#wildfire

#wildfire

"If you just dropped in from another planet and you didn't know and you started looking at L.A. wildfires ... you would think the only area that was hit was Pacific Palisades," said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable. "West Altadena has gotten lost in the shuffle." The historically Black community, made up primarily of working-class families, didn't receive evacuation alerts until the fire had already descended on their neighborhoods.

Most nights for the last year, Darlene Hamilton slept four hours and woke at about 4.30am. She wanted to sleep, but she could not. Instead the 66-year-old started the day at her Altadena rental home in morning darkness with a familiar routine, scouring through websites of local humane societies and lost animal groups in search of two familiar little faces.

This weekend, I stood on a bluff in the Palisades where houses used to be. Los Angeles rose to my left, and the sky had the dramatic clouds we get in the winter when it rains, as it has for a few weeks. The hillsides have turned to Irish green, but the burn scar, below, is still black. Twice, when my family drove past during the holidays, our phones blared with evacuation alerts for possible mudslides and flooding.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story. The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

I was retracing my steps of 20 years earlier to a scene of mass death I had never been able to erase from my mind. At a small plateau alongside Ninemile Creek in the Golden Trout Wilderness Area, I had stood in a forest of black sticks standing on both sides of a steep canyon like whiskers on a beast too large to comprehend.

Iran has urgently requested international assistance to combat a devastating wildfire that has been raging for nearly three weeks in the ancient Hyrcanian Forests, which have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2019. The blaze, which began near the village of Elit in Mazandaran Province on October 31, has defied containment efforts and continues to threaten one of the world's oldest and most biodiverse ecosystems.

This was "a nightmare scenario," said a firefighter with the park, who also spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. During the last government shutdown six years ago, the revelation that vandals appeared to have chopped down a few of the Dr. Seuss-esque trees grabbed national headlines. In this instance, the firefighter estimates more than a thousand trees were torched.

TOKYO Firefighters and army helicopters battled a fire Wednesday that burned through a neighborhood of old wooden houses in a fishing town in southwestern Japan, killing one person, injuring another and forcing more than 170 people to evacuate. A man in his 70s was unaccounted for and firefighters later found a body, possibly of the missing man, and a woman in her 50s suffered a minor injury, the Oita prefecture disaster response team said.

The Pack Fire burning near Crowley Lake on the eastern slope of California's Sierra Nevada, about 20 miles east of Mammoth Mountain, has grown to 3,400 acres with no containment as of Friday morning, according to Cal Fire. The wildfire ignited Thursday afternoon near McGee Creek Road, west of Highway 395, under strong winds and dry conditions. Officials reported gusts up to 30 mph, which grounded firefighting aircraft and complicated suppression efforts through much of Thursday.

Edison International Chief Executive Pedro Pizarro said Wednesday that the utility expects the first Eaton fire victims who have agreed not to sue the utility to get their settlement offers later this month. In an interview, Pizarro said that the utility decided to create the program to pay victims before the fire investigation was complete to get money to them more quickly and because it has become more apparent that the company's equipment ignited the inferno that killed 19 people.

After disasters - natural or otherwise - people with disabilities often find themselves in temporary lodging that offers a roof, but lacks the safe, customized environment they need. This can result in many dangers and difficulties, including leaving people in wheelchairs or who require walkers to spend weeks or months in unfamiliar rental housing with dangerous stairways, rather than accessibility-friendly ramps.

The team collected weather reports, topographic data, G.P.S. records from fire engines, photos, videos, and property-damage reports. They debriefed more than two hundred witnesses, mostly first responders. After a hundred and fifty "technical discussions," Maranghides finally met two firefighters from Northern California who were able to explain the miracle at Hot Springs Court. Their crew had parked their fire truck there and, for an entire night, had hosed down the four houses. (A fortuitous change in the wind helped, too.)

In the U.S., the annual area burned by wildfires has more than doubled over the past 20 years. In addition to the lost carbon storage, wildfires cost lives, create harmful smoke pollution, and make it more expensive to insure and rebuild our communities. The bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act ( HR 471) can help. The bill includes provisions to increase resiliency to catastrophic wildfires, restore forest health and build fire-safety defenses for communities in high-risk areas.

It's been five years since a sudden shift in the wind brought the North Complex fire roaring up a remote canyon into the pines of Berry Creek, where it incinerated almost all of the more than 1,500 houses in the area and killed 16 people. But to many of the hundreds of people who remain in the mountain hamlet in Butte County, the blaze that burned through their homes and

Namibia has deployed more than 500 soldiers to help fight a fire that has burned through a third of the vast Etosha National Park, one of Africa's largest wildlife reserves, Prime Minister Tjitunga Ngurare Manongo said in a social media post. Manongo said, starting Sunday, the troops would help firefighters, police, and volunteers who are already fighting the raging fire.

Twenty-four days after the worst wildfire in L.A. history burned their stadium, members of the Palisades Charter High School football team stretched and twisted on a middle school field in Santa Monica. To the north, a sickly orange haze hung along the horizon, a reminder of the inferno that had reduced parts of their school to a ragged tangle of charred masonry, metal and wood. About 10 players had lost their homes in the Palisades fire.

Protesters burn tyres in protest at a curfew imposed after unrest over a social media ban and political corruption Photograph: Niranjan Shrestha/AP The Israeli military drops leaflets urging residents to leave their homes ahead of a planned offensive Photograph: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images Palestinian women and children sit on a vehicle with their luggage as they flee following the Israeli evacuation order Photograph: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters Smoke rises from the house of Sabit Mesalme, a Palestinian prisoner, after the building was targeted by the Israel army Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

A brush fire ignited near homes in San Diego County on Monday afternoon, damaging multiple structures and prompting evacuation orders in the surrounding community of Lakeside. The blaze, dubbed the Coches 2 fire, began around 3 p.m. north of Interstate 8 at Los Coches Road in Lakeside, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection San Diego Unit. Helicopter footage captured by NBC7 News showed smoke engulfing several hillside structures as ground crews attacked the flames with hoses.