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As Cuomo exits, Hochul to take office minus ‘distractions’
Andrew Cuomo neared the end of his decade as New York’s governor Monday, as he prepared to relinquish his tight grip on government to Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul in a midnight power transfer that will break another glass ceiling for women in state politics.
Cuomo, a Democrat, was set to end his term at 11:59 p.m., just under two weeks after he announced he would resign rather than face a likely impeachment battle over sexual harassment allegations.
Hochul was scheduled be sworn in as New York’s first female governor just after midnight in a brief, private ceremony overseen by the state’s chief judge, Janet DiFiore.
Read:Kathy Hochul to be 1st female NY governor after Cuomo leaves
The switch in leadership was happening in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Henri, which narrowly missed Long Island on Sunday but was dumping potentially dangerous amounts of rain over parts of the Catskill Mountains and Hudson River Valley, even after it was downgraded to a tropical depression.
The storm drew Cuomo back out into public view over the weekend, albeit briefly. He gave two televised briefings — warning New Yorkers to take the storm seriously with the same mix of scolding and reassurance that once made his daily COVID-19 briefings popular.
Perhaps if the storm had been catastrophic Cuomo might have been tempted to put off his resignation. But as the potential for danger diminished, he said there would be no change in his plans. “My final day is tomorrow,” he said Sunday.
Hochul, also a Democrat, will inherit immense challenges as she takes over an administration facing criticism for inaction in Cuomo’s distracted final months in office.
COVID-19 has refused to abate. Schools are set to reopen in the coming weeks, with big decisions to be made about whether to require masks for students or vaccination for teachers. The state’s economic recovery from the pandemic is still incomplete.
Cuomo’s resignation comes after an independent investigation overseen by state Attorney General Letitia James concluded there was credible evidence he’d sexually harassed at least 11 women, including an aide who said he groped her breast and has since filed a complaint with the Albany County Sheriff’s Office.
Investigators also said Cuomo’s senior staff retaliated against at least one of those women and worked to undermine the credibility of others.
Cuomo insists he didn’t touch anyone inappropriately and called the allegations “unfair” and “untruthful,” but said he wouldn’t force the state to endure an impeachment trial he couldn’t win.
Read:New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigns over sexual harassment
Separately, Cuomo was facing a legislative investigation into whether he misled the public about COVD-19 deaths in nursing homes to protect his reputation as a pandemic leader and improperly got help from state employees in writing a pandemic book that may net him $5 million.
Cuomo has offered few hints about his plans or where he’ll live after leaving the Executive Mansion. He told New York magazine in a recent interview that he’s “not disappearing.”
In his resignation speech Aug. 10 he spoke with pride about his record of legalizing same-sex marriage, expanding paid family leave and boosting the statewide minimum wage to $15.
Hochul will need to quickly build her own team of advisers who can help steer the administration for at least the next 16 months.
She plans to keep on Cuomo-era employees for 45 days to allow her time to interview new hires, but said she will not keep anyone found to have behaved unethically. At least 35 employees in the governor’s office have left since February, according to staff rosters.
Hochul, who said she didn’t work closely with Cuomo and wasn’t aware of the harassment allegations before they became public, has vowed no one will ever call her workplace “toxic.”
“I have a different approach to governing,” Hochul said Wednesday in Queens, adding, “I get the job done because I don’t have time for distractions, particularly coming into this position.”
Hochul has already said she plans to run for a full four-year term next year.
She’ll do so as the state Democratic Party grapples with an internal struggle between moderate and liberal New Yorkers.
Read: Cuomo’s top aide resigns as governor faces harassment furor
Hochul, who once represented a conservative Western New York district in Congress for a year and has a reputation as a moderate, is expected to pick a left-leaning state lawmaker from New York City as her lieutenant governor.
State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs praised Hochul as “formidable.”
“She’s very experienced and I think she’ll be a refreshing and exciting new governor,” he said.
Henri hurls rain as storm settles atop swamped Northeast
The slow-rolling system named Henri is taking its time drenching the Northeast with rain, lingering early Monday atop a region made swampy by the storm’s relentless downpour.
Henri, which made landfall as a tropical storm Sunday afternoon in Rhode Island, has moved northwest through Connecticut. It hurled rain westward far before its arrival, flooding areas as far southwest as New Jersey before pelting northeast Pennsylvania, even as it took on tropical depression status.
Read:Hurricane Henri closes in as the Northeast braces for impact
Over 140,000 homes lost power, and deluges of rain closed bridges, swamped roads and left some people stranded in their vehicles.
Beach towns from the Hamptons on Long Island to Cape Cod in Massachusetts exhaled from being spared the worst of the potential damage Sunday. Other areas of New England awaited the storm’s return.
The National Hurricane Center said Henri is expected to slow down further and likely stall near the Connecticut-New York state line, before moving back east through New England and eventually pushing out to the Atlantic Ocean.
Henri could produce 3 to 6 inches (8 to 15 centimeters) of rainfall over portions of Long Island, New England, southeast New York, New Jersey, and northeast Pennsylvania through Monday, the agency projects. Parts of northern New Jersey into southern New York could see up to a foot of rain, leading to considerable flash flooding, it said.
New England officials fretted that just a few more inches of precipitation would be a back breaker following a summer of record rainfall.
“The ground is so saturated that it can flood with just another inch of rain,” Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont warned late Sunday.
Read: Coastal evacuations urged as Hurricane Henri heads north
In the central New Jersey community of Helmetta, some 200 residents fled for higher ground, taking refuge in hotels or with friends and family, as flood waters inundated their homes Sunday.
“It came so quick — in the blink of an eye,” said the town’s mayor, Christopher Slavicek, whose parents were spending the night after fleeing their home. “Now there’s clean up. So this is far from over.”
President Joe Biden has declared disasters in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, opening the purse strings for federal recovery aid to those states.
“We’re doing everything we can now to help those states prepare, respond and recover,” said the president, who also offered condolences Sunday to Tennessee residents, after severe flooding from an unrelated storm killed at least 22 people and left dozens missing.
When Henri made landfall near Westerly, Rhode Island, it had sustained winds of about 60 mph (97 kph) and gusts of up to 70 mph (110 kph).
Some communities in central New Jersey were inundated with as much as 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rain by midday Sunday. In Jamesburg, television video footage showed flooded downtown streets and cars almost completely submerged. In Newark, Public Safety Director Brian O’Hara said police and firefighters rescued 86 people in 11 incidents related to the storm.
In Connecticut, about 250 residents from four nursing homes on the shoreline had to be relocated to other facilities. Several major bridges in Rhode Island were briefly shuttered Sunday, and some coastal roads were nearly impassable.
Read:New England preps for 1st hurricane in 30 years with Henri
Other communities awaited for sunrise to survey the damage already wrought.
Linda Orlomoski, of Canterbury, Connecticut, was among those without power late into Sunday.
“It’s supposed to get nasty hot and humid again on Tuesday,” she said. “If we still have no power by then, that will be miserable.”
Biden says US-led evacuation from Kabul is accelerating
President Joe Biden said Sunday the U.S.-led evacuation of Americans, at-risk Afghans and others from the Kabul airport accelerated this weekend, although it remains vulnerable to threats posed by the Islamic State extremist group.
One week after the Taliban completed its takeover of Afghanistan by capturing Kabul, Biden said discussions are underway among military officials about potentially extending the airlift beyond Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline. “Our hope is we will not have to extend, but there are discussions,” he said, suggesting the possibility that the Taliban will be consulted.
Since Aug. 14, one day before the Taliban entered Kabul, the airlift has evacuated 28,000 people, Biden said. He said that included 11,000 who had departed from Kabul in a 36-hour period this weekend, but he did not provide details. The number appeared to include flights by charter and non-U.S. military aircraft as well as the U.S. Air Force C-17 and C-130 transport planes that have been flying daily from the capital. The U.S. military is controlling air traffic on both the civilian and military sides of the airport.
Tens of thousands of people remain to join the airlift, which has been slowed by security issues and U.S. bureaucracy hurdles.
Biden asserted, without a full explanation, that U.S. forces have managed to improve access to the airport for Americans and others seeking to get on flights. He suggested that the perimeter had been extended, widening a “safe zone.”
“What I’m not going to do is talk about the tactical changes we’re making to make sure we maintain as much security as we can,” he said. “We have constantly, how can I say it, increased rational access to the airport, where more folk can get there more safely. It’s still a dangerous operation but I don’t want to go into the detail of how we’re doing that.”
Later Biden added: “We’ve discussed a lot with the Taliban. They’ve been cooperative in extending some of the perimeter.”
He said groups of Americans in Kabul are being moved more efficiently and safely to the airport, but he provided no details.
“Any American who wants to get home, will get home,” he asserted.
Earlier Sunday, administration officials said the U.S. military is considering “creative ways” to get Americans and others into the Kabul airport for evacuation from Afghanistan amid “acute” security threats, and the Pentagon on Sunday ordered six U.S. commercial airlines to help move evacuees from temporary sites outside of Afghanistan.
Addressing a criticism cited by many Republicans, Biden said no Afghan evacuees are being flown directly to the United States from Afghanistan without prior screening. He said they are being screened in third countries.
Biden and his top aides have repeatedly cited their concern that extremist groups in Afghanistan will attempt to exploit the chaos around the Kabul airport.
“The threat is real, it is acute, it is persistent and something we’re focused with every tool in our arsenal,” said Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.
Sullivan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that 3,900 people had been airlifted out of Kabul on U.S. military flights over the past 24 hours. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public, said those people were flown on a total of 23 flights — 14 by C-17 transports and nine aboard C-130 cargo planes.
That represents an increase from 1,600 flown out aboard U.S. military planes in the previous 24 hours, but remains far below the 5,000 to 9,000 that the military says it has the capacity to airlift daily. Sullivan also said about 3,900 people were airlifted on non-U.S. military flights over the past 24 hours.
The Biden administration has given no firm estimate of the number of Americans seeking to leave Afghanistan. Some have put the total between 10,000 and 15.000. Sullivan on Sunday put it at “several thousand.”
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Austin said that as Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline for ending the evacuation operation approaches, he will recommend whether to give it more time. Tens of thousands of Americans and others have yet to be flown out of the country.
Austin’s interview with ABC aired Sunday but was taped Saturday. In a notice Sunday, the State Department urged people seeking to leave Afghanistan as part of an organized private evacuation effort not come to the Kabul airport “until you have received specific instructions” to do so from the U.S. Embassy’s flight organizer. The notice said that others, including American citizens, who have received specific instructions from the embassy to make their way to the airport should do so.
Austin said the airlift would continue for as long as possible.
“We’re gonna try our very best to get everybody, every American citizen who wants to get out, out,” Austin said in the interview. “And we’ve got -- we continue to look at different ways to -- in creative ways -- to reach out and contact American citizens and help them get into the airfield.”
The British military said Sunday another seven people had been killed in the unceasing crush of crowds outside the airport.
Republicans in Congress stepped up their criticism of Biden’s response. “If the Taliban is saying that Americans can travel safely to the airport, then there is no better way to make sure they get safely to the airport than to use our military to escort them,” GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, an Army veteran, said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Ryan Crocker, who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan under Presidents George W, Bushand Barack Obama, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that Biden’s management of the withdrawal was “catastrophic” and had unleashed a “global crisis.”
A central problem in the evacuation operation is processing evacuees once they reach other countries in the region and in Europe. Those temporary waystations, including in Qatar, Bahrain and Germany, are sometimes reaching capacity, although new sites are being made available, including in Spain.
In an attempt to alleviate that, and to free up military aircraft for missions from Kabul, the Pentagon on Sunday activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. The Defense Department said 18 aircraft from American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines, Omni Air, Hawaiian Airlines and United Airlines will be directed to ferry evacuees from interim waystations. The airlines will not fly into Afghanistan. The six participating airlines have agreed to assist for a little less than two weeks, which roughly coincides with the currently planned duration of the airlift, which is to end Aug. 31.
The civil airline reserve system was last activated in 2003 for the Iraq War. The commercial airliners will retain their civilian status but the military’s Air Mobility Command will control the flights.
22 dead, many missing after 17 inches of rain in US state
At least 22 people were killed and rescue crews searched desperately Sunday amid shattered homes and tangled debris for dozens of people still missing after record-breaking rain sent floodwaters surging through Middle Tennessee of the US.
Saturday’s flooding in rural areas took out roads, cellphone towers and telephone lines, leaving families uncertain about whether their loved ones survived the unprecedented deluge. Emergency workers were searching door to door, said Kristi Brown, a coordinator for health and safety supervisor with Humphreys County Schools.
Many of the missing live in the neighborhoods where the water rose the fastest, said Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis, who confirmed the 22 fatalities in his county. The names of the missing were on a board in the county’s emergency center and listed on a city department’s Facebook page.
“I would expect, given the number of fatalities, that we’re going to see mostly recovery efforts at this point rather than rescue efforts,” Tennessee Emergency Management Director Patrick Sheehan said.
Read: Rescuers rush to help as Europe's flood toll surpasses 125
The dead included twin babies who were swept from their father’s arms, according to surviving family members, and a foreman at county music star Loretta Lynn’s ranch. The sheriff of the county of about 18,000 people some 60 miles (96 kilometers) west of Nashville said he lost one of his best friends.
Up to 17 inches (43 centimeters) of rain fell in Humphreys County in less than 24 hours Saturday, shattering the Tennessee record for one-day rainfall by more than 3 inches (8 centimeters), the National Weather Service said.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee toured the area, calling it a “devastating picture of loss and heartache.” He stopped on Main Street in Waverly where some homes were washed off their foundations and people were sifting though their water-logged possessions. All around the county were debris from wrecked cars, demolished businesses and homes and a chaotic, tangled mix of the things inside.
Shirley Foster cried as the governor walked up. She said she just learned a friend from her church was dead.
“I thought I was over the shock of all this. I’m just tore up over my friend. My house is nothing, but my friend is gone,” Foster told the governor.
The hardest-hit areas saw double the rain that area of Middle Tennessee had in the previous worst-case scenario for flooding, meteorologists said. Lines of storms moved over the area for hours, wringing out a record amount of moisture — a scenario scientists have warned may be more common because of global warming.
The downpours rapidly turned the creeks that run behind backyards and through downtown Waverly into raging rapids. Business owner Kansas Klein stood on a bridge Saturday in the town of 4,500 people and saw two girls who were holding on to a puppy and clinging to a wooden board sweep past, the current too fast for anyone to grab them. He hadn’t found out what happened to them.
Not far from the bridge, Klein told The Associated Press by phone that dozens of buildings in a low-income housing area known as Brookside appeared to have borne the brunt of the flash flood from Trent Creek.
“It was devastating: buildings were knocked down, half of them were destroyed,” Klein said. “People were pulling out bodies of people who had drowned and didn’t make it out.”
Read: Europe flooding toll over 180 as rescuers dig deeper
The Humphreys County Sheriff Office Facebook page filled with people looking fo r missing friends and family. GoFundMe pages were made asking for help for funeral expenses for the dead, including 7-month-old twins yanked from their father’s arms as they tried to escape.
The foreman at Lynn’s ranch, Wayne Spears, also was killed.
“He’s out at his barn and next thing you know, he goes from checking animals in the barn to hanging on in the barn to people seeing him floating down the creek. And that’s how fast it had come up,” the sheriff said.
A photo taken by someone at the ranch showed Spears in a cowboy hat clinging to a pillar in brown, churning water up to his chest.
“Wayne’s just one of those guys, he just does everything for everybody, if there’s a job to do,” said his friend Michael Pate, who met Spears at the ranch 15 years ago.
At the Cash Saver grocery in in Waverly, employees stood on desks, registers and a flower rack as the waters from the creek that’s usually 400 feet (120 meters) from the store rushed in after devastating the low income housing next door. At one point, they tried to break through the celling into the attic and couldn’t, store co-owner David Hensley said.
The flood waters stopped rising as fast just as the situation was getting dire and a rescue boat came by. “We told him that if there’s somebody else out there you can get, go get them, we think we’re OK,” Hensley said.
At the beginning of a news conference on Tropical Storm Henri’s impact on New England, President Joe Biden offered condolences to the people of Tennessee and directed federal disaster officials to talk with the governor and offer assistance.
Just to the east of Waverly, the town of McEwen was pummeled Saturday with 17.02 inches (43.2 centimeters) of rain, smashing the state’s 24-hour record of 13.6 inches (34.5 centimeters) from 1982, according to the National Weather Service in Nashville, though Saturday’s numbers would have to be confirmed.
A flash flood watch was issued for the area before the rain started, with forecasters saying 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) of rain was possible. The worst storm recorded in this area of Middle Tennessee only dropped 9 inches (23 centimeters) of rain, said Krissy Hurley, a weather service meteorologist in Nashville.
“Forecasting almost a record is something we don’t do very often,” Hurley said. “Double the amount we’ve ever seen was almost unfathomable.”
Recent scientific research has determined that extreme rain events will become more frequent because of man-made climate change. Hurley said it is impossible to know its exact role in Saturday’s flood, but noted in the past year her office dealt with floods that used to be expected maybe once every 100 years in September south of Nashville and in March closer to the city.
“We had an incredible amount of water in the atmosphere,” Hurley said of Saturday’s flooding. “Thunderstorms developed and moved across the same area over and over and over.”
The problem isn’t limited to Tennessee. A federal study found man-made climate change doubles the chances of the types of heavy downpours that in August 2016 dumped 26 inches (66 centimeters) of rain around Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Those floods killed at least 13 people and damaged 150,000 homes.
Hurricane Henri closes in as the Northeast braces for impact
Hurricane Henri kept on course early Sunday to crash into a long stretch of northeastern coastline, as millions on New York’s Long Island and in southern New England braced for flooding, toppled trees and extended power outages.
With the center of the storm projected to pass just off the eastern tip of Long Island by midday, hurricane warnings extended from coastal Connecticut and Rhode Island to near the old whaling port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and across the luxurious oceanfront estates of New York’s Hamptons to the summer getaway of Fire Island.
The first thunderstorms bringing what could be up to half a foot (15 centimeters) of rain arrived late Saturday, and flash flooding began in some areas overnight. Bands of heavy rain overwhelmed storm drains and drivers plowed through foot-deep water in a few spots in New York City, and Newark and Hoboken, New Jersey.
Tropical storm-intensity winds were expected to begin striking the coast at around 8 a.m.
Read:Winds threaten to fan destructive California wildfire
People in the projected path spent Saturday scrambling to stock up on groceries and gasoline. Those close to the coast boarded up windows and, in some cases, evacuated.
Residents and visitors on Fire Island, a narrow strip of sandy villages barely above sea level off Long Island’s southern coast, were urged to evacuate. The last boats out left before 11 p.m. Saturday and officials warned there might be no way to reach people left behind.
The evacuation threw a wrench into Kristen Pavese’s planned Fire Island bachelorette party. The group of 10 had intended to celebrate Saturday night, but ended up leaving on the ferry just a day after arriving. They had planned to stay until Monday.
“I’m upset about it, but it’s the weather. It’s nothing I can control,” said Pavese, a Long Island resident. “I’ve been going to Fire Island for a long time, so I’m sort of familiar with this happening.”
Approaching severe weather Saturday night also cut short a superstar-laden concert in Central Park. The show headlined by Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Jennifer Hudson was meant to celebrate New York City’s recovery from the coronavirus. But officials asked concertgoers to leave the park during Barry Manilow’s set amid the threat of lightning.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, set to leave office Monday after resigning over a sexual harassment scandal, emerged Saturday to plead with New York residents to make last-minute preparations, warning that heavy rain, wind and storm surge from Henri could be as devastating as Superstorm Sandy back in 2012.
Read:At least 10 killed in Tennessee flash floods; dozens missing
“We have short notice. We’re talking about tomorrow,” Cuomo said in one of his final forays before TV cameras, a setting that shot him to fame during the worst of the pandemic last year. “So if you have to move, if you have to stock up, if you have to get to higher ground, it has to be today. Please.”
Gov. Ned Lamont warned Connecticut residents they should prepare to “shelter in place” from Sunday afternoon through at least Monday morning as the state braces for the first possible direct hit from a hurricane in decades. Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee issued a similar warning.
Major airports in the region remained open as the storm approached, though hundreds of Sunday’s flights were canceled. Service on some branches of New York City’s commuter rail system was suspended through Sunday, as was Amtrak service between New York and Boston.
The White House said President Joe Biden discussed preparations with northeastern governors and that New York Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who succeeds Cuomo on Tuesday, also participated.
Biden later began approving emergency declarations with Rhode Island.
New York hasn’t had a direct hit from a powerful cyclone since Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc in 2012. Some of the most important repairs from that storm have been completed, but many projects designed to protect against future storms remain unfinished.
With maximum sustained winds at 75 mph (120 kph), just above hurricane strength, Henri was moving north at 18 mph (30 kph) as of Sunday morning. It was about 80 miles (125 kilometers) south-southeast of Montauk Point on the tip of Long Island.
Some gas stations from Cape Cod to Long Island sold out of fuel. Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman described a run on supplies like batteries and flashlights as people “are starting to wake up” as weather models showed the storm’s center would run “smack on the town of Southampton.”
Read:Coastal evacuations urged as Hurricane Henri heads north
Regardless of its exact landfall, broad impacts were expected across a large swath of the Northeast, extending inland to Hartford, Connecticut, and Albany, New York, and eastward to Cape Cod, which is teeming with tens of thousands of summer tourists.
Storm surge between 3 and 5 feet (1 to 1.5 meters) was possible in much of Long Island Sound all the way to Chatham, Massachusetts, and slightly less on Long Island’s Atlantic coast, the hurricane center said. Flash flooding was possible in inland areas already saturated by recent rain.
In the Hamptons, the celebrity playground on Long Island’s east end, officials warned of dangerous rip currents and flooding that’s likely to turn streets like the mansion-lined Dune Road into lagoons.
“We have a lot of wealthy people. There’s no doubt that we do, but everybody pulls together in an emergency,” Schneiderman said. “So, you know, yeah, there are people hanging out on their yachts at the moment drinking martinis, but they’re also starting to talk about this storm and I’m sure they’re going to want to be helpful.”
Winds threaten to fan destructive California wildfire
Crews were digging in and burning out fire lines amid another round of high winds Saturday contributed to the fury to a Northern California wildfire.
“We have a firefight ahead of us and the wind today is going to make it very challenging,” said Keith Wade, a spokesman with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
The Caldor Fire in the northern Sierra Nevada already destroyed dozens of homes, and authorities on Friday closed down a 46-mile (74-kilometer) stretch of Interstate 50, the main route between the state capital of Sacramento and Lake Tahoe on the Nevada state line.
The highway was closed after debris from the blaze fell onto the roadway and because of red flag warnings for 20- to 30-mph (32- to 48-kph) winds that by Saturday evening “combined with continued extremely dry fuels will result in critical fire weather conditions in the vicinity of the Caldor Fire,” the National Weather Service said.
Read: California wildfires destroy homes; winds hamper containment
The winds could gust to 40 mph (65 kph) Saturday.
The road is a key checkpoint as crews struggle against the fire, which erupted earlier this week and grew to 10 times its size in a few days, fueled by winds.
“We’re going to invest everything we can into holding the fire south” of the road, said Eric Schwab, an operations section chief with Cal Fire.
Firefighters made progress on the fire’s western side and burned vegetation to starve it of fuel and prevent the flames from heading into the evacuated community of Pollock Pines. On the northeast side, crews were protecting cabins in the dense forest area, fire officials said.
The Caldor Fire had now devoured about 130 square miles (310 square kilometers) as of Saturday and more than 1,500 firefighters were battling it amid heavy timber and rugged terrain.
The blaze was one of about a dozen large California wildfires that have scorched Northern California, incinerating at least 700 homes alone in and around the Sierra Nevada communities of Greenville and Grizzly Flats.
The fires, mainly in the northern part of the state, have burned nearly 1.5 million acres, or roughly 2,300 square miles (6,000 square kilometers) and have sent smoke as far as the East Coast. They were burning in grass, brush and forest that is exceptionally dry from two years of drought likely exacerbated by climate change.
Read: Fueled by winds, largest wildfire moves near California city
Thousands of homes remained under threat in communities tucked away in scenic forests and tens of thousands of people remain under evacuation orders.
Nine national forests in the region have been closed because of the fire threat.
To the northwest of the Caldor Fire, the massive Dixie Fire kept expanding and new evacuations were ordered, including the tiny hamlet of Taylorsville. In five weeks, the fire about 175 miles (282 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco has become the second-largest in state history and blackened an area twice the size of Los Angeles.
Weather forecasts call for a storm system that will bring winds but little rain through Northern California into early next week. With it will come increased risks of fires. Dozens have erupted in recent days but were quickly stamped out.
An exception was the Cache Fire, a small but fast-moving grass blaze that ravaged at least 56 homes and virtually annihilated a mobile home park.
Some of those forced to flee the flames had to leave their pets behind.
Emily Crum, an animal control officer with North Bay Animal Services, got a surprise as she searched for abandoned pets in the Clearlake area.
She spotted a black dog in a charred lot.
“I saw her laying there. I thought she was dead,” Crum said. “Then she started wagging her tail.”
Despite being chained to a boat trailer, the mutt named Sammy had not been injured, Crum said.
Read: Thunderstorms, heat fuel wildfires burning across West
Cats, goats and chickens also were rescued.
California is one of a dozen mostly Western states where 99 large, active fires were burning as of Friday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
Fires have intensified across the entire West, creating a nearly year-round season that has taxed firefighters. Fire patterns used to migrate in seasons from the Southwest to the Rockies, to the Pacific Northwest and then California, allowing fire crews to move from one place to the next, said Anthony Scardina, deputy regional forester for the U.S. Forest Service.
“But the problem is all of those seasons are starting to overlap,” Scardina said.
At least 10 killed in Tennessee flash floods; dozens missing
Catastrophic flooding in Middle Tennessee left at least ten people dead and dozens missing Saturday as record-shattering rainfall washed away homes and rural roads, authorities said.
Business owner Kansas Klein watched in horror from a bridge Saturday morning as cars and entire houses were swept down a road in Waverly, a town of about 4,500 people that Klein, 48, has called home for more than half his life. Two girls who were holding on to a puppy and clinging to a wooden board swept past, far too fast for Klein and other onlookers to go down and grab hold of them.
After being told by authorities to go back, Klein returned a couple hours later, shocked that the floodwaters had almost entirely receded and aghast at the destruction that was left behind.
Read:Coastal evacuations urged as Hurricane Henri heads north
“It was amazing how quick it came and how quick it left,” Klein said.
Klein said his restaurant, a decade-old New York-style pizzeria, was still standing, but the morning deluge of between 10 and 12 inches (25 to 30 centimeters) of rain in Humphreys County had caused floodwaters to reach 7 feet (2.1 meters) inside the eatery, rendering it a total loss.
After leaving his restaurant, Klein walked to the nearby public housing homes and heard yelling. A man had just recovered a baby’s body from one of the homes. Other bodies would soon follow.
“I’m looking at my restaurant, thinking how horrible it was that I lost my restaurant and then I walk around the corner and see someone’s baby dead — my restaurant doesn’t mean a whole lot right now,” Klein told the Associated Press in a phone interview Saturday night, still in shock as he watched a local news channel air footage he had recorded on his phone hours ago.
The low-income homes — dozens of block buildings known as Brookside — appeared to have borne the brunt of the flash flood, Klein said.
“It was devastating: buildings were knocked down, half of them were destroyed,” Klein said. “People were pulling out bodies of people who had drowned and didn’t make it out.”
Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis told news outlets more than 30 people have been reported missing. It was not immediately clear how many had lived at Brookside, located about 60 miles (96 kilometers) west of Nashville.
Read:Dominica Completes $2m Bypass Project to Safeguard Community During Hurricane Season
Two of the bodies recovered were toddlers who had been swept away from their father, Davis told WSMV-TV.
Waverly couple Cindy Dunn, 48, and her husband Jimmy, 49, were rescued from their attic by a crew who used a bulldozer to reach them.
“Hell. That’s what we had to go through,” Cindy Dunn told The Tennessean.
She said her husband woke her up Saturday, telling her that floodwaters had pushed her car to their backyard. Eventually the water in their house rose to at least 6 feet (1.8 meters) high, forcing them to the attic. Dunn said the rooftop wasn’t an option.
“My husband is dealing with cancer. He’s going through chemotherapy. And I am an amputee. So there was no going anywhere besides the attic,” Dunn said.
Dunn said their home and neighboring houses “are gone.”
Just to the east of Waverly, the town of McEwen was pummeled with about 17 inches (43 centimeters) of rain in less than a day, prompting water rescues, road closures, and communications disruptions. That rainfall total smashed the state’s 24-hour record of 13.6 inches (34.5 centimeters) from 1982, according to the National Weather Service Nashville, though Saturday’s numbers would have to be confirmed.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee tweeted on Saturday, “Tennesseans, please stay cautious of rising floodwaters caused by heavy rainfall in parts of Middle TN. We are actively working with emergency response officials & first responders as they support Tennesseans in flooded areas.”
The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency activated its emergency operations center and said agencies that include the Tennessee National Guard, the state Highway Patrol, and Fire Mutual Aid were responding to the flooding. In a bulletin, TEMA called the situation “dangerous and evolving” and urged people to avoid travel in the affected counties.
Read:Officials: Storm lashing Florida strengthens into hurricane
Klein isn’t sure for what the future holds for his family or his town.
He also isn’t sure what happened to the two girls and the puppy he witnessed who had been clinging on to the board. He heard that a girl and a puppy had been rescued downstream, and that the other girl was also saved, but he wasn’t sure it was them.
“This is the third 100-hundred year flood that we’ve had in about 10 years,” referencing 2010 and 2019 floods. “But this is 100 times worse than either one of them was. ... The last report I saw was there were 31 missing. This is a small town so the odds are I know most of those people.”
Biden vows to evacuate all Americans — and Afghan helpers
President Joe Biden has pledged firmly to bring all Americans home from Afghanistan — and all Afghans who aided the war effort, too — as officials confirmed that U.S. military helicopters flew beyond the Kabul airport to scoop up 169 Americans seeking to evacuate.
Biden’s promises came Friday as thousands more Americans and others seeking to escape the Taliban struggled to get past crushing crowds, Taliban airport checkpoints and sometimes-insurmountable U.S. bureaucracy.
“We will get you home,” Biden promised Americans who were still in Afghanistan days after the Taliban retook control of Kabul, ending a two-decade war.
The president’s comments, delivered at the White House, were intended to project purpose and stability at the conclusion of a week during which images from Afghanistan more often suggested chaos, especially at the airport.
His commitment to find a way out for Afghan allies vulnerable to Taliban attacks amounted to a potentially vast expansion of Washington’s promises, given the tens of thousands of translators and other helpers, and their close family members, seeking evacuation.
READ: Defiant Biden is face of chaotic Afghan evacuation
“We’re making the same commitment” to Afghan wartime helpers as to U.S. citizens, Biden said, offering the prospect of assistance to Afghans who largely have been fighting individual battles to get the documents and passage into the airport that they need to leave. He called the Afghan allies “equally important” in the evacuations.
Meanwhile, Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had disconcerting news for the lawmakers he briefed Friday, confirming that Americans are among those who have been beaten by the Taliban at airport checkpoints.
Biden is facing continuing criticism as videos and news reports depict pandemonium and occasional violence outside the airport.
“I made the decision” on the timing of the U.S. withdrawal, he said, his tone firm as he declared that it was going to lead to difficult scenes, no matter when. Former President Donald Trump had set the departure for May in negotiations with the Taliban, but Biden extended it.
Thousands of people remain to be evacuated ahead of Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw most remaining U.S. troops. Flights were stopped for several hours Friday because of a backup at a transit point for the refugees, a U.S. airbase in Qatar, but they resumed in the afternoon, including to Bahrain.
READ: Biden team surprised by rapid Taliban gains in Afghanistan
Still, potential evacuees faced continuing problems getting into the airport. The Belgian foreign ministry confirmed that one of its planes took off empty because the people who were supposed to be aboard couldn’t get in.
A defense official said about 5,700 people, including about 250 Americans, were flown out of Kabul aboard 16 C-17 transport planes, guarded by a temporary U.S. military deployment that’s building to 6,000 troops. On each of the previous two days, about 2,000 people were airlifted.
Biden said 169 Americans had been brought to the airport from beyond its perimeter, but he provided no details. Later, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the 169 had gathered at the Baron Hotel near the airport and were flown across the airport perimeter to safety Thursday. He said they were transported by three U.S. military CH-47 helicopters.
Kirby said the helicopters took no hostile fire. He added that the Americans initially were going to walk the short distance from the hotel to an airport gate, but a crowd outside the gate changed the plan.
Separately, senior American military officials told The Associated Press that a U.S. helicopter picked up Afghans, mostly women and children, and ferried them to the airport Friday. The 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division airlifted the Afghans from Camp Sullivan, near the Kabul airport. Those officials commented only on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.
Kirby said he was not aware of any such Friday helicopter mission.
For those living in cities and provinces outside Kabul, CIA case officers, special operation forces and agents from the Defense Intelligence Agency on the ground are gathering some U.S. citizens and Afghans who worked for the U.S. at predetermined pick-up sites.
The officials would not detail where these airlift sites were for security reasons. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing operations.
In Washington, some veterans in Congress were calling on the Biden administration to extend a security perimeter beyond the Kabul airport so more Afghans could get through.
The lawmakers also said they want Biden to make clearer that the Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops is not a firm one.
The deadline “is contributing to the chaos and the panic at the airport because you have Afghans who think that they have 10 days to get out of this country or that door is closing forever,” said Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., who served in Iraq and also worked in Afghanistan to help aid workers provide humanitarian relief.
With mobs of people outside the airport and Taliban fighters ringing its perimeter, the U.S. renewed its advisory to Americans and others that it could not guarantee safe passage for any of those desperately seeking seats on the planes inside. The Taliban are regularly firing into the air to try to control the crowds, sending men, women and children running.
The advisory captured some of the pandemonium, and what many Afghans and foreigners see as their life-and-death struggle to get inside. It said: “We are processing people at multiple gates. Due to large crowds and security concerns, gates may open or close without notice. Please use your best judgment and attempt to enter the airport at any gate that is open.”
While Biden has previously blamed Afghans for the U.S. failure to get out more allies ahead of this month’s sudden Taliban takeover, U.S. officials told The AP that American diplomats had formally urged weeks ago that the administration ramp up evacuation efforts.
Biden said Friday he had gotten a wide variety of time estimates, though all were pessimistic about the Afghan government surviving.
He has said he was following the advice of Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed president, Ashraf Ghani, in not earlier expanding U.S. efforts to fly out translators and other endangered Afghans. Ghani fled the country last weekend as the Taliban seized the capital.
Biden has also said many at-risk Afghan allies had not wanted to leave the country. But refugee groups point to yearslong backlogs of applications from thousands of those Afghans for visas that would let them take refuge in the United States.
Afghans and the Americans trying to help them also say the administration has clung to visa requirements for would-be evacuees that involve more than a dozen steps, and can take years to complete. Those often have included requirements that the Taliban sweep has made dangerous or impossible — such as requiring Afghans to go to a third country to apply for a U.S. visa, and produce paperwork showing their work with Americans.
Man surrenders after claiming to have bomb near US Capitol
A North Carolina man who claimed to have a bomb in a pickup truck near the U.S. Capitol surrendered to law enforcement after an hourslong standoff Thursday that prompted a massive police response and the evacuations of government buildings in the area.
Authorities were investigating what led the suspect, identified as 49-year-old Floyd Ray Roseberry, to drive onto the sidewalk outside the Library of Congress, make bomb threats to officers and profess a litany of antigovernment grievances as part of a bizarre episode that he live-streamed for a Facebook audience. Police later searched the vehicle and said they did not find a bomb but did collect possible bomb-making materials.
The standoff was resolved peacefully after roughly five hours of negotiations, ending when Roseberry crawled out of the truck and was taken into police custody. But even in a city with a long history of dramatic law enforcement encounters outside federal landmarks, this episode was notable for its timing — Washington remains on edge eight months after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — and for the way the suspect harnessed social media to draw attention to his actions in the hours before his arrest.
Read: Afghan official: bombs hit 2 minivans in Kabul, 7 dead
Authorities who spent hours negotiating with Roseberry — he held up handwritten signs through his driver-side window — were continuing to dig into his background Thursday evening. They did not reveal any details about a motive, and no charges were immediately announced.
Investigators had been speaking with members of Roseberry’s family and learned that his mother had recently died, Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said. “There were other issues he was dealing with,” the chief said, without providing specific details.
But social media appeared to offer its own clues.
As police continued negotiations, video surfaced of Roseberry on Facebook Live inside the truck, which was stuffed with coins and boxes. He threatened explosions, expressed hostility toward President Joe Biden, profanely warned of a “revolution” and laid bare a series of grievances related to U.S. positions on Afghanistan, health care and the military.
Roseberry’s ex-wife, Crystal Roseberry, said she had seen images of the man in the standoff at the Capitol and confirmed to The Associated Press that it was her ex-husband. She said she had never known him to have explosives, but he was an avid collector of firearms.
Videos posted to Facebook before the page was taken down appear to show Roseberry at a Nov. 14 Washington rally attended by thousands of Trump supporters to protest what they claimed was a stolen election. One video appears to be filmed by Roseberry as he’s marching with a crowd of hundreds of people carrying American flags and Trump flags and shouting “stop the steal.”
Thursday’s incident began around 9:15 a.m. when a truck drove up the sidewalk outside the library. The driver told the responding officer he had a bomb, and he was holding what the officer believed to be a detonator. The truck had no license plates.
Read: Israeli military says it bombed home of a top Hamas leader
Kelsey Campbell, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison visiting Washington as part of a class trip, said she and another student encountered Roseberry around 9:20 a.m. outside the nearby Supreme Court building. Campbell said he was with his truck, which was parked next to the sidewalk, and was holding a large stack of dollar bills.
“He said, ‘Hey, call the police, tell them to evacuate this street, and I’ll give you all this money,’” Campbell recounted to The AP. “I said, ’No!’ and he threw the money at us and we started running.”
Campbell said she and the other student saw some police officers standing nearby. They told the officers what happened, and the officers then went to confront Roseberry.
The standoff brought the area surrounding the Capitol to a virtual standstill as police emptied buildings and cordoned off streets as a precaution. Congress is in recess this week, but staffers were seen calmly walking out of the area at the direction of authorities.
By Thursday evening, authorities had finished searching the vehicle and determined the area to be safe after not finding an explosive.
The nation’s capital has been tense since the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, when thousands of supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the building as Congress was gathered to certify the results of the presidential election.
Read:Bomb kills at least 30 near girls’ school in Afghan capital
A day before the riot at the Capitol, pipe bombs were left at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee in Washington. No one has been arrested yet for placing the bombs.
The RNC, not far from where the truck was parked Thursday, was also evacuated over the threat. A spokesman for the DNC said its headquarters, which is located farther away from the truck’s location, was put under lockdown, but that lockdown has been lifted.
Thursday’s incident marked the third time in as many weeks that federal and military law enforcement authorities had to respond to attacks or possible threats in the Washington area. Officials are also jittery over a planned rally in September.
Oxygen plant among earthquake-damaged buildings in Haiti
As if Haiti’s 7.2 magnitude earthquake, a tropical storm and the coronavirus pandemic weren’t enough, the temblor damaged the only medical oxygen plant in the southern part of the country.
The building that housed the oxygen concentrator machines that the region depended on partially collapsed, and the machines were upended. The Etheuss company is run by the a family famous for their vetiver perfume oils plant in the city of Les Cayes, one of the areas hardest hit by Saturday’s earthquake.
“We are trying to get the oxygen production started again. That is our responsibility, because many people depend on it,” said Kurtch Jeune, one of the brothers who run the plant, as he showed reporters through the damaged, rubble-strewn plants on Thursday.
The quake left concrete pillars and roofs at the facility leaning, and cement block rubble battered the tanks, electrical system and the delicate web of copper tubing that fills vital oxygen plants. “The oxygen generators are upside down,” Jeune said. “We did get a promise of help from the public works department to get the rubble out with excavators.”
Read: Tensions over aid grow in Haiti as quake’s deaths pass 2K
Jeune said that, apart from two medical oxygen plants in the capital, Port-au-Prince, his factory was the only one serving local hospitals. As the COVID-19 pandemic grinds on, Jeune says demand for oxygen has gone up 200% in the last month.
“We have the capacity to supply 40 oxygen cylinders per day,” Jeune said. “We supply several hospitals.”
The powerful earthquake that struck Haiti’s southwestern peninsula killed at least 2,189 and injured 12,268 people, according to official figures. More than 300 people are estimated to still be missing, said Serge Chery, head of civil defense for the Southern Province, which includes the small port city of Les Cayes.
More than 100,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, leaving about 30,000 families homeless, according to official estimates. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches also were demolished or badly damaged.
The earthquake was trailed by a tropical storm that brought heavy rain and strong winds at the beginning of the week.
Private relief supplies and shipments from the U.S. government and others began flowing more quickly into Haiti on Thursday, but the Caribbean nation’s entrenched poverty, insecurity and lack of basic infrastructure still presented huge challenges to getting food and urgent medical care to all those who need it.
Read: What makes Haiti prone to devastating earthquakes
Adding to the problems, a major hospital in the capital of Port-au-Prince, where many of the injured were being sent, closed for two days beginning Thursday to protest the kidnapping of two doctors, including one of the country’s few orthopedic surgeons.
The abductions dealt a blow to attempts to control criminal violence that has threatened disaster response efforts in the capital.
Further, a group of 18 Colombian volunteer search-and-rescue workers had to be escorted out of the quake-hit city of Jeremie under police protection after a false rumor circulated that they had been involved in the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moise. The workers took shelter Wednesday night at a civil defense office, and police escorted them to the airport on Thursday.
Moise’s killing, still unsolved, is suspected of being carried out by a group of Colombian mercenaries. Despite what happened to the Colombian rescue workers, Haiti is welcoming “everyone who is coming to bring assistance,” said Jerry Chandler, the head of the national Civil Protection Agency.
Health care facilities in the Western Hemisphere poorest nation were already at a critical point before the earthquake because of the pandemic. The country of 11 million people has reported 20,556 cases and 576 deaths of COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Haiti received its first batch of U.S.-donated coronavirus vaccines only last month via a United Nations program for low-income countries.
The rest of Jeune’s factory, which produces an essential oil used in fine perfumes, was also badly damaged.
Read: Rescuers racing in Haiti as storm threatens to follow quake
The family’s business processes bales of beige, stringy roots culled from the vetiver plant to produce more than half the world’s vetiver oil.
Vetiver oil is also used for cosmetics, soaps and aromatherapy. It generates an estimated $12 million in revenue a year and employs anywhere from 15,000 to 60,000 farmers.
The damage to the factory threatens Haiti’s already perilous rural economy, plagued by drought, soil erosion and tropical storms.
Haiti produces more than 70 tons of vetiver oil a year, surpassing Indonesia, China, India, Brazil and the neighboring Dominican Republic. It is one of the country’s top exports, with up to 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres) harvested annually. But more than 60% of the crop still comes from individual producers, many of whom are struggling financially, according to Gabriel Gelin, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program in Haiti.