LOS ANGELES: A California wildfire that has killed two people and seared its way through cities, towns and wilderness northwest of Los Angeles became the largest blaze ever officially recorded in California on Friday, authorities said.
The Thomas fire took only 2 ½ weeks to burn its way into history books as unrelenting winds and parched weather turned everything in its path to tinder — including more than 700 homes.
The fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties had scorched 273,400 acres, or about 427 square miles of coastal foothills and national forest, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
That was 154 acres larger than California’s previous fire record holder — the 2003 Cedar fire in San Diego County that killed 15 people.
The Cedar fire had been recognized as the biggest California wildfire in terms of acreage since 1932. Some fires before that date undoubtedly were larger but records are unreliable, according to state fire officials.
A firefighter and a civilian fleeing the flames died in the Thomas fire as days of unrelentingly dry, gusty winds drove the flames. At times firefighters were forced to retreat to safe areas and simply wait for the flames to pass so they could attack them from the rear.
Often erratic gusts combined with extremely low humidity — it dropped to just 1 percent on some days — pushed the blaze with virtually unprecedented speed, blackening more ground in weeks than other fires had consumed in a month or more.
On Wednesday, as the fire continued to march north and west, Santa Barbara County fire Capt. David Zaniboni was awed by the speed of its growth.
“Those (other) fires burned for weeks and weeks and this fire is only a few weeks old,” he said. “It’s incredible.”
By that point, firefighters already were beginning to take advantage of a lull in the weather. Several days of easing winds allowed crews to burn and bulldoze protective firebreaks in the foothills above threatened communities, including the celebrity enclave of Montecito.
By Thursday, most of the southern end of the fire also was surrounded and the last mandatory evacuation orders were called off.
As of Friday, while 18,000 homes and other buildings were technically still at risk, there was little flame showing in previously burned areas and the fire was moving slowly through remote wilderness.
The fire was 65 percent contained and colder, moister weather was helping. Although some 50-mph winds gusts were recorded, it produced “no remarkable fire activity” near Montecito or other areas, according to a state fire report.
While brush and timber in the area remain tinder dry, fire crews are setting backfires to burn it out, and that could add to the fire’s size.
“The main fire itself will not have any growth,” Capt. Brandon Vaccaro of the California City Fire Department told the Los Angeles Times. “Any growth that we see or is reflected in the acreage will be based on the control burns.”
California wildfire now largest in state history
California wildfire now largest in state history
Trump campaign accuses UK’s Labour Party of election ‘interference’
- Now-deleted LinkedIn post from Labour Party’s Sofia Patel, said ‘nearly 100’ current and former Labour party staff would be traveling to the US in the coming weeks to help elect Kamala Harris
The campaign has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in Washington, calling for an immediate investigation into what it called “apparent illegal foreign national contributions made by the Labour Party of the United Kingdom and accepted by Harris for President.”
The complaint cited media reports and a now deleted LinkedIn post from Sofia Patel, head of operations at Britain’s Labour Party, who wrote that “nearly 100” current and former Labour party staff would be traveling to the US in the coming weeks to help elect Harris, the Democratic vice president.
“Those searching for foreign interference in our elections need to look no further than LinkedIn post,” the letter of complaint said. “The interference is occurring in plain sight.”
The center-left Labour Party, which sees the US Democrats as its sister party, swept to power in July. Starmer has since sought to build ties with Trump, meeting him at his Trump Tower during a visit to New York in September.
Starmer, traveling on a flight to Samoa, told reporters he did not expect the complaint to strain relations with Trump if he wins the election on Nov. 5, adding Labour volunteers had gone to pretty much every US election.
“They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers, they’re staying I think with other volunteers over there,” he said.
“That’s what they’ve done in previous elections, that’s what they’re doing in this election and that’s really straightforward.”
Greece imposes restrictions to contain spread of pox among sheep, goats
- Authorities are investigating the initial source of the outbreak and tests are being conducted in the wider area where the cases were first detected, in line with EU rules, it said
ATHENS: Greece has banned the transportation and reproduction of sheep and goats across the country for 10 days after detecting more than 100 pox infections, the agriculture ministry said.
The measures are precautionary and are aimed at containing the spread of the virus, which does not affect humans, the ministry said in a statement late on Tuesday.
So far, 104 cases have been detected, most of them in the northern area of Evros. About 17,500 animals have been culled.
Authorities are investigating the initial source of the outbreak and tests are being conducted in the wider area where the cases were first detected, in line with EU rules, it said.
Greece is home to the largest number of goats in Europe, the ministry has said. Their milk, used in Greece’s trademark feta cheese, is a major economic driver.
“Starting today, we announce a complete ban on the movement of sheep and goats for breeding, fattening, grazing and slaughter, throughout the Greek territory for 10 days,” Agriculture Minister Costas Tsiaras said.
In June, Greece imposed similar restrictions to contain a viral infection known as “goat plague.”
In South Africa, water shortages are the new reality
- “It’s been going on for five days,” she said, lamenting shortages affecting South Africa’s largest city where temperatures are rising with the beginning of summer
JOHANNESBURG: Joyce Lakela runs a nursery in Tembisa, a Johannesburg township, but these days she spends most of her time trying to find water.
“It’s been going on for five days,” she said, lamenting shortages affecting South Africa’s largest city where temperatures are rising with the beginning of summer.
“This is a big challenge,” the elderly woman said, after filling up a large bin with water from a tanker. “The kids have to wash their hands, we have to flush the toilets, and we also have to wash the kids.”
The crisis is the result of daily restrictions imposed by the city to stop what they say is over-consumption and to allow maintenance work.
While there is enough water in the country’s reserves, for individuals like Lakela, who already faced months of electricity shortages last year, the reality is that taps are going dry for hours and sometimes days.
Last week, residents of Westbury and Westdene, suburbs to the west of the central business district, blocked the streets in protest against water outages. They burned tires and blocked a road with rocks and debris.
Businesses and services have also been affected, including at least one hospital in northern Gauteng, the province of 16 million people which includes Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria.
This comes after Rand Water, the water supplier for Gauteng, this month warned over high water consumption and instructed municipalities to impose daily limits.
“Water storage could soon be depleted if municipalities do not implement our recommendations. It is essential to act now to prevent the impending disaster,” Rand Water said in a statement on October 12.
The water company is not just worried about consumers leaving taps on. There are also leaks and “illegal connections,” or theft by individuals who divert pipelines and do not pay bills.
“We are losing an average of over 40 percent (of our water) if you look at it in Gauteng,” Makenosi Maroo, a spokeswoman for the utility, told AFP.
Municipalities often cite leaks as a reason for maintenance-related outages.
“We’re not replacing anywhere near as much infrastructure as we should be,” said Craig Sheridan, director of the Center in Water Research and Development at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
For Chris Herold, another water expert, “one of the main problems is that they (the municipalities) are incompetently run, and there’s also a lot of corruption which is hindering the efficient running of water systems.”
Municipalities insist that they are doing what they can with the resources they have. According to at least one city in the province, Ekurhuleni, it is the utility that is not providing enough water and leaving the reservoirs empty.
But Rand Water is only licensed to withdraw a fixed amount approved by the Department of Water and Sanitation.
Already back in 2009, it was clear that more was needed as Gauteng’s population was rapidly expanding. The government made a deal with neighboring Lesotho to expand the bulk water supply to Rand Water.
The project initially meant for 2018 has been delayed until 2028 and as a result, sporadic restrictions to reduce demand are likely to continue.
The rules could become more severe if South Africans do not change their habits, authorities have warned, adding that there could also be “financial implications.”
The country is already considered water scarce, with an average annual precipitation of 495mm compared to the global average of around 990mm per year, and a warming planet will exacerbate the issue.
Under a moderate climate change scenario, in which global emissions peak around 2040 and then decline, the amount of precipitation could fall by as much as 25 percent in South Africa by the end of the century.
The estimates were released in a report published this month by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water.
“There’s definitely a sense of urgency,” said Sheridan, who is particularly concerned by the health risks linked to turning water systems on and off, which has been South Africa’s short term solution.
“When a pipe is full of water, the water leaks out of it. If the pipe is empty, then a leaking sewer next to it can potentially contaminate the supply.”
US embassy warns of attack threat in Sri Lanka
- The embassy said it had “received credible information warning of an attack targeting popular tourist locations” in eastern Arugam Bay
COLOMBO:The US embassy in Sri Lanka issued a travel warning Wednesday to citizens visiting a popular surfing resort in a rare notice of a possible attack.
The embassy said it had “received credible information warning of an attack targeting popular tourist locations” in eastern Arugam Bay.
The warning comes after social media posts called for a boycott of Israeli-owned businesses in the area.
Protests by local Muslim groups against Israel’s war in Gaza and Lebanon have drawn support from the wider community in the predominantly Buddhist South Asian nation.
There was no immediate reaction from Sri Lankan authorities, but police have stepped up security in the area.
There have been no attacks in Sri Lanka since the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 279 people, including 45 foreign nationals.
The coordinated attack against three hotels and three churches was blamed on a local jihadi group.
Tourism has been recovering since the island’s economic collapse in 2022, with some 1.48 million tourists visiting so far this year.
Thousands flee homes as fierce tropical storm batters Philippines
- Families driven from their homes in Bicol were staying at around 2,500 evacuation centers scattered across the region
- About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the Philippines or its surrounding waters each year
MANILA: Philippine rescuers waded through chest-deep floodwaters Wednesday to reach residents trapped by Tropical Storm Trami, which has forced thousands to evacuate as it barrels toward the country’s east coast.
Torrential rains driven by the storm have turned streets into rivers, submerged entire villages and buried some vehicles up to their door handles in volcanic sediment knocked loose by the downpour.
At least 32,000 people had fled their homes in the northern Philippines, police said, as the storm edged closer to the Southeast Asian country’s main island of Luzon.
In the Bicol region, about 400 kilometers (249 miles) southeast of the capital Manila, “unexpectedly high” flooding was complicating rescue efforts, said police.
“We sent police rescue teams but they struggled to enter some areas because the flooding was high and the current was so strong,” regional police spokeswoman Luisa Calubaquib said.
Trami’s center was 310 kilometers east of Aurora province with maximum sustained winds of 85 kilometers per hour as of 8:00 a.m. (0000 GMT), the national weather agency said.
Photos verified by AFP showed streets submerged by muddy floodwaters in Camarines Sur province’s Bato municipality, with only the roofs of houses and convenience stores visible.
“It’s getting dangerous. We’re waiting for rescuers,” resident Karen Tabagan said.
In Naga city, about 40 kilometers from Bato, half of the 600 villages were fully submerged by flooding.
At an emergency meeting of government agencies Wednesday morning, President Ferdinand Marcos said that “the worst is yet to come.”
“I’m feeling a little helpless here because... all we can do is sit tight, wait, hope and pray that there is not too much damage, that there are no casualties.”
Families driven from their homes in Bicol were staying at around 2,500 evacuation centers scattered across the region.
“There was also a lahar flow in Albay due to the rains,” Calubaquib, the Bicol police spokeswoman said, referring to the volcanic sediment flowing from the Philippines’ famous Mayon volcano.
About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the Philippines or its surrounding waters each year, damaging homes and infrastructure and killing dozens of people.
