Most nights for the last year, Darlene Hamilton slept four hours and woke at about 4.30am. She wanted to sleep, but she could not. Instead the 66-year-old started the day at her Altadena rental home in morning darkness with a familiar routine, scouring through websites of local humane societies and lost animal groups in search of two familiar little faces.
This weekend, I stood on a bluff in the Palisades where houses used to be. Los Angeles rose to my left, and the sky had the dramatic clouds we get in the winter when it rains, as it has for a few weeks. The hillsides have turned to Irish green, but the burn scar, below, is still black. Twice, when my family drove past during the holidays, our phones blared with evacuation alerts for possible mudslides and flooding.
90 miles per hour The speed of predicted wind gusts in mountain areas, equivalent to 145 kilometers per hour. Red Flag warnings were issued Jan. 6 for severe wildfire danger as Southern California was buffeted by the region's notorious Santa Ana winds. Grass and brush were tinder dry after months with little or no rain. The National Weather Service warned it could be a life-threatening wind event. Firefighting assets were pre-positioned in areas deemed to be at especially high risk for fires.
I was retracing my steps of 20 years earlier to a scene of mass death I had never been able to erase from my mind. At a small plateau alongside Ninemile Creek in the Golden Trout Wilderness Area, I had stood in a forest of black sticks standing on both sides of a steep canyon like whiskers on a beast too large to comprehend.
Iran has urgently requested international assistance to combat a devastating wildfire that has been raging for nearly three weeks in the ancient Hyrcanian Forests, which have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2019. The blaze, which began near the village of Elit in Mazandaran Province on October 31, has defied containment efforts and continues to threaten one of the world's oldest and most biodiverse ecosystems.
This was "a nightmare scenario," said a firefighter with the park, who also spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. During the last government shutdown six years ago, the revelation that vandals appeared to have chopped down a few of the Dr. Seuss-esque trees grabbed national headlines. In this instance, the firefighter estimates more than a thousand trees were torched.
TOKYO Firefighters and army helicopters battled a fire Wednesday that burned through a neighborhood of old wooden houses in a fishing town in southwestern Japan, killing one person, injuring another and forcing more than 170 people to evacuate. A man in his 70s was unaccounted for and firefighters later found a body, possibly of the missing man, and a woman in her 50s suffered a minor injury, the Oita prefecture disaster response team said.
The team collected weather reports, topographic data, G.P.S. records from fire engines, photos, videos, and property-damage reports. They debriefed more than two hundred witnesses, mostly first responders. After a hundred and fifty "technical discussions," Maranghides finally met two firefighters from Northern California who were able to explain the miracle at Hot Springs Court. Their crew had parked their fire truck there and, for an entire night, had hosed down the four houses. (A fortuitous change in the wind helped, too.)
In the U.S., the annual area burned by wildfires has more than doubled over the past 20 years. In addition to the lost carbon storage, wildfires cost lives, create harmful smoke pollution, and make it more expensive to insure and rebuild our communities. The bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act ( HR 471) can help. The bill includes provisions to increase resiliency to catastrophic wildfires, restore forest health and build fire-safety defenses for communities in high-risk areas.
It's been five years since a sudden shift in the wind brought the North Complex fire roaring up a remote canyon into the pines of Berry Creek, where it incinerated almost all of the more than 1,500 houses in the area and killed 16 people. But to many of the hundreds of people who remain in the mountain hamlet in Butte County, the blaze that burned through their homes and
Namibia has deployed more than 500 soldiers to help fight a fire that has burned through a third of the vast Etosha National Park, one of Africa's largest wildlife reserves, Prime Minister Tjitunga Ngurare Manongo said in a social media post. Manongo said, starting Sunday, the troops would help firefighters, police, and volunteers who are already fighting the raging fire.
Twenty-four days after the worst wildfire in L.A. history burned their stadium, members of the Palisades Charter High School football team stretched and twisted on a middle school field in Santa Monica. To the north, a sickly orange haze hung along the horizon, a reminder of the inferno that had reduced parts of their school to a ragged tangle of charred masonry, metal and wood. About 10 players had lost their homes in the Palisades fire.
Protesters burn tyres in protest at a curfew imposed after unrest over a social media ban and political corruption Photograph: Niranjan Shrestha/AP The Israeli military drops leaflets urging residents to leave their homes ahead of a planned offensive Photograph: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images Palestinian women and children sit on a vehicle with their luggage as they flee following the Israeli evacuation order Photograph: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters Smoke rises from the house of Sabit Mesalme, a Palestinian prisoner, after the building was targeted by the Israel army Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
A brush fire ignited near homes in San Diego County on Monday afternoon, damaging multiple structures and prompting evacuation orders in the surrounding community of Lakeside. The blaze, dubbed the Coches 2 fire, began around 3 p.m. north of Interstate 8 at Los Coches Road in Lakeside, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection San Diego Unit. Helicopter footage captured by NBC7 News showed smoke engulfing several hillside structures as ground crews attacked the flames with hoses.
A quick-moving wildfire burned homes in a California Gold Rush town settled around 1850 by Chinese miners who were driven out of a nearby camp and the blaze grew without containment on Wednesday. The fire rapidly expanded to 10 sq miles (26 sq km) in size, forcing the evacuation Tuesday of the Chinese Camp town and surrounding highways, according to CalFire, the state's chief fire agency. There were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths.
Napa County officials declared a local health emergency on Monday over concerns that toxic materials from the Pickett wildfire could affect the local water supply. Officials said debris from the ongoing Pickett wildfire, which has burned 6,803 acres as of Tuesday morning, could lead to "imminent environmental threats to safe water supplies." "The health of Napa County residents is my highest priority, and the declaration of a local health emergency is a proactive and necessary step to protect our community from the unseen dangers left behind by this fire," Dr. Christine Wu, the public health officer for Napa County, said in a statement.
GOOD MORNING, PORTLAND! 👋 Expect another day of extreme "hot" with temps expected to hit 95 degrees before "cooling down" (HAHAHAHAHAAAA!) on Tuesday with a high of 92. The rest of the week is predicted to be much more reasonable, with the temps varying between the low-80s and mid-70s, but don't pack away those thongs just yet! Instead? Let's pack away some NEWS.
The Florida Everglades recently experienced two significant fires, the Mile Marker 39 fire and the Sawgrass fire, which collectively scorched over 1,850 acres by Tuesday afternoon. Despite being 0% contained, there is currently no immediate threat to structures or the public. However, residents are facing challenges such as reduced visibility and poor air quality, particularly impacting vulnerable groups like seniors and individuals with existing health conditions.
Blockchain gaming startup Ex Populus Inc., which registered the XAI trademark in May, is suing Elon Musk's AI company, xAI. Ex Populus says xAI has been trying to bully the company into giving up its rights to the trademark. [SF Business Times] Local community group Black Men United and the East Bay chapter of national nonprofit Live Free held a meeting Thursday night discussing how they'll protect young people if the National Guard is deployed in Oakland.
