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Tag: Hurricanes and typhoons

  • Climate change boosted Helene’s deadly rain and wind and scientists say same is likely for Milton

    Climate change boosted Helene’s deadly rain and wind and scientists say same is likely for Milton

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    Human-caused climate change boosted a devastating Hurricane Helene ‘s rainfall by about 10% and intensified its winds by about 11%, scientists said in a new flash study released just as a strengthening Hurricane Milton threatens the Florida coast less than two weeks later.

    The warming climate boosted Helene’s wind speeds by about 13 miles per hour (20.92 kilometers per hour), and made the high sea temperatures that fueled the storm 200 to 500 times more likely, World Weather Attribution calculated Wednesday from Europe. Ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above average, WWA said.

    “Hurricane Helene and the storms that were happening in the region anyway have all been amplified by the fact that the air is warmer and can hold more moisture, which meant that the rainfall totals — which, even without climate change, would have been incredibly high given the circumstances — were even higher,” Ben Clarke, a study co-author and a climate researcher at Imperial College London, said in an interview.

    Milton will likely be similarly juiced, the authors said.

    The scientists warned that continued burning of fossil fuels will lead to more hurricanes like Helene, with “unimaginable” floods well inland, not just on coasts. Many of those who died in Helene fell victim to massive inland flooding, rather than high winds.

    Helene made landfall in Florida with record storm surge 15 feet (4.57 meters) high and catastrophic sustained winds reaching 140 miles per hour (225.31 kilometers per hour), pummeling Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Virginia. It decimated remote towns throughout the Appalachians, left millions without power, cellular service and supplies and killed over 230 people. Search crews in the days following continued to look for bodies. Helene was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005.

    Helene dumped more than 40 trillion gallons of rain — an unprecedented amount of water — onto the region, meteorologists estimated. That rainfall would have been much less intense if humans hadn’t warmed the climate, according to WWA, an international scientist collaborative that runs rapid climate attribution studies.

    “When you start talking about the volumes involved, when you add even just a few percent on top of that, it makes it even much more destructive,” Clarke said.

    Hurricanes as intense as Helene were once expected every 130 years on average, but today are about 2.5 times more likely in the region, the scientists calculated.

    The WWA launched in 2015 to assess the extent which extreme weather events could be attributed to climate change. The organization’s rapid studies aren’t peer-reviewed but use peer-reviewed methods. The team of scientists tested the influence of climate change on Helene by analyzing weather data and climate models including the Imperial College Storm Model, the Climate Shift Index for oceans and the standard WWA approach, which compares an actual event with what might have been expected in a world that hasn’t warmed about 1.3 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times.

    A separate analysis of Helene last week by Department of Energy Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientists determined that climate change caused 50% more rainfall in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas, and that observed rainfall was “made up to 20 times more likely in these areas because of global warming.” That study was also not peer-reviewed but used a method published in a study about Hurricane Harvey.

    Kim Cobb, director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, wasn’t involved in either study. She said there are uncertainties in exactly how much climate change is supercharging storms like Helene, but “we know that it’s increasing the power and devastation of these storms.”

    She said Helene and Milton should serve “as a wake up call” for emergency preparedness, resilience planning and the increased use of fossil fuels.

    “Going forward, additional warming that we know will occur over the next 10 or 20 years will even worsen the statistics of hurricanes,” she said, “and we will break new records.”

    Analysis is already indicating climate change made possible the warmed sea temperatures that also rapidly intensified Milton. Clarke said the two massive storms in quick succession illustrates the potential future of climate change if humans don’t stop it.

    “As we go into the future and our results show this as well, we still have control over what trajectory this goes in as to what risks we face in the future, what costs we pay in the future,” he said. “That just hinges on how we change our energy systems and how many more fossil fuels we burn.”

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    Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

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    Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Voters in North Carolina and Georgia have bigger problems than politics. Helene changed everything

    Voters in North Carolina and Georgia have bigger problems than politics. Helene changed everything

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    VILAS, N.C. (AP) — Brad Farrington pulls over to grab a case of water bottles being passed out in Vilas, a small rural community tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He’s on his way to help a friend who lost much of what he owned when Hurricane Helene blew through last weekend.

    His friend, like countless others across western North Carolina, is starting over, which explains why Farrington isn’t thinking too much about politics or the White House race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris right now.

    “I don’t believe people’s hope is in either people that are being elected,” he said.

    Farrington pauses, then gestures toward a dozen volunteers loading water and other necessities into cars and trucks.

    “I believe we’re finding a lot more hope within folks like this,” he said.

    In the election’s final weeks, people in North Carolina and Georgia, influential swing states, are dealing with more immediate concerns: widespread storm damage. If that weren’t enough, voters in Watauga County, a ticket-splitting Appalachian county that has become more Democratic in recent years, must contend with politicians laying blame while offering support as they campaign in a race that could be decided by any small shift.

    Large uprooted trees litter the sides of roads, sometimes blocking driveways. Some homes in Vilas are inaccessible after bridges collapsed and roads crumbled. More populous areas like Boone, home of Appalachian State University, saw major flooding.

    Residents wonder where are missing friends and relatives, is there enough food and water to last until new supplies arrive and how will they rebuild.

    The focus is on survival, not politics — and may remain that way for weeks.

    Politicians travel to affected battleground states

    Trump and Harris have visited North Carolina and Georgia five times since the storm hit. Trump was in North Carolina on Friday, and Harris was there the next day.

    After Trump went to Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday, 20-year-old Fermin Herrera said the former president clinched his vote with his display of caring, not out of any frustration with how President Joe Biden and Harris, the vice president, are handling the federal disaster response. Herrera already leaned toward voting for Trump.

    “I feel like everybody’s kind doing what they can,” he said. “All the locals are appreciating the help that’s coming.”

    Trump, who has his own mixed record on natural disaster response, attacked Biden and Harris for what he said was a slow response to Helene’s destruction. Trump accused the Democrats of “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas” and said there wasn’t enough Federal Emergency Management Agency money because it was spent on illegal immigrants. There is no evidence to support either claim.

    “I’m not thinking about voters right now,” Trump insisted after a meeting with Gov. Brian Kemp, R-Ga., on Friday. “I’m thinking about lives.”

    Biden pushed back hard, saying he is “committed to being president for all of America” and has not ordered aid to be distributed based on party lines. The White House cited statements from the Republican governors of Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee expressing satisfaction with the federal government’s response.

    FEMA’s head, Deanne Criswell, told ABC’s “This Week” that this “truly dangerous narrative” of falsehoods is “demoralizing” to first responders and creating “fear in our own employees.”

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    Criticism of aid efforts so soon after a natural disaster is “inappropriate,” especially when factoring in the daunting logistical problems in western North Carolina, said Gavin Smith, a North Carolina State University professor who specializes in disaster recovery. He said the perilous terrain from compromised roads and bridges and the widespread lack of power and cellphone service make disaster response in the region particularly challenging.

    Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has made several stops in western North Carolina, including Watauga County and surrounding areas, and Biden viewed the extensive damage via an aerial tour.

    A focus on recovering and rebuilding

    In Watauga County, Jessica Dixon was scraping muck and broken furniture off the ground with a shovel, then dumping it in the bucket of a humming excavator. The 29-year-old stood in a home she bought two years ago. It’s now gutted after a rush of water forced Dixon, her boyfriend and their two dogs to flee to safety.

    Without flood insurance, Dixon is not sure what will happen over the next month. She said she filled out a FEMA application but hasn’t checked her email since. She had given the presidential election some thought before Helene, but now she’s preoccupied with cleaning her home.

    “It wouldn’t change my views on anything,” said Dixon, who was planning to vote for Harris.

    The presidential election isn’t top of mind for 47-year-old Bobby Cordell, either. He’s trying to get help to neighbors in western Watauga County, which has become inaccessible in some parts.

    His home near Beech Mountain is one of those places, he said, after a bridge washed away. Cordell rescued his aunt from a mudslide, then traveled to Boone and has been staying in Appalachian State’s Holmes Convocation Center, which now serves as a Red Cross emergency shelter.

    He’s trying to send disaster relief back where he lives by contacting officials, including from FEMA. That conversation, he said, “went very well.”

    Accepting help isn’t easy for people in the mountains, he said, because they’re used to taking care of themselves.

    Now, though, the people who are trapped “need everything they can get.”

    Helping neighbors becomes more important in Helene’s aftermath

    Over the past week of volunteering at Skateworld, where Farrington stopped for water, it’s become harder for Nancy Crawford to smile. She’s helped serve more than 1,000 people, she said, but the emotional toll has started to settle in for “a lot of us that normally are tough.”

    That burden added to the weight she was already feeling about the election, which she said was “scary to begin with.” Crawford, a registered Republican, said she plans to vote for Harris. As a Latina of Mexican descent, she thinks Trump’s immigration policies would have harmful effects on her community.

    The storm, she said, likely won’t change her vote but has made one thing evident.

    “It doesn’t matter what party you are, we all need help,” she said.

    Jan Wellborn had a similar thought as she made her way around the Watauga High School gym collecting supplies to bring to coworkers in need. A 69-year-old bus driver for the school district, she said the outpouring of support she’s seen from the community has been a “godsend.”

    She takes solace from the county’s ability to pull together. The election matters, she said, but helping people make their way through a harrowing time matters more.

    “The election, it should be important,” Wellborn said. “But right now we need to focus on getting everybody in the county taken care of.”

    ——

    Associated Press writer Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this report.

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  • US disaster relief chief blasts false claims about Helene response as a ‘truly dangerous narrative’

    US disaster relief chief blasts false claims about Helene response as a ‘truly dangerous narrative’

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government’s top disaster relief official said Sunday that false claims and conspiracy theories about the federal response to Hurricane Helene — spread most prominently by Donald Trump — are “demoralizing” aid workers and creating fear in people who need recovery assistance.

    “It’s frankly ridiculous, and just plain false. This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people,” said Deanne Criswell, who leads the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people, and that’s what we’re here to do. We have had the complete support of the state,” she said, referring to North Carolina.

    AP AUDIO: Correspondent Julie Walker reports after the deluge, lies and misinformation are clouding the recovery effort from Hurricane Helene.

    Republicans, led by the former president, have helped foster a frenzy of misinformation over the past week among the communities most devastated by Helene, promoting a number of false claims, including that Washington is intentionally withholding aid to people in Republican areas.

    Trump accused FEMA of spending all its money to help immigrants who are in the United States illegally, while other critics assert that the government spends too much on Israel, Ukraine and other foreign countries.

    “FEMA absolutely has enough money for Helene response right now,” Keith Turi, acting director of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery said. He noted that Congress recently replenished the agency with $20 billion, and about $8 billion of that is set aside for recovery from previous storms and mitigation projects.

    There also are outlandish theories that include warnings from far-right extremist groups that officials plan to bulldoze storm-damaged communities and seize the land from residents. A falsehood pushed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., asserts that Washington used weather control technology to steer Helene toward Republican voters in order to tilt the presidential election toward Democrat Kamala Harris.

    Criswell said on ABC’s “This Week” that such baseless claims around the response to Helene, which caused catastrophic damage from Florida into the Appalachian mountains and a death toll that rose Sunday to at least 230, have created a sense of fear and mistrust from residents against the thousands of FEMA employees and volunteers on the ground.

    “We’ve had the local officials helping to push back on this dangerous — truly dangerous narrative that is creating this fear of trying to reach out and help us or to register for help,” she said.

    President Joe Biden said in a statement Sunday that his administration “will continue working hand-in-hand with local and state leaders –- regardless of political party and no matter how long it takes.”

    Meantime, FEMA is preparing for Hurricane Milton, which rapidly intensified into a Category 1 storm on Sunday as it heads toward Florida.

    “We’re working with the state there to understand what their requirements are going to be, so we can have those in place before it makes landfall,” she said.

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  • Milton increases to a Category 2 hurricane as Florida prepares for massive evacuations

    Milton increases to a Category 2 hurricane as Florida prepares for massive evacuations

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida — Milton increased to a Category 2 hurricane early Monday as Florida gears up for what could be its biggest evacuation in seven years as the storm heads toward major population centers including Tampa and Orlando.

    Hurricane Milton was strengthening over the southern Gulf of Mexico as storm surge and hurricane watches for parts of Florida and a hurricane warning for the Mexican coast were issued, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. The storm-ravaged Gulf Coast in Florida was expected to hit again.

    While forecast models vary widely, the most likely path suggests Milton could make landfall Wednesday in the Tampa Bay area and remain a hurricane as it moves across central Florida into the Atlantic Ocean. That would largely spare other southeastern states ravaged by Hurricane Helene, which caused catastrophic damage from Florida into the Appalachian Mountains and a death toll that rose Sunday to at least 230 people.

    The Mexican government issued a hurricane warning for the Yucatan Peninsula from Celestun to Rio Lagartos, the center said.

    About 7 million people were urged to evacuate Florida in 2017 as Hurricane Irma bore down on the state. The exodus jammed freeways, led to hourslong lines at gas stations that still had fuel and left evacuees frustrated and, in some cases, vowing never to evacuate again.

    Building on lessons learned during Irma and other previous storms, Florida is staging emergency fuel for gas vehicles and charging stations for electric vehicles along evacuation routes, Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said at a Sunday briefing.

    “We are looking at every potential, possible location that can potentially house someone, as what we refer to in emergency management, as a refuge of last resort,” Guthrie added.

    The storm, which the center said was likely to become a major hurricane Monday, was centered about 195 miles (314 kilometers) west-northwest of Progreso, Mexico, and 750 miles (1,207 kilometers) west-southwest of Tampa with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (161 kph) while moving east-southeast at 8 mph (12.8 kph), the hurricane center said.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday that while it remains to be seen where Milton will strike, it’s clear the state is going to be hit hard.

    “I don’t think there’s any scenario where we don’t have major impacts at this point,” he said.

    “You have time to prepare — all day today, all day Monday, probably all day Tuesday to be sure your hurricane preparedness plan is in place,” DeSantis said. “If you’re on that west coast of Florida, barrier islands, just assume you’ll be asked to leave.”

    With Milton achieving hurricane status, this is the first time the Atlantic has had three simultaneous hurricanes after September, according to Colorado State University hurricane scientist Phil Klotzbach. There have been four simultaneous hurricanes in August and September.

    The St. Petersburg-Tampa Bay area is still cleaning up extensive damage from Helene and its powerful storm surge. Twelve people perished as Helene swamped the coast, with the worst damage along the narrow, 20-mile (32-kilometer) string of barrier islands that stretch from St. Petersburg to Clearwater.

    DeSantis expanded his state of emergency declaration Sunday to 51 counties and said Floridians should prepare for more power outages and disruption, making sure they have a week’s worth of food and water and are ready to hit the road.

    “We are preparing … for the largest evacuation that we have seen, most likely since 2017, Hurricane Irma,” Guthrie said.

    People who live in homes built after Florida strengthened codes in 2004, who don’t depend on constant electricity and who aren’t in evacuation zones should probably avoid the roads, Guthrie said.

    All classes and school activities in St. Petersburg’s Pinellas County preemptively closed Monday through Wednesday as Milton approached. Officials in Tampa opened all city garages free of charge to residents hoping to protect their cars from floodwaters, including electric vehicles. The vehicles must be left on the third floor or higher in each garage.

    As many as 4,000 National Guard troops are helping state crews to remove debris, DeSantis said, and he directed Florida crews dispatched to North Carolina in Helene’s aftermath to return in preparation for Milton.

    “All available state assets … are being marshaled to help remove debris,” DeSantis said. “We’re going 24-7 … it’s all hands on deck.”

    FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell defended her agency’s response to Hurricane’s destruction after Republicans’ false claims, amplified by former President Donald Trump, created a frenzy of misinformation across devastated communities.

    “This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people and it’s really a shame we’re putting politics ahead of helping people,” Criswell told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. It has created fear and mistrust among residents against the thousands of FEMA employees and volunteers on the ground across the southeast, she said.

    Despite this, Criswell said the agency is already preparing for Milton, well before it’s clear exactly where the storm will move across the Florida peninsula.

    Federal disaster assistance has surpassed $137 million since Helene struck more than a week ago, one of the largest mobilizations of personnel and resources in recent history, FEMA said Sunday.

    Some 1,500 active-duty troops, more than 6,100 National Guardsmen and nearly 7,000 federal workers have been deployed, shipping more than 14.9 million meals, 13.9 million liters (3.6 million gallons) of water, 157 generators and 505,000 tarps, along with approving more than $30 million in housing and other types of assistance for over 27,000 households, according to FEMA, the White House and the Department of Defense.

    More than 800 people unable to return home are staying in lodging provided through FEMA and 22 shelters are still housing nearly 1,000 people as mobile feeding operations continue to help survivors. The response to Helene won’t let up during Milton and its aftermath, because FEMA has the capacity to address multiple disasters simultaneously, the agency said.

    “My Administration is sparing no resource to support families as they begin their road to rebuilding,” President Joe Biden said. “We will continue working hand-in-hand with local and state leaders — regardless of political party and no matter how long it takes.”

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  • US disaster relief chief blasts false claims about Helene response as a ‘truly dangerous narrative’

    US disaster relief chief blasts false claims about Helene response as a ‘truly dangerous narrative’

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    WASHINGTON — The U.S. government’s top disaster relief official said Sunday that false claims and conspiracy theories about the federal response to Hurricane Helene — spread most prominently by Donald Trump — are “demoralizing” aid workers and creating fear in people who need recovery assistance.

    “It’s frankly ridiculous, and just plain false. This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people,” said Deanne Criswell, who leads the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people, and that’s what we’re here to do. We have had the complete support of the state,” she said, referring to North Carolina.

    Republicans, led by the former president, have helped foster a frenzy of misinformation over the past week among the communities most devastated by Helene, promoting a number of false claims, including that Washington is intentionally withholding aid to people in Republican areas.

    Trump accused FEMA of spending all its money to help immigrants who are in the United States illegally, while other critics assert that the government spends too much on Israel, Ukraine and other foreign countries.

    “FEMA absolutely has enough money for Helene response right now,” Keith Turi, acting director of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery said. He noted that Congress recently replenished the agency with $20 billion, and about $8 billion of that is set aside for recovery from previous storms and mitigation projects.

    There also are outlandish theories that include warnings from far-right extremist groups that officials plan to bulldoze storm-damaged communities and seize the land from residents. A falsehood pushed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., asserts that Washington used weather control technology to steer Helene toward Republican voters in order to tilt the presidential election toward Democrat Kamala Harris.

    Criswell said on ABC’s “This Week” that such baseless claims around the response to Helene, which caused catastrophic damage from Florida into the Appalachian mountains and a death toll that rose Sunday to at least 230, have created a sense of fear and mistrust from residents against the thousands of FEMA employees and volunteers on the ground.

    “We’ve had the local officials helping to push back on this dangerous — truly dangerous narrative that is creating this fear of trying to reach out and help us or to register for help,” she said.

    President Joe Biden said in a statement Sunday that his administration “will continue working hand-in-hand with local and state leaders –- regardless of political party and no matter how long it takes.”

    Meantime, FEMA is preparing for Hurricane Milton, which rapidly intensified into a Category 1 storm on Sunday as it heads toward Florida.

    “We’re working with the state there to understand what their requirements are going to be, so we can have those in place before it makes landfall,” she said.

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  • A Tennessee nurse and his dog died trying to save a man from floods driven by Hurricane Helene

    A Tennessee nurse and his dog died trying to save a man from floods driven by Hurricane Helene

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    As the Hurricane Helene-driven waters rose around the Nolichucky River in Tennessee, Boone McCrary, his girlfriend and his chocolate lab headed out on his fishing boat to search for a man who was stranded by floodwaters that had leveled his home. But the thick debris in the water jammed the boat’s motor, and without power, it slammed into a bridge support and capsized.

    McCrary and his dog Moss never made it out of the water alive.

    Search teams found McCrary’s boat and his dog’s body two days later, but it took four days to find McCrary, an emergency room nurse whose passion was being on his boat in that river. His girlfriend, Santana Ray, held onto a branch for hours before rescuers reached her.

    David Boutin, the man McCrary had set out to rescue, was distraught when he later learned McCrary had died trying to save him.

    “I’ve never had anyone risk their life for me,” Boutin told The Associated Press. “From what I hear that was the way he always been. He’s my guardian angel, that’s for sure.”

    The 46-year-old recalled how the force of the water swept him out his front door and ripped his dog Buddy — “My best friend, all I have” — from his arms. Boutin was rescued by another team after clinging to tree branches in the raging river for six hours. Buddy is still missing, and Boutin knows he couldn’t have survived.

    McCrary was one of 215 people killed by Hurricane Helene’s raging waters and falling trees across six states — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia — and was among a group of first responders who perished while trying to save others. The hurricane caused significant damage in nearby Unicoi County, where flooding swept away 11 workers at an plastics factory and forced a rescue mission at an Erwin, Tennessee, hospital.

    McCrary, an avid hunter and fisherman, spent his time cruising the waterways that snake around Greeneville, Tennessee. When the hurricane hit, the 32-year-old asked friends on Facebook if anyone needed help, said his sister, Laura Harville. That was how he learned about Boutin.

    McCrary, his girlfriend and Moss the dog launched into a flooded neighborhood at about 7 p.m. on Sept. 27 and approached Boutin’s location, but the debris-littered floodwaters clogged the boat’s jet motor. Despite pushing and pulling the throttle, McCrary couldn’t clear the junk and slammed into the bridge about two hours into the rescue attempt.

    “I got the first phone call at 8:56 p.m. and I was a nervous wreck,” Harville said. She headed to the bridge and started walking the banks.

    Harville organized hundreds of volunteers who used drones, thermal cameras, binoculars and hunting dogs to scour the muddy banks, fending off copperhead snakes, trudging through knee-high muck and fighting through tangled branches. Harville collected items that carried McCrary’s scent — a pillowcase, sock and insoles from his nursing shoes — and stuffed them into mason jars for the canines to sniff.

    On Sunday, a drone operator spotted the boat. They found Moss dead nearby, but there was no sign of McCrary.

    Searchers had no luck on Monday, “but on Tuesday they noticed vultures flying,” Harville said. That was how they found McCrary’s body, about 21 river miles (33 kilometers) from the bridge where the boat capsized, she said.

    The force of the floodwaters carried McCrary under two other bridges, under the highway and over the Nolichucky Dam, she said. The Tennessee Valley Authority said about 1.3 million gallons (4.9 million liters) of water per second was flowing over the dam on the night McCrary was swept away, more than double the flow rate of the dam’s last regulated release nearly a half-century ago.

    Boutin, 46, isn’t sure where he will go next. He is staying with his son for a few days and then hopes to get a hotel voucher.

    He didn’t learn about McCrary’s fate until the day after he was rescued.

    “When the news hit, I didn’t know how to take it,” Boutin told the AP. “I wish I could thank him for giving his life for me.”

    Dozens of McCrary’s coworkers at Greenville Community Hospital have posted tributes to him, recalling his kindness and compassion and desire to help others. He “was adamant about living life to the fullest and making sure along the way that you didn’t forget your fellow man or woman and that you helped each other,” Harville said.

    McCrary’s last TikTok video posted before the hurricane shows him speeding along the surface of rushing muddy water to the tune, “Wanted Dead or Alive.” He wrote a message along the bottom that read:

    “Some people have asked if I had a ‘death wish.’ The truth is that I have a ‘life wish.’ I have a need for feeling the life running through my veins. One thing about me, I may be ‘crazy,’ Perhaps a little reckless at times, but when the time comes to put me in the ground, you can say I lived it all the way.”

    ___

    Bellisle reported from Seattle.

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  • Death toll from Hurricane Helene rises to 227 as grim task of recovering bodies continues

    Death toll from Hurricane Helene rises to 227 as grim task of recovering bodies continues

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    FRANKFORT, Ky. — The death toll from Hurricane Helene inched up to 227 on Saturday as the grim task of recovering bodies continued more than a week after the monster storm ravaged the Southeast and killed people in six states.

    Helene came ashore Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane and carved a wide swath of destruction as it moved northward from Florida, washing away homes, destroying roads and knocking out electricity and cellphone service for millions.

    The number of deaths stood at 225 on Friday; two more were recorded in South Carolina the following day. It was still unclear how many people were unaccounted for or missing, and the toll could rise even higher.

    Helene is the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005. About half the victims were in North Carolina, while dozens more were killed in Georgia and South Carolina.

    The city of Asheville, in the western mountains of North Carolina, was particularly battered. A week later workers used brooms and heavy machinery to clean mud and dirt outside of New Belgium Brewing Company, which lies next to the French Broad River and is among thousands of city businesses and households affected.

    So far North Carolinians have received more than $27 million in individual assistance approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said MaryAnn Tierney, a regional administrator for the agency. More than 83,000 people have registered for individual assistance, according to the office of Gov. Roy Cooper.

    In Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, FEMA-approved assistance has surpassed $12 million for survivors, Tierney said Saturday during a news briefing.

    “This is critical assistance that will help people with their immediate needs, as well as displacement assistance that helps them if they can’t stay in their home,” she said.

    She encouraged residents impacted by the storm to register for disaster assistance.

    “It is the first step in the recovery process,” she said. “We can provide immediate relief in terms of serious needs assistance to replace food, water, medicines, other life safety, critical items, as well as displacement assistance if you cannot stay in your home.”

    Helene’s raging floodwaters shocked mountain towns hundreds of miles inland and far from where the storm made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast, including in the Tennessee mountains that Dolly Parton calls home.

    The country music star has announced a $1 million donation to the Mountain Ways Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing immediate assistance to Hurricane Helene flood victims.

    In addition, her East Tennessee businesses as well as the Dollywood Foundation are combining efforts, pledging to match her donation to Mountain Ways with a $1 million contribution.

    Parton said she feels a close connection to the storm victims because so many of them “grew up in the mountains just like I did.”

    “I can’t stand to see anyone hurting, so I wanted to do what I could to help after these terrible floods,” she said. “I hope we can all be a little bit of light in the world for our friends, our neighbors — even strangers — during this dark time they are experiencing.”

    Walmart U.S. President and CEO John Furner said the company, including Sam’s Club and the Walmart Foundation, would increase its commitment and donate a total of $10 million to hurricane relief efforts.

    In Newport, an eastern Tennessee town of about 7,000, residents continued cleaning up Saturday from the destruction caused by Helene’s floodwaters.

    Mud still clung to the basement walls of one Main Street funeral home. The ground-floor chapel of another nearby was being dried out, a painting of Jesus still hanging on the wall in an otherwise barren room.

    Newport City Hall and its police department also took on water from the swollen Pigeon River. Some of the modest, one-story homes along its banks were destroyed, their walls crumbled and rooms exposed.

    Farther east in unincorporated Del Rio, along a bend in the French Broad River, residents and volunteers toiled to clean up. The smell of wood hung in the air as people used chainsaws to cut through downed trees, and Bobcats beeped as they moved mangled sheet metal and other debris. Many homes sustained damage, including one that slid off its foundation.

    ___

    Associated Press journalists Jeff Roberson in Newport, Tennessee; Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa; and Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia, contributed.

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  • Homeowners hit by Hurricane Helene face the grim task of rebuilding without flood insurance

    Homeowners hit by Hurricane Helene face the grim task of rebuilding without flood insurance

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    A week after Hurricane Helene overwhelmed the Southeastern U.S., homeowners hit the hardest are grappling with how they could possibly pay for the flood damage from one of the deadliest storms to hit the mainland in recent history.

    The Category 4 storm that first struck Florida’s Gulf Coast on September 26 has dumped trillions of gallons of water across several states, leaving a catastrophic trail of destruction that spans hundreds of miles inland. More than 200 people have died in what is now the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina, according to statistics from the National Hurricane Center.

    Western North Carolina and the Asheville area were hit especially hard, with flooding that wiped out buildings, roads, utilities and land in a way that nobody expected, let alone prepared for. Inland areas in parts of Georgia and Tennessee were also washed out.

    The Oak Forest neighborhood in south Asheville lives up to its name, with trees towering over 1960s era ranch-style houses on large lots. But on Sept. 27, as Helene’s remnants swept through western north Carolina, many of those trees came crashing down, sometimes landing on houses.

    Julianne Johnson said she was coming upstairs from the basement to help her 5-year-old son pick out clothes that day when her husband began to yell that a giant oak was falling diagonally across the yard. The tree mostly missed the house, but still crumpled part of a metal porch and damaged the roof. Then, Johnson said, her basement flooded.

    On Friday, there was a blue tarp being held on the roof with a brick. Sodden carpet that the family torn out lay on the side of the house, waiting to go to the landfill. With no cell phone service or internet access, Johnson said she couldn’t file a home insurance claim until four days after the storm.

    “It took me a while to make that call,” she said. “I don’t have an adjuster yet.”

    Roof and tree damage are likely to be covered by the average home insurance policy. But Johnson, like many homeowners, doesn’t have flood insurance and she’s not certain how she’ll pay for that part of the damage.

    Those recovering from the storm may be surprised to learn flood damage is a completely separate thing. Insurance professionals and experts have long warned that home insurance typically does not cover flood damage to the home, even as they espouse that flooding can happen anywhere that rains. That’s because flooding isn’t just sea water seeping into the land – it’s also water from banks, as well as mudflow and torrential rains.

    But most private insurance companies don’t carry flood insurance, leaving the National Flood Insurance Program run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as the primary provider for that coverage for residential homes. Congress created the federal flood insurance program more than 50 years ago when many private insurers stopped offering policies in high-risk areas.

    North Carolina has 129,933 such policies in force, according to FEMA’s latest data, though most of that protection will likely be concentrated on the coast rather than in the Blue Ridge Mountains area where Helene caused the most damage. Florida, in comparison, has about 1.7 million flood policies in place statewide.

    Charlotte Hicks, a flood insurance expert in North Carolina who has led flood risk training and educational outreach for the state’s Department of Insurance, said the reality is that many Helene survivors will never be made whole. Without flood insurance, some people may be able to rebuild with the help of charities but most others will be left to fend for themselves.

    “There will absolutely be people who will be financially devasted by this event,” Hicks said. “It’s heartbreaking.”

    Some may go into foreclosure or bankruptcy. Entire neighborhoods will likely never be rebuilt. There’s been water damage across the board, Hicks said, and for some, mudslides have even taken the land upon which their house once stood.

    Meanwhile, Helene is turning out to be a fairly manageable disaster for the private home insurance market because those plans generally only serve to cover wind damage from hurricanes.

    That’s a relief for the industry, which has been under increasing strain from other intensifying climate disasters such as wildfires and tornadoes. Nowhere is the shrinking private market due to climate instability more evident than in Florida, where many companies have already stopped selling policies — leaving the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corporation now the largest home insurer in the state.

    Mark Friedlander, spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group, said Helene is a “very manageable loss event,” and estimates insurer losses will range from about $5 billion to $8 billion. That’s compared to the insured losses from the Category 4 Hurricane Ian in September 2022 that was estimated in excess of $50 billion.

    Friedlander and other experts point out that less than 1% of the inland areas that sustained the most catastrophic flood damage were protected with flood insurance.

    “This is very common in inland communities across the country,” Friedlander said. “ Lack of flood insurance is a major insurance gap in the U.S., as only about 6% of homeowners carry the coverage, mostly in coastal counties.”

    Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer advocacy group United Policyholders, said the images of the flood destruction in North Carolina shook her despite decades of seeing challenging recovery faced by victims of natural disasters.

    “This is a pretty serious situation here in terms of people disappointed. They are going to be disappointed in their insurers and they are going to be disappointed in FEMA,” Bach said. “FEMA cannot match the kind of dollars private insurers are supposed to be contributing to the recovery.”

    This week, FEMA announced it could meet the immediate needs of Helene but warned it doesn’t have enough funding to make it through the hurricane season, which runs June 1 to Nov. 30 though most hurricanes typically occur in September and October.

    Even if a homeowner does have it, FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program only covers up to $250,000 for single-family homes and $100,000 for contents.

    Bach said that along with homeowners educating themselves about what their policies do and don’t cover, the solution is a national disaster insurance program that does for property insurance what the Affordable Care Act did for health insurance.

    After Hurricane Floyd in 1999, the state of North Carolina started requiring insurance agents to take a flood insurance class so they could properly advise their clients of the risk and policies available, Hicks said. The state also requires home insurance policies to clearly disclose that it does not cover flood.

    “You can’t stop nature from doing what nature is going to do,” Hicks said. “For us to think it’s never going to be this bad again would be a dangerous assumption. A lot of people underestimate their risk of flooding.”

    ___

    Associated Press Staff Writers Jeff Amy in Asheville, North Carolina, Lisa Leff in London and Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • Hurricane Helene brings climate change to forefront of the presidential campaign

    Hurricane Helene brings climate change to forefront of the presidential campaign

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    WASHINGTON — The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene has brought climate change to the forefront of the presidential campaign after the issue lingered on the margins for months.

    Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Georgia Wednesday to see hard-hit areas, two days after her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, was in the state and criticized the federal response to the storm, which has killed at least 180 people. Thousands of people in the Carolinas still lack running water, cellphone service and electricity.

    President Joe Biden toured some of the hardest-hit areas by helicopter on Wednesday. Biden, who has frequently been called on to survey damage and console victims after tornadoes, wildfires, tropical storms and other natural disasters, traveled to the Carolinas to get a closer look at the hurricane devastation. He is expected to visit Georgia and Florida later this week.

    “Storms are getting stronger and stronger,” Biden said after surveying damage near Asheville, North Carolina. At least 70 people died in the state.

    “Nobody can deny the impact of the climate crisis any more,” Biden said at a briefing in Raleigh, the state capital. “They must be brain dead if they do.”

    Harris, meanwhile, hugged and huddled with a family in hurricane-ravaged Augusta, Georgia.

    “There is real pain and trauma that resulted because of this hurricane” and its aftermath, Harris said outside a storm-damaged house with downed trees in the yard.

    “We are here for the long haul,” she added.

    The focus on the storm — and its link to climate change — was notable after climate change was only lightly mentioned in two presidential debates this year. The candidates instead focused on abortion rights, the economy, immigration and other issues.

    The hurricane featured prominently in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate as Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz were asked about the storm and the larger issue of climate change.

    Both men called the hurricane a tragedy and agreed on the need for a strong federal response. But it was Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who put the storm in the context of a warming climate.

    “There’s no doubt this thing roared onto the scene faster and stronger than anything we’ve seen,” he said.

    Bob Henson, a meteorologist and writer with Yale Climate Connections, said it was no surprise that Helene is pushing both the federal disaster response and human-caused climate change into the campaign conversation.

    “Weather disasters are often overlooked as a factor in big elections,” he said. “Helene is a sprawling catastrophe, affecting millions of Americans. And it dovetails with several well-established links between hurricanes and climate change, including rapid intensification and intensified downpours.”

    More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast in the last week, an amount that if concentrated in North Carolina would cover the state in 3 1/2 feet of water. “That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

    During Tuesday’s debate, Walz credited Vance for past statements acknowledging that climate change is a problem. But he noted that Trump has called climate change “a hoax” and joked that rising seas “would make more beachfront property to be able to invest in.″

    Trump said in a speech Tuesday that “the planet has actually gotten little bit cooler recently,” adding: “Climate change covers everything.”

    In fact, summer 2024 sweltered to Earth’s hottest on record, making it likely this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, according to the European climate service Copernicus. Global records were shattered just last year as human-caused climate change, with a temporary boost from an El Niño, keeps dialing up temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said.

    Vance, an Ohio senator, said he and Trump support clean air, clean water and “want the environment to be cleaner and safer.” However, during Trump’s four years in office, he took a series of actions to roll back more than 100 environmental regulations.

    Vance sidestepped a question about whether he agrees with Trump’s statement that climate change is a hoax. “What the president has said is that if the Democrats — in particular Kamala Harris and her leadership — really believe that climate change is serious, what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America. And that’s not what they’re doing,” he said.

    “This idea that carbon (dioxide) emissions drives all of the climate change. Well, let’s just say that’s true just for the sake of argument. So we’re not arguing about weird science. If you believe that, what would you want to do?” Vance asked.

    The answer, he said, is to “produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America, because we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world.”

    Vance claimed that policies by Biden and Harris actually help China, because many solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and other materials used in renewable energy and electric vehicles are made in China and imported to the United States.

    Walz rebutted that claim, noting that the Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats’ signature climate law approved in 2022, includes the largest-ever investment in domestic clean energy production. The law, for which Harris cast the deciding vote, has created 200,000 jobs across the country, including in Ohio and Minnesota, Walz said. Vance was not in the Senate when the law was approved.

    “We are producing more natural gas and more oil (in the United States) than we ever have,” Walz said. “We’re also producing more clean energy.”

    The comment echoed a remark by Harris in last month’s presidential debate. The Biden-Harris administration has overseen “the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot over rely on foreign oil,” Harris said then.

    While Biden rarely mentions it, domestic fossil fuel production under his administration is at an all-time high. Crude oil production averaged 12.9 million barrels a day last year, eclipsing a previous record set in 2019 under Trump, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

    Democrats want to continue investments in renewable energy such as wind and solar power — and not just because supporters of the Green New Deal want that, Walz said.

    “My farmers know climate change is real. They’ve seen 500-year droughts, 500-year floods back to back. But what they’re doing is adapting,” he said.

    “The solution for us is to continue to move forward, (accept) that climate change is real” and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, Walz said, adding that the administration is doing exactly that.

    “We are seeing us becoming an energy superpower for the future, not just the current” time, he said.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Colleen Long in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Christopher Megerian in Augusta, Georgia, contributed to this report.

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  • Taiwan’s weather agency says Typhoon Krathon has made landfall on the heavily populated west coast

    Taiwan’s weather agency says Typhoon Krathon has made landfall on the heavily populated west coast

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    Taiwan’s weather agency says Typhoon Krathon has made landfall on the heavily populated west coast

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  • North Carolina town that produces quartz needed for tech products is devastated by Helene

    North Carolina town that produces quartz needed for tech products is devastated by Helene

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    SPRUCE PINE, N.C. — Two North Carolina facilities that manufacture the high-purity quartz used for making semiconductors, solar panels and fiber-optic cables have been shut down by Hurricane Helene with no reopening date in sight.

    Sibelco and The Quartz Corp both shut down operations in the Appalachian town of Spruce Pine on Thursday ahead of the storm that swept away whole communities in the western part of the state and across the border in East Tennessee. The town is home to mines that produce some of the world’s highest quality quartz.

    With increasing global demand, Sibelco announced last year that it would invest $200 million to double capacity at Spruce Pine.

    Since the storm, the company has simply been working to confirm that all of its employees are safe and accounted for, according to a statement, as some were “unreachable due to ongoing power outages and communication challenges.”

    “Please rest assured that Sibelco is actively collaborating with government agencies and third-party rescue and recovery operations to mitigate the impact of this event and to resume operations as soon as possible,” the company wrote.

    The Quartz Corp wrote that restarting operations is a “second order of priority.”

    “Our top priority remains the health and safety of our employees and their families,” the company wrote.

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  • Hurricane Helene’s death toll tops 130

    Hurricane Helene’s death toll tops 130

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    ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Widespread devastation left behind by Hurricane Helene came to light Monday across the South, revealing a wasteland of splintered houses, crushed cargo containers and mud-covered highways in one of the worst storms in U.S. history. The death toll topped 130.

    A crisis was unfolding in western North Carolina, where residents stranded by washed-out roads and by a lack of power and cellular service lined up for fresh water and a chance to message loved ones days after the storm that they were alive.

    At least 133 deaths in six Southeastern states have been attributed to the storm that inflicted damage from Florida’s Gulf Coast to the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia.

    The toll steadily rose as emergency workers reached areas isolated by collapsed roads, failing infrastructure and widespread flooding. During a briefing Monday, White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall suggested as many as 600 people hadn’t been accounted for as of Monday afternoon, saying some might be dead.

    President Joe Biden said he will travel to North Carolina on Wednesday to meet with officials and take an aerial tour of Asheville.

    He said earlier that the federal government would be with affected residents in the nation’s southeast “as long as it takes.”

    Government officials and aid groups worked to deliver supplies by air, truck and even mule to the hard-hit tourism hub of Asheville and its surrounding mountain towns. At least 40 people died in the county that includes Asheville.

    The destruction and desperation were overwhelming. A flattened cargo container sat atop a bridge crossing a river with muddy brown water. A mass of debris, including overturned pontoon boats and splintered wooden docks and tree trunks covered the surface of Lake Lure, a picturesque spot tucked between the mountains outside Asheville.

    A woman cradled her child while people around her gathered on a hillside where they found cellphone service, many sending a simple text: “I’m OK.”

    The North Carolina death toll included one horrific story after another of people who were trapped by floodwaters in their homes and vehicles or were killed by falling trees. A courthouse security officer died after being submerged inside his truck. A couple and a 6-year-old boy waiting to be rescued on a rooftop drowned when part of their home collapsed.

    Rescuers did manage to save dozens, including an infant and two others stuck on the top of a car in Atlanta. More than 50 hospital patients and staff in Tennessee were plucked by helicopter from the hospital rooftop in a daring rescue operation.

    How some of the worst-hit areas are coping

    Several main routes into Asheville were washed away or blocked by mudslides, including a 4-mile section of Interstate 40, and the city’s water system was severely damaged, forcing residents to scoop creek water into buckets so they could flush toilets.

    People shared food and water and comforted one another in one neighborhood where a wall of water ripped away all of the trees, leaving a muddy mess nearby. “That’s the blessing so far in this,” Sommerville Johnston said outside her home, which has been without power since Friday.

    She planned on treating the neighborhood to venison stew from her powerless freezer before it goes bad. “Just bring your bowl and spoon,” she said.

    Others waited in a line for more than a block at Mountain Valley Water, a water seller, to fill up milk jugs and whatever other containers they could find.

    Derek Farmer, who brought three gallon-sized apple juice containers, said he had been prepared for the storm but now was nervous after three days without water. “I just didn’t know how bad it was going to be,” Farmer said.

    Officials warned that rebuilding would be lengthy and difficult. Helene roared ashore in northern Florida late Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane and quickly moved through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee. The storm upended life throughout the Southeast, where deaths were also reported in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia.

    Federal Emergency Management Agency officials said Monday that shelters were housing more than 1,000 people.

    North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper took an aerial tour of the Asheville area and later met with workers distributing meals.

    “This has been an unprecedented storm that has hit western North Carolina,” he said afterward. “It’s requiring an unprecedented response.”

    Officials implored travelers from coming into the region to keep the roads clear for emergency vehicles. More than 50 search teams spread throughout the region in search of stranded people.

    Waiting for help and searching for a signal in North Carolina

    Several dozen people gathered on high ground in Asheville, where they found one of the city’s hottest commodities — a cell signal.

    “Is this day three or day four?” Colleen Burnet asked. “It’s all been a blur.”

    The storm unleashed the worst flooding in a century in North Carolina. Rainfall estimates in some areas topped more than 2 feet since Wednesday.

    Ten federal search and rescue teams were on the ground and another nine were on their way, while trucks and cargo planes were arriving with food and water, FEMA said. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell surveyed damage with Cooper Monday.

    Volunteers were showing up, too. Mike Toberer decided to bring a dozen of his mules to deliver food, water and diapers to hard-to-reach mountainous areas.

    “We’ll take our chainsaws, and we’ll push those mules through,” he said, noting that each one can carry about 200 pounds of supplies.

    Why western North Carolina was hit so hard

    Western North Carolina suffered relatively more devastation because that’s where the remnants of Helene encountered the higher elevations and cooler air of the Appalachian Mountains, causing even more rain to fall.

    Asheville and many surrounding mountain towns were built in valleys, leaving them especially vulnerable to devastating rain and flooding. Plus, the ground already was saturated before Helene arrived, said Christiaan Patterson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

    “By the time Helene came into the Carolinas, we already had that rain on top of more rain,” Patterson said.

    Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful cyclones, sometimes within hours.

    Destruction from Florida to Virginia

    Along Florida’s Gulf Coast, several feet of water swamped the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, forcing workers to move two manatees and sea turtles. All of the animals were safe but much of the aquarium’s vital equipment was damaged or destroyed, said James Powell, the aquarium’s executive director.

    Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said the storm “literally spared no one.” Most people in and around Augusta, a city of about 200,000 near the South Carolina border, were still without power Monday.

    With at least 30 killed in South Carolina, Helene was the deadliest tropical cyclone to hit the state since Hurricane Hugo made landfall north of Charleston in 1989, killing 35 people.

     

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    By JEFFREY COLLINS – Associated Press

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  • Today in History: September 29, Willie Mays makes “The Catch”

    Today in History: September 29, Willie Mays makes “The Catch”

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    Today is Sunday, Sept. 29, the 273rd day of 2024. There are 93 days left in the year.

    Today in history:

    On Sept. 29, 1954, Willie Mays of the New York Giants made a running, over-the-shoulder catch of a ball hit by Vic Wirtz of the Cleveland Indians in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series; “The Catch” would become one of the most famous plays in baseball history.

    Also on this date:

    In 1789, Congress officially established a regular army under the U.S. Constitution.

    In 1938, British, French, German and Italian leaders concluded the Munich Agreement, which was aimed at appeasing Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland.

    In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed an act creating the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.

    In 1982, Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with deadly cyanide claimed the first of seven victims in the Chicago area; the case, which led to legislation and packaging improvements to deter product tampering, remains unsolved.

    In 1990, the construction of Washington National Cathedral concluded, 83 years to the day after its foundation stone was laid in a ceremony attended by President Theodore Roosevelt.

    In 2005, John G. Roberts Jr. was sworn in as the nation’s 17th chief justice after winning Senate confirmation.

    In 2017, Tom Price resigned as President Donald Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services amid investigations into his use of costly charter flights for official travel at taxpayer expense.

    In 2018, Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, agreed to pay a total of $40 million to settle a government lawsuit alleging that Musk had duped investors with misleading statements about a proposed buyout of the company.

    In 2021, a judge in Los Angeles suspended Britney Spears’ father from the conservatorship that had controlled her life and money for 13 years, saying the arrangement reflected a “toxic environment.”

    In 2022, rescue crews piloted boats and waded through flooded streets to save thousands of Floridians trapped after Hurricane Ian destroyed homes and businesses and left millions in the dark.

    Today’s Birthdays: Writer-director Robert Benton is 92. NASA administrator and former Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., actor Ian McShane and jazz musician Jean-Luc Ponty are 82. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa is 81. TV journalist and sportscaster Bryant Gumbel is 76. Olympic gold medal runner Sebastian Coe is 68. Rock musician Les Claypool is 61. Actors Zachary Levi and Chrissy Metz (TV: “This Is Us”) are 44. Actor Kelly McCreary (TV: “Grey’s Anatomy”) is 43. Football Hall of Famer Calvin Johnson is 39. NBA All-Star Kevin Durant is 36. Pop singer Halsey is 30.

    Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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    By The Associated Press

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  • Dozens dead and millions without power after Helene’s deadly march across southeastern US

    Dozens dead and millions without power after Helene’s deadly march across southeastern US

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    PERRY, Fla. — PERRY, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Helene caused dozens of deaths and billions of dollars of destruction across a wide swath of the southeastern U.S. as it raced through, and more than 3 million customers went into the weekend without any power and for some a continued threat of floods.

    Helene blew ashore in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday packing winds of 140 mph (225 kph) and then quickly moved through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, uprooting trees, splintering homes and sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.

    Western North Carolina was essentially cut off because or landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. There were hundreds of water rescues, none more dramatic than in rural Unicoi County in East Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were plucked by helicopter from the roof of a hospital that was surrounded by water from a flooded river.

    The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley on Saturday and Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said. Several flood and flash flood warnings remained in effect in parts of the southern and central Appalachians, while high wind warnings also covered parts of Tennessee and Ohio.

    Among the at least 44 people killed in the storm were three firefighters, a woman and her 1-month-old twins, and an 89-year-old woman whose house was struck by a falling tree. According to an Associated Press tally, the deaths occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

    In North Carolina, a lake featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing” overtopped a dam and surrounding neighborhoods were evacuated, although there were no immediate concerns it would fail. People also were evacuated from Newport, Tennessee, a city of about 7,000 people, amid concerns about a dam near there, although officials later said the structure had not failed.

    Tornadoes hit some areas, including one in Nash County, North Carolina, that critically injured four people.

    Atlanta received a record 11.12 inches (28.24 centimeters) of rain in 48 hours, the most the city has seen in a two-day period since record keeping began in 1878, Georgia’s Office of the State Climatologist said on the social platform X. Some neighborhoods were so badly flooded that only car roofs could be seen poking above the water.

    Moody’s Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage.

    Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful cyclones sometimes in a matter of hours.

    Florida’s Big Bend is a part of the state where salt marshes and pine flatwoods stretch into the horizon, and where the condo developments and strip malls that have carved up so much of the state’s coastlines are largely absent.

    It’s a place where Susan Sauls Hartway and her 4-year-old Chihuahua mix Lucy could afford to live within walking distance of the beach on her salary as a housekeeper.

    At least, until her house was carried away by Helene.

    Friday afternoon, Hartway wandered around her street near Ezell Beach, searching for where the storm may have deposited her home.

    “It’s gone. I don’t know where it’s at. I can’t find it,” she said of her house.

    Born and raised in rural Taylor County, Hartway said there is nowhere in the world she would rather be, even after Helene. But she’s watched as wealthier residents from out of state have bought up second homes here. She wonders how many of them will sell out — and what will happen to the locals who have nowhere else to go.

    “There’s so many people down here, they don’t have any place to go now. This was all they had,” she said.

    The community has taken direct hits from three hurricanes since August 2023.

    All five who died in one Florida county were in neighborhoods where residents were told to evacuate, said Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff in Pinellas County in the St. Petersburg area. Some who stayed ended up having to hide in their attics to escape the rising water. He said the death toll could rise as crews go door-to-door in flooded areas.

    More deaths were reported in Georgia and the Carolinas, including two South Carolina firefighters and a Georgia firefighter who died when trees struck their trucks. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin reported at least one death in his state.

    When the water hit knee-level in Kera O’Neil’s home in Hudson, Florida, she knew it was time to escape.

    “There’s a moment where you are thinking, ‘If this water rises above the level of the stove, we are not going to have not much room to breathe,’” she said, recalling how she and her sister waded through chest-deep water with one cat in a plastic carrier and another in a cardboard box.

    President Joe Biden said he was praying for survivors, and the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency headed to the area. The agency deployed more than 1,500 workers, and they helped with 400 rescues by late Friday morning.

    Officials urged people who were trapped to call for rescuers and not tread floodwaters, warning they can be dangerous due to live wires, sewage, sharp objects and other debris.

    In Georgia, an electrical utility group warned of “catastrophic” damage to utility infrastructure, with more than 100 high voltage transmission lines damaged. And officials in South Carolina, where more than 40% of customers were without power, said crews had to cut their way through debris just to determine what was still standing in some places.

    The hurricane came ashore near the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of where Hurricane Idalia hit last year at nearly the same ferocity. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the damage from Helene appears to be greater than the combined effects of Idalia and Hurricane Debby in August.

    The destruction extended far beyond Florida.

    A mudslide in the Appalachian Mountains washed out part of an interstate highway at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line.

    Another slide hit homes in North Carolina and occupants had to wait more than four hours to be rescued, said Ryan Cole, the emergency services assistant director in Buncombe County. His 911 center received more than 3,300 calls in eight hours Friday.

    “This is something that we’re going to be dealing with for many days and weeks to come,” Cole said.

    Forecasters warned of flooding in North Carolina that could be worse than anything seen in the past century. The Connecticut Army National Guard sent a helicopter to help.

    Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.

    ___

    Payne reported from Tallahassee, Florida, and Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Associated Press journalists Seth Borenstein in New York; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Russ Bynum in Valdosta, Georgia; Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Andrea Rodríguez in Havana; Mark Stevenson and María Verza in Mexico City; and Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, contributed.

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  • Young people in island nations face an existential question: Should they stay or should they go?

    Young people in island nations face an existential question: Should they stay or should they go?

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    UNITED NATIONS — It’s the uncomfortable talk that as a young woman, she knows she should have with her parents. They alluded to it, once, but couldn’t quite address it directly. And Grace Malie was glad to avoid the subject with them, though she and her friends do discuss it.

    As her home, the tiny but shrinking island of Tuvalu, slowly erodes from climate change’s rising seas, should she rough it out on the remaining high land? Or should she flee her home, her culture, her heritage and her past to go to Australia — in what her government negotiated as “Plan B?”

    The 25-year-old, who on Wednesday addresses a special U.N. General Assembly summit on sea level rise as a representative for her country, has years to decide — decades, even. But it’s a decision that, like the mythical sword of Damocles, hangs over a nation’s entire generation. And two of the biggest issues facing the summit are what to do about people like Grace Malie and how countries like Tuvalu will keep the sovereignty even when they lose their land.

    “This is not about leaving,” said Kamal Amakrane, managing director of the Global Center for Climate Mobility and climate envoy to the president of the General Assembly. “This is not about giving up. This is not about giving in. This is about agency.”

    Such a situation is like no other. It can’t be compared to when other climate, conflict or economic refugees have to flee with little or no notice as storms hit or drought takes away livelihoods, said Alex Randall, the United Kingdom-based coordinator of the Climate and Migration Coalition.

    The vast majority people permanently fleeing climate-related disasters stay within their own country and travel short distances — such as those who left New Orleans after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. This is about young people today making a long-term, stay-or-go decision that lingers in the back of their minds. It’s a conversation that’s happening now, even though the fleeing won’t happen until later.

    “It’s a very difficult conversation, very emotional,” Malie said in an interview. “And it’s 50-50. Some of us wish to stay. Some of them, because they have families,” will probably head to Australia.

    And that’s what Malie thinks will be her own future. If she has children, she would think about “the life of my children. I would have to opt for Plan B. Worst comes to worst, relocate.”

    “I want them to have a safe and to have access to quality living, access to quality water, quality life. And in order for me to have that for them to have that, relocation is an option,” she said. “But if I were to live by myself, you know, no children in the future as planned, then I would choose to stay.”

    Her parents wouldn’t come right out and say it, but they have dropped hints that she should think about going to Australia, Malie said. She said they want what’s best for her.

    Tuvalu Climate Minister Maina Talia has had the same discomfort but from the father’s point of view. He said he talked to his four young children about the inexorable threat of sea-level rise on their home and future, but he has not yet quite raised the idea of leaving the island to them.

    Talia said he fears that if his children leave Tuvalu for higher ground, “their identity would be compromised.”

    “It’s not an easy conversation because I want my kids to grow up the way I grew up,’’ Talia said. “It’s an emotional thing to go through.”

    Talia calls sea-level rise “an existential threat.” And it’s those two words — “existential threat” — that are at the heart of Wednesday’s summit. For years, small island nations have used that phrase, as have leaders of the United Nations and climate activists. But now it’s coming back to bite them because island nations want their sovereignty, their culture, to exist — even if their land does not.

    “We’ve been trying really hard to as (the Alliance of Small Island States) to move away from that concept of existential threat given the fact that if we say that that means, does that mean that the State no longer exists? The people no longer exist? And that’s not the case,” said Michai Robertson, an advisor to the small island states’ alliance.

    Belize Prime Minister John Briceño said: “Sovereignty is defined by the will of the people, not by the whims of climate change. Once a state is established, it will endure and thrive, no matter the challenges it faces.“

    The UN’s Amakrane said Wednesday’s summit main aims is to re-affirm the issue of sovereignty despite what the oceans do.

    “The land is still there,” he said. “It’s just the surface is submerged under water.”

    For most of the young people’s lives, if not all, there will be some land on Tuvalu, just less and less of it — with more of it inundated during storms, king tides and the rise of the oceans. And if she doesn’t have to worry about a family, Malie said the increasing hardship of living there will be worth it.

    The threat of her home disappearing, slowly, has been hanging over her head since birth. Even when she went to school in Fiji, she and her fellow Tuvalu students “were usually mocked as the `sinking island kids,’” she said. “That’s something that pushes us to continue our fight.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Follow Seth Borenstein at http://x.com/ borenbears and read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

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  • Coney Island’s iconic Cyclone roller coaster reopens 2 weeks after mid-ride malfunction

    Coney Island’s iconic Cyclone roller coaster reopens 2 weeks after mid-ride malfunction

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    NEW YORK (AP) — The famed Cyclone roller coaster in New York City’s Coney Island has reopened two weeks after a mechanical problem forced a mid-ride stop and people had to be helped off the attraction.

    The 97-year-old wooden roller coaster at Luna Park returned to service Saturday after city inspectors gave a thumbs up following repairs.

    The Cyclone was shut down indefinitely on Aug. 22 due to a damaged chain sprocket in the motor room. The operator stopped the ride and several people were removed without injury, the city’s Department of Buildings said. The department cited Luna Park for violations related to the damaged equipment and failing to immediately notify the city.

    City inspectors said the ride passed inspection Saturday morning after test runs over several days.

    “This American icon has captivated guests for nearly a century, and our dedicated team and attraction engineers continue to ensure that this legendary 97-year-old landmark continues to operate safely and smoothly,” Alessandro Zamperla, president and CEO of the amusement park’s owner, Central Amusement International, said in a statement.

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  • Tropical Storm Gordon forms in the Atlantic Ocean, forecast to stay away from land

    Tropical Storm Gordon forms in the Atlantic Ocean, forecast to stay away from land

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    SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Tropical Storm Gordon formed on Friday in the Atlantic Ocean, with forecasters saying it is expected to remain over open water for several days.

    The storm had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph) and was located about 990 miles (1,590 kilometers ) from the Cabo Verde Islands. It was moving west-northwest at 12 mph (19 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

    Gordon formed during the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season that began on June 1 and ends on Nov. 30. It is the season’s seventh named storm.

    Gordon is expected to strengthen slightly before weakening starting on Saturday as it turns toward the northwest, forecasters said.

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season this year because of record warm ocean temperatures. It forecast 17 to 25 named storms, with four to seven major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher.

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  • Vietnam typhoon death toll rises to 233 as more bodies found

    Vietnam typhoon death toll rises to 233 as more bodies found

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    HANOI, Vietnam — The death toll in the aftermath of a typhoon in Vietnam climbed to 233 on Friday as rescue workers recovered more bodies from areas hit by landslides and flash floods, state media reported.

    Flood waters from the swollen Red River in the capital, Hanoi, were beginning to recede, but many neighborhoods remained inundated and farther north experts were predicting it could still be days before any relief is in sight.

    Typhoon Yagi made landfall Saturday, starting a week of heavy rains that have triggered flash floods and landslides, particularly in Vietnam’s mountainous north.

    Across Vietnam, 103 people are still listed as missing and more than 800 have been injured.

    In A Lac village on the outskirts of Hanoi, Nguyen Thi Loan returned to the home that she’d hastily fled on Monday as the floodwaters rose.

    Much of the village was still under water, and as she surveyed the damage, she wondered how she and others would manage.

    “The flood has made our lives so difficult,” she said. “Our rice crop has been destroyed and at home the electrical appliances like the washing machine, TV and fridge are under water.”

    Most fatalities have come in the province of Lao Cai, where a flash flood swept away the entire hamlet of Lang Nu on Tuesday. Eight villagers turned up safe on Friday morning, telling others that they had left before the deluge, state-run VNExpress newspaper reported, but 48 others from Lang Nu have been found dead, and another 39 remain missing.

    Roads to Lang Nu have been badly damaged, making it impossible to bring in heavy equipment to aid in the rescue effort.

    Some 500 personnel with sniffer dogs are on hand, and in a visit to the scene on Thursday, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh promised they would not relent in their search for those still missing.

    “Their families are in agony,” Chinh said.

    Coffins were stacked near the disaster site in preparation for the worst, and villager Tran Thi Ngan mourned at a makeshift altar for family members she had lost.

    “It’s a disaster,” she told VTV news. “That’s the fate we have to accept.”

    In Cao Bang, another northern province bordering China, 21 bodies had been recovered by Friday, four days after a landslide pushed a bus, a car and several motorcycles into a small river, swollen with floodwaters. Ten more people remain missing.

    Experts say storms like Typhoon Yagi are getting stronger due to climate change, as warmer ocean waters provide more energy to fuel them, leading to higher winds and heavier rainfall.

    The effects of the typhoon, the strongest to hit Vietnam in decades, were also being felt across the region, with flooding and landslides in northern Thailand, Laos and northeastern Myanmar.

    In Thailand, 10 deaths have been reported due to flooding or landslides, and Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra flew to the north on Friday to visit affected people in the border town of Mae Sai. Thailand’s Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation warned of a continuing risk of flash floods in multiple areas through Wednesday, as new rain was expected to increase the Mekong River’s levels further.

    International aid has been flowing into Vietnam in the aftermath of Yagi, with Australia already delivering humanitarian supplies as part of $2 million in assistance.

    South Korea has also pledged $2 million in humanitarian aid, and the U.S. Embassy said Friday it would provide $1 million in support through the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

    “With more heavy rain forecast in the coming days, USAID’s disaster experts continue to monitor humanitarian needs in close coordination with local emergency authorities and partners on the ground,” the embassy said in a statement. “USAID humanitarian experts on the ground are participating in ongoing assessments to ensure U.S. assistance rapidly reaches populations in need.”

    The typhoon and ensuing heavy rains have damaged factories in northern provinces like Haiphong, home to electric car company VinFast, Apple parts suppliers and other electronic manufacturers, which could affect international supply chains, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a research note.

    “Though 95 percent of businesses operating in Haiphong were expected to resume some activity on September 10, repair efforts will likely lower output for the next weeks and months,” CSIS said.

    ___

    Rising reported from Bangkok. Associated Press writer Jintamas Saksornchai in Bangkok contributed to this report.

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  • Global shares mostly fall on caution ahead of a key US employment report

    Global shares mostly fall on caution ahead of a key US employment report

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    TOKYO — Global shares mostly declined Friday ahead of a highly anticipated U.S. jobs report that’s expected to influence how the U.S. Federal Reserve will move on interest rates.

    France’s CAC 40 slipped 0.3% in early trading to 7,407.73, while Germany’s DAX shed 0.6% to 18,467.13. Britain’s FTSE 100 dropped 0.5% to 8,203.63. U.S. shares were set to drift lower with Dow futures down 0.3% at 40,691.00. S&P 500 futures fell nearly 0.7% to 5,476.25.

    Trading was cautious in Asia amid lingering worries about a possible recession in the U.S. The job market report, set for release later in the day, is key, possibly dictating how big of a cut to interest rates the Federal Reserve will deliver at its next meeting later this month.

    After keeping its main interest rate at a two-decade high to stifle inflation, the Fed has hinted it’s about to begin cutting rates to keep the economy from sliding into a recession.

    Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 0.7% to finish at 36,391.47. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.4% to 8,013.40, while South Korea’s Kospi slipped 1.2% to 2,544.28. The Shanghai Composite shed 0.8% to 2,765.81. Trading was halted in Hong Kong because of a typhoon.

    In the U.S., one report suggested companies slowed their hiring last month, falling short of forecasts, while another found fewer workers filed for unemployment benefits last week than expected.

    A separate report said growth for businesses in the finance, health care and other services industries was stronger last month than expected.

    In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude fell 3 cents to $69.12 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, added 4 cents to $72.73 a barrel.

    In currency trading, the U.S. dollar edged down to 142.75 Japanese yen from 143.40 yen, The euro cost $1.1111, little changed from $1.1112.

    ___

    AP Writer Stan Choe contributed. Yuri Kageyama is on X: https://x.com/yurikageyama

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  • School and work are suspended in parts of southern China as Typhoon Yagi edges closer

    School and work are suspended in parts of southern China as Typhoon Yagi edges closer

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    HONG KONG (AP) — School and work were suspended Thursday in parts of southern China as Typhoon Yagi closed in on an island province with the potential to be the most powerful storm to hit the area in a decade.

    The Hong Kong Observatory raised a No. 8 typhoon signal, the third-highest warning under the city’s weather system, on Thursday evening. It said the super typhoon, with maximum sustained winds of 210 kilometers per hour (130 miles per hour), would skirt around 300 kilometers (190 miles) southwest of the financial hub on Friday morning.

    Kindergartens, special schools and evening classes were already canceled in the semi-autonomous city while the weather remained calm Thursday morning. The Education Bureau announced the city’s schools would be suspended on Friday to ensure students’ safety.

    Dozens of flights were also canceled on Thursday and Friday in the city, with care centers for children and elderly residents closed. About 30 government-organized temporary shelters were opened to people in need.

    The observatory said the No.8 signal is expected to remain in force until at least Friday noon, meaning the city’s stock market will likely be closed on Friday.

    China’s official news agency, Xinhua, said tens of thousands of fishing boats returned to ports in Hainan and elsewhere to seek shelter, along with nearly 70,000 fishers. State broadcaster CCTV said some train services were suspended, starting Thursday evening.

    Hainan Meteorological Service forecast that the typhoon will make landfall Friday along the region from Qionghai in Hainan to Dianbai in neighboring Guangdong province. Meteorological authorities said it could be the strongest typhoon to hit Hainan in the past 10 years, Xinhua reported. The tropical island is a popular tourist destination known for its holiday resorts and duty-free shopping allowance.

    In Guangdong, all coastal tourist attractions and beaches were ordered to close from Wednesday evening, with dozens of flights canceled at the airport in Zhuhai city, state media China Daily reported.

    Typhoon Yagi traveled north from the Philippines, where it set off landslides and unleashed pounding rains that caused flooding and left at least 14 people dead.

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