward toward Mexico in the coming days and forecasters warned that swells from the hurricane were likely to cause “life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.”
Forecasters said they expected the storm to weaken and “meander” over the center of the Gulf through early next week.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Authorities in a broad swath of eastern Pakistan closed all parks and museums Friday because of record-breaking smog that already has prompted the closure of schools and government offices and has sickened tens of thousands of people.
The new restrictions went into effect for 10 days in 18 districts of Punjab province, including the provincial capital of Lahore, where a twilight gloom lingered over the city, limiting visibility to about 100 yards.
The closures apply to all public parks, zoos and museums, historical places, and playgrounds. Schools and government offices already had been closed until Nov. 17.
Toxic smog has shrouded Lahore, a city of 14 million people, and other parts of Punjab since last month, and health officials say more than 30,000 people have been treated for respiratory ailments in smog-hit districts.
Sajid Bashir, the spokesperson for the Environment Protection Department in Punjab, said the new restrictions were aimed keeping people at home so that they are better protected from the record pollution. On Friday, a court in Lahore also ordered the government to shut all markets after 8 p.m.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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CAMARILLO, CA - Firefighters gained ground Friday against a wildfire that has destroyed at least 132 structures, mostly houses, as favorable conditions were expected to continue through the weekend after two days of dangerous gusty winds.
Forecasters expect light winds over the weekend that will continue to aid firefighters. Meteorologists are monitoring a weather system that could hit Southern California next week, but it is not expected to bring another round of extreme winds like earlier this week.
Ventura County Sheriff James Fryhoff said Friday that evacuation orders for 3,500 houses have been lifted, but residents of 2,000 homes still have not been able to go back.
Maryanne Belote was among those who returned Friday to sift through the charred remains of their properties. She went home to her hillside neighborhood in Camarillo, northwest of Los Angeles, after making a harrowing escape with her cat, her dog and her horses as the blaze raged in the area. The only thing standing was a rock wall she built.
“If I hadn’t gotten the horses, I would have been devastated, but I have my family and I have my animals, so I’m OK. I will rebuild,” she said standing outside the remains of her home of 50 years while her dog stayed in her car.
The Mountain fire started Wednesday morning in Ventura County and had grown to more than 20,400 acres. It was 14% contained Friday evening.
“We had no external or lateral movement today,” Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner said Friday. “That is fantastic.”
Over three days, thousands of people were under evacuation orders as the fire threatened thousands of structures in suburban neighborhoods, ranches and agricultural areas around Camarillo.
At least 88 additional structures were damaged in addition to the 132 destroyed. Officials did not specify whether they had been burned or affected by water or smoke damage. The cause of the fire has not been determined.
Ten people suffered smoke inhalation or other injuries that were not life- threatening, Fryhoff said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Santa Ana winds continued to blow through the county’s backcountry Thursday, but weather forecasters expect the gusts to weaken by today.
A second day of blustery conditions brought a fresh wave of power shutoffs by San Diego Gas & Electric, although the total number of affected customers was dropping.
As of 4:51 p.m. Thursday, 14 customers in Potrero had no electricity after SDG&E implemented the practice of Public Safety Power Shut-offs, in which specific power lines are de-energized to reduce the risk of high winds downing power lines and potentially starting a wildfire. SDG&E officials estimated that power will be restored by 5 p.m. today.
As dawn broke Thursday, almost 1,300 customers in rural areas around East County, including Alpine, Boulevard and Campo, had no power.
SDG&E attributed the reduction to improved weather conditions that allowed utility workers to patrol the area. “In certain regions, it is now safe for crews to inspect equipment for damage in communities that were de-energized for public safety,” the utility said in a statement.
The shut-offs were put in place after the National Weather Service earlier this week issued red-flag warnings, alerting people throughout San Diego County of gusty winds and dry conditions. The red-flag warnings remain in effect through 11 a.m. today.
The shut-off affected the Mountain Empire Unified School District, which closed its schools Thursday for a second straight day. The rural East County district cited high winds and the danger it posed for high-profile vehicles, such as school buses, when they canceled classes Wednesday.
SDG&E reported gusts as high as 66 mph at 9:50 p.m. Wednesday at Sill Hill near Descanso.
Windy conditions persisted into Thursday morning, with the utility’s weather center recording gusts of 41 mph at Hauser Mountain, 38 mph at Lucky 5 Ranch in Anza-Borrego and 34 mph at East Willows Road, off Interstate 8 in Alpine.
The National Weather Service in San Diego predicts the high winds will start to abate by this morning, lessening to around 10 to 15 mph throughout most of the county.
“Conditions are extremely dry and the relative humidities are down around 10%, which is very, very low,” said weather service meteorologist Philip Gonsalves. “The lower relative humidities are going to continue well into (today), even though the winds are weakening.”
The recent round of Public Safety Power Shut-offs marks the first time since 2021 that SDG&E has employed the practice. Lines were de-energized in strategic locations five times in 2018 and 2020 and once in 2021. No shut-offs were instituted in 2022 and 2023, after two consecutive wet winters helped reduce the risk of wildfires in the region.
Rural, backcountry communities in what is called the High Fire Threat District are particularly affected when their lines are de-energized because many
homes there rely on water from wells powered by electricity for their homes, horses and livestock.
A Community Resource Center has opened in Potrero so that customers affected by the outages can get water, pick up snacks, charge their electronic devices and receive the most recent information regarding the shutoff.
The center in Potrero is at the Potrero Community Center at 24550 California Route 94 and is open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
(Rob Nikolewski, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; Christian Martinez)
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HAVANA, Cuba - Cuba was left reeling Thursday after a fierce Category 3 hurricane ripped across the island, destroying hundreds of homes, knocking out the country’s power grid and damaging other infrastructure.
No fatalities were immediately reported in Cuba, and Hurricane Rafael had weakened to a Category 2 storm as it swirled across the gulf toward Mexico where heavy rains were expected in the coming days.
Rafael crossed a western portion of Cuba on Wednesday evening about 45 miles west of Havana, where José Ignacio Dimas returned home from his night shift as a security guard to find his apartment building in the historic center of the city had collapsed.
“The entire front wall of the building fell,” Dimas said as he scanned the damage early Thursday. Like many buildings in the capital, it was aging and lacked maintenance.
More than 461 homes collapsed because of the hurricane, Cuban authorities said. More than 283,000 people from across the country had been evacuated from their homes, 98,300 of which were in Havana, the said.
Streets across the western swath of the country were riddled with utility poles, wires and trees.
In Havana, residents picked up what debris they could, but huge trees and fallen telephone lines lined the ground, blocking traffic. Concerned about food going bad due to blackouts, a group of residents opened an informal soup kitchen. “If we don’t work together as neighbors, nobody does it,” said Ariel Calvo, who was helping to shovel debris Thursday morning.
Lázaro Guerra, electricity director for the Ministry of Energy and Mines, said power had been partially restored in the island’s western region and that generation units were powering back up. But he warned that restoring power would be slow-going as crews took safety precautions.
On Thursday morning, the hurricane was about 260 miles west-northwest of Havana. It had maximum sustained winds of 105 mph and was moving west- northwest at 9 mph.
Earlier in the week, Rafael brushed past Jamaica and battered the Cayman Islands, downing trees and power lines and unleashing heavy flooding in some areas.
Authorities in Jamaica are searching for a couple last seen inside a car that was swept away by floodwaters, police told Radio Jamaica News.
Thousands of customers in Jamaica and Little Cayman remained without power as crews worked to restore electricity after the storm.
Rafael was expected to keep weakening as it spins over open waters and heads toward northern Mexico, although the hurricane center warned there was “above average uncertainty” in the storm’s future track.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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CAMARILLO, CA - A Southern California wildfire has destroyed 132 structures, mostly homes, in less than two days, fire officials said Thursday as raging winds were forecast to ease.
The fire started Wednesday morning in Ventura County and has grown to about 32 square miles — 20,480 acres. Containment was at about 5% Thursday evening, and the fire’s cause has not been determined.
Ten people have been injured in the course of the fire, Ventura County Sheriff James Fryhoff said. Most of them suffered smoke inhalation or other non-life-threatening injuries.
Fire officials said 88 other structures were damaged but did not specify whether they had been burned or affected by water or smoke damage.
Some 10,000 people remained under evacuation orders Thursday as the Mountain fire continued to threaten some 3,500 structures in suburban neighborhoods, ranches and agricultural areas around Camarillo in Ventura County.
County fire officials said crews working in steep terrain with support from water-dropping helicopters were focusing on protecting homes on hillsides along the fire’s northeast edge near the city of Santa Paula, home to more than 30,000 people.
Kelly Barton watched as firefighters sifted through the charred rubble of her parents’ ranch home of 20 years in the hills of Camarillo with a view of the Pacific Ocean. The crews uncovered two safes and her parents’ collection of vintage door knockers undamaged among the devastation.
“This was their forever retirement home,” Barton said Thursday. “Now in their 70s, they have to start over.” Her father returned to the house an hour after evacuating Wednesday to find it already destroyed. He was able to move four of their vintage cars to safety but two — including a Chevy Nova he’d had since he was 18 — burned to “toast,” Barton said.
Officials in several Southern California counties urged residents to be on watch for fast-spreading blazes, power outages and downed trees during the latest round of notorious Santa Ana winds.
Santa Anas are dry, warm and gusty northeast winds that blow from the interior of Southern California toward the coast and offshore, moving in the opposite direction of the normal onshore flow that carries moist air from the Pacific. They typically occur during the fall months and continue through winter and into early spring.
Ariel Cohen, the National Weather Service’s meteorologist in charge in Oxnard, said Santa Ana winds were subsiding in the lower elevations but remained gusty across the higher elevations Thursday evening.
The Mountain fire was burning in a region that has seen some of California’s most destructive fires over the years. The fire swiftly grew from a few hundred acres to more than 10,000 acres in little more than five hours on Wednesday. By Thursday evening it was mapped at more than 20,000 acres and Gov. Gavin Newsom had proclaimed a state of emergency in the county.
Marcus Eriksen, who has a farm in Santa Paula, said firefighters kept embers from spreading to his home, his vehicles and other structures even as piles of compost and wood chips were engulfed.
The flames were up to 30 feet tall and moving quickly, Eriksen said Thursday. Their speed and ferocity overwhelmed him, but the firefighters kept battling to save as much as they could on his property. Thanks to their work, “we dodged a bullet, big time,” he said.
The Ventura County Office of Education announced that more than a dozen school districts and campuses in the county were closed Thursday, and a few were expected to be closed today.
Utilities in California began powering down equipment during high winds and extreme fire danger after a series of massive and deadly wildfires in recent years were sparked by electrical lines and other infrastructure.
Power was shut off to nearly 70,000 customers in five counties over the heightened risk, Southern California Edison said Thursday. Gabriela Ornelas, a spokesperson for Edison, could not immediately answer whether power had been shut off in the area where the Mountain fire was sparked.
(Christopher Weber & Noah Berger, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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ALBUQUERQUE, NM - New Mexico’s governor declared an emergency Thursday after a powerful winter storm left tens of thousands of people without power as heavy snow, fierce winds and freezing temperatures marched across the northern two-thirds of the state and into Colorado.
Dozens of crews with Public Service Co. of New Mexico were mobilized to address widespread outages from Albuquerque to Santa Fe and beyond as the snow brought tree branches crashing down onto power lines.
The utility acknowledged frustrations and urged residents to be patient, saying
there were about 19,000 people still affected by the outages Thursday evening. That was down from 50,000 earlier in the day.
“This really is an unprecedented storm in the fact that it came so earlier and so heavily while leaves were still on the trees. That has caused limbs to be much heavier than they would normally be,” PNM spokesman Jeff Buell said, adding that crews were dealing with hundreds of separate repair jobs in Albuquerque alone.
With more snow in the forecast, Buell said there could be additional outages into today.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A red flag warning of elevated fire danger will remain in place for San Diego County another day as Santa Ana winds were expected to gust 30 to 40 mph in local mountains and valleys amid a drop in humidity, the National Weather Service said.
“For the rest of the evening and into early (Thursday) morning, we are going to continue to be seeing Santa Ana winds across most of the valley locations,” weather service meteorologist Kyle Wheeler said.
The warning for San Diego County’s valleys was expected to remain in place through this evening, while the warning for the mountain areas will be in place through Friday morning. Strong winds combined with low relative humidity and warm temperatures can substantially raise the fire risk.
Temperatures were expected to be below normal because the storm system producing the winds was very cold and bringing snow to northern Arizona and New Mexico, Wheeler said.
For the first time in three years, San Diego Gas & Electric on Wednesday cut off power in selected backcountry areas as a precautionary measure to help avoid the risk of wildfire ignition.
As of 3 p.m., about 700 customers had no electricity after the utility instituted Public Safety Power Shutoffs in areas including Campo, Jacumba, Boulevard and Live Oak Springs. SDG&E estimated the four de-energized circuits won’t be restored until 5 p.m. Friday.
SDG&E earlier this week issued notifications to 24,700 residents in backcountry and rural areas, warning them of the potential for outages.
Predictions of strong winds prompted the Mountain Empire Unified School District to cancel classes at all of its schools on Wednesday. No announcement had been made by mid-afternoon if classes would resume today.
County officials said the East County school district canceled classes because travel on mountain roads can be difficult in windy conditions, especially for high-profile vehicles like school buses.
According to data from the SDG&E weather center, gusts of 50 mph were recorded at Buckman Springs in the Cleveland National Forest and winds of more than 42 mph were tracked at Hellhole Canyon, Hauser Mountain and Sill Hill.
Rural communities in the High Fire Threat District are particularly affected by pre-emptive power shutoffs because many homes rely on water from wells powered by electricity for their homes, horses and livestock.
A community resource center has been opened in Boulevard so those affected by the outage can get water, pick up snacks, charge their electronic devices and receive the most recent information regarding the shutoff. The center is located at 39223 California Route 94 in Boulevard.
(Karen Kucher, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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TOKYO, Japan - Japan’s Mount Fuji finally got its trademark snowcap early on Wednesday, more than a month after it normally would and after setting a record for the most-delayed snowfall in 130 years.
The first snowfall on Mount Fuji, a UNESCO World Heritage site, could be seen from the southwestern side of the mountain, according to the Shizuoka branch of the Japan Meteorological Agency. But the JMA’s Kofu Local Meteorological Office, which is on the other side of the mountain and has been in charge of making the announcement since 1984, still could not see the snow due to cloudy weather — meaning it’s not official yet.
The lack of snow on Mount Fuji on Tuesday broke the previous record set on Oct. 26, 2016, meteorological officials said. Usually, the nearly 12,300-foot-tall mountain has sprinkles of snow falling on its summit starting Oct. 2, about a month after the summertime hiking season there ends. Last year, snow fell on the mountain on Oct. 5, according to the JMA.
The snowless Mount Fuji has captured attention on social media. People posted photos showing the bare mountain, some expressing surprise and others concerned over climate change.
The JMA’s Kofu office has cited October’s surprisingly summery weather as the reason. The temperature earlier this year has been higher across Japan, including Mount Fuji.
“Many people are waiting to see the snowcap and we’ve received many inquiries recently,” Kiryu said. He said clouds around the mountaintop had blocked the view since Wednesday morning, delaying the confirmation of the snowcap, but officials are continuing to try to get a peek at the first snowfall.
Kiryu said it is too early to link this year’s late snowcap to global warming, noting Mount Fuji’s first snow last year was in early October, adding: “I think we need to examine data for a longer period of time to make any conclusion.”
The average October temperature is 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit at the summit, but this year, it was 34.9 degrees, a record high since 1932. Japan this year also had an unusually hot summer and warm autumn.
A symbol of Japan, the mountain called “Fujisan” used to be a place of pilgrimage. The mountain with its snowy top and near symmetrical slopes have been the subject of numerous forms of art, including Japanese ukiyoe artist Katsushika Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.
Today, it attracts hikers who climb to the summit to see the sunrise. But tons of trash left behind and overcrowding have triggered concern and calls for environmental protection and measures to control overtourism.
Jun Kubota, a weather forecaster and a climber who grew up in Yamanashi, one of the two prefectures that are home to Mount Fuji, says he is concerned if this year’s delayed snowfall is part of a trend.
“I wonder if the season we can enjoy the snow is getting shorter, not just at Mount Fuji but also on other mountains in central Japan or on Hokkaido,” Kubota said in a Zoom call. He noted reports of snow shortage on ski slopes in recent years. “I’m afraid there could be an impact not only on snow mountain climbing, but also winter sports in general.”
(Mari Yamaguchi, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HAVANA, Cuba - Hurricane Rafael pushed into the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday night after plowing across western Cuba as a Category 3 hurricane with winds so powerful it knocked out the entire country’s power grid.
Massive waves lashed at the shores of Havana as sharp winds and rain whipped at the city’s historic center, leaving trees littered on flooded streets on Wednesday evening.
Forecasters warned Rafael could bring “life-threatening” storm surges, winds and flash floods to western swaths of the island after it knocked out power and dumped rain on the Cayman Islands and Jamaica the day before. The extent of the damage was still unclear as of Wednesday night.
The storm was 55 miles west-northwest of Havana on Wednesday. After plowing across the island, it slowed to a Category 2 hurricane. It had maximum sustained winds of 105 mph and was moving northwest at 13 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The storm is bad news for Cuba, which is struggling with devastating blackouts while recovering from another hurricane two weeks ago that killed at least six people in the eastern part of the island.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Cuban government issued an alert for the incoming storm while crews in Havana worked to fortify buildings and clear scraps from seaside areas in anticipation of flooding.
Classes and public transit were suspended on parts of the island and authorities canceled flights in and out Havana and Varadero. Meanwhile, thousands of people in the west of the island were evacuated as a precautionary measure.
Silvia Pérez, a 72-year-old retiree living in a coastal area of Havana, was among those scrambling to prepare. As other neighbors moved appliances and other furniture from ground-level homes, Pérez stocked up on water and food. “This is a night I don’t want to sleep through, between the battering air and the trees,” Pérez said. “I’m scared for my friends and family.”
Forecasters expected the storm to weaken over Cuba before emerging in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico as a hurricane.
The U.S. State Department issued an advisory for Cuba on Tuesday afternoon, offering departure flights to non-essential staff and American citizens, and advising others to “reconsider travel to Cuba due to the potential impact of Tropical Storm Rafael.”
On Tuesday morning, the Cuban Civil Defense called on Cubans to prepare as soon as possible, because when the storm makes landfall “it’s important to stay where you are.”
A hurricane warning was in effect Wednesday for the Cuban provinces of Pinar del Rio, Artemisa, La Habana, Mayabeque, Matanzas and the Isle of Youth. A tropical storm warning was in effect for the Cuban provinces of Villa Clara, Cienfuegos, Sancti Spiritus and Ciego de Avila, as well as the lower and middle Florida Keys from Key West to west of the Channel 5 Bridge, and Dry Tortugas.
The storm on Tuesday knocked out power in parts of Jamaica and unleashed flooding and landslides. The Jamaica Public Service, the island’s electricity provider, said in a statement late Tuesday that impassable roads were preventing crews from restoring power in some areas.
Power outages were reported across the Cayman Islands after a direct hit late Tuesday, and schools remained closed on Wednesday.
“While conditions have improved on Grand Cayman, residents are advised to exercise extreme caution on the roads and near coastlines as rough seas and residual flooding risks may persist,” the government said in a statement.
Heavy rainfall also was expected to spread north into Florida and nearby areas of the southeast U.S. during the middle to late part of the week. The Hurricane Center predicted storm surges in Florida could reach up to 3 feet in Dry Tortugas and between 1 and 2 feet in the Lower Florida Keys.
Rafael is the 17th named storm of the season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted the 2024 hurricane season was likely to be well above average, with between 17 and 25 named storms.
The forecast called for as many as 13 hurricanes and four major hurricanes.
(Andrea Rodríguez, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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CAMARILLO, CA - California was lashed by powerful winds Wednesday that fed a fast-moving wildfire, which destroyed dozens of homes and forced thousands of residents to flee as forecasters warned of the potential for “extreme and life-threatening” blazes.
Northwest of Los Angeles, the Mountain fire exploded in size and prompted evacuation orders for more than 10,000 people as it threatened 3,500 structures in suburban communities, ranches and agricultural areas around Camarillo, according to a statement from Gov. Gavin Newsom. The area east of Ventura will receive federal assistance after a request from Newsom was granted, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday.
The blaze was burning in a region that has seen some of California’s most destructive fires over the years. A thick plume of smoke rose hundreds of feet into the sky Wednesday, blanketing whole neighborhoods and limiting visibility for firefighters and evacuees. The fire grew from less than half of a square mile to 16 square miles — more than 10,200 acres — in little more than five hours.
Ventura County Fire Capt. Trevor Johnson described crews racing with their engines to homes threatened by the flames to save lives. “This is as intense as it gets. The hair on the back of the firefighters’ neck I’m sure was standing up,” he said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
At one spot, flames licked the burning remains of a home. Its roof was reduced to only a few charred shingles.
Two people suffered apparent smoke inhalation and were taken to hospitals, fire officials said. No firefighters reported significant injuries.
The erratic winds and limited visibility grounded fixed-wing aircraft, and gusts topped 61 mph, said weather service meteorologist Bryan Lewis. Water-dropping helicopters were still flying.
First responders pleaded with residents to evacuate. Deputies made contact with 14,000 people to urge them to leave as embers blew up to 2.5 miles away and sparked new flames.
“This fire is moving dangerously fast,” Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner said.
Aerial footage from local television networks showed dozens of homes in flames across several neighborhoods as embers were whipped from home to home. Other footage captured horses trotting alongside evacuating vehicles.
Jade Katz, who said she is disabled and does not drive, waited for a friend to pick her up near her Camarillo Heights home with a suitcase full of medication and Bella, her Great Dane service dog. But the friend couldn’t reach her, so first responders sent a squad car to escort her out Wednesday afternoon as a helicopter dropped water on the house across from her home.
“On the way out of the neighborhood, there were five or eight houses that had already burnt to the ground,” said Katz, 35, who was sitting in a car with housemate Shannon Kelly, 28. They planned to spend the night with a friend in Los Angeles.
Officials said they were using all resources, including water-dropping
helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft dropping fire retardant, but it was still burning out of control Wednesday afternoon. Andrew Dowd, a Ventura County fire spokesperson, said he did not have details of how many structures had been damaged.
Gus Garcia, who owns a ranch south of the fire, said he’s waiting to see whether conditions will change to decide if he should evacuate his horses and cattle. Around 12:30 p.m., his animals were still safe and he was trying to stay out of the way as others got their livestock out.
His ranch is surrounded by others with horses and alpacas, and Garcia said his neighbors in the canyon did not seem panicked.
“The horse community, they prepare for this because it’s always a possibility up here,” he said.
Meanwhile to the south, Los Angeles County Fire Department crews scrambled to contain a wildfire near Malibu’s Broad Beach as authorities briefly shut down the Pacific Coast Highway as flames burned near multimillion-dollar properties. Residents were urged to shelter in place while aircraft dropped water on the 50-acre Broad fire. It was 15% contained around 12:30 p.m. with forward progress stopped. Fire officials said two structures burned.
The National Weather Service office for the Los Angeles area amended its red flag warning for increased fire danger with a rare “particularly dangerous situation” label, and officials in several counties urged residents to be on watch for fast-spreading blazes, power outages and downed trees amid the latest round of notorious Santa Ana winds.
With predicted gusts between 50 mph and 100 mph and humidity levels as low as 8%, parts of Southern California could experience conditions ripe for “extreme and life-threatening” fire behavior into today, the weather service said.
Forecasters also issued red flag warnings until Thursday from California’s central coast through the San Francisco Bay Area and into counties to the north, where strong winds were also expected.
(Marcio J. Sanchez, Christopher Weber & Stefanie Dazio, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Biden administration moved Wednesday to narrow the scope of an oil-and-gas lease sale in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that was mandated under President Donald Trump.
The plan underscores how the Biden administration is racing to cement its environmental legacy mere hours after Trump secured a second term. Trump has vowed to boost oil drilling in the refuge, as part of broader plans to expand fossil fuel production on public lands across the country.
For nearly four decades, drilling was banned in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, whose 19.3 million acres provide critical habitat for the Southern Beaufort Sea’s remaining polar bears, along with tens of thousands of migrating caribou and waterfowl. But in 2017, Trump signed a tax bill mandating at least two lease sales of 400,000 acres each in the refuge’s 1.6 million-acre coastal plain by the end of 2024.
Two weeks before Trump left office in 2021, the Interior Department auctioned off the first of these leases to oil companies and an Alaska state agency. But the Biden administration suspended and then canceled those leases, saying Interior had done an “insufficient analysis” of drilling’s impact in the environmentally sensitive region.
Now, the Biden administration is seeking to narrow the second lease sale without violating the 2017 law that requires it.
In a final environmental impact statement released Wednesday, Interior’s Bureau of Land Management outlined several options for the second sale. The “preferred alternative” calls for offering 400,000 acres — the minimum required by the 2017 tax law.
It also calls for avoiding critical habitat for polar bears and calving grounds for the Porcupine caribou herd, and minimizing harm to the subsistence activities of Alaska Native communities.
Trump has offered a starkly different vision for the refuge. At a fundraiser in Houston in May, Trump promised oil executives that he would significantly boost drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if he returned to the White House, The Washington Post previously reported.
The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated somewhere between 4.3 billion and 11.8 billion barrels of oil lie underneath the refuge’s coastal plain.
(WASHINGTON POST)
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San Diego Gas & Electric officials have notified 24,700 customers living in backcountry areas that they may lose power in the coming days because Santa Ana winds are expected to blow through the area, which may result in elevated risk of fire.
Moderate-strength Santa Ana winds were expected to arrive Tuesday night and
last until Thursday evening, leading the National Weather Service to issue red flag warnings for San Diego County valleys and mountains through Friday morning.
The red flag warning is also in effect for inland and coastal Orange County.
SDG&E officials say that as early as this morning, backcountry areas may be subject to Public Safety Power Shutoffs — a practice in which investor-owned utilities in California cut off electricity from specific circuits as a precautionary measure to avoid the chance of power lines falling in high winds and igniting a wildfire.
The utility started notifying customers most at risk of losing power on Monday via phone, text messages and email. SDG&E officials say those customers should be prepared to be without power through Friday and added that crews “will work to restore power as quickly as safety allows.”
Since the potential shutoffs are not expected until today at the earliest, they were not expected to have any impact on customers in those areas casting their ballots on Election Day.
Rural and backcountry areas are most prone to power shutoffs, called PSPS for short, because the canyons and more elevated terrain are susceptible to blustery conditions. Communities in what is called the High Fire Threat District are particularly affected because many homes rely on water from wells powered by electricity for their homes, horses and livestock.
Five PSPS events occurred in SDG&E’s service territory in 2018 and five in 2020. But the numbers dropped to one in 2021 and none in 2022 and 2023. Two straight wet winters have helped reduce the risk of wildfires in the region.
SDG&E said it has activated its Emergency Operations Center to monitor conditions 24/7 and has personnel and pre-staged materials and equipment ready for response.
Real-time information about unplanned power outages can be found at sdge.com/outage.
SDG&E said it’s important to remember that customers should never approach a downed line and report it by calling 911 or SGD&E’s call center at 800-411-7343.
(Rob Nikolewski, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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As families along Spain’s Mediterranean coast took to the country’s airwaves to plea for help finding lost loved ones in the aftermath of last week’s devastating floods, the government Monday deployed hundreds more troops to help with the search for victims, according to emergency authorities.
Thousands of soldiers and police officers who were deployed to the region to help with rescue and recovery efforts were stymied by up to a foot more of rain in some places Monday. Spain’s meteorological agency had recorded about 6 inches of rain by 11 a.m. in Barcelona and warned that the city could get another 5 inches later in the day. The agency also predicted heavy rains in the coastal provinces of Castellón, Tarragona and Barcelona.
Spain’s Interior Ministry said Monday that the death toll had risen to 215 from the floods spurred by downpours that began last week. The disaster has sparked an angry debate in Spain over accountability, with some people accusing government officials of waiting too long to send warnings.
Dozens of flights were canceled and 18 were diverted from the international airport in Barcelona, according to the airport operator. News agencies shared videos of flooding in the terminals.
Rain was also falling in Valencia, the region hit hardest by last week’s flash floods. That could complicate search-and-rescue efforts still underway there.
Several main roads remained cut off in the region, and some people were without power or drinkable water.
As a clearer picture of the scale of the catastrophe has emerged, Spaniards have questioned why so many people were seemingly unprepared for the destruction or the violence of the storms.
Spain’s meteorological agency started sending out weather warnings days before the storm intensified and issued a flurry of them Oct. 29, when rains were heaviest.
But the regional government in Valencia, which controls the formal alert system, did not send out a text message with an alert until after 8 p.m. that day, when the floodwaters were already rising.
That has led to anger and frustration with authorities — sentiments that spilled over Sunday in Valencia, when a delegation of leaders came to visit the town of Paiporta, where at least 60 people died.
Protesters screamed insults and flung mud at King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Carlos Mazón, the leader of the Valencia region.
Some also criticized how resources were allocated: The king and his entourage were able to get to Paiporta even as rescuers and emergency workers struggled to navigate the area.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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Conditions ranging from abnormally dry to various levels of drought covered a record portion of the Lower 48, according to the latest update from the U.S. Drought Monitor. A remarkable 87% of the country had fallen into dry or drought conditions as of Oct. 31. And as a weather pattern shift continues, a swath of the central United States will remain in a transition from drought to flood concerns this week and beyond.
The recent record drought surpassed prior high marks of 85% in November 2022 and 80% in July 2012. Statistics from the U.S. Drought Monitor, a partnership of the federal government and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, date to 2000.
Recent expansion of the drought was boosted by a historically dry October in the contiguous United States, a pattern that started shifting wetter in the central part of the country as the month closed and November began.
Multiple rounds of heavy rain and severe weather over the past week indicate the peak of drought conditions is passing. Another soaking and an elevated tornado threat is on the way Monday after several days of similar weather centered in Oklahoma.
The 87% of the U.S. in abnormally dry or drought conditions was nearly a doubling of area covered since late June — when the value was 45%.
Drought conditions were observed from coast to coast, with widespread drought present across the central United States at the end of October.
One epicenter, a big chunk of the southern Plains region, was under moderate to severe drought, Levels 2 and 3 out of 5. Substantial rain has since fallen in some of these areas, which will likely lead to a decrease in the dry and drought%age going forward.
A drought outlook for November shows a large zone of improvement from Texas to the Great Lakes, while dry conditions persist or grow in parts of the eastern United States.
(WASHINGTON POST)
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Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency said today that at least six people have died as a series of volcanic eruptions widens on the remote island of Flores.
The eruption at Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki just after midnight today spewed thick brownish ash as high as 6,500 feet into the air and hot ashes hit a nearby village, burning down several houses including a convent of Catholic nuns, officials said.
Authorities also raised the danger level and widened the danger zone for Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki today, following a series of eruptions that began last week.
The country’s volcano monitoring agency increased the volcano’s alert status to the highest level and more than doubled the exclusion zone to a 4.3-mile radius after midnight today as eruptions became more frequent.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Two sister meteor showers are already flashing across night skies — and will peak a week apart.
The Southern Taurids will reach their zenith early Tuesday morning and the Northern Taurids on Nov. 12.
While the two showers only produce around five visible meteors per hour under ideal viewing conditions, they are often very bright fireballs, said Sally Brummel, planetarium manager at the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum.
“What’s notable is that they’re likely to produce brighter and longer-lasting meteors than some other showers, even if there aren’t as many” at a time, she said.
The Southern Taurids will peak on an evening with only a slim crescent moon just 11% full. The Northern Taurids may be more obstructed by moonlight since the moon will be 79% full. Viewing of both will last into December.
Multiple meteor showers occur annually and you don’t need special equipment to see them.
Most meteor showers originate from the debris of comets. Both showers share the same parent source — originating from the debris of comet Encke.
When rocks from space enter Earth’s atmosphere, the resistance from the air makes them very hot. This causes the air to glow around them and briefly leaves a fiery tail behind them — the end of a “shooting star.” The glowing pockets of air around fast-moving space rocks, ranging from the size of a dust particle to a boulder, may be visible in the night sky.
The two showers share similar names because, when seen in the night sky, they appear to originate from different points in the constellation Taurus.
Meteor showers are usually most visible between midnight and predawn hours. It’s easier to see shooting stars under dark skies, away from city lights.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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OKLAHOMA CITY, OK - Severe storms and tornadoes battered Oklahoma early Sunday, tossing cars and ripping roofs off buildings in the middle of the night and leaving tens of thousands of homes and businesses without power. Among numerous injuries, 11 people required hospitalization, authorities said.
Much of the damage was reported in and around the state capital of Oklahoma City, near the state’s center, but also scattered elsewhere around the state. The early-morning storms set off tornado warnings that extended south to the Arkansas state line. Heavy rains caused flash flooding in some areas and one lightning-sparked house fire was reported.
More than 99,000 Oklahoma homes and businesses lost power during the overnight storms. By late Sunday afternoon, that number was reduced toaround 24,000. No fatalities had been reported.
Richard Thompson, forecast chief for the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma, said he believes six or more tornadoes hit the state overnight.
Meanwhile, forecasters warned state residents to brace for more heavy rain and possible severe weather through today. “We’re not done with it yet,” Thompson said.
A tornado watch for much of the central and southeast part of Oklahoma was in effect until 8 p.m. Sunday. Other areas were under thunderstorm or flood watches.
In the town of Choctaw, east of Oklahoma City, firefighters and police officers went door to door Sunday morning to ask about injuries.
“It leveled a complete neighborhood in Choctaw,” the town’s mayor, Chad Allcox, told The Associated Press. He added that debris hindered search and rescue efforts.
“Power lines are down everywhere ... a lot of the roads are blocked, hard to get through. Very large trees blocking roadways,” Allcox said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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BOSTON, MA - Firefighters in Massachusetts are continuing to battle stubborn brush fires across the state with officials urging residents to take precautions to help avoid sparking new blazes.
Hundreds of acres in the greater Boston area have already burned in the past week with new fires cropping up in the western and central parts of the state.
In Massachusetts, an average of 15 wildland fires are reported each October. This year, the month’s total capped at about 200 — an increase of about 1,200% over the average, rivalling the monthly numbers usually seen in the traditional early spring brush fire season.
About 100 fire were reported over the last seven days of the month and
preliminary information indicates that all of them started with human activity, according to fire officials. The fires prompted some communities last week to cancel school classes and Halloween activities.
On Friday, the National Weather Service declared a “red flag” warning for much of eastern Massachusetts. The warning means that the region, which has been experiencing dry and warm weather, is at high risk of fire.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A day after hundreds of College Area and Talmadge residents fled as fast-moving fire raged by their home, many spent time Friday relieved that disaster was averted, praising firefighters but raising long-held concerns about brush clearance in canyons and evacuation traffic jams.
The blaze, which burned around 40 acres, was 80% contained by Friday afternoon, according to the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department. Three engine companies were slated to stay through the night to watch for flare-ups. The remainder of the line around the fire was to be drawn Saturday. Montezuma Road between Collwood Boulevard and Fairmount Avenue remained closed.
Evacuation orders Thursday stretched across a wide swath of central San Diego, encompassing large parts of Talmadge, the College Area, Kensington and Normal Heights. All orders were lifted Thursday night, and power was restored to those neighborhoods, fire officials reported.
The blaze, which started around 1:40 p.m. off Montezuma east of Fairmount, damaged six homes — mostly charred fences, broken windows and the like, officials said. The fire burned quickly through canyons dense with brush and palm trees and raced toward homes at the top of ridges as about 300 firefighters fought to stop its march.
A single call of a brush fire alongside Montezuma near Fairmount Avenue immediately drew the standard initial response of two engines but was quickly upgraded as more 911 calls started pouring in. Fire-Rescue Assistant Chief Dan Eddy credited Engine 17 Capt. Dallas Higgins, the first captain on the scene, for recognizing the explosive potential of the fire and immediately asking Cal Fire to drop fire retardant — fast action when every moment counted.
Higgins — “a senior captain, very good at his job” — is stationed in the area and knew as soon as he arrived “that this was going to be ripping pretty quickly,” Eddy said. He said the first battalion chief on scene also ordered a larger attack than usual.
“The response that came was phenomenal,” Eddy said. “We had engines from all over San Diego County, and because that trigger was pulled very quickly to start getting those resources going, we were able to get a lot of individuals on the fire.”
Eddy said he was driving up Interstate 15 when he heard the fire radio traffic, looked in his rearview mirror, saw the fire and turned around. He arrived maybe five minutes into the incident.
“I’ll be dead honest with you ... I was expecting us to lose multiple homes with the speed that that fire was going, the amount of heat that it had behind it, and it had the wind direction pushing it,” Eddy said.
He feared 20 homes might be destroyed. Although six sustained a bit of damage, none were lost. The assistant chief pointed to the “phenomenal job” of crews on the ground. The retardant drop also helped “immensely,” slowing the fire as it chewed through brush.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
The smell of smoke was still palpable in the area Friday morning. Residents in Talmadge said they were thankful for the firefighters who stayed in their neighborhood overnight to contain the fire. Some homes off Lucille Drive lost fences to the blaze.
Several people pointed to concerns that the heavy brush along Montezuma was a fire danger and said their requests to clear it went nowhere.
Julie Hamilton, president of the College Area Community Council, said the council had alerted San Diego officials about clearing the canyons. She said area residents “have been raising concerns about homeless encampments lighting fires and clearing brush, especially those palm trees. You have two communities immediately uphill of these palm trees who have repeatedly asked the city, ‘How do we get rid of them?’”
A quick search of the city’s NextRequest website turned up a request filed in July in which someone asked who was responsible for brush abatement of the property running south along Montezuma. The requester, whose name was not available, alleged that the parcel “is seriously overgrown and is used as a camping spot by homeless individuals, and as such represents a clear threat to the safety of neighboring residents.”
It’s not clear where the fire started, whether on public or private property. Questions regarding brush management in the area could not be immediately answered late Friday.
San Diego spokesperson Matt Hoffman said Friday the city “has addressed unsafe encampments in this area and will continue working with residents and private property owners to do so.” But, he said, “a significant portion of property in this area is privately owned.”
“The City cannot enter private property to remove waste or encampments. Code officers have been and will continue communicating with property owners to address concerns, and if needed, issue citations to ensure compliance,” he said.
Hamilton, the community council president, praised the firefighters and pointed to “a silver lining”: the palm trees are gone.
Schools in the area monitored air quality Friday and asked to limit outdoor activities if warranted, according to a letter from San Diego Unified School District Interim Superintendent Fabiola Bagula. She thanked firefighters, first responders and school staff who helped evacuate students from Hardy Elementary to Viejas Arena on Thursday.
Katie Nieri shared praise for firefighters and Hardy Elementary staff but was floored at the gridlock — it took her an hour and 15 minutes to go about a mile as she was trying to evacuate. She said neighbors with children at Hardy had to abandon their cars and walk to retrieve their kids. She was frustrated that San Diego State University did not cancel classes to help clear the streets as residents tried to flee.
Hamilton also criticized the evacuation, noting that residents just west of the school had limited egress and it took people hours to inch out through the campus.
(Teri Figueroa & Tammy Murga, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; Kristina Davis)
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As the death toll passed 200 from floods this week that triggered the deadliest natural disaster in Spain’s recent history, southern regions were battered by more heavy rain Friday, complicating an already strained rescue effort.
Valencia, the region that suffered the worst of the deluge, recorded 202 deaths, regional President Carlos Mazón said at a news conference.
Three more people have died in neighboring regions, bringing the total of confirmed deaths to 205, according to authorities. That toll was expected to rise as rescue workers continued to dig through sodden towns clogged with mud and debris.
Late Thursday and Friday, rains spread to other southern regions. Heavy rain
fell overnight in Andalusia, with the western province of Huelva the worst hit. Residents were out celebrating Halloween when sheets of rain began to fall, local news media reported. Authorities urged people to stay home and avoid celebrating All Saints Day on Friday, warning of the risk of flooding.
While the southwest was on high alert, along the east coast rescue workers were still searching through piles of cars flung by floodwater and homes ripped through by mud. Rain continued Friday, particularly in Castellón, north of the Valencia region; in Tarragona, in the southern Catalonia region; and on the Balearic Islands, off Spain’s east coast.
In Valencia, dozens of people were still missing.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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ERWIN, TN - Rescue workers in Tennessee said Friday they have recovered the body of the final person missing after massive flooding from Hurricane Helene hit a plastics factory.
Rosa Andrade, 29, was one of six employees killed after they were unable to escape the rising waters around Impact Plastics in Erwin, a small town in East Tennessee. Surviving workers have said they were not allowed to leave until water had flooded the plant’s parking lot and the power went out. Eleven people were swept away and only five were rescued. The plant’s owner has denied the accusations.
Emergency workers discovered Andrade’s body Wednesday, more than a month after the Sept. 27 flood of the Nolichucky River.
Normally running 2 feet deep, the river rose to a record 30 feet that day, with more than 1.4 million gallons of water running downstream each second — twice as much as Niagara Falls.
Relatives of some of those who were killed have sued Impact Plastics and its owner, Gerald O’Connor. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is probing the allegations involving Impact Plastics.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The unseasonably balmy weather throughout the Northeast in recent weeks, however pleasant, has stirred some of the driest drought conditions in recent memory, leaving New Jersey and Connecticut vulnerable to hundreds of wildfires.
In New Jersey, 377 wildfires have burned more than 628 acres since Sept. 15, a jump from 26 wildfires with only about 7 acres consumed over the same period last year. State authorities have not reported any injuries from the fires.
In Connecticut, where Gov. Ned Lamont has declared a state of emergency, there have been 84 wildfires since Oct. 21, compared with five over the same period in 2023. The largest fire this fall, a 127-acre blaze about 15 miles south of Hartford, injured six people and killed one firefighter.
People are usually the cause of wildfires, whether intentionally or by accident, a spokesperson for New Jersey’s Forest Fire Service said. The fires in the state are under investigation, he added. Officials in Connecticut did not comment on possible causes.
“We have never experienced conditions like this,” said Bill Donnelly, chief of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service. “It’s so dry, the fires are burning down into the ground and are continuing to smoke.”
Having multiple wildfires in the Northeast might seem surprising for a region where rainfall averages are increasing and flooding poses a constant threat. But climate change can produce unpredictable weather patterns, said David Robinson, a New Jersey state climatologist and a geography professor at Rutgers University.
“Warm, dry episodes such as this are expected to become more common in a warming world, despite the fact that overall the region is supposed to get wetter,” he said.
In between periods of intense rain, which are becoming more common with climate change, drought-like conditions — the opposite extreme — can also occur. These abrupt shifts are on the rise because of global warming, which tends to supercharge typical atmospheric conditions, experts say.
Larger wildfires out West have prepared emergency workers in the Northeast with what to expect. In recent years, Connecticut fire crews have been deployed to fight blazes in areas ranging from California to provinces in Canada, said a spokesperson for the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection.
And last year in New Jersey, Gov. Philip Murphy gave $3 million to the Forest Fire Service so it could update equipment and add employees, following an uptick in local wildfires and after much of the state was blanketed in a toxic haze from a fire out west.
New Jersey has been under a drought watch for two weeks. The Pine Barrens region, which makes up about a quarter of the state and contains forests,
cranberry bogs and blueberry fields, is of particular concern for fire experts.
In this southern region of the state, homes are near or in the forest, Donnelly said, so access for emergency services can be a challenge. The U.S. Drought Monitor is likely to designate parts of the Pine Barrens as being in an extreme drought — the second-highest level in the organization’s ratings system — in the near future, Robinson said.
No appreciable rain, perhaps just a tenth of an inch in the coming days, is predicted for New Jersey anytime soon. A cold front toward the end of the week could lower humidity even further, which would — along with wind gusts of up to 35 mph — threaten to increase the fire risk, according to the National Weather Service.
(Hilary Howard, NEW YORK TIMES)
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A powerful typhoon made landfall in Taiwan on Thursday, killing two people
and bringing high winds and floods to much of the island’s east coast and northern areas, after barreling past the northern Philippines.
Flights and train service were suspended in Taiwan and 8,600 people moved to shelters.
Typhoon Kong-rey was blowing at 114 miles per hour with gusts of up to 141 mph as it moved over the eastern county of Taitung. Parts of Yilan and Hualien counties were inundated by heavy rain, but many farmers in the largely rural areas had already brought in their crops in anticipation of damage from the storm.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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BARRIO DE LA TORRE, Spain - Crews searched for bodies in stranded cars and sodden buildings Thursday as residents salvaged what they could from their ruined homes following monstrous flash floods in Spain that claimed at least 158 lives, with 155 deaths confirmed in the eastern Valencia region alone.
More horrors emerged Thursday from the debris and ubiquitous layers of mud left by the walls of water that produced Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory. The damage from the storm late Tuesday and early Wednesday recalled the aftermath of a tsunami, with survivors left to pick up the pieces as they mourn their loved ones.
Cars were piled on one another like fallen dominoes, uprooted trees, downed
power lines and household items all mired in mud that covered streets in dozens of communities in Valencia, a region south of Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast.
An unknown number of people are still missing and more victims could be found.
“Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles,” Spain’s Transport Minister Óscar Puente said early Thursday before the death toll spiked from 95 on Wednesday night.
Rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that tore through homes and businesses, sweeping away cars, people and everything else in its path. The floods demolished bridges and left roads unrecognizable.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Efforts to protect the troubled rail corridor between San Diego and Los Angeles by stabilizing the eroding beach and bluffs in San Clemente got a $100 million boost this week from a new round of federal grants.
The project is one of 12 in California receiving a total of $278 million from the
Department of Transportation’s Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements Grants Program, which supports work to improve the safety, efficiency and reliability of intercity passenger and freight rail service. Nationwide, the grants amounted to more than $2.4 billion.
The coastal corridor is San Diego’s only railroad connection to Los Angeles and the rest of the United States. In addition to North County Transit District’s Coaster commuter train, the route is used by Amtrak, Metrolink, BNSF Freight and other carriers.
“OCTA (the Orange County Transportation Authority) applied for the grant to help fund our Coastal Rail Infrastructure Resiliency Project, which will address the most immediate needs to protect the rail line in four hot spots through San Clemente,” OCTA spokesperson Eric Carpenter said in an email Tuesday.
“With this grant, as well as other state and local funds, including the $125 million from (the California State Transportation Agency) last week, OCTA has secured more than $310 million, which essentially fully funds this hot-spot protection effort,” Carpenter said.
A draft coastal rail resilience study report released by OCTA earlier this year identifies the four hot spots to be worked on.
An additional seven spots within San Clemente’s 7 miles of the rail corridor were identified for continued monitoring and possible reinforcement through methods yet to be decided. They include areas of Doheny State Beach, Poche Beach and North Beach.
Two of the hot spots recommended for immediate action are eroded beaches just north of the San Clemente Pier. Another is an unstable bluff near those beaches but east of the tracks, where the slope could slide onto the tracks. A fourth area is another eroded beach south of the pier and near San Clemente State Beach.
Comments on the draft report will be accepted through next summer, and the OCTA board is expected to approve the final report in the fall of 2025. Construction could begin in the spring of 2026, according to permit applications submitted to the California Coastal Commission.
Strategies outlined in the report are expected to protect the San Clemente segment of the railroad for the next 30 years. Meanwhile, transit officials will continue to evaluate how to protect the corridor into the more distant future.
Past efforts to protect the beach side of the tracks in San Clemente have
centered on building rock revetments. However, hard barriers such as revetments have been shown to increase erosion and shrink the beach, and are widely opposed by environmentalists.
A better strategy, though more expensive, is sand replenishment with material dredged from nearby ocean deposits or other sources. A recommendation for revetments, sand replenishment or a combination of both will be included in the OCTA’s final report.
San Clemente and Dana Point agreed this year to join San Diego County coastal cities in preliminary studies for what could be a massive regional sand replenishment project for all the agencies. That effort, led by the San Diego Association of Governments, is unrelated to the OCTA work to protect its segment of the railroad. Still, a regional sand project would help protect all coastal infrastructure, from roads and public parks to private homes and the railroad.
Bluff stabilization projects have used retaining walls, soil anchors, grading and other tactics. Those efforts also have their downside, such as the destruction of native plants and the loss of public spaces.
Among the long-term ideas being considered is to reroute the tracks away from the coastline between San Onofre State Beach and San Juan Capistrano, although little progress has been made in that direction.
“Given the potential magnitude of this effort, it will require involvement of state and federal agencies,” according to the OCTA website. “Discussions are underway to determine which agency is best positioned to lead that effort.”
An effort to reroute about 1.7 miles of track off the coastal bluffs and into a tunnel in Del Mar has been discussed for decades. The first real progress came after a $300 million state grant was awarded to start preliminary studies in 2022.
However, there’s no money for construction that will cost at least several billion dollars, and the potential route is mired in controversy. SANDAG officials have said the earliest a tunnel could be completed is 2035.
The federal funding comes on the tail of $125 million in grant money allocated by the California State Transportation Agency a week earlier for the San Clemente rail needs identified by the OCTA.
“Over the past three years, there has been a cumulative total of over 12 months of closures in this section of the corridor due to extensive railroad track movement and slope instability,” state officials said in their announcement.
“This investment will have ... a decadeslong impact on the improvement of commerce and economic development through freight movement and national security as a part of the Strategic Rail Corridor Network,” said North County Transit District CEO Shawn Donaghy.
The San Clemente rail projects also have been allocated $80 million from the California Transportation Commission’s Trade Corridor Enhancement Program.
NCTD owns and maintains more than 60 miles of the rail corridor from downtown San Diego to the Orange County border and operates Coaster commuter trains serving eight stations from Oceanside to the Santa Fe Depot in San Diego.
OCTA owns and maintains about 40 miles of the right-of-way. Both transit agencies are among several in six counties that use the 351-mile rail route known as the Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo corridor.
(Phil Diehl, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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A fast-moving brush fire chewed through canyons of thick brush and palm
trees in San Diego’s College Area and Talmadge neighborhoods Thursday afternoon, damaging homes and prompting widespread evacuations.
The fire was reported about 1:40 p.m. and burned on both sides of Montezuma Road, just east of Fairmount Avenue, according to San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.
Flames raced down canyons and up ridges toward homes behind Lucille Drive in Talmadge and Alvarado Estates in the College Area, growing to around 40 acres by Thursday evening before crews got the upper hand.
Crews had about 25% of the fire contained by early evening, and six homes were damaged, Fire-Rescue officials said on X. They said Montezuma Road would remain closed through the night to give access to fire equipment and crews will remain on scene to watch for hot spots. No injuries had been reported as of Thursday evening, said Jose Ysea, spokesperson for the city’s Office of Emergency Services.
Ysea said he saw several homes that had sustained relatively minor damage — burned fences, broken windows — including one where the deck had been heavily damaged “but they were able to save the house.”
Mónica Muñoz, a fire department spokesperson, said multiple decks were damaged and the fire may have reached into the attic of one home.
The cause of the fire was under investigation.
San Diego police officers went door to door telling residents to leave in an evacuation zone that spanned Talmadge, the College Area, Normal Heights and Kensington. The boundaries encompassed a populated swath — south of Interstate 8, west of Hewlett Drive and Collwood Boulevard, north of Monroe Avenue and east of Interstate 805.
Most of the evacuation orders were lifted by early Thursday evening, save for a portion of Talmadge essentially east of Fairmount Avenue stretching roughly to Collwood Boulevard, and from I-8 south to Adams Avenue. And those allowed to return home were warned that power could be out.
The Allied Gardens Recreation Center, at 5155 Greenbrier Ave., was set up as a temporary evacuation and reunification center. As of early Thursday evening, a few dozen people were at the site, Ysea said.
The San Diego Humane Society said people and their pets could get food and water at the site. It tweeted a photo of a woman in a Buzz Lightyear costume with a few leashed dogs — two of them wearing hotdog costumes.
Hardy Elementary School, near Montezuma and Remington roads, was also evacuated, with students and staff sent to San Diego State University’s Viejas Arena, fire officials said.
The fire snarled traffic on surface streets as major thoroughfares were closed.
Police said several other roads in the area — including Collwood Boulevard, between Monroe Avenue and Montezuma, Fairmont Avenue from Interstate 8 to Aldine Drive and Camino Del Rio south of Fairmont — would be closed until at least midnight. The Fairmount exit at I-8 also caused for delays on the freeway.
Crews from multiple agencies participated in the firefight, including air assets that dropped water and fire retardant on the flames, fire officials said.
Muñoz said Thursday’s blaze marked the first time in nearly 10 years that retardant was used to fight a city fire.
“We’re super happy with the response and our ability to grab it,” Muñoz said.
The fire and evacuations on Halloween kept trick-or-treaters off the streets — and that meant a lot of extra candy in homes up and down the cleared-out blocks.
Ysea said he spied residents instead approaching firefighters to hand out candy.
In the Talmadge area, fire Capt. David Bartoletti and his crew hosed down flames that had sped up the canyon and charred people’s backyards.
“It’s really important to create that defensible space,” Bartoletti said as he pointed to the burned brush that had overgrown in one of the backyards.
Next door along Lorraine Drive, homeowners Blanchard Roberson and his husband, David Noel, watched as the flames missed their home. From their single-family house, firefighters helped extinguish hot spots creeping toward their neighbors’ homes.
“That’s the fear of living in the canyons, but we try to keep clearance and that’s what helped today,” said Roberson. “We were 50 miles away from home, but we’re thankful to our neighbors. They notified us and we came back.”
Nearby was UC San Diego student Aiden Molter, who rushed from campus to his house. His father was home when evacuations started.
“He said he grabbed a backpack and helped the neighbor’s dogs before leaving,” said Molter. “I just came to the house to see if there was anything I could pack. The house is fine.”
Tashayla Paige, one of many parents who went to Viejas to pick up their children after being evacuated from Hardy Elementary, broke down when she didn’t immediately find her 6-year-old daughter on the field. Her daughter had gone with a teacher to get a drink of water.
“It was pretty intense but I’m glad we’re together now,” Paige said as she embraced her daughter.
The mother said she did not get a direct alert about the evacuations but learned about it upon arriving at the school for normal pickup.
Nearby was Ayako Do, who was picking up her son and a few of his friends from Hardy.
“I was freaked out because (the fire) seemed so close,” said Do, as the children in costume huddled near her. They said they had just completed a fire drill a few weeks ago.
About an hour earlier to the south, a blaze broke out near Quarry and Sweetwater roads in the La Presa area, at the western end of Sweetwater Reservoir. The blaze initially threatened an apartment complex, and residents were ordered to evacuate, said San Miguel Fire Chief Andy Lawler.
The evacuation order for the complex and homes south of Jamacha Boulevard was soon downgraded to a warning as crews gained control and was eventually lifted, according to county officials. The blaze charred about 12 acres.
(Kristina Davis, Tammy Murga, Christian Martinez & Alex Riggins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; staff writer Teri Figueroa)
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CALI, Colombia - The United Nations, scientists and governments made an urgent call Wednesday for increased funding to protect coral reefs under threat of extinction.
Research this year shows that 77% of the world’s reefs are affected by bleaching, mainly due to warming ocean waters amid human-caused climate change. It’s the largest and fourth mass global bleaching on record and is impacting both hemispheres, United Nations Capital Development Fund said.
The findings prompted a U.N. special emergency session — typically called to address escalating conflicts or natural disasters — on corals to be convened on sidelines of the U.N. biodiversity summit, known as COP16, nearing its end after two weeks in Cali, Colombia.
Coral reefs are vital ecosystems that support over 25% of marine life and nearly a billion people, many relying on reefs for food security, coastal protection and livelihoods, the U.N. development fund said.
After the emergency session, the governments of New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Germany and France made new pledges totaling around $30 million to the U.N. fund for coral reefs established in 2020. By 2030, the fund seeks to leverage up to $3 billion in public and private financing to support coral reef conservation efforts. Around $225 million has been raised to date.
“Protecting our ocean and its precious habitats is fundamental to life on earth,” said U.K. Minister for Nature Mary Creagh. “But without urgent action, the world’s coral reefs face extinction from global heating, acidification, disease, and pollution; a vital ecosystem lost within our lifetime.”
Next year, a U.N. ocean conference will take place in Nice, France, and countries are being urged beforehand to pledge more to the U.N. global fund for coral reefs with the aim of mobilizing an additional $150 million in donations by the conference.
“In 2024, climate change and other human impacts triggered the fourth mass coral reef bleaching event, the most extensive and devastating on record,” said Peter Thomson, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean. “With the window to protect these ecosystems closing rapidly, world leaders must act now.”
“We must secure a sustainable future for coral reefs and the countless lives that rely on them —before it’s too late,” Thomson said.
(Steven Grattan, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Flash floods in Spain turned village streets into rivers, ruined homes, disrupted transportation and killed at least 95 people in the worst natural disaster to hit the European nation in recent memory.
Rainstorms that started Tuesday and continued Wednesday caused flooding across southern and eastern Spain, stretching from Malaga to Valencia. Muddy torrents tumbled vehicles down streets at high speeds while debris and household items swirled in the water. Police and rescue services used helicopters to lift people from their homes and rubber boats to reach drivers stranded atop cars.
Emergency services in the eastern region of Valencia confirmed 92 deaths on
Wednesday. Another two casualties were reported in the neighboring Castilla La Mancha region, while Andalusia reported one.
“Yesterday was the worst day of my life,” Ricardo Gabaldón, the mayor of Utiel, a town in Valencia, told national broadcaster RTVE on Wednesday. He said six residents perished and more are missing.
“We were trapped like rats. Cars and trash containers were flowing down the streets. The water was rising to 3 meters (9.8 feet),” he said.
Spain’s government declared three days of mourning starting today.
“For those who are looking for their loved ones, all of Spain feels your pain,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in a televised address.
Rescue personnel and more than 1,100 soldiers from Spain’s emergency response units were deployed to affected areas. Spain’s central government set up a crisis committee to coordinate rescue efforts.
Javier Berenguer, 63, escaped his bakery in Utiel when crushing water threatened to overwhelm him. He said it rose to 8.2 feet inside his business, and he fears his livelihood has been destroyed.
“I had to get out of a window as best I could because the water was already coming up to my shoulders. I took refuge on the first floor with the neighbors and I stayed there all night,” Berenguer said. “It has taken everything. I have to throw everything out of the bakery, the freezers, ovens, everything.”
María Carmen Martínez, another Utiel resident, witnessed a harrowing rescue.
“It was horrible, horrible. There was a man there clinging to a fence who was falling and calling people for help,” she said. “They couldn’t help him until the helicopters came and took him away.”
Spain’s national weather service said it rained more in eight hours in Valencia than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.”
As the floods receded, thick layers of mud mixed with refuse made some streets unrecognizable.
“The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other,” Christian Viena, a bar owner in the Valencian village of Barrio de la Torre, said by phone. “It’s literally smashed up.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A bone-dry October is pushing nearly half of the United States into a flash drought, leading to fires in the Midwest and hindering shipping on the Mississippi River.
More than 100 long-term weather stations in 26 states, including Alaska, are having their driest October on record, according to records through Sunday by the Southern Regional Climate Center and Midwest Regional Climate Center.
Cities that have had no measurable rain for October include New York, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Sioux City, Iowa, along with normal dry spots such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix, National Weather Service records show.
“This is on pace for a record dry October,” said Allison Santorelli, acting warning coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md. This includes the Southeast, some of which experienced deadly flooding just the month before in Hurricane Helene.
In June, less than 12% of the country was experiencing drought. Now it’s almost 50% and growing, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
That fits the definition of “flash drought,” which is different than normal slowly developing dry spells, said U.S. Department of Agriculture meteorologist Brad Rippey, a drought monitor author. A study last year showed that a warming world from the burning of coal, oil and gas is causing more frequent and damaging flash droughts, such as a $30 billion one that hit America in 2012 and a devastating 2022 drought in China.
In one-eighth of the area of the continental United States, no rain had been reported for the first 28 days of October. About 93% of the continental U.S. is seeing below-average rain in October, most with less than an inch, according to climate center data analyzed by The Associated Press.
Studies over the last decade or so have shown that the jet stream — the currents of air that move weather systems across the world — is wavier and getting stuck more often, attributing it to human-caused climate change’s extra warming of the Arctic, said Rippey.
What’s happening now, especially with an extremely warm Arctic and “feverish ocean temperatures across the North Pacific,” fits the theory well, said Woodwell Climate Research Center senior scientist Jennifer Francis.
Stuck weather systems this year have caused “weather whiplash” in places like Sioux City, where downpours in June caused so much rain that it pulled down a railroad bridge and forced people to their rooftops, said climatologist Melissa Widhalm, associate director of the Midwest Regional Climate Center at Purdue University.
Asheville, N.C., which was devastated by Hurricane Helene, was deluged with nearly 14 inches of rain in three days in September, but has received only one one-hundredth of an inch in October.
The Mississippi River, a major transporter of crops, is at levels so low that shipping loads have to be constrained, Rippey said. It’s the third straight year of problematic water levels on the river, he said.
Elsewhere, dry fields mean a situation ripe for wildfires in both the Midwest and East, Rippey said. Five large uncontrolled fires Tuesday had burned more than 1,000 acres in the East and Midwest, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
(Seth Borenstein, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Tropical Storm Trami made landfall in Vietnam on Sunday, days after causing widespread flooding and leaving at least 85 people dead in the Philippines, officials said.
Trami reached land near the central Vietnamese city of Danang on Sunday.
Vietnam’s national meteorological agency said on social media that the storm was producing maximum wind speeds of 55 mph, or 19 mph below hurricane strength.
The storm had moved west across the South China Sea from the Philippines
after killing at least 85 people dead and leaving 41 others missing in one of the Southeast Asian archipelago’s deadliest and most destructive storms so far this year, the government’s disaster-response agency said.
The death toll was expected to rise as reports come in from previously isolated areas.
As Trami moved inland across Vietnam on Sunday, the country’s meteorological agency said there was a risk of flooding and coastal landslides. It said that some areas south of Danang, one of the country’s largest cities, were forecast to reach up to 16 inches of rain through tonight.
Before the storm, flights had been suspended at four airports in central Vietnam, including at the Danang International Airport. But all four were reopened Sunday, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam.
Tropical Storm Trami caused widespread flooding in several Philippine provinces, forced more than 500,000 people from their homes, damaged nearly 28,000 houses and led to power disruptions in more than 150 cities and municipalities, officials said. Floodwaters prevented relief workers from reaching some hard-hit areas.
More than 5 million people were in the path of the storm, including nearly half a million who mostly fled to more than 6,300 emergency shelters in several provinces, the government agency said.
Another tropical storm, Kong-rey, was hovering near the Philippines on Sunday with roughly the same wind speeds, according to the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
Kong-rey was forecast to brush along the coast of Luzon, the most populous island in the Philippines, today and Tuesday. From there it was expected to head for the Ryukyu Islands of southern Japan.
Last month, Typhoon Yagi left at least 24 people dead in China and the Philippines before crossing the South China Sea and making landfall in Vietnam with wind speeds equivalent to those of a Category 3 hurricane. At least 49 people were killed as the storm moved inland across northern Vietnam.
(NEW YORK TIMES; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Biden and Newsom administrations will soon adopt new rules for California’s major water delivery systems that will determine how much water may be pumped from rivers while providing protections for imperiled fish species.
But California environmental groups, while supportive of efforts to rewrite the rules, are criticizing the proposed changes and warning that the resulting plans would fail to protect fish species that are declining toward extinction in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and San Francisco Bay.
As the preferred proposal is laid out in a federal draft environmental review, the new rules “would make things worse,” said Jon Rosenfield, science director for the group San Francisco Baykeeper.
“We are deeply concerned that six endangered species in the Bay Delta are on the verge of extinction or headed in that direction,” Rosenfield said.
The rules under revision govern dams, aqueducts and pumping plants in California’s two main water systems, the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, which deliver water to millions of acres of farmland and more than 25 million people. Pumping to supply farms and cities has contributed to the ecological degradation of the Delta, where threatened and endangered fish species include steelhead trout, two types of Chinook salmon, longfin smelt, Delta smelt and green sturgeon.
The rewriting of the rules, along with supporting biological opinions, began nearly three years ago after California and environmental groups successfully challenged the Trump administration’s previous rules in court, arguing that 2019 biological opinions failed to provide adequate protections for endangered fish.
Federal and state agencies are now aiming to lock in new rules in the coming weeks amid uncertainty about the presidential election, which in the event of a
victory by former President Donald Trump would likely bring new attempts to weaken protections for fish.
“The Biden-Harris administration and the Newsom administration, which said that we’re going to do better than the illegal Trump administration plan, have actually produced a less protective plan that will accelerate the path to extinction for many of these fish species,” Rosenfield said. “No doubt a Trump administration would seek to weaken these protections, but that is not an argument to lock in obviously inadequate protections.”
State officials disagreed, saying their plan for the State Water Project will better protect fish species.
The state Department of Water Resources has been working for the last several years with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and counterparts at state and federal fish agencies to complete a new permit — called an incidental take permit — for the State Water Project, said Karla Nemeth, the department’s director.
Nemeth said DWR’s proposal for operating the system “includes a portfolio of actions designed to reduce impacts to listed species while ensuring water supply reliability amid a changing climate.”
That permit for the State Water Project is separate from the forthcoming biological opinions for the federally operated Central Valley Project.
Nemeth said state officials are working with federal partners to ensure the rules governing operations of both systems “are aligned to benefit listed and endangered fish species while continuing to provide water to millions of Californians.”
The development of the new operating rules has involved more than 2 1/2 years of consultations and analysis through a “multi-agency state and federal team with regular engagement and opportunities for feedback,” said Mary Lee Knecht, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Reclamation. She said the proposal focuses partly on “striking a reasonable balance among competing demands for water, including the requirements of fish and wildlife, agricultural, municipal, and industrial uses of water.”
The time allotted for updating the rules is coming to an end. For the last three years, federal and state officials have operated the water systems under a court-ordered interim operations plan, which will expire in December.
The federal environmental review — called a draft environmental impact statement — includes several alternatives, and environmental groups have
urged officials to consider one that they say would provide stronger environmental protections than the Biden administration’s preferred alternative.
Trump has said in recent campaign speeches that water in California is “horribly mismanaged” and that if he is elected, he would deliver more water to farmers and cities. He has indicated he would again seek to weaken environmental protections, lamenting that because of “a little tiny fish called a smelt, they send millions and millions of gallons of water out to the Pacific Ocean.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, in contrast, would likely seek to maintain stronger environmental protections.
Such arguments over water in the Delta have long pitted Central Valley farmers and agricultural water districts against environmental groups, fishing advocates and Native tribes.
The California Farm Bureau, the state’s largest agricultural organization, raised various concerns about the proposed rules in a recent letter, saying the federal analysis ignored the fact that farms face state-mandated limitations on groundwater pumping in the coming years.
Alexandra Biering, the Farm Bureau’s senior policy advocate, wrote in the letter that agricultural water users have been frustrated by “politically driven regulatory uncertainty” and have been “left in a limbo of sorts about the future operational conditions of the projects” as officials have pushed for rewriting the rules.
“I continue to be dismayed about the fact that this is a political football, and it just keeps getting kicked from one side to the other,” Biering said in an interview. “Everybody wants to lock something in before the potential for a change in administration, which I understand, but I think it inevitably leads to this perception that politics is what’s driving those decisions.”
That’s unfortunate, she said, because the same public officials have been tasked with revising the plans for years under different administrations. Biering said she would like to see the process be “a little bit more insulated from politics.”
Large urban water agencies that depend on the State Water Project have also been weighing in.
Adán Ortega Jr., board chair of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California, said leaders of the agency would like to see state and federal permits “that have consistent terms across them.” He said the district, which supplies water for 19 million people, supports the inclusion of proposed negotiated agreements — called Agreements to Support Healthy Rivers and Landscapes — in which water agencies have pledged to forgo certain amounts of water while also funding projects to improve wetland habitats.
Those proposed deals, also called the “voluntary agreements,” have been supported by Gov. Gavin Newsom and his administration but strongly opposed by environmental groups, who have argued this approach would mean reduced flows in the Delta and would be detrimental to fish and the ecosystem.
Instead, they have called for science-based flow requirements to help fish populations recover.
“The science is very, very clear, and has been for a long time, that without additional flows into, through and out of the Delta to San Francisco Bay, these species will continue to decline,” Rosenfield said.
Another key water policy framework is now being developed by the State Water Resources Control Board, which on Friday released a draft review of potential options for updating the state’s plan for managing flows in the Delta. It includes options for incorporating the voluntary agreements proposal.
The state water board has not yet decided which option it will adopt in the updated Bay-Delta Plan. Board members will hear comments from the public at a series of meetings in November, December and January. The board has not set a date for adopting the plan but is aiming for sometime in summer or fall of 2025, said Eric Oppenheimer, the board’s executive director.
Whatever approach the board ultimately takes, legal challenges are expected.
Potential litigation also looms as the federal government finalizes the rules for operating the Central Valley Project. Environmental groups have said the Biden administration’s preferred plan is built on the controversial voluntary agreements, and the analysis failed to properly assess the environmental effects of two proposed infrastructure projects — Sites Reservoir and the Newsom administration’s plan to build a $20 billion water tunnel — both of which the groups are fighting.
A coalition of environmental groups raised other concerns in a recent letter, condemning the federal government’s proposed rules for excluding environmental impacts on the Trinity River and its fish. The groups said that “creates an overestimate of the water available for export” and will result in uncertainty and potentially more litigation.
“They’re going to make it worse for fish in California,” said Tom Stokely, water policy adviser for the group California Water Impact Network.
Max Gomberg, a former state water official who resigned in 2022 over differences with the Newsom administration, said the proposed rules would “essentially maintain the status quo,” which has harmed the Delta’s ecosystem and fisheries, and would allow “environmentally destructive levels of water exports.”
“The only real beneficiaries are a few wealthy Central Valley growers,” said Gomberg, a board member of the California Water Impact Network.
State officials disagreed with the claims that the proposed rules would be less protective of the environment.
“We believe the proposed State Water Project operations will better protect threatened fish species by incorporating new science and addressing climate change impacts,” said Ryan Endean, a spokesperson for the Department of Water Resources.
He said the improvements partly come through commitments to restore marsh and floodplain habitats, as well as other efforts to support the recovery of fish species.
(Ian James, LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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MANILA, Philippines - Tropical Storm Trami blew away from the northwestern Philippines on Friday, leaving at least 82 people dead in landslides and extensive flooding that forced authorities to scramble for more rescue boats to save thousands of terrified people, who were trapped, some on their roofs.
But the onslaught may not be over: State forecasters raised the rare possibility that the storm — the 11th and one of the deadliest to hit the Philippines this year — could make a U-turn next week as it is pushed back by high-pressure winds in the South China Sea.
A Philippine provincial police chief said Friday that 49 people were killed
mostly in landslides set off by Trami in Batangas province south of Manila. That brought the overall death toll from the storm to at least 82.
Eleven other villagers remain missing in Batangas, Col. Jacinto Malinao Jr. told The Associated Press by telephone from the lakeside town of Talisay, where he stood beside a villager whose wife and child were buried in the deep mound of mud, boulders and trees.
With the use of a backhoe and shovels, police scrambled to search into 10 feet of mud, rocks and debris and found a part of a head and foot that apparently were those of the missing woman and child.
“He’s simply devastated,” Malinao said of the villager, a fisherman, whose wife and child were buried in the landslide that happened Thursday afternoon amid torrential rains while he was away tending to fish cages in a lake.
“He’s in shock and couldn’t speak and we’re only asking him to point to where their bedroom was located so we can dig in that part,” Malinao said.
The storm was last tracked Friday blowing 255 miles west of the northwestern Philippine province of Ilocos Sur with sustained winds of up to 59 mph and gusts of up to 78 mph. It was moving northwestward at 19 mph toward Vietnam, which is forecast to be lashed by Trami starting on Sunday if it stays on course.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Ecuador has announced an increase in daily power cuts as the severe drought impacting the nation keeps lowering water levels for the key hydroelectric plants, the source of more than 70% of the country’s electricity.
Acting energy minister Inés Manzano said late Thursday that the authorities are ordering an electricity service suspension from eight to 14 hours a day in the country because the drought has worsened in recent days.
Like other South American countries, Ecuador has faced a prolonged dry season.
The new measures come days after President Daniel Noboa said he anticipated the power cuts in the country of 17 million people to gradually decrease.
Since mid-September, Ecuador has established an electricity rationing system of up to 10 hours a day in some cities, but the power cut hours announced Thursday are the most extreme so far.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Hurricane Kristy strengthened into a Category 5 storm on Thursday and was expected to remain away from land as it churns in the Pacific Ocean and weakens over the coming days, forecasters said.
The major hurricane was 970 miles southwest of the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula of Mexico. It had maximum sustained winds of 160 mph, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center.
Waves generated by Kristy were expected to affect parts of the peninsula’s west coast into the weekend, the center said, and those are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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One year after world leaders made a landmark promise to move away from fossil fuels, countries have essentially made no progress in cutting emissions and tackling global warming, according to a United Nations report issued Thursday.
Global greenhouse gas emissions soared to a record 57 gigatons last year and are not on track to decline much, if at all, this decade, the report found. Collectively, nations have been so slow to curtail their use of oil, gas and coal that it now looks unlikely that countries will be able to limit global warming to the levels they agreed to under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
“Another year passed without action means we’re worse off,” said Anne Olhoff, a climate policy expert based in Denmark and a co-author of the assessment, known as the Emissions Gap Report.
The report comes a month before diplomats from around the world are scheduled to meet in Baku, Azerbaijan, for annual U.N. climate talks, where countries will discuss how they might step up efforts to address global warming.
Lately, those efforts have faced huge obstacles.
Even though renewable energy sources like wind and solar are growing rapidly around the world, demand for electricity has been rising even faster, which means countries are still burning more fossil fuels each year. Geopolitical conflicts, from the U.S.-China rivalry to war in places like Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, have made international cooperation on climate change harder. And rich countries have failed to keep their financial promises to help poor countries shift away from oil, gas and coal.
At last year’s climate talks in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, representatives from nearly every nation approved a pact that called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” and accelerating climate action this decade. But the agreement was vague on how to do so and on which countries should do what, and so far there has been little follow-through.
The new U.N. report finds that at least 151 countries have formally pledged under the Paris climate agreement to curb their greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. If every country followed through on its stated plans, which is far from assured, then global emissions could be 3% to 11% lower at the end of the decade than they are today.
But that would still put the Earth on track to heat up an average of roughly 2.6 to 2.8 degrees Celsius (4.7 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit) over preindustrial levels by the century’s end, the report found. The planet has already warmed roughly 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit). That may not sound like much, but every fraction of a degree of warming brings greater risks from deadly heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinction, scientists have said.
Under the Paris Agreement, world leaders vowed to hold global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably closer to 1.5 degrees Celsius, to limit the risks from climate catastrophes.
Current policies don’t come close to meeting those goals, the report found. To stay below 2 degrees Celsius, global emissions would need to fall roughly 28% between now and 2030.
To stay at 1.5 degrees Celsius, global emissions would need to fall about 43%, requiring a blindingly fast transformation of the global energy system.
Over the past year, only the island nation of Madagascar has submitted a new, stronger pledge to curb emissions by 2030, despite exhortations by U.N. officials for all countries to bolster their plans.
And with each year that goes by without additional action, the cuts needed to hold warming to those low levels become more and more extreme.
“Theoretically, it’s still possible to stay below 1.5 degrees, but it’s not really feasible anymore,” said Christoph Bertram, an associate research professor at the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability.
Inger Andersen, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said it was still important for nations to accelerate their efforts to cut emissions and keep warming as low as possible.
“Even if the world overshoots 1.5 degrees Celsius, and the chances of this happening are increasing every day, we must keep striving” to bring emissions down to zero as soon as possible, Andersen said. “Every fraction of a degree avoided counts in terms of lives saved, economies protected, damages avoided, biodiversity conserved.”
In the coming year, countries are expected to submit new formal targets for cutting emissions by 2035. It remains to be seen how ambitious those goals will be and whether countries will take concrete steps to follow through.
One of the big topics at the climate talks in Baku will be money. For years, developing countries like India and Indonesia have said they would be willing to accelerate efforts to cut emissions if they received financial assistance from wealthier countries to do so.
According to the U.N. report, cutting global emissions to zero could require an extra $900 billion to $1.2 trillion per year in global investment.
That amount, the report said, is “substantial” but also manageable in the broader context of the global economy and financial markets worth close to $110 trillion.
(Brad Plumer, NEW YORK TIMES)
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State transportation officials announced millions of dollars in funding Thursday for maintenance and improvement projects on the beleaguered coastal rail corridor in San Diego and Orange counties.
The California State Transportation Agency allocations include $26.8 million to replace a 100-year-old, single-track railroad bridge across the San Luis Rey River in Oceanside. The new double-tracked bridge and 0.6 mile of additional second track will extend an existing 10.3-mile stretch of double-track in North County.
The San Diego Association of Governments and North County Transit District have been working for years to build a second set of tracks between the Santa Fe Depot in downtown San Diego and the Orange County border. A double- tracked line allows trains to pass each other, increasing efficiency and reliability.
“Two lanes are more important than one, we all know that from driving on the highways,” said Solana Beach Mayor and SANDAG board member Lesa Heebner at a news conference in San Clemente to announce the awards.SANDAG also will get a CalSTA grant for $11.6 million to help cover the costs of efforts underway to stabilize the eroding coastal bluff that carries the tracks in Del Mar. The work includes drainage improvements, seawalls and an additional 128 soldier piles in the fifth phase of stabilization projects started more than 20 years ago.
“We know we are all too vulnerable to coastal erosion and the growing impacts of climate change,” Heebner said. “The long-term benefits of these projects extend beyond transportation. They support our economy ... our environment and the well-being of our communities.”
The Orange County Transportation Authority will receive $125 million for projects to protect about seven miles of railroad at the edge of the beach in San Clemente. OCTA owns 40 miles of track between San Clemente and Fullerton.
Landslides on the San Clemente bluffs above the tracks have suspended passenger train service for months at a time in recent years. Advancing beach erosion also threatens the railway.
“This is a great day for Orange County,” said Darrell E. Johnson, CEO of the Orange County agency.
“This is a $125 million investment in the future of Orange County and will go a long way toward keeping our rail line moving safely and efficiently,” Johnson said.
San Diego is the southern terminus of the Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo Rail Corridor, which stretches 351 miles from San Diego to San Luis Obispo. The corridor is San Diego’s only rail connection to Los Angeles and the rest of the United States.
NCTD CEO Shawn Donaghy emphasized the importance of state and regional agencies working together to improve the rail system.
“In addition to the improvements that this investment will have on passenger rail, it also will have a decades-long impact on the improvement of commerce and economic development through freight movement and national security as a part of the Strategic Rail Corridor Network,” Donaghy said.
The grants show California’s understanding that alternative modes of transportation will continue to help reduce highway congestion and protect the environment, he said.
“We are building a template for the next 100 years and beyond,” Donaghy said.
The money was part of $1.3 billion in transportation grants statewide, including one for work on the LOSSAN corridor in Santa Barbara.
CalSTA Secretary Toks Omishakin from Sacramento joined local administrators and elected officials in San Clemente for the announcement.
Other participants included state Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas; Assemblymember Laurie Davies, R-Laguna Niguel; and Orange County Supervisor and OCTA board member Katrina Foley.
(Phil Diehl, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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HAVANA - A small town in far eastern Cuba was recovering Tuesday from flooding that killed at least six people after Oscar crossed the island’s eastern coast as a tropical storm with winds and heavy rain.
Cuba’s capital was partially illuminated after a large-scale blackout generated a handful of protests and a stern government warning that any unrest would be punished.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel said on state television that rescue and recovery work continued in the town of San Antonio del Sur, and officials hadn’t yet entered some flooded areas.
People in Havana collected subsidized food Tuesday and said the country faced an intensive recovery period.
“There are lines everywhere you go,” city resident Carlos López said. “You get to a place and there are obstacles and obstacles.”
Tropical Storm Oscar disintegrated as it headed toward the Bahamas after making landfall in Cuba as a Category 1 hurricane. The remnants were expected to drop up to 4 inches of rain across the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Modesto Hernández, who lived in central Havana, said Tuesday that “we don’t know anything about what is going on.” “These problems need to be solved now,” he said. “We are in bad shape.”
Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said in a news conference he hoped that more reliable electricity would be restored Tuesday but schools will remain closed through at least Thursday.
He said that Oscar would bring “an additional inconvenience” to Cuba’s recovery since it would affect key Cuban power plants, such as Felton in the city of Holguín, and Renté in Santiago de Cuba.
Many of Havana’s 2 million people resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves on the streets before their food went bad in refrigerators. People lined up to buy subsidized food and few gas stations were open.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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RALEIGH, NC - The North Carolina county that is home to Asheville overcounted deaths caused by Helene by as many as 30, according to a statement Tuesday from its sheriff’s office and data from the state, significantly reducing the death toll from the historic storm.
Buncombe County officials, who previously reported 72 deaths, are now deferring to a state tally of 42 deaths for the county.
The county’s number dates to an Oct. 3 news release in which county officials reported that “72 lives have been lost due to Hurricane Helene,” repeating a number cited by Sheriff Quentin Miller at an earlier media briefing. But state officials, relying on reviews by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Raleigh, have consistently reported a number lower than that for the county. The number for Buncombe County included in the state’s tally has stood at 42 since at least Oct. 10.
On Tuesday, the Buncombe County Sheriff’s office acknowledged in a statement that the number of deaths in the county was lower than the number it provided. The statement, attributed to Public Information Officer Christina Esmay, cited factors ranging from updated causes of death to communication challenges after the storm knocked out cell service and electricity in multiple mountain counties.
“In the early aftermath of Hurricane Helene all deaths were being classified as storm related and from Buncombe County. However, as the days progressed BCSO was able to identify who had passed away due to the hurricane, who was in fact from Buncombe County, and who passed away from other causes,” the statement said. “Compounded with the lack of consistent communication, due to widespread outages, the Buncombe County fatality number that was initially provided to Sheriff Miller has decreased.”
The sheriff’s office did not provide additional information on how they arrived at their tally, and spokesperson Matt Marshall said any other questions about how deaths have been investigated and counted should be sent to state officials.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HAVANA - Cuba’s capital remained largely paralyzed Monday and the rest of the island braced for the fourth night of a massive blackout that has generated a handful of small protests and a stern government warning that any unrest will be punished.
Hurricane Oscar made landfall Sunday before crossing Cuba’s eastern coast as a tropical storm Monday with winds and heavy rain, leaving at least six dead after a night that saw protests by several dozen people in urban neighborhoods like Santos Suárez and central Havana.
Some banged pots and pans in the streets, while others demonstrated from their balconies. Protesters blocked at least one street with garbage.
“The country has completely halted,” said Mayde Quiñones, 55. She cares for her mother-in-law, who is in her 80s. “This hurts everyone, but the elderly most of all.”
The Cuban government has a low tolerance for civil disobedience, and President Miguel Díaz-Canel warned on national television Sunday, “We’re not going to allow any vandalism, or let anyone disturb people’s tranquility.”
The prolonged nationwide blackout followed a massive outage Thursday night, part of energy problems that led to the largest protests in Cuba in almost 30 years, in July 2021. Those were followed by smaller local protests in October 2022 and March 2024.
It’s all part of a deep economic crisis that has prompted the exodus of more than half a million Cubans to the U.S., with thousands more heading to Europe.
The Cuban government and its allies blame the United States’ 62-year-old trade embargo on the island for its economic problems, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that the Cuban government’s “long-term mismanagement of its economic policy and resources has certainly increased the hardship of people in Cuba.”
Power remains relatively cheap but increasingly unavailable. The Cuban government has said it’s producing 700 megawatts when peak demand can hit 3 gigawatts. Authorities said by Monday afternoon that about 80% of Havana had intermittent power, but people were skeptical.
“We have the fridge full of food and we’re scared,” said Juan Estrada, whose Havana business hasn’t had consistent power since Friday morning.
Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said in a news conference he hoped that more reliable electricity will be restored by this morning but classes remained closed through at least Thursday.
He said Oscar, which made landfall on the eastern coast Sunday evening, will bring “an additional inconvenience” to Cuba’s recovery since it will touch a “region of strong (electricity) generation.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A southeastern New Mexico community began to dry out Monday after historic rainfall over the weekend produced severe flooding that left at least two people dead and hundreds stranded on rooftops.
All the standing water and mangled masses of twisted guardrails and splintered wood were scenes unfamiliar for the community. Surrounded by usually dusty plains and dairy farms, Roswell isn’t known for its rainfall, but rather as the spot where a spacecraft purportedly crashed in 1947.
Less than a foot of rain falls in Roswell in an average year, but forecasters with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque said Monday that the weekend deluge was spurred by an upper-level low pressure system that was parked over Arizona. Some areas received 9 inches of rain in a matter of hours.
“So the moisture just kept funneling and funneling and funneling up across eastern New Mexico,” meteorologist Jennifer Shoemake said. “They got multiple days of heavy rainfall and severe weather in that area because that storm system was just not moving.”
More than 300 people were rescued by the New Mexico National Guard, with 38 of them taken to hospitals for treatment of injuries. New Mexico State Police said two people died as a result of the flash flood, but information on the victims or the circumstances of their deaths wasn’t immediately released.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham declared an emergency Monday in response to the flooding, clearing the way for $1 million in state funding to bolster relief efforts. She met with city officials who were charting the path for cleanup and recovery.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HAVANA - Many Cubans waited in anguish late Sunday as electricity on much of the island had yet to be restored days after an island-wide blackout. Their concerns were raised as Hurricane Oscar first made landfall in the southeastern Bahamas and then slammed into Cuba’s coast.
Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said in a news conference he hopes the country’s electricity grid will be restored today or Tuesday morning.
But he recognized that Oscar, which hit the island’s eastern coast Sunday evening, will bring “an additional inconvenience” to Cuba’s recovery since it will touch a “region of strong (electricity) generation.” Key Cuban power plants, such as Felton in the city of Holguín, and Renté in Santiago de Cuba, are located in the area.
Some neighborhoods had electricity restored in Cuba’s capital, where 2 million people live, but most of Havana remained dark. The impact of the blackout goes beyond lighting, as services like water supply also depend on electricity to run pumps.
People resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves on the streets before the food went bad in refrigerators.
In tears, Ylenis de la Caridad Napoles, mother of a 7-year-old girl, says she is reaching a point of “desperation.”
The failure of the Antonio Guiteras plant on Friday, which caused the collapse of the island’s whole system, was just the latest in a series of problems with energy distribution in a country where electricity has been restricted and rotated to different regions at different times of the day.
People lined up for hours on Sunday morning to buy bread in the few bakeries that could reopen.
Some Cubans like Rosa Rodríguez have been without electricity for four days.
“We have millions of problems, and none of them are solved,” said Rodríguez. “We must come to get bread, because the local bakery is closed, and they bring it from somewhere else.”
About half of Cuba was plunged into darkness on Thursday evening, followed by the entire island on Friday morning after one of the plants failed.
Besides the Antonio Guiteras plant, whose failure on Friday affected the entire national system, Cuba has several others, and it wasn’t immediately clear whether they remained functional.
The blackout was considered to be Cuba’s worst in two years after Hurricane Ian made landfall as a Category 3 storm in 2022 and damaged power installations. It took days for the government to fix them. This year, some homes have spent up to eight hours a day without electricity.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Hurricane Oscar arrived in the Cuban province of Guantanamo, near the city of Baracoa, on Sunday evening. Its maximum sustained winds were 75 mph. The system is expected to move across eastern Cuba today.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Hundreds of people were rescued in eastern New Mexico late Saturday and Sunday, as torrential rains dumped more than a third of the city of Roswell’s annual rainfall total in just a few hours, causing at least two deaths, officials said.
Search-and-rescue efforts were still under way Sunday, as forecasters warned that storms were expected to continue in the area, carrying the threat of more floods, large hail and possibly tornadoes.
As of Sunday morning, nearly 300 people had been rescued by county and state agencies and 38 people had been taken to local hospitals, the New Mexico National Guard said. Miguel Aguilar, the state National Guard’s adjutant general, said in a statement Sunday that emergency responders had worked all night and rescue efforts were still under way.
A spokesperson for the New Mexico State Police, Amanda Richards, said in an email that there had been two deaths in the flooding. She did not provide information on the victims or the circumstances of their deaths.
The state police had closed all roads into and out of Roswell early on Sunday and roads into the city remained closed in the afternoon. Officials opened a shelter at the Eastern New Mexico Fairgrounds for people who had to leave their homes.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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A fast-moving fire fed by strong winds burned two homes Friday and damaged several others in a hillside neighborhood in Oakland, where roughly 500 people were ordered to evacuate, officials said.
Fire Chief Damon Covington said that at about 1:30 p.m., calls came in reporting a fire in front of a home in the Oakland hills. Crews arrived as the inferno quickly grew with winds ranging from calm breezes to 40 mph gusts during red flag conditions. “Wind was whipping,” Covington said.
The fire was near Interstate 580, which connects the Bay Area to Central California, causing traffic jams as people tried to leave the area and smoke wafted over the city of 440,000.
The blaze charred through eucalyptus trees, which spread the fire as flames jumped across sides of the roadway, Covington said. By about 4 p.m. crews were able to stop it from advancing, though scores of firefighters continued to battle. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
Authorities issued red flag warnings for fire danger through today across a large swath of the state.
Pacific Gas & Electric shut off power in 19 counties in the northern and central part of the state as a major “diablo wind ” — notorious in autumn for its hot, dry gusts — spiked the risk of wildfire.
About 16,000 customers were without electricity Friday after Pacific Gas and Electric shut off power.
During a diablo wind, the air is so dry that relative humidity levels plunge, drying out vegetation and making it ready to burn. The name — “diablo” is Spanish for “devil” — is informally applied to a hot wind that blows near the San Francisco region from the interior toward the coast as high pressure builds over the West.
The “diablo wind” is forecast to cause sustained winds reaching 35 mph in many areas, with possible gusts topping 65 mph along mountaintops, according to the National Weather Service. About 20,000 customers could lose power temporarily in the next couple of days, PG&E said in a statement Friday.
Red flag warnings were also issued in parts of Southern California.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Tens of thousands of students in the Southeast are dealing with school disruptions after Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc so severe — on homes, campuses and municipal power and water systems — that some districts have no idea when they will reopen.
While virtual learning helped during the COVID-19 school closures, that has not been an option for this crisis because internet and cellphone service has remained spotty since the storm struck in late September. In hard-hit western North Carolina, some districts warn students will miss up to a month of school, and others say they can’t yet determine a timeline for returning to classrooms.
“I feel like a month is a lot, but it’s not something that can’t be overcome,” said Marissa Coleman, who has sent her four children to stay with grandparents in Texas because their home in North Carolina’s Buncombe County has no running water. “But if we get further into Thanksgiving and Christmas, it’s like, how are they actually going to make this up?”
In mountainous Buncombe County, Helene swept away homes, cut power and destroyed crucial parts of the water system for Asheville, a city of about 94,000 people. The storm decimated remote towns and killed at least 246 people throughout the Appalachians, where massive cleanup efforts have been complicated by washed-out bridges and roads. It was the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since Katrina in 2005.
The Buncombe County School system, which serves over 22,000 students, told families Tuesday on the district’s Facebook page that no decision has been made “with regards to start date or length of day” because of a need to repair buildings, restore phone and security systems and redraw bus routes.
Even when schools reopen, educators worry the disruption could have profound effects on students’ learning and emotional well-being.
Children who experience natural disasters are more prone to acute illness and symptoms of depression and anxiety, research shows. The physical and mental health impacts put them at greater risk of learning loss: Absences can undermine achievement, as can the effects of trauma on brain function.
Just weeks after Helene made landfall, Hurricane Milton roared ashore last week farther south along the same Florida coast as a Category 3 storm. While about half the state’s districts were closed, all of them said they were planning to reopen by the end of this week.
Schools affected by Helene are trying to provide stability. The Buncombe district has suggested parents trade books with neighbors and friends for their kids. “Have them write, maybe about something they’re looking forward to when school starts again,” the district told parents on social media. “Turn everyday experiences into math problems.”
Cécile Wight, a mother of two in Asheville, said she has been grateful for concern shown by schools including surveys checking on families’ well-being and an elementary school bus driver who took his own car to visit each child on his route. “That has been huge, just having the emotional support from the school system and from the people we know at the school,” she said.
But uncertainty remains. Wight said her family is able to stay at their home because they have well water, but many other families have yet to return since evacuating. Most of Buncombe’s 45 schools still lacked running water as of Tuesday, meaning they’re unable to meet basic safety and hygiene standards.
Schools have begun exploring whether it would be possible to open without running water, relying on portable bathroom trailers. In a letter to families, Asheville Superintendent Maggie Furman said the district is considering drilling wells at each school so they don’t have to rely on city water.
Coleman said her kids are eager for some kind of normalcy.
“I understand the schools are going to have to take some time to find a way to open safely, and I support that 100%. But I definitely am not in the camp of, ‘We need to wait until we get water back, until everything’s normal again to open.’ I just think that’s going to be too long,” Coleman said.
The Tennessee Department of Education, meanwhile, is still trying to determine how many schools remain closed since Hurricane Helene and how many took too much damage to reopen.
Echoing the COVID-19 pandemic, several schools in Tennessee have postponed traditions like homecoming games, parades and dances. Many colleges are also granting extensions on application deadlines, officials say, to reduce high school seniors’ stress.
In storm-drenched areas elsewhere, some early education providers may never reopen.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Florida counties hard hit by Hurricane Milton are returning to a semblance of normalcy, with power restored to most areas Monday, gas stations reopening and students preparing to return to school.
Still, some hard-hit neighborhoods remained without power, with many severely damaged homes and businesses, their streets flooded and filled with debris. Those could take some time to recover.
As of Monday afternoon, Florida power companies had restored electricity to almost 90% of the 3.4 million homes and businesses that lost service after Milton made landfall late Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane south of Tampa, smacking the region with 120 mph winds and a storm surge of up to 10 feet and killing at least 11 people, less than two weeks after Helene inflicted major damage.
The region’s three major power companies expect that more than 95% of their customers who lost power will have it restored by tonight, having deployed thousands of workers to quickly repair lines, poles and other infrastructure.
“I know those guys got in and started working as soon as it was possible,” Gov. Ron DeSantis told a Monday news conference at SeaPort Manatee, just south of Tampa Bay. He said the recovery has been “very rapid and we appreciate what they’ve been able to do.”
Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy and TECO Energy also credited efforts over the past decade to put more power lines underground, install stronger utility poles and adopt technology that enables electricity to be rerouted around damaged equipment.
Most school districts in the hardest-hit areas plan to reopen campuses Wednesday, though Manatee County plans to reopen its schools today.
DeSantis has cautioned that debris removal from Helene and Milton could take up to a year, even as Florida shifts nearly 3,000 workers to the cleanup.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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TAMPA, FL - When ankle-deep floodwaters from Hurricane Helene bubbled up through the floors of their home, Kat Robinson-Malone and her husband sent a late-night text message to their neighbors two doors down: “Hey, we’re coming.”
The couple waded through the flooded street to the elevated front porch of Chris and Kara Sundar, whose home was built on higher ground, and handed over their 8-year-old daughter and a gas-powered generator.
The Sundars’ lime-green house in southern Tampa also became a refuge for Brooke and Adam Carstensen, whose house next door to Robinson-Malone also flooded.
The three families met years earlier when their children became playmates, and the adults’ friendships deepened during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. So when Helene and Hurricane Milton struck Florida within two weeks of each other, the neighbors closed ranks as one big extended family, cooking meals together, taking turns watching children and cleaning out their damaged homes.
And as Milton threatened a direct strike on Tampa last week, the Malones, the Sundars and the Carstensens decided to evacuate together. They drove more than 450 miles in a caravan to metro Atlanta — seven adults, six children, four dogs and teenage Max Carstensen’s three pet rats.
“Everyone has, like, the chain saw or a tarp,” Robinson-Malone said Sunday. “But really the most important thing for us was the community we built. And that made all the difference for the hurricane rescue and the recovery. And now, hopefully, the restoration.”
Recovery efforts continued Sunday in storm-battered communities in central Florida, where President Joe Biden surveyed the devastation. Biden said he was thankful the damage from Milton was not as severe as officials had anticipated. But he said it was still a “cataclysmic” event for people caught in the path of the hurricane, which has been blamed for at least 11 deaths.
Nearly 800,000 homes and businesses in Florida remained without electricity Sunday, according to Poweroutage.us, down from more than 3 million after Milton made landfall late Wednesday as a Category 3 storm.
Fuel shortages also appeared to be easing as more gas stations opened, and lines at pumps in the Tampa area looked notably shorter. Gov. Ron DeSantis announced nine sites where people can get 10 gallons each for free.
While recovery efforts were gaining steam, a full rebound will take far longer.
DeSantis cautioned that debris removal could take up to a year, even as Florida shifts nearly 3,000 workers to the cleanup. He said Biden has approved 100% federal reimbursement for those efforts for 90 days.
“The (removal of) debris has to be 24/7 over this 90-day period,” DeSantis said while speaking next to a pile of furniture, lumber and other debris in Treasure Island, an island city near St. Petersburg that has been battered by both recent hurricanes. “That’s the way you get the job done.”
National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Close said rivers will keep rising for the next several days and result in flooding, mostly around Tampa Bay and northward. Those areas got the most rain, which came on top of a wet summer that included several hurricanes.
Meanwhile, residents unable to move back into their damaged homes were making other arrangements.
Robinson-Malone and her husband, Brian, bought a camper trailer that’s parked in their driveway. They plan to live there while their gutted home is repaired and also improved to make it more resilient against hurricanes.
“These storms, they’re just going to keep happening,” she said. “And we want to be prepared for it.”
The Carstensens plan to demolish what’s left of their flooded, low-slung home, which was built in 1949, and replace it with a new house higher off the ground. For the time being they are staying with Brooke Carstensen’s mother.
Chris Sundar said he’s questioning his plan to remain in Tampa until his children have all graduated from high school a decade from now. His house remains the home base for the families’ kids, ages 8 to 13. On the wall there is a list of chores for them all, from folding laundry to emptying wastebaskets.
Brooke Carstensen, a teacher, has helped the children through an extended period without school.
The Sundars lost both their vehicles when Helene’s storm surge flooded their garage, so they drove Robinson-Malone’s car when they evacuated to Georgia. Arriving, exhausted after the 14-hour trek, Chris Sundar said to Robinson- Malone: “This is where community shines or it falls apart.”
“And that night we got together and we all hung out,” he said.
On Sunday back in Florida, they worked together to remove sticks and logs from a large oak limb that dangled over another neighbor’s driveway. Brian Malone cut it up with a chain saw.
Tackling recovery as a group has made it seem far less overwhelming, Brooke Carstensen said. The families share tips and ideas on a group text thread. The Sundars threw an impromptu 13th birthday party for her son at their house between the storms. And she found solace and laughter from Brian Malone’s advice about rebounding: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
It’s why she wants to remain in Tampa, despite her concerns that Helene and Milton won’t be the last storms.
“Why do we live here in a place that’s trying to destroy us?” Brooke Carstensen said. “Well, it’s all the people that we have here.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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More than 1.6 million people in Sao Paulo were without power on Saturday more than 16 hours after a brief but powerful storm swept through South America’s largest city.
Officials in Sao Paulo state said that record wind gusts Friday night of up to 67 mph knocked down transmission lines and uprooted trees, causing severe damage in some parts.
The storm also shut down several airports and interrupted water service in several areas, according to the Sao Paulo state government.
Authorities originally expected to restore power within a few hours.
But several neighborhoods in the metropolitan area, which is home to 21 million people, were still in the dark on Saturday and authorities were urging residents to limit their consumption of water.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Florida residents slogged through flooded streets, gathered up scattered debris and assessed damage to their homes on Friday after Hurricane Milton smashed through coastal communities and spawned a barrage of deadly tornadoes.
At least 10 people were dead, and rescuers were still saving people from swollen rivers, but many expressed relief that Milton wasn’t worse. The hurricane spared densely populated Tampa a direct hit, and the lethal storm surge that scientists feared never materialized.
Gov. Ron DeSantis warned people to not let down their guard, however, citing ongoing safety threats including downed power lines and standing water that could hide dangerous objects.
“We’re now in the period where you have fatalities that are preventable,” DeSantis said. “You have to make the proper decisions and know that there are hazards out there.”
About 2.2 million customers remained without power in the state, according to poweroutage.us. St. Petersburg’s 260,000 residents were told to boil water before drinking, cooking or brushing their teeth, until at least Monday.
Also Friday, the owner of a major phosphate mine disclosed that pollution spilled into Tampa Bay during the hurricane.
The Mosaic Company said in a statement that heavy rains from the storm overwhelmed a collection system at its Riverview site, pushing excess water out of a manhole and into discharges that lead to the bay. The company said the leak was fixed Thursday.
Mosaic said the spill likely exceeded a 17,500-gallon minimum reporting standard, though it did not provide a figure for what the total volume might have been. Calls and emails to Mosaic seeking additional information about Riverview and the company’s other Florida mines received no response, as did a voicemail left with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Florida’s vital tourism industry has started to return to normal, meanwhile, as Walt Disney World and other theme parks reopened. The state’s busiest airport, in Orlando, resumed full operations Friday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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ST. PETERSBURG, FL - Rescue teams plucked Florida residents from the flotsam of Hurricane Milton on Thursday after the storm smashed through coastal communities where it tore homes into pieces, filled streets with mud and spawned a barrage of deadly tornadoes. At least eight people were dead.
Arriving just two weeks after the misery wrought by Hurricane Helene, the system also knocked out power to more than 3 million customers, flooded barrier islands, tore the roof off a baseball stadium and toppled a construction crane.
Among the most dramatic rescues, Hillsborough County officers found a 14-year-old boy floating on a piece of fence and pulled him onto a boat. A Coast Guard helicopter crew rescued a man who was left clinging to an ice chest in the Gulf of Mexico after his fishing boat was stranded in waters roiled by Hurricane Milton. The agency estimated the man had survived winds of 75 to 90 mph and waves up to 25 feet high during his night on the water. “This man survived in a nightmare scenario for even the most experienced mariner,” Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dana Grady said.
Despite the destruction, many people expressed relief that Milton wasn’t worse. The hurricane spared Tampa a direct hit, and the lethal storm surge that scientists feared never materialized.
The storm tracked to the south in the final hours and made landfall late Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane in Siesta Key, about 70 miles south of Tampa. Damage was widespread, and water levels may continue to rise for days, but Gov. Ron DeSantis said it was not “the worst-case scenario.”
“You face two hurricanes in a couple of weeks — not easy to go through — but I’ve seen a lot of resilience throughout this state,” the governor told a briefing in Sarasota. He said he was “very confident that this area is going to bounce back very, very quickly.”
Five people were killed in tornadoes in the Spanish Lakes Country Club near Fort Pierce, on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, where homes were destroyed, authorities said. Police also found a woman dead under a fallen tree branch in Tampa.
In Volusia County, authorities said two people, a 79-year-old woman in Ormond Beach and a 54-year-old woman in Port Orange, were also killed when trees fell on homes.
Speaking at a White House briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said there were reports of as many as 10 fatalities from tornadoes, but he cautioned that the number was tentative.
At least 340 people and 49 pets had been rescued in ongoing efforts, DeSantis said Thursday afternoon.
South of Tampa, Natasha Shannon and her husband, Terry, felt lucky to be alive after the hurricane peeled the tin roof off their cinder block home in Palmetto. They spent the night in a shelter with their three children and two grandchildren after she pushed them to leave.
“I said, ‘Baby, we got to go. Because we’re not going to survive this,’” she said.
They returned to find the roof torn into sheets across the street, shredded insulation hanging from exposed ceiling beams and their belongings soaked.
“It ain’t much but it was ours,” she said. “What little bit we did have is gone.”
The worst storm surge appeared to be in Sarasota County, where it was 8 to 10 feet — lower than in the worst place during Helene. The storm also dumped up to 18 inches of rain in some areas.
Officials in the hard-hit Florida counties of Hillsborough, Pinellas, Sarasota and Lee urged people to stay home, warning of downed power lines, trees in roads, blocked bridges and flooding.
Among the dozens of tornadoes was a twister that hit the tiny barrier island of Matlacha, just off Fort Myers. The fishing-and-tourism village also endured a surge, with many of the colorful buildings sustaining serious damage. Tom Reynolds, 90, spent the morning sweeping out 4 feet of mud and water and collecting chunks of aluminum siding torn off by a twister that also picked up a car and threw it across the road.
Elsewhere on the island, a house was blown into a street, temporarily blocking it. Some structures caught fire. Reynolds said he planned to repair the home he built three decades ago.
“What else am I going to do?” he said.
In contrast, city workers on Anna Maria Island were grateful not to be wading through floodwaters as they picked up debris Thursday morning, two weeks after Helene battered buildings and blew in piles of sand up to 6 feet high. Those piles may have helped shield homes from further damage, said Jeremi Roberts of the State Emergency Response Team.
“I’m shocked it’s not more,” city worker Kati Sands said as she cleared the streets of siding and broken lights. “We lost so much with Helene, there wasn’t much left.”
Helene flooded streets and homes in western Florida and left at least 230 people dead across the South. In many places along the coast, municipalities raced to collect and dispose of debris before Milton’s winds and storm surge could toss it around and compound any damage.
Power was knocked out across much of the state. More than 3.4 million homes and businesses were without electricity, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports.
The fabric that serves as the roof of Tropicana Field — home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team in St. Petersburg — was ripped to shreds by fierce winds. Debris littered the field.
About 80,000 people spent the night in shelters, and thousands of others fled after authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders across 15 Florida counties with a total population of about 7.2 million people.
In Punta Gorda, a 10-foot surge from the Peace River swept into the historic district, damaging homes and depositing six boats along one riverside street. It was the third surge to hit the neighborhood in three months.
Josh Baldwin said he was leaning toward scrapping his 38-foot boat rather than pay $100,000 to fix it. He couldn’t get insurance because it was moored in Punta Gorda.
“They don’t like to pay out, and this place always gets ruined in hurricanes,” he said.
A half-block away, information technology workers Kent and Cathy Taylor and their son were using an SUV attached to a chain to pull waterlogged drywall out of the bottom floor of their three-story home, which they bought in July. The lower level is gutted, but the upper floors are still structurally sound.
“It will be beautiful again — it’s just a nick,” Cathy Taylor said.
By Thursday afternoon, Milton was headed into the Atlantic Ocean as a post-tropical cyclone with winds of 75 mph — just barely hurricane force.
Crossing the bridge from the mainland to Anna Maria Island early Thursday, Police Chief John Cosby breathed a sigh of relief. Nearly all residents had evacuated. There were no injuries or deaths, and the projected storm surge never happened. After fearing that his police department would be underwater, it remained dry.
“It’s nice to have a place to come back to,” he said.
(Julio Cortex, Kate Payne & Haven Daley, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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U.S. officials are racing to approve airlifts of IV fluids from overseas manufacturing plants to ease shortages caused by Hurricane Helene that have forced hospitals to begin postponing surgeries as a way to ration supplies for the most fragile patients.
The current shortage occurred when flooding coursed through western North Carolina and damaged a Baxter plant, which is now closed for cleaning. The plant makes about 60% of the United States’ supply of fluids used in IVs, for in-home dialysis and for people who rely on IV nutrition. They include premature babies in intensive care and patients who rely on tube feeding to survive.
The situation could become even more dire now with Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida. On Tuesday, workers at B. Braun, makers of a fourth of the nation’s IV fluids, loaded trucks at the company’s plant in Daytona Beach with the medical bags and drove them north through the night to what they hoped would be a safer location.
The Baxter plant, in Marion, N.C., and the B. Braun site in Daytona Beach manufacture about 85% of the nation’s supply of IV fluids. Experts on shortages have long pointed out the risk of such over-concentration of critical supplies, citing exposure to disasters like those now at hand. Even before the latest storm, supplies were tight and reflected a long-standing problem of how few companies are willing to produce crucial but low-cost and low-profit medical products.
A spokesperson for the B. Braun site in Florida said that the company was working with federal officials and that the plant’s staff would be off work Wednesday and planned to return Friday once the hurricane had moved on.
The supply crunch from flooding at the Baxter plant has led the company to limit hospital customers to 40% to 60% of their typical supplies this week. The American Hospital Association wrote to President Joe Biden on Monday, seeking assistance to alleviate concerns about “substantial shortages of these lifesaving and life-supporting products.”
The saline, dextrose and sterile water fluids that the Baxter plant makes have myriad uses in health care: They provide basic hydration before surgery or childbirth and can be mixed with nutrients and medications, including chemotherapies. They are widely used in life-supporting infusions for babies born prematurely. Some are crucial to treating sepsis, a life-threatening blood infection.
“When you’re coming in with sepsis, and specifically the septic shock, those 1-liter bags are the most immediate form of treatments,” said Dr. Chris DeRienzo, chief physician executive of the American Hospital Association.
Patients who rely on Baxter’s fluid to do at-home dialysis treatments and those who depend on IV nutrition for survival have been particularly distressed by the shortage, doctors and patients said in interviews.
Federal officials and some Baxter staff members have worked nights and weekends to try to lessen the effects of the disruption in supply. The Food and Drug Administration was said to be on the verge of approving the temporary importation of IV, dialysis and liquid nutrition products from several foreign sites.
Baxter said in a statement Wednesday that its foreign plants were ramping up production and anticipating FDA authorization to export their goods. The company statement said it planned to resume production in phases by the end of this year. Baxter said it was not releasing an estimate on when the plant would be fully operational.
(Christina Jewett, NEW YORK TIMES)
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TAMPA, FL - Hurricane Milton crashed into Florida as a Category 3 storm Wednesday, pounding the coast with ferocious winds of over 100 mph, heavy rain and producing a series of tornadoes around the state. Tampa avoided a direct hit.
The cyclone had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph as it made landfall at 8:30 p.m. near Siesta Key, the National Hurricane Center said. Siesta Key is a strip of white-sand beaches home to 5,500 people about 70 miles south of Tampa.
More than 1.5 million homes and businesses were without power Wednesday night in Florida, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports. The highest number of outages were in Hardee County, as well as neighboring Sarasota and Manatee counties.
The Tampa Bay area has not taken a direct hit from a major hurricane in more than a century, but the storm was still bringing a potentially deadly storm surge to much of Florida’s Gulf Coast, including densely populated areas such as Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota and Fort Myers.
The National Weather Service said flash flooding was occurring in the Tampa Bay area, including St. Petersburg, where more than 16 inches of rain had fallen.
Heavy rains were also likely to cause flooding inland along rivers and lakes as Milton traverses the Florida Peninsula as a hurricane, eventually to emerge in the Atlantic Ocean today.
About 125 homes were destroyed before the hurricane even made landfall, many of them mobile homes in communities for senior citizens, said Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
Multiple tornadoes spawned by the hurricane tore across Florida, the twisters acting as a dangerous harbingers of Milton’s approach. Videos posted to social media sites showed large funnel clouds over neighborhoods in Palm Beach County and elsewhere in the state.
About 90 minutes after making landfall, Milton was centered about 20 miles northeast of Sarasota and had weakened slightly with maximum sustained winds of 110 mph, becoming a Category 2 storm, the hurricane center reported.
Milton slammed into a Florida region still reeling from Hurricane Helene, which caused heavy damage to beach communities with storm surge and killed a dozen people in seaside Pinellas County alone.
Earlier, officials issued dire warnings to flee or face grim odds of survival. “This is it, folks,” said Cathie Perkins, emergency management director in Pinellas County, which sits on the peninsula that forms Tampa Bay. “Those of you who were punched during Hurricane Helene, this is going to be a knockout. You need to get out, and you need to get out now.”
By late afternoon, some officials said the time had passed for such efforts, suggesting that people who stayed behind hunker down instead. By the evening, some counties announced they had suspended emergency services.
Milton was expected to remain a hurricane as it plowed across the state, including the heavily populated Orlando area, through today.
The storm threatened communities still reeling two weeks after Hurricane Helene flooded streets and homes in western Florida and left at least 230 people dead across the South. In many places along the coast, municipalities raced to collect and dispose of debris before Milton’s winds and storm surge could toss it around and compound any damage. Surge was projected to reach as high as 9 feet in Tampa Bay.
Jackie Curnick said she wrestled with her decision to stay and hunker down at home in Sarasota, just north of where the storm made landfall. But with a 2- year-old son and a baby girl due Oct. 29, Curnick and her husband thought it was for the best.
Curnick said they started packing Monday to evacuate, but they couldn’t find any available hotel rooms, and the few they came by were too expensive.
She said there were too many unanswered questions if they got in the car and left: where to sleep, if they’d be able to fill up their gas tank, and if they could even find a safe route out of the state.
“The thing is it’s so difficult to evacuate in a peninsula,” she said. “In most other states, you can go in any direction to get out. In Florida there are only so many roads that take you north or south.”
The famous Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which spans the mouth of Tampa Bay, closed around midday. Other major bridges also closed.
At a news conference in Tallahassee, Gov. Ron DeSantis described deployment of a wide range of resources, including 9,000 National Guard members from Florida and other states; over 50,000 utility workers from as far as California; and highway patrol cars with sirens to escort gasoline tankers to replenish supplies so people could fill up their tanks before evacuating.
“Unfortunately, there will be fatalities. I don’t think there’s any way around that,” DeSantis said.
Heavy rain and tornadoes lashed parts of southern Florida starting Wednesday morning, with conditions deteriorating throughout the day. Six to 12 inches of rain, with up to 18 inches in some places, was expected well inland, bringing the risk of catastrophic flooding.
One twister touched down Wednesday morning in the lightly populated Everglades and crossed Interstate 75. Another apparent tornado touched down in Fort Myers, snapping tree limbs and tearing a gas station’s canopy to shreds.
Authorities have issued mandatory evacuation orders across 15 Florida counties with a total population of about 7.2 million people. Officials warned that anyone staying behind must fend for themselves, because first responders were not expected to risk their lives attempting rescues at the height of the storm.
St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch told residents to expect long power outages and the possible shutdown of the sewer system.
In Charlotte Harbor, about 100 miles south of Tampa, clouds swirled and winds gusted as Josh Parks packed his Kia sedan with clothes and other belongings. Two weeks ago, Helene’s surge brought about 5 feet of water to the neighborhood, and its streets remain filled with waterlogged furniture, torn- out drywall and other debris.
Parks, an auto technician, planned to flee to his daughter’s home inland and said his roommate already left.
“I told her to pack like you aren’t coming back,” he said.
By early afternoon, airlines had canceled about 1,900 flights. SeaWorld was closed all day Wednesday, and Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando shut down in the afternoon.
More than 60% of gas stations in Tampa and St. Petersburg were out of gas Wednesday afternoon, according to GasBuddy. DeSantis said the state’s overall supply was fine, and highway patrol officers were escorting tanker trucks to replenish the supply.
(Terry Spencer & Kate Payne, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Human-caused climate change boosted a devastating Hurricane Helene’s rainfall by about 10% and intensified its winds by about 11%, scientists said in a new flash study released as Hurricane Milton was bearing down on the Florida coast less than two weeks later.
The warming climate increased Helene’s wind speeds by about 13 miles per hour, and made the high sea temperatures that fueled the storm 200 to 500 times more likely, World Weather Attribution calculated Wednesday from Europe. Ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above average, WWA said.
“Hurricane Helene and the storms that were happening in the region anyway have all been amplified by the fact that the air is warmer and can hold more moisture, which meant that the rainfall totals — which, even without climate change, would have been incredibly high given the circumstances — were even higher,” Ben Clarke, a study co-author and a climate researcher at Imperial College London, said in an interview.
Milton will likely be similarly juiced, the authors said.
The scientists warned that continued burning of fossil fuels will lead to more hurricanes like Helene, with “unimaginable” floods well inland, not just on coasts. Many of those who died in Helene fell victim to massive inland flooding, rather than high winds.
Helene made landfall in Florida with record storm surge 15 feet high and catastrophic sustained winds reaching 140 miles per hour, pummeling Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Virginia. It decimated remote towns throughout the Appalachians, left millions without power, cellular service and supplies and killed over 230 people. Search crews in the days following continued to look for bodies. Helene was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005.
Helene dumped more than 40 trillion gallons of rain — an unprecedented amount of water — onto the region, meteorologists estimated. That rainfall would have been much less intense if humans hadn’t warmed the climate, according to WWA, an international scientist collaborative that runs rapid climate attribution studies.
“When you start talking about the volumes involved, when you add even just a few percent on top of that, it makes it even much more destructive,” Clarke said.
Hurricanes as intense as Helene were once expected every 130 years on average, but today are about 2.5 times more likely in the region, the scientists calculated.
The WWA launched in 2015 to assess the extent which extreme weather events could be attributed to climate change. The organization’s rapid studies aren’t peer-reviewed but use peer-reviewed methods.
The team of scientists tested the influence of climate change on Helene by analyzing weather data and
climate models including the Imperial College Storm Model, the Climate Shift Index for oceans and the standard WWA approach, which compares an actual event with what might have been expected in a world that hasn’t warmed about 1.3 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times.
A separate analysis of Helene last week by Department of Energy Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientists determined that climate change caused 50% more rainfall in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas, and that observed rainfall was “made up to 20 times more likely in these areas because of global warming.” That study was also not peer-reviewed but used a method published in a study about Hurricane Harvey.
Kim Cobb, director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, wasn’t involved in either study. She said there are uncertainties in exactly how much climate change is supercharging storms like Helene, but “we know that it’s increasing the power and devastation of these storms.”
She said Helene and Milton should serve “as a wake up call” for emergency preparedness, resilience planning and the increased use of fossil fuels. “Going forward, additional warming that we know will occur over the next 10 or 20 years will even worsen the statistics of hurricanes,” she said.
(Alexa St. John, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Postpandemic vacancies and surging debt payments have eaten away at commercial real estate for more than two years. Even as those threats start to fade, owners of strip malls, apartment buildings and office towers face a problem that could last much longer: soaring insurance costs.
The problem is familiar to homeowners across the country. The rise in natural disasters has insurance companies pushing rates substantially higher, or pulling out of markets. The rate increases have been fastest in coastal cities and towns vulnerable to damage from big storms or coastal floods, but insurers and banks are coming to terms with the notion that no area is truly safe from increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather events.
Hurricane Helene, which hit Florida’s Gulf Coast before leaving a trail of deadly floods and landslides through Georgia and the western parts of the Carolinas, most likely caused at least $35 billion in economic losses along the way, according to an estimate by reinsurance broker Gallagher Re.
Building owners are also trapped between their insurers and lenders, who are afraid of being on the hook for catastrophic damage and won’t allow the smallest changes to policies — even those that might give a struggling borrower some breathing room.
It isn’t possible to know comprehensively how many properties have gone into foreclosure solely because of insurance costs, but people in the industry say they know of deals that have fallen apart over the matter. Developers and investors say that in an industry grappling with higher interest rates and materials and labor expenses, insurance costs can tip the scales.
“This current interest-rate environment has exposed the people that know what they’re doing and those that don’t,” said Mario Kilifarski, head of asset management at Fundamental Advisors, a investor with $3.5 billion in assets.
Insurance brokerage Marsh McLennan estimated that premiums on commercial properties rose an average of 11% across the country last year but as much as 50% in storm-vulnerable places like the Gulf Coast and California. This year, premiums may have doubled in some of those places, the brokerage said.
For apartment buildings, insurance costs now account for 8% of operating expenses, twice what they did about five years ago, said Paul Fiorilla, director of research at Yardi Matrix, a data provider. Compared with expenses like taxes and maintenance, insurance is still a small sliver of the pie, Fiorilla said, but it is adding to the strain caused by stagnating rents and higher borrowing costs. Landlords’ operating expenses grew faster last year than their income, he said.
Lenders are worried. “We’re constantly hearing from our banks,” said Kevin Kaseff, a co-founder and the managing partner of Titan Real Estate Investment Group, a California- based owner of living facilities for seniors and cold-storage buildings for fruits and vegetables.
The lenders have been asking for details about how he is getting insurance, Kaseff said, particularly on buildings in California, where some insurers have stopped doing new business.
“They’re nervous,” he said, adding that it was frustrating that although the lenders seemed eager to hear about his latest plans, they expressed no willingness to help.
Like homeowners, commercial property owners are required by banks to carry insurance policies if they have a mortgage. But the requirements can be stricter: A commercial real estate borrower often needs explicit permission from its lender to make tweaks to insurance coverage, and if the loan has been securitized and sold to Wall Street investors, getting that permission can be impossible.
Lenders have largely refused to soften insurance requirements because they worry about the potential impact on the broader property market. If a big disaster destroys a building, what happens if no one can afford to rebuild it?
“Insurance pricing has caused deals to come to a halt and has forced deals into foreclosure in some cases,” said Danielle Lombardo, chair of the real estate, hospitality and leisure division at Willis Towers Watson, an insurance brokerage. Part of the problem, she said, is that costs can jump from the time a buyer begins putting together financing to the moment the deal is about to close. To Kaseff, the solution seems simple. Banks should let commercial real estate owners buy insurance with higher deductibles to reduce the cost of coverage. Or they should approve of policies covering only the value of the bank loan instead of the cost of replacing the building if it is destroyed.
But banks may be unwilling to budge, because if landlords without full insurance coverage cannot rebuild after a big disaster, it could destabilize the real estate market, hurting the value of banks’ collateral, said Adam DeSanctis, a spokesperson for the Mortgage Bankers Association, a trade group. Regulators, too, are watching how the banks respond so they don’t increase risks to the financial system.
Analysts say the insurance problem is more of a headache than a potential catastrophe, and data on loan delinquencies shows stress but no cause for major alarm.
By being extremely cautious about their lending and shedding as many older commercial real estate loans from their books as they can, banks may have staved off a crisis.
Since fall 2022, delinquencies have risen to 1.5% of all outstanding commercial real estate loans, said Nathan Stovall, director of financial institutions research at S&P Global Market Intelligence. The largest banks are reporting the biggest jump in delinquencies — a 5% rate. That’s still far from the 10% during the 2008 global financial crisis.
(Emily Flitter, NEW YORK TIMES)
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A rare deluge of rainfall left blue lagoons of water amid the palm trees and sand dunes of the Sahara desert, nourishing some of its driest regions with more water than they had seen in decades.
Southeastern Morocco’s desert is among the most arid places in the world and rarely experiences rain in late summer.
The Moroccan government said two days of rainfall in September exceeded yearly averages in several areas that see less than 10 inches annually, including Tata, one of the areas hit hardest. In Tagounite, a village about 280 miles south of the capital, Rabat, more than 3.9 inches was recorded in a 24-hour period.
The storms left striking images of water gushing through the Saharan sands amid castles and desert flora. NASA satellites showed water rushing in to fill Lake Iriqui, a famous lake bed that had been dry for 50 years.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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TAMPA, FL — Fearful Florida residents streamed out of the Tampa Bay region Tuesday ahead of what could be a once-in-a-century direct hit from Hurricane Milton, as crews worked furiously to prevent furniture, appliances and other waterlogged wreckage from the last big storm from becoming deadly projectiles in this one.
Tuesday marked the last chance for millions of people in the Tampa metro area to prepare for lethal storm surges, ferocious winds and possible tornadoes in a place that has narrowly avoided a head-on blow from a major storm for generations.
“Today’s the last day to get ready,” said Craig Fugate, a former FEMA director who previously ran the state’s emergency operation division. “This is bringing everything.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state deployed over 300 dump trucks that had removed 1,300 loads of debris left behind by Hurricane Helene by Tuesday afternoon. In Clearwater Beach, Nick Szabo spent a second long day hauling away 3-foot piles of soggy mattresses, couches and drywall after being hired by a local resident who was eager to help clear the roads and unwilling to wait for overwhelmed city contractors.
“All this crap is going to be missiles,” he said. “It’s like a spear coming at you.”
After weakening slightly, Milton regained strength Tuesday afternoon and became a Category 5 storm again, with winds of 165 mph. It could make landfall today in the Tampa Bay area, which has a population of more than 3.3 million people. The 11 Florida counties under mandatory evacuation orders are home to about 5.9 million people, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Fluctuations in the storm’s intensity are likely while Milton moves across the Gulf of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center said, but it is expected to be a dangerous storm when it reaches Florida.
Milton’s expected trajectory also wobbled slightly Tuesday, which means it could make landfall today in the less populated areas a bit south of Tampa Bay, according to the center. Still, the whole region is expected to get slammed by the storm.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Florida’s storm-battered Gulf Coast raced against a Category 5 hurricane Monday as workers sprinted to pick up debris left over from Helene two weeks ago and highways were clogged with people fleeing ahead of the storm.
The center of Hurricane Milton could come ashore Wednesday in the Tampa Bay region, which has not endured a direct hit by a major hurricane in more than a century.
Scientists expect the system to weaken slightly before landfall, though it could retain hurricane strength as it churns across central Florida toward the Atlantic Ocean. That would largely spare other states ravaged by Helene, which killed at least 230 people on its path from Florida to the Carolinas.
“This is the real deal here with Milton,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told a news conference. “If you want to take on Mother Nature, she wins 100% of the time.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday that it was imperative for debris from Helene to be cleared ahead of Milton’s arrival so the pieces cannot become projectiles. More than 300 vehicles gathered debris Sunday.
As evacuation orders were issued, forecasters warned of a possible 8- to 12-foot storm surge in Tampa Bay. That’s the highest ever predicted for the region and nearly double the levels reached two weeks ago during Helene, said National Hurricane Center spokesperson Maria Torres.
The storm could also bring widespread flooding. Five to 10 inches of rain was forecast for mainland Florida and the Keys, with as much as 15 inches expected in some places.
The Tampa metro area has a population of more than 3.3 million people.
Much of Florida’s west coast was under hurricane and storm surge warnings. A hurricane warning was also issued for parts of Mexico’s Yucatan state, which expected to get sideswiped.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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FORT LAUDERDALE, FL - Hurricane Milton quickly intensified Sunday and is on track to become a major hurricane with the Tampa Bay area in its sights, putting Florida on edge and triggering evacuation orders along a coast still reeling from Helene’s devastation.
While forecast models vary, the most likely path suggests Milton could make landfall Wednesday in the Tampa Bay area and remain a hurricane as it moves across central Florida into the Atlantic Ocean, forecasters said. That would largely spare other southeastern states ravaged by Hurricane Helene, which caused severe damage from Florida into the Appalachian Mountains and a death toll of at least 230.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday that it’s clear that Florida is going to be hit hard by Milton — “I don’t think there’s any scenario where we don’t have major impacts at this point.”
Hurricane Milton was centered about 815 miles west-southwest of Tampa on Sunday afternoon, with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.
“You have time to prepare — all day today, all day Monday, probably all day Tuesday to be sure your hurricane preparedness plan is in place,” the governor said. “If you’re on that west coast of Florida, barrier islands, just assume you’ll be asked to leave.”
In Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg, officials issued voluntary evacuation orders for people along the barrier island beaches and mobile home parks. Mandatory evacuations are likely to follow.
With Milton achieving hurricane status, this is the first time the Atlantic has had three simultaneous hurricanes after September, said Colorado State University hurricane scientist Phil Klotzbach. There have been four simultaneous hurricanes in August and September.
The St. Petersburg-Tampa Bay area is still cleaning up extensive damage from Helene. Twelve people died as storm surge swamped the coast, with the worst damage along the narrow, 20-mile string of barrier islands that stretch from St. Petersburg to Clearwater.
DeSantis expanded his state of emergency declaration Sunday to 51 of the state’s 67 counties — home to more than 90% of the state’s nearly 23 million residents. The state’s Panhandle, which continues to recover from other recent storms, is expected to be mostly spared.
Floridians should prepare for more power outages and disruption, making sure they have a week’s worth of food and water and are ready to hit the road, DeSantis said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, meanwhile, coordinated with the governor and briefed President Joe Biden Sunday on how it has staged lifesaving resources.
“We are preparing ... for the largest evacuation that we have seen, most likely since 2017, Hurricane Irma,” said Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
The state has prepared emergency fuel sources and electric vehicle charging stations along evacuation routes, and “identified every possible location that can possibly house someone along those routes,” Guthrie said. People who live in homes built after Florida strengthened its codes in 2004, who don’t depend on constant electricity and who aren’t in evacuation zones, should probably avoid the roads, he said.
All classes and school activities in St. Petersburg’s Pinellas County preemptively closed Monday through Wednesday as Milton approached, and officials in Tampa opened all city garages free of charge to residents hoping to protect their cars from floodwaters, including electric vehicles.
As many as 4,000 National Guard troops are helping state crews to remove the tons of debris left behind by Helene, DeSantis said, and he directed that Florida crews dispatched to North Carolina in Helene’s aftermath return to the state to prepare for Milton. The Florida Department of Emergency Management is establishing a base camp at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, where the Tampa Bay Rays play baseball, to support the operations to remove debris ahead of Milton’s arrival, the governor said.
“All available state assets ... are being marshaled to help remove debris,” DeSantis said. “We’re going 24-7.”
Air search and rescue teams on Saturday found 39 more storm survivors who were still stranded in western North Carolina, state Gov. Roy Cooper’s office said. So far, almost 6,600 people have been rescued, evacuated or assisted by search-and-rescue teams since the storm hit, the office said.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell defended her agency’s response to the hurricane’s destruction after Republicans’ false claims, amplified by former President Donald Trump, created a frenzy of misinformation across devastated communities.
“This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people and it’s really a shame we’re putting politics ahead of helping people,” Criswell told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, adding that it’s created fear and mistrust among residents against the thousands of FEMA employees and volunteers on the ground across the southeast.
Criswell said the agency is already preparing for Milton.
“We’re working with the state there to understand what their requirements are going to be, so we can have those in place before it makes landfall,” she said.
Federal disaster assistance for survivors has surpassed $137 million since Helene struck more than a week ago, one of the largest mobilizations of personnel and resources in recent history, FEMA said Sunday.
Some 1,500 active-duty troops, more than 6,100 National Guardsmen and nearly 7,000 federal workers have been deployed, shipping more than 14.9 million meals, 13.9 million liters of water, 157 generators and 505,000 tarps, along with approving more than $30 million in housing and other types of assistance for over 27,000 households, according to FEMA, the White House and the Department of Defense.
More than 800 people unable to return home are staying in lodging provided through FEMA, and 22 shelters are still housing nearly 1,000 people as mobile feeding operations continue to help survivors. The response to Helene won’t let up during Milton and its aftermath, because FEMA has the capacity to address multiple disasters simultaneously, the agency said.
“My Administration is sparing no resource to support families as they begin their road to rebuilding,” Biden said. “We will continue working hand-in-hand with local and state leaders – regardless of political party and no matter how long it takes.”
The hurricane center said Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, the Florida Peninsula, the Florida Keys and the northwestern Bahamas should monitor the system’s progress. Heavy rainfall was expected Sunday ahead of the storm itself and will likely then combine with Milton’s rainfall to flood waterways and streets in Florida, where forecasters said up to a foot (30 centimeters) of rain could fall in places through Wednesday night.
Meanwhile in the open Atlantic, Hurricane Kirk diminished to a Category 2 hurricane on Sunday, with top winds of 105 mph (165 kph), sending large swells and “life-threatening surf and rip current conditions” to Bermuda and northward along the U.S. and Canadian coasts, the center said. Hurricane Leslie was also moving over the Atlantic Ocean, well away from land, with top winds of 85 mph (140 kph).
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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MIAMI, FL - A storm system that was brewing in the Gulf of Mexico strengthened into Tropical Storm Milton on Saturday, and forecasters warned that it could intensify into a hurricane and slam into the west coast of Florida next week.
Tropical Storm Milton was about 220 miles north-northeast of Veracruz, Mexico, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said in an afternoon advisory. It had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph and was heading toward the north-northeast at 3 mph.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 35 counties ahead of the storm’s potential landfall.
Because many of those counties are still recovering from Hurricane Helene, DeSantis asked the Florida Division of Emergency Management and the Florida Department of Transportation to coordinate all available resources and personnel to supplement local communities as they expedite debris removal.
Though no coastal watches or warnings were in effect, the hurricane center said the Florida Peninsula, the Florida Keys, Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula and the northwestern Bahamas should monitor the system’s progress.
The storm is forecast to strengthen and bring the risk of life-threatening impacts to parts of Florida, with hurricane and storm-surge watches likely in effect beginning today.
Parts of the state are expected to have heavy rainfall beginning today, threatening flash, urban and area flooding, along with some river flooding.
“There is an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and wind impacts for portions of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula beginning late Tuesday or Wednesday. Residents in these areas should ensure they have their hurricane plan in place, follow any advice given by local officials, and check back for updates to the forecast,” the center said.
Meanwhile, Hurricane Kirk remained a Category 4 major hurricane, and waves from the system were affecting the Leeward Islands, Bermuda and the Greater Antilles, forecasters said. The storm’s swells were expected to spread to the East Coast of the United States, the Atlantic Coast of Canada and the Bahamas on Saturday night and today.
Forecasters warned the waves could cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.
Kirk was expected to weaken starting Saturday, the center said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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FRANKFORT, KY - The death toll from Hurricane Helene inched up to 227 on Saturday as the grim task of recovering bodies continued more than a week after the monster storm ravaged the Southeast and killed people in six states.
Helene came ashore Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane and carved a wide swath of destruction as it moved northward from Florida, washing away homes, destroying roads and knocking out electricity and cellphone service for millions.
It was still unclear how many people were unaccounted for or missing, and the death toll could rise even higher. Helene is the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005. About half the victims were in North Carolina, while dozens more were killed in Georgia and South Carolina.
The city of Asheville, in the western mountains of North Carolina, was particularly battered.
North Carolinians so far have received more than $27 million in individual assistance approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said MaryAnn Tierney, a regional administrator for the agency. More than 83,000 people have registered for individual assistance, according to the office of Gov. Roy Cooper.
In Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, FEMA-approved assistance has surpassed $12 million for survivors, Tierney said Saturday during a news briefing.
“This is critical assistance that will help people with their immediate needs, as well as displacement assistance that helps them if they can’t stay in their home,” she said.
She encouraged residents affected by the storm to register for disaster assistance.
“It is the first step in the recovery process,” she said. “We can provide immediate relief in terms of serious needs assistance to replace food, water, medicines, other life safety, critical items, as well as displacement assistance if you cannot stay in your home.”
Helene’s raging floodwaters shocked mountain towns hundreds of miles inland and far from where the storm made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast, including in the Tennessee mountains that Dolly Parton calls home.
The country music star has announced a $1 million donation to the Mountain Ways Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing immediate assistance to Hurricane Helene flood victims.
In addition, her East Tennessee businesses as well as the Dollywood
Foundation are combining efforts, pledging to match her donation to Mountain Ways with a $1 million contribution.
“I can’t stand to see anyone hurting, so I wanted to do what I could to help after these terrible floods,” she said. “I hope we can all be a little bit of light in the world for our friends, our neighbors — even strangers — during this dark time they are experiencing.”
Walmart U.S. President and CEO John Furner said the company, including Sam’s Club and the Walmart Foundation, would increase its commitment and donate a total of $10 million to hurricane relief efforts.
(Bruce Schreiner, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Flooding in northern Thailand forced many residents of the city of Chiang Mai and its outskirts to seek safety on higher ground on Friday, with members of the animal world under similar threat.
Evacuations were underway at the Elephant Nature Park, which houses around 3,000 rescued animals, including 125 elephants, 800 dogs, 2,500 cats, 200 rabbits and 200 cows.
Floodwaters caused by heavy rainfall swept through the park on Thursday.
Heavy seasonal monsoon rains and the effects of Typhoon Yagi combined to cause serious flooding in many parts of Thailand, with the northern region particularly badly hit.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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MANAUS, Brazil - One of the Amazon River’s main tributaries has dropped to its lowest level ever recorded, Brazil’s geological service said Friday, reflecting a severe drought that has devastated the Amazon rainforest and other parts of the country.
The level of the Negro River at the port of Manaus was at 41.5 feet Friday, as compared with a normal level of nearly 69 feet. It is the lowest since measurements started 122 years ago. The previous record low level was recorded last year, but toward the end of October.
The Negro River’s water level might drop even more in coming weeks based on
forecasts for low rainfall in upstream regions, according to the geological service’s predictions. Andre Martinelli, the agency’s hydrology manager in Manaus, was quoted as saying the river was expected to continue receding until the end of the month.
Water levels in Brazil’s Amazon always rise and fall with its rainy and dry seasons, but the dry portion of this year has been much worse than usual. All of the major rivers in the Amazon basin are at critical levels, including the Madeira River, the Amazon River’s longest tributary.
The Negro River drains about 10% of the Amazon basin and is the world’s sixth-largest by water volume. Manaus, the biggest city in the rainforest, is where the Negro joins the Amazon River.
For locals, the drought has made basic daily activities impossible. Gracita Barbosa, 28, works as a cashier on a floating shop on the Negro River. She’s out of work because boats that once stopped there can no longer navigate the increasingly shallow watercourse. Barbosa can no longer bathe in the river and now has to travel longer distances to collect drinking water.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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ASHEVILLE, NC - The weary and worn residents of Julianne Johnson’s neighborhood in Asheville have been getting by without electricity since Hurricane Helene tore through the Southeast last week and upended their lives. They’ve been cooking on propane stoves and using dry erase boards to keep up with local happenings while wondering when the lights would come back on.
Johnson, who has a 5-year-old son and works for a land conservation group, received a text from Duke Energy promising her power would be restored by Friday night. But as of midday, utility poles and wires were still draped at odd angles across the streets, pulled down by mangled trees.
“I have no idea what’s next,” said Johnson, whose family does have some power thanks to a generator. “Just the breadth of this over the whole region, it’s kind of amazing.”
She and her neighbors have been taking care of each other since Helene came ashore Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane and carved a path of destruction as it moved northward from Florida, killing at least 220 people in six states, including at least 72 in Buncombe County, which includes Asheville. Block captains set out whiteboards with information about who can provide first aid and where to get tools repaired.
Nearly 700,000 homes and businesses — mostly in the Carolinas and Georgia — were still without electricity Friday, according to poweroutage.us. That’s an improvement over the more than 2 million customers without power five days ago, and Duke Energy, the dominant provider in North Carolina, said it hoped to have the lights back on by Sunday night for many of its affected customers. But for roughly 100,000 customers in places with catastrophic damage, it could be next week or longer, according to company spokesperson Bill Norton.
“We’re talking about places where the homes no longer exist,” Norton said, adding that some roads where utility poles once stood have been washed away.
The company said it would miss its Friday goal of restoring power to almost all
of its customers in South Carolina, and it was now shooting for Sunday. Dominion Energy also said it would take longer than initially expected to restore power to the hardest hit counties in the state.
In North Carolina, exhausted rescue crews and volunteers continued to navigate past washed out roads, downed power lines and mudslides to reach the isolated and the missing. In Buncombe County, officials said Friday, about 75 missing persons cases remained.
“We know these are hard times, but please know we’re coming,” Buncombe Sheriff Quentin Miller said. “We’re coming to get you.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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An excessive heat warning will be in effect through 8 p.m. Thursday for areas of San Diego County east of Interstate 15 as unseasonably warm weather spreads across most of California, the National Weather Service said.
The daytime high temperatures in areas like Ramona and Alpine will be in the 98-to-100-degree range today and possibly Thursday. Escondido and El Cajon will be in the mid- to upper 90s.
San Diego also will be unseasonably warm with daytime highs in the low 80s. The heat wave will produce unusually warm overnight temperatures tonight.
There will be an elevated risk of wildfires in the county’s backcountry, where the relative humidity will fall to the 15-to-20-percent range.
The 2023-24 water year ended Monday with San Diego International Airport recording 12.43 inches of rain, which was 2.64 inches above average.
The water year — also known as the rainy season — extends from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 of each year.
Forecasters say the new rainy season could turn out to be drier than normal because a La Niña climate pattern is expected to settle in.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Rescuers in Nepal searched Tuesday for two dozen people still missing and tried to recover the bodies of those killed in weekend flooding and landslides that left more than 200 dead.
The disaster came just ahead of the country’s biggest festival Dasain, which begins on Thursday, and roads were busier than usual as people returned home to celebrate with loved ones. The damage to roads is likely to hamper travel plans.
The deaths climbed to 224 and the injured to 158 while rescue efforts were underway to look for 24 others, the government’s chief secretary, Eak Narayan Aryal, said Tuesday.
Police and soldiers have been assisting with rescue efforts, while heavy equipment was used to clear the landslides from the roads. Schools and colleges were told to shutter until Tuesday until cleanup efforts were concluded.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The total acreage burned in California this year surpassed 1 million as spiking temperatures Tuesday added to the challenges facing firefighters struggling to contain a stubborn blaze in the mountains northeast of Los Angeles that flared up over the weekend.
Evacuation orders were expanded again Monday for remote communities northeast of Los Angeles as the Line fire, which has been burning for nearly a month, spread over nearly 68 square miles [44,000 acres] of the San Bernardino Mountains and containment dropped from 83% to 76%.
“The dry vegetation, steep slopes and wind aligned ... to create conditions for the rapid fire spread,” according to a statement Monday from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
The risk of wildfires increased across California as an autumn heat wave scorched much of the state.
The Line fire’s surge pushed the total acreage burned across the state this year to 1,001,993 as of Tuesday morning, according to Cal Fire. The milestone surpasses the total scorched on this date last year — 293,362 acres — but is roughly on par with the five-year average for the period.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Rescuers fanned out across the mountains of southern Appalachia on Tuesday, scouring the region for missing people and rushing supplies to communities still in dire need of food, water and power after Hurricane Helene.
“The challenges are immense,” Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina said at a news conference, adding that 92 search-and-rescue teams were working across the state.
More than 160 people across six states died as a result of the storm, and the toll was expected to rise. Almost a third of those killed were in the county surrounding Asheville, NC, where an unknown number of people were still unaccounted for Tuesday.
The military has joined the relief and rescue efforts across the Southeast. Maj. Gen. Todd Hunt, the head of the North Carolina National Guard, said 800 soldiers were on duty as of Tuesday morning, pushing into more cutoff parts of the state.
In South Carolina, nearly 1,000 National Guard soldiers were on the ground, along with 18 chain-saw teams, Gov. Henry McMaster said at a news conference. “Things are getting better,” he said, “but we’re not out of the woods yet.” Persistent power outages caused by toppled trees were still a “choke point,” he added.
Rescue efforts were complicated by the many roads that had, until recently, served as lifelines for small mountain towns. Hundreds were flooded, destroyed or blocked by debris. In some parts of the Carolinas, power remained scarce after flooding from the storm submerged electrical substations, and cellphone service was spotty or nonexistent in some places.
President Joe Biden plans to visit North Carolina and South Carolina today.
Helene made landfall in northwestern Florida late Thursday as a Category 4 storm, with winds of 140 mph. It caused record-breaking storm surges in the Tampa Bay region, flash flooding in Atlanta and power outages as far north as Cincinnati.
Across the South, strong winds toppled trees. Tornadoes destroyed homes. Flash floods overwhelmed entire neighborhoods, and landslides destroyed public infrastructure, including for drinking water.
Water systems in the rapidly growing city of Asheville were badly damaged, and officials said that restoring the full system could take weeks. Emergency crews were trucking in drinkable water for the city’s 94,000 residents.
“This crisis will likely be a sustained crisis because of water system issues,” Cooper said Tuesday.
More than 1.5 million electricity customers from Florida to West Virginia were still without power Tuesday afternoon, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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Widespread devastation left behind by Hurricane Helene came to light Monday across the South, revealing a wasteland of splintered houses, crushed cargo containers and mud-covered highways in one of the worst storms in U.S. history. The death toll topped 130.
A crisis was unfolding in western North Carolina, where residents stranded by washed-out roads and a lack of power and cellular service lined up for fresh water and a chance to message loved ones days after the storm that they were alive.
At least 133 deaths in six Southeastern states have been attributed to the storm
that inflicted damage from Florida’s Gulf Coast to the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia.
The toll steadily rose as emergency workers reached areas isolated by collapsed roads, failing infrastructure and widespread flooding. During a briefing Monday, White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall suggested as many as 600 people hadn’t been accounted for as of Monday afternoon, saying some might be dead.
President Joe Biden said he will travel to North Carolina on Wednesday to meet with officials and take an aerial tour of Asheville. He said earlier that the federal government would be with affected residents in the nation’s southeast “as long as it takes.”
Government officials and aid groups worked to deliver supplies by air, truck and even mule to the hard-hit tourism hub of Asheville and its surrounding mountain towns. At least 40 people died in the county that includes Asheville.
The North Carolina death toll included one horrific story after another of people who were trapped by floodwaters in their homes and vehicles or were killed by falling trees. A courthouse security officer died after being submerged inside his truck. A couple and a 6-year-old boy waiting to be rescued on a rooftop drowned when part of their home collapsed.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Authorities struggled to get water and other supplies to isolated, flood-stricken areas across the U.S. Southeast in the wake of Hurricane Helene as the death toll from the storm rose to nearly 100.
A North Carolina county that includes the mountain city of Asheville reported 30 people killed due to the storm, and several other fatalities reported in North Carolina on Sunday pushed the overall death toll to at least 91 people across several states.
Supplies were being airlifted to the region around the isolated city. Buncombe County Manager Avril Pinder pledged that she would have food and water into Asheville — which is known for its arts, culture and natural attractions — by today.
“We hear you. We need food and we need water,” Pinder said on a Sunday call with reporters. “My staff has been making every request possible to the state for support and we’ve been working with every single organization that has reached out. What I promise you is that we are very close.”
Officials warned that rebuilding from the widespread loss of homes and property would be lengthy and difficult. The storm upended life throughout the Southeast. Deaths also were reported in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper predicted the toll would rise as rescuers and other emergency workers reached areas isolated by collapsed roads, failing infrastructure and widespread flooding.
He implored residents in western North Carolina to avoid travel, both for their own safety and to keep roads clear for emergency vehicles. More than 50 search teams spread throughout the region in search of stranded people.
One rescue effort involved saving 41 people north of Asheville. Another mission focused on saving a single infant. The teams found people through both 911 calls and social media messages, North Carolina National Guard Adjutant General Todd Hunt said.
President Joe Biden described the impact of the storm as “stunning” and said he would visit the area this week as long as it does not disrupt rescues or recovery work.
Hurricane Helene roared ashore late Thursday in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane with 140 mph winds. A weakened Helene quickly moved through Georgia, then soaked the Carolinas and Tennessee with torrential rains that flooded creeks and rivers and strained dams.
There have been hundreds of water rescues, including in rural Unicoi County in East Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were plucked by helicopter from a hospital rooftop Friday.
More than 2 million homeowners and other utility customers were still without power Sunday night. South Carolina had the most outages, and Gov. Henry McMaster asked for patience as crews dealt with widespread snapped power poles.
“We want people to remain calm. Help is on the way, it is just going to take time,” McMaster told reporters outside the airport in Aiken County.
The storm unleashed the worst flooding in a century in North Carolina. One community, Spruce Pine, was doused with over 2 feet of rain from Tuesday through Saturday.
Jessica Drye Turner in Texas had begged for someone to rescue her family members stranded on their rooftop in Asheville amid rising floodwaters. “They are watching 18-wheelers and cars floating by,” Turner wrote in an urgent Facebook post on Friday.
But in a follow-up message Saturday, Turner said help had not arrived in time to save her parents, both in their 70s, and her 6-year-old nephew. The roof collapsed and the three drowned.
The state was sending water supplies and other items toward Buncombe County and Asheville, but mudslides blocking Interstate 40 and other highways prevented supplies from making it. The county’s own water supplies were on the other side of the Swannanoa River, away from where most of the 270,000 people in Buncombe County live, officials said.
Law enforcement was making plans to send officers to places that still had water, food or gas because of reports of arguments and threats of violence, the county sheriff said.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell toured south Georgia on Sunday and planned to be in North Carolina today.
“It’s still very much an active search and rescue mission” in western North Carolina, Criswell said. “And we know that there’s many communities that are cut off just because of the geography” of the mountains, where damage to roads and bridges have cut off certain areas.
Biden on Saturday pledged federal government help for Helene’s “overwhelming” devastation. He also approved a disaster declaration for North Carolina, making federal funding available for affected individuals.
In Florida’s Big Bend, some lost nearly everything they own. With sanctuaries still darkened as of Sunday morning, some churches canceled regular services while others like Faith Baptist Church in Perry opted to worship outside.
Standing water and tree debris still covers the grounds of Faith Baptist Church. The church called on parishioners to come “pray for our community” in a message posted to the congregation’s Facebook page. “We have power. We don’t have electricity,” Immaculate Conception Catholic Church parishioner Marie Ruttinger said. “Our God has power. That’s for sure.”
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Saturday that it looked “like a bomb went off” after viewing splintered homes and debris-covered highways from the air.
In eastern Georgia near the border with South Carolina, officials notified Augusta residents Sunday morning that water service would be shut off for 24 to 48 hours in the city and surrounding Richmond County. A news release said trash and debris from the storm “blocked our ability to pump water.” Officials were distributing bottled water.
With at least 25 killed in South Carolina, Helene was the deadliest tropical cyclone for the state since Hurricane Hugo made landfall north of Charleston in 1989, killing 35 people.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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KATHMANDU, Nepal - Rescuers in Nepal recovered dozens of bodies from buses and other vehicles that were buried in landslides near the capital Kathmandu, as the death toll from flooding rose to at least 148 with dozens missing, officials said Sunday.
The weather improved on Sunday following three days of monsoon rains, and rescue and cleanup efforts were under way. Kathmandu remained cut off Sunday as three highways out of the city were blocked by landslides.
Rescuers retrieved 14 bodies overnight from two buses that were headed to Kathmandu when a landslide buried them. An additional 23 bodies were dug out from vehicles Sunday on the same spot, about 10 miles from Kathmandu, and workers searched for others who may have been buried.
A statement by the Nepal police said an additional 101 people were injured in the flooding and landslides while 50 are missing. The death toll was expected to rise as reports come in from villages across the mountainous country.
Residents in the southern part of Kathmandu, which was inundated on Saturday, were cleaning up houses as water levels began to recede. At least 34 people were killed in Kathmandu, which was the hardest hit by flooding.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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PERRY, FL - Hurricane Helene left an enormous path of destruction across Florida and the southeastern United States on Friday, killing at least 44 people, snapping towering oaks like twigs and tearing apart homes as rescue crews launched desperate missions to save people from floodwaters.
Among those killed were three firefighters, a woman and her 1-month-old twins, and an 89-year-old woman whose house was struck by a falling tree. According to an Associated Press tally, the deaths occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
The Category 4 hurricane knocked out power to some hospitals in southern Georgia, and Gov. Brian Kemp said authorities had to use chain saws to clear debris and open up roads. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 140 mph when it made landfall late Thursday in a sparsely populated region in Florida’s rural Big Bend area, home to fishing villages and vacation hideaways where the state’s panhandle and peninsula meet.
Moody’s Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage.
The wreckage extended hundreds of miles northward to northeast Tennessee, where a “dangerous rescue situation” by helicopter unfolded after 54 people were moved to the roof of the Unicoi County Hospital as water rapidly flooded the facility. Everyone was rescued and no one was left at the hospital as of late Friday afternoon, Ballad Health said.
In North Carolina, a lake featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing” overtopped a dam and surrounding neighborhoods were evacuated, although there were no immediate concerns it would fail. People also were evacuated from Newport, TN, a city of about 7,000 people, amid concerns about a dam near there,
although officials later said the structure had not failed.
Tornadoes hit some areas, including one in Nash County, NC, that critically injured four people.
Atlanta, GA, received a record 11.12 inches of rain in 48 hours, the most the city has seen in a two-day period since record keeping began in 1878, Georgia’s Office of the State Climatologist said on the social platform X. The previous mark of 9.59 inches was set in 1886. Some neighborhoods were so badly flooded that only car roofs could be seen poking above the water.
Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful cyclones sometimes in a matter of hours.
When Laurie Lilliott pulled onto her street in Dekle Beach, FL, after Helene plowed through, she couldn’t see the roofline of her home beyond the palm trees. It had collapsed, torn apart by the pounding storm surge, one corner still precariously propped up by a piling.
“It took me a long time to breathe,” Lilliott said.
As she surveyed the damage, her name and phone number were still inked on her arm in permanent marker, an admonition by Taylor County officials to help identify recovered bodies in the storm’s aftermath. The community has taken direct hits from three hurricanes since August 2023.
All five who died in one Florida county were in neighborhoods where residents were told to evacuate, said Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff in Pinellas County in the St. Petersburg area. Some who stayed ended up having to hide in their attics to escape the rising water. He said the death toll could rise as crews go door-to-door in flooded areas.
More deaths were reported in Georgia and the Carolinas, including two South Carolina firefighters and a Georgia firefighter who died when trees struck their trucks.
Video on social media showed sheets of rain and siding coming off buildings in Perry, FL, near where the storm hit land. A news station showed a home that was overturned, and many communities established curfews.
Also in Perry, the hurricane peeled off the new roof of a church that was replaced after Hurricane Idalia last year.
When the water hit knee-level in Kera O’Neil’s home in Hudson, Fla., she knew
it was time to escape.
“There’s a moment where you are thinking, ‘If this water rises above the level of the stove, we are not going to have not much room to breathe,’” she said, recalling how she and her sister waded through chest-deep water with one cat in a plastic carrier and another in a cardboard box.
President Joe Biden said he was praying for survivors, and the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency headed to the area. The agency deployed more than 1,500 workers, and they helped with 400 rescues by late morning.
In Tampa, some areas could be reached only by boat.
Officials urged people who were trapped to call for rescuers and not tread floodwaters, warning they can be dangerous due to live wires, sewage, sharp objects and other debris.
More than 3 million homes and businesses were without power in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas as of late Friday, according to poweroutage.us. The site also showed outages as far north as Ohio and Indiana due to Helene’s rapid northward movement throughout the day.
In Georgia, an electrical utility group warned of “catastrophic” damage to utility infrastructure, with more than 100 high-voltage transmission lines damaged. And officials in South Carolina, where more than 40 percent of customers were without power, said crews had to cut their way through debris just to determine what was still standing in some places.
The hurricane came ashore near the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 20 miles northwest of where Idalia hit last year at nearly the same ferocity. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the damage from Helene appears to be greater than the combined effects of Idalia and Hurricane Debby in August.
“It’s tough, and we understand that. We also understand that this is a resilient state,” DeSantis said at a news conference in storm-damaged St. Pete Beach.
Soon after it crossed over land, Helene weakened to a tropical storm and later a post-tropical cyclone. Forecasters said it continued to produce catastrophic flooding, and some areas received more than a foot of rain.
A mudslide in the Appalachian Mountains washed out part of an interstate highway at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line.
Another slide hit homes in North Carolina and occupants had to wait more
than four hours to be rescued, said Ryan Cole, the emergency services assistant director in Buncombe County. His 911 center received more than 3,300 calls in eight hours Friday.
“This is something that we’re going to be dealing with for many days and weeks to come,” Cole said.
Forecasters warned of flooding in North Carolina that could be worse than anything seen in the past century. Evacuations were under way and around 300 roads were closed statewide. The Connecticut Army National Guard sent a helicopter to help.
School districts and universities canceled classes. Florida airports that closed due to the storm reopened Friday. Inspectors were examining bridges and causeways along the Gulf Coast, the state’s transportation secretary said.
Helene also swamped parts of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, flooding streets and toppling trees as it brushed past the resort city of Cancun this week. It also knocked out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses in western Cuba.
Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.
(Stephen Smith, Kate Payne & Heather Hollingsworth, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Hurricane Helene made landfall Thursday night in northwestern Florida as a Category 4 storm as forecasters warned that the enormous system could create a “nightmare” storm surge and bring dangerous winds and rain across much of the southeastern U.S.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Helene roared ashore around 11:10 p.m. local time near the mouth of the Aucilla River of Florida’s Gulf Coast. It had maximum sustained winds estimated at 140 mph.
Helene prompted hurricane and flash flood warnings extending far beyond the coast up into northern Georgia and western North Carolina. More than a million homes and businesses were without power in Florida and more than 50,000 in Georgia, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us. The governors of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas and Virginia all declared emergencies in their states.
One person was killed in Florida when a sign fell on their car and two people were reported killed in a possible tornado in south Georgia as the storm approached.
“When Floridians wake up tomorrow morning, we’re going to be waking up to a state where very likely there’s been additional loss of life and certainly there’s going to be loss of property,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference Thursday night.
The National Weather Service in Tallahassee had issued an “extreme wind warning” for the Big Bend as the eyewall approached: “Treat this warning like a tornado warning,” it said in a post on X. “Take shelter in the most interior room and hunker down!”
Helene arrived barely a year after Hurricane Idalia slammed into Florida’s Big Bend and caused widespread damage. Idalia became a Category 4 storm in the Gulf of Mexico but made landfall as a Category 3 near Keaton Beach, with maximum sustained winds near 125 mph.
Helene’s wrath was being felt widely, with sustained tropical storm-force winds and hurricane-force gusts along Florida’s west coast. Water lapped over a road in Siesta Key near Sarasota and covered some intersections in St. Pete Beach. Lumber and other debris from a fire in Cedar Key a week ago crashed ashore in the rising water.
Beyond Florida, up to 10 inches of rain had fallen in the North Carolina mountains, with up to 14 inches more possible before the deluge ends, setting the stage for flooding that forecasters warned could be worse than anything seen in the past century.
Heavy rains began falling and winds were picking up earlier Thursday in Valdosta, Ga., near the Florida state line. The weather service said more than a dozen Georgia counties could see hurricane-force winds exceeding 110 mph.
In south Georgia, two people were killed when a possible tornado struck a mobile home on Thursday night, Wheeler County Sheriff Randy Rigdon told WMAZ-TV. The damage was reported as heavy thunderstorms raked much of the state.
Forecaster Dylan Lusk said the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for Wheeler County at 8:47 p.m. on Thursday. He said it’s one of 12 tornado warnings the office near Atlanta issued for parts of Georgia between 1 and 11 p.m.
The storm made landfall in the sparsely populated Big Bend area, home to fishing villages and vacation hideaways where Florida’s Panhandle and peninsula meet.
In a Facebook post, the sheriff’s office in mostly rural Taylor County warned those who chose not to evacuate, “Please write your name, birthday, and important information on your arm or leg in a PERMANENT MARKER so that you can be identified and family notified.”
Still, Philip Tooke, a commercial fisherman who took over the business his father founded near the region’s Apalachee Bay, planned to ride out this storm like he did during Hurricane Michael and the others — on his boat. “If I lose that, I don’t have anything,” Tooke said. Michael, a Category 5 storm, all but destroyed one town, fractured thousands of homes and businesses and caused some $25 billion in damage when it struck the Florida Panhandle in 2018.
Many, though, were heeding the mandatory evacuation orders that stretched from the Panhandle south along the Gulf Coast in low-lying areas around Tallahassee, Gainesville, Cedar Key, Lake City, Tampa and Sarasota.
Among them was Sharonda Davis, one of several gathered at a Tallahassee shelter worried their mobile homes wouldn’t withstand the winds. She said the hurricane’s size is “scarier than anything because it’s the aftermath that we’re going to have to face.”
Federal authorities were staging search-and-rescue teams as the weather service forecast storm surges of up to 20 feet and warned they could be particularly “catastrophic and unsurvivable” in Apalachee Bay.
“Please, please, please take any evacuation orders seriously!” the office said, describing the surge scenario as “a nightmare.”
School districts and multiple universities canceled classes. Airports in Tampa, Tallahassee and Clearwater were closed Thursday, while cancellations were widespread elsewhere in Florida and beyond.
While Helene will likely weaken as it moves inland, damaging winds and heavy rain were expected to extend to the southern Appalachian Mountains, where landslides were possible, forecasters said. The hurricane center warned that much of the region could experience prolonged power outages and flooding.
“This is one of the biggest storms we’ve ever had,” said Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.
For Atlanta, Helene could be the worst strike on a major Southern inland city in 35 years, said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd.
(Kate Payne & Heather Hollingsworth, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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TALAHASSEE, FL - An enormous Hurricane Helene swamped parts of Mexico on Wednesday as it churned on a path forecasters said would take it to Florida as a potentially catastrophic storm with a surge that could swallow entire homes, a chilling warning that sent residents scrambling for higher ground, closed schools, and led to states of emergency throughout the Southeast.
Helene’s center was about 430 miles southwest of Tampa, FL, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, and the hurricane was expected to intensify and accelerate as it crosses the Gulf of Mexico toward the Big Bend area of Florida’s northwestern coast. Landfall was expected sometime this evening, and the hurricane center said by then it could be a major Category 4 storm with winds above 129 mph.
Tropical storm conditions were expected in southern Florida Wednesday night, spreading northward and encompassing the rest of Florida as well as Georgia and South Carolina through tonight. The storm was moving north at 12 mph with top sustained winds of 85 mph Wednesday evening.
Helene could create a life-threatening storm surge as high as 20 feet in parts of the Big Bend region, forecasters said. Its tropical storm-force winds extended as far as 345 miles from its center.
The fast-moving storm’s wind and rain also could penetrate far inland: The hurricane center posted hurricane warnings well into Georgia and tropical storm warnings as far north as North Carolina; it warned that much of the Southeast could experience prolonged power outages, toppled trees and dangerous flooding.
“Just hope and pray that everybody’s safe,” said Connie Dillard of Tallahassee as she shopped at a grocery store with thinning shelves of water and bread before hitting the highway out of town. “That’s all you can do.”
One insurance firm, Gallagher Re, is expecting billions of dollars in damage in the U.S. Around 18,000 linemen from out of state staged in Florida, ready to help restore power. Airports in St. Petersburg, Tallahassee and Tampa were planning to close today, and 62 hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities evacuated their residents Wednesday.
Georgia activated 250 National Guard soldiers for rapid deployment. State game wardens, foresters and Department of Correction teams will help provide swift-water rescues and other emergency responses.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Tropical Storm Helene formed Tuesday in the Caribbean Sea and could strengthen into a major hurricane while moving north toward the U.S., forecasters said. Heavy rains and big waves already lashed the Cayman Islands, and some Florida residents began to evacuate and fill sandbags ahead of anticipated flooding.
Helene was expected to strengthen into a hurricane today, and it could become a major hurricane before it arrives on Florida’s Gulf Coast as soon as late Thursday. The storm was 145 miles south of the western tip of Cuba, had sustained winds of 60 mph and was moving northwest.
As the storm approached the Gulf Coast, hurricane warnings were issued for the northwestern Florida coastline and part of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, and hurricane watches were in effect for parts of western Cuba and Florida, including Tampa Bay, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Parts of Cuba and Florida’s southwestern coastline, including the Florida Keys, were under tropical storm warnings. Nearly the entirety of Florida’s west coast was under a storm surge warning.
In the U.S., federal authorities are positioning generators, food and water, along with search-and-rescue and power restoration teams, as President Joe Biden declared an emergency in Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis also declared a state of emergency for most of the state’s counties, 10 of which were urging or ordering evacuations.
The storm is expected to move over deep, warm waters, fueling its intensification. People in regions under watches and warnings should be prepared to lose power and should have enough food and water for at least three days, forecasters warned.
The tropical storm prompted NASA and SpaceX to bump Thursday’s planned astronaut launch to at least Saturday. And Florida A&M University postponed its upcoming college football game against Alabama A&M.
The storm is anticipated to be unusually large and fast-moving, meaning storm surge, wind and rain will likely extend far from the storm’s center, the hurricane center said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Small tsunami waves splashed ashore on remote Japanese islands Tuesday morning after an earthquake that may have been triggered by volcanic activity.
The offshore quake was not felt, and the tsunami advisory was lifted about three hours later. No damage or injuries were reported.
The Japan Meteorological Agency had advised that waves up to 1 meter above tide levels could occur on the coasts of the Izu and Ogasawara island chains after the magnitude 5.8 quake occurred off the Izu Islands.
JMA said a tsunami of about 20 inches was detected in the Yaene district on
Hachijo Island about 30 minutes after the quake. Smaller waves were detected on three other islands — Kozushima, Miyakejima and Izu Oshima.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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MARQUELIA, Mexico - Former Hurricane John dissipated over Mexico on Tuesday after barreling into the country’s southern Pacific coast overnight, leaving two dead and a trail of destruction in its path.
Now a tropical depression, John was 70 miles northwest of Acapulco and moving northwest at 3 mph as it dawdled along the coastal mountains and continued to weaken.
John grew into a Category 3 hurricane in a matter of hours Monday and made landfall about 80 miles east of the resort of Acapulco, near the town of Punta Maldonado, with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph before declining to a tropical storm after moving inland. It was downgraded on Tuesday to remnants with maximum sustained wind speeds of 35 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
The storm blew tin roofs off houses, triggered mudslides and toppled scores of trees, officials said Tuesday.
Evelyn Salgado, the governor of the coastal state of Guerrero, said two people died when the storm sent a mudslide crashing into their house on the remote mountain of Tlacoachistlahuaca.
After warning that the potentially catastrophic flash flooding and mudslides in some Mexican states [sic], the U.S. National Hurricane Center said the main concern on Tuesday morning was flash flooding in parts of southern and southwestern Mexico in the coming days.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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ABUJA, Nigeria - Houses swept away to the very last brick. Inmates frantically fleeing the city’s main prison as its walls got washed away by water rising from an overflowing dam. Corpses of crocodiles and snakes floating among human bodies on what used to be main streets.
As torrential rains across Central and West Africa have unleashed the most catastrophic floods in decades, residents of Maiduguri, the capital of the fragile Nigerian state of Borno — which has been at the center of an Islamic extremist insurgency — said they have seen it all.
The floods, which have killed more than 1,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands across the region this year, have worsened existing humanitarian crises in the countries that have been impacted the most: Chad, Nigeria, Mali and Niger. More than 4 million people have been affected by flooding so far this year in West Africa, a threefold increase from last year, according to the U.N.
With rescue operations still under way, it is impossible to give an accurate count of lives lost in the water. So far, at least 230 were reported dead in Nigeria, 265 in Niger, 487 in Chad and 55 in Mali, which has seen the most catastrophic flooding since the 1960s.
While Africa is responsible for a small fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is among the regions most vulnerable to extreme weather events, the World Meteorological Organization said this month. In sub-Saharan Africa, the cost of adapting to extreme weather events is estimated between $30 billion and $50 billion annually over the next decade, the report said. It warned that up to 118 million Africans could be affected by extreme weather by 2030.
Maiduguri has been under significant strain. Over the past decade, Borno has been hit by a constant string of attacks from Boko Haram militants, who want to install an Islamic state in Nigeria and have killed more than 35,000 people.
Saleh Bukar, a 28-year-old from Maiduguri, said he was awakened last week around midnight by his neighbors. “Water is flooding everywhere!” he recalled their frantic screams in a phone interview. “They were shouting: ‘Everybody come out, everybody come out!’ ”
Older people and people with disabilities did not know what was going on, he said, and some were left behind. Those who did not wake up quickly drowned.
Local authorities are overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster: over 600,000 people in Borno state have been displaced, according to the U.N..
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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WARSAW, Poland - European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday pledged billions of dollars in aid for Central European countries that suffered enormous damage to infrastructure and housing during the massive flooding that has so far claimed 24 lives in the region.
Von der Leyen paid a quick visit to a flood-damaged area in southeastern Poland and met with heads of the governments of the affected countries — Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
She said funds will be made available quickly for infrastructure repair from the EU’s solidarity fund, as well as $11 billion from what is called the cohesion fund — for the most urgent repairs. In a special approach, no co-financing will be required from these countries for the money to be released.
“Here we say it’s 100 percent European money, no co-financing,” von der Leyen told a news briefing. “These are extraordinary times, and extraordinary times need extraordinary measures. “
Meanwhile, a massive flood wave threatened new areas and heavy rains also caused flooding and evacuation of some 1,000 people in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna. In Central Europe, the receding waters revealed the scale of the destruction caused by exceptionally heavy rains that began a week ago.
Czech Interior Minister Vit Rakušan said one more person was reported killed on Thursday in the country’s hard-hit northeast, bringing the death toll there to five. There were also seven deaths each in Poland and Romania and five in Austria — with the overall death toll now at 24.
Authorities deployed troops to help. In the northeastern Czech Republic, soldiers joined firefighters and other emergency crews to help with the recovery efforts.
Army helicopters distributed humanitarian aid while soldiers were building temporary bridges in place of those that were swept away.
Some 400 people remained evacuated from the homes in the regional capital of Ostrava. In the southwest, the level of the Luznice River reached an extreme high but the evacuation of 1,000 people in the town of Veseli nad Luznici was not necessary for the moment, officials said.
Cleanup efforts were under way in Austria, where flooding washed away roads and led to landslides and bridge damage. Firefighters and soldiers pumped water and mud out of houses and disposed of damaged furniture, broadcaster ORF quoted fire department spokesperson Klaus Stebal as saying.
The governor of Lower Austria province, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, said reconstruction was expected to take years, according to the Austria Press Agency.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Floods and landslides in Myanmar triggered by last week’s Typhoon Yagi and seasonal monsoon rains have claimed at least 226 lives, with 77 people missing, state-run media reported Tuesday. The new figures push the total number of dead in Southeast Asia from the storm past 500.
Typhoon Yagi earlier hit Vietnam, northern Thailand and Laos, killing almost 300 people in Vietnam, 42 in Thailand and four in Laos, according to the ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance. It said 21 people were killed in the Philippines, with another 26 missing.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Monday that an estimated 631,000 people may have been affected by flooding across Myanmar.
Heavy rains from the typhoon and the seasonal monsoon brought widespread flash floods to Myanmar, especially the central regions of Mandalay, Magway, Bago and the Ayeyarwaddy Delta; the eastern states Shan, Kayah, Kayin and Mon; and the country’s capital, Naypyitaw.
More than 160,000 houses have been damaged and 438 temporary relief camps have been opened for more than 160,000 flood victims, the Myanmar Alin newspaper reported.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Carolinas braced for a storm that forecasters warned could bring heavy rain — as much as 6 to 8 inches in some spots. But one narrow band got a “firehose” that dumped as much as 20 inches in a so-called 1,000-year flood that shocked many with its intensity.
The storm left homes flooded, cars submerged and schools closed Tuesday in parts of North Carolina.
Monday’s deluge centered on Carolina Beach south of Wilmington, where more than 18 inches of rain fell in 12 hours and almost 21 fell overall. That much rain qualifies as a 1,000-year flood expected only once in that length of time, meteorologists at the National Weather Service office in Wilmington said.
Some areas were hit particularly hard as the storm took a narrow path over the region, “causing a bit of a firehose effect,” NWS meteorologist Lauren Warner said.
Carolina Beach Mayor Lynn Barbee said the 21 inches that fell on his town was impossible to fully prepare for even in a place accustomed to tropical downpours.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it rain so hard and for so long,” said Barbee, who has lived on the coast for most of his life.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Exceptionally heavy rainfall pounding Central Europe has prompted deadly flooding, with four new deaths reported Monday in Poland, three in the Czech Republic and one in Romania.
The flooding has swamped parts of Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania as a low-pressure system crossing the region has unleashed record-high rains for days, and it was expected to affect Slovakia and Hungary later in the week. So far 16 people have been reported killed — seven in Romania, five in Poland, three in the Czech Republic and one in Austria.
In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk held an emergency meeting and later declared a disaster in flooded areas, a government measure to facilitate evacuation and rescues. He also said the government would provide $258,000 in immediate payouts to victims.
The flooding in Poland has burst dams and embankments, while receding waters left streets covered in piles of debris and mud. It prompted a hospital in the southwestern Polish city of Nysa to evacuate about 40 patients.
Schools and offices in the affected areas were closed Monday and drinking water and food were being delivered by trucks. Many Polish cities, including Warsaw, have called for food donations for flood survivors.
Experts warned of flood threats due to the cresting Oder River in Opole, a city of some 130,000 residents, and Wroclaw, home to about 640,000 residents and where disastrous flooding happened in 1997.
Authorities in the Czech Republic declared an emergency in two northeastern regions, including in the Jeseniky mountains near the Polish border.
A number of towns and cities had been submerged in the northeast, with thousands evacuated. Military helicopters joined rescuers on boats in efforts to transport people to safety. Waters were receding from the mountainous areas Monday, leaving behind destroyed houses and bridges and damaged roads.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala visited the town of Jesenik, one of the hardest hit places.
“The worst is behind us and now. We have to deal with all the damage,” Fiala said following the visit.
In Hungary, the mayor of Budapest warned residents that the largest floods in a decade were expected to hit the capital later in the week, with the waters of the Danube River set to breach the city’s lower quays by this morning.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán canceled his planned foreign engagements, including an address to a plenary session of the European Parliament on Wednesday where heated debates were expected over his conduct since Hungary took over the European Union’s rotating presidency in July.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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LOS ANGELES, CA - Firefighters gained further ground over the weekend against three Southern California wildfires as authorities in northern Nevada lifted the last of evacuation orders for all homes Sunday.
More than 8,000 personnel combined are battling the three biggest fires burning in the state, all ignited during a triple-digit heat wave at the start of the month.
The largest blaze is the Bridge fire at 85 square miles [54,500 acres] , which exploded
dramatically through the Angeles National Forest east of Los Angeles at the start of last week. It has torched at least 49 buildings and forced the evacuation of 10,000 people. The fire was 9 percent contained Sunday morning, with firefighters gaining 4 percent overnight.
Officials said Sunday the focus continues to be on the northwest flank, where the fire is the most active, but upcoming rain and humidity will aid firefighting efforts.
“That’s not gonna stop this fire, what that is gonna allow is ... operation folks to go out there and be able to get that line constructed,” said fire behavior analyst Garret Hazelton on Saturday.
Line fire
The Line fire, which grew slightly overnight to 60 square miles [38,500 acres] in the San Bernardino Mountains, was 36 percent contained Sunday.
Officials said it was active in the early morning due to a dry air mass in higher elevations, but cool weather conditions prevailed across the fire area. Light rain was possible late Sunday and into today.
Authorities have said a delivery driver purposely started the Line fire in Southern California on Sept. 5. Arson-related charges have been filed against Justin Wayne Halstenberg, who is accused of starting the blaze. He is due to be arraigned today, according to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office. Halstenberg’s mother, Connie Halstenberg, told the Los Angeles Times that her son “did not light that fire.”
Airport fire
The Airport fire in Orange and Riverside counties remained at 37 square miles and 19 percent containment as of Sunday.
“We’re being helped by the weather and that weather will continue for a couple of days so we’re making good progress,” said Orange County Fire Authority Operations Section Chief Albert Ward.
Firefighting efforts are expected to get a significant boost from thick fog and high humidity Sunday night, and from cooler temperatures and light rain Sunday and today, according to the fire authority.
Crews were able to gain access to an area previously blocked by a rock slide.
However, the southern edge of the fire is still marked by “very rugged inaccessible country” that will require helicopters to bring crews in or a long hike, Ward said Sunday.
Despite favorable weather, there is still fire risk above 4,000 feet in elevation, which remains dry. Smoldering vegetation up high can roll downhill and ignite unburned vegetation, the fire authority said.
Davis fire
In northern Nevada, Washoe County fire officials say evacuations were lifted Sunday for all homes — the last of nearly 20,000 evacuees.
The Davis fire was estimated at 77 percent containment on Sunday.
Officials said the fire now is classified as being in a state of mop-up with many restoration and repair projects under way.
More than 600 personnel are currently working the wildland blaze that destroyed 14 homes and burned through nearly 9 square miles [5,800 acres] of timber and brush along the Sierra Nevada’s eastern slope near Lake Tahoe.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Prague, Czech Republic - The death toll was rising in Central European countries on Sunday after days of heavy rains caused widespread flooding and forced mass evacuations.
Several Central European nations have already been hit by severe flooding, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania.
Slovakia and Hungary might come next as a result of a low pressure system from northern Italy dumping record rainfall in the region since Thursday.
The floods have claimed six lives in Romania and one each in Austria and Poland. In the Czech Republic, four people who were swept away by waters were missing, police said.
Most parts of the Czech Republic have been affected as authorities declared the highest flood warnings at around 100 places across the country. But the situation was worst in two northeastern regions that recorded the biggest rainfall in recent days, including the Jeseniky mountains near the Polish border.
In the city of Opava, up to 10,000 people out of a population of around 56,000 have been asked to leave their homes for higher ground. Rescuers used boats to transport people to safety in a neighborhood flooded by the raging Opava River.
“There’s no reason to wait,” Mayor Tomáš Navrátil told Czech public radio. He said that the situation was worse than during the last devastating floods in 1997, known as the “flood of the century.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HONOLULU, HI - Investigators reviewing the emergency response to last year’s wildfire that killed 102 people on Maui said in a report released Friday they found “no evidence” Hawaii officials made preparations for it, despite days of warnings that critical fire weather was coming.
That lack of planning hindered efforts to evacuate the historic town of Lahaina before it burned, the report said.
A forecaster with the National Weather Service emailed fire managers an “unprecedented advance warning” on Aug. 4, 2023, of the danger that would develop on Aug. 8, including extreme winds as a hurricane passed far to the south, according to the report released by the state attorney general.
But in the ensuing days, the report found, there is no evidence that key agencies — the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, Maui Fire Department, Maui Police and others — developed plans for dealing with severe wildfire risk, such as by having extra staff on duty, stationing emergency vehicles or supplies in high-risk areas, or plotting possible evacuations.
“The strongly worded nature of the email, had it been communicated to fire managers in other states with better developed severity preparedness strategies, could have gained attention and prompted discussion and operational planning,” the report said. “It was a call for State of Hawaii fire managers to prepare for the impending extreme weather.”
The heroic efforts of firefighters and police — who frequently risked their lives, sometimes sprinting door to door to warn residents to leave — were undercut by the lack of planning as the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century destroyed thousands of buildings.
A Maui County spokeswoman said the county received the report when it was released to the public and wouldn’t be able to comment until officials had an opportunity to review it. The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency didn’t immediately respond with comment.
“This investigation serves as a wake-up call for the state and county governments to learn from the past and urgently prepare for the future,” Attorney General Anne Lopez said in a statement.
Maui fire commanders discussed the forecast, but “no evidence of pre-event preparedness plans by the MFD were produced,” the report said. The police and fire departments never established a unified incident command post or action plan, and as a result it was more difficult to know who was responding to what, where to direct resources, or which evacuation routes were blocked by downed trees or power lines.
The departments share a mobile command vehicle, but the county did not provide evidence that it was used that day, the report said. Some emergency vehicles didn’t have equipment for clearing roadblocks.
Hawaiian Electric Co. has acknowledged that its power lines caused a fire the morning of Aug. 8. Firefighters who responded believed they had extinguished it. But, the report notes, they had limited access to the area due to steep terrain and unstable power lines overhead, making it difficult to determine if the fire was truly out.
The fire that destroyed Lahaina later that day ignited in the same area. Maui County’s report on the cause of the catastrophe has not been released.
With multiple fires burning on Maui that day, police focused on routine duties like traffic control rather than preparing for an evacuation, the report said. The police and fire departments operated separately, hindering communication as winds toppled utility poles, cutting power and cell service.
Maui County and the state use private contractors to help fight fires with water tankers and heavy equipment. But those contractors weren’t trained to use portable radios, and with cell service down many had to communicate with firefighters in person. Firefighters had to flag down water tankers to ask them to fight fires. Some hydrants failed as the fire melted water lines.
Maui Fire Department policy requires relief engines — those that back up the front-line fleet during major events — to be ready to respond to an emergency. But some lacked breathing equipment and portable radios, the report said. Personnel at fire stations spent valuable time locating and loading hoses, nozzles and hand tools.
And despite the warnings, the heads of the county emergency management agency and the Maui Fire Department were off-island that day, attending conferences in Honolulu. The report said no one appeared to be in charge of strategic resource allocation.
The 518-page report, conducted by the Fire Safety Research Institute, is the second part of a three-part attempt by officials to understand the tragedy and how best to avoid such disasters in the future.
The review determined that the lack of planning fit a long pattern of apathy to wildfire risk in Hawaii, where tsunamis and hurricanes are considered more pressing dangers, and it was among many factors that set the stage for the catastrophe.
(Jennifer Sinco Kelleher, Audrey Mcavoy& Gene Johnson, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HANOI, Vietnam - The death toll in the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi in Vietnam climbed to 233 on Friday as rescue workers recovered more bodies from areas hit by landslides and flash floods, state media reported.
Floodwaters from the swollen Red River in the capital, Hanoi, were beginning to recede, but many neighborhoods remained inundated, and farther north, experts were predicting it could still be days before any relief is in sight.
Typhoon Yagi made landfall last Saturday, setting off heavy rains that have triggered flash floods and landslides, particularly in Vietnam’s mountainous north. Across the country, 103 people are still missing and more than 800 have been injured.
Most fatalities have come in the province of Lao Cai, where a flash flood swept away the entire hamlet of Lang Nu on Tuesday.
Some 500 personnel with sniffer dogs are on hand, and in a visit to the scene, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh promised they would not relent in their search for those still missing.
Coffins were stacked near the disaster site in preparation for the worst, and villager Tran Thi Ngan mourned at a makeshift altar for family members she had lost. “It’s a disaster,” she told VTV news. “That’s the fate we have to accept.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Residents of the Carrollton neighborhood in New Orleans are among thousands who remained without power Friday after Hurricane Francine passed through. Their frustration mounted as the city’s electrical provider, Entergy, sent out notifications informing some people their power had been “restored” even though they still had no electricity.
“Every single storm, every one, no matter how big or how small, the same thing happens,” said Rudy Cerone, 71, referring to the power outages. “Entergy just doesn’t seem to take the necessary preparatory actions to harden this system to provide the power that we’re paying through the nose for.”
An Entergy New Orleans spokesperson said the city had restored power to more than 40,000 customers since Thursday and that many more would regain electricity by the end of the day Friday. Around 6,500 Entergy customers in the city lacked power as of Friday afternoon, part of about 95,000 customers in Louisiana still without electricity, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us. The spokesperson said the information used to update outage numbers comes from crews in the field.
“These steps take time, and our teams are committed to providing customers with the latest restoration information as it is available,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Utility crews from Oklahoma, Florida, Texas and elsewhere are working to restore power throughout the state, officials said, with projections for full restoration by Sunday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Helped by cooler temperatures, firefighters gained ground Friday against three blazes in Southern California and authorities began scaling back evacuation orders that displaced thousands of people.
The largest is the Bridge fire east of Los Angeles, which has burned 81 square miles — nearly 52,000 acres — torched at least 33 homes and six cabins and forced the evacuation of 10,000 people. The cause of the fire is not yet known. After days of burning without fire crews being able to stop its forward march, it was 3 percent contained on Friday.
“Firefighters made great progress on the ground, aided by aircraft to attack the fire aggressively 24 hours per day,” the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said in a statement.
While firefighters have made significant progress, the three major wildfires that have ravaged the mountains east of Los Angeles, destroying dozens of homes, injuring a dozen people, and burning more than 155 square miles combined, still pose significant threats to some communities.
California is entering the height of wildfire season and has already seen nearly three times as much acreage burn as during all of 2023.
Evacuation orders were being scaled back, including in parts of Big Bear where the Line fire forced thousands of people to flee. Authorities say a delivery driver purposely started the blaze Sept. 5.
The fire has charred 59 square miles, or more 37,000 acres, in the San Bernardino mountains, where Southern Californians ski in the winter and mountain bike in the summer. It was 21 percent contained as of Friday.
Farther south, the Airport fire in Orange and Riverside counties has burned more than 37 square miles, or about 23,500 acres. Reportedly sparked by workers using heavy equipment Monday, it was 9 percent contained as of Friday evening.
Ten firefighters and two residents were injured in the blaze, according to the Orange County Fire Authority. The fire has destroyed at least 27 cabins in the Holy Jim Canyon area, authorities said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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After days of multiple wildfires across Southern California in extreme heat, a drop in temperatures has finally given crews a chance to gain the upper hand, though lingering risks remain, officials said.
On Thursday, fire officials cautioned that several communities in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties are still under evacuation orders, with some of the blazes continuing to show “extreme fire behavior” on the ground. Since last week, the Bridge, Line and Airport fires have raced across more than 100,000 acres combined, or more than 156 square miles of land. But the pace has slowed dramatically in the last day. “The conditions are improving a little bit, at least weather-wise,” said Bryan Lewis, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Oxnard.
The Bridge fire has consumed at least 20 homes in Wrightwood, Mount Baldy Village and other mountain towns with more than 5,700 structures threatened, officials said Thursday.
The fire broke out Sunday in Angeles National Forest and exploded from 4,000 acres to more than 50,000 acres between Tuesday and Wednesday. It had blackened 51,167 acres by Thursday with no containment.
Firefighters were focusing their efforts to protect the communities of Wrightwood, Pinon Hills and Mount Baldy. After days of temperatures in the triple digits, crews will carry on the fight with temperatures hovering in the mid- to low-70s into the weekend, with the possibility of drizzle on Sunday, Lewis said. The weekend weather will also bring a light breeze steering the fire east, he said.
“It’s certainly a little less windy and a little bit higher humidity,” he added. “It should translate to better firefighting conditions, for sure.”
Despite the improving weather, firefighters will still have to grapple with steep and rugged terrain, as well as an abundance of fuel beds and vegetation from back to back wet winters.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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Francine weakened Thursday after striking Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of utility customers, sent a storm surge rushing into coastal communities and raised flooding fears in New Orleans and beyond.
As the system moved inland, crews began clearing roads and restoring electricity while neighborhoods and businesses started cleaning up the mess. There were no reports of deaths or injuries, Gov. Jeff Landry said.
“The human spirit is defined by its resiliency, and resiliency is what defines Louisiana,” Landry told a news conference.
At the peak of the storm, 450,000 people in Louisiana were without power,
according to the Public Service Commission. Many of the outages were linked to falling debris, not structural damage. At one point, around 500 people were in emergency shelters, state officials said.
The storm drenched the northern Gulf Coast. Up to 6 inches of rain was possible in parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Georgia, with up to 10 inches in parts of Alabama and Florida. There was also a lingering threat of spinoff tornadoes in Florida and Alabama.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A low pressure system that extends from the West Coast to the continental divide will produce a 4,000-foot-deep marine layer today that’s likely to spread across all of San Diego County, the National Weather Service said.
That’s more than twice as deep as the marine layers that typically form this time of year, and many of those clouds typically stay largely at or near the coast. Monday’s marine layer in San Diego was 3,000 feet deep.
Today’s daytime high will reach 78 degrees in San Diego, which is about average for early September. But forecasters say the region will turn cooler during the weekend, a shift that’s expected to last until the middle of next week. Temperatures will be 4 to 7 degrees below average in many places.
The moisture from Thursday’s marine layer helped limit the growth of the Airport fire in Orange and Riverside counties. That blaze has burned more than 23,000 acres.
Forecasters said that wind currents will prevent smoke from the fire from drifting over San Diego County.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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LOS ANGELES, CA - Three fast-moving wildfires that have burned homes, injured firefighters and civilians and scorched more than 100,000 acres combined across Southern California in a matter of days have stretched firefighting resources dangerously thin as crews attempt to assess damage and gain control over the blazes.
The largest of the three, the Bridge fire, broke out Sunday in Angeles National Forest and exploded from 4,000 acres to 49,000 acres from Tuesday to early Wednesday.
Fueled by days of extreme heat, winds and bone-dry brush, the fire prompted evacuations in a number of mountain hamlets, towns and resorts along Highway 2, with towering flames jumping across hillsides and canyons. Twenty homes have been destroyed in Mount Baldy, 13 homes in Wrightwood and six cabins in the wilderness area. About 2,500 structures are threatened by the fire, officials said.
“This is currently the largest active fire in the state of California,” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said during a news conference. “Our priority remains the protection of life and structure and infrastructure defense.”
At least 13 people, including several firefighters, have been injured in the Airport fire, which has charred thousands of acres in Riverside and Orange counties, and in the Line fire in San Bernardino County.
Officials have not determined what sparked the Bridge fire. The Airport fire was started unintentionally by a spark from heavy equipment moving rocks in the Trabuco Canyon foothills, and authorities said the Line fire was arson.
Fire officials continue to work to move resources from smaller area blazes to the fires and tap out-of-state crews, but an epic and record-setting fire season across the West has created a nationwide shortage of firefighters, aircraft and contractors to fight these blazes.
Oregon, Idaho and Washington are also dealing with hundreds of fires resulting from multiple weeks of dry lightning strikes on parched vegetation.
“Yes, there is a strain on resources,” said Adrienne Freeman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service. “We had multiple fires start in close succession all with critical numbers of affected people in huge urban centers.”
The National Interagency Fire Center has set the current national preparedness level to 5 the highest possible indicating that federal resources are fully committed and the potential for significant wildland fires to emerge is expected to remain high across multiple geographic areas. That level has been reached this early in the year only four times in the last two decades, according to the agency.
The north and east flanks of the Bridge fire were expected to continue to grow Wednesday, threatening Wrightwood and the Pinon Hills community. Firefighters were able to hold the fire on the west side of Mount Baldy Road, allowing crews to get in and defend the community, said Lisa Cox, a spokesperson for the California Interagency Management Team on the fire.
Higher humidity levels are expected in the coming days, “which is really good news because it’s going to aid the firefighters in holding the lines they’ve constructed” and help them protect cities south of the fire including Upland, Cox said.
Dramatic video footage in Wrightwood shows homes being consumed by flames late Tuesday as fire crews rushed to protect structures in the mountain community. Burning embers cascaded over the state highway as flames rose on both sides of the road.
While the inferno reached Mountain High Resort, the popular ski spot did not sustain severe damage. The resort staff turned on snowmakers in an effort to keep the flames at bay.
“Fire raced through the area yesterday but all the main lifts and buildings survived with little to no damage,” the resort posted on social media. “Thank you to all the employees and fire fighters for their hard work. Our hearts go out to the Wrightwood families that may be suffering. We are with you!”
Many residents were hesitant to leave their homes despite the rapidly advancing blaze, said Los Angeles County Fire Deputy Chief Mike Inman. “They never believed it would happen but then they believed it when they saw it come to town,” he said.
On Wednesday morning, a dense layer of smoke continued to choke the mountain community. A steady stream of ash rained down on firefighters stationed in the area. Gusty winds, combined with warm temperatures, created favorable conditions for the Bridge fire to explode overnight. Low humidity also contributed to the spread of the fire, said National Weather Service meteorologist Ariel Cohen.
The past two wet winters have created a significant amount of brush, meaning there’s a lot more fuel susceptible to burning, Cohen said. “It’s a really energetic phenomenon,” she said.
Three people — two civilians and one off-duty sergeant — needed to be rescued by air from a remote area 5 miles west of Mount Baldy on Wednesday, but officials are waiting until the smoke clears. The civilians were visiting the area during the time of the fire and got caught in the blaze. None are injured, said Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna.
Further south of the Bridge fire, the Airport fire roared up the Santa Ana Mountains in Orange County and was headed downhill toward Lake Elsinore, spurring evacuations. Some homes burned along Ortega Highway in the Decker Canyon area, but authorities could not provide a specific number.
The Airport fire has grown to 22,376 acres and was zero percent contained Wednesday morning. The fire ignited Monday afternoon amid the stubborn heat wave that fueled fires across the region.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that the state had secured a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help provide resources to Riverside County to assist with the costs of suppressing the Airport fire.
The Line fire in San Bernardino County began Thursday and had scorched 34,729 acres with 14 percent containment Wednesday afternoon. Evacuations were in place for several communities southwest of the fire, which was expected to continue to grow amid dry conditions and strong winds, according to fire officials.
More than 65,000 structures are threatened in the blaze, but fire officials have not confirmed whether any property has been damaged.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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MORGAN CITY, LA - Hurricane Francine slammed into the Louisiana coast Wednesday evening as a dangerous Category 2 storm that knocked out electricity to more than a quarter-million customers and threatened widespread flooding as it sent a potentially deadly storm surge rushing inland along the Gulf Coast.
Francine crashed ashore in Terrebonne Parish, about 30 miles southwest of Morgan City, the National Hurricane Center said. Packing top sustained winds near 100 mph, the hurricane then battered a fragile coastal region that hasn’t fully recovered from a series of devastating hurricanes in 2020 and 2021.
Morgan City Fire Chief Alvin Cockerham said the hurricane quickly flooded streets, snapped power lines and sent tree limbs crashing down.
“It’s a little bit worse than what I expected, to be honest with you,” Cockerham said of the onslaught. “I pulled all my trucks back to the station. It’s too dangerous to be out there in this.”
There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.
TV news broadcasts from coastal communities showed waves from nearby lakes, rivers and Gulf waters thrashing sea walls. Water poured into city streets amid blinding downpours. Oak and cypress trees leaned in the high winds, and some utility poles swayed back and forth. As Francine continued its trek inland, it spread drenching rains over New Orleans and surrounding areas, raising flooding fears.
Power outages in Louisiana topped 261,000 hours after landfall, spread widely across southeast Louisiana. Blackouts affected the majority of homes and businesses in coastal parishes nearest where the storm came ashore as well as their inland neighbors, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us.
Sheltering at her mother’s home just outside Morgan City, Laura Leftwich said blasts of wind had swept away two large birdhouses outside. She had a generator powering an internet connection so she could video chat with friends, holding her computer to a window to show them water overflowing in the street.
If the storm had been any more intense, “I wouldn’t have the guts to look outside,” said Leftwich, 40. “It’s a little scary.”
The National Hurricane Center urged residents to stay sheltered overnight as the weakening hurricane churned inland. The storm’s projected path included New Orleans, where forecasters said the storm’s eye could pass through.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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BRASILIA, Brazil - Brazil is enduring its worst drought since nationwide measurements began over seven decades ago, with 59 percent of the country under stress — an area roughly half the size of the United States.
Major Amazon basin rivers are registering historic lows, and uncontrolled man-made wildfires have ravaged protected areas and spread smoke over a vast expanse, plummeting air quality.
“This is the first time that a drought has covered all the way from the North to the country’s Southeast,” Ana Paula Cunha, a researcher at the National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters, said in a statement Thursday. “It is the most intense and widespread drought in history.”
Smoke on Monday afternoon caused Sao Paulo, a metropolitan area of 21 million people, to breathe the second most polluted air in the world after Lahore, Pakistan, according to data gathered by IQAir, a Swiss air technology company.
About 680 miles to the north, a wildfire is sweeping through Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, one of Brazil’s most famous tourism sites.
“This year, the dry season started much earlier than in previous years, whereas the rain season was intense yet short,” Nayara Stacheski, head of the park, told The Associated Press. “The wind is strong, the air humidity is very low and it’s extremely hot. All this worsens the wildfire.”
On Monday, there was one uncontrolled wildfire in a remote area. A helicopter was expected to transport firefighters. Another fire was controlled by 80 firefighters, with support from two aircraft. Two other fires were threatening to enter the park.
The blazes in one of the few protected areas of Cerrado, the Brazilian savanna, are just the latest drama in the country beset by months of blazes. From the beginning of the year until Sunday, Brazil registered almost 160,000 fires, the worst year since 2010. In Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland area, it has been the second worst fire year on record.
Most fires are man-made as part of the deforestation process or for clearing pastures and agricultural land. So far this year, an area the size of Italy has burned in Brazil.
Fire is not the only problem. More than 1,200 miles from Chapada dos Veadeiros to the Northeast, the Amazon — the world’s most voluminous river — and one of its main tributaries, the Madeira River, have registered new daily record lows at the city of Tabatinga. There’s no end in sight — significant rain is not expected until October.
Low river levels have stranded dozens of communities only accessible by water. One of the largest is Fidadelfia, inhabited by 387 families of the Tikuna tribe. Due to the drought, there is shortage of potable water and children are drinking dirty water, leading to a surge in illnesses. Food is becoming scarce as crops die and it’s increasingly difficult to travel to the city, local leader Myrian Tikuna told the AP.
(Fabiano Maisonnave, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Apocalyptic-looking plumes of smoke dotted skies over parts of Southern California on Tuesday as firefighters continued to battle at least three major wildfires that erupted amid a blistering heat wave and were threatening tens of thousands of homes and buildings.
In Orange County, firefighters used bulldozers, helicopters and planes to control a rapidly spreading blaze that started Monday and spread to about 3 square miles [1900 acres] in only a few hours. The blaze was ignited by a spark from heavy equipment being used by public workers, officials said.
By Tuesday, it had charred more than 14 square miles [8950 acres] and was heading over mountainous terrain into neighboring Riverside County with no containment, said Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Steve Concialdi. It burned some communications towers on top of a peak, though so far officials said they did not have reports of the damage disrupting police or fire communication signals in the area.
Two firefighters who suffered heat-related injuries and a resident who suffered from smoke inhalation were treated at a hospital and released.
Meanwhile, in the San Bernardino National Forest, some 65,600 homes and buildings were under threat, including those under mandatory evacuations and those under evacuation warnings, nearly double the number from the previous day.
Three firefighters have been injured since the blaze was reported Thursday, state fire managers said.
The blaze had charred about 41 square miles [26,250 acres] of grass and brush and blanketed the area with a thick cloud of dark smoke Tuesday. The acrid air prompted several districts in the area to close schools through the end of the week because of safety concerns.
Other major fires were burning across the West, including in Idaho, Oregon and Nevada, where about 20,000 people had to flee a blaze outside Reno.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Local officials across southern Louisiana were clearing storm drains and distributing sandbags to prepare for Hurricane Francine, which was churning in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday. Forecasters said the storm was expected to make landfall today, bringing the potential for heavy rainfall and a dangerous storm surge.
Residents across the region were being urged to make their own preparations as the hurricane gathered strength a day after forming in the Gulf. Many were buying supplies and bracing for the storm surge.
Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana said that agencies statewide were working to prepare by positioning resources where they could be needed.
“We want everybody to be safe,” Landry said. “Once you have decided where you are going to be at the time that the storm comes onshore, you want to stay there.”
Landry declared a state of emergency Monday to make resources available to parishes, the equivalent of counties in other states, before the storm.
In New Orleans, city officials asked residents to prepare enough essential supplies to last through Thursday or Friday. Sandbags will also be made available to residents, Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans said.
The National Hurricane Center said Tuesday that cities along the coast in southern Louisiana could see up to 12 inches of rain through Friday morning. One of the greatest threats, forecasters said, was the risk of a “dangerous” storm surge that could combine with a tide and cause flooding in some areas.
(NEW YORK TIMES )
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RIVERSIDE COUNTY - Two 16-year-old boys were arrested Thursday on suspicion of setting off fireworks in Riverside that led to the Hawarden fire that burned nearly 600 acres, destroyed six homes and forced scores of families to flee.
The fire raged through a section of Riverside on July 21, consuming around 527 acres, destroying six homes and damaging 18 others, Riverside Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson said during a news conference Thursday. Of the 18 homes — 13 of them inhabited — seven had major damage and eight vehicles were lost, Riverside Fire Chief Michael Moore said. The fire was fully contained July 29.
Arson investigators determined the fire was caused by fireworks after surveillance footage captured three teens in a silver pickup that were setting off the fireworks in a field near where the blaze originated — in an area bordered by Alessandro Boulevard, Overlook Parkway and Victoria Avenue, Moore said.
“The fireworks that they ignited were not only illegal in Riverside but are classified as dangerous in the state of California,” Riverside Police Chief Larry Gonzalez said. “These are not fireworks that can be obtained legally, even in counties where fireworks are legal.”
Authorities filed 27 charges of willful and malicious fire setting against the teens.
The third boy, also 16 and a resident of Northern California, was not arrested on Thursday, but charges were filed with local authorities, Riverside police Officer Ryan Railsback said.
Details about the boys were not released by authorities because of their ages.
The blaze cost the city at least $1.5 million, Moore said, with the damage to the affected homes estimated to be around $28 million. “We’re working on cost recovery,” he said.
(Hunter Lee, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP )
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Days of triple-digit temperatures fed a wildfire in the foothills of the San Bernardino National Forest on Monday, pushing some 6,000 people to flee the area as a blaze in Nevada displaced more than 20,000.
In California, the Line fire led at least 6,000 people to evacuate mountain communities, said Cal Fire spokesperson Rick Carhart.
“We’re dealing with triple-digit temperatures and hard-to-reach steep areas where there has not been fire in decades, or in recorded history, so all that vegetation has led to significant fuel loads,” Carhart said.
Mara Rodriguez, a spokesperson with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which issues evacuation orders, said nearly 5,000 homes fell under the existing orders and nearly 17,000 more were under evacuation warnings.
The blaze threatened thousands of homes and commercial structures. As of Monday evening, the blaze had charred about 23,700 acres of grass and brush and blanketed the area with a thick cloud of dark smoke. It was 5 percent contained. The fire is among the most dangerous of the many burning in the West.
About 20 miles outside Reno, Nev., the uncontained Davis fire grew to about 6,400 acres after igniting Sunday afternoon. It originated in the Davis Creek Regional Park in the Washoe Valley and was burning in heavy timber and brush, firefighters said.
An emergency declaration issued for Washoe County by Gov. Joe Lombardo on Sunday noted that about 20,000 people were evacuated from neighborhoods, businesses, parks and campgrounds. Parts of south Reno remained under the evacuation notice Monday, firefighters said, and some homes, businesses and traffic signals in the area were without power.
Meanwhile, a brush fire that erupted Monday afternoon in the hills of Orange County exploded to nearly 2,000 acres within a few hours, prompting evacuation orders for nearby communities as the blaze burned uncontrolled.
Known as the Airport fire, it began just before 1:30 p.m. about 15 miles east of Irvine near an airport for remote-controlled model airplanes. Officials ordered evacuations in parts of Trabuco Canyon, in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, and recommended evacuations for surrounding neighborhoods as well.
The blaze ignited as the region is experiencing a severe heat wave. Temperatures in the Trabuco Canyon area reached about 98 degrees Monday, above normal for early September, said Samantha Zuber, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego. Wind speeds were about 15 mph, she said.
The winds are expected to slow into the evening, but overnight temperatures will remain unusually high, she said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES )
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An end to a stubborn heat wave that has broiled the San Diego region for nearly a week is in sight, but relief still had yet to come as temperatures again soared into the triple digits in multiple communities Monday.
The persistent heat left some San Diego Gas & Electric customers vulnerable to potential power outages, although the number had fallen dramatically compared to a day earlier.
Some 14,000 customers had lost power for hours at a time on Sunday, but by Monday evening the figure had dropped to around 200.
“When our equipment doesn’t even have a chance to cool off in the evening hours, it just puts tremendous amount of stress” on the system, said SDG&E spokesperson Alex Welling. More than 10,000 customers lost power Sunday in areas around Spring Valley and Rancho San Diego after the company’s substation in Jamacha went down.
SDG&E said customer demand hit an all-time high of 5,032 megawatts at 6:45 p.m. Sunday — breaking the previous record in its service territory of 4,890 megawatts set on Sept. 16, 2014.
Temperatures on Monday remained hot, but a high-pressure system that’s been the source of the heat will begin to weaken as a low-pressure trough starts to move in, according to forecasters.
“We’ve got to hang on until Wednesday,” said Casey Oswalt, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in San Diego. “We are getting an area of low pressure moving in from the Gulf of Alaska into the Pacific Northwest,” and that will push out the high-pressure system that’s lingered for nearly a week.
Temperatures were expected to drop today to about 5 to 10 degrees above normal from the coasts to the deserts.
By Wednesday, forecasters anticipate temperatures will fall another 10 to 15 degrees, and “we’ll continue to see below-average temperatures into early next week,” Oswalt said.
In the meantime, though, hot weather continued to suffocate many areas, and an excessive heat warning remained in effect into Monday evening.
By 4 p.m., inland cities of Fallbrook, Santee and Escondido each recorded highs of 104, and the temperature soared to 106 in Valley Center, according to the weather service.Even usually balmy coastal areas sweltered: San Diego International Airport hit a high of 91 degrees, as did Oceanside.
The heat wave that began Sept. 4 has made for an uncharacteristically swampy kind of heat across the region that has led to records being set in some communities for “high lows” — that is, when the lowest temperature overnight on any given day is still unusually hot.
On Sunday, the temperature in Escondido fell only to 79 degrees, breaking a record that had stood since 2015. The low temperature at San Diego International Airport came to a still-warm 75 degrees, tying the record set in 2022.
“It’s just not cooling off overnight, and that’s really what’s contributing to these really excessively hot conditions,” Oswalt said.
The extended heat wave has not yet prompted the California Independent System Operator, which manages the electric grid for about 80 percent of the state, to issue any requests for customers to voluntarily reduce their energy use.
But the grid operator has called on utilities and other entities that participate in energy markets around California to avoid conducting maintenance work so that all available generation and transmission lines stay in service. That directive remained in effect until 10 p.m. Monday.
When outages occur, “our crews are going to be working as hard as they possibly can in this heat to get your power back up as quickly and safely as possible,” SDG&E’s Welling said.
(Rob Nikolewski, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE )
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Fans turned off. Air conditioning vanished. Freezer ice began to thaw. The sun, however, just kept on shining. Thousands of residents lost power across the San Diego region on Sunday as a punishing heat wave entered its fifth day.
At one point Sunday afternoon, San Diego Gas & Electric said about 13,000 customers were without electricity. By 8 p.m., the utility reported more than 11,000 still lacked power, affecting residents from Lemon Grove to City Heights to Old Town, as well as some in Escondido and Vista. Some problems were attributed to weather affecting equipment, while others were being investigated, according to the company’s outage map.
One of the larger outages — affecting more than 10,510 customers in the Spring Valley, La Presa and Rancho San Diego areas around 3:30 p.m. — was due to an outage at the company’s Jamacha substation, located near state Route 94. Crews were able to restore power there later in the day.
Sunday’s heat again soared above 100 degrees in more than a dozen communities, mostly east of Interstate 15. But problems also developed at and near the coast. Forecasters say overnight winds arriving from the east flowed to beach cities, causing temperatures to rise rapidly early Sunday.
San Diego International Airport hit 94 before noon. That’s 16 degrees above normal.
“The high pressure system producing the heat is so large there is now a lot of hot air over the ocean and that’s also coming in,” said Phil Gonsalves, a National Weather Service forecaster.
People sought relief at cooling centers across the region, and they might have to do so again today. Forecasters say many cities east of Interstate 15 will hit 100 degrees or higher. Noticeable cooling won’t start until Tuesday.
On Sunday in East County, the air was thick and heavy. Hills that months ago had been lush from heavy rains were now sepia-toned and brittle. Residents trudged into El Cajon’s air-conditioned library where almost every table was taken. A few people wandered the stacks in what appeared to be a daze, their skin flushed.
One woman stepped outside with a young boy, who quickly spotted a curling yellow slide at a nearby playground. “Mom —,” he started. “No, no, it’s too hot, you cannot.” A few minutes later, another kid asked to go to the same playground. His mother was also having none of it.
Many local communities reached 100 or above by 2 p.m. Sunday, including Ramona, 110; Santee, 109; Gillespie Field, 109; Ocotillo Wells, 109; Camp Pendleton, 109; Escondido, 108; Poway, 107; El Cajon, 107; Lemon Grove, 105; Montgomery Field, 103; Brown Field, 101; and Miramar MCAS, 100.
The lingering heat has raised temperatures across the state but has been particularly oppressive in Southern California.
The California Independent System Operator, which manages the power system for about 80 percent of the state, issued a heat bulletin Saturday, due to increased demand for electricity by customers cranking up their air conditioners.
“Although the hottest days of the heat event have passed, persistent heat and warm overnight temperatures are expected to remain through mid-week for California,” the system operator said.
Despite the increase in loads, grid officials have not had to resort to asking customers to voluntarily reduce their electricity usage. “At this time, the grid is stable, and we will continue to monitor conditions carefully,” the operator added.
Utilities and other entities that participate in energy markets around California have been notified of Restricted Maintenance Operations directives, which caution them to avoid conducting any work on their systems so that all available generation and transmission lines stay in service. That directive will be in effect from noon to 10 p.m. today.
In El Cajon, Ahmed Mohammed left the library mid-afternoon to go find something to eat. The 37-year-old didn’t have a car but wasn’t worried about traveling by foot. Mohammed was originally from Iraq, where temperatures could hit 120 degrees. How bad could East County be?
He took a right and began walking. His skin glistened. Almost nobody else was out, and when he did finally pass another woman she was holding an umbrella large enough to cover her torso. Mohammed wiped his cheek and looked at his hand.
Upon reaching a 7-Eleven, he said, “It’s really hot.” Mohammed grabbed a
Gatorade and a pre-made sandwich and got in line. Ahead of him was a man hugging a child-sized bag of ice.
At the cash register, Mohammed swiped his Electronic Benefit Transfer, or EBT, card, which helps low-income residents buy food. The machine beeped an error message. The cashier asked him to try again. Mohammed got the same response.
He stared for a moment at the sandwich and drink and then left both behind. Back outside, Mohammed wasn’t sure what to do next. He wasn’t even sure where he’d sleep. Mohammed has been homeless for years and said he’d lost his last tent during an encampment sweep. In the meantime, his only plan was to keep walking.
(Gary Robbins, Rob Nikolewski & Blake Nelson, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE )
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An out-of-control wildfire in the foothills of San Bernardino National Forest threatened tens of thousands of buildings and forced hundreds of residents to flee Sunday amid a days-long heat wave of triple-digit temperatures.
The so-called Line fire was burning along the edge of the national forest. As of Sunday morning, the blaze had charred more than 17,000 acres of grass and chaparral, leaving a thick cloud of dark smoke blanketing the area.
The fire burned so hot Saturday that it created its own thunderstorm-like weather systems, according to the National Weather Service. Firefighters also faced steep terrain, which limited their ability to control the blaze, officials said. The fire remained uncontained Sunday.
County officials, who declared an emergency Saturday evening, issued evacuation orders for Running Springs, Arrowbear Lake, areas east of Highway 330 and other regions.
Running Springs resident Steven Michael King said he had planned to stay to fight the fire and help his neighbors until Sunday morning, when the fire escalated. He had prepped his house to prevent fire damage but decided to leave out of fear smoke could keep him from finding a way out later.
“It came down to, which is worse, being trapped or being in a shelter?” he said outside an evacuation center Sunday. “When conditions changed, I had to make a quick decision, just a couple of packs and it all fits in a shopping cart.”
State firefighters said three firefighters had been injured and more than 35,000 structures were threatened, including single and multi-family homes and commercial buildings.
Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency for San Bernardino County on Saturday night.
The affected area is near small mountain towns in the San Bernardino National Forest where Southern California residents ski in the winter and mountain bike in the summer.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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A few days after the Park fire tore through Cohasset, a small forest community in Northern California, in late July, Dallas Koller drove out to inspect the damage.
He passed destroyed buildings, trees charred to black matchsticks and smoke rising from smoldering vegetation. But amid the destruction, there was a heartening sight: The homes at the four properties where Koller, volunteers from Butte County and a few fire professionals had intentionally set blazes to burn excess vegetation had survived. Koller, 34, said there was no way to know for sure if the intentional burns, which occurred periodically in the years before the fire, including two in March, had made the difference. “But prescribed fire was part of that puzzle,” he said.
Federal and state agencies, as well as other groups that work with them, including private citizens and businesses, are setting fires that burn the dry grasses, small trees and other vegetation that could otherwise fuel an intense wildfire. Research has shown that these burns reduce wildfire risk, potentially saving lives and property.
Although the state is increasing its use of beneficial fire, as the method is called, officials and experts alike say it is far from enough to meet the threat posed by catastrophic wildfires.
Land managers in the state, including the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and federal agencies have set a target of intentionally burning 400,000 acres annually by next year, an amount of land that when combined would be larger than the city of Los Angeles. The goal is to chip away at the 10 million to 30 million acres that officials estimate would benefit from
some form of fuel-reduction treatment.
In 2022, the most recent year for which there is data publicly available, about 96,000 acres were burned by these land managers.
“The state is struggling to get anywhere close to the targets they have for prescribed fire,” said Chris Field, a climate scientist at Stanford University who has studied controlled burns. “It’s clear that there would be real profound benefits of reaching the target and ultimately going beyond it.”
According to one study from researchers at Columbia University and Stanford, low-intensity fires, a category that includes mild natural fires and prescribed burns, reduce wildfire risk by about 60%. Experts also say that prescribed burns have reduced the severity of previous wildfires, including in Yosemite National Park, where researchers found that they helped protect giant sequoias during the Washburn fire in 2022.
Most of California’s ecosystems have evolved to adapt to or depend on fire, which can rejuvenate forests and help nutrients return to the soil. But federal and state land management agencies banned intentional burns for many decades, arguing that all fires were dangerous and could hurt the timber industry. This, along with aggressive efforts to suppress wildfires, allowed vegetation to accumulate, a condition that could supercharge blazes.
Since then, intentional burn practices, including planned fires and cultural burning by Native American tribes, have been gradually reintroduced. Nowadays, these efforts are carried out by various entities across the state, including Cal Fire, the U.S. Forest Service, tribal organizations and private citizens. Koller, for example, runs Butte County’s prescribed burn association, a group with about 400 members that carries out controlled fires for private landowners. Groups such as these now operate in about half of the counties in California.
“The state can’t possibly burn everyone’s land,” he said. “The task is too large.”
Although all forms of intentional burns reduce the fuel for future blazes, they are sometimes ignited for other purposes, such as managing rangelands or for cultural reasons. Other parts of the country, particularly the Southeast, also have a history of doing regularly prescribed burns.
In California, recent devastating fire seasons have propelled interest — and investment — in controlled burns. In 2020 alone, wildfires killed 33 people, destroyed thousands of buildings and caused over $12 billion in damages, according to a report from the state.
This year’s fire season got off to a furious start after two relatively quiet years. The Park fire ignited in late July and has burned about 430,000 acres, making it the largest blaze in California this year. It was almost entirely contained as of Friday, and overall fire activity slowed in California in late August, but forecasters say fires could pick up again across much of the state in September. Fires that sparked this past week in Northern California and the Central Valley have led authorities to order hundreds of residents to evacuate.
Cal Fire has steadily increased the number of acres it has burned over the past few years, and now it has an annual target of 50,000 acres by next year. It burned about 36,000 acres during the 2022-23 fiscal year. Cal Fire said in a statement that the department was taking “numerous positive, if incremental, steps” toward increasing that number.
The state’s budget maintains $2.6 billion in funding for tackling wildfires and improving forest health. An additional $200 million per year is designated for healthy forest and fire-prevention programs, which include prescribed fire projects.
The money is most likely not enough, especially because it is spread across a number of initiatives, said Mark Schwartz, a professor emeritus at the University of California Davis, who has studied controlled burns and other wildfire management methods.
In addition to the need for more funds, Schwartz said, controlled burn programs face a number of hurdles. Already limited in number, firefighters who would staff a prescribed fire are often called away to battle an active blaze. There are also only so many days in a year that conditions are right for a fire, and access is a challenge in some locations. And local communities may oppose a controlled burn, he said. “It’s hard to wag a finger too much at agencies,” he said. “Getting prescribed fire on the landscape at the scale we’d like is very difficult.”
Some of these concerns are rooted in fears of what could go wrong in a prescribed fire. The U.S. Forest Service has said that more than 99 percent of these fires go as planned, but mistakes can be destructive. In 2022, the agency lost control of two prescribed burns in New Mexico. The fires merged and grew to become the largest recorded fire in the state’s history, destroying hundreds of homes.
However, experts say that avoiding these burns can also have consequences. The Sacramento Bee reported in early August that authorities in Chico, the college town where the Park fire ignited, had planned but not carried out a prescribed burn that could have curbed the giant blaze.
But the fire chief in Chico, Steve Standridge, disputed that account. He said a patch of land across the road from where the Park fire ignited had been identified as a site that could be advantageous to burn, but that a formal plan was never made, and that there were other higher-priority sites. He added that such a burn would have had a “marginal impact” given the way the Park fire started and spread.
In Cohasset, where about a third of the structures in the community burned down, Sheri Simons, 69, and her husband, Paul Wellin, 69, said they had a controlled fire done on their property in March. The fire was managed by a group of about 20 people from the prescribed burn association that included friends and neighbors.
When the Park fire was approaching, the couple were away from home; they learned of the fire while on a plane and landed in California after Cohasset had already been evacuated. When an official drove them to their property a few days later, they passed one burned house after another, and believed theirs was lost, too.
The couple were dropped off at the end of their driveway and told they had 10 minutes to survey everything. Simons and Wellin ran past downed power lines, burned ponderosa pines and ash that Simons described as “ankle-deep.” To their shock, their home was still standing.
“It was crazy that it was still there,” Simons said.
Wellin said the prescribed burn had increased the odds that their home would make it through. The prescribed burn association there said it had not carried out a burn on a property where a home was later destroyed, but that does not mean the method saves homes 100 percent of time.
Koller said he was happy to see that the homes treated had survived, but the feeling was short-lived. He knew of other landowners who had requested a prescribed burn but did not receive one and subsequently lost their homes.
“It’s hard not to think about it,” he said. “You just wonder if maybe we had burned it, if that would have been enough.”
(Kate Selig, NEW YORK TIMES )
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As floodwaters coursed through Texas and Taiwan, as mosquito-borne viruses spread across the Americas, as lethal heat struck down children on hikes and grandparents on pilgrimage, the world’s average temperature this summer soared to the highest level in recorded history, according to new data from Europe’s top climate agency.
Global temperatures between June and August were 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above the preindustrial average, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said Friday — just edging out the previous record set last summer. The sweltering season reached its apex in late July, when Copernicus’ temperature analysis program detected the four hottest days ever recorded.
Meanwhile, temperatures for the year to date have far exceeded anything seen in the agency’s more than 80 years of record-keeping, making it all but certain that 2024 will be the hottest year known to science.
To Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo, the onslaught of broken records is not surprising. Humanity continues to burn fossil fuels at an ever-increasing pace, and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than the world has seen in roughly 3 million years, according to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “If you keep doing the same thing, you cannot expect to get any different result,” Buontempo said.
This summer came on the heels of an unprecedented year-long stretch in which Earth’s temperature repeatedly met or exceeded 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above the preindustrial average — a threshold scientists say the world cannot surpass if it hopes to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. The scorching conditions were the product of a complex cocktail of human-caused climate change and a strong El Niño event — a natural phenomenon characterized by warm temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.
The consequences were felt by people on every continent, from world-class
athletes competing in the Paris Olympics to refugees fleeing from wars.
In the United States, nearly 7,000 weather stations broke daily temperature records between June 1 and Aug. 31, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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Following two wet winters that boosted California’s water supplies, Gov. Gavin Newsom has officially lifted a drought emergency declaration in 19 counties that are home to 70 percent of the state’s population.
The decision will roll back certain drought-related state authorities in counties
including San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Francisco.
At the same time, Newsom decided to keep the drought state of emergency in effect in 39 counties where state officials say significant effects of the severe 2020-22 drought have persisted, including depleted groundwater supplies and threats to native fish.
These 39 counties include regions across the Central Valley and in the watersheds of the Scott, Shasta and Klamath rivers, among other areas.
Newsom referred to this week’s extreme heat wave as he explained why his administration is retaining certain drought authorities in parts of the state.
“As this week’s weather makes clear, California and the West experience extreme weather swings that exacerbate our water challenges and make it more important than ever that we build a climate-resilient water system,” Newsom said. “This targeted action is responsive to current conditions while continuing the tools and support for work under way to help future-proof water supplies in the most impacted communities.”
State officials said Newsom’s order responds to the improved conditions in parts of the state while continuing efforts to support drought recovery. They said where certain drought measures remain in place, they will help the state address continued impacts to local water supplies. “We continue to help local communities recover from drought conditions,” said Wade Crowfoot, California’s natural resources secretary. “In some cases, the powers that we have under these orders are quite helpful to support local communities.”
California suffered through the state’s driest three-year period on record from 2020 through 2022.
Newsom declared a statewide drought emergency in October 2021 and called for Californians to voluntarily reduce water use 15 percent.
The drought ended dramatically in early 2023 as one of the wettest winters on record unleashed flooding and blanketed the Sierra Nevada in heavy snow.
In March 2023, following that series of storms, Newsom rolled back some of the most stringent drought measures, including an order that had required urban suppliers to activate conservation plans for a shortage of 20 percent.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor website, about 41 percent of the state is classified as being abnormally dry or in a moderate drought. The unusually dry regions include large portions of Northern California and the southeastern corner of the state.
(Ian James, LOS ANGELES TIMES )
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Thursday was the hottest day San Diego County has experienced in four years — and the heat wave isn’t expected to break before Monday or Tuesday.
The heat beat down on hospitals, roasted playgrounds and cooked tents. Multiple areas saw thermometers rise to the triple digits: Escondido hit 104 degrees, as did Gillespie Field. Parts of El Cajon and Santee went higher still while Ramona was at 111.
“The high-pressure system is lingering,” said Dan Munyan, a forecaster with the National Weather Service. “Temperatures are going to get into the upper 90s and low 100s into Monday, and there won’t be much relief at night.”
The agency extended its excessive heat warning for areas east of Interstate 15 through at least Monday.
Some good news? The air conditioning should keep working. “The power grid is currently stable,” the California Independent System Operator, which manages electricity flow across much of the state, said in a statement. Officials added that there were no imminent plans to issue a Flex Alert asking residents to reduce energy use.
That’s a change from two years ago. On Sept. 6, 2022, Californians used more than 52,000 megawatts of electricity, an all-time high, and residents received nearly a dozen Flex Alerts throughout the year. In comparison, the demand at noon Thursday hovered around 35,200 megawatts. The state’s system operator did ask residents to “be ready in case we need to call for voluntary conservation.”
Yet thousands of people countywide have little power to rely on in the heat.
More than 6,100 individuals were living in tents, vehicles or on the street at the start of the year, and outreach workers have been scrambling to distribute bottled water. “We’re handing out cases and cases and cases,” said Bob McElroy, CEO of Alpha Project.
Tuesday Moon, an outreach worker with Father Joe’s Villages’ street health team, said workers were driving around several times a day offering hats, rechargeable fans and directions to places with shade. While officials have said heat annually sends hundreds of people to emergency rooms countywide, Moon said she hadn’t yet needed to call 911 for anyone they’d encountered.
The extreme heat also brought warnings for those working outside. State rules say employees must be able to get out of the sun whenever temperatures exceed 80 degrees and water should similarly be nearby.
Crews that clean streets and sidewalks have been especially affected.
“They are trained to spot signs of heat exhaustion and look out for one another,” said Aaron Hunter, a spokesperson for the California Department of Transportation. “Most importantly, they make sure to stay hydrated.”
High temperatures can be particularly threatening to children.
In schools around the region, teachers ushered students inside. Outdoor recess was a no-go. The same went for lunch. East County’s Grossmont Union High School District continues to weigh whether to cancel sports practices and games.
Officials countywide said all classrooms have air conditioning, although the age and quality of each system may vary from school to school. Some leaders are pursuing bond measures this November to pay for further upgrades.
To stay cool, experts recommend avoiding alcohol, wearing light clothing and moving slowly, among other suggestions.
Many residents spent the day in one of the region’s designated “cool zones,” which include public libraries.
“This space is really important,” Katie Keeley, a student at Grossmont College, said inside the Santee library. “Most people are trying to get out of the house because they don’t have the money to afford the electricity bill.”
(Blake Nelson (Phillip Molnar, Gary Robbins, Kristen Take, Caleb Lunetta & Paul Sisson), S.D. UNION TRIBUNE )
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Growing wildfires in California forced evacuations as a heat wave Wednesday threatened to make fire conditions worse. In the Midwest, a wildfire kept residents of South Dakota’s second-largest city on edge, ready to flee if flames moved dangerously close.
A blaze near the remote Northern California mountain community of Sierra Brooks was at zero containment. Authorities expanded evacuation orders for more than 530 residents Tuesday evening after strong winds pushed flames through dry brush and timber about 50 miles north of Lake Tahoe. The Bear fire grew to more than 3,200 acres Wednesday and sent up a plume of smoke visible some 25 miles away in Reno, NV.
“Due to steep and rocky terrain, crews have experienced difficulty in gaining access to some areas of the fire, slowing progress,” the U.S. Forest Service said in a statement. Flames damaged power lines, knocking out electricity to more than 750 residents, the service said.
In Central California, firefighters working in triple-digit temperatures were battling a blaze that scorched more than 17 square miles of dry brush in mostly open space. A handful of homes were evacuated outside of Coalinga in Fresno County. The Boone fire was 5 percent contained Wednesday.
Across the state, red flag warnings for increased wildfire risk were issued. The desert communities of Palm Springs, Twentynine Palms, Needles and Barstow were heating up, with highs of up to 118 degrees in Death Valley’s Furnace Creek expected at week’s end.
The wildfire news was better in South Dakota: The battle to contain the First Thunder fire got a boost Wednesday from cooler weather and lighter winds. Officials were optimistic homes in Rapid City, a community with 80,000 residents, would remain safe. The First Thunder fire, reported Monday just a few miles from Rapid City, had burned nearly 160 acres by Wednesday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for the city of Rancho Palos Verdes Tuesday after the risk of ongoing landslides recently forced authorities to shut off power for more than 200 homes in two of the city’s neighborhoods, with some facing indefinite power outages.
In the declaration, Newsom said land movement under the city that sits atop the bluffs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula has accelerated significantly following severe storms in 2023 and 2024 and “is now sliding at an average of 9 to 12 inches per week.”
The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services has been coordinating with emergency response officials in Los Angeles County for nearly a year, supporting the local assistance center, facilitating a federal mitigation grant to support the recent groundwater construction work in the area, and helping officials with initial damage estimates, the declaration states.
The power shutoff affects not only the day-to-day lives of residents but also poses new safety issues, as power is needed for telecommunications lines, the sewer system and the pumps that help slow land movement by expelling the groundwater that geologists say causes it.
The declaration issued early Tuesday comes two days after Southern California Edison announced plans to cut power to 140 homes in one neighborhood, where gas service was shut off about month ago, and 105 homes in another neighborhood. The shutoffs are designed to reduce the risk that the shifting earth could spark a wildfire if power lines remained electrified, officials said.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES )
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The most intense heat wave so far this year is expected to start today in San Diego County, producing “dangerously hot conditions” that could affect people’s health and significantly increase the risk of wildfires, the National Weather Service said.
The near-record heat — which could reach 107 degrees in Escondido and El Cajon — also might delay the start of some high school football games on Friday night due to new rules governing the conditions under which athletes can practice and play.
An excessive heat warning will be in effect for all areas of the county except the coast from 11 a.m. today to 8 p.m. Friday. Forecasters said the highest temperatures will occur east of Interstate 15, which is home to about 700,000 people. Temperatures are expected to be in the 95 to 105 degree range today, 100 to 107 degrees Thursday and Friday, and 95 to 103 on Saturday.
A new state law that took effect this year says that high schools east of I-15 cannot begin any outdoor, after-school activity if weather conditions do not meet certain criteria, including having an air temperature that is below 90 degrees. The temperature can be slightly higher if other factors — such as the wind and humidity — are more favorable.
Many high school football teams in that region are scheduled to begin play at 7 p.m. Friday, when the temperature will likely be in the low 90s, the weather service says. Large crowds are expected when Escondido High School hosts Torrey Pines High School and Valley Center High School hosts Poway High School. The schools can delay the start of games, to a degree.
The temperatures will be only slightly better along the Interstate 805 corridor, reaching the upper 80s today, low 90s on Thursday and Friday, and upper 80s on Saturday.
The coast is expected to be in the upper 70s to low 80s today, and low-to-upper 80s Thursday through Saturday. Forecasters say the temperature could be 80 at 5:40 p.m. Thursday when the San Diego Padres host the Detroit Tigers at Petco Park.
The weather service noted that motorists will experience a perilous 15- to 20- degree increase in heat on Interstate 8 if they descend the east side of the mountains into Imperial County, where the temperature is expected to be 114 degrees on Thursday and Friday afternoons. Such temperatures can cause vehicles to overheat if they’re not well-maintained.
The excessive-heat warnings will extend across much of Southern California into far southern Nevada and southwest Arizona, while less severe heat advisories are expected for portions of Central and Northern California into far southwest Oregon. The National Weather Service is forecasting “multiple days of widespread highs into the triple digits and maximum temperatures up to around 115-120F in the typically hottest desert locations.” Hot spots will include Phoenix, Las Vegas and Death Valley, with highs in the upper 90s to low 100s expected to span much of interior California all the way north into southwest Oregon.
Some calendar-day records are possible in California, Nevada and Arizona, but the best chance of record heat is in western Oregon and portions of Washington state later this week. In Oregon, the cities of Portland, Salem, Eugene and Medford could all come close to or surpass their calendar-day records as highs reach the low 100s.
After enduring their hottest summer on record, there will be no letup in the heat for Phoenix and Las Vegas. Both cities are looking at highs well into the 100s this week.
Phoenix is forecast to reach 108 to 114 degrees through Saturday, with nighttime lows in the mid-80s to near 90. Those temperatures could push the Phoenix area to the highest levels of the weather service’s HeatRisk forecast, which rates the heat’s danger to human health. During the same period, Las Vegas is expecting highs near or above 105 degrees and lows in the low to mid-80s.
“Temperatures of these magnitudes in early September will cause HeatRisk levels to increase into the major to locally extreme category, meaning that most of the general population is under the risk of heat-related illnesses if the proper heat precautions are not taken,” the weather service in Phoenix said.
Phoenix is now on its longest streak of days reaching at least 100 degrees, while Las Vegas set summer records for the number of days that the high temperature exceeded 100, 105, 110 and 115 degrees, and the number of nights that the low temperature stayed above 90 and 80 degrees. Las Vegas recorded an all-time high of 120 degrees on July 7.
While the high-pressure heat dome is forecast to subside by next week, reducing the threat for dangerously extreme heat, temperatures are still expected to be significantly warmer than average across much of the western United States, according to the latest forecast from the Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center.
(Gary Robbins, John Maffei S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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Parts of eastern San Diego County are under an excessive heat watch through 8 p.m. Friday, which means temperatures may be much hotter or conditions may be more humid than average for those areas.
Heat-related illness is a serious concern and the CDC reports that, approximately 1,220 people die in the United States every year from issues from extreme heat.
Here are some health and safety tips to keep in mind during the current heat wave, as well as any hotter-than-usual day in San Diego County.
How to Assess risk
Health officials maintain that babies, young children, people over 65 years of age and people with chronic conditions, as well as people without access to air conditioning or living in isolation are at risk for heat-related illness.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a HeatRisk application that allows people to explore a “health-based heat forecast” from the National Weather Service. It determines the level of heat risk for a community in these categories: little to none, minor, moderate, major and extreme. On Tuesday, San Diego County was given a minor ranking on the HeatRisk map, but that was increased to moderate for today and major for Thursday and Friday.
The platform offers location-based tips and health information in response to those rankings. Use your ZIP code to explore the application here: >ephtracking.cdc.gov/Applications/HeatRisk
Tips for staying cool
San Diego County offers cool zones, where locals can go to find air conditioning. Find a list of available locations, organized by ZIP code, at sandiegocounty.gov/hhsa/programs/ais/cool_zones. For transportation, call 2-1-1.
Other tips from the county’s Health and Human Services Agency for taking care during a heat wave include:
Recognize signs of heat-related illness
For anyone needing to be outside in such heat, including construction workers or athletes, it’s important to know the signs of heat-related illness. In extreme heat, the body may have a difficult time regulating its temperature, which can result in heat cramps, heat exhaustion or heatstroke. Many symptoms for these distinct conditions can overlap, so it’s important to be able to distinguish them.
Heat cramps: These are involuntary and painful muscle spasms and cramps in the legs and abdomen that are usually accompanied by extreme sweating. To treat, apply pressure on the muscle and gently massage, according to the National Weather Service.
Heat exhaustion: Symptoms of heat exhaustion include nausea, fatigue, pale and clammy skin, weak pulse and thirst. If these signs occur, move to a cool area, loosen clothing and sip water.
Heat stroke: Heat stroke can be fatal. It is marked by confusion, dizziness, a fast and strong pulse and loss of consciousness. To treat, call 911 immediately, move to a cool, shaded area, loosen or remove extra clothing and cool off with water or ice on the body. Do not drink water.
Dehydration: A person may experience dry mouth, lethargy, headache, a lack of appetite and dark urine. To treat, take a rest and drink water. Consistently sip on water instead of taking huge gulps.
Sun rash: Usually occurring on sensitive skin, this rash looks like raised red or pinks spots on the skin that has been exposed to sunlight. It’ll probably occur within a few hours of exposure and can be treated with aloe vera, cool compresses or an anti-itch cream.
Energy tips from SDG&E
San Diego Gas & Electric announced on Tuesday a series of tips related to managing energy use during hot summer months, including:
Limit appliance use: Use a slow cooker, microwave or grill instead of ovens to help save energy and keep the home cooler. Also, use dishwashers and laundry machines outside of the on-peak hours of 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Set Up Personalized Alerts: Stay informed by adjusting energy or spending alerts to avoid surprises on your next bill.
Use the Vampire Calculator: Find out what devices in your home that may be draining energy.
For more information from SDG&E, go to sdge.com/heat-wave.
(Abby Hamblin & Maura Fox, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE )
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An excessive heat watch will be in effect from 11 a.m. Wednesday to 8 p.m. Friday east of San Diego County’s Interstate 15 due to soaring temperatures that are expected to affect much of the western U.S., the National Weather Service said.
The heat wave will increase the risk of power outages, according to the California Independent System Operator, which is responsible for almost 80 percent of the state’s power grid.
Forecasters say the hot weather will begin today and peak Wednesday and Thursday, when temperatures could reach 95 to 105 degrees in many inland valley cities. Friday also will be uncomfortably hot.
San Diego Gas & Electric said the heat will elevate the risk of wildfires in a county that has experienced about a half-dozen small blazes in recent weeks.
Escondido is projected to reach 100 Wednesday, 105 Thursday and 104 Friday, the weather service said. El Cajon’s forecast is 99 Wednesday and 100 Thursday and Friday. Borrego Springs will likely range from 111 to 114 during that period.
The temperature also could reach 100 on eastern Interstate 8, below the 4,500-foot level, potentially causing overheating in vehicles that are not well maintained.
The weather will be noticeably milder at the coast but still much warmer than usual for the first week of September. Forecasters said San Diego is expected to reach 83 Wednesday, 86 Thursday and 87 Friday. Forecast models suggest that temperatures could turn out to be higher. The city’s seasonal high temperature is 78.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE )
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As dangerous heat bears down on the central and eastern United States this week, a new study shows heat-related deaths across the country are on the rise.
While 2023 was the hottest year on record and led to at least 2,325 heat-related deaths in the U.S., more than 21,518 people have died from heat since 1999, according to a study published Monday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association.
“It’s very likely that we’re going to continue to face these kind of extreme heat issues,” said Jeffrey Howard, an associate professor in public health at the University of Texas at San Antonio and the lead author of the study.
Heat kills more people in the United States than any other type of extreme weather, according to researchers. The study noted a 117 percent increase in heat-related deaths over the past 24 years, with a significant upswing since 2016.
The Southwest has seen a disproportionate amount of those deaths. About 48 percent of heat-related deaths took place in California, Arizona, Nevada or Texas, Howard said. That detail was not included in the study, he noted.
The latest heat wave, expected over the next few days, will close out a period of relatively cool weather with a blast of unseasonably hot temperatures in the Upper Midwest and mid-Atlantic. As of Tuesday, more than 19 million people were under an excessive heat warning.
The JAMA study analyzed publicly available data from the Centers for Disease Control, the federal agency that tracks heat-related deaths, and adjusted the data for changes in age and population size over time. While previous U.S. studies had analyzed earlier data, up until 2018, Howard said his work on more recent years revealed an increasing trend.
But heat-related deaths are hard to track. The CDC relies on death certificates from local authorities, but there is no consistent criteria to determine the contribution of heat to a death. The tally of deaths from extreme heat could actually be higher, with an average annual number of 10,000 deaths across the United States from 1997 to 2006, according to a 2020 study.
(NEW YORK TIMES )
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Visitors to the Minnesota State Fair sought relief from soaring temperatures under misters Monday while some Midwestern schools dismissed classes early or called off sports practices.
Highs approaching the century mark combined with oppressive humidity to made it feel like 105 to 115 degrees across the country’s heartland, the National Weather Service said. It issued heat warnings or advisories for large swaths of Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.
“There’s going to be some records in play today,” warned Ashton Robinson Cook, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center in College Park, MD.
Several cities opened cooling centers, including Des Moines, IA, where city buses gave people free rides to the sites. Experts urged those venturing outside to drink plenty of water.
“It is certainly steamy,” said Dr. Haley Taormina, an emergency medicine physician for Regions Hospital EMS, while treating fairgoers in Minnesota for heat illnesses.
By 11 a.m., she already had seen firefighters cut rings off two people’s fingers after they became swollen from the heat and salty fair food. Extra health care workers were assigned to the fair’s medical stations, and air-conditioned city buses were parked nearby to give sweltering fairgoers a place to escape the heat.
Meanwhile, Detroit’s public schools implemented early release for students Monday and today because of scorching temperatures. The district said in a post on its webpage that it would decide Monday evening if the early release will be extended to Wednesday. Only 30 percent of the district’s schools have air conditioning available, according to a spokeswoman.
In Indiana, all Gary Community Schools middle school athletic programs and events were canceled Monday and today, while all high school athletic teams have been instructed to practice — without exception — indoors.
By midweek, the heat will shift to the South and East, said Cook.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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Hurricane Hone passed within 60 miles of Hawaii’s Big Island early Sunday, bringing heavy rain, knocking out power to thousands of customers and snapping native ohia trees like twigs.
More than 20,000 customers were without electricity Sunday afternoon on the island, which has a population of about 206,000. But Mitch Roth, the mayor of Hawaii County, which covers the Big Island, said there were no reports of injuries or major damage.
Kazuo Todd, the fire chief for Hawaii County, said nearly 18 inches of rain had fallen around the volcanoes in the southern part the island. But so far, neither the winds nor the flooding had been dramatic.
“We do live on an island in the Pacific where the water can drain off into the ocean relatively quickly,” Todd said.
Forecasters predicted that Hone, which was a Category 1 storm as it was spinning westward below the islands Sunday, could still bring up to 20 inches of rain to some areas. As the storm moves, it will slow down and push moisture over all the islands, increasing the potential for heavy rainfall statewide and the threat of flash flooding in some areas.
By midday Sunday, the Central Pacific Hurricane Center forecast that wind and rainfall would gradually diminish through the evening.
The storm was producing life-threatening surf and rip currents in some areas. Many of the island’s beach parks were closed due to the conditions, Roth said.
On Friday, Hawaii Electric, the state’s main electricity utility, said it was preparing to possibly shut off power in areas with high wildfire risk, where strong winds could potentially fuel a devastating blaze.
But by late Saturday, the National Weather Service had canceled the red-flag wildfire warning in the state, and the utility announced that shut-offs were no longer under consideration.
(NEW YORK TIMES )
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SUPAI, AZ - The body of an Arizona woman who went missing in the Grand Canyon National Park after a flash flood days earlier was recovered Sunday, park rangers said.
The body of Chenoa Nickerson, 33, from the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert, AZ, was discovered by a commercial river trip in the Colorado River. Park rangers recovered the body, which was transported to the rim by helicopter.
National Park Service officials said Nickerson was swept into Havasu Creek above the Colorado River confluence around 1:30 p.m. Thursday. She wasn’t wearing a life jacket.
Nickerson was hiking along Havasu Creek about a half-mile from where it meets up with the Colorado River when the flash flood struck. Nickerson’s husband was among the more than 100 people safely evacuated.
The flood trapped several hikers in the area above and below Beaver Falls, one of a series of usually blue-green waterfalls that draw tourists from around the world to the Havasupai Tribe’s reservation. The area is prone to flooding that turns its iconic waterfalls chocolate brown.
Other hikers made it to the village, about 2 miles from the campground, where they awaited helicopter rides out.
Gov. Katie Hobbs activated the Arizona National Guard, including Blackhawk helicopters, to help evacuate hikers from the village.
Guard officials said an estimated 104 tribal members and tourists near Havasupai Falls have been evacuated since Thursday after floodwaters left them stranded.
The Havasupai Tribe’s reservation is one of the most remote in the continental U.S., accessible only by foot, mule or helicopter. Helicopter evacuations began after bridges were washed away and rescuers fanned out amid a series of towering waterfalls.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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Wildfires in Brazil’s southern Sao Paulo state have killed at least two people, officials said. At least 36 cities have been put on high alert.
Local and federal authorities were stepping up efforts to control the flames, Sao Paulo state Gov. Tarcísio de Freitas said. The fires have raged in the region outside the city of Sao Paulo, one of Latin
America’s most populous cities.
At least 7,300 government workers and volunteers had been deployed across the state to “contain the advance and put out these fires,” de Freitas told journalists. De Freitas warned that the flames, spurred on by a heat wave and a drought, may be fanned by strong winds.
While the city largely hasn’t been affected by the fires, videos on social media show the skies of rural areas filled with smoke and burning trees along the highway.
The government said that in the city of Urupes, two employees working at an industrial plant died on Friday while trying to fight back a fire, but provided few other details.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES )
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Lava spewed from a volcano in southwestern Iceland on Friday — the sixth time since December the volcano has erupted on the Reykjanes Peninsula.
The eruption from a new fissure began shortly after 9 p.m. Thursday following a series of strong earthquakes and within the hour a 2.4-mile fissure cut through the Sundhnúkur crater.
Authorities say the eruption’s effects remain localized with road closures but do not threaten the population.
Halldór Björnsson, head of weather and climate at the Norwegian Meteorological Agency, told the Icelandic news portal Vísir that unlike previous eruptions, the lava flow was not heading for the town of Grindavik, which was largely evacuated in December when the volcano came to life after being dormant for 800 years.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES )
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An aging, federal wastewater treatment plant at the U.S.-Mexico border that allows Tijuana sewage to foul San Diego’s southern shorelines has finally secured a contractor to begin crucial repairs and double its current capacity.
The U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, the federal agency that operates the facility, said Wednesday that it had awarded a $42.4 million contract to Long Beach-based PCL Construction.
That contract covers the design phase of the multi-phased project, which is expected ultimately to cost as much as $600 million. Officials said the firm hired Stantec Consulting Services of San Diego to carry out the design work. Some construction is anticipated to begin later this year, they added.
The project involves rehabilitating several parts of the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant that repeatedly break down, and expanding its treatment capacity from 25 million gallons of wastewater per day to 50 million.
Federal officials said it could take about five years to complete construction — about a year and a half faster than expected — because the agency awarded the contract using what it calls the progressive design-build contract delivery method.
Such builds are typically used for complex construction projects and often cut the timeline for development, compared to traditional, design-bid builds, which are more often used for smaller-scale and lower-risk projects.
Some early construction is expected to begin later this year and include excavating the plant’s primary sedimentation tanks, which remove solids from wastewater, relocating the site’s fence, and installing shoring to protect utilities.
The full project cost — including design, construction, project management, support services and contingencies — is estimated at $600 million, according to the IBWC.
Funding currently falls far short, however, which is why the agency says it is a phased project.
The IBWC has more than $400 million — $300 million that Congress approved in 2019, plus another $156 million it granted in March.
San Diego’s congressional delegation secured the more recent funding after the federal agency revealed last year that as much as $150 million was needed to cover deferred maintenance before the plant could be expanded.
On Wednesday, several congressional leaders applauded the contract award and pledged to secure the rest of the money needed.
“After years of investment and attention to planning and permitting, today’s announcement marks a welcome new design and construction phase in the fight to end the beach closures, polluted ocean water, and rancid smell of sewage that residents of the South Bay and Coronado, our Navy SEALs, and border patrol agents have had to put up with,” said Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego.
Tijuana’s crumbling wastewater system has suffered several pipeline breaks and other challenges in recent years — a situation compounded by heavy winter storms.
The South Bay plant has provided a backstop for Mexico by routinely taking more wastewater than it was designed to handle.
But that’s taken a toll on the aging facility, which first came online in 1997. The plant’s five primary treatment tanks have been frequently clogged with sewage, garbage and sediment — discharging tens of millions of gallons a day of partially treated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.
As a result, the IBWC’s damaged facility has racked up numerous clean water violations, according to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.
Last week, officials told the water board that it would not be able to meet its Aug. 15 deadline to bring the broken wastewater system into compliance with federal standards.
The agency said that continuing equipment failures and political challenges made it impossible to get its infrastructure to work in time. Officials said the South Bay plant will continue to operate throughout the design and construction.
(Tammy Murga, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE )
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ORANGE COUNTY - Two new helicopters that will “exponentially bolster” firefighting capabilities in Orange County were unveiled on Monday with a water-dropping demonstration over Irvine Lake in Silverado.
The Sikorsky S70 Firehawks, first approved for purchase by the Orange County Fire Authority board of directors in 2022, are born with the military design of the Black Hawk helicopter, are outfitted with two engines and are known for quick maneuverability when fully loaded and a strong airframe.
Firehawks have already been implemented into the fleets of neighboring agencies, including the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, Los Angeles County Fire and Cal Fire.
The two Firehawks cost roughly $26 million each, and were meant to replace the agency’s two 1966 UH-1H “Super Huey” helicopters that were grounded in 2020 due to increased cost of repairs and operation.
“With the addition of the two Firehawks, the Orange County Fire authority will have four operational helicopters for the first time in four years, exponentially
bolstering our ability to fight fires across the county,” said OCFA Captain Greg Barta.
The Firehawks will potentially fight alongside two Bell helicopters and a pair of 3,000 gallon-carrying Chinook CH-47s helitankers acquired in 2021 as part of a joint disaster-response team with Los Angeles and Ventura county fire departments.
The new aircraft were joined on Monday by one of OCFA’s two Bell 412EP helicopters to demonstrate their superior capabilities, with the first big improvement being the Firehawks’ water-carrying load.
The Firehawks are able to haul around 1,000 gallons of water, compared to the Bells’ 350-gallon carrying capacity.
“We’re a two-aircraft staffed fire department. So the ability for two Firehawks to deliver roughly 2,000 gallons on the initial drop is so much safer, so much different than how we’ve been able to operate in the past,” said OCFA Fire Operations Chief Tim Perkins. “The amount of water we can deliver (compared to the two Bells) is three-to-one.”
The increased carrying capacity also allows for pilots to deliver multiple partial water drops over a fire — called “spot drops” — rather than dropping the entire water load at once.
The process of refilling the Firehawk tanks has also been simplified with an automatically extending and retracting snorkel as opposed to the snorkel on board the Bells, which must be manually raised and lowered when refilling.
The Firehawk is also able to refill in roughly the same time as the Bell 412s — about 60 seconds — but with nearly three times the amount of water.
“The bottom line is our statewide fire service goal of keeping 95 percent of wildfires 10 acres or less is relied upon speed and force on initial attack,” said Fire Chief Brian Fennessy. “And these Firehawks are the greatest weapon ever built to achieve that.”
One of the capabilities most important when deciding to purchase the Firehawks was the survivability of the aircraft, Fennessy said.
“The S70s are created after the Black Hawk model that have proven themselves in battle to be very survivable,” he said. “You lose an engine in a Bell 412, that second engine might not get you to safety. You lose an engine in an S70, even full of water, they’ll be able to fly off and land safely.”
The S70 models can carry a pilot, two captains, an operations supervisor and up to eight people aboard. The aircrafts’ ability to operate with greater stability in high winds will also allow for both day and night operations.
The Firehawks will make their home at the Fullerton Airport, and were approved for use in the field on Monday after aircraft crews spent the last six weeks training to operate them.
“If we do get a vegetation fire going forward today, you’re going to see the Firehawks on the fire,” Perkins said.
(Hunter Lee, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NEWS GROUP )
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Torrential rains turned streets into raging rivers in parts of Connecticut and New York’s Long Island, trapping people in cars, covering vehicles in mud and sweeping two women to their deaths, authorities said.
Dramatic rescues unfolded as a foot of rain fell on some parts of western Connecticut late Sunday and early Monday, coming down so fast that it caught drivers unaware. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, who declared a state of emergency, said more than 100 people were evacuated by search and rescue teams Sunday evening.
The bodies of two women who had been in separate cars were recovered Monday in Oxford, a town of 13,000 about 35 miles southwest of Hartford, officials said.
Firefighters were trying to get one of the women to safety when the flooded Little River swept her away, Oxford Fire Chief Scott Pelletier said at a news conference with other Connecticut officials. The second woman got out of her car and tried to cling to a sign, but “the racing water was too much” and swept her away, too, he said.
Numerous roads were closed in the area, many because of washed-out bridges, including parts of routes 34 and 67. As of Monday afternoon, 27 state roads were closed but no interstates were affected, said Garrett Eucalitto, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Transportation. The Waterbury branch of the commuter Metro-North Railroad remained closed due to flooding and damage from a mudslide, officials said.
“It’s going to be a long recovery,” Eucalitto said. “We’re still inspecting all the state roadways today.”
The storm system that hit Connecticut and then moved on to Long Island was separate from Hurricane Ernesto, which on Monday was over the open Atlantic Ocean but still expected to cause powerful swells, dangerous surf and rip currents along the U.S. East Coast.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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California’s largest wildfire this year has been significantly tamed as the state’s initially fierce fire season has, at least temporarily, fallen into a relative calm.
The Park fire was 53 percent contained Monday after scorching nearly 671 square miles [430,000 acres] in several northern counties, destroying 637 structures and damaging 49 as it became the state’s fourth-largest wildfire on record.
A large portion of the fire area has been in mop-up stages, which involves extinguishing smoldering material along containment lines, and residents of evacuated areas are returning home. Timber in the northeastern corner of the fire area continues to burn. The fire is burning islands of vegetation within containment lines, the Cal Fire situation summary said.
The Park fire was allegedly started by arson July 24 in a wilderness park outside Chico. It spread northward with astonishing speed in withering conditions as it climbed the western slope of the Sierra Nevada.
July was marked by extraordinary heat in most of the state, where back-to-back wet winters left an abundance of grasses and vegetation that dried and became ready to burn. Wildfires erupted up and down the state.
The first half of August has been warmer than average but not record-setting, according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“We’re still seeing pretty regular ignitions and we’re still seeing significant fire activity, but the pace has slowed and the degree of that activity, the intensity, rates of initial spread, are not as high as they were,” he said in an online briefing Friday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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With this weekend’s weather so serene, it may be tough to recall that this time last year, San Diego County was under the first tropical storm warning in its history.
A system named Hilary had barreled up the Baja California peninsula and was projected to come ashore on Aug. 20, 2023. Many didn’t take it seriously, leading to mockery on social media.
The skepticism eased as Hilary drew near. The system was no longer a full-fledged tropical storm when it arrived — but it produced heavy rains that caused flooding, mudslides and river rescues across much of Southern California. And the winds got fierce.
How well did the National Weather Service do sizing up, forecasting and warning the public about such an unusual threat? What did its forecasters learn?
Agency veteran Alex Tardy dealt with the matter head-on in an interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Q: Hilary struck me as a real oddity. San Diego hadn’t taken a major direct hit from a tropical storm in more than 80 years. And we weren’t expecting one. It traveled over water that was warm enough for it to rapidly gain strength. But there have been many years when the ocean was far warmer. As Hilary developed, did you think, “Hmm, this is weird?”
A: Dozens of tropical cyclones of varying strength develop in the Pacific every year. So the fact that Hilary developed off the tip of southern Baja and western Mexico was not a surprise.
The odd thing was that Hilary did not veer off to the west and die, like most tropical cyclones do. We could see in the forecast tracks that it could potentially hit San Diego. That’s what caught people’s attention.
Q: The National Hurricane Center said on Aug. 15 last year that Hilary would likely come ashore in San Diego within five days. It sometimes seems like forecasters struggle to figure out if it is going to rain two days from now. Given the limits of meteorology, did you feel like the government was going out on a limb?
A:
The National Hurricane Center doesn’t use just one model. It gathers lots of information and makes an official forecast.
The confidence challenge was that San Diego doesn’t have much history with tropical cyclones. The last one to track up this far, directly hitting Long Beach, occurred in 1939. And there was Nora in 1997, which went into the Imperial Valley and Yuma, Ariz.
With that said, I think there was good confidence in the forecast.
A few days later, on Aug. 18, things got hairier. Hilary evolved into a Category 4 hurricane. For the first time in history, a tropical storm watch was issued for San Diego County. It was upgraded to a warning. Forecasters said the region could experience “potentially catastrophic flooding.” The Navy sent about 10 warships out of San Diego Bay to prevent them from slamming against their piers in heavy winds.
Q: Suddenly, all kinds of people were making wild and crazy weather predictions on X (Twitter), TikTok and other social media platforms. Many did so by recasting weather service text and graphics, often in clever, eye-popping ways. It felt like the calm voice of government forecasters had been co-opted. What did this teach you about how to effectively talk to the public when people are on edge?
A: Messaging was a challenge. We were simply trying to say that a weakening but significant tropical cyclone was coming toward San Diego, which meant there would be a lot of rain, especially in the deserts — but not hurricane-strength winds, because landfall in San Diego was expected to be tropical storm strength.
That message didn’t get across the way we wanted. People were downplaying it, or up-playing it, on social media.
We couldn’t control that. All we could do was say that 1 to 3 inches of rain would fall in the San Diego metro area, which is exactly what happened on Aug. 20, 2023.
The Palm Springs desert area and surrounding mountains got much heavier rain. There was major flooding and mud damage that led to things like the closure of Interstate 10 and water rescues. Some roads are still washed out in the mountains.
But at the time, many people said, “Oh, this storm was a bust.”
Q: Why did people say that?
A: It’s just the way humans are. They give their take on the weather all the time in elevators, in grocery stores, at the post office. There are people in my neighborhood in San Marcos who tell me what the weather is going to be.
My own daughter gets weather forecasts from TikTok. She’ll say, “Is this accurate?”
Q: Does social media deeply add to the confusion?
A: We have a lot of competition for people’s attention. It might be TikTok, it might be Facebook, it might be TV, or a smartphone or a person’s favorite app. Our minds can go on overload, which means people might miss important, detailed messages from the weather service, such as where we think flooding will occur.
Q: Your agency produced an extraordinary number of forecasts. But did you have enough tools to deliver your work in real time, especially during a major event like this?
A: We showed graphics, we did videos, we did webinars, we posted words, we did everything we could. We literally predicted that a foot of rain would fall in the mountains around Palm Springs and said the outcome could be catastrophic.
If something is not expected to happen directly in your backyard, you might not pay attention and think that it’s important.
I’d say we do need to tell people more about what the impact of a particular storm might be. We probably could have done better, saying something like, you know, “San Diego is going to get unusual, significant rainfall, and there will be some street flooding — but the chance that it will be life-threatening is minimal.” We need to do a better job at breaking down what the weather will bring for any given region, since our terrain and geography is very complex and diverse, resulting in a wide range of impacts.
Q: Are you where you want to be in adapting to the digital age?
A: This isn’t for me to decide. But I’ll say I have teenagers who spend half the day on TikTok. I know adults who do the same thing. There were people walking through my neighborhood this morning who had their faces glued to a phone while they were out for a walk. But if I told my agency that you think we should have a TikTok account, the response would be crickets chirping. These decisions are national, not local. We’re a federal agency.
Q: Fair enough. Let’s get back to simply forecasting the weather. It’s August again. Things are pretty quiet. Are we out of danger this year when it comes to having a tropical storm or hurricane swirl our way?
A: No, we’re not.
The thing that was unique about mid-August last year was that a massive heat wave occurred over the central United States, and it created atmospheric currents that helped steer tropical cyclone Hilary up the Baja Peninsula toward San Diego. It was like a monsoon flow on steroids.
The window of opportunity for a tropical system to come up our way this year will remain open way into September. Cyclones are rare. And it really takes a lot of things coming together meteorologically for them to happen. But they do happen. And as Hilary showed, we have to be ready.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE )
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One of Russia’s most active volcanoes has erupted, spewing plumes of ash 3 miles into the sky over the far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula and briefly triggering a “code red” warning for aircraft.
The Shiveluch volcano began sputtering shortly after a powerful 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck off Kamchatka’s east coast early Sunday, according to volcanologists from the Russian Academy of Sciences. They warned that another, even more potent earthquake may be on the way.
The academy’s Institute of Volcanology and Seismology released a video showing the ash cloud over Shiveluch. It stretched over 304 miles east and southeast of the volcano.
The Ebeko volcano, located on the Kuril Islands, also spewed ash 1.5 miles high, the institute said. It did not explicitly say whether the earthquake touched off the eruptions.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES )
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Sudan has been stricken by a cholera outbreak that has killed nearly two dozen people and sickened hundreds more in recent weeks, health authorities said Sunday. The African nation has been roiled by a 16-month conflict and devastating floods.
Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim said in a statement that at least 22 people have died from the disease, and that at least 354 confirmed cases of cholera have been detected across the country in recent weeks.
Ibrahim didn’t give a time frame for the deaths or the tally since the start of the year. The World Health Organization, however, said that 78 deaths were recorded from cholera this year in Sudan as of July 28. The disease also sickened more than 2,400 others between Jan. 1 and July 28, it said.
Cholera is a fast-developing, highly contagious infection that causes diarrhea, leading to severe dehydration and possible death within hours when not treated, according to WHO. It is transmitted through the ingestion of contaminated food or water.
The cholera outbreak is the latest calamity for Sudan, which was plunged into chaos in April last year when simmering tensions between the military and a powerful paramilitary group exploded into open warfare across the country.
The conflict has turned the capital, Khartoum, and other urban areas into battlefields, wrecking civilian infrastructure and an already battered health care system. Many hospitals and medical facilities have had to close their doors.
It has killed thousands of people and pushed many into starvation, with famine already confirmed in a sprawling camp for displaced people in the northern region of Darfur.
Sudan’s conflict has created the world’s largest displacement crisis. More than 10.7 million people have been forced to flee their homes since fighting began, according to the International Organization for Migration. More than 2 million of those fled to neighboring countries.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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Tropical Storm Ernesto became a hurricane again Sunday as it churned away from Bermuda and headed farther out in the northeastern Atlantic, sending powerful swells toward the U.S. East Coast, generating rip currents associated with at least one death and prompting many rescues.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Ernesto’s maximum sustained winds were 75 mph, just barely Category 1 strength.
More strengthening was forecast before Ernesto weakens and becomes a post-tropical cyclone on Tuesday, the hurricane center said. The storm was centered about 520 miles south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was expected to pass near southeastern Newfoundland late today and early Tuesday.
Swells generated by Ernesto were affecting portions of the Bahamas, Bermuda, the U.S. East Coast as well as the Canadian Atlantic coast. Life-threatening surf and rip current conditions are likely in these areas during the next couple of days, the hurricane center said.
The National Weather Service posted a coastal flood advisory and warned of a high risk for rip currents along the Atlantic Coast through this evening, saying they “can sweep even the best swimmers away from shore into deeper water.” A warning extended from Florida to the Boston area and portions of Maine.
In periods of high risk, rip currents become more likely and potentially more frequent, posing a danger to all levels of swimmers, not just inexperienced ones, said meteorologist Mike Lee in Mount Holly, NJ. “It’s going to be really dangerous out in the water today,” he said.
Separately, heavy rains unrelated to the hurricane caused flooding in parts of western Connecticut Sunday, closing roads, forcing water rescues and causing a minor mudslide. Floodwaters swept two people into the Little River in the town of Oxford, CT Insider reported, but officials weren’t able to immediately reach the area because of high waters and had to respond to other emergency calls, said Scott Pelletier, Oxford’s fire chief. Pelletier did not respond to a message from The Associated Press seeking additional details.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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Hurricane Ernesto began to pound Bermuda late Friday with heavy winds and rain after officials in the tiny British territory in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean opened shelters and closed government offices.
The Category 2 storm 95 miles south-southwest of Bermuda was packing maximum sustained winds of 100 mph.
Ernesto’s large eye will likely be very near or over Bermuda early this morning, with significant coastal flooding expected, according to the National Hurricane Center.
“Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,” the center said.
The storm was forecast to dump between 6 and 9 inches of rain. Forecasters noted that Ernesto was a large hurricane, with hurricane-force winds extending up to 75 miles from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extending up to 275 miles.
In preparation for the storm, officials in the wealthy British territory suspended public transportation and closed the airport Friday night.
National Security Minister Michael Weeks warned of dangerous weather conditions starting late Friday, with more than 14 percent of customers already without power and growing.
Dangerous surf and rip currents are also possible on the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas and Atlantic Canada during the next few days, according to the center.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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Hurricane Ernesto barreled toward Bermuda on Thursday after leaving hundreds of thousands of people in Puerto Rico without power or water as sweltering heat enveloped the U.S. territory, raising concerns about people’s health.
A hurricane warning was in effect for Bermuda, with Ernesto expected to pass near or over the island on Saturday. The Category 1 storm was about 450 miles south-southwest of Bermuda on Thursday afternoon. It had maximum sustained winds of 90 mph and was moving north at 13 mph over open waters.
Ernesto was forecast to near Category 3 hurricane status today and then decrease in strength as it approaches Bermuda, where it is expected to drop between 6-12 inches of rain, with up to 15 inches in isolated areas. Ernesto is then expected to pass near or east of Atlantic Canada on Monday.
Meanwhile, the storm on Thursday was generating southern winds in Puerto Rico, which have a heating effect as opposed to the typical cooling trade winds that blow from the east.
More than 290,000 of 1.4 million customers remained without power Thursday evening, more than a day after Ernesto swiped past Puerto Rico late Tuesday as a tropical storm before strengthening into a hurricane. A maximum of 735,000 clients were without power on Wednesday.
Hundreds of thousands also were without water.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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Hurricane Ernesto dropped torrential rain on Puerto Rico and knocked out power for nearly half of all customers in the U.S. territory Wednesday as it threatened to become a major storm en route to Bermuda.
The hurricane was over open water about 720 miles south-southwest of Bermuda with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph and moving north at 16 mph.
A hurricane watch was issued for Bermuda, while tropical storm warnings were discontinued for Puerto Rico and its outlying islands of Vieques and Culebra and for the U.S. and British Virgin Islands.
“I know it was a long night listening to that wind howl,” U.S. Virgin Islands
Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. said in a news conference.
An islandwide blackout was reported in St. Croix, and at least six cellphone towers were offline across the U.S. territory, said Daryl Jaschen, emergency management director. He added that the airports in St. Croix and St. Thomas were expected to reopen at midday.
Schools and government agencies remained closed in the U.S. and British Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, where heavy flooding was reported in several areas, forcing officials to block roads, some of which were strewn with trees. More than 140 flights were canceled to and from Puerto Rico.
“A lot of rain, a lot of rain,” Culebra Mayor Edilberto Romero said in a phone interview. “We have trees that have fallen on public roads. There are some roofs that are blown off.”
Flash flood warnings remained in effect because of ongoing rains.
Ernesto is forecast to strengthen into a major hurricane and its center is expected to pass near Bermuda on Saturday.
Forecasters also warned of heavy swells along the U.S. East Coast.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season this year because of record warm ocean temperatures.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Tropical Storm Ernesto battered the northeast Caribbean on Tuesday as it took aim at Puerto Rico, where officials closed schools, opened shelters and moved dozens of the U.S. territory’s endangered parrots into hurricane-proof rooms.
Ernesto was expected to become a hurricane overnight Tuesday as the center of the storm moved just northeast of Puerto Rico on a path toward Bermuda. Forecasters issued a hurricane watch and tropical storm warning for the U.S. and British Virgin Islands as well as the tiny Puerto Rican islands of Vieques and Culebra, which are popular with tourists.
“Since there is some chance of Ernesto becoming a hurricane while it is near the Virgin Islands, a hurricane watch remains in effect,” the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
The storm moved over the U.S. Virgin Islands on Tuesday night and was forecast to pass just northeast and north of Puerto Rico late Tuesday and early today. It is then expected to move into open waters and be near Bermuda on Friday.
Heavy rains began pelting Puerto Rico, and strong winds churned the ocean into a milky turquoise as people rushed to finish securing homes and businesses.
“I’m hoping it will go away quickly,” said José Rodríguez, 36, as he climbed on the roof of his uncle’s wooden shack in the Afro-Caribbean community of Piñones on Puerto Rico’s north coast to secure the business famous for its fried street food.
Ernesto was about 20 miles east of St. Thomas on Tuesday night. It had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph and was moving west-northwest at 18 mph.
“We are going to have a lot of rain,” Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said as he urged people to be indoors by early Tuesday evening.
He activated the National Guard as crews across the island visited flood-prone areas and older residents as part of last-minute preparations.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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EAST COUNTY - A brush fire near Jamul quickly charred 10 to 15 acres Monday afternoon, threatening homes and prompting an evacuation order for residents nearest the flames before firefighters got a handle on it.
The blaze, dubbed the Anita fire, was reported around 1:30 p.m. in the area of Millar Ranch Road and Millar Anita Lane in the San Miguel area, south of state Route 94 in East County, said Cal Fire Capt. Thomas Shoots. More than 100 firefighters attacked the blaze, with planes and helicopters dropping water and fire retardant.
Residents initially were told to shelter in place, Shoots said. Residents nearest the fire were soon put under an evacuation order and were told to go to the Regal Edwards Rancho San Diego theaters on Jamacha Road, particularly those needing extra time or bringing animals with them.
Eastbound SR-94 at state Route-54 was temporarily closed but had reopened by 4:30 p.m., according to Caltrans.
Shoots said firefighters from several agencies were quickly on the blaze because they were participating in a training exercise nearby. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. Shoots said law enforcement officers were looking into it.
“It is quite hilly and very brushy,” Shoots said of the affected area. There are homes on large lots in the area, and the “fire appears to have gone all around” the homes, Shoots said at one point.
“The fire is mostly terrain-driven, running up the slopes,” he said. “It doesn’t appear the wind is a huge factor where I’m at, but we do have an onshore breeze.”
By mid-afternoon, crews began to get the upper hand. At 3:35 p.m., the fire’s spread had been stopped and it was reported to be 20 percent contained, Cal Fire said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
(Karen Kucher, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE )
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AUSTIN, TX - Texas’ attorney general launched an investigation Monday into Houston’s electric utility over allegations of fraud and waste following Hurricane Beryl, adding to the mounting scrutiny after widespread power outages left millions without electricity for days.
The latest investigation of CenterPoint Energy comes after state regulators and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott have also demanded answers about storm preparations and the response to Beryl, a Category 1 hurricane that knocked out power to nearly 3 million people around the nation’s fourth-largest city.
The storm was blamed for at least three dozen deaths, including those of some residents who died in homes that were left without air conditioning in sweltering heat after the storm’s passage.
“My office is aware of concerning allegations regarding CenterPoint and how its conduct affected readiness during Hurricane Beryl,” Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general, said in a statement. “If the investigation uncovers unlawful activity, that activity will be met with the full force of the law.”
The utility pledged its support of the investigation.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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A major wildfire raged across the northern suburbs of Athens on Monday, leaving at least one person dead and triggering multiple evacuations as swirling winds hampered the efforts of hundreds of firefighters and dozens of water-dropping planes.
Fire officials said shortly after midnight that firefighters found a body in a burned building in the suburb of Vrilissia, but was unable to provide further details.
The blaze started Sunday near Lake Marathon, about 22 miles northeast of Athens, coursed across Mount Pendeli and reached the capital’s northern suburbs. It burned several homes and businesses in the suburbs and in communities near the lake.
Greece went on high alert but by late night Monday, a drop in winds offered hope, and officials reported progress against the fast-moving blaze that spawned flames more than 80 feet tall.
Fire Department spokesperson Col. Vassileios Vathrakogiannis said crews were no longer battling a single front but “many active localized blazes,” mostly around Marathon and Pendeli.
The Marathon area was the site of a famous battle between Greeks and Persians in 490 B.C. and hosts a museum and archaeological site, but there were no reports of damage from the blaze to either.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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KAMPALA, Uganda - A vast landfill site in the Ugandan capital has collapsed, killing at least 18 people, the Red Cross said.
Fourteen other people were injured when the Kiteezi landfill, which serves as a waste disposal site for much of Kampala, collapsed late Friday. At least two of the dead were children, Kampala Capital City Authority said in a statement.
The collapse is believed to have been triggered by heavy rainfall. The precise details of what happened were unclear, but the city authority said there was a “structural failure in waste mass.”
Irene Nakasiita, a spokesperson for the Uganda Red Cross, said the toll reached 18 after more bodies were retrieved from the scene Sunday. “The assessment is not yet completed,” she said, adding that rainfall was slowing the efforts of rescue teams digging through heaps of trash.
The Kiteezi landfill is on a steep slope in an impoverished part of the city. Women and children who scavenge plastic waste for income frequently gather there, and some homes have been built close to the landfill.
Kampala authorities for years have considered closing the site and commissioning a larger area outside the city as a waste disposal site. It was not clear why the plan has failed to take off since 2016.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni ordered an investigation into the incident, asking in a series of posts on the social platform X why people were living in close proximity to an unstable heap of garbage. “Who allowed people to live near such a potentially hazardous and dangerous heap?” Museveni said, adding that effluent from the site is hazardous enough that people should not be living there.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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ATHENS, Greece - A wildfire burned northeast of Athens on Sunday, darkening the sky as the smell of smoke and soot pervaded the Greek capital.
More than 400 firefighters, 110 fire engines and a large number of volunteers were fighting the fire, which broke out around 3 p.m. local time around 22 miles from Athens. The 15 firefighting planes and nine helicopters were operating by late afternoon but stopped at sunset.
The flames were moving fast toward Lake Marathon, an important reservoir supplying Athens with water, said Fire Col. Vassileios Vathrakogiannis, a spokesperson for the fire department. An unknown number of houses have been damaged.
Vathrakogiannis said winds reached gale force strength in the area of the fire and flames exceeded 80 feet in height. Residents of the villages near the area of the fire have been warned by emergency text messaging to evacuate.
In the afternoon, messages were also sent to residents of some northern Athens suburbs to do the same. Police said they evacuated more than 200 people, mostly elderly and others who did not heed the warnings.
Another fire that broke out west of Athens has been contained, the spokesperson said.
Hot and dry weather, made worse by strong winds, increases the danger of wildfires. June and July were the hottest months ever recorded in Greece.
Both meteorologists and government officials have warned of the heightened danger of wildfires because of weather conditions from Sunday until Thursday. Half of the country will be under a “red alert,” Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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PHILADELPHIA, PA - The weather system previously known as Hurricane Debby was not quite done with parts of the United States on Sunday as flood warnings remained in effect in North Carolina and thousands were without power in New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
After hitting Florida as a hurricane Aug. 5, the storm spent nearly a week unleashing tornadoes and flooding, damaging homes and taking lives along the East Coast before moving into Canada on Saturday.
While many rivers had receded by Sunday, flood warnings remained in effect across central and eastern North Carolina, where more thunderstorms were possible over the next few days. With the ground already saturated from Debby, the National Weather Service said localized downpours could result in additional flash flooding throughout the coastal Carolinas.
Authorities in Lumberton, N.C., said in a Facebook post Saturday that one person died after driving into floodwaters on a closed road and getting swept away. Officials didn’t identify the driver.
“It bears repeating,” the agency said in the post. “Never drive into flooded roadways and obey road closed signage.”
In South Carolina, the National Weather Service’s Charleston office warned Sunday that as much as 3 to 4 inches of additional rainfall was possible in the afternoon and evening, and could lead to flash flooding. Showers and thunderstorms could develop across Charleston County down through Chatham County and inland, the office said.
Even in drier areas, more than 35,000 homes and businesses in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont still had no electricity as of Sunday afternoon, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us. Some 23,000 outages lingered in hard-hit Ohio, where Debby-related storms including tornadoes blew through the northeastern part of the state on Wednesday.
Debby’s last day and night over the U.S. inundated parts of New York,
Pennsylvania and New England with rain and flash flooding on Friday, prompting evacuations and rescues.
Stacey Urban, whose family owns the Moss Vanwie Farm in Canisteo, N.Y., said the floodwaters destroyed about three-fourths of the 1,200-acre farm, including about 400 acres of corn, 200 acres of soybeans and hundreds more acres of hay used to feed their animals.
Urban said the family, which has operated the farm about 37 years, hasn’t had a chance to take a full accounting of the damage but said all their 150 cows and 200 youngstock are safe and all farm equipment has been recovered.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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The sun came out but the power stayed off in more than 100,000 homes and businesses across four states Saturday as Debby finally moved out of the U.S.
After first arriving in Florida as a hurricane, the storm spent the better part of a week unleashing tornadoes and flooding, damaging homes and taking lives as it moved up the East Coast.
Though the skies cleared, a flood warning remained in effect until Saturday night in a small part of northern New York where up to 7 inches of rain fell. The National Weather Service said water there was receding slowly, and many roads remained flooded.
Nearly 170,000 customers in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont had no electricity Saturday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us, and some utilities said restoration could take days. More than half the outages were in Ohio, where Debby-related storms including tornadoes blew through the northeastern part of the state on Wednesday.
Debby’s last day over the U.S. before moving over Canada inundated south-central New York and north-central Pennsylvania with rain Friday, prompting evacuations and rescues by helicopter. The post-tropical cyclone continued dropping rain on New England and southern Quebec on Friday night, though conditions improved the following morning as the system continued moving northeast.
Some of the worst flash flooding in New York happened in villages and hamlets in a largely rural area south of the Finger Lakes. In Steuben County, which borders Pennsylvania, officials ordered the evacuation of the towns of Jasper, Woodhull and part of Addison, and said people were trapped as floodwaters made multiple roads impassable.
The recovery effort was under way Saturday, as emergency workers cleared debris and helped residents pump floodwater from their basements.
Officials in Tioga County in north-central Pennsylvania said a search and rescue operation was going on for one person unaccounted for in the Knoxville area after flooding that prompted dozens of rescues.
Fire Chief William Goltz of Crary Hose Co. in Westfield said 30 to 50 water rescues were conducted using boats aided by two helicopters, and those rescued included some firefighters who became trapped while trying to help others.
Officials said about 100 people were displaced and several shelters opened, but by midday Saturday only 14 remained in one shelter. They urged people to document damage before beginning cleanup and to send them any images of the flooding.
Debby was downgraded to a tropical depression Thursday afternoon and was a post-tropical cyclone on Friday, the National Hurricane Center said. It made landfall early Monday on the Gulf Coast of Florida as a Category 1 hurricane, emerged over the Atlantic Ocean and hit land a second time early Thursday in South Carolina as a tropical storm.
There have been at least nine deaths related to Debby, mostly in vehicle accidents or from fallen trees.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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First responders launched high-water and helicopter rescues of people trapped in cars and homes in rural New York and Pennsylvania as heavy rain from the remnants of Debby slammed the Northeast with intense floods.
The worst of the flash flooding so far in New York was occurring in villages and hamlets in a largely rural area south of the Finger Lakes, not far from the Pennsylvania border.
In Steuben County, which borders Pennsylvania, officials ordered the evacuation of the towns of Jasper, Woodhull and part of Addison, and said people were trapped as floodwaters made multiple roads impassable. By mid-evening, some of those orders were being lifted as threat of severe flooding
passed.
In the hamlet of Woodhull, a rain-swollen creek ran so ferociously that the water overtopped a bridge. Area resident Stephanie Waters said parts of sheds, branches and uprooted trees were among the debris that slammed into the span.
“Hearing the trees hit the bridge was scary,” she said. Fire Chief Timothy Martin said everybody was safe in the town, but “every business in Woodhull is damaged.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro declared states of emergency.
Stormwater swamped parts of downtown Annapolis, MD, including at the U.S. Naval Academy on Friday. And flash flooding hit the South Carolina town of Moncks Corner, where one of Debby’s early bands unleashed a tornado on Tuesday.
There have been at least nine deaths related to Debby, most in vehicle crashes or from fallen trees.
More than 150,000 customers were without power across New York and Pennsylvania, according to PowerOutage.us.
In Vermont more than 47,000 customers were without power.
Debby, which made landfall Monday as Category 1 hurricane, was downgraded to a tropical depression late Thursday afternoon and was a post-tropical cyclone on Friday, the National Hurricane Center said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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The death toll from nearly six weeks of monsoon rains and flash floods across Pakistan has risen to 156, officials said Thursday, as downpours continued in much of the country, inundating some villages and causing landslides.
More than 1,800 homes have been damaged since July 1, when the monsoon rains began, the National Disaster Management Authority said. Orchards in remote areas of the southwestern Baluchistan province have also been damaged, and rains flooded many streets in the eastern city of Lahore.
Many of the 156 deaths occurred in the eastern Punjab and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, according to the disaster agency and provincial authorities. Nearly 300 people were also injured in the rain-related incidents.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES )
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TOKYO, Japan - A powerful earthquake struck off southern Japan on Thursday, causing mostly minor injuries but raising the level of concern over possible major quakes stemming from an undersea trough east of the coast.
Officials said nine people were injured on Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu, but the injuries were mostly minor. There were no reports of serious damage, and tsunami advisories for the quake were later lifted.
However, the quake prompted seismologists to hold an emergency meeting in which they reassessed and raised the level of risk of major quakes associated with the Nankai Trough east of southern Japan. The Japan Meteorological Agency said it will continue to closely watch movements of plates near the Nankai Trough.
The Jagency said that Thursday’s quake registered magnitude 7.1 and was centered in waters off the eastern coast of Kyushu at a depth of about 19 miles below sea surface.
The quake most strongly shook Nichinan city and nearby areas in Miyazaki prefecture on Kyushu island.
The agency said tsunami waves of up to 1.6 feet were detected along parts of Kyushu’s southern coast and the nearby island of Shikoku about a half hour after the quake struck. Tsunami advisories were issued, but lifted for most areas three hours later, and for all remaining coastlines five and a half hours later.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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LUCAMA, NC - Tornadoes spawned by Debby leveled homes, damaged a school and killed one person early Thursday, as the tropical system dropped heavy rain and flooded communities across North and South Carolina.
It only took 15 seconds for a tornado to devastate Genesis Cooper’s home in Lucama, N.C., a small town about 40 miles east of Raleigh. He almost slept through it — if not for an alert on his wife’s phone.
He, his wife and their 20-year-old son huddled in a bathroom with blankets. They felt vibrations and heard glass shattering before hearing a sudden boom.
“I can’t even describe it. It’s like, suction, that’s what it felt like,” Cooper said. “Like something is squeezing, like your ears are popping.”
The tornado was one of at least three reported overnight in North Carolina, and perhaps the most devastating. One person was found dead in a home damaged by the Lucama tornado, Wilson County spokesperson Stephen Mann said in an email. No further details on the person were immediately provided.
The superintendent of Wilson County Schools confirmed damage at Springfield Middle School, where sections of the walls and roof of the 6th and 7th grade halls are gone or compromised.
Meanwhile, a dam north of Fayetteville broke Thursday morning as Debby drenched the area. Between 12 and 15 homes were evacuated, but no one was injured and no structures were damaged, officials said.
Debby was a tropical depression by late Thursday afternoon, with maximum sustained winds around 35 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. It made landfall early Monday on the Gulf Coast of Florida as a Category 1 hurricane. Then, Debby made a second landfall early Thursday in South Carolina as a tropical storm.
At least seven people have died due to the tropical weather.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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The month of July kicked off with a dire warning: A rare, long-duration heat event was forecast to bring extreme heat risk across the West, with triple-digit temperatures and dangerous fire conditions expected in much of California for days on end.
That outlook quickly proved accurate — and would end up defining almost the entire month in the Golden State, which would see little relief from unrelenting heat.
As the first heat wave kicked off, utility officials on July 2 initiated the year’s first planned power shutoffs in some Northern California counties, trying to avoid dangerous fire starts in the scorching weather.
Then, record after record across the state shattered. Palm Springs saw its hottest day ever, hitting 124 degrees July 5. Redding hit an all-time high of 119 degrees July 6. Palmdale and Lancaster had almost a week straight of days at or above 110 degrees, more than doubling the cities’ previous streaks.
Tragic outcomes, too, began to mount. Several wildfires that erupted in the extreme heat destroyed homes and sent families fleeing. A motorcyclist died while touring Death Valley. Without much of a reprieve, a second heat wave then broiled the state’s interior. While not as intense or as long as the first, it would still fuel the Park fire’s explosive growth across Butte and Tehama counties. Within a matter of days, the blaze would become one of the largest wildfires in California history.
It was a historic month for extreme heat, and now climate data have confirmed just how unprecedented it was: July 2024 was officially California’s hottest on record.
July’s average temperature across the Golden State was 81.7 degrees, surpassing the prior record from July 2021 by almost two degrees, according to data published Thursday by the National Centers for Environmental Information, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The agency’s statewide climate data goes back to 1895.
“July’s heat was remarkable not only for its sheer intensity ... but also for its duration,” Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist wrote in a blog post anticipating the release of Thursday’s data. “Temperatures remained extremely elevated for weeks on end and did not substantially cool off at night, especially in the foothill thermal belts.”
Meteorologists and climate scientists said the mark doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise, but falls into the globe’s path of dangerous warming driven by human-caused climate change.
Of California’s hottest months on record, the top three occurred in the last seven years.
Globally, July also saw two of the hottest days in recorded history, hitting an average surface temperature of 17.15 degrees Celsius, or 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit, on both July 22 and 23, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Interestingly, for the first time in 13 months, global temperatures did not set a record high for the respective month, with the average temperature for July coming in approximately 0.04 degrees Celsius behind the record from July 2023. However, July 2024 still became the second-warmest month globally on record.
“The streak of record-breaking months has come to an end, but only by a whisker,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. “The overall context hasn’t changed, our climate continues to warm. The devastating effects of climate change started well before 2023 and will continue until global greenhouse gas emissions reach net-zero.”
Halfway through the year, the world’s temperatures would need to fall drastically to not become — once again — the warmest year on record, the climate agency reported.
In California and the West, NOAA officials warned that the region is favored to again see above-average temperatures in August, with “significant wildland fire potential,” according to the agency’s climate report released Thursday.
It remains to be seen if August could rival the early-July prolonged heat wave, which proved a main factor in shattering California’s monthly heat records, as well as several other records across the state.
“We’ve had heat waves before that were maybe a week or so, but this one was just so persistent,” said Andrew Gorelow, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Las Vegas, which provides forecasts for much of southeastern California.
Death Valley, the national park known for its sweltering temperatures, also recorded its hottest month on record, with average high temperatures hitting 121.9 degrees, according to park officials. Temperatures reached at least 120 degrees on all but seven days in the month, and the hottest day, July 7, hit 129 degrees.
“Six of the 10 hottest summers have come in the last 10 years, which should serve as a wake up call,” Mike Reynolds, Death Valley National Park superintendent, said in a statement. “Record-breaking months like this one could become the norm as we continue to see global temperatures rise.”
The historic month saw a variety of new records across California:
Both Lancaster and Palmdale set a record for the most consecutive days over 100 degrees — 25 in a row, from July 2 to 26, beating the prior record of 23 days, according to the National Weather Service.
July was also both Lancaster and Palmdale’s hottest month on record. Lancaster had an average high of 104.9 degrees, 2 degrees higher than the record set in August 2022. Palmdale’s July average temperature was 105.4 degrees, also 2 degrees higher than the record set in July 1961.
Sanberg, in the Los Angeles County mountains, hit its hottest month on record, with an average monthly temperature of 93.5 degrees. The prior record was 92.5 degrees, set in July 2021.
Palm Springs, which hit its hottest day in history, also had its hottest month, with an average high of 114.9 degrees — beating the record from last July.
In the Central Valley, Merced, Madera, Fresno and Bakersfield also recorded their hottest month in known history, with average temperatures breaking records set from 1931 to 2021, according to the National Weather Service.
Several regions in the Sacramento Valley, including Red Bluff, Redding and Modesto, hit their hottest July on record this year, according to the National Weather Service.
(Grace Toohey, LOS ANGELES TIMES )
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Days of rain forced the deluge-hardened residents of a South Carolina community to begin the near-ritualistic task of assessing damage left behind by Tropical Storm Debby, which continued spinning over the Atlantic Ocean and influencing thunderstorms from the East Coast to the Great Lakes on Wednesday.
In Huger, about 15 miles northeast of Charleston, Gene Taylor was waiting in the afternoon for a few inches of water to drain from his house along French Quarter Creek as high tide passed.
Taylor saw the potential for flooding last week and started moving belongings out or up higher in his home. It’s a lesson learned the hard way — Taylor estimated that this is the fourth time he has had floodwater in his home in the past nine years. “To save everything, we’ve learned from the past it’s better be prepared for the worst. And unfortunately, I think we got it,” Taylor said.
The National Hurricane Center warned that isolated areas could see up to 25 inches of rain from Debby. Additionally, the National Weather Service’s office in Charleston said survey teams confirmed four-Debby related tornadoes.
In Georgia, at least four dams were breached northwest of Savannah in Bulloch County, but no deaths had been reported, authorities said at a briefing.
More than 75 people were rescued from floodwaters in the county, said Corey Kemp, director of emergency management, and about 100 roads were closed.
Debby also dumped rain on communities all the way up to the Great Lakes and New York and New Jersey. Moisture from the tropical storm strengthened another system Tuesday evening, which caused strong thunderstorms, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Kleebauer.
As much as 6 inches of rain fell in parts of New Jersey in less than four hours.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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Tropical Storm Debby drenched coastal cities in Georgia and South Carolina, stirred up tornadoes and submerged streets with waist-high floodwaters Tuesday in what is just the beginning of a prolonged storm that could dump staggering rain totals of up to 25 inches.
Charleston and Savannah took the first blow, with up to a foot of rain falling along the coast between the two cities in just over 24 hours. Police blocked all the roads into Charleston’s downtown peninsula as a precaution. Dozens of roads were closed in the historic city because of flooding similar to what it sees several times a year because of rising sea levels.
As Debby swirls just offshore, the heavy rain is expected to move north into parts of South Carolina and North Carolina that have already seen two billion- dollar floods in eight years.
In one Savannah neighborhood, firefighters used boats Tuesday afternoon to evacuate some residents and waded in waist-deep floodwaters to deliver bottled water and supplies to others who refused to leave.
Michael Jones said downpours sent water gushing into his home Monday evening, overturning the refrigerator and causing furniture to float. Outside, the water seemed to be everywhere and was too deep to flee safely. So Jones spent a sleepless night on his kitchen table before firefighters going door-to- door came to his home in a boat Tuesday morning. “It was hell all night,” Jones said. He added: “It was a struggle, but God is good.”
Officials in Charleston continued a curfew, closing all roads into the downtown peninsula and letting only essential workers and emergency personnel pass through.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said Debby hasn’t yet been as bad as feared, but he warned residents the slow-moving storm was far from over.
The storm, which made landfall Sunday in Florida as a Category 1 hurricane before being downgraded, was expected to slowly move out to sea, then reverse and creep back onshore Thursday near Charleston.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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More than 120 people died of heatstroke in the Tokyo metropolitan area in July, when the nation’s average temperature hit record highs and heat warnings were in effect much of the month, Japanese authorities said Tuesday.
According to the Tokyo Medical Examiner’s Office, many of the 123 people who died were elderly. All but two were found dead indoors, and most were not using air conditioners despite having them installed.
Japanese health authorities and weather forecasters repeatedly advised people to stay indoors, consume ample liquids to avoid dehydration and use air conditioning, because elderly people often think that air conditioning is not good for one’s health and tend to avoid using it.
It was the largest number of heatstroke deaths in Tokyo’s 23 metropolitan districts in July since 127 deaths were recorded during a 2018 heatwave, the medical examiner’s office said.
More than 37,000 people were treated at hospitals for heatstroke across Japan from July 1 to July 28, officials said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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HORSESHOE BEACH, FL - Tropical Storm Debby slammed Florida on Monday with torrential rain and high winds, contributing to at least four deaths in the state and the rescue of hundreds from flooded homes before turning menacingly toward the Eastern Seaboard’s low-lying regions and threatening to flood some of America’s most historic Southern cities.
Record-setting rain was causing flash flooding, with up to 30 inches possible in some areas, the National Hurricane Center said.
About 500 people were rescued from flooded homes in Sarasota, FL, a beach city popular with tourists, the Sarasota Police Department said in a social media post. It was one of the cities hardest hit by flooding on Monday.
“Essentially we’ve had twice the amount of the rain that was predicted for us to have,” Sarasota County Fire Chief David Rathbun said in a social media update.
Just north of Sarasota, officials in Manatee County said in a news release that 186 people were rescued from floodwaters.
A flash flood emergency was issued into Monday evening for the Lake City area in the north central part of the state, where up to a foot of rain had fallen and more was expected.
Debby made landfall along the Gulf Coast of Florida early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane. It since has weakened to a tropical storm and is moving slowly, covering roads with water and contributing to at least four deaths.
Nearly 200,000 customers remained without power in Florida and Georgia on Monday evening, down from a peak of more than 350,000, according to PowerOutage.us..
Airports were also affected. More than 1,600 flights had been canceled nationwide, many of them to and from Florida airports, according to FlightAware.com.
The potential for high water also threatened Savannah, GA, and Charleston, SC, With winds and rainfall expected to worsen overnight, authorities in each city issued curfews — from 10 p.m. Monday until 6 a.m. today for Savannah and starting at 11 p.m. Monday for Charleston.
North Carolina is also under a state of emergency after Gov. Roy Cooper declared it in an executive order signed Monday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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BUFFALO, NY - A small tornado took Buffalo by surprise Monday, damaging buildings, flipping cars and sending debris swirling over downtown.
A spiraling column was caught on multiple videos shortly before 2 p.m.
One video showed the cell appearing to move from Lake Erie into the city, on the lake’s shore, sending pieces of roofing flying before quickly dissipating.
“It surprised everyone,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said at a news conference.
In the aftermath, photos showed a car on its roof in a parking lot, street signs bent and fallen tree limbs across roads and sidewalks.
After assessing the scene, a National Weather Service team confirmed that a tornado had touched down on the city’s west side.
There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Poloncarz said a nursing facility damaged in the storm was assessing whether to move its patients.
A school sustained damage to some windows, several traffic lights were knocked offline and some cars were overturned, Mayor Byron Brown said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA - A slow-moving, 5,200-acre brush fire burning in a federal preserve on the southern tip of Riverside County, along the boundary with San Diego County, was triggered by a faulty electrical panel on private property, officials confirmed Friday.
The fire was one-fifth contained and no longer was threatening any homes or other structures, situated within the Beauty Mountain Wilderness, maintained by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Four structures were destroyed by the blaze, which prompted an evacuation order for the scattered homes south of Highway 371, north of the county line, west of Terwilliger Road and east of Foolish Pleasure Road.
Evacuation warnings were also in place in parts of Riverside and San Diego counties.
The orders were expected to be lifted any time.
The blaze erupted about 12:30 p.m. last Monday in the area of Richard Nixon Boulevard and Tule Peak Road, according to the Riverside County Fire Department.
At its height, more than 1,000 personnel were battling the blaze, including county fire crews, Cal Fire San Diego crews and BLM firefighters.
One flank of the fire briefly crossed into San Diego County earlier last week, blackening 2 open acres before firefighters extinguished that section of flames.
(CITY NEWS SERVICE )
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CHICO, CA - Fire crews battling California’s largest wildfire this year have corralled a third of the blaze aided in part by cooler weather, but a return of triple-digit temperatures could allow it to grow, fire officials said Sunday.
Cooler temperatures and increased humidity gave firefighters “a great opportunity to make some good advances” on the fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills, said Chris Vestal, a spokesperson for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
As of Sunday evening, the Park fire had scorched 627 square miles [401,000 acres] since igniting July 24 when authorities said a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico and then fled. The blaze was 31 percent contained as of Sunday night.
The massive fire has scorched an area bigger than the city of Los Angeles, which covers about 503 square miles [322,000 acres]. It continues to burn through rugged, inaccessible and steep terrain with dense vegetation.
The fire’s push northward has brought it toward the rugged lava rock landscape surrounding Lassen Volcanic National Park, which has been closed because of the threat. The inhospitable terrain remains one of the biggest challenges for firefighters.
“The challenge with that is we can’t use our heavy machinery like bulldozers to go through and cut a line right through it,” Vestal said. “On top of that, we have to put human beings, our hand crews, in to remove those fuels and some of that terrain is not really the greatest for people that are hiking so it takes a long time and extremely hard work,” he added.
The fire has destroyed at least 640 structures and damaged 52 others. At least 2,700 people in Butte and Tehama counties remain under evacuation orders, Veal said.
After days of smoky skies, clear skies Sunday allowed firefighters to deploy helicopters and other aircraft to aid in the fight against the blaze as temperatures reached above 100 degrees.
The fire in Northern California is one of 85 large blazes burning across the West.
In Colorado, firefighters were making progress Sunday against three major fires burning near heavily populated areas north and south of Denver. Many residents evacuated by the fires have been allowed to go back home.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a blaze threatening hundreds of homes near the Colorado city of Littleton as arson.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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TAMPA, FL - Tropical Storm Debby strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane as it approached Florida on Sunday evening, according to the National Weather Service.
Debby is the fourth named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.
Forecasters warned heavy amounts of rain from Debby could spawn catastrophic flooding in Florida, South Carolina and Georgia.
The storm was expected to make landfall around midday today in the Big Bend area of Florida, the National Hurricane Center said. A tornado watch also was in effect for parts of Florida and Georgia.
“Right now, we are trying secure everything from floating away,” said Sheryl Horne, whose family owns the Shell Island Fish Camp along the Wakulla River in St. Marks, FL, where some customers moved their boats inland. “I am used to storms and I’m used to cleaning up after storms,” Horne said.
Debby was expected to move eastward over northern Florida and then stall over the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina, lashing the region with potential record-setting rains totaling up to 30 inches beginning Tuesday. Officials also warned of life-threatening storm surge along Florida’s Gulf Coast, with 6 to 10 feet of inundation expected today between the Ochlockonee and Suwannee rivers.
Flooding impacts could last through Friday and are expected to be especially severe in low-lying areas near the coast, including Savannah, GA; Hilton Head, SC; and Charleston, SC. North Carolina officials were monitoring the storm’s progress. Officials in Savannah said the area could see a month’s worth of rain in four days if the system stalls.
Debby’s outer bands grazed the west coast of Florida on Sunday, flooding streets and bringing power outages. Sarasota County officials said most roadways on Siesta Key, a barrier island off the coast of Sarasota, were under water.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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MONTPELIER, VT - The toll of damage from recent flooding in Vermont exceeds $6 million, and the state is asking the federal government for help, officials said.
Vermont residents dealt with heavy flooding that damaged homes and infrastructure last week and came on the heels of wider flooding in the state.
Republican Gov. Phil Scott said Friday the state is asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency for assistance in several counties.
A very early assessment found damage to public infrastructure exceeding $6 million, well above the threshold for a federal disaster declaration, Vermont officials said.
“Many of the communities impacted by the July 30-31 storms were still cleaning up from flooding less than a month ago,” Scott said. “This intense rainstorm devastated homes, businesses, roads, bridges, culverts and other public infrastructure.”
A federal disaster declaration would provide reimbursement to communities for storm repair and response. Vermont officials are asking residents to report damage to the state so it can make the best case possible for federal aid.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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The roughly 650,000 people who live in San Diego County’s valley communities will be under a heat advisory from 10 a.m. today to 11 a.m. Tuesday due to the arrival of another summer heat wave, the National Weather Service said Friday.
Daytime highs are expected to range from the mid-90s to 102 degrees, and the humidity will drop significantly, adding another level of discomfort.
But the seasonal monsoon will disappear over the weekend, largely removing the threat of lightning, a potential source of wildfires. Thursday’s thunderstorms generated 1,350 cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning bolts.
The weather service has advised drivers that the heat will be even worse in the local deserts, rising as high as 114 degrees in places like Ocotillo Wells and Borrego Springs.
The public can find relief at local beaches, where temperatures will be in the mid-to-upper 70s into Tuesday.
Forecasters say it is possible that Hurricane Carlotta, which was 975 miles south of San Diego late Friday afternoon, could send some cooling moisture into Southern California, and possibly bump up the surf a bit.
Sea surface temperatures will be in the 62-to-70-degree range, which is unusually cool for this time of year.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE )
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TALLAHASSEE, FL - A storm system brewing over Cuba on Friday will likely dump torrential rains over the Florida peninsula this weekend, a forecast that’s especially concerning for low-lying coastal and urban areas that were inundated by dangerous floods this year.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said there’s a 90 percent chance it will strengthen into a tropical storm by tonight as it curves northward just off the southwest Florida coast, where the water has been extremely warm, with temperatures approaching 92 degrees Fahrenheit this week.
The hurricane center has labeled it Potential Tropical Cyclone Four for now. The next name on this season’s list is Debby. “Regardless of development, heavy rains could cause areas of flash flooding across Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas through the weekend,” its advisory said.
It doesn’t take a name for flooding to become dangerous. Torrential rains from a tropical disturbance in June left many Florida roads impassable, swamping school buses and stranding residents as cars floated away down flooded streets.
“Hurricanes aren’t the only problem, right?” said Tom Frazer, executive director of the Florida Flood Hub for Applied Research and Innovation at the University of South Florida.
“We can have very rapidly developing storm systems that take advantage of extremely warm sea waters and high water content in the atmosphere to deposit large amounts of rain on various parts of the peninsula,” Frazer said.
Forecasting models predict it could come ashore as a tropical storm on Sunday and cross over Florida’s Big Bend region into the Atlantic Ocean, where it’s likely to remain a tropical storm threatening Georgia and the Carolinas early next week.
In Fort Lauderdale, the flooding in June was so bad that the city has kept open sites where residents can fill up to five sandbags a day until further notice.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency for most Florida counties, extending from the Florida Keys up through Central Florida and the Tampa Bay region and into the western Panhandle.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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CHICO, CA - Firefighters battling California’s largest wildfire of the year are preparing for treacherous conditions entering the weekend when expected thunderstorms may unleash fire-starting lightning and erratic winds that could erode progress made over the past week. Dry, hot conditions posed similar threats across the fire-stricken West.
Weather, fuels and terrain will pose challenges for the nearly 6,400 firefighters battling the Park fire, which has spread over 624 square miles [400,000 acres] since allegedly being started by arson in a park in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of the Sacramento Valley city of Chico. It is now California’s fourth-largest wildfire on record.
Suppression crews working on more than 200 miles of active fire front gained 25 percent containment by Friday evening, Cal Fire said. Temperatures up to 103 degrees Fahrenheit were expected.
After days of benign weather, increasing winds and a surge of monsoonal moisture were expected to increase fire activity and bring a chance of thunderstorms Friday night into today, said Ryan Walbrun, incident meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
“The concern with thunderstorms is any gusty outflow winds that would push the fire itself or create some new fire ignitions within the vicinity of the Park fire,” Walbrun said.
The Park fire is among almost 100 large fires burning across the western U.S. Evacuation orders were in effect for 28 of the fires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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HONOLULU, HI - The parties in lawsuits seeking damages for last year’s Maui wildfires have reached a $4 billion global settlement, according to a court filing Friday, nearly one year after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century.
The term sheet with details of the settlement is not publicly available, but the liaison attorneys filed a motion Friday saying the global settlement seeks to resolve all Maui fire claims for $4.037 billion.
The motion asks the judge to order that insurers can’t separately go after the defendants to recoup money paid to policyholders.
“We’re under no illusions that this is going to make Maui whole,” Jake Lowenthal, a Maui attorney selected as one of four liaisons for the coordination of the cases, told The Associated Press. “We know for a fact that it’s not going to make up for what they lost.”
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said in a statement that seven defendants will pay the $4.037 billion to compensate those who have already brought claims for the Aug. 8, 2023, fires that killed 102 people and destroyed the historic downtown area of Lahaina on Maui.
Green said the proposed settlement is an agreement in principle. He said it was subject to the resolution of insurance companies’ claims that have already been paid for property loss and other damages.
Green said the settlement “will help our people heal.”
“My priority as governor was to expedite the agreement and to avoid protracted and painful lawsuits so as many resources as possible would go to those affected by the wildfires as quickly as possible,” he said in a statement.
He said it was unprecedented to settle lawsuits like this in only one year.
“It will be good that our people don’t have to wait to rebuild their lives as long as others have in many places that have suffered similar tragedies,” Green said.
Lowenthal noted there were “extenuating circumstances” that made lawyers worry the litigation would drag on for years. Some lawyers involved have expressed concern about reaching a settlement before possible bankruptcy of Hawaiian Electric Company.
Now that a settlement has been reached, more work needs to be on next steps, like how to divvy up the amount.
“This is the first step to allowing the Maui fire victims to get compensation sooner than later,” Lowenthal said.
More than 600 lawsuits have been filed over the deaths and destruction caused by the fires, which burned thousands of homes and displaced 12,000 people. In the spring, a judge appointed mediators and ordered all parties to participate in settlement talks.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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FOREST RANCH, CA - Firefighters made progress and were helped by improving weather over the weekend in the battle against wildfires covering massive areas in the western United States, but further evacuations have been necessary as thousands of personnel tackle the flames.
The Park fire, the largest wildfire in California this year and the sixth-largest in the state’s recorded history, was one of more than 100 large active wildfires burning in the U.S. on Monday. The man arrested on suspicion of starting the blaze in Northern California by pushing a burning car into a gully made his first appearance in court Monday and was charged with felony arson of an inhabited structure or property.
Ronnie Dean Stout was arrested at his home in Chico a day after the fire started. Prosecutors said Stout has a previous criminal record and would face life in prison if convicted.
There was no reply to an email to the district attorney asking whether Stout had legal representation or someone who could comment on his behalf. Butte County District Attorney Michael Ramsey told reporters after the hearing that Stout says the incident was an accident, The Sacramento Bee reported.
The Park fire has scorched more than 583 square miles (373,357 acres), an area greater than the city of Los Angeles, as of Monday evening, according to Cal Fire. It has destroyed more than 100 structures and is threatening 4,200 more.
Firefighters increased containment to 14 percent on Monday night, aided by cooler temperatures and more humidity, officials said.
Evacuation orders were in effect Monday for 25 wildfires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. More than 27,000 wildland firefighters and support personnel are assigned to wildfires that have burned more than 3,200 square miles nationwide, the center said. More than 4,800 are fighting the Park fire.
In Cohasset, a small forest community north of where the Park fire started, Ron Ward described on Monday the “nail-biter” experience of saving the buildings on his family’s ranch, which had lost insurance coverage about a month earlier. He and his son Ethan installed a fire protection system — a water line to a pond and sprinklers.
The fire approached with flames hundreds of feet high, Ward said. “It hit our sprinklers and kind of died down and then went around our property and missed, missed all of our structures,” he said.
Although cooler-than-average temperatures are expected through the middle of this week, that doesn’t mean existing fires will disappear, experts at the National Weather Service said. The service issued “red flag” warnings Monday for wide swaths of Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming, in addition to parts of California, meaning dry fuels and stronger winds were increasing the fire danger, the weather service said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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SOUTH COUNTY - Firefighters battled a blaze Sunday afternoon that has charred 90 acres near the U.S.-Mexico border in the area of Tecate Peak, a state fire official said.
As of Sunday evening, the fire’s forward rate of spread was stopped and the fire was 5 percent contained, said Cal Fire Capt. Tom Piranio.
The vegetation fire, which is being called the Border 65 fire, began around 1 p.m. Sunday in Marron Valley, west of Tecate.
The terrain is challenging for firefighters to get to because it’s steep and rugged, Piranio said. Getting ground crews in and attacking the fire from the air are both key to achieving containment, he said.
As of 6:30 p.m. there were no evacuation orders or warnings issued, and the fire was burning in wide open space, he said.
Cal Fire firefighters were also simultaneously battling another brush fire that ignited Sunday. That 12-acre fire in De Luz, north of Fallbrook, began around 10:15 a.m. At one point, county officials issued an evacuation warning for residents in the area as it was threatening homes.
Shortly after 1 p.m., Cal Fire reported the forward rate of spread of that fire had also been stopped. The fire was 75 percent contained as of Sunday evening.
(Kristen Take, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE )
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Fifteen people were killed after a mudslide hit a homestay house in a tourist area in southeastern China on Sunday as heavy rains from what remained of a tropical storm drenched the region, state media said.
Elsewhere in China, a delivery person on a scooter was killed Saturday after being hit by a falling tree in Shanghai, apparently because of storm-related winds, according to The Paper, a digital news outlet.
The deaths were the first in China that appear linked to Typhoon Gaemi, which weakened to a tropical storm after making landfall on Thursday. Before reaching China, the typhoon intensified monsoon rains in the Philippines, leaving at least 34 dead, and swept across the island of Taiwan, where the death toll has risen to 10, authorities said late Saturday.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES )
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Get ready for a meteor shower doubleheader.
The Southern Delta Aquariid meteor shower peaks in late July. And this year, it will coincide with a second smaller meteor shower, the Alpha Capricornids.
The Delta Aquariids occur every year in North America’s late summer. This year’s peak activity happens early Tuesday morning, with an expected 15 to 20 meteors visible per hour in the Northern Hemisphere, under dark skies. The shower lasts through Aug. 21, according to the American Meteor Society.
Around the same time, the Alpha Capricornid meteor shower should produce around five meteors per hour and lasts through Aug. 15.
Meteor showers don’t typically require the use of special equipment to be seen. Meteor showers are usually most visible between midnight and predawn hours.
It’s easier to see these “shooting stars” under dark skies, away from city lights. Meteor showers also appear brightest on cloudless nights when the moon wanes smallest.
And your eyes will better adapt to seeing meteors if you aren’t checking your phone. “It ruins your night vision,” said NASA’s Bill Cooke.
The Southern Hemisphere will have the best view of Delta Aquariids. Coinciding with a waning moon around 30 percent full means the clearest viewing will happen after midnight.
The meteor society keeps an updated list of upcoming large meteor showers, including the peak viewing days and moonlight conditions.
The next major meteor shower will be the Perseids, peaking in mid-August.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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FOREST RANCH, CA - Wildfires across the western United States and Canada put millions of people under air quality alerts on Sunday as thousands of firefighters battled the flames, including the largest wildfire in California this year.
The Park fire had scorched an area greater than the size of Los Angeles as of Sunday, darkening the sky with smoke and contributing poor air quality to a large swath of the northwestern U.S. and western Canada. The blaze spanned more than 550 square miles — 352,000 acres — of inland Northern California.
Firefighters were helped by cooler temperatures and more humidity on Saturday and made some progress, increasing containment from zero to 12 percent. The fire has drawn comparisons to the 2018 Camp fire that tore through the nearby community of Paradise, killing 85 people and torching 11,000 homes.
Paradise and several other Butte County communities were under an evacuation warning Sunday.
First responders initially focused on saving lives and property endangered by the Park fire, but that has since shifted to confronting the blaze head-on, Jay Tracy, a spokesperson at the Park fire headquarters, said Sunday. Nearly 4,000 firefighters are battling the blaze, aided by numerous helicopters and air tankers, and Tracy said reinforcements would give much-needed rest to local firefighters, some of whom have been working nonstop since the fire started Wednesday.
“This fire is surprising a lot of people with its explosive growth,” he said. “It is kind of unparalleled.”
The Park fire has destroyed at least 66 structures and damaged five others, Tracy said. Authorities initially believed 134 structures had been lost, based on drone footage, but they lowered the number after teams assessed the damage in person.
“Unfortunately, that number will probably go up,” Tracy said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS )
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In the past several years, homeowners across the state have been either burdened with extremely high insurance premiums or have struggled to find coverage at all. Wildfires have sent California’s homeowners insurance market into crisis and the situation is only getting worse. So far, 2024 has seen roughly 687,000 acres burned in California, compared to 25,272 acres by this time last
year, according to Cal Fire data Sunday. As wildfires become more frequent and destructive, insurers have worked to lower their risk exposure through rate hikes, non-renewals, and even halting new policies in the state entirely.
New buyers and those whose policies have not been renewed have limited options since the biggest companies, State Farm, Farmers, Allstate, USAA, Travelers, Nationwide and Chubb, have limited or paused new policies in the last few years. Earlier this month State Farm’s cancellations of 30,000 homeowner policies mostly in high wildfire risk areas, took effect. In late June, State Farm requested a 31 percent rate increase, its largest increase in recent history, on the heels of a 22 percent increase earlier this year. Allstate also recently filed a request for a significant 34 percent rate increase.
Homeowners are finding the expense and lack of options unsustainable. Sharon Goldman, a longtime resident of the Pacific Palisades, has not had her policy canceled yet, but she has seen increases to her premium and worries she could be next. In her ZIP code the wildfire risk is high, and State Farm decided to not renew 70 percent of their policies. Starting in 2019, rates of non-renewals in high- and very high-risk areas grew to 14 percent compared with 3 percent and 2 percent for moderate- and low-risk areas.Goldman, using her maiden name out of concern for retribution from State Farm, has paid her premiums each year since she bought her home 50 years ago. She has never filed a claim. But she has seen her rate increase 78 percent in the past two years. Her agent has told her that her fire coverage will be replaced with the state-run FAIR plan in 2025, an increasingly common insurer strategy that leaves homeowners paying more for less coverage.
Goldman and her neighbors are left wondering what options they have left. She hears stories of people paying tens of thousands a year, an impossible amount for her to cover on her retirement budget. She has started looking into moving out of state and out of the home where she raised her children.
While the state does not require insurance, mortgage lenders do. So, going without is not an option for many. Those whose mortgage is paid off, like Goldman, may not be comfortable leaving their home, typically their most expensive asset, uninsured. High rates and loss of fire coverage have pushed desperate homeowners to riskier non-admitted carriers or to the state-run FAIR plan, meant to be the plan of last resort. But the California Department of Insurance worries that it is quickly becoming overburdened.
Over the past year, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has been rolling out his plan to increase policy writing in vulnerable areas and get people off of the FAIR plan. One big component of his strategy is allowing insurers to use wildfire catastrophe models to set overall rates. Insurers say the tool would help them more accurately predict the correct rate for the amount of risk.
As a trade-off, Lara says companies that use these models will be required to increase service in distressed areas with a high wildfire risk and a high concentration of FAIR plan policies.
In public workshops held by the Department of Insurance, consumer advocates raised concerns about a lack of transparency with “black box” models that may be used to justify unnecessary rate hikes. Industry advocates are concerned the plan will take too long to implement when they desperately need changes now.
How likely is it a house will be damaged in a wildfire?
There are many versions of catastrophe models. Each modeling company has its own proprietary analysis but they all generally use the same data to answer the same question.
Each modeled event starts with an ignition, the probability that a fire will start at that location; spread, the probability that the fire will travel based on the land cover in the area; and property characteristics. Using those data points, the model simulates a large number of possible outcomes for a given location, estimates the likelihood that a structure will burn from wildfire, and calculates the loss for any buildings there.
The USDA Forest Service developed a national analysis of wildfire risk that is similar to what models created for insurance companies would look like. Based on vegetation and fire-behavior fuel models, topographic data, historical weather patterns and long-term simulations of large wildfire behavior, their wildfire likelihood map shows the probability of a fire in any given year.
A critical part of predicting the potential spread of the fire is the available fuel. The Forest Service’s land cover classifications are used in many wildfire models. They specify 40 different fuel types such as grass, shrub, timber and nonburnable types. Each category is further subdivided based on depth of the cover and humidity or aridity of the climate.
For example, in an arid climate, coarse continuous grass at a depth of 3 feet would have a very high spread rate. A combination of low grass or shrubs and dead leaves or needles in the forest would have a low spread rate.
Property characteristics such as the type of roof or whether the siding is fire-resistive make a significant difference in whether a structure will ignite from wildfire embers. The Center for Insurance Policy and Research found that structural modifications can reduce wildfire risk up to 40 percent, and structural and vegetation modifications combined can reduce wildfire risk up to 75 percent.
All of these factors are combined in the model with information about the rebuilding cost and level of coverage to generate an amount of risk unique to the individual property.
Could these models turn the industry around?
Currently, companies are required to calculate their projected losses, on which their overall rates are based, using a historical view of wildfire loss over the previous 20 years. As wildfires increase, however, this means that the average loss trails behind the current state of wildfire risk.
Nancy Watkins, an actuary and principal at the insurance consulting firm Milliman, said that she believes the inclusion of catastrophe models could save the industry. She analyzed the effect of a model on rates compared with using just historical experience. While the rates would generally be higher, the increases would be more even.
In April during a public meeting, Allstate said that if wildfire catastrophe models were allowed, they would once again start writing new policies in the state.
But wildfire catastrophe models are already used by insurance companies in California for some business decisions and have been for some time. They use models to determine where to write or renew policies, which is one of the reasons non-renewals have disproportionately happened in high-risk areas.
In recent rate filings, Allstate, Farmers and State Farm cited a modeled wildfire risk score as the basis for not renewing policies. Allstate used CoreLogic’s Risk Meter score in 2019 to classify all policies that fell above certain risk thresholds as ineligible for renewal. A 2023 filing from Farmers documents eligibility guidelines for new and renewing policies that sets a risk level using Verisk’s FireLine and Zesty.ai’s Z-FIRE scores. State Farm’s recent 30,000 non-renewals are based on CoreLogic’s Brushfire Risk Layer.
Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, says that wildfire models worked their way into rates without enough state oversight. “We didn’t regulate the use of risk scores and now [they] are having a dramatic impact on the market and the genie is out of the bottle.”
Some companies use models to assess relative risk between properties and
adjust individual rates accordingly. State Farm multiplies its base rate by a location rating factor, calculated using catastrophe models produced by CoreLogic and Verisk. Areas with high wildfire risk have seen dramatic increases in the location rating factor in the past few years.
This process is called segmentation and the Department of Insurance is aware that it is opaque. Department spokesperson Michael Soller says, “People do not know what their risk score is. They don’t know what goes into the risk score. It’s a black box. Yet, the risk score can be used to [charge you] double what somebody else pays.”
While these situations are significant for some, they generally only apply to select high-risk properties. The median effect of the location rating factor has remained fairly stable.
But under the commissioner’s new policy, model results could also be incorporated directly into the overall rate. Soller says that one important difference in this new regulation is that for a model to be valid, it will need to incorporate property and community level risk mitigation into rates, including state agency forest thinning and utility company efforts. As more investment goes into making communities safer, in theory the rates should decrease.
Only you can prevent forest fires?
Wildfire mitigation happens at the state and local level. Since 2020, in addition to baseline spending, California has allocated more than $2.6 billion toward its wildfire and forest resilience package. 872 communities in the state are registered participants in Firewise USA, a program administered by the National Fire Protection Association that sets standards for fire safety.
For an individual, retrofitting one’s home for wildfire resistance is not cheap. On average, homeowners spend $15,000 on a new roof.
As of October 2022, companies such as State Farm that use wildfire models in segmentation are already supposed to give mitigation discounts. A February filing from State Farm breaks down how their discounts would work in a low-, medium- and high-risk area.
For the low-risk group, the dollar amount saved may not be worth the investment in mitigation. For the high-risk group, the slightly lower percentage reductions would still result in more substantial dollar amounts saved.
According to the State Farm documents, these discounts are given at a set rate for all properties across the state. Granular catastrophe models take into account the impact of mitigation on the property level, nearby community mitigation and any recent wildfire history that might indicate a temporarily reduced risk.
However, a complaint raised several times during the regulation workshops was that when homeowners do spend money, often thousands, on lowering risk, they do not see any changes in their insurance premiums. Some say their policies were still dropped.
Goldman has already completed the property-level mitigation work. She has a class A Spanish tile roof. She does the brush clearance every year. This past year it cost about $1,200. She even has an outdoor sprinkler system. But she did not learn about mitigation from her insurance company. Instead, it was on one of Bach’s monthly educational community calls where she got the idea to install fire-resistant vents.
And yet, she has not received a mitigation credit from State Farm and has not received any information about how to receive one. When she asked her agent whether the work she had done on her home qualified for a discount he said no. The Department of Insurance says that they review consumer complaints for rate accuracy and conduct regular examinations of insurance companies. They noted that concerned consumers should contact them to review their specific situation.
The catastrophe modeling regulation requires insurers to submit their modeling information to the Department of Insurance for review by an internal model adviser and any necessary consultants. Some proprietary information is allowed to remain confidential but proponents of the plan say that the regulators will have all the information they need to assess the models even if the general public does not.
The department says it is still considering public input from the most recent workshop and has no further plans for additional workshops. Once the regulation is finalized there will be a public hearing. Commissioner Lara plans to have this regulation and the rest of the Sustainable Insurance Plan in place by the end of the year.
(Gabrielle Lamar Lemee, LOS ANGELES TIMES )
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NORTH COUNTY - The Grove fire near Palomar Mountain continued to burn Friday while firefighters, battling the topography and weather, made progress containing the blaze.
According to Cal Fire Capt. Mike Cornette, the blaze was around 863 acres, with 25 percent containment Friday, a similar acreage total to Thursday. Cornette said there had been a “decrease in fire activity.” “We’ve experienced some high heat and some wind this afternoon,” Cornette said. “But there’s not a whole lot of smoke.”
Many of the evacuation orders were updated to warnings Thursday, Cornette said. Areas under evacuation order still are those in the immediate vicinity of the fire. “We just want to make sure we keep residents out of that area for our safety and their safety,” Cornette said. “Everything else is an evacuation warning to allow residents to repopulate.”
The Grove fire first was reported about 1:15 p.m. Wednesday in the area of Dodge Valley near the rural community of Sunshine Summit. Later that night, officials announced evacuation orders for the areas around Chihuahua Valley Road, east of state Route 79 and south of the San Diego- Riverside county line. Evacuation warnings were issued in the area of Stone Ridge Estates.
Sheriff’s officials updated the orders around 8:20 p.m. Thursday to say residents living in areas toward the southeast and northeast end of the fire were allowed to return home.
Throughout the response to the blaze, firefighters have been dealing with rocky slopes and high temperatures, particularly along the southeast side of the fire. However, crews have been able to make inroads over the last two days.
“Firefighters were able to get out there in the area and put in some work,” Cornette said. “We’re making progress, but there’s still work to be done.”
National Weather Service officials said that heading into the weekend temperatures are expected to drop into the mid- to high 80s. Wind speeds are projected to stay relatively high through today but slow down come the end of the weekend.
(Caleb Lunetta, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE )
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What was Typhoon Gaemi headed toward inland China on Friday after weakening to a severe tropical storm soon after making landfall on the east coast Thursday night. The storm felled trees, flooded streets and damaged crops in China but there were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage.
Five people died in Taiwan, which Gaemi crossed at typhoon strength on Thursday before heading over open waters to China.
The worst loss of life, however, was in a country that Gaemi earlier passed by but didn’t strike directly: the Philippines. A steadily climbing death toll has reached 34, authorities there said Friday. The typhoon exacerbated seasonal monsoon rains in the Southeast Asian country, causing landslides and severe flooding that stranded people on rooftops as waters rose around them.
In China, Gaemi is still expected to bring heavy rains in the coming days as it moves northwest to Jiangxi, Hubei and Henan provinces.
About 210 acres of crops were damaged in Fujian province and economic losses were estimated at $1.6 million, according to Chinese media reports. More than 290,000 people were relocated because of the storm.
Elsewhere in China, several days of heavy rains this week in Gansu province left one dead and three missing in the country’s northwest, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
In southern and central Taiwan, residents and business owners swept out mud and mopped up water Friday after serious flooding that sent cars and scooters floating down streets. Five people died and more than 650 people were injured, the emergency operations center said.
In the Philippines, at least 34 people have died, mostly because of flooding and landslides triggered by days of monsoon rains that intensified when the typhoon — called Carina in the Philippines — passed by the archipelago’s east coast.
The victims included 11 people in the Manila metro area, where widespread flooding trapped people on the roofs and upper floors of their houses, police said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HINTON, Alberta, Canada - A wildfire in Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies this week destroyed more than 350 structures, but all of the critical infrastructure is intact, officials said Friday.
The fast-moving fire that prompted 25,000 people to flee the city of Jasper and adjacent park earlier this week damaged about 30 percent of the town. Parks Canada said out of a total of 1,113 structures within the town, 358 have been destroyed.
Mayor Richard Ireland said all of the critical infrastructure has been saved.
“Many homes and business have been lost,” Danielle Smith, premier of Alberta province, said at a news conference in Hinton, Alberta, where a command center has been set up. “About 70 percent of the town has no damage.”
Smith said residents will be out of their homes for several weeks and said officials are expediting emergency relief funds for them.
“Some of our residents, most have them, will have a home to return to, some will not,” Ireland said. “There will be a sad mix of people who have lost their home and livelihood. It’s going to be difficult. The pain that will be felt defies description.”
There were no reports of injuries during the mass evacuation of the picturesque resort and national park earlier in the week.
Parks Canada officials said the hospital, schools and the wastewater treatment plant were protected. They said the most significant damage is concentrated on the west side of town.
Jasper and the neighboring Jasper National Park had been menaced by fires from both the north and south and the town’s 5,000 full-time residents — along with 20,000 visitors — fled on short notice late Monday and Tuesday when the fires flared up.
“This fire was enormous, it was fast moving,” Ireland said. “It got pushed by winds.”
Parks Canada officials said Friday that cooler conditions were reducing fire
behavior as rain tapered off overnight.
A postcard-perfect mountain town, Jasper is famous for hiking, skiing, kayaking and biking. It is also home to dozens of species such as elk, mountain goats, cougars, lynx, black bears and grizzly bears. Jasper National Park is considered a national treasure. The United Nations designated the parks that make up the Canadian Rockies, including Jasper, a World Heritage Site in 1984.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Communities in the U.S. West were under siege from raging wildfires on Friday, as a fast-moving blaze sparked by lightning sent people fleeing on fire-ringed roads in rural Idaho and a human-caused inferno forced evacuations in Northern California.
In eastern Oregon, a pilot was found dead in a small air tanker plane that crashed while fighting one of the many wildfires spreading across several Western states.
More than 110 active fires covering 2,800 square miles [1,792,000 acres] were burning in the U.S. on Friday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Some were caused by the weather, with climate change increasing the frequency of lightning strikes as the region endures record heat and bone-dry conditions.
Late Friday, a new wildfire blew up in Eastern Washington that threatened homes, the railroad, Interstate 90 and the community of Tyler, which was evacuated. The Columbia Basin fire in Spokane County closed part of Highway 904 between the interstate and Cheney. Multiple planes, helicopters and fire personnel were working hard to contain the fire, according to the Washington State Patrol.
Others were human-caused, like the Park fire burning in Butte County, just northwest of the community of Paradise where the 2018 Camp fire killed 85 people and incinerated thousands of homes.
Carli Parker is one of hundreds who fled their homes as the Park fire pushed close. Parker decided to leave her Forest Ranch residence with her family when the fire began burning across the street. She has previously been forced out of two homes by fire, and she said she had little hope that her residence would remain unscathed.
More than 130 structures have been destroyed by the fire, and thousands more remain threatened. The state’s largest active wildfire began Wednesday when a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico, authorities said.
By Friday evening, the fire had burned more than 374 square miles [240,000 acres]. It remained zero percent contained.
Oregon has the biggest active blaze in the United States, the Durkee fire, which combined with the Cow fire to burn nearly 630 square miles [403,000 acres]. It remains unpredictable and was 20 percent contained Friday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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NORTH COUNTY - A brush fire that ignited Wednesday afternoon from a lightning strike, burning hundreds of acres north of Palomar Mountain and triggering evacuations, is expected to last several days, a fire official said.
The blaze, named the Grove fire, charred 900 acres and was reported to be 20 percent contained, Cal Fire reported Thursday evening. Firefighters are battling flames under hot and humid weather conditions in steep terrain, Cal Fire Capt. Mike Cornette said.
The fire was reported around 1:15 p.m. Wednesday in the area of Dodge Valley near the rural community of Sunshine Summit, and it spread quickly. It is located east of Oak Grove and burning to the southwest, Cornette said.
Around 5:25 p.m. that evening, officials announced evacuation orders for the areas around Chihuahua Valley Road, east of state Route 79 and south of the San Diego-Riverside county line. Evacuation warnings were issued in the area of Stone Ridge Estates.
Sheriff’s officials updated the orders around 8:20 p.m. Thursday to say residents living in areas toward the southeast and northeast end of the fire were allowed to return home.
Cornette said firefighters are working in challenging conditions as they climb steep hills to try to put down containment lines. More than 230 firefighters have been assigned, along with 35 engines, eight water tenders, six helicopters and six dozers. Several air tankers also were expected to make fire retardant drops on the fire, Cornette said.
Firefighters are facing their biggest challenge for the blaze on the southeast side due to terrain.
“The fire is spreading,” Cornette said.
He said officials expect the fire to last “several days.” “The weather is hot again,” he said.
Forecasters said they expected fewer thunderstorms in the area on Thursday. Temperatures in the area were between the high 90s and low 100s. The air was quite dry, with high gusts of wind coming in from the northwest, National Weather Service Meteorologist Casey Oswant said.
Heading into the weekend, temperatures are expected to drop into the mid- to high 80s, Oswant said. Wind speeds are expected to increase, but that will bring in higher humidity, she said.
County officials said the estimated daytime population in the evacuation order zones is about 120 people, and the nighttime population is estimated at 425. The affected area includes 373 structures and nearly 27,000 acres, county spokesperson Mike Workman said.
On Thursday, officials said a temporary evacuation point was set up at the Warner Springs Community Resource Center, 30950 Highway 79 in Warner Springs. Small animals are welcome at that location.
Wednesday, Red Cross officials set up a shelter at Warner Spring High, where 13 people stayed overnight and four people with two dogs remained as of 10 a.m. Thursday, Workman said.
Anyone fleeing the fire with large animals is being directed to Ramona High School, 1401 Hanson Lane, in Ramona.
(Karen Kucher, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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A persistent heat wave that scorched most of California earlier this month essentially amounted to a real-time stress test that the state’s electric grid managed to withstand. But the head of the organization responsible for keeping the lights on says energy officials are still on alert as the summer wears on.
“We are generally well prepared” to avoid potential power outages, said Elliot Mainzer, president of the California Independent System Operator. “We’ve taken important steps to bring new clean energy and capacity onto the system, but we must stay diligent.”
As the Independence Day weekend approached, hot weather descended on the Golden State, with residents in Northern California suffering the brunt. Sacramento hit a high of 113 degrees on July 6, setting a city record for that date.
Though not as severe, parts of Southern California sweltered as well. In the deserts of San Diego County, temperatures hovered around 120 degrees in Borrego Springs and Ocotillo Wells on July 8.
Heat waves strain the electric grid because homes and businesses crank up their air conditioners, putting pressure on system operators to meet the surge in demand.
To make matters worse, the hot weather lasted 14 days and bled into neighboring states.
On July 10, the Western Interconnection that helps coordinate electricity between 14 states in the West (including all of California) plus northern Baja California, British Columbia and Alberta hit an all-time record of 167,988 megawatts for peak load.
But the California Independent System Operator, known as the CAISO for short, did not resort to issuing any Flex Alerts — requests of customers across the state to voluntarily reduce their energy use.
On July 8, for example, CAISO operators had about 55,000 megawatts of supply on hand to meet an estimated demand of just over 43,000 megawatts — a fairly comfortable cushion of around 12,000 megawatts.
The elbow room was due in large part to capacity that’s been added to California’s grid in recent years.
The state has added nearly 11,600 megawatts of new grid resources since 2022. Of that amount, energy storage from batteries accounts for 5,800 megawatts. Storage facilities take solar power generated during the day and discharge the electricity when California’s power system is under the most stress.
The batteries “did exactly what we expected them to do” during this month’s heat wave, Mainzer told the Union-Tribune. “They charged during the day when solar is abundant and put energy back onto the grid in the afternoon when solar production is rolling off the system ... They were clearly a difference maker.”
It should be noted that the costs of building storage systems — and other grid enhancements — are passed on to utility customers in their monthly bills.
During this month’s heat wave, multiple wildfires broke out in Northern California but they did not affect major power lines or distribution and transmission infrastructure that feed into the grid.
System operators were not so lucky three years ago.
The Bootleg fire in Oregon in July 2021 tripped a major transmission line called the California-Oregon Intertie that carries imported electricity from the Pacific Northwest into California. The fire knocked about 3,500 megawatts off the system at the same time stifling weather blanketed the area.
“Every event and every set of facts is different,” Mainzer said.
The threat of statewide power outages has taken on a higher level of urgency in recent years.
In August 2020, rotating outages in California occurred for the first time in 20 years after oppressive heat nearly overloaded the system for two straight days. The blackouts caused some areas to go without electricity for up to 2 1/2 hours.
The Golden State barely avoided a repeat the following summer. In September 2022, it nearly happened again when relentlessly high temperatures nearly buckled the grid. The CAISO issued a record 10 straight days of Flex Alerts and thanked utility customers afterward for helping save the day by cutting back on energy use from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Those are critical hours for California’s power grid because solar production quickly disappears from the grid when the sun sets and system operators must seamlessly replace those megawatts of solar with other energy sources in real time to make sure the power system doesn’t collapse.
September can get tricky for the CAISO because the weather is still hot so customers keep running their air conditioners. But since autumn is approaching, the sun sets earlier in the day and that means there are fewer hours of solar generation the power system can draw on.
Other complicating factors?
If wildfires break out, the smoke from the blazes can obscure the skies and that leads to a reduction in solar output.
And if a heat wave extends to neighboring states, that can lead to reductions of imports and exports in power trading markets. States under stress tend to hold onto the megawatts they already have so they can keep electricity flowing to their own utility customers and not export them elsewhere.
The system is interconnected and complicated but Mainzer is cautiously optimistic.
“The four-hour lithium-ion battery fleet that we’ve got in California is now the largest of anywhere in the world, outside of China,” he said.
Last year, the CAISO issued zero Flex Alerts. Can that be repeated this summer?
“If we have another set of unprecedented circumstances that take the system to its absolute outer edge — both here in California and other parts of the West — then it’s possible to call Flex Alerts,” Mainzer said. “I couldn’t put a probability on it, but it’s certainly a possibility. We always try to minimize those but it is a tool in the toolbox.”
The CAISO manages the flow of electricity across the high-voltage power lines for about 80 percent of the state, plus a small part of Nevada.
(Rob Nikolewski, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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OTTAWA, Ontario, Canada - As much as half of a town at the heart of a jewel of Canada’s national park system has been destroyed by a pair of wildfires that roared in from two sides, an official said Thursday.
“We don’t know particularly which structures have been damaged and which ones have been destroyed, but that is going to be a significant rebuild,” Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta, told a news conference. She struggled to avoid tears describing the beauty of Jasper National Park and the damage to the community that shares its name.
Pierre Martel, the director of fire management for Parks Canada, the national parks agency, told a briefing on Thursday afternoon that the “aggressive and fast-moving fire” was still burning in the park. As the fires expanded Monday, about 20,000 tourists and the 5,000 residents of Jasper were evacuated, mostly west to British Columbia.
On Wednesday night, firefighters had to leave because of toxic smoke from the buildings that had caught fire.
Jasper National Park receives about 2.5 million visitors each year.
The mayor of Jasper, Richard Ireland, said Thursday that the disaster had been “almost beyond comprehension.”
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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A burning car pushed into a gully sparked California’s largest wildfire of the year, authorities said Thursday as they announced the arrest of a suspect. Meanwhile other blazes scorched the Pacific Northwest.
Flames from the fire the man is accused of starting exploded into what is now the Park fire, which has burned more than 188 square miles [120,000 acres] near Chico. Evacuations were ordered in Butte and Tehama counties, with the blaze only 3 percent contained by Thursday evening.
California authorities did not immediately name the man they arrested.
Also in California near the Nevada line, about 1,000 people remained displaced from their homes Thursday after evacuations were ordered Monday night when lightning sparked the Gold Complex fires that have burned more than 4 square miles [2,500 acres] of brush and timber in the Plumas National Forest about 50 miles northwest of Reno, Forest Service spokesperson Adrienne Freeman said.
There have been no reports of structure damage, deaths or serious injuries from the Gold Complex of fires southwest of Portola near the Nevada line. But they still had zero containment Thursday.
“We’ve made some really good progress on the fires,” Forest Service operations section chief Tom Browning said Thursday afternoon. “But it’s hot, it’s dry and it’s very windy ... With the wind and the heat, we don’t have great containment on all these lines.”
Tim Fike, Forest Service incident commander at the Gold Complex, said gusty winds were plaguing crews at the Park fire as well, causing new spot fires up to a mile beyond the main fire lines.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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After three of Earth’s hottest days ever measured, the United Nations called for a flurry of efforts to try to reduce the human toll from soaring and searing temperatures, calling it “an extreme heat epidemic.”
“If there is one thing that unites our divided world, it’s that we’re all increasingly feeling the heat,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday at a news conference where he highlighted that Monday was the hottest day on record, surpassing the mark set just a day earlier. “Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere.”
Nearly half a million people a year die worldwide from heat-related causes, far more than from other weather extremes such as hurricanes, and this is likely an underestimate, a new report by 10 U.N. agencies said.
“Billions of people are facing an extreme heat epidemic — wilting under increasingly deadly heat waves, with temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius around the world,” Guterres said. “That’s 122 degrees Fahrenheit and halfway to boiling.”
The dire warnings came after a barely noticeable respite in back-to-back record global heat.
The European climate service Copernicus calculated that Tuesday’s global average temperature was 0.01 degree Celsius (0.01 Fahrenheit) lower than Monday’s all-time high of 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.8 Fahrenheit), which was .06 degrees Celsius (0.1 Fahrenheit) hotter than Sunday.
All three days were hotter than Earth’s previous hottest day in 2023. “We are not prepared,” the U.N. report said.
Guterres urged countries of the world to adopt several proposals aimed at reducing heat deaths, starting with help to cool and care for the most vulnerable people — the poor, elderly, young and sick.
The U.N. also called for better heat wave warnings, expanding “passive cooling,” improved urban design, stronger protections for outside workers and greater efforts to tackle human-caused climate change that’s worsening weather extremes.
But officials said most work will have to be done by countries, with the U.N. offering aid and coordination, especially when it comes to beefing up weather warning systems.
If countries adopt the United Nations’ heat-fighting recommendations, “these measures could protect 3.5 billion people by 2050, while slashing emissions and saving consumers $1 trillion a year,” Guterres said, citing a U.N. Environment Program estimate.
Better heat-health warning systems in 57 countries could save 98,314 lives per year, the report said, based on World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization estimates.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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NORTH COUNTY - Firefighters are in a rocky and uphill battle as they try to contain a large brush fire that broke out Wednesday north of Palomar Mountain near the San Diego-Riverside county line, according to Cal Fire officials.
The blaze, called the Grove fire, was reported about 1:15 p.m. in the area of Dodge Valley near the rural community of Sunshine Summit, Cal Fire reported on X.
The fire has grown to 300 acres within a few hours and had zero containment, Cal Fire Capt. Mike Cornette said around 4:45 p.m.
Cornette said firefighters were having trouble accessing the blaze as it headed toward the challenging terrain of Chihuahua Valley.
“We have substantial air and ground resource requests, and firefighters are currently putting in line around the fire,” Cornette said. “Firefighters are experiencing deep and rocky terrain.”
While the cause of the fire is under investigation by Cal Fire, the National Weather Service reported a large thunderstorm in the community around the time of ignition and that a lightning strike hit the ground in the area. The high was around 100 [deg F] Wednesday afternoon, the weather service reported.
(Kristina Davis & Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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For the second day in a row, the summer monsoon generated big thunderstorms in East County on Wednesday, sparking at least 82 lightning bolts and producing close to 1 inch of rain near Mount Laguna, the National Weather Service said.
There also were reports of half-inch-sized hail south of Laguna Lodge on Sunrise Highway. Most of the lightning occurred in the Pine Valley area, near Interstate 8.
Forecasters said at least one bolt struck the ground in the Sunshine Summit neighborhood between 12:30 and 1 p.m., near where a brush fire broke out. It wasn’t clear Wednesday afternoon if lightning had sparked the fire.
Moisture from the monsoon also flowed to the coast Wednesday, raising the temperature and humidity.
The monsoon is expected to ease today, leading to cooler temperatures and reducing the chance of thunderstorms.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Monday was most likely the hottest day ever recorded on Earth, with a global average of about 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit, or 17.15 degrees Celsius, preliminary data showed — beating a record that had been set just one day before.
The data, released Wednesday by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a European Union institution that provides information about the past, present and future climate, caused alarm among some experts.
Earlier this week, the service announced that Sunday had set a record, with a global average of about 62.76 degrees Fahrenheit, or 17.09 degrees Celsius. A day later it announced that Monday was the hottest day since at least 1940, when records began.
Before this week’s back-to-back records, the previous record, 62.74 degrees Fahrenheit, or 17.08 degrees Celsius, was set last year, on July 6, besting a record that stood since 2016.
Since Sunday’s and Monday’s temperatures were averages, some portions of the globe felt that extra heat more strongly, like parts of the Western United States, where an excessive heat warning has been in place for days and is expected to continue for much of the week.
“What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” Carlo Buontempo, the director of the service, said in a news release announcing Sunday’s record. “We are now in truly uncharted territory and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years.”
Buontempo said in a statement on Wednesday that data showed there may be slightly lower temperatures in the next few days.
At a closer look, 2023 and 2024 have seen annual highs significantly above those recorded in previous years, the agency said. Another key sign of global warming was that the 10 years with the highest daily average temperatures are the last 10 years, 2015 to 2024.
While researchers said Sunday’s record was not totally unexpected, as global temperatures typically reach their peak this time of year, several factors are contributing to their increase, including seasonal patterns in the Northern Hemisphere that drive worldwide temperatures and above-average temperatures over large parts of Antarctica.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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BOISE, ID - Powerful winds and hundreds of lightning strikes from thunderstorms rattled the Oregon-Idaho border Wednesday afternoon, pushing wildfires that include an Oregon fire which is already the largest active blaze in the nation.
The Durkee fire, burning near the Oregon-Idaho border about 130 miles west of Boise, Idaho, caused the closure of a stretch of Interstate 84 again Wednesday. Amid rapidly forming storms in the afternoon, the blaze crossed the interstate near the town of Huntington, home to about 500 people. It also merged with the Cow Valley fire, another large blaze that had been burning nearby, Gov. Tina Kotek said.
“The wildfires in Eastern Oregon have scaled up quickly,” Kotek said in a news release Wednesday evening, calling it a dynamic situation. “We are facing strong, erratic winds over the region that could impact all fires. Rain is not getting through. Some communities do not have power.”
She said she had deployed the National Guard to the region.
The nearly 400-square-mile [256,000 acres] blaze had prompted the evacuation of Huntington on Sunday, and on Wednesday city officials posted on Facebook that people remaining in town needed to leave their homes because of wildfire smoke and the lack of power.
The National Weather Service in Boise said the storms were capable of producing wind gusts up to 70 mph with blowing dust reducing visibility. A storm about 44 miles northwest of Huntington near Baker City on Wednesday afternoon had recorded a wind gust of 66 mph, the weather service said.
Wind, lightning and heavy rain was expected that could cause flash flooding, the sheriff’s office said.
The major electricity utility in the region, Idaho Power, warned customers to prepare for possible outages, and by late Wednesday afternoon, nearly 7,000 customers were without electricity, the utility said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The summer monsoon sparked wild, slow-moving thunderstorms Tuesday afternoon in East County, generating 200 to 250 lightning bolts that sent people scurrying for cover, the National Weather Service said.
The worst conditions occurred from about 2 to 4 p.m. in and around Pine Valley and Julian. Roughly half the bolts struck the ground, which is bone-dry due to the above average temperatures the region has been having. But the weather service said it doesn’t appear the lightning sparked brushfires in the area.
The thunderstorms also produced hail, notably in Pine Valley, near Interstate 8, and winds gusts 30 mph to 40 mph in some areas.
There’s a possibility that another round of thunderstorms will occur today.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Global temperatures hit the highest levels in recorded history on Sunday, according to preliminary data from Europe’s top climate monitor — another worrying sign of how human-caused climate change is pushing the planet into dangerous new territory.
The results from the Copernicus Climate Change Service show the planet’s average temperature on July 21 was 62.76 degrees Fahrenheit — breaking a record set only last year. The historic day comes on the heels of 13 straight months of unprecedented temperatures and the hottest year scientists have ever seen. “We are in truly uncharted territory,” Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. “And as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see records being broken in future months and years.”
Though Sunday was only slightly warmer than the world’s previous hottest day, Copernicus researchers noted, it was extraordinarily hotter than anything that came before. Before July 2023, Earth’s daily average temperature record — set in August 2016 — was 62.24 degrees Fahrenheit. But in the past year, the global [sic] has exceeded that old record on 57 days.
“What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” Buontempo said.
Scientists have only been tracking global temperatures for the past few centuries. Yet there is good reason to believe that Sunday was the hottest day on Earth since the start of the last Ice Age more than 100,000 years ago. Research from paleoclimate scientists — who use tree rings, ice cores, lake sediments and other ancient material to understand past environments — suggests that recent heat would have been all but impossible over the last stretch of geologic time.
Sunday’s record-setting heat was felt on nearly every continent. Huge swaths of Asia sweltered amid scorching days and dangerously hot nights. Triple-digit temperatures in the western United States fueled out-of-control wildfires. Around much of Antarctica, Copernicus data show, temperatures were as high as 22 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, 550 places around the planet saw record high daily temperatures in the last 7 days alone.
(WASHINGTON POST)
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ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Mudslides triggered by heavy rain in a remote part of Ethiopia have killed at least 229 people, including many who tried to rescue survivors, local authorities said Tuesday, in what the prime minister called a “terrible loss.”
Young children and pregnant women were among the victims in Kencho Shacha Gozdi district of southern Ethiopia, said Dagmawi Ayele, a local administrator, adding that at least five people have been pulled out alive.
The death toll rose sharply from the initial one of 55 late Monday. Search operations continued in the area, said Kassahun Abayneh, head of the communications office in Gofa Zone, the administrative area where the mudslides occurred.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in a statement on Facebook that the federal disaster prevention task force has been deployed to assist in search efforts. It was not clear how many people were still unaccounted for.
Many victims were buried Monday as rescue workers searched the steep terrain for survivors of another mudslide the previous day.
Markos Melese, director of the disaster response agency in Gofa Zone, said many rescuers remained missing.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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CHEYENNE, WY - A surprise eruption that shot steam, water and dark- colored rock and dirt dozens of feet into the sky Tuesday sent people running for safety in Yellowstone National Park.
The hydrothermal explosion happened around 10 a.m. in Biscuit Basin, a collection of hot springs a couple miles north of the famous Old Faithful Geyser.
Video posted online showed a couple dozen people watching from a boardwalk as the eruption sprayed and grew in front of them. As water and debris began to fall, they ran to keep clear, some yelling “Back up!” and “Holy cow!” People then turned to watch the spectacle under a huge cloud of steam.
The eruption damaged the boardwalk, an elevated wooden walkway that keeps people off Yellowstone’s fragile and often dangerous geothermal areas. Photos and video of the aftermath showed damaged guardrails and boards covered in rock and silt near muddy pools.
No injuries were reported, but the Biscuit Basin area was closed for visitor safety, according to a U.S. Geological Survey statement.
A hydrothermal explosion happens when water suddenly flashes to steam underground. Such blasts are relatively common in Yellowstone.
Similar blasts have happened in Biscuit Basin in 2009, 1991 and after the magnitude 7.2 Hebgen Lake earthquake in 1959.
Yellowstone is centered on a huge, dormant volcano. The hydrothermal explosion did not indicate new activity within the volcanic system, which remains at normal levels, according to the Geological Survey.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Firefighters in the West are scrambling as new wildfires threaten communities in Oregon, California and Washington, with at least one Oregon fire so large that it is creating its own weather.
Interstate 84 in eastern Oregon was closed in both directions Tuesday between Ontario and Baker City as flames from the Durkee fire advanced toward the road in multiple locations. On Tuesday, the Oregon Department of Transportation also closed the eastbound lanes of I-84 from Pendleton to Baker City.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Monday authorized the use of federal funds to help with firefighting costs for the lightning-caused blaze that started July 17. It had scorched nearly 375 square miles as of Tuesday afternoon. The Durkee fire was threatening homes and infrastructure in and around Durkee, Huntington and Rye Valley.
In Washington, a fire that sparked Monday near Natches prompted evacuations, while one near Bickelton forced evacuations and threatened a natural gas plant.
Near the California-Nevada border, a series of lightning-sparked wildfires was threatening structures Tuesday in several communities southwest of Portola.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SPRING, TX — As the temperature soared in the Houston-area home Janet Jarrett shared with her sister after losing electricity in Hurricane Beryl, she did everything she could to keep her 64-year-old sibling cool.
But on their fourth day without power, she awoke to hear Pamela Jarrett, who used a wheelchair and relied on a feeding tube, gasping for breath. Paramedics were called but she was pronounced dead at the hospital, with the medical examiner saying her death was caused by the heat.
“It’s so hard to know that she’s gone right now because this wasn’t supposed to happen to her,” Janet Jarrett said.
Almost two weeks after Beryl hit, heat-related deaths during the prolonged power outages have pushed the number of storm-related fatalities to at least 23 in Texas. The combination of searing summer heat and residents unable to power up air conditioning in the days after the Category 1 storm made landfall on July 8 resulted in increasingly dangerous conditions for some in America’s fourth-largest city.
Beryl knocked out electricity to nearly 3 million homes and businesses at the height of the outages, which lasted days or much longer, and hospitals reported a spike in heat-related illnesses.
Power finally was restored to most by last week, after over a week of widespread outages. The slow pace in the Houston area put the region’s electric provider, CenterPoint Energy, under mounting scrutiny over whether it was sufficiently prepared.
While it may be weeks or even years before the full human toll of the storm in Texas is known, understanding that number helps plan for the future, experts say.
Just after the storm hit, bringing high winds and flooding, the deaths included people killed by falling trees and people who drowned when their vehicles became submerged in floodwaters. In the days after the storm passed, deaths included people who fell while cutting limbs on damaged trees and heat- related deaths.
Half of the deaths attributed to the storm in Harris County, where Houston is located, were heat related, according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.
With power outages and cleanup efforts still ongoing, the death toll likely will continue to climb.
Officials are still working to determine if some deaths that have already occurred should be considered storm related. Lara Anton, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services, which uses death certificate data to identify storm-related deaths, estimated that it may not be until the end of July before they have a preliminary count.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A dangerous heat wave, gusty winds and potential lightning strikes posed a critical fire risk for large parts of the Pacific Northwest on Sunday, as firefighters in Oregon and Washington state battled wildfires that have burned more than 621,000 acres.
About 547,000 people in Oregon and Washington on Sunday were under red flag warnings, the highest National Weather Service alert for conditions that may result in extreme fire behavior.
The warnings are issued when high temperatures, very low humidity and strong winds combine to produce a heightened risk.
Thunderstorms were also moving across the region on Sunday, including over central and southeast Oregon and southern Washington, where “abundant lightning” was expected.
The lightning and dry conditions could result in “numerous fire starts,” and winds from the storms could cause “erratic fire spread,” the weather service said.
There were 22 fires burning in Oregon and six in Washington on Sunday, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, which coordinates fire response for the states. The fires covered more than 621,000 acres, the agency said.
More than 11 million people in parts of Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state were under excessive heat warnings on Sunday.
In Southern California, homes burned Sunday and evacuations were ordered when a wildfire grew to more than 400 acres and spread to a residential area in Riverside. Aerial footage from KABC-TV showed at least three houses burning.
The Hawarden fire sparked Sunday had no containment and was threatening several other homes, the Riverside Fire Department said.
Meanwhile, a 200-acre wildfire on Ensign Peak in Salt Lake City forced people living uphill from Utah’s state Capitol to evacuate, and it remained uncontained Sunday as more than 100 firefighters worked to protect nearby homes.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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A new report on California beach water quality confirms the dire conditions of ocean waters off San Diego County’s southern coast, exacerbated by the millions of gallons of untreated sewage from the Tijuana River.
Heal the Bay’s annual list of the state’s 10 most polluted beaches in California includes four from San Diego County and two just across the border, with some of the highest bacteria levels in their ocean waters.
The local beaches on the nonprofit’s “beach bummers” list were Tijuana River Mouth, Tijuana Slough, Border Field State Park and Imperial Beach in the South Bay, along with Playa Blanca and El Faro in Tijuana.
This year’s findings reflect an increasingly glaring reality for the county’s beaches’ health: It’s also a climate story.
“Most of our sites this year have been impacted by either urban runoff from storms flushing pollution out to the coast, or inadequate and aging sewage infrastructure, which has also been impacted by those big storms,” said Annelisa Moe, a scientist with the Santa Monica-based nonprofit.
San Diego County received 12 inches of rain last year, versus a historical average of 10 inches, according to the report.
That led to severe flooding and overwhelmed many wastewater conveyance systems, spewing more than 20 million gallons of wastewater in the region.
South Bay beaches’ proximity to the mouth of the Tijuana River means that they are often tainted by pollution from across the U.S.-Mexico border. All year round, residents of San Diego’s southern coast, from Coronado to Imperial Beach, experience swimming restrictions, health advisories and beach closures.
“I’m not surprised any of them made the list,” said Sarah Davidson, a program manager with the Surfrider Foundation, which recently released its own clean water report with similar findings for local beaches. “The situation continues to worsen everyday.”
But in Heal the Bay’s last assessment of the state’s beaches, none of the usual suspects were flagged.
The organization’s advocates at the time said they were stumped by the county’s recent adoption of a highly sensitive DNA-based test for water quality. So none of the beaches on San Diego’s southern coast were named last year as among the state’s most polluted, except the Tijuana River mouth.
The report didn’t use that testing method in its grading system this year, either.
Instead, by converting the DNA-based test results, Heal the Bay was still able to collect insight on the water quality from the region’s beaches.
Still, those findings could have been clouded by the method’s sensitivity, the report warned.
“We’re going to work on being able to use our grading system for that rapid testing, because if it’s once proved reliable, we want that to be used as often as possible,” Moe said. “Having results within an hour is great, but for now, we’re not able to make grades for those beaches.”
So far this year, the Tijuana River sewage crisis has prompted growing calls for federal and state support. In a June letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, all mayors in San Diego County urged him to declare the Tijuana River Valley in a “state of emergency.”
Newsom’s response for months has been the same: that federal authorities should take charge and fund dilapidated wastewater facilities, such as the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The San Ysidro-based plant had long operated at more than it could handle, and in 2020, Congress approved $300 million to double its capacity.
But more recent assessments have indicated more funding is needed: A government memo obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune last year suggested it already needed $150 million in repairs alone. A few months later, officials with the binational agency that operates it pegged the full cost of repairs and expansion at $900 million.
Local officials also recently sent a formal request to the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for epidemiological help with potential health issues caused by the sewage flow.
Despite the attention Heal the Bay’s report paid to southern San Diego County beaches, the county also got some good from this year’s beach report.
Both Point Loma Lighthouse and Moonlight beaches made the list’s honor roll, awarded for their low and controlled bacterial counts in ocean waters during the year.
“The interesting thing with San Diego County is the variability with the water quality,” Moe said. “There are areas where San Diego is doing the right thing ... Unfortunately, because of the way that ocean currents move, there’s definitely an impact from that cross-border region.”
(S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Several tons of fish have died along one of the main rivers in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state after an alleged illegal dumping of industrial waste, authorities said Wednesday.
A preliminary analysis estimates that between 10 and 20 tons of fish died on the Piracicaba River, Sao Paulo’s prosecutors said in a statement.
The initial investigation points to an “irregular discharge of wastewater” from the Sao Jose Sugar and Alcohol company plant, prosecutors said. Sao Jose denied any wrongdoing.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Another wave of severe storms pummeled a wide swath of the United States and Canada, leading to flash floods and water rescues Wednesday in the Ozark Mountains, dropping a tornado that ravaged a community in upstate New York and stranding drivers in high water around Toronto.
The relentless series of storms has caused deaths or damage from the Plains to New England this week. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost power amid sweltering heat.
As much as 11 inches of rain fell overnight into Wednesday on parts of the Ozarks in Arkansas and Missouri, the National Weather Service said.
Buses and ambulances evacuated 86 people from a nursing home in Yellville, AR, where water rose to about 4 feet during flash flooding, Marion County Sheriff Gregg Alexander said. A section of a bridge washed out and a historic courthouse flooded.
Cities across upstate New York were cleaning up after a storm swept through Tuesday with high winds and spectacular lightning and flying debris that killed one person.
In the small city of Rome, NY, a tornado ripped off roofs, tipped over vehicles and turned several buildings into piles of rubble. Steeples crumbled and roofs were torn apart at First Presbyterian Church and the St. Mary’s Church, both built in the 1800s. The winds were fierce enough to move a multi-ton tourist attraction, a B-52 bomber displayed at Griffiss Business and Technology Park.
Speaking outside St. Mary’s, Gov. Kathy Hochul said it was “miraculous” no one was killed in the city of 31,000. She toured the downtown Wednesday and said 22 buildings were damaged or destroyed.
A National Weather Service preliminary damage survey released Wednesday night estimated the Rome tornado’s top winds at 135 mph and gave it an EF2 rating, considered “significant.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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TORONTO - A major highway, several thoroughfares and a key transit hub were flooded in Canada’s largest city on Tuesday after torrential rain hit Toronto, while power outages were reported in multiple areas.
Toronto police said part of the Don Valley Parkway, which runs from the north part of the city into the downtown area, was closed due to flooding. They also said part of Lakeshore Boulevard, which runs along Lake Ontario, was flooded and closed.
Toronto Fire Services said they rescued 14 people from flooding on the highway.
“We’re actively rescuing people that are trapped in their cars or on top of their cars,” Deputy Fire Chief Jim Jessop told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “We are triaging based on life safety.”
At the heart of the downtown core, there was flooding at Union Station, a key transit terminus. Water was seen pooling on the floor of a main concourse and stores at the station were closed. Parts of the underground PATH network, which has retail and restaurants and connects to Union, were also closed due to flooding and stores lost power for a time.
Environment Canada had issued rainfall warnings for the Greater Toronto Area and much of southern Ontario as a mix of heavy rain and thunderstorms moved across the region. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority said about 4 inches of rain had fallen in pockets across Toronto.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Hundreds of people in a southern Illinois town were ordered to evacuate Tuesday as water rolled over the top of a dam, just one perilous result of severe weather that raged through the Midwest overnight with relentless rain and tornadoes and hit the Chicago area especially hard.
Hundreds of thousands of people lost power, and even weather forecasters had to briefly scramble for safety. The National Weather Service cited a tornado in Des Moines, IA, one in Chicago and at least four others in the Chicago area as storms rolled through Monday afternoon and into the night. Police responded to calls about utility poles that snapped in two. A woman in Indiana died after a tree fell on a home Monday night.
“We kind of heard a gust of wind that came up quick and we decided — my uncle decided — that we’d all go into the basement,” said Mihajlo Jevdosic, 16, in Norridge, IL. “And as we went in the basement, we heard a big thump and the tree fell on the house.”
The weather service’s Chicago office said preliminary findings indicated that an EF-1 tornado struck an area of Chicago that included the western portions of the Loop on Monday night. The weather service said EF-1 tornadoes struck two other areas of suburban Chicago. EF-0 twisters were reported in Illinois and Indiana suburbs of Chicago.
Water overtopped a dam near Nashville, IL, and first responders fanned out to ensure everyone escaped safely.
There were no reports of injuries in the community of 3,000, southeast of St. Louis, but a woman was rescued after reporting that she was in water up to her waist in her home, said Alex Haglund, a spokesperson for the Washington County Emergency Management Agency.
About 300 people were in the evacuation zone near the city reservoir, officials said. The rest of Nashville was not in imminent danger from the dam failure, but flash flooding created worries about water rescues.
Water began to recede in Nashville by Tuesday afternoon. But Haglund said evacuees won’t be allowed back into their homes until today at the earliest.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Three hikers died over the weekend in suspected heat-related cases at state and national parks in Utah, including a father and daughter who got lost on a strenuous hike in Canyonlands National Park in triple-digit temperatures.
The daughter, 23, and her father, 52, sent a 911 text alerting dispatchers that they were lost and had run out of water while hiking the 8.1-mile Syncline Loop.
Park rangers and a helicopter crew began their search for the lost hikers in the early evening Friday, but found them already dead. They were identified on Monday as Albino Herrera Espinoza and Beatriz Herrera of Green Bay, WI.
Later Saturday, first responders in southwest Utah responded to a call about two hikers “suffering from a heat related incident” at Snow Canyon State Park, which is known for a canyon carved from red and white Navajo sandstone.
A search team found and treated two hikers who were suffering from heat exhaustion. While they were treating those individuals, a passing hiker informed them of an unconscious person nearby. First responders found a 30- year-old woman dead, public safety officials said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HOUSTON, TX - Widespread power outages caused by Hurricane Beryl have sent a wave of patients to Houston-area hospitals for treatment of heat-related illnesses and carbon monoxide poisoning due to using home generators improperly, medical officials said Friday.
Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses have been without power since Beryl swept ashore Monday as a Category 1 hurricane. Although outages peaked at 2.7 million customers and the Houston area’s main utility, CenterPoint Energy, said it had restored power to about 1.4 million by Friday morning, up to half a million others were expected to be without electricity into next week, with temperatures hovering around 90 degrees or higher.
Houston-area hospitals have reported about twice the number of emergency room patients as they typically would. More than 320 patients suffered from heat-related illnesses, about triple the norm at this time of year, according to the Houston Office of Emergency Management.
Dr. Ben Saldana, who oversees the 18 emergency rooms in the Houston Methodist hospital system, said his ERs are treating their highest numbers of patients since the widespread power outages during a 2021 freeze, with heat exhaustion and heat-related problems the biggest reasons.
“These range from cramps to heat stroke with (body) temperatures at 104 degrees,” Saldana said.
The heat also exacerbates chronic problems for people with lung, heart and kidney disease, he said. Kidney patients are also coming in for dialysis because their regular centers are closed, as are patients who rely on oxygen tanks at home but don’t have power.
Beryl has been blamed for at least nine deaths in the U.S. and 11 others in the Caribbean. Most of the Texas power outages were caused by downed trees and branches toppling power lines.
City and state officials set up community cooling centers, but many affected residents have had no easy way to cool off. Temperatures were expected to remain in the low 90s throughout the weekend.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Wildfires fueled by strong winds and an extended heat wave have led to the first death in California of the 2024 season, while wind-whipped flames in Arizona have forced hundreds to flee from what tribal leaders are calling the “most serious” wildfire on their reservation in decades.
The fires were unfolding as authorities in Western states warned of the rising risk of wildfires amid this month’s protracted heat wave that has dried out the landscape, set temperature records and put lives at risk.
In eastern California and Nevada, the parched conditions also prompted officials to increase staffing in order to better monitor “deteriorating conditions forecasted for this weekend,” the Humboldt–Toiyabe National Forest announced Friday.
California’s first death of the fire season was reported after Mendocino County officials said they found human remains in a home that had burned in a fire that started Monday.
The coroner’s office is working to identify the body, but it may be that of a 66-year-old woman whose family reported her missing.
There have been other wildfire deaths in the West this season, including three people who were killed in New Mexico’s Ruidoso blaze.
In Arizona, more than 400 residents on the San Carlos Apache Reservation were told to leave after a wildfire spilled into the downtown area on Thursday and destroyed at least 13 homes, officials said.
No injuries or deaths have been reported. But the tribe’s chair, Terry Rambler, called it the “most serious structural fire” on the reservation in decades.
Officials said arson was suspected in the fire, which had so far burned about 2 square miles — about 1,280 acres — and remained at 0 percent containment as tribal leaders declared a state of emergency on the reservation. “We have never experienced anything like this,” Rambler said Friday in a statement.
Meanwhile, California’s top fire official said this week that so far this year, the state has responded to more than 3,500 wildfires that have scorched nearly 325 square miles, or about 208,000 acres — five times the average burned through July 10 in each of the past five years.
“We are not just in a fire season, but we are in a fire year,” Joe Tyler, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said. “Our winds and the recent heat wave have exacerbated the issue, consuming thousands of acres. So we need to be extra cautious.”
California crews working in scorching temperatures and single-digit humidity were battling numerous wildfires, including a stubborn 53-square-mile (33,920-acre) blaze that prompted evacuation orders for about 200 homes in the mountains of Santa Barbara County.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Another fast-moving wildfire has broken out in California, this time near a gateway town to Yosemite National Park, prompting mandatory evacuations and a temporary road closure.
The French fire started Thursday evening in Mariposa in Mariposa County after a heat wave brought days of scorching temperatures. By Friday afternoon, the fire had spread to 843 acres and was 15 percent contained, according to Cal Fire.
Some of the 1,100 residents forced to evacuate were allowed to return home Friday afternoon. Also on Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom secured a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, making it the second infusion of funds California has received this week to fight wildfires.
The French fire is the latest blaze to ignite in California amid a particularly dangerous fire season. Just this week, 23 fires have broken out across the state. Most of the active fires are at least 50 percent contained, with no fatalities reported.
Cal Fire crews made progress fighting the largest blaze, the Thompson fire in Butte County. That fire has grown to 3,789 acres and was 46 percent contained Friday.
(WASHINGTON POST)
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PORTLAND, OR — A slow-moving and potentially record-setting heat wave is spreading across the Western U.S., the National Weather Service said, sending many residents in search of a cool haven from the dangerously high temperatures. The Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S. are also sweltering, with oppressive heat and humidity expected to last through today.
Widespread temperature records are expected to be tied or even broken during the heat wave, with much of the West Coast likely to see triple-digit temperatures that are between 15 and 30 degrees Fahrenheit higher than average, the National Weather Service said.
“The duration of this heat is also concerning as scorching, above-average temperatures are forecast to linger into next week,” the weather service said.
In the Portland, OR, suburb of Gresham, Sherri Thompson, 52, was waiting in her car with her 14-year-old Chihuahua Kiwani for a cooling center to open late Friday morning. Thompson has lived in her car for three years and can only run its air conditioning for about 20 minutes at a time as it causes the engine to overheat. Thompson said the high temperatures prompted health concerns, as she had been hospitalized for a heat stroke in the past. “I have anxiety and panic attacks and I get worried. I don’t want to have another heat stroke, and everything just triggers my anxiety a lot,” she said.
The blistering weather in the Portland region is expected to last at least through Monday, National Weather Service meteorologist Clinton Rockey said. If the triple-digit temperatures stretch into Tuesday, then the region will match a record last seen in July 1941, with five consecutive days of more than 100-degree weather, Rockey said.
On the East Coast, Kristin Weisenborn set up her table at an outdoor farmers market in Norfolk, VA, to sell sourdough bread. The air was hovering just below the triple digits, but the 58 percent humidity in the air made it feel more like 114 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
“It’s so hot, I just hope there’s a lot of people here that can buy my bread,” Weisenborn said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Beryl moved over Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Friday after battering the resort town of Tulum and started to emerge into the Gulf of Mexico, prompting Texas officials to urge coastal residents to prepare as the storm headed their way.
Beryl hit Tulum as a Category 2 hurricane and toppled trees but caused no injuries or deaths before weakening to a tropical storm as it moved across the peninsula. The U.S. National Hurricane Center expects the storm to regain hurricane strength in the warm waters of the Gulf and hit south Texas by late Sunday or early Monday.
Beryl, the earliest storm to develop into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, caused at least 11 deaths as it passed through the Caribbean islands earlier in the week.
The storm’s center Friday afternoon was on Mexico’s Gulf coast at Progreso, Yucatan, and was 580 miles east-southeast of Brownsville, TX. It was moving west-northwest at 15 mph with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph, the hurricane center said.
Once in the Gulf, Beryl could regain wind speed of 90 mph before hitting Texas, though it is hard to tell now where it could make landfall, forecasters said. Hurricane watches were in effect from the Rio Grande along the coast to Sargent, just south of Houston.
Beryl spread destruction in Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Barbados this week. Three people have been reported dead in Grenada, three in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, three in Venezuela and two in Jamaica, officials said.
The head of Mexico’s civil defense agency, Laura Velázquez, said Beryl hadn’t caused any deaths or injuries there and that “damages were minor,” though tens of thousands of people remained without power.
While many in the Yucatan Peninsula took a deep breath, Jamaica and other islands ravaged by the hurricane were still reeling. As of Friday morning, 55 percent of Jamaica still without electricity and most of the country was without running water, officials said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A rare tornado swept through China’s eastern province of Shandong on Friday, killing one person and injuring scores of others, officials said. Authorities said 79 people were taken to hospitals with injuries of varying degrees.
The tornado swept through the town, uprooting trees and tearing off store signs, according to videos on state media. Officials are assessing the damage.
Tornadoes are usually recorded in southern and coastal provinces such as Guangdong and Jiangsu, according to the China Meteorological Administration.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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After leaving a trail of destruction across the eastern Caribbean and at least nine people dead, Hurricane Beryl weakened as it chugged over open water toward Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Thursday, going from the earliest Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic to Category 2 by the evening.
Jack Beven, senior hurricane specialist at the U.S. Hurricane Center, said “the biggest immediate threat now that the storm is moving away from the Cayman Islands is landfall in the Yucatan Peninsula.”
The storm’s center was about 180 miles east-southeast of Tulum, Mexico, on Thursday afternoon.
Beryl was expected to bring heavy rain and winds to Mexico’s Caribbean coast, before crossing the Yucatan Peninsula and restrengthening in the Gulf of Mexico to make a second strike on Mexico.
Beryl has damaged or destroyed 95 percent of homes on a pair of islands in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, jumbled fishing boats in Barbados and ripped off roofs in Jamaica before rumbling past the Cayman Islands early Thursday.
Beryl’s worst damage appeared to be behind it. Its eye wall brushed by Jamaica’s southern coast on Wednesday afternoon while on Thursday morning, telephone poles and trees were blocking the roadways in Kingston. Sixty percent of the island remained without electricity, along with a lack of water and limited telecommunications.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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EAST COUNTY - The 1,300-acre McCain fire burning near Boulevard was 50 percent contained and all evacuation warnings were lifted as firefighters continued to make progress Wednesday, officials said.
The fire, which began Monday after a car crash caught nearby brush on fire on Interstate 8 near McCain Valley Road, quickly spread to 1,000 acres and forced the evacuation of De Anza Springs Resort, a motel and recreational vehicle site a few miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border.
A day later, the evacuation order for the resort was lifted and, on Wednesday, sheriff’s officials announced that all evacuation warnings and road closures in Boulevard were lifted.
“Drive slowly and carefully. Be mindful of firefighters, deputies, road and utility crews working in the area,” sheriff’s officials said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Expect noise and dust as (Cal Fire) will remain on scene to contain the fire and put out hot spots. You will continue to see smoke, but there’s no immediate threat.”
On Wednesday, Cleveland National Forest rangers announced that the nearby federal park was under “elevated fire restrictions,” meaning fire use, campfires or charcoal barbecues outside developed recreation sites would not be permitted.
The change was due to “a combination of critical fire weather, fuel moisture nearing critical levels, increased fire activity and a seasonal outlook showing continued hot and dry weather,” Nathan Judy, a spokesperson for the agency, said in a news release.
The restrictions will be in effect until the end of the year.
(Caleb Lunetta, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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KINGSTON, Jamaica - Hurricane Beryl was roaring by Jamaica on Wednesday, bringing fierce winds and heavy rain after the powerful Category 4 storm earlier killed at least seven people and caused significant damage in the southeastern Caribbean.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Beryl’s eye wall was “brushing the south coast of Jamaica.”
Wind-whipped rain pounded the island for hours as residents heeded authorities’ call to shelter until the storm had passed. Power was knocked out in much of the capital.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness said Wednesday afternoon that nearly 500 people were placed in shelters. By evening, he said that Jamaica has not seen the “worst of what could possibly happen.”
“We can do as much as we can do, as humanly possible, and we leave the rest in the hands of God,” Holness said.
Several roadways in the country’s interior settlements were impacted by fallen trees and utility poles, while some communities in the northern section were without electricity, according to the government’s information service.
Kingston resident Pauline Lynch said she had stockpiled food and water in anticipation of the storm’s arrival. With wind already driving rain, Lynch said, “I have no control over what is coming so I just have to pray that all people of Jamaica is safe and we don’t suffer no deaths, no loss.”
A hurricane warning was in effect for Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac, and the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico from Puerto Costa Maya to Cancun. Beryl was forecast to weaken slightly over the next day or two but still be at or near major-hurricane strength when it passes near the Cayman Islands today and into Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula late today or Friday, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
Jamaica was under a state of emergency as the island was declared a disaster zone hours before the impact of the hurricane.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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OROVILLE, CA - Firefighters lined roads to keep flames from reaching homes as helicopters dropped water on a growing wildfire Wednesday in Northern California that has forced at least 26,000 people to evacuate, as the state sweltered under extreme heat.
The Thompson fire broke out before noon Tuesday about 70 miles north of Sacramento, near the city of Oroville in Butte County. It sent up a huge plume of smoke that could be seen from space as it grew to more than 5.5 square miles, or about 3,500 acres. There was no containment.
But Oroville Mayor David Pittman said by Wednesday afternoon there had been a “significant drop in the fire activity,” and he was hopeful that some residents could soon be allowed to return home. The fire’s progress was stopped along the southern edge, and firefighters working in steep terrain were trying to build containment lines on the northern side.
“On that north side they have some real struggles in terms of the topography,” Pittman said.
More than a dozen other blazes, most of them small, were active across the state, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. A new fire Wednesday afternoon prompted a small number of evacuations in heavily populated Simi Valley.
The state’s largest blaze, the Basin fire, covered nearly 22 square miles [14080 acres] of the Sierra National Forest in eastern Fresno County and was 26 percent contained.
In Oroville, a state of emergency was declared Tuesday night and evacuation centers were set up. The evacuation zone expanded Wednesday into foothills and rural areas beyond the city.
With July Fourth in mind, authorities also warned that fireworks are banned in many places, including most of Butte County.
There was no immediate official report on property losses.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Swaths of California sweltered Tuesday and things were only expected to get worse during the Fourth of July holiday week for parts of the United States, with nearly 90 million people under heat alerts.
The torrid conditions were being caused by a ridge of high pressure just off the West Coast and a separate ridge that spawned heat warnings and advisories from Kansas and Missouri to the Gulf Coast states, according to the National Weather Service.
California’s capital, Sacramento, was under an excessive heat warning expected to last until Sunday night, with temperatures forecast to reach between 105 degrees and 115 degrees.
John Mendoza, 35, called it a “firehose of heat” as he walked around the Capitol on Tuesday with an iced coffee in his hand. By 9 a.m. he had already been in a pool once — and planned to go back later in the day.
“I felt like I needed to be submerged in water,” he said.
About 70 miles north of Sacramento, crews working in scorching conditions were battling a wildfire in a remote area of Butte County that prompted evacuation orders for about 2,000 people in and around Oroville, home to about 15,000 residents. The blaze, dubbed the Thompson fire, broke out before noon and sent up a huge plume of smoke as it swiftly grew to more than 3 square miles by evening, with zero containment.
California’s heat was expected to spread from north to south over the week, with the worst of it focused on interior areas including the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys and the southern deserts. But warnings extended out to just short of the coast.
The heat arrived with gusty, dry winds in the northern part of the state, where the utility Pacific Gas & Electric implemented public safety power shutoffs in parts of 10 counties to prevent wildfires from being ignited by downed or damaged electrical wires.
About 12,000 customers were told their power could be cut and given information about centers where they could obtain ice, water, snacks, Wi-Fi and other necessities, PG&E said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada — Hurricane Beryl roared through open waters Tuesday as a powerful Category 4 storm heading toward Jamaica after earlier making landfall in the southeast Caribbean, killing at least six people.
A hurricane warning was in effect for Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, Cayman Brac and for Haiti’s entire southern coast. Beryl was forecast to start losing intensity on Tuesday but still be near major hurricane strength when it passes near or over Jamaica early today, near the Cayman Islands on Thursday and into Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Friday, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Late Monday, Beryl became the earliest storm to develop into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, fueled by record warm waters, though it was downgraded a notch Tuesday to Category 4.
The center said Beryl was expected to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge to Jamaica, where officials warned residents in flood-prone areas to prepare for evacuation.
“I am encouraging all Jamaicans to take the hurricane as a serious threat,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a public address late Monday. “It is, however, not a time to panic.”
On Tuesday night, the storm was about 360 miles east-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica. It had top winds of 150 mph and was moving west-northwest at 22 mph.
In Miami, National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan said Jamaica appears to be in the direct path of Beryl.
“We are most concerned about Jamaica, where we are expecting the core of a major hurricane to pass near or over the island,” he said in an online briefing. “You want to be in a safe place where you can ride out the storm by nightfall (Tuesday). Be prepared to stay in that location through Wednesday.”
Storm surge of 5 to 8 feet above typical tide levels are likely in Jamaica, as well as heavy rainfall. “This is a big hazard in the Caribbean, especially with the mountainous islands,” Brennan said. “This could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides in some of these areas.”
As the storm barreled through the Caribbean Sea, rescue crews in the southeast Caribbean fanned out across the region to determine the extent of the damage that Hurricane Beryl inflicted after landing on Carriacou, an island in Grenada, as a Category 4 storm.
Three people were reported killed in Grenada and Carriacou and another in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, officials said. Two other deaths were reported in northern Venezuela, where five people are missing, officials said. Some 25,000 people in that area also were affected by heavy rainfall from Beryl.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A fire that grew to more than 900 acres in East County mountains and forced evacuations just north of the U.S.-Mexico border was one of several wildland blazes firefighters responded to Monday afternoon, according to officials.
The fire began after a vehicle fire spread to nearby brush around 3:55 p.m. on Interstate 8 near McCain Valley Road near Boulevard, Cal Fire Captain Mike Cornette said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The blaze quickly spread to 20 acres and had the potential to grow to 1,000 acres, Cornette said. By 7:15 p.m., it was steadily closing in on that prediction, and more than 150 firefighters from several agencies had been deployed.
An evacuation order was in place for DeAnza Springs Resort, a luxury motel and recreational vehicle site a few miles north of the border, and the surrounding area. An evacuation warning was issued for the area west of Interstate 8 near Table Mountain. The area is sparsely populated.
The Golden Acorn Casino has been designated as a site to temporarily receive evacuees. “If you are in the fire area and feel threatened, don’t wait — leave immediately,” Cal Fire urged.
The blaze appeared to be burning east at a moderate rate but was staying north of Interstate 8 as night approached.
That blaze broke out a few miles east of another brushfire that was first reported around 11:40 a.m. near Kitchen Creek Road and Old Highway 80, according to Cleveland National Forest officials.
As of about 2 p.m., they announced the fire had extended to 43 acres and was 5 percent contained.
A separate, smaller fire started around 2:40 p.m. on San Miguel Road just east of state Route 125, Cal Fire officials said in a post on X. The forward progress was stopped roughly an hour later at 7 acres.
Cal Fire and Cleveland National Forest officials could not be immediately reached for further details.
(Caleb Lunetta; Noah Lyons; S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Hurricane Beryl tore off doors, windows and roofs in homes across the southeastern Caribbean on Monday after making landfall on the island of Carriacou as the earliest storm of Category 4 strength to form in the Atlantic, fueled by record warm waters.
There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries, with communications down across the region.
Streets from St. Lucia island south to Grenada were strewn with shoes, trees, downed power lines and piles of other debris scattered by winds up to 150 mph, just shy of a Category 5 storm. The storm snapped banana trees in half and killed cows that lay in pastures as if they were sleeping, with homes made of tin and plywood tilting precariously nearby.
Beryl was still swiping the southeastern Caribbean late Monday afternoon even as it began moving into the Caribbean Sea on a track that would take it just south of Jamaica and toward Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula by late Thursday as a Category 1 storm.
Beryl was about 125 miles northwest of Grenada and was moving west-northwest at 21 mph, with hurricane conditions possible Wednesday on Jamaica. A hurricane watch was in effect for Jamaica, and a tropical storm warning for Grenada, St. Lucia, Martinique, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the southern coasts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Weather forecasters warned Monday that much of New Mexico faces two more days of elevated threats of dangerous flooding after walls of water over the weekend caused severe damage, forced the rescues of 100 people and left parts of one town recently ravaged by wildfires covered in mud and debris.
The body of one person was recovered from the Rio Grande in Albuquerque on Sunday, but it wasn’t immediately clear if the death was flood-related, according to Albuquerque Fire Rescue and Bernalillo County Fire Rescue. The death remained under investigation and no other details had been released.
Most of central New Mexico remained under a flood watch into today, including Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Las Vegas and Ruidoso.
“Very few parts of the state have been immune from the impacts,” said Daniel Porter, the senior meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service office in Albuquerque. “Unfortunately the threat is most likely to continue to be really elevated for the next couple of days, at least through Wednesday,” he said.
The threat should briefly subside Thursday but begin to ramp up again by the weekend, Porter said.
The downpours have caused the most damage in areas of New Mexico where wildfires have left mountainside void of trees, brush and grass — including in northern New Mexico where a historic blaze burned through numerous communities in 2022 and in the village of Ruidoso, where residents were forced to flee fast-moving flames just weeks ago.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Hurricane Beryl closed in on the southeastern Caribbean late Sunday after strengthening into what experts called an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm as government officials pleaded with people to take shelter.
The storm was expected to make landfall in the Windward Islands this morning. Hurricane warnings were in effect for Barbados, St. Lucia, Grenada, Tobago and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
“This is a very dangerous situation,” warned the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami, saying Beryl was “forecast to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge.”
Beryl was centered about 200 miles southeast of Barbados on Sunday evening. It had maximum sustained winds of 130 mph and was moving west-northwest at 18 mph. It is a compact storm, with hurricane-force winds extending 35 miles from its center.
A tropical storm warning was in effect for Martinique and Trinidad. A tropical storm watch was issued for Dominica, Haiti’s entire southern coast, and from Punta Palenque in the Dominican Republic west to the border with Haiti.
Beryl is expected to pass just south of Barbados early today and then head into the Caribbean Sea as a major hurricane on a path toward Jamaica. It was expected to weaken by midweek, but still remain a hurricane while heading toward Mexico.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Scorching temperatures in southern Europe are set to intensify next month, promising little relief from the heat waves and wildfires that have taken hold in parts of the continent.
Greece, Spain and Italy will experience the hottest conditions in July, according to meteorologists surveyed by Bloomberg. Below-average temperatures are expected for Germany, France and the U.K., but could turn warmer by the end of the month.
Atlantic Ocean temperatures have been breaking records in recent months, and will contribute to the heat over parts of southeast Europe, according to Matthew Dross, a meteorologist at forecaster Maxar Technologies Inc. Climate change is exacerbating the effects of extreme weather globally, with 2024 on track to be the hottest year on record.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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A [magnitude] 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Peru early Friday, injuring at least three people, triggering a tsunami alert and shaking buildings as far as the capital, Lima, about 600 miles away, according to officials.
The quake struck about a mile off the coast of the Arequipa region of Peru at 12:36 a.m. local time, the United States Geological Survey said. Several aftershocks were also recorded off Arequipa, Peru’s National Seismological Center said.
Peruvian authorities issued a tsunami alert on the country’s coast and warned that waves could reach the town of Puerto Atico by 12:52 a.m. The U.S. Tsunami Warning Center said about an hour later that the tsunami threat had passed.
No deaths were reported, but eight people were treated for injuries, officials said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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A 13-year-old beachgoer died after being struck by lightning in northern Greece during a sudden summer rainstorm Friday, authorities said.
A local official said the Greek girl had been swimming with her parents at Faros beach, near Poseidi in Halkidiki, a resort area southeast of Thessaloniki popular with Greek and foreign visitors.
Kassandreia Mayor Anastasia Halkia said the family came out of the sea because it had just started to rain, but the weather deteriorated very quickly.
“There was a lot of lightning,” she said. “It’s the kind of summer storm that usually doesn’t cause any trouble.”
Police said the girl was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Her parents were uninjured.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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A wildfire in Oregon’s high desert, near the popular vacation destination of Bend, grew rapidly Wednesday, and officials urged the continued evacuations of hundreds of homes in the area best known for its microbreweries, hiking, river rafting and skiing on nearby Mount Bachelor.
The wind-driven Darlene 3 wildfire was just outside city limits of La Pine, about 30 miles south of Bend, and grew to nearly 4 square miles [2560 acres].
Video taken Tuesday showed a huge plume of thick smoke billowing behind homes, strip malls and grocery stores. Officials set up an evacuation center at a local high school and were working to get horses and other animals out of the area.
“We’re doing much better than we were yesterday,” Geoff Wullschlager, city manager of La Pine, said Wednesday.
Firefighters were able to build a defense around the fire overnight, and fire managers listed the blaze at 30 percent contained Wednesday.
The concern, however, was stronger winds forecast for late Wednesday, which again could fan the fire.
Evacuation alerts were sent to 1,100 homes and businesses Tuesday, said Lt. Jayson Janes of the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office. Those orders remained in effect Wednesday. It was not known whether any structures had burned.
The fire is just one of the latest forcing people out of their homes in the U.S.. In New Mexico, thousands fled last week as two fast-moving wildfires approached their village. Two people were killed, and officials have estimated around 1,500 structures were destroyed or damaged.
In Central California, a new group of three large wildfires and several smaller ones covered nearly 11 square miles [7050 acres] in rural Fresno County, with 20 percent containment. Several areas were under evacuation orders or warnings, and a shelter was set up at a college.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A days-long intense heat wave has disrupted normal life in Pakistan, especially in its largest city, Karachi, where doctors treated thousands of victims of heatstroke at various hospitals, health officials said Tuesday. Several people fell unconscious in the city and some of them later died, local media said.
Temperatures soared as high as 117 degrees Fahrenheit in Sindh province on Tuesday. Authorities in Karachi, the provincial capital, are urging people to stay indoors, hydrate, and avoid unnecessary travel.
Forecasters say the heat wave, which began in May, will subside next week.
According to local media, the heat also killed more than two dozen people in Karachi, but no government spokesperson was able to confirm the number of deaths.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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DES MOINES, IA - Tornado warnings, flash flooding and large hail added insult to injury for people in the Midwest already contending with heat, humidity and intense flooding after days of rain.
The National Weather Service on Tuesday afternoon and evening issued multiple tornado warnings in parts of Iowa and Nebraska as local TV news meteorologists showed photos of large hail and spoke of very heavy rain.
Earlier Tuesday, floodwaters breached levees in Iowa, creating dangerous conditions that prompted evacuations.
A vast swath of lands from eastern Nebraska and South Dakota to Iowa and Minnesota has been under siege from flooding from torrential rains since last week, while also being hit with a scorching heat wave. Up to 18 inches of rain have fallen in some areas, and some rivers rose to record levels.
Hundreds of people were rescued, homes were damaged and at least two people died after driving in flooded areas.
The sheriff’s office in Monona County, near the Nebraska border, said the Little Sioux River breached levees in several areas. In neighboring Woodbury County, the sheriff’s office posted drone video on Facebook showing the river overflowing the levee and flooding land in rural Smithland. No injuries were immediately reported.
To the east in Humboldt, IA, a record crest of 16.5 feet was expected today at the west fork of the Des Moines River. Amid high temperatures and humidity, nearly 68,000 sandbags have been laid, according to county emergency manager Kyle Bissell. Bissell told reporters Tuesday that there was no water on the streets yet, but flooding had begun in some backyards and was reaching up to foundations. Humboldt is home to nearly 5,000 residents.
In Michigan, more than 150,000 homes and businesses were without power Tuesday morning after severe thunderstorms barreled through, less than a week after storms left thousands in the dark for days in suburban Detroit.
The weather service also predicted more than two dozen points of major flooding in southern Minnesota, eastern South Dakota and northern Iowa, and flood warnings are expected to continue into the week.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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PALERMO, CA - Improved weather conditions aided firefighters Tuesday as they battled a rural Northern California wildfire that destroyed two structures and threatened the community of Palermo, which is near where the state’s deadliest wildfire struck six years ago.
The fire spread over about 1 square mile in the initial hours Monday evening but was static overnight and containment reached 15 percent, said Capt. Dan Collins of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
The cause of the blaze — dubbed the Apache fire — was under investigation.
Evacuation orders were in effect for several areas but Collins did not know how many people were affected. The destroyed structures included one house and an outbuilding that may have been a shed or garage, he said. One firefighter had a minor injury.
Palermo had a population of about 9,400 in the 2020 census. The town is about 65 miles north of Sacramento. It is part of Butte County, which is also home to Paradise, where California’s deadliest wildfire killed 85 people and destroyed 11,000 homes in 2018.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Flooding in the Midwestern U.S. killed at least two, collapsed a railroad bridge and sent water surging around a dam Monday after days of heavy rains that have forced hundreds of people to evacuate or be rescued from rising waters.
An Illinois man died Saturday while trying to go around a barricade in Spencer, Iowa, Sioux City’s KTIV-TV reported Monday.
The Little Sioux River swept his truck away, according to a news release from the Clay County Sheriff’s Office provided to the station. Officials found the vehicle in the treeline but weren’t able to recover his body until Monday because of dangerous conditions.
At least one person died in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem has said.
The flooding brought added misery to parts of Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota during a vast and stubborn heat wave. In some communities hit by flooding, the temperature Monday afternoon approached 100 degrees.
More than 3 million people live in areas touched by flooding, from Omaha, NE, to St. Paul, MN. Storms dumped huge amounts of rain from Thursday through Saturday, with as much as 18 inches falling south of Sioux Falls, SD, according to the National Weather Service.
Places that didn’t get as much rain still had to contend with the extra water moving downstream. More rain is forecast, and many streams may not crest until later this week as the floodwaters slowly drain down a web of rivers to the Missouri and Mississippi. The Missouri will crest at Omaha on Thursday, said Kevin Low, a weather service hydrologist.
The bridge connecting North Sioux City, SD, with Sioux City, IA, fell into the Big Sioux River around 11 p.m. Sunday, officials said. Images on local media showed a large span of the steel bridge partially submerged as floodwaters rushed over it.
There were no reports of injuries from the collapse.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The hottest year on record, 2023, was also the most extreme for wildfires, according to new research.
Both the frequency and intensity of extreme wildfires have more than doubled in the past two decades, the study found. And when the ecological, social and economic consequences of wildfires were accounted for, six of the past seven years were the most “energetically intense.”
“That we’ve detected such a big increase over such a short period of time makes the findings even more shocking,” said Calum Cunningham, a postdoctoral researcher in pyrogeography at the University of Tasmania and lead author of the study, published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology Evolution. “We’re seeing the manifestations of a warming and drying climate before our very eyes in these extreme fires.”
Last week, wildfires in New Mexico killed two people and burned more than 24,000 acres; in Southern California, more than 15,000 acres burned near Los Angeles; and in Turkey, at least 12 people died and many more were injured by fires that started Thursday from burning crop residue, according to Turkish health authorities and ministers.
Even though wildfires can be deadly and cost the United States up to $893 billion annually, which includes the costs of rebuilding and the economic effects of pollution and injuries, most fires are “relatively benign and in most cases ecologically beneficial,” Cunningham said.
The new study looked at the total power emitted by clusters of fire events, defined as fires burning at the same time in proximity, or in the same spot, at multiple times in a single day. The researchers analyzed 21 years of data collected by two NASA satellites between January 2003 and November to quantify how fire activity has changed over time.
They identified 2,913 extreme events out of more than 30 million fires across the world. Such extreme fire events were also defined by the vast amount of smoke they emitted; their high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, which can further accelerate global warming; and the fire’s ecological, social and economic effects.
“This has been the holy grail for me,” said David Bowman, senior author of the study and professor of pyrogeography and fire science at the University of Tasmania. Although he observed fires growing stronger, especially in Australia after 2019’s bushfires killed 173 people and almost 3 billion vertebrates, he said he needed the data from the study to show a trend and convey something enormous is happening.
“When you have these signals that are so frightening, it’s also really motivating,” Bowman said. “There’s an imperative to do something about this.”
The global increase in the frequency and intensity of fires was almost exclusively caused by changes in two regions. In the temperate conifer forests of the western United States and Canada, extreme fire events increased to 67 in 2023, more than elevenfold, from six in 2003. The boreal forests of North America and Russia’s northern latitudes saw a more than sevenfold increase in energetically extreme fires.
The scientists plan to examine why the fires in these biomes were so extreme, but Cunningham said their findings were consistent with the effects of climate change, which make conditions hotter and drier in these forests and more conducive to extreme events.
This scale of wildfire threatens not only nearby communities but people living far away because dense smoke can significantly affect air quality and can travel great distances.
“The largest smoke events come from the most intense fire events,” said Jeffrey Pierce, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. “If you don’t have the ability to clean air in your home or seek places that have air purification systems,” wildfire smoke can have strong health effects.
Jennifer Marlon, a research scientist and lecturer at the Yale School of the Environment and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, said the study showed that humans are changing patterns of forest and grassland burning far beyond what humans have ever done.
“Larger and more severe wildfires are one of the most obvious manifestations of a planet that is heating up,” Marlon said in an email. “If we can help people better understand that connection, we may be able to build support for working more quickly to reduce the root causes of the problem burning fossil fuels."
(Austyn Gaffney, NEW TORK TIMES)
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BERNE- Rescuers in Switzerland have found the body of one of three people a day after they were swept away in a rockslide that hit their Alpine village following massive thunderstorms and rainfall, authorities said Sunday. The other two are still missing.
One woman was pulled out alive from the rubble Saturday morning. The man’s body was found in a nearby river, authorities said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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RUIDOSO, NM - Full-time residents of Ruidoso will be allowed to return to their village this morning as federal authorities seek to prosecute whoever started a pair of New Mexico wildfires that killed two people and destroyed or damaged more than 1,400 structures.
The FBI said it is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrests and convictions of those responsible for the South Fork fire and Salt fire in southern New Mexico, which forced thousands to flee.
The federal agency also said it was seeking public assistance in identifying the cause of the fires discovered June 17 near the village of Ruidoso.
But the notice also pointedly suggested human hands were to blame, saying the reward was for information leading to the arrest and conviction of “the person or persons responsible for starting the fires.
Lincoln County Manager Randall Camp said at a news conference Saturday that “we are approaching a thousand homes lost” in the fires.
President Joe Biden issued a disaster declaration for parts of southern New Mexico on Thursday. The move freed up funding and more resources to help with recovery efforts including temporary housing, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property and other emergency work in Lincoln County and on lands belonging to the Mescalero Apache Tribe.
The National Interagency Fire Center said the South Fork fire, which reached 26 square miles, was 31 percent contained Sunday. It said the Salt fire that has spread over 12 square miles was now 7 percent contained.
Both fires had been at zero containment Friday. Full containment isn’t expected until July 15, according to fire officials.
More than 1,100 firefighters continued to fight the flames in steep and rocky terrain Sunday.
The South Fork and Salt fires are still burning on both sides of Ruidoso and a threat of flash floods still looms over the village. Authorities said downed power lines, damaged water, sewer and gas lines plus flooding in burn scars continued to pose risks to firefighters and the public.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham toured some of the disaster area Saturday with Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Deanne Criswell.
Even with federal and state assistance on the table, Ruidoso Mayor Lynn Crawford estimates it could take at least five years for the area to fully recover.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Millions of Americans sweated through yet another scorching day as temperatures soared Sunday across the U.S., while residents were rescued from floodwaters that forced evacuations across the Midwest, including in an Iowa town where the flood gauge was submerged. One person was killed during flooding in South Dakota, the governor said.
From the mid-Atlantic to Maine, across the Great Lakes region, and throughout the West to California, officials cautioned residents about the dangers of excessive heat and humidity.
In the Midwest where South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota meet, floodwaters rose through the weekend. In northwest Iowa, 13 rivers flooded the area, said Eric Tigges of Clay County emergency management. Entire neighborhoods — and at least one entire town — were evacuated, and the town of Spencer imposed a curfew Sunday for the second night in a row after flooding that surpassed the record set in 1953.
Gov. Kim Reynolds declared a disaster for 21 counties in northern Iowa. In drone video posted by the local sheriff, no streets were visible, just roofs and treetops poking above the water.
Reynolds told reporters Sunday that more than 1,000 displaced residents slept in shelters Saturday night. National Guard troops were helping with water rescues and transporting needed medications lost in flooding.
National Weather Service meteorologist Donna Dubberke said parts of northern Nebraska, southeastern South Dakota, southern Minnesota and northwest Iowa received eight times the typical average rainfall. And more heavy rain was expected this week.
In South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem declared an emergency after severe flooding in the southeastern part. Several highways were closed. Areas south of Sioux Falls had an estimated 10 to 15 inches of rain over three days, National Weather Service hydrologist Kevin Low said. At least one person died in the floods, Noem said Sunday.
Several rivers, including the Big Sioux, James and Vermillion, were expected to peak sometime today through Wednesday night, the governor said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a settlement between Western states over the management of one of North America’s longest rivers.
In a 5-4 decision, the justices ruled that the water-sharing deal between Texas and New Mexico can’t go through because the federal government still has concerns about New Mexico water use on the Rio Grande, which Colorado also draws from.
“Having acknowledged those interests, and having allowed the United States to intervene to assert them, we cannot now allow Texas and New Mexico to leave the United States up the river without a paddle,” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, reading the majority opinion, which crossed ideological lines as it was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts.
In a dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch said the United States’ theory about how water should be distributed between the two states is “so aggressive that New Mexico fears it could devastate its economy.” Joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett, he wrote that the high court’s ruling “defies 100 years of this court’s water law jurisprudence.”
New Mexico’s state engineer said it was disappointing the high court scuttled the deal recommended by a federal judge overseeing the case.
“We need to keep working to make the aquifers in the Lower Rio Grande region sustainable, and lasting solutions are more likely to come from parties working together than from continued litigation,” said Mike Hamman, whose office is responsible for administering the state’s water resources.
Some New Mexico lawmakers had voiced concerns about the proposed settlement, which would have meant reducing the state’s use of Rio Grande water with steps like paying farmers to leave their fields barren and making infrastructure improvements.
Attorney Samantha Barncastle with the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, the largest in New Mexico, greeted the ruling with pleasure and said her group hopes all the parties will go back to the settlement table and work out a new agreement.
Farmers in southern New Mexico have had to rely more heavily on groundwater wells over the last two decades as drought and climate change resulted in reduced flows and less water in reservoirs along the Rio Grande. Texas sued over the groundwater pumping, saying the practice was cutting into the amount of water that was delivered as part of the interstate compact.
U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Melloy had previously deemed the proposal a fair and reasonable way to resolve the conflict consistent with a decades-long water-sharing agreement.
The federal government, though, lodged objections, including that the proposal did not mandate specific water capture or use limitations within New Mexico.
(Lindsay Whitehurst, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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WASHINGTON - The head of the Homeland Security Department said Friday that the agency tasked with responding to disasters across the country is prepared as it goes into what is expected to be an intense hurricane and wildfire season but he’s concerned about looming budget shortfalls.
As parts of the U.S. are sweltering under potentially record-breaking temperatures, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said extreme heat could qualify as a major disaster under a law governing how the federal government responds to natural disasters but that local communities historically have been able to deal with major heat waves or wildfire smoke without needing federal financial assistance.
Mayorkas spoke to The Associated Press during a visit to the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a briefing about the hurricane season, which started on June 1. Experts think this year could be one of the busiest Atlantic hurricane seasons on record as climate change causes storms to become more intense. Already Tropical Storm Alberto, the season’s first named storm, brought heavy rain to parts of Mexico and Texas.
Mayorkas said one reason FEMA is prepared is that the agency staff has gotten so much practice responding to disasters as climate change has intensified.
“They have exercised these muscles regrettably year after year. As the impacts of climate change have been more and more evident, we have seen and experienced increasing frequency and gravity of extreme weather events,” Mayorkas said.
Against that backdrop, the secretary said he was concerned about the size of the agency’s disaster relief fund. That’s the primary way that FEMA funds its response to hurricanes, wildfires, floods and other disasters.
“We expect the disaster relief fund, which is the critical fund that we use to resource impacted communities, we expect it will run out by mid-August. And we need Congress to fund the disaster relief fund,” he said.
If the fund runs out of money, it doesn’t mean the agency doesn’t respond to emergencies. Instead, the agency goes into what’s called immediate needs funding — redirecting money from other programs so it can respond to the most urgent, lifesaving needs. But that can take away money from longer-term recoveries.
Much of the United States has been baking in a heat wave, with numerous areas expected to see record-breaking temperatures and hot weather expected to continue through the weekend. The hot start to the summer comes after the U.S. last year experienced the most heat waves since 1936.
With climate change raising temperatures nationwide, advocates and some members of Congress have questioned whether heat waves should be considered natural disasters in the same way hurricanes, tornadoes and floods are.
Environmental and labor groups earlier this week petitioned FEMA to include extreme heat and wildfire smoke as major disasters under the Stafford Act, the law spelling out federal disaster response. They argued that both are among the biggest environmental killers and that a clear federal designation would unlock money for things like cooling centers to be used in heat waves or community solar energy projects to reduce grid load.
“In recent years, increasing extreme heat events have impacted millions of workers and communities — ranging from farmworkers sowing outdoor crops under fatal heat dome conditions, to postal workers ducking in and out of searing hot trucks, to warehouse workers experiencing record indoor heat while undertaking fast-paced physical labor, and to communities of color suffering disproportionate heat while living in concrete urban heat islands,” the petition read.
Mayorkas said the law doesn’t prevent extreme heat or smoke from qualifying as a major disaster but that the federal government only steps in to help when a local community doesn’t have the resources to respond itself. But historically that “has not been the case with respect to extreme heat and smoke,” he said.
(Rebecca Santana, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A fire that apparently started in crop stubble spread through settlements in southeast Turkey overnight, killing 11 people and leaving dozens of others requiring medical treatment, officials and news reports said Friday.
In neighboring Greece, authorities evacuated several villages south of Athens and in the southern Peloponnese region because of wildfires.
The blaze in Turkey broke out in an area between the provinces of Diyarbakir and Mardin. Fanned by winds, it moved quickly through the villages of Koksalan, Yazcicegi and Bagacik, Diyarbakir Gov. Ali Ihsan Su said. The fire was brought under control early Friday.
The cause is under investigation.
Across the country in northwest Turkey, meanwhile, firefighters were battling a wildfire near the town of Ayvacik in Canakkale province, the state-run Anadolu Agency said. No one was hurt, but authorities evacuated the small village of Camkoy as a precaution, the agency reported.
Wildfires also erupted in Greece amid very windy, hot and dry conditions. Six villages or settlements were ordered evacuated as a precaution because of wildfires near Anavyssos, just south of Athens, and in the southern Peloponnese region. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage to property, and firefighters on the ground were assisted by water-dropping aircraft.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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At least 47 people have died as downpours in southern China’s Guangdong province caused historic flooding and slides, state media reported Friday, while authorities warned of more extreme weather ahead in other parts of the country.
State broadcaster CCTV said Friday that 38 people were confirmed dead in a county under the jurisdiction of Meizhou city, adding to nine others previously reported dead elsewhere in Meizhou.
Heavy rains caused landslides, floods and mudslides that severely damaged eight townships, CCTV said.
The heaviest rains were on Sunday, with an average rainfall of 7.83 inches, and one town seeing 14.4 inches. It is unclear from the report when the deaths occurred.
The extreme weather also destroyed some 221 miles of road, damaged more than a hundred bridges and flooded farmland.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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A relentless heat wave continued to bake most of the United States on Friday, with numerous areas expected to see record-breaking temperatures and forecasters warning there would likely be little relief through the weekend for most areas.
The steamiest conditions on Friday were expected in parts of Ohio and Indiana, where heat indexes soared past 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But the Midwest was not the only area being baked, as heat and excessive heat warnings and advisories have been issued across the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic and in some western states.
Idaho officials said two people in their 60s have died of heat-related causes — the state’s first heat-related deaths of the year. Health officials did not release additional information about the victims Friday, including where they died.
Millions of residents across the country have had their lives disrupted by days of unusually high temperatures, including tens of thousands who lost power amid the grueling heat.
In Michigan, utility crews from several states were working feverishly Friday to restore power to thousands of suburban Detroit customers, two days after severe storms knocked out their power, leaving residents suffering amid a heat wave expected to linger through today.
About 12,000 homes and businesses remained without power Friday afternoon in Oakland County, a suburban area north of Detroit hit hard by Wednesday night’s storms that cut power to about 75,000 homes and businesses at its peak, said Brian Calka, DTE Energy’s vice president of distribution operations.
Between 500 and 600 crew members from utilities in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were working with about 1,000 DTE Energy utility workers and 1,000 tree-trimming contractors to get the power back on. Calka said the utility’s goal is to restore power for all its customers by early today.
Utility crews were working 16-hour shifts to get the power back on and they were urged to deal with the heat by taking more breaks because they are wearing jeans, long-sleeved shirts, rubber gloves and hardhats for their work, Calka said.
The excessive heat wasn’t the only weather-related issue in some states.
Several small-town tourist meccas in northern Minnesota continued to be inundated by floodwaters after a deluge of rain earlier this week, prompting the closure of major roads and leaving a costly trail of damage.
On Friday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz traveled to St. Louis County, where people in one town paddled through flooded streets in small boats and officials estimated the floods had caused at least $50 million in damage.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Alberto, the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, made landfall on the northeastern coast of Mexico as a tropical storm early Thursday, unleashing heavy rain, flooding and gusty winds, forecasters said. At least four people died in events related to the storm, which later weakened into a depression, officials and forecasters said.
The deaths were all in Nuevo León. A man received an electrical shock there while trying to make repairs to his house, Gov. Samuel García said in a televised interview Thursday.
A teenager was trapped by currents in a river and drowned after trying to recover a ball, Erik Cavazos, the director of civil protection in Nuevo León, told reporters earlier. Two children were electrocuted crossing a pond that was in contact with a live cable, he said.
The El Universal newspaper, citing local emergency authorities, reported that the child who drowned was 16 and the two others were 12.
By Thursday afternoon, Alberto was no longer considered a tropical cyclone, but the U.S. National Weather Service warned that the storm’s remnants would continue to produce “heavy rainfall over northeastern Mexico with life-threatening flooding and mudslides likely.” Rainfall totals of 20 inches were possible. Maximum sustained winds were near 30 mph, the service said.
Forecasters said ocean swells caused by the storm would continue to affect the Texas coast and northeastern Mexico through today, likely causing life-threatening surf and rip current conditions. Flash floods and mudslides are a concern in the hills of Mexico as rain continues to fall.
Rivers were rising in Mexico.
Mexico’s meteorological service had forecast torrential rains for the northern states of Nuevo León, Coahuila, Tamaulipas and San Luis Potosí for Thursday. Government workers set up shelters, and electricians were deployed to areas at risk of power outages.
The flow of two of the rivers that run through Nuevo León’s capital, Monterrey, had increased considerably in a matter of hours. By Thursday morning, civil protection authorities in Monterrey had reported traffic accidents and vehicles stranded on flooded streets.
Seemingly endless streams of brown water flooded some parts of Monterrey by Thursday afternoon.
A disaster declaration was issued in Texas.
Before the storm, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas announced a severe-weather disaster declaration for 51 counties.
Alberto drenched areas near Rockport, a coastal city 30 miles north of Corpus Christi with up to 7 inches of rain, and prompted some counties near the border with Mexico to issue tornado warnings. No major injuries were reported Thursday. Scattered showers were still expected the rest of the week, weather officials said.
The most jarring images of vehicles submerged under water and streets overrun by currents came from Surfside Beach, a retirement community of about 750 residents that sees its population grow to about 10,000 during its high summer season.
As of Thursday morning, many of the streets on the west end of the island were measuring about 3 feet of water, said Greg Bisso, the mayor of Surfside Beach. Most of the homes were spared major damage because the city has long required new dwellings to be built 14 feet above sea level.
“When you live on a barrier island, this is what you have to deal with,” Bisso said. “You know, we’re surrounded by water.”
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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TAMPICO, Mexico - Tropical Storm Alberto formed Wednesday in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, the first named storm of what is forecast to be a busy hurricane season.
Alberto, which is bringing strong winds, heavy rainfall and some flooding along the coasts of Texas and Mexico, is expected to make landfall in northern Mexico today.
“The heavy rainfall and the water, as usual, is the biggest story in tropical storms,” said Michael Brennan, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center.
The National Hurricane Center said Wednesday afternoon that Alberto was located about 150 miles east of Tampico, Mexico, and about 320 miles south-southeast of Brownsville, Texas, with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph. The storm is moving west-southwest at 9 mph.
The center of the storm was expected to reach the northeastern coast of Mexico south of the mouth of the Rio Grande by this morning.
Brennan said that winds could get up to 45 mph to 50 mph before the storm makes landfall. As much as 5 to 10 inches of rain was expected in some areas along the Texas coast, with even higher isolated totals possible, Brennan said. He said some higher locations in Mexico could see as much as 20 inches of rain, which could result in mudslides and flash flooding, especially in the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon.
Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said Wednesday on X that schools across the state will remain closed through Friday.
The coordinator of civil protection in Tamaulipas, Luis Gerardo Gonzalez, said they have 333 shelters distributed throughout the state at each municipality. “As the storm moves, we will be opening up more shelters.”
Authorities urged residents to be aware of the alerts the state and municipal civil protections are sharing. They anticipate the storm arriving overnight with communities closest to the coast most affected.
The municipal government of Tampico, a port city in Tamaulipas state, announced Wednesday that it had activated a command center in coordination with the water, electricity and oil companies.
Tampico has been dealing with extreme droughts. “We have been needing this water that we’re now getting, thank God. Let’s hope that we only get water,” said Blanca Coronel Moral, a resident of Tampico. “Our lagoon, which gives us drinking water, is completely dry.”
Tropical storm warnings were in effect from the Texas coast at San Luis Pass southward to the mouth of the Rio Grande and from the northeastern coast of Mexico south of the mouth of the Rio Grande to Tecolutla.
“Rapid weakening is expected once the center moves inland, and Alberto is likely to dissipate over Mexico” today, the center said. The U.S. National Weather Service said the main hazard for southern coastal Texas is flooding from excess rain. Wednesday, the NWS said, there was “a high probability” of flash flooding in southern coastal Texas. Tornadoes or waterspouts were possible.
NOAA predicts the hurricane season that began June 1 and runs through Nov. 30 is likely to be well above average, with between 17 and 25 named storms. The forecast calls for as many as 13 hurricanes and four major hurricanes. An average Atlantic hurricane season produces 14 named storms, seven of them hurricanes and three major hurricanes.
(Alfredo Peña & Mariana Martínez Barba, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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MECCA, Saudi Arabia - Hundreds of people died during this year’s Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia as the faithful faced intense high temperatures at Islamic holy sites in the desert kingdom, officials said Wednesday as people tried to claim their loved ones’ bodies.
Saudi Arabia has not commented on the death toll amid the heat during the pilgrimage, required of every able Muslim once in their life, nor offered any causes for those who died. However, hundreds of people had lined up at the Emergency Complex in Al-Muaisem neighborhood in Mecca, trying to get information about their missing family members.
One list circulating online suggested at least 550 people died during the five-day Hajj.
A medic who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss information not released publicly by the government said that the names listed appeared genuine.
That medic and another official who also spoke on condition of anonymity for the same reason said they believed at least 600 bodies were at the facility. Deaths are not uncommon at the Hajj, which has seen at times over 2 million people travel to Saudi Arabia.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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ROSWELL, NM - Heavy rain and hail fell Wednesday around an evacuated village in New Mexico threatened by wildfires that have killed at least two people and damaged more than 1,400 structures, offering the hope of some assistance for firefighters but adding the threat of high winds and flash floods.
Air tankers dropped water and red retardant earlier on the pair of fires growing in a mountainous part of the state where earlier in the week residents of the village of Ruidoso were forced to flee the larger of the two blazes with little notice.
New Mexico State Police spokesperson Wilson Silver said Wednesday that officers discovered the skeletal remains of an unidentified second person in the driver seat of a burned vehicle. It’s the second confirmed death in the blazes. The first fire victim was a badly burned 60-year-old man found by the side of the road near the popular Swiss Chalet Inn in Ruidoso.
Weather patterns were shifting Wednesday with moisture arriving from the Gulf of Mexico, said Bladen Breitreiter of the National Weather Service office in Albuquerque.
“It will be a challenging situation going into the late afternoon and evening,” said Breitreiter, who has been an incident meteorologist at past wildfires. “The potential for scattered to isolated thunderstorms could help, but it depends on where they hit. If the rain misses the fires, downward winds could cause problems for firefighters on the ground.”
The two fires remained at 0 percent containment Wednesday afternoon as crews used heavy equipment to build fire lines while water and retardant was dropped from the air, authorities said.
Officials said hundreds of firefighters were on the scene and watching to stop any spot fires that could flare up.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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From the Midwest to the northern tip of Maine, millions of Americans sweltered under a springtime heat wave Wednesday that stifled the Eastern portion of the United States for a third consecutive day.
As the heat wave moved east, the Northeast felt the brunt of the conditions, stemming from a high-pressure system called a heat dome that scorched the Great Lakes region earlier this week.
Conditions in a swath of central Maine were particularly brutal, largely because the area was farther from ocean winds, according to Jay Engle, a forecaster at the National Weather Service. The heat index — a measure that includes temperature and humidity to showcase how hot it actually feels — topped 100 degrees in some areas, and temperatures reached as high as 95 degrees in cities, including Bangor, Houlton and Millinocket, according to the weather service.
More than 78 million people were under heat warnings, watches and advisories Wednesday. Heat waves are not uncommon in mid-June, but the weather service warned that this one could last longer than some places have experienced in decades.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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On Feb. 3, 2023, a train carrying toxic chemicals crashed in northeastern Ohio, sending up a large black cloud over Ohio and Pennsylvania after officials decided to burn off the hazardous materials. As the chemicals lofted into the air, the pollution spread as far as 16 states, according to a new study.
“I didn’t expect to see an impact this far out,” said David Gay, lead author of the study. “There’s more going on here than most people would have guessed, including me.”
Toxic chemicals rained down from South Carolina to Wisconsin to New England following the accident, according to the new analysis in the Environmental Research Letters journal. Overall, the pollution spread over 540,000 square miles, or 14 percent of U.S. land area.
People closer to the accident reported rashes, nausea and headaches, but Gay said the low chemical concentrations farther away from the accident weren’t “toxic, but are pretty unusual at a lot of places.”
“It’s not death and destruction. It’s fairly low concentrations, but they are very high relative to the normal that we typically see — some of the highest we’ve measured in the last 10 years,” Gay said.
Initially, Gay expected to see only a few abnormally high chloride signals nearby in Pennsylvania, but the impact was much higher than he anticipated.
High chloride concentrations spanned as far as Virginia, South Carolina and Wisconsin.
The highest concentrations were located near the Canada-New York border, which was downwind of East Palestine.
The pollutants disappeared within two to three weeks after the accident.
(WASHINGTON POST)
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SANTA FE, NM - At least one person has died in a New Mexico wildfire that has forced thousands to evacuate, the governor’s office said Tuesday. “We don’t have any additional details,” said Michael Coleman, communications director for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. “Only one fatality as a result of the fire.”
The governor declared a countywide state of emergency that extended to neighboring tribal lands and deployed National Guard troops after residents fled under evacuation orders Monday with little time to rescue belongings.
Earlier, Lujan Grisham said at a news conference: “We are deploying every available resource to control these fires.” She said the magnitude of the fires is beyond local control and requires immediate state intervention to protect public health, safety and welfare.
More than 500 structures have been damaged and the entire village of Ruidoso, population 7,000, has been evacuated, the governor said. She said it’s unclear how many homes were engulfed by the fast-moving flames because the extreme fire activity continues to prevent authorities from safely accessing the area to assess the damage.
State Forester Laura McCarthy described the fires as “dangerous and fast moving” in strong winds up to 20 mph. McCarthy said a cold front was moving into the area and should bring rain to the area today or Thursday. But she warned that while the precipitation would be welcome, stronger winds would not.
The governor said her emergency declaration unlocks additional funding and resources to manage the crisis in Lincoln County and the Mescalero Apache Reservation. She said nearly 20,000 acres have been consumed, an area larger than 31 square miles.
Meanwhile, big new wildfires challenged California firefighters Tuesday even as they increased containment of earlier blazes that erupted as dry north winds arrived over the weekend.
Evacuations were ordered after the Aero fire erupted Monday and spread over more than 5,000 acres near Copperopolis, in Calaveras County. Three structures were destroyed and one was damaged, fire officials said. A decrease in winds and a rise in relative humidity helped firefighters gain 23 percent containment.
In the northern Central Valley, a blaze dubbed the Sites fire erupted Monday afternoon and spread over than 10,000 acres of Colusa County. It was 5 percent contained Tuesday evening.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Stifling heat blanketed tens of millions across United States on Tuesday, with extreme heat alerts stretching from Iowa to Ohio and even into the Northeast on Tuesday, canceling youth sports camps, nature walks and festivals across the region.
The National Weather Service said the dangerous heat wave was expected until at least Friday.
With much of the Midwest and Northeast under heat warnings or watches, officials urged people to limit outdoor activities when possible and to check in with family members and neighbors who may be vulnerable to the heat.
An organization that provides produce to areas with limited access to fresh foods in Columbus, Ohio, prepared frozen towels for their workers in case of overheating and packed cold water to stay hydrated.
“Hydration is the key,” said Monique McCoy, market manager for the Local Matters Veggie Van.
Toledo, OH, canceled a weekly fitness event and a neighboring suburb called off a street fair as temperatures reached the mid-90s. A food bank in upstate New York canceled deliveries for today out of concern for its staff and volunteers.
Schools in New York canceled field trips Tuesday to the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, where workers turned on water misters for visitors and the animals.
Cities that opened cooling centers this week advised that some public libraries, senior centers and pools where residents could beat the heat will be closed today because of the Juneteenth holiday.
The blast of heat before the official start of summer came too early for many.
“This is hot for just moving in to summer, so I’m hoping that we’re going to see the downward trend in the temperature here soon because this is a warm one,” said Krista Voltolini, who was selling produce at a farmers market in Columbus.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Heavy rains battered southern China over the weekend and into Tuesday, setting off landslides and causing roads and homes to collapse as rivers overran their banks.
The landslides and flash floods killed at least nine people in Fujian province and neighboring Guangdong, China’s most populous province. Dozens of people remained trapped or missing as of Tuesday.
Days of severe rainfall forced thousands of people to evacuate and left more than 100,000 households without power as the region was inundated. As of Monday, at least 17 rivers had risen above warning levels in Guangdong, according to local media. The province is home to about 127 million people.
Video footage showed bridges collapsing into rushing rivers and debris floating down city streets after hundreds of buildings had collapsed.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Three men drowned in Guatemala when two of them tried to help another who had tried to cross an overflowing river as heavy rains wreaked havoc across Central America, authorities said Tuesday.
The three fatalities Monday were the latest in a series of deaths caused by heavy rains in the region in recent days. In neighboring El Salvador, 11 people have died over the past week. Both countries have canceled school and El Salvador has opened shelters for the displaced.
Two weather systems — one along Guatemala’s Pacific coast and the other in the Gulf of Mexico — have brought saturating rains to southern Mexico and Central America.
The storm forming in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to eventually become the season’s first named storm and come ashore in northeast Mexico today.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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LOS ANGELES, CA - A wildfire that quickly consumed more than 24 square miles of grasslands and brush in a mountainous area northwest of Los Angeles over the weekend signaled the start of what experts warn could be a dangerous, prolonged fire season in the West.
“This is a taste of what’s to come,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California Los Angeles.
The Post fire started Saturday afternoon near Interstate 5 about 45 miles outside of Los Angeles, authorities said. It forced the evacuation of about 1,200 people from Hungry Valley State Vehicular Recreation Area, a popular destination for off-roaders. Officials also closed nearby Pyramid Lake, a destination for weekend boaters.
As of Monday afternoon, the fire was about 8 percent surrounded, and ranked as the state’s largest wildfire so far this year, according to Cal Fire.
“That 8 percent is good because it means we are increasing and bolstering our containment lines,” said Kenichi Haskett, a Los Angeles County Fire Department section chief.
Firefighters hoped to hold the fire at its current size, but further growth was still possible, especially toward the south, Haskett said.
The Post fire burned about 10,000 acres within 12 hours after it ignited — a rapid spread fueled by hot, dry and windy conditions, said Haskett — and stood at more than 15,000 acres late Monday. Winds gusting up to 50 mph over ridge tops made firefighting efforts especially difficult. When firefighters dump water from planes, for example, “it just sprays everywhere,” Haskett said.
Haskett said that fire officials hoped to be able to make significant progress containing the blaze in coming days.
“Our goal is hopefully to be done within the week,” he said.
Two buildings — a campground kiosk and another recreational building — were damaged, Haskett said, but no homes had been burned so far.
Still, he said, officials were encouraging residents of the area surrounding Castaic Lake, another popular weekend destination, to prepare to leave if winds continued to push the fire south.
On Sunday afternoon, another fast-moving brush fire, the Max fire, ignited about 50 miles east of the Post fire and burned through several hundred acres near homes in Lancaster, a city of about 170,000 people. Some residents were told to evacuate, though by Sunday evening the fire was fully contained, according to a social media post by authorities in Palmdale.
The Post fire alone seems unlikely to shatter records or cause widespread damage, Swain said. But the speed of its spread and the fact that it is still only mid-June illustrate why — even after two rainy winters — Californians should be on high alert as the summer unfolds, he added.
Climate change is driving wider swings between precipitation extremes. In California, whiplash between drought and deluge has been particularly intense in the past few years.
“There’s this cycle between wetter and drier conditions,” Swain said. “We’re used to that.”
Global warming trends, however, are exacerbating the effects of these swings, he said.
A record-setting rainy season at the end of 2022 and into 2023 followed years of catastrophic drought. There was so much rain that deep into summer and autumn, when fire risk is typically higher, vegetation that otherwise might be prone to burn was still green and damp.
Last winter in California was also rainy, which spurred the growth of even more vegetation.
But Swain said late spring has been hot in the West — temperatures in Las Vegas set records this month — and the sweltering air is expected to continue.
That heat sucks moisture out of the grasses and brush that have grown over the past two years, turning them into a thick carpet of tinder. The hotter and drier it is, the more quickly vegetation becomes fuel for fires.
“Even though dryness levels are not record-breaking at this point, what is anomalous is just how much fuel there is,” Swain said.
He said grasslands tend to burn first because grasses dry out the most quickly. But if hot, dry conditions persist and combine with fearsome autumn winds, like Santa Anas, residents could see an active fire season that goes well into the fall.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES; NEW YORK TIMES; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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PHOENIX, AZ - Nearly 73 million people in the United States were under extreme heat alerts Monday as a heat wave moved eastward, and the mid-Atlantic and New England were likely to see highs in the 90s as the week progresses. Excessive humidity will make it feel even more oppressive.
The U.S. last year saw the most heat waves, consisting of abnormally hot weather lasting more than two days, since 1936. Officials again warned residents to take precautions.
Much of the Midwest and Northeast were under heat warnings or watches.
The heat has been especially dangerous in recent years in Phoenix, where 645 people died from heat-related causes in 2023, a record. Temperatures there hit 112 degrees Saturday. Weather service forecasters say the first two weeks of June in Phoenix have been an average of 5.6 degrees hotter than normal — the hottest start to June on record there.
A meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Phoenix, Ted Whittock, advised reducing time outdoors between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., staying hydrated and wearing light, looser fitting clothing. More than 100 cooling centers were open in the city and surrounding county, including two new overnight ones.
In neighboring New Mexico, the high in Roswell was expected to hit 107 degrees Monday, while temperatures in southern Colorado were expected to surpass 100 degrees.
In Southern California, firefighters increased their containment of a large wildfire in mountains north of Los Angeles on Monday after a weekend of explosive, wind-driven growth along Interstate 5.
The warming temperatures come amid growing concern about the effects of extreme heat and wildfire smoke. The nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity on Monday sent a petition to the Federal Emergency Management Agency asking it to recognize extreme heat and wildfire smoke as major disasters.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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GORMAN, CA - Strong winds pushed flames through dry brush in mountains along Interstate 5 north of Los Angeles on Sunday, and officials warned residents in the wildfire’s path to be prepared to leave if it explodes in size again.
Los Angeles County’s first major wildfire of the year swiftly grew to more than 23 square miles — more than 14,700 acres — one day after it forced the evacuation of at least 1,200 campers, off-roaders and hikers from the Hungry Valley recreation area.
The blaze, dubbed the Post fire, was just 2 percent contained Sunday evening. No injuries were reported. The cause was under investigation.
Firefighters working in sweltering conditions and steep terrain raced to douse spot fires that erupted as unpredictable winds blew embers ahead of the flames, said Kenichi Haskett, a section chief for the L.A. County Fire Department. The gusts also hampered efforts by aircraft crews to drop water and fire retardant, he said. “When it’s windy, it just sprays the water everywhere we don’t need it. So that’s a challenge,” Haskett said.
Meanwhile in Northern California, crews were protecting structures from a small wildfire sparked Sunday that prompted evacuation orders and warnings for a sparsely populated area of vineyards and rural estates near Lake Sonoma. The Point fire sent up a huge plume of dark smoke as powerful winds from the northwest pushed flames through brush and timber about 80 miles north of San Francisco.
It was 15 percent contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Southern California’s Post fire erupted Saturday afternoon near I-5 in Gorman, about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Two structures burned within the evacuated recreation area.
Flames were moving toward Pyramid Lake, a popular destination for boaters that was closed as a precaution on Father’s Day. No houses were threatened Sunday, but officials warned some residents of Castaic, home to about 19,000 people, that they should prepare to leave if the fire pushes farther south. “If you’re in a warning area, be prepared with a ‘go bag,’ with overnight clothes and your cellphone, your medicines, your glasses. Have your car fueled up,” said Haskett. “Be ready to evacuate.”
Low humidity and gusts around 50 mph were seen throughout the day, and winds could pick up speed after sundown, warned the National Weather Service office for Los Angeles.
About 75 miles to the east, the 1,280-acre Hesperia fire forced road closures and prompted evacuation warnings after it broke out Saturday near mountain communities in San Bernardino County. The blaze was 19 percent contained Sunday evening.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Extreme heat spread across Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Texas, Colorado and Kansas as severe weather swept across many parts of the U.S. on Sunday. There was unseasonable cold in the Pacific Northwest, snow headed to the northern Rocky Mountains and heavy rainfall forecast from the northern Plains to the Upper Midwest.
The National Weather Service estimated that more than 63 million people were under heat advisories on Sunday, stretching from the Southwest up through Denver and into Chicago.
Temperatures in Phoenix, which hit 112 degrees on Saturday, eased slightly on Sunday to 110 degrees. The heat wave was moving eastward Sunday into the Plains and the Great Lakes area and was expected to arrive in the Northeast by Tuesday.
While much of the country swelters, snow was forecast for the northern Rockies today and Tuesday. Parts of Montana and north-central Idaho were under a winter weather watch, with as much as 6 inches of snow expected in the mountains around Missoula, Mont.
As much as 20 inches was predicted for higher elevations around Glacier National Park.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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After days of intense flooding in Florida, that state and many others are bracing for an intense heat wave, while the Pacific Northwest will experience unseasonably cold weather and there is a potential for late-season snow in the Rocky Mountains early this week.
The chaotic weather map includes the possibility of severe thunderstorms developing in between hot and cold fronts. Forecasters said the colliding fronts could lead to areas of flash flooding between eastern Nebraska and northern Wisconsin, as well as strong storms across parts of eastern Montana into North and South Dakota.
Meanwhile a plume of tropical moisture will reach the central Gulf Coast during the next couple of days, with heavy rain expected to start Monday morning, according to the National Weather Service.
“They’re all related,” said David Roth, a forecaster with the National Weather Prediction Center in College Park, MD. “This heat that’s going to be building over the Midwest and the Northeast is because we have an unusually amplified weather pattern for June.”
A trough of low pressure in the Northwest brought thunderstorms and hail to Seattle and other cities in western Washington on Saturday afternoon, and frost warnings prompted gardeners in northern Idaho to cover delicate plants for the weekend.
In Phoenix, temperatures reached 111 degrees by 5 p.m. and were predicted to climb a few degrees higher. Lee Franklin, a spokesperson for the Phoenix Public Library, said more than 5,000 visitors had sought respite at library cooling centers.
Forecasters said the threat of heavy rains in Florida continues to dissipate, but some thunderstorms could cause flooding given the already saturated soil. Some areas between Miami and Fort Lauderdale were left underwater in recent days as storms dumped up to 20 inches in southern parts of the state.
Across much of the southern U.S., temperatures were rising Saturday.
In Atlanta, highs were forecast to near 100 degrees both weekend days. And in the west Texas city of El Paso, Saturday highs were expected to approach 105, and the National Weather Service issued a heat advisory through Monday morning.
In Tennessee, tens of thousands of revelers at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival braved a hot, sunny weekend. While medical crews treated various heat-related conditions, some fans constructed elaborate canopy and tent combinations for shade.
Temperatures in the Mid-Atlantic and New England will likely peak in the mid- to upper 90s this week, which is “nothing to sneeze at even in the middle of the summer, let alone this early in the summer,” National Weather Service meteorologist William Churchill said. The expected highs in the Northeast could set daily and even monthly records over the next several days, Roth said. Even northern Maine has a chance of reaching 100 degrees, he said.
While most of the country bakes, parts of Montana have been placed under winter storm watches with a potential for wet snow lasting into Monday night. Churchill said the northwestern cold front is connected to the heat wave because one extreme is often accompanied by the other.
The National Weather Service issued a winter weather watch for north-central Idaho and western Montana from today through Tuesday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SAN DIEGO - Mayor Todd Gloria met with officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the State Water Resources Control Board in Mission Beach on Wednesday to announce $37 million in funding to upgrade the city’s aging stormwater system.
As part of President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the city will receive a $32 million low-interest loan and $5 million grant, intended to reduce neighborhood flood risk and bolster the region’s defenses for increasingly intense rain events.
The $32 million State Revolving Fund loan has a 1.7 percent interest rate.
“Upgrading our aging stormwater system is vital to protect our neighborhoods and environment from the increasing threat posed by climate change and severe weather,” Gloria said.
A project specifically earmarked includes upgrading storm drain infrastructure in South Mission Beach dating to the 1940s that officials say is too small, resulting in regular flooding.
According to the city, the funding is in conjunction with, but not part of, the $733 million investment the federal government committed to making for San Diego stormwater upgrades two years ago. That commitment was made in September 2022 through the EPA’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act — a federal credit program designed to promote improved water infrastructure.
“Improving stormwater infrastructure protects homes, businesses and our environment,” said Bruno Pigott, the EPA’s acting assistant administrator for water. Biden’s infrastructure law means that “now $37 million is coming to San Diego to reduce the risk of flooding in South Mission Beach,” he added.
The funding comes several months after intense storms and inadequately maintained stormwater infrastructure compounded to cause flooding in multiple areas of San Diego, especially in the southeastern part of the city.
More than $235 million in projects are in the works to bolster flood resilience and water quality improvements in the Chollas Creek watershed.
“San Diegans know all too well from recent flooding that the city’s aging stormwater infrastructure is no match for severe weather events,” said Rep. Scott Peters, who represents Mission Beach and the rest of the city of San Diego’s coastline.
However, despite these major investments, the city still faces $1.6 billion in unfunded stormwater infrastructure upgrades citywide that are needed to reduce flood risk and prevent pollution.
A proposed parcel tax to shore up stormwater infrastructure and flood prevention could be headed for the November ballot.
(CITY NEWS SERVICE)
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The strong El Niño weather condition that added a bit of extra heat to already record warm global temperatures is gone. Its cool flip side, La Niña, is likely to breeze in just in time for peak Atlantic hurricane season, federal meteorologists said.
The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration Thursday pronounced dead the El Niño that warms parts of the central Pacific. The El Niño, while not quite a record breaker in strength, formed a year ago and has been blamed, along with human-caused climate change and overall ocean warmth, for a wild 12 months of heat waves and extreme weather.
The world is now in a neutral condition when it comes to the important natural El Niño Southern Oscillation, which warps weather systems worldwide. Neutral is when weather gets closer to long-term averages or normal, something that hasn’t happened as much recently as it used to, said NOAA physical scientist Michelle L’Heureux, who is the lead forecaster of the agency’s ENSO team. But it likely won’t last, she added.
She said there’s a 65 percent chance that a La Niña, a cooling of the same parts of the Pacific that often has opposite effects, will form in the July, August and September time period. One of the biggest effects of La Niña is that it tends to make Atlantic hurricane season more active, and that storm season starts its peak in August.
“The likelihood of a La Niña coupled with record warm sea surface temperatures is the reason the National Hurricane Center is forecasting an extraordinary hurricane season,” said Kathie Dello, North Carolina’s state climatologist. “States from Texas to Maine are making preparations.”
NB: This article confuses weather with climate. El Niño and La Niña are global climate events, not weather events. During a La Niña, the equatorial eastern Pacific is cooler than normal but more tropical moisture tends to be present in the north Atlantic, increasing the likelihood for more frequent and stronger (north) Atlantic hurricanes. Hurricanes are storms, and therefore weather events.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The number of Mexico’s critically endangered vaquita marina porpoises sighted in the Gulf of California has fallen to between six and eight this year, researchers said Tuesday.
But it is possible that some of the few remaining vaquitas — the world’s smallest porpoise and most endangered marine mammal — may have moved elsewhere in the Gulf, the only place in the world where they live.
Last year, experts on a sighting expedition estimated they saw 10 to 13 of the tiny, shy, elusive porpoises during nearly two weeks of sailing in the Gulf, also known as the Sea of Cortez.
But this year, the conservation group Sea Shepherd said a similar expedition May 5-26 sighted only about a half dozen. More troubling, no baby vaquitas were seen this year.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Violent riots erupted in a drought-stricken Algerian desert city last weekend after months of water shortages left taps running dry and forced residents to line up to access water for their households.
In Tiaret — a central Algerian city of less than 200,000 about 155 miles southwest of Algiers — protesters wearing balaclavas set tires aflame and set up makeshift barricades blocking roads to protest their water being rationed, according to pictures and videos circulating on social media.
The unrest followed demands from President Abdelmajid Tebboune to rectify the suffering.
At a council of ministers meeting last week, he implored his cabinet to implement “emergency measures” in Tiaret. Several government ministers were later sent to “ask for an apology from the population” and to promise that access to drinking water would be restored.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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In canton Thurgau, the fire brigade had to pump out several flooded cellars. In Berlingen, the road through the village on Untersee west of Constance, has been closed.
Following constant rainfall on Sunday, the second-highest danger level is now in effect at Lake Constance. This means there is a high risk of flooding around the entire lake.
The situation is most tense in Untersee, at the western part of Lake Constance. According to the Federal Office for the Environment, the water level on Monday morning was only just below the highest of five danger levels. Lakeshore promenades, car parks, and garden restaurants are under water, for example in Gottlieben and Berlingen in canton Thurgau.
Amidst a tense situation, two streams burst their banks in Berlingen on Sunday after a heavy thunderstorm and flowed through parts of the village, the mayor, Ueli Oswald, told the Keystone-SDA news agency. As a result, the cantonal road through the village of Berlingen is currently closed.
Due to Sunday’s thunderstorm, Thurgau cantonal police received around 120 damage reports from the canton between Sunday evening and Monday morning, a police spokesperson told the Keystone-SDA news agency. These were mainly flooded cellars.
Despite the high flood danger level on Lake Constance, the canton of Thurgau has not yet set up a crisis team. Compared to the extreme flooding situation in 1999, the current situation is much less alarming. At that time, the maximum lake level at the Berlingen measuring station was around 65 centimetres higher than the value on Monday morning.
(swissinfo.ch)
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A landslide in the Teton mountains destroyed part of a highway that links Idaho with Jackson, WY, forcing authorities to close the road indefinitely Saturday just as the area was entering its summer tourism season.
No one was injured when a section of the Teton Pass “catastrophically failed,” the Wyoming Department of Transportation said in a statement Saturday. The highway west of Jackson had been closed to traffic before the road gave way, and crews were working to build a detour around a section where a crack had appeared in the surface days earlier.
The department said it expected a long-term closure. Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming said in a separate statement that geologists and engineers would “develop a long-term solution to rebuild the roadway.”
Even a short closure would pose major logistical challenges for the area, in part because the road serves Jackson Hole, a major tourism hub in Teton County.
“We understand this highway is a lifeline for commuters, deliveries, medical care access and tourism, especially with limited alternatives and the summer season upon us,” Darin Westby, director of the state’s Transportation Department, said in a separate statement.
The department’s “engineers, surveyors and geologists mobilized quickly to try to maintain highway viability as long as possible, but catastrophic failure could not be avoided,” Westby said.
The Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce said on its website that travelers could still reach the Jackson area from the west by taking two other roads through the Snake River Canyon. But that detour adds more than an hour of driving time, the local news outlet WyoFile reported.
The section of Wyoming State Highway 22 that collapsed was initially closed earlier in the week after cracks appeared in the surface. It reopened after crews patched the cracks but was closed again after a separate mudslide a few miles away sent mud and debris spilling over the road, the Transportation Department said.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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RENO, NV - The first heat wave of the year maintained its grip on the Southwest on Friday, a day after records tumbled across the region as temperatures soared past 110 degrees Fahrenheit from California to Arizona.
Although the official start of summer is still two weeks away, roughly half of Arizona and Nevada were under an excessive heat alert, which the National Weather Service extended until Friday evening. The alert was extended through today in Las Vegas, where it’s never been hotter this early in the year.
Temperatures were expected to slowly retreat over the weekend but will remain above normal into early next week.
After setting a new record of 111 degrees on Thursday — which also equaled the earliest time of year the high reached at least 110 degrees — Las Vegas quickly broke another record early Friday afternoon as it hit 110 degrees and surpassed the record high for the day set in 2013. And the National Weather Service office there warned it could still get hotter before sundown.
In Phoenix, the new record high of 113 degrees on Thursday leapfrogged the old mark of 111 degrees set in 2016. Forecasters called the conditions “dangerously hot.”
“It’s so hot,” said 9-year-old Eleanor Wallace, who was visiting Phoenix from northern Utah on Thursday on a hike to celebrate her birthday with her mother, Megan Wallace.
There were no immediate reports of any heat-related deaths or serious injuries.
The National Weather Service expects mild cooling region-wide this weekend, but only by a few degrees. In central and southern Arizona and parts of southern Nevada, that will still mean triple-digit highs, even up to 110 degrees.
Several other areas of Arizona, California and Nevada also broke records Thursday by a degree or two, including Death Valley National Park with a record high for the date of 122 degrees, topping the 121 degrees dating to 1996 in the desert that sits 194 feet below sea level near the California-Nevada line. Records there date to 1911.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The first heat wave of the season has arrived earlier than usual across much of the Southwest, with dangerously hot conditions that produced triple-digit temperatures on Tuesday.
Forecasters say temperatures are likely to top 110 degrees in some areas by Thursday.
By this afternoon, much of an area stretching from southeast California to central Arizona will see “easily their hottest” weather since September, and record highs will be in jeopardy from Las Vegas to Phoenix, the National Weather Service said.
Excessive heat warnings were issued for this morning through Friday evening for parts of southeast California, Nevada and Arizona.
“Temperatures well above average for the time of year — some spots as much as 10 to 20 degrees above average,” said Marc Chenard, a weather service meteorologist in College Park, Md. He said unseasonably hot weather was expected to spread northward and make its way into parts of the Pacific Northwest by the end of the week.
Tuesday’s highs reached 106 degrees in Bullhead City, AZ, 104 in Phoenix and 103 in Las Vegas. Highs in California included 112 degrees at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, 108 in Needles and 104 in Palm Springs.
In Las Vegas, the mercury was forecast to hit at least 108 degrees today and could then go even higher, according to the weather service.
Forecast highs for Thursday included 120 degrees at Furnace Creek and 113 in Phoenix, the latter of which would break a record high for the date of 111 degrees, set in 2016.
Fire crews were on high alert, especially in Arizona, where fire restrictions went into effect before Memorial Day in some areas and will be ordered by Thursday across much of the western and south-central parts of the state, authorities said.
Fire forecasters at the Southwest Coordination Center in Albuquerque, NM, said typically it does not get this hot until mid- or late June.
“It does seem like Mother Nature is turning up the heat on us a little sooner than usual,” said Tiffany Davila, a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SACRAMENTO, CA — California’s largest wildfire so far this year was largely surrounded Monday after blackening a swath of hilly grasslands between San Francisco Bay and the Central Valley.
The Corral fire was 75 percent contained after scorching more than 22 square miles during the weekend, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. One home was destroyed and two firefighters were injured.
The wind-driven fire erupted Saturday afternoon on land managed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the country’s key centers for nuclear weapons science and technology. The cause was under investigation.
Thousands of people in the area, including parts of the San Joaquin County city of Tracy, were ordered to leave for evacuation centers Saturday.
Evacuation orders were lifted when improved weather allowed firefighters to make progress against the flames.
The wildfire presented no threat to laboratory facilities or operations, Lawrence Livermore spokesperson Paul Rhien said in a statement Sunday.
California has had back-to-back wet years that ended drought but spawned vegetation growth. Cal Fire’s outlook for 2024 noted that increasing dryness from mid-May to June would potentially lead to more small fires and a chance of larger fires, depending on wind. The Corral fire is by far the largest of more than 1,200 wildfires this year.
The progress against the blaze comes just ahead of a predicted major heat wave. The National Weather Service has issued warnings for “dangerously hot conditions” throughout the Central Valley through Thursday.
Though this fire is nearly contained, in general, fire burns hotter when the weather is hotter, said Jacob Bendix, professor emeritus in the geography and the environment department at Syracuse University.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SACRAMENTO, CA — California firefighters made significant progress Sunday to tame a wind-driven wildfire that scorched thousands of acres 60 miles east of San Francisco, burned down a home and forced residents to flee the area near the Central California city of Tracy.
The fire erupted Saturday afternoon in the grassy hills managed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the country’s key centers for nuclear weapons science and technology. The cause was under investigation.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said the research center was not under immediate threat from the blaze, dubbed the Corral fire, which had devoured some 22 square miles [14,000 acres] by Sunday afternoon. The fire was 50 percent contained as of Sunday evening.
Thousands of people in the area, including parts of the city of Tracy with a population of 100,000, were ordered to leave for evacuation centers Saturday. The order was lifted to allow residents to return home starting Sunday evening.
Cal Fire Battalion Chief Josh Silveira said Sunday afternoon the fire “burned right up to the homes” in the area and destroyed one house. With calmer winds and milder weather Sunday, Silveira said he didn’t expect the fire to grow.
Two firefighters suffered minor to moderate burns on Saturday and were expected to make a full recovery, Silveira said.
The wildfire presented no threat to any laboratory facilities or operations and had moved away from the site, Lawrence Livermore spokesperson Paul Rhien said in a statement to The Associated Press early Sunday.
“As a precaution, we have activated our emergency operations center to monitor the situation through the weekend,” Rhien said.
Photos showed a wall of flames moving over the parched landscape as dark smoke billowed into the sky.
The wildfire also forced the closure of two major highways, including an interstate that connects the San Francisco Bay Area to San Joaquin County. But they had reopened by Sunday afternoon.
(no source provided)
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Parts of Southern Germany are under flood warning, with the highest levels applying to western Swabia, the Upper Allgäu and Upper Bavaria.
A state of emergency has been declared in Augsburg due to the extreme rainfall and rising water levels. Water levels are expected to continue to rise sharply in the coming hours. The communities of Fischach and Langenneufnach will be particularly affected.
The Lake Constance region has also been affected and is under risk of flooding. Around 1,300 people in Meckenbeuren, Baden-Württemberg have been advised to evacuate.
Rivers at risk of bursting their banks are also under observation further north on the Danube and its other tributaries. Floods statistically only occur every 50 to 100 years.
The Rhine and Neckar are also at risk of bursting.
In Italy, local media report that three young people have been missing since early Friday afternoon due to flooding of the Natisone river in the north-east of Italy.
They had called for help as they were on a small island and the water was rising fast due to torrential rain. They are now reported missing. A search is currently underway.
(Euronews)
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HOUSTON, TX - Power outages scattered across storm-weary Texas on Wednesday could linger into the weekend after storms flooded streets in Houston for the second time this month and ripped off roofs in Dallas, leaving a teenager dead and injuring others.
The teen was killed Tuesday at a construction site while working on a home that collapsed, and three people at a campground were shocked by a downed power line.
The severe weather left more than 1 million homes and businesses without electricity at one point.
Electric utility Oncor said power in the Dallas area should be restored by Friday for most customers, but some outages will continue into the weekend.
By Wednesday afternoon, the lights had come back on for about 70 percent of affected customers.
Destructive storms over the Memorial Day weekend killed 24 people in seven states across the South, with the deaths stretching from Texas to Virginia.
The National Weather Service said the “very active and highly impactful” weather pattern will continue in the central U.S. over the next several days.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A volcano in southwestern Iceland erupted Wednesday for the fifth time since December, cracking the Sundhnjukar mountain ridge open with spectacular force and sending lava spewing 150 feet into the air.
The meteorological office said it received indications of a possible eruption about two hours before it occurred at 1 p.m. local time in Grindavik, prompting the civil defense agency to immediately urge guests at the Blue Lagoon, the geothermal spa that is one of Iceland’s most popular tourist destinations, to evacuate.
“Evacuate, Evacuate!” read a text message sent to the nearly 800 guests staying at the Blue Lagoon and surrounding hotels. Civil defense sirens installed in February rang out as visitors scrambled to leave.
Within minutes of the eruption, drivers traveling the highway to Keflavik Airport posted pictures of the nearly 2-mile-long fissure at Sundhnjukar. While the eruption occurred with little notice, scientists had predicted that another volcanic event would happen after the last eruption three weeks ago.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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New Delhi recorded its highest temperature ever measured Wednesday — 126 degrees Fahrenheit — leaving residents of the Indian capital sweltering in a heat wave that has kept temperatures in several Indian states above 110 degrees for weeks.
In New Delhi, where walking out of the house felt like walking into an oven, officials feared that the electricity grid was being overwhelmed and that the city’s water supply might need rationing.
The past 12 months have been the planet’s hottest ever recorded and cities like Miami are experiencing extreme heat even before the arrival of summer.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Authorities in Papua New Guinea were searching Wednesday for safer ground to relocate thousands of survivors at risk from a potential second landslide in the South Pacific country’s highlands, while the arrival of heavy earth-moving equipment at the disaster site where hundreds are buried has been delayed, officials said.
Emergency responders say that up to 8,000 people might need to be evacuated as the mass of boulders, earth and splintered trees that crushed the village of Yambali in the nation’s mountainous interior on Friday becomes increasingly unstable.
But an evacuation center near Yambali in Enga province only had room for about 50 families, said Justine McMahon, country director for the humanitarian agency CARE International.
“For the number of people that they anticipate having to help, they actually need more land and I understand the authorities are trying to identify places now,” McMahon said.
The unstable ground was also impacting the humanitarian response, said Kate Forbes, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The United Nations estimated 670 villagers died in the disaster that immediately displaced 1,650 survivors. Papua New Guinea’s government has told the U.N. it thinks more than 2,000 people were buried.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Strong storms with damaging winds and baseball-sized hail pummeled Texas on Tuesday, leaving one person dead and about 1 million businesses and homes without power as much of the U.S. recovered from severe weather, including tornadoes, that killed at least 24 people during the Memorial Day holiday weekend.
Widespread outages were reported across a wide swath of storm-weary Texas, where an oppressive, early-season heat wave added to the misery. Voters in the state’s runoff elections found dozens of polling places without power. Dallas County said it would keep polls open two hours later because of the outages Tuesday.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins declared a disaster and noted that some nursing homes were using generators. “This ultimately will be a multi-day power outage situation,” Jenkins said.
Social media posts showed winds pushing an American Airlines plane away from a gate at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The airline said in a statement that the severe weather, including straight-line wind gusts up to 80 mph, affected several parked and unoccupied aircraft. No one was injured. “Our maintenance team is currently conducting thorough inspections and will make any needed repairs,” the statement said.
The airport said in an email to The Associated Press that about 500 flights were canceled because of the weather. Nearly 200 more flights were canceled at Dallas Love Field Airport, according to the website FlightAware.
Around Houston, cars crawled through flooded highways and more than 300,000 customers were without power in the area, which includes parts still recovering from hurricane-force winds earlier this month.
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that a 16-year-old boy died when a home under construction began to shift and then collapsed during a thunderstorm in the Houston suburb of Magnolia. The teen was confirmed to be an employee of the construction company and was authorized to be on the site, the statement said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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MELBOURNE, Australia — Authorities fear a second landslide and a disease outbreak are looming at the scene of Papua New Guinea’s mass-casualty disaster because of water streams and bodies trapped beneath the tons of debris that swept over a village. Thousands are being told to prepare to evacuate, officials said Tuesday.
A mass of boulders, earth and splintered trees devastated Yambali in the South Pacific nation’s remote highlands when a limestone mountainside sheared away Friday.
The blanket of debris has become more unstable with recent rain and streams trapped between the ground and rubble, said Serhan Aktoprak, chief of the International Organization for Migration’s mission in Papua New Guinea.
The U.N. agency has officials at the scene in Enga province helping shelter 1,600 displaced people. The agency estimates 670 villagers died, while Papua New Guinea’s government has told the United Nations it thinks more than 2,000 people were buried. Six bodies had been retrieved from the rubble by Tuesday.
“We are hearing suggestions that another landslide can happen and maybe 8,000 people need to be evacuated,” Aktoprak told The Associated Press. “This is a major concern. The movement of the land, the debris, is causing a serious risk, and overall the total number of people that may be affected might be 6,000 or more.” That includes villagers whose source of clean drinking water has been buried and subsistence farmers who lost their vegetable gardens.
“If this debris mass is not stopped, if it continues moving, it can gain speed and further wipe out other communities and villages further down” the mountain, Aktoprak said.
A U.N. statement later tallied the affected population at 7,849, including people who might need to be evacuated or relocated. The U.N. said 42 percent of those were children younger than 16.
Some villagers were evacuated Tuesday, Enga provincial disaster committee chairperson and provincial administrator Sandis Tsaka told Radio New Zealand. The number was unclear. As many people as possible would be evacuated today, Tsaka said.
Scenes of villagers digging with their bare hands through muddy debris in search of their relatives’ remains were also concerning. “My biggest fear at the moment is corpses are decaying, ... water is flowing and this is going to pose serious health risks in relation to contagious diseases,” Aktoprak said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A series of powerful storms swept over the central and southern U.S. over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, killing at least 22 people and leaving a wide trail of destroyed homes, businesses and power outages.
The destructive storms caused deaths in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kentucky and were just north of an oppressive, early season heat wave setting records from south Texas to Florida.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said at a Monday news conference that five people had died in four separate counties.
The death toll of 22 also included seven deaths in Cooke County, Texas, from a Saturday tornado that tore through a mobile home park, officials said, and eight deaths across Arkansas. Two people died in Mayes County, OK, which is east of Tulsa, authorities said.
The latest community left with shattered homes was the tiny Kentucky town of Charleston, which took a direct hit Sunday night from a tornado that the governor said appeared to be on the ground for 40 miles.
More than 500,000 customers across the eastern U.S. were without power Monday afternoon, including about 170,000 in Kentucky.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A Papua New Guinea government official has told the United Nations that more than 2,000 people are believed to have been buried alive by Friday’s landslide and has formally asked for international help.
The government figure is roughly triple the U.N. estimate of 670 killed by the landslide in the South Pacific island nation’s mountainous interior. The remains of five people had been recovered by Monday, local authorities reported. It was not immediately clear why the tally of six reported Sunday had been revised.
In a letter to the United Nations resident coordinator Sunday, the acting director of the country’s National Disaster Center, Luseta Laso Mana, said the landslide “buried more than 2,000 people alive” and caused “major destruction” in Yambali village in Enga province.
Estimates of the casualties have varied widely since the disaster occurred, and it was not immediately clear how officials arrived at the number of people affected. The International Organization for Migration, which is working closely with the government and taking a lead role in the international response, has not changed its estimated death toll of 670, released Sunday, pending new evidence.
“We are not able to dispute what the government suggests but we are not able to comment on it,” said Serhan Aktoprak, chief of the U.N. migrant agency’s mission in Papua New Guinea. “As time goes in such a massive undertaking, the number will remain fluid,” Aktoprak added.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres sent “heartfelt condolences” to the families of the victims and the people and government of Papua New Guinea and said the U.N. and its partners are supporting the government’s response efforts, and “the United Nations stands ready to offer additional assistance at this challenging time,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Monday.
The death toll of 670 was based on calculations by Yambali village and Enga provincial officials that more than 150 homes had been buried by the landslide. The previous estimate had been 60 homes.
The office of Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape did not respond Monday to a request for an explanation of what the government estimate of 2,000 was based on. Marape has promised to release information about the scale of the destruction and loss of life when it becomes available.
The landslide also buried a 650-foot stretch of the province’s main highway under debris 20 to 26 feet deep, creating a major obstacle for relief workers. Mana said the landslide would have a major economic impact on the entire country.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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VALLEY VIEW, TX - Powerful storms killed at least 15 people, injured hundreds and left a wide trail of destruction Sunday across Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas after obliterating homes and destroying a truck stop where dozens sought shelter in a restroom during the latest deadly weather to strike the central U.S.
The storms inflicted their worst damage in a region spanning from north of Dallas to the northwest corner of Arkansas, and the system threatened to bring more violent weather to other parts of the Midwest later in the day. By today, forecasters said, the greatest risk would shift to the east, covering a broad swath of the country from Alabama to near New York City.
Seven deaths were reported in Cooke County, Texas, near the Oklahoma border, where a tornado Saturday night plowed through a rural area near a mobile home park, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said at a news conference Sunday. The dead included two children, ages 2 and 5. Three family members were found dead in one home, according to the county sheriff.
Storms also killed two people and destroyed houses in Oklahoma, where the injured included guests at an outdoor wedding, and five people in Arkansas. Tens of thousands of residents were without power across the region.
In Texas, about 100 people were injured and more than 200 homes and structures destroyed, said Abbott, sitting in front of a ravaged truck stop near the small agricultural community of Valley View. The area was among the hardest-hit, with winds reaching an estimated 135 mph, officials said.
“The hopes and dreams of Texas families and small businesses have literally been crushed by storm after storm,” said Abbott, whose state has seen successive bouts of severe weather, including storms that killed eight people in Houston.
Hugo Parra, who lives in Farmers Branch, north of Dallas, said he rode out the storm with 40 to 50 people in the bathroom of the truck stop. The storm sheared the roof and walls off the building, mangling metal beams and leaving battered cars in the parking lot. “A firefighter came to check on us and he said, ‘You’re very lucky,’” Parra said. “The best way to describe this is the wind tried to rip us out of the bathrooms.”
Multiple people were transported to hospitals by ambulance and helicopter in Denton County, also north of Dallas.
At least five people were killed in Arkansas, including a 26-year-old woman who was found dead outside a destroyed home in Olvey, a small community in Boone County, according to Daniel Bolen of the county’s emergency management office. Another person died in Benton County, and two more bodies were found in Marion County. In Oklahoma, two people died in Mayes County, east of Tulsa, officials said.
Elsewhere, a man was killed Sunday in Louisville, Ky., when a tree fell on him, police said. Louisville Mayor Craig Greenburg confirmed it was a storm-related death on social media.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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DHAKA, Bangladesh — A cyclone flooded coastal villages and left hundreds of thousands of people without power today after making landfall overnight along India’s West Bengal state and Bangladesh, where nearly 800,000 residents had evacuated.
Cyclone Remal started lashing Bangladesh’s southern coast late Sunday and was expected to take five to six hours to cross the vast coastal region, Bangladesh’s Meteorological Department in Dhaka said early today.
TV stations reported that dozens of Bangladeshi coastal villages were flooded as many flood protection embankments were either washed away or damaged by the force of the storm surges. Authorities gave no casualty figures yet, but Dhaka-based Somoy TV reported that at least two people died.
The India Meteorological Department expected Remal to reach maximum wind speeds of up to 75 mph, with gusts up to 85 mph in the area of West Bengal’s Sagar Island and Bangladesh’s Khepupara region on Sunday night.
On Sunday, Bangladesh evacuated nearly 800,000 people from vulnerable areas. Officials said volunteers have been deployed to move the evacuees to up to 9,000 cyclone shelters. The government also closed all schools in the region.
India’s Kolkata airport was closed today. Bangladesh shut down the airport in the southeastern city of Chattogram and canceled all domestic flights to and from Cox’s Bazar.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia prepared today to send aircraft and other equipment to help at the site of a deadly landslide in Papua New Guinea as overnight rains in the South Pacific nation’s mountainous interior raised fears that the tons of rubble that buried hundreds of villagers could become dangerously unstable.
Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said his officials have been talking with their Papua New Guinea counterparts since Friday, when a mountainside collapsed on Yambali village in Enga province, which the United Nations estimates killed 670 people. The remains of only six people had been recovered so far.
“The exact nature of the support that we do provide will play out over the coming days,” Marles told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “We’ve got obviously airlift capacity to get people there. There may be other equipment that we can bring to bear in terms of the search and rescue and all of that we are talking through with PNG right now.”
Papua New Guinea is Australia’s nearest neighbor and the countries are developing closer defense ties as part of an Australian effort to counter China’s growing influence in the region. Australia is also the most generous provider of foreign aid to its former colony, which became independent in 1975.
Heavy rain fell for two hours overnight in the provincial capital of Wabag, 35 miles from the devastated village. A weather report was not immediately available from Yambali, where communications are limited.
But emergency responders were concerned about the impact of rain on the already unstable mass of debris lying 20 to 26 feet deep over an area the size of three to four football fields.
An excavator donated by a local builder Sunday became the first piece of heavy earth-moving machinery brought in to help villagers who have been digging with shovels and farming tools to find bodies. Working around the still-shifting debris is treacherous.
Serhan Aktoprak, the chief of the International Organization for Migration’s mission in Papua New Guinea, said water was seeping between the debris and the earth below, increasing the risk of a further landslide.
He did not expect to learn the weather conditions at Yambali until this afternoon.
“What really worries me personally very much is the weather, weather, weather,” Aktoprak said. “Because the land is still sliding. Rocks are falling.”
Papua New Guinea’s defense minister, Billy Joseph, and the government’s National Disaster Center director, Laso Mana, flew on Sunday in an Australian military helicopter from the capital of Port Moresby to Yambali to gain a firsthand perspective of what is needed.
Traumatized villagers are divided over whether heavy machinery should be allowed to dig up and potentially further damage the bodies of their buried relatives, officials said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Unstable rubble and debris were complicating search and rescue efforts in rural Papua New Guinea on Saturday, a day after a massive landslide buried villages and killed at least three people. Local officials said the death toll was likely to be at least in the hundreds.
Nearly 4,000 people live in the three villages engulfed by the landslide early Friday, said Sandis Tsaka, the provincial administrator for Enga, which includes the affected area. He said the death toll was likely to be high because the landslide hit a densely populated area that is also a highly trafficked corridor.
“Our people will consider it of biblical proportions,” he said. “We are looking for all the help and support we can get to address the humanitarian disaster of proportions we’ve never seen in this part of the world.”
Prime Minister James Marape said in a voice message that while the toll had yet to be determined, the disaster could be the country’s biggest landslide.
“This year we’ve experienced prolonged and extraordinary rain in most parts of our country that has caused flood and also landslips,” he said. “It is a heavily populated village that experienced the entire village being submerged.”
Three bodies were pulled out of the rubble Friday, and five people, including a child, were treated for injuries, according to Tsaka.
The disaster struck around 3 a.m., catching most residents off guard and sending huge boulders, some larger than shipping containers, tumbling down. At least 60 homes were buried under as much as 20 feet of debris, Tsaka said. At least a 500-foot section of the Porgera Highway, the main thoroughfare connecting the area, was inundated, he said.
The landslide buried an area equivalent to about three or four soccer fields, said Serhan Aktoprak, the chief of mission for the International Organization for Migration’s office in Papua New Guinea. A humanitarian aid convoy, after some delays, reached the affected villages Saturday to deliver tarps and water, he said, though no food would arrive Saturday.
The villages are populated mostly by subsistence farmers and are in the highlands region of Papua New Guinea, an island nation in the Pacific Ocean north of Australia. The province has been afflicted in recent months by escalating deadly clashes between tribal groups.
The aid convoy was delayed by a blockade set up by one of the groups involved in the conflict, and was allowed through only after the military got involved, Aktoprak said, slowing relief efforts when time was critical. Daylight hours are getting shorter in the Southern Hemisphere, with the sun setting just before 6 p.m., he noted.
“Every minute that passes is basically shrinking our chances of reaching them alive,” he said.
Vincent Pyati, president of the local Community Development Association, said the area was a transport node where many came from remote areas overnight to catch public motor vehicles, a popular method of transit, probably adding to the toll. He said there was also a drinking club popular with people from all over the district.
Pyati said at least 300 people were estimated to have been killed.
(Victoria Kim & Christopher Cottrell, NEW YORK TIMES)
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MELBOURNE, Australia - More than 100 people are believed to have been killed in a landslide Friday that buried a village in a remote, mountainous part of Papua New Guinea, officials in the South Pacific island nation said.
The landslide struck Enga province, about 370 miles northwest of the capital, Port Moresby, at roughly 3 a.m., Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. Residents from surrounding areas said boulders and trees from a collapsed mountainside buried parts of the community and left it isolated.
Residents said that estimates of the death toll were above 100, although authorities haven’t confirmed that figure. Some villagers and local media reports said the number of people killed might be much higher, though they did not cite sources.
The chief of the International Organization for Migration’s mission in Papua New Guinea, Serhan Aktoprak, said the landslide struck Yambali village, which is about a two-hours drive from Enga’s provincial capital of Wabag.
“The land still continues sliding, therefore it makes it very difficult to operate on,” he said, citing firsthand reports from IOM staff and others deployed from the provincial capital to the affected village.
Water is inaccessible in the affected area, power lines are down, and villagers are likely to struggle with accessing food, Aktoprak said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Doctors treated hundreds of victims of heatstroke at hospitals across Pakistan on Thursday after an intense heatwave sent temperatures above normal levels due to climate change, officials said.
Temperatures soared as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit the previous day in Mohenjo Daro. The heatwave is forecast to continue for at least a week.
Authorities have urged people to stay indoors, hydrate and avoid unnecessary travel. But laborers say they don’t have a choice because they need to continue working to feed their families.
This month, temperatures are likely to soar to 131 degrees, weather forecasters said.
Pakistan has set up emergency response centers at hospitals to treat patients affected by the heat.
The United Nations children’s agency appealed for children to be protected from the heat. Authorities have shut down schools in some areas, affecting about 52 percent of the nation’s children.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Mexico’s drought, heatwave and water shortages have gotten so bad that even police blocked traffic in protest Wednesday.
In recent months, residents of some Mexico City neighborhoods have regularly taken to forming human chains to block boulevards to demand water. In April, complaints about contaminated water sparked a weeks-long crisis in one upscale neighborhood.
Normally, police seek to redirect traffic, but on Wednesday some officers were themselves manning a protest blockade, near the capital’s iconic Independence Monument. The officers blocked six lanes of traffic, saying their barracks hadn’t had water for a week, and that the bathrooms were unusable. “We don’t have water in the bathrooms,” said one female officer who would not give her name for fear of reprisals, adding that conditions in the barracks were intolerable. “They make us sleep on the floor,” she said.
In the midst of record temperatures and a severe drought, many buildings in the capital have to get water brought in by tanker trucks, but they have been in short supply and are expensive.
About 85 percent of the country was expected to see highs of at least 104 degrees Wednesday, with about a third of the country reaching 113 degrees or more.
Almost 40 percent of the country’s dams are below 20 percent of capacity, and another 40 percent are between 20 and 50 percent full.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SAO PAULO, Brazil - The first two deaths from waterborne bacterial disease were reported in southern Brazil, where floodwaters were slowly receding, and health authorities warned additional fatalities are likely.
Rio Grande do Sul state’s health secretariat confirmed the death of a 33-year-old man due to leptospirosis on Wednesday. Monday, authorities registered that a 67-year-old man had died from the same infectious disease. Since the beginning of May, 29 cases of the waterborne disease have been confirmed in the state.
The flooding over about a two-week period killed at least 161 people, with 82 still missing, state authorities said Wednesday. More than 600,000 people were forced from their homes, including tens of thousands who remain in shelters, they said.
Health experts had previously forecast a surge in infectious diseases, including leptospirosis and hepatitis B, within a couple weeks of the floods as sewage mixed into the floodwaters.
The unprecedented disaster struck more than 80 percent of the state’s municipalities and damaged critical infrastructure. More than 3,000 health establishments were affected, according to a report from the federal government’s health research institute, Fiocruz, released Tuesday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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GREENFIELD, IA - Five people died and at least 35 were hurt as powerful tornadoes ripped through Iowa Tuesday, with one carving a path of destruction through the town of Greenfield, officials said.
The Iowa Department of Public Safety said Wednesday that four people had been killed in the Greenfield area. Officials did not release the names of those killed in the storm because they were still notifying relatives.
The numbers released Wednesday bring the total number of deaths to five after authorities announced previously that a woman in a vehicle had been killed by a twister about 25 miles from Greenfield. The Iowa Department of Public Safety said Wednesday it’s believed that the number of people injured is likely higher.
The Greenfield tornado left a wide swath of obliterated homes, splintered trees and crumpled cars in the town of 2,000 about 55 miles southwest of Des Moines. The twister also ripped apart and crumpled massive power-producing wind turbines several miles outside the town.
Greenfield resident Kimberly Ergish, 33, and her husband dug through the debris field Wednesday that used to be their home, looking for family photos and other salvageable items. There wasn’t much left, she acknowledged. “Most of it we can’t save,” she said. “But we’re going to get what we can.”
After sweeping through Iowa, the storms pummeled parts of Illinois and Wisconsin, knocking out power to tens of thousands of customers. The severe weather turned south on Wednesday, and the National Weather Service issued tornado and flash flood warnings in Texas.
The National Weather Service said initial surveys indicated at least an EF-3 tornado in Greenfield, but additional damage assessment could lead to a more powerful ranking.
The tornado appeared to have been on the ground for more than 40 miles, AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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GREENFIELD, IA - Multiple people died Tuesday and at least a dozen were injured when a powerful tornado tore through a small Iowa town, carving a bleak landscape of destroyed homes and businesses, shredded trees, smashed cars, and widely strewn debris.
The tornado destroyed much of Greenfield, a town of about 2,000 around 55 miles southwest of Des Moines, during a day that saw tornadoes, giant hail and heavy rain in several states.
“We do have confirmed fatalities,” Iowa State Patrol Sgt. Alex Dinkla said at a news conference Tuesday night. He said authorities were still determining the total number but thought they had accounted for all of the town’s residents.
Dinkla said there were at least a dozen injuries amid widespread devastation in Greenfield, including at the community’s small hospital. Patients there had to be transferred to other facilities in nearby cities.
Authorities said they would only allow residents to enter Greenfield until this morning and ordered media representatives to leave the city Tuesday night.
In the aftermath of the storm, parts of Greenfield appeared devastated. Mounds of broken wood, branches, car parts and other debris littered lots where homes once stood. Cars lay busted and bent while damaged houses sat skewed against the gray and overcast sky. Trees stood — barely — bereft of branches or leaves. Residents helped each other salvage furniture and other belongings from mounds of debris or from homes barely left standing.
Rogue Paxton said he sheltered in the basement of his home when the storm moved through. He told WOI-TV he thought the house was lost but said his family got lucky. “But everyone else is not so much, like my brother Cody, his house just got wiped,” Paxton said. “Then you see all these people out here helping each other. ... Everything’s going to be fine because we have each other, but it’s just going to be really, really rough. It is a mess.”
Tornadoes were reported throughout the state, and one also apparently took down several 250-foot wind turbines in southwest Iowa. Some of the turbines caught fire, sending plumes of smoke into the air and continued to smolder hours later.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Houston area residents affected by deadly storms received some good news as officials said power had been restored Sunday to a majority of the hundreds of thousands who had been left in the dark and without air conditioning.
The widespread destruction of Thursday’s storms left at least seven dead and brought much of Houston to a standstill. Thunderstorms and hurricane-force winds tore through the city, reducing businesses and other structures to piles of debris, uprooting trees and shattering glass from downtown skyscrapers.
By Sunday evening, 88 percent of customers in the Houston area had their power restored, said Paul Lock, a spokesperson for CenterPoint Energy.
“We expect everyone to be back on by end of business Wednesday,” Lock said.
More than 289,000 homes and businesses in Texas remained without electricity Sunday evening, mostly in the Houston area. More than 3,900 customers remained without power in Louisiana, which had also been hit by strong winds and a suspected tornado.
Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia stood outside one of five cooling centers set up in the city Sunday, helping load water and ice onto vehicles while offering words of encouragement to residents still waiting for power to be restored.
“We are seeing a bit of the recovery come through,” Garcia said. “But we can’t see enough of it fast enough.”
Disaster assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and loans from the Small Business Administration were on the way, said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in the county where Houston is located.
Mayor John Whitmire said a six-block area in downtown Houston would be closed today to allow crews to continue repairs after various high-rise buildings had their windows blown out.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Power outages could last weeks in parts of Houston, an official warned Friday, after thunderstorms with hurricane-force winds tore through the city, knocking out electricity to nearly 1 million homes and businesses in the region, blowing out windows on downtown high-rises and flipping vehicles.
The National Weather Service said it confirmed a tornado with peak winds of 110 mph touched down near the northwest Houston suburb of Cyprus in Harris County.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county’s top elected official, said crews were still trying to determine the extent of the damage and the number of casualties from Thursday’s storms. Houston Mayor John Whitmire said four people, and possibly five, had died.
“It was fierce. It was intense. It was quick, and most Houstonians didn’t have time to place themselves out of harm’s way,” Whitmire said.
With multiple transmission towers down, Hidalgo urged patience. Thousands of utility workers were headed to the area, where power had already been restored to roughly 200,000 customers. Another 100,000 customers were without power in Louisiana, down from a peak of 215,000.
The widespread destruction brought much of Houston to a standstill. Trees, debris and shattered glass littered the streets. One building’s wall was ripped off.
School districts in Houston canceled classes for more than 400,000 students and government offices were closed. City officials urged people to avoid downtown and stay off roads, many of which were flooded or lined with downed power lines and malfunctioning traffic lights.
Whitmire said at least 2,500 traffic lights were out. The problems extended to the city’s suburbs, with emergency officials in neighboring Montgomery County describing the damage to transmission lines as “catastrophic.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A wildfire that has forced thousands of people out of their homes in Canada’s oil sands hub city of Fort McMurray was held in place Thursday, as rain and cooler temperatures swept the area.
Alberta provincial wildfire information officer Christie Tucker said the blaze remained out of control — the only such designated fire in the province — but it did not grow overnight and remained at 77 square miles in size.
“We’re seeing rain and cooler temperatures in much of the province this week, but unfortunately the northern part of the province is expected to stay drier and warmer,” Tucker told a news conference in the provincial capital of Edmonton.
The blaze remained just under 3.7 miles from the southwest outskirts of the community and less than 3 miles from the main highway south.
“The rain will damper things,” Alberta Wildfire Information Officer Josee St.-Onge said.
In Fort McMurray, crews woke up to light rain, overcast skies and cooler temperatures.
“With some help from the weather I am very hopeful that this is headed in the right direction,” said Sandy Bowman, mayor of the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo that contains Fort McMurray.
Evacuated residents are likely to remain out of their homes until at least Tuesday.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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HONOLULU, HI - A University of Hawaii study examining the health effects of last year’s deadly wildfires on Maui found that up to 74 percent of participants may have difficulty breathing and otherwise have poor respiratory health, and almost half showed signs of compromised lung function.
The data, gathered from 679 people in January and February, comes from what researchers hope will be a long-term study of wildfire survivors lasting at least a decade. Researchers released early results from that study Wednesday. They eventually hope to enroll 2,000 people in their study to generate what they call a snapshot of the estimated 10,000 people affected by the fires.
Dr. Alika Maunakea, one of the researchers and a professor at the university’s John A. Burns School of Medicine, said those who reported higher exposure to the wildfire tended to have more symptoms.
Many study participants hadn’t seen a doctor, he said. Some study participants said they weren’t able to because clinics had burned down or because they prioritized getting housing, jobs and food after the disaster. Maunakea urged people exposed to the wildfires to get checked.
“There might be some problems that might manifest in the future,” he said. “Please see your doctor. Just pay more attention to your health because of this.”
Two-thirds of study participants lived in Lahaina at the time of the fires. About half of the participants reported daily or weekly exposure to smoke, ash or debris.
The Aug. 8 blaze killed at least 101 people, making it the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in more than a century. It burned thousands of buildings, displaced 12,000 residents and destroyed the historic town on Maui.
The report shows Maui doesn’t have enough pulmonary health specialists to care for those who will need this expertise, said Ruben Juarez, a professor of health economics at the university and one of the study’s leaders. Researchers are talking with Hawaii’s congressional delegation to figure out how to bring these resources to Maui, he said.
Maunakea said researchers want to avoid the higher cancer and death rates experienced 20 years later by people affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “We’ll hopefully be able to prevent this tragedy from compounding to higher mortality rates in the future, like we saw with other events like 9/11,” Maunakea said.
Dr. Gopal Allada, an associate professor of medicine specializing in pulmonary and critical care at the Oregon Science & Health University who wasn’t involved in the study, said it would have been great if the study participants had undergone similar lung function tests before the fire. But he acknowledged that wasn’t possible, as is often the case in similar studies.
He hopes the researchers will get funding to continue their research over time.
Allada noted most scientific studies on the health effects of wildfires have focused on what happens to people in the days and the week of exposure and less is known about the long-term effects.
He commended the researchers for showing there’s a problem and for collecting data that can influence policymakers.
“This is important work that hopefully influences policymakers and people who control budgets and trainees train and that sort of thing,” he said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Hundreds of residents in four neighborhoods in the southern end of Canada’s oil sand hub of Fort McMurray, Alberta, were ordered to evacuate with a wildfire threatening the community, authorities said Tuesday.
The Rural Municipality of Wood Buffalo said residents in Beacon Hill, Abasand, Prairie Creek and Grayling Terrace needed to leave by 4 p.m.
An emergency evacuation warning remained in place for the rest of Fort McMurray and surrounding areas. The rural municipality said the residents in the four neighborhoods were being ordered out to clear room for crews to fight the fire, which had moved to within 8 miles of the city.
Fort McMurray has a population of about 68,000 and a wildfire there in 2016 destroyed 2,400 homes.
In the northeast of the neighboring province of British Columbia, areas subject to mandatory evacuation increased, with the latest order Monday for Doig River First Nation and the Peace River Regional District as a fire threatened nearby.
Forecasts Tuesday called for wind that could blow a growing wildfire closer to Fort Nelson. Emergency workers had been phoning as many of the estimated 50 residents still in town and urging them to go.
The British Columbia Wildfire Service said the blaze had grown to 32 square miles [20,500 acres] Tuesday, up from 21 the day before.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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FORT NELSON, B.C. - An intense wildfire could reach a town in western Canada this week, fire experts and officials warned, based on forecasts of winds that have fueled the out-of-control blaze, which has forced the evacuation of thousands of people.
The British Columbia Wildfire Service said the fire was burning about 1.5 miles northwest of Fort Nelson. More than 4,700 people have evacuated after an order was issued Friday.
Bowinn Ma, the province’s minister of emergency management, said drought conditions have persisted since last year and no rain is in the forecast.
“We are extremely concerned,” she said. “It is extremely uncommon for us to have so many on a evacuation order.”
Fire crews and emergency workers were preparing for a “last stand” if the fire advances into the town, said Rob Fraser, mayor of the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality based in Fort Nelson. Fraser said that less than 100 people remained in town.
The wildfire had swelled to nearly 20 square miles [12,800 acres).
A smoky haze from the Canadian wildfires hung over parts of the U.S. states of Minnesota and Wisconsin on Monday, pushing air quality down to unhealthy levels for the second consecutive day.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Residents of the wealthy coastal city whose crumbling bluffs are endangering the only rail line from San Diego to the rest of the nation are balking at measures being taken to shore up the vital transportation corridor.
It’s not the first time Del Mar has argued that efforts to preserve the coastline should not compromise beach access and sand retention. But those demands clash with regional efforts to forestall the inevitable collapse of the bluff from erosion and rising seas.
The tensions highlight the continuing push and pull between those trying to preserve a disappearing way of life and those trying to protect a critical national asset until it can be moved inland.
Sea walls are the latest phase in a series of projects that the San Diego Association of Governments started more than 20 years ago to protect the train tracks atop the bluffs.
Each phase involved consultation with and approvals from multiple government agencies, including Del Mar. Still, residents say the new sea walls are taking up more beach space, removing more of the bluff material, and making shoreline access more difficult than people expected.
“Instead of stabilizing the bluff, they are scraping away from the bluff,” said resident Camilla Rang at a recent Del Mar City Council meeting. In other places, the contractor is filling in space behind the sea wall, at one spot eliminating a small cove loved by beachgoers.
“It looks like the construction zone from hell,” Rang said.
Drew Cady, a Stratford Court resident, said he was “horrified” to see the sea wall going up along his beloved beach.
“It now appears there will be a continuous sea wall that will cut off all access to the beach from the bluff between Ninth and Seventh streets,” he said.
He suggested the city take legal action to stop the construction, as it did when North County Transit District proposed building a safety fence along the railroad right of way.
A state court decision in the case is expected this year, but for now the fence plan remains on hold, even though most of the rest of San Diego County’s 60-mile rail corridor has been fenced.
So far, no one on the Del Mar City Council has publicly discussed any legal action to stop the sea walls.
Bruce Smith, a principal design engineer at SANDAG, said the construction that began in March is actually a series of six closely spaced sea walls being added to the ones already in place below the railroad.
Landslides have occurred along the bluffs as recently as April. They show “there is a very real and present danger,” Smith said. “It is imperative that these walls go up as soon as possible.”
To build the walls, loose sand on the beach at the base of the bluffs must be excavated down to the harder foundation material, he said. Also, in some places, parts of the face of the bluffs are sheared away.
The material removed is being temporarily stockpiled nearby for a possible return to the beach.
Residents also expressed concerns that some of the sand removed during construction might not be returned to the beach. Smith confirmed that may be the case.
“We haven’t taken any material off site yet,” he said. “It’s all stored on the southern bluff. We hope to use it all on site, but some might not be up to quality.”
Organic material and silt-like clay taken from the bluff may not be suitable for use on the beach, even though it would eventually end up there naturally if nature were allowed to take its course.
Sand placed on the beach as part of a construction project must meet standards for cleanliness and grain size set by agencies such as the California Coastal Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“We recognize there is going to be some sand loss and beach loss with the project,” Smith said. However, the mitigation work included in the plan is intended to compensate for that.
The mitigation proposed for the project is a beach access trail with either a switchback ramp or a concrete stairway over the bluffs and down to the beach between Seventh and Eighth streets.
Construction of the access project is scheduled to start in 2026, but some residents also are unhappy about SANDAG’s apparent preferred alternative of a ramp.
State and federal grant money is available only for the ramp because it would provide the handicapped access required by the Americans With Disabilities Act, Smith said. If Del Mar wants stairs, which some people prefer, the city would have to pay for the construction.
The bluffs where the trail would be created are where a train went off the tracks and fell to the beach in 1940, Smith said. The area remains unsafe, and people on the beach near the steep slope could be hit by falling rocks at any time, he said, and the switchback ramp will help stabilize the slope.
The budget for the entire phase of stabilization work is about $80 million, with almost all the money coming from state and federal grants.
Council member Dan Quirk said the ramp and stairs are both bad choices. Quirk, who has twice been censured by the City Council for misrepresenting the city’s position on the railroad and other issues, has called for abandoning the rail route and turning it into a bicycle and pedestrian trail from San Diego to San Clemente.
“This is just going to be another assault on our coastline,” Quirk said. “This is all for a train that is obsolete and has minimal ridership. We need to go in a completely different direction.”
Mayor Dave Druker has said repeatedly that the train tracks are not going way and that the route on the bluff must be protected until an alternate route is completed. Plans are in progress for an inland tunnel that could be built as soon as 2035. The most recent construction estimate for the tunnel is at least $4 billion.
SANDAG, North County Transit District and other agencies expect rail traffic to increase in the years ahead.
Federal, state and regional officials promote trains as an energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly way to take vehicles off overcrowded freeways. The transit district’s Coaster commuter train is a relatively new addition to the 150-year-old coastal rail route, making its first run in 1995.
Del Mar’s 1.7-mile section of the tracks is San Diego’s only rail link to Los Angeles and the rest of the United States. It carries 10 round-trip Amtrak passenger trains daily from Los Angeles, 15 round-trip Coaster trips between Oceanside and San Diego most weekdays, and six to eight BNSF freight trains most nights. It’s also part of the Defense Department’s strategic rail network that connects military bases across the country.
Still, efforts to promote or protect rail traffic have long hit a sore spot in Del Mar. Most residents there believe they can cross the tracks at will, despite trespassing laws, to surf, watch the sunset or reach their favorite spot on the shrinking stretch of sand.
Average home prices in Del Mar ranged from $2.5 million to $4 million in March, depending on the real estate website. Single-family homes atop the bluffs near the tracks can be worth much more, and homeowners consider beach access and ocean views to be a significant part of their value.
Del Mar also has spent years fighting the Coastal Commission’s policy of “managed retreat,” which is the idea of long-term planning to eventually remove shoreline homes, roads and other structures from areas threatened by sea-level rise. The commission requires coastal cities to consider managed retreat as part of their efforts to adapt to sea-level rise.
Residents and the City Council have said there’s no room for retreat in their small city. Also, to acknowledge that homes could have to be moved would slash their property values.
As for the sea walls, little could stop them at this point. Years of studies have been completed, piles of permits obtained, millions of dollars allocated, contracts signed, bulldozers are moving and pilings are being sunk.
One thing in the project that could change is the beach access trail proposed as mitigation, which still needs final design work and can only be built after the sea walls are finished.
Councilmember Terry Gaasterland said she was disappointed that the trail could not be built before the sea walls.
If the city must accept a ramp instead of stairs, maybe it should “step back” from the proposal and try to get sand replenishment as mitigation instead, she said.
“Everybody in Del Mar is feeling a lot of pain right now, myself included,” Gaasterland said. “The craziness of taking material off the beach and not being able to put it back ... it’s difficult to comprehend the logic, because it’s not logical.”
Councilmember Dwight Worden agreed with others that any loss of the beach is difficult and said it’s “very distressing” to see the construction under way. He tried to stay optimistic.
“It’s a little like if you interrupted a heart surgeon in the middle of heart surgery,” he said, when, obviously, the work in progress would appear to be a bit of a mess.
The best solution now is to “hold SANDAG’s feet to the fire” and make sure the agency follows all of the specifications for the project, Worden said.
(Phil Diehl, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Shopkeeper Nazer Mohammad ran home as soon as he heard about flash floods crashing into the outskirts of a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan. By the time he got there, there was nothing left, including his family of five.
“Everything happened just all of a sudden. I came home, but there was no home there, instead I saw all the neighborhood covered by mud and water,” said Mohammad. 48. He said that he buried his wife and two sons aged 15 and 8 years, but he’s still looking for two daughters, who are around 6 and 11 years old.
The U.N. food agency estimated that unusually heavy seasonal rains in Afghanistan have left more than 300 people dead and thousands of houses destroyed, most of them in the northern province of Baghlan, which bore the brunt of the deluges Friday.
Mohammad said Sunday that he found the bodies of his wife and two sons late Friday night on the outskirt of Puli Khumri, the capital of Baghlan province. “I hope someone has found my daughters alive,” he said, holding back tears. “Just in the blink of an eye, I lost everything: family, home, belongings, now nothing is left to me.”
Among at least 240 people dead are 51 children, according to UNICEF, one of several international aid groups that are sending relief teams, medicines, blankets and other supplies. The World Health Organization said it delivered 7 tons of medicines and emergency kits.
Aid group Save the Children said about 600,000 people, half of them children, live in the five districts in Baghlan that have been severely impacted by the floods. The group said it sent a “clinic on wheels” with mobile health and child protection teams to support children and their families.
“Lives and livelihoods have been washed away,” said Arshad Malik, country director for Save the Children. “The flash floods tore through villages, sweeping away homes and killing livestock. Children have lost everything. Families who are still reeling from the economic impacts of three years of drought urgently need assistance.”
He said that Afghanistan was a country least prepared to cope with climate change patterns, such as the heavier seasonal rains, and needs help from the international community.
At least 70 people died in April from heavy rains and flash floods in the country, which also destroyed About 2,000 homes, three mosques and four schools.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Heavy rains and torrents of cold lava and mud flowing down a volcano’s slopes on Indonesia’s Sumatra island triggered flash floods that killed at least 37 people and more than a dozen others were missing, officials said Sunday.
Monsoon rains and a major mudslide from a cold lava flow on Mount Marapi caused a river to breach its banks and tear through mountainside villages in four districts in West Sumatra province just before midnight on Saturday. The floods swept away people and submerged more than 100 houses and buildings, National Disaster Management Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said.
Cold lava, also known as lahar, is a mixture of volcanic material and pebbles that flow down a volcano’s slopes in the rain.
By Sunday afternoon, rescuers had pulled out 19 bodies in the worst-hit village of Canduang in Agam district and recovered nine other bodies in the neighboring district of Tanah Datar, the National Search and Rescue Agency said in a statement.
The agency said that eight bodies were pulled from mud during deadly flash floods that also hit Padang Pariaman, and one body was found in the city of Padang Panjang. It said rescuers are searching for 18 people who are reportedly missing.
NB: The term 'cold lava' is a misnomer and not used in the scientific literature. A lahar is a mix of water and volcanic material, such as ash, as indicated in the text. But lava flows are not involved.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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An unusually strong solar storm hitting Earth could produce northern lights in the U.S. this weekend and potentially disrupt power and communications.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a rare severe geomagnetic storm warning when a solar outburst reached Earth on Friday afternoon, hours sooner than anticipated. The effects were due to last through the weekend and possibly into next week.
NOAA alerted operators of power plants and spacecraft in orbit to take precautions, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“For most people here on planet Earth, they won’t have to do anything,” said Rob Steenburgh, a scientist with NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
The storm could produce northern lights as far south in the U.S. as Alabama and Northern California, according to NOAA. But experts stressed it would not be dramatic curtains, but more like splashes of greenish hues.
The storm — ranked 4 on a scale of 1 to 5 — poses a risk for high-voltage transmission lines for power grids. Satellites also could be affected, which in turn could disrupt navigation and communication services.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Powerful storms packing hurricane-force winds killed at least one woman Friday in Florida as a week of deadly severe weather continued in the South, where uprooted trees crashed onto homes and knocked out electricity to thousands in several states.
City officials in Tallahassee said wind gusts of 80 to 100 mph, speeds that exceed hurricane intensity, were reported in Florida’s capital city. Images posted on social media showed mangled metal and other debris from damaged buildings littering some areas.
A statement on the Tallahassee government’s website said crews were scrambling to repair 100 broken power poles while half the homes and businesses were left without electricity in a city of 200,000 people. It said the National Weather Service was assessing paths of three potential tornadoes.
“Our area experienced catastrophic wind damage,” Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey said on the social platform X.
The sheriff’s office for Leon County, which includes Tallahassee, said in a Facebook post Friday that a woman was killed when a tree fell onto her family’s home.
The storm that struck Tallahassee early Friday also knocked two chimneys from apartment buildings at a complex where fallen trees covered a row of cars. Fencing was left bent at the baseball stadium of Florida State University, where classes were canceled Friday.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on social media Friday that the state Division of Emergency Management was working with local officials to “do everything possible to return life to normalcy for our residents as quickly as possible.”
Nearly 230,000 homes and businesses from Mississippi to North Carolina were blacked out Friday afternoon, according to the tracking website poweroutage.us. Most of those outages were in Florida, where lights and air conditioning were out for nearly 160,000 customers.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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ALBUQUERQUE, NM — The U.S. government is dedicating $60 million over the next few years to projects along the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico and West Texas to make the river more resilient in the face of climate change and growing demands.
The funding announced Friday by U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland marks the first disbursement from the Inflation Reduction Act for a basin outside of the Colorado River system.
While pressures on the Colorado River have dominated headlines, Haaland and others acknowledged that other communities in the West — from Native American reservations to growing cities and agricultural strongholds — are experiencing the effects of unprecedented drought.
Water users and managers can’t afford to waste one drop, Haaland said, sharing the advice her own grandmother used to give when she and her cousins would carry buckets of water to their home at Laguna Pueblo for cooking, cleaning and bathing.
“She was teaching us how precious water is in the desert,” Haaland said, standing among the cottonwoods that make up a green belt that stretches the length of the river from the Colorado-New Mexico border south into Texas and Mexico.
Haaland noted that parts of the river have gone dry through the Albuquerque stretch in recent years.
In fact, a decades-long drought has led to record low water levels throughout the Rio Grande Basin.
“When drought conditions like this strike, we know it doesn’t just impact one community, it affects all of us,” she said, pointing to the importance of investing in water projects throughout the basin.
One of the longest rivers in North America, the Rio Grande provides drinking water for millions of people and supplies thousands of farmers with water for crops.
Management of the river has sparked legal battles over the decades, with the most recent case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court as New Mexico, Texas and Colorado seek approval of a settlement that will help ensure they have more flexibility in the future.
U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, a New Mexico Democrat, said improving sustainability along the Rio Grande will help the state meets obligations under a decades-old compact to deliver water downstream to Texas and ultimately Mexico.
(Susan Montoya Bryan, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Dangerous storms crashed over parts of the South on Thursday even as the region cleaned up from earlier severe weather that spawned tornadoes, killed at least three people and gravely injured a boy who was swept into a storm drain as he played in a flooded street.
A heavy line of storms swept into Atlanta near the end of the morning rush hour. Busy hub airports in Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C., reported delays. The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center cited an “enhanced risk” for severe weather from Texas to South Carolina.
The storms continue a streak of torrential rains and tornadoes this week from the Plains to the Midwest and, now, the Southeast. Since Monday, 39 states have been under threat of severe weather and at least four people have died. Wednesday and Thursday, about 220 million people were under some sort of severe weather risk, with some in danger multiple days, a Storm Prediction Center forecaster said.
The weather comes on the heels of a stormy April in which the U.S. had 300 confirmed tornadoes, the second-most on record for the month and the most since 2011.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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After years-long battles with the city of San Diego over crumbling stormwater infrastructure in their southeastern San Diego neighborhoods, hundreds of people whose homes and businesses were damaged by flash flood waters in January are now suing the city.
The $100 million mass tort lawsuit has nearly 300 plaintiffs — homeowners and renters as well as business owners in the communities of Southcrest, Logan Heights and others along the Chollas Creek watershed.
The lawsuit contends that city leaders have known for years that the creek and stormwater infrastructure around it are in urgent need of attention.
“The city of San Diego failed in its duty to protect communities from flooding,” the complaint, filed Monday in San Diego Superior Court said.
It said the city knew for years that its storm drains were clogged full of vegetation, sediment and debris and therefore “created a destructive state of affairs and absolutely failed their residents.”
It also contends that despite years of warnings, the city failed to take the steps necessary to avoid flooding or increase stormwater revenue in the past two decades.
And it notes that the city’s stormwater system makes up the biggest share of its infrastructure backlog. A city report from earlier this year found that stormwater needs had grown to more than $2.2 billion over the next five years — a figure higher than the city’s entire proposed annual budget.
The city has said that absent billions of dollars in new spending, the outdated and underfunded stormwater system “poses a risk of flooding and catastrophic failure,” city officials wrote in a report published earlier this year.
The city attorney’s office declined to comment Wednesday on the pending litigation.
“The heart of that complaint is the clogging of Chollas Creek, which the city has known about for some time as a problem,” said Evan Walker, one of the five lawyers representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Walker said his office, along with contractors and appraisers, have been assessing the storm destruction since January to calculate the total cost of damages.
The suit he filed on behalf of flood victims lists six causes of action, ranging from negligence to creation of a dangerous condition for public property.
This isn’t the first time the city has had to defend its aging flood-control network. Walker sued the city on behalf of some of the same residents after the same channel overflowed in 2018 and caused some of the properties on Beta Street to flood.
That suit accused the city of not only knowing about but helping to create the failures that caused the flooding. It pointed to a concrete channel the city built to direct storm runoff from Chollas Creek but allowed to remain clogged, as well as an embankment above the channel that directed stormwater toward homes.
Residents eventually accepted just more than $200,000 to resolve the lawsuit. But the settlement did not require the city to correct the problem.
The events of 2018 were “more or less the same” as what residents experienced in January, Walker said, but the biggest difference “is the sheer magnitude of the damages and that people affected” in this year’s storms.
The 2019 case only had a handful of plaintiffs. But now, some of those who previously settled are suing the city again, under different causes of action.
Greg Montoya, a plaintiff in both lawsuits, said he watched in despair as his block was inundated once again — this time much more extensively — after the bridge at 38th Street, just upstream from his home, was clogged with debris.
“The bridge acted like a dam and water couldn’t get through, so it overflowed, blew out all the fencing along the creek and started flooding down the street,” Montoya said. “It was a mess.”
At least 3 feet of water destroyed most of his belongings and he has been living in a hotel through the county’s hotel voucher program while he repairs his home.
Since the first lawsuit, Montoya said he’s kept pestering the city, sending numerous emails and reports via the city’s online Get It Done problem-reporting app in an effort to clear the storm drains.
“They just continue to show that they have a lack of interest in this area,” he said.
He hopes he and other flood victims are compensated for their losses but also that the city will implement a plan to fix the stormwater system.
“I hope this time they take it more seriously and get something done,” he said.
Meanwhile, city leaders are working to close the stormwater infrastructure funding deficit with a proposed parcel tax increase. The tax measure, which city officials hope to put on the November ballot, would raise anywhere from $74 million to $474 million a year for flood prevention and water quality projects.
The goal is to eliminate a $1.6 billion shortfall in the funding needed to complete crucial flood prevention and stormwater infrastructure improvements over the next five years — a gap that’s grown so wide in part because the city’s stormwater fee is only a small fraction of what other cities charge.
Should the tax hike appear on the November ballot and win approval from voters, it would mark the first such fee increase since Proposition 218 began requiring support from two-thirds of voters back in 1996.
San Diego’s existing stormwater fee is about 95 cents per house each month — far less than the $10 per month that city officials say is the true cost of what San Diego must do to prevent floods and water pollution.
Despite the funding struggles, city officials have suggested the January floods were unavoidable. In a February news conference, city stormwater Director Todd Snyder said the creek channel behind Beta Street wasn’t designed to handle such an intense storm and would have been overwhelmed even if it had been maintained.
The city also may face more legal claims to come. Other residents — like Gerardo Hernandez — who aren’t plaintiffs in the suit, say they plan to pursue legal action of their own.
“Every person lost different amounts of money and property,” Hernandez said. “So it’s better to (sue) individually.”
Hernandez also has been living at a hotel through the county’s temporary lodging program after his Beta Street home flooded and said he has been dealing with pain in his legs and hips since standing in cold water for 5 1/2 hours the day of the flood.
In preparing to sue, he has been making a list of everything he lost, from toenail clippers to Christmas decorations to five vehicles. It’s currently at 18 pages.
(Emily Alvarenga & Maura Fox, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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COLUMBIA, TN - Severe storms tore through parts of the U.S. again Wednesday, spawning damaging tornadoes, producing massive hail, and killing two people in Tennessee and one person in North Carolina.
A storm that rumbled across northeastern Tennessee brought high winds that knocked down powerlines and trees. Claiborne County Sheriff Bob Brooks said a 22-year-old man was in a car struck by one of the trees.
On Wednesday afternoon, a tornado emergency — the weather service’s highest alert level — was issued for an area south of Nashville including the towns of Spring Hill, Chapel Hill and Eagleville.
The National Weather Service had previously reported a likely tornado on the ground in nearby Columbia.
Rita Thompson, a spokesperson for Maury Regional Health, said the hospital had received five patients. One died, another was in serious condition and three had injuries that were not life-threatening.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued a temporary ground stop at Nashville International Airport because of the weather, media outlets reported. Northeast of Nashville, a flash flood emergency was issued for Sumner and Robertson counties. The National Weather Service said water rescues were ongoing.
The National Weather Service in Nashville on Wednesday evening issued a tornado watch for parts of Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee. The weather service continued issuing tornado warnings into the night, mostly in Tennessee, but also in Missouri, Alabama, Georgia and Texas.
In North Carolina, a state of emergency was declared for Gaston County on Wednesday evening following a large storm. The New Hope Fire Department responded to a tree down on a car. One person in the car was killed and another was taken to a hospital, officials said.
More than 135,000 customers had lost power in the state as of Wednesday evening, according to PowerOutage.us.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil - As major floods engulfed entire cities in the northern part of the Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state last week, meteorologist Estael Sias knew the water would drain into capital Porto Alegre’s metropolitan region and that she would need to find a safe place.
So she, her husband, three children and two dogs left everything behind. Less than 24 hours later, water started filling her neighborhood in Canoas, now one of the state’s most affected cities.
“My house was inundated,” Sias recalled. “And it was very hard to leave my house, to make my family leave.” She said she could protect her close family, but not others who insisted on staying put. “It has been very distressing and still is. I don’t know how it will be when I return home.”
Authorities in southern Brazil rushed Wednesday to rescue survivors of massive flooding that has killed at least 100 people, but some residents refused to leave belongings behind while others returned to evacuated homes despite the risk of new storms.
Heavy rains and flooding in Rio Grande do Sul since last week also have left 130 people missing, authorities said. More than 230,000 have been displaced, and much of the region has been isolated by the floodwaters.
Storms were expected Wednesday evening with hail and wind gusts reaching up to 37 mph, according to the national meteorology institute’s afternoon bulletin. The institute forecasts a cold front this weekend with additional rains to be particularly intense in the state’s north and east.
In Porto Alegre, about 300 people were sheltering at the Gremio Nautico Uniao club, in the upscale, little-harmed neighborhood of Moinhos de Vento. Dozens lay on mattresses as volunteers brought boxes filled with feijoada — a typical Brazilian bean-and-pork stew.
Staffers of the state’s civil defense agency told The Associated Press they have been struggling to persuade residents of the city of Eldorado do Sul, one of the hardest hit by the floods, to leave their homes. It is located beside Porto Alegre, near the center of the state’s coastline. At least four people declined to evacuate.
A flyover of Eldorado do Sul in a military helicopter showed hundreds of houses submerged, with only their roofs visible. Residents were using small boards, surfboards and personal watercraft to move around. Mayor Ernani de Freitas told local journalists that the city “will be totally evacuated.”
“It will take at least a year to recover,” he said.
Rio Grande do Sul Gov. Eduardo Leite, speaking at a news conference late Tuesday, appealed to residents to stay out of harm’s way, as the anticipated downpour may cause more severe flooding across the state. “It isn’t the time to return home,” he said.
The civil defense agency’s own urgent warning asking displaced residents not to return to flooded areas also stressed the risk of disease transmission.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil - The mayor of a major city in southern Brazil on Tuesday pleaded with residents to comply with his water rationing decree, given that some four-fifths of the population is without running water, a week after major flooding that has left at least 90 people dead and more than 130 others missing.
Efforts were continuing to rescue people stranded by the floods in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, as more rain was forecast for the region into next week. The capital, Porto Alegre, has been virtually cut off, with the airport and bus station closed and main roads blocked because of the floodwaters.
Five of the Porto Alegre’s six water treatment facilities aren’t working, and Porto Alegre Mayor Sebastião Melo on Monday decreed that water be used exclusively for “essential consumption.”
“We are living an unprecedented natural disaster and everyone needs to help,” Melo told journalists. “I am getting water trucks to soccer fields and people will have to go there to get their water in bottles. I cannot get them to go home to home.”
The most urgent need is drinking water, but food and personal hygiene products are also in short supply. Other Brazilian states are mobilizing trucks with donations bound for Rio Grande do Sul.
Public health experts say there is also growing risk of disease as much of the region remains submerged.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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Tornadoes ripped through communities in Michigan on Tuesday evening as severe storms battered the Midwest, bringing more destruction a day after tornadoes in the southern Plains killed at least one person and damaged dozens of homes.
Officials in Kalamazoo County in southern Michigan said they were responding to a tornado that struck Portage, a city of about 50,000, leaving streets littered with downed power lines, trees and building debris. The extent of the damage was not immediately clear, but local news outlets shared images from social media that showed damaged buildings and the collapse of a FedEx distribution center.
Another a tornado warning was issued for Kalamazoo County, including Portage, even as emergency workers were responding to damage from the tornado that had hit earlier.
Roughly 20,000 customers in the county were without power in the county, according to PowerOutage.us, which aggregates utilities information across the U.S.
As storms moved through the region Tuesday afternoon, the Weather Service issued a string of tornado warnings in cities across Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.
About 13.5 million people in parts of Indiana, northern Kentucky and western Ohio were warned about an enhanced risk for severe thunderstorms through Tuesday evening, with the possibility of strong tornadoes and large hail, according to the Storm Prediction Center of the National Weather Service.
At least 15 tornadoes were reported to have struck parts of the Plains on Monday night. One tornado that was up to 2 miles wide ripped through Barnsdall, OK, about 40 miles northwest of Tulsa, killing one person, an Osage County official said.
One Osage County official said it had leveled about one-third of the small city, which has a population of about 1,000.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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After massive downpours flooded California’s rivers and packed mountains with snow, the state reported Monday the first increase in groundwater supplies in four years.
The state saw 4.1 million acre-feet of managed groundwater recharge in the water year ending in September, and an 8.7 million acre-feet increase in groundwater storage, California’s Department of Water Resources said.
The semiannual report came after officials stepped up efforts during last year’s rains to capture flows from melting snowpack in the mountains and encouraged farmers to flood fields to replenish groundwater basins.
For many years, Californians pumped groundwater from wells without measuring how much they were taking. But as some wells ran dry and land began sinking, the state enacted a law requiring local communities to start measuring and regulating groundwater pumping to ensure the basins would be sustainable for years to come.
In the report, California water officials noted that some areas where land had been sinking saw a rebound as users pumped less groundwater, since more surface water was available following the rains.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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TRUCKEE, CA - A weekend spring storm that drenched the San Francisco Bay Area and closed Northern California mountain highways also set a single-day snowfall record for the season on Sunday in the Sierra Nevada.
The wet weather system had mostly moved out of the state by Sunday morning, but officials warned that roads would remain slick after around 2 feet of snow fell in some areas of the Sierra.
“Did anyone have the snowiest day of the 2023/ 2024 season being in May on their winter bingo card?” the University of California Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab asked on the social platform X.
The 26.4 inches of snowfall on Sunday beat the second snowiest day of the season — March 3 — by 2.6 inches, according to the lab.
Treacherous driving conditions on Saturday forced the closure of several highways near Lake Tahoe, including Interstate 80 over the Donner Summit.
Flood advisories were issued for parts of the Bay Area, where up to an inch of rain fell while temperatures dipped into the low 40s, the National Weather Service said. Wind gusts reaching 40 mph were reported Saturday near San Francisco.
The storm brought light rain and gusty winds to Southern California. Drier and warmer conditions were expected throughout the week.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HOUSTON, TX - Storms in Texas brought additional rain Sunday to the already saturated Houston area where hundreds of people have been rescued from flooded homes and roads, while to the north in the Fort Worth area, a child died after being swept away when the car he was traveling in got stuck in floodwaters.
Over the last week, areas near Lake Livingston, northeast of Houston, have gotten upward of 23 inches of rain, National Weather Service meteorologist Jimmy Fowler said on Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, he said, areas in northeastern Harris County, the nation’s third-largest county that includes Houston, had a range of 6 inches to almost 17 inches of rain in that same period. Scattered showers in the Houston area on Sunday brought light to moderate rainfall, he said.
“With the rainfall that fell overnight plus this morning it just kind of prolonged the river flooding that we were experiencing,” Fowler said.
He said the rain would taper off in the evening, with no heavy rain expected in the next week or so.
In Johnson County, south of Fort Worth, a 5-year-old boy died when he was swept away after the vehicle he was riding in became stuck in swift-moving water near the community of Lillian just before 2 a.m. Sunday, an official said.
The child and two adults were trying to get to dry ground when they were swept away, Jamie Moore, the Johnson County Emergency Management director, wrote in a Facebook post.
The two adults were rescued around 5 a.m. and taken to a hospital, while the child was found dead around 7:20 a.m. in the water, Moore said.
Storms brought as much as 9 inches of rain in a span of six to eight hours in some areas from central Texas to the Dallas-Fort Worth area overnight, said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Stalley. He said the rains washed out some roads west of Waco.
Over the last few days, storms have forced numerous high-water rescues in the Houston area, including some from the rooftops of flooded homes.
Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist with the Harris County Flood Control District, said Sunday afternoon that “things are improving slowly.”
“We have water going down on our river systems,” Lindner said. The San Jacinto River crested on Saturday, with its east and west forks and main stem below Lake Houston falling from 1 foot to 3 feet overnight, he said.
Lindner said that so far, Sunday’s additional rain did not seem to be causing any new flooding. He urged people to still be cautious, noting that many areas are still flooded.
Greg Moss, 68, was staying put in his recreational vehicle on Sunday after leaving his home in the community of Channelview in eastern Harris County near the San Jacinto River. On Saturday, he packed up many of his belongings and left before the road to his home flooded.
“I would be stuck for four days,” Moss said. “So now at least I can go get something to eat.”
Moss moved his belongings and vehicle to a neighbor’s home, where he planned to stay until the waters recede.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Massive floods in Brazil’s southern Rio Grande do Sul state have killed at least 75 people over the last seven days, and an additional 103 were reported, local authorities said Sunday.
At least 155 people were injured, while damage from the rains forced more than 88,000 people from their homes. Approximately 16,000 took refuge in schools, gymnasiums and other temporary shelters.
The floods left a wake of devastation, including landslides, washed-out roads and collapsed bridges across the state. Operators reported electricity and communications cuts. More than 800,000 people are without a water supply, according to the civil defense agency, which cited figures from water company Corsan.
A rescue team pulled an elderly man in serious medical condition into a helicopter from a remote area in the Bento Gonçalves municipality, according to footage from military firefighters. Torrents of brown water poured over a nearby dam.
On Saturday evening, residents in the town of Canoas stood up to their shoulders in muddy water and formed a human chain to pull boats carrying people to safety, according to video footage shared by local UOL news network. The Guaiba river reached a record level of 17.5 feet Sunday morning, surpassing levels seen during a historic 1941 deluge, when the river reached 15.6 feet.
“I repeat and insist: The devastation to which we are being subjected is unprecedented,” state Gov. Eduardo Leite said Sunday morning. He had previously said the state will need a “kind of ‘Marshall Plan’ to be rebuilt.”
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva visited Rio Grande do Sul for a second time on Sunday, accompanied by Defense Minister José Múcio, Finance Minister Fernando Haddad and Environment Minister Marina Silva, among others. The leader and his team surveyed the flooded streets of Porto Alegre from a helicopter. “We need to stop running behind disasters. We need to see in advance what calamities might happen and we need to work,” Lula told journalists afterward.
During Sunday Mass at the Vatican, Pope Francis said he was praying for the state’s population. “May the Lord welcome the dead and comfort their families and those who had to abandon their homes,” he said.
The downpour started April 29. In some areas, such as valleys, mountain slopes and cities, more than 11.8 inches of rain fell in less than a week, according to Brazil’s National Institute of Meteorology, known by the Portuguese acronym INMET, on Thursday.
The heavy rains were the fourth such environmental disaster in the state in a year, following floods in July, September and November 2023 that killed 75 people.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SAO PAULO, Brazil - Heavy rains in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul killed 39 people, with another 68 still missing, the state civil defense agency said Friday, as record-breaking floods devastated cities and forced thousands to leave their homes.
It was the fourth such environmental disaster in a year, following floods in July, September and November 2023 that killed 75 people in total.
The flooding statewide has surpassed that seen during a historic 1941 deluge, according to the Brazilian Geological Service. In some cities, water levels were at their highest since records began nearly 150 years ago, the agency said.
On Thursday, a dam at a hydroelectric plant between the cities of Bento Goncalves and Cotipora partially collapsed and entire cities in the Taquari River valley, like Lajeado and Estrela, were overtaken by water. In the town of Feliz, 50 miles from the state capital, Porto Alegre, a massively swollen river swept away a bridge that connected it with the city of Linha Nova.
Operators reported electricity, communications and water cuts across the state. More than 24,000 people had to leave their homes, according to the civil defense agency.
Without Internet, telephone service or electricity, residents struggled to provide updates or information to their relatives living in other states. Helicopters flew continually over the cities while stranded families with children awaited rescue on the rooftops.
Isolete Neumann, 58, lives in the city of Lajeado in the Taguai River valley and said she has never before seen a scenario like the one she is now experiencing.
Some people in her region were so desperate, she said, that they threw themselves into the water currents.
The downpour started Monday and is expected to last at least through today, Marcelo Seluchi, chief meteorologist at the National Center for Monitoring and Alerts of Natural Disasters, told Brazil’s public television network Friday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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At least 13 people died in northern Haiti following two days of heavy rains, officials said.
The majority of the deaths were caused by a landslide in the southeastern region of the coastal city of Cap-Haitien, according to a Thursday statement by Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency.
More than 2,200 homes also were flooded, and there were significant losses in livestock swept away by the Haut-Cap river, authorities said.
Crews were clearing roads across northern Haiti, with additional rain expected in upcoming days.
Heavy rains also were reported in neighboring Puerto Rico, forcing at least a dozen flights scheduled to land in the capital of San Juan to reroute to the Dominican Republic and elsewhere, officials said Friday.
Widespread flooding also was reported in the U.S. territory.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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HOUSTON, TX - Heavy storms slammed the Houston area again Friday, widening already dangerous flooding in Texas and leading to numerous high-water rescues, including some from the rooftops of flooded homes. Officials redoubled urgent instructions for residents in low-lying areas to evacuate, warning the worst was still to come.
“This threat is ongoing and it’s going to get worse. It is not your typical river flood,” said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in the nation’s third-largest county.
She described the surge of water as “catastrophic” and said several hundred structures were at risk of flooding. There had already been at least two dozen water rescues in the county, in addition to getting 30 pets to safety. Schools in the path of the flooding canceled classes and roads jammed as authorities closed highways taking on water.
For weeks, drenching rains in Texas and parts of Louisiana have filled reservoirs and saturated the ground. Floodwaters partially submerged cars and roads this week across parts of southeastern Texas, north of Houston, where high waters reached the roofs of some homes.
More than 11 inches of rain fell during a 24-hour period that ended Friday morning in the northern Houston suburb of Spring, according to the National Weather Service, which has issued a flood warning until Tuesday for the region.
In the rural community of Shepherd, Gilroy Fernandes said he and his spouse had about an hour to evacuate after a mandatory order. Their home is on stilts near the Trinity River, and they felt relief when the water began to recede on Thursday.
Then the danger grew while they slept.
“Next thing you know, overnight they started releasing more water from the dam at Livingston. And so that caused the level of the river to shoot up by almost five or six feet overnight,” Fernandes said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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OTTAWA, Ontario - For the first time, negotiators from most of the world’s nations are discussing the text of what is supposed to become a global treaty to end plastic pollution.
Delegates and observers at the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution called it a welcome sign that talk has shifted from ideas to treaty language at this fourth of five scheduled plastics summits.
Most contentious is the idea of limiting how much plastic is manufactured globally. Currently, that remains in the text over the strong objections of plastic-producing countries and companies and oil and gas exporters. Most plastic is made from fossil fuels and chemicals.
The Ottawa session was scheduled to end early today. There could sharp discussion over whether this question of plastic production is a focus for working groups before the next and final meeting.
Stewart Harris, an industry spokesperson with the International Council of Chemical Associations, said the members want a treaty that focuses on recycling plastic and reuse, sometimes referred to as “circularity.”
“We want to see the treaty completed,” Harris said. “We want to work with the governments on implementing it. The private sector has a role to play.”
Dozens of scientists from the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty came to the meeting to provide scientific evidence on plastic pollution to negotiators, in part, they said, to dispel misinformation.
“I heard yesterday that there’s no data on microplastics, which is verifiably false: 21,000 publications on micro and nanoplastics have been published,” said Bethanie Carney Almroth, an ecotoxicology professor at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg who co-leads the coalition. “It’s like Whac-A-Mole.”
She said scientists were being harassed and intimidated by lobbyists and she reported to the United Nations that a lobbyist yelled in her face at a meeting.
Despite their differences, the countries represented share a common vision to move forward in the treaty process, Ecuador’s chief negotiator, Walter Schuldt said.
“Because at the end of the day, we’re talking about the survival of the future of life, not only of human life but all sorts of life on this planet,” he said in an interview.
He said he was proud to participate, to contribute his “grain of sand” to global action to address an environmental crisis.
Negotiators aim to conclude a treaty by the end of 2024. Topics assigned to expert working groups by tonight will advance into the final round of talks in the fall in South Korea.
Without this preparation work between meetings, it would be daunting to complete the negotiations this year. Multiple countries said Sunday night they’re committed to working in between meetings.
The treaty talks began in Uruguay in December 2022 after Rwanda and Peru proposed the resolution that launched the process in March 2022.
Progress was slow during Paris talks in May 2023 and in Nairobi in November as countries debated rules for the process.
When thousands of negotiators and observers arrived in Ottawa, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, the committee chair from Ecuador, reminded them of their purpose, asking them to be ambitious.
“The world is counting on us to deliver a new treaty that will catalyze and guide the actions, and international cooperation needed to deliver a future free of plastic pollution,” he said. “Let us not fail them.”
The delegates have been discussing not only the scope of the treaty, but chemicals of concern, problematic and avoidable plastics, product design, and financing and implementation.
Delegates also streamlined the unwieldy collection of options that emerged from the last meeting.
Many traveled to Ottawa from communities affected by plastic manufacturing and pollution.
Louisiana and Texas residents who live near petrochemical plants and refineries handed out postcards aimed at the U.S. State Department saying, “Wish you were here.”
They traveled together as a group from the Break Free From Plastic movement, and asked negotiators to visit their states to experience the air and water pollution firsthand.
“This is still the best option we have to see change in our communities. They’re so captured by corporations. I can’t go to the parish government,” said Jo Banner, of the St. John the Baptist Parish in Louisiana. “It feels this is the only chance and hope I have of helping my community repair from this, to heal.”
Members of an Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus held a press conference Saturday to say microplastics are contaminating their food supply and the pollution threatens their communities and ways of life guaranteed to them in perpetuity. They felt their voices weren’t being heard.
“We have bigger stakes. These are our ancestral lands that are being polluted with plastic,” Juressa Lee, of New Zealand, said after the event. “We’re rights-holders, not stakeholders. We should have more space to speak and make decisions than the people causing the problem.”
Traditionally, there was no plastic, but now in the Bay of Plenty, their source of seafood, the sediment and shellfish are full of tiny plastic particles. They regard nature’s “resources” as treasures, Lee added.
“Indigenous ways can lead the way,” Lee said. “What we’re doing now clearly is not working.”
Vi Waghiyi traveled from Alaska to represent Arctic Indigenous peoples. She’s reminding decision-makers that this treaty must protect people from plastic pollution for generations to come.
She said, “We come here to be the conscience, to ensure they make the right decision for all people.”
(Jennifer McDermott, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Southeast Asia continued coping with a weeks-long heat wave Monday as record high temperatures led to school closings in several countries and urgent health warnings throughout the region.
Millions of students in all public schools across the Philippines were ordered to stay home Monday after authorities canceled in-person classes for two days. The main advice for everyone, everywhere has been to avoid outdoor activities and drink plenty of water, but the young and the elderly were told to be especially careful.
Cambodia this year is facing the highest temperatures in 170 years, Chan Yutha, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology, said Monday. His agency has forecast that temperatures in most parts of the country could reach up to 109 degrees this week.
Myanmar’s meteorological department said Monday that seven townships in the central Magway, Mandalay, Sagaing and Bago regions experienced record high temperatures.
Several towns in Myanmar last week were on lists of the hottest spots worldwide.
Chauk township in Magway, historically the country’s hottest region, saw Myanmar’s highest temperature at 118.8 degrees, breaking the previous record of 117.3, set in 1968.
The Philippines is among the nations worst affected by the sweltering weather in Southeast Asia, where the intense tropical summer heat worsened by humidity forced class cancellations in recent weeks and sparked fears of water shortages, power outages and damage to crops.
The Department of Education ordered students in more than 47,000 public schools to switch to home-based and online learning due to health risks from record high temperatures and a three-day strike starting Monday by drivers who oppose a government program they fear would remove dilapidated passenger jeepneys from streets.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Flash floods and a landslide sent a deluge of muddy water over a Kenyan village early Monday, killing at least 45 people, as torrential rains continued to pound East Africa.
The disaster in Kenya was the deadliest in the country in the two weeks since the devastating inundations began, said Emmanuel Talam, a press secretary in President William Ruto’s office.
The cause of the landslide was not immediately clear. Earlier information from a government official had cited a collapsed dam, although later reports from aid workers and local news media suggested that an obstructed tunnel had given way, allowing a torrent of muddy water to engulf the village around 3 a.m.
The floods swept off people, houses and cars in the Kamuchiri area of the Rift Valley region in southern Kenya, Kithure Kindiki, Cabinet secretary of the Kenyan Interior Ministry, said in a statement. Kindiki added that bodies had been found along the path of the floods and the landslide, and that search-and-rescue operations were continuing.
The Interior Ministry has also ordered an inspection of all public and private water reservoirs within 24 hours.
Heavy rains have been pounding parts of East Africa for weeks, and the resultant flooding has killed hundreds of people in several nations in recent days and displaced tens of thousands more.
In Tanzania, at least 155 people have been killed and 236 injured, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said last week. In Kenya, more than 100 people have died because of the floods, the government said Monday, and more than 28,000 have been displaced.
The inundations have also killed hundreds of farm animals and have damaged or destroyed thousands of acres of farmland in a region dealing with the severe effects of climate change and some poor infrastructure.
United Nations experts have attributed the heavier-than-usual rains to a combination of two natural climate cycles: El Niño, which increases the likelihood of wet conditions in certain parts of the world, and a similar pattern called the Indian Ocean Dipole.
Munir Ahmed, a spokesperson for the Kenyan Red Cross, said the current deluge came as people were still trying to recover from last year’s flooding.
“Families are not able to cope,” he said, describing the situation as “persistent devastation.”
On Monday, the Education Ministry postponed the reopening of the country’s schools, pushing back the opening of the next term to Monday. In a statement, the ministry said, “The devastating effects of the rains were so severe that it will be imprudent to risk the lives of learners and staff.”
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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SULPHUR, OK - When a monster nighttime tornado came roaring into the southern Oklahoma town of Sulphur, Sheila Hilliard Goodman, a grandmother and casino worker, hunkered down in Raina’s Sport Lounge with about 30 other customers.
The roof of the popular downtown bar collapsed Saturday as other brick buildings down the block crumbled. Family members who arrived Sunday to search for her learned she was the only one inside who didn’t survive.
“She loved her family, loved to cook,” said her cousin Wes Hilliard, who confirmed that Goodman was one of the four people in Oklahoma, including an infant, who lost their lives in the storm. “She lived a good life. She was an amazing person who loved big.”
The storms, part of an outbreak of severe weather across the middle of the U.S., also left at least 100 injured, authorities said. The deadly weather in Oklahoma followed dozens of tornadoes that raked Iowa and Nebraska on Friday, killing one person.
At least 22 tornadoes touched down in Oklahoma, the most powerful of which ripped through Holdenville, Marietta and Sulphur, said National Weather Service meteorologist Rick Smith.
Those tornadoes were rated as EF3 or higher, meaning they were powerful enough to uproot large trees, remove roofs, knock down walls of well-built homes and easily toss cars and trucks.
On Monday, Vicki Combs sat on a pink trunk of records that a first responder salvaged from her consignment store while her husband, Larry, pulled up his truck to help load what was left inside the crumpled building. The retired couple moved to Sulphur a few years ago to start their business, which they hope to eventually reopen. “We’re just devastated, like it can’t be,” said Larry, a retired pastor. “All my life I’ve ministered to people who have gone through stuff like this, but it never really hits home until it happens to you.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A tornado that swept through the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou killed five people and damaged scores of factory buildings Saturday.
The tornado struck about 3 p.m. and injured an additional 33 people as it slammed through the Baiyun district, in the city’s northern suburbs, the local government said. It lasted about four minutes. Hailstones, some with diameters of around 2 inches, also fell over parts of the city.
Videos shared by Chinese official media showed transmission towers and power lines igniting and debris swirling in the air, against a backdrop of a giant funnel that had darkened the mid-afternoon sky.
Guangzhou, a sprawling city of 19 million people and a manufacturing and technology hub, has been battered this month by heavy spring downpours. Flooding across Guangdong province, of which Guangzhou is the capital, had already led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of people last week.
The flow of warm, humid air from the South China Sea had led to the accumulation of a “large amount of unstable energy” near the ground, according to the Guangzhou government.
Authorities said a total of 141 factory buildings were damaged by the tornado and latest rains.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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SULPHUR, OK - Tornadoes killed four people, including an infant, in Oklahoma and left thousands without power Sunday after a destructive outbreak of severe weather flattened buildings in one town and injured at least 100 people across the state.
More than 20,000 people remained without electricity after tornadoes began late Saturday night. The destruction was extensive in Sulphur, a town of about 5,000 people, where a tornado crumpled many downtown buildings, tossed cars and buses and sheared the roofs off houses across a 15-block radius.
“You just can’t believe the destruction,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said during a visit to the town. “It seems like every business downtown has been destroyed.”
Stitt said about 30 people were injured alone in Sulphur, including some who were in a bar as the tornado struck. Hospitals across the state reported about 100 injuries, including people apparently cut or struck by debris or hurt from falls, according to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management.
White House officials said President Joe Biden spoke to Stitt on Sunday and offered the full support of the federal government.
The deadly weather in Oklahoma added to the dozens of reported tornadoes that wreaked havoc in the nation’s midsection since Friday. On Sunday, authorities in Iowa said a man injured during a tornado that hit the town of Minden on Friday had died, according to local reports.
Officials said the tornado in Sulphur began in a park before barreling through the downtown, flipping cars and ripping the roofs and walls off of brick buildings. Windows and doors were blown out of structures that remained standing.
“How do you rebuild it? This is complete devastation,” said Kelly Trussell, a lifelong Sulphur resident as she surveyed the damage.
Farther north, a tornado near the town of Holdenville killed two people and damaged or destroyed more than a dozen homes, according to the Hughes County Emergency Medical Service. Another person was killed along Interstate 35 near the southern Oklahoma city of Marietta, state officials said.
Heavy rains that swept into Oklahoma with the tornadoes also caused flooding and water rescues.
Stitt issued an executive order Sunday declaring a state of emergency in 12 counties due to the fallout from the severe weather.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Flooding and heavy rains in Kenya have killed at least 70 people since mid-March, a government spokesperson said Friday, twice as many as were reported earlier this week.
The East African country has seen weeks of heavy rains and severe flooding in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, as well as in the country’s western and central regions.
Kenya’s government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura on Friday refuted claims that hundreds of people have died in the ongoing flooding and said the official tally now stands at 70.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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OMAHA, NE - A tornado plowed through suburban Omaha, NE, on Friday, damaging hundreds of homes and other structures as the twister tore for miles along farmland and into subdivisions. Some injuries were reported, but there were no immediate reports that anyone was killed.
Multiple tornadoes were reported in Nebraska, but the most destructive storm moved from a largely rural area into suburbs northwest of Omaha, a city of 485,000 people.
Photos on social media showed ravaged homes and shredded trees. Video showed homes with roofs stripped of shingles in a rural area near Omaha. Law enforcement were blocking off roads in the area.
Hundreds of houses were damaged in Omaha, mostly in the Elkhorn area in the western part of the city, Omaha police Lt. Neal Bonacci said.
Police and firefighters were going door-to-door Friday evening helping people who were trapped.
Omaha Fire Chief Kathy Bossman said crews had gone to the “hardest hit area” and had a plan to search anywhere someone could be trapped.
“They’re going to be putting together a strategic plan for a detailed search of the area, starting with the properties with most damage,” Bossman said. “We’ll be looking throughout properties in debris piles, we’ll be looking in basements, trying to find any victims and make sure everybody is rescued who needs assistance.”
Bonacci said many homes were destroyed or severely damaged.
“You definitely see the path of the tornado,” Bonacci said. In one area of Elkhorn, dozens of newly built, large homes were damaged. At least six were wrecked, including one that was leveled, while others had the top half ripped off.
The tornado warning was issued in the Omaha area on Friday afternoon just as children were due to be released from school. Many schools had students shelter in place until the storm passed. Hours later, buses were still transporting students home.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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At least 200 people were killed and dozens more were injured across East Africa in recent days, officials and aid groups said, as torrential rains, floods and landslides pummeled towns and cities in a region already grappling with the devastating effects of the climate change crisis.
The extreme rains unleashed a wave of destruction across Tanzania, Kenya and Burundi, flooding homes, demolishing businesses and leaving many people stranded on rooftops.
The downpours exposed yet again the bad roads and poor drainage systems in some of the region’s biggest cities, which residents have persistently complained about. They also revealed how poor people, who live in sprawling shantytowns without access to proper roads, water or power, bear the biggest brunt of destructive floods.
Speaking during a session in Parliament, Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said the rains had affected 200,000 people.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Taiwan was shaken by a series of earthquakes on Monday and early Tuesday, the strongest with a magnitude of 6.3, partially toppling four buildings and keeping frightened residents up overnight.
The temblors were aftershocks from the magnitude 7.4 quake that killed 17 people three weeks ago, authorities said.
The temblors began just after 5 p.m. Monday with a 5.5 magnitude quake in Hualien County on Taiwan’s east coast, according to Wu Chien-fu, director of the Taiwanese Central Weather Administration’s Seismological Center. It was followed by a series of smaller temblors minutes later in the same area.
Four buildings Hualien County partially collapsed, some residents were evacuated, and schools and offices in the county were ordered to close Tuesday because of the threat of continuing earthquakes, according to local news outlets. No injuries or deaths had been reported by Tuesday morning.
By Tuesday morning, more than 180 shocks had been recorded in the previous 24 hours, according to the Central Weather Administration.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Skies over southern Greece turned an orange hue on Tuesday as dust clouds blown across the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa engulfed the Acropolis and other Athens landmarks.
Strong southerly winds carried the dust from the Sahara Desert, giving the atmosphere of the Greek capital a Martian-like filter in the last hours of daylight.
The skies are predicted to clear today as winds shift and move the dust. The strong southerly winds over the past few days have also fanned unseasonal early wildfires in the country’s south.
The fire service said Tuesday evening that a total of 25 wildfires broke out across the country in the previous 24 hours. Persistent drought combined with high spring temperatures has raised fears of a particularly challenging period for firefighters in the coming months.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Torrential rain battered Southern China on Sunday, causing flooding and forcing tens of thousands of evacuations in the country’s most populous province, as a waterspout appeared briefly in Hong Kong and forecasters warned of potentially severe flooding.
Rain has been falling in Guangdong, which has a population of about 127 million, since last week. It intensified over the weekend, hammering the north of the province and the Pearl River Delta in the south, which includes Guangdong’s capital, Guangzhou, as well as the cities of Hong Kong and Macao.
The city of Yingde, in Guangdong’s north, received nearly 1 foot of rain from Friday to Sunday, the state-owned newspaper China Daily reported Sunday. Nearly 20,000 people were evacuated and nine rivers were at risk of overflowing, it said.
The Beijiang River, a tributary of the Pearl River, flooded Saturday night, China’s Ministry of Water Resources said Sunday. As the downpour continued, the river faced a risk of an “exceptionally large” flood through today, the ministry said.
And in Hong Kong, a Chinese territory south of Guangdong, a waterspout was sighted by the local meteorological agency Sunday morning. Waterspouts are whirling columns of air and water mist that form when cold air moves over warmer water, drawing up moisture.
There were no reports of the waterspout causing damage, and a rainstorm warning for the city was canceled at 2 p.m. But forecasters warned of violent winds and possible flooding.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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An estimated 20 million people in southern Africa are facing what the United Nations calls “acute hunger” as one of the worst droughts in more than four decades shrivels crops, decimates livestock and, after years of rising food prices brought on by pandemic and war, spikes the price of corn, the region’s staple crop. Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe all have declared national emergencies.
It is a bitter foretaste of what a warming climate is projected to bring to a region that’s likely to be acutely affected by climate change, though scientists said Thursday that the current drought is more driven by the weather cycle known as El Niño than by global warming. In southern Africa, El Niños tend to bring below-average rainfall.
The rains this year began late and were lower than average. In February, when crops need it most, parts of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Angola, Mozambique and Botswana received one-fifth of the typical rainfall.
In southern Malawi, in Chikwawa, some residents were wading into a river rife with crocodiles to collect a wild tuber known as nyika to curb their hunger.
“My area needs urgent help,” the local leader, who identified himself as Chief Chimombo, said.
Elsewhere, cattle in search of water walked into fields still muddy from last year’s heavy rains, only to get stuck. Thousands of cattle deaths have been reported in the region.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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Indonesian authorities closed an airport and residents left homes near an erupting volcano Thursday due to the dangers of spreading ash, falling rocks, hot volcanic clouds and the possibility of a tsunami.
Mount Ruang on the northern side of Sulawesi Island had at least five large eruptions Wednesday, causing the Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation to issue its highest-level alert, indicating an active eruption.
The crater emitted white-gray smoke continuously during the day Thursday.
People have been ordered to stay at least 3.7 miles from the 2,378 foot mountain. More than 11,000 people live in the affected area and were told to leave.
An international airport in Manado city was temporarily closed Thursday as volcanic ash was spewed into the air.
Eruptions Wednesday evening spewed volcanic ash approximately 70,000 feet into the atmosphere, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre. The bureau said in a statement Thursday it was tracking and forecasting the ash dispersion.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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As unpredictable wildfires roared across Maui in August, the head of the emergency management agency dragged his heels about returning to the island amid the unfolding crisis, while a broad communications breakdown left authorities in the dark and residents without emergency alerts, according to a report released Wednesday.
Communications problems also were encountered by the Hawaiian Electric Co., with officials unable to confirm that power lines were de-energized until well after flames had caused widespread damage, the report from the Hawaii Attorney General’s office said.
It was the second of two major assessments this week about the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century. A report released Tuesday by the Western Fire Chiefs Association detailed the challenges facing the Maui Fire Department during the unprecedented series of blazes, including one that killed 101 people in the historic town of Lahaina.
Attorney General Anne Lopez presented the latest report with Steve Kerber, vice president of the Fire Safety Research Institute.
Officials did not answer questions about cause or liability, saying it is only an initial reckoning and two more reports will follow. Investigators still are trying to get some documents from Maui County, officials said. “We’re going to continue this investigation and we will follow it wherever it leads,” Lopez said.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also is investigating, and its report, expected to pinpoint cause, will come out before the one-year anniversary.
The report released Wednesday says that five days before the flames broke out, meteorologists warned that strengthening winds resulting from a hurricane south of Hawaii could lead to extreme wildfire risk Aug. 8. The Maui Emergency Management Agency had posted to Facebook on Aug. 6 about a “serious fire and damaging wind threat” due to dry conditions as Hurricane Dora passed.
The agency’s administrator, Herman Andaya, was off island at a conference on Oahu on Aug. 8 as the fires intensified. His call and text records show that he was getting updates from Gaye Gabuat, an administrative assistant. After a series of evacuations in Lahaina, Gabuat told Andaya that “multiple people look overwhelmed,” according to the report. Andaya asked if he should come home, to which Gabuat responded, “it may look OK.” After the fire had been burning for more than five hours, Gabuat told Andaya that flames had reached Lahaina’s commercial heart. Only then did Andaya respond that he had “better come home tomorrow.”
The report also describes a breakdown in communication between police, firefighters and emergency officials after cell networks went down. Police and firefighters had to communicate using their handheld or car radios on closed channels that public officials and others could not listen to.
Meanwhile, a stretched and limited dispatch center had single operators monitoring five or six channels at a time to keep up.
“With no cellular communication, residents and tourists were not able to receive emergency alerts, communicate with loved ones and/or to receive incoming or outgoing calls/texts,” the report’s authors wrote.
Hawaiian Electric has acknowledged that a downed power line sparked a fire in Lahaina early on the morning of Aug. 8. Firefighters still were mopping up that fire at noon and waiting for a utility worker to arrive and confirm that the power lines had been de-energized. But when the worker got there, he was unable to confirm the power had been cut off — information that would likely have helped fire crews assess the risk of re-ignition as well as the risk posed by other downed lines.
Still, the fire crew determined that the blaze was extinguished and headed back to the station at 2:17 p.m. By 2:55 p.m., several calls came about another fire in the same area.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The desert nation of the United Arab Emirates attempted to dry out Wednesday from the heaviest rain ever recorded there after a deluge flooded Dubai International Airport, disrupting flights through the world’s busiest airfield for international travel.
The state-run WAM news agency called the rain Tuesday “a historic weather event” that surpassed “anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949.” Dubai recorded 5.59 inches of rainfall over 24 hours Tuesday. An average year sees 3.73 inches.
The flooding sparked speculation that cloud seeding — flying small planes through clouds dispersing chemicals aimed at getting rain to fall — may have caused the deluge. The UAE, which heavily relies on energy-hungry desalination plants to provide water, conducts cloud seeding in part to increase its dwindling, limited groundwater.
Jeff Masters, a meteorologist for Yale Climate Connections, said the flooding in Dubai was caused by a strong low pressure system that drove many rounds of heavy thunderstorms.
“You don’t need cloud seeding’s influence to account for the record deluge in Dubai,” Masters said.
Scientists say climate change is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme storms and floods around the world.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HONOLULU, HI - Poorly stocked fire engines, a lack of mutual aid agreements between Hawaii counties and limited equipment hindered the Maui Fire Department’s response when deadly wildfires broke out on the island in August, according to a report released Tuesday.
The after-action report on the Aug. 8 wildfire in Lahaina and elsewhere is the first of two major assessments coming out this week about the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century. The Hawaii Attorney General is expected to release the first phase of a comprehensive report today that will include a timeline of the 72 hours before, during and after the fire.
The fire department’s report describes the difficulties and harrowing conditions faced by firefighters returning to the reignited Lahaina fire, including many resources being deployed elsewhere, structures quickly catching ablaze amid extreme winds and downed power lines making it hard to move resources. The Western Fire Chiefs Association produced the report at the department’s request.
“Then the worst-case scenario happened, the fire hydrants began to lose water supply,” the authors wrote. “It is unknown if the sheer number of burning homes caused the water connections to fail or if the water supply tanks were not filled due to the early morning loss of electricity.”
The report describes a truck getting caught between downed power lines and the fast-approaching flames, and one crew member who was able to leave in a smaller vehicle to bring back police officers to help evacuate the crew. They huddled to one side of the truck, one of them unconscious from a medical emergency, to avoid the extreme heat before they were rescued.
All of that happened before 4:30 p.m.
During a news conference in Kula on Tuesday morning, Fire Chief Brad Ventura and Assistant Fire Chief Jeff Giesa discussed the report, which includes 111 recommendations in 17 specific “challenge areas.” It also details what went well when the department responded in Lahaina, Olinda and Kula on Aug. 8, as well as improvements that can be made for future emergencies, Giesa said.
“There were firefighters fighting the fires in Lahaina as they well knew their homes were burning down,” Ventura said. “There were firefighters who rescued people and kept them in their apparatus for several hours as they continued to evacuate others.”
One off-duty safety officer repeatedly drove his personal moped into the fire zone to rescue people, according to Ventura, and other firefighters drove their own cars to the perimeter and ran and hiked inside to evacuate people.
“While I’m incredibly proud of our department’s response, I believe we can always improve our efforts,” Ventura said.
One of the recommendations is that the department keep its relief fire equipment fully stocked. Most of the department’s equipment is dedicated to primary first-response vehicles and any extra is stored outside the relief vehicles when they aren’t in use. As a result, it took crews as much as an hour to stock the engines and pumpers before they could be used, according to the report.
Other recommendations include creating a statewide mutual aid program and a statewide evacuation plan for residents who speak different languages.
Many of the factors that contributed to the disaster already are known: A windstorm battering the island had downed power lines and blown off parts of rooftops and debris blocked roads throughout Lahaina.
Hawaiian Electric has acknowledged that one of its power lines fell and caused a fire in Lahaina the morning of Aug. 8, but the utility company denies that the morning fire caused the flames that burned through the town later that day.
The vast majority of the county’s fire crews were already tied up fighting other wildfires on a different part of the island, their efforts sometimes hindered by a critical loss of water pressure after the winds knocked out electricity for the water pumps normally used to load firefighting tanks and reservoirs. County officials have acknowledged that a lack of backup power for pumps made it significantly harder for crews. Plus, cellphone and Internet services were down.
(Jennifer Since Kelleher, Rebecca Boone & Claudia Lauer, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Record rains that inundated the United Arab Emirates and surrounding countries, killing at least 18 people in Oman and bringing air travel to a standstill in Dubai, were expected to continue into today, authorities said.
Dubai typically records about 5 inches of rain in a year. The deluge that fell by Tuesday evening alone equaled that amount.
In Oman, which borders the UAE to the east, a separate rainstorm killed at least 18 people, including “some 10 schoolchildren swept away in a vehicle with an adult,” The Associated Press reported.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Heavy thunderstorms have lashed the United Arab Emirates (UAE), dumping more than a year and a half’s rain on the desert city-state of Dubai in just a few hours and flooding major highways and its international airport.
The rains began late on Monday, soaking the sands and roads of Dubai with some 20 mm (0.79 inches) of rain, according to meteorological data collected at Dubai International Airport. The storms intensified at about 9 am (05:00 GMT) on Tuesday and continued throughout the day, dumping more rain and hail onto the overwhelmed city.
By the end of Tuesday, more than 142 mm (5.59 inches) had soaked Dubai. An average year sees 94.7 mm (3.73 inches) of rain at Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest for international travel and a hub for the long-haul carrier Emirates.
At the airport, pools of water lapped on taxiways as aircraft landed. The airport ended up halting arrivals on Tuesday night and passengers struggled to reach terminals through the floodwater covering surrounding roads.
Dubai International Airport acknowledged on Wednesday morning that the flooding had left “limited transportation options” and affected flights as aircraft crews could not reach the airfield.
Emirates said it was suspending check-in for passengers from Dubai International from 8 am until midnight on Wednesday because of operational challenges resulting from the incessant rain.
“Recovery will take some time,” the airport said on the social platform X. “We thank you for your patience and understanding while we work through these challenges.”
Police and emergency personnel drove slowly through the flooded streets of Dubai, their emergency lights shining across the darkened roads. Lightning flashed across the sky, occasionally touching the tip of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. The city’s driverless Metro network also saw disruptions and flooding.
Fujairah saw the heaviest rainfall
Schools across the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, largely shut before the storm and government employees were mostly working remotely. Many other workers also stayed at home, although some ventured out, with the unfortunate finding themselves stranded in deeper-than-expected water after the water stalled their vehicles’ engines.
Authorities sent tanker trucks out into the streets and highways to pump away the water, but some homes were also inundated forcing residents to bail them out.
The country did not offer any information on the overall damage. In Ras al-Khaimah, the country’s northernmost emirate, police said one 70-year-old man died when his vehicle was swept away by floodwater.
Fujairah, an emirate on the UAE’s eastern coast, saw the heaviest rainfall on Tuesday with 145 mm (5.7 inches) falling there.
Authorities cancelled school and the government instituted remote work again for Wednesday.
Rain is unusual in the UAE, an arid, Arabian Peninsula nation, but it does occur periodically during the cooler winter months. Many roads and other areas lack drainage given the lack of regular rainfall, causing flooding.
Rain also fell in Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
In neighboring Oman, a sultanate that rests on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, the country’s National Committee for Emergency Management said at least 18 people had been killed in heavy rains over the past few days. Among the dead were 10 schoolchildren who were swept away in a vehicle with an adult.
Rulers from across the region sent their condolences.
(AL JAZEERA)
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The world’s coral reefs are in the throes of a global bleaching event caused by extraordinary ocean temperatures, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and international partners announced Monday.
It is the fourth such global event on record and is expected to affect more reefs than any other. Bleaching occurs when corals become so stressed that they lose the symbiotic algae they need to survive. Bleached corals can recover, but if the water surrounding them is too hot for too long, they die.
Coral reefs are vital ecosystems: limestone cradles of marine life that nurture an estimated quarter of ocean species at some point during their life cycles, support fish that provide protein for millions of people and protect coasts from storms. The economic value of the world’s coral reefs has been estimated at $2.7 trillion annually.
For the past year, ocean temperatures have been off the charts.
Substantial coral death has been confirmed around Florida and the Caribbean, but scientists say it’s too soon to estimate what the extent of global mortality will be.
To determine a global bleaching event, NOAA and the group of global partners, the International Coral Reef Initiative, use a combination of sea surface temperatures and evidence from reefs. By their criteria, all three ocean basins that host coral reefs — the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic — must experience bleaching within 365 days, and at least 12 percent of the reefs in each basin must be subjected to temperatures that cause bleaching.
Currently, more than 54 percent of the world’s coral area has experienced bleaching-level heat stress in the past year, said Derek Manzello, coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program.
He added that within a week or two, “this event is likely to be the most spatially extensive global bleaching event on record.”
Bleaching has been confirmed in 54 countries, territories and local economies, as far apart as Florida, Saudi Arabia and Fiji. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is suffering what appears to be its most severe bleaching event; about one-third of the reefs surveyed showed a prevalence of very high or extreme bleaching, and at least three-quarters showed some bleaching.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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President Joe Biden has approved California’s request for a major disaster declaration to support recovery efforts from a string of February storms that drenched much of the state with historic rainfall and mountain snow and resulted in numerous deaths, officials announced Sunday.
Nine California counties — Butte, Glenn, Los Angeles, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Sutter and Ventura — will receive federal aid as a result of the declaration, which also includes funding for statewide hazard mitigation efforts, officials said.
“This declaration brings in more resources for local communities across the state recovering from the widespread impacts of these storms,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement thanking the Biden administration.
At least 11 people died as a result of the storms, which caused widespread flooding, power outages, school closures and damage to critical infrastructure, Newsom wrote in his request for a disaster declaration.
In San Luis Obispo County, where two tornadoes touched down, high waves caused major structural damage to the Cayucos Pier, Newsom wrote.
In Santa Barbara County, high winds damaged homes in Goleta and tore off part of a windmill in Solvang, and rain overwhelmed concrete channels that divert water from residential areas, destroying 300 linear feet of them, Newsom wrote.
In Ventura County, flooding damaged roads, bridges, levees and park facilities, inundating the Ventura Wastewater Facility and causing water to backflow into the system, Newsom wrote.
Los Angeles County saw hundreds of debris flows, prompting evacuations. The Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant was inundated with stormwater, which caused an excess of pressure in a sewer line that sent sewage up from utility hole covers, flooding portions of the facility, Newsom wrote.
In Santa Cruz County, heavy surf damaged a municipal wharf in the city of Santa Cruz, collapsing a portion of its deck, he wrote.
In Monterey County, heavy rain in burn scars sent silt and debris into catch basins and stormwater conveyance systems, overwhelming them and resulting in tens of thousands of cubic yards of material that had to be trucked long distance for disposal, Newsom wrote.
In Butte County, the worst of the damage took place in the burn scars of the Bear and Camp fires, which cover roughly 40 percent of the county, Newsom wrote.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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At least 33 people have been killed over three days of heavy rains and flash flooding in Afghanistan, according to the government’s disaster management department.
“From Friday onwards, because of the rains there were flash floods which caused high human and financial losses,” department spokesman Janan Sayeq said on Sunday.
“The primary information shows that, unfortunately, in the floods, 33 people were martyred and 27 people got injured.”
Most casualties were from roof collapses, as some 600 houses were damaged or destroyed. In addition, 200 livestock have perished, nearly 600 km (370 miles) of road have been destroyed, and about 800 hectares (1,975 acres) of agricultural land have “flooded away”, the spokesman added.
Twenty of the nation’s 34 provinces were lashed by the heavy rains, which followed an unusually dry winter season that has parched terrain and forced farmers to delay planting.
Western Farah, Herat, southern Zabul and Kandahar are among the provinces that suffered the most damage, Sayeq said.
The authorities have warned that more rain is expected in the coming days in most of Afghanistan’s provinces.
Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, the flow of foreign aid into the impoverished country has drastically diminished, hindering relief responses to natural disasters.
At least 25 people were killed in a landslide after heavy snowfall in eastern Afghanistan in February, while about 60 were killed in a three-week spate of precipitation ending in March.
The United Nations last year warned that “Afghanistan is experiencing major swings in extreme weather conditions”.
Scientists say harsh weather patterns are being spurred by global warming. After being ravaged by four decades of war, Afghanistan ranks among the nations least prepared to face climate change.
(AL JAZEERA)
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Heavy rains pounding different parts of Kenya have led to the deaths of at least 13 people and displaced some 15,000 people, the United Nations said, as forecasters warn that more rains can be expected until June.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, citing the Kenya Red Cross Society, said Thursday that nearly 20,000 people have been affected. That includes the estimated 15,000 displaced by heavy rains and flash floods across the country since the start of the wet season in mid-March.
The East African country has seen thousands of people killed by flooding in previous rainy seasons, mostly in the lake regions and downstream of major rivers.
So far, nine out of 47 counties in the country have reported flooding incidents.
Mudslides have been reported in the central regions, and on Tuesday four people were killed in the western part of the country.
The Kenya Red Cross Society’s secretary general, Ahmed Idris, told Citizen TV that “lifesaving assistance” including shelter and clean drinking water was being offered to those displaced and are living in camps to avert outbreaks of waterborne diseases.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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ATLANTA, GA - Powerful storms rumbled over parts of the U.S. Southeast on Thursday, prompting a few tornado warnings, causing flash flooding, and delaying the start of one of the world’s biggest sporting events in Georgia.
The storm system, which has already been blamed for at least one death in Mississippi, demolished buildings and flooded streets in the New Orleans area Wednesday. It continued to spawn flash flood and tornado warnings in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina on Thursday.
More than 100,000 customers lacked power Thursday afternoon nationwide. That included more than 60,000 in Louisiana, which was hit hard by storms Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.us.
Forecasters said parts of Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia were near the bull’s-eye of a new area of concern Thursday. Those areas could see some tornadoes, damaging winds and large hail, according to the latest outlooks from the Storm Prediction Center.
The entire state of Ohio was under a flood watch Thursday afternoon. The ground there is already saturated with the potential for heavy rainfall on the way, said James Gibson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Ohio.
Public school students in at least a dozen counties in West Virginia were sent home early Thursday due to the arriving storms. Southern West Virginia was hit by 10 tornadoes April 2. It was a record for one day in the state, which gets two tornadoes in an average year.
In Augusta, Georgia, the start of the Masters golf tournament was delayed, tournament officials announced. Forecasters predict wind gusts as high as 45 mph.
“Those wind speeds could easily knock down branches here and there,” said Brad Carlberg, a National Weather Service forecaster.
Storm damage was reported from Texas to the Florida Panhandle.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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NEW ORLEANS, LA - Severe storms blamed for a death in Mississippi spawned a tornado that demolished buildings in one Louisiana city Wednesday while inundating streets in low-lying New Orleans with hours of steady rain that snarled traffic and strained the city’s antiquated drainage system.
Severe weather stretched across much of the Gulf South with reports of damage from Texas to the Florida panhandle.
More than 30,000 homes and businesses were without power Wednesday night in Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish, where a tornado struck the city of Slidell, about 30 miles northeast of New Orleans. It ripped roofs off buildings and partially collapsed others in and around the city of about 28,000 people. Authorities said first responders had to rescue people trapped in one heavily damaged apartment building.
At a Wednesday night news conference, Slidell Mayor Greg Cromer estimated about 75 homes and businesses were damaged in the city. Parish President Mike Cooper said assessments were still under way, but he estimated that hundreds more homes were damaged outside the city.
Police video showed tree limbs littering the streets and flooded yards that resembled Louisiana swamps. Outside a McDonald’s restaurant, a car was on its side, power poles leaned toward the ground and large pieces of the restaurant’s trademark golden arches were strewn about.
“I’ve never talked to God so much before in my life,” Robin Marquez said after huddling with co-workers in a two-story building where the roof was ripped away and walls caved in.
There were no reports of deaths or critical injuries in Slidell.
Close to 8 inches of rain fell in parts of New Orleans. It came as the system of pipes and pumps that drains the city dealt with problems with its power generating system, forcing workers to divert power from one area to another as needed.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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At 11:11 a.m. Monday — the exact moment a partial solar eclipse peaked above San Diego — a stray cloud moved out of the way, revealing a sharp orange crescent sun set against skies as blue as robins’ eggs.
The sight enthralled the roughly 3,000 observers gathered near the fountain in Balboa Park, triggering spontaneous applause and dreamy oohs and ahs.
“It’s like a chunk was taken out of the sun,” said Ralph Petrocello of San Diego, who moments earlier was showing children how they could project the eclipse through the itsy-bitsy holes in a Ritz cracker and onto a white paper plate.
He didn’t regret that he wasn’t standing in the 115-mile-wide path of totality that stretched from Texas to Maine.
“It’s raining in a lot of those places,” said Petrocello, a retired defense worker. “And I wouldn’t want to deal with the big crowds and travel.”
Almost everyone in North America could see at least a partial eclipse, weather permitting.
It was the continent’s biggest eclipse audience ever, with a couple hundred million people living in or near the shadow’s path, plus scores of out-of-towners flocking in to see it. With the next coast-to-coast eclipse 21 years out, the pressure was on to catch this one.
Clouds blanketed most of Texas as the total solar eclipse began its diagonal dash across land, starting along Mexico’s mostly clear Pacific coast and aiming for Texas and 14 other U.S. states, before exiting into the North Atlantic near Newfoundland.
In Georgetown, Texas, the skies cleared just in time to give spectators a clear view. In other spots, the eclipse played peek-a-boo with the clouds.
“We are really lucky,” said Georgetown resident Susan Robertson. “Even with the clouds it is kind of nice, because when it clears up, it is like, wow!”
“I will never unsee this,” said Ahmed Husseim of Austin, who had the eclipse on his calendar for a year.
Similar scenes played out across San Diego County, where a region nearly as big as Connecticut unexpectedly enjoyed mostly sunny skies.
“I don’t know if this is a coincidence, but the fair-weather cumulus clouds that were moving in just kind of disappeared during the eclipse,” said Liz Adams, a veteran forecaster at the National Weather Service. “They started to return afterward.”
There were wonderful vantage points locally, from the breezy coastal bluffs in La Jolla to the pine-studded slopes of Julian to the Anza-Borrego Desert, where a wondrous bloom of flowers is under way.
Some people also took to the skies to see the event, boarding commercial airline flights that ventured into the path of totality.
Two such Alaska Airlines flights departed from San Diego — one bound for Washington Dulles International Airport, the other Boston. Both jetted off just after 8 a.m. Monday.
“I had to do this. It’s a lifetime event,” said Jacque Whaley of Lakeside from her first-class seat en route to Dulles.
In San Diego, Balboa Park was among the most crowded spots. As it has done in the past, the Fleet Science Center threw a viewing party, setting up telescopes for the public and selling eclipse glasses to anyone who needed a pair. Staff also explained the phenomenon that had brought everyone together on a Monday morning.
The joy was infectious.
“Today’s my birthday,” said Toni Saia, an education professor at San Diego State University. “What a way to ring in my 32nd year!”
Bri Maloney and her partner, Moon Wahal, of San Diego, lay face-up on the pavement next to the fountain, snuggling in the sun.
“I’m giddy,” Maloney said.
“I knew this was going to happen, but it’s cooler to actually see it,” added Wahal, watching the moon pass between the sun and the Earth, casting a shadow on Earth. “This is the best date I’ve ever had.”
Sue Brown of San Diego reveled in the fleeting sense of community. “We’re all here for a common purpose — to see something that many of us might never see again,” she said.
“I came by myself, and I’m making friends. We’re showing each other how to do different things.”
She was standing near Linda Burke of San Diego, who tilted her head toward the sun, captured by the moment.
“This is joyous,” Burke said. “Just joyous.”
The path of totality encompassed several major cities, including Dallas; Indianapolis; Cleveland; Buffalo, N.Y.; and Montreal. An estimated 44 million people live within the track, with a couple hundred million more within 200 miles.
“This may be the most viewed astronomical event in history,” said National Air and Space Museum curator Teasel Muir-Harmony, standing outside the museum in Washington, awaiting a partial eclipse.
The out-of-sync darkness lasted up to 4 minutes, 28 seconds. That’s almost twice as long as during the U.S. coast-to-coast eclipse seven years ago because the moon was closer to Earth.
It took just 1 hour, 40 minutes for the moon’s shadow to race more than 4,000 miles across the continent.
Just east of Dallas, the hundreds gathered at Mesquite’s downtown area cheered and whistled as the clouds parted in the final minutes before the eclipse’s peak. As the sun finally became cloaked, the crowd grew louder, whipping off their eclipse glasses to soak in the unforgettable view of the sun’s corona, or spiky outer atmosphere, and Venus shining brilliantly off to the right.
In Rushville, Ind., the streetlights lit up as darkness fell, drawing cheers and applause from residents gathered on porches and sidewalks.
For some, eclipse day was also their wedding day. Couples exchanged vows in a mass ceremony at a park in Trenton, Ohio.
St. Louis was just outside totality, but that didn’t stop residents from taking in the scene from the Mississippi River aboard the Tom Sawyer, a paddlewheel riverboat.
“I almost enjoyed it a little bit more because it didn’t go black,” said passenger Jeff Smith of St. Louis.
Going into Monday’s spectacle, northern New England into Canada had the best chances of clear skies, and that didn’t change. Holly Randall, who watched from Colebrook, N.H., said experiencing the eclipse was beyond her expectations.
“I didn’t expect to cry when I saw it,” she said, as tears ran down her face.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; K.C. Alfred; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Eclipse spectators staked out their spots across three countries Sunday, fervently hoping for clear skies despite forecasts calling for clouds along most of the sun-vanishing route.
North America won’t see another coast-to-coast total solar eclipse for 21 years, prompting the weekend’s worry and mad rush.
Today’s extravaganza stretches from Mexico’s Pacific beaches to Canada’s rugged Atlantic shores, with 15 U.S. states in between.
“I have arrived in the path of totality!” Ian Kluft announced Sunday afternoon after pulling into Mesquite, TX, from Portland, OR, a 2,000-mile drive.
A total eclipse happens when the moon lines up perfectly between Earth and the sun, blotting out the sunlight. That means a little over four minutes of daytime darkness east of Dallas in Mesquite, where locals like Jorge Martinez have the day off. The land surveyor plans to “witness history” from home with his wife and their 3-year-old daughter, Nati.
“Hopefully, she’ll remember. She’s excited, too,” he said following breakfast at Dos Panchas Mexican Restaurant. Inside the jammed restaurant, manager Adrian Martinez figured on staying open today.
“Wish it was going to be sunny like today,” he said. “But cloudiness? Hopefully, it still looks pretty good.”
Farther north, in Buffalo, NY, Jeff Sherman flew in from Somerville, MA, to catch his second total solar eclipse. After seeing the U.S. coast-to-coast eclipse in 2017, “now I have to see any one that’s nearby, he said.
Kluft also enjoyed clear skies for the 2017 eclipse, in Oregon, and rolled into Mesquite wearing the T-shirt from that big event. As for today’s cloudy forecast across Texas, “at least I’ll be around people who are like-minded.”
Dicey weather was also predicted almost all the way to Lake Erie. The only places promised clear skies along today’s narrow 115-mile-wide corridor of totality were New England and Canada.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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NEW YORK - An unusual East Coast earthquake shook millions of people from New York and Philadelphia skyscrapers to rural New England on Friday, causing no widespread damage but startling an area unaccustomed to temblors.
The U.S. Geological Survey said more than 42 million people might have felt the midmorning quake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8, centered near Whitehouse Station, N.J., about 45 miles west of New York City and 50 miles north of Philadelphia.
People from Baltimore to Boston and beyond felt the ground shake. Nearly 30 people were displaced when officials evacuated three multifamily homes in Newark, N.J., to check for damage.
Officials around the region were inspecting bridges and other major infrastructure, some flights were diverted or delayed, Amtrak slowed trains throughout the busy Northeast Corridor, and a Philadelphia-area commuter rail line suspended service as a precaution.
Pictures and decorative plates tumbled off the wall in Christiann Thompson’s house near Whitehouse Station, she said, relaying what her husband had told her by phone as she volunteered at a library.
“The dogs lost their minds and got very terrified and ran around,” she said.
Whitehouse Station Fire Chief Tim Apgar said no injuries were reported, but responders fielded some calls from people who smelled gas. Nearby, the upper portion of the 264-year-old Col. John Taylor’s Grist Mill historic site collapsed onto a roadway, according to Readington Township Mayor Adam Mueller.
In a 26th-floor midtown Manhattan office, Shawn Clark felt the quake and initially feared an explosion or construction accident. It was “pretty weird and scary,” the attorney said.
Earthquakes are less common on the eastern than western edges of the U.S. because the East Coast does not lie on a boundary of tectonic plates. But 13 earthquakes of magnitude 4.5 or stronger have been recorded since 1950 within 311 miles of Friday’s temblor, the USGS said. The strongest was a 5.8-magnitude quake in Mineral, Va., on Aug. 23, 2011, that jolted people from Georgia to Canada.
Rocks under the East Coast are better than their western counterparts at spreading earthquake energy across long distances, scientists note.
“If we had the same magnitude quake in California, it probably wouldn’t be felt nearly as far away,” said USGS geophysicist Paul Caruso.
More than a dozen aftershocks were reported in the ensuing hours in the region, including a 4.0-magnitude quake early Friday evening, according to the USGS.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Countless San Diego County residents were left with wet feet and cold cheeks Friday by an unusual-for-the-season Alaskan storm that delivered snow, rain, hail, lightning, wind and biting temperatures. “This feels more like January than April,” said Mark Moede, a forecaster at the National Weather Service.
The weekend will be mostly dry — but it still won’t be a moment to cast aside coats and sweaters. San Diego’s daytime high will be in the low 60s. San Diego International Airport recorded a high of 60, which is 8 degrees below average for this time of year.
The northern jet stream dropped into Southern California on Thursday night and focused much of its energy on greater San Diego on Friday. By dawn, many inland communities had recorded gusts in the range of 30 to 40 mph.
Light snow also began falling on Interstate 8, east of Alpine, drawing a travel advisory from the California Highway Patrol. Palomar Mountain later reported 4 inches of snow and Julian 3 inches.
Hail pelted La Mesa, Allied Gardens, Del Cerro, Encinitas and La Jolla. Lightning erupted in La Mesa, El Cajon, Rancho Santa Fe and Harbison Canyon, forecasters said.
The weather service said that a weak storm could produce showers in the local mountains and inland valleys on Monday afternoon. But it appears that skies will be reasonably clear on Monday morning when a partial eclipse of the sun occurs. The eclipse will begin at 10:03 a.m. and end at 12:23 p.m.
Elsewhere, snow fell to elevations as low as 1,500 feet in parts of Northern California while southern mountain ranges received fresh coatings of white down to 3,000 feet, the National Weather Service said.
Tire chains were required on sections of major Sierra Nevada highways including Interstates 80 and 50 as well as U.S. 395, according to Caltrans. Chains were also necessary on mountain routes in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
The chilly blast nearly three weeks into spring follows a winter that got off to a slow start in California and then suddenly ramped up with significant storms in February and March.
The Sierra snowpack that normally supplies about 30 percent of the water that California uses has rebounded, with water content continuing to be measured at above-average levels.
All the snow has allowed California resorts to plan extended spring skiing. In the Sierra, Mammoth Mountain and Palisades Tahoe will operate until May 27. With snow still falling in April, Big Bear Mountain Resort has not determined closing dates for its three ski areas, according to its website.
Some parts of the state were expected to experience frosts and freezes into this morning, with possible record low temperatures, forecasters said.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Rescuers searched Thursday for dozens of missing people and worked to reach hundreds stranded when Taiwan’s strongest earthquake in 25 years sent boulders and mud tumbling down mountainsides, blocking roads. Ten people died and more than 1,000 were injured.
The magnitude-7.4 quake struck during the morning rush hour a day earlier, sending schoolchildren rushing outdoors and families fleeing their apartments through the windows. The ground floors of some buildings collapsed, leaving them leaning at precarious angles.
Though the island is regularly rattled by earthquakes and generally well prepared, authorities did not send out the usual alerts because they were expecting a smaller temblor.
Some 200 residents of Hualien County near the epicenter were staying in temporary shelters, and the main road linking the county to the capital, Taipei, was still closed Thursday afternoon, but much of Taiwan’s day-to-day life returned to normal. Some local rail service to Hualien resumed, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., one of the world’s most important manufacturers of computer chips, restarted most operations, the Central News Agency reported.
Hundreds of people were stranded in the mountainous region when rocks and mud blocked the roads leading to their hotel, campground or worksite — though most were safe while they awaited rescue.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A major spring storm brought heavy snow, rain and high winds to the Northeast, downing trees and power lines and leaving nearly 700,000 homes and businesses without power at one point. A woman was killed by a falling tree in a New York City suburb and a second woman died in a New Hampshire fire caused by the weather.
Two feet of snow was expected in parts of northern New England on Thursday evening, with wind gusts of 50 to 60 mph in coastal areas and inland, according to the National Weather Service. Moderate to heavy snow was forecast to continue into today in areas of higher terrain.
Maine and New Hampshire bore the brunt of the power outages, with about 310,000 and 125,000, respectively, as of Thursday night, according to poweroutage.us. Officials said the heavy, wet snow was to blame for bringing down trees and power lines.
“This was pretty much a classic nor’easter,” said Stephen Baron, a meteorologist for the weather service in Maine. “This is definitely a high-end storm for April.”
The weather service said it was the biggest April nor’easter to hit the region since 2020.
“Still reporting snow and wind here at the office, with 17.4 inches (44.2 centimeters) of snow for the event thus far here in Gray,” the service posted in the evening on X, formerly Twitter.
The storm brought mostly heavy rain to southern parts of the Northeast, as well as high winds.
In New Hampshire, Derry Fire Chief Shawn Haggart said a woman died and a young woman was hospitalized after a morning house fire Thursday that was sparked by an explosion.
Haggart said the state Fire Marshal’s Office concluded that a tree fell on the house near external propane tanks at a time when strong winds were knocking down branches and power lines.
Dozens of flights were canceled or delayed, and many schools and government offices were closed.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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HUALIEN, Taiwan - Taiwan’s strongest earthquake in a quarter-century rocked the nation Wednesday morning, killing nine people, stranding dozens at quarries and a national park, and sending some residents scrambling out the windows of damaged buildings.
The quake, which injured more than 1,000, struck just before 8 a.m. and was centered off the coast of rural, mountainous Hualien County, where some buildings leaned at severe angles, their ground floors crushed. Just over 93 miles away in the capital of Taipei, tiles fell from older buildings, and schools evacuated students to sports fields as aftershocks followed.
Rescuers fanned out in Hualien, looking for people who may be trapped and using excavators to stabilize damaged buildings. The numbers of people missing, trapped or stranded fluctuated as authorities learned of more in trouble and worked to locate or free them.
Some 70 workers who were stranded at two rock quarries were safe, according to Taiwan’s national fire agency, but the roads to reach them were damaged by falling rocks. Six workers were slated to be airlifted today.
In the hours after the quake, TV showed neighbors and rescue workers lifting residents through windows and onto the street. Some doors had fused shut in the shaking.
Taiwan’s earthquake monitoring agency said the quake measured magnitude 7.2 while the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 7.4. It struck about 11 miles from Hualien and was about 21 miles deep. Multiple aftershocks followed.
Taiwan is regularly jolted by earthquakes and its population is among the best prepared for them. But the quake was strong enough to scare even people who are used to such shaking.
“I’ve grown accustomed to (earthquakes). But today was the first time I was scared to tears by an earthquake,” said Hsien-hsuen Keng, who lives in a fifth-floor apartment in Taipei. ”I was awakened by the earthquake. I had never felt such intense shaking before.”
At least nine people died in the quake, according to Taiwan’s fire agency. Most of the fatalities were caused by falling rocks, including four people who were struck inside Taroko National Park, according to the state Central News Agency. One died in a residential building that was damaged, the news agency said.
At least 1,011 people were reported injured.
A small tsunami washed ashore on southern Japanese islands but caused no damage.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A major spring storm was expected to drop more than a foot of snow in parts of New England on Wednesday night, while heavy rains soaked the East Coast and cleanup work continued in several states wracked by tornadoes and other severe weather blamed for at least two deaths.
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for several states in New England, where 7 to 18 inches of snow were expected with some areas topping 24 inches at higher elevations. Parts of New Hampshire and Maine were expected to see the highest totals.
A mix of rain and snow was falling throughout the region by early evening and was expected through tonight in many areas.
“It is now a rain/snow mix at the office, and we have received our first trace of snow for the storm ahead,” the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, said Wednesday night via X, formerly Twitter.
Maine officials warned the storm was expected to cause difficult travel conditions, power outages and minor coastal flooding.
In New Hampshire, the U.S. Forest Service issued an avalanche watch through Friday afternoon for parts of the White Mountains including Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast at 6,288 feet.
School districts and government offices throughout both states announced closures for today because of the storm.
The severe weather comes a day after thousands of homes and businesses were left without power after storms roared through several states.
Storms in northeastern Oklahoma on Tuesday unleashed three suspected tornadoes and dumped heavy rain that was blamed for the death of a 46-year-old homeless woman in Tulsa who was sheltering inside a drainage pipe.
In Kentucky, storms that spawned at least five tornadoes led to one death and widespread damage in several counties, Gov. Andy Beshear said Wednesday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan’s strongest earthquake in a quarter century rocked the island during the morning rush today, damaging buildings and creating a 1-foot tsunami that washed ashore on southern Japanese islands. There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries, and the tsunami threat largely passed about two hours later.
A five-story building in the lightly populated southeastern coastal city of Hualien near the epicenter appeared heavily damaged, collapsing its first floor and leaving the rest leaning at a 45-degree angle. In the capital, tiles fell from older buildings and within some newer office complexes, while debris fell from some building sites. Schools evacuated their students to sports fields, equipping them with yellow safety helmets.
Train service was suspended across the island of 23 million people, as was subway service in Taipei, where a newly constructed above-ground line partially separated.
Taiwan’s earthquake monitoring agency gave the magnitude as 7.2 while the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 7.4.
There was no word on casualties from the epicenter near the city of Hualien.
The earthquake was also felt in Shanghai and several provinces along China’s southeastern coast, according to Chinese media. China and Taiwan are about 100 miles apart. China issued no tsunami warnings for the Chinese mainland.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Thousands of homes and businesses were without power Tuesday as severe weather roared through several states, causing at least one death and spawning possible tornadoes.
In West Virginia, about 140,000 customers were without electricity Tuesday afternoon, or about 14 percent of all customers tracked in the state by poweroutage.us.
Meanwhile, a spring snowstorm was expected to drop more than a foot of snow in Wisconsin.
Northeastern Oklahoma was hit with a strong weather system containing heavy rains that produced three suspected tornadoes. The storms were blamed for the death of a 46-year-old homeless woman in Tulsa, police said.
Tulsa Fire Department spokesperson Andy Little said the woman’s boyfriend told authorities the two had gone to sleep at the entrance of a drainage pipe and were awakened by floodwaters. Up to 1.5 inches of rain fell in Tulsa in about an hour, National Weather Service meteorologist Robert Darby said.
In southern Ohio, Mindy Broughton, 49, rushed into her mobile home Tuesday morning as hail began and winds picked up at the RV Park where she lives near Hanging Rock.
Broughton and her fiancé hunkered down as the mobile home quickly began rocking. Broughton said her fiancé used his body to shield her as the winds raged outside.
“I said I think we may die today,” she said.
In a matter of seconds, the winds died down. When Broughton opened her door, she saw the RV Park littered with debris and overturned RVs. Luckily, Broughton said there was no one inside the overturned mobile homes that could be seen in her Facebook Live video.
Severe storms also swept through Indiana on Tuesday morning, toppling trees and causing power outages, leading several local school districts to cancel the day’s classes. More than 18,000 homes and businesses were without power Tuesday.
The weather service confirmed a tornado in Tennessee on Tuesday. Power lines and trees were down, officials said, but no deaths or injuries were reported.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Sierra Nevada was so bereft of snow in December that skiers and farmers alike worried that a disappointing winter was sure to give way to a drought-ridden spring and summer.
Then came a deluge in subsequent months, enough to bring California back to a normal snowfall level and then some, state leaders announced Tuesday during the most crucial snow measurement of the year. The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada on Tuesday stood at 110 percent of average for early April, an encouraging sign that the state would have plenty of water — at least, in the months ahead.
“Average is awesome,” Karla Nemeth, director of the state’s Department of Water Resources, said from a field blanketed in white and ringed by evergreen trees near the headwaters of the south fork of the American River near Lake Tahoe.
“But average may be becoming less and less common of a feature for snowpack in California,” Nemeth warned.
The store of snow sitting atop the Sierra Nevada, California’s biggest mountain range, is by far the largest and most important reservoir in the state. In the dry months to come, the snow will melt and course downhill, replenishing scarce water supplies.
For the second straight year, Californians navigated flood watches and blizzard warnings in February and March, as a string of big storms caused mudslides and snarled traffic, particularly in Southern California. This past weekend, a storm once again caused the collapse of a section of Highway 1 near Big Sur.
But Gov. Gavin Newsom warned residents not to grow too comfortable with heavy precipitation and pointed to the month-to-month swings as indicative of how the state’s weather patterns had become ever more erratic.
“Extremes are becoming the new reality,” Newsom said. “One weather system or one weather year doesn’t necessarily make a trend.”State water officials forecast that the water supply from melting snow in the Sierra will shrink by 10 percent in two decades.
“There’s nothing normal about this average year,” Newsom said from Phillips Station, located along Highway 50 near Echo Summit. “The hots are getting a lot hotter, the dries drier, and that requires us to have a sophistication of approach.”
The beginning of April is a particularly important moment for gauging California’s water status in the increasingly wide swings between deluge and drought.
“We refer to the April 1 metric because it’s typically our peak snowpack, even though the climate is changing that slowly,” said engineer Andy Reising.
A year ago, after a procession of atmospheric rivers wreaked havoc from the coast to the mountains, the same spot where Newsom and water officials stood Tuesday was covered in more than 10 feet of snow. Only half that amount is there this year.
But state leaders were nonetheless cheerful. Consider this: Nine years ago, Gov. Jerry Brown stood in that very same meadow “unable to find a shred of snow,” said Wade Crowfoot, secretary of California’s natural resources agency.
In the years that followed, the state became even drier. Millions of acres of tinder-dry vegetation burned in 2020. Heading into last year, one of California’s wettest years on record, 6 million residents were under water rationing rules, Crowfoot said, “and we were planning for a whole lot more.”
Newsom emphasized that the state still had to prepare for future droughts. California’s water system, he said, “was designed for a world that no longer exists.” Climate models show that the American West will have to contend with less and less water as temperatures rise to dangerous levels during the summer.
Newsom’s newly released Water Plan Update 2023 is one of several water-related policy strategies that he has released in recent years and framed as part of the state’s fight against climate change.
His 2022 California Water Supply Strategy focused on increasing resources for conservation strategies such as water recycling and stormwater capture, as well as infrastructure developments.
The 300-page plan plots a path to prioritize resilience against climate change, manage resources at a watershed level and underscore equity in water management.
Those include the Sites Reservoir in Colusa County and the Delta Conveyance Project, which the state has proposed for decades to ship water from the state’s northern regions to Southern California.
California releases a new Water Plan update every five years to guide local agencies’ use and development of water resources. Newsom said it builds on his previous policy strategies.
Water Plan Update 2023, according to a Tuesday news release from the Department of Water Resources, “focuses on three intersecting themes: addressing climate urgency, strengthening watershed resilience, and achieving equity in water management.”
California is home to dozens of watersheds, which mark the area of land where water is naturally channeled as rainfall, snowmelt and runoff into the state’s rivers, bays and ultimately the Pacific Ocean.
Snowpack has historically made up around two-thirds of California’s total water supply.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES; NEW YORK TIMES; SACRAMENTO BEE)
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On Halloween, there was reason to wonder whether it would ever rain again in San Diego County. On Easter, there was reason to wonder whether the rain would ever stop.
A wet winter has given way to a wet and wild spring in the land of who knows what will happen next.
Saturday’s downpours were followed Sunday by weaker but still substantial rain, including a few “self-announcing” thunderstorms that clapped hard and spit hail at Escondido as well as Palomar Mountain, where the peak is frosted with 6 inches of newly fallen snow.
Sensing trouble, SeaWorld San Diego decided not to open on either day, which turned out to be a good decision. By 10 a.m. Sunday, San Diego International Airport had recorded 1.58 inches of weekend rain, more than it typically gets in the entire month of March.
The latest drenching will stoke the already wondrous mix of wildflowers that are blooming from coastal bluffs to desert lowlands.
And this might not be the end of it. It looks like a new storm will roll ashore on Friday, says the National Weather Service. There’s a chance the same will happen on April 8, obscuring San Diego’s partial view of a total solar eclipse.
Big storms are comparatively rare in late March. The bigger ones can be a source of beauty and pain. The latest system proves the point.
The Alaskan storm generated a huge ocean swell that was glassier than a champagne flute when the clouds lifted on Saturday afternoon, mesmerizing surfers. Strong winds kicked up Sunday, giving the waves a haircut.
The wind also was very cold. Homeless people sought shelter in restrooms near the Ocean Beach Pier, which was closed after years of similar batterings.
The culprit was the main storm clouds overhead, which became very unstable as their temperature — at around 25,000 feet — hovered at nearly minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a source of concern to forecasters who issued a special advisory about noon Sunday, saying that water spouts could swirl to life west of La Jolla.
That didn’t happen. But the weather service’s prediction that 1.5 to 2 inches of rain would fall across much of the county did come true.
“This will help reduce the wildfire risk for months,” said National Weather Service forecaster Brandt Maxwell. “But it will eventually dry out. There will be lots of kindling.”
Here are some of the top two-day rainfall totals across the county through 4:32 p.m. Sunday, according to the National Weather Service:
Location Amount (in) San Onofre 3.28 Skyline Ranch 2.48 Lake Wohlford 2.37 Valley Center 2.27 Mount Woodson 2.00 Fashion Valley 1.95 Henshaw Dam 1.93 Fallbrook 1.92 Ramona Airport 1.85 Camp Pendleton 1.81 Santee 1.73 Point Loma 1.67 San Diego Country Estates 1.66 Lake Cuyamaca 1.64 Montgomery Field 1.63 Escondido 1.63 Barona 1.62 Miramar 1.59 Kearny Mesa 1.59 San Diego International Airport 1.58 La Mesa 1.58 Julian 1.56 National City 1.54 Descanso 1.50 Carlsbad 1.31 Oceanside 1.29 Rancho Bernardo 1.16 Alpine 1.11 Vista 1.09
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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SAN FRANCISCO - Authorities urged motorists to avoid Highway 1 along California’s central coast after a section of the scenic route collapsed during an Easter weekend storm, forcing closures and stranding motorists near Big Sur, authorities said.
The collapse occurred amid heavy rain Saturday afternoon near Rocky Creek Bridge about 17 miles south of Monterey, sending chunks of asphalt tumbling into the ocean from the southbound side of the two-lane road.
The highway was closed in both directions in the mountainous area of California’s central coast as engineers assessed the damage, said the state Department of Transportation, or Caltrans.
“We are working on a plan to get motorists evacuated from the area,” the California Highway Patrol said Saturday.
Around noon on Sunday, crews had determined that travel in the northbound lane was safe, and authorities began periodically escorting motorists around the damaged section. About 300 cars were waiting to travel north when officials led the first convoy through the area, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Some stranded motorists had slept in their cars overnight while others were sheltered at the nearby Big Sur Lodge, the newspaper said.
Caltrans spokesperson Kevin Drabinski said periodic convoys would continue over the coming days as crews shore up the highway, which had other closures because of rocks and debris in lanes.
He urged people to avoid the area.
The famous route has seen frequent closures because of collapses, mud flows and rockslides during severe weather.
The slow-moving storm dumped heavy rain at lower elevations and more than a foot of snow at Sierra Nevada ski resorts around Lake Tahoe.
Ryan Kittell, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said the system is typical for March but was not an atmospheric river like many of the other storms that have pounded the state in recent winters.
The storm exited the San Francisco Bay Area on Friday and “just marched right down the California coast,” bringing most of the rainfall to the Los Angeles area, Kittell said.
The storm then parked itself over Southern California, where it was expected to stay until Sunday night or into today.
A flood warning was in effect Sunday in the San Diego area, as the storm continued to move along the coast before heading inland, forecasters said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SAN DIEGO - San Diego’s nine city reservoirs already have captured enough rainwater since the beginning of the year to serve all of the city’s 1.4 million water customers for 56 days with no imported water, a spokesperson said Wednesday.
The amount of rain collected this winter and last is so much higher than normal that San Diego is on track to have local water make up 25 percent of the city’s water supply this year — more than double the usual 10 percent.
Collectively, the city’s nine reservoirs have 42 percent more water than they did two years ago, on March 28, 2022, said the spokesperson, Arian Collins.
And the National Weather Service is predicting much more rain this weekend.
The 40,000 acre-feet of water — equivalent to 13 billion gallons — captured since Jan. 1 is far more than the usual amount captured. The city usually captures about 23,000 acre-feet of water a year.
San Diego could have captured even more rain the last two winters if some of its reservoirs, many of which are outside the city limits, were not forced by the state to limit their capacity based on structural concerns.
Lake Murray was recently added to the list of city dams that must be kept below its maximum volume, joining Lake Hodges, Lake Morena and El Capitan Reservoir.
San Diego’s dams are among the oldest in the state. State officials recently deemed Hodges “unsatisfactory” and have rated three others as being in “poor” condition: Morena, El Capitan and Lower Otay. Murray and Barrett got ratings of “fair,” while San Vicente, Miramar and Sutherland were rated “satisfactory.”
San Diego announced last fall that it is accelerating efforts to shore up the aging dams, including moving up construction of the new Lake Hodges Dam from 2031 to 2029 and committing to comprehensively evaluating the eight other city dams by 2028.
(David Garrick, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The city of Berkeley has settled a lawsuit by the California Restaurant Association to repeal that city’s first-in-the-nation ban on gas hookups in new construction, dealing a final blow to more than a hundred similar measures in California cities.
Berkeley’s 2019 gas ban became a cornerstone in a national battle over the future of fossil gas in buildings as dozens of other municipal and county governments followed suit with similar measures — including San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles.
The announcement comes after a federal appeals court declined to rehear the case on Berkeley’s ordinance that a panel of judges struck down last year for pre-empting federal energy law.
In a news release, the Sacramento-based California Restaurant Association said Berkeley will take steps to formally repeal the ordinance as part of the settlement. Until the city repeals the measure in its legislative process, it will not enforce the measure.
“We are encouraged that the City of Berkeley has agreed to take steps to repeal the ordinance,” said Jot Condie, the association’s president and CEO, in a statement. “Every city and county in California that has passed a similar ordinance should follow their lead.”
When Berkeley passed its first-in-the-nation ban on gas hookups for most new buildings in July 2019, dozens of cities followed. At least 76 California cities passed similar ordinances by the start of 2023.
In 2022, the San Diego City Council voted 8-0 to eliminate natural gas in all new construction and cut natural gas in existing buildings by 45 percent by 2030 and then phase out 90 percent of it from all buildings, including houses, condos and apartments, by 2035. Pollution from heating, cooling and cooking in buildings makes up California’s third-largest source of carbon emissions. Research suggests that cooking with gas stoves emits detectable levels of cancer-causing benzene, sometimes exceeding concentrations found in secondhand tobacco smoke in poorly ventilated homes.
Following Berkeley’s pioneering ban on gas hookups in most new buildings, the California Restaurant Association sued, arguing the ordinance overstepped federal energy law. Judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed last April, striking down the ban. The ruling had a widespread chilling effect, and no new cities issued gas bans thereafter.
(SACRAMENTO BEE)
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The International Boundary and Water Commission is getting a significant boost to its annual construction budget, which it may use to fix its dilapidated treatment plant at the U.S.-Mexico border that allows Tijuana sewage to pollute South County shorelines.
On Saturday, Congress passed a $1.2 trillion appropriations package that includes $156 million for the IBWC’s construction projects in this fiscal year. It is a $103 million increase over last year’s construction funding and its largest sum in recent years. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law.
Language in the bill states that funding is made available “to address urgent water management and water quality improvement programs” of the U.S. section of the IBWC, “including the rehabilitation and expansion of the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant.”
Additionally, the legislation provides $64.8 million for the IBWC’s salaries and expenses account, which covers operation and maintenance costs for its facilities. It also allows the IBWC to receive funding from other federal and nonfederal entities, such as state and local governments and nonprofit organizations.
Rep. Scott Peters, along with other San Diego-area congressional members and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, secured the increase and vital language to allow additional funding sources in the massive bill that came down to the wire hours ahead of a deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown.
“After years of steadfast advocacy from residents, service members, and elected officials at every level, we’ve managed to get a real commitment from Washington to address this crisis,” said Peters in a statement.
Maria-Elena Giner, U.S. IBWC commissioner, said in a statement that the agency appreciated “the efforts and support of the many federal, state, and local leaders who have come forward. ... Additional funding, along with giving us the authority to accept funds from other government agencies, could help us more quickly provide badly needed relief to residents on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.”
She added that the binational agency expects to award a contract for the rehab and expansion project this summer, which should reduce cross-border flows by 90 percent in combination with a treatment plant Mexico is rehabilitating in Baja California.
The IBWC has come under fire for failing to promptly address and disclose $150 million worth of deferred maintenance the plant is facing, a major setback that put into question when and how much more money would be needed to double the federal facility’s capacity.
Congress had funded the expansion project with $300 million in 2020, but funds have fallen short of the nearly $1 billion now needed to fix and grow the federal facility, according to calculations the IBWC has announced.
Giner has stated that it has been challenging for the agency to move swiftly with the South Bay treatment plant project in large part because it has only had a $50 million budget to cover all of its construction projects across several states.
Giner said last week she is working to ensure that the plant achieves compliance with environmental regulations by August.
Since October 2020, the IBWC has reported hundreds of violations of its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit, which regulates discharges to the waters of the country and is authorized by the Clean Water Act. Two San Diego nonprofits announced in December 2023 that they plan to sue the agency over those violations and for “depriving the public of meaningful access to information about the treatment plant’s discharges.”
Meanwhile, discharges have polluted the Tijuana River and beaches on both sides of the border, affecting the health and economy of those who live and work in those communities.
Officials reiterated that their advocacy remains far from over as they still seek an additional $310 million specifically for the South Bay treatment plant. Congress has yet to consider approval of those funds.
“This is a step in the right direction and is cause for celebration,” Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre said in a statement about Friday’s spending bill. She led a delegation of local elected officials earlier this year who traveled to Washington, D.C., and lobbied for approval of the $310 million.
“However, the work doesn’t end here,” she added. “Our communities will continue to bear the brunt of this pollution until the plant is fixed and expanded, the sewage and trash throughout the Tijuana River Valley is remediated, and further action is taken to ensure we eliminate entirely the sources of toxic pollution.”
(Tammy Murga, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Thousands of hardy souls across New England spent Sunday digging out after a major weekend storm dumped more than 2 feet of snow in some areas, caused multiple road accidents, downed power lines and left hundreds of thousands across the Northeast in the dark, some perhaps for days.
Heavy snowfall from the storm stretched across the region, including upstate and northern New York through Vermont, New Hampshire and most of Maine. Many areas saw totals of 8 inches to 12 inches of snow, and some of the highest totals exceeded 30 inches in south central Vermont, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service.
“So overall, it was a pretty significant winter storm and for some areas that was some of the most snow they’ve seen all winter with a single storm,” Taylor said.
The combination of sleet, freezing rain and heavy wet snow took down trees and power lines and was blamed for hundreds of delayed and canceled flights.
In New York City, floodwaters snarled subway service, closed part of the Cross Island Parkway and trapped motorists on flooded roads through Central Park, where more than 3.5 inches of rain fell. On Fifth Avenue, a giant tree fell down over several cars, prompting a road closure.
Central Maine Power, the state’s largest utility, said crews began clearing damage and fixing downed lines Sunday — but that it anticipated a multi-day effort in areas hit hardest by the storm.
By late Sunday, about 170,000 customers were without power in Maine.
An additional 54,000 customers were without power in New Hampshire. In New York, more than 57,000 customers were without power late Sunday, down from more than 90,000 earlier in the day.
Police across the Northeast reported hundreds of crashes as cars spun out and drivers grappled with icy roads, while Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston also saw heavy rain and flooding.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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PETROPOLIS, Brazil - Heavy rains in Rio de Janeiro state have killed at least seven people, authorities said Saturday, while a 4-year-old girl was rescued after more than 16 hours under mud.
The girl was pulled out alive in the city of Petropolis, 43 miles north of Rio. Rescue teams had to stop their work Friday night because of risks of new landslides in the region.
The girl’s father died as a house was knocked to the ground. She survived because he protected her with his body, members of rescue teams said. Three more people died in the same place.
“My son was a warrior, he spent all that time there and saved his little daughter,” Roberto Napoleão, the grandfather of the girl, told journalists. “You can’t imagine what it is like to lose a son. It hurts so much.”
Mayors in the state and Gov. Claudio Castro had alarmed residents of potential problems for the weekend since Thursday.
Firefighters have struggled to reach those hit by heavy rains, many of them residents of long-endangered areas.
Sniffing dogs were also part of the rescue efforts. Almost 100 people had been saved, authorities said.
Local authorities in Teresopolis, close to Petropolis, said that one person was still missing after the heavy rains.
Meteorologists say the heavy rains that hit Rio state were moving toward the neighboring state of Espirito Santo.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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It may officially be spring, but wintry weather blanketed the U.S. on Saturday with New England and California seeing a mix of rain, heavy snow and gusty winds.
In the West, a winter storm warning was in effect through this morning for parts of the Sierra Nevada, and a 91 mph wind gust was recorded at Mammoth Mountain near the California-Nevada line. About a foot of snow had fallen by Saturday morning north of Lake Tahoe.
A winter weather advisory was issued through tonight for parts of northern Arizona, the Grand Canyon and Flagstaff to the New Mexico border with up to a half-foot of snow possible at upper elevations and winds gusting to 40 mph.
In Maine, the National Weather Service warned of a treacherous travel day with an increase in ice forming inland from the coast, on top of snow or sleet that had already fallen.
Farther inland forecasters called for anywhere from 1 to 2 feet of snow across the mountains in western Maine and areas north and in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, according to Maura Casey, a lead forecaster for the weather service, based out of Gray, Maine.
In the lakes region of New Hampshire up to Maine, totals were expected to be somewhat lower at 6 inches to a foot with sleet and freezing rain mixing in.
Across Connecticut, New York City, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, the storm was expected to remain largely a rain event.
“Overnight dry weather will give way to sunshine,” said Frank Nocera, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service in Norton, Mass. Despite the sun, today was expected to be blustery with temperatures chillier than average for late March, he said.
In New York City, a flood watch and wind advisory were in place until 2 a.m. today.
Flooding affected subway service, shutting down a section of the Staten Island Railway in both directions. Flooding also closed part of the Cross Island Parkway in Queens, and police warned motorists about standing water on roadways throughout the city.
The storm was blamed for hundreds of delayed and canceled flights at New York-area airports.
Fans of skiing welcomed the snowfall.
At Loon Mountain in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, skiers were looking forward to the 12 to 20 inches of new snow the storm was expected to drop on top of a foot earlier in the week.
“This could be the biggest snow we’ll see all year. It sets us up for a really good spring,” said Kevin Bell, vice president of marketing for the resort. “The more snow New England gets, the better for us.”
(Steve LeBlanc, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Every couple of weeks, Erminia Lopez walks from her room to the front desk at the Ramada hotel in National City, anxious to find out if she’ll be able to stay just a little bit longer.
After historic storms sent floodwaters surging into her nearby home two months ago, Lopez, 81, and her 59-year-old son, Richard, have been staying in a small room with two double beds, a microwave and just enough room for two walkers. They’ve been there for over a month, and with uncertainty over what’s in store for their home, they intend to stay as long as they can.
The Lopez family is one of the 1,225 San Diego County households that were displaced when their homes flooded on Jan. 22 — the fourth-wettest day in San Diego since record-keeping began in 1850, and the wettest January day on record. Two months later, many are still homeless as they work to repair and rebuild their homes — a process that for many could take at least a few more months.
Most of those households — 846 in total — are participating in a county program that provides flood victims short-term lodging at 65 local hotels, like the Ramada, across the county. People displaced by the storm can get up to 30 days of lodging, possibly more based on household circumstances. While Lopez has had a mostly positive experience at the hotel, she said she faces weekly uncertainty over whether her stay will be extended again, because of what she says is lackluster communication from the county and its partners.
Residents say they typically aren’t told until just a day or two before their stay is up whether they’ve been cleared to stay longer or will have to find other accommodations.
“There’s confusion; there’s doubt,” she said. “It’s kind of up in the air most of the time, because we’re not sure what the next step is.”
County officials have acknowledged flood victims’ concerns and say they are actively working to address them.
Earlier this month, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved nearly $10 million in funding to extend the program into May.
But it’s still unclear how long resources like this will be needed.
At the Extended Stay America hotel in Mission Valley, Daniel, a flood victim who declined to give his last name, considers himself one of the lucky ones.
He has to commute to North County for work and back down to Mountain View to pick up his 7- and 10-year-old boys from school each night before heading back to their temporary home — sometimes a three-hour round trip with traffic — but he’s grateful his family has a room with a small kitchen.
“They’re picky eaters,” he said, gesturing to one son as he gathered groceries in one arm, while balancing the other boy on his hip. “So it’d be a nightmare if we didn’t have a spot where we could cook our own meals.”
Daniel and his wife moved to San Diego just last year, away from their families on the East Coast, so they had no choice but to participate in the county’s hotel program. But he knows it’ll take much longer than 30 days to make his muddy home livable.
“We got real lucky and haven’t had to move hotels yet, but it has been stressful not knowing how long our luck will last,” he said.
His and the Lopez family’s stories illustrate a larger issue dividing flood victims from the resources they need to rebuild their homes and lives.
A total of 2,400 households — 7,750 people — were impacted by the floods on Jan. 22, which caused at least $30.8 million in public damage in San Diego County.
The county responded by setting aside $10 million to fund relief efforts for displaced residents, creating a temporary lodging program. And then more was allocated this month.
Residents showed up in droves to that meeting to push for the funding and share their stories. Among them was Aaron Swanton, who presented a petition signed by more than 900 people asking to extend hotel vouchers.
He and Roy Gonzalez, who said he lost everything in the floods, had co-founded Together San Diego to raise money for flood victims and organize volunteer recovery efforts.
“I’ve been in there, like, mucking houses — I know exactly how long this is going to take,” Swanton later told The San Diego Union-Tribune. “It’s going to take a long time.”
But for weeks, flood victims have been raising concerns over the county’s lodging program and its contractor in charge of managing it, Equus Workforce Solutions, including poor communication and insufficient amenities.
“We’re not only worried about finding contractors and fixing our house, but we’re worried about, ‘Do we have to pack up our hotel?’” said Southcrest resident Brittany LeMoine, who is staying at the Ramada with her two children and mother. “It’s added more to the problems we have to deal with.”
Equus declined to respond to the Union-Tribune’s questions about residents’ concerns and its process for managing the program, but president and CEO Mark Douglass apologized to supervisors at the board’s last meeting.
“The weight of all the pain that I heard today, I sit with that and I own it,” he said. “My staff stands behind me. They’ve worked with what they have, and that wasn’t good enough, but we will make it right.”
Residents also brought their concerns directly to county officials, who say they are working to address them.
Spokesperson Michael Workman said the county has spoken directly with hotel management about room amenities, including reports of a lack of towels and toilet paper, and has added staff at hotels to provide more points of contact, including placing about 35 disaster service workers at 12 of the program’s most-used hotels.
He said the county has also begun providing case workers to help walk people through the decision of whether to use the county’s program or FEMA aid.
“It is important to note, there is not a model for long-term emergency non-congregate housing by local government,” he said in an email. “It is complex uncharted territory for us all.”
Supervisor Nora Vargas said the county has met with Equus about some of the concerns it’s heard from the community. “I know some of the folks have lost everything, and so we want to make sure people understand that we’re not taking this lightly,” she said.
Gerardo Hernandez, a Southcrest resident who has been staying at the Ramada for a month and a half with his 23-year-old son, is glad the county has stepped in but called the program under Equus “a big mess.”
Hernandez said his home on Beta Street — an area in the Chollas Creek watershed hit especially hard by the storm — was destroyed, and his landlord terminated his lease the next day, leaving him to rush to remove his waterlogged belongings.
In the hurry, he had to throw most everything away, including his beloved sports cards collection.
At the Ramada, he’s had some trouble getting towels and toilet paper, but his bigger concern is communication from Equus. He says the contractor hasn’t been able to answer his questions about stay extensions, and he’s turned to hotel staff for confirmation.
Workman explained that the voucher program isn’t like booking a typical hotel room, as it takes time to update reservation details through all the partners involved, and cautioned that guests who ask hotel desk clerks could get the wrong information. That may be scant consolation for San Diegans waiting for answers on where they’ll stay until their homes are habitable. But the work of local community organizations, they say, has helped.
“Without the nonprofits, who knows what would have been?” wondered Hernandez.
He wants to see things return to how they were under the YMCA, which ran a hotel voucher program for the first few weeks after the flood before the county launched its program. The first program ran much more smoothly, he said.
Such groups have stepped in to help flood victims, though they don’t typically focus on disaster response.
“It was really a big effort that the community really, really stepped up for,” said Barry Pollard, CEO of the Urban Collaborative Project, a community outreach program.
The Harvey Family Foundation has been bringing dinner to residents staying at hotels. Its leader, Armon Harvey, said it has been paying for the meals out of its own budget and is waiting for the county to start funding them.
“Of course, everybody was asking, ‘Where’s the city?’ and ‘Where’s the county?’ But it takes them time to respond,” Pollard said. “The county has been very, very responsive.”
Justin Lipford, the YMCA’s director of community engagement, thinks the county should be seeking more long-term solutions, beyond extending the voucher program.
“After May 11, there is no clear understanding — at least on my side — of what’s going to happen to folks that can’t return home,” he said.
Pollard agreed. He hopes this is a wake-up call that prompts the city and county both to create community-based disaster response plans.
“What we’ve experienced with this (shows) what not to do in the future — and that is probably one of the biggest advantages in retrospect, looking back,” he said.
For now, the temporary residents of the Ramada are holding on to the county’s voucher program for as long as possible.
For Marcela Ralac, the hotel is close to her flooded home, so she can more easily go check on reconstruction work.
Without the hotel voucher, LeMoine said she’d bring her family to camp out in their home in Southcrest, though the only thing left inside is a toilet.
The Lopez family also hopes to stay until their house is ready, which their landlord says will be in two months.
In the meantime, they’ll keep sharing a hotel room where despite their different taste in television — he likes “Blue Bloods,” she prefers QVC — they’re making it work.
“We need to be secure,” Richard said.
(Maura Fox & Emily Alvarenga, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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RAMONA - A former search and rescue plane for the U.S. Coast Guard will be making its new home away from the sea at Cal Fire’s Air Attack Base in Ramona.
The C-130 air tanker is one of seven that will be joining Cal Fire’s fleet of aircraft used to fight fires. These massive planes are faster and can deliver over three times more fire retardant than the two S-2Ts at the Ramona base, said Cal Fire Capt. Brent Pascua.
“They can fly longer; they don’t need to land and refuel as often,” Pascua said. “They’re not replacing our S-2Ts but they’ll take some workload off them.”
A C-130 used to train pilots at the Ramona Air Attack Base in August 2019 was leased to Cal Fire on a contract basis from Coulson Aviation.
Nick Brown, aviation battalion chief at Ramona Air Attack Base, said that getting a C-130 plane in San Diego County is crucial with the region’s fire risk and past major fires like the 2003 Cedar fire and 2007 Witch Creek fire.
“To add a C-130, that type of tanker, is huge for us,” Brown said.
Once available, the air tankers will be able to deliver about 4,000 gallons of fire retardant. The S-2Ts can deliver 1,200 gallons. When fully loaded with retardant, the C-130 has a range of 800 miles and can be in operation for up to eight hours straight.
With the three-person crew that is dedicated to the C-130, the plane will be ready on the strip for takeoff in a short amount of time, Brown said. The downtime on the ground for refueling the retardant would only be between five and 10 minutes, according to Brown.
The C-130 doesn’t have to drop all 4,000 gallons at once, Brown said, but can split it in two drops. This is useful in using the plane to attack multiple fronts of a fire at the same time, he said.
The planes have had repairs and improvements over the past several years, Pascua said.
“Not only having to repaint them into the Cal Fire paint scheme and go through the rigorous testing, we also had to install the 4,000-gallon retardant tanks,” he said. “There’s quite a bit that goes into this.”
The size and conditions around a wildfire ultimately will determine the response level and which planes will be used, Brown said. A medium-level dispatch will use the other planes and three helicopters, but not necessarily the C-130.
A fire in the middle of the summer in 90-degree weather with low relative humidity most likely would warrant the C-130 being sent out, he said.
These planes bring in the support needed to finish the job of putting out the fire, Brown said.
“A lot of people think it’s the aircraft that puts the fires out. It doesn’t,” he said. “It gives us the ability to slow down the fires so the ground crews can get in there and contain it.”
Having access to this plane will be a game changer, Brown said, in being able to dump over 6,000 gallons of retardant on a fire anywhere in San Diego County with the C-130 and the two S-2Ts. It’s this kind of response that could mean the difference of saving several houses from catching fire or 10 acres that otherwise would have been burned, Brown said.
In December last year, seven C-130 planes were transferred from the Coast Guard to Cal Fire, Pascua said, five of which will be dispersed throughout the state and two held back as reserves and used while one of the other five have to undergo maintenance.
The five C-130s will be placed in Chico, McClellan, Paso Robles, Fresno and Ramona, Pascua said, each place chosen strategically to support the surrounding area.
According to Pascua, test runs for the newly outfitted planes are scheduled for later this year and Ramona could see its plane as early as the end of this year, he said.
“It’s going to be impressive to see on a fire and I can’t wait,” he said. “I think this is going to be a great asset overall to the aircraft firefighting fleet.”
(Noah Harrel, U-T COMMUNITY PRESS)
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South Sudan has long been hit by climate change-exacerbated disasters such as recurring droughts and floods. Now, extreme heat is forcing the world’s youngest nation to close its schools.
Authorities have ordered schools across the country shuttered since Monday because of a wave of excessive heat that is expected to last at least two weeks. Temperatures are forecast to reach 113 degrees Fahrenheit, far above the 90-degree highs typically experienced in the dry season from December to March.
Officials did not say how long the schools would remain closed. But the health and education ministries said that “any school that will be found opened during this time will have its registration withdrawn.”
Parents also have been urged to stop their children from playing outside and to monitor them for signs of heat exhaustion and heatstroke.
The sweltering temperatures in South Sudan, whose tropical climate includes both dry and wet seasons, are interrupting the onset of the academic year. Most schools in the East African nation, especially those outside Juba, the capital, are congested and underfunded and lack infrastructure such as air conditioners to help withstand such heat.
South Sudan is highly exposed to severe climatic events, including droughts, floods and rising temperatures. These changes have exacerbated displacement, food insecurity and communal conflict in the nation of 11 million people.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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The highest governing body in geology has upheld a contested vote by scientists against adding the Anthropocene, or human age, to the official timeline of Earth’s history.
The vote, which a committee of about two dozen scholars held in February, brought an end to nearly 15 years of debate about whether to declare that our species had transformed the natural world so thoroughly as to have sent the planet into a new epoch of geologic time.
Shortly after voting ended last month, however, the committee’s chair, Jan A. Zalasiewicz, and vice chair, Martin J. Head, called for the results to be annulled. They said the members had voted prematurely, before evaluating all the evidence. Zalasiewicz and Head also asserted that many members shouldn’t have been allowed to vote in the first place because they had exceeded their term limits.
After considering the matter, the committee’s parent body, the International Union of Geological Sciences, has decided the results will stand, the union’s executive committee said Wednesday.
That means it’s official. Our planet, at least for the time being, is still in the Holocene epoch, which began 11,700 years ago with the most recent melting of the ice sheets.
Even if the Anthropocene does not yet have an official place on the geologic time scale, the term will “continue to be used not only by earth and environmental scientists, but also by social scientists, politicians and economists, as well as by the public at large,” the statement from the geological union said. “It will remain an invaluable descriptor of human impact on the earth system.”
The statement did not directly address concerns about the voting process.
“The scientific decision is clear, and the specialists do not see any value in adding a new epoch in the geological record,” the union’s president, John Ludden, said by email.
Even though the voting results have been declared valid, Head, an earth scientist at Brock University in Canada, said he expected the episode to prompt geologists to change their procedures for deciding on future updates to the time scale.
“I feel this has been a missed opportunity to recognize and endorse a simple reality, that our planet left its natural functioning state in the mid-20th century,” Head said by email.
(Raymond Zhong, NEW YORK TIMES)
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Full passenger train service between San Diego and Orange counties is expected to resume Monday after the completion of a barrier wall to protect the railroad tracks from a San Clemente landslide triggered by seasonal rains.
“Service is being restored ahead of the initial schedule because of expedited work made possible with strong cooperation between the transportation agencies and the state, including the California State Transportation Agency,” according to an announcement posted on the Orange County Transportation Authority’s website.
Metrolink will resume service to its southernmost station at Oceanside and Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner will return to its normal daily service through San Clemente to downtown San Diego. Amtrak resumed limited service March 6, allowing trains to pass through the area only between 7 and 8 a.m. and 6 and 7 p.m. daily, while work continued on the barrier wall.
Also called a catchment wall, the barrier is about 200 feet long, standing between 10 feet to 15 feet above ground, and supported by steel beams sunk 30 feet deep. The steel beams are encased in concrete, with large wood planks placed horizontally between the beams.
“OCTA and its rail partners will continue to work with local, state and federal stakeholders on both near-term and long-term solutions for protecting rail movement along this critical corridor,” the release said.
The trouble spot is on a privately owned hillside along the San Clemente Beach Trail near an area called Mariposa Point.
OCTA and Metrolink built a similar wall last year at a landslide on city property below San Clemente’s historic Casa Romantica cultural center, just north of Mariposa Point.
Both slides are in a seven-mile stretch of tracks that runs along the beach below steep bluffs from Dana Point to the San Diego County line.
BNSF freight trains have been traveling through the repair site at slow speeds overnight during the past few weeks.
North County Transit District’s Coaster commuter trains between San Diego and Oceanside were not affected by the suspension.
(Phil Diehl, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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GRINDAVIK, Iceland - Lava from a volcanic eruption in Iceland flowed Sunday toward defenses around the town of Grindavik, which have so far held the molten rock back from the evacuated community.
Scientists said the eruption appeared to be weakening and would probably peter out.
A volcanic system on the Reykjanes Peninsula in the country’s southwest erupted late Saturday for the fourth time in three months, sending orange jets of lava into the night sky.
Iceland’s Meteorological Office said the eruption opened a fissure in the earth almost 2 miles long between the mountains of Stóra-Skógfell and Hagafell.
The office said Sunday that lava was flowing south and southeast at about 0.6 miles an hour, and might reach the ocean. Barriers were built to stop it inundating the main road along the peninsula’s southern coast.
Hundreds of people were evacuated from the Blue Lagoon thermal spa, one of Iceland’s top tourist attractions, when the eruption began, national broadcaster RUV said.
The eruption site is a few miles northeast of Grindavik, a coastal town of 3,800 people southwest of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik.
The town was evacuated before the initial eruption on Dec. 18.
A second eruption that began on Jan. 14 sent lava toward the town. Defensive walls that had been bolstered after the first eruption stopped some of the flow, but several buildings were consumed by the lava.
Both eruptions lasted only a matter of days. A third eruption began Feb. 8. It ended within hours, but not before a river of lava engulfed a pipeline, cutting off heat and hot water to thousands of people.
Iceland, which sits above a volcanic hot spot in the North Atlantic, sees regular eruptions. The most disruptive in recent times was the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which spewed huge clouds of ash into the atmosphere and led to widespread airspace closures over Europe.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Winchester, IN - At least three people were killed and dozens were injured after a parade of severe weather marched through Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio overnight, spinning off at least six devastating tornadoes, officials said.
Around Indian Lake, a reservoir in Ohio that becomes a bustling resort area in the summer, the storm caused two deaths in a mobile home park Thursday night, and a third in a home early Friday, according to Dr. John O’Connor, the Logan County coroner.
All three people died from “blunt force trauma,” the coroner said.
Around two dozen others from the area, about 70 miles northwest of Columbus, were treated for broken bones and other wounds, said Laura Miller, a spokesperson for Mary Rutan Hospital in Bellefontaine, Ohio.
“We have never experienced anything like this, anything this severe in the 75 years that I’ve lived around here,” said John Coleman, the president of the Indiana Lake Area Historical Society, who was driving the streets of Russells Point, Ohio, on Friday morning, looking at homes that were missing second stories.
Meteorologists were still surveying the damage Friday to establish the number and strength of tornadoes in the outbreak. The National Weather Service office in Wilmington, Ohio, had confirmed five in the state by early Friday afternoon, although Kristen Cassady, a meteorologist, said that number could grow.
In eastern Indiana, the towns of Winchester in Randolph County and Selma in Delaware County were badly hit by at least one tornado, which razed buildings and tore roofs off homes.
The homeland security emergency management office in Randolph County said in a statement early Friday that 38 people had been injured, with 12 taken to hospitals.
The emergency management director in Trimble County, KY, Andrew Stark, said that 20 to 30 homes had been severely damaged there, with some roofs shorn off and walls destroyed.
“It’s a mess,” Stark said.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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America’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm is officially open, a long-awaited moment that helps pave the way for a succession of large wind farms.
Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource built a 12-turbine wind farm called South Fork Wind 35 miles east of Montauk Point,NY. New York Governor Kathy Hochul went to Long Island on Thursday to announce that the turbines are delivering clean power to the local electric grid, flipping a massive light switch to “turn on the future.” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was also on hand.
Achieving commercial scale is a turning point for the industry, but what’s next? Experts say the nation needs a major buildout of this type of clean electricity to address climate change.
Offshore wind is central to both national and state plans to transition to a carbon-free electricity system. The Biden administration has approved six commercial-scale offshore wind energy projects, and auctioned lease areas for offshore wind for the first time off the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts. New York picked two more projects last month to power more than 1 million homes.
This is just the beginning, Hochul said. She said the completion of South Fork shows that New York will aggressively pursue climate change solutions to save future generations from a world that otherwise could be dangerous. South Fork can generate 132 megawatts of offshore wind energy to power more than 70,000 homes.
“It’s great to be first, we want to make sure we’re not the last. That’s why we’re showing other states how it can be done, why we’re moving forward, on to other projects,” Hochul told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview before the announcement.
“This is the date and the time that people will look back in the history of our nation and say, ‘This is when it changed,’” Hochul added.
South Fork will generate more than four times the power of a five-turbine pilot project developed earlier off the coast of Rhode Island, and unlike that subsidized test project, was developed after Ørsted and Eversource were chosen in a competitive bidding process to supply power to Long Island.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A major storm dumped heavy snow in Colorado on Thursday — forcing flight cancellations and shutting down a highway that connects Denver to Colorado ski resorts for much of the day, stranding some people in their cars for hours.
The storm comes as other parts of the country face severe weather. Suspected tornadoes raked parts of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky on Thursday, damaging homes and businesses and leaving people without electricity, authorities said. And parts of Kansas and Missouri were pelted with massive chunks of hail on Wednesday night, with storms unleashing possible tornadoes in Kansas.
The Colorado storm, which began Wednesday night, delivered the slushy, wet snow typical for March, one of the snowiest months in Denver, and wasn’t expected to wind down until this morning. The heaviest accumulations were expected in Colorado’s Front Range region, where the eastern plains meet the Rocky Mountains and the vast majority of the state’s population lives. Most of the snow was falling in the foothills west of Denver.
Those higher elevations had up to 3 feet of snow by Thursday and more than another foot was forecast expected overnight. Denver itself got up to about 9 inches by Thursday. Up to another 10 inches were expected in the Denver area.
A mountain stretch of Interstate 70, the state’s main east-west highway, closed as the storm moved in Wednesday night. Trucks, many without the tire chains required to travel the route, got stuck and blocked other vehicles from getting through for hours. The big rigs were towed out by the afternoon, said Sgt. Patrick Rice of the Colorado State Patrol.
Some drivers may have been stranded until I-70 reopened, he said, but no injuries were reported. The highway remains closed to trucks through noon today and officials warned it could be shut to passenger vehicles too as the storm picks up. Rice urged any drivers setting out to bring food and blankets in case they get trapped.
“We’re going to continue to work at this and keep the road open the best we can,” said Matt Inzeo, a spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Transportation.
While a boon to Colorado’s ski industry, the extreme conditions shut down several ski resorts. The storm also closed numerous schools and government offices Thursday and Denver area schools announced they would be closed today.
More than 53,000 customers were without power across Colorado on Thursday, primarily in metro Denver and along the Front Range, according to poweroutage.us.
The storm started as rain in the Denver area and turned into snow. The area was expected to get 10 to 20 inches of snow, with up to 2 feet in the western suburbs, the weather service said.
Denver International Airport was open Thursday, but about 800 flights were canceled with nearly 200 more delayed, according to Flightaware.com.
Meanwhile, severe weather and suspected tornadoes caused damage in other parts of the country, including the Lakeview, Ohio, area where forecasters plan to survey the area today to confirm the tornado, said Scott Hickman, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Wilmington, Ohio.
A number of buildings in Lakeview were destroyed, Amber Fagan, the president and CEO of the Indian Lake Area Chamber of Commerce, told ABC 6 news.
“It’s pure devastation,” she said. “I have never seen anything like this in my entire life. “Our Lakeview municipal building is demolished. Our laundromat is gone. The old plastics building is just completely demolished. Downtown, it’s bad.”
Storms also damaged homes and trailers in the Ohio River communities of Hanover and Lamb in Indiana.
In Kentucky, Trimble County Emergency Management Director Andrew Stark said the storms damaged at least 50 structures, including homes.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear issued a statement saying a tornado touched down along the Indiana state border in Gallatin and Trimble counties and there were reports of a couple of minor injuries. He urged Kentuckians to stay alert to the weather as more storms were expected across the state overnight.
The state’s emergency operations center was activated to coordinate storm response, Beshear said.
Additionally, there were unconfirmed reports of tornadoes in Jefferson County, MO, and Monroe County, IL, but no immediate reports of damage.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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LOS ANGELES, CA - A landslide reduced a Los Angeles house under renovation to a jumble of lumber, pulled the pool and deck away from a second home, and left the pool at a third residence on the edge of a huge fissure early Wednesday.
The slide occurred just before 3 a.m. in Sherman Oaks, a neighborhood of expensive homes about 12 miles northwest of downtown. An initial search found no victims, but several people were evacuated from one house, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a statement.
There was no immediate word on the cause of the landslide, but numerous slides have happened in Southern California due to drenching winter storms that saturated the ground.
Since Jan. 1, downtown L.A. has had almost 16 inches of rain, which is nearly twice what it normally gets by this time of year. By early February, the city had reported nearly 600 mudslides, had red-tagged 16 buildings as unsafe to enter and had yellow-tagged more than 30 others, limiting access to them.
News helicopter video revealed the extent of the slide.
The destroyed house, which appeared to be in the midst of a renovation, was crushed with most of its roof lying on the ground. Next door, the slide pulled a pool and deck area away from a house.
Up the hill, the slide left a tennis court and pool on the edge of a huge fissure. A table and chairs that used to be poolside stood on a patch of deck on the other side of the gaping fissure.
Firefighters drained the pool to reduce weight on the hill.
“Department of Building and Safety is responding to assess the structures and hillsides,” the Fire Department said.
Southern California has seen a lull in storms in recent days, but slides and rockfalls have continued. South of L.A., a notable slide in Dana Point left an ocean-view estate on the edge of a coastal bluff.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Power lines ignited massive wildfires across the Texas Panhandle that destroyed homes and killed thousands of livestock, officials said Thursday, including the largest blaze in state history that the utility provider Xcel Energy said its equipment appeared to have sparked.
The Texas A&M Forest Service said its investigators have concluded that power lines ignited both the historic Smokehouse Creek fire, which has burned nearly 1,700 square miles [1,088,000 acres] and spilled into neighboring Oklahoma, and the nearby Windy Deuce fire, which has burned about 225 square miles [144,000 acres]. The statement did not elaborate on what led to the power lines igniting the blazes. “Based on currently available information, Xcel Energy acknowledges that its facilities appear to have been involved in an ignition of the Smokehouse Creek fire,” the utility stated.
The wildfires that ignited last week in the windswept rural area prompted evacuations in a handful of small communities, destroyed as many as 500 structures and killed at least two people.
Containment levels have been increasing — the Smokehouse Creek fire was 74 percent contained Thursday while the Windy Deuce fire was 89 percent. But the Forest Service warned that high winds were expected to be moving across the dry landscape, increasing fire danger.
Downed power lines and other utility equipment have led to other major wildfires, including the deadly blaze in Maui last year and a massive California wildfire in 2019.
While Xcel Energy said in its Thursday news release that its equipment appeared to have played a role in igniting the Smokehouse Creek fire, it disputed claims of negligence in maintaining and operating infrastructure alleged in a lawsu[i]t filed by a homeowner last week. The Minnesota-based company also noted in the statement that it did not believe its equipment caused the ignition of the Windy Deuce fire.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The official history of the planet should not include a radical new chapter defined by human impacts, a key scientific panel has decided — ending, for now, a years-long effort to update Earth’s geologic timeline with a new epoch: the Anthropocene.
In a vote that concluded Monday night, the scientists rejected a proposal that would mark the start of the Anthropocene in the mid-20th century, when global trade, nuclear weapons tests and rampant fossil fuel consumption radically altered the Earth.
Members of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy — the group responsible for delineating geologic history — agreed that people have transformed the climate and put ecosystems in peril. But most felt that this “Age of Humans” should not be rigidly defined as an epoch — a stretch of geologic time that typically spans thousands or even millions of years.
“It suggests that all of a sudden, within my lifetime, the changes that are affecting the planet suddenly appeared,” said Philip Gibbard, a geologist at the University of Cambridge who voted against the Anthropocene proposal. “But humans have in fact been influencing the natural environment for 40,000 years.”
In a statement Tuesday, the working group behind the Anthropocene proposal said it would continue to advocate for its Anthropocene proposal, which emerged from nearly 15 years of research and deliberation.
“We’ve provided ample evidence that the rate at which humans have an impact on the planet has increased dramatically,” said working group member Francine McCarthy, a professor of earth science at Brock University in Ontario. “It’s hard to understand how anyone who looks at the science can say that there wasn’t a massive tipping point in the mid-20th century.”
In a search that spanned from mountain summits to the depths of the oceans, the Anthropocene Working Group identified more than 100 distinct markers of how human activities have left an imprint on Earth’s geologic record. Air bubbles in Antarctic ice showed the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they said. A host of entirely new substances — microplastics, mine waste — could be found in almost every corner of the planet.
Though humanity’s environmental impact stretches back millennia, the number and scale of these markers increased dramatically around 1950, the working group concluded. Although these changes unfolded in a geologic eye-blink, studies suggested their effects would be incredibly long-lasting. Even if people disappeared tomorrow, it would take tens of thousands of years for atmospheric carbon concentrations to return to preindustrial levels.
(Sarah Kaplan, WASHINGTON POST)
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PORTLAND, Oregon - A jury in Oregon has ordered PacifiCorp to pay more than $42 million to 10 victims of devastating wildfires on Labor Day 2020 — the latest verdict in litigation that is expected to see the electric utility on the hook for billions in damages.
Last June, a jury found PacifiCorp liable for negligently failing to cut power to its 600,000 customers despite warnings from top fire officials. The jury determined it acted negligently and willfully and should have to pay punitive and other damages — a decision that applied to a class including the owners of up to 2,500 properties.
Tuesday’s decision was the third verdict applying last year’s ruling to a specific set of plaintiffs. Last month, a jury awarded $85 million to a different set of nine plaintiffs, and the jury that initially found PacifiCorp liable awarded about $90 million to 17 homeowners named as plaintiffs in that case.
Thousands of other class members are still awaiting trials, though the sides are also expected to engage in mediation that could lead to a settlement.
PacifiCorp, a unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, is appealing. The utility said in an email Tuesday it has settled hundreds of claims relating to the fires and “remains committed to settling all reasonable claims for actual damages under Oregon law.”
“For utilities, there is an ominous risk in making future investments in regions where they become the de facto insurers of last resort in a more frequent extreme weather environment,” the statement said.
The fires were among the worst natural disasters in Oregon’s history, killing nine people, burning more than 1,875 square miles and destroying upward of 5,000 homes and other structures.
The U.S. government is also threatening to sue PacifiCorp to recover nearly $1 billion in costs related to the 2020 wildfires in southern Oregon and Northern California, though the company is trying to negotiate a settlement.
Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway estimates that its utilities face at least $8 billion in claims across all the wildfire lawsuits already filed in Oregon and California, although the damages could be doubled or even tripled in some of those cases and some of the lawsuits don’t list a dollar amount.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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MEXICO CITY, Mexico - Mexico City’s drought and water shortage is so bad that one of the capital’s rainwater catchment basins caught fire Tuesday, scorching 75 acres of dried-up vegetation.
The Mexico City fire department said in a statement that the fire had been brought under control by late afternoon, although photos distributed by the department showed a haze of smoke still blanketing the low-lying basin.
The El Cristo basin was hit by a fire that began late Monday on the city’s northwest side. The basins are meant to hold excess water from storm drains.
Because the city is located in a high mountain valley with no natural outlet, sudden rushes of rainwater tend to overwhelm the man-made drains; the catchment basins act as a buffer.
Normally, they are so green from previous rains that residents have used them as impromptu soccer fields or for grazing animals.
But the central Mexico valley saw below-average rainfall in 2023. The situation is so bad that the Cutzamala reservoirs on the city’s outskirts are at about one-third of capacity, with some as low as 30 percent.
The network of three reservoirs supplies about a quarter of the water for more than 20 million residents in the Mexico City metropolitan area. Wells in the city provide most of the rest.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Emergency repairs could cost $200 million over the next year along a 7-mile stretch of coastal railroad tracks in San Clemente, where multiple landslides have stopped trains traveling between San Diego and Orange counties.
Orange County Transportation Authority officials also are monitoring a half-dozen other places in San Clemente where the eroded beach could undermine the railroad or the steep seaside bluffs could collapse on it.
“This is what we have to do now, this summer, to be prepared for (next) winter,” OCTA Program Manager Dan Phu said Monday.
Phu presented an overview Monday to the agency’s Regional Transportation Planning Committee of the work completed so far and still under way to protect the railroad tracks.
So far, the OCTA has spent about $38 million for repairs at three sites — below the Cyprus Shore community near San Onofre State Park and the San Diego County border, below San Clemente’s historic Casa Romantica cultural center, and most recently along the San Clemente Beach Trail near Mariposa Point.
The additional work proposed is primarily to install more boulder riprap along the beach to protect the tracks from the ocean waves. That tactic does not sit well with many Orange County residents, who say that the growing rock wall occupies too much of the shrinking beach and may contribute to the erosion problem.
“What was glaringly missing from this study was sand,” said Katrina Foley, an Orange County supervisor and member of the OCTA’s Regional Transportation Planning Committee.
“I’m concerned that our focus predominantly on riprap as a solution is only going to exacerbate the coastal erosion and the removal of the sand from the beaches,” Foley said.
Orange County beaches, as in San Diego County and elsewhere, have shrunk to a fraction of their former size. Until recently, the wide swath of sand protected the railroad for more than a century.
“Ignoring sand replenishment as part of this solution is a mistake,” said Dana Point Mayor Jamey Federico, also a member of the OCTA committee. “For many decades the sand that was there helped to protect the train tracks.”
San Clemente, working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, launched its first beach restoration project in late December. However, work was suspended in early January after the material dredged from an ocean site near Oceanside proved to be more rocks and gravel than sand. Officials say finding another source could prove costly and time-consuming.
Passenger train traffic has been suspended at the Mariposa Point slide since Jan. 24. Construction began last week on a 200-foot-long, 10- to 15-foot-tall barrier wall below the slide. Passenger service is expected to resume when the wall is completed in about another three weeks.
Other areas being monitored include additional spots along the 2.3-mile beach trail, the North Beach area north of the San Clemente Pier, South Doheny Beach, and the Poche Beach outfall and pedestrian underpass, according to a report prepared for the committee.
OCTA has spent about $21.7 million so far at Cyprus Shore, where the slow-moving slide pushed the tracks as much as 30 inches toward the ocean. The biggest part of that work was the installation of tie-back anchors into the bedrock. Most of the cost was covered by a $6 million federal block grant, an additional $6 million from the state’s Interregional Transportation Improvement program, and $1 million in federal coronavirus relief funds, with the rest of the money from OCTA.
The Casa Romantica project cost the OCTA $6 million, most of which went to build a temporary barrier wall, and the state paid half that cost. The slide there is on city property, and San Clemente officials have said their stabilization work will cost about $8.5 million.
At Mariposa Point, the cleanup costs so far were about $2 million and the wall under construction will be about $8 million. That work has been funded by the state, OCTA officials said.
OCTA owns more than 40 miles of the tracks in Orange County and serves as that segment’s managing agency for the Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo (LOSSAN) Rail Corridor Agency. Metrolink is the operator of record on the Orange County tracks and leases track rights to Amtrak and BNSF Freight.
Metrolink, also known as the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, provides passenger train service in six Southern California counties, normally including one southernmost stop in Oceanside.
North County Transit District continues to run Coaster commuter trains on their normal schedule between downtown San Diego and Oceanside. During the San Clemente stablization work, Metrolink trains run as far south as the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo Station on weekdays and San Juan Capistrano on weekends.
Amtrak has halted some of its Pacific Surfliner trains on the route, but some continue serving San Diego with a bus connection between Oceanside and Irvine.
(Phil Diehl, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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A powerful blizzard that closed highways and ski resorts had moved through the Sierra Nevada by early Monday, but forecasters warned that more snow was on the way for the Northern California mountains.
A long stretch of Interstate 80 from west of Lake Tahoe to the Nevada state line finally reopened to all but big rigs late Monday morning, but chains or snow tires were required, the California Highway Patrol’s Truckee office said. Closures or chain requirements also affected other highways.
More than 7 feet of snow fell in some locations and fierce winds lashed the Sierra over the weekend.
The last blizzard warnings expired before dawn Monday, leaving a few light Sierra showers, but winter storm warnings were issued for a new, less powerful system expected to last into tonight, the National Weather Service said. The new system was expected to bring periods of moderate mountain snow.
The weekend blizzard caused traffic backups and closures on I-80 and many other roadways, shut down ski resorts for two days and left thousands of homes and businesses without power.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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An influx of hundreds of firefighters and more favorable weather conditions Monday helped authorities in the Texas Panhandle keep the largest wildfire in state history from threatening more homes and communities, fire officials said.
Strong winds spread flames and led to the evacuation of the small town of Sanford on Sunday while airplanes dropped fire retardants to stop a blaze that was quickly contained, thanks to hundreds of firefighters who were deployed on the ground, said Deidra Thomas, a spokesperson for Hutchinson County Emergency Management.
“Yesterday had we not had the resources we had, that fire could have been catastrophic,” Thomas said Monday. “We’re in a really good position today and tomorrow and hopefully through the rest of the week.
Although officials have not released an official cause of the largest fire, the Smokehouse Creek fire that scorched more than 1 million acres and destroyed dozens of homes near the towns of Stinnett and Canadian, a lawsuit filed Friday in Hemphill County alleges a downed powerline near Stinnett on Feb. 26 sparked the blaze.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of a Stinnett homeowner against Xcel Energy Services Inc. and two other utilities, alleges the blaze started “when a wooden pole defendants failed to properly inspect, maintain and replace, splintered and snapped off at its base.” A spokesperson for Xcel said in a statement there is no official determination for the causes of the fire and that investigations are ongoing.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Planes dropped fire retardant over the Texas Panhandle on Sunday and a small community was ordered to evacuate as firefighters kept up efforts to stamp out the largest wildfire in state history while contending with new blazes.
Strong winds spread the flames farther, prompting an evacuation order to be issued in Sanford, a town of a little more than 100 residents, according to the Amarillo office of the National Weather Service, which posted on X. A cluster of fires has burned more than 1,900 square miles [1,216,000 acres] in rural areas surrounding Amarillo, including the largest blaze spilling into neighboring Oklahoma.
As firefighters battle to contain the unprecedented wildfires, humanitarian organizations are pivoting their attention to victims who have lost their homes and livelihoods in the blazes.
Residents began clearing affected property on Saturday, and by Sunday the extent of the loss began mounting.
Julie Winters, executive director for Hutchinson County United Way, said the organization has heard of more than 150 homes being affected in the county, noting that the fires extend to at least five other counties.
“We already know that a large group of people are uninsured who lost their homes. So without monetary assistance, it’s going to be very hard for them to start back over,” Winters said.
A steady outpouring of donated clothing, water and hot meals quickly overwhelmed one city in the area. By Sunday, the city of Borger urged people to redirect their donations from food and water to cleanup supplies.
As of Sunday afternoon, the Smokehouse Creek fire, which has burned over 1 million acres, was 15 percent contained. Two other fires that have burned a combined 180,000 acres were 60 percent contained.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A major highway was closed and ski resorts were shut down Sunday as the effects of a powerful blizzard continued to cause problems across the Sierra Nevada, and forecasters warned that more heavy snow was on the way for Northern California.
Sections of Interstate 80 to the west and north of Lake Tahoe were made impassable by blowing snow piling up in lanes, with no estimate for reopening, the California Highway Patrol said.
The CHP office in South Lake Tahoe warned motorists that tire chains for improved traction are required on most mountain routes. The online warning was accompanied by a photo of a big rig without chains stuck in whiteout conditions on a local road. “Trying to bypass chain control, no no no!!” the agency said on X. “Dangerous and not smart.”
A blizzard warning was in effect Sunday night for areas above 6,500 feet, while lower elevations were under a winter storm warning with an additional 2 feet of snow possible, the National Weather Service office in Sacramento said. “Mountain travel is HIGHLY discouraged!” the office warned.
The multi-day storm closed I-80 and other highways, shut down ski resorts and left thousands of homes and businesses without power.
By Sunday morning, Pacific Gas & Electric had restored electricity to all but about 7,000 California customers, while NV Energy had reduced its outages to roughly 1,000 homes and businesses.
The storm began barreling into the region Thursday. A widespread blizzard warning through Sunday covered a 300-mile stretch of the mountains. A second, weaker storm was forecast to bring additional rain and snow between today and Wednesday, forecasters said.
California authorities on Friday shut down 100 miles of I-80, the main route between Reno and Sacramento. There was no estimate when the freeway would reopen.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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RENO, NV - California authorities shut down 100 miles of Interstate 80 on Friday as the biggest snowstorm of the season bore down on the Sierra Nevada, where residents were urged to take shelter and stay off roads as they prepared for up to 10 feet of snow in some areas and damaging winds.
“AAANNNDD WE’RE CLOSED!!” the California Highway Patrol posted on X, previously known as Twitter, saying the closure was due to “spin outs, high winds, and low visibility. No estimated time of reopening the freeway.”
Authorities closed the interstate in both directions after 5 p.m. on a day when the majority of more than a dozen ski resorts around Lake Tahoe were closed, a tornado touched down in Central California and visitors to Yosemite National Park were told to leave. The 100-mile closure is at the state border just west of Reno, NV, to near Emigrant Gap.
California Highway Patrol, state transportation officials and other authorities reported throughout the day that troopers and others were responding to dozens of collisions on I-80, cars sliding into snowbanks or getting stuck on the side of slick roadways. There were no immediate reports of any serious injuries.
A tornado touched down Friday afternoon in Madera County before 4 p.m., said Andy Bollenbacher, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford. It caused some damage to an elementary school, he said.
The National Weather Service in Reno said late Friday it expected the heaviest snow to arrive after midnight, continuing with blizzard conditions and blowing snow through today that could cut visibility to a quarter-mile or less.
The storm began barreling into the region Thursday. A blizzard warning through Sunday morning covers a 300-mile stretch of the mountains. Meteorologists predict as much as 10 feet of snow is possible in the mountains around Lake Tahoe, with 3 to 6 feet on the lake’s shores and more than a foot possible in the valleys on the Sierra’s eastern front. Winds are expected to gust in excess of 115 mph over Sierra ridgetops, and 70 mph at lower elevations.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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STINNETT, TX - Wildfires may have destroyed as many as 500 structures in the Texas Panhandle, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday, describing how the largest blaze in state history scorched everything in its path, leaving ashes in its wake.
Texas officials warned that the threat was not yet over. Higher temperatures and stronger winds forecast for today elevated worries that fires in the Panhandle could spread beyond the more than 1,700 square miles [1,088,000 acres] already chewed up this week by fast-moving flames.
The largest blaze, the Smokehouse Creek fire, which began Monday, has killed at least two people, and left a charred landscape of scorched prairie, dead cattle and burned-out homes. The cause of the fire remains under investigation, although strong winds, dry grass and unseasonably warm weather fed the flames.
“When you look at the damages that have occurred here it’s just gone, completely gone, nothing left but ashes on the ground,” Abbott said during a news conference in Borger, Texas. He said a preliminary assessment found 400 to 500 structures had been destroyed.
Abbott praised what he called a “heroic” response from “fearless” firefighters.
“It would have been far worse and far more damaging not just to property but to people, but for those firefighters,” he said.
The National Weather Service forecast for the coming days warns of strong winds, relatively low humidity and dry conditions that pose a “significant” wildfire threat.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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STINNETT, TX - A dusting of snow covered a desolate landscape of scorched prairie, dead cattle and burned out homes in the Texas Panhandle on Thursday, giving firefighters brief relief in their desperate efforts to corral a blaze that has grown into the largest in state history.
The Smokehouse Creek fire grew to nearly 1,700 square miles — more than 1 million acres. It merged with another fire and is just 3 percent contained, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.
Gray skies loomed over huge scars of blackened earth in a rural area dotted with scrub brush, ranchland, rocky canyons and oil rigs. In Stinnett, a town of about 1,600, someone propped up an American flag outside a destroyed home.
Dylan Phillips, 24, said he hardly recognized his Stinnett neighborhood, which was littered with melted street signs and the charred frames of cars and trucks. His family’s home survived, but at least a half-dozen others were smoking rubble.
“It was brutal,” Phillips said. “The streetlights were out. It was nothing but embers and flames.”
The Smokehouse Creek fire’s explosive growth slowed Thursday as snow fell and winds and temperatures dipped, but it was still untamed and threatening. The largest of several major fires burning in the rural Panhandle section of the state, it has also crossed into Oklahoma.
Firefighter Lee Jones was helping douse the smoldering wreckage of homes in Stinnett to keep them from reigniting when temperatures and winds increase today and into the weekend.
“The snow helps,” said Jones, who was among a dozen firefighters called in from Lubbock to help. “We’re just hitting all the hot spots around town, the houses that have already burned.”
Authorities have not said what ignited the fires, but strong winds, dry grass and unseasonably warm temperatures fed the blazes.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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RENO, NV - The most powerful Pacific storm of the season started barreling into the Sierra Nevada on Thursday, packing multiple feet of snow and dangerous winds that forecasters say will create blizzard conditions likely to close major highways and trigger power outages into the weekend. A 300-mile stretch of the Sierra Nevada was under a blizzard warning through Sunday, with the biggest effects expected this afternoon into Saturday.
As much as 10 feet of snow is possible in the mountains around Lake Tahoe by the weekend, with 3 to 6 feet in the communities on the lake’s shores and more than a foot possible in the valleys on the Sierra’s eastern front, including Reno, the National Weather Service said.
Winds are expected to gust in excess of 115 mph over Sierra ridge tops, and 70 mph at lower elevations, it said.
The weather service in Reno said in its updated forecast as evening approached on Thursday that it has seen no new scenarios to suggest a weakening of the storm: “Snow amounts have increased, if that is even possible.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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San Diego County officials passed a law Tuesday night that will delay and reduce property tax bills for some flood victims. The county Board of Supervisors approved the law 4-0 to allow property owners with more than $10,000 worth of damage from the January storms to get properties reassessed and delay property tax bills. Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer was absent for the vote.
Under the change, a property owner — residential or commercial — must apply for the deferral with the county Assessor’s Office by April 10. Property owners will still have to pay their bills eventually, but now payments can be delayed until repairs are made.
San Diego County Assessor Jordan Marks said the thinking behind the law is to give victims time to focus on paying for repairs, not upcoming tax bills. Marks toured many of the destroyed properties and said the extent of the damage made it clear to his office that additional relief was needed.
“You could see the damage, smell the mold and feel it on your feet when you walked in their house,” he said. “It was terrible.”
Marks said many of the victims he met with did not have flood insurance, uncommon in California and especially for properties not in flood zones, and would be paying for repairs, hotel stays and other costs themselves.
The Assessor’s Office could already offer property tax reductions based on damages, called “calamity” laws. Yet it needed the supervisors to pass the deferred payment separately. Tax deferrals for natural disasters are already part of California law, but requires governments to vote to adopt them.
Marks said 300 to 500 property owners will eventually apply for relief, but the hard part will be getting the word out before the deadline in April. He said his office plans visits throughout the county in March.
The fastest way for a flood victim to get relief would be to get a contractor to estimate damages and include that estimate in the application. Commercial property owners can also apply for the deferral if 20 percent of the value of the property was lost.
This law is different than the delay to June 17 to file individual and business tax returns announced Tuesday by the Internal Revenue Service. That applies to everyone in San Diego County, not just flood victims. The county’s deferral ordinance also applies to new homeowners who may have recently purchased a home that was damaged in the floods. The law looks to reduce supplemental tax bills often included in mortgage payments of new owners.
San Diego County Supervisors Nora Vargas and Monica Montgomery Steppe sponsored the tax deferral ordinance. The text of the bill linked it to the strategic plan of the county to create policies to reduce and eliminate poverty, promote housing and promote economic sustainability for all residents.
“The implementation of a resource to assist residents, in particular new homeowners,” it read, “whose properties have been damaged or destroyed in the recent severe winter storm disasters is part of creating a safety net for San Diego’s current and future residents and will lead to an immediate financial benefit to help those affected rebuild.”
Flood victims can find applications for relief at the assessor’s website at SDARCC.gov. Additionally, the office is taking questions on its helpline, (619) 236-3771, or by email, arcchelp@sdcounty.ca.gov.
(Phillip Molnar, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Mexico’s National Disaster Prevention Center said Wednesday the Popocatépetl volcano, just 50 miles from the country’s capital, erupted 13 times in the past day and urged people to not try to climb it due to debris shooting out of the crater.
Volcanic ash from the Popocatépetl disrupted flights out of Mexico City’s largest airport on Tuesday and caused another airport even closer to the volcano to temporarily suspend activity.
Volcanic ashes is especially dangerous for aviation, not only because it reduces visibility but because it can act as an abrasive, damaging an aircraft’s wings and fuselage.
NB: The article omits a nearly invisible but potentially catastrophic threat to jet engines. Volcanic ash is glass-like. Getting into hot jet engines, it can melt and attach to engine parts, thereby clogging the engine. Often, the haze from volcanic ash/smoke cannot be distinguished from weather-caused haze. Near-crash incidents in the last few decades therefore led to a satellite-based monitoring systems to warn pilots to avoid areas of 'hazy' volcanic clouds.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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CANADIAN, TX - A cluster of wildfires scorched the Texas Panhandle on Wednesday, including a blaze that grew into one of the largest in state history, as flames moved with alarming speed and blackened the landscape across a vast stretch of small towns and cattle ranches.
An 83-year-old grandmother from the tiny town of Stinnett was the lone confirmed fatality. However, authorities have yet to make a thorough search for victims and have warned the damage to some communities is extensive.
Known as the Smokehouse Creek fire, the largest blaze expanded to more than 1,300 square miles [832,000 acres] and jumped into parts of neighboring Oklahoma. It is now larger than the state of Rhode Island, and the Texas A&M Forest Service said the flames were only about 3 percent contained.
The largest fire recorded in state history was the 2006 East Amarillo Complex fire, which burned about 1,400 square miles [896,000 acres] and resulted in 13 deaths.
“I believe the fire will grow before it gets fully contained,” Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said Wednesday.
Walls of flames were pushed by powerful winds while huge plumes of smoke billowed hundreds of feet in the air across the sparsely populated region. The smoke delayed aerial surveillance of the damage in some areas.
Authorities said at least 80 homes had burned in the small towns of Canadian and Fritch.
Residents are probably not “prepared for what they’re going to see if they pull into town,” Hutchinson County Emergency Management spokesperson Deidra Thomas said in a social media livestream. She compared the damage to a tornado.
Authorities have not said what ignited the fires, but strong winds, dry grass and unseasonably warm temperatures fed the blazes. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a disaster declaration for 60 counties.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Severe storms that appear to have spawned a rare February tornado outbreak sent sleeping Midwesterners scrambling for safety and left a trail of damage and power outages across four Great Lakes states, including the Chicago suburbs, ending a spell of summer-like, sometimes record, temperatures.
Nearly two dozen confirmed or suspected tornadoes in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio littered roads with fallen trees and branches, shredded homes and barns, and scattered debris across city and countryside alike. No injuries were reported.
In Michigan’s Grand Blanc Township, near Flint, a confirmed tornado — only the second on record for February in that part of the state — damaged subdivisions, uprooted trees and broke gas lines in Wednesday’s wee hours. At least six storms in Ohio were confirmed as [having spawned] tornadoes.
At one point, more than 50,000 customers in Ohio and Michigan lacked power Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.us.
The National Weather Service’s Chicago office reported that at least 11 confirmed tornadoes touched down in Illinois, including 10 near Chicago.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Construction began Monday on a barrier wall below a San Clemente landslide that has stopped passenger train traffic between San Diego and Orange counties for more than a month. “The soil on the hillside continues to move between 1 to 2 inches and up to 12 inches in places daily,” said Scott Johnson, communications director for Metrolink.
Passenger trains have been suspended since Jan. 24, when the slide pushed debris and parts of a San Clemente Beach Trail pedestrian bridge onto the railroad right-of-way near Mariposa Point. Freight trains have been allowed through the area below the slide at times, only at slow speeds and at night, but have been stopped again since soil movement accelerated last week.
“The hillside and project is evaluated daily and once the project team deems the right-of-way safe, freight movement will resume,” Johnson said. “That could happen yet this week.”
Also called a catchment wall, the barrier will be 160 feet long, standing between 10 feet to 15 feet above ground, and supported by steel beams sunk 30 feet deep, he said. The steel beams will be encased in concrete and large wood planks will be installed between the beams.
Two large drilling rigs were in place Monday morning to begin drilling in the afternoon and subsequently place the steel beams that will serve as the foundation for the wall, Johnson said.
The Orange County Transportation Authority, which owns the railroad right-of-way, recently received a $7.2 million allocation from the California Transportation Commission to pay for the wall and other work to stabilize the slide. The commission previously allocated $2.2 million for cleanup and pre-construction work.
Metrolink, which works with OCTA to maintain the tracks, approved a contract with Condon-Johnson and Associates to design and build the wall. Construction is expected to take about one month.
Completion of the wall is intended to allow regular passenger and freight service to resume.
A similar wall was built last year along the tracks about a half-mile to the south below a slide at the city’s Casa Romantica. Repairs underway there include grading and building hillside retaining walls.
North County Transit District continues to run Coaster commuter trains on their normal schedule between downtown San Diego and Oceanside. Metrolink trains run as far south as the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo station on weekdays and San Juan Capistrano on weekends.
(Phil Diehl, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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CANADIAN, TX - A rapidly widening Texas wildfire more than doubled in size Tuesday and prompted evacuation orders in small towns as strong winds, dry grass and unseasonably warm temperatures fueled the blaze in the state’s rural Panhandle.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for 60 counties as the largest fire burned nearly 400 square miles [256,000 acres], according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. That is more than twice its size since the fire sparked Monday. Authorities have not said what might have caused the blaze, which tore through sparsely populated counties surrounded by rolling plains.
“Texans are urged to limit activities that could create sparks and take precautions to keep their loved ones safe,” Abbott said.
The largest blaze, known as the Smokehouse Creek Fire, closed highways and remained 0 percent contained as of Tuesday afternoon, according to the Forest Service.
The main facility that assembles and disassembles America’s nuclear arsenal shut down its operations Tuesday night as fires raged out of control near its facility. Pantex, 30 miles east of Amarillo, issued a statement online saying it had paused operations until further notice.
The National Weather Service issued red flag warnings and fire danger alerts for several other states through the midsection of the country, as high winds combined with warm temperatures, low humidity and dry winter vegetation to make conditions ripe for wildfires.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Peru declared a health emergency in most of its provinces Monday due to a growing number of dengue cases that are occurring at a time of higher-than-usual temperatures caused by the El Niño weather pattern.
According to the nation’s health ministry, the number of dengue cases registered during the first seven weeks of this year is twice as high as during the same period in 2023 — with more than 31,000 cases recorded.
The health emergency will enable the nation’s government to transfer funds faster to the affected regions and also transport doctors and nurses. It will cover 20 of the country’s 24 provinces, including regions that surround the capital city of Lima.
A dengue epidemic last year put Peru’s public health system under strain as thousands sought care in emergency rooms.
The disease is spread by Aedys egypti, a mosquito that reproduces in hot and humid conditions.
Although most dengue cases present light symptoms, the disease can cause severe headaches, fevers and muscle pains.
Last year, a dengue epidemic in Peru killed 18 people, while in the first two months of this year 32 Peruvians have died from the virus.
In December, the World Health Organization said Peru’s 2023 dengue epidemic was linked to rains and hot temperatures that helped mosquito populations to grow, especially in the north of the country.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Astronomers have found three previously unknown moons in our solar system — two additional moons circling Neptune and one around Uranus.
The distant tiny moons were spotted using powerful land-based telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, and announced Friday by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.
The latest tally puts Neptune at 16 known moons and Uranus at 28.
One of Neptune’s new moons has the longest known orbital journey yet. It takes around 27 years for the small outer moon to complete one lap around Neptune, the vast icy planet farthest from the sun, said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington who helped make the discovery.
The new moon orbiting Uranus, with an estimated diameter of just 5 miles, is likely the smallest of the planet’s moons. “We suspect that there may be many more smaller moons” yet to be discovered, he said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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At least eight people died in Rio de Janeiro state due to landslides and floods caused by heavy rains Thursday, Brazilian authorities said. A 6-year-old was listed as missing in the countryside city of Mendes.
More than 100 people were left homeless across the state, according to mayors of different cities.
The state government warned that there was still a high possibility of more floods and landslides in 10 cities, including in Rio de Janeiro city.
Local media reported several cases of desperate residents working as improvised rescue teams in an attempt to save lives. Some hard-hit area had not yet been reached by firefighters and police.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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LOS ANGELES, CA - Former Hurricane Hilary was actually no longer a tropical storm but essentially had the same impact when its destructive remnants entered California last August, according to a new National Hurricane Center report.
Damage from Hilary was estimated at $900 million in the United States. Three deaths were directly related to the storm, including two in Mexico and one in California when a woman was washed away in her home.
Hurricane Hilary moved north off Mexico’s Pacific coast and weakened to a tropical storm before making landfall in northern Baja California, where its center became less defined as it encountered mountainous terrain and other atmospheric conditions, the report said.
“As a result, the storm lost tropical characteristics and degenerated to a post-tropical cyclone over northern Baja California,” the new analysis said.
At the same time, an area of low pressure to the northwest near the coast of Southern California quickly absorbed remnants of Hilary and the new system continued on over the southwestern U.S., according to the report. Forecasters noted at the time that Hilary was becoming diffuse and difficult to track, and it was unclear if the low pressure area was Hilary or a new system.
The new conclusion came from a routine post-cyclone examination of real-time data and other data that was not immediately available, the report said. “Ultimately, these post-analysis changes do not diminish the significant wind impacts that Hilary and its remnants brought to the southwestern United States,” the report said. Significant damage included flooded neighborhoods and destruction of roads.
(Ian James, LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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Concerns that California might remain in a “snow drought” this winter have eased after a series of storms this month blanketed the Sierra Nevada with a near-average amount of snow for this time of year. The snowpack across the mountain range now measures 86 percent of normal for the date, according to state data, up from 28 percent of normal at the start of the year.
The latest storms have also brought enough rain to push the state’s total precipitation to slightly above average for this time of year. And California’s major reservoirs, which were filled spectacularly by last year’s historic wet winter, are still at 118 percent of their average levels.
The wet weather and improved snowpack mean that California appears headed for a less-extreme water year after whipsawing from three years of severe drought to one of the wettest years on record.
“Overall, I’m not worried about drought for the rest of this year,” said Jay Lund, an emeritus professor and vice director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences.
“We have a fairly good snowpack right now — not great, but it’s not unusually dry,” Lund said. “And even if it were to get dry, we’re coming into it with a full set of reservoirs.”
Shasta Lake, the state’s largest reservoir, is now 87 percent full, while Lake Oroville stands at 82 percent of capacity. The high reservoir levels will translate into more water availability for cities and agriculture this year.
The state Department of Water Resources on Wednesday increased its forecast allocation of supplies from the State Water Project to 15 percent of full allotments, up from an initial 10 percent allocation in December. State officials said they will continue to reassess supplies as more storms come, and the allocation could be readjusted in mid-March.
The recent storms have come during relatively warm conditions in parts of the state, and precipitation in the region that feeds the State Water Project has remained below average.
DWR Director Karla Nemeth said the conditions this winter are a reminder of the “shift to bigger, flashier storms and the need to continue increasing the state’s ability to capture and store stormwater when it comes as rain instead of snow.”
The federal Bureau of Reclamation also announced initial allocations for the Central Valley Project, including 75 percent of the contractual allotments for agricultural users north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, and 15 percent of allotments for irrigators south of the delta.
“Precipitation totals this water year started off slowly,” said Karl Stock, regional director for the Bureau of Reclamation. “Since that time, several storms have boosted the Sierra Nevada snowpack, bringing us to near normal conditions for Northern California.”
Forecasts show that more storms building over the Pacific Ocean could bring more wet weather to California in the coming weeks and give the snowpack an additional boost.
“This is one of the unusual average years,” Lund said.
California has traditionally relied on the Sierra snowpack for about 30 percent of the state’s water supplies on average.
This year, the network of snow sensors across the Sierra Nevada show larger accumulations in the northern portion of the mountain range, where the snowpack measures exactly 100 percent of average for this time of year. Other areas are further below average, measuring 84 percent of normal in the central Sierra and 79 percent in the southern Sierra.
“We’ve had more snow accumulation in the north, where we’ve had freezing elevations that get it down around 5,000 feet,” said Michael Anderson, the state climatologist. But in the central and southern Sierra, he said, the recent storms have not been “accumulating snow at the pace we would normally expect this time of year.”
Across the entire Sierra Nevada, the snowpack now stands at 69 percent of average for the end of the season on April 1. The wet season isn’t over, and how close the state comes to an average snowpack will depend on conditions over the next five weeks.
“We’ve had a lot of improvement from January, when things were really dry. We just haven’t caught up all the way,” Anderson said.
As for the state’s overall water situation, Anderson said the year is shaping up to be pretty good.
“I don’t see any extremes on the dry side,” he said.
“We’ve seen the wet extremes episodically and they’ve certainly been impactful, particularly in Southern California,” Anderson said. “The challenge is, it’s all come in these great big blasts.”
The atmospheric rivers this month brought heavy rainfall in Southern California, triggering flooding and debris flows that damaged some homes and forced residents to evacuate.
“It is noteworthy how different Southern California’s situation is from the rest of the state. We are now at roughly 125 percent of what we normally get in the whole water year. And the wet season isn’t over yet,” said Alex Hall, a UCLA climate scientist.
“It’s another very wet year in Southern California. This is a classic El Niño pattern — where Southern California has an exceptionally wet year,” Hall said.
The wet year has also underscored the importance of capturing water locally for climate resilience, Hall said. “If Southern California were only capturing more of that stormwater, we could be buffering what is shaping up to be a mediocre water year in the rest of the state.” Rising temperatures driven by human-caused climate change have led to declines in the average snowpack in the western United States in recent decades. Research has shown that average snow lines have been creeping higher with warming temperatures as more precipitation falls as rain instead of snow.
UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said the snow drought conditions in the Sierra Nevada have eased this year as “the gap between the total precipitation and the snowpack has narrowed.”
But he said the state’s shrinking snowpack remains a long-term problem, and he noted that this winter parts of the Pacific Northwest still have snowpack that remains far below average for this time of year. “There has been a sustained long-term trend towards less snow, and snow falling in higher elevations, and snow melting earlier in the season,” Swain said. “We still could see that snow melting earlier in the season problem this year, if it ends up being warm in the spring and summer, which looks like it probably will be.”
In the short term, Swain said the active weather pattern looks likely to continue to bring more snow to California in the coming weeks. “We’ll probably be quite close to the average snowpack,” Swain said. “Overall, this looks like it’s going to be a good water year.”
The Rocky Mountains snowpack that feeds the Colorado River — another major water source for Southern California — also measures slightly above the median level for this time of year.
Lund said while the moderate conditions are welcome, California’s water management officials and policymakers need to be looking ahead to the next round of drought or flooding. He said vital efforts that should continue at full speed include ongoing steps to curb over-pumping of groundwater, flood management preparations and measures to protect struggling river ecosystems.
“We have serious water problems in California,” Lund said. “Because policymakers forget about floods and drought so quickly after they are over, you worry about complacency.”
Lund said the state’s water decision-makers need to be “somewhere between complacency and panic,” like a driver looking ahead on the road for looming problems.
“The last few years, and this year, just reinforced the normal lesson of California hydrology,” he said. “Worry about floods and droughts at the same time.”
(Ian James, LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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LA PARAGUA, Venezuela - he collapse of an illegally operated open-pit gold mine in central Venezuela killed at least 14 people and injured several more, state authorities said Wednesday, as some other officials reported an undetermined number of people could be trapped.
Bolivar state Gov. Angel Marcano told local reporters that 14 bodies had been removed so far and authorities knew of at least 11 people injured. “We continue to carry out rescue work,” he said, with relatives demanding swift rescue efforts.
The incident took place in the Angostura municipality Tuesday, when a wall collapsed at a mine known as Bulla Loca, which can only be reached by an hours-long boat ride.
Angostura Mayor Yorgi Arciniega said late Tuesday that he planned to take “some 30 caskets” to a community near the mine, indicating that officials feared the death toll could rise into the dozens.
Relatives of the miners gathered in La Paragua, the closest community to the mine, to ask the government to send aircraft to the remote location to rescue the injured and recover bodies.
Miner Carlos Marcano, 71, survived the collapse and arrived at a triage medical tent in La Paragua on Wednesday. “One would not want a colleague, a human being, to die like that,” he said. “Some of us made it. There are a few wounded, but there are still a number of dead who have not been rescued and are buried there.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The saturated, slide-prone coastal bluffs in San Diego County are expected get 1 to 1.5 inches of rain by early today from the sixth major Pacific storm to hit the region since November.
The storm moved ashore Tuesday with light to moderate rain that was expected to become heavy early this morning, the National Weather Service said.
“This is a threat to really steep coastal slopes,” said Alex Tardy, a National Weather Service forecaster. “They’ve been getting hit with big waves and strong winds. The waves were in the 8- to 12-foot range in the county (Tuesday).”
Large cracks have appeared in the cliffs immediately south of the Torrey Pines Gliderport in La Jolla, and the soil has been shifting on the switchback trail at Beacons, a surf break in Encinitas.
Just after 6 p.m., rail authorities announced that overnight freight trips to San Diego would halt due to newly detected slope movement at Mariposa Point in San Clemente. “Movement of the slope accelerated from about 1 to 2 inches before the rain to 10 to 12 inches,” transit agencies said in a joint statement.
A project team made up of Orange County Transit Authority and Metrolink representatives said they decided to halt overnight trips “out of an abundance of caution,” but had detected no track instability at the base of the private slope, which workers spent the day protecting with plastic tarps.
Much of the saturated state faced the threat of flooding Tuesday as the latest storm blew through, but managed to escape the severity of damage from mudslides, wind and rain spawned by an atmospheric river only weeks ago.
While the rainfall was focused on Southern California, thunderstorms and strong winds were reported across wide swaths of the state, and mountain snow fell in the north. Some flood watches and warnings remained in effect into today.
Heavy downpours flooded streets and sidewalks in San Francisco, and mudslides closed roads to the north and south of the city.
The heaviest rain came through the Los Angeles area Tuesday, with an additional 1 to 2 inches on top of the 2 to 5 inches that fell in recent days, said Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in Maryland. “It’s heavy but not quite as heavy as previously,” he said. “But it’s been a wet month across Southern California. The ground is saturated, so any additional rain can bring the chance of flash flooding.”
The Los Angeles area has received around 10 inches of rain so far this month, with parts of the coastline and mountain areas farther north receiving more than 1 foot of precipitation, Oravec said.
Tuesday’s rains forced Disneyland to shorten its hours while nearby Knott’s Berry Farm closed outright.
A flood-prone stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway was closed south of Los Angeles, and evacuation warnings were issued to the west due to possible mudslides. The National Weather Service also warned any brave souls venturing to the shoreline to stay far back from the crashing ocean waves.
Residents of Rancho Palos Verdes, where a slow-moving landslide complex has been shifting for decades, are bracing for the aftermath of the storm. Although the weather service reported that only about 2 inches of rain fell in the area during this storm, record-setting rainfall over the past several months has saturated the ground, causing the landslide area to shift more rapidly, according to City Manager Ara Mihranian.
“In some areas, (the land) is moving up to 10 feet a year,” he said. “That’s significant movement, and we’re seeing the damage that’s being sustained throughout the community. We have approximately 400 homes that are threatened by this landslide.” Two homes have already been red-tagged, and other residents have reported sinkholes, cracks in their walls and doorways that have split.
In Santa Barbara, the airport reopened Tuesday, a day after heavy rains flooded the runways, according to a statement on its website. Santa Barbara County sheriff’s officials said Tuesday that an 86-year-old man was found dead in a creek a day after he was reported missing when his truck was stuck in rising waters near Goleta.
Ethan Ragsdale, a spokesperson for the Santa Barbara Police Department, implored residents to stay away from creeks and other normally tame water bodies even after the rains subside.
“They’re absolutely dangerous,” he said. Mountain areas of Santa Barbara County received around 11 inches of rain over three days, the weather service reported.
The wet, wintry weather hit the state only weeks after a powerful atmospheric river parked itself over Southern California, turning roads into rivers, causing hundreds of landslides and killing at least nine people.
This week’s storm already has led to several rescues on swollen rivers and creeks on Monday. Crews helped three people out of the rising Salinas River in Paso Robles while a camper trapped in a tree was rescued along a creek in El Dorado Hills, northeast of Sacramento.
Federal authorities have also approved disaster assistance for residents of San Diego County.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said that assistance from the disaster declaration will help with recovery efforts following severe storms that hit the region in late January, damaging more than 800 homes and leading to at least three deaths.
The aid can include grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-interest loans to cover uninsured property losses and other programs for individuals and business owners, the agency said.
The San Diego area could receive another big storm late Sunday or Monday, said Tardy of the National Weather Service. A system will develop in the North Pacific later this week and, like its predecessors, grab additional moisture from the subtropics.
(U-T STAFF AND NEWS SERVICES; Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; ASSOCIATED PRESS; LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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A sluggish storm following an uncertain path is expected to reach San Diego County today and drop 0.6 to 1.3 inches of rain from the coast to the inland valleys, and possibly 1 inch of snow on mountain peaks, the National Weather Service said.
The system was originally expected to move ashore Monday. But the storm has slowed a bit and isn’t likely to deliver significant rain before dawn today. It appears that the heaviest rain will fall in North County.
Forecasters say the system will draw extra moisture from the subtropics, but not as deeply as the storms that have drenched the county since late January. It’s possible that thunderstorms will break out, intensifying rainfall before the system clears to the east Wednesday.
A flash flood watch will be in effect for the entire county until 10 a.m. Wednesday.
San Diego’s daytime highs will reach 63 today and 64 Wednesday. The seasonal high is 66. The city’s average monthly temperature, so far, is 56.2 degrees, 2.6 degrees below average.
A high surf advisory will be in effect through 10 p.m. today. Waves are expected to reach 6 to 9 feet at west-facing beaches, with occasional sets to 10 to 12 feet.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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President Joe Biden on Monday approved California’s request for a major disaster declaration, ordering that federal aid go toward helping San Diego County residents recover after last month’s historic storm.
The White House’s declaration unlocks federal funds that will be used for grants to provide temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses, and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover, officials said.
Torrential rains Jan. 22 killed three people and damaged or destroyed more than 800 homes across San Diego County, according to state officials.
“President Biden continues to stand with California whenever disaster strikes,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a news release Monday.
After the storm, city officials assessed damage to public infrastructure and urged residents to fill out an online survey to help estimate the total amount of damage to their personal property.
Several residents most deeply affected by the flooding — particularly in Southcrest and Mountain View — told the Union-Tribune they did not have flood insurance, or had policies that covered the bare minimum.
Mayor Todd Gloria said local leaders used the damage assessments to lobby state and federal officials for a FEMA major disaster declaration.
“The city has been on the ground in the impacted neighborhoods, assessing damage and providing all the resources we can to get these communities on the path to recovery,” Gloria said in a statement. “Now, with this designation, we can focus on the long-term rebuilding efforts from this natural disaster.”
The heavy rains, rising mud and fast-moving floods caused tens of millions of dollars in damage to San Diego County residents and public facilities.
SOUL Academy, a school under the San Diego County Office of Education, has been closed for weeks due to flood damage, district officials said. An elementary school in Coronado Unified flooded, and Coronado Middle, Coronado High and the early Childhood Development Center had a gas leak during the flood.
The La-Mesa-Spring Valley district alone reported sustaining $10 million to $15 million in costs during the storm, from having to install new flooring to asbestos abatement to replacing much of the furniture and supplies on school campuses.
City officials said previously that the federal government will consider a disaster declaration if countywide costs to public facilities reach $15.1 million and statewide losses reach $72.7 million.
Before Biden’s announcement, multiple online fundraisers and community organizations began collecting money for individuals. Some residents also filed legal claims against the city.
The Union-Tribune reported last month that the city has a decades-long record of failing to maintain its flood-control channels and had not generated nearly enough revenue to cover the $2 billion needed for the infrastructure improvements.
Many of those victims continue to be displaced, even though city and county officials have worked to provide emergency housing.
The city plans to work with FEMA and the California Office of Emergency Services to set up a field office and disaster recovery centers in the most impacted communities in the coming weeks, Gloria said.
Officials asked residents and business owners who sustained losses in designated areas to begin applying for assistance by visiting disasterassistance.gov, calling 800-621-3362 or by using the FEMA mobile app.
(Caleb Lunetta, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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A landslide triggered by heavy rain and snowfall buried more than two dozen houses in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least five people and leaving at least 25 others missing, a provincial official said Monday.
The landslide Sunday night destroyed or damaged more than two dozen houses in Noorgram district, according to Samiulhaq Haqbayan, the Taliban-appointed director of information and culture in Nuristan province.
Rescuers have recovered five bodies and were searching for at least 25 others trapped under the destroyed houses.
The heavy rains and snowfall were continuing, Haqbayan added.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Another wet winter storm swamped California with heavy rainfall on Monday, flooding the runways at the Santa Barbara regional airport and leading to several rescues on swollen rivers and creeks.
The Santa Barbara airport closed Monday after as much as 10 inches of rain had fallen in the area by noon.
“Commercial flights have been canceled, general aviation operations are paused, and the terminal is closed,” airport officials said in a post on social media.
The National Weather Service had warned that the Central Coast was at risk of “significant flooding,” with up to 5 inches of rain predicted for many areas and isolated rain totals of 10 inches possible in the Santa Lucia and Santa Ynez mountain ranges as the storm headed south.
The storm is expected to move through quicker than the devastating atmospheric river that parked itself over the region earlier this month, turning roads into rivers, causing hundreds of landslides and killing at least nine people.
Moderate showers were reported Monday afternoon but more rain was expected to impact the state through the night and into today, forecasters said.
The storm had already led to a number a rescues, including in San Luis Obispo County, where crews helped three people out of the rising Salinas River in Paso Robles. Firefighters were getting ready to train on swift-water rescues when they received word that someone was stranded on an island in the river, Paso Robles Fire and Emergency Services Battalion Chief Scott Hallett told KSBY-TV.
Farther to the north, firefighters rescued two people from the top of their vehicle, which had stalled in flood waters in Sloughhouse, a community about 20 miles southeast of Sacramento.
Hours earlier, a man was rescued along a creek northeast of Sacramento. The man, who had been camping, was trapped in a tree as floodwaters rose, said El Dorado Hills Deputy Fire Chief Dave Brady.
Forecasters said the storm would be strong enough to cause problems including flash flooding and power outages.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The latest in a series of wet winter storms blew ashore in Northern California on Sunday, with forecasters warning of possible flooding, hail, strong winds and even brief tornadoes as the system moves south over the next few days.
Gusts topped 30 mph in Oakland and San Jose as a mild cold front late Saturday gave way to a more powerful storm that will gain strength into today, said meteorologist Brayden Murdock with the National Weather Service office in San Francisco.
“The winds are here and getting stronger, and the rains will follow quickly,” he said Sunday afternoon.
The Central Coast is at risk of “significant flooding,” with up to 5 inches of rain predicted for many areas, according to the weather service. Isolated rain totals of 10 inches are possible in the Santa Lucia and Santa Ynez mountain ranges as the storm heads toward Los Angeles.
Thunderstorms in valleys around the state capital today could bring “brief tornadoes, large amounts of small hail, heavy rain, lightning, and gusty winds,” the weather service office in Sacramento warned on X, formerly Twitter.
The latest storm is expected to move through quicker than the devastating atmospheric river that parked itself over Southern California earlier this month, turning roads into rivers, causing hundreds of landslides and killing at least nine people.
“It’s not the ideal setup for an atmospheric river, but it does have some of the characteristics,” including a band of subtropical moisture bringing up the rear of the storm, Murdock said. “Otherwise it’s just a cold front.”
But it’s a cold front strong enough to cause problems including flash flooding and power outages, forecasters said. Flood watches and warnings were issued in coastal and mountain areas up and down the state.
Rainfall will be widespread even in the mountains, but several feet of snow is possible at elevations above about 6,800 feet across the Sierra Nevada, the weather service said. Motorists are urged to avoid mountain routes.
The weather service office in Reno, Nev., was encouraging drivers to reschedule Sierra travel until later in the week. The office issued a backcountry avalanche watch for the greater Lake Tahoe area and the eastern Sierra in Inyo and Mono counties.
The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services activated its operations center and positioned personnel and equipment in areas most at risk.
The storm is expected to drop from 0.25 inches to 1 inch of rain across the San Diego region starting late today.
The heaviest precipitation will fall in North County, which is recovering from the recent series of storms that dropped 4 to 8 inches of rain in some communities.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS; Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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San Diego residents were startled when they received a phone alert indicating a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. However, it was soon revealed to be a false alarm, sent inadvertently during a testing phase of the ShakeReadySD system. Initially, residents received an alert stating a 6.3 magnitude quake had struck near Chula Vista, urging them to take cover. However, many reported not feeling any seismic activity.
Social media platforms quickly filled with reactions from confused residents.
"Just got a massive earthquake alert for San Diego but haven’t felt a thing...? What?!?" one person wrote on X.
Another wrote, "Anyone in SD feel an earthquake? My earthquake warning alarm just went off. Last time it did this I felt it about 10 seconds after the alarm."
A third person asked, "Did any of you in San Diego feel this earthquake? I’m in Little Italy right now and didn’t feel anything. Neither did my wife who is working from home today."
Shortly after, another message clarified the situation, stating, "ShakeReadySD Testing Error A testing error with the ShakeReadySD Alert system caused an alert of an incoming earthquake to go out to all users of the ShakeReadySD system. No action is required. We apologize for the error."
Despite the clarification, some residents criticized the handling of the situation.
"Testing error??!! The San Diego region was sent scrambling for cover, and all we get is a “my bad” response? If/when a real earthquake alert goes out, people may not react and be harmed due to this false alarm," one person wrote.
Another wrote, "False alarm on the San Diego earthquake alert, unbelievable."
(TIMES NOW)
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It will be mostly sunny across San Diego County this week — until Sunday, when a potentially significant new Pacific storm will move in, dropping between 0.75 and 1.25 inches of rain from the coast to inland foothills and valleys, the National Weather Service said.
The system is expected to swirl to life in the North Pacific and could draw moisture from the subtropics, the same connection that supercharged the series of storms that have pounded the county since Jan. 22.
Forecasters said it is still too early to tell what path the next system will take. Early models show the storm hitting central California first, then sliding south. Locally, the heaviest rain is expected to fall in northern San Diego County, areas of which received from 4 inches to nearly 9 inches of precipitation last week.
The storm might not be cold enough to produce snow in the San Diego County mountains. But the system could be very unstable, possibly resulting in brief thunderstorms like the one that also pelted South County with hail last week.
Since the rainy season began on Oct. 1, San Diego International Airport has recorded 8.81 inches of precipitation, which is 3.11 inches above average. There’s a small possibility that the next system could push the total to 9.79 inches, which is what the airport averages during an entire rainy season.
The calm weather expected during the next few days is “a good time to shift flowers like ranunculus from indoor areas to outside gardens,” said Jim Horacek, manager of the Armstrong Garden Centers location in Del Mar.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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HONOLULU, HI - The death toll from the wildfire that destroyed the historic Hawaii town of Lahaina in August rose to 101 Tuesday after Maui police confirmed the identity of one new victim, a 76-year-old man.
As of last month, Paul Kasprzycki of Lahaina was one of three people still missing from the Aug. 8 blaze.
Maui police didn’t explain in a news release where his remains were found or how he was identified except to say the discovery was the work of the “cold case detail.”
Maui police said last week that they had formed the island’s first cold case unit to try to find the remains of the three people who were still missing in the fire. They did not return a call for comment Tuesday.
The victims of the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century ranged in age from 7 to 97, but more than two-thirds were in their 60s or older, according to Maui police’s list of known victims.
An after-action report released by Maui police earlier this month said 42 people were recovered from inside buildings, 39 outdoors and 15 inside vehicles. One person was found in the ocean.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A new report released Tuesday and written by researchers at San Diego State University calls the Tijuana River a “public health crisis,” citing broad evidence of unhealthy conditions from untreated sewage to industrial waste.
Authors synthesized multiple studies that have documented pollution over the years, leading with a recent paper that documented that the threat also extends to oceangoing mammals. Bottle nose dolphins stranded in San Diego died from infection by a bacteria “generally transmitted through contact with feces or urine in contaminated water, food or soil.”
The document is not peer-reviewed research, but rather a white paper designed to help make the argument that more should be done to address long-standing environmental concerns that are exacerbated every time it rains.
Use of the words “public health crisis” conjure images of health effects on a broad scale. However, the county public health department and its leader, Dr. Wilma Wooten, have said that while they are studying reports of increased gastrointestinal illness from a South Bay medical provider, recent rains have not so far produced a broad surge of illness detectable in emergency departments. Testing has long confirmed that the river’s water is toxic, contributing to constant beach closures that severely impact the beach economy throughout the South Bay.
SDSU environmental health professor Paula Stigler Granados and others who spoke during a news conference on the report Tuesday morning said that calling the situation in and around the Tijuana River a public health crisis refers to the cumulative risk of health problems caused by the presence of pollutants rather than the observation of increases in observed illness.
“For this report, we did not look at the health data; that is not what we were asked to do,” Stigler Granados said. “We are aggregating the current research that’s out there on what our area of expertise is, which is in environmental health risk exposures.
“Criteria for calling this a public health crisis really sets upon this idea that there is an exposure risk because of the vast amount of contamination that is occurring; it is elevating the risk and that the potential for those exposures is highly elevated because (of) just the sheer amounts of contamination.”
Rep. Scott Peters called the distinction academic. Noting that there have been many anecdotal reports of vomiting and diarrhea from those who live and work closest to the river, the congressman said now is not the time to mince words.
“We don’t have the luxury to wait around ... we have to treat it like it is a crisis,” Peters said. “It’s hard to find anyplace else in the country where this kind of thing is happening, so for my purposes, it is a crisis.”
Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre echoed that sentiment, recounting the calls she has received from citizens who have experienced symptoms after heavy rains, especially following tropical storm Hilary last year.
“We had residents approach us and tell us, ‘I was hospitalized for four days,’ right? Aguirre said. “I think that this represents, maybe, an opportunity to close that gap with the methodology that is being used to declare it or not declare it a public health crisis.”
Funded by San Diego’s Conrad Prebys Foundation, the paper is clearly constructed to make a case not just in San Diego County or Southern California, but even more so in Washington, where the region’s delegation of leaders are pressing for an additional appropriation of $310 million on top of the $350 million already allocated to repair and expand the federal wastewater treatment plant that has been overtaxed treating Tijuana River flows.
“We really need to get Congress to approve this money, so it’s important to gather evidence that really drives home the severity of this problem,” Peters said. “We know people are getting sick.
“We know Navy SEALs have had to cancel training sessions due to contaminated water; we’ve seen news reports showing rivers of raw sewage flowing into the Pacific Ocean.”
The white paper pulls together the many sources of information on the festering situation at the border, noting that a graduate student study analysis last year of river water at the border detected the presence of 392 organic chemical contaminants, 175 which “appeared in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencies Toxic Substance Control Act.” Other studies have shown the presence of drug-resistant bacteria and even pesticides such as DDT that are banned in the United States.
Contaminated air from the region, researchers found, could potentially “increase the health risks of local community members without any direct water contact,” a statement that references the potential aerosolization of polluted water in sea spray, a possibility documented by UC San Diego biochemist Kim Prather in 2023.
Researchers call for better monitoring of environmental contaminants and a deeper investigation of “nearby community exposures and health effects,” including investments “by Congress and federal and state agencies “ to “slow and prevent the ongoing and egregious contamination” and also to assess local environmental harm.
(Paul Sisson, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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A magnitude 4.8 earthquake occurred near El Centro in Imperial County early Monday, producing shaking across much of San Diego County, including in coastal cities, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The agency said the mainshock at 12:36 a.m. was followed six minutes later by a magnitude 4.5 aftershock and a series of smaller aftershocks, all of which originated west of the Salton Sea.
Nearly a dozen aftershocks in the 3.0-to-3.9 range had occurred through 3:30 p.m. Monday.
The epicenter of the mainshock was 11.7 miles deep, at a point roughly 113 miles east of San Diego. The temblor occurred on the Weinert fault, a branch of the San Jacinto fault system, one of the most active in Southern California.
“I don’t recall a swarm of aftershocks like this ever occurring on the Weinert,” said Tom Rockwell, a San Diego State University geologist who has studied that region for decades. “Is it a foreshock to something bigger? No one knows.”
The Weinert fault, located beneath agricultural land in the El Centro area, contributed to the 6.6 Superstition Hills earthquake on Nov. 23, 1987. That temblor was mostly caused by the larger San Jacinto system.
The fault runs through parts of Imperial, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. On Dec. 25, 1899, the San Jacinto produced a 6.7 quake.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Parts of the Northeast were preparing for a coastal storm that was expected to pack high winds and dump a foot or more of snow in some areas, leading to school closures, warnings against road travel and the possible disruption of flights.
The nation’s largest school system in New York City said it was switching to remote learning and closing its buildings today because of the impending storm.
Some of the highest snowfall totals were forecast for the northern suburbs of New York City and southwestern Connecticut, where 12 to 15 inches were possible, according to the National Weather Service. Wind gusts could hit 60 mph off the Massachusetts coast.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey told all nonessential executive branch employees to not report to work today. Boston schools were closing and a parking ban was in effect.
Similar closures and bans were put in place in other cities and towns. Emergency officials had equipment in place to help keep roads clear.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said the city’s homeless shelters would remain open.
Healey warned of downed power lines and coastal flooding, saying the heaviest snow would be from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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More than 125 million Americans will be exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution by the middle of the century, largely because of increased smoke from wildfires, according to estimates released Monday.
Yet there are few good ways to protect communities, experts said. The United States has gotten better at coping with other climate perils, like floods, hurricanes and even wildfires themselves. Smoke is different: It’s more challenging to anticipate, to get people to take seriously and to keep out of people’s homes.
“With wildfire smoke in particular, we are not going to adapt our way out of the problem,” said Brian G. Henning, director of the Institute for Climate, Water and the Environment at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. “It’s really hard to address.”
In the 1950s, U.S. air pollution began to steadily improve, largely because of increased regulation, according to the First Street Foundation, the research group that released the report. Then, starting around 2016, the trajectory reversed.
That shift can be seen in the Air Quality Index, which measures the concentration of tiny particles in the air, which can be absorbed through the lungs and into the bloodstream, as well as ozone, another harmful pollutant. For almost a decade, average air-quality readings have been getting worse.
Two main causes explain that shift, according to First Street, both tied to climate change. First, more extreme heat has increased the levels of ozone in the air. Second, and more consequential: An increase in heat and drought has made wildfires worse, causing more smoke to reach more of the United States.
That can bring severe health dangers.
Inhaling the tiny particles in wildfire smoke is associated with strokes, heart disease, respiratory disease, lung cancer and early death, according to Susan Anenberg, director of the Climate and Health Institute at George Washington University. “The higher the pollution level and the longer the duration of exposure,” she said, “the more risk there is.”
‘Staggering’ projections
That pollution level is expected to get significantly worse.
First Street projected changes in air pollution, based on models that predict extreme heat and wildfires. The group estimated that by 2054, more than 125 million Americans each year will be exposed to at least one day of “red” air quality, the level that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency describes as unhealthy. That’s a 50 percent jump over this year.
Eleven million Americans are expected to face at least one day that reaches purple on the index, which the EPA characterizes as “very unhealthy.” The highest risk level, maroon, is what the EPA calls “hazardous,” and according to First Street’s projections, almost 2 million Americans will be exposed to at least one such day by 2054.
“Parts of the country are set to see months’ worth of unhealthy air quality days,” said Jeremy R. Porter, head of climate implications at First Street and the report’s lead author. “That statistic is staggering, and is going to slowly make some parts of the country relatively unlivable.”
By 2054, New York City is projected to see eight days a year when the Air Quality Index is orange or worse, meaning the air is unhealthy for at least some sensitive groups. That’s up from six days this year.
Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, is projected to hit 54 days that are orange or worse, compared with 47 this year.
A different threat
The best way to address wildfire smoke, experts note, is to stop warming the planet, which would entail drastically reducing the amount of oil, coal and natural gas that humans burn. But that remains far from reach: While U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have dipped in recent decades, global emissions continue to rise.
The Biden administration is also trying to limit wildfires by reducing the amount of flammable vegetation on federal lands, through prescribed burns and other strategies. But those treatments are costly and tend to cover relatively small areas, limiting their effect.
That leaves state and local governments with one main option: to try to protect residents against the smoke that will increasingly reach their communities. But the barriers are enormous.
As last year’s wildfires in Canada showed, smoke can travel great distances with little warning. Unlike flooding, smoke’s movement through a community can’t easily be guessed by mapping the local topography, and it can’t be blocked or diverted.
That makes wildfire smoke more akin to extreme heat. But unlike heat waves, people can’t respond by moving their activities to dawn or evening hours. And people may not know when they’re being exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution.
“You can’t always see it,” said Paige Fischer, a professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability who is studying responses to extreme smoke. “You don’t really experience the advanced health impacts necessarily until much later.”
Not safe inside
Governments are working to improve their warning systems, for example by sending notifications to people’s phones. But those most at risk are often older or don’t speak English, according to Crystal Raymond, a climate adaptation specialist at the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group.
Even if people know the air is dangerous, their options are limited. The most common guidance is to take shelter in homes or other buildings. Yet not all structures provide protection.
“Unless you have central air, and central air with a good filter, there’s no reason to believe that the indoor air quality is significantly better than the outdoor air quality,” Henning said. Without a filtration device, he added, “the only thing that’s filtering that indoor air is your lungs.”
Lori Moore-Merrell, the U.S. fire administrator, is in charge of fire research and public education. In a statement, she said that local officials should give people without air filters at home, or those who are homeless, information about where they can find what she called “cleaner air shelters.”
Henning’s team is using an EPA grant to set up such a shelter, installing an expensive air-filtration system at a community center in Spokane. But his worry is that some people won’t recognize the danger they’re in, and will stay in homes that have become unsafe.
(Christopher Flavelle, NEW YORK TIMES)
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The death toll from a massive landslide that hit a gold-mining village in the southern Philippines has risen to 54 with 63 people still missing, authorities said Sunday.
The landslide hit the mountain village of Masara in Davao de Oro province on Tuesday night after weeks of torrential rains.
Davao de Oro’s provincial government said in a Facebook post that 54 bodies had been recovered. At least 32 residents survived with injuries but 63 remained missing, it said.
Among those missing were gold miners who had been waiting in two buses to be driven home when the landslide struck and buried them.
The search operation has been hampered by poor weather and fears of more landslides. More than 1,100 families have been moved to evacuation centers for their safety, officials said.
The area has been swamped by heavy rains in the weeks before the landslide struck.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The remnants of a slow-moving atmospheric river storm that pummeled California last week delivered the first notable snowfall of the season across eastern New Mexico, with the National Weather Service warning Sunday of snow-packed and icy roads as the system headed toward the Texas Panhandle and central Oklahoma.
A winter storm advisory was issued for eastern New Mexico, including the city of Roswell.
The National Weather Service in Albuquerque said temperatures were in the mid-30s, which is up to 25 degrees below normal.
Jennifer Shoemake, a meteorologist for the weather service in Albuquerque, said the storm system appeared to be headed next to the Texas Panhandle and central Oklahoma, where warnings were already in effect.
The National Weather Service forecast up to 8 inches of snow Sunday in the west Texas city of Lubbock, with 1.3 inches already on the ground in Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle.
The storms stem from a slow-moving system that first hit California early Wednesday. It moved out after days of wind, record rain and heavy snowfall that caused power outages, street flooding and mudslides.
It also dumped 3 feet of snow over three days in northern Arizona before tracking east on Friday and making its way Saturday into New Mexico.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Super Bowl won’t be the only thing to cheer about this weekend. Six days of stormy weather will have come to an end across San Diego County, and Sunday will be picture-perfect, says the National Weather Service.
You can play in the mountain snow in the morning and walk the beach in the afternoon. But watch your step: The storms, which dropped more than 8 inches of rain at San Onofre and nearly 4 inches at National City, have left behind muddy trails, crumbling cliffs and damaged beaches.
Here’s a glimpse of what to expect.
Winter wonderland
The weather service says 6-8 inches of snow have fallen above the 4,000-foot level at Palomar Mountain and Mount Laguna, and Julian has received 4 inches. Drivers might have to put snow chains on their vehicles to access higher elevations. Check Caltrans for updates on road conditions and chain controls at
The temperatures in the mountains this weekend will be in the low 40s during the day and 20s at night, helping preserve the snow. If skies are clear, the coating should be visible from far away. Fresh snow reflects between 80 percent and 90 percent of the sunlight that hits it.
Beaches and coastal bluffs
The storms heavily damaged and closed the parking lot at Cardiff State Beach and shut down vehicular traffic at Torrey Pines State Beach on the road that extends from the south parking lot to the bluffs. The trails on the bluffs are open and accessible on foot, including spongy Guy Fleming Trail — but it wouldn’t be a surprise if soil slips above Flat Rock, near the south end of the reserve.
The rain also wiped out the road that leads into San Onofre Surf Beach, home of such fabled breaks as Old Man’s and The Point. It’s one of the spots where California’s surf culture took root.
The recent rains are also causing the soil to slip on the switchback trail at Beacon’s, a surf spot in Encinitas, UC San Diego scientists report. The university is examining bluffs along much of the county’s coastline, including the slide-prone stretch between 13th Street and Carmel Valley Road in Del Mar.
A slide in that area could disrupt passenger rail service within the county — something that has occurred in the past. Recent rains caused a mudslide in San Clemente that has shut down passenger rail service from that city to San Diego County.
Another potential trouble area is the mouth of the San Dieguito River at the north end of Del Mar. Water is rapidly flowing into the ocean and could imperil people and dogs who wade into the flow. And shifting sand could affect the pitch of the popular shore break at Tamarack State Beach in Carlsbad.
The surf will be in the 2- to 3-foot range in most places this weekend. Storm runoff could carry debris into the water, including tree branches.
Inland trails
Most parks and trails will be open this weekend. But the edges of creeks in places like Daley Ranch Park and Elfin Forest Recreational Reserve in Escondido are muddy and slippery. Hikers will find the same conditions along Los Peñasquitos Creek, which extends from Poway to the ocean in Del Mar.
What's next
A new storm could push into the county next weekend, forecasters say, but it is too soon to tell how much rain it might drop.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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A volcanic eruption in southwestern Iceland appears to have subsided, though scientists are warning that the area may experience further eruptions in the coming months.
Iceland’s Meteorological Office said late Thursday that the eruption had decreased significantly.
The eruption Thursday northeast of Mount Sýlingarfell prompted the evacuation of the popular Blue Lagoon thermal spa and cut off heat and hot water to several communities on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwestern corner of the island.
“Although the eruption has significantly decreased it is still too early to declare if it has come to an end,” the Met Office said Friday. The office said it was keeping a close watch on the area.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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LOS ANGELES, CA - A 4.6-magnitude earthquake struck the Southern California coast near Malibu on Friday and was widely felt in the Los Angeles region, rattling windows and shaking shelves but bringing no reports of major damage or injuries.
The area of the epicenter was in the rugged Santa Monica Mountains, roughly 35 miles west of downtown Los Angeles.
The range rises steeply from the coastline, and the nearest homes to the epicenter are on a narrow strip of development along the shore or scattered in the ridges and canyons.
The quake struck at 1:47 p.m. at a depth of about 8 miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
It was felt from the Malibu coast north to Bakersfield, south to San Diego and east to downtown Los Angeles.
The quake was not related to a 5.7-magnitude shock that hit Hawaii’s Big Island on Friday, seismologist Lucy Jones said.
Jones said the magnitude of the quake was not of a severity that would cause expectations of damage.
“It’s sort of run-of-the-mill for earthquake country,” Jones said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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EVANSVILLE, WI - The first tornadoes ever recorded in Wisconsin in the usually frigid month of February tore through mostly rural areas on a day that broke records for warmth, setting up the perfect scenario for the type of severe weather normally seen in the late spring and summer.
The storms left a swath of destruction that included dead and missing cows, roofs blown off of homes, destroyed storage sheds and barns, trashed vehicles and shattered windows.
At least two tornadoes were confirmed south of Madison and the National Weather Service was investigating reports of several more spawned from storms that swept across the southeastern part of the state around 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, said meteorologist Taylor Patterson.
One confirmed tornado near Evansville was a “high end” F2, the weather service said. Those tornadoes are described as “significant,” with winds topping out at 135 mph. Another tornado that touched down near Juda was an F2. Those tornadoes are considered “significant” with maximum winds of 110 mph. Surveyors were still assessing damage late Friday afternoon, the weather service said.
There were no reports of significant injuries. Local emergency management officials reported dozens of buildings, power lines and other structures that were damaged in the path of the storm that formed in eastern Iowa and died out near Milwaukee. The temperature was a record high for the date: 59 degrees.
Matt Artis, 34, said he had just got out of the shower in his family’s Town of Porter farmhouse on Thursday evening when he heard a “big bang.”
He got his mother and their dog, Dixie, into the bathroom just as the tornado hit. He said he emerged from the bathroom, looked up and saw nothing but the night sky.
The tornado had torn the roof from their home.
Patterson, the meteorologist, said the storm was like ones typically seen in Wisconsin in the late spring and summer.
“It’s just unusual in the sense that it doesn’t normally happen in February,” she said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The ramifications of the flooding that drove hundreds of people from their homes and caused millions of dollars in damage last month continue to swamp San Diego City Hall.
Three more legal claims have been filed against the city, accusing officials of failing to properly maintain flood channels and stormwater drains. The claims are required before any civil lawsuit can be filed, and the attorneys representing the claimants are seeking class- action status.
“The city of San Diego has admitted that for many years the city failed to adequately fund maintenance of the city’s stormwater network,” one of the claims says. “In so acting, the city of San Diego has violated its legal duty.”
City officials had no immediate response to the allegations in the claims, which seek at least $250,000 each. Public agencies regularly decline to comment on legal proceedings so as not to jeopardize their positions in the courtroom.
The claims were filed by San Diego residents Juan Alberto Lopez, JoAnn Murphy and Adrian Manuel Rico, all of whom say they suffered major losses in recent weeks as a result of the city’s stormwater and flood-control failures.
“As a result of the city of San Diego’s failure to maintain its storm drain system in a workable condition, the surface water flow from the January and February 2024 rain has resulted in a taking of, or damage to, hundreds of homes,” the Rico claim states.
The documents say the failures were citywide, affecting at least 17 neighborhoods from Southcrest and Chollas Creek to areas north of Interstate 8 such as Carmel Valley and Del Cerro.
“This claim seeks not only to recover damages for insured property owners, but also seeks injunctive relief requiring city action be taken to restore and maintain the city of San Diego’s storm drain system,” the claims say.
San Diego already had been served with a legal claim filed late last month by an attorney representing Beta Street resident Gregory Montoya.
Montoya was among a handful of Southcrest-area residents who sued the city five years ago, after stormwater from a 2018 rainstorm overflowed Chollas Creek and severely damaged their homes.
That case was settled for just over $200,000, but the agreement did not require the city to make improvements to the flood channel that would have prevented future damage.
On Jan. 22, millions of gallons of unchecked storm runoff overtook Beta Street and nearby neighborhoods, washing away scores of cars and flooding hundreds of homes and apartments.
Many of those victims continue to be displaced, even though city and county officials have worked to provide emergency housing and other relief.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported days later that the city has a decades-long record of failing to maintain its flood-control channels or collect enough revenue in fees to pay for improvements.
Under the current fee structure, homeowners pay just 95 cents per month toward infrastructure improvements that city officials say are badly needed and will cost $2 billion or more.
Last week, the City Council president proposed raising such fees to help pay for upgrades, and this week the council said it wanted aggressive action on stormwater in the upcoming city budget.
Legal claims to public agencies must be filed and rejected before a lawsuit can proceed. The claims filed this week say they expect to seek class-action status, which if granted would let the group of plaintiffs grow far beyond the three named claimants to include potentially thousands of victims.
(Jeff McDonald, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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San Diego freight trains resumed traffic through San Clemente this week after another brief suspension as agencies explored possible fixes for an ongoing landslide that has stopped passenger service there since Jan. 24.
Tilt sensors and a videocamera installed last weekend showed accelerated movement in the slope early this week, at one point moving about 3 feet in 24 hours. Trains run by BNSF Freight were held up Tuesday night as a precaution but continued the next night after the movement slowed, officials said.
“BNSF is aware of the ongoing movement of the soil from the private property hillside,” states an update from Metrolink, which operates passenger service in six Southern California counties.
“Inspections of the track and confirmation that it is safe to proceed will occur before and after each freight train passes,” officials said.
The slide displaced two sections of the Mariposa Pedestrian Bridge on a 2.3-mile, city-maintained trail that runs parallel to the tracks along the landward side. The trail connects one section of beach to another at the base of a steep, unstable bluff north of the city’s pier.
Work crews used a crane on a flatbed train car to remove the damaged sections of the bridge last week. Rocks and a drainage culvert were added at the base of the slope, and the hillside was graded and covered with plastic tarps. Some of the tarps later were removed after they were torn by the wind and rain.
Officials from the Orange County Transportation Authority, Metrolink, the city of San Clemente and other agencies meet daily to evaluate the conditions at the slide.
The California Transportation Commission has authorized OCTA’s request for $2 million to cover costs of debris removal and other work that will continue after the storm has passed. Showers are possible again today and Saturday, followed by dry and warming days next week, according to the National Weather Service.
OCTA and Metrolink officials said they plan to build a barrier wall to protect the tracks while repairs are finished on the landslide above the tracks.
The Mariposa slide is the third in recent years to stop trains at San Clemente.
Before that, a landslide in April 2023 below the city’s historic Casa Romantica, suspended passenger train traffic for about a month. Metrolink built a barrier wall there to protect the tracks, and the city continues efforts to stabilize the slope.
Another recurring slide has stopped trains at times below the Cyrus Shore community, at the southern end of San Clemente near San Onofre State Beach. During most of the suspensions, freight trains have been allowed through at slow speeds at night.
Beaches across Southern California are eroding rapidly, threatening any coastal infrastructure including the railroad. As part of efforts to stabilize the slide areas, OCTA has added boulders between the beach and the railroad tracks.Many residents and environmental groups oppose building the rock revetments and seawalls, often called “armoring” the coast. They say the walls cover what’s left of the beach and contribute to erosion.
“OCTA is causing significant, permanent beach loss,” said John Dow, a member of Save Our Beaches San Clemente, during public comments at the California Coastal Commission’s meeting Thursday in Oceanside.
“Our entire beach will soon be hard-armored,” Dow said. “The entire rail line in San Clemente is vulnerable.”
Other Save Our Beaches members told the commission that OCTA should be required to place sand instead of rocks on the coastline. Sand restoration projects, though temporary and expensive, are widely viewed as a superior way to protect the shoreline.
San Clemente launched its first sand restoration project ever in December, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers program planned for more than 20 years. The first phase of the recurring project is expected to cost $16 million, with 65 percent of the money from the federal government and the rest from the state and the city.
However, the project got off to a bad start. The first few barge-loads of material dredged from an offshore borrow site near Oceanside proved to be more rocks and gravel than sand.
San Clemente officials told the contractor, Manson Construction, that the quality of material was unacceptable, and Manson suspended work there in January. Manson then moved its equipment to a different sand restoration effort in Solana Beach, finding clean sand for that project at a borrow pit offshore from Del Mar.
The Solana Beach restoration is expected to continue a few more weeks, then move to Encinitas to spread more of the Del Mar-dredged sand. The Encinitas delivery is likely to continue to May 1.
That makes it unlikely the San Clemente sand project will resume before summer, when tourism-based businesses need every inch of their beaches.
Further complicating San Clemente’s situation is the possibility that the relatively close Oceanside borrow pit, about 20 miles away, will not yield the desired quality material.
Other borrow sites are available, but any site other than Oceanside will require new environmental permits, and obtaining the permits could be time- consuming and expensive.
The Oceanside borrow site has been studied off and on for years. It’s broad and deep, but apparently has a layer of gravel and cobble up to 3 feet thick on top of the clean sand, San Clemente Mayor Victor Cabral said Tuesday.
“They never reached the layer of sand,” Cabral said.
“The city has been in talks almost daily with entities to let them know what our expectations are,” he said. “The city has not dropped the ball on this issue.”
The San Clemente project, like the joint one underway in Solana Beach and Encinitas, is intended to continue in phases for the next 50 years.
(Phil Diehl, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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GRINDAVIK, Iceland — A volcano system in southwestern Iceland erupted Thursday for the third time since December, spewing out a stream of bright orange lava that cut off a source of heating and hot water for tens of thousands of residents amid freezing temperatures.
The eruption occurred at 6 a.m. on a mountain ridge on the Reykjanes peninsula, according to the country’s Meteorological Office. By late morning, a stream of lava had flowed over a main road and was pouring over a key pipe that transports hot water from the Svartsengi power plant to nearby towns.
Around noon, Vidir Reynisson, the director of Iceland’s civil defense agency, said the eruption was producing more lava than expected and that it was threatening infrastructure critical to the peninsula.
Volcanic eruptions are not uncommon in Iceland, but the volcanoes on the Reykjanes peninsula had been dormant for about 800 years until 2021. There have been several eruptions since, and experts say that the threat to the peninsula will not end soon.
“It’s like a tap of water that is now open underneath the ground,” said Kristin Maria Birgisdottir, a spokesperson for the mayor of Grindavík, a nearby fishing town, adding that unless it was “turned off soon,” the peninsula would be seeing “continuous events.”
Thorvaldur Thordarson, a volcanologist at the University of Iceland, said the lava had probably reached its maximum breadth, at least for the moment, and that the intensity of the eruption was dropping.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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Rescuers dug out more bodies from a landslide-hit southern Philippine village on Thursday, bringing the death toll to 11 as the number of missing rose to 110, officials said.
At least 31 residents survived with injuries when the landslide hit the gold-mining mountain village of Masara in Davao de Oro province on Tuesday night, officials said.
Army troops, police and volunteers halted their search for the missing Thursday afternoon due to fears of more landslides and will begin a “retrieval operation” today, Davao de Oro provincial spokesperson Edward Macapili said by telephone.
More than 1,165 families have been moved to evacuation centers for their safety, disaster response officials said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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SACRAMENTO, CA - California would ban all plastic shopping bags in 2026 under a new bill announced Thursday in the state Legislature.
California already bans thin plastic shopping bags at grocery stores and other shops, but shoppers at checkout can purchase bags made with a thicker plastic that purportedly makes them reusable and recyclable.
State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, said people are not reusing or recycling those bags. She points to a state study that found the amount of plastic shopping bags trashed per person grew from 8 pounds per year in 2004 to 11 pounds per year in 2021.
“It shows that the plastic bag ban that we passed in this state in 2014 did not reduce the overall use of plastic. It actually resulted in a substantial increase in plastic,” Blakespear said Thursday. “We are literally choking our planet with plastic waste.”
Twelve states, including California, already have some type of statewide plastic bag ban in place, according to the environmental advocacy group Environment America Research & Policy Center.
Hundreds of cities across 28 states also have their own plastic bag bans in place.
While California’s bag ban would apply statewide, it would only affect about half the state’s population, according to Mark Murray, lead advocate for the environmental advocacy group Californians Against Waste.
That’s because most of the state’s major cities already ban these types of thicker plastic bags.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Last month’s flooding has prompted San Diego City Council members to demand more money for clearing storm drains and flood channels, despite the large projected budget deficits the city faces.
Council members said Wednesday that Mayor Todd Gloria must find money in the new city budget for aggressive action to clear, maintain and upgrade stormwater channels near underserved communities.
“These floods were the result of storm channels located in underserved areas either not being maintained at the level that they should have or not being adequately upgraded over the years,” Council member Vivian Moreno said. “The city must adjust, and we need to start now.”
Council President Sean Elo-Rivera said that enhanced spending on flood prevention must come despite a recent increase — from $115 million to $166 million — in the projected deficit for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
That larger projected deficit is based on a city report unveiled this week that shows sales tax and hotel tax are sharply lower than expected and that expenses are higher than expected, primarily because of employee overtime.
Elo-Rivera said the deficit is not an adequate reason to delay decisive action, stressing that the victims of the Jan. 22 flood were mostly low-income people in southern neighborhoods who can’t afford to live anywhere else.
“I hope we do everything we can to ensure the impacted communities don’t feel even further left behind,” he said.
Moreno said she also hoped the mayor’s proposed budget, scheduled to be released April 15, includes money to pave many of the dirt roads in the city’s southern neighborhoods.
While complaints about such roads have mostly focused on damage to neighborhood image and problems with dust polluting the air, Moreno stressed that long overdue upgrades would also include installing badly needed storm drains.
“The residents who live on these streets pay taxes just like everybody else in San Diego, but they’re subjected to living on dirt roads, and they are at greater risk of experiencing flood events,” she said. “It’s simply not fair.”
The demands for more flood prevention money were among several requests council members made Wednesday in budget priority memos that will be sent to the mayor.
Another request calls for a heat action plan that would aim to help low-income neighborhoods cope with rising summer temperatures attributed to climate change.
A 2020 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that there are typically more deaths from heat each year than from floods, tornadoes and hurricanes combined.
In her budget memo, Council member Marni von Wilpert said a heat action plan, which would cost roughly $250,000 to create, would be a key step toward making vulnerable San Diego neighborhoods more climate resilient.
“The Heat Action Plan is an important first step to begin the process of delivering livable communities with ample tree canopy coverage and critical ‘cool zones,’” she said. “Heat waves continue to worsen, with 2023 marking the hottest year ever recorded in the historical record.”
Another new spending request from the council is for more neighborhood shuttles, like the popular Free Ride Everywhere Downtown and the Beach Bug that began running in Pacific Beach last summer.
The rise in the city’s projected deficit for the upcoming fiscal year is based on a new report showing expenses for the ongoing fiscal year are expected to outpace revenue by $51 million more than previously expected. That would nearly wipe out a projected surplus this fiscal year that city officials had hoped to carry into the new fiscal year.
Revenues are projected to be $28 million lower than previously expected. Property tax is projected to be $10 million higher than expected, but sales tax is projected to be $27 million lower and hotel tax $7 million lower.
City finance officials blamed the sales tax drop on a decrease in consumer spending because of inflation. They said the hotel tax drop was because leisure travel was down, also partly because of inflation.
Another reason revenue is down is the city’s shift to a new model for ambulance service that eliminates an annual $9 million contribution from the city’s private provider, Falck USA.
Overall city expenses are now projected to be $13 million more than the city had expected. Officials said that’s primarily because of higher-than-expected overtime and $10 million they are allocating to storm recovery efforts.
City comptroller [sic] Rolando Charvel said the new numbers stop at the end of November and don’t include most of the holiday shopping season, which looks promising in some initial data.
“The December numbers for retail were really strong, and we know that consumer confidence has continued to improve,” Charvel said.
(David Garrick, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Rivers and flood channels will be flowing hard across San Diego County early today as a new Pacific storm brings a fifth day of rain to a soaked and soggy region eager for it all to end.
An overnight storm was expected to drop about a half-inch of rain near the coast by midmorning and roughly an inch across inland foothills and valleys, the National Weather Service said. The system, which could spark pre-dawn lightning, will then produce intermittent showers that will double those totals by Friday night.
The storm also will drop about 3 inches of snow on the Julian area by noon today and about 1 foot in the upper reaches of Palomar Mountain and Mount Laguna. The California Highway Patrol is requiring chains for drivers east of Warner Springs near Montezuma Valley Road and San Felipe Road.
“We won’t have a blue sky day until Sunday,” said John Suk, meteorologist in charge of the weather service office in San Diego.
The county was hit hard late Tuesday night and Wednesday by an earlier and more powerful Pacific storm. That system produced a brief and wild downpour of hail around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday in Otay Ranch and nearby areas.
The Marines were investigating whether rough weather contributed to the crash of a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter late Tuesday night in a mountainous area near Pine Valley in eastern San Diego County. The fate of the five crew members aboard was still unclear Wednesday afternoon.
In perhaps the most memorable development of the storm, earlier Tuesday a tornado alert was issued in parts of South County and East County, startling many people in an area where such a threat is rare.
Through 3 p.m. Wednesday, San Diego International Airport had recorded 8 inches of precipitation since the rainy season began on Oct. 1. Forecasters said the city could reach its year-long average of 9.79 inches by Friday night.
What forecasters dub the rainy season — also known as the water year — begins on Oct. 1 each year and ends on Sept. 30 of the following year. This time frame was created long ago by the federal government to make sure that total precipitation for a one-year period captures winter snowfall as well as summer rain, which is more common in other areas of the country.
The series of storms that has pummeled the region since Jan. 22 has claimed another victim: A man was found dead in Forester Creek in Santee on Tuesday.
The Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed Wednesday that his death was storm-related. His name was not released, and it was not clear when he died.
He is the third person known to have died in the rains over the last two weeks. A 67-year-old man died in a vehicle crash last month, and a 61-year-old West African man drowned Tuesday in the Tijuana River while trying to enter the United States.
Two other deaths are suspected to be storm-related. Both victims were found in Santee following the explosive Jan. 22 storm: a still-unidentified woman found in Forester Creek, and a 48-year-old man whose precise location authorities have not disclosed.
Also on Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom asked President Joe Biden to declare a major disaster from last month’s destructive flooding. That would grant the region access to federal aid to help people recover.
According to the request, more than 800 homes — many in underserved communities where flood insurance coverage is low — were damaged in the Jan. 22 storm. County officials have said separately that the flooding cost the region more than $100 million alone in emergency response expenses and damage to public infrastructure.
Wednesday’s weather produced starkly different effects across the county.
The approach of a snowstorm led to the declaration of a snow day Wednesday in Julian Union Elementary School District, Julian Union High School District, Mountain Empire Unified School District, Spencer Valley School District and Warner Unified School District. The Julian and Warner districts also planned for schools to start late today.
By the time the snow days were announced, enormous amounts of snow had fallen farther away, in Southern Californian mountains associated with skiing. Mount Baldy reported more than 3 feet of snow, while Mountain High said it got 38 inches and Big Bear said it got 27 inches.
The scene was far different at Dog Beach in Del Mar, where a break in the clouds led volleyball players to take to the nets as waves rising to 7 feet crashed ashore.
(Gary Robbins & Karen Kucher, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; Teri Figueroa, Lyndsay Winkley, Caleb Lunetta)
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The death toll from wildfires that ravaged central Chile for several days increased to 131 on Tuesday, and more than 300 people were still missing as the blazes appeared to be burning themselves out.
The fires in Valparaiso are said to be Chile’s deadliest disaster since an earthquake in 2010. Officials have suggested that some could have been intentionally set.
President Gabriel Boric during a visit to the region announced that furniture used for the 2023 Pan American Games will be donated to victims. He said the government also will forgive the water bills for 9,200 affected homes.
The fires began Friday on the mountainous eastern edge of Viña del Mar. The fires spread quickly in dry weather and strong winds.
Chile’s Forensic Medical Service has said many bodies recovered from the fires were in bad condition and difficult to identify, but forensic workers would take samples of genetic material from people reporting missing relatives.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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The violent second wave of a massive Pacific storm lashed San Diego County on Tuesday, bringing enough rain to flood the San Diego River and thunderstorms that led to a brief — and rare — tornado warning.
Since flowing into the region Monday, the system has dropped 3 to 6.6 inches of rain on parts of North County and about 2 inches in some South County areas. And on Tuesday, the storm apparently claimed its first life.
Border Patrol agents near the Tijuana River Channel west of the San Ysidro Port of Entry saw someone showing signs of distress and then going underwater while trying to cross the rapidly flowing river about 2 a.m. The agents called San Diego firefighters and lifeguards for assistance, but by the time a lifeguard raft reached the area, the person was floating in the water. Lifeguards retrieved the body.
The Medical Examiner’s Office will determine the cause of death and whether the fatality was storm-related.
Although the brunt of the storm hit farther north, Tuesday’s weather kept emergency crews busy in San Diego County and Tijuana.
San Diego city officials said about 1 p.m. that more than 500 storm-related calls had come in over the last 24 hours, and nearly 70 were considered emergencies. Across the city, almost 60 roads were closed due to flooding.
Early Tuesday, San Diego lifeguards used a rescue boat to pluck two people from the south bank of the San Diego River in Mission Valley, just east of Qualcomm Way. The two were checked out by medical personnel but did not require treatment.
Farther north, Caltrans crews worked through the night to repair a sinkhole that developed Monday on state Route 78.
In the Artesanal neighborhood of Tijuana, a landslide on a hill damaged two houses. As of Tuesday afternoon, city firefighters had responded to 15 rain- related incidents in the last day, including a Red Cross ambulance that became stuck in mud with a patient on board, authorities said.
By 10 a.m., heavy rain prompted the National Weather Service to issue a flash flood warning for northwestern parts of San Diego County — particularly in Oceanside — as well as Riverside County and Orange County. The San Diego river swelled past its 10-foot flood stage around 2 p.m.
A much more rare advisory went out about 11:45 a.m. — a tornado warning.
The National Weather Service issued a notification to a wide swath of South and East County after radar detected a rotation in a thunderstorm.
“When you get real strong thunderstorms they start to rotate. The radar can pick that up, and if the circulation is strong enough it can indicate that a tornado is either forming in the cloud or potentially developing on the ground,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Alex Tardy. “So it is literally a circulation within the thunderstorm itself.”
Alerts rang out on cellphones starting at 11:44 a.m., when the weather service reported a severe thunderstorm was over Paradise Hills and near Chula Vista.
There were 164 schools in the tornado warning area, and several districts had their schools temporarily shelter in place until the warning expired, including South Bay Union, Chula Vista Elementary, Grossmont Union High, Sweetwater Union High and La Mesa-Spring Valley, as well as several San Diego Unified campuses.
Residents took action as well.
When Chula Vista resident Wendi Leon got the warning, she went outside and recorded the ominous black clouds forming on the horizon. She called her mom, who was on a walk but took shelter in her car.
“When the alarm went off we didn’t know where to hide,” Leon said. “They said basement. We don’t have basements here. They said stay away from windows, both sides of my house are head-to-toe windows. I grabbed my daughter and dog and went into the garage in a corner.”
The alert was lifted around 12:15 p.m., and no damage from a tornado was reported, officials said.
The last tornado warning issued in San Diego was Aug. 20 when Tropical Storm Hilary hit the region. Before that, one was issued in March in North County.
Today, a new storm will move ashore, periodically dropping light to heavy rain that will extend into Thursday.
Precipitation totals were hard to predict, but even if the region gets less rain, the ground is so saturated, it may lead to flooding anyway, meteorologists said.
Scattered rain will continue into the weekend.
In-person classes have been canceled today for schools in Tijuana, Rosarito, Ensenada, Tecate and San Quintín, Baja California Gov. Marina del Pilar Ávila announced on social media.
In some cities, such as Tijuana, classes have been suspended since Feb.1 due to weather.
The city of San Diego lifted its evacuation warning later Tuesday to people living in low-lying areas in Southcrest, Mountain View, Encanto, San Ysidro, Sorrento Valley and Mission Valley. A shelter for flood victims and those still concerned about flooding remained open at the Balboa Park Municipal Gym.
San Diego officials said Tuesday the city’s stormwater system held up well against the rain.
“I’m happy to report that all of our channels and our pump stations are functioning appropriately,” said Todd Snyder, director of the city’s stormwater department.
“They’re containing the floodwaters. And our storm water pump stations are all up and functional.”
He said crews were paying particularly close attention to communities that flooded during Jan. 22’s historic storm.
Angela Hampton, who lives on Beta Street in Southcrest, was one of the many in her neighborhood whose home was destroyed in last month’s flooding.
Over the past week, however, the street has been largely spared from any new rising waters, she said.
“When it started raining, we were really nervous,” Hampton said. “But (the canal) did really well after the city cleared out a lot of the vegetation.”
Hampton said the neighborhood could keep that confidence in the future if the channels remain clear.
If San Diego receives 3 inches of rain by Sunday, that would push the city’s seasonal rainfall total to more than 8 inches. San Diego only averages 9.79 inches of rain annually, a year that runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.
The weather service said that 2.88 inches of rain fell in Oceanside Harbor on Monday alone, breaking the previous record for Feb. 5 by 1.29 inches. The older record was set in 1948. Vista recorded 1.87 inches, breaking the day’s record by 1.13 inches. The previous record was set in 1976.
In the Los Angeles area, the storm unleashed at least 475 mudslides after dumping more than half the amount of rainfall the city typically gets in a season in just two days, and officials warned residents to remain vigilant.
“Our hillsides are already saturated. So even not-very-heavy rains could still lead to additional mudslides,” Mayor Karen Bass said during an evening news conference. “Even when the rain stops, the ground may continue to shift.”
Officials expressed relief that the storm hadn’t caused a major catastrophe in Los Angeles despite its size and intensity, with nearly 400 trees toppling. There were six deaths reported in the state in addition to the death in the Tijuana River Channel, including several people crushed by fallen trees in Northern California.
Bass said the city is now looking toward recovery and will seek federal aid. It may see if it can qualify for FEMA money to help people whose homes were damaged in hillside communities where insurance companies won’t cover.
As of Tuesday, seven buildings had been deemed uninhabitable, officials said.
Another 10 buildings were yellow-tagged, meaning residents could go back to get their belongings but could not stay there because of the damage.
(Gary Robbins, Lyndsay Winkley & Karen Kucher, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; Alexandra Mendoza, Kristen Take, Emily Alvarenga, Tammy Murga & Caleb Lunetta; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SANTIAGO, Chile - Volunteers in central Chile tried to remove charred metal, broken glass and other debris Monday from neighborhoods devastated by wildfires over the past several days, as officials raised the death toll to 122.
Hundreds of people remain missing.
The fires appeared to have diminished by Monday morning after burning intensely since Friday on the eastern edge of the city of Viña del Mar. Two other towns in the Valparaíso region, Quilpé and Villa Alemana, also have been hit hard, and President Gabriel Boric said Sunday that at least 3,000 homes had been burnt down in the area.
An additional 10 victims were added to the death toll Monday afternoon, bringing it to 122, said Marisol Prado, the director of Chile’s Forensic Medical Service.
Prado said many bodies were in bad condition and difficult to identify, but added that forensic workers would be taking samples of genetic material from people who have reported missing relatives.
Viña del Mar Mayor Macarena Ripamonti said that at least 370 people have been reported missing in the city of about 300,000 residents.
The fires ravaged several neighborhoods that had been precariously built on the mountains that loom to the east of Viña del Mar, which is also a popular beach resort.
Schools and other public buildings in Viña del Mar and in the capital city of Santiago are serving as depots, where people are taking donations of water, food, candles and shovels for the victims of the fires.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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WAILUKU, Hawaii - Nearly six months after a wind-whipped wildfire destroyed the historic town of Lahaina, the Maui Police Department released on Monday a preliminary report about its response to the tragedy.
“The Maui Police Department, in collaboration with other emergency response agencies, worked tirelessly to ensure the safety of our residents, coordinate evacuations, and provide support to those in need,” the report said. “The bravery and resilience demonstrated by our officers, personnel, fellow first responders, and members of the community who continued to assist the community while suffering losses themselves, have been nothing short of extraordinary.”
The Aug. 8 wildfire, the deadliest U.S. wildfire in over a century, leveled Lahaina, the one-time capital of the former Hawaiian Kingdom, and killed at least 100 people. It was driven by high winds from a hurricane passing far to the south and spread quickly through dry, invasive grasses.
Residents fled through black smoke that blotted out the sun, frequently encountering roadblocks or traffic jams where police blocked roads due to fire or downed power lines. Communications failed. In the chaos, some people jumped over a sea wall and sought refuge in the ocean, while others remained in their vehicles and died as heat and flames overtook them.
Audio recordings of 911 calls, obtained by The Associated Press, reflected the confusion and terror many residents faced as they were trapped in their cars or homes and unsure of where they should go.
Video from body cameras showed police going to great lengths to try to help. One officer sprinted from house to house, alerting people to the approaching inferno.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The powerful storm moving through Southern California dumped a record amount of rain over parts of Los Angeles on Monday, sending mud and boulders down hillsides dotted with multimillion-dollar homes while people living in homeless encampments scrambled for safety.
About 710,000 people statewide were without power Monday evening.
The storm was the second one fueled by an atmospheric river to hit the state over the span of days.
Virtually all of Southern California was under flash flood advisories and watches, including the Los Angeles area, where between 5 and 10 inches of rain had fallen and more was expected, according to the National Weather Service.
At the downtown measuring station, 6.7 inches of rain had fallen by Monday afternoon, nearly half the yearly average of 14.25 inches.
It was already the third-wettest two-day period since 1877, the service said.
So far officials have attributed three deaths to the storm that first hit Northern California.
Crews rescued people from swift-moving water in various parts of Southern California on Monday, including 16 people and five cats in Los Angeles County alone, authorities said.
Also rescued were two homeless people who spent the night on a small island in the Santa Ana River in San Bernardino authorities said.
“They were cold and exhausted from a night out stranded on this little patch of dirt that was in the middle of the river,” said Capt. Nathan Lopez of the San Bernardino County Fire Department. A dog and two cats were also saved.
At a news conference, authorities said rain would taper off in intensity today, but the threat of flooding remained high.
“The ground is extremely saturated, supersaturated,” said Ariel Cohen, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service bureau in Los Angeles. “It’s not able to hold any additional water before sliding. It’s not going to take much rain for additional landslides, mudslides, rockslides and other debris flows to occur.”
Near the Hollywood Hills, floodwaters carried mud, rocks and household objects downhill through Studio City, damaging at least two homes, city officials said.
Sixteen people were evacuated.
“It looks like a river that’s been here for years,” said Keki Mingus, whose neighbors’ homes were damaged.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The Los Angeles Fire Department said 1,000 firefighters were contending with 49 debris flows, 130 reports of flooding, half a dozen structure fires and several rescues of motorists stranded in vehicles.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass urged residents to avoid driving, warning of fallen trees and electrical lines on flooded roadways.
Shelters were adding beds for the city’s homeless population of nearly 75,000 people.
Tony Sanz spent the night in a city park before seeking higher ground around dawn as floodwaters were rising around his tent.
“Boy did it rain last night,” he said Monday afternoon hunkered down in a tent layered with tarps on a sidewalk outside a supermarket.
He spied the cloudy skies during a break in the downpours and wondered, “Is that it? I hope that’s it.”
Not yet, according to forecasters.
The weather service predicts up to 8 inches of rainfall across the region’s coastal and valley areas, with 14 inches possible in the foothills and mountains over the next two days.
Authorities also reported several spills Monday, including the discharge of about 5 million gallons of raw sewage in the Rancho Dominguez area surrounding Compton. Most of the untreated sewage went into a channel leading to the Pacific Ocean and the city closed a 7-mile stretch of Long Beach to recreational swimming, Most public schools remained open, but some districts decided to close.
The weather also prompted the closure of Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain theme parks and a rare early closure of Disneyland.
Dangerous winds kicked off the storm late Saturday across Northern and Central California, where gusts of more than 80 mph were recorded in some spots, causing fallen trees, power line damage and widespread outages.
“In terms of total outages, this was one of the top three most damaging, single-day storms on record, comparable to storms in 1995 and 2008,” PG&E officials said in a statement Monday, with updated estimates reporting 440,000 PG&E customers still without power. “This resulted in damage to trees and electric infrastructure, and led to other debris contacting electric equipment and lines.”
Among those who died in the storm were two men killed by fallen trees Sunday in Carmichael, a suburb of Sacramento, and in Boulder Creek in Santa Cruz County.
Police were investigating the death of another man in Yuba City who was found under a redwood tree in his backyard Sunday.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for most of coastal Southern California, while emergency shelters were opened.
Heavy snow was falling throughout the Sierra Nevada and motorists were urged to avoid mountain roads.
The storm was “remarkable and in some ways historic,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA. He noted that the system reached bombogenesis — or “bomb cyclone” — status as it zeroed in on the state Sunday, indicating a sustained drop in pressure and a rapid strengthening.
“The concern right now in Southern California is that the rain and the atmospheric river has been stalled, mainly over the same place it has been for the past 18 hours,” Swain said during a briefing Monday.
Much of the state was still drying out from the initial atmospheric river- powered storm that blew in last week. Atmospheric rivers are relatively narrow plumes of moisture that form over an ocean and can produce torrential amounts of rain as they move over land.
Both atmospheric rivers were called a “Pineapple Express” because they originated near Hawaii.
Since last winter, 46 atmospheric rivers have made landfall on the U.S. West Coast, pulling the state out of a years-long drought, according to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes. Nine were categorized as strong, two were extreme and one was exceptional.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES; ASSOCIATED PRESS, NEW YORK TIMES, LOS ANGELES TIMES)
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An extraordinary plume of subtropical moisture moved into San Diego on Monday night, in what forecasters say is the start of a meteorological chain reaction that could ultimately drop 4 to 6 inches of rain in North County and 3 to 4 inches from San Diego south to the border by Sunday.
The plume took the form of an atmospheric river that traveled from near Hawaii and was pulled into Southern California by a cold storm from the North Pacific.
The [atmospheric] river — which has already caused flooding and mudslides in Los Angeles and Orange counties — will last until early today, possibly producing the same kind of mayhem here in San Diego County.
The plume will then fade. But forecasters said that what follows will be the core of the main storm, which will lash the county well into tonight. The following day, an entirely new storm will move ashore, periodically dropping moderate to heavy rain that will [affect] virtually all of Southern Cali- extend into Thursday. Scattered rain will continue into the weekend.
If San Diego receives 3 inches of rain by Sunday, that would push the city’s seasonal rainfall total to more than 8 inches. San Diego only averages 9.79 inches during the rainy season, which lasts from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.
The plume moved into North County before dawn on Monday and dropped more than 3 inches of rain at San Onofre and Camp Pendleton, along with about 2 inches at Oceanside and Fallbrook, through late afternoon.
Many areas south of Carlsbad had gotten only a smattering of rain by Monday evening, leading many to wonder if the storm would simply bypass San Diego and South County, especially the areas where a Jan. 22 storm caused damaging flooding, such as Southcrest, Mountain View and National City.
But the atmospheric river soon shifted south, as forecast, and began drenching the San Diego metropolitan area. Forecasters expected the San Diego River in Fashion Valley to reach flood stage early this morning.
The initial arrival and expansion of the storm was felt throughout the county, and beyond.
More than 175 flights out of San Diego International Airport had been delayed by Monday evening, and about a third of inbound flights also had been delayed, according to FlightAware.
Monday’s rain also closed the stretch of state Route 78 between the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and Bandy Canyon Road. Flooding led to road closures throughout the region, including — again — on a busy section of state Route 78 near El Camino Real in Oceanside. There was also a smattering of reports of downed trees across North County.
Conditions were even worse to the north in San Clemente, leading the city to close two new sections of beach near the spot of a landslide in late January that has halted passenger rail service between San Diego County and points north.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria issued evacuation warnings Sunday to several of the low-lying communities that had already suffered flood damage in earlier storms.
“This is a warning, not an order,” Gloria said. “This warning is designed to have residents in these communities make preparations now should it become necessary in the future” to evacuate. If an evacuation order is issued, first responders will go door-to-door, the mayor said.
Fire Chief Colin Stowell said the city’s Fire-Rescue Department had beefed up its staffing because of the storm, calling in extra firefighters, lifeguards and dispatchers to handle calls.
He urged residents to stay home, avoid outside activities and stay off the roads if they could.
“If you do not need to go outside, if you do not need to get on the roads, don’t,” Stowell said. He reminded drivers not to go around barricades.
Nearly 160 households were temporarily placed in hotel rooms by the San Diego Housing Commission, Gloria’s office said.
The Red Cross shelter at Balboa Park hosted 91 people, nearly a third of them new to the shelter Monday.
Many of the others remain displaced by Jan. 22 flooding.
The city of San Diego said it had relocated people who had been staying at the designated camping site at 20th and B streets, offering all of the roughly 150 people at the site temporary shelter at Golden Hall.
The city also activated its inclement weather shelter program, a partnership of the San Diego Housing Commission, city of San Diego, Father Joe’s Villages, San Diego Rescue Mission and Living Water Church of the Nazarene.
There was a push to help unhoused people with pets prepare as well. Helen Woodward Animal Center’s Emergency Response Team stopped by Alpha Project and Dreams for Change, passing out dog and cat food, crates, collars, blankets and more.
There was also a veterinary technician on hand to provide basic welfare checkups.
The animal center helped 85 animals and “completely ran out of supplies,” a spokesperson said.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta issued an alert Monday reminding people to beware of price-gouging.
State law generally prohibits sellers from increasing prices more than 10 percent after a state of emergency has been declared — Gov. Gavin Newsom issued such a declaration over the weekend in anticipation of the deluge expected in several counties, including San Diego.
(Gary Robbins, Karen Kucher&Teri Figueroa, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Days after devastating wildfires swept through Chile’s Pacific Coast, officials said Sunday that at least 64 people had been killed and hundreds remained missing and warned that the number of dead could rise exponentially.
“That number is going to go up, we know it’s going to go up significantly,” President Gabriel Boric said Sunday, describing the fires as the worst disaster in the country since a devastating earthquake in 2010 left more than 400 people dead and displaced 1.5 million.
Thousands of homes were destroyed in the fires, which swept through the coastal hills toward the resort of Viña del Mar starting Friday, propelled by high winds.
The fires came as many were vacationing in Viña del Mar in the country’s Valparaíso region, and roared through hillside settlements where many older residents were not able to escape.
Omar Castro Vázquez, whose home was destroyed in the settlement of El Olivar, said a neighbor in his 80s had died in the fire.
“It was more like a nuclear bomb than a fire,” said Castro, 72. “There’s nothing left.”
The destruction in Valparaíso comes as dozens of fires are burning across central and southern Chile, amid what officials have said are higher-than-normal temperatures for this time of year.
Several other countries in South America have also struggled to contain wildfires.
In Colombia, fires erupted in several parts of the country in recent weeks, including around the capital city of Bogotá, amid a spell of dry weather.
Firefighters have also been battling blazes in Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina.
The cyclical climate phenomenon known as El Niño has caused droughts and high temperatures through parts of the continent, creating conditions that experts say are ripe for forest fires.
At dawn Sunday, bands of smoke clung to the hillsides above Viña del Mar.
Along the highway to the coast, banks of earth and bridges were charred and tree stumps smoldered on the hillsides.
The charred husks of cars littered the roads.
Early signs point to flawed evacuation orders, which some residents said may have contributed to the casualty count.
Photographs posted on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, showed long lines of burned cars that appeared to have been engulfed in flames as people attempted to leave.
Castro Vázquez said residents had fled to a local square when a cellphone alert came through about 6 p.m. Friday.
They weren’t given any instructions beyond that about having to flee, he said.
Black smoke plumed over a hill from a botanical gardens on the other side of the hill, he said, and within minutes their community was engulfed in tall orange flames.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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Freight trains, unlike passenger trains, have resumed running across the tracks beneath a San Clemente landslide that continues to threaten San Diego County’s only rail link with the rest of the United States.
That has prompted some people to ask why the route is safe for cargo such as automobiles and building supplies, but not for people. There are several answers to that question.
Safety standards are not the same for freight trains and passenger trains, according to an official at the Federal Railroad Administration, the regulatory agency that sets the standards and guidelines for the rail industry.
Visual track inspections normally are required twice a week for passenger trains, compared to once a week for freight trains, as outlined in the Code of Federal Regulations.
Also, there’s a separate category of equipment safety standards for passenger trains.
Extra caution and vigilance may be exercised when restricting passenger operations over an area that has experienced repeated flooding, landslides and washouts, the FRA official said. In such instances, the railroad that owns the right-of-way, which at San Clemente is the Orange County Transit Authority, may impose temporary suspensions or moratoriums on passenger or freight trains to reduce risks.
The FRA does not require a minimum crew size for freight trains, but industry practice is to have two people, a certified locomotive engineer and a certified conductor, on most runs.
The federal agency has issued national safety advisories as recently as Nov. 20, providing guidance to the rail industry on severe weather and climate effects.
The agency has no regulations specific to the identification of landslide risks, but it “has confidence in the precautionary actions being taken by the railroads at San Clemente to ensure operating safety on this line,” the official said.
Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, is a strong advocate for improvements to the coastal rail corridor.
On Friday, he said he has been communicating with OCTA officials to emphasize reopening the tracks “as quickly and safely as possible.”
“The longer the corridor is out of service, the greater the impact this landslide will have on our region,” said Levin, whose district includes coastal cities from Laguna Niguel to Del Mar.
“I’m confident OCTA will take all the appropriate precautions when determining the usability of the tracks and hope that the tracks can safely resume service soon.”
The railroad has wide-ranging economic impacts on the region. The corridor supports more than $1 billion in annual freight volume carried by two railroad companies — Burlington Northern Santa Fe, or BNSF, and Union Pacific — serving seaports in San Diego, Long Beach, Los Angeles and Port Hueneme, according to the California Senate Office of Research.
Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner inter-city trains had more than 1.6 million passengers in 2022 on the 351-mile LOSSAN corridor between San Diego and San Luis Obispo, according to statistics provided by Caltrans.
Metrolink and North County Transit District’s Coaster trains had a total of 5 million passengers in 2022.
State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, is leading an effort to have the California State Transportation Agency take a larger role in overseeing the rail corridor.
As chair of the Senate’s LOSSAN Corridor Resiliency Subcommittee, she found that the multiple independent agencies using the corridor complicate issues, including responses to rail closures, and make planning difficult.
The LOSSAN corridor also is part of Defense Department’s Strategic Rail Corridor Network, which links military bases across the United States including Camp Pendleton and Naval Base San Diego.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in July extending the three-year deadline to 2026 for work under Assembly Bill 66, which secured $2.5 million in the state budget for research that could lead to an early warning system for landslides and cliff erosion in hot spots such as Del Mar and San Clemente.
The study is led by coastal geomorphologist Adam Young and research geophysicist Mark Zumberge, both of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. Their work uses ground-monitoring devices and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), a system that scans the cliffs with lasers to create three-dimensional maps of the coast.
“We aim to gain a better understanding of the processes leading up to cliff failures,” Zumberge said last year. “Our goal is to learn how deformations are impacted by tides, large surf, groundwater and rainfall to see if we can answer the question of whether signals exist that can forecast where and when an increased risk for collapse is developing.”
OCTA and Metrolink officials said late Friday they plan to build a barrier wall to protect the tracks while work continues on the Mariposa landslide.
No details were released, but last year they built a barrier wall below a different slide at San Clemente’s Casa Romantica, a historic bluff-top estate that holds special community events. That wall, erected along the railroad right-of-way, was about 300 feet long and 12 feet to 15 feet high, made of steel pilings and wooden timbers.
“The path forward could include restoring limited passenger rail service during construction of the wall, but no timeline for letting passenger trains run again has been determined at this point,” states an OCTA news release. “The safety of passengers, as always, will guide that decision.”
Last week, Caltrans declared the Mariposa slide to be an official emergency, clearing the way for up to $10 million in state emergency funding for repairs.
Safety is always a concern, of course, but logistics also are a factor in when passenger service will resume at the San Clemente site, transit officials said.
Freight usually travels at night to avoid passenger trains. In the slide area, the night moves also prevent conflicts with repair crews working only in daylight hours.
During the day, crews use heavy equipment such as cranes, bulldozers and skip loaders, and there is no room for trains to pass. No roads reach the Mariposa hillside site, and the narrow railroad right-of-way provides the only access.
For the past week, BNSF trains were allowed through only between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m., and the speed limit was 10 mph.
“Inspections of the track and a confirmation that it is safe to proceed will occur before and after each freight train passes,” a Metrolink spokesperson said, and work crews will remain on-site throughout the looming rain.
“At this point it’s all visual inspection,” said Scott Johnson, Metrolink director of communications.
The engineer drives the train through the trouble spot at 10 mph, slow enough to stop if they see anything on the tracks, Johnson said Saturday. A geological technician on the hillside also watches for any recent soil movement that could threaten the train.
Freight trains can be quite long, as many as 40 or 50 cars, unlike passenger trains that are usually just three or four cars. Rail officials have said the weight of a freight train is not much of a safety factor, but its length and the time it takes to slowly travel through a trouble spot can cause problems.
A long freight train can monopolize a section of track and even the entire rail corridor, because there is only a single set of rails in places such as southern Orange County, the Del Mar bluffs and downtown Carlsbad.
Those places can be bottlenecks when multiple trains are on the corridor.
Trains need a second set of tracks to pass each other.
Regional planners have been working for years to double-track the rail corridor, but so far only about three-quarters of the stretch between San Diego and San Clemente has the double capacity.
Also, freight trains run on an as-needed basis, one at a time with no set schedule.
They don’t necessarily make round trips. Passenger trains must make round trips scheduled at specific times throughout each day so commuters and travelers can reach their destinations without delay. Amtrak alone has 15 round-trip trains between San Diego and Los Angeles on a normal weekday.
Further, each agency is responsible for its own actions. BNSF decides whether its trains are safe to travel, as do Amtrak, Metrolink, and North County Transit District.
BNSF did not respond to emails requesting comment on the San Clemente slide and the hazard it may represent.
Amtrak, Metrolink and NCTD have long said passenger safety is their utmost priority. A spokesperson at the National Transportation Safety Board referred questions about rail safety to the Federal Railroad Administration.
Landslides should be no surprise on the rugged California coast, where trains have traveled basically the same route for 120 years or longer.
Most of the slides are in places where they have occurred before. Unlike a mountaintop avalanche, coastal land slips often start slowly with cracks in the soil or a few loose boulders. Some move only inches or less per day.
San Clemente officials detected soil movement at the Mariposa Pedestrian Bridge and closed the trail there more than a week before debris fell onto the tracks. The slide has slowed since then, but late last week it continued to move slowly.
The Mariposa slide is the third location in San Clemente where recurring landslides have stopped trains repeatedly in recent years.
The previous slide, at Casa Romantica, is still being repaired, and completion is several months away.
Before that, a slow-moving slide below the Cyprus Shore community suspended passenger service for almost six months while repairs were completed. Freight trains were allowed through at slow speeds at night during most of the work.
Heavy rain or an earthquake still can precipitate a sudden disaster for the railroad, just as it could for a tall building or a freeway overpass.
Drainage and groundwater flow at the Mariposa site are being monitored constantly, transit officials said.
“The topography of the area has changed due to the landslide itself,” states one of several recent updates to the OCTA website.
“The project team placed additional pipes and ballast to integrate with the existing culvert system to further improve water drainage from the saturated hillside,” it states.
“In addition to continuing the grading and excavation, work was performed to reestablish a culvert inlet on the inland side of the track that was covered by landslide debris,” it states. “In order to keep the culvert functioning, approximately 30 tons of riprap was placed to ensure proper water drainage.”
Plastic sheeting was placed over the slope to slow the infiltration of water during the rain expected over the next few days.
(Phil Diehl, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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The second of back-to-back atmospheric rivers battered the state on Sunday, flooding roadways and knocking out power to nearly 850,000 people and prompting a rare warning for hurricane-force winds as residents braced for what could be days of heavy rains.
The massive storm, which was slowing down and gaining strength, will likely drop 2 to 4 inches of rain across San Diego County between late this afternoon and late Tuesday night, the National Weather Service said.
“Flooding will be possible everywhere,” said Adam Rozer, a weather service forecaster.
“The San Diego River could reach 10 feet on Tuesday afternoon.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday declared a state of emergency for San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services activated its operations center and positioned personnel and equipment in areas most at risk.
On Sunday evening, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria announced the city had issued evacuation warnings to several low-lying communities that already suffered flood damage in earlier storms, including Southcrest, Mountain View, Encanto, Rolando and other southeastern and south San Diego neighborhoods.
“This is a warning, not an order,” Gloria said. “This warning is designed to have residents in these communities make preparations now should it become necessary in the future” to evacuate. If an evacuation order is issued, first responders will go door-to-door, the mayor said.
Gloria said he was grateful for the governor’s emergency proclamation, which he said will make it easier to respond to “whatever Mother Nature throws our way” in coming days.
Fire Chief Colin Stowell said the Fire-Rescue Department has beefed up its staffing because of the storm, calling in extra firefighters, lifeguards and dispatchers to handle calls. He urged residents to stay home, avoid outside activities and stay off the roads if they can. “If you do not need to go outside, if you do not need to get on the roads, don’t,” Stowell said. He reminded drivers out driving in the rain not to go around barricades.
Officials said city workers and contractors have continued working to clear blockages in city storm drains, including those that had earlier problems in Chollas Creek as well as drains in Nestor, Otay Mesa and Sorrento Valley.
On Sunday, the storm inundated streets and brought down trees and electrical lines across the San Francisco Bay Area, where winds topped 60 mph in some areas.
Gusts exceeding 80 mph were recorded in the mountains.
Just to the south in San Jose, emergency crews pulled occupants out of the windows of a car stranded by floodwaters and rescued people from a homeless encampment alongside a rising river.
Throughout Southern California, officials warned of potentially devastating flooding and ordered evacuations for canyons that burned in recent wildfires that are at high risk for mud and debris flows. The National Weather Service office for Los Angeles warned that “all systems are go for one of the most dramatic weather days in recent memory.”
Similar warnings were issued in Santa Barbara.
“This storm is predicted to be one of the largest and most significant in our county’s history, and our goal is to get through it without any fatalities or any serious injuries,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown told reporters Saturday.
Classes were canceled today for schools across the county, which was devastated by mudslides caused by powerful storms in 2018.
Nearly 846,000 customers were without electricity statewide by Sunday evening, with most of the outages concentrated in coastal regions, according to poweroutage.us.
The weather service on Sunday issued a rare “hurricane force wind warning” for the Central Coast, with wind gusts of up to 92 mph possible from the Monterey Peninsula to northern San Luis Obispo County.
Meanwhile, Southern California was at risk of substantial flooding beginning late Sunday because of how slow the system was moving, said Ryan Kittell, a weather service meteorologist.
“The core of the low pressure system is very deep, and it’s moving very slowly and it’s very close to us. And that’s why we have those very strong winds. And the slow nature of it is really giving us the highest rainfall totals and the flooding risk,” he said at a Sunday briefing.
The National Weather Service on Sunday afternoon issued a flood watch for San Diego County’s coastal areas, valleys, mountains and deserts that will be in effect from this afternoon through Wednesday morning. Even worse trouble is expected just to the north. Forecasters say that many parts of Orange County will receive 5 to 7 inches of rain.
(U-T STAFF & NEWS SERVICES; Gary Robbins, Caleb Lunetta; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Much of Alaska has plunged into a deep freeze, with temperatures well below zero, bringing heavy snow and ice to the state earlier than expected.
Anchorage has seen some of its coldest temperatures in years and the mayor opened warming facilities for people who are homeless or don’t have reliable heating.
To the south in the state capital, Juneau, snow blanketed streets and rooftops as part of a two-day storm that helped set a new January snowfall record of 6.4 feet for the city, which is nestled in a relatively temperate rainforest.
Anchorage surpassed 100 inches of snow this week, the earliest date the state’s largest city has ever hit that mark.
For much of the last week, temperatures were minus-40 degrees Fahrenheit or colder in Fairbanks, an inland city that’s a popular destination for seeing the northern lights.
In other far-flung towns, the thermometer hovered between minus-30 degrees and minus-20 degrees for days.
“That’s a pretty solid streak,” National Weather Service meteorologist Dustin Saltzman said, adding that it was the coldest outbreak in at least several years.
It’s not only Fairbanks.
Anchorage, which hit minus-17 degrees late Wednesday night, is experiencing its coldest temperatures in 15 years, said Brian Brettschneider, with the local weather service office.
The forecast called for temperatures there to remain below zero through Friday before climbing into the teens by Sunday.
Anchorage resident DuShan Vujnovic, a native of Serbia who is working for the Alaska Railroad, said this winter — his fifth in the city — has been “too much.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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To keep Earth from overheating too much, the nations of the world need to put fewer loopholes in climate agreements and far more money into financial help for poor nations, the United Nations climate chief said Friday.
In an unusual and blunt lecture at a university in Baku, Azerbaijan, the host city of upcoming international climate negotiations later this year, United Nations Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called gains made in the past not nearly enough. Without the proper amount of cash, he said those could “quickly fizzle away into more empty promises.”
Much of it comes down to money: $2.4 trillion a year, Stiell said. That’s how much a United Nations High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance estimated that developing nations need to invest in renewable energy instead of dirtier fossil fuels, as well as to adapt to and recover from climate change harms such as floods, storms, droughts and heat waves.
Richer nations have promised less than 5 percent of that amount in climate financial help to poor nations — and they often haven’t even delivered that much.
“It’s already blazingly obvious that finance is the make-or-break factor in the world’s climate fight,” Stiell said. “We need torrents — not trickles — of climate finance.”
United Nations climate officials emphasized the next two years are crucial for curbing climate change, with 2024 negotiations in Baku followed by a critical meeting in Brazil in 2025, when countries are required to come up with new and stronger pledges to cut emissions of all heat-trapping gases. To do that, officials said money is the great enabler of action.
After briefly praising last year’s climate agreement that said fossil fuels cause warming and the world needs to “transition away” from use of them in many instances, Stiell offered a rare but subtle rebuke.
“Hiding behind loopholes in decision texts or dodging hard work ahead through selective interpretation would be entirely self-defeating for any government as climate impacts hammer every country’s economy and population,” Stiell said.
Activists, scientists and small island nations that are most vulnerable to warming’s worst effects criticized last year’s deal specifically for what they called loopholes.
“The problem with the text is that it still includes cavernous loopholes that allow the United States and other fossil fuel-producing countries to keep going on their expansion of fossil fuels,” Center for Biological Diversity energy justice director Jean Su said in December.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Scattered showers peppered the region with moisture Friday as the latest winter storm moved inland, ushering in what meteorologists expect will be a pretty dry weekend.
It’s a reprieve the soaked region needs. It won’t last.
A slow-moving system is set to roll in early next week, according to the National Weather Service, and it’s expected to drop even more rain than Thursday’s blustery storm.
Today, however, “should be a pretty nice day,” said meteorologist Jon Suk. “And even the first part of Sunday is looking pretty darn dry right now.”
The new storm, another atmospheric river, could bring light rain to the county as early as Sunday night, with the brunt of the precipitation falling on Monday. The system isn’t expected to taper off until Wednesday. Because it’s a slower storm, it will be overhead for a while, likely dropping 2 to 2.5 inches of rain.
“The good news is that when it’s a slow-moving system, (the rain is) usually also spread out, so it’s not falling all at once,” Suk said.
Still, that’s nearly double the rain dropped by Thursday’s storm. North County communities got the worst of that downpour, with Oceanside, Carlsbad and Encinitas all getting more than an inch of rain. The San Diego International Airport got just over 0.80 inch of rain — a fair cry from the record-setting total dropped on the city Jan. 22.
Thursday’s system still flooded dozens of roads, prompted a swift-water rescue and knocked over a few trees. Early Friday morning, a 70-foot pine toppled onto a house in North Park.
But it didn’t cause anywhere close to the destruction of last week’s historic storm. County officials on Friday estimated that flooding on Jan. 22 cost the region more than $100 million in emergency response expenses and damage to public infrastructure such as schools, bridges and culverts.
Local, state and federal damage assessment teams also verified that 442 homes were seriously damaged by the storm and another 146 homes suffered minor damage.
More than 3,400 residents and business owners filled out the county’s damage assessment survey. Those reports are still being assessed.
Today, authorities are opening a Local Assistance Center, a short-term one-stop shop for San Diegans affected by the storm to get help from several local, county and state agencies and community-based organizations. The center will be at the Mountain View Community Recreation Center, 641 Boundary St. in San Diego, and will be open every day from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Friday, the last day the center will be open.
Available information there crosses a swath of services, from pet supplies to help with disaster assistance claim forms to learning about short-term hotel stays.
San Diego officials said Friday that 50 units at a property recently acquired by the San Diego Housing Commission will be made available to city residents displaced by the storm.
The location was once a hotel on Midway Drive and was purchased to create affordable rental options for people experiencing homelessness.
The state’s Housing and Community Development department, which provided some of the funding for the property, granted emergency waivers and approvals so the Housing Commission could use the site as a short-term emergency storm shelter. It will be run by Alpha Project.
City officials are identifying people who might need the resource through housing assessments that the commission is conducting at shelter and resource locations, and with assistance from community-based organizations. Seniors, those with disabilities and families with children will be priorities.
“Our neighbors are struggling to recover from the record-breaking rain and flooding last week that upended their lives,” said Lisa Jones, president and CEO of the commission. “Making this site available for a short-term emergency shelter will give these families the shelter and support they need during a difficult time.”
The Housing Commission is also running an emergency hotel-placement program until other resources can be made available to county residents, such as federal aid. Since last week’s storm, the commission has placed 61 households in hotels and 14 others will soon move in. About 80 other households were connected to other resources.
The Medical Examiner’s Office is still trying to learn the identity of a woman found dead along Forester Creek in Santee on Jan. 22, and on Friday released a sketch in hopes someone will recognize her. She is one of three people whose deaths are suspected to be related to the storm.
As another round of rain began on Friday, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond toured several Spring Valley schools damaged during last week’s storm, moving between classrooms draped with plastic sheets and stripped of carpeting.
On Jan. 22, classrooms at one of those schools — Bancroft Elementary School on Tyler Street — were filled with about 6 to 8 inches of rainwater. David Feliciano, La Mesa-Spring Valley School District superintendent, said the flooding was caused by water rushing down a nearby hillside, overwhelming the challenged storm drain infrastructure.
“If you think about what a flash flood looks like, that’s what that looked like going down the middle of this school,” Feliciano said.
Bancroft, which sustained the most damage of the Spring Valley schools in last week’s storm, will be closed for at least four weeks as staffers replace classroom flooring. In the meantime, Bancroft students are being bused to Spring Valley Academy to take classes in unused classrooms.
Feliciano said the school district will need an estimated $10 million to $15 million to mitigate flood damage, which displaced about 250 students.
Thurmond said Friday that he and the California Department of Education Facilities and Emergency Response teams were working to support the schools, students and their families, including by providing gift cards for school families to purchase food, water, books and other supplies.
Mayor Todd Gloria said donations are also needed to support San Diego victims of last week’s floods — everything from cleaning supplies to bedding to plastic storage containers. The city will be accepting these items and more at four locations today and Sunday, from 8 a.m. to noon: the Beckworth Library at 721 San Pasqual St. in Mountain View; the College-Rolando Library at 6600 Montezuma Road; the Encanto Recreation Center at 6508 Wunderlin Ave.; and the Southcrest Recreation Center at 4149 Newton Ave.
Clothing donations will not be accepted.
The city is also making sandbags available at the Encanto Recreation Center and Mountain View Community Center from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. for residents in those communities.
Sand and empty sandbags are available at 10 other recreation centers across the city from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday. For a full list of those locations and the types of donations needed, visit sandiego.gov/storm.
Evacuation warnings issued in advance of Thursday’s storm for communities in flood-prone areas were lifted Friday morning, but San Diego officials said residents should remain vigilant, as another storm moves closer.
“I want to urge all San Diegans to take action now to prepare” for next week’s weather, Gloria said.
(Lyndsay Winkley, Lauren J. Mapp & Teri Figueroa, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Caltrans declared an emergency Thursday for the San Clemente landslide that continues to halt passenger train traffic between San Diego and Orange counties.
The declaration will allow the Orange County Transportation Authority, which owns that segment of the railroad, to obtain up to $10 million from the California Transportation Commission for immediate repairs.
“This section of rail is vital to the economic prosperity of the entire Southern California region and provides critical commuter, intercity and freight rail service every day,” Caltrans director Tony Tavares said in a news release. “This emergency declaration will give OCTA the immediate funding needed to fix this landslide and get the trains moving again as quickly and safely as possible.”
The Jan. 24 slide at the Mariposa Pedestrian Bridge in San Clemente halted all rail traffic over that spot.
Freight trains resumed travel through the area over the weekend, but only at night and at speeds of 10 mph or less.
Metrolink trains, which normally go as far south as Oceanside, are only operating as far south as the Laguna Niguel-Mission Viejo station during the suspension. Some Amtrak trains offer a bus link between Oceanside and Irvine.
Rail officials have not offered an estimate for when passenger service might resume through San Clemente. Caltrans officials said the closure is a matter of statewide concern and that immediate action is needed to stop the slide and restore the tracks.
OCTA and Metrolink workers have graded the affected slope. They also replaced a culvert and applied about 30 tons of rock to ensure property drainage.
The area was covered with plastic sheeting to avoid further saturation from the rain that’s expected to continue into next week.
Coaster and Sprinter trains run by the North County Transit District in San Diego County are not affected by the suspension.
The tracks are part of the 351-mile Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo, or LOSSAN, rail corridor. One of every nine Amtrak riders in the country, nearly 3 million passengers a year, uses the corridor.
(Phil Diehl, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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For the second time in less than two weeks, a Pacific storm supercharged by moisture from the subtropics drenched San Diego County on Thursday, creating runoff in areas that recently flooded, snarling traffic on freeways and prompting at least one rescue.
But nothing like the ferocious downpour that sent floodwaters roaring through more than 250 homes and businesses on Jan. 22 materialized. The region — still recovering from last week’s torrential storm — breathed a sigh of relief.
Thursday’s blustery system arrived early, buffeting stretches of coastline with 35 to 40 mph winds throughout the morning — gusts strong enough to take out a few trees. Winds swept the most serious rain into North County, and a flood advisory went into effect for several hours.
While the Palomar Observatory logged 3 inches of rain, most places saw an inch or so, if that. The San Diego International Airport received about 0.73 inch of rain. During last week’s historic storm, San Diego saw 2.73 inches — nearly an inch more than the city typically sees during the entire month of January.
Still, the storm packed its own punch.
On-ramps on state Routes 76 and 78 flooded, as did about 30 roads across San Diego.
A lifeguard swift-water crew rescued two people from the banks of swollen Chollas Creek about 11:15 a.m., a San Diego Fire-Rescue spokesperson said.
It’s not clear how they ended up stuck there. Neither needed medical aid, and it was the only water rescue reported in the city as of 5 p.m.
The weather service issued a flood advisory for a large part of San Diego County for several hours, and thunderstorms were reported.
And more than 1,600 customers lost power for several hours around 11:30 a.m. in communities including Nestor, San Ysidro and Otay Mesa. San Diego Gas & Electric said the cause of the outage was due to equipment that needed to be repaired but did not specifically say if it was storm-related. An outage at the Costco on Broadway in Chula Vista prompted the store to close for two hours.
Before the storm, the city of San Diego issued evacuation warnings to a handful of communities in flood-prone areas. No evacuations were ordered, and city officials said the warnings would likely be lifted this morning.
No storm-related injuries or deaths were reported.
Last week’s flooding likely contributed to three fatalities — Harold Hooker, 67, who died in a traffic crash, and two people — a man and a woman — whose bodies were found in Santee.
On Thursday, the Medical Examiner’s Office identified the man found in Santee as Manuel Andres Perez, 48. The investigation remains under way, and his cause of death is pending. The woman remains unidentified, and the Medical Examiner’s Office said it will soon release a sketch of her in hopes of learning her name.
Since last week, officials and community groups have been working overtime to stack sandbags and clear storm channels, drains and roadways in preparation for Thursday’s storm.
Although Mother Nature gave the region a serious leg up by dropping a lot less rain, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and other local leaders applauded communities for those efforts at a Thursday news conference.
“I want to start by saying how grateful I am to the public and to our city team for the preparations that were made in advance of today’s storm,” Gloria said.
Officials said San Diego’s public works dispatch system fielded 390 calls Thursday — down from more than 1,000 made on Jan. 22. And only 75 were emergencies, compared to the more than 400 emergency calls that came in last week.
“The volume of calls and the nature of the calls is a direct reflection of the lower intensity rain and the lower rainfall totals,” said Bethany Bezak, director of the city’s transportation department.
Some residents questioned how they may have fared had the city’s sweeping preparations occurred before last week’s flooding.
As the rain subsided in Southcrest on Thursday afternoon, people began emerging from their homes on Beta Street, one of the roads hardest hit by the storm on Jan. 22. Children played on a rope swing attached to a tree in their front yard. An elderly man walked his dog down Southcrest Trail. And families resumed cleaning the muck out of their homes.
Tanya and Ricardo Tilman stood on their front porch, watching as trucks passed every so often.
“Where were they last week?”
Ricardo asked. “It feels phony having so many city people here now when they pretty much left us here to drown last week.”
The Tilmans have been staying in a hotel as they work to repair their flood-damaged home but had returned to Beta Street Thursday to ensure they could document any further damage.
“I wanted to be here to see the difference having clear storm drains made,” Tanya said. The nearby street barely flooded.
A temporary shelter was set up Wednesday night at the Municipal Gymnasium in Balboa Park to house families forced to evacuate after last week’s storm, and it will remain open, officials said.
The shelter, run by the Red Cross and the Humane Society, was already serving 75 people as of noon — no more than a dozen who evacuated their homes ahead of Thursday’s storm, and another 63 people who have needed a place to stay since the Jan. 22 storm.
They had been sheltering at Lincoln High School, but that site was closed and they were bused Thursday to Balboa.
Residents needing transportation to the temporary shelter can be taken by school buses or can access no-cost rides from United Taxi Workers. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Gloria said buses would pick up residents from the Encanto Recreation Center, the Mountain View/Beckwourth Library and the College-Rolando Library. The last pickup Thursday was 6 p.m., and more busing is planned for today.
Residents also may request rides to Balboa Park from their pickup location by calling 619-280-4444 or by downloading the Ride United (Passenger) app on their smartphones. The shelter will provide food and temporary shelter for displaced pets and is staffed 24 hours a day.
It’s a resource many were grateful for Thursday.
Patricia Colman Casillas, a Southcrest resident, said she awoke the morning of last week’s storm to the sound of one of her dogs, a Chihuahua named Russell, splashing in a foot of water. By the time she left her apartment, there was 4 feet of water outside her door.
“How did I survive that?” she asked. Colman Casillas has been at the shelter since Tuesday and praised the Red Cross for their efforts. “It feels great to be seen,” she said.
City and county officials are also working on more long-term housing assistance for people displaced by last week’s storm.
So far, 37 families have been put up in hotel rooms, and another 10 are set to move into rooms. All are getting help from San Diego Food Bank, as well. Another 62 families were connected with resources, and the San Diego Housing Commission is triaging the needs of more than 200 other families.
A flood watch will remain in effect throughout San Diego County through 10 a.m. today, and a new storm is on the way.
The slow-moving system is expected to drift ashore late Sunday and early Monday, dropping torrential rain in some areas for at least two days.
Sandbags are still being doled out and distribution sites can be found in each San Diego City Council district. Locations at sandiego.gov/storm.
(Lyndsay Winkley, Gary Robbins & karen Kucher, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; Emily Alvarenga, Teri Figueroa, Caleb Lunetta, Lauren Mapp, Rob Nikolewski, Roxana Popescu)
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San Diego officials issued evacuation warnings Wednesday to residents living in areas prone to flooding in the Chollas Creek watershed as another major storm barreled toward neighborhoods still saturated by floodwaters.
The warning is voluntary, Mayor Todd Gloria said of the notification, and is designed to encourage residents to prepare “if, or when,” an evacuation order becomes necessary with the heavy rain coming today.
The message, sent via text message, went to residents in Southcrest, Mountain View, Encanto, San Ysidro, Sorrento Valley and Mission Valley, city officials said.
“Residents in these areas should consider gathering important documents and belongings and make sure you have a plan to move yourself and your family out of harm’s way should major flooding occur,” Gloria said in a statement. “If you are willing and able, we encourage residents in these low-lying, impacted areas to seek alternative accommodations.”
The city set up a shelter for evacuees at Municipal Gym in Balboa Park, and officials are working to arrange transportation for those who need help getting there. If evacuation orders are issued, police officers will go door-to-door to notify residents, officials said.
The declaration drew some criticism. Shane Harris, founder of the People’s Association of Justice Advocates, argued it was irresponsible for the city to warn people about evacuations but offer no way to house them, such as a hotel voucher program.
County and city emergency crews have been in high gear since Jan. 22, when a torrential downpour sent floodwaters roaring through homes and businesses across the region. Since then, teams have been working around the clock to clear storm channels and culverts of debris, organize local assistance centers for those who lost homes and businesses, and apply for funding that will help communities recover.
Now, a new storm approaches. The National Weather Service said Wednesday that strong, gusty winds are expected to roll in early today, followed by hours of rain. The city of San Diego could get 2 inches of precipitation, and the San Diego River is expected to reach flood stage around 6 p.m. Coronado, the San Diego community of Encanto, and National City have been identified as areas of concern, in addition to communities still soaked from last week’s deluge.
The expected rain is about one inch less than the January surprise storm, but the saturated ground may not be able to absorb it quickly.
“We only got about an inch of water in our house last week, so we were able to save most of our stuff, but God only knows if we can get that lucky twice,” said Izzie Pasqual, an Encanto resident who dropped by the Jackie Robinson Family YMCA in southeastern San Diego with her mother, Vanessa, on Wednesday.
Volunteers assembled care packages and filled sandbags. Residents dropped off donations of food, clothing, blankets and toiletries. And flood victims filtered in to pick up supplies. The YMCA was one of four locations across the county that held such Day of Service events — part of a countywide effort to help flood victims recover and prepare residents for today’s weather.
Across the street from the Pasquals, neighbors lost everything in last week’s storm, which damaged more than 250 structures at last count.
“I’m terrified it’ll be our turn next,” Pasqual said. “We weren’t ready last week, but you best believe we’re doing everything in our power to be ready now.”
Across the region, fire and police are getting staged. Extra swift-water rescue teams are positioned around town, and 211 — a nonprofit that connects people with community, health and disaster services — is being staffed with additional workers to handle an increase in calls.
Over the last few days, tens of thousands of sandbags have been filled and distributed. On Wednesday morning, a line of vehicles wrapped around a Spring Valley block waiting to get bags filled from San Miguel Fire District Station 16.
Thanks in part to the city of San Diego’s emergency declaration, city crews have cleared 4 miles of storm channels in the last five days, and critical areas of Chollas Creek and Cottonwood Creek will be cleared by Wednesday night.
Seeing the unclogged channels filled some residents with hope that this storm would be less destructive.
Lara Lockwood said Wednesday that she and her two sons had not returned to their Mountain View home that was destroyed when the drainage ditch behind their house overflowed last week. However, some of her neighbors have stuck around through the clean-up process and were taking some comfort in the work already done by the city ahead of today’s storm.
“The main reason why it flooded is because the water had nowhere to go. The drainage ditch was completely blocked by trees, debris, bamboo and other small plants,” Lockwood said. “The city bulldozed through all that in two days, so I’m not as concerned as a lot of people.”
Despite being less concerned, the Mountain View neighborhood helped each other fill sandbags and put them around each others’ doors and garages this week.
“We’re a really strong, tight-knit street, and this has brought us even closer together,” she added.
Dan Cruz, spokesman for the county YMCA, said he was initially naive to the catastrophic damage the storm had caused in isolated pockets of the county last week.
But as the week went on and the YMCA began to hear from the community, Cruz said it was eye opening to see not only the severity of the damage but also the response from its members.
“I was truly inspired to see people going out in the community to help their friends and neighbors,” Cruz said. “It was a beautiful thing to see how everyone sprung into action.”
Although Cruz said the YMCA and its partners are holding their breath to see how the storm hits San Diegans today, he hopes the community response will help residents be more prepared.
By noon, the YMCA location had run out of sandbags and had to direct people to one of the other nearby assistance centers.
Although Pablo Quinera was already living in a motel with his wife and three young children after his home in southeastern San Diego had been flooded last week, he took the day off work Wednesday to ensure it couldn’t be further damaged.
“We were able to save some stuff like furniture and things that were up higher, but we couldn’t afford a storage unit, so we put it all back in the house,” Quinera said.
Now Quinera hoped he could collect enough sandbags to ensure more water didn’t enter the home.
“It’s been really hard already,” Quinera said. “Hearing there would be more rain really was another blow, but I’m thankful there’s been places I could turn to for help this time.”
(Lyndsay Winkley & Emily Alvarenga, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; Caleb Lunetta, David Garrick, Gary Robbins)
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ANCHORAGE, AK - Even by Alaska standards, there is a lot of snow this winter.
So much snow has fallen — so far, more than 8.7 feet — that roofs on commercial buildings are collapsing around Anchorage and officials are urging residents to break out their shovels to avoid a similar fate at home. As of Tuesday morning, the three-day storm had dropped nearly 17 more inches of snowfall, pushing Alaska’s largest city past the 100-inch mark earlier than at any other time in its history.
The city is well on track to break its all-time record of 134.5 inches.
Now, even winter-savvy Anchorage residents are getting fed up with the snow-filled streets and sidewalks, constant shoveling and six days of pandemic-era remote learning. The city is already in the record books with this year’s snowfall, the eighth snowiest, with a lot of time left this season.
“It’s miserable,” said Tamera Flores, an elementary school teacher shoveling her driveway on Monday, as the snow pile towered over her head. “It’s a pandemic of snow.”
Last year, 107.9 inches fell on Anchorage, making this only the second time the city has had back-to-back years of 100-plus inches of snow since the winters of 1954-55 and 1955-56.
This year, the roofs of three commercial structures collapsed under loads of heavy snow. On Tuesday, there were no injuries when a roof partially collapsed on a fourth warehouse building. The Anchorage Fire Department said in a statement that the cause was under investigation but reminded residents of the importance of clearing snow off roofs. Last year, 16 buildings had roofs collapse, with one person killed at a gym.
The city last week issued guidance urging people to remove snow from their home roofs. Officials said there were snow loads of more than 30 pounds per square foot.
Since it is so early in the season, people should think about removing the snow, especially if there are signs of structural distress. These include a sagging roof; creaking, popping, cracking or other strange noises coming from the roof, which can indicate it’s under stress from the snow; or sticking or jammed doors and windows, a sign the snow might be deforming the structure of the house.
Signs have popped up all over town from companies advertising services to remove the snow from roofs.
Anchorage isn’t the only Alaska city beset by near-record snowfalls. So far this month, the capital city of Juneau has recorded 69.5 inches of snow.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Additional swift-water rescue teams and assistance from the U.S. National Guard will be on tap when the next big storm arrives Thursday, officials said Tuesday, even as many worked to recover from the flash flood that upended so many lives just a week ago.
The situation was considered serious enough — with the National Weather Service predicting another 1 to 2 inches of precipitation starting Thursday, and a third storm looking probable early next week — that the San Diego County Board of Supervisors held a special meeting, putting in place prohibitions against eviction and rent increases in 11 urban ZIP codes where last week’s flash flood hit hardest.
Termed an “urgency ordinance,” the action approved on a 4-1 vote prohibits “residential evictions without just cause” in areas of eastern and southeastern San Diego, Spring Valley, National City, Lemon Grove and Coronado unless landlords show “that there is an imminent health or safety threat.” That term is defined as a tenant creating an “immediate and serious threat to a person’s health or safety,” and only in circumstances where “all other remedies available to the landlord and other occupants of the property” have been exhausted. Evictions notices served before Jan. 22 are not included.
The eviction moratorium lasts for 60 days and applies to the ZIP codes 92113, 91977, 91950, 92114, 92102, 92115, 91945, 92118, 92104, 92105 and 92111.
And landlords are also prohibited, for the next 60 days, from increasing rents in the designated ZIP codes by an amount that is greater than the overall increase in the region’s Consumer Price Index for the previous year. Rent increases already communicated to tenants before the flash flood can still take effect.
Some did not appreciate the decision.
Molly Kirkland, immediate past president of the Southern California Rental Housing Association, called the rent cap unnecessary as a similar provision is already in place due to a state emergency declaration. Overall, she said, the ordinance was not specific enough in many areas.
“There’s a plethora of definitions that really just don’t work for either side, and we think clarity is needed,” Kirkland said.
Supervisors also approved $10 million in emergency spending, and emergency extensions of several contracts, to help with the recovery process.
Board Chair Nora Vargas said she was proud to see the community’s response to the flash flood but wanted to make sure that those efforts were amplified. Pictures of the devastation wrought on neighborhoods with few resources, she said, can never do justice to the flood’s true impacts in communities that have historically had inadequate resources.
“Truly, unless you are there, I don’t think you can see it or smell it or feel it,” Vargas said.
Some of her colleagues, though, noted that many of the ZIP codes listed are inside cities. While county staff said they were confident that the state’s Emergency Services Act allows such actions, some were worried about mission creep.
Supervisor Joel Anderson, the lone no vote, said that while he supports helping those in need, it was not clear why the region’s 18 city governments were not handling some of the proposed actions themselves.
“I’m trying to figure out how we can do this in a way that people have skin in the game, and that they meet us halfway, that they don’t just say, ‘Well, we can order as much food as we want at the restaurant, because we’re not paying.’ ”
Anderson’s request to break out some of the items on the county’s list of actions went nowhere. Vargas said she didn’t feel she could wait to bring the resolutions forward for a discussion at the next regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday.
“We really are in a place right now where our communities are suffering,” Vargas said. “I worked really, really closely with legal counsel to ensure that every one of these items ... so that we can go ahead and move forward.”
Vargas said she decided to delay her State of the County speech, scheduled for today, to encourage the public to get out and volunteer in neighborhoods affected by flooding in a countywide “day of service.” More information is available at countynewscenter.com.
Vargas also said that county government will request assistance from the California National Guard and California Conservation Corps to assist with storm preparations.
Baja California is also hunkering down.
In-person classes are officially suspended Thursday and Friday in all Baja California schools, Gov. Marina del Pilar Ávila announced Tuesday after a meeting in Tijuana with officials from Civil Protection — the state’s office that coordinates preparedness and emergency response.
Ávila said that, depending on the forecast, it will be determined Sunday whether it is also necessary to suspend classes on Tuesday of next week to reduce mobility throughout the state. Monday is an observed holiday in Mexico. Baja California has 80 shelters available to people in need, Ávila said.
Meanwhile, cities across the San Diego region scrambled to make repairs and prepare as best they can for the next deluge.
Swift-water rescue teams in Del Mar and Carlsbad were gearing up, as was Cal Fire. Capt. Brent Pascua said Tuesday that beginning at 8 a.m. today, Cal Fire will have two dedicated rescue teams posted in Jamul and San Marcos. The San Diego Fire-Rescue Department’s Lifeguard Division will deploy teams in flood-prone areas.
“We have also requested a California Office of Emergency Services Swift Water Rescue team, which will arrive (today) and stay through Friday,” said Monica Munoz, a media services manager for the department. “This is a team of 12 swift water rescue trained firefighters.”
Everyone seemed to be stocking up on sandbags. A comprehensive list of locations where bags could be obtained and filled across the region is available at alertsandiego.org/en-us/recovery/sandbags.html.
Outside the Heartland Fire Station on Central Avenue in Lemon Grove, about a dozen residents shoveled sand into bags to safeguard their homes from rising waters ahead of Thursday’s storm.
Lemon Grove resident Rachel Eaves was with her husband filling some sandbags they purchased online to protect their garage. Although they live on top of a hill, last week’s rising water flowed up their short driveway, seeping into their garage.
“I didn’t really know that the storm was going to be super bad this last time, and so we didn’t really do a whole lot of prep,” she said. “Since it did get so crazy, we decided to go ahead and prep this time.”
U.S. Navy veteran Jordan Baude said he had picked up some bags at Home Depot to fill up at the Lemon Grove station. Although he had more than a dozen bags with him, he was only taking five of them home to his house in Spring Valley.
“They’re running low on bags, and there’s a lot of people out here who don’t have maybe kids or a husband or something to help them fill up,” Baude said. “There may be some older folks, and so I figured I would grab a bunch extra and just fill them up and leave them here for the people that needed them. I was trying to make my mama proud.”
Public works crews focused on making sure that storm drains that clogged in the flash flood were unblocked and ready to serve on Thursday.
Chula Vista Public Works crews spent the day removing mud and debris from a storm channel under a pedestrian bridge at the Chula Vista Golf Course on Bonita Road, an area that has faced flooding in the past.
Coronado’s sewer system was severely impacted by last week’s heavy rains. Residents in the Country Club area were asked to stop flushing their toilets and running their showers and sinks for nearly 24 hours. Some repairs to the Parker Pump Station were completed Sunday, and a fully functional storm drain pump for the station is expected to go online today, according to the city.
In Carlsbad, city employees were inspecting the city’s drainage system to be sure it was clear of any debris that could block gutters and pipes, especially in areas that have had drainage issues in the past, said Kristina Ray, the city’s director of communication and engagement.
Certain areas in Tijuana are especially vulnerable to flood due to inadequate drainage and neighborhoods where houses were built in areas susceptible to landslides. Tijuana city workers were seen Tuesday afternoon removing debris and trash from the Cañon de la Pedrera channel in preparation for the rains.
Up the coast, Oceanside has been preparing for winter storms since summer, said Public Works Division Manager Nathan Mertz.
“The city cleans out over 3,500 storm drain inlets, maintains detention basins, drainage channels and storm drains,” Mertz said. “The city is constantly checking these facilities to ensure they are functioning correctly and are not blocked with debris.”
National City officials declared a local emergency Monday in response to last week’s storm.
City Manager Ben Martinez said the city is assessing damage to businesses, homes and roadways, and it opened an emergency operations center to coordinate response and recovery efforts that may be needed later in the week.
(Paul Sisson, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; Phil Diehl, Lauren Mapp, Alexandra Mendoza, Tammy Murga, Lyndsay Winkley)
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SAN DIEGO, CA - Residents in Southcrest awoke Monday morning to tow trucks hauling away vehicles parked on their street — an unwelcome surprise to many.
The work was part of the city’s effort to clean up the neighborhood after last week’s severe flooding, and ahead of more rain that could bring more damage. But several residents in Southcrest say the city didn’t give them advance notice that their vehicles would be towed, leaving some to push their flood-damaged cars off the street to avoid being towed.
“Obviously all the cars are not working, but that doesn’t mean that they’re junk,” Elvira Paulin, who rents a house on Beta Street, said Monday morning. “We can’t even bring mechanics to check the cars (because of road closures). We’re dealing with taking things out of our homes, and you expect us to move our cars in 30 minutes?”
Along with cleaning up from last week, the city is also preparing for another storm expected to drop at least 2 inches of rain on San Diego later this week. City officials say the vehicles need to be removed from the street for crews to clear mud and debris from the road so storm runoff can flow properly.
Crews have been clearing about 4 miles of channels between last week’s storm and the coming one, city officials say — work that is both recovery cleanup and preparation for rain expected later this week.
“They go hand in hand,” city spokesperson Jose Ysea said. He said that crews have collected 3,100 tons of storm debris from the affected areas across San Diego, including Southcrest, Encanto and Mountain View, and that the city was having cars towed if they were a hazard or impeding city cleanup work.
Officials say they followed procedures to notify residents about the towing, posting no-parking signs on the curb 24 hours in advance and going door to door. Police also then contacted registered owners of vehicles, said Lucero Maganda, a community representative for Mayor Todd Gloria, in what Ysea called “an extra step.”
But residents like Paulin say that city communication was lacking and late, and that crews handed out information on Monday after the crews had already started towing.
She and her neighbors managed to push her car onto a neighbor’s property.
Some Southcrest neighbors are trying to stay connected with one another. Many are in a WhatsApp group chat, where they share announcements and resources, such as where to find warm food and free transportation, says Karen Moran, who lives on Beta Street. Although her own home was damaged, she is offering meals with donated food to neighbors in her driveway.
Moran said one neighbor posted about the towing to notify others, but not everyone in the neighborhood is in the group chat.
The city said it is working with neighbors to help spread information. “It’s very hard to get in touch with everyone,” said Maganda, adding later that they are “trying to work with trusted community leaders to share the information.”
This isn’t the first time the city’s towing policies have come under scrutiny.
More than a year ago, a city audit found that towing practices by police disproportionately affected low-income people and recommended changes to policies, including a “text before tow” program, parking “boots” or offers of community service instead of fines.
Last January, city officials said they were exploring implementing those changes. But the city auditor, Andy Hanau, said Monday that no changes have since been made.
“We follow up on all of our audit and investigative recommendations every six months,” Hanau said in a statement. “As of our most recent review, all of the recommendations from the towing audit were still in the process of being implemented.”
Southcrest residents say that the towing is just their latest frustration with how the city has responded to the devastation in their neighborhood.
It’s “an understatement” to say that the cleanup has been slow, said Koko Fajardo, who has lived in the neighborhood for 12 years.
“It’s a Black and brown community, so time and time again, we’re the people that kind of (bear the brunt of) it,” Fajardo said. “Thankfully we have each other, but it’s ridiculous. We cannot count on anybody.”
Ramon De La Mora and his wife have felt “bewildered” by the whole situation. They lost everything in their Birch Street home, including important documents. He could barely read the policy information on his car insurance paperwork due to water damage.
“It feels like we are abandoned,” he said. “Someone’s going to have to be responsible for all of this.”
(Maura Fox, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; Teri Figueroa)
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A cold Pacific storm will drop 2 to 2.5 inches of rain across much of San Diego County from Thursday morning to Friday afternoon, possibly causing heavy runoff in a region still recovering from last week’s damaging, storm-induced flooding, the National Weather Service said.
The heaviest rain will fall on Thursday afternoon and evening and could include thunderstorms capable of dropping 0.75 inches of precipitation per hour, a rate that typically leads to urban flooding. Isolated spots could receive as much as 3 inches of precipitation. In San Diego, city crews were working to clear storm channels in preparation.
Forecasters stressed that the fast-moving system will make a mess of Thursday’s evening commute on local freeways and could leave people seeking shelter as they await trolley service, including in southeastern San Diego, where rain and flooding were most intense last week.
The new storm also will cause parts of the San Diego River to rise to at least 10 feet, leading to flash flooding in some areas, notably in Mission Valley, where many unhoused people live in the riverbed.
The rain will be preceded by winds out of the south that will gust 35 to 45 mph in spots like Imperial Beach, possibly damaging trees and signs.
The weather service also said that the county will get hit by a second major storm that will begin to push ashore late Sunday night and will cause big downpours on Monday and Tuesday, again raising the risks of urban flooding. That system will move slowly, allowing it to absorb additional moisture from the subtropics as it approaches land. Some areas could get 1.5 to 2 inches of precipitation from that storm.
Computer models suggest that Thursday’s storm will not produce the sort of unusually long and intense rainfall that fell last Monday and overwhelmed creeks and outdated stormwater runoff systems in parts of San Diego. That earlier system dropped rain at 1.25 to 2 inches per hour, making it a meteorological anomaly in Southern California.
The storm also will generate ocean waves in the 8-to-10-foot range, eroding beaches that have already been torn up by lots of big surf over the past month. Forecasters are advising the public to stay away from coastal cliffs, jetties and piers.
The rain could make it harder to repair the portion of railroad track in San Clemente that was damaged by last week’s storm. Workers are still trying to restore passenger rail service between Orange County and San Diego.
Several inches of snow could fall at elevations as low as 4,000 feet on Friday as the cold front moves through. Mount Laguna and Palomar Mountain have received comparatively little snow so far this winter.
The county and local cities will provide the public with free sandbags at many locations. Go to sandiegocounty.gov for a complete list. The county’s emergency app, which is called SD Emergency, is available for iPhone users in the App Store and for Android phone users in the Google Play store.
Seasonal rainfall update
Since the rainy season began on Oct. 1, San Diego International Airport has recorded 5.06 inches of precipitation, which is 0.29 inches above average. Oceanside Airport has recorded 5.62 inches, which is 0.05 inches above average. Ramona has received 4.87 inches, which is 1.79 inches below average.
Weather Vocabulary
Thursday’s storm will tap into a large plume of moisture from the subtropics. These plumes are referred to as atmospheric rivers, which the NOAA defines as “narrow regions in the atmosphere that transport much of the moisture from the tropics to northern latitudes. (They) are part of the Earth’s ocean water cycle, and are tied closely to both water supply and flood risks.” The news media sometimes refer to the rivers as the “pineapple express.”
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Soil continues to move at the site of the San Clemente landslide that has halted passenger train travel between San Diego and Orange counties since last week, rail officials said Monday.
“The construction and project teams, including geological technicians, resumed grading and excavating efforts (Monday) morning at 6:30 a.m. in an effort to stabilize the hillside slope,” said Scott Johnson, director of communications for Metrolink, the multi-county commuter rail service.
“At this point, there is still no definitive timeline as to when train movement can safely resume through the area,” Johnson said.
The spot at the Mariposa Pedestrian Bridge is the third separate location in San Clemente where landslides have halted train traffic on multiple occasions over the last several years.
Three BNSF freight trains were allowed through the Mariposa site at slow speeds Saturday night after the company’s representatives inspected the tracks, Johnson said. No trains were allowed on Sunday.
Freight trains have a window of time overnight when they can pass the site, Johnson said. During the daytime, when passenger trains usually travel, equipment, supplies and crews working to repair the site are crowded along the narrow stretch of tracks, and there is no room for trains to pass.
“Freight service resumed Saturday,” said Brianne Page, communications officer for the Port of San Diego.
“There was no impact at our Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal as there was no rail activity while freight service was suspended Wednesday-Friday,” Page said Monday afternoon. “There was minimal impact at the National City Marine Terminal.”
Work crews have completed most of the hillside grading and have installed plastic tarps to prepare for rain expected Thursday and through the weekend, Johnson said.
The bridge is on a city trail that runs parallel to the tracks on the uphill, landward side. It connects two sections of San Clemente beach along a steep bluff that is impassible for pedestrians during high tides. The slide occurred on private property above the trail, sending down material that damaged sections of the bridge and sent debris onto the tracks.
San Clemente city officials noticed movement in the hillside earlier and closed the pedestrian trail more than a week before material fell onto the tracks and stopped trains Wednesday.
Metrolink provides passenger service in six Southern California counties and is responsible for maintaining the track in San Clemente. Metrolink trains normally go as far south as Oceanside but as of Monday were only going as far as the Laguna Niguel-Mission Viejo station in Orange County.
Amtrak has suspended some of its Pacific Surfliner trains because of the closure. Some still run between San Diego and Oceanside, and north from Irvine, with a bus connection available by reservation between Oceanside and Irvine.
The North County Transit District’s Coaster and Sprinter trains are not affected by the closure.
The San Diego-to-San Clemente route covers a little over 60 miles of the 351-mile Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo route known as the LOSSAN corridor.
Much of the LOSSAN corridor takes trains close to the coastline, which in places provides spectacular ocean views. However, the most scenic sections of the track are among the most threatened because of their proximity to the erosion caused by high tides, ocean waves and stormwater runoff.
Del Mar is another spot where crumbling cliffs have long threatened the tracks and occasionally stopped trains.
The San Diego Association of Governments has completed four phases of bluff stabilization projects at Del Mar since 2003. A fifth phase, with a $78 million budget, is expected to start this year.
“No issues were observed (at Del Mar) from last week’s storm,” said Colleen Windsor, the NCTD’s director of marketing and communications.
“We had staff on hand during the storm to address any issues,” she said. “We inspected the right-of-way and conducted track inspections following the storm. No concerns were identified.”
Transit district officials inspect drainage facilities in high-priority areas before storms, monitor the areas constantly during rain, and perform post-storm inspections, she said.
Past stabilization work on the Del Mar bluffs included the installation of hundreds of concrete-and-steel pilings, seawalls, retaining walls, drainage structures and more.
SANDAG also received $300 million in state funding in 2022 to advance planning for the construction of a new route that would take about 1.7 miles of track off the Del Mar bluffs and into a tunnel drilled beneath the city of Del Mar.
Completion of the Del Mar tunnel would cost more than $4 billion and could happen no earlier than 2035, SANDAG officials have said.
(Phil Diehl, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Victims of last week’s flash flooding came to Spring Valley on Sunday for detailed advice on making insurance claims, applying for property tax relief, replacing destroyed documents and finding a place to live during repairs.
More than 25 government agencies and nonprofits came together to create a county resource center that aims to provide every kind of advice flood victims need — even some advice they don’t yet know they need.
“We’re trying to see what sort of help we can get,” said Lane Harris, who bought his first home in San Diego’s Skyline neighborhood just six weeks ago. “This is our first time owning a home and first time dealing with a disaster like this.”
Luckily, the home’s tile floors survived last Monday’s historically intense flash flood. But throughout the house, about a foot of drywall above floor level was badly damaged and must be replaced.
Danny Ayala, who was forced to leave his rented home in Spring Valley, had a more specific goal Sunday: help finding an apartment in a notoriously tight rental market so he can leave a La Mesa hotel room where he’s living with his wife and four young children.
Ayala was also seeking advice on insurance claims and what he must do to make sure he’s eligible for any state and federal relief that might become available.
“Lots of stuff got damaged,” he said. “I have renter’s insurance, but they’re not helping me with anything at all.”
Renter’s insurance and homeowner’s insurance often cover only flooding from broken water or sewer pipes, not flooding from storms.
County officials said the resource center, which is scheduled to remain open through Wednesday, is especially crucial for this local disaster because most of the victims live in the county’s least affluent neighborhoods.
They said that means many are underinsured homeowners, renters confused about their rights, and people struggling to navigate complex applications — often with language barriers as an additional hurdle.
“I wanted to make sure we have everything centered in one location so people can get help,” said county Board of Supervisors Chair Nora Vargas, who represents many of the southern and eastern neighborhoods damaged by the flood.
County officials said more than 400 households visited the resource center on Sunday. Located at the Spring Valley Library, it will be open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. today through Wednesday.
Vargas said the resource center will also focus on helping people fill out online surveys documenting the damage they suffered during the flood, which could be crucial to making the county eligible for federal aid.
Through early Sunday, county officials said more than 2,600 households had filed reports of flood damage.
Vargas said officials from the state Office of Emergency Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency were scheduled to visit San Diego today to assess the local damage.
County officials announced Saturday that the region will qualify for state relief money to repair infrastructure damaged by the flood. More than $60 million in damage and emergency costs has been reported.
On Sunday, city of San Diego crews continued to clear streets of mud and debris in anticipation of more rain later this week. They are also making sand and empty sandbags available at 10 city recreation centers starting Tuesday from 1 to 7 p.m.
City officials say they’ve removed more than 1,443 tons of mud, debris, trash and bulky items from areas impacted by flooding, including Southcrest, Shelltown, Mountain View and Encanto.
Among Sunday’s visitors to the resource center, Kimmie Kissinger was in more need than most.
“We lost our whole household — it was flooded up to my waist,” said Kissinger, a Spring Valley resident. “The insurance doesn’t cover anything, so we’re seeing if we can get help for that.”
Kissinger was planning to visit a Department of Motor Vehicles booth where victims can get help declaring cars damaged by the flood non-operational. The booth also helps with replacements of documents destroyed by the water.
On a bright note, Kissinger said her two dogs — Sky and Gypsy — survived the flood.
“We found the dogs floating on top of the couch,” she said.
Maureen Bell, who owns a home in Lemon Grove, said she came to the resource center because she’s mostly clueless about what help is available.
“I don’t know anything financial yet,” she said. “Luckily everything isn’t toast. I was home working at the time and luckily I have a DryVac and was able to get busy right away. But it’s still damaged — I have to have all of my floors replaced.”
She was in the middle of back-to-back online video meetings when she noticed something unusual last Monday.
“I look down and my sock is getting wet,” she said. “Then I get up and see flowing water. Then I had to swim across to my garage, which is detached.”
Jeff Toney, the county’s emergency services director, said he hopes the opening of the resource center can help the region turn a corner.
“Today’s the day I think that the healing process starts,” he said. “We wanted to physically bring this to the community. They can walk around and we guide them around. Sometimes, disaster survivors really don’t know what they need.”
Information available covers coping with mold from flooding, debris removal, and how to get a property tax break because of flood damage. There is also food available, including potatoes, oranges, celery, onions, cabbage, mini-watermelons, cheese and canned pears.
Residents can get up-to-date information at sandiego.gov/storm or alertsandiego.org.
(David Garrick, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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When flash flood waters swept into homes and businesses near Chollas Creek last week, not many people should have been surprised — not residents, not activists and certainly not a parade of San Diego city officials.
City leaders and others have known for years that the creek and stormwater infrastructure around it are in dramatic need of attention and that absent billions of dollars in new spending, the communities of Southcrest, Logan Heights and others along the channel that feeds San Diego Bay could seriously flood.
Year after year, city officials have outlined deficiencies in an outdated and underfunded stormwater system they describe as “failing.”
“The City’s stormwater infrastructure, most of which was built in the 20th Century, is past its useful life, resulting in system deterioration and failure,” city officials wrote in a 2022 infrastructure report.
“Age, combined with deferred maintenance due to historic underfunding of the storm drain system, poses a risk of flooding and catastrophic failure,” city officials wrote in a report published earlier this month.
The backlog of projects aimed at shoring up the stormwater system is so extreme, it makes up the largest share of an infrastructure deficit that has swollen to more than $5 billion — roughly equal to every dollar the city spends per year.
“Consequences of inadequate maintenance include flooding, sinkholes, property damage, increased maintenance costs and public liability costs,” a 2018 city audit found.
Quickly rising stormwater overran some of the city’s neediest neighborhoods Monday, sending waves of mud and debris crashing into homes and dozens of residents fleeing to safety.
Many residents say Monday was far from the first time they have had flooding due to problems with the city’s stormwater system. Now residents and advocates are calling for the city to do more to fix the system before future floods can bring repeat wreckage.
Delays and backlogs
First developed more than a century ago, the city’s network of pipes and drains is now old and outdated. It was built in a different time, when San Diego was far less densely urbanized and before climate change increased the severity and frequency of storms.
All told, the city needs some $2.2 billion in stormwater upgrades over the next five years, according to a city infrastructure report released earlier this month. It doesn’t have funding for at least $1.6 billion of those identified needs.
That infrastructure need has ballooned over the years as needed projects go underfunded. In 2016, the city had estimated it would have $416.2 million in stormwater capital needs from 2017 to 2022.
City officials say cost projections have risen over time because they are more comprehensively assessing their infrastructure than they have in the past, and a lot of what was built during the city’s population boom of the 1950s and 1960s is now nearing the end of its lifespan.
Last year, the stormwater department told elected officials that there were more than 1,000 known pipe failures that had yet to be addressed.
The city currently uses about 19 miles of corrugated metal pipe for stormwater, a material now considered outdated. Virtually all of the city’s corrugated metal pipe has exceeded its expected useful life.
The failed pipes “pose (a) threat to health and safety,” the stormwater department said.
The city has approximately 200 segments of flood channels. Almost a third of them need “substantial maintenance,” the stormwater department wrote in a report to the City Council in November.
But the agency says it only gets enough money to maintain four segments a year.
Infrastructure failures contribute not just to flooding but to sinkholes, erosion and pollution in streets and alleys, the department said. They are also costly — infrastructure emergencies caused more than $46 million in capital costs last fiscal year, according to the stormwater department.
Still, city leaders have repeatedly called Monday’s atmospheric river a pounding so rare and severe that it would have overwhelmed any stormwater system, no matter how well-equipped.
“Even a storm drain system that (was) designed to the golden standard today ... would have failed,” Kris McFadden, one of San Diego’s deputy chief operating officers, said at a news conference Thursday.
Stormwater maintenance and capital projects are time-consuming, costly and full of bureaucratic hurdles to clear, McFadden added.
Flood channel projects take time to plan and carry out partly because they require multiple reviews and regulatory approval from several agencies, from state and federal wildlife agencies to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, officials said. The approval process takes years.
Not only do the actual projects have to be planned and conducted, but corresponding environmental mitigations must be conducted and paid for to offset the impacts of the channel projects, McFadden said.
“Increased and evolving clean water regulations have enormously expanded the city’s compliance obligations and associated infrastructure costs,” city officials wrote in a recent infrastructure report.
McFadden noted on Thursday five stormwater construction projects starting this year, including upgrades in Southcrest Park and in Lomita. The projects are aimed at better controlling runoff and improving water quality. Two years ago, the city dredged the flood channel in Southcrest, he added.
McFadden said the city prioritizes which flood channel segments to upgrade first by considering public input and by measuring the risk, including which channels are most likely to fail and the extent of damage any failure might cause.
Last fiscal year, the city completed 22 stormwater capital projects, mostly storm drain repairs or replacements, budget records show. The current budget calls for beginning design and construction for 53 capital projects across the stormwater network this year — including a drain and channel upgrade along Beta Street, which flooded last week.
Chronically underfunded
Problems with the stormwater system can largely be boiled down to one reason, officials have said: It doesn’t get nearly enough funding.
The stormwater department gets only about a third of the money it needs on an annual basis, according to a November report from the department. It needs $314 million annually on average, but it has a budget of only $109 million.
In June 2018, then-City Auditor Eduardo Luna released a detailed report on San Diego’s lagging stormwater system.
The 88-page performance audit spelled out deficiencies not only with the city’s flood-control practices but with the fee structure that doesn’t come close to generating the money needed to implement repairs.
San Diego charges single-family homes 95 cents a month to pay for stormwater costs — as little as one-tenth what other California cities charge for that service, the audit said. For multifamily and commercial customers, the fee is less than 7 cents per 100 cubic feet of water used.
The city’s stormwater fee is so low that it doesn’t even cover 10 percent of the department’s $60 million-plus in operational spending. Last year, the surcharge raised $5.7 million.
“Current revenue sources are not sufficient to address storm water funding need,” the audit said.
Auditors also said the city should replace vulnerable pipes more quickly and write a plan to make improvements more efficiently. They made nine separate recommendations aimed at getting the needed upgrades prioritized and completed.
McFadden, the director of the city’s Transportation and Storm Water Department at the time, agreed with all nine of the recommendations.
But even though city staff issued several proposals aimed at addressing the fixes and lapses in revenue, little has been done to increase the stormwater infrastructure fee, first put in place in 1996. The fee has not risen since.
McFadden and others blame California’s Proposition 218, passed by California voters that same year. The so-called Right to Vote on Taxes Act requires a two-thirds majority vote before cities, school districts and other public agencies can impose special taxes.
“Proposition 218 has essentially frozen funding for stormwater management at 1996 levels,” wrote the California Stormwater Quality Association.
San Diego has not placed a stormwater fee increase before voters ever since.
Other local governments in California have successfully made the case to voters that spending on flood control is worth the investment.
In 2004, Los Angeles city voters passed a $500 million bond to fund stormwater and clean-water projects. In 2018, Los Angeles County passed — on its second try — a stormwater tax increase of 2.5 cents per square foot of impervious surface. It generates $280 million for projects a year.
Three years ago, San Diego officials discussed placing a stormwater tax measure on the ballot that was expected to raise about $85 million a year. But they didn’t pursue one after survey results suggested they might not receive the two-thirds voter approval needed for it to pass.
Instead, San Diego leaders have taken a different path toward securing money for managing stormwater — seeking grants and borrowing money.
In 2022, the city said it had accumulated $733 million in loans, grants and other financing, including a hefty federal loan, to pay for dozens of stormwater projects over five years, including replacing old pipes and pump stations.
But the loans are far from a cure-all, officials acknowledged in a presentation last year. Even that $733 million would cover only one-third of the capital improvements needed over five years and does not include operations or maintenance needs.
‘The drains aren’t clean’
While San Diego officials have been sounding alarms over the aging flood-control network, lawyers defending the city in civil lawsuits have adopted a different position.
According to a legal complaint Southcrest resident Greg Montoya and others filed in 2019, the city not only knew about the threat for decades, it helped create the conditions that caused the flooding.
The city built a concrete channel to direct storm runoff from Chollas Creek but nonetheless allowed it to remain clogged, the lawsuit said. City work crews also constructed an embankment above the concrete channel behind Beta Street that then directed stormwater to nearby properties, the complaint alleged.
“That concrete channel was in a dangerous condition on or around Dec. 6, 2018 because it was clogged with vegetation restricting the water flow and causing water to back up and overflow the banks of the channel,” the lawsuit said. “That condition caused plaintiffs’ properties to flood.”
Lawyers hired by San Diego argued that the city was not at fault.
An expert hired by the city “found that the 100-year flow in Beta Street will not cause flood impacts since plaintiffs’ residences are adequately set back and elevated above the street,” the city’s lawyers wrote in a 2021 court filing.
“Collectively, the alley and Beta Street meet the city’s criteria to avoid flooding of existing buildings,” they added.
Montoya and his neighbors eventually accepted just over $200,000 to resolve the lawsuit. But the settlement did not require the city to correct the problem.
On Monday, he watched in despair as his block flooded once again.
Montoya told The San Diego Union-Tribune he was aghast as he watched Mayor Todd Gloria blame climate change and otherwise deflect responsibility for what happened to homes along Chollas Creek once again.
“I would tell the mayor that he made false statements,” Montoya said. “I have documents that show the drains aren’t clean.”
The years-long quandary in the stormwater system has not escaped the notice of clean-water advocates and other environmental groups. They have been pressing the city to do more to improve its watershed-management practices for a long time.
Groundwork San Diego – Chollas Creek is a local nonprofit founded in 2007 at the direction of city officials. Its mission was to create a master plan for the 32-square-mile watershed that stretches from City Heights and Encanto to Barrio Logan and San Diego Bay.
Executive Director Leslie Reynolds credits San Diego public officials for working to develop and implement a climate-friendly plan for a regional park, but she also said progress has been too slow.
“It’s devastating,” she said of last week’s events. “There have been pockets throughout this watershed that have experienced flooding for decades, and historically the city’s response has been inadequate.”
Reynolds credited the Gloria administration for beginning upgrades along Chollas Creek in the area that flooded so many homes last week, but she said far more improvements need to be made.
“The problem is huge,” she said. “We need improved levels of service for storm drain maintenance.”
Phillip Musegaas of San Diego Coastkeeper also said the city has been slow to act.
“City agencies’ failure to clear stormwater channels and creeks of trash and debris led to flooding impacts to homes and property that were much worse than they could have been,” he said.
Musegaas said the mayor and City Council must do more to raise money to fix the problems.
“These intense storms are not a fluke, they are the new normal,” he said. “Continuing to ignore the funding problem will only make things worse, and continue to put San Diego residents’ lives and property at risk.”
‘This cannot happen every several years’
Many residents across San Diego also saw the threat posed by the recurring neglect of the city flood-control system.
Rob Campbell is a health care administrator from Encanto who repeatedly filed requests to the city for help, warning that the flood channel near his house was unsafe.
He submitted photographs he took showing an old television, a shopping cart and heaps of garbage clogging up a culvert near his home.
The requests for service were routinely closed without the city taking any action, he said.
“It’s super sad for all of the people who live in the affected areas,” Campbell said. “It’s not a secret that we are a low-resourced area. We have been historically underfunded. I don’t know how else to advocate for the community. I have taken all the avenues I know how.”
Prior to Monday, more than 2,600 complaints about the city’s stormwater system had been filed in the past year to the city’s online Get It Done problem-reporting application. More than a quarter of those were unresolved as of Thursday.
People have complained about clogged storm drains and flood channels blocked by heaps of trash and overgrown vegetation.
“Full grown trees in the ditches, water has no where to go but up into the streets and homes, city has not cleared in years,” wrote one resident from the Shelltown neighborhood just south of Southcrest.
“This is the second time in eight years we have had massive flooding in our apartments due to the negligence of the city drains,” someone from Golden Hill wrote. “This cannot happen every several years, as it is (devastating) to our investment and tenants who live here.”
And from a resident in Clairemont: “Clean out the channel!!! This is the 4th time that I am reporting this.”
Campbell, the health care administrator from Encanto, said in his experience city workers tend to close out complaints rather than fix the problems.
“That’s pretty typical to close without having an actual resolution,” he said. “That’s a common thing. It’s a major problem that you can’t follow up with a Get It Done report. You are forced to re-report.”
The stormwater department only conducts work for Get It Done requests that are straightforward, like clearing a storm drain or pipe, a city spokesperson said.
When requests concern more complicated issues that would take years and millions of dollars to fix, like clearing a flood channel, the department marks them as resolved, even if the work hasn’t yet been performed, the spokesperson said.
Earlier last week, Gloria announced he had spoken with Vice President Kamala Harris about the city’s flood damage and pressed the former California senator for federal relief.
The city said Friday it had set aside $370,000 for grants to businesses and nonprofits affected by the storm, and on Saturday officials got word that the county will qualify for state relief for public infrastructure, although no dollar amount was announced.
(Jeff McDonald & Kristen Taket, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Passenger rail service between San Diego and Orange County will remain unavailable for several more days or longer, a transit official said Friday.
A new landslide destroyed the Mariposa Bridge on a pedestrian trail in San Clemente on Wednesday, sending debris and parts of the bridge onto the railroad tracks. Trains have been unable to cross the site since then.
Work crews used a crane on a flatbed train car to remove two sections of the bridge Thursday night and take them away for disposal, said Scott Johnson, director of communications for Metrolink, the multi-county commuter rail service.
“At this point, officials from Metrolink, the OCTA (Orange County Transportation Agency) and private property landowners are all working to determine a course of action to remove soil and implement grading to assure that no additional debris falls onto the right-of-way,” Johnson said Friday.
“There is still no set timeline for when passenger rail service will return,” he said.
Officials from BNSF Railway, the region’s freight carrier, will determine when commercial freight service might resume, Johnson said.
“They are sending out their team to determine whether they want to accept the risk of operating freight through that area,” he said.
The San Diego-Orange County rail segment is part of the 351-mile Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo, or LOSSAN, rail corridor. It is San Diego’s only railway link with Los Angeles and the rest of the United States.
During previous closures at other San Clemente slides, freight service continued through the work areas at slow speeds and at night while passenger service remained suspended.
The Mariposa pedestrian bridge ran parallel to the tracks on part of a 2.3-mile, city-maintained trail along the base of a steep, unstable bluff from one section of beach to another. Most of the bluff where the slide occurred is private property.
Some of the officials at a news conference held Thursday in San Clemente were optimistic that train service would be restored soon. The news event was originally scheduled to announce funding for rail corridor improvements, but the focus quickly turned to the previous day’s landslide.
“Hopefully, within the next couple of days, we’ll have the trains running again,” said San Clemente City Councilmember Rick Loeffler, but others were less hopeful.
“I don’t want anyone to think that this is going to happen in the next day or two,” said Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley. “That’s not what I’ve been told ... we don’t know. It is uncertain how long this will take.”
The Mariposa Bridge slide could be more difficult to repair than the Casa Romantica slide, which was on city property and so far has cost San Clemente about $8 million.
“In this case, the landslide is coming from private property, which we have no control over,” said San Clemente Councilmember Chris Duncan.
“Also, the slope (at the bridge) is more severe,” Duncan said. “It’s almost straight down. The landslide is going to be more powerful, and there’s less room to build some kind of wall or structure.”
Removal of the bridge will probably make the slope more unstable, he said, and there is “a huge pinnacle of dirt” above the tracks ready to fall that will have to be removed. Recent heavy rain may have triggered the slide, and more rain is expected next week.
An earlier landslide closed the Mariposa Bridge for several days in December, although train traffic continued at the time. Money the city had budgeted for a replacement bridge was diverted for last year’s Casa Romantica repairs.
The slide is the third in recent years to stop trains at San Clemente. Before the Casa Romantica slide, there was a slow, recurring one at the Cyrus Shore community, at the southern end of San Clemente near San Onofre State Beach.
The repeated closures at San Clemente have drawn some of the attention away from another trouble spot — the 1.7 miles of tracks on the crumbling seaside bluffs at Del Mar, near San Diego.
Tens of millions of dollars have been spent on a series of projects over more than 20 years to stabilize the Del Mar bluffs. A new phase of work beginning this year will cost $78 million, with funding from federal, state and local sources.
The San Diego Association of Governments received $300 million in state funding in 2022 to advance plans for a new route to take trains off the Del Mar bluffs and through a tunnel to be drilled beneath the city.
The proposed tunnel project would cost more than $4 billion and could not be completed before at least 2035.
North County Transit District’s Coaster and Sprinter trains are not affected by the San Clemente suspension. Metrolink trains, which normally come as far south as Oceanside, will only go as far as San Juan Capistrano on the weekend and to the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo station during weekdays.
Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner will not run between Oceanside and Irvine. Some Pacific Surfliner runs will have a bus link to take passengers between the Oceanside and Irvine stations.
State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, chaired a Senate subcommittee that held three hearings on railroad issues last year. This month, the subcommittee encouraged CalSTA to take a stronger role in managing the rail corridor, which passes through six counties.
A spokesman for the California State Transportation Agency, or CalSTA, said Friday that the agency will work closely with teams responding to the latest landslide.
“CalSTA will lend state support in any way possible to safely and quickly reopen the impacted section,” said agency spokesman Marty Greenstein in an email.
“CalSTA is providing leadership to establish a unified focus for corridor-wide coordination,” he said.
(Phil Diehl, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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LAHAINA, HI - Hawaii officials said Friday that they have identified the last of the 100 known victims of the wildfire that destroyed Lahaina in August.
That victim was Lydia Coloma, 70, Maui police said.
Identifying those who perished in the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in more than a century has been a long, arduous process. Forensic experts and cadaver dogs have had to sift through ash searching for bodies that were possibly cremated, and authorities have been collecting DNA samples from victims’ family members.
The DNA testing allowed officials in September to revise the death toll downward, from 115 to at least 97. The toll rose slightly over the next month as some victims succumbed to their injuries or as police found additional remains.
The number of those who remain unaccounted for has also fallen — to just a few from a previous high of nearly 400, according to the Maui Police Department.
The victims ranged in age from 7 to 97, but more than two-thirds were in their 60s or older, according to Maui police’s list of known victims. Several were residents of a low-income senior apartment complex.
Authorities reopened the burn zone to residents and property owners who lost homes while urging returning residents not to sift through the ashes for fear of raising toxic dust.
Authorities began clearing debris from residential lots this month. The waste is being wrapped in thick industrial plastic before the Army Corps of Engineers takes it to a temporary debris storage site south of Lahaina.
The disaster devastated Maui and Hawaii more broadly. Caught in a hellscape, some residents died in their cars, while others jumped into the ocean or tried to run for safety.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation. It may have been sparked by downed power lines that ignited dry, invasive grasses. An AP investigation found the answer may lie in an overgrown gully beneath Hawaiian Electric Co. power lines and something that harbored smoldering embers from an initial fire that burned in the morning and then rekindled in high winds that afternoon.
The blaze destroyed more than 2,000 buildings, most of them homes, and is estimated to have caused $5.5 billion in damage.
Nearly six months after the blaze, about 5,000 displaced residents were still living in hotels or other short-term accommodations around Maui. Economists have warned that without zoning and other changes, housing costs in already expensive Lahaina could be prohibitively costly for many after rebuilding.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Floods like the one that submerged parts of San Diego County Monday push urban waterways beyond their banks, carrying a melange of potentially harmful bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella into nearby neighborhoods.
From the border to North County, the inches of rain that fell in just a few hours not only shut down roads and even freeways, but also filled residential homes with enough water that, in some cases, boats were necessary to pull people, some of them stranded on roofs of homes or cars, to safety.
Having what’s usually confined to riverbeds and creeks suddenly on one’s property only adds to the damage that the water itself does when it soaks hidden spaces inside wall cavities, providing the perfect conditions for mold to grow.
It is just the recipe for public health problems, and local officials say they are doing what they can to spot flood-related infections early.
Dr. Wilma Wooten, San Diego County’s public health officer, said Friday that regular analysis of patients seen in local emergency departments has not so far detected increases in symptoms such as diarrhea, which would signal a bloom of flood-associated illness. But it’s early.
“Looking at the last three days, what we’re seeing in the (emergency departments) isn’t higher than what’s normally presenting this time of the year,” Wooten said.
The incubation period for salmonella, Wooten noted, is 12 to 72 hours, meaning that anyone who swallowed tainted flood water on Monday or Tuesday should have started to show symptoms already. E. coli, the other pathogen of significant concern, has a three- to five-day incubation period, meaning any cases associated with flood water might start to appear as the weekend arrives.
But the danger of suffering health consequences after a severe flood, explained Naresh Kumar, an environmental health scientist at the University of Miami, only increases as recovery efforts continue.
“When the water is running, the level of bacteria will be relatively low, but the problem happens with standing water,” Kumar said. “The flood water, it doesn’t just contain bacteria, but also lots of other nutrients too, and those nutrients are food for the bacteria to grow once the water is still.”
For this reason, he said, the danger of wading through a flooded home a day or two after a flood can be significantly less than it is a week later.
The need to wear tall boots, gloves and masks increases the further in time one gets from the storm.
Kumar, who has a research grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to study the health effects of Hurricane Ian, which struck Florida in 2022, added that the mold clock is also ticking post-flood.
Research, he said, shows that temperature plays a significant role in how long it will take for mold to start growing on sodden building materials.
“If the temperature outside is 70 degrees or so, it generally doesn’t take more than seven days before mold begins to grow in the walls or on any furniture or clothes or drywall that was exposed to water,” Kumar said.
It is best, he added, to open walls and start as much ventilation as possible inside flooded structures, though it can be hazardous to continue living inside dwellings that are taking a long time to dry.
The health consequences of flood, then, tend to fall hardest on those with the fewest resources, individuals and families who can’t afford to hire remediation companies to do the work quickly and safely with the promise of an eventual insurance payout.
There is a tragic recent example of what can happen when a person with a chronic health condition has no option but to continue living in a home when mold starts to grow.
Florida mourned the death of 26-year-old Christian Childers who died in January 2023 after his asthma was worsened by continuing to live inside a home choked with mold following Hurricane Ian.
“Many people who are unable to evacuate and who are renting homes, generally landlords take care of themselves first,” Kumar said.
Could more be done by local government to help those of more modest means escape homes at an elevated risk of developing mold?
“Those discussions are being held as we speak,” Wooten said. “Hopefully, we will be hearing more about those types of efforts at upcoming board meetings, but I don’t have anything specific to share at this time.”
The county did announce this week that it will take a more active role in helping individuals recover from flood damage.
An assistance center announced this week is set to open Sunday, and county road crews, which already have been working through the week to help homeowners remove flood debris from their properties, are due to be supplemented by hired contractors on Monday.
Residents who need assistance with flood related recovery can call 2-1-1.
(Paul Sisson, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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When rain started falling in sheets Monday morning, the co-owner of Native Poppy, a local flower shop, decided to check on their warehouse in Mission Valley.
It wasn’t uncommon for a bit of water to seep in on heavy rain days. But nothing could have prepared her for what she would find.
“It looked like an aquarium,” said Meg Blancato of her business partner’s discovery. “(The warehouse) was about halfway filled, with about 3 1/2 - 4 feet of water, with all of our products just floating in it like fish.”
In the days following the flood, much of the city’s most immediate emergency responses have been geared toward the hundreds of homes damaged by the storm. But business owners across San Diego were also grappling with serious losses. Blancato estimates Native Poppy’s warehouse, located several blocks from the San Diego River, suffered $100,000 in damage, and insurance is covering little of it.
Although the full extent of the destruction is unclear, the region quickly turned to trying to secure various forms of funding, including federal aid.
On Friday, county Board of Supervisors Chair Nora Vargas sent a letter to President Joe Biden requesting a federal disaster declaration, which is necessary to access federal aid.
“We anticipate the damages to be in the tens of millions of dollars in order to repair damaged homes and properties to make them safe again,” Vargas said. “People need help to get back on their feet again and to begin to rebuild their lives.”
Also on Friday, the city of San Diego announced a new form of assistance — an emergency response grant that will help up to 100 small businesses and nonprofits impacted by this week’s storm.
“We are doing everything we can to ease the burden on residents and small businesses that were in the path of this natural disaster,” said Mayor Todd Gloria in a statement. “Having our neighborhood businesses up and running is important for the community’s recovery from the devastation, and I encourage business owners to start preparing to apply so we can get these grants out to them as quickly as possible.”
The Business Emergency Response & Resilience Grant will provide up to $2,500 per business and up to $5,000 for businesses and nonprofits in the city’s Promise Zone, as well as for businesses and nonprofits in low- to moderate-income census tract areas.
The Promise Zone was recognized by the federal government as one of 22 similar areas across the country suffering from low educational attainment, poverty, rising crime, and a lack of affordable housing and healthy food. The zone spans just over 6 miles, stretching from Barrio Logan to Encanto, and includes some of the city’s most underserved communities.
In order to qualify, business owners will need to demonstrate they were impacted by the storm, have a current business tax certificate on file with the city and have no more than 12 employees.
The budget for the program is currently $370,000 through the city’s Small Business Enhancement Program. Eligible expenses for the grant include supplies and labor for storm cleanup efforts; repairs and equipment replacement not covered by insurance; employee wages; and insurance deductibles.
Businesses will be able to apply in mid-February. Until then, city officials are encouraging people to track any storm-related expenses. Staff members will be reaching out to businesses and community groups who may have been impacted with more information in multiple languages.
Unfortunately, it’s not a funding stream that will be available to Native Poppy, which has about 25 employees.
Matt Thomas, CEO of Pet Kingdom in the Midway District, a shop that sells pet supplies, fish and reptiles, said he also missed the cut-off — he has 15 employees.
Thomas said there’s always been drainage issues in his shopping center on Sports Arena Boulevard, so he expected to find some pooling Monday. But by 11 a.m., the store’s floor was under 3 inches of water. All week, he and his employees have been cleaning and assessing damage, which he estimated at about $100,000. He did have flood insurance, but Monday’s rare storm isn’t the kind of occurrence that’s covered, he explained.
While Thomas is focused on ways he can recoup his losses, seeing the city address its infrastructure issues feels like it should be the first priority, he said.
“There’s a really good possibility that this is going to happen again,” he said. “So, I mean, we could keep rebuilding, and we could keep having the same problem. So that is priority No. 1 in my eyes — let’s fix the root of the problem.”
In an effort to help the county secure federal funding, officials have set up a voluntary assessment survey that will help the county calculate how much damage the flood caused. That figure can help the region qualify for federal disaster relief.
County officials said as of Friday morning, just over 2,100 residents and business owners had filled out the survey.
The county has also asked the federal Small Business Administration to approve the Physical Disaster Declaration Loan Program, which would provide low-interest loans to homeowners, renters and businesses affected by the flooding.
Both Thomas and Blancato are hoping federal assistance pans out. But Blancato with Native Poppy also hopes to lean on another resource — her community.
She said both she and her business partner have been overwhelmed with messages and calls of support while they work to recover. They set up a donation page, and they’ve raised about $10,000, she said. It won’t cover all the costs, but it’s a huge help.
“And Valentine’s Day is the second-biggest flower holiday of the year,” Blancato said. The business runs two other shops — in Solana Beach and South Park. “It’s just over two weeks away, and we’re hoping San Diego will think of us.”
(Lyndsay Winkley, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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San Diego renters displaced by this week’s floods have some protections under California law concerning damages.
State law says landlords are required to fix damage caused by the rain waters. Most landlords should have property insurance that covers the cost of repairs, but, if they don’t, it still won’t be the responsibility of the renter.
Lucinda Lilley, CEO of the San Diego-based Southern California Rental Housing Association, said it is the landlord’s legal responsibility to make the unit habitable. For example, water damage can be a health issue, and not just a roof collapsing on a renter. Water can cause mold to grow. If the water damage was caused by the renter, which in this case it wasn’t, the tenant would be on the hook for repairs.
However, it is not required that landlords pay for renters to live somewhere else while repairs are ongoing.
Lilley said some landlords might pay for renters to go somewhere else because they want to help, and will try to make repairs as fast as humanly possible because they cannot charge rent while the renter is out of the property.
“This is not so much a matter of legality, but a matter of being a human being,” Lilley said. “We’re not in the business of putting people out.”
She said many landlords have good insurance plans that will actually pay for rent loss in case of disaster. If not, she said her association is trying its best to put together as many financial programs — city, county, Red Cross — it can find to help less affluent landlords with access to funds. Although they are still researching what is available, she said sometimes programs give money to help with temporary renter relocation.
It is possible that some tenants have renter’s insurance, which may or may not house someone in an emergency, Lilley said. Relocation assistance is more likely in a plan with full coverage, not just basic liability coverage that most people have.
According to California civil laws, a tenant is allowed to withhold rent if flood damage is not repaired, said the Beverly Hills-based The Tenants Law Firm, which published its own guide for renters dealing with flood damage.
It also said other options for dealing with a landlord who won’t make repairs include suing them, as well as contacting local public health officials.
(Phillip Molnar, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Climate change fueled the remarkable 2023 drought that drained major rivers, fueled huge wildfires and threatened the livelihoods of millions of people in the Amazon rainforest, scientists said Wednesday.
Deforestation of the Amazon, the world’s largest and most biodiverse rainforest, has decreased rainfall and weakened the ability of trees and soil to retain moisture, researchers found. That made drought more acute and caused the forest to be less resilient to environmental destruction and events like wildfires.
The Amazon River — the world’s largest by volume — and several of its tributaries reached their lowest levels in 120 years of record-keeping last year. One-fifth of the world’s freshwater flows through the rainforest.
A severe drought would have still occurred if humans hadn’t so profoundly changed the climate, but the burning of fossil fuels gave it the ranking of “exceptional,” the highest category in the U.S. Drought Monitor classification system, according to the study published by the World Weather Attribution initiative, an international collaboration among scientists that focuses on rapid analysis of extreme weather events.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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An unregulated gold mine collapsed late last week in Mali, killing more than 70 people, an official said Wednesday, and a search continued amid fears that the toll could rise.
Karim Berthé, a senior official at the government’s National Geology and Mining Directorate, called the incident an accident. There were around 100 people in the mine at the time of the collapse, according to Abdoulaye Pona, president of the Mali Chamber of Mines.
The cause of the collapse, which happened in the Koulikoro region on Friday, was under investigation. It was first reported on Tuesday in a Ministry of Mines statement that estimated “several” miners dead.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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San Diego city and county officials are trying to figure out just how much damage was left behind as the region continues recovering from Monday’s record-setting storm — one now suspected to have been deadly.
While no deaths were reported in the city of San Diego, three people outside the city died in ways suspected to be storm-related — including a man and a woman whose bodies were found in Santee. Both remain unidentified. In Lemon Grove, a 67-year-old man died after his vehicle collided with debris.
The excruciating cleanup work continued on Wednesday, with many flood victims trying to figure out what comes next. How much assistance might be available from state and federal governments remained unclear.
County officials hope flood victims will step forward to report the damage via an online survey. It’s a big part of deciding how much assistance will come to the region. Nearly 1,500 residents had already filled out the survey as of Wednesday evening.
One Red Cross shelter remains open. The site, at Lincoln High School in San Diego’s Lincoln Park, was housing 53 people from a total of 23 families as of Wednesday. The shelter in Bostonia just outside El Cajon closed Wednesday.
Seven dogs were being housed at the Lincoln High site, San Diego Humane Society spokesperson Nina Thompson said. There are also pet supplies available there.
Wednesday brought a bit of good news in one location: Residents of San Diego’s first safe-sleeping site, at 20th and B streets, have been allowed to return.
But it still remains unclear whether one homeless shelter downtown can be salvaged. City crews are still evaluating the Alpha Project tent near 16th Street and Newton Avenue, which was evacuated in a scramble as several feet of water rose inside. Hundreds of people who had been staying there were offered cots at the Balboa Park Activity Center.
And as the cleanup continues, so do the after-action assessments. San Diego Gas & Electric on Wednesday said staff crunched the numbers and found that the peak of the outages occurred Monday between noon and 12:30 p.m., when 25,115 customers across the county were without power.
Investigators are still trying to piece together what happened to the two people found dead in Santee. A spokesperson for the Medical Examiner’s Office provided little information, but said they are being investigated as storm-related deaths.
The death of Harold James Hooker, 67, which had already been publicly reported, is also suspected to be storm-related, the spokesman said. Hooker was driving a minivan on Lemon Grove Avenue just after 5:30 p.m. when the vehicle slammed into concrete debris in the roadway, went up an embankment, hit a utility pole and flipped.
It was still unclear what happened to an unknown man with a dog who was seen by first responders going underwater in Spring Valley on Monday.
In the Tijuana River Valley, San Diego Humane Society officers and lifeguards used a boat to rescue what at first appeared to be a dog trapped in a flooded field — with a bucket on its head. The animal turned out to be a coyote. It’s recovering before it will be released back in the wild.
‘Going to have to start from scratch’
On hard-hit Beta Street in Southcrest where streets are still caked in mud, residents cleared out their flood-damaged homes, carrying ruined belongings to the curb to be hauled off. San Diego officials said there were 13 packer trucks in affected areas to pick up bulky items, as well as other city efforts to begin removing mud from public areas.
A man from a car removal service, Instant Cash for Cars, was purchasing flood-destroyed vehicles and towing them off.
At least 100 residents gathered on the street to voice their anger. A representative from District 8 Councilmember Vivien Moreno’s office was there to listen and field concerns.
Kristina Lemoine, whose family has lived in the neighborhood for the last 40 years, said the problem began long before Monday’s storm. She points to inadequate management of the vegetation in Southcrest Trails Park, which she says has prevented water from properly flowing in the canal running through the park near homes.
Lemoine said she and her mother have submitted at least 30 requests to clean up the area on the city’s Get It Done app — where San Diegans can submit orders for improvement areas throughout the city — over the last 10 years.
“This is our neighborhood and we care about it,” Lemoine said. “The more I walk down the street, I cry.”
Residents Martha Navarro, 34, and her husband Jose Navarro, 28, haven’t yet told their sons, who are 3 and 5 years old, about what happened to their home, which they bought two years ago. Martha Navarro said she was traumatized by Monday’s events. She had raced home during the storm to save her 3-month-old puppy, which she saw on the home’s security camera struggling in high water in the backyard.
The Navarro family are first-time homeowners and said they pay about $700 a year for flood insurance on top of regular homeowner’s insurance. Even with help from that coverage, the family isn’t sure they’ll stay in the home because of concerns over mold.
Elvira Paulin, 43, lives with her husband and five children in a two-story home they rent on Beta Street. The flood destroyed the bottom floor, so they are living on the second story. Paulin said her landlord terminated her month-to-month lease agreement after the flood. She doesn’t know what to do.
“Everything is so expensive,” Paulin said, pointing to the costs of moving out and securing a deposit for a new place. “Plus, you’re going to have to start from scratch.”
Many people turned to each other and to social media, such as the Barrio Logan Facebook page, to learn about community services being offered.
People in nearby communities stepped in to provide warm food, blankets and hygiene supplies. A small group from Barrio Logan is collecting donations at Memorial Community Park and distributing them to neighborhoods in Encanto, Southcrest, Mountain View and to unhoused people downtown.
On Wednesday evening, Cholo Tacos Food Truck set up on Birch Street and gave out free birria tacos.
How much aid might come?
As the trucks haul away wet trash and people navigate for help, the city of San Diego and the county are busy assessing exactly how much damage has occurred. It’s a key step before the region can even hope for formal federal assistance.
The question remains: How much aid from the state and federal government can it expect to help residents and businesses, plus cover the millions of dollars in damage?
Based on information provided by the county of San Diego via an online survey, more than 400 homes in the city of San Diego were damaged. Neighborhoods that were hardest hit are in council Districts 4 and 8 in the southern part of the city, said city spokesperson Nicole Darling.
San Diego’s Stormwater Department received more than 500 calls regarding flooding and other issues during and following the rain. Six of the city’s 15 stormwater pump stations were overwhelmed during Monday’s storm, with two still out of service. Crews have been working nonstop, Darling said, to bring them back online.
By mid-day Tuesday, San Diego had logged at least $6 million to $7 million in damage to public infrastructure, and the city hopes it will be reimbursed by the state.
The city and county have already declared states of emergency, as has Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, but the most significant source of financial aid would come from the federal government. That requires a disaster declaration from President Joe Biden — no easy task.
An assessment of total damages is required, along with evidence that “the situation is beyond the capability of the State and affected local governments,” states the Federal Emergency Management Agency on its webpage.
A request for a presidential disaster declaration would come from the state, with supporting data provided by San Diego County.
Public assistance could include help with debris removal, as well as emergency work and the repair of damaged facilities such as roads, bridges and water control facilities.
The county’s survey is the first step toward getting state and federal aid.
The survey “is not a claim,” county spokesperson Chuck Westerheide said. “It doesn’t mean that we’re going to come with a pile of money. But it does give us more information, and that information will be used to try and work to get assistance for the entire county.”
The county does not yet have an accurate tally of total damage in dollars and cents. The city of San Diego is expected to make a separate ask for assistance.
Federal aid, though, is not guaranteed.
“The amount of assistance that we get will be dependent on a bar that they set, a threshold that they set,” Westerheide explained. “And we won’t know yet whether we meet that bar for federal assistance, or if we’re really ‘San Diegans taking care of San Diegans.’”
People whose homes were flooded will likely need recovery assistance from multiple agencies, he noted.
Assistance from the state as a result of the governor’s declaration is less about cash and more about assistance in the form of workers on the ground, as well as regulatory waivers to speed up the recovery process — such as bids for repairs or renewing a driver’s license.
“Usually money comes from other programs outside the state of emergency,” said Brian Ferguson, a spokesperson for California’s Office of Emergency Services. “If there are shelters, the state’s social services department will pay the local government or Red Cross. And Cal Fire has an emergency fund for swift water rescues.”
He noted that the state already has deployed thousands of workers in San Diego to help respond to the storm — before and after.
“In most cases, we want to be there before the crisis occurs,” Ferguson said. “So there were state workers pre-positioned, and a state of emergency helps expedite that and pay for that.”
(Teri Figueroa, Lori Weisberg, Roxana Popescu & Maura Fox, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; Rob Nikolewski, Blake Nelson, Caleb Lunetta)
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The beastly storm that caused dangerous flooding around San Diego County Monday was an anomaly that only became fully apparent to forecasters shortly before it struck the region.
Most winter storms originate in the northwest Pacific and spread ashore in California as they drop south toward San Diego. They can siphon moisture from the subtropics along the way, making them stronger. But San Diego typically gets the weakest piece of the storm.
These systems also usually hit San Diego at an angle, amounting to little more than a glancing blow in many cases.
Monday’s storm was different. It originated in the western Pacific and headed directly for northern Baja California and San Diego County. Along the way, the system drew extraordinary amounts of moisture from the subtropics.
“The columns of air coming at us had 250 percent to 350 percent as much water in them as they normally do,” said Liz Adams, a forecaster at the National Weather Service. “That turned into rain.”
The rain ended up falling faster than normal because part of the storm hit San Clemente Island off the coast of San Diego County. The clouds rode up the far side of the island, causing the moisture to condense into rain as it flowed toward the mainland.
By the time the clouds reached the coast, they were unleashing 1 inch of rain or more per hour in many places, notably National City, San Diego, and Point Loma. Rain rarely falls with that intensity in San Diego County.
The powerful storm set new rainfall records for the day in eight San Diego County cities, the National Weather Service said.
The agency also said San Diego experienced its fourth wettest day since record-keeping began in 1850, and Monday was the wettest January day on record.
Rainfall records for Jan. 22 were set in:
The downpours were especially strong in Mission Valley, causing the normally weak lower San Diego River to surge rapidly and exceed flood stage. People living or moving about in the riverbed had to run for their lives or, in many causes, be rescued.
The rain also overwhelmed city drainage systems, causing street flooding throughout the region. Much of the rain flowed to the coast, flooding parking lots and seeping into buildings.
“The rain was heavier than what we got last August when Tropical Storm Hilary came through,” Adams said.
So why didn’t the National Weather Service fully anticipate the deluge?
The problem, Adams said, largely involves forecast models. They’re quite sophisticated, but they don’t always correctly predict the timing and path of a storm, which is what happened here. Forecasters expected most of the storm to go into Baja California.
To a degree, San Diego forecasters also are blind to the west. There are comparatively few weather stations at sea to help them track a system’s size and movement. That isn’t true in cities far from the coast, which can tap dozens of ground stations that track a storm’s movement.
(Gary Robbins, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Water-logged San Diego started monstrous cleanup efforts Tuesday after record-breaking rains battered homes, choked streets with mud and damaged trolley lines — causing millions in damage and displacing several people.
City and county officials assessed the damage as some residents picked through soggy belongings and others demanded answers about how water backed up so quickly. Monday’s powerful storm — far more potent than expected — unleashed sheets of rain on the region, flooding neighborhoods from the South Bay to Oceanside and turning roads into rivers.
Hundreds were rescued from flooded streets and swollen rivers across the region. No deaths were reported, but rescue crews saw a man going underwater in Spring Valley and were not able to find him.
A day after people scrambled onto rooftops or watched wide-eyed as cars floated down city streets, residents in San Diego’s hardest hit areas, including Mountain View and Southcrest, shoveled mud and hosed down cars. People sorted whatever they could salvage, tossing saturated toys, clothes and furniture into sodden piles of trash. Water lines on buildings dirtied walls as high as 5 feet in some spots.
San Diego Mayor Gloria told reporters Tuesday that in the neighborhoods of Southcrest and Mountain View as many as 100 homes may be uninhabitable due to flood damage. He called the impact of the damage “absolutely devastating.”
“I saw that entire lives changed in just a few minutes,” Gloria said.
By midday Tuesday, San Diego had logged at least $67 million in damage to public infrastructure, damage that city officials hope will be reimbursed by the state, said Chris Heiser, director of the city’s Office of Emergency Services.
City and county governments proclaimed local emergencies, and Gov. Gavin Newsom also declared an emergency in San Diego County. The declarations fast-track cleanup and aid efforts.
Monday’s storm went down as San Diego’s rainiest January day — preliminary numbers had San Diego International Airport getting 2.70 inches of rain between midnight and 4 p.m. — since record-keeping started in 1850.
Rescuers on Monday plucked scores of people from homes and streets and from surging rivers — with about 125 people rescued in Southcrest alone, San Diego Fire-Rescue Chief Colin Stowell said. There were an additional 50 rescue incidents in places including San Ysidro, Mission Valley and San Diego riverbanks. Thirty animals were also saved from rising waters.
“Fortunately, we saw no fatalities. For a storm this size that is simply just remarkable,” Stowell said.
The drenching created peril countywide, and emergency crews outside the city of San Diego rescued people from about 250 residences, including apartment complexes and trailer parks, San Miguel Fire and Rescue Division Chief Andy Lawler said.
Lawler said there were at least seven swift water rescues — but that is likely an underestimate. He said crews saw man with a German shepherd go underwater in Spring Valley’s La Presa area sometime around 11 a.m. to noon, but could not find him. It is unclear what happened to him.
The La Presa neighborhood was especially hard hit. Water inundated entire streets and reached 5 to 6 feet high inside homes, and people took shelter on top of cars, Lawler said.
“I’ve worked in the area for 25 years, and I’ve never seen water flow to that magnitude,” he said.
At a mobile home park on Division Street in National City, where floodwaters also hit 5 feet, families scavenged through their homes.
“I’m not finding anything,” said Lalo Najera as he passed trash bags filled with food and other household items to a waste hauler. “All of it is, unfortunately, trash now.”
Similar scenes of mud-filled homes and debris played out in Tijuana, where streets turned to rivers and first responders logged some 70 rescues Monday.
Cleanup crews worked overnight and by Tuesday afternoon 95 percent of the city’s main roads affected by the rain were back to normal, officials said.
San Diego Gas & Electric estimated that at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday the effects of the storm had knocked out roughly 26,000 meters from customers across its service territory. By the late afternoon, less than 200 customers were still without lights.
A couple of schools will remain closed today, including KIPP Adelante Preparatory Academy and SOUL Academy, which will be shuttered for several days so heavily flooded classrooms can be cleaned. Classes at SOUL will move online for now, according to the San Diego County Office of Education.
Transit also took a hit in the rain, but freeways choked by water Monday were open Tuesday.
Still, stretches of the trolley lines remain down, the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System said. The Orange Line took the brunt of the storm damage — the agency tweeted a picture of dirt washed out under tracks — and is out of service between Euclid Transit Center and the Lemon Grove Transit Center. MTS will rely on a bus bridge there for several weeks during the repairs.
So why was Monday’s rain just so torrential?
The storm was a direct hit from the west, rather than the glancing blows from the usual northwest approach. Plus, the system drew extraordinary amounts of moisture from the subtropics, with upward of 250 percent as much water in the air than usual.
And when the storm clouds hit the far side of San Clemente Island, just off the region’s coast, the moisture condensed into rain as it swept toward the mainland.
The storm overwhelmed the city’s aging drainage system that officials have acknowledged is far behind on proper updates. A year ago, city officials estimated that there were $2.1 billion in backlogged stormwater infrastructure projects.
Two of the city’s 15 pump stations failed Monday, said Kris McFadden, the city’s deputy chief operating officer. Out of 200 segments of flood channels in San Diego, the city only has funding to do major maintenance on four of those each year, said Todd Snyder, director of the city’s stormwater department.
Gloria said he thinks Monday’s storm would have overwhelmed any drainage system, but he also acknowledged that it is inadequate — something that he and other city officials attributed to a lack of funding and time-consuming bureaucratic processes such as permitting.
“It is fundamentally true that our stormwater system is not resourced correctly, and that’s a long-term thing that we have to probably talk to the voters about,” Gloria said.
Two years ago the city approved a plan, funded by a $733 million federal loan, that will fund storm drain system improvements over five years, including replacing aging pipes, pump station upgrades and replacement of deteriorating stormwater infrastructure.
The loan will fund 50 projects, including one for Beta Street in the hard-hit Southcrest neighborhood, McFadden said. But the planning, permitting, environmental mitigation and other requirements to get those projects done are time-consuming, he said.
A city spokesperson said Monday that, before the rain hit, it had several hundred employees clearing storm drains and doing other prep work to help reduce flood risk across San Diego.
City officials urged residents and businesses to thoroughly photograph damage because they said federal and state officials will want documentation before doling out aid.
Officials encouraged residents and businesses to contact their insurance companies about damage. But they also acknowledged that many people don’t have flood-specific insurance coverage or may not have insurance. San Diego officials are working with the county on identifying potential sources of immediate aid for people in that situation.
The county urged people to report storm damage to its online survey at
crisis track.juvare.com, which will help determine whether the county will receive state or federal disaster aid, and how much or what kind of aid the county may receive, county officials said.
Some residents and business owners turned to GoFundMe to raise recovery funds. The platform has launched a centralized hub featuring all verified fundraisers related to the flooding in San Diego, as well as aid for winter storms across the country. Fundraisers on the hub can be searched by city and state.
(Teri Figuearoa, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; Karen Kucher, Kristen Taketa, Alex Riggins, Gary Robbins, Emily Alvarenga, Tammy Murga, Alexandra Mendoza, Rob Nikolewski, Pam Kragen)
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The flooding happened quickly at the apartment complex off National Avenue. One couple drove down the street to buy sandbags, and by the time they returned not much later, several feet of water had invaded their home, killing four of their parakeets. Another resident emerged from a quick shower to find water seeping up through the floor.
Within minutes, Alejandro Padilla, freshly bathed, was wading through filthy, waist-deep water trying to rescue his frail, 67-year-old mother, with whom he lives as her caretaker.
“It was just a little puddle,” Padilla said, pointing to where the water had been gathering in the complex’s parking lot. “Fifteen minutes, man, or 20, that’s when the water rose.”
The 37-unit complex in the Mountain View neighborhood took severe damage during Monday’s flooding, which hit southeastern San Diego particularly hard as the result of the wettest January day on record, the city’s aging drainage system and blockages along a swollen Chollas Creek. Across many of those neighborhoods Tuesday, shaken, bewildered and exhausted residents — some of whom had been rescued by firefighters or sought shelter on the roofs of their cars or houses a day earlier — returned to their homes to see what, if anything, survived the mud and muck that had forced them to flee.
Many of those residents, who said they hadn’t been aware they were living in high-risk flood areas, did not have flood insurance. They were left to wonder Tuesday if they’d been left with few belongings and even less recourse.
The flooding in Mountain View occurred because huge piles of debris washed down Chollas Creek and clogged its path underneath National Avenue, creating what amounted to a dam. As more and more water rushed toward the clogged bridge Monday morning, it had nowhere to move except out and away from the wide, tall concrete drainage that makes up the urban creek in that area. The murky floodwaters carried away trash bins and vehicles. The water penetrated nearby Nu-Way International Christian Ministries, ravaging most of the church. And it rushed into the ground-level apartment of the complex next door, knocking over refrigerators, picking up couches and sending residents scrambling out of their windows.
Juan and Maite Lopez were inside their apartment noticing the water starting to pool in the complex’s central parking lot when they left for about 15 minutes to drive up the street for sandbags. By the time they got back, the murky water had risen so high the complex was inaccessible. The floodwaters had picked up an Acura sedan and slammed it into their unit’s wooden front fence.
“I was thinking about my dog, because my dog was drowning,” Maite Lopez said. Fortunately, an upstairs neighbor saved Dubsky, a Doberman-husky mix. But four of the family’s parakeets were killed, while nine others and a cockatoo survived. “I was thinking about my animals. The stuff inside the house, to me it’s nothing, I didn’t care about the stuff inside. All I cared about was the animals.”
The Lopez family — the couple has a 14-year-old son, and Maite is two months pregnant — stayed with Juan Lopez’s mother Monday night. Maite Lopez said the family hopes to clean and dry out the apartment and continue living there.
Padilla, who rescued his mother after getting out of the shower, said he was waiting on city officials to assess the apartment before deciding what to do, but was assuming it would be uninhabitable for a lengthy period. He figured that even if government agencies provided financial help, it would be the landlord who would reap that benefit, not the renters.
Armando and Sandra Aguirre live toward the front of the complex with their three daughters, who were not home at the time. The couple said the floodwater moved in so quickly, they didn’t have time to leave. They were stuck inside their apartment until firefighters helped them climb out their front window and wade to safety.
“It was very ugly,” Armando Aguirre said Tuesday in Spanish.
Upstream just a few hundred feet, homes built along the banks of Chollas Creek also flooded.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Carlos Gutierrez, who has lived in a home on San Miguel Avenue for 20 years, said in Spanish as he cleaned a muddy mess from his driveway. He said a large, empty field situated between his home and the flooded church and apartment complex looked like a lake for much of the day Monday. His car, parked near the field, was submerged in water. He figures it will no longer work.
Residents at the apartment complex that flooded joined local civil rights activist Shane Harris in criticizing both the city’s response on Monday and its apparent lack of preparation in dealing with a swollen Chollas Creek.
“Today we are here because this is a symptom of a decades-old and decades-long illness that the city of San Diego’s elected leaders have created,” Harris told reporters outside the complex. He said residents he had spoken to in several southeastern San Diego neighborhoods “have no faith that government is going to be there for them. They have no faith that government is going to help them in the midst of this crisis.”
City leaders acknowledged Tuesday at a briefing that the storm overwhelmed the city’s aging drainage system, which is far behind on proper updates. Mayor Todd Gloria said he thought Monday’s storm would have overwhelmed any drainage system, regardless of how updated it is.
“This is called climate change,” Gloria said, while also acknowledging that the storm drain system is inadequate.
Jerry Hernandez, a resident of the hard-hit Southcrest neighborhood, said he called the city around 8:30 Monday morning when he noticed water already starting to pool in the street. “But it kept ringing, ringing, ringing,” he said. “Nobody answered.”
By the time he returned home a few hours later, the water was reaching dangerously high levels. “So I called 911,” Hernandez said. “Nobody ever showed up.”
Hernandez has lived on Beta Street in Southcrest for about a decade. The backyards of homes on Beta Street butt up against Chollas Creek a few hundred yards east of where it dumps into San Diego Bay. He said the drainage issue in that area is a known problem, and the city had been doing construction recently on the sewage and storm water drainage systems in the area.
“Last week, with the little rain we had, they were out here with a suction truck ready,” Hernandez said. “Yesterday, they did not show up.”
Later in the day, Hernandez watched neighbors climbing onto their roofs as he stood on his raised front porch up to his armpits in rushing water.
“The city has been neglecting this area for years and years,” he said.
On nearby Birch Street, a group of people set up a table Tuesday morning filled with snacks, water, coffee and hand sanitizer. “We’re all here just trying to help,” Iliana Benzon said, adding that the table was set up by friends and family members of Birch Street residents.
As Benzon and others were helping their loved ones, more people showed up with clothing donations. “It’s really nice to see the community get together and how humble everybody is,” Benzon said.
Residents in Encanto who live along a different branch of Chollas Creek that runs next to Imperial Avenue had sought safety on the roofs of their cars Monday when the swollen creek flooded their neighborhood.
Even after the water had receded, they found little relief.
Adrian Rico had cleared his driveway Tuesday morning of debris after floodwaters covered half of his house off 63rd Street and Akins Avenue, just north of Imperial Avenue and the Metropolitan Transit System’s Orange Line trolley tracks. But inside the home was a different and more emotional cleanup effort.
“The fridge got knocked down,” Rico said as he trekked through a dark living room where only framed family photos seemed to have been left untouched by the flooding.
“I called my insurance and they said, ‘Oh, we’ll get back to you in two days,’ ” Rico said. “Dude, I’m homeless.”
The circumstances were no different for his neighbors.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Maria Puente, who has lived in the area 33 years. “The driveway was a river, and the house, I felt it move because of the pressure of the water. It was shocking.”
Puente felt she was going to lose the home where she raised her children, and where her grandchildren now visit. So, as soon as it was safe, she began photographing the aftermath to send to her insurance.
Unlike Puente and Rico who own their homes, Maria Elva Rivas Castillo and her husband, Alejandro Blancas, rent a two-bedroom house. She found it severely flooded Monday after returning from a grocery run.
“We lost everything,” Rivas Castillo said. “Our landlord is not picking up our calls, and we’re not sure who to call for help.”
Some help came from an unexpected place: a coworker of Blancas, a masonry worker.
“I’m really grateful for him because no one else is answering,” Blancas said, as he piled muddied clothes and shoes into trash bags.
The couple said they were contemplating visiting a shelter at Lincoln High School that the American Red Cross had set up for those affected by flooding.
(Alex Riggins, Emily Alvarenga & Tammy Murga, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE; Kristen Takieta)
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BEIJING, China - A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck a sparsely populated part of China’s western Xinjiang region early today, knocking out power and destroying at least two homes, local authorities and state media reported. No fatalities have been reported.
The quake rocked Uchturpan county, called Wushi county in Mandarin, in Aksu prefecture shortly after 2 a.m., the China Earthquake Networks Center said. The mountainous county had around 233,000 people in 2022, according to Xinjiang authorities.
Two houses collapsed, Aksu authorities said, and around 200 rescuers were dispatched to the epicenter, according to state broadcaster CCTV. The quake downed power lines but electricity was quickly restored to the region, Aksu authorities reported.
Urumqi Railroad Bureau resumed services after 7 a.m. after safety checks confirmed no problems on the train lines.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake occurred in the seismically active Tian Shan mountain range. It said the area’s largest quake in the past century was 7.1 magnitude and occurred in 1978 about 124 miles to the north of today’s temblor.
State broadcaster CCTV said 14 aftershocks have been measured, two of them above 5 magnitude.
The rural area is populated mostly by Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnicity that is predominantly Muslim and has been the target of a state campaign of forced assimilation and mass detention.
Uchturpan county at the quake’s epicenter is recording temperatures well below freezing, with lows down to zero degrees forecast by the China Meteorological Administration this week. Parts of northern and central China have shivered under frigid cold snaps this winter, with authorities closing schools and highways several times due to snowstorms.
The tremors were felt hundreds of miles away. Chandeliers swung, buildings were evacuated, and a media office building near the epicenter shook for a full minute, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. A video posted by a Chinese Internet user on Weibo showed residents standing outside on the streets bundled in winter jackets, and a photo posted by CCTV showed a cracked wall with chunks missing.
Tremors were felt across the Xinjiang region and in the neighboring countries Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. In the Kazakh capital of Almaty, people left their homes, the Russian news agency Tass reported.
Earthquakes are common in western China, including in Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, as well as the Xinjiang region and Tibet.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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MEMPHIS, TN - Memphis residents spent their fourth day boiling water for drinking, brushing their teeth and preparing food on Monday as repair crews worked to fix broken pipes in hopes of easing the stress caused by a week of subfreezing temperatures, snow and ice.
The city’s water company issued a boil water notice on Friday to the more than 600,000 people it serves because low pressure in the system and breaks in water mains could allow harmful bacteria to contaminate the water supply.
“It’s frustrating for us homeowners, especially old folks, to have to deal with the snow and the water problem,” said 81-year-old William Wilkerson, who lost all water service between Thursday and Sunday.
Memphis was the largest, but not the only, water system in Tennessee to experience problems from the unusually cold weather that has caused dozens of deaths around the U.S. this month, many involving hypothermia or road accidents. The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said Sunday night that 28 other water systems were under boil water notices and 19 counties were reporting operational issues with their water utilities.
Meanwhile, the Tennessee Department of Health reported 34 weather-related fatalities across the state as of Monday.
Several days of below-freezing temperatures have also caused water problems for multiple cities around Arkansas, where freezing rain on Monday led to warnings of possible power outages as well.
In Tennessee, the several inches of snow and unusually low temperatures led the Tennessee Valley Authority to ask the 10 million people in its service area to conserve energy to avoid rolling blackouts. The utility saw its highest demand for electricity ever last week, but the system remained stable.
Memphis Light, Gas and Water CEO Doug McGowen told reporters Sunday that crews were making progress with repairs, and he expected most customers to have water service restored on Monday and today. They will still have to boil water, likely through Thursday, though.
Sarah Houston, executive director of Protect Our Aquifer, in Memphis, said she lost water service on Sunday night and still had no running water on Monday morning.
“I had filled up pitchers and water bottles and have some backup supply just for drinking,” she said. “Everybody’s going through it. It’s just unfortunate.”
While the majority-Black city is known more for its warm climate than freezing, icy weather, it has experienced winter storms in the past. But the storm last week was the fourth in past three years, showing that the city, like so many others, is feeling direct effects of climate change, Houston said.
“The first thing to recognize is that having snow and multi-day deep freezes every year is not normal,” she said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A huge pool of Pacific moisture unleashed explosive rain on San Diego County Monday, flooding neighborhoods from the South Bay to Oceanside, turning roadways into rivers, prompting dozens of rescues and knocking out power to thousands.
Residents in southeastern San Diego climbed onto their roofs as rising waters swept into their homes — flooding so powerful it lifted cars and dropped them on top of other cars. Fire crews used ladders as bridges, stretching them across flooded areas to reach trapped residents. At Balboa Elementary School, water as deep as 3 feet outside the building prompted fire crews to move students and teachers up to the second floor.
Michael Rios woke up Monday morning to water pouring into his apartment on National Avenue. With the water level 3 feet deep, he grabbed his Chihuahua, Maxey.
“I jumped out my living room window,” Rios said. “I heard my neighbor yelling that he couldn’t get out and he was trapped — so we had to break through his window to get him out.”
Once free, the pair helped a woman with a baby, and they all rushed to the second floor. “The cars and a dumpster looked like they were flowing down the street,” Rios recalled Monday night, a blanket around his shoulders, at the Red Cross shelter at Lincoln High School. “It was like a river.”
The deluge “really caused a lot of havoc,” San Diego Assistant Fire Chief David Gerboth said. Citywide, he said, there were well over 100 people rescued Monday. No deaths were reported.
“There were people stuck in cars in moving water, people stuck in the river, people stuck in homes that were flooded,” he said. “It’s been well over 10 years since we had an event that would compare.”
Forecasters had been expecting significant rain — but nothing like what San Diego County ultimately received.
During a three-hour period starting at 9 a.m., 3 inches of rain fell in National City, while 2 inches fell at San Diego International Airport, the National Weather Service said. The rain cells also appeared to contain lightning, leading forecasters to advise the airport to temporarily stop fueling aircraft during one of the busiest periods of the day.
“We almost never get rainfall that intense during a short period like that,” said Ivory Small, a weather service forecaster with more than 40 years of experience.
They thought the core of the system would curl into northern Baja California. Computer models didn’t give clear, advance noticed that it would instead collide with the 21-mile-long sliver of San Clemente Island, widely used for military exercises. The system also came straight in from the west, rather than taking a less direct path.
The collision basically tore open the plumes of moisture, causing a deluge — upwards of 1 inch of rain per hour in parts of southern San Diego County, overwhelming drainage systems.
Preliminary figures also showed that the airport got 2.70 inches of rain between midnight and 4 p.m. — the most that’s ever fallen on a January day in San Diego, a record dating back to 1850. It was also the fifth wettest day ever recorded in the city.
The deluge wiped out a 2.5-inch rainfall deficit in San Diego, and greatly tamped down the threat of wildfires. But it caused plenty of damage and prompted San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria to declare a local emergency.
Gloria said it was the first step toward receiving federal and state money to help rebuild damaged infrastructure and provide services. More than 100 homes in southeastern San Diego had been damaged or destroyed, he said.
In San Diego’s Southcrest neighborhood, crews also used boats and rescue boards to get scores of people from flooded homes on Beta Street and surrounding streets, fire officials said. Some waited on roofs to be rescued, as fast water swept up cars, dumping them onto other vehicles.
And rescue crews plucked about 45 stranded people from swollen rivers and soaked sites in the Tijuana River Valley and Mission Valley, Gerboth said.
“When you think about it, how heavy a car is, people don’t stand a chance in that,” Gerboth said. “I was surprised that the water had been so high and moved so swiftly.”
Monday’s storm came in the form of towering sheets of rain that fell fairly uniformly from Oceanside to the U.S.-Mexico border, instead of in just a handful of spots, which is more common. Soon, water began to pool on the surface of freeways, making driving perilous. And the winds began to bend trees. Imperial Beach got hit by a 48 mph gust.
Those who dared brave the freeways were slowed not just by rain but by flooding or crashes, including a jackknifed big rig around noon on northound Interstate 15 at Interstate 8. At points throughout the day, flooding shut a stretch of state Route 78 in Oceanside — where the water was waist-high — as well Interstate 5 in downtown San Diego and state Routes 94 and 15 in southeastern San Diego.
It also halted trolley service in downtown San Diego and in East County and caused damage to all three lines, prompting delays even where trains were running. At times, rain blew sideways through car doors, creating puddles on the seats.
Homeless residents were hit especially hard.
Flooding forced evacuations at two sites, including Alpha Project’s tent shelter downtown, where water rose chest-high in some places. Officials said it wasn’t clear if the structure, at 16th Street and Newton Avenue, was even salvageable.
Hundreds of people were moved to facilities at Balboa Park. The city’s first designated camping area was also cleared.
By early afternoon, San Diego Gas & Electric listed more than 15,000 customers without electricity on the company’s outage map, mostly in southeastern San Diego. Many people had lights back on by nightfall.
The storm prompted early Monday dismissals and closures today at schools around the county.
The La Mesa-Spring Valley Elementary School District will close all of its schools today to assess and address damage, after six campuses — primarily in Spring Valley — were flooded so heavily that entire classrooms got soaked, said Superintendent David Feliciano. The district planned to reopen schools Wednesday.
And in rural East County, rain flooded classrooms and eroded hillsides at Jamul-Dulzura schools, which sent students home early Monday and hoped to reopen today. In her more than 25 years in the district, it was the first time Superintendent Liz Bystedt could remember the district closing a school due to a downpour.
In Tijuana, schools canceled classes, as Mexican authorities urged residents to not leave home unless necessary. Tijuana firefighters evacuated 140 people, including teachers and students, from two schools in the Otay Centenario area due to flooding, city officials said.
Emergency crews responded to at least 40 rain-related incidents, including two people rescued from inside their vehicles, nine vehicles stuck in water and four landslides. Power outages were also reported in Playas de Tijuana.
San Diego fire stations were fully staffed, administrators were assigned to work in the field, and rescue teams normally assigned to the beach and bay were sent to swift water scenes far from their usual shoreline.
The rain was also a challenge for San Diego State University faculty who began a weeklong strike, along with their counterparts at all 23 California State University campuses, in an effort to pressure system executives to award them significantly higher wages.
Here is a sample of how much rain had fallen over a three-day period ending at 3 p.m. Monday:
Location Amount (in) Otay Mountain 4.51 Point Loma 4.49 National City 4.21 Palomar Mountain 4.01 La Mesa 3.89 Fallbrook 3.40 Dulzura summit 3.38 S.D. Intl. Airport 3.29 Lake Cuyamaca 3.23 Campo 3.20 Carlsbad Airport 3.17 Bonsall 3.09 Santee 3.05 Encinitas 2.93 Fashion Valley 2.88 Volcan Mountain 2.81 Skyline 2.77 Lake Henshaw 2.74 Oceanside 2.69 Mount Laguna 2.62 Kearny Mesa 2.59 Montgomery Field 2.58 Vista 2.55 San Onofre 2.52 Brown Field 2.49 Lake Wohlford 2.45 Miramar Lake 2.44 Pine Valley 2.44 Alpine 2.39 Julian 2.33 San Marcos 2.16 Rancho Bernardo 2.15 Ramona Airport 2.12 Santa Isabel 2.07 Poway 1.99 San Diego
Country Estates1.82 Borrego Springs 0.98
(Gary Robbins, Karen Kucher & Teri Figueroa; Kristen Taketa, Blake Nelson, Alexandra Mendoza, Caleb Lunetta S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Nearly three-quarters of U.S. states could experience damaging shaking from earthquakes in the next century, according to the government’s latest National Seismic Hazard Model, which is used to inform policies, building codes, risk assessments and earthquake preparation plans.
The greatest risks are in southern Alaska, California and Hawaii, which largely have above a 95 percent chance of feeling shakes from an earthquake in the next century. These are areas located near geologic features that can frequently trigger earthquakes, but the new model predicted more intense shaking than previous models.
Perhaps more surprising, part of the Mississippi Valley has up to a 90 percent chance of experiencing damaging shaking. Central Virginia and Charleston, SC, have up to 50 chance. Moderate to large earthquakes in these areas would reverberate to large population centers like D.C., Boston and New York City.
The damage could be anywhere from a crack in a building to a full collapse, although most of the modeled hazard would be slight, said Mark Petersen, lead author of a new study detailing the model. The model shows shaking from a moderate sized earthquake, magnitude 5.
“Many states have already experienced damaging earthquakes of magnitude five and greater” over the past two centuries, said Petersen. “We want to be able to prepare infrastructure and people for the shaking that we think can occur in their lifetimes.”
While no one has ever predicted a major earthquake, scientists can forecast where earthquakes are more likely to occur through seismic hazard models. Based on the best available scientific studies, historical geologic data and data collection, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) releases new risk assessments for the nation every few years.
The 2023 model, the biggest update in five years, is the most comprehensive analysis of active faults, past earthquake activity and geological factors that can affect seismic activity.
“It’s been almost 120 years (1906) since we’ve had a large earthquake make a direct hit on an urban area,” Greg Beroza, a professor of geophysics at Stanford University who was not involved in creating the model, wrote in an email. “The US has grown so much and so much has changed in the world since then, that the next such earthquake is likely to bring some unanticipated consequences.”
Earthquakes are expected to cost the United States $14.7 billion each year due to ground-shaking-related damage to buildings, according to the USGS and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
There are still many faults in the eastern United States that are not included in [the] model, Petersen said. The biggest reason is they don’t have evidence of movement on those faults because they’ve been eroded or covered up. But he thinks the general hot spots on the East Coast will probably persist even with new data.
“We try to make the best model we can that can be used in building codes, insurance rates, planning by FEMA and by states,” said Petersen. “We want to produce more resilient communities so that when an earthquake does strike, we can quickly recover.”
(Kasha Patel, WASHINGTON POST)
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BEIJING, China - A landslide in southwestern China’s mountainous Yunnan province early Monday buried 47 people and forced the evacuation of 200 more amid freezing temperatures and falling snow.
The disaster struck just before 6 a.m. in the village of Liangshui in the northeastern part of Yunnan province. Rescue efforts were under way to find victims buried in 18 separate houses, the Zhenxiong county publicity department said.
There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries. The cause of the landslide wasn’t immediately known, although photos showed snow was on the ground and continuing to fall.
Rescuers evacuated tourists last week from a remote skiing area in northwestern China where dozens of avalanches triggered by heavy snow trapped more than 1,000 people for a week. The avalanches blocked roads, stranding both tourists and residents in a village in Altay prefecture in the Xinjiang region, close to China’s border with Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan.
Landslides, often caused by rain or unsafe construction work, are not uncommon in China. At least 70 people were killed in landslides last year, including more than 50 at an open pit mine in the Inner Mongolia region. In 2021, 14 workers were killed when a tunnel under construction was flooded.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesia’s Mount Merapi erupted Sunday, spreading searing gas clouds and avalanches of lava down its slopes as other active volcanoes flared up across the country, forcing the evacuation of thousands.
On the densely populated island of Java, Merapi unleashed clouds of hot ash and a mixture of rock and lava that traveled up to 1.2 miles down its slopes, said Agus Budi Santoso, the head of Indonesia’s Geological Disaster Technology Research and Development Center. A column of hot clouds blasted about 109 yards into the air as ash blanketed several villages without casualties, he added.
Merapi is the most active out of more than 120 volcanoes across the country. Sunday’s eruption is the latest since authorities raised its alert level to the second-highest in November 2020 after sensors picked up increasing activity. Residents living on the slopes were advised to stay more than 4 miles away from the crater’s mouth and be aware of possible threats from flowing lava.
In 2010, an eruption killed 347 people and displaced 20,000 villagers.
The 9,737-foot mountain is about 18 miles from Yogyakarta, an ancient center of Javanese culture and the seat of royal dynasties going back centuries. About a quarter million people live within 6 miles of the volcano.
Several other active volcanoes also erupted this weekend, prompting authorities to evacuate thousands of residents, said Indonesia’s Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation in a statement released on social media platform X, formerly Twitter. No casualties were reported, it said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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NASHVILLE, TN - Subfreezing conditions and treacherous roadways have contributed to dozens of deaths this month across the U.S., where states as far south as Texas and Florida remain gripped by deadly arctic weather Sunday. But the numbing cold is expected to ease up in the coming days.
Nationally, winter storms have claimed at least 72 lives around the U.S. this January, many involving hypothermia or road accidents.
On Sunday, crews in Memphis, TN, continued to work around the clock to find and fix broken pipes that were causing low water pressure throughout the system. Memphis Light, Gas and Water President and CEO Doug McGowen said Sunday afternoon that crews are making progress and he expects most of the 700,000 people the utility services to have water restored over the next 24 hours.
“If we remain on this very positive path, and we are on a positive path, I believe that by Wednesday we will have pressure sufficient for us to take samples of our water system,” he said. “Assuming good results, we think that means a Thursday for lifting of the boil water advisory.”
Memphis Light, Gas and Water was repairing 10 water main breaks on Sunday afternoon, and McGowen said he expects to see more as the ground continues to thaw. The utility said it previously repaired 41 broken water mains.
Memphis was the largest, but not the only, water system in Tennessee to experience problems from the unusually cold weather. The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said on Saturday night that 28 water systems have issued boil-water notices.
The continued cold weather is also responsible for at least 27 deaths in Tennessee, according to the Tennessee Department of Health.
Just south in Mississippi, the state’s Emergency Management Agency said Sunday that 11 people have died of causes related to frigid weather since Jan. 14.
Elsewhere, freezing rain, sleet and high wind gusts made traveling in parts of Kansas and Oklahoma particularly treacherous, the National Weather Service said. Wind chills in Iowa made it feel like minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit in some parts.
But the end of subzero temperatures — which blasted into the U.S. on Friday — was in sight for parts of the country. The daily high temperatures in Iowa’s capital of Des Moines, for example, were expected to stay above freezing starting today.
On the West Coast, more freezing rain was forecast in the Columbia River Gorge and the area was expected to remain near or below freezing through early today. Trees and power lines already coated with ice could topple if they get more, the National Weather Service warned.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Responding to frustrations from impacted communities across the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced Friday that it is making sweeping changes so that more disaster victims get financial assistance faster and with fewer rules, red tape and delays.
“We can do better. Survivors deserve better,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said in a call with reporters. “We are breaking records year after year with these disasters, and we need to be better prepared and informed to recover faster and more effectively.”
FEMA, a relatively small agency, largely carries the responsibility of helping states and communities recover from hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters. This includes helping people find and pay for short-term, temporary housing while their state and local governments lead recovery efforts.
The result for many victims, however, has long been a bureaucratic nightmare that bounces them between multiple agencies, often resulting in denials and delays of critical funds when they need it most. Thousands of survivors do not get adequate money to find new housing, rebuild what was broken, and move forward.
Criswell said that when she took the job in 2021, she started traveling to disaster zones and listening to the frustrations and criticisms from victims, nonprofits and local officials, who repeatedly highlighted how people were left for months struggling to get aid.
To change that, the agency will soon offer more flexible forms of assistance aimed at getting money to people faster.
The agency’s overhaul of its Individual Assistance Program includes nixing steps — such as first making states apply for Critical Needs Assistance funding — that often slowed and complicated federal money getting to victims. Now, its cash-relief program will automatically give eligible households $750 to help cover immediate expenses and basic necessities.
It has also removed barriers for victims who applied late and simplified its appeal process.
To make it easier for people to access housing immediately, FEMA has removed some of its documentation requirements. The agency also is doing away with what Criswell called “onerous documentation” that made victims prove they were spending their aid on rent to make them eligible for continued assistance.
Displaced victims now have the flexibility to choose where they stay, such as with family or friends, and FEMA will give them the funds up front for it instead of making them stay in specified hotels.
One longtime source of confusion was the involvement of the Small Business Administration, with the agency first having to reject a victim’s loan application before the person could get help from FEMA. That’s now gone. Victims with disabilities can also now use FEMA funds to make their homes more accessible after a disaster.
Previously, if insured residents got a certain amount of money from their carrier, they were ineligible for federal assistance, even if the payout barely put a dent in their repairs. Now, FEMA will pay up to $42,500 toward damages that insurance doesn’t cover.
Disaster response and recovery nonprofits and victims rights advocates are applauding the reforms, which some had been pushing for years. Team Rubicon, an organization that has been advising the federal government on how to streamline disaster response, said that “these changes will have immediate and significant positive impacts” when the next disaster strikes.
The new rule changes go into effect March 22, meaning that victims of a disaster declared on or after that date will benefit from these reforms.
(Brianna Sacks & Brady Dennis, WASHINGTON POST)
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A landslide set off by days of heavy rain buried a house where people were holding Christian prayers in the southern Philippines, killing at least seven people, including children, and seriously injuring two others, a disaster-response official said.
Five to 10 people remained unaccounted for following the landslide in a mountain village in the gold-mining town of Monkayo in Davao de Oro province, Ednar Dayanghirang, regional chief of the government’s Office of Civil Defense, said Thursday night.
Aside from the landslide, days of heavy rains also flooded low-lying villages and displaced more than 6,000 people in two other outlying provinces, he said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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Two weeks of storms that have turned roads into icy death traps, have frozen people to death from Oregon to Tennessee and caused power outages that could take weeks to fix continued to sock both coasts with another round of weather chaos on Friday.
The rain, snow, wind and bitterly cold temperatures have been blamed for at least 55 deaths in the U.S. over the past two weeks as a series of storms moved across the country. Schools and roads have closed, and air traffic has been snarled.
There is hope. The forecast for next week calls for above-average temperatures across almost the whole country, according to the National Weather Service.
Heavier-than-forecast snow fell in New York City, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., on Friday and Michigan City, Ind., received 17 inches of lake-effect snow. But the biggest problems remained in places hit hard by storms earlier in the week.
On the West Coast, Oregon’s governor declared a statewide emergency Thursday night, nearly a week after the start of a crippling ice storm.
Thousands have been without power since last weekend in parts of Oregon’s Willamette Valley because of the freezing rain.
“We lost power on Saturday, and we were told yesterday that it would be over two weeks before it’s back on,” said Jamie Kenworthy of Jasper.
About 70,000 customers remained without electricity Friday night in the state, according to poweroutage.us.
Ice was also a problem in the South. Snow and freezing rain added another coat of ice in Tennessee on Thursday. More than 9 inches of snow has fallen around Nashville since Sunday, nearly twice the yearly average. Authorities blamed at least 17 deaths in Tennessee on the weather.
The cold broke so many water mains in Memphis that the entire city was placed on a boil-water notice because the pressure was so low, Memphis Light, Gas and Water said. Bottled water was being given out in at least two locations Friday.
On Friday, more bitterly cold air spilled into the Midwest from Canada. Several states were under an advisory as forecasters warned wind chills dipping to minus-30 degrees could be common through Sunday morning.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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NASHVILLE, TN - A new layer of ice formed over parts of Tennessee on Thursday after a deadly storm blanketed the state in snow and sent temperatures plummeting earlier this week — part of a broader bout of bitter cold sweeping the country from Oregon to the Northeast.
Authorities said at least 14 deaths in Tennessee alone are blamed on the system, which dumped more than 9 inches of snow since Sunday on parts of Nashville, a city that rarely sees such accumulations. Temperatures also plunged below zero in parts of the state, creating the largest power demand ever across the seven states served by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Thursday’s freezing rain compounded problems, adding a thin glaze of ice in some areas ahead of another expected plunge in temperatures over the weekend. Many schools and government offices have closed, and the state Legislature also shut down, canceling in-person meetings all week.
Near Portland, OR, ice slowly began to melt in areas south of the city as warmer temperatures and rain arrived Thursday. But a National Weather Service advisory through today warned of freezing rain and gusting winds of up to 40 mph for parts of the state. Most Portland-area school districts canceled classes for a third straight day because of slick roads and water damage from burst frozen pipes.
On Wednesday, a power line fell on a parked car in northeastern Portland, killing three people and injuring a baby during an ice storm that made driving in parts of the Pacific Northwest treacherous.
More than 40 deaths nationwide have been attributed to the frigid weather in the past week.
The dead in Tennessee included a box truck driver who slid into a tractor-trailer on an interstate, a man who fell through a skylight while cleaning a roof, and a woman who died of hypothermia after being found unresponsive in her home. The deaths occurred in nine Tennessee counties spanning more than 400 miles.
Across the country in Washington state, five people died from hypothermia over a four-day span that saw temperatures plummet to well below freezing in Seattle, the King County Medical Examiner’s office said. Three of those who died between Jan. 11 and Jan. 15 were presumed homeless.
In western New York, the icy weather was blamed for three deaths in three days. Then on Thursday, an American Airlines plane slid off a snowy taxiway in Rochester, NY, after a flight from Philadelphia. No injuries were reported.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A severe drought that began last year has forced authorities to slash ship crossings by 36 percent in the Panama Canal, one of the world’s most important trade routes.
The new cuts announced Wednesday by authorities in Panama are set to deal an even greater economic blow than previously expected.
Canal administrators now estimate that dipping water levels could cost them between $500 million and $700 million in 2024, compared with previous estimates of $200 million.
One of the most severe droughts to ever hit the Central American nation has stirred chaos in the 50-mile maritime route, causing a traffic jam of boats, casting doubts on the canal’s reliability for international shipping and raising concerns about its effect on global trade.
On Wednesday, Panama Canal Administrator Ricaurte Vásquez said they would cut daily ship crossings to 24, after already gradually slashing crossings last year from 38 a day in normal times.
“It’s vital that the country sends a message that we’re going to take this on and find a solution to this water problem,” Vásquez said.
Vásquez added that in the first quarter of the fiscal year the passageway saw 20 percent less cargo and 791 fewer ships than the same period the year before.
It was a “significant reduction” for the country, Vásquez said. But the official said that more “efficient” water management and a jump in rainfall in November has at least enabled them to ensure that water levels are high enough for 24 ships to pass daily until the end of April, the start of the next rainy season.
Canal authorities attributed the drought to the El Niño weather phenomenon and climate change, and warned it was urgent for Panama to seek new water sources for both the canal’s operations and human consumption. The same lakes that fill the canal also provide water for more than 50 percent of the country of more than 4 million people.
“The water problem is a national problem, not just of the Canal,” Vásquez said. “We have to address this issue across the entire country.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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LUSAKA, Zambia - Zambia is reeling from a major cholera outbreak that has killed more than 400 people and infected more than 10,000, leading authorities to order schools across the country to remain shut after the end-of-year holidays.
A large soccer stadium in the capital city has been converted into a treatment facility.
The Zambian government is embarking on a mass vaccination program and says it’s providing clean water to communities that are affected across the nation.
The national disaster management agency has been mobilized.
Cholera is an acute diarrhea infection caused by a bacteria that is typically spread via contaminated food or water.
The outbreak in Zambia began in October and 412 people have died and 10,413 cases have been recorded, according to the latest count on Wednesday from the Zambia Public Health Institute. The Health Ministry says the nation of about 20 million people has been recording more than 400 cases a day.
“This outbreak continues to pose a threat to the health security of the nation,” Health Minister Sylvia Masebo said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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PORTLAND, OR - A power line fell on a parked car in northeast Portland, OR, on Wednesday, killing three people and injuring a baby during an ice storm that turned roads and mountain highways treacherous in the Pacific Northwest.
Shortly before noon, dispatchers started receiving frantic calls about a downed power line and people appearing to be electrocuted, according to a statement from the city’s fire department. A branch had fallen on a power line, causing it to fall onto an SUV, officials said.
As the chaotic situation unfolded, a resident grabbed the baby from one of the people lying in the street in a bid to save its life, according to the statement. The three killed — two adults and one teenager — were found dead upon firefighters’ arrival, and the baby was taken to a hospital. It is believed the victims were electrocuted after they got out of the vehicle, the statement said.
The power company later de-energized the line, the statement added without specifying which company.
Around Portland, driving and even walking were virtually impossible as slick ice coated roads and sidewalks. Icicles dangled from roofs and cars, and ice encased branches, plants and leaves like thick glass.
A large swath of the region was under warnings Wednesday for as much as 1 inch of ice, promising only to add to the damage wrought by a deadly, powerful storm that hit over the weekend. The warning area was reduced later in the morning to parts of southwest Washington and northwest Oregon, including Portland, and further limited to the western edge of the Columbia River Gorge in the afternoon.
Freezing rain could return to the region this evening through Friday morning, the National Weather Service said. The areas most likely to be impacted include the eastern Portland metro area and the western Columbia River Gorge.
Portland transportation officials asked the public to stay off the roads through this morning, and numerous school districts, including Oregon’s largest, canceled classes for a third straight day as roads remained slick.
The three deaths Wednesday added to at least seven deaths linked to fallen trees and suspected hypothermia during the previous weekend’s storm.
The storm hit the northwest corner of the U.S. as much of the rest of the country coped with bitter weather that in some places put electricity supplies at risk. Some 90,000 homes and businesses across the U.S. — mostly in Oregon — did not have power as of late Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.us.
Freezing temperatures spread as far south as North Florida on Wednesday morning, the National Weather Service said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Pacific Northwest braced for freezing rain Tuesday after a weekend of extreme winds knocked down trees and cut power to thousands, while communities across the U.S. also struggled with perilously cold weather that closed schools and put electricity supplies at risk.
Another day of record cold temperatures swept much of the Rockies, Great Plains and Midwest, with wind chills below minus-30 degrees extending into the mid-Mississippi Valley. On the East Coast, meanwhile, New York City and Philadelphia ended a drought of sorts with enough snow falling for play in both cities.
More than 80,000 U.S. homes and businesses were without power by Tuesday afternoon, most of them in Oregon. Portland General Electric warned that freezing rain could delay restoration efforts. Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides electricity in seven states, asked customers to voluntarily cut back, citing a high demand for power because of the cold. A similar plea came from the grid operator in Texas.
More than 200 residents were evacuated after a broken pipe flooded the first three floors of an apartment building in downtown St. Louis, KSDK-TV reported. An assistant manager at the Mark Twain Building complex said all 213 residents of the building, many of them elderly, were evacuated onto five warming buses.
Schools were closed in major cities, including in Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Dallas, Houston, Memphis, TN; Portland, OR; across New England and in the Washington, D.C., region. Federal offices in the nation’s capital were closed as roughly 2 inches of snow hit the area.
The National Weather Service posted an ice storm warning in parts of Oregon, including Portland, until today, when temperatures are expected to rise to 43 degrees.
“Power outages and tree damage are likely due to the ice. Travel could be difficult,” the weather service said.
While the Pacific Northwest is more known for rain and wasn’t set to experience the Arctic temperatures or significant snowfall blanketing other parts of the U.S., the heavily forested region is especially prone to the danger of falling trees and power lines, particularly during freezing rain and ice storms.
Rough weather was a challenge across the U.S. More than 2 feet of snow covered southeast Alaska, sinking six boats in Juneau and causing avalanches. Three of the six boats were saved.
More than 9 inches of snow hit Nashville, TN, since Sunday — nearly twice the annual average. The Tennessee Department of Health on Tuesday confirmed six weather-related fatalities.
Maeve McConville said she and her sister were stuck inside an American Airlines plane at the Nashville airport for seven hours Monday after arriving from Washington.
“The pilot came on and said, ‘No gates available, and ground operations just told us it’s going to be at least an hour,’” McConville told The Associated Press.
But an hour turned into many hours. McConville said portable stairs were considered but they were not used because of a broken part. American said “challenging conditions” made gate arrivals very difficult. Passengers watched hours of TV and movies as they waited to be taken to a gate.
“I’ve now seen all of season four of ‘Friday Night Lights,’” McConville said.
In New Jersey, authorities said two people died when their SUV collided with a snowplow on the slick Garden State Parkway in Monmouth County.
A man in Chicago fought off the Arctic-like cold Tuesday with a fire made from cardboard, splintered pallets and other trash under Interstate 90/94. Others without a secure home sought shelter in more than 20 tents erected nearby.
Forecasters in Buffalo, NY, warned that the region should brace for a foot or more of snow through Thursday, on top of a mighty storm that delayed an NFL playoff game for a day.
Armed with only a shovel, Belinda Bonacquisti praised a 14-year-old boy with a snowblower who helped her clear 3 feet from her suburban Buffalo driveway Monday.
“I didn’t know where he came from or what direction,” she told WKBW-TV. “He just really bailed me out.”
New York City’s Central Park recorded more than an inch of snow since midnight, the first time since 2022 that it had at least an inch in a single day. The weather service said Philadelphia snapped a similar 715-day streak, too.
Despite the threats posed by cold weather, there still was room for frivolity.
In Philadelphia, more than 3 inches of snow finally fell after a long dry spell. Isaiah Stout said his kids “lost their minds” and wanted to play outside, so they rushed to Target to buy the right clothes.
“It was really crazy in there,” Stout said. “Got their snowsuits and their snow boots and now they’re excited.”
Dan O’Conor, known as the “Great Lake Jumper,” did his usual morning flip into Lake Michigan in Chicago, where the air temperature was at minus-5 degrees, according to his social media feed.
In Washington, a friendly snowball fight broke out among a few dozen people on the National Mall. The group even has a name: the Washington DC Snowball Fight Association.
“It’s a way just to let off steam,” Michael Lipin said, brushing snow off his cap, “bring some childhood memories back.”
(Ed White, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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BUFFALO, NY - Brutally cold temperatures and dangerous wind chills stayed put across much of the United States Monday, promising the coldest temperatures ever for Iowa’s presidential nominating contest, holding up travelers and testing the mettle of NFL fans in Buffalo for a playoff game that was delayed a day by wind-whipped snow.
About 150 million Americans were under a windchill warning or advisory for dangerous cold and wind, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, MD, as an Arctic air mass spilled south and eastward across the country.
Sunday morning saw temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 40 degrees in northern and northeast Montana. Saco, MT, dropped to minus 51. Subzero lows reached as far south as Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and parts of Indiana, Taylor said.
About 110,000 U.S. homes and businesses were without power late Monday, the bulk of them in Oregon after widespread outages that started Saturday. Portland General Electric warned that strong winds forecast for Monday and threat of an ice storm today could delay restoration efforts.
Classes were canceled today for students in major cities including Chicago — the nation’s fourth-largest public school district — Denver, Dallas, Fort Worth and Portland.
The storm was blamed for at least four weekend deaths around Portland, including two people who died of suspected hypothermia. Another man was killed after a tree fell on his house and a woman died in a fire that spread from an open-flame stove after a tree fell onto an RV.
Three deaths of homeless people were under investigation in the Milwaukee area. They likely died from hypothermia, officials said.
In Utah, where almost 4 feet of snow fell in the mountains over a 24-hour period, a snowmobiler was struck and killed Sunday night by a semitrailer about 70 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, according to the Utah Highway Patrol.
In Wyoming, a backcountry skier was killed after triggering a 50-foot-wide avalanche. The victim was swept into a gully and through brush and trees, then remained buried for about 15 minutes before being found by a companion in the mountains south of Alpine, WY, on Sunday afternoon, according to the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center.
It marked the third U.S. avalanche fatality in recent days, following a Wednesday accident at a California ski resort that killed one person and injured three others, and another that killed a person on Thursday in the Idaho backcountry near the Montana border.
Swirling snow and avalanche dangers prompted numerous road closures across the Rocky Mountains. East of the resort community of Vail, CO, officials closed a 20-mile stretch of Interstate 70, the primary east-west highway through the state.
Crews on Monday continued clearing snow after a weekend avalanche briefly trapped the occupants of 10 cars and shut down the road over Berthoud Pass in central Colorado.
The Buffalo Bills renewed their call for shovelers at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, NY, on Monday morning to dig out from more than a foot and a half of snow that fell through a blustery weekend.
Crews had the turf cleared by midmorning. Citizen shovelers working for $20 an hour worked in temperatures in the teens to clear seats for fans ahead of the 4:30 p.m. game.
At first glance it was a daunting task, Bob Isaacs of Buffalo acknowledged a few hours after arriving at 7:30 a.m. He considered his work a contribution to the team.
“You got to remember you’re a Bills fan. It’s all part of the deal,” he said.
Neighboring towns saw even higher snow totals, with 41 inches in Hamburg and Angola.
Transportation officials in Portland, OR, urged residents to avoid travel all day today as a forecast of up to half an inch of freezing rain could make roads hazardously slick with ice and weigh down trees and power lines, causing them to fall.
Multnomah County, home to Portland, said it served a record number of people — 1,136 — at 12 overnight emergency weather shelters on Sunday night as low temperatures hit 17 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. The county estimated it needed 100 additional volunteers to respond to the high demand in a city that has thousands of homeless people living on its streets.
“As we head into day five of the weather emergency … the real limitation for us right now is staffing,” said Dan Field, director of the joint county-city homelessness office. “We have to have enough people to keep the doors open of the emergency shelters.”
Air travelers across the country experienced delays and cancellations. The flight tracking service FlightAware reported about 2,900 cancellations Monday within, into or out of the United States.
Freeze warnings were issued by the National Weather Service across the Deep South. Mississippi forecasters warned of a “long duration freeze” that would last in some locations until Thursday.
The winter storm was affecting travel across the central Appalachian region, with areas of Tennessee seeing as much as 8 inches of snow. The Tennessee Legislature canceled its meetings for the week.
The snow was expected to continue accumulating through today with bitter cold wind chills.
With the potential for record low temperatures in Texas, the state’s electrical grid operator asked consumers to conserve energy. About 11,000 Texas customers were without power Monday, according to poweroutage.us.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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REYKJAVIK, Iceland - A volcano in southwestern Iceland erupted for the second time in less than a month on Sunday, sending lava snaking toward a nearby community and setting at least one home on fire.
The eruption, which began just before 8 a.m. local time, came after authorities evacuated the town of Grindavik following a swarm of small earthquakes, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said. Hours later, a second fissure opened near the edge of town and lava crept toward the homes.
“We just watch it on the cameras and there’s really nothing else we can do,” Grindavik resident Reynir Berg Jónsson told Iceland’s RUV television.
Grindavik is a town of 3,800 people about 30 miles southwest of Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital. The community was previously evacuated in November following a series of earthquakes that opened large cracks in the earth between the town and Sýlingarfell, a small mountain to the north. The nearby Blue Lagoon geothermal spa — one of Iceland’s biggest tourist attractions — also closed temporarily.
The volcano eventually erupted on Dec. 18, and residents were allowed to return to their homes on Dec. 22.
In the weeks since then, emergency workers have been building defensive walls around Grindavik, but the barriers weren’t complete and lava is moving toward the community, the meteorological office said.
Before last month’s eruption, the Svartsengi volcanic system north of Grindavik had been dormant for around 780 years.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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PORTLAND, OR - Subfreezing temperatures across much of the U.S. left millions of Americans facing dangerous cold as Arctic storms left four dead and knocked out electricity to tens of thousands in the Northwest, brought snow to the South, and walloped the Northeast with blizzard conditions that forced the postponement of an NFL game.
An estimated 95 million people nationwide faced weather warnings or advisories Sunday for wind chills below zero Fahrenheit. Forecasters said the severe cold was expected to push as far south as northern Texas while the bitter blast sends wind chill readings as low as minus 70 degrees in Montana and the Dakotas.
“It takes a matter of minutes for frostbite to set in,” the South Dakota Department of Public Safety said in a statement Sunday urging people to stay indoors.
In Buffalo, NY, where snowfall of 1 to 2 feet was forecast, severe conditions led officials to postpone the Buffalo Bills-Pittsburgh Steelers NFL playoff game from Sunday to today. Winds whipped at 30 mph, and snow was falling at a rate of 2 inches per hour.
Workers with shovels and trucks worked to clear snow from the field at Buffalo’s Highmark Stadium as the Bills warned volunteers eager to help with the shoveling to stay at home and not defy a travel ban on area roads.
“Looks like a pretty good day to not have a football game,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Buffalo native, posted on X with a video clip of whiteout conditions in the western New York city.
Zack Taylor, a National Weather Service meteorologist in College Park, MD, warned some parts of the Northeast would see intense snowfall and extreme winds, with gusts up to 50 mph possible.
“That’s why they’re expecting to see near-blizzard conditions at times,” Taylor said.
Across the country in Oregon, more than 130,000 homes and businesses were without electricity, most of them in the Portland metro area, a day after high winds and a mix of snow and ice brought down trees and power lines.
“Given the extent of the damage and the high level of outage events, restoration efforts will continue into the week and customers are encouraged to plan accordingly,” Portland General Electric said in a statement. The utility said it was watching a second weather pattern that could bring high winds and freezing rain on Tuesday.
The City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services said its crews were working nonstop at multiple locations to make emergency repairs and prevent sewage releases into homes and businesses. Portland’s largest sewage pump station, which serves downtown and the surrounding inner city, was under partial service due to a frozen pipe.
Widespread power outages affecting tens of thousands were also reported Sunday in Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In Nebraska, the Omaha Public Power District asked customers to conserve electricity to prevent outages.
“The weather came on faster and has been more prolonged than anticipated,” the district said in a statement Sunday.
Airports across the country were affected. More than half of flights into and out of Buffalo Niagara International Airport were canceled. Scores of flights also were canceled or delayed at Chicago, Denver and Seattle-Tacoma airports.
Forecasters also warned that rapid bursts of heavy snow and wind could cause drastic and sudden drops in visibility in eastern Pennsylvania and parts of northern New Jersey and Delaware with some “near whiteout conditions” possible.
Another Arctic storm that’s dumped heavy snowfall in the Rockies was forecast to push further south, potentially bringing 4 inches to 6 inches of snow to parts of Arkansas, northern Mississippi and west Tennessee.
Much of Wisconsin were under advisories through this afternoon, with predicted wind chills as low as 30 degrees below zero.
Even parts of northern Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia could see snow. In Shreveport, LA, Mary Trammel was among residents who stocked up on bottled water, food and fuel for generators ahead of subfreezing weather expected to coat some roads in ice and up to an inch of snow.
“It’s cold out here,” said Tramel, who told KSLA-TV she bought bread and ingredients for enough soup to last days.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency in advance to give utility trucks and trucks hauling essential supplies greater flexibility to respond.
Officials in Mississippi’s capital city of Jackson were preparing for days of freezing weather after cold snaps in 2021 and 2022 caused pipes to burst and water pressure to drop across the city of 150,000.
“We feel as confident as we can that we’re prepared for whatever comes our way,” Ted Henifin, Jackson’s interim manager of Jackson’s long-troubled water system, told WAPT-TV. He said crews were on standby to respond to any broken pipes.
The wild weather didn’t just bring snow and ice. Record high tides that flooded some homes in Maine and New Hampshire on Saturday also swept three historic fishing shacks into the sea from where they had stood for more than 130 years in South Portland, Maine.
“History is just being washed away,” Michelle Erskine said Sunday, a day after capturing video footage of the last two wooden shacks sliding into the ocean.
In Oregon, just south of Portland, 100 trees toppled Saturday, including one that fell on a house and killed a man. Two other people died of suspected hypothermia and a fourth died in a fire that spread from an open-flame stove after a tree fell onto an RV.
The snow and gusting winds had let up Sunday in Oregon, but frigid temperatures meant roads remained treacherous and much of Portland was shut down. In nearby Lake Oswego, Glenn Prohaska was looking for a business that had Wi-Fi so he could book a hotel. With the power out, the temperature in his home had dropped to the 20s overnight.
“In the 40 years I’ve been here, this is the worst I’ve seen,” he said.
(Gillian Flaccus & Christopher Weber, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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ENCINITAS, CA - Another landslide has again closed the steep, switch-back trail down to Beacon’s Beach, a popular surfing spot in Encinitas.
City officials have asked people to avoid the pathway and the area below it until further notice. Slides and bluff failures have damaged the hillside trail multiple times over the years.
“Our engineers and geotechnical consultants are monitoring the active landslide,” Encinitas Senior Management Analyst and Public Information Officer Lois Yum said Friday morning.
“Once the landslide is inactive, we can then evaluate what work is necessary to repair and reopen the beach access trail,” she said. “We do not know at this time when the work will begin.”
The small Beacon’s Beach parking lot along the west side of Neptune Avenue, between Leucadia Boulevard and Jasper Street, remains open, but could be closed if conditions worsen. The nearest access to the beach from Neptune is blocks away at El Portal Street or Grandview Street.
A slide in early May 2022 closed the trail and the parking lot for almost two months, while the city worked with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the state Parks Department and the California Coastal Commission to study the geology and complete repairs. Four small retaining walls were added, some damaged steps were replaced and the trail was re-leveled.
A city official estimated the cost to the city, including staff time and temporary fencing, at about $50,000, excluding the work and equipment contributed by the other agencies for the 2022 repairs.
Three women in the same family were killed in August 2019 when part of a bluff collapsed on them on the beach near the stairs at the nearby Grandview Beach.
The cliff-top access point at Beacon’s began as a foot path more than 50 years ago. A better trail was built after a large landslide in the early 1980s.
Long-term plans call for moving the parking lot back from the edge of the bluff to prevent parked cars from going over in an earthquake or because of ongoing erosion, according to the city website. Non-native, invasive vegetation will be removed, and native species will be planted to help stabilize the slope.
(Phil Diehl, S.D. UNION TRIBUNE)
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Widespread floods in the Republic of Congo have pushed hundreds of thousands of people to be in urgent need of assistance, the United Nations said Friday.
The rainfall is twice the average of what was recorded between 2022 and 2023 and the floods have destroyed or damaged 34 health facilities, 120 schools and more than 64,000 houses, the World Health Organization said in a statement. More than 330,000 people have been impacted.
The flooding occurred along Congo’s Ubangi River. The United Nations warned it could lead to an outbreak of water-borne diseases such as cholera and impede access to health care.
River levels are at an all-time high and it’s likely the waters will not recede in the immediate future, said government spokesman Thierry Moungalla. Since flooding began some two weeks ago, it has killed at least 17 people, he said.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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A dangerous winter storm swept the northern U.S. on Friday, with blinding snow in some places, freezing rain in others, and bitter cold temperatures and whipping winds across several states.
Authorities announced Friday that a suburban Chicago man died of cold exposure, apparently becoming the first cold-related death of the season. The man, whose identity wasn’t released, was found Thursday in the suburb of Schiller Park, the Cook County medical examiner’s office said.
An autopsy performed Friday found that the man’s death was weather-related, and the medical examiner’s office ruled it an accident.
Heavy snow and strong winds made driving virtually impossible in parts of Iowa, so much so that Republican presidential hopefuls called off campaign events. “Black ice” from freezing rain caused wrecks and brought Kansas City, MO, to a standstill. Flight cancellations were common, including more than 1,000 at Chicago’s airports.
Blizzard warnings were issued in some places, including southwestern Minnesota and the Green Bay area of Wisconsin. Forecasts for the Milwaukee area predicted heavy snow stretching into this morning with wind gusts up to 40 mph.
The cold was the bigger concern in the Dakotas. It was 11 degrees below zero in Bismarck, ND, on Friday morning, and forecasters warned the weekend will get even worse. It could reach 20-below by early Sunday.
Chicago is expecting several inches of snow through the weekend, with wind chills well below zero. Advocates worried for the growing population of migrants sent up from the U.S.-Mexico border — more than 26,000 have arrived since last year. By Friday, dozens were staying in eight parked “warming buses” to avoid sleeping outside while they await space in city-run shelters.
The South wasn’t immune to the harsh weather. Severe storms with winds reaching 70 mph stretched across Mississippi, and Arctic air is expected to arrive in the South this weekend.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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America’s greenhouse gas emissions fell 1.9 percent in 2023, in large part because the burning of coal to produce electricity plummeted to its lowest level in half a century, according to estimates published Wednesday by the Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan research firm.
The drop means that U.S. emissions have now fallen roughly 17.2 percent since 2005. There was a huge, anomalous dip in planet-warming pollution at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when large segments of the economy shut down, followed by a sharp rebound in the next two years once activity resumed. But over the longer term, U.S. emissions have been trending downward as power plants and cars have gotten cleaner.
Still, the decline in emissions to date hasn’t been nearly steep enough to meet the nation’s goals for trying to slow global warming. President Joe Biden wants to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. To hit that goal, annual emissions would have to fall more than three times as fast for the rest of the decade as they did last year, the report found.
The researchers looked at planet-warming emissions generated by transportation, electricity, industry and buildings but did not include pollution from agriculture, which accounts for roughly 10 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gases.
To speed action on climate change, Congress in 2022 approved a record amount of federal money for low-emissions technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear reactors, electric vehicles and hydrogen fuels.
But the full impact of those investments on emissions has yet to be seen, since many companies are only starting to ramp up investments in clean energy.
“In the coming years, we’d expect to start seeing surges in renewable energy deployment and surges in the number of electric vehicles on the road,” said Ben King, an associate director at the Rhodium Group and an author of the new report. “The big question is how fast emissions will fall as a result.”
The main reason emissions fell last year was that carbon dioxide pollution from America’s fleet of power plants dropped roughly 8 percent. Electric utilities closed more than a dozen large power plants that burned coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, replacing them with cheaper and lower-emitting natural gas, wind and solar power.
That’s a trend that has been under way since the fracking boom of the mid-2000s made natural gas plentiful and relatively inexpensive. While coal plants once generated nearly half of U.S. electricity, they produced just 17 percent last year, a lower share than either nuclear or renewable energy, the report said. The use of coal for electricity dropped to its lowest level since 1969.
By contrast, the use of natural gas for electricity soared to record highs as a series of scorching summer heat waves spurred utilities to run their gas plants more often to meet heavy demand for air conditioning. Renewable electricity generation increased by a smaller amount: While the solar industry enjoyed a record year for installations, wind companies erected significantly fewer new turbines than they did in 2022.
Transportation, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases, saw a 1.6 percent rise in emissions in 2023. Gasoline and jet fuel consumption both increased as Americans continued to drive and fly more after the pandemic. U.S. sales of electric vehicles passed the 1 million mark in 2023, but they still make up a relatively small fraction of vehicles on the road and have yet to put a major dent in road emissions.
(Brad Plumer, NEW YORK TIMES)
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A magnitude 6.4 earthquake shook parts of Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan on Thursday, sending panicked residents fleeing from their homes and offices and frightening people in remote villages, Pakistani officials and the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The epicenter of the quake was in the Hindu Kush mountain range in Afghanistan, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department. It was the third major earthquake to strike Afghanistan in three months.
There were no immediate reports of damage in either country.
It was felt in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, and in the major cities of Lahore, Peshawar and Muzaffarabad in the Pakistan-administered portion of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is divided between Pakistan and India and claimed by both in its entirety.
The quake was also felt in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and in provinces in the east and northeast.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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RENO, NV - An avalanche roared through a section of expert trails at a California ski resort near Lake Tahoe on Wednesday, sweeping up four people and killing one, as a major storm with snow and gusty winds moved into the region, authorities said.
The avalanche prompted Palisades Tahoe to close 30 minutes after it opened, and search crews combed the area to see if anyone was injured or trapped.
Sgt. David Smith, a spokesperson for the Placer County Sheriff's Office, said hours later that one person died. The sheriff's office identified him Wednesday evening as Kenneth Kidd, 66, a resident of nearby Truckee and Point Reyes.
One person suffered a lower leg injury and two others were treated for unspecified injuries and released, officials said.
Authorities said nobody was missing.
The avalanche occurred around 9:30 a.m. on steep slopes in the GS Gully area under the KT-22 lift, which serves “black diamond” runs for skilled skiers and snowboarders. Michael Gross, vice president of mountain operations, said ski patrols had been on the slopes checking the avalanche conditions since Sunday.
“They’ve been up there doing control work, evaluating weather conditions, setting up all safety markings, hazard markings, etc., to get them prepared for today’s opening,” Gross told reporters at a news conference Wednesday.
The popular lift opened Wednesday for the first time this season. Palisades Tahoe said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, that the entire resort would be closed for the rest of the day.
The avalanche debris field spanned about 150 feet wide, 450 feet long and 10 feet deep, the sheriff’s office said.
“This is a very sad day for my team and everyone here,” said Dee Byrne, president of Palisades Tahoe, her voice emotional.
Skier Mark Sponsler said he arrived at the KT-22 lift around 9:30 a.m. amid howling winds and white-out conditions to find it shut down. Unbeknownst to him, the avalanche had just hit.
He spoke to someone who was in the second group to ride up. That person had watched the disaster strike from above, said Sponsler, a veteran weather forecaster and founder of stormsurf.com.
“There was screaming, there were skis and poles and a hand sticking up out of the snow,” Sponsler said the witness told him.
The cause of the avalanche is under investigation, officials said. It happened as a powerful storm was expected to bring as much as 2 feet of snow to the highest elevations by early today.
Dan Lavely, 67, of Reno is a season pass holder at Palisades and skied mostly at Alpine Meadows on Monday when there was very little snow and the KT-22 lift was closed.
“They didn’t have enough snow to open the lift, it wasn’t even running. ... Today was supposed to be the first day they opened KT-22,” he said.
The steep run along the side of the lift is where the giant slalom was held during the 1960 Winter Olympics, he said.
“Really good skiers love it because it’s really steep,” he said. “I remember when I was really young I was skiing around there. I fell over and slid like two-thirds of the way down the mountain. There was no way to stop because it’s just so steep.”
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Powerful storms were disrupting life around the United States on Tuesday, closing schools, snarling traffic and cutting power across swaths of the Pacific Northwest, the Plains, the Midwest, the South and the East Coast.
At least three deaths were reported. An 81-year-old woman was killed when her mobile home in Houston County, AL, was lifted off its foundation and rolled over several times, the county coroner said. One person was killed in Claremont, NC, where a strong storm moved through a mobile home park, officials in Catawba County said. And in Clayton County, GA, south of Atlanta, one person was killed when a tree fell on a car, police said.
Severe thunderstorms and apparent tornadoes ripped across the Florida Panhandle early Tuesday, downing power lines and trees and damaging buildings. The storm left some roadways impassable in Panama City, FL, according to authorities, and spawned hail about the size of baseballs. There had been at least 10 reports of tornadoes in the South, according to the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center.
To the north, heavy rain hit the New York area late Tuesday, bringing with it the potential for flooding and damaging winds that were expected to stretch into this morning. Places that received heavy snowfall over the weekend will be particularly vulnerable to flooding.
The rainfall and flooding are forecast to stretch into southern Maine. Several school districts in the eastern United States either canceled classes or planned for early dismissals Tuesday.
In the High Plains through the Upper Midwest on Tuesday, blizzard conditions persisted, with potentially more on the way by the end of the week.
And a potent cold front continued to affect the Pacific Northwest, bringing several feet of heavy snow and blizzard conditions across the Cascades. Heavy snow will also continue to blanket the Northern Rockies.
More than 1,000 domestic and international flights in the United States were canceled on Tuesday as extreme weather pummeled the country from coast to coast. With more than 70 flights canceled, Chicago O’Hare International Airport had the most cancellations, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website.
(NEW YORK TIMES)
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The year 2023 was the hottest in recorded human history, Europe’s top climate agency announced Tuesday, with blistering surface temperatures and torrid ocean conditions pushing the planet dangerously close to a long-feared warming threshold.
According to new data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, Earth’s average temperature last year was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the preindustrial average, before humans began to warm the planet through fossil fuel burning and other polluting activities. Last year shattered the previous global temperature record by almost two-tenths of a degree — the largest jump scientists have ever observed.
This year is predicted to be even hotter. By the end of January or February, the agency warned, the planet’s 12-month average temperature is likely to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial level — blasting past the world’s most ambitious climate goal.
The announcement of a new temperature record comes as little surprise to scientists who have witnessed the past 12 months of raging wildfires, deadly ocean heat waves, cataclysmic flooding and a worrisome Antarctic thaw. A scorching summer and “gobsmacking” autumn temperature anomalies had all but guaranteed that 2023 would be a year for the history books.
But the amount by which the previous record was broken shocked even climate experts.
“I don’t think anybody was expecting anomalies as large as we have seen,” Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said. “It was on the edge of what was plausible.”
The new statistics underscore how human-caused climate change has allowed regular planetary fluctuations to push temperatures into uncharted territory. Each of the past eight years was already among the eight warmest ever observed. Then, a complex and still somewhat mysterious host of climatic influences combined with human activities to push 2023 even hotter — ushering in an age of “global boiling,” in the words of United Nations Secretary General António Guterres.
A year with no equal
When ominous warmth first appeared in Earth’s oceans last spring, scientists said it was a likely sign that record global heat was imminent — but not until 2024.
But as the planet transitioned into an El Niño climate pattern — characterized by warm Pacific Ocean waters — temperatures took a steeper jump. July and August were the two warmest months in the 173-year record Copernicus examined.
As Antarctic sea ice dwindled and the planet’s hottest places flirted with conditions too extreme for people to survive, scientists speculated that 2023 would not only be the warmest on record — it might well exceed anything seen in the last 100,000 years.
Autumn brought even greater departures from the norm. Temperatures in September were almost a full degree Celsius hotter than the average over the past 30 years, making it the most unusually warm month in Copernicus’ data set. And two days in November were, for the first time ever, more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the preindustrial average for those dates.
“What we have seen in 2023 doesn’t have an equivalent,” Buontempo said.
This year’s record-setting conditions were driven in part by unprecedented warmth in the oceans’ surface waters, Copernicus said. The agency measured marine heat waves from the Indian Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Parts of the Atlantic Ocean experienced temperatures 4 to 5 degrees Celsius (7.2 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit) above average — a level the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration classifies as “beyond extreme.”
Though the oceans cover about two-thirds of Earth’s surface, scientists estimate they have absorbed about 90 percent of the extra warming from humans’ burning of fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect those emissions have in the atmosphere.
“The ocean is our sentinel,” said Karina von Schuckmann, an oceanographer at the nonprofit Mercator Ocean International.
What drove record warmth?
Scientists are still disentangling the factors that made this year so unusual.
The largest and most obvious is El Niññ, the infamous global climate pattern that emerges a few times a decade and is known to boost average planetary temperatures by a few tenths of a degree Celsius, or as much as half a degree Fahrenheit. El Niño’s signature is a zone of warmer-than-normal waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, which release vast amounts of heat and water vapor and trigger extreme weather patterns around the world.
But El Niño alone cannot explain the extraordinary heat of the past 12 months, according to Copernicus. Because it wasn’t just the Pacific that exhibited dramatic warmth this year.
Scientists also believe the Atlantic may have warmed as a result of weakened westerly winds, which tend to churn up waters and send surface warmth into deeper ocean layers. It could also have been the product of below-normal Saharan dust in the air; the particles normally act to block some sunlight from reaching the ocean surface.
And then there is the potential impact of a massive underwater volcanic eruption. When Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai blasted a plume 36 miles high in January 2022, scientists warned it released so much water vapor into the atmosphere, it could have a lingering effect for months, if not years, to come.
But it won’t be clear how much of a role each of those factors played until scientists can test each of those hypotheses.
What is clear, scientists stress, is that this year’s extremes were only possible because they unfolded against the backdrop of human-caused climate change. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record high of 419 parts per million in 2023, Copernicus said. And despite global pledges to cut down on methane, levels of that gas also reached new peaks.
Only by reaching “net zero” — the point at which people stop adding additional greenhouse to the atmosphere — can humanity reverse Earth’s long-term warming trend, said Paulo Ceppi, a climate scientist at Imperial College London.
“That is what the physical science tells us that we need to do,” Ceppi said.
(Scott Dance, Sarah Kaplan & Veronica Penney, WASHINGTON POST)
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OMAHA, NE - A “highly impactful” winter storm delivered a punch to the country’s midsection on Monday, with blizzard conditions dumping as much as a foot of snow and shutting down schools and highways in several Midwest states.
Through today, snow as deep as 12 inches could blanket a broad area stretching from southeastern Colorado all the way to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, including western Kansas, eastern Nebraska, large parts of Iowa, northern Missouri and northwestern Illinois, said Bob Oravec, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in College Park, Md.
“So a very, very highly impactful event coming forward,” Oravec said.
There were widespread school closures across Nebraska and Kansas on Monday ahead of the storm, where forecasters predicted 5 to 8 inches of snow. The school district that includes Nebraska’s capital, Lincoln, told students to stay home. Lines were long at a Target store drive-up in Omaha as residents stocked up on milk, bread and booze ahead of the storm.
Whiteout conditions in central Nebraska closed a long stretch of Interstate 80. Kansas closed Interstate 70 from the central city of Russell all the way to the Colorado border due to dangerous travel conditions, as well as many secondary roads in northwestern Kansas. Several vehicles slid off I-70 in the northeastern part of the state.
The weather service office in Des Moines, Iowa, warned of the potential for “widespread heavy, possibly extreme, snowfall,” with up to 15 inches, and said that commuters this morning would face “significant impacts,” with possible whiteout conditions at times.
The disruptions extended as far south as Oklahoma, where a blizzard warning was in effect for the Panhandle and northern and western parts of the Texas Panhandle, with snowfall accumulations of up to 8 inches expected along with wind gusts up to 75 mph.
The Gulf Coast in southeastern Louisiana and Mississippi was under a tornado watch.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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A major winter storm bringing heavy snow and freezing rain to some communities spread across New England on Sunday, sending residents scurrying for their shovels and snowblowers to clear sidewalks and driveways.
Winter storm warnings and watches were in effect throughout the Northeast, and icy roads made for hazardous travel as far south as North Carolina.
The Northeast snow came as a Sierra Nevada storm packing heavy snow shut down a stretch of interstate [80] Saturday and briefly knocked out power to tens of thousands in Reno, Nev.
More than 17 million people from the northeastern United States to northern Arizona were under winter storm warnings Sunday.
More than 11,000 electric customers in California were without power Sunday afternoon.
Some communities in Massachusetts had recorded more than a foot of snow by Sunday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service. Nearly 13,000 electric customers in the state were without power Sunday afternoon.
More than 780 flights were canceled in the United States as of Sunday afternoon, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking service. As of 3 p.m., more than 160 flights to and from Boston Logan International Airport had been canceled.
Amtrak service was modified on the Northeast Regional and Acela routes.
As of Sunday morning, the weather service office in New York reported two-tenths of an inch of snow had fallen in Central Park, though some outlying suburbs got 4 or more inches. It has been almost 700 days since Central Park last received 1 inch of snow on a single day.
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said at a news conference Sunday that there was a threat of coastal flooding in the New York City area, especially on Long Island and in southern Westchester County, the Bronx and Northern Queens.
The governor said that the most snowfall in the state so far was recorded in Ulster County, with 14 inches.
The storm reached into Maine with snow totals of up to 12 inches in some places — with locally higher amounts over southern New Hampshire and southwestern Maine. Wind gusts up 35 mph could add to blowing and drifting snow. Moderate to heavy snow was expected to continue in Vermont, with total snow accumulations of 6 to 12 inches.
Major winter storm conditions were expected through Sunday night, including snow in parts of New England and rain and freezing rain around the central Appalachian mountains.
In the West, cold air brought snowfall, icy conditions and fog along Interstate 5 near the Grapevine, which made for hazardous driving conditions. In the mountains around Lake Tahoe, the weather service said as much as 20 inches of snow could fall, with winds gusting up to 100 mph.
The California Highway Patrol said numerous spinouts and collisions forced an hours-long closure of Interstate 80 from west of Truckee to the state line west of Reno.
In Arizona, transportation officials said several highways in the state’s northern reaches — including Interstate 40 near Williams and state Route 64 near Grand Canyon National Park — were closed Sunday due to weather-related crashes and slide-offs from snowfall.
Forecasters also warned of another Northeast storm Tuesday into Wednesday that is expected to drop heavy rain on already saturated ground. They warned of possible flooding and coastal flooding and a threat of damaging winds that could topple trees and power lines.
(U-T NEWS SERVICES)
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WAJIMA, Japan - Rescue teams worked through snow to deliver supplies to isolated hamlets today, a week after a powerful earthquake hit western Japan, killing at least 161 people.
Heavy snowfall in Ishikawa Prefecture over the weekend and into the new week added to the urgency.
After the New Year’s Day 7.6 magnitude temblor, 103 people were still unaccounted for, down from the more than 200 reported earlier, and 565 people were injured. Hundreds of aftershocks have followed, rattling Noto Peninsula, where the quakes were centered.
Taiyo Matsushita walked three hours through mud to reach a supermarket in Wajima city to buy food and other supplies for his family. The home where he lives with his wife and four children, and about 20 nearby homes, are among the more than a dozen communities cut off by landslides.
Power was out, and in a matter of hours, they couldn’t even use their cellphones, he told Jiji Press.
“We want everyone to know help isn’t coming to some places,” Matsushita was quoted as saying by Jiji Press.
Late Saturday, a woman in her 90s was rescued from a crumbled home in Suzu, Ishikawa Prefecture, after 124 hours trapped in the rubble. She was welcomed by shouts of encouragement, although the darkness and a long blue sheet of plastic blocked her from view.
Chances for survival greatly diminish after the first 72 hours.
Of the deaths, 70 were in Wajima, 70 in Suzu, 11 in Anamizu and the rest in smaller numbers spread among four towns. Firefighters and other disaster officials were trying to get to nine people believed to be buried under collapsed houses in Anamizu, Japanese media reports said.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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WAJIMA, Japan - The death toll from a major earthquake in western Japan reached 100 today, as rescue workers fought aftershocks to carefully pull people from the rubble.
Deaths had reached 98 earlier in the day, but two more deaths were reported in Anamizu, while officials in Ishikawa prefecture, the hardest-hit region, held their daily meeting to discuss strategy and damages.
Some survivors who had clung to life for days were freed from collapsed homes. A man was pulled out 72 hours after a series of powerful quakes started rattling Japan’s western coast.
The number of missing was lowered to 211 as of Saturday, after it shot up two days ago.
An older man was found alive Wednesday in a collapsed home in Suzu, one of the hardest-hit cities in Ishikawa Prefecture. His daughter called out, “Dad, dad,” as a flock of firefighters got him out on a stretcher, praising him for holding on for so long after Monday’s 7.6 magnitude earthquake.
Others were forced to wait while rescuers searched for loved ones.
Ishikawa officials said 59 of those who died were in the city of Wajima and 23 were in Suzu, while the others were reported in five neighboring towns. More than 500 people have been injured, at least 27 seriously.
The Earthquake Research Institute at the University of Tokyo found that the sandy coastline in western Japan shifted by up to 820 feet seaward in some places.
The earthquakes set off a large fire in the town of Wajima, as well as tsunamis and landslides in the region. With some routes cut off by the destruction, worries grew about communities in which water, food, blankets and medicine had yet to arrive.
The United States announced $100,000 in aid Friday, including blankets, water and medical supplies, and promised more help would come.
Thousands of Japanese troops have joined the effort to reach the hardest-hit spots on the Noto Peninsula, the center of the quake, connected by a narrow land strip to the rest of the main island of Honshu.
Experts warned of disease and even death at the evacuation centers that now house about 34,000 people who lost their homes, many of them older.
Masashi Tomari, a 67-year-old oyster farmer who lives in Anamizu city in Ishikawa, said it was tough sleeping on the floor with just one blanket. There was no heating until two stoves finally arrived Thursday — three days after the 7.6 quake struck.
“This is a terrible, cold place,” he said.
Tomari felt at a loss thinking about his home, where broken glass and knocked over items littered the floor.
But Tomari and others were already thinking about rebuilding.
Sachiko Kato, who owns a clothing shop in Anamizu, put up a yellow notice as a warning inside her store where the walls have tipped slanted, and a red one for the shed in the back that was completely flattened.
“So many stores were on this street. Now, they’re all gone. Maybe we can work hard to rebuild,” she said.
Dozens of aftershocks have rattled Ishikawa and the neighboring region in the past week. Weather forecasts called for rain and snow over the weekend, and experts warned of more aftershocks.
(Hiro Komae, Ayaka McGill & Yuri Kageyama, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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LOS ANGELES, CA - A magnitude 4.2 earthquake was felt widely across the nation’s second-largest city Friday and shook things off shelves near the epicenter in a small mountain community east of Los Angeles, but there were no reports of major damage or injuries.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the 10:55 a.m. quake was centered about a mile northwest of Lytle Creek, in the San Gabriel Mountains about 45 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. The depth was put at 5.5 miles.
It came less than a week after a similar quake with a magnitude of 4.1 also hit the Los Angeles area and was felt by people watching the Rose Parade in Pasadena on New Year’s Day.
The quake was centered within miles of the home of minor league baseball’s Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. “What’s in a name, you say,” the team quipped on social media.
The quake occurred in Cajon Pass, where the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults come together, veteran seismologist Lucy Jones said in a social media post.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SUZU, Japan - His face hidden under a humble straw hat, the man silently watched as several helmeted rescue workers carefully lifted from the rubble his wife’s body, wrapped in blue plastic on a stretcher.
He wiped his weary face with a rag. His eyes were red.
This scene in the city of Suzu was tragically repeated across Ishikawa Prefecture and nearby regions on the western coastline of Japan after Monday’s 7.6 magnitude temblor that destroyed houses, twisted and scarred roads and scattered boats like toys in the waters, and prompted tsunami warnings.
The death toll stood at 92 as of early today.
Ishikawa officials said 55 of those who died were in the city of Wajima and 23 were in Suzu. The 13 others were reported in five neighboring towns. More than 460 people have been injured, at least 26 seriously.
Officials said 242 people still missing, releasing a list of names that has grown by the day. Many of them are elderly and from the hard-hit cities of Wajima and Suzu.
What exacerbated matters was people visiting to ring in the new year with their loved ones when the quake hit.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reinforced rescue operations with about 3,600 soldiers in addition to the initial 1,000. Their mission is to provide those affected with fresh water and hot meals, as well as set up bathing facilities for the 34,000 who lost their homes and are now staying at evacuation facilities.
Although Japan is reputed for relatively reliable disaster relief, essential supplies such as water, food and blankets have been running short.
Many roads have been blocked by landslides or suffered cracks because of the strong quake, making it difficult for trucks delivering water and food supplies to reach those in need.
Snow is expected over the weekend, so finding those trapped under the rubble has become even more critical.
Days after Monday’s quake, rescuers are still pulling out people alive from under debris. But time is running out. Experts categorize the first 72 hours as crucial to finding survivors.
Authorities warned more quakes and tsunamis could follow, stressing extra caution over the coming days.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Extremely cold temperatures compounded by gale-force winds and snow wreaked havoc across the Nordic region Thursday, leaving thousands without power while others braved the cold for hours stuck in their cars along clogged highways.
Heavy rains in Germany, France and the Netherlands again caused floods in regions that have seen persistent flooding in the last two weeks. One death was reported in France.
Electricity was cut to some 4,000 homes in Arctic Sweden, where temperatures plummeted to minus 36.4 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Swedish public radio. In the southern part of the country, closures of sections of highways and major roads left motorists stuck in their cars or evacuated to a nearby sporting complex where they spent the night.
In Germany, heavy rain has resumed in regions that have seen persistent flooding over the past two weeks. After several days of rain and rising waters, several towns in northern France were left underwater Thursday. Hundreds of people have been evacuated in recent days. The area was also hit by flooding in November and December, and some towns still hadn’t recovered.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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For the first time in the United States, turbines are sending electricity to the grid from the sites of two large offshore wind farms.
The joint owners of the Vineyard Wind project, Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, announced Wednesday the first electricity from one turbine at what will be a 62-turbine wind farm 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts.
Five turbines are installed there. One turbine delivered about 5 megawatts of power to the Massachusetts grid just before midnight Wednesday. The other four are undergoing testing and should be operating early this year.
Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource announced last month that their first turbine was sending electricity from what will be a 12-turbine wind farm, South Fork Wind, 35 miles east of Montauk Point, N.Y. Now, a total of five turbines have been installed there too.
Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra said 2023 was a historic year for offshore wind with “steel in the water and people at work, and today, we begin a new chapter and welcome 2024 by delivering the first clean offshore wind power to the grid in Massachusetts.” Avangrid is an energy company headquartered in Orange, Conn. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners is a large fund manager and global leader in renewable energy investments.
“We’ve arrived at a watershed moment for climate action in the U.S., and a dawn for the American offshore wind industry,” Azagra said in a statement Wednesday.
Nearly 200 countries agreed last month at COP28 to move away from planet-warming fossil fuels — the first time they’ve made that crucial pledge in decades of U.N. climate talks. The deal calls for tripling the use of renewable energy, and offshore wind will be crucial to meeting that target.
But the industry has had hard times recently. Developers have canceled several projects along the East Coast, saying they were no longer financially feasible.
On Wednesday, Equinor and BP announced a “reset” for Empire Wind 2, a 1,260-megawatt offshore wind project off the coast of New York, citing changed economic circumstances on an industry-wide scale.
The project isn’t canceled, but it will take longer to continue the development and participate in a future offshore wind solicitation. They did not change the first phase of the project to develop an 800-megawatt wind farm in the same lease area, Empire Wind 1.
Large offshore wind farms have been making electricity for three decades in Europe, and more recently in Asia. Vineyard Wind was conceived as a way to launch offshore wind in the U.S., and prove that the industry wasn’t dead in the United States at at time when many people thought it was.
The first U.S. offshore wind farm was supposed to be a project off the coast of Massachusetts known as Cape Wind. The application was submitted to the federal government in 2001. It failed after years of local opposition and litigation. Turbines began spinning off Rhode Island’s Block Island in 2016. But with just five of them, it’s not a commercial-scale wind farm.
Vineyard Wind submitted state and federal project plans to build an offshore wind farm in 2017. Massachusetts had committed to offshore wind by requiring its utilities to solicit proposals for up to 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind power by 2027.
Vineyard Wind would be significantly farther offshore than Cape Wind and the first utility-scale wind power development in federal waters.
In what might have been a fatal blow, federal regulators delayed Vineyard Wind by holding off on issuing a key environmental impact statement in 2019. Massachusetts Democratic Rep. William Keating said at the time the Trump administration was trying to stymie the renewable energy project just as it was coming to fruition.
The Biden administration signed off on it in 2021. Construction began onshore in Barnstable, Mass. Last spring, massive tower sections from Portugal arrived at the Port of New Bedford to be assembled out on the water.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said Wednesday’s announcement is a “great way to kick off 2024.”
The 800-megawatt wind farm will power more than 400,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said this is clean, affordable energy made possible by the many advocates, public servants, union workers and business leaders who worked for decades to accomplish this achievement.
(Jennifer McDermott, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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SUZU, Japan - Rescuers braved the cold in a race against time as they searched for survivors along Japan’s western coastline today after a powerful earthquake earlier in the week smashed homes and left at least 77 people dead and 35 missing.
A downpour and possible snow were expected, raising the risk of landslides. A list of those officially missing released overnight grew from 15 to 35 people, including a 13-year-old boy.
Ishikawa prefecture and nearby areas were shaken by more aftershocks, adding to the dozens that followed Monday’s magnitude 7.6 temblor centered near Noto, about 185 miles from Tokyo on the opposite coast. The quake set off tsunami warnings, followed by waves measuring more than 3 feet in some places.
The first 72 hours are especially critical for rescues, experts say, because the prospects for survival greatly diminish after that.
“More than 40 hours have passed. This is a race against time, and I feel that we are at a critical moment,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Wednesday. “We have received reports many people are still waiting for rescue under collapsed buildings.”
The narrowness of the Noto Peninsula has added to the challenges in reaching some communities. Water, power and cellphone service were still down in some areas.
Naomi Gonno said she and her children got out of their house just as it came crashing down.
But her children were screaming “Granma,” and Gonno saw that her mother was trapped under the smashed house, with only her hand visible. She was able to squeeze her way out through a tiny space, Gonno said.
“I can’t believe we’re still alive,” she said. “We are living in fear.”
Relief officials handed out water, blankets, food and other supplies. Sniffer dogs joined military personnel and firefighters in the search.
Weather forecasters warned of heavy rain in Ishikawa, leading to worries about landslides and further damage to half-crumbled homes. Temperatures were expected to drop to around 36 degrees Fahrenheit overnight.
Ishikawa officials raised the death toll today to 77. More than 300 people have been injured, at least 25 of them seriously.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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ORANGE COUNTY, CA - Orange County’s beaches are again lighting up with bright bioluminescent waves, with the latest reports coming from Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Laguna Beach this week.
The sightings have been strong enough, Davey’s Locker Whale Watching & Sportfishing was running boat tours on Tuesday and, if it sticks around, throughout the week.
With family and friend still in town for the holiday break, it could be a chance to show them something spectacular.
The phenomenon of algae creating glowing, neon blue waves has been seen sporadically the past few years, the latest report from Long Beach last week before appearing in Orange County on Monday.
Once word goes out, crowds flock to the coast to get a glimpse at the phenomenon. Out at sea, it’s a unique experience seeing the boat’s wake light up and there have been descriptions of pelicans diving into the ocean with their splash turning neon and dolphins frolicking to light up the dark sea.
“It’s just something that fills a lot of emotions in people, it is so otherworldly when you’re seeing it in person,” said Jessica Roame, education and communications manager for Newport Landing & Davey’s Locker Whale Watching.
The charter operators will launch two of their big boats, one that holds 100 people and the other 80, twice a night. The first fleet leaves at 6 p.m., the other at 8 p.m. for nearly two- hour tours out to sea.
Spots were quickly selling out Tuesday. Weather may impact tours today, but if the bioluminescence sticks around, they will add more trips for the end of the week, Roame said.
The last time they held boat tours was in September, and based on images and videos from this week, the bio glow is even stronger this time around, she said.
“From out on the water, it’s illuminating the entire time, it starts to glow the moment you
start moving through it,” Roame said.
The bioluminescence is created when the dinoflagellates, tiny plankton that are red during the day, are agitated at night.
Orange County Outdoors photographer Mark Girardeau said he searched several beaches Monday night for the neon blue waves. Crescent Bay was showing some glowing waves, but the best spot was Main Beach, he said, where dolphins and pelicans were lighting up the ocean just past the surf break.
Photographer friend Patrick Coyne found more of the bioluminescence at Sunset Beach and then at the border of Newport Beach and Huntington Beach.
In a video posted on social media, he called it some of the brightest he’s seen — and he’s seen many glowing waves, spending countless nights the past few years chasing bioluminescent waves.
In the video, he showed dolphins swimming past, making the water around them glow, with him screaming “This is unbelievable!”
(Laylan Connelly, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER)
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WAJIMA, Japan - A series of powerful earthquakes that hit western Japan left at least 62 people dead and damaged thousands of buildings, vehicles and boats. Officials warned Tuesday that more quakes could lie ahead.
Aftershocks continued to shake Ishikawa prefecture and nearby areas a day after a magnitude 7.6 temblor slammed the area.
The damage was so great that it could not immediately be assessed. Japanese media reports said tens of thousands of homes were destroyed.
Water, power and cellphone service were still down in some areas. Residents expressed sorrow about their uncertain futures.
“It’s not just that it’s a mess. The wall has collapsed, and you can see through to the next room. I don’t think we can live here anymore,” Miki Kobayashi, an Ishikawa resident, said as she swept around her house.
The house was also damaged in a 2007 quake, she said.
Of the deaths, 29 were counted in Wajima city, while 22 people died in Suzu, according to Ishikawa Prefectural authorities. Dozens of people have been seriously injured, including in nearby prefectures.
Although casualty numbers continued to climb gradually, the prompt public warnings, relayed on broadcasts and phones, and the quick response from the general public and officials appeared to have limited some of the damage.
Japanese media’s aerial footage showed widespread damage in the hardest-hit spots, with landslides burying roads, boats tossed in the waters and a fire that had turned an entire section of Wajima city to ashes.
Japan’s military dispatched 1,000 soldiers to the disaster zones to join rescue efforts, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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California’s statewide Sierra Nevada snowpack — the source of nearly one-third of the state’s water supply — is at its lowest level in a decade, a major turnaround from last year when huge storms ended a three-year drought and buried ski resorts in massive amounts of snow.
On Tuesday, the snowpack was just 25 percent of its historical average for Jan. 2. A year ago on the same date, it was a staggering 185 percent of normal. The last time there was less snow at the beginning of a new year was 2014 when it stood at just 19 percent.
The lack of snow so far this year is due to fewer big storms hitting the state than normal. And when storms have come, they have been warmer, depositing snow mostly at higher elevations.
But the meager totals so far across California’s pre-eminent mountain range are not a cause to panic, experts say.
Not only are there three months left in the winter season, which typically ends in early April, but last year’s soaking winter filled reservoirs across the state. That “money in the bank” means chances are low that there will be significant urban water restrictions in the state this summer, even if the winter ends with below-average snow and rain.
“The reservoirs are in great shape,” said Jay Lund, vice director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis. “Almost every reservoir in the state is near or well above its historical average for this time of year. We can sleep better knowing there is water in the reservoirs.”
On Monday, Shasta Lake, California’s largest reservoir, was 69 percent full, or 116 percent of its historic average for New Year’s Day. Similarly, Oroville in Butte County, the state’s second-largest reservoir, was 68 percent full, or 130 percent of its historical average. Diamond Valley in Riverside County was 93 percent full.
Heading into the winter, many water managers were concerned that if huge atmospheric river storms pounded the state in November and December, that could have caused major flooding because there was less space left in the big reservoirs than in most years to catch runoff.
On Tuesday, officials from the state Department of Water Resources headed into the Sierra Nevada to take a manual snow reading as part of a monthly news conference at Phillips Station in El Dorado County.
“While we are glad the recent storms brought a small boost to the snowpack, the dry fall and below-average conditions today show how fast water conditions can change,” said Sean de Guzman, manager of snow surveys and water-supply forecasting for the state Department of Water Resources. “It’s still far too early to say what kind of water year we will have, and it will be important for Californians to pay attention to their forecasts and conserve water, rain or shine.”
The statewide totals Tuesday come from 130 automated snow sensors spread across the Sierra Nevada range.
Two storms are forecast to bring new snow to the Sierra today and Saturday. Each is expected to deliver up to 1 foot to elevations above 5,000 feet, according to the National Weather Service in Sacramento. That’s not enough to get the Sierra back to normal, but it will help.
“Finally there is some good cold air coming in this week,” said Mike Anderson, state climatologist with the Department of Water Resources.
Large storms bringing many more feet of snow could still arrive in January, February and March. But with each passing dry day, the odds increase that this winter will end below normal.
“Because the first wet season months have been drier than average,” Lund said, “we are less likely to have a very wet year overall and more likely to have a drier year overall.”
As the climate continues to warm, California’s winters have become less predictable, swinging from very dry to very wet, experts say. Since the 1970s, more precipitation is falling as rain in the Sierra, rather than snow, which makes capturing water more difficult than if much of it was frozen for months and melting gradually. In recent decades, the trend has been particularly pronounced in October, November and May, said Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Laboratory.
“We are seeing a shortening of the (snow) season from either end,” he said, “and a lot more rain in the winter.”
One area already feeling the impact of this year’s low snowpack is California’s ski industry.
Ski resorts around Lake Tahoe opened in December, some of them several weeks late. But without much natural snow, they have had to rely heavily on snow-making machines.
“Obviously things have been a little lighter than we would have hoped for. It’s been a bit of a challenge,” said Mike Reitzell, president of Ski California, an industry association.
Only about half the lifts are open at many Sierra resorts.
Reitzell said the industry had its best year in 20 years last year when there was so much snow that some resorts were open into April and May, and the large Palisades resort hosted Fourth of July skiing. Pent-up demand after the COVID pandemic had people flocking to the mountains, and last year’s massive Sierra snowpack — 237 percent of its historical average on April 1 — buried the Tahoe area in snow.
Ski resorts have invested heavily in snow-making equipment in recent years as climate change has made winters less predictable, Reitzell added. As a result, in a dry year as California has seen so far, there is still plenty of good opportunity to ski.
“It’s still early in the season for sure,” he said. “We’ve dealt with this before. It’s obviously not ideal. But our resorts know how to handle it.”
A year ago, the early January snowpack was already exceptional amid a barrage of atmospheric river storms that stood in stark contrast to three preceding years of drought. By April 2023, the snowpack was 237 percent of average to date.
The storms caused deadly and damaging flooding and crushed buildings with towering loads of snow, but when the state’s Oct. 1-Sept. 30 “water year” ended, enough rain and snow had fallen to fill the state’s reservoirs to 128 percent of their historical average.
(Paul Rogers, MERCURY NEWS; ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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WAJIMA, Japan - A series of powerful earthquakes hit western Japan, leaving at least 30 people dead and damaging buildings, vehicles and boats, with officials warning people in some areas to stay away from their homes because of a continuing risk of strong quakes.
Aftershocks continued to shake Ishikawa prefecture and nearby areas a day after a magnitude 7.6 temblor slammed the area on Monday afternoon.
Thirty people were confirmed dead in Ishikawa, officials said. Seven others were seriously injured, while damage to homes was so great that it could not immediately be assessed, they said.
“Saving lives is our priority and we are fighting a battle against time,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said. “It is critical that people trapped in homes get rescued immediately.”
A quake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.6 shook the area as he was speaking.
Japan's military dispatched 1,000 soldiers to the disaster zones to join rescue efforts, Kishida said, stressing they were facing “large-scale damage.” Details of damaged homes were still under investigation, he said.
Firefighters were able to bring under control a fire in Wajima city that reddened the sky with embers and smoke.
Nuclear regulators said several nuclear plants in the region were operating normally. A major quake and tsunami in March 2011 caused three reactors to melt down at a nuclear plant in northeastern Japan.
News videos showed rows of collapsed houses. Some wooden structures were flattened and cars were overturned. Half-sunken ships floated in bays where tsunami waves had rolled in, leaving a muddied coastline.
On Monday, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a major tsunami warning for Ishikawa and lower-level tsunami warnings or advisories for the rest of the western coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu, as well as for the northern island of Hokkaido.
The warning was downgraded several hours later, and all tsunami warnings were lifted as of early today. Waves measuring more than 3 feet hit some places.
The agency warned that more major quakes could hit over the next few days.
People who were evacuated from their homes huddled in auditoriums, schools and community centers. Bullet trains in the region were halted, but service was being restored in some places. Sections of highways were closed, water pipes burst, and cellphone service was out in some areas.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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