“The forecast is concerning, and we’re watching it very closely, obviously. We also are sending out warnings and making sure everyone knows,” said Col. Jeremy Slinker, the Kentucky emergency management director.
“We’re preparing for it and making sure all the residents there are prepared for it because we just don’t want to lose anyone else or have any more tragedy,” he told CNN’s Pamela Brown Saturday.
A flood watch is in effect through at least Monday morning for parts of southern and eastern Kentucky, according to the National Weather Service, and there is a Level 3 of 4 moderate risk for excessive rainfall Sunday across southeastern Kentucky, per the Weather Prediction Center, escalating the concern of additional flooding.
Widespread rainfall totals of 1 to 3 inches are forecast over the next 24 to 48 hours, but as much as 4 or 5 inches is possible in localized areas. As little as 1 to 2 inches can revive flooding concerns, particularly in areas already inundated with heavy rain where the soil is saturated.
The ominous forecast comes as crews in eastern Kentucky continue their search for people who remained unaccounted for after the devastating flooding last Thursday inundated homes and swept some from their foundations, sending residents fleeing for higher ground.
Twenty-six people have been confirmed dead, Gov. Andy Beshear said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday, in what officials described as unprecedented flooding for the region. The death toll is expected to climb as crews gain more access to currently impassable areas, Beshear told CNN Saturday.
“There are still so many people unaccounted for,” Beshear said. “It’s going to get worse.”
Officials believe thousands have been affected, and efforts to rebuild some areas may take years, the governor has said. The state’s estimated losses are potentially in the “tens if not the hundreds of millions of dollars,” Beshear noted Saturday.
After the rain, excessive heat is expected to build over the region Tuesday as many people are currently struggling with no access to clean drinking water, power outages and cell service still out in some counties Saturday.
More than 10,000 homes and businesses in the region were in the dark early Sunday, according to PowerOutage.us; three drinking water systems were totally out of operation Saturday, the governor said.
“The water is still high in some counties. It’s crested in most, but not all. Water systems overwhelmed. So, either no water or water that’s not safe, that you have to boil,” Beshear said.
The federal government sent tractor trailers of bottled water to the region, and more financial assistance is on the way.
The flooding — as with other recent weather disasters — was further amplified by the climate crisis: As global temperatures climb as a result of human-caused fossil fuel emissions, the atmosphere is able to hold more water, making water vapor more abundantly available to fall as rain.
Scientists are increasingly confident in the role the climate crisis plays in extreme weather, and have warned such events will become more and more intense dangerous with every fraction of a degree of warming.
‘Hero’ rescued family from flooded home
Among the tales of heroism emerging from the disaster is an unidentified man who drifted through fast-moving water to get a 98-year-old grandmother, her grandson and another family member out of their home as it was nearly swallowed by the flooding Thursday.
Randy Polly, who witnessed the rescue in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and recorded parts of it on his cellphone, told CNN he got stuck a distance away from home on his way to get gas Thursday morning.
Polly said he heard people yelling across the flooded road, “Get me help, get help.” He called 911, but first responders were overwhelmed and unresponsive to his calls from him.
Around 9 am, he saw a man he described as a hero drift over to the house and start banging on the door and window.
The man eventually helped get three people out of the home and guided them through rushing water, the videos show. The rescue took about 30 minutes, Polly said.
Missy Crovetti, who lives in Green Oaks, Illinois, told CNN the people rescued in the video are her grandmother Mae Amburgey, uncle Larry Amburgey and brother Gregory Amburgey. They are safe and doing well, she said.
Crovetti said she does not know the name of the man who rescued her family. Polly also said he does not know the man’s name.
Financial help in progress
Officials have moved swiftly to approve financial assistance, given the scores of people in need of relief after losing everything.
The federal government greenlighted funding for people in five counties “at a pace that we’ve never seen before,” Kentucky Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman told CNN’s Pamela Brown Saturday.
“Residents will actually receive direct payments, which is some really good news in what will be a very long tunnel to see the light,” Coleman said.
Coleman did not provide an exact date on when those payments are expected to reach residents, though she said they will be dispersed as soon as the state receives the money.
Additionally, nearly $700,000 has been raised for relief efforts, Beshear said Saturday. He noted funeral expenses for those killed in the flooding will be paid for.
“We value ensuring that these loved ones can be reconnected with their family members, and to make sure that these folks are able to have a proper funeral for their loved ones,” Coleman said.
Additionally, the state is prioritizing placing generators at the shelters for flood survivors as temperatures are expected to soar Tuesday following the rain.
CNN’s Sharif Paget, Gene Norman, Derek Van Dam, Haley Brink, Jalen Beckford, Angela Fritz and Raja Razek contributed to this report.
Drought has a way of revealing things. Receding waters can highlight the precarity of the crucial systems that keep functioning societies and expose hidden ancient cities.
In the case of Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, diminishing waters have in recent months uncovered long buried secrets and other mysterious finds: at least three sets of human remains, including a body inside a barrel that could be linked to a mob killing, and a sunken boat dating back to the second world war.
A grueling drought in the American west has depleted the lake, a crucial water source for 25 million people, drying out tributaries, threatening hydropower production and closing boat ramps at the popular recreation site. It is now at its lowest level since the lake was being filled in 1937.
Officials expect more grim finds, and have already received calls from visitors about possible remains that turned out to be animal bones or prop skeletons left by local scuba divers years earlier.
A formerly sunken boat sits high and dry along the shoreline of Lake Mead in May. Photograph: John Locher/AP
“You will find things in the lake. It’s inevitable,” said Michael Green, an associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “It’s been sad to watch the lake drop, the islands appear, the bathtub ring, the marina being moved out further and further.”
The recent spate of discoveries began in May when boaters spotted a barrel. Inside were the remains of a man who officials say was shot between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s. The killing has the signature of a “mob hit”, the local Mob Museum said, and coincided “with the most violent period in Las Vegas’s past – an era of unprecedented street crime and underworld killings”.
A week after that discovery, two sisters paddle-boarding on the lake came across what they thought were the bones of a bighorn sheep, but which turned out to be another set of human remains.
“I would say there is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains,” Ray Spencer, a lieutenant with the Las Vegas police, said in May.
Earlier this week, someone alerted park rangers to additional human remains, partially encased in mud, along a beach. The investigation is continuing, the park said in a statement.
But there aren’t just bodies in the water that comes in from the Colorado River, and experts say as the “bathtub ring” around the lake grows, more discoveries are waiting.
This summer a sunken second world war-era boat began to jut out from the water. The Higgins landing craft, models of which were deployed at Normandy, was once used to survey the Colorado River and then sold to the marina before it sank.
A sunken second world war-era Higgins landing craft that used to be nearly 200ft underwater rests on its side near the Lake Mead Marina on Thursday. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images
A crashed B-29 plane has been in the water since 1948. It’s still far below the surface, but as the water levels fall light is reaching the plane for the first time in decades, 8NewsNow reported.
Lake Mead is not a natural body of water, Green points out. It was formed with the creation of the Hoover Dam, which submerged St Thomas, a Mormon settlement founded in 1865. One of the town’s final residents left in 1938 when waters reached his front door, according to the Deseret News. Declining lake levels, which have exposed St Thomas several times over the years, have kept the settlement visible for the last 10 years.
The lake also covered archaeological digs, said Green, who teaches about the history of Nevada and Las Vegas, meaning there could be historical items in the water.
“There might actually be some archaeological relics,” Green said, adding that a nearby museum has artifacts from the Puebloan people, who lived in the area about a thousand years earlier. “Archaeologists were working there until the lake was rising around them.”
The vast reservoir’s water level has dropped more than 170ft (52m) since 1983, the same year the Colorado River flooded the dam’s spillways. Over-extraction, extreme heat and decreased snowmelt have burdened the Colorado River Basin and nearly 40 years later, Lake Mead is down to about 27% of its capacity.
The forecast is grim – the Colorado River has endured a drought for two decades and project officials Lake Mead’s water levels will continue to fall, meaning that more discoveries will be unearthed.
“There tends to be plenty of stuff that goes to the bottom and you just wait around,” Green said. “Ideally we’ll get more water and we won’t find more.”
Drought has a way of revealing things. Receding waters can highlight the precarity of the crucial systems that keep functioning societies and expose hidden ancient cities.
In the case of Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, diminishing waters have in recent months uncovered long buried secrets and other mysterious finds: at least three sets of human remains, including a body inside a barrel that could be linked to a mob killing, and a sunken boat dating back to the second world war.
A grueling drought in the American west has depleted the lake, a crucial water source for 25 million people, drying out tributaries, threatening hydropower production and closing boat ramps at the popular recreation site. It is now at its lowest level since the lake was being filled in 1937.
Officials expect more grim finds, and have already received calls from visitors about possible remains that turned out to be animal bones or prop skeletons left by local scuba divers years earlier.
A formerly sunken boat sits high and dry along the shoreline of Lake Mead in May. Photograph: John Locher/AP
“You will find things in the lake. It’s inevitable,” said Michael Green, an associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “It’s been sad to watch the lake drop, the islands appear, the bathtub ring, the marina being moved out further and further.”
The recent spate of discoveries began in May when boaters spotted a barrel. Inside were the remains of a man who officials say was shot between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s. The killing has the signature of a “mob hit”, the local Mob Museum said, and coincided “with the most violent period in Las Vegas’s past – an era of unprecedented street crime and underworld killings”.
A week after that discovery, two sisters paddle-boarding on the lake came across what they thought were the bones of a bighorn sheep, but which turned out to be another set of human remains.
“I would say there is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains,” Ray Spencer, a lieutenant with the Las Vegas police, said in May.
Earlier this week, someone alerted park rangers to additional human remains, partially encased in mud, along a beach. The investigation is continuing, the park said in a statement.
But there aren’t just bodies in the water that comes in from the Colorado River, and experts say as the “bathtub ring” around the lake grows, more discoveries are waiting.
This summer a sunken second world war-era boat began to jut out from the water. The Higgins landing craft, models of which were deployed at Normandy, was once used to survey the Colorado River and then sold to the marina before it sank.
A sunken second world war-era Higgins landing craft that used to be nearly 200ft underwater rests on its side near the Lake Mead Marina on Thursday. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images
A crashed B-29 plane has been in the water since 1948. It’s still far below the surface, but as the water levels fall light is reaching the plane for the first time in decades, 8NewsNow reported.
Lake Mead is not a natural body of water, Green points out. It was formed with the creation of the Hoover Dam, which submerged St Thomas, a Mormon settlement founded in 1865. One of the town’s final residents left in 1938 when waters reached his front door, according to the Deseret News. Declining lake levels, which have exposed St Thomas several times over the years, have kept the settlement visible for the last 10 years.
The lake also covered archaeological digs, said Green, who teaches about the history of Nevada and Las Vegas, meaning there could be historical items in the water.
“There might actually be some archaeological relics,” Green said, adding that a nearby museum has artifacts from the Puebloan people, who lived in the area about a thousand years earlier. “Archaeologists were working there until the lake was rising around them.”
The vast reservoir’s water level has dropped more than 170ft (52m) since 1983, the same year the Colorado River flooded the dam’s spillways. Over-extraction, extreme heat and decreased snowmelt have burdened the Colorado River Basin and nearly 40 years later, Lake Mead is down to about 27% of its capacity.
The forecast is grim – the Colorado River has endured a drought for two decades and project officials Lake Mead’s water levels will continue to fall, meaning that more discoveries will be unearthed.
“There tends to be plenty of stuff that goes to the bottom and you just wait around,” Green said. “Ideally we’ll get more water and we won’t find more.”
Wildfires in California near the Oregon border and in Montana exploded in size overnight amid windy, hot conditions and were quickly encroaching on neighborhoods, forcing evacuation orders for over 100 homes Saturday, while an Idaho blaze was spreading.
In California’s Klamath National Forest, the fast-moving McKinney fire, which started Friday, went from charring just over 1 square mile to scorching as much as 62 square miles by Saturday in a largely rural area near the Oregon state line, according to fire officials .
“It’s continuing to grow with erratic winds and thunderstorms in the area and we’re in triple digit temperatures,” said Caroline Quintanilla, a spokeswoman at Klamath National Forest.
Check out The Oregonian/OregonLive’s new wildfire smoke map below. (click here if you don’t see the map.)
Meanwhile in Montana, the Elmo wildfire nearly tripled in size to more than 11 square miles (about 28 square kilometers) within a few miles of the town of Elmo. Roughly 200 miles to the south, Idaho residents remained under evacuation orders as the Moose Fire in the Salmon-Challis National Forest charred more than 67.5 square miles in timbered land near the town of Salmon. It was 17% contained.
A significant build-up of vegetation was fueling the McKinney fire, said Tom Stokesberry, a spokesman with the US Forest Service for the region.
“It’s a very dangerous fire — the geography there is steep and rugged, and this particular area hasn’t burned in a while,” he said.
A small fire was also burning nearby, outside the town of Seiad, Stokesberry said. With lightning predicted over the next few days, resources from all over California were being brought in to help fight the region’s fires, he said.
McKinney’s explosive growth forced crews to shift from trying to control the perimeter of the blaze to trying to protect homes and critical infrastructure like water tanks and power lines, and assist in evacuations in California’s northernmost county of Siskiyou. The fire is west of Interstate 5.
Deputies and law enforcement were knocking on doors in the county seat of Yreka and the town of Fort Jones to urge residents to get out and safely evacuate their livestock onto trailers. Automated calls were being sent to land phone lines as well because there were areas without cell phone service.
Over 100 homes were ordered evacuated and authorities were warning people to be on high alert. Smoke from the fire caused the closure of portions of Highway 96.
“We’re asking residents all over the area to be ready,” Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Courtney Kreider said. “Last night we were pushing out evacuations about every hour, and there are large portions of the county that are in warning areas.”
Moments later, she said, “Oh — we just added another zone to the evacuation warning.”
The Pacific Coast Trail Association urged hikers to get to the nearest town while the US Forest Service closed a 110-mile (177-kilometer) section of the trail from the Etna Summit to the Mt. Ashland Campground in southern Oregon.
Oregon state Rep. Dacia Grayber, who is a firefighter, was camping with her husband, who is also in the fire service, near the California state line when gale-force winds awoke them just after midnight.
The sky was glowing with strikes of lightening in the clouds, while ash was blowing at them, though they were in Oregon, about 10 miles away. Intense heat from the fire had sent up a massive pyrocumulonimbus cloud, which can produce its own weather system including winds and thunderstorms, Grayber said.
“These were some of the worst winds I’ve ever been in and we’re used to big fires,” she said. “I thought it was going to rip the roof top tent off of our truck. We got the hell out of there.”
On their way out, they came across hikers on the Pacific Coast Trail fleeing to safety. They offered rides, but one hiker said he would just take a beer, which they gave him, she said.
“The terrifying part for us was the wind velocity,” she said. “It went from a fairly cool breezy night to hot, dry hurricane-force winds. Usually that happens with a fire during the day but not at night. I hope for everyone’s sake this dies down but it’s looking like it’s going to get worse.”
In western Montana, the wind-driven Elmo fire forced evacuations of homes and livestock as it raced across grass and timber, according to The National Interagency Fire Center, based in Idaho. The agency estimated it would take nearly a month to contain the blaze.
Smoke shut down a portion of Highway 28 between Hot Springs and Elmo because of the thick smoke, according to the Montana Department of Transportation.
Crews from several different agencies were fighting the fire on Saturday, including the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Fire Division. Six helicopters were making drops on the fire, aided by 22 engines on the ground.
In Idaho, more than 930 wildland firefighters and support staff were battling the Moose fire Saturday and protecting homes, energy infrastructure and the Highway 93 corridor, a major north-south route.
A red flag warning indicated that the weather could make things worse with the forecast calling for “dry thunderstorms,” with lightning, wind and no rain.
Meanwhile, crews made significant progress in battling another major blaze in California that forced evacuations of thousands of people near Yosemite National Park earlier this month. The Oak fire was 52% contained by Saturday, according to a Cal Fire incident update.
As fires raged across the West, the US House on Friday approved wide-ranging legislation aimed at helping communities in the region cope with increasingly severe wildfires and drought — fueled by climate change — that have caused billions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses in recent years.
The legislative measure approved by federal lawmakers Friday combines 49 separate bills and would increase firefighter pay and benefits; boost resilience and mitigation projects for communities affected by climate change; protect watersheds; and make it easier for wildfire victims to get federal assistance.
The bill now goes to the Senate, where California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein has sponsored a similar measure.
Matthew Moczygemba knew something was wrong when he lost his thirst. It was midafternoon on a 103-degree day in Fort Worth, Texas, and the UPS driver had been delivering packages for several hours. Soon he felt dizzy, then he pulled his truck over and vomited onto the curb.
“I stopped sweating and was starting to get cold,” said Moczygemba, 35, who has worked for UPS for five years. “It was a bad feeling.”
Moczygemba wound up at a hospital emergency room, where doctors diagnosed him with dehydration and heat exhaustion, and gave him several bags of IV fluid, according to medical records.
He was released a few hours later, but he has not returned to work in the nearly three weeks since.
“I’m nervous about going back,” Moczygemba said.
With heat waves rolling across the country, and states like Texas and Oklahoma experiencing record hot summers, workers exposed to the elements are increasingly struggling under the heat.
More than a dozen UPS employees and union leaders say this year more workers seem to be getting sick and been hospitalized because of the heat than ever before. In response, they are demanding that the company put more safety measures in place.
“Left and right people are falling out,” said Jeff Schenfeld, a union steward in Dallas and UPS veteran of 25 years. “Something is different this year. It’s a lot more people.”
UPS workers gathered outside the company’s Foster Avenue facility Thursday in Brooklyn, NY, to demand better heat protections.Adiel Kaplan/NBC News
UPS is the world’s largest package delivery company, and its ubiquitous brown trucks and warehouses are largely without air conditioning. After record earnings last year, the company installed cameras in its delivery trucks, but did not change its heat safety protocols, according to the union, compounding long-held grievances about the company’s priorities.
The majority of UPS workers, some 350,000 people, are covered by the biggest union contract in North America, which expires next year. Heat protections will be one of the key issues in the upcoming negotiations, according to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents the workers.
“UPS hasn’t been proactive at all on the topic of heat and that’s going to have to change,” said Sean M. O’Brien, general president of the union.
The Teamsters issued a public letter last week outlining a series of steps it says UPS should take immediately to improve the safety of its drivers, given the weather. They include providing fans in every truck (rather than by request), cooling neck towels, consistent supplies of water and ice, and more breathable uniforms, along with hiring more drivers to reduce workload.
“By refusing to implement these safety measures, the company is literally sending drivers out to die in the heat,” said O’Brien.
In a statement, UPS said its drivers are trained to work outdoors and to manage the effects of hot weather and that the company provides regular heat illness and injury prevention training for employees, as well as water and ice, as part of its “cool solutions.” ” program developed with regulators. The company has weekly safety meetings between workers and management and said it promptly addressed issues when they were brought to its attention.
“The health and safety of our employees is our highest priority,” said spokesperson Matt O’Connor. “We never want our employees to continue working to the point that they risk their health or work in an unsafe manner.”
tensions rising
Heat illness, which in severe cases can lead to locked muscles, kidney failure, and death, has long been a risk for UPS workers in the summer, and a point of contention between the company and its workers, as NBC News has reported. The company’s iconic trucks do not have air conditioning, and some are without fans in the front. The warehouse floors and docks where the company’s loaders work can also get dangerously hot.
The company has previously stated it does not air-condition its fleet of package trucks because frequent stops and the size of the vehicles would render air conditioning “ineffective.” The same goes for large warehouses with loading-dock doors that are usually left open.
How many of its workers are injured by heatin a given yearit is difficult to know, worker safety experts say. While workplace safety regulators track severe heat-related injuries, those numbers are generally underreported and only include in-patient hospitalizations. Many workers who go to emergency rooms for heat illness, like Moczygemba, are never fully admitted and leave the hospital after a few hours, though they may take weeks to recover and return to work.
Some UPS workers say the back of the trucks, which they must go in and out of to retrieve packages, can feel like saunas. Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors have documented heat indexes of 126, and temperature readings taken by workers in their trucks in Arizona and Florida provided to NBC News show temperatures above 150 degrees.
UPS has taken steps to lessen the heat in its trucks. The company says it has
installed venting systems to increase airflow, optimized the roofs for heat reduction and insulation and offers fans to drivers on request.
“This job is physically demanding even without the sun beating down,” said Hector Medina, who has delivered packages for UPS in the Tampa area for more than 20 years. “There’s times you go home and you’re brain dead because of the heat.”
Medina said this summer feels hotter, but the company does not adjust its workload based on high temperatures.
A temperature reading taken by a driver in the cargo area of a UPS delivery truck on a mid July afternoon in Florida. Obtained by NBC News
The risks for UPS workers and their fight for more protections from the company are emblematic of what workers everywhere — including others in the delivery industry — face with rising temperatures, said Juley Fulcher, worker health and safety advocate at Public Citizen, a nonprofit organization that pushes for national heat protections.
But UPS is unique, she said, in its size and “extremely detailed procedures” for its workers.
“They’re in a uniquely positive position to actually do something about this, because they are so structured,” she said.
Many of UPS’ main competitors employ large numbers of contractors, and have far less union representation, giving UPS’ thousands of union employees more opportunities to speak out about worker safety issues. This year, tensions between the company and union have been rising amid a steady stream of headlines about UPS drivers collapsing in the heat.
In New York City, the local Teamsters union held a rally Thursday after they say four UPS employees in Long Island and Manhattan went to the emergency room in two days. Local union president Vincent Perrone announced he was taking the unusual step of pulling all union representatives from weekly safety meetings with the company.
“If and when the Company decides to take the safety of our people seriously, I will consider reinstating the committee,” he wrote in a public letter.
Some 1,500 miles away, as Oklahoma was pummeled by several weeks straight of record 100-plus degree days, a group of drivers from one UPS center distributed thermometers in early July to collect temperature readings from the front and back of several dozen trucks. On one 103-degree afternoon, they logged 12 different readings between 110 and 127 degrees, according to an NBC review of their data.
“There are living animals in the back of my package car, and I don’t know that all of those lizards are alive by the time they get to somebody’s house,” said one of the drivers, who requested to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.
A thermometer on a box of crickets in an Oklahoma UPS truck reads 117 F. Obtained by NBC News
heat deaths
Last August, Jorja Rodriguez lost her son, José Cruz Rodriguez, 23, just weeks after he started working for UPS.
On his second day driving a truck after finishing training in Waco, Texas, José Rodriguez texted a supervisor that he was not feeling well. He spoke to his mother from her around 7:30 pm, telling her his shift was almost over, but he never clocked out. He was found hours later, lying in a concrete culvert by the facility parking lot. He was pronounced dead around 2 am
OSHA later ruled that he had died from a heat-related illness, and issued a $14,502 fine, which UPS is contesting.
“This could have been prevented,” Rodriguez said. “My son could still be here. Maybe he could have ended up at the hospital for a few days for dehydration or something, but other than that, I could still have him.”
She and her husband filed a wrongful death lawsuit against UPS, settling with the company a few months later.
Jorja Rodriguez with her son José Cruz Rodriguez in March 2021.Courtesy Jorja Rodriguez
David Michaels, an epidemiologist at George Washington University who ran OSHA under President Obama, said that heat can lead to fatal conditions, including heart attacks, but an autopsy might not make any mention of its effect. “The number of worker heat deaths is severely undercounted,” Michaels said.
With its current regulations, “OSHA’s hands are tied,” said Michaels. “Only in the most extreme situations when workers are killed or badly hurt can OSHA issue a citation because of heat exposure.” The agency’s fines are rarely more than $15,000, and many are ultimately dropped after companies contest them.
OSHA has begun an effort to inspect more often for heat-related dangers and is working on creating heat-specific worker protections, but those will take years.
“With the climate crisis, the summers are getting hotter, and if employers don’t better protect workers, we’re going to see more deaths,” he said. “Certainly UPS knows how to make sure workers are safe and can afford to protect them.”
The issue gained a burst of attention earlier this summer following the death of a young UPS employee.
In June, Esteban “Stevie” Chavez Jr., 24, died after he passed out in his UPS vehicle on a residential street in Pasadena, California, a day after his birthday.
The official cause of Chavez’s death is still unknown. The family is waiting for the autopsy results, but his father, Esteban Chavez Sr., told NBC News, “I strongly believe it was the heat.”
UPS issued a statement after his death, saying that “we are deeply saddened” and “are cooperating with the investigating authorities and are respectfully deferring questions about this incident to them.”
“Maybe if he hadn’t gone to work that day he would still be here,” his step-mother Dominique Chavez said shortly after the funeral.
Wildfires in California near the Oregon border and in Montana exploded in size overnight amid windy, hot conditions and were quickly encroaching on neighborhoods, forcing evacuation orders for over 100 homes Saturday, while an Idaho blaze was spreading.
In California’s Klamath National Forest, the fast-moving McKinney fire, which started Friday, went from charring just over 1 square mile to scorching as much as 62 square miles by Saturday in a largely rural area near the Oregon state line, according to fire officials .
“It’s continuing to grow with erratic winds and thunderstorms in the area and we’re in triple digit temperatures,” said Caroline Quintanilla, a spokeswoman at Klamath National Forest.
Check out The Oregonian/OregonLive’s new wildfire smoke map below. (click here if you don’t see the map.)
Meanwhile in Montana, the Elmo wildfire nearly tripled in size to more than 11 square miles (about 28 square kilometers) within a few miles of the town of Elmo. Roughly 200 miles to the south, Idaho residents remained under evacuation orders as the Moose Fire in the Salmon-Challis National Forest charred more than 67.5 square miles in timbered land near the town of Salmon. It was 17% contained.
A significant build-up of vegetation was fueling the McKinney fire, said Tom Stokesberry, a spokesman with the US Forest Service for the region.
“It’s a very dangerous fire — the geography there is steep and rugged, and this particular area hasn’t burned in a while,” he said.
A small fire was also burning nearby, outside the town of Seiad, Stokesberry said. With lightning predicted over the next few days, resources from all over California were being brought in to help fight the region’s fires, he said.
McKinney’s explosive growth forced crews to shift from trying to control the perimeter of the blaze to trying to protect homes and critical infrastructure like water tanks and power lines, and assist in evacuations in California’s northernmost county of Siskiyou. The fire is west of Interstate 5.
Deputies and law enforcement were knocking on doors in the county seat of Yreka and the town of Fort Jones to urge residents to get out and safely evacuate their livestock onto trailers. Automated calls were being sent to land phone lines as well because there were areas without cell phone service.
Over 100 homes were ordered evacuated and authorities were warning people to be on high alert. Smoke from the fire caused the closure of portions of Highway 96.
“We’re asking residents all over the area to be ready,” Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Courtney Kreider said. “Last night we were pushing out evacuations about every hour, and there are large portions of the county that are in warning areas.”
Moments later, she said, “Oh — we just added another zone to the evacuation warning.”
The Pacific Coast Trail Association urged hikers to get to the nearest town while the US Forest Service closed a 110-mile (177-kilometer) section of the trail from the Etna Summit to the Mt. Ashland Campground in southern Oregon.
Oregon state Rep. Dacia Grayber, who is a firefighter, was camping with her husband, who is also in the fire service, near the California state line when gale-force winds awoke them just after midnight.
The sky was glowing with strikes of lightening in the clouds, while ash was blowing at them, though they were in Oregon, about 10 miles away. Intense heat from the fire had sent up a massive pyrocumulonimbus cloud, which can produce its own weather system including winds and thunderstorms, Grayber said.
“These were some of the worst winds I’ve ever been in and we’re used to big fires,” she said. “I thought it was going to rip the roof top tent off of our truck. We got the hell out of there.”
On their way out, they came across hikers on the Pacific Coast Trail fleeing to safety. They offered rides, but one hiker said he would just take a beer, which they gave him, she said.
“The terrifying part for us was the wind velocity,” she said. “It went from a fairly cool breezy night to hot, dry hurricane-force winds. Usually that happens with a fire during the day but not at night. I hope for everyone’s sake this dies down but it’s looking like it’s going to get worse.”
In western Montana, the wind-driven Elmo fire forced evacuations of homes and livestock as it raced across grass and timber, according to The National Interagency Fire Center, based in Idaho. The agency estimated it would take nearly a month to contain the blaze.
Smoke shut down a portion of Highway 28 between Hot Springs and Elmo because of the thick smoke, according to the Montana Department of Transportation.
Crews from several different agencies were fighting the fire on Saturday, including the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Fire Division. Six helicopters were making drops on the fire, aided by 22 engines on the ground.
In Idaho, more than 930 wildland firefighters and support staff were battling the Moose fire Saturday and protecting homes, energy infrastructure and the Highway 93 corridor, a major north-south route.
A red flag warning indicated that the weather could make things worse with the forecast calling for “dry thunderstorms,” with lightning, wind and no rain.
Meanwhile, crews made significant progress in battling another major blaze in California that forced evacuations of thousands of people near Yosemite National Park earlier this month. The Oak fire was 52% contained by Saturday, according to a Cal Fire incident update.
As fires raged across the West, the US House on Friday approved wide-ranging legislation aimed at helping communities in the region cope with increasingly severe wildfires and drought — fueled by climate change — that have caused billions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses in recent years.
The legislative measure approved by federal lawmakers Friday combines 49 separate bills and would increase firefighter pay and benefits; boost resilience and mitigation projects for communities affected by climate change; protect watersheds; and make it easier for wildfire victims to get federal assistance.
The bill now goes to the Senate, where California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein has sponsored a similar measure.
Georgia authorities released body camera footage Friday of an incident from earlier this month where a mother experiencing what her family called a mental health crisis died due to a fatal injury while in police custody.
Brianna Grier, 28, was experiencing a mental health episode on July 15 when her mother called police to assist with the matter, civil rights attorney Ben Crump said at a news conference Friday.
Crump, who is representing the Grier family, said Grier had a history of mental health crises and the family had called police several times in the past.
“When they used to come out to the house they’d call an ambulance service,” Grier’s father Marvin Grier said. “The ambulance service would come out and they would take her to the hospital to get some help.”
“But this time they only called the police, and the police didn’t bring the ambulance with them, even though, Ms. Mary (Brianna’s mom) clearly stated she was having an episode,” Crump explained.
Crump said Hancock County Sheriff’s deputies came into the home, handcuffed Grier and placed her in the back of a patrol car to take her into custody for allegedly resisting arrest.
In body camera video released by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Grier asks deputies to give her a breathalyzer test and repeatedly tells officers she is not drunk. According to a time stamp on the video, Grier was placed in the patrol car shortly before 1 am on July 15.
Grier then yells to officers saying she’s going to hang herself if she is placed in the car. They proceed to place her in handcuffs and attempt to place her in a squad car but when she resists further, an officer is seen unholstering his taser from her.
When Grier sees this, she yells at officers saying they can rate her, and that she doesn’t care. The officer replies, saying he’s not going to rate her.
The video shows the officer putting the Taser away and then walking away from the rear driver’s side door. When the officer returns, he is seen lifting Grier off the ground and putting her in the back seat of the patrol car.
The body camera video fails to show if officers opened, closed or had any interaction with the rear passenger side door, but an officer is heard asking another officer if the door is closed.
GBI investigators concluded Wednesday that “the rear passenger side door of the patrol car, near where Grier was sitting, was never closed,” according to a news release.
Less than a minute later, after the officers drive away from the Grier family home, the video shows an officer suddenly stop his vehicle and get out.
Once out of the car, the officer locates Grier laying on the side of the road, face down. Grier does n’t respond to the officer, who is tapping her side of her and saying her name of her. The officer then radios to an oncoming patrol car that is behind him that they’re going to need an ambulance.
The footage does not show the moment Grier falls out of the vehicle but does show her laying face first on the ground and the rear passenger car door open.
The second officer says that Grier is still breathing. Grier never responds to the officers calling her name de ella after falling out of the patrol vehicle. The video ends with Grier on the ground while police wait for paramedics.
Crump alleges that police didn’t secure Grier in a seatbelt while she was handcuffed in the back of the police car and as a result, when the vehicle started moving, she somehow fell out of the car, landed on her head, cracked her skull and then went into a coma for six days before dying because of her injuries.
Investigators reviewed multiple body camera videos, conducted numerous interviews and conducted “mechanical tests on the patrol car” to determine “if there were possible mechanical malfunctions” to the vehicle, the GBI statement reads.
The GBI news release notes that two deputies were trying to get her into the back of the patrol car after she was arrested and put in handcuffs.
Grier told the deputies she was going to hurt herself and was on the ground refusing to get into the patrol car, according to the release.
The GBI statement said the two deputies and Grier, who was on the ground, “were at the rear driver’s side door of the patrol car” when “one of the deputies walked around and opened the rear passenger side door.” The same deputy quickly returned to the rear driver’s side door, the GBI statement says, and both deputies put Grier into the back of the patrol car.
Deputies closed the rear driver’s side door and, according to the GBI statement, “The investigation shows that the deputy thought he closed the rear passenger side door.”
In the video, an officer can be seen picking Grier up and placing her in the car through the driver’s side rear door.
Off camera, one of the officers is heard asking if the door on the other side is closed, to which the other officer replies yes.
Deputies left the scene of the incident and drove a short distance before Grier fell out of the moving car, according to the statement.
CNN has reached out to the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department for comment but did not immediately hear back.
“I just don’t understand why they couldn’t put her in a seat belt why they violated so many policies to prevent anything like this from happening,” Crump said.
“We loved her regardless, unconditionally. Now we got to raise these kids and tell them a story, and I’m not planning on telling no lie,” Marvin Greer told reporters Friday. “I want to tell the truth, so it won’t happen to anyone else.”
Former President Donald Trump suggested that the proposed prisoner swap between Russia and the United States that would return jailed WNBA star Brittney Griner in exchange for a Russian arms dealer “doesn’t seem like a very good trade.”
“She knew you don’t go in there loaded up with drugs, and she admitted it,” Trump told the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. “I assume she admitted it without too much force because it is what it is, and it certainly doesn’t seem like a very good trade, does it? He’s absolutely one of the worst in the world, and he’s gonna be given his freedom from him because a potentially spoiled person goes into Russia loaded up with drugs.
Trump was referring to reports that the United States is attempting to secure the release of Griner, and former US Marine Paul Whelan, in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout who is known as the “Merchant of Death” due to his weapons sales that fueled deadly conflicts around the world.
“She went in there loaded up with drugs into a hostile territory where they’re very vigilant about drugs,” Trump added. “They don’t like drugs. And she got caught. And now we’re supposed to get her out of her — and she makes, you know, a lot of money, I guess. We’re supposed to get her out for an absolute killer and one of the biggest arms dealers in the world. She killed many Americans. She killed many people.”
Former President Donald Trump said the proposed trade involving Brittney Griner for Russia arms dealer Viktor Bout wouldn’t be a “good fit.”Getty Images
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said earlier this week that while the Kremlin and US officials have engaged in talks, “there has been no concrete result yet.”
“We proceed from the assumption that the interests of both parties should be taken into account during the negotiations,” she said.
Griner, a WNBA champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist was arrested in Russia in February after customs officers found “vapes” containing hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow.
Griner, who faces a potential 10-year prison sentence, pleaded guilty earlier this month in a move her legal team says was made to “take full responsibility for her actions.”
Brittney Griner is escorted before a court hearing in Khimki outside Moscow, Russia on July 27, 2022. REUTERS
Former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also suggested earlier this week that the proposed prisoner swap is not a good idea.
“He’s a bad guy. He is a guy who wanted to kill Americans. It presents a real risk to the United States. There’s a real reason the Russians want to get him home. To offer a trade like this is a dangerous precedent,” Pompeo told “America’s Newsroom.”
“This is not a good trade, not the right path forward, and it’ll likely lead to more,” Pompeo added.
Russian officials have long pushed for the release of Bout, who is currently serving a 25-year sentence in US prison after being convicted in 2011 of conspiracy to kill Americans, conspiracy to deliver anti-aircraft missiles, and aiding a terrorist organization.
Viktor Bout was convicted in 2011 of conspiracy to kill Americans, but Russian officials have pushed for his release.ZUMAPRESS.com
He was nabbed in 2008 in a sting operation at a luxury hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, where he met with Drug Enforcement Administration informants who were posing as officials with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which has been classified by US officials as a narco- terrorist group.
Prosecutors said that Bout was prepared to provide the groupwith $20 million worth of “a breathtaking arsenal of weapons — including hundreds of surface-to-air missiles, machine guns and sniper rifles — 10 million rounds of ammunition and five tons of plastic explosives.”
The fire has already burned 30,000-40,000 acres with potentially dangerous storms possible Saturday, according to an update from Klamath National Forest.
“Cumulus clouds are developing in the fire area, which have potential to exacerbate fire behavior,” Klamath National Forest said in a Facebook post Saturday afternoon.
Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency Saturday for Siskiyou County, saying the blaze has threatened critical infrastructure and forced nearly 2,000 residents to flee their homes.
The fire, known as the McKinney fire, started on Friday in Siskiyou County near the California-Oregon border, about four hours north of Sacramento. The county has a population of just about 44,000, according to the US Census Bureau.
A mandatory evacuation order was announced for parts of Siskiyou County on Saturday, according to the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office. Residents within the evacuation zone are being asked to “please leave immediately.”
A red flag warning, which indicates dangerous fire conditions, is in effect. Lightning is expected in the area, and fire managers were “expecting a very dynamic day [Saturday] on the fire as predicted weather is expected to be problematic for the firefighters,” according to InciWeb’s update.
Firefighters were forced to shift their tactics “from an offensive perimeter control effort” to more of a defensive posture to assist with evacuations Saturday morning, the InciWeb report notes. Estimates on the McKinney Fire’s containment have not yet been made available Saturday afternoon.
Two other fires burning in Siskiyou County — the China 2 and Evans fires — merged and together burned more than 300 acres, prompting evacuation warnings for more than 200 residents, according to the governor’s office.
The state of emergency is meant to unlock state resources and allow firefighters from other states to help crews battling the fires in California, according to the governor’s office.
HAZARD, Ky. — Firefighters and National Guard crews have swarmed into eastern Kentucky after days of deadly flooding, rescuing by the hundreds of people who found themselves trapped in the perilous water.
Also preparing to send a delegation: the tiny community of Bremen, Ky., nearly 300 miles away. When Bremen was shredded last year by one of the worst tornadoes in state history, the mayor from a little town in the eastern part of the state came to help with the cleanup. That town, Hindman, was among the hardest hits in this week’s floods. So the mayor of Bremen immediately began planning trips across the state with trucks full of supplies — even as his own community continued to rebuild.
“I said, ‘You were here in December and helped us,’” Major Allen Miller of Bremen told the major of Hindman in a phone call. “’Now it’s time for me to return the favor.’”
Officials have held up efforts like these as a testament to a kind of generosity ingrained in the culture of Kentucky, a spirit forged over generations of hardship in which communities had to rely on one another to pull through.
But that cycle of support is also a serious reminder of the turbulence wrought by natural disaster that has gripped the state in recent months and will make recovery from the latest calamity all the more difficult.Officials said on Saturday that at least 25 people had been killed in the floods, but it could take weeks for the full magnitude of the human toll and physical devastation to become clear.
“I wish I could tell you why we keep getting hit here in Kentucky,” Gov. Andy Beshear said during a briefing in which he updated residents on the rising death toll and displayed a sense of anguish and exhaustion that many in the state have felt after recurring disasters, including a powerful ice storm last year that cut off power to 150,000 people in eastern Kentucky, a flash flood last July that left many stranded in their homes and the rare December tornadoes that carved a nearly 200-mile path of destruction and killed 80 people.
“I wish I could tell you why areas where people may not have much continue to get hit and lose everything,” the governor went on. “I can’t give you the why, but I know what we do in response to it. And the answer is everything we can.”
These disasters — particularly the flooding and tornadoes — would be staggering setbacks for any community. But here, they have been especially calamitous, striking rural areas that were already deeply vulnerable after decades of decline.
“These places were not thriving before,” said Jason Bailey, the executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, a nonpartisan think tank, noting the erosion of the coal industry and loss of manufacturing jobs. “To even get back to where they were is a long road.”
For communities inundated by the powerful floods, that road has only begun.
The worst of the devastation has been concentrated in roughly a half-dozen counties in the Appalachian region on the eastern edge of the state. At least 14 people, including four children, died in Knott County, officials said. More than 1,400 people have been rescued by boat and helicopter, and thousands remain without electricity.
Homes were pulled from their foundations. Bridges have washed out, leaving some remote communities inaccessible. “I’ve seen ditches formed where there weren’t ditches because of the rushing water,” said Dan Mosley, the judge-executive for Harlan County.
His community experienced only minor flooding, he said, so for the past several days, he has accompanied workers from the county Transportation Department with dump trucks equipped with snow plows to clear out roads blocked by muck and debris in neighboring communities. The worst destruction he saw was in Knott and Letcher Counti
“The pure catastrophic loss is hard to put into words,” he said. “I’ve just never seen anything like this in my career or even my life.”
In Breathitt County, at least four deaths had been confirmed, roughly a dozen people were missing and much of the county remained underwater. Many homes in the sparsely populated county were still inaccessible. The community was already struggling to find its footing after the last flood.
“We had another flood, a record flood, not 12 months ago, and a lot of families had just started getting their lives back on track,” said Hargis Epperson, the county coroner. “Now it’s happened all over again, worse this time. Everybody’s lost everything, twice.”
In Hazard, a city of just over 5,200 people in Perry County, 24 adults, five children and four dogs had taken shelter at First Presbyterian Church — a number that was almost certain to climb in the coming days. Their homes had been flooded or wiped out by a mudslide.
Some of them arrived soaking wet and caked in mud, said Tracy Counts, a Red Cross worker at the church. All she had to offer them was baby wipes; there was no running water.
“It’s making it a harder puzzle to solve, but we’re adapting and making it happen,” Ms. Counts said. “It’s just hard to ask for help when we’re all in the same boat.”
Melissa Hensley Powell, 48, was brought to the church after being rescued from her home in Hardshell, an unincorporated area of Breathitt County. She and her boyfriend de ella had pulled her brother de ella, who is paralyzed, out of their house and then carried out a mattress for him to lie on. They kept him dry by holding garbage bags and umbrellas over him.
Two days after her rescue, while having a lunch of Little Caesars pizza and bottled water, she said the gravity of what she had endured was soaking in. “It’s starting to,” she said. “We’re still in that adrenaline rush.”
At the church, one congregant has rented portable toilets. People have dropped off water, blankets and dog food, the donated items filling some of the pews.
“I know people have this image of Eastern Kentucky,” Ms. Counts said, acknowledging the painful perception among outsiders of the region as poor and backward. “But we are the first ones to step up. We are the first ones to ask, ‘How can we help?’”
But now, an onslaught of disasters was testing that spirit of support in profound ways.
It is difficult to link a single weather event to climate change, but the flooding and tornadoes have highlighted the vulnerabilities that Kentucky faces. For some, it has also underscored the failures to prepare, as experts warn of heavier rainfall, flash floods that are becoming shorter in span but more powerful in magnitude, and weather patterns overall becoming more erratic.
“Let’s be aware that this a new normal of incredibly catastrophic events, which are going to hit our most vulnerable communities,” said Alex Gibson, the executive director of Appalshop, the arts and education center in Whitesburg, Ky., comparing the litany of flooding disasters in eastern Kentucky with the devastation faced by poor island nations around the world in the era of climate change.
In the vast stretches of the state now contending with the aftermaths of flooding and tornadoes, Mr. Bailey said, the infrastructure had already been inadequate and the communities had been impoverished. “We have people who are living on the edge,” he said.
“So much of the wealth has been extracted,” he said. “In a topography that has been stripped, literally, of trees and mountains, flooding in particular becomes more likely, more risky, more dangerous — that’s what we’re seeing.”
And as much as the communities want to rely on one another to recover from the devastation, it would be difficult to summon the necessary resources on their own.
“The strain has been immense,” Judge Mosley, who is also an officer in the Kentucky Association of Counties, said of the widespread consequences of major disasters.
Without outside support, “this would be unsurvivable,” he said. “The federal government’s resources and our faith in God is the only thing that’s going to get us through this.”
