California Fire | 9K homes, buildings burnt; 60 killed, 130 missing

Agencies
November 15, 2018

Paradise/ Calif, Nov 15: National Guard troops joined the grim search on Wednesday for more victims in the ruins of an incinerated northern California town while the death toll climbed to 56 in the most deadly and destructive wildfire in the state's history.

The latest fatality count was announced as authorities released a revised list of 130 people reported missing by loved ones after flames largely obliterated the Sierra foothills town of Paradise, about 175 miles (280 km) north of San Francisco, last Thursday.

The majority on the list were over the age of 65. Nearly 230 people were initially reported as missing in the killer blaze, dubbed the Camp Fire. Most of those who remain unaccounted for are from Paradise, once home to 27,000 people.

More than 8,900 homes and other buildings burned to the ground in and around Paradise, and an estimated 50,000 people remained under evacuation orders in the area. Adding to the misery of some survivors was an outbreak of norovirus, a highly contagious gastrointestinal illness, at a shelter housing about 200 evacuees in the nearby city of Chico.

Public health agency spokeswoman Lisa Almaguer said at least 20 people may have caught the virus. The footprint of the six-day-old fire grew to 135,000 acres (55,000 hectares) as of Wednesday, even as diminished winds and rising humidity helped firefighters shore up containment lines around more than a third of the perimeter.

Still, the ghostly expanse of empty lots covered in ash and strewn with twisted wreckage and debris made a strong impression on Governor Jerry Brown, U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and other officials who toured the devastation on Wednesday. “This is one of the worst disasters I've seen in my career, hands down,” Brock Long, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told reporters in Chico. “It looks like a war zone. It is a war zone,” Brown said.

No finger pointing

After visiting some of California's earlier wildfire zones in August, Zinke blamed “gross mismanagement of forests” because of timber harvest restrictions that he said were supported by ”environmental terrorist groups.” But pressed by reporters on Wednesday, Zinke demurred. “Now is really not the time to point fingers,” he said. “It is a time for America to stand together.”

The blaze, fueled by thick, drought-desiccated scrub, has capped two back-to-back catastrophic wildfire seasons in California that scientists largely attribute to prolonged drought they say is symptomatic of climate change. Lawyers for some of the victims claimed in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday that lax equipment maintenance by an electric utility was the proximate cause of the fire, which officially remains under investigation.

The Butte County disaster coincided with a flurry of blazes in Southern California, most notably the Woolsey Fire, which has killed at least two people, destroyed more than 500 structures and displaced about 200,000 people in the mountains and foothills near the Malibu coast west of Los Angeles.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said the body of a possible third victim was found there in a burned-out dwelling. Cal Fire officials said that blaze was 52 percent contained as of Wednesday night.

In Butte County, the search for more human remains kicked into high gear as a National Guard contingent of 50 military police officers joined dozens of search-and-recovery workers and at least 22 cadaver dogs, Sheriff Kory Honea said.

The remains of eight more fire victims were found on Wednesday, raising the official number of fatalities to 56 - far exceeding the previous record from a single wildfire in California history - 29 people killed by the Griffith Park fire in Los Angeles in 1933. The Camp Fire also stands as one of the deadliest US wildfires since the turn of the last century. More than 80 people perished in the Big Burn firestorm that swept the Northern Rockies in August of 1910.

Tracking the missing

Butte County Sheriff's spokeswoman Megan McMann said the list of 130 missing would fluctuate from day to day as more names are added and others are removed, either because they turn up safe or end up identified among the dead.

Sheriff Honea invited relatives of the missing to provide DNA samples to compare against samples taken from newly recovered remains in hopes of speeding up identification of the dead. But he acknowledged it was possible some of the missing might never be found.

Authorities attributed the magnitude of casualties to the staggering speed with which the fire struck Paradise. Wind-driven flames roared through town so swiftly that residents were forced to flee for their lives. Some victims were found in or around the burned-out wreckage of their vehicles.

Anna Dise, a resident of Butte Creek Canyon west of Paradise, told KRCR TV her father, Gordon Dise, 66, died when he ran back inside to gather belongings and their house collapsed on him. Dise said she could not flee in her car because the tires had melted. To survive, she hid overnight in a neighbor's pond with her dogs. “It was so fast,” Dise recounted of the fire. “I didn't expect it to move so fast.”

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
July 27,2020

Tokyo, Jul 27: Gold hit an all-time high on Monday as tit-for-tat consulate closures in China and the United States rattled investors, boosting the allure of safe-haven assets, although sentiment was mixed with tech gains supporting some Asian stocks.

MSCI's ex-Japan Asia-Pacific index rose 1.3 percent as Taiwan's TSMC, Asia's third-largest company by market capitalisation, rose almost 10 percent.

The chipmaker's gains boosted other tech stocks in the region and came after rival Intel signalled it may give up manufacturing its own components due to delays in new 7-nanometer chip technology.

Also soothing sentiment, Chinese shares eked out gains after big falls late last week, with CSI300 index rising 0.5 percent.

S&P500 futures were last up 0.4 percent in choppy trade while Japan's Nikkei fell 0.5 percent, resuming trade after a long weekend and catching up with falls in global shares late last week.

Global shares had lost steam last week after Washington ordered China's consulate in Houston to close, prompting Beijing to react in kind by closing the US consulate in Chengdu.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took fresh aim at China last week, saying Washington and its allies must use "more creative and assertive ways" to press the Chinese Communist Party to change its ways.

"US President (Donald) Trump used to say China's President Xi Jinping is a great leader. But now Pompeo's wording is becoming so aggressive that markets are starting to worry about further escalation," said Norihiro Fujito, chief investment strategist at Mitsubishi Securities.

Gold rose 1.0 percent to a record high of $1,920.9 per ounce, surpassing a peak touched in September 2011, as Sino-US tensions boosted the allure of safe-haven assets, especially those not tied to any specific country.

The yellow metal is also helped by aggressive monetary easing adopted by many central banks around the world since the pandemic plunged the global economy into a recession.

Some investors fret such an unprecedented level of money-printing could eventually lead to inflation.

MORE STIMULUS

Hopes of a quick US economic recovery are fading as coronavirus infections showed few signs of slowing.

That means the economy could capitulate without fresh support from the government, with some of earlier steps such as enhanced jobless benefits due to expire this month.

Investors hope US Congress will agree on a deal before its summer recess but there are some sticking points including the size of the stimulus and enhanced unemployment benefits.

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the package will contain extended unemployment benefits with 70 percent "wage replacement".

Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, want enhanced benefits of $600 per week to be extended and look to much bigger stimulus compared with the Republicans' $1 trillion plan.

Investors are looking to corporate earnings from around the world for hints on the pace of recovery in the global economy.

"It looks like rising coronavirus cases are starting to slow down recovery in many countries," said Masahiro Ichikawa, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management.

Concerns about the US economic outlook started to weigh on the dollar, reversing its inverse correlation with the economic well-being over the past few months.

The dollar index dropped 0.3 percent to its lowest level in nearly two years.

The euro gained 0.3 percent to $1.1693, hitting a 22-month high of $1.16590 as sentiment on the common currency improved after European leaders reached a deal on a recovery fund in a major step towards more fiscal co-operation.

Against the yen, the dollar slipped 0.5 percent to 105.605 yen, a four-month low while the British pound hit a 4 1/2-month high of $1.2832.

Oil prices dipped on worries about the worsening Sino-US relations.

Brent futures fell 0.46 percent to $43.14 per barrel while US crude futures lost 0.44 percent to $41.11.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
April 14,2020

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has reprimanded the Imran Khan government for denying food aid to Hindus and Christians in Pakistan amid the coronavirus pandemic and warned that it will trigger an additional crisis due to religious discrimination.

The USCIRF is an independent federal government entity set up by the US Congress to monitor and report on religious freedom in the world.

Pakistan continues to be in the tier one of the USCIRF list of the countries whose record on religious freedom remains abysmal.

In a statement issue on Monday, the USCIRF said it was troubled by the reports of food aid being denied to Hindus and Christians in Pakistan amid pandemic.

Citing one of the examples of religious discrimination, the USCIRF said that in Karachi, the Saylani Welfare International Trust, a non-government organization set up to help the homeless and seasonal workers, has been refusing food aid to Hindus and Christians and providing it only Muslims.

Describing such actions "reprehensible", the USCIRF commissioner Anurima Bhargava said: "As COVID-19 continues to spread, vulnerable communities within Pakistan are fighting hunger and to keep their families safe and healthy. Food aid must not be denied because of one's faith."
One of the USCIRF commissioners, Johnnie Moore warned that if the Khan government continued with such policies, Pakistan would add an additional crisis.

"In a recent address by Prime Minister Khan to the international community, he highlighted that the challenge facing governments in the developing world is to save people from dying of hunger while also trying to halt the spread of COVID-19. This is a monumental task laying before many countries.

"Prime Minister Khan's government has the opportunity to lead the way but they must not leave religious minorities behind. Otherwise, they may add on top of it all one more crisis, created by religious discrimination and inter-communal strife."

The organization which makes foreign policy recommendations to the US President, the Secretary of State, and Congress, urged the Pakistani government to ensure that food aid from distributing organizations is shared equally with Hindus, Christians, and other religions minorities.

Last year, in its annual report, the USCIRF had noted that Hindus and Christians in Pakistan "face continued threats to their security and are subjected to various forms of harassment and social exclusion".

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
April 9,2020

Washington, Apr 9: At least 11 Indians have died of COVID-19 in the United States with another 16 testing positive for the infection which has claimed more than 14,000 lives and afflicted more than four lakh people in the US.

All Indian citizens who have succumbed to the deadly infection in the US are male, with ten of them from New York and New Jersey area. Four of the victims are said to be taxi drivers in New York City.

New York City has emerged as the US epicentre for COVID-19 spurt, accounting for more than 6,000 deaths and over 1,38,000 cases of infections. New Jersey accounts for 1,500 fatalities and nearly 48,000 infections.

One Indian national reportedly died in Florida because of coronavirus. Authorities are also ascertaining the nationality of some other Indian origin people in the States of California and Texas.

All 16 Indians, including four females, who have tested positive for coronavirus are in self-quarantine. Coming from diverse background, eight of them are from New York, three from New Jersey and rest from other states like Texas and California. They hail from Indian states like Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.

Indian Embassy and consulates across the United States are working closely with local authorities and Indian-American organizations to provide necessary assistance to Indian nationals and students affected with COVID-19.

Because of the strict travel restrictions and regulations to prevent the spread of the deadly virus, local city officials have been performing the last rites of the deceased and in many cases are not allowing even their immediate family members to attend their cremations, officials said.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.