Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
All 55 patients who were being treated at the Napa Valley hospital were safely evacuated
A wind-driven wildfire has forced the evacuation of several hundred homes and a hospital in the heart of northern California’s wine country.
The blaze, dubbed the Glass Fire, broke out before dawn on Sunday near in Calistoga in Napa Valley, and raced toward the adjacent towns of Deer Park and St Helena. The fire spread across more than 1,000 acres (400 hectares) and flames advanced within a mile of the Adventist Health St Helena hospital.
Triple-digit temperatures could spark new fires just a few weeks after a record heatwave
California is bracing for another dangerously warm weekend, with dry winds, parched vegetation, and triple-digit temperatures threatening to ignite new fires and complicating containment efforts in an embattled state.
With only a few weeks’ reprieve after a record heatwave in early September, firefighters have made progress in containing the dozens of blazes tearing across the region. But fatigued crews – many of whom have spent weeks fighting on the frontline – are preparing for a potentially rough week ahead.
Attractions from Big Sur to Disneyland reel in the face of the pandemic and historic wildfires
Summers are always busy in Big Sur, the picturesque region in northern California known for towering forests that give way to sweeping cliffs and sandy beaches. But this summer has been unlike any other, as the state reckons with a global pandemic and historic wildfires.
Like many scenic small towns in California, Big Sur’s local economy relies heavily on the tourist traffic that sweeps through every summer. It seemed like the kind of place that could have been hit hard by a nosedive in tourism.
Firefighters in Southern California continue to tackle one of 27 huge wildfires blazing across the state which has already burned more than 21,600 acres (8,741 hectares) of forest.
A firefighter has died while battling the El Dorado fire which has been burning in San Bernardino National Forest since 5 September.
A front of humid and rainy weather has brought some relief to western states that have suffered a historically devastating fire season
California governor warns about climate crisis as new wildfire evacuations ordered north-east of Los Angeles
As wildfires continued to burn across the US west coast, with smoke reaching as far as Europe, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, issued a stark warning on climate, saying: “The facts are the facts.”
Forecast rain for the Pacific north-west prompted hopes on Thursday of improved fire-fighting conditions in Washington state and Oregon, parts of which have been decimated and swathed in the world’s worst air quality.
At least 35 people have died and hundreds of structures have burned in serious wildfires in Oregon, California and Washington. Democratic governors of all three states say the fires are a consequence of climate change
There’s a quick snap from Reuters here that the city government of Louisville, Kentucky, is expected to announce on Tuesday a financial settlement with the family of Breonna Taylor, the Black woman fatally shot by police in March.
The Courier Journal has reported locally that the “substantial” settlement will be accompanied by police reforms, including a requirement that commanders approve search warrants before they are put to a judge.
Forecasters say Hurricane Sally could dump flooding rains on a path from Mississippi to the Carolinas this week after the storm makes landfall on the Gulf Coast.
The National Weather Service says after the storm comes inland Wednesday, rainfall of 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) is likely across portions of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas.
The US president is urged to recognise the changing climate and what it means to forests, during a briefing on the wildfires in California on Monday. Trump interrupts an official, Wade Crowfoot, the secretary of California’s Natural Resources Agency, to argue the climate 'will start getting cooler, you just watch'.
Crowfoot responds: 'I wish science agreed with you.' To which Trump retorts: 'I don’t think science knows actually'
Trump has landed in California, where he will receive a briefing on the west coast wildfires, which have already claimed at least 35 lives.
“There has to be good, strong forest management, which I’ve been talking about for three years with the states, so hopefully they’ll start doing that,” Trump said.
Trump is in California mispronouncing "Oregon" and insisting that wildfires are caused be poor forest management pic.twitter.com/zydXDoe3DT
Joe Biden closed his climate speech by noting he continues to pray for Americans on the west coast who have been affected by the wildfires.
“We see the light through the dark smoke. We never give up. Always,” Biden said.
This interactive map shows the total area burned since 15 August in America’s west, compared with various major cities
Record-breaking wildfires are burning across the American west.
The blazes scorching parts of California, Oregon and Washington state have destroyed millions of acres, leveled entire towns and displaced hundreds of thousands. Dozens of people have been reported dead or missing.
Politicians strongly criticised the US president for his response to the escalating wildfire crisis in the west coast after he claimed 'forest management' was the main culprit for the emergency.
The death toll from wildfires choking the west coast of the US continued to rise on Sunday as authorities said more bodies were likely to be found in the charred ruins of towns across several states
Record-breaking wildfires are threatening thousands of acres of one of the most biologically diverse areas on the planet, Brazil's Pantanal region.
'Sometimes we are a bit frustrated, but we try to have hope and to rescue the few animals we can,' said 26-year-old vet Karen Ribeiro at one of the shelters, where rescue units and volunteers are bringing in animals including jaguars for evacuation
Dozens still missing and tens of thousands forced to flee
Lighter winds and rising humidity help firefighters’ efforts
Fire crews in California and Oregon reported making progress on several blazes over the weekend, as lighter winds and lower temperatures aided the battle against the massive fires raging across the west.
But officials in both states told residents to brace for bad news, as rescue teams start combing through towns and neighborhoods leveled by the infernos.
The California governor, Gavin Newsom, said ‘this is not a world that anyone should be experiencing’ as he surveyed charred mountain terrain devastated by wildfires. ‘If you do not believe in science, I hope you believe in observed evidence,’ he added. More than 68,000 people are under evacuation orders in California where the largest fire in state history has burned over 740,000 acres in the Mendocino National forest
Nancy Pelosi has been notably tepid on green legislation – so are the Democrats serious about fighting climate change?
With hundreds of thousands of Americans forced to evacuate their homes in the western US, Donald Trump hasn’t said a word about the wildfires blazing across multiple states in nearly three weeks.
Dozens of people are missing and at least 23 people are believed to have been killed as historic wildfires in the western US forced evacuations, stretched fire crews thin and spawned misinformation.
Residents of Portland, Oregon, awoke on Friday to air thick with smoke pollution that dimmed the sun and turned the skies blood-orange red. Hundreds of firefighters are battling two large wildfires that threatened to merge near the most populated part of Oregon, including the suburbs of Portland, and the governor said dozens of people are missing in other parts of the state.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Oregon were ordered to leave their homes on Thursday as wildfires encroached on their properties. The evacuations clogged highways, emptied entire towns and sparked confusion in a state that has not grappled with wildfires of this size before.
Large-scale evacuations in the state began within the metropolitan area of Portland, Oregon’s largest city. Clackamas county, home to some 420,000 people in the metro’s south, was already under varying levels of fire alert when officials on Thursday afternoon told residents of the city of Molalla to leave.
Footage shot over Eagle Point shows flattened residential areas after nearly 100 major wildfires ripped through the US west. At least three people have been killed in Oregon with the governor, Kate Brown, warning that the state faces further hardship as authorities battle to contain the blazes
Washington state’s governor, Jay Inslee, said today that the fires in the state have burned nearly 937 sq miles (2,426km).
“We’ve had this trauma all over Washington,” Inslee said, KHQ-TV reported. The governor was touring the farm town of Malden, which is 35 miles south of Spokane: “But this is the place where the whole heart of the town was torn out.”
Stunned residents of the small Oregon town of Phoenix walked through a scene of devastation Thursday after one of the state’s many wildfires wiped out much of their community, including a mobile home park, houses and businesses, the AP reports on the ground.
There were flames across the street from me, flames to the right of me, flames to the left of me. I just watched everything burn.”
Burned out cars, charred lawn ornaments, rubble. That’s what’s left of this Phoenix mobile home park, which covers abt 20 acres. Flames and smoldering embers still visible here. Everything is blackened by fire.