MANILA, Philippines (AP) — An offshore earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.6 hit off a southern Philippine province Friday morning, and a hazardous tsunami was possible nearby.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said it was expecting damage and aftershocks from the earthquake, which was centered at sea about 62 kilometers (38 miles) southeast of Manay town in Davao Oriental province and was caused by movement in a fault at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles),
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu said hazardous waves were possible within 300 kilometers (186 miles) of the epicenter. There was not a wider danger of a tsunami, it said.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
In January, firefighters spent nearly a month battling more than a dozen wildfires across Los Angeles. Despite their best efforts, the two largest—the Eaton and Palisades fires—now rank as the second- and third-most destructive in California history, together burning 38,000 acres, torching 16,000 structures, and killing 31 people.
A large part of what makes this story so devastating is that it isn’t unique. All across the world—from Chile to Canada, Greece, Australia, Portugal, Algeria, and the U.S.—highly destructive, unruly disasters like the Palisades and Eaton fires are becoming the status quo. A new study published Thursday in the journal Science reveals the extent of this global surge, finding that areas of high wildfire risk close to human populations cover 10% of Earth’s landmass.
“The rise in wildfire disasters isn’t just a perception, it’s reality,” said co-author Crystal Kolden, associate professor and director of the Fire Resilience Center at the University of California, Merced, in a university release. “For decades, wildfires primarily impacted largely unpopulated areas, but contemporary catastrophic fires are killing more people and destroying more homes and infrastructure.”
The rising global cost of wildfire
The researchers analyzed global wildfire disaster records from 1980 to 2023 using data from global re-insurer Munich Re’s private database and a public international disaster database. They specifically looked at events that killed 10 or more people or ranked among the 200 most economically damaging.
Of those 200 most costly fires, 43% occurred within the past 10 years. This reflects a fourfold increase in economic wildfire disasters and a threefold increase in wildfires responsible for 10 or more deaths since 1980.
The surge of devastation has unfolded against a backdrop of skyrocketing firefighting investment. In the U.S., federal fire suppression spending nearly quadrupled to $4.4 billion by 2021, yet disasters like the LA fires, the Lahaina fire, and the Durkee fire have become increasingly common.
The team also developed a model that looked beyond the study period to identify areas of high wildfire risk close to human communities. This revealed the deadly risk to 10% of Earth’s land area, and allowed the researchers to successfully forecast major disasters such as the LA fires and Chile’s deadly Las Tablas fire in 2024.
“This provides a roadmap for where the next catastrophic disasters are most likely to occur,” said co-author David Bowman, professor and director of the Fire Center at the University of Tasmania, in the release. “But climate change has fundamentally altered the game. We need to adapt to how we live with fire, not just fight it.”
Climate change drives “hellacious” fire weather
The researchers found that extreme “disaster weather” conditions have become far more common, with severe fire weather and atmospheric drying more than doubling since 1980. Meanwhile, severe droughts have more than tripled. Half of all the disasters they analyzed struck during the most wildfire-conducive conditions on record.
“A majority of global fire disasters occurred with hellacious fire weather that overwhelmed fire suppression efforts,” said co-author John Abatzoglou, a professor and climatologist at UC Merced, in the release. “Moreover, such extreme fire weather conditions are becoming more likely, increasing the odds of disastrous fires,” he added. “While we have seen this play out in catastrophic fires in California, the same factors have played out across the globe.”
“It is unambiguous and it is clear climate change is playing a role,” lead author Calum Cunningham, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Fire center, told The Guardian. “These aren’t just bigger fires, they’re fires occurring under increasingly extreme weather conditions that make them unstoppable.”
BOGO, Philippines (AP) — When firefighters brought out the body of his 4-year-old son in a bag from a budget hotel demolished by a 6.9-magnitude earthquake in the central Philippines, Isagani Gelig stooped down and gently stroked the black cadaver bag for several minutes, trying to feel his child’s remains inside for the last time.
A bag containing the body of Gelig’s wife, the Condor Pension House’s receptionist, was carried out next. She had worked there at night while taking care of their son, John. A rescuer handed him a cellphone found with her body and he nodded a confirmation that it was hers.
Gelig and his family had frantically called after the powerful earthquake shook the city of Bogo in Cebu province Tuesday night, but she never picked up.
“I went around the rubble and kept calling out their names,” Gelig told The Associated Press beside the hotel ruins, where he and rescuers discovered their remains pinned together in the first-floor rubble.
The death toll from the earthquake rose to at least 72 people Thursday with nearly 300 injured. Disaster officials said there have not been reports of additional missing people. More than 170,000 people were affected, including many who have refused to return home because they were traumatized and fearful of aftershocks.
The earthquake damaged or destroyed 87 buildings and nearly 600 houses in Bogo, a relatively new and progressive coastal city of about 90,000, and outlying towns. Bridges and concrete roads were damaged and a seaport in Bogo collapsed.
The quake was triggered around 10 p.m. by a shallow undersea fault line that Filipino seismologists said has not moved for at least 400 years.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. flew to Bogo Thursday to assess the damage and offer aid and support to survivors while mourning with families of the victims. Just days ago, the president was in the central region after a fierce storm left at least 37 people dead and lashed more than half a million people, including in Cebu province.
Countries offer condolences and support
The United States, a longtime treaty ally of the Philippines, offered assistance following the earthquake. Several other countries, including China and Japan, expressed condolences.
“Japan always stands with the Philippines in overcoming this time of difficulties,” Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in a message to Marcos.
One of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, the Philippines is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the ocean.
The archipelago also is lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms each year, making disaster response a major task of the government and volunteer groups.
Victims and survivors share harrowing stories
Shortly after the earthquake ravaged Bogo, the Red Cross tried to call up one of its full-time volunteers who lived in the city.
Ian Ho, 49, was a highly trained first responder. When he did not answer, a Red Cross team was deployed. His house had crumbled and he was found inside, buried in the rubble while embracing his 14-year-old son, who was injured. The teen survived, Red Cross Secretary-General Gwendolyn Pang said.
“He chose to be the shield of his son,” Pang said. “This is the kind of people that we have, lifesavers with an innate instinct to help other people. In this case, the last person that he saved was his son.”
While most people were at home when when the quake struck, Bryan Sinangote was watching a basketball game with less than 100 spectators in San Remigio town, just outside Bogo. Everybody froze. When the up-and down shaking became intense, everybody dashed out of the gym in panic, the 49-year-old driver said.
A gymnasium ceiling collapsed, killing three coast guard personnel and a firefighter. Sinangote said he tried to roll away but was partly trapped. He was later pulled free by members of the coast guard and treated for face and arm injuries.
It was not his first brush with death. He recalled how Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones on record, destroyed his house in San Remigio in 2013. Haiyan left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages and caused ships to run aground and smash into houses in the central Philippines.
“It’s heartbreaking to hear what happened to Bogo city,” Sinangote said, adding that Filipinos have no option but to learn to live side by side with calamities. “After Typhoon Haiyan destroyed my house, I built it back in one year. We just have to be prepared for anything.”
Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The high north is dreaded for its bone-chilling winters. Even worse, say soldiers there, is the warmer season, when insects infest marshes that flood overnight.
GLOBE, Ariz. — Three people have died and others are believed missing after flooding in a rural community in Arizona, officials said Saturday.
Carl Melford, the Gila County Division of Emergency Management manager, told KPHO-TV that two of the people who died were found in a vehicle and a third person was found elsewhere after flooding on Friday in Globe, a city of about 7,250 people about 88 miles (142 kilometers) east of Phoenix.
“I grew up here, and I don’t recognize the town that I grew up in right now,” he said.
Searchers looked for people missing all night, and more help arrived Saturday to continue the search, city officials said on Facebook. They urged people to stay away from the historic downtown of the former mining town because of compromised buildings and hazardous chemicals and debris, including propane tanks swept away in the floodwaters.
Earlier today, in Illinois v. FEMA a federal district court ruled the Trump administration cannot deny federal disaster relief aid to “sanctuary” states that limit assistance to federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. The suit was brought by twenty state governments, led by the state of Illinois, and by the District of Columbia. This is the latest in a long line of decisions striking down Trump Administration efforts to impose immigration-related conditions on federal grants to state governments, even though those conditions were never authorized by Congress.
Federal District Judge William E. Smith (a Republican George W. Bush appointee) ruled the Trump conditions violated the Spending Clause of the Constitution in three ways: the conditions are ambiguous, they aren’t related to the purposes of the grants in question, and they are onerous enough to be coercive:
First, the Court finds that the contested conditions are not reasonably related to the purposes of the grants to which they attach. DHS justifies the conditions by pointing to its broad homeland security mission, but the grants at issue fund programs such as disaster relief, fire safety, dam safety, and emergency preparedness. Sweeping immigration-related conditions imposed on every DHS-administered grant, regardless of statutory purpose, lack the necessary tailoring. The Spending Clause requires that conditions be “reasonably calculated” to advance the purposes for which funds are expended, [South Dakota v.] Dole, 483 U.S. at 209, and DHS has failed to demonstrate any such connection outside of a few programs like Operation Stonegarden. The Court therefore concludes that the conditions are overbroad and unrelated to the underlying programs.
Second, the Court finds that the conditions are coercive. The record shows that states rely on these grants for billions of dollars annually in disaster relief and public safety funds that cannot be replaced by state revenues. Denying such funding if states refuse to comply with vague immigration requirements leaves them with no meaningful choice, particularly where state budgets are already committed. The financial pressure here goes well beyond the “relatively mild encouragement” approved in Dole, 483 U.S. at 211, and amounts instead to “economic dragooning” of the sort condemned in NFIB [v. Sebelius], 567 U.S. at 582. The coercion is even more pronounced because the threatened funds involve essential public safety responsibilities rather than optional or peripheral programs.
Third, the Court holds that the conditions are unlawfully ambiguous. The Spending Clause requires clarity so that states may exercise their choice knowingly. Here, DHS required states to provide “cooperation” and participate in “joint operations” and “information sharing,” but without defining what compliance entails. Likewise, the prohibition on operating programs that “benefit illegal immigrants” or “incentivize illegal immigration” provides no meaningful standards and is hopelessly vague. States cannot predict how DHS will interpret these vague terms, yet they risk losing billions in federal funding for any perceived violation. Such ambiguity deprives the states of the ability to make informed decisions, rendering the conditions constitutionally invalid.
During Trump’s first term, his administration lost numerous lawsuits over issues like this one. Last November, I predicted we would see a repetition of this pattern in his second term. It wasn’t a hard prediction, and I don’t claim any great credit for it. Sure enough, Trump 2.0 has indeed lost multiple cases over its attempts to impose grant conditions on sanctuary jurisdictions. Today’s ruling follows a similar April decision addressing a variety of federal grants, and one in June dealing with transportation grants.
In the November 2024 post, I noted that longstanding Supreme Court precedent holds that conditions on federal grants must 1) be enacted and clearly indicated by Congress (the executive cannot make up its own grant conditions), 2) be related to the purposes of the grant in question (here, transportation grants cannot be conditioned on immigration enforcement), and 3) not be “coercive.”
In the disaster aid case, the court seems obviously right to conclude the Trump conditions violated the first and second of these requirements. I would add that, in addition to being ambiguous, the conditions also were never authorized by Congress. And, Congress, not the executive, controls the spending power.
Whether the disaster aid conditions are also “coercive” is more debatable. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on coercive grants is far from a model of clarity. NFIB v. Sebelius (2012), cited in today’s ruling famously held that a condition onerous enough to be a “gun to the head” is coercive, but doesn’t clearly explain exactly where the line between coercion and mere inducement is. I suspect that states actually vary as to the extent of their dependence on federal disaster aid, and therefore the conditions here may be coercive as to some states, but perhaps not others. Regardless, they were rightly invalidated on the other two grounds.
Today’s ruling also holds that the disaster aid conditions violated the Administrative Procedure Act by being “arbitrary and capricious.” I will leave that issue to others with greater relevant expertise. I will also pass by the procedural mootness issue addressed by the court.
There is, I think, a good policy argument for reducing federal disaster aid to state governments, and leaving most disaster relief to state, local, and private initiative. But that doesn’t mean the executive should be able to use disaster relief as leverage to control state policy on unrelated issues. More generally, as I have long argued, executive-imposed spending conditions are a major threat to both federalism and separation of powers. Today’s ruling, and others like it, help stave off that danger.
They also reinforce Steve Vladeck’s point that the judiciary is resisting Trump’s power grabs more effectively than many think. The second Trump Administration, like the first, keeps losing sanctuary city cases, and so far they have not tried to get them to the Supreme Court (probably because they know they are like to lose there, too). Because the issue has not reached the Supreme Court, and because there is so much else going in the news cycle, these cases have not attracted much public and media attention. But they nonetheless have substantial real-world effects. Had they gone the other way, Trump would have many more levers to compel state and local governments to do his bidding. That doesn’t mean courts are doing everything right (they aren’t), or that they can curb Trump’s illegal policies entirely on their own (the latter requires a strategy combining litigation and political action). But they are making a real difference.
HONOLULU — Officials on the Hawaiian island of Maui went door-to-door evacuating residents from a wildfire Tuesday and sounded emergency sirens.
The 4-acre (1.6-hectare) fire was first reported near the north shore town of Paia at 1:30 p.m., officials said. There were no containment estimates immediately available. There was no immediate information on what caused the fire.
“Leave immediately!” said one alert from Maui Emergency Management Agency. “There is a dangerous threat to life and property.”
Paia is a former sugar plantation town that has become popular with windsurfers. It is on the other side of the island from Lahaina, which was destroyed by a deadly wildfire in 2023.
Paia resident Rod Antone was trying to coordinate evacuation of his elderly parents. “It’s nerve-wracking,” he said. “Hopefully nothing happens to the neighborhood.”
Antone was working in a county building in Wailuku where he listened to radio updates but didn’t hear the sirens. In the hours before a wildfire engulfed the town of Lahaina in 2023, Maui County officials failed to activate sirens.
Antone noted that winds didn’t feel particularly strong Tuesday, unlike in August 2023 when wind-whipped flames burned Lahaina and left 102 people dead. But like Lahaina, Paia is surrounded by dry brush, he said.
The Maui Fire Department was using two helicopters to help fight the blaze. During the Lahaina fire, helicopters were grounded due to the strong winds.
The American Red Cross was setting up evacuation sites, the county said.
When traffic out of Paia started building, Wayne Thibaudeau decided to open a gate to give motorists an alternate evacuation route. Thibaudeau is one of the owners of Paia Sugar Mill, which closed in 2000 and is being renovated.
The route takes motorists through old sugarcane fields.
There was a steady stream of “cars packed with people” using the route, he said.
A report on the Lahaina fire said that some back roads that could have provided an alternative escape were blocked by locked gates.
FLAT ROCK, N.C. — North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein on Monday requested $13.5 billion more from Congress in recovery aid for Hurricane Helene almost a year after the historic storm, saying additional help is needed from Washington to address record amounts of damage and to get funds to the region quicker.
The proposal also asks the federal government to distribute an additional $9.4 billion in federal funds that the state has already requested or is expecting but first needs additional action from U.S. agencies.
Stein’s administration says $5.2 billion in federal funds have already been allocated or obligated to western North Carolina for Helene relief, in contrast to the estimated $60 billion damage and costs incurred from the September 2024 storm and related flooding. Officials said there were over 100 storm-related deaths in the state.
“We are grateful for every federal dollar that we have received because it brings us closer to recovery. But we need more help,” Stein during a news conference at Blue Ridge Community College in Henderson County, about 30 miles south of Asheville. “The next stage of recovery is going to require a new commitment from Congress and from the administration to not forget the people of western North Carolina.”
Stein, who said he plans to take his request to Washington on Wednesday, has tried to find a balance between building rapport with President Donald Trump’s administration on recovery activities and criticizing delays. On Monday, he cited “extra layers of bureaucratic review” slowing down reimbursements to local governments. More relief money has been permitted for distribution in recent weeks.
“Recovery costs money, more money than any city or county in western North Carolina can manage even from a cash flow standpoint,” Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer, who co-chairs an Helene recovery advisory commission, said Monday.
The Democratic governor and his Helene recovery office has often cited a bar chart they say shows relatively meager financial assistance received so far from the federal government as a percentage of total storm-related costs compared to what was provided for other recent U.S. hurricanes.
“Western North Carolina has not received anywhere near what it needs, nor our fair share,” he said.
About $8.1 billion of the $13.5 billion that Stein is requesting would go to the state’s already approved disaster recovery block grant program. More than one-third of that portion would help rebuild or replace thousands of homes and businesses, provide rental assistance and perform storm mitigation activities.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development already has awarded $1.65 billion of these block grants to the state and to Asheville. Other block grant money requested Monday would go to fund forgivable loans for small business, the construction of private and municipal bridges, and support for homeless individuals.
Other newly requested funds would include nearly $1.6 billion to increase reimbursements to rebuild major roads, including Interstate 40 and I-26; and $1.75 billion toward “Special Community Disaster Loans” to help local governments provide essential services.
The state legislature and state agencies already have provided another $3.1 billion toward Helene recovery since last fall.
It’s unclear how Monday’s broad proposal — addressed to Trump and North Carolina’s congressional delegation — will be received by the president and Congress in full. When Stein made a pitch for supplemental recovery funds from the federal government earlier this month, a White House spokesperson said the request was evidence that he is unfit to run a state.”
Meanwhile, the region’s tourist economy received a boost on Monday when the National Park Service announced that a 27-mile stretch of a popular scenic route has reopened with the completion of two projects that repaired damage from a landslide. The opening also provides transportation access to the adjoining Mount Mitchell State Park that features the tallest peak east of the Mississippi River.
CORBIN − The 2025 SOAR Summit concluded in Corbin last Friday with a Principal Officer Plenary that highlighted both the resilience of Eastern Kentucky and major new investments aimed at shaping the region’s future.
Governor Andy Beshear and U.S. Congressman Hal Rogers led the closing session — underscoring the importance of collaboration, economic revitalization and disaster recovery.
SOAR Executive Director Colby Hall opened the plenary by recognizing first responders, city officials and volunteers who aided recovery efforts during the May tornado in Laurel County and other natural disasters in the region.
Leaders from London, Pulaski and surrounding communities joined him on stage to be honored for their service.
“Over 200 showed up today from as far as Florida, and all over the country that participated in the response,” Hall said. “What a great way to start the morning as a way to say thank you to these heroes, and their important work in helping us rebuild from these tragedies that have happened — but that we are going to build back stronger and ever than before.”
Gov. Beshear followed by praising the resilience of the people of Eastern Kentucky in the face of disasters such as the 2022 floods and the May tornado.
“After natural disasters, we see that people at their core are good,” Beshear said. “We see God in the strength, the kindness and the love in Kentuckians.”
He turned his remarks toward the progress being made through the Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization program, which has provided millions of dollars to communities impacted by historic coal mining.
Beshear highlighted completed projects including waterline replacements in Hazard, wastewater upgrades in Jenkins and expansions at the Appalachian Valley Autism Center in Floyd County.
“No parent should ever hear that the best thing for their child’s healthcare is to move,” Beshear said. “With some of the investments we are making today, we are gonna make sure that no parent does hear that in Eastern Kentucky.”
Approximately 15 new AMLER awards were also announced during the closing plenary.
Among those recipients of this year’s AMLER awards were Union Commonwealth University in Barbourville, which was awarded $780,000 to build a new dormitory for its nursing students.
Dr. DJ Washington, President of Union, said that the project will give local students the opportunity to train in world class facilities, and serve their neighbors with the skill and compassion they deserve.
Somerset Community College’s Laurel County campus was awarded $6 million for a career and technical education training complex that will support workforce programs in construction, HVAC and other trades.
Saint Joseph London received $650,000 toward the purchase of a new CT scanner — expanding care for the 34,000 patients it serves each year.
In addition to AMLER funding, Beshear pointed to other statewide progress — including a 30 percent decline in opioid-related deaths over the past year, record-breaking tourism and $42 billion in new investments since he took office, creating nearly 63,000 jobs.
Also announced at the plenary session was Beshear’s intention to push for universal preschool for all Kentucky four-year-olds in the next legislative session.
In June, the governor formalized the effort with an executive order establishing the “Team Kentucky Pre-K for All Advisory Committee,” emphasizing that the initiative would deliver broad benefits by boosting student achievement, strengthening the workforce and easing family budgets.
Congressman Rogers built on Beshear’s remarks, praising Kentuckians for their role in driving both state and national success.
“Eastern Kentucky has proven once again that we are stronger than any storm we face,” Rogers said. “Our best resource has always been you — the Appalachian people who fuel the nation’s industrial revolution and growth renovation across the country.”
He also pointed to Kentucky’s leadership in combating the drug epidemic and detailed his request for nearly $150 million in federal funding for fiscal year 2026.
The request includes $45 million for first responders and emergency facilities, more than $100 million for infrastructure projects such as the Somerset northern bypass and the Mountain Parkway expansion, and $10 million for aerospace education and drug recovery initiatives.
Both leaders credited SOAR (Shaping Our Appalachian Region) for creating opportunities and bringing communities together.
“You cannot tell the story of the United States of America without talking about Eastern Kentucky,” Beshear said. “Because of everyone here, this region is going to play a major role in the future of our country too.”
The plenary concluded with Beshear’s call for compassion and unity, and his continued dedication to the state.
“Life is short,” Beshear said. “Our job is to do good things, and to be kind to each other. I think that is what is seen every year at SOAR.”
For the full recording of the 2025 Officer Plenary Session and other events throughout the summit, visit the Shaping Our Appalachian Region Inc. (SOAR) Facebook page.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Desperate Afghans clawed through rubble in the dead of the night in search of missing loved ones after a strong earthquake killed some 800 people and injured more than 2,500 in eastern Afghanistan, according to figures provided Monday by the Taliban government.
The 6.0 magnitude quake late Sunday hit towns in the province of Kunar, near the city of Jalalabad in neighboring Nangarhar province, causing extensive damage.
The quake at 11:47 p.m. was centered 27 kilometers (17 miles) east-northeast of Jalalabad, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It was just 8 kilometers (5 miles) deep. Shallower quakes tend to cause more damage. Several aftershocks followed.
Footage showed rescuers taking injured people on stretchers from collapsed buildings and into helicopters as people frantically dug through rubble with their hands.
A Taliban government spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said at a press conference Monday that the death toll had risen to at least 800 with more than 2,500 injured. He said most of the casualties were in Kunar.
Buildings in Afghanistan tend to be low-rise constructions, mostly of concrete and brick, with homes in rural and outlying areas made from mud bricks and wood. Many are poorly built.
One resident in Nurgal district, one of the worst-affected areas in Kunar, said nearly the entire village was destroyed.
“Children are under the rubble. The elderly are under the rubble. Young people are under the rubble,” said the villager, who did not give his name.
“We need help here,” he pleaded. “We need people to come here and join us. Let us pull out the people who are buried. There is no one who can come and remove dead bodies from under the rubble.”
Eastern Afghanistan is mountainous, with remote areas. The quake has worsened communications. Dozens of flights have operated in and out of Nangarhar Airport, transporting the injured to hospital.
One survivor described seeing homes collapse before his eyes and people screaming for help.
Sadiqullah, who lives in the Maza Dara area of Nurgal, said he was woken by a deep boom that sounded like a storm approaching. Like many Afghans, he uses only one name.
He ran to where his children were sleeping and rescued three of them. He was about to return to grab the rest of his family when the room fell on top of him.
“I was half-buried and unable to get out,” he told The Associated Press by phone from Nangarhar Hospital. “My wife and two sons are dead, and my father is injured and in hospital with me. We were trapped for three to four hours until people from other areas arrived and pulled me out.”
It felt like the whole mountain was shaking, he said.
Rescue operations were underway and medical teams from Kunar, Nangarhar and the capital Kabul have arrived in the area, said Sharafat Zaman, a health ministry spokesman.
Zaman said many areas had not been able to report casualty figures and that “the numbers were expected to change” as deaths and injuries are reported. The Taliban government’s chief spokesman, Mujahid, said “all available resources will be utilized to save lives.”
Nearby Jalalabad, close to neighboring Pakistan, is a bustling trade center and a key border crossing. Although it has a population of about 300,000 according to the municipality, its metropolitan area is thought to be far larger.
Jalalabad also has considerable agriculture, including citrus fruit and rice farming, with the Kabul River flowing through the city.
A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2023, followed by strong aftershocks. The Taliban government estimated at least 4,000 people perished in that quake.
The U.N. gave a far lower death toll of about 1,500. It was the deadliest natural disaster to strike Afghanistan in recent memory.
Sunday night’s quake was felt in parts of Pakistan, including the capital Islamabad. There were no reports of casualties or damage.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he was deeply saddened by events in Afghanistan. “Our hearts go out to the victims and their families. We are ready to extend all possible support in this regard,” he said on the social platform X.
A tsunami has hit coastal areas of Russia’s Kuril Islands and Japan’s large northern island of Hokkaido after a powerful, 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Russia early Wednesday. (AP via NTV)
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A magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan near its shared border with Pakistan late Sunday, killing at least 250 people and injuring hundreds more.
The quake was reported at 11:47 p.m. some 17 miles east-northeast of the city of Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The area is difficult to access, so the extent of the damage and injuries is not entirely known at this time.
The Kunar Disaster Management Authority said in a statement that at least 250 people were killed and 500 others injured though those figures were expected to rise.
This is a locator map for Afghanistan with its capital, Kabul. (AP Photo)
The earthquake was just 5 miles deep and shallower quakes tend to cause more damage.
A 4.5 magnitude quake occurred in the same province just after midnight.
Herat, Afghanistan. A general view of people living in tents due to the earthquake that struck western Afghanistan on October 15. (ESMATULLAH HABIBIAN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
Afghanistan is especially vulnerable to earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush Mountain range where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
Two 6.3 magnitude earthquakes killed dozens of people in western Afghanistan’s Herat province on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023, the country’s national disaster authority said.(AP)
One of the deadliest natural disasters to strike Afghanistan in recent memory occurred on Oct. 7, 2023, when a 6.3 earthquake struck the South-Central Asian nation, followed by strong aftershocks.
ATHENS, Greece — Climate change that has driven scorching temperatures and dwindling rainfall made massive wildfires in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus this summer burn much more fiercely, said a new study released Thursday.
The study by World Weather Attribution said the fires that killed 20 people, forced 80,000 to evacuate and burned more than 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres) were 22% more intense in 2025, Europe’s worst recorded year of wildfires.
Hundreds of wildfires that broke out in the eastern Mediterranean in June and July were driven by temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (about 104 Fahrenheit), extremely dry conditions and strong winds.
WWA, a group of researchers that examines whether and to what extent extreme weather events are linked to climate change, called its findings “concerning.”
“Our study finds an extremely strong climate change signal towards hotter and drier conditions,” said Theodore Keeping, a researcher at Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College in London.
“Today, with 1.3 degrees C of warming, we are seeing new extremes in wildfire behaviour that has pushed firefighters to their limit. But we are heading for up to 3 degrees C this century unless countries more rapidly transition away from fossil fuels,” Keeping said.
The study found winter rainfall ahead of the wildfires had dropped by about 14% since the pre-industrial era, when a heavy reliance on fossil fuels began. It also determined that because of climate change, weeklong periods of dry, hot air that primes vegetation to burn are now 13 times more likely.
The analysis also found an increase in the intensity of high-pressure systems that strengthened extreme northerly winds, known as Etesian winds, that fanned the wildfires.
Gavriil Xanthopoulos, research director at the Institute of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems of the Hellenic Agricultural Organization in Greece, said firefighters used to be able to wait for such winds to die down to control fires.
“It seems that they cannot count on this pattern anymore,” Xanthopoulos said. More study is needed to understand how the wind patterns are reaching high velocities more often, he said.
Flavio Lehner, an assistant professor in Earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University who was not involved in the WWA research, said its summary and key figures were consistent with existing literature and his understanding of how climate change is making weather more conducive to wildfire.
Climate change is “loading the dice for more bad wildfire seasons” in the Mediterranean, Lehner said.
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In mid-May, at about ten thousand feet above sea level, a rocky mountainside in the Swiss Alps gave way and tumbled onto a field of ice called the Birch Glacier. Half a mile below, in the Lötschen Valley, lay Blatten, a picturesque village of centuries-old wooden houses. The following night, Blatten’s mayor, Matthias Bellwald, heard crashing noises from the mountain. He quickly arranged for a helicopter to fly him and a local official who monitored natural hazards up to the site. Although the mountain, the Kleine Nesthorn, was still covered with snow, they could tell that something deeply unnatural was happening. “I saw that, on the mountain, cracks had formed,” the Mayor told me. “At first, it was just one, then several more.”
Since the nineties, the Birch Glacier, which covered an area of about fourteen city blocks, had been behaving strangely. Unlike many Alpine glaciers, which have receded as the planet warms, it had advanced down the slope, probably because of periodic rockfalls that weighed it down. As a result, Swiss authorities kept the section under constant surveillance. On Saturday, May 17th, after sensors detected more instability, the village government ordered the evacuation of what is known as the shadow side of the village, which is closest to the Kleine Nesthorn. Lukas Kalbermatten, the owner of a local hotel, told me that some village residents moved from their homes and into his property.
Soon, a crack, which was perhaps several feet wide and a hundred feet deep, was spotted between the Kleine Nesthorn and the mountain range it was a part of—suggesting that the peak itself was unstable. “The whole mountain was moving,” Kalbermatten told me. By Monday morning, experts from the canton of Valais, which encompasses Blatten, estimated that up to three million cubic metres of debris could rush down the mountain, over a nearby dam, and into the village. This time, all of Blatten’s three hundred residents, including Kalbermatten, were required to leave within twenty minutes. Officials counted them individually as they left.
By Monday evening, one flank of the Kleine Nesthorn had collapsed in on itself, sending more debris onto the glacier. Kalbermatten spent this period helping his employees find places to stay; he was optimistic that they’d be back to work soon. On May 28th, having little to do—his hotel was empty and inaccessible—he and a former colleague went up to an observation point just across the valley, where they’d have a good view of the glacier. In the hour and a half that Kalbermatten spent up there, rain started to fall. Then he saw the glacier and the mountainside begin to move. In a video that he shot, what looks like a wave of ice and stone slowly flows down from the snowy peak. A voice briefly cries out with shock, then falls silent. The slurry of glacier and debris picks up speed; by the time it reaches the treeline, farther down the slope, it has billowed into a cloud that resembles a volcanic eruption or an explosive demolition. After that, Kalbermatten stopped filming. He didn’t want to record the moment that his home town was erased. “We all knew,” he said. “It was too late.”
A local farmer, Toni Rieder, witnessed the disaster from his car, about a mile from Blatten. “I heard the crash, the blast wave,” he told me. The wreckage from the village was thrown high into the air, he said; the energy of the landslide appeared to vaporize chunks of ice into a cloud of mist. One of his friends was tending to sheep nearby—outside the evacuation zone, but inside the area that was struck. “The first thing I knew was that he was gone,” Rieder said. “It was impossible for someone to survive.”
The landslide contained an estimated nine million cubic metres of material—three times what officials had expected. It was so large that, after it reached the valley floor, it flowed up the opposite slope before sloshing back down again. The avalanche temporarily dammed the Lonza River, which runs through Blatten, and small lakes, filled with dead trees and detritus from homes, formed on each side of the village. About ninety per cent of Blatten, including Kalbermatten’s hotel, was destroyed. High above the village, the Birch Glacier was gone.
The Lonza River is normally an icy blue, but when I first saw it, on a sunny day in June, it was brown from the debris upstream. I caught a bus to Blatten from the entrance to the Lötschen Valley, where the Lonza flows into the Rhône. We drove up a series of steep switchbacks until Alpine peaks, still decked in snow, towered above us. Then the bus rounded a corner and the landslide came into view. A man in the bus stood up and, with a shocked look on his face, took a photograph with his phone. In the distance, a brown gash stretched from the mountaintops to the valley floor. Where it had cut through forest, no trees remained intact; all had been flattened or buried. Blatten now resembled a pit mine. Several rivulets flowed lazily through the debris.
I got off in Kippel, two villages before Blatten, and made my way to the town hall, which had become a staging area for the emergency response. Even at five thousand feet, the temperature was in the eighties. Upstairs, I met Mayor Bellwald, thin and tan in a red plaid shirt and hiking boots. He had occupied his position for only five months, and he looked drawn. Like everyone I interviewed in Blatten, he referred to the landslide as die Katastrophe.
Bellwald told me that, after the landslide, the first thing he felt was pain. “An entire village—history, tradition, houses, memories—simply gone in thirty seconds,” he said. His deep-set eyes peered at me through large glasses. “Then, straightaway, came the feeling that I am responsible for this community. What needs to be done now?” In the days that followed, scientists studied the slope to gauge the risk of more landslides. The national government called in the Army to secure the area. First responders searched for the missing shepherd; his remains were not recovered until weeks later. Bellwald barely saw his family. He mentioned a recent conversation with his godmother, who is in her nineties and lost a seven-century-old house. “We can’t undo it,” she’d told him. “Just get up once more than you fall down.”
Ultimately, hundreds of news outlets covered the destruction of Blatten. Experts called it unprecedented and warned that Alpine permafrost was thawing. Before-and-after photos went viral online. The media frenzy was so intense that, at one point, journalists were barred from entering the Kippel town hall. Meanwhile, Swiss newspapers debated whether Blatten should be abandoned. Beat Balzli, the editor-in-chief of the Sunday edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, cautioned politicians not to fall into an “empathy trap” by promising to rebuild. “The retreat of civilization reduces the potential for damage,” he wrote. “Where there is less, less is destroyed.” His argument was a version of one that Americans encounter every year, whether after hurricanes in Florida or after fires in Southern California.
I expected to hear the same debate among locals. Instead, everyone who spoke to me seemed unified around a shared message. “We have lived here for a thousand years,” Bellwald told me. “A village will be built here again.” Funding began flowing to Blatten soon after the landslide. The Swiss legislature unanimously approved six million dollars in emergency aid; a charitable group, Swiss Solidarity, quickly secured another twenty-one million in donations. But by far the largest source of financing, nearly four hundred million dollars, will come from insurance companies, many of which are headquartered in Switzerland. (Property in all parts of the country—even areas that are at the highest risk of landslides, fire, and flooding—can be insured against disasters.)
Bellwald’s conviction about rebuilding was based in part on principle. “Everyone has the right to live where they live,” he said. He pointed out that cities, too, are increasingly prone to disasters. Yet most people in Miami, Los Angeles, and New York do not seem to be retreating from the hurricanes, fires, and sea-level rise that they face. Bellwald also argued that people from the mountains are best able to weigh the dangers there. “Nature lives in people here,” he said. Locals routinely stockpile supplies because they know that blizzards and avalanches threaten the roads. Each village employs a Naturgefahren-Beobachter, or observer of natural hazards, which was one of the reasons that Blatten was evacuated so swiftly. “The mountains have already made us pretty robust,” he said. He was not downplaying the risks of future disasters but making the case for adapting to them.
When I asked the Mayor about climate change, he seemed reluctant to talk about it. “I don’t think we should politicize these issues,” he told me. The scientists I consulted had a different attitude. None of them said that climate change could fully explain the catastrophe—the Kleine Nesthorn was inherently prone to rockfalls, and the immediate cause was gravity—but all were convinced that climate change had played a key role. Switzerland has warmed at a rate twice the global average. When water soaks into thawing permafrost and refreezes, it expands, causing cracks to spider through the landscape. The Swiss Federal Office for the Environment estimates that six to eight per cent of the country’s territory is unstable. “Ice is considered as the cement of the mountains,” a geoscientist told the news agency AFP shortly after the landslide. “Decreasing the quality of the cement decreases the stability of the mountain.”
“The more critical question is whether climate change was the main factor controlling the timing of the event,” Mylène Jacquemart, a glaciologist at the university ETH Zürich who studies natural hazards, told me, in an e-mail. If climate change sped up the collapse of the mountain, it could be responsible for the scale of the destruction. A decade from now, in a warmer world, “the glacier would likely have been gone, and the whole thing would have been much less catastrophic,” Jacquemart said. Bellwald tried to look at the long-term outlook in a positive light. “Everyone says that glaciers are melting,” he said. “And that glacier is gone now.”
One of the scientists I spoke with was a distant relative of the Mayor—Dr. Benjamin Bellwald, a clean-energy geologist at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, who spent much of his youth in Blatten. During his scientific training, he studied the glaciers of the Lötschen Valley. “Blatten was always like the anchor for me,” he told me. “Even now, when I close my eyes, I can go back there and navigate through all the small roads, through every corner of the village.” He first understood the scale of the destruction when his brother sent him a photograph. He couldn’t figure out which part of Blatten it depicted.
A few weeks ago, Dr. Bellwald made his first trip to Blatten since the landslide. On a hike through the affected area, childhood memories came back to him, and his eyes filled with tears. Still, he was relieved: almost everyone in the village had survived. He felt grateful that he’d grown up “surrounded by these peaks and glaciers, even if they destroyed what I loved most.” His trip ultimately reassured him that the area can be made safe to live in again, at least for those who are patient enough to wait. What is left of the Kleine Nesthorn is still crumbling, but the village could build dams to block small landslides. Although a remnant of the upper Birch Glacier still sits far above Blatten, it’s too high up for large quantities of rock to accumulate there.
At first, Dr. Bellwald couldn’t believe that, of all the places in the world where a disaster could strike, his village, during his lifetime, was destroyed. But over time he sensed that the catastrophe did not make Blatten an outlier. “Climate change will impact everybody,” he told me. Not every country can afford to monitor every glacier or rebuild entire villages. Still, he hoped that this landslide—one of the most closely studied in history—could serve as a case study. He felt a renewed sense of urgency, not only to stop climate change by phasing out fossil fuels but also to prepare for its effects through monitoring and adaptation. “Solidarity is key,” he said, adding that we must “be empathic with all of the people on the planet.”
During my trip, I hiked as close to Blatten as I could without crossing a perimeter that the Swiss Army had established. Whenever I looked up to admire the grandeur of the mountains, my eyes would be drawn back to the scar on the landscape. A faint haze, thrown up by smaller and more recent rockfalls, hung over the site. I kept thinking of the word “sublime,” which eighteenth-century philosophers associated with the might of nature and the feeling of mortal terror.
As Hurricane Erin pelted North Carolina’s barrier islands with strong winds and waves this week, it destroyed many nests of threatened sea turtle, burying the eggs deep in sand or washing them out to sea.
On Topsail Island more than half the 43 loggerhead turtle nests were lost in the storm, according to Terry Meyer, conservation director for the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center.
“I didn’t anticipate the water table being so high and the eggs being just literally sitting in water when we got to them,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve seen that on such a wide scale.”
Erin never made landfall and caused no widespread damage to infrastructure despite being twice the size of an average hurricane. But the turtles were not so lucky.
Loggerheads, which are known for their large head and strong jaw muscles, are threatened in the U.S. due to fishing bycatch, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They are the state’s primary sea turtle and nest every two to three years between May and August, with each nest containing about 100 eggs.
Meyer said that in the big picture, the devastation of dozens of these nests will not have a significant impact on the species. But for the many volunteers who spend every summer helping to monitor each nest on the 26-mile (42-kilometer) beach, it’s heartbreaking.
“When you’re digging up a nest that’s got 100 dead, fully developed, ready-to-go hatchlings — I’m old and jaded, but that can be pretty tough to handle,” she said.
About 33 miles (53 kilometers) to the northeast, the storm likely wiped out eight of the 10 remaining loggerhead turtle nests on Emerald Isle, said Dale Baquer, program coordinator and president of the Emerald Isle Sea Turtle Patrol.
One survived when the turtles managed to hatch Wednesday night, while another one likely made it safely through the storm because of its higher location on the dunes, according to Baquer. But there is little chance for the others, though it will not be known for sure until about 75 days into the incubation cycle.
“They really suffered a lot of damage. A lot of high tides and a lot of sitting water. But we’re just going to remain optimistic,” she said.
Both organizations tried to get ahead of the storm by picking up signs or extra stakes or fencing that could be washed out or cause other problems for the turtles.
But there is little they can do given North Carolina’s strict laws about keeping the sea turtle hatching process natural.
Baquer said the only time the group can obtain state permission to help a nest is if it knows it has already hatched or possibly if the tide hits the nest and the eggs are washing out.
“It’s stressful and of course it’s not something you ever get used to, but I think we all have a science mindset that this is nature and this is what’s going to happen,” she said.
In August 2023, downed power lines on Maui, Hawaii, sparked a wildfire that quickly exploded into multiple, fast-moving blazes fanned by high winds. Over several days, the fires reduced much of the town of Lāhainā to ashes, displacing thousands and killing more than 100 people.
New research published Thursday, August 22, in the journal Frontiers in Climate suggests this disaster also caused a population-wide increase in mortality beyond what the official death count captured. By calculating the all-cause excess fatality rate—how many more deaths took place over a given period than expected—scientists found a 67% increase in the local mortality rate for August 2023. During the deadliest week of the blaze, the local death rate was 367% higher than expected. These findings underscore a need for improved disaster preparedness that incorporates Native Hawaiian ecological knowledge, the researchers concluded.
What excess death rate reveals
Looking at the excess death rate offered a fuller picture of the fire’s impact, co-first author Michelle Nakatsuka, a medical student and researcher at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, told Gizmodo in an email. “The official numbers mostly count direct causes, like burns or smoke inhalation, but excess deaths capture [the] true toll better by telling us how many more people died than would have otherwise been expected in the month of the Lāhainā fires,” she explained.
Disasters like wildfires often cause deaths in indirect ways that affect communities over time. When clinics shut down and roads are blocked off, people can’t refill their prescriptions or get dialysis treatments, Nakatsuka explained. Stress and displacement can worsen chronic conditions, and power or communication failures can delay emergency responses. “These impacts are amplified in under-resourced settings and [are] disproportionately suffered by vulnerable groups, like the elderly or people of color,” she said.
The tragic toll of the Maui fires
Even with this knowledge, Nakatsuka and her colleagues were surprised by the increase in excess mortality during the month of August 2023. Their analysis included all causes of death except covid-19. “While we anticipated an increase in excess deaths, seeing more than 80 additional deaths in the month of the Lāhainā fires was striking,” Nakatsuka said. “It was also surprising to see that the proportion of those deaths occurring outside of medical settings was larger than expected,” she added.
Indeed, the number of deaths that didn’t take place in a medical context—such as the emergency room—rose from 68% in previous months to 80% in August 2023. These people died in homes or public locations, suggesting that many were unable to reach medical care because of the fires.
A path to resilience
While all-cause excess mortality is useful for correlating increased fatalities with natural disasters, it offers little insight into the details of these deaths, Nakatsuka clarified. “The main limitation here is that we can’t say exactly which deaths were caused by the fires or look into Lāhainā-specific excess mortality; we can only measure the overall increase in deaths,” she said, adding that future research should analyze death records alongside medical and toxicology reports to identify causes of death.
Still, these findings reveal a need to improve Maui’s disaster preparedness and invest in wildfire mitigation strategies rooted in Indigenous knowledge, Nakatsuka said. “Native Hawaiian practices center around caring for the land (mālama ʻāina) in ways that naturally reduce fire risk, like restoring native plants, maintaining diverse ecosystems, and managing water resources,” she said. “Bringing Indigenous knowledge together with modern climate prediction tools will minimize risk of future climate crises and center the community’s voice at the heart of disaster prevention and recovery efforts.”
There’s a popular T-shirt on Hatteras Island on the North Carolina Outer Banks that says: “One road on. One road off (sometimes)” — poking fun at the constant battle between Mother Nature and a thin ribbon of pavement connecting the narrow barrier island to the rest of the world.
Mother Nature is probably going to win this week. Hurricane Erin is forecast to move hundreds of miles offshore from the islands but the massive storm is still sending waves 20 feet (6 meters) or greater crashing over vulnerable sand dunes.
Officials have ordered evacuations of Hatteras and Ocracoke islands even without a hurricane warning because that tiny ribbon of highway called NC 12 will likely be torn up and washed out in several places, isolating villages for days or weeks.
The 3,500 or so Outer Bankers who live there have handled isolation before. But most of the tens of thousands of vacationers have not.
“We haven’t seen waves of that size in a while and the vulnerable spots have only gotten weaker in the past five years,” said Reide Corbett, executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute, a group of several universities that study the Outer Banks.
In a basic sense, they are sand dunes that were tall enough to stay above the ocean level when many of the Earth’s glaciers melted 20,000 years ago.
The barrier islands in some places are as far as 30 miles (48 kilometers) off mainland North Carolina. To the east is the vast Atlantic Ocean. To the west is the Pamlico Sound.
“Water, water everywhere. That really resonates on the Outer Banks,” Corbett said.
The most built up and populated part of the Outer Banks are in the north around Nags Head and Kill Devil Hills, which aren’t under the evacuation order. South of the Oregon Inlet, scoured out by a 1846 hurricane, is Hatteras Island, where the only connection to the mainland is the NC 12 highway. South of there is Ocracoke Island, accessible only by boat or plane.
The first highways to reach the area were built more than 60 years ago. And the Outer Banks started booming, as it went from quaint fishing villages to what it is now, dotted with 6,000-square foot vacation homes on stilts.
On a nice day, what look like snowplows and street sweeper brushes wait on the side of NC 12 to scoop and sweep away the constantly blowing sand.
When the storms come, water from the ocean or the sound punch through the sand dunes and wash tons of sand and debris on the road. In more extreme cases, storms can break up the pavement or even create new inlets that require temporary bridges.
It cost the North Carolina Department of Transportation more than $1 million a year in regular maintenance to keep NC 12 open during the 2010s. They also spent about $50 million over the decade on repairs after storms.
But the state estimates Dare County, which includes most of the Outer Banks, brings in $2 billion in tourism revenue a year. So the cycle of clean up and repair continues.
It can take time to fix things. Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and Hurricane Irene in 2011 both cut inlets into Hatteras Island and ferries were needed for two months. It can still take days to get NC 12 back open even after more routine Nor’easters.
It’s not just storms that impact the island. As the planet warms and polar ice melts, rising ocean levels threaten the Outer Banks. In a place where most of the land is only a few feet above sea level, every inch of sand counts.
In Rodanthe, which sticks the farthest out into the Atlantic, the churning ocean has swallowed up more than a dozen homes since 2020. Officials think at least two unoccupied homes are likely to be lost if the waves from Erin are as strong as predicted.
Shelli Miller Gates waited tables on the Outer Banks to earn money as a college student in the late 1970s. She remembers houses with no air conditioning, televisions or phones. And she adored it.
“I love the water. I love the wildness of it. It’s the way I want to live my life,” the respiratory therapist said.
It’s a lifestyle embraced by many. The area’s shorthand “OBX” shows up in many places as a source of pride, including the first three letters on license plates issued by the state.
The isolation contributes to a sense of community. Gates has seen people band together countless times when their connection to the outside world is severed. And there is always the allure of getting to live someplace where others just get to visit.
“There’s things everywhere. There’s earthquakes and lizards and floods. Looks at the poor people out in western North Carolina,” Gates said. “There are so many things that can happen to you. I feel like you have to find the place that feels like home.”
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Associated Press Journalist Ben Finley contributed to this report.
Several large brush fires broke out across the region this weekend amid the ongoing dry weather.
A large brush fire had been smoldering for a day off Cain Road and Highland Avenue in Salem before flames broke out early Sunday morning.
Salem firefighters were trying to contain the blaze via a controlled burn, according to reports, but also had to work to protect buildings and homes close to the flames. The fire also threatened a cell tower at one point.
A public safety alert just before 10 a.m. urged residents to avoid the area.
In Beverly, a brush fire broke out near 40 Enon St., behind McDonald’s toward Wenham Lake, on Saturday blanketing the area in smoke.
Two brush fires were also reported in Topsfield on Saturday. And yet another brush fire was reported in Middleton Sunday afternoon near Emerson Brook Reservoir.
A red flag warning is in place across Massachusetts, indicating extreme fire danger.
RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina state legislators returning to work Thursday to consider further Hurricane Helene relief have received an estimate of the monetary scope of the catastrophic flooding and what Gov. Roy Cooper wants them to spend soon on recovery efforts.
The Republican-dominated General Assembly scheduled a one-day session to consider additional funding and legislation four weeks after Helene tore across the Southeast and into the western North Carolina mountains.
Earlier this month, lawmakers unanimously approved — and Cooper signed — an initial relief bill that included $273 million, mostly the state’s matching share to meet federal requirements for disaster assistance programs. Lawmakers said it would be the first of many actions they would take to address the storm.
North Carolina state officials have reported 96 deaths from Helene, which brought historic levels of rain and flooding to the mountains in late September.
Thursday’s session comes one day after Cooper, a Democrat, unveiled his request to legislators to locate $3.9 billion to help pay for repairs and revitalization. The request was included in a report from his Office of State Budget and Management, which calculated that Helene likely caused at least a record $53 billion in damages and recovery needs in western North Carolina.
Cooper said on Wednesday that the state’s previous record for storm damage was $17 billion from Hurricane Florence, which struck eastern North Carolina in 2018.
State government coffers include several billon dollars that can be accessed for future recovery spending. Almost $4.5 billion is in the state’s savings reserve alone.
Cooper’s request includes $475 million for a grant recovery program for businesses in the hardest-hit areas; $325 million to help homeowners and renters quickly with rebuilding and minor repairs; $225 million for grants to farmers for uninsured losses; and $100 million for public school and community college capital needs.
Agricultural and residential losses are expected to be particularly acute in the damaged areas because few growers were covered by crop insurance and homeowners by flood insurance.
According to the budget office, the storm and its aftermath caused 1,400 landslides and damaged over 160 water and sewer systems, at least 6,000 miles (9,650 kilometers) of roads, more than 1,000 bridges and culverts and an estimated 126,000 homes.
At a Harley-Davidson dealership in Appalachia, one expects to encounter the occasional roar of some serious horsepower.
Less expected is the sight that has accompanied that sound in Swannanoa, North Carolina, for the past three weeks: Helicopters, many of them privately owned and operated, launching and landing from a makeshift helipad in the backyard of the local hog shop. According to the men who organized this private relief effort in the wake of devastating floods unleashed by the remnants of Hurricane Helene, more than a million pounds of goods—food, heavy equipment to clear roads, medical gear, blankets, heaters, tents, you name it—have been flown from here to dots all over the map of western North Carolina.
“We’re not the government, and we’re here to help,” says one of the two men standing by the makeshift gate—a pair of orange traffic drums—that controls access to and from the Harley-Davidson dealership’s parking lot and the piles of donated items neatly organized within it. “We can do it quicker, we can do it efficiently, and we genuinely just want to help our neighbors.” He identifies himself only by his first name and later asks that I don’t use even that. It’s an understandable request, as what he’s doing is probably not, strictly speaking, totally legal.
There are a lot of those blurry lines in western North Carolina right now, and thankfully the police are either too busy or too grateful for the help to care much about it. An ethos of do-it-yourself-ism, plenty of cooperation, and a healthy amount of “ask forgiveness rather than permission” is on display everywhere in Asheville and its surroundings.
Every bit of it is needed. The flooding caused by Helene is catastrophic, as I witnessed firsthand during a two-day trip to the area last week. Pictures and videos on social media and in the news do not fully capture the scope of this disaster—and the digging out, picking up, and rebuilding is a process far too large and too important to be left to the government.
The Harley-Davidson dealership in Swannanoa, North Carolina, has become an official relief center in the weeks since Hurricane Helene hit. (Photo by Eric Boehm)Piles of bottled water, clothes, gasoline, propane, and more donated goods in Swannanoa, where an ad hoc helicopter landing pad has been set up. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
“It’s been miraculous.”
The man largely responsible for organizing the Harley-Davidson airlift is a burly, bearded former Green Beret who goes by Adam Smith—yes, really.
Smith was on a work trip to Texas on September 27, when the remnants of Helene stormed into the southern Appalachians and dumped over 20 inches of rain onto the mountains. After losing contact with his ex-wife and 3-year-old daughter, Smith drove through the night to get back to the Asheville area. What greeted him was a nightmare: Roads to the mountain hamlet where the two lived were completely impassable thanks to downed trees and power lines, mudslides, and collapsed bridges. After two days of trying to get to them, and still no contact, Smith feared the worst.
“They’re about eight miles that way,” he gestures toward the mountain ridge that runs south of Swannanoa, an area where some of the worst flooding in the area occurred. “I just assumed they were dead at that point.”
Former Green Berets don’t give up easily. Through a series of connections, Smith got in touch with someone who owned a small recreational helicopter. On the morning of September 29, he hitched a ride on his last hope.
He found them, alive and well. Tears well up in his eyes when I ask him about that moment. “We landed the helicopter and I was getting out of the door and I saw them walk from the tree line,” he says. “And they were perfect.”
They weren’t the only ones who needed help. Smith’s day job these days is running Savage Freedoms Defense, a training and consulting firm, where he draws on his military experience to help prepare people to take care of themselves and their loved ones under difficult circumstances. Through that business and via connections with other retired special operations veterans in the area, Smith launched what’s been called a redneck air force to get supplies to flooded mountain towns. Smith owns motorcycles and knows people who work at the Harley-Davidson dealership. He also knew it would be a perfect spot for the group’s ad hoc operations: a big parking lot with a single entrance, and a large field out back where the helicopters have been landing.
By the end of the first week, they had three civilian helicopters running missions, and it has only grown from there. In addition to food and supplies, the group has carried Starlink devices into places where internet and cell connections were down.
Bringing together veterans and others with experience in emergency response meant that the group had people who knew “the different systems and procedures and process, and understand the red tape and also understanding the people on the ground,” says Austin Holmes, who is handling communications for Savage Freedoms.
The bootstrapped operation has gained notoriety in the region—and a visit from former President Donald Trump on Monday of this week—as well as the respect of the National Guard, which has started piggybacking on some of Savage Freedom’s supply runs. When I visited on Friday, a truckload of National Guardsmen were picking up a free lunch—smoked turkey, with peas and carrots—being distributed by volunteers in the parking lot.
Even the bureaucrats at the Federal Aviation Administration have had to get out of the way: The field behind the Harley-Davidson dealership was granted an emergency designation as a legitimate landing zone.
Smith says this is meant to be a “collaborative” operation, rather than a fully private one. But there are no uniformed cops controlling access, just Travis and his buddy, who declines to speak with me. The National Guardsmen who are here seem to be waiting for orders rather than giving them. What’s happening here resembles a militia operation, in the best and truest sense of the term.
“Now that we’re three weeks into it, we’ve had no less than 60 people here. At the height, we had 130 people here every day,” Smith says. “It just, it’s been miraculous.”
(Photo by Eric Boehm)
Who will build the roads…and the hot showers?
Any doubts about the necessity of those helicopters disappear as I wind my way into the mountains southeast of Asheville. It’s been three weeks, but U.S. Route 74—the only main road in this area—is passable only in the strictest sense of the word. Trees have been cut and the mudslides partially cleared, but power lines are down everywhere. In some places, it looks like every third tree was felled by the storm. In others, whole mountainsides came loose and tumbled down.
Where the road wasn’t blocked with debris from above, it was washed out from below. After crossing the top of Strawberry Gap, Route 74 follows Hickory Creek as it spills down the side of the eastern continental divide toward the Broad River. In places where floodwaters from the storm came into conflict with anything man-made, the creek won. The road is open now thanks to piles of gravel and steel plates filling some of the washed-out sections. Hastily constructed culverts have replaced destroyed bridges in so many places that I lost count.
“I’ve never dealt with anything like this, and I hope I never do again,” says Jay Alley, who has been the chief at the volunteer fire department in Gerton since 1994. “We had pretty much no roads, no bridges, no power poles, nothing. Had a lot of homes destroyed.”
Despite the damage, he’s proud to report that the town didn’t lose a single life in the flooding. “We actually gained one,” he says. “We had a baby born in the middle of all this, so that was really great.” The stories that kid will be told.
Other places have not been so lucky. As of October 23, there have been 96 deaths attributed to Helene’s impact on North Carolina—seven of them in Henderson County, where the town of Bat Cave (just down the road from Gerton) was nearly wiped out.
Flooding washed out sections of U.S. Route 74, slowing relief efforts. (Photo by Eric Boehm)A message of defiance in Bat Cave, North Carolina. (Photo by Eric Boehm)Debris from homes line the roads of western North Carolina. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
Donations and supplies that poured into Gerton overflow onto the driveway outside the firehouse: propane heaters, sleeping bags, warm clothes, and more. A trailer with a massive propane-fueled rotisserie oven—one that’s normally used to cook turkeys for church dinners, says Debbie, who offers me a chili dog while I wait to chat with Alley—has been churning out hundreds of hot meals every day for first responders and residents alike.
“It speaks to the generosity of the people who have come to help us,” says Alley. “We had lots of faith-based organizations and volunteers who came in and they rebuilt roads and they rebuilt things for everyone in the community.”
Wait, even the roads?
“We’ve had private organizations from Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama, just all over the country have been here rebuilding our roads,” Alley says. “I don’t know how they got here, but we said ‘hey, go fix this problem,’ and they went and fixed it.”
Groups with names like God’s Pit Crew have poured into North Carolina in the weeks since Helene, armed with the power of prayer, chain saws, and front-end loaders. In a church parking lot near Mills River, I meet a group of volunteers from Pennsylvania as they’re packing up a trailer to head home after a week of cutting tree limbs and clearing debris. In two days of driving around, I see more “Texas Strong” decals on trucks and trailers than Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) logos.
The Cajun Navy, a Louisiana-based disaster response team that made headlines in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is here too. At an outpost the group established in the parking lot of a Dollar General in Black Mountain, Chris Woodard is serving corn bread and chili. He’ll be here for a week, and then other volunteers will arrive to take his place. World Central Kitchen, the relief group founded by Chef José Andrés, has set up a massive outdoor kitchen in downtown Asheville, where the public water supply was only partially restored this past Friday: For the first time since the storm, toilets could be flushed and residents could take showers, but the water was not yet safe for drinking or cooking.
Outside of the more well-established relief efforts, local networks of volunteers have sprung up around churches, firehouses, and other gathering points. Many rely on the ingenuity of the people running them, or at least a willingness to think outside the box. At BattleCat Coffee in East Asheville, staff are hauling tanks of water from a nearby World Central Kitchen distribution point, and using a jury-rigged pump system to feed it into the expresso machine.
The community pool in Black Mountain has become another of the many ad hoc relief centers in the region: Piles of donated clothes fill the locker rooms, hot food is being grilled on a trailer in the parking lot, and volunteers who traveled from Maryland and Indiana are crashing in the swim team’s clubhouse. This one has something that many other do not: hot showers.
“We had an idea and we just went with it,” says Heather Hensley, who works as the pool’s assistant manager during the summer months. A few days after the flood took out Black Mountain’s power and water supply, Hensley and her colleagues realized that the pool could be used to filter the available water—which was unsanitary due to broken pipes—to make it usable. A generator got the filter up and running. Then, another problem: the October sun wasn’t warm enough to heat the solar shower bags someone provided. So, she called a friend who owns a propane-powered turkey fryer.
Like so many of these off-the-cuff setups, it’s the sort of thing that almost certainly violates at least a few of the town’s ordinances. Hensley says she’s found it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission when attending to flood victims’ needs.
That approach has turned Hensley into something of a field marshal. Our conversation is interrupted at one point by a volunteer who is in contact with some members of the 101st Airborne Division, which has been deployed to the region. The other woman asks Hensley to decide what task the airmen should be given: Are they needed here to unload a truck of donations scheduled to arrive shortly, or focus on clean-up efforts down the road?
“Did you ever think you’d be giving orders to the 101st Airborne?” I ask her after the volunteer steps away to deliver the message (the airmen get clean-up duty, as Hensley has enough volunteers here).
“I’m not,” she laughs, “I’m not giving orders.”
But, yeah, she is.
Makeshift hot showers in Black Mountain, thanks to a community pool and a turkey fryer. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
The road from Black Mountain back to Swannanoa is lined with piles of debris—the guts of homes that were swamped when the Swannanoa River overflowed its banks. The football bleachers from the Asheville Christian Academy have been dragged across the field and crushed like an empty beer can. Mud-logged cars and trucks have been strewn in fields and flushed down the riverbank.
Amid the destruction, the Valley Hope Church has become a hub of activity. Inside, Amy Berry oversees the stockpiles of donated clothes, bedding, furniture, and food that have poured in from as far away as Canada and Connecticut, and now fill the church’s rec center.
“It just has been amazing to see the best of humanity,” Berry says. “We can always talk about the worst of it, but I have seen the best of it, I really have.”
On the church’s front lawn, Taylor and Frances Montgomery are serving a full hot dinner of roasted chicken, Tex-Mex soup, parmesan pasta, and vegetables to dozens of families from the area. Kids are playing tag in the playground. The buzz of generators and an approaching autumn chill hang in the air.
“We’ve seen tears over salad,” says Taylor, who has been a chef for more than two decades. “My whole career, I concentrate on learning the next culinary discipline or new trend or how to develop flavor. And not one of those plates has been more important or impactful than the plate I’m handing to a person on the other side of this slide.”
In more normal times, Taylor and Frances run the Montgomery Sky Farm and an associated animal rescue center in Leicester, about 10 miles northwest of Asheville. If Smith and his brand of redneck mountain tough guy represent one-half of the western North Carolina cliché, then the Montgomeries are the yin to that yang: crunchy, flannel-wearing folks who talk about “scratch” cooking and run a carefully curated Instagram page. They’re also the type who depend on the area’s agritourism, which usually peaks in the autumn.
Not this year. With their farm partially flooded by the storm and the tourists staying away, Taylor and Frances hit the road with a mobile kitchen trailer and food that’s been provided by fundraising on social media. For two weeks, they’ve been feeding desperate people in stricken communities across the Black Mountains. They’re hoping to keep this up through Thanksgiving, and maybe longer if the donations keep flowing.
“We figured we could sit and cry,” says Frances, “or we could be proactive.”
Scenes of destruction along the banks of the Swannanoa River. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
“We’re the ones seeing our friends float away”
The question that will be asked in the wake of Helene is whether FEMA’s response was sufficient. For what it’s worth, President Joe Biden has already delivered his verdict—”you’re doing a heckuva job,” Biden told FEMA Director Deanne Criswell on October 9 (an irony-free callback to then-President George W. Bush’s questionable praise for then-FEMA chief Michael Brown after Hurricane Katrina).
Many in western North Carolina will have a different view, no doubt. Threats of violence against FEMA personnel earlier this month caused a brief suspension of federal relief efforts in Rutherford County, where the town of Chimney Rock was wiped off the map by the same floodwaters that devastated Gerton and Bat Cave. The man responsible for those threats was quickly arrested, and the recovery efforts resumed.
Threats like that are not helping anyone, obviously, and the people engaged in the actual work on the ground—from first responders like Alley to the redneck airforce leaders like Smith—are quick to dismiss that incident as an outlier. It’s no secret that FEMA’s efforts are often slow, incompetent, and ineffective, but the aid is accepted for what it is. (And it hasn’t been completely insignificant: FEMA says it has shippedover 9.3 million meals, more than 11.2 million liters of water, 150 generators, and more than 260,000 tarps to western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.)
But the people here also know that FEMA can’t be trusted with the really important tasks.
“If we weren’t here, there wouldn’t be people getting warm clothes, because FEMA doesn’t give out clothes,” says Bob Wright, who is running another of these roadside donation distribution centers, this one in a shopping center parking lot in Swannonoa. Wright works for a local nonprofit, Hearts and Hands, that is distributing heaters, canned food, blankets, and other items alongside plastic bins containing sweaters and jeans in various sizes.
“They give you $750 to go buy some,” he adds, gesturing at the nearby Ingles grocery store that’s been closed due to damage from the flood as if to underline his point.
In any disaster, a federal response is bound to be insufficient. There will always be the need for people in the affected communities—first responders and other public officials, yes, but also ad hoc volunteer efforts and charity.
Not everyone involved in the recovery is a former Green Beret. Not everyone knows how to fly a helicopter or operate a front-end loader. That’s fine. Surviving the first three weeks after Helene required the assistance of farmers and pool managers, of breweries and barbeques, of chefs and fishmongers from the next state—and untold contributions from the wallets of ordinary Americans and the corporate accounts of some of the country’s biggest businesses. The overflowing donations, the pallets of bottled water, the fresh food, and the helicopters, too. They all represent the wealth of America, and not in some metaphorical sense but in a very literal one.
“I do not have time to defend what the government is doing. They are doing a lot of hard, dangerous work,” says Berry. But grassroots organizations like her church have a vital role to play. “We can respond a lot faster. We’re a lot smaller, but they are our neighbors. It is our home. We are going to respond faster because we are the ones standing in the water, in the mud. We are the ones seeing our friends float away.”
Down the road, at the Harley-Davidson dealership, Smith and his collaborators are working on a planto ferry huge tanks of clean water into the mountain hollows that might not have regular service restored for months.
“This is a long-term effort. And we’ve given our word to the community that we will stay and support them as long as it takes for them to get back on their feet,” says Smith. “The mission is to get the local economy up and running again, make sure the community and residents of western North Carolina are taken care of, and to remind them on a regular basis that they haven’t been forgotten.”
TOKYO — Japan’s beloved former Empress Michiko received greetings from her relatives and palace officials to celebrate her 90th birthday Sunday as she steadily recovers from a broken leg, officials said.
Michiko is the first commoner to become empress in modern Japanese history. Catholic-educated Michiko Shoda and then-Crown Prince Akihito married on April 10, 1959, after what is known as their tennis court romance.
Since then, Akihito and Michiko have largely withdrawn from public appearance to enjoy their quiet life together, taking daily walks inside the palace gardens or occasionally taking private trips, hosting small gatherings for book reading and music, according to the Imperial Household Agency.
Former Emperor Akihito has been concerned about Michiko’s physical strength and asking how she is feeling, officials said.
Michiko, who fell earlier in October at her residence and had a surgery for her femoral fracture, was steadily recovering with a daily rehabilitation session for about an hour at a time, palace officials said. She was expected to be in a wheelchair when joining her well-wishers for Sunday’s celebration.
The former empress was deeply concerned about the people affected by the deadly Jan. 1 earthquake in Japan’s north-central region of Noto, especially those who suffered additional damage from September’s heavy rains and floods, the palace said.
Since retirement, Michiko has shared her love of literature, including children’s books, English poetry and music, with her friends as well as with Akihito.
The palace said she reads parts of a book aloud with her husband as a daily routine after breakfast. They are currently reading a book chosen by Akihito about war and Okinawa, a southern Japanese island where one of the harshest ground battles took place at the end of World War II fought in the name of his father.
The couple broke with traditions and brought many changes to the monarchy: They chose to raise their three children themselves, spoke more often to the public, and made amends for war victims in and outside Japan. Their close interactions have won them deep affection among Japanese.
