California Burning

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Think recent climate disasters have been bad? Just wait, researchers at the University of Hawaii predicted Monday.

Right now, one climate-linked disaster generally hits at a time, whether it’s forest fires destroying swathes of California, hurricanes flooding Texas and Louisiana and completely devastating Puerto Rico, or heat waves killing thousands in Europe. By 2100, unless something drastic changes, a new report predicts regions will start dealing with multiple disasters all at once.
Think this was a bad year for climate disasters? Just wait

 

[Yossarian]

Think recent climate disasters have been bad? Just wait, researchers at the University of Hawaii predicted Monday.

Right now, one climate-linked disaster generally hits at a time, whether it’s forest fires destroying swathes of California, hurricanes flooding Texas and Louisiana and completely devastating Puerto Rico, or heat waves killing thousands in Europe. By 2100, unless something drastic changes, a new report predicts regions will start dealing with multiple disasters all at once.
Think this was a bad year for climate disasters? Just wait

But how can that be happening - the president heard about it being really cold somewhere today.

 

[Archimage]

Haha.. of course Trump would post something like that. He's not the brightest crayon in the box.

 

[yield]

California Wildfire Likely Spread Nuclear Contamination From Toxic Site
26/11/18

Hirsch is also president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nonprofit organization that provides independent technical assistance to communities near nuclear sites. Students working with him back in 1979, when he was teaching at University of California Los Angeles, uncovered the partial nuclear meltdown that had occurred in 1959 at the SSFL, but that had been kept secret. He has worked ever since to have SSFL cleaned up.

Hirsch explained to Truthout that the 1959 partial meltdown had been covered up for years by the Atomic Energy Commission. Meanwhile, at least three other reactors there suffered accidents.

“There were radioactive fires with high-level radioactive waste, releases from a plutonium fuel fabrication facility, and decades of illegal burning of toxic and radioactive wastes in open pits,” he said. “Other parts of the facility hosted tens of thousands of tests of missile and rocket engines, often with exotic and very toxic rocket fuels.”

While explaining how incredibly toxic the SSFL site is, Hirsch added, “Collectively, the sloppy environmental practices and lax regulatory oversight resulted in widespread radioactive and toxic chemical contamination of soil, surface water and groundwater.”

And now, given that most, if not all, of the SSFL site has burned, it is possible that the millions of people who live within a 100-mile radius of the site have been exposed to its radioactive waste and toxic chemicals that are now airborne.

Camp Fire: Butte County sheriff releases names of 16 more victims
27/11/18

The search for human remains in Butte County continued Tuesday, though no new victims of the devastating Camp Fire were found.

The death toll remained at 88 while the number of missing dropped from just over 200 people to 158, according to the county Sheriff’s Office. Deputies have also named 16 of the fire victims, bringing the total number who have been positively identified to 28, but released the names of 27.

Authorities have not said how far along they are in combing for human remains across the several communities burned by this month’s fire, saying only that “good progress” is being made.

 

[MikeMcc]

It's now killed off one of the insurance companies too (policy holders are still protected via a State supported scheme):

Insurance company goes under after California's Camp Fire - CNN

 

[yield]

Poor, elderly and too frail to escape: Paradise fire killed the most vulnerable residents Outline - Read & annotate without distractions
February 10, 2019

Dorothy Mack had crippling back pain and deteriorating eyesight. Helen Pace used a walker and could barely hear. Teresa Ammons suffered a stroke in 2017 and couldn’t drive.

Although each woman had a different frailty, their final circumstances were strikingly similar: They were all seniors on fixed incomes, they all lived alone, and they all died when the Camp fire roared through their mobile home park.

Experts say the incineration of Paradise, a sleepy town of 27,000 nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, is a case study in what can go wrong when a landscape that’s prone to wildfire is disproportionately populated by those who are least likely to escape.

Like the women who died in Ridgewood Mobile Home Park, most of the 86 people who died in the fire were seniors. Of the 69 bodies that have been positively identified, 53 were over the age of 65 — or 77%.

 

[cupid_stunt]

That's sad.