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Cuomo’s top aide resigns as governor faces harassment furor
Melissa DeRosa, a fixture next to Gov. Andrew Cuomo for months during his coronavirus news conferences, resigned late Sunday on the heels of a report that found Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women, leaving the governor without his top aide as he faces the prospect of impeachment.
DeRosa, who had been one of Cuomo’s most fierce defenders and strategists, said in a statement sent to multiple new organizations that serving the people of New York had been “the greatest honor of my life.”
But she added that “Personally, the past two years have been emotionally and mentally trying.”
Read: New York Gov. Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, probe finds
She didn’t give a more specific reason for her resignation.
“I am forever grateful for the opportunity to have worked with such talented and committed colleagues on behalf of our state,” she said.
DeRosa’s departure comes as Cuomo has dug in for the fight of his political life despite the threat of criminal investigations and widespread calls for his impeachment.
Scores of Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have urged him to leave office or face an impeachment battle he probably cannot win.
About two-thirds of state Assembly members have already said they favor an impeachment trial if he refuses to resign. Nearly all 63 members of the state Senate have called for Cuomo to step down or be removed.
More punishing news for the governor is expected Monday when an Assembly committee meets to discuss possible impeachment proceedings and “CBS This Morning” is scheduled to broadcast the first TV interview from an executive assistant who accused Cuomo of groping her breast.
In her first public interview in which she identified herself, Brittany Commisso told CBS and the Times-Union newspaper, of Albany, that what Cuomo did was a crime and that he “needs to be held accountable.”
Commisso has said Cuomo reached under her shirt and fondled her when they were alone in a room at the Executive Mansion last year and on another occasion rubbed her rear end while they posed for a photo. She was the first woman to file a criminal complaint against Cuomo.
“He broke the law,” she said in an excerpt of an interview scheduled to be aired in full on Monday.
The Associated Press does not identify alleged victims of sexual misconduct unless they speak out publicly, as Commisso has done.
Cuomo, who has denied touching any women inappropriately, has largely been holed up in the governor’s mansion since the release of a 168-page report written by two independent attorneys selected by the state attorney general to investigate his behavior.
His lawyers have attacked the credibility and motives of his accusers.
DeRosa, who often defended Cuomo when he faced public criticism, had been with the administration since 2013. She got the title “secretary to the governor” in 2017, and was probably the most recognizable face in the administration after Cuomo.
She appeared by his side in most of his news briefings and often fielded policy questions from reporters when the governor didn’t know enough details to answer.
Read:Top Dems call on Cuomo to resign amid harassment allegations
DeRosa was mentioned 187 times in the attorney general’s report, which detailed the administration’s efforts to discredit some of his accusers.
The report described DeRosa as a central figure in his office’s retaliation against one of the women, Lindsey Boylan, after she became the first person to speak out publicly. The administration released internal memos showing that Boylan had, herself, been the subject of complaints about toxic workplace behavior.
The investigators’ report also revealed some tension between DeRosa and Cuomo: She told investigators she was so upset with the way Cuomo had handled a conversation with one of his accusers, former aide Charlotte Bennett, that she angrily got out of his car when it stopped at a traffic light.
“She told the governor, ‘I can’t believe that this happened. I can’t believe you put yourself in a situation where you would be having any version of this conversation,’” the report said.
The governor’s lawyers have promised what will likely be a drawn-out fight to stay in office, and few see him as willing to quit.
“My sense is from what I’m hearing is he’s still looking for ways to fight this and get his side of the story out,” state Democratic party Chairman Jay Jacobs said in an interview with The AP. But Jacobs added: “I just think that he’s going to, at some point, see that the political support is just not anywhere near enough to even make an attempt worthwhile.”
Cuomo lawyer, Rita Glavin, told CNN on Saturday that he had no plans to resign.
She called the attorney general’s report “shoddy” and “biased” and “an ambush.”
Dozens of state lawmakers who were once hesitant to call for Cuomo’s resignation or impeachment told the AP in recent interviews that they were swayed by the heft of the report.
“I think the majority of us feel that the governor is not in a position to lead the state any longer, and that’s not a temporary position,” said Assembly member John McDonald, a Democrat whose district includes Albany.
The state Assembly’s judiciary committee planned to meet Monday to discuss when to conclude its monthslong investigation into whether there are grounds to impeach Cuomo.
The investigation has focused on sexual harassment and misconduct, the administration’s past refusal to release how many nursing home residents died of COVID-19, the use of state resources for Cuomo’s $5 million book deal and efforts to prioritize COVID-19 tests for the governor’s inner circle in spring 2020, when testing was scarce.
Some lawmakers want an impeachment vote in days, but committee members say the probe could wrap up in a month. State law requires at least 30 days between an Assembly impeachment vote and Senate impeachment trial.
Assembly member Amanda Septimo called for urgency, saying Cuomo was damaging the Democratic Party nationally.
Read: NY's Cuomo to receive International Emmy for virus briefings
“I’m willing to put money on how soon we see Cuomo’s face on an attack mailer somewhere in Ohio,” she said.
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul would take over for Cuomo if a majority of the 150-member Assembly votes to impeach him.
Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said Saturday that Cuomo could face misdemeanor charges if investigators substantiate Commisso’s complaint. At least five district attorneys have asked for materials from the attorney general’s inquiry to see if any of the allegations could result in criminal charges.
1 Chicago officer killed, 1 wounded in traffic stop shooting
A 29-year-old female police officer in Chicago was killed and another officer was seriously wounded in an exchange of gunfire during a traffic stop, officials said Sunday, the city’s mayor later citing the shooting as a reason for Chicagoans to work together to stem violence.
The officer killed Saturday night was identified as Ella French, according to a post on the Chicago Police Department’s Facebook page Sunday evening. French’s death was the first fatal shooting of a Chicago officer in the line of duty since 2018 and the first female officer fatally shot on the job in 33 years.
Read: Pentagon on lockdown after shooting near Metro station
“We will never forget the true bravery she exemplified as she laid her life down to protect others,” the department said of French on Facebook, adding that fellow officers will “grieve the loss of this hero.” The department also requested support for French’s “wounded partner, who is in the hospital fighting for his life.”
At a Sunday news conference, Mayor Lori Lightfoot urged Chicagoans to end the acrimony between ardent police proponents who say officers are hampered by overly burdensome rules and staunch critics who say officers act with impunity.
“Stop. Just stop,” she said. “This constant strife is not what we need in this moment.”
The shooting of the officers occurred on another violent summer weekend in the nation’s third largest city, with at least 64 people shot, 10 fatally, by afternoon Sunday, ABC7 in Chicago reported.
“The police are not our enemies,” Lightfoot added at the news conference. “We must come together... We have a common enemy: It’s the guns and the gangs.”
Officers had stopped a vehicle with two men and a woman inside just after 9 p.m. on Chicago’s South Side, when a male passenger opened fire, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said during the same news conference.
Read:8 dead in shooting at rail yard serving Silicon Valley
Officers returned fire, striking the passenger who appeared to fire at them, said Brown. He did not release the condition of that man. All three are in custody, but no charges had been filed, he said.
Police also did not identify the three who have been arrested.
When asked about the condition of the injured officer, Brown responded, “Critical. We need your prayers.”
The superintendent said it was too soon to say why the vehicle was stopped and what might have happened just before the shooting began. He said available evidence included police body camera footage. A gun was also recovered at the scene.
A large crowd of officers gathered outside the hospital’s ambulance entrance overnight, some hugging and praying, as Lightfoot first addressed the shooting to reporters nearby. Lightfoot said the officer who died “was very young on the job, but incredibly enthusiastic to do the work.”
The last Chicago officer shot to death in the line of duty was 28-year-old Samuel Jimenez, who was killed after responding to a shooting at a hospital on Nov. 19, 2018.
Read:Police: 9 wounded in Providence, Rhode Island, shooting
Two officers, Conrad Gary and Eduardo Marmolejo, died when they were struck by a train while pursuing a suspect on Dec. 17, 2018. The department also considers the COVID-19 deaths of four officers last year line-of-duty deaths.
The last female officer shot to death in the line of duty was Irma Ruiz, who was shot inside an elementary school in 1988.
Colorado mudslides wreak havoc on major transportation route
As ominous storm clouds gathered in western Colorado over a large area blackened by a recent wildfire, torrential rain fell and the charred land stripped of vegetation gave way, sending a rush of mud and boulders tumbling down steep canyon walls and onto a major highway.
The July 29 mudslides stranded more than 100 people in their vehicles overnight and caused extensive damage that closed Interstate 70, capping several weeks of perilous conditions in a scenic canyon carved through the mountains by the Colorado River.
It marked the latest in a string of closures over the past two years for an area that serves as a key transportation corridor between the Rocky Mountains and the West Coast. Each forced long detours for semitrailers that deliver fuel and food, and inflicted economic pain on businesses that cater to tourists in the popular summer destination of Glenwood Springs.
Read:Californians endure intense weekend of wildfire fears
The closures illustrate the kind of damage scientists have long warned can follow wildfires made worse by climate change: dangerous mudslides caused by rain in burn-scarred terrain. Though no injuries were reported, such slides have caused deaths and destruction in recent years in California and other parts of the U.S. West.
Those who live and work in the Glenwood Canyon area have been adjusting to the inconveniences of closures for years, but mudslides have become more frequent and intense since the Grizzly Creek Fire scorched about 50 square miles (130 square kilometers) last summer.
Transportation officials have closed a 46-mile (74-kilometer) stretch of the interstate and are telling motorists traveling between Denver and Glenwood Springs, on the west end of the canyon, to take another route that adds about 250 miles (402 kilometers) to the trip. Meanwhile, long-haul truckers have been advised to detour north onto Interstate 80 through Wyoming until the canyon is reopened, which could take weeks.
On average, thousands of commercial vehicles travel daily on the interstate through the canyon, according to state transportation officials.
Much of the fuel, food and other products that are distributed in the western part of the state come from Denver via I-70, and the detours are adding several hours to each trip, said Greg Fulton, president and CEO of the Colorado Motor Carriers Association.
In some cases, that means truckers can’t make the round trip without running afoul of federal limits on how long they can be behind the wheel.
“This is a ripple effect because we’re not getting the truck back until the next day. ... It takes it out of sync in terms of those drivers, and effectively, you need more drivers and more trucks,” said Fulton, who warned that the delays could lead to gas and food shortages, late deliveries and higher prices.
“When we’re bearing additional mileage and we’re having additional time, and then even possibly bearing the cost of a motel room, that has to be passed on at some point,” he said.
The mudslides also have significantly impacted tourism in Glenwood Springs, which typically attracts thousands of visitors this time of year for its hiking, biking, fishing and other outdoor activities.
Lisa Langer, the city’s tourism director, said many attractions and some hotels went from full occupancy to being half-full, and some lost between 25% and 50% of their normal revenue during the weekend following the canyon’s closure.
The biggest problem is people from Front Range cities such as Denver canceling their trips because they don’t want to take the long detour, said Langer, who has shifted her focus toward attracting tourists from areas that still have easy access.
Meanwhile, whitewater rafting companies have had to reroute their itineraries, and some businesses have been short-staffed because employees live on the other end of the closed interstate, an engineering marvel that winds through a narrow passage constrained by the Colorado River and cliffs towering hundreds of feet.
Read: Town burns to ashes in raging Northern California wildfire
Max Vogelman, who co-owns Stoneyard Distillery, said the closure has had a “pretty huge” effect on the finances and logistics of his business, which makes alcoholic spirits from sugar beets.
The company opened a tasting room in Glenwood Springs in May, but the distillery is at the other end of the canyon, in Dotsero.
Vogelman said the company’s sole employee in Glenwood Springs has picked up extra shifts to keep the tasting room open, and another worker in Dotsero has been traveling nearly an hour out of her way on a series of winding, dirt roads every few days to deliver supplies.
“It definitely puts us in a bit of a conundrum here, but we’re trying to make it work,” said Vogelman, who also is trying to figure out how to continue distributing to areas west of the canyon and how to keep people coming to the distillery for tours and drinks.
“We get a lot of RV traffic coming through. A lot of them stay overnight on a property here. They’re all canceled,” he said.
He and other business owners and residents are quickly realizing they will have to adjust to what could become the canyon’s new normal.
Scientists say special calculations are needed to determine how much global warming is to blame, if at all, for a single extreme weather event. But a historic drought and recent heat waves tied to climate change have, no doubt, made wildfires harder to fight in the American West.
Climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and is expected to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive, which could lead to more mudslides as rain falls on burn scars.
Andy Hoell, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said last summer’s precipitation over the Four Corners states was the lowest on record, and drought conditions are getting worse.
“In this case, it’s really the compounding and cascading effect of an active fire season last year, followed by heavy precipitation events this year that came together to produce these big effects on I-70,” said Hoell, who studies drought and extreme events in a changing climate.
A recent study led by U.S. Geological Survey researchers mapped landslide vulnerability in Southern California and found the area can now expect small, post-wildfire landslides almost every year, and major events roughly every 10 years. It said the state faces increased risks of both wildfires and landslides caused by climate change-induced shifts in its wet and dry seasons.
Read:Western wildfires calm down in cool weather, but losses grow
One particularly devastating post-fire slide occurred in Southern California in 2018, when a river of mud, trees and boulders slammed into the town of Montecito. More than 20 people died, and hundreds of homes were destroyed.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said Monday he hopes any state or federal infrastructure package has climate resiliency “at the very heart” of it.
“We need to look at things like fire risk mitigation, retaining walls, in a new and different way given the reality that we face on the ground in Colorado,” he said.
Californians endure intense weekend of wildfire fears
After four years of homelessness, Kesia Studebaker thought she finally landed on her feet when she found a job cooking in a diner and moved into a house in the small community of Greenville.
She had been renting for three months and hoped the stability would help her win back custody of her 14-year-old daughter. But in just one night, a raging wildfire tore through the mountain town and “took it all away,” she said.
Read: Town burns to ashes in raging Northern California wildfire
Fueled by strong winds and bone-dry vegetation, the Dixie Fire grew to become the largest single wildfire in state history. Residents of the scenic forestlands of Northern California are facing a weekend of fear as it threatens to reduce thousands of homes to ashes.
“We knew we didn’t get enough rainfall and fires could happen, but we didn’t expect a monster like this,” Studebaker said Saturday.
The fire incinerated much of Greenville on Wednesday and Thursday, destroying 370 homes and structures and threatening nearly 14,000 buildings in the northern Sierra Nevada. It had engulfed an area larger than the size of New York City.
The Dixie Fire, named for the road where it started, spanned an area of 700 square miles (1,813 square kilometers) Saturday night and was just 21% contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Four firefighters were taken to the hospital Friday after being struck by a fallen branch. More 20 people were initially reported missing, but by Saturday afternoon authorities had contacted all but four of them.
The fire’s cause was under investigation. The Pacific Gas & Electric utility has said it may have been sparked when a tree fell on one of its power lines. A federal judge ordered PG&E on Friday to give details by Aug. 16 about the equipment and vegetation where the fire started.
Cooler overnight temperatures and higher humidity slowed the spread of the fire and temperatures topped 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) instead of the triple-digit highs recorded earlier in the week.
But the blaze and its neighboring fires, within several hundred miles of each other, posed an ongoing threat.
Read: Thousands flee homes outside Athens as heat fuels wildfires
Studebaker sought shelter at an evacuation center before setting up her tent in a friend’s front yard.
She is counting on returning to her job if the restaurant where she works stays open. Her boss also evacuated when the town of Chester, northwest of Greenville, lost power and the smoke was so thick that it made it hard to breathe.
Heat waves and historic drought tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West. Scientists have said climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
Near the Klamath National Forest, firefighters kept a close watch on small communities that were ordered evacuated in the path of the Antelope Fire, which earlier threw up flames 100 feet (30 meters) high as it blackened bone-dry grass, brush and timber. It was just 20% contained.
Further northwest, about 500 homes scattered in and around Shasta-Trinity National Forest remained threatened by the Monument Fire and others by the McFarland Fire, both started by lightning storms last week, fire officials said.
About a two-hour drive south from the Dixie Fire, crews had surrounded nearly half of the River Fire that broke out Wednesday near the town of Colfax and destroyed 68 homes and other buildings. Evacuation orders for thousands of people in Nevada and Placer counties were lifted Friday. Three people, including a firefighter, were injured, authorities said.
Smoke from the fires blanketed Northern California and western Nevada, causing air quality to deteriorate to very unhealthy and, at times, hazardous levels.
Air quality advisories extended through the California’s San Joaquin Valley and as far as the San Francisco Bay Area to Denver, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, where residents were urged to keep their windows and doors shut. Denver’s air quality ranked among the worst in the world Saturday afternoon.
Read:Western wildfires calm down in cool weather, but losses grow
California’s fire season is on track to surpass last year’s season, which was the worst fire season in recent recorded state history.
Since the start of the year, more than 6,000 blazes have destroyed more than 1,260 square miles (3,260 square kilometers) of land — more than triple the losses for the same period in 2020, according to state fire figures.
California’s raging wildfires were among 107 large fires burning across 14 states, mostly in the West, where historic drought conditions have left lands parched and ripe for ignition.
US now averaging 100,000 new COVID-19 infections a day
The U.S. was averaging about 11,000 cases a day in late June. Now the number is 107,143.
It took the U.S. about nine months to cross the 100,000 average case number in November before peaking at about 250,000 in early January. Cases bottomed out in June but took about six weeks to go back above 100,000, despite a vaccine that has been given to more than 70% of the adult population.
The seven-day average for daily new deaths also increased, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. It rose over the past two weeks from about 270 deaths per day to nearly 500 a day as of Friday.
The virus is spreading quickly through unvaccinated populations, especially in the South where hospitals have been overrun with patients.
Also read: Thousands jam Philippine vaccination sites over false news
Health officials are fearful that cases will continue to soar if more Americans don’t embrace the vaccine.
“Our models show that if we don’t (vaccinate people), we could be up to several hundred thousand cases a day, similar to our surge in early January,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky said on CNN this week.
The number of Americans hospitalized with the virus has also skyrocketed and it has gotten so bad that many hospitals are scrambling to find beds for patients in far-off locations.
Houston officials say the latest wave of COVID-19 cases is pushing the local health care system to nearly “a breaking point,” resulting in some patients having to be transferred out of the city to get medical care, including one who had to be taken to North Dakota.
Also read: US plans to require COVID-19 shots for foreign travelers
Dr. David Persse, who is health authority for the Houston Health Department and EMS medical director, said some ambulances were waiting hours to offload patients at Houston area hospitals because no beds were available. Persse said he feared this would lead to prolonged respond times to 911 medical calls.
“The health care system right now is nearly at a breaking point ... For the next three weeks or so, I see no relief on what’s happening in emergency departments,” Persse said Thursday.
Last weekend, a patient in Houston had to be transferred to North Dakota to get medical care. An 11-month-old girl with COVID-19 and who was having seizures had to be transported on Thursday from Houston to a hospital 170 miles (274 kilometers) away in Temple.
In Missouri, 30 ambulances and more than 60 medical personnel will be stationed across the state to help transport COVID-19 patients to other regions if nearby hospitals are too full to admit them, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson announced Friday.
Shots give COVID-19 survivors big immune boost, studies show
Even people who have recovered from COVID-19 are urged to get vaccinated, especially as the extra-contagious delta variant surges — and a new study shows survivors who ignored that advice were more than twice as likely to get reinfected.
Friday’s report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adds to growing laboratory evidence that people who had one bout of COVID-19 get a dramatic boost in virus-fighting immune cells — and a bonus of broader protection against new mutants — when they’re vaccinated.
“If you have had COVID-19 before, please still get vaccinated,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. “Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others around you, especially as the more contagious delta variant spreads around the country.”
According to a new Gallup survey, one of the main reasons Americans cite for not planning to get vaccinated is the belief that they’re protected since they already had COVID-19. From the beginning health authorities have urged survivors to get the broader protection vaccination promises. While the shots aren’t perfect, they are providing strong protection against hospitalization and death even from the delta mutant.
Also read: China to continue providing vaccine aid to Bangladesh: Wang Yi
Scientists say infection does generally leave survivors protected against a serious reinfection at least with a similar version of the virus, but blood tests have signaled that protection drops against worrisome variants.
The CDC study offers some real-world evidence.
Researchers studied Kentucky residents with a lab-confirmed coronavirus infection in 2020, the vast majority of them between October and December. They compared 246 people who got reinfected in May or June of this year with 492 similar survivors who stayed healthy. The survivors who never got vaccinated had a significantly higher risk of reinfection than those who were fully vaccinated, even though most had their first bout of COVID-19 just six to nine months ago.
A different variant of the coronavirus caused most illnesses in 2020, while the newer alpha version was predominant in Kentucky in May and June, said study lead author Alyson Cavanaugh, a CDC disease detective working with that state’s health department.
Also read: Bangladesh going to receive large Covid vaccine shipment from China soon
That suggests natural immunity from earlier infection isn’t as strong as the boost those people can get from vaccination while the virus evolves, she said.
There’s little information yet on reinfections with the newer delta variant. But U.S. health officials point to early data from Britain that the reinfection risk appears greater with delta than with the once-common alpha variant, once people are six months past their prior infection.
“There’s no doubt” that vaccinating a COVID-19 survivor enhances both the amount and breadth of immunity “so that you cover not only the original (virus) but the variants,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, said at a recent White House briefing.
The CDC recommends full vaccination, meaning both doses of two-dose vaccines, for everyone.
But in a separate study published Friday in JAMA Network Open, Rush University researchers reported just one vaccine dose gives the previously infected a dramatic boost in virus-fighting immune cells, more than people who have never been infected get from two shots.
Other recent studies published in Science and Nature show the combination of a prior infection and vaccination also broadens the strength of people’s immunity against a changing virus. It’s what virologist Shane Crotty of California’s La Jolla Institute for Immunology calls “hybrid immunity.”
Read: Head of UN health agency seeks vaccine booster moratorium
Vaccinated survivors “can make antibodies that can recognize all kinds of variants even if you were never exposed to the variant,” Crotty said. “It’s pretty sweet.”
One warning for anyone thinking of skipping vaccination if they had a prior infection: The amount of natural immunity can vary from person to person, possibly depending on how sick they were to begin with. The Rush University study found four of 29 previously infected people had no detectable antibodies before they were vaccinated — and the vaccines worked for them just like they work for people who never had COVID-19.
Why do many of the previously infected have such a robust response to vaccination? It has to do with how the immune system develops multiple layers of protection.
After either vaccination or infection, the body develops antibodies that can fend off the coronavirus the next time it tries to invade. Those naturally wane over time. If an infection sneaks past them, T cells help prevent serious illness by killing virus-infected cells -- and memory B cells jump into action to make lots of new antibodies.
Those memory B cells don’t just make copies of the original antibodies. In immune system boot camps called germinal centers, they also mutate antibody-producing genes to test out a range of those virus fighters, explained University of Pennsylvania immunologist John Wherry.
The result is essentially a library of antibody recipes that the body can choose from after future exposures — and that process is stronger when vaccination triggers the immune system’s original memory of fighting the actual virus.
With the delta variant’s super infectiousness, getting vaccinated despite a prior infection “is more important now than it was before to be sure,” Crotty said. “The breadth of your antibodies and potency against variants is going to be far better than what you have right now.”
Town burns to ashes in raging Northern California wildfire
Eva Gorman says the little California mountain town of Greenville was a place of community and strong character, the kind of place where neighbors volunteered to move furniture, colorful baskets of flowers brightened Main Street, and writers, musicians, mechanics and chicken farmers mingled.
Now, it’s ashes.
As hot, bone-dry, gusty weather hit California, the state’s largest current wildfire raged through the Gold Rush-era Sierra Nevada community of about 1,000, incinerating much of the downtown that included wooden buildings more than a century old.
Read: Thousands flee homes outside Athens as heat fuels wildfires
The winds were expected to calm and change direction heading into the weekend but that good news came too late for Gorman.
“It’s just completely devastating. We’ve lost our home, my business, our whole downtown area is gone,” said Gorman, who heeded evacuation warnings and left town with her husband a week and-a-half ago as the Dixie Fire approached.
She managed to grab some photos off the wall, her favorite jewelry and important documents but couldn’t help but think of the family treasures left behind.
“My grandmother’s dining room chairs, my great-aunt’s bed from Italy. There is a photo I keep visualizing in my mind of my son when he was 2. He’s 37 now,” she said. “At first you think, ‘It’s OK, I have the negatives.’ And then you realize, ‘Oh. No. I don’t.’”
Officials had not yet assessed the number of destroyed buildings, but Plumas County Sheriff Todd Johns estimated on Thursday that “well over” 100 homes had burned in and near the town.
“My heart is crushed by what has occurred there,” said Johns, a lifelong Greenville resident.
About a two-hour drive south, officials said some 100 homes and other buildings burned in the fast-moving River Fire that broke out Wednesday near Colfax, a town of about 2,000. There was no containment and about 6,000 people were ordered to evacuate in Placer and Nevada counties, state fire officials said.
The three-week-old Dixie Fire was one of 100 active, large fires burning in 14 states, most in the West where historic drought has left lands parched and ripe for ignition.
Read: Western wildfires calm down in cool weather, but losses grow
The Dixie Fire had consumed about 565 square miles (1,464 square kilometers), an area larger than the size of Los Angeles. The cause was under investigation, but Pacific Gas & Electric has said it may have been sparked when a tree fell on one of the utility’s power lines.
The blaze exploded on Wednesday and Thursday through timber, grass and brush so dry that one fire official described it as “basically near combustion.” Dozens of homes had already burned before the flames made new runs.
No deaths or injuries were reported but the fire continued to threaten more than 10,000 homes.
On Thursday, the weather and towering smoke clouds produced by the fire’s intense, erratic winds kept firefighters struggling to put firefighters at shifting hot spots.
“It’s wreaking havoc. The winds are kind of changing direction on us every few hours,” said Capt. Sergio Arellano, a fire spokesman.
“We’re seeing truly frightening fire behavior,” said Chris Carlton, supervisor for Plumas National Forest. “We really are in uncharted territory.”
Heat waves and historic drought tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West. Scientists say climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
The blaze hit Greenville from two angles and firefighters already were in the town trying to save it but first they had to risk their lives to save people who had refused to evacuate by loading people into cars to get them out, fire officials said.
Read:Wildfires blasting through West draw states to lend support
“We have firefighters that are getting guns pulled out on them, because people don’t want to evacuate,” said Jake Cagle, an incident management operations section chief.
The flames also reached the town of Chester, northwest of Greenville, but crews managed to protect homes and businesses there, with only minor damage to one or two structures, officials said.
The fire was not far from the town of Paradise, which was largely destroyed in a 2018 wildfire sparked by PG&E equipment that killed 85 people, making it the nation’s deadliest in at least a century.
US plans to require COVID-19 shots for foreign travelers
The Biden administration is taking the first steps toward requiring nearly all foreign visitors to the U.S. to be vaccinated for the coronavirus, a White House official said Wednesday.
The requirement would come as part of the administration’s phased approach to easing travel restrictions for foreign citizens to the country. No timeline has yet been determined, as interagency working groups study how and when to safely move toward resuming normal travel. Eventually all foreign citizens entering the country, with some limited exceptions, are expected to need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to enter the U.S.
Read: Biden to launch vaccine push for millions of federal workers
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the policy under development.
The Biden administration has kept in place travel restrictions that have severely curtailed international trips to the U.S., citing the spread of the delta variant of the virus. Under the rules, non-U.S. residents who have been to China, the European Schengen area, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Brazil, South Africa and India in the prior 14 days are prohibited from entering the U.S.
All travelers to the U.S., regardless of vaccination status, are required to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within three days of air travel to the country.
Read: Biden says getting vaccinated ‘gigantically important’
The Biden administration has faced pressure to lift some restrictions from affected allies, the air travel industry and families who have been kept separated from loved ones by the rules. Many have complained that the travel restrictions don’t reflect the current virus situation — particularly as caseloads in the U.S. are worse than in many of the prohibited nations.
Airlines for America, a trade group for major U.S. airlines, said it was pleased by reports that the administration plans to make it easier for more foreign travelers to enter the country if they have been vaccinated.
Analysis: Delta variant upends politicians’ COVID calculus
President Joe Biden’s administration drew up a strategy to contain one coronavirus strain, then another showed up that’s much more contagious.
This week — a month late — Biden met his goal of 70% of U.S. adults having received at least one COVID-19 shot. Originally conceived as an affirmation of American resiliency to coincide with Independence Day, the belated milestone offered little to celebrate. Driven by the delta variant, new cases are averaging more than 70,000 a day, above the peak last summer when no vaccines were available. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is drawing criticism from experts in the medical and scientific community for its off-and-on masking recommendations.
But the delta variant makes no distinctions when it comes to politics. If Biden’s pandemic response is found wanting, Republican governors opposed to pandemic mandates also face an accounting. They, too, were counting on a backdrop of declining cases. Instead unvaccinated patients are crowding their hospitals.
The Biden administration’s process-driven approach succeeded in delivering more than enough vaccine to protect the country, sufficient to ship 110 million doses overseas. When the president first set his 70% vaccination target on May 4, the U.S. was dispensing around 965,000 first doses per day, a rate more than twice as fast as needed to reach the July 4 goal.
Read: Biden to launch vaccine push for millions of federal workers
Then things started to happen.
While the White House was aware of public surveys showing swaths of the population unwilling or unmotivated to get a shot, officials didn’t anticipate that nearly 90 million Americans would continue to spurn lifesaving vaccines that offer a pathway back to normalcy. The spread of misinformation about the vaccines enabled a festering fog of doubt that has clung close to the ground in many communities, particularly in Republican-led states.
Yet on May 13, when the CDC largely lifted its mask-wearing guidance for fully vaccinated adults indoors, topline indicators were still flashing green. The agency said unvaccinated people should keep wearing masks — and get their shots soon. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris celebrated by doffing their masks and strolling in the Rose Garden of the White House. Around the country, an everyday celebration spread to coffee shops, supermarkets, beer gardens and restaurants. People planned weddings and music festivals.
Drowned out in the applause were expert warnings that there was no way to tell who was and who wasn’t vaccinated, and a country restless for an end to the pandemic was essentially being placed on the honor system.
“The single biggest mistake of the Biden presidency when it comes to COVID 19 was the CDC’s precipitous and chaotic change in masking guidance back in May,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner and commentator. “It had the direct result of giving people the impression the pandemic was over. It allowed unvaccinated people to have free rein and behave as if they were vaccinated, and therefore we have the surge of the delta variant.”
“I think they were naive,” Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said of the CDC. “They saw it as a carrot, as a gift.”
Meanwhile, the delta variant had arrived, and in a matter of weeks would become the dominant strain in circulation.
Read: Biden woos working class with new ‘buy American’ efforts
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky recently confirmed just how much more contagious delta is. “If you get sick with the alpha variant, you could infect about two other unvaccinated people,” she said. “If you get sick with the delta variant, we estimate that you could infect about five other unvaccinated people — more than twice as many as the original strain.”
Last week, the CDC reversed course on masks, recommending that even vaccinated people again mask up indoors in areas where the virus is on the march, now most of the country.
The immediate reason was a report by disease detectives of a recent outbreak in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The delta variant was to blame and a majority of those infected had been vaccinated. Although very few vaccinated people got sick enough to be hospitalized, the initial findings showed vaccinated people with breakthrough infections were carrying about as much virus as unvaccinated people.
The report fed vaccine doubts in some quarters. Wen, the former health commissioner, said the CDC should have put the Provincetown report in a fuller context that showed vaccines do keep protecting. CDC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Back on July 4 Biden proclaimed that the nation was declaring its independence from the virus. In recent weeks, he seemed to have moved on from the pandemic. The president was focused on securing a bipartisan deal on infrastructure and on selling the separate Democrats-only legislation to carry out his ambitious domestic agenda. The number of White House COVID-19 briefings dwindled.
“We celebrated prematurely,” said Ali Mokdad, an infectious disease expert with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle. Biden’s 70% goal was a solid step, said Mokdad, but about half the population is not yet fully vaccinated.
Read: Biden says getting vaccinated ‘gigantically important’
Now vaccinations are again edging upward, but the data don’t show a dramatic increase.
Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Republicans dismissive of mask requirements, are staring at surges in their states. Together, Florida and Texas accounted for about one-third of new cases nationally in the past week. DeSantis doubled down on defiance Tuesday, blaming “media hysteria” and people spending more time indoors in the sweltering summer.
“Even among a lot of positive tests, you are seeing much less mortality that you did year-over-year,” he said at a Miami-area news conference. “Would I rather have 5,000 cases among 20-year-olds or 500 cases among seniors? I would rather have the younger.”
Offit, the Philadelphia vaccines expert, says “it’s hard to watch” DeSantis say he won’t abide mask mandates. “Why not?” asked Offit. “That is why his state leads the league in cases.”
Huge California fire grows as heat spikes again across state
California’s largest wildfire exploded again after burning for nearly three weeks in remote mountains and officials warned Tuesday that hot, dry weather would increase the risk of new fires across much of the state.
Firefighters saved homes Monday in the small northern California community of Greenville near the Plumas National Forest as strong winds stoked the Dixie Fire, which grew to over 395 square miles (1,024 square kilometers) across Plumas and Butte counties.
Read:Evacuations lifted as progress made against western fires
“Engines, crews and heavy equipment shifted from other areas to increase structure protection and direct line construction as the fire moved toward Greenville,” the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, said Tuesday morning.
Evacuations were ordered for the community of about 1,000 people as well as for the east shore of nearby Lake Almanor, a popular resort area. About 3,000 homes were threatened by the blaze that has destroyed 67 houses and other buildings since breaking out July 14. It was 35% contained.
Crews contended with dry, hot and windy conditions “and the forecast calls for the return of active fire behavior,” Cal Fire said.
Similar weather was expected across Southern California, where heat advisories and warnings were issued for interior valleys, mountains and deserts for much of the week.
Heat waves and historic drought tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West. Scientists say climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
Read:Western wildfires calm down in cool weather, but losses grow
More than 20,000 firefighters and support personnel were battling 97 large, active wildfires covering 2,919 square miles (7,560 square kilometers) in 13 U.S. states on Tuesday, the National Interagency Fire Center said.
Dry conditions and powerful winds made for dangerous fire conditions again on Tuesday in Hawaii.
Firefighters gained control over the 62-square-mile (160-square-kilometer) Nation Fire that forced thousands of people to evacuate over the weekend and destroyed at least two homes on the Big Island.
About 150 miles (240 km) west of California’s Dixie Fire, the lightning-sparked McFarland Fire threatened remote homes along the Trinity River in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. The nearly 25-square-mile (65-square-mile) fire was 5% contained Tuesday.
In southern Oregon, lightning struck parched forests hundreds of times in a 24 hour-period, igniting 50 new wildfires as the nation’s largest blaze burned less than 100 miles (161 kilometers) away, officials said Monday.
Read: Wildfires blasting through West draw states to lend support
Firefighters and aircraft attacked the new fires before they could spread out of control. No homes were immediately threatened.
Oregon’s Bootleg Fire, the nation’s largest at 647 square miles (1,676 square kilometers), was 84% contained and is not expected to be fully under control until Oct. 1.