SO MUCH FOR 'GREEN' MINERALS

Serbia roads blocked for 3rd weekend of lithium mine protest
Via AP news wire
Sat, December 11, 2021

Serbia Protest (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Environmental protesters blocked roads in Serbia for a third consecutive weekend to oppose plans for lithium mining, despite a bid by the country's populist government to defuse the demonstrations by agreeing to the key demands of organizers.

Several thousand people braved rain and cold weather Saturday to halt traffic in the capital, Belgrade and in other cities and towns in the Balkan nation.

The protesters want the government to fully remove any possibility of companies initiating mining projects. Environmentalists argue that extracting lithium, a key component in electric car batteries, causes huge damage to mined areas.

Serbian authorities withdrew two key laws that activists said were designed to help multinational mining company Rio Tinto open a mine in the country's lithium-rich west. Fewer people showed up at Saturday's demonstration compared to the two previous weekends, reflecting a rift among protest leaders over how to proceed.

“There will be no peace until exploitation of lithium is banned and Rio Tinto sent away from Serbia,” Aleksandar Jovanovic, one of the organizers, said.

Serbia's autocratic president, Aleksandar Vucic described continued protests as “political” after the government gave up on the two proposed laws, which involved property expropriation and referendum rules. Vucic said people would have a chance to express their preferences during the next election in April.

Serbia must tackle its environmental problems to advance toward European Union membership. Vucic has said he wants the country to join the EU, but he has also fostered close ties with Russia and China, including Chinese investments in mines, factories and infrastructure.

Environmental issues have come into focus recently in Serbia and other Balkan nations because of accumulated problems from air and water pollution. Protesters argue that authorities favor the interests of foreign investors and profit over environment protection.

'Nobody's dump': Lithium mine stirs unrest in Serbia
 

Demonstrators blocked a highway in Serbia's capital Belgrade at the beginning of December to protest against Anglo-Australian company Rio Tinto's plan to mine lithium in the Jadar Valley

"No to the mine - Yes to life" reads the sign in Gornje Nedeljice 

 (AFP/OLIVER BUNIC)

Miodrag SOVILJ and David STOUT
Fri, December 10, 2021

Farmhouses and cornfields dot the gentle, rolling plains of Serbia's Jadar Valley, but underneath the bucolic surface lies one of Europe's largest lithium deposits -- the source fuelling the latest round of unrest in the Balkan nation.

The future of the vast mineral deposits near the city of Loznica has become the latest flashpoint in Serbia, pitting festering distrust in the country's increasingly autocratic government against Europe's plans for a greener future.

Billions are at stake with Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto boasting that the project has the potential to add a full percentage point to Serbia's gross domestic product and provide thousands of jobs.

In a matter of years, this impoverished corner of Serbia nestled against the Bosnian border could be transformed into one of the industrial engines turbocharging Europe's transition to lower-carbon technology considered vital for a greener future.

Lithium is a key ingredient for batteries powering electric vehicles and storing renewable energy, with soaring demand for the mineral setting off a "white gold rush" as automakers scramble to secure sufficient supplies to meet their ambitious goals to roll out new fleets in the coming years.

But environmental activists and locals living near the future mining site have accused Rio Tinto and President Aleksandar Vucic's administration of cloaking the entire project in secrecy and refusing to release environmental assessment reports.

The lack of transparency, locals argue, is stoking fears the mine may leave their land in ruins.

"If the Jadar project goes through, everything will be destroyed around us," Dragan Karajcic -- a community leader in the village of Gornje Nedeljice -- told AFP.

"Wherever Rio Tinto operated, it left a wasteland behind," he added.

- Power struggle -

In Serbia, the mining project has tapped into simmering anger against Vucic. Thousands have swarmed key roads across the country in recent weeks to voice their opposition to the government's handling of the project.

Violent attacks by masked men against a demonstration in the western Serbian city of Sabac in late November sparked outrage on social media along with accusations the government was relying on hooligans to squash dissent.

With elections likely coming early next year, Vucic has sought to blunt the mounting pressure, vowing to remove amendments to one law and scrap another piece of legislation that protesters argued were written to provide favourable conditions for Rio Tinto.

The leader has also insisted the mine's future is up for debate.

"I will have to sit down and see whether we essentially want this mine or not," the president said late Wednesday.

Getting to the minerals will be no easy task, requiring extensive excavation to supply enough lithium to power more than one million electric vehicles per year, according to Rio Tinto.

The area nearby is also home to extensive borate reserves needed for the production of solar panels and wind turbines.

The mine is set to be located along the Jadar River, a tributary of the much larger Drina -- a vital source for agricultural production in both Serbia and neighbouring Bosnia.

Any contamination caused by the project along the banks of the Jadar would be felt much wider afield, activists argue.

Rio Tinto has sought to allay rising fears over the project, promising to uphold the "highest environmental standards", according to a statement posted online.

But residents in Gornje Nedeljice say Rio Tinto's track record has given them pause.

In recent years, the mining giant has been mired in controversy, with a public backlash and investor revolt forcing the company's chief executive and some top officials to step down after the firm destroyed a sacred indigenous site in Australia last year.

Critics of the mine also point to the Vucic government's poor track record with regulating its industrial sector as Serbia courted Chinese companies to invest in the country.

Access forbidden -- danger! warns a sign in front of a house sold to Rio Tinto, which has been paying top dollar to buy property where it wants to mine 

 

The Jadar valley in western Serbia holds lithium deposits that could help the world transition to electric vehicles

 (AFP/OLIVER BUNIC)

-'Nobody’s dump'-

In Gornje Nedeljice, signs saying: "No to the mine. Yes to life" hang throughout the village, where Rio Tinto has been buying up large swathes of land -- offering virtual fortunes for residents' plots that would fetch just a fraction of the price elsewhere.

The company is set to break ground on the mine next year, but is still awaiting the final green light from Belgrade.

Rio Tinto has promised the project will provide over 2,000 jobs during its construction phase and another 1,000 mining and processing jobs once it is operational.

But for Gornje Nedeljice resident Marijana Petkovic and others, the mine's potential benefits put their community's health and environment at risk at the behest of their wealthier European neighbours.

"Serbia needs to realise that we're nobody's dump for mining," says Petkovic. "Not Europe's, nor the world's."

ds/rl/spm

Civic activism roils Serbia's plans for big mining concessions


Civic activism in Serbia gives headache to ruling elite

Aleksandar Vasovic
Fri, December 10, 2021

By Aleksandar Vasovic

PRANJANI, Serbia (Reuters) -From her village home in southwestern Serbia, Ljiljana Bralovic keeps watch on snow-covered hills and a network of small roads, looking for unfamiliar cars she believes might be carrying geologists prospecting for lithium.

Environmentalist groups like the one in her village threw up roadblocks there and across Serbia for two straight weekends in protest at laws meant to ease multibillion dollar projects by foreign miners to extract lithium, borates and copper. More protests were scheduled for Dec. 11.

The blockades in late November and early this month prompted the conservative government to backtrack this week on two laws environmentalists see as beneficial to exploitation of local resources with scant regard for the risk of worsened pollution.

In the village of Pranjani, Bralovic and activists of the Mount Suvobor Ridge environmental group chased away a team of geologists and seized their rock samples.

"We learned that the Pranjani area was designated for lithium and borates prospecting...Holes are not being drilled in the ground for us to plant our famous plum trees in them," Bralovic told Reuters.

Protests also erupted in the western Jadar area where Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto has begun buying land for its planned $2.4 billion underground lithium and borates mine.

Lithium is in big global demand as a vital ingredient in batteries for increasingly popular electric cars, while borates is used in solar panels and wind turbines.

Big foreign carmakers want to secure direct access to raw materials via partnerships with mining companies to avoid bottlenecks and keep plants at full capacity.

Serbia is among central and east European countries most scarred by industrial pollution dating to former Communist rule.

But the government, seeing higher economic growth and reducing unemployment as priorities, has offered mineral resources to investors including China's Zijin copper miner and Rio Tinto.

President Aleksandar Vucic has said an environmental impact study will be carried out for the Rio Tinto project and, once complete, he will call a referendum to allow people to decide whether it should go ahead.

"Everything we build today we are leaving to our children," Vucic wrote on Instagram.

In August, Rio Tinto Serbia's CEO Vesna Prodanovic said it would meet all European Union and Serbian environmental regulations to mine lithium.

Green activists say such projects will aggravate land, water and air pollution in the Western Balkan country.

GOVERNMENT BENDS TO ACTIVISM

The road blockades prompted Vucic to send the expropriation law, which allowed faster acquisition of private land, back to parliament for reworking.

And on Friday, parliament, dominated by Vucic's allies, amended a referendum law to require that legislation comply with any referendum outcome and remove a requirement for payment of fees by any civic group to launch referendum initiatives.

Bojan Klacar, executive director of Belgrade-based pollster CESID, said the environmental protests had succeeded because they had "clear, achievable and non-divisive demands".

In another concession, the infrastructure ministry said on Thursday waste dumps which are part of the Rio Tinto lithium project must be moved out of the flooding-prone western Jadar area to another location.

"These (concessions) do not mean that all the problems in Serbia will vanish. We will keep fighting on other levels," said Savo Manojlovic, head of the Kreni-Promeni (Move-Change) group that oversaw the roadblock protests this month.

But economists warn the various protests could backfire. Sasa Djogovic of the Belgrade-based Institute for Market Research said Vucic's bowing to the demands of protesters "is testimony to an unstable business climate" in Serbia "where ... everything depends on one man (Vucic) and his inner circle."

Urgently needed foreign investors could put their plans on hold until after next year's election, Djogovic said, adding: "None has guarantees now that any major investment could come under attack from environmental protests."

(Reporting by Aleksandar VasovicEditing by Mark Heinrich)

40% OF THE WORLD IS UNDER 30

More than half of young people surveyed think ‘humanity is doomed’ due to climate change

Three-quarters of respondents under age 25 said they believe ‘the future is frightening’ in Lancet-published global survey

Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg talks about her “Fridays For Future” school walkout campaign in 2019. The global protests continue each Friday. Nearly 60% of young people in a new survey said they were “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change. GETTY IMAGES


Last Updated: Dec. 11, 2021 
By Rachel Koning Beals

Global citizens under the age of 25 roundly believe that governments are letting them down when it comes to an aggressive handling of global warming and dangerous weather — and they’re fed up with being told to meditate to cope.

Nearly 60% of young people surveyed said they were “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change, and 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning, according to a study published Thursday in the science journal The Lancet Planetary Health.

“I grew up being afraid of drowning in my own bedroom,” said Mitzi Tan, a 23-year-old from the Philippines, who was featured in the study’s report. The query included 10,000 participants aged 16 to 25 across 10 countries: the U.S., the U.K., France, Finland, Australia, Portugal, India, Nigeria, the Philippines and Brazil.

Read: ‘Every step we take toward this catastrophe’: A ‘black box’ the size of a city bus will log the climate crisis

“Society tells me that this anxiety is an irrational fear that needs to be overcome — one that meditation and healthy coping mechanisms will ‘fix,’” Tan said. “But that erases the accountability from those who are directly causing this fear. At its root, our climate anxiety comes from this deep-set feeling of betrayal because of government inaction. To truly address our growing climate anxiety, we need justice.”

Nearly two-thirds of young people said their governments were not doing enough to avoid a climate catastrophe, and 58% felt governments were “betraying me and/or future generations.”

Three-quarters of respondents said they believe “the future is frightening,” and 56% felt “humanity is doomed.”

Read: Did the climate summit leave you anxious? You’re not alone — here are the most-Googled questions during COP26

Study authors contributed from the University of Bath, New York University Langone Health, Stanford University, the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and other academic institutions. They stressed the significance of the anxiety survey’s reach across several regions of the world.

In the U.S. alone, 2021 featured the hottest July ever recorded, the largest wildfire in California history amid a series of fires, and deadly Hurricane Ida’s devastating winds and flooding from the Gulf Coast up through parts of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Investing Insights with Global Context

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A separate study out earlier this year showed that four in 10 young people said they were reluctant to have their own children because of the impact of unchecked climate change, which has been found to aggravate typical natural disasters, erode coasts, kill crops, bring on respiratory issues and more.

“Our children’s anxiety is a completely rational reaction given the inadequate responses to climate change they are seeing from governments,” Caroline Hickman of the University of Bath said in a release. “What more do governments need to hear to take action?”

This week, by executive order, President Biden said he’ll use the economic might of the U.S. government to push greener initiatives toward net-zero emissions by 2050, including updating federal buildings and the fleet of government vehicles. Leading Republicans said that’s an inefficient way to expand cleaner energy markets, which should be private-sector driven and only be included alongside fossil fuels NG00, +1.94% that will position the U.S. as its own energy powerhouse.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found that emissions from fossil fuels are the dominant cause of global warming, with about 89% of those emissions coming from traditional energy sources and industry.

The U.K. and the European Union are generally considered the leaders in climate-change policy, although not as fast as environmental advocates might like, while growing economic giants such as China and India have their own portfolios of green energy innovation but have pushed for a slow drawdown of the coal they largely depend on. In fact, their moderate language on coal was the late snag in otherwise mostly collaborative talks last month at the high-profile U.N. summit.

Those talks still failed to energize noted global teenage activist Greta Thunberg, who said the Glasgow conference takeaway was only more “Blah, blah, blah…”

Read: Greta Thunberg on next move in climate-change fight: ‘COP26 is over, blah, blah, blah… We will never give up’

Madagascar food crisis: How a woman helped save her village from starvation

Catherine Byaruhanga - Africa correspondent, BBC News
Fri, December 10, 2021

Loharano and her husband Mandilimana have transformed the way they farm

Loharano's effortless grace belies the hard work that she is doing to stave off the tragedy that is unfolding in parts of her region of Madagascar.

A prolonged drought in the deep south of the island has left 1.3 million people struggling to find food and 28,000 facing starvation. Some have called it the world's first famine caused by climate change, though this has been disputed.

But Loharano's village, Tsimanananda, where she is a community leader, has been spared the worst.

It is a tough 45-minute drive from Ambovombe, the regional capital of Androy, one of the regions hardest hit by the sharp drop in rainfall in recent years.

The 4x4 vehicle can barely find a grip on the sandy roads. The view through the dusty windscreen reveals a desert-like dune landscape, stripped of trees and exposed to harsh winds.

It is hard to imagine anything growing here. But Tsimanananda stands out in the landscape.

Loharano's smile lights up the space around her. She is short and gentle - not the first person you would pick out as the leader in her neighbourhood.

But she quickly invites me into her compound, making me feel at home.

"We suffered a lot from hunger. We planted but it failed every time," the 43-year-old says, reflecting on a previous drought that started in 2013. But with the help of a local charity, the Agro-ecological Centre of the South (CTAS), this time things are very different.

Shortly after I arrive, Loharano leads a short class under the shade of a tree.

Armed with a poster illustrating farming techniques, she talks to her neighbours, and her husband Mandilimana, about drought-resistant crops and techniques to revitalise the soil.

'We have breakfast, lunch and dinner'

Over the past seven years, CTAS has helped introduce grains like millet and sorghum and local legume varieties, which grow well in the sandy conditions and improve the soil's fertility.

The villagers were also taught how to plant natural windbreaks to help protect the crops from the ravages of the elements.

"Now, we have breakfast, lunch and dinner," Loharano says proudly as she shows off her plot of land where she and Mandilimana have grown an impressive range of crops.

On one end there are rows of millet, then beans, peas and sweet potatoes.

"We eat the husk from the ground millet with sugar and this is the favourite food of the children, their bellies are always full of millet."

CTAS has replicated this work in 14 other villages in the south of Madagascar helping some 10,000 households, the charity says.

But the small organisation cannot reach everyone and there is clearly enormous need.

Back in the regional capital, Ambovombe, is a sight reminiscent of a war zone.

In a small dusty field, dozens of families have erected makeshift tents - a patchwork of torn mosquito nets, rice sacks and plastic sheets.

But these people, around 400, have fled hunger not conflict.

Unlike Loharano, they were not able to grow any food and had to sell their farms and cattle just to survive.

Climate change controversy

However it is more than just possessions that people have lost.

Mahosoa, who lives here with one of his wives and 12 children, tells me four of his youngest children died at the start of the drought three years ago.

"They died of hunger in the village. They died one by one, day by day. We didn't eat for one week. Nothing to eat, nothing to drink."

The residents of the makeshift camp in Ambovombe fled their homes fearing starvation

Mahosoa tells me some of his children go out to beg in the town so they can buy food or water.

Promises of aid from the government have not materialised for them, he says.

The government has distributed food aid in the affected area and has announced dozens of long-term infrastructure projects that could transform the area's prospects.

Nevertheless, President Andry Rajoelina has been criticised for failing to respond quickly enough to the crisis as the impact of the successive years of drought became more obvious.

Some locals put this down to the historical marginalisation of the region.

"During the war against the French colonialist army, the Antandroy [people from the Androy region] were able to fight against the French colonisers, they were able to use guerrilla tactics," university lecturer Dr Tsimihole Tovondrafale says.

Because of this, he says the French were not interested in developing the region.

"They didn't think about how to make roads, dig wells for example, and that's still the politics of Madagascar since independence up to now."

Many political commentators blame what they see as the government's slowness to react for exacerbating the hunger crisis in the south, but Madagascar's environment minister sees things very differently.

Map

Dr Baomiavotse Vahinala Raharinirina says that the famine is "climactic in its origin". This chimes with the view of the World Food Programme, which says that the crisis is being driven by climate change.

The recent influential World Weather Attribution report on the drought in Madagascar, which included work from Dr Rondro Barimalala, a Malagasy climate scientist, disputed this.

Researchers found that though the recent rains have been poor and the probability of future droughts may be on the rise, the change in rainfall cannot be attributed to human impact on the climate.

Regardless of the exact cause of the lack of rain, there is no doubt that hundreds of thousands of people will be living with its impact for years to come.

Through her work to improve her village, Loharano is happy her community has avoided the disaster many are facing right now.

But it hurts her to see many more cannot be helped.

"I feel sad for them because they could die of hunger. One day, somebody had nothing and I asked her why.

"She said that they hadn't eaten since the day before. So I told her to take some of my peas and feed her kids."

'No warning': Indonesian village caught off guard in volcano disaster





 Eruption of Mount Semeru volcano in East Java

Kate Lamb, Stanley Widianto and Prastyo Wardoyo
Fri, December 10, 2021

PENANGGAL, Indonesia (Reuters) -In the wake of the deadly Semeru eruption on Indonesia's Java island, the entwined bodies of a mother and daughter encased in molten ash have come to symbolise what many living in the shadow of the volcano feel went wrong.

"There was no warning. If there had been, there wouldn't have been victims, right?" said Minah, of her cousin Rumini, who died clutching her elderly mother as their kitchen roof caved in. Like many Indonesians, they use only one name.

Nestled at the base of volcano, their village of Curah Kobokan was among the worst-hit when Semeru spectacularly erupted on Saturday, ejecting ash clouds and pyroclastic flows that killed at least 45 people and left dozens missing.

The eruption of Java's tallest mountain has raised questions about the effectiveness of Indonesia's disaster warning system, and the dangers of rebuilding on the volcano's fertile but precarious slopes.

Officials said some messages were sent to local administrators but acknowledged they did not result in an evacuation order, in part because the volcano's activity is hard to predict.

Warnings to evacuate are normally relayed by the national disaster mitigation agency, such as in 2017 when it ordered 100,000 people living near Bali's rumbling Mt Agung to immediately leave the danger zone https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-volcano-idUSKBN1DR036.

The national disaster mitigation agency did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for a comment.

In Javanese, the village's name Curah Kobokan means "pouring bowl", a reference to the river that snakes by it. Once a source of life, the river would also become the community's downfall.

When Semeru erupted, the river carried thick flows of lava and ash directly into Curah Kobokan, now a field of gray ash piled as high as the powerlines, a few triangular roofs jutting out of the newly formed disaster landscape.

Residents say the air grew blazing hot and pitch black in seconds. People screamed and fled in panic, some taking refuge in a prayer house, others huddled in a concrete drain.

Of eight residents Reuters interviewed, not one said they received warning of an impending eruption.

"If there had been warning, people would have evacuated. Instead in a matter of minutes, lava streamed down and a lot of people died," said 41-year-old Irawati, whose husband was knocked unconscious as they tried to escape.

Bicycles are seen submerged following the Mount Semeru volcano eruption in Sumberwuluh, Candipuro district, Lumajang

A police officer gives a drink to 9-year-old sniffer dog, Sola, as they take a break during a rescue operation in Sumberwuluh, Candipuro district, Lumajang

Volunteers load vegetables at a temporary shelter in Penanggal, Candipuro district, Lumajang

'NO TIME TO RUN'

An archipelago of 270 million sitting atop the Pacific Ring of Fire, Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone nations on earth. The devastation wreaked by Semeru can be ascribed to a deadly confluence of factors, for which no one wants to take the blame.

The head of Indonesia's geological agency, Eko Budi Lelono, says messages were sent to local officials warning of hot ash clouds. The river near Curah Kobokan, he said, was marked red on the map.

"In the future, we can't blame one another, but we need to synergise more," Eko says.

Dino Adalananto of the East Java disaster mitigation agency says the warnings were passed on to local resilience officers but there were no specific orders to evacuate. The head of Curah Kobokan could not be reached.

Experts say the nature of the eruption, a cave-in of the lava dome possibly triggered by external factors such as heavy rain, was also difficult to catch ahead of time.

"Whatever the actual trigger was, it was the instability of this lava dome at the summit that collapsed and those things are very hard to predict," said Heather Handley, a volcano scientist at Australia's Monash University.

Eruptions triggered by lava dome collapses account for about 6% of all volcanic eruptions, says Handley, with more research needed to understand the characteristics and causes.

Another causal factor for the tragedy is the reality of life on Semeru's slopes, where over the decades communities have become inured to volcanic activity, including the summit letting off steam.

As disaster officials survey the devastation, some 100,000 homes damaged or destroyed, there is growing talk about the danger of living so close to the mountain, with Indonesian President Joko Widodo saying https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/indonesian-president-bolsters-rescue-recovery-efforts-after-deadly-eruption-2021-12-07 at least 2,000 homes will be moved.

With 142 volcanoes, Indonesia has the largest population globally living in close range to a volcano, including 8.6 million within 10km (6.2 miles).

"What needs to be explained to people is the areas where the lava flows, our recommendation is don't live there anymore," said the geological agency's Eko.

"When they're there, there's no time to run."

(Reporting by Prasto Wardoyo in Penanggal; Kate Lamb in Sydney and Stanley Widianto in Jakarta; Additional reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa; Writing by Kate Lamb; Editing by Karishma Singh)

TURTLE ISLAND

‘A Place of Padlocks and Chamber Pots’: Repatriation Discussions for the 126 Natives Buried at the Only Government-Run Native Insane Asylum


Jenna Kunze
Thu, December 9, 2021

The asylum's graveyard is unmarked, on city-owned Hiawatha Golf Club course, between the fourth and fifth fairways.

After a summer of returning nine ancestors who died while attending boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe is zeroing in on another location for return: The cemetery of a former government-run insane asylum in Canton, a town of about 3,000 people in southeast South Dakota.

“This exhumation will be different than the last,” Rosebud Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Ione Quigley told Native News Online. “It's not a boarding school. This particular situation is going to take a multifaceted effort [by] all tribes, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the city of Canton. So we're gonna have to unify that partnership to get these relatives home to where they belong.”

From 1903 to 1934, the BIA operated the Hiawatha Indian Insane Asylum (also known as the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians) for nearly 400 Native Americans, overlapping with the same period that U.S. policy aimed to assimilate Natives into the dominant settler culture and erase their own. Native Americans from across Indian Country were admitted to the asylum at a time where Indigenous peoples were not recognized as citizens of the United States, and therefore would not be admitted to state institutions.

According to local historian Ross Lothrop (Citizen Band of Potawatomi), a volunteer at the Keepers of the Canton Native Asylum Story, the asylum was more of a solution for the so-called “Indian problem” than it was a credible institution.

Lothrop’s group has worked for nearly a decade to honor those admitted to the asylum, educate others on its history, and facilitate reconciliation for those that were affected by its existence.

“Many of the people that were there... might have simply been ‘trouble’ or created trouble for the Indian agent,” Lothrop told Native News Online. “Some of [the elders] were medicine men. It was a time when we weren't allowed to practice our spiritual ways, and this was one way to… as my mom said, ‘try to get the Indian out of the Indian.’”

The Bureau of Indian Affairs deeded the land within boundaries of the asylum grounds, including the cemetery, to the city of Canton in 1946, to use for community recreation.

At least 126 graves from 53 different Nations

Today, the asylum’s graveyard sits on a city-owned golf course between the fourth and fifth holes’ fairways. It’s sectioned off with a split-rail fence, and maintained by the city and the Keepers of the Canton Native Asylum Story group.

There are 121 people buried there, according to the plot map that hung on the commissioner's wall until the facility closed. But in 2016, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma conducted ground-penetrating radar surveys of the site and found an additional five graves that weren’t listed on the plot map, plus several anomalies that could be more graves, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Ian Thompson told Native News Online. At least 53 different tribal nations are represented in the cemetery.

Student records obtained by Lothrop’s group from the National Archives show that many of the deaths were caused by illnesses common for the time period, such as tuberculosis, but an equal number had no cause listed.

The gravesites are unmarked, because the BIA had determined that stone markers “were unwarranted.”

Now, Quigley’s office—with direction from the Rosebud Sioux tribal government— is seeking to return at least six more of their tribe’s relatives, plus as many of the remaining 120 as the affected tribes choose to have returned.

“I have the six names in front of me, and I'm looking at them and thinking: Who are their descendants?” Quigley told Native News Online on a phone call from her office. “There will be so much pain, so [many] questions— there is already—on how people ended up there. And, you know, there's questions about what they went through.”

‘A place of padlocks and chamber pots’

According to Lothrop, there were 27 investigations of the asylum over its 31-year operation.

But it would take another nearly three decades for those complaints--some from staff themselves, alleging patient mistreatment in the form of insufficient clothing, bedding, and improper medical treatment—-to shut down the facility.

In 1929, psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Silk of St. Elizabeths Hospital, the federal mental hospital in Washington, described the Canton asylum as “a place of padlocks and chamber pots,” where reservations sent patients they weren’t able to care for. He noted a lack of real medical facilities, and that “several patients exhibited no symptoms of mental illness,” according to a 1998 National Park Service document.

According to Quigley, it’s her job now to create forgiveness for her ancestors’ perpetrators, in order to move forward.

“The people that… committed these atrocities, they're gone now,” she said. “Their justice, it's beyond us. What our responsibility is right now is to create that forgiveness for them that have gone on, and to step forward.”

Quigley will now embark on an effort to contact the historic preservation officers of all 52 tribes who have ancestors buried at Canton, for a coordinated effort to disinter them. Some tribes, such as the Choctaw Nation, have already said they won’t disturb their ancestors’ gravesites unless a direct family member advocates for it.

The only known past disinterment took place in 1982, Lothrop said, when the Comanche Nation exhumed a relative who had died at the asylum in 1920. The Comanche Nation did not return Native News Online’s calls to learn more.

Quigley said her team is working with the tribe’s attorney general, Lloyd Guy, to determine ownership.

City officials in Canton, which technically owns the cemetery, told Native News Online that they would “respect and honor the decision of each tribal nation” regarding their ancestors buried there.

"Whether those decisions be repatriation or leaving them where they were laid to rest, we will honor and remember their lives through continued care and upkeep of the grounds and cemetery,” representatives from Canton, the Hiawatha Golf Club, Sanford Canton-Inwood Medical Center, and Keepers of the Canton Native Asylum Story wrote in a joint statement.

Who will pay?

In June, the Department of the Interior announced a Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, prompted by the discovery of 215 Indigenous childrens’ remains at the site of a former Indian residential school, to examine its own dark history. The initiative directs the department to identify boarding-school facilities and examine potential burial sites near them, as well as the identities and tribal affiliations of the students who were taken to those schools.

Quigley believes that the department's effort to right wrongs committed in the past is a show of good faith for the future of the Canton asylum’s cemetery.

“With the big push toward repatriating all the ancestral remains from the boarding schools and from this particular institution, I'm thinking that it's going to go back to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to pay for it,” she said. “Knowing that the Bureau of Indian Affairs did have a hand in it in the beginning.”

The Department of the Interior had not responded by press time to Native News Online’s request for comment on whether the asylum would be included in the scope of the federal investigation, or whether they’d pay for repatriations.

In early December, Quigley said her department was going to begin by reaching out to the city of Canton to begin discussing how to move forward. She said initial conversations with Lothrop put her at ease.

“It's gonna be okay with... his group in the middle,” she said. “He really reassured me that...we can do this quietly. We can do it peacefully. We can do this respectfully.”

About the Author: "Jenna Kunze is a reporter for Native News Online and Tribal Business News. Her bylines have appeared in The Arctic Sounder, High Country News, Indian Country Today, Smithsonian Magazine and Anchorage Daily News. In 2020, she was one of 16 U.S. journalists selected by the Pulitzer Center to report on the effects of climate change in the Alaskan Arctic region. Prior to that, she served as lead reporter at the Chilkat Valley News in Haines, Alaska. Kunze is based in New York."

Contact: jkunze@indiancountrymedia.com

US immigration policy played a role in crash that killed more than 50 migrants in Mexico


Carli Pierson, USA TODAY
Fri, December 10, 2021, 

As Mexican officials work to investigate a vehicle collision that has killed at least 53 immigrants and injured at least 50 more, we have to examine what role American immigration policy is playing in these tragedies and in the surge of migrants continuing to come north.

This latest accident happened Thursday when Mexican officials said a cargo truck filled with migrants from Central America rolled over and crashed into a bridge, according to the Associated Press.

The accident happened in the Mexican state of Chiapas, which is the first state migrants enter after crossing the Guatemalan border with Mexico. The details of this horrible crash are being revealed, as is the impact of America's immigration policy that has done nothing to stem the flow of migrants.

An injured migrant woman is moved by rescue personnel from the site of an accident near Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas state, Mexico, Dec. 9, 2021.

More: In Mexico, we've seen destitute Haitian families heading north for weeks. Why was the US unprepared?

U.S. policy has proved increasingly deadly over the years, and it has done little to deter determined families running from deadly gangs, political instability, climate catastrophes and indigence in Central America, Haiti, South America and Africa. Recently, the Biden Administration was forced to reinstate the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as Remain In Mexico, which requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico as they apply and wait for their asylum cases to be heard.

This goes against international and federal law and the principle of non-refoulement – the policy of not returning refugees and asylum seekers who would face danger or severe insecurity if returned to their country of origin. But while the Biden administration was required to reinstate the policy, it also expanded it to include all migrants from the Western Hemisphere, most notably Haiti.

More: Massive migrant caravans are on their way. Democrats must move on migration alternatives.

It should come as no surprise that thousands of migrants are en route to the USA. I have written about it in the past months, and the migrant caravans dominate the news in Mexico.

We have known for months that families were coming en masse, unable to return to their countries of origin. We have also known that they face significant, horrific acts of violence if they are forced to remain in Mexico. Kidnappings, human trafficking, sexual assault and murder are commonplace among these incredibly vulnerable populations.

We have also known that Mexico cannot handle these populations, as the Mexican civil society and U.S. advocates have repeatedly reminded us.

These are the tired, the weak, the hungry and the brave. These are children and mothers who want nothing more than an education, a safe place to sleep, work and live their lives.

We know that these families are coming. I reiterate my call to this administration to partner with Canada and Mexico to find a humane and safe way to process migrants and let them make their asylum cases safely from the United States. It is their legal right to do so.

Surely, death by trailer tractor is not what we want for people who will risk everything just to make an honest living. There has to be a better way.

Carli Pierson is an attorney and an opinion writer at USA TODAY. Follow her on Twitter: @CarliPiersonEsq

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Migrant deaths in Mexico truck crash show need for better policies

Christmas tree turns symbol of hope at Brazil dump

 Gabriel Silva holds a Christmas decoration he found while scavenging through garbage at the Picarreira landfill of the Cidade das Aguas neighborhood, in Pinheiro, Brazil, on November 08, 2021 (AFP/Joao Paulo Guimaraes)

Joao Paulo GUIMARAES, with Louis GENOT in Rio de Janeiro
Fri, December 10, 2021, 10:08 PM·3 min read

An illegal garbage dump seems an unlikely setting for a holiday story, but when a photojournalist captured 12-year-old Gabriel Silva pulling a Christmas tree from a fetid mountain of trash, the image quickly went viral.

Silva lives with his mother and two older brothers in a small mud hut next to the dump in the town of Pinheiro, in northeastern Brazil.

It is a disturbing landscape of rotting waste and discarded plastic, where dozens of trash-pickers compete for scraps of food with vultures, cats, dogs and cattle.

Silva was with his mother on November 8, digging through the garbage as he does most days after school, when he unearthed a blue plastic bag with a small artificial Christmas tree inside.

"I had never had a Christmas tree before," he says.

His face has an inscrutable expression in the picture that photographer Joao Paulo Guimaraes captured of that moment, as if the shirtless young trash-picker were unsure what to make of this find: it intrigued the child in him, but would do nothing to feed his family.

But then the image went viral on social networks, and the little plastic tree turned into an unexpected Christmas present.

Silva and his family's dirt-floor hut now has a giant, sparkling Christmas tree inside -- not the one from the dump, but a gift from a benefactor who was moved by the photograph.

It is just one of a flood of donations the family has received.

"We've gotten clothes, mattresses, baskets of food. Thank God, we'll be able to get by fine for Christmas this year," says Silva's mother, 45-year-old Maria Francisca Silva.

There has also been money, thanks to online collections -- a windfall for Maria Francisca, who earns around 600 reais ($105) a month selling recyclable materials from the dump.

The family hopes to soon fulfill their dream of building an actual house.

They have already realized one longtime wish, thanks to an initial donation of 500 reais: install a hydraulic pump to bring up water from their well, replacing the rope and bucket they used to use.

But Silva's favorite gift is a bicycle he received from a teacher at his school.

Gabriel Silva poses inside his house in Pinheiros, Maranhao state, Brazil, on December 10, 2021 

(AFP/JOAO PAULO GUIMARAES)

- 'Like the apocalypse' -

Silva spends much of his free time at the dump with his mother.

"I prefer to bring him with me. If I let him run around in the street, he could get into drugs, do things he's not supposed to," she says.

"He's a good boy. He always helps me."

The episode has turned Silva into a local celebrity.

"Every day, people want to take my picture, ask me things," he says.

Guimaraes, a freelance photographer who collaborates with AFP, lives in the neighboring state of Para.

He got the idea to shoot pictures at the dump after seeing a video of residents there running after a garbage truck carrying waste from a supermarket.

"It was just crazy. There were probably 50 people chasing it," says Pinheiro's public defender, Eurico Arruda, who shot the video.

"That dump is like something out of the apocalypse. There are fires and smoke everywhere, vultures, dogs. It's the bottom rung of destitute poverty."

Arruda, who has set up a cooperative to help the trash-pickers defend their rights, says he hopes the Christmas tree picture will raise awareness about the plight of people like the Silvas.

The local government has already promised monthly welfare payments of 100 reais ($18) for the trash-pickers, and vowed to build a legal dump next year that complies with sanitation regulations.

jpg-lg/jhb/md

Illegal but essential, migrants recycle Istanbul's waste




Most of the trash collectors and warehouse workers live on-site in crudely arranged containers 

(AFP/Bulent KILIC)

Anne CHAON
Fri, December 10, 2021, 11:33 PM·4 min read

Shrouded by acrid smoke, a young Afghan crouches sorting waste he has pulled from the trash bins of Istanbul, anxious that Turkey will soon strip him of even this subsistence.

"I start at eight in the morning and finish at eight at night," said Issam Raffur, who has spent four of his 20 years in Turkey.

"It is very hard and poorly paid, but I have no choice," he shrugged, smoke billowing from a fire barely warming his makeshift sorting centre on a soggy winter day.

Considered the poorest of Turkey's poor, Afghans have joined Kurds, the Laz, Roma and other ethnic minorities and undocumented migrants in doing work others snub.

For less than $10 a day, they roam the streets of Istanbul, a megalopolis of nearly 16 million people straining under the weight of a currency crisis and a flood of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other conflict-riven states.

Diving headfirst into dumpsters, they dig up plastic bottles, glass and other waste they then sort and sell in bulk -- a self-organised, unregulated business that keeps the city clean, and men such as Issam fed.

But as public sentiment turns against migrants and other foreigners in Turkey, the state-appointed prefecture of Istanbul has declared this work bad for "the environment and public health".

Issam and his friends suspect that what Turkish officials really want is to put this potentially profitable business under the control of a few, well-connected recycling firms.

"If the big companies take over, they will saw off our last branch of support," said Mahmut Aytar, a Turk who manages one of the small recycling centres on the Asian side of Istanbul. "They will throw us in the ravine."

Speaking to AFP, Deputy Environment Minister Mehmet Emin Birpinar did little to ease Aytar's concerns.

"Waste can be bought and sold, so we have started to view it as a raw material with other uses," he said. "After the price of raw materials increased, the value of recycled goods has risen."

- Women and children -

Born in multi-ethnic southeastern Turkey, Aytar, 28, launched his recycling business out of desperation after failing to find work befitting his biology degree.

"This job does not require experience or training. Anyone can do it, but it is mostly the people excluded by the system who get involved," he said while watching his press machines crush plastic bags and empty bottles.

After being shrunk into tidy bales, the plastic waste is loaded onto trucks of small, independently run recycling operators who convert them into granules.

Aytar said he runs one of 2,500 or so impromptu recycling depots in Istanbul, receiving dozens of trash collectors -- called "cekcekci" (pronounced "chekchekchi" and roughly translating as those who pull carts) -- every day.

Tugging white, muddied carts filled with paper, cardboard, plastic and bottles, they dart between honking cars and pedestrian streams, earning 80-120 liras ($6-$9) a day.

Women and minors specialise in cardboard boxes, which they find after the shops close at night, their babies sometimes riding along in the carts' lower folds.

Each kilogramme (2.2 pounds) of waste is worth about a lira (seven US cents), and the bravest collect about 150 kilogrammes of waste a day.

"They probably don't realise it, but by being impoverished, they contribute to protecting the environment," said Aytar. "They are helping society."

Refugees dig up plastic bottles, glass and other waste they then sort and sell in bulk

 (AFP/Bulent KILIC)

- 'Harassment' -

They do so while living in destitution and depend on the whims of the police.

In early October, security forces rounded up more than 250 cekcekci in one day, releasing them after a few hours but keeping their precious cargoes of waste.

"It's harassment," said Elrem Yasar, who started managing his own depot after collecting trash for 12 years.

"Each confiscation costs me about 560 liras, which I earn in three days."

Istanbul prefecture officials defended their crackdown.

"These cekcekci work illegally," one official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "It is up to the city to take care of recycling and to collect revenues from it."

Conceding that his work has no legal status, collector Ekrem Yasar said he would be happy to pay taxes if ever given the chance.

"We are not asking for state handouts, but if they take away our jobs, tens of thousands of people will be left with nothing," he said, pinning his hopes on the first cekcekci union, which is still in the process of being set up.

Most of the trash collectors and warehouse workers live on-site in crudely arranged containers, huddling around open fires in Istanbul's industrial zones.

"Imagine, life in the city," Yasar said with a bitter laugh. "You think we are making money? Look, we only have one teaspoon between us," he said while serving tea.

ach/zak/imm/lth/cdw

It’s Not a Labor Shortage, It’s a Workers’ Rights Shortage

Posted on November 2021 by Pat Simpson

“America’s Work Ethic,” an OtherWords.org cartoon by Khalil Bendib, Creative Commons License CC BY-ND 3.0

The Great Uprising, the Great Resignation, even the unofficial General Strike: analysts and pundits—left, right and center—speak of mounting worker unrest in the US in awestruck terms. What these labels certainly do capture is the expansive scale of this unrest and how it breaks with recent patterns. It has been decades since strike numbers rose to the levels seen in 2021. With the year not yet concluded, Cornell University ILR (School of Industrial and Labor Relations) Labor Action Tracker recorded 251 strikes this year, and 38 of them occurred just in the first two weeks of October.

The Broad Sweep of Unrest

Some of the most notable strikes involve 10,000 John Deere production workers at plants in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, and Georgia; 1400 bakery and distribution Nabisco facilities; 1,100 miners at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama; 2,000 hospital workers at Buffalo’s Mercy Hospital; and 2,550 service workers in Cook County.

Some 24,000 nurses and health care workers at Kaiser Permanente in California and Oregon have also authorized a strike should an acceptable contract continue to be out of reach.

The Cornell tracker also charted 549 labor protests in 2021, referring to actions like informational picketing and lunch-hour protests that do not involve the withdrawal of labor. Furthermore, one can argue that the record number of workers quitting their jobs is yet another form of labor withdrawal. Forty-three million individuals left their jobs in August—a figure nearly 60 percent above the average since 2000.

This unrest is taking place in a political landscape where pro-labor elements of the Biden agenda are in limbo, with no sign of forward movement absent changes to the filibuster. But the reality is that singular reliance on governmental entities dominated by corporate interests has always been a bankrupt strategy for labor, and the recent rank-and-file militancy is plausibly a sign of union members having learned this lesson very well.

Motivations

The breadth and scope of unrest, and how it has been manifested across industries, makes it difficult to pinpoint all of its underlying causes and motivations. Certainly the pandemic has been a factor affecting key industries, often those with large concentrations of women and minority workers. Essential workers in health care and manufacturing faced long hours and often dangerous and abusive conditions, that had become more so during the pandemic. Restaurant workers faced wages below legally-mandated minimums and inadequate safety protocols once the businesses began opening again.

The pandemic also brought the problem of childcare for women workers into sharp relief. The crisis in access to quality care is undoubtedly one of the major causes of the much higher rate of women leaving the labor force.

Conservatives have argued that extended unemployment and related benefits offered during the pandemic were disincentives for workers to return to the labor market. But recent studies have shown that those states that ended these benefits early had fewer individuals return to the labor market than states that kept the benefits in place.

True to an enduring pattern in labor—the only exception being during the Great Depression—a labor shortage caused by labor market withdrawal has also increased the bargaining power of union workers. They can easily find other work and leave their employers, already having difficulty with staffing levels, in the lurch.

To understand the current militancy, however, a wider net must be cast. Since the 1970s worker pay has been largely stagnant, with workers disadvantaged by deindustrialization and too often by a labor leadership loathe to threaten their own enviable positions by rocking the boat. They were also often fearful that militancy might alienate tepid allies in a Democratic Party that since the Clinton years had largely abandoned a commitment to working-class voters. Meanwhile, corporate profits attained unprecedented levels; concessionary bargaining led to givebacks in wages and benefits; and constraints on employers’ ability to mistreat workers through production speedups, mandatory and uncompensated overtime, and harsh supervisory regimens all but vanished in many workplaces. Such are the underpinnings of an income inequality that has grown exponentially in the US in recent decades. These realities have inspired one commentator to accurately opine that what we are seeing in the current unrest is due to not a labor shortage, but a workers’-rights shortage.

Not surprising then that while covering strikes undertaken after rejections of tentative contracts recommended by union leadership, reporters have described the rank-and-file workers they interview as simply “angry, very angry.”

What Worker Anger Means for the Future

The labor unrest of this period gives cause for some optimism, as does new national survey data indicating that, at 68 percent, union favorability has reached its highest levels since 1965. The critical question will be whether this unrest and changing attitudes are channeled into strengthening collective mechanisms—including not just unions, but other innovative entities like worker centers. Even in the absence of a collective bargaining contract, these centers typically organize low-paid urban workers to fight employer practices like wage theft and failure to provide safe job sites.

It would be simplistic to suggest that the high level of job quits is a good sign for collective worker power in and of itself. Indeed, absent augmented collective worker power, it may be that individual decisions to leave the marketplace at best enhance only that individual’s limited personal fortunes and may be the start of a deterioration in living conditions for those who fail to find a better job.

One foreseeable task for unions and related institutions is to collect data on trends in quit patterns by firm to pinpoint those marked by high levels of turnover. Targeted organizing efforts could be focused on entities experiencing strong evidence of worker discontent. Putting more money and staff into organizing efforts should be a no brainer at this point.

Successful union organizing is often still a long shot in the US, due to an industrial relations regime that imposes miniscule penalties for unfair labor practices like firing rank-and-file organizers and fosters the ability of employers to use replacement workers in strike situations. Indeed, even some of the current strikes may still be at risk of loss if labor law reform is not soon achieved. Passing the federal PRO Act, which addresses issues of penalties and replacement workers, is a must.

But how to do it? As previously stated, the outlook for near-term passage is not favorable. It is possible that if labor unrest continues apace into 2022, interest in accommodating labor may increase, at least at the margins among legislators. An additional requirement is forceful union leaders at the national and local levels who have their fingers on the pulse of what the rank and file actually wants, who are truly committed to pursue rank-and file interest above their own, and, relatedly, who are not vulnerable to outside pressure (read blackmail, in select cases) from government and even employers due to their own corruption.

It is for these reasons that rank-and-file rebellions in the form of contract rejections are a truly hopeful sign, not least when they are complemented by rank-and-file movements to reform unions from within. Keep an eye on two recent examples of such efforts. The “One Member, One Vote” reform movement within the United Auto Workers aims at the direct election by the membership of International Executive Board officers, as opposed to the current system where officers are elected by convention delegates. Reformers see this change as one means for ending the corruption that has recently been exposed at the topmost levels of the union and for generating a more assertive leadership approach to collective bargaining. And the Teamsters United slate backed by Teamsters for a Democratic Union is making a bid to win a November election and put an end to years of wage and benefit givebacks to employers.

In the meantime, we can all help out striking workers in a variety of ways. See How to Support Striking Workers on the this ain’t livin’ blog (meloukhia.net).

'Mass casualty' after Amazon warehouse roof collapses with 'up to 100 people inside'

Saturday 11 December 2021

The Amazon distribution centre is partially collapsed after being hit by heavy winds on Friday.Credit: St Louis Dispatch/AP

Emergency crews in the US are responding to reports of workers trapped inside an Amazon warehouse after its roof collapsed from storm damage.Footage from TV stations in St. Louis, Illinois showed dozens of emergency vehicles at the Amazon centre near the city of Edwardsville, about 25 miles west of St. Louis.

It wasn’t immediately clear if or how many people were hurt, but the Collinsville Illinois Emergency Management Agency on Facebook called it a “mass casualty incident.”
Extinction Rebellion targets Amazon warehouses across UK on Black Friday

One official told KTVI-TV that up to 100 people were believed to be in the building, working the night shift, at the time of the collapse.

Television news footage from the scene showed buses taking people away from the building, and at least one person was seen being carried to a medical helicopter on a gurney.

Emergency vehicles outside the Amazon fulfillment centre

The Belleville News-Democrat reported that the Amazon fulfillment center in Edwardsville opened with two warehouses in 2016, with 1.5 million square feet of space. The warehouses are used to store items until they are shipped to customers.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the damage to the Amazon warehouse was caused by straight-line storms or a tornado, but a large tornado was reported in the Edwardsville area at about the time the building was damaged. The National Weather Service office near St. Louis issued reports of “radar-confirmed tornadoes” in the Edwardsville area.

In fact, workers at the weather service office themselves had to take shelter as another tornado passed near their office in Weldon Spring, Missouri, about 30 miles west of St. Louis.

That twister was suspected of destroying several homes in the Missouri towns of New Melle and Defiance, leaving at least three people injured, one of them hospitalised with serious injuries. Rescue crews worked into the night sifting through damage to make sure there were not additional injuries.

The collapse came as a strong thunderstorm, and possibly a tornado, ripped through the St. Louis area. Winds of up to 70 mph were reported in parts of St. Charles and St. Louis counties in Missouri.

In rural St. Charles County, Missouri, one person died and two others were injured when buildings collapsed near the town of Defiance. The National Weather Service office in suburban St. Louis confirmed the death, but no further information was immediately available.

Deaths confirmed in 'mass casualty incident' at Illinois Amazon warehouse roof collapse caused by severe weather


Bethany Dawson
Sat, December 11, 2021

Emergency vehicles surround the site of an Amazon distribution warehouse with a collapsed roof, after storms hit the area of Edwardsville, Illinois, U.S. December 10, 2021.REUTERS/Lawrence Bryant

An Amazon warehouse in Collinsville, Illinois, has collapsed.

At least 2 deaths have been confirmed.

The collapse is due to severe weather hitting the state of Illinois as well as surrounding states.

At least two workers have died after an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois collapsed due to severe weather, police confirm.

A wall the length of a football field and the roof above it collapsed in the warehouse at 8:33 pm.

Speaking at live press conference at 5:45 am CST, Edwardsville Police chief Michael Fillback confirmed that there have been "at least 2" deaths, 1 hospitalization, 3o workers transferred to the Pontoon Beach police station, and a number unaccounted for.

The department describes the scene as an "active search and recovery".

Describing the warehouse, the Fillback says it is an "utter disaster" with a portion of the building "completely destroyed."

Photos taken from a drone flying above the building show emergency services working through masses of debris.

Delivery vehicles with the Amazon Prime logo sit parked at a damaged Amazon.com, Inc warehouse as emergency crews respond after a tornado passed through Edwardsville, Illinois, U.S., December 10, 2021 in this still image taken from drone video obtained on December 11, 2021.

Chris Phillips/Maverick Media Group, LLC via REUTERSMore


More than 11 emergency service departments from surrounding areas are attending the scene.

A few hours after the event, writing on their Facebook, the Collinsville Emergency Management Agency stated that "subjects were trapped inside" and described the event as a "mass casualty incident."

"Please be patient with us. Our fire personnel is doing everything they can to reunite everyone with their loved ones," Fillback said on KMOV-TV.

Insider spoke to a man whose brother-in-law — an Amazon worker at the Edwardsville warehouse — is currently one of those unaccounted for.

Kevin, who wishes only to go by his first name, describes rushing to the warehouse after picking up his sister and niece, and getting to the warehouse as fast as the speed-limit let him.

"When we arrived to the area, all roads leading to the location was blocked by emergency services. We sat on the highway for 3 hours waiting to get to go to the location and pick him up to take him home" he told Insider.

They then hurried to the Pontoon Beach police dept when he heard of other employees being taken there.

"We had sat here for an hour desperately calling hospitals and police departments in the area trying to locate him, then his boss had gotten a hold of my sister to tell her that he was unaccounted for.

We kept blowing his phone up hoping for a answer from him. We've called him over 100 times. No luck."

Kevin, his sister, and his neice are now waiting to hear any news.

FOX2 spoke to the stepson of an Amazon worker who was missing.

"Our mother is basically hysterical at this point, trying to find out what's going on. She's really worried. We're worried too. At this point, I'm starting to get pretty scared that he got hurt or worse." said Connor Jones.

Reuters spoke to Sarah Bierman who was waiting at the warehouse for her husband, an Amazon employee at the site.

She told a reporter that she hasn't heard from him since the collapse.

"I just heard through the news and we live in Edwardsville; we lost power. So I decided to come down here to see what was going on, and I had no idea the building looked that bad. And I'm just; I'm worried sick." she said.

The collapse is due to tornadoes and severe storms surging through five states, including Arkansas, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri.

Two maps highlighting the damaged Amazon warehouse, one showing it in the context of the wider Midwest, and one in the context of IllinoisInsider/Google Maps

Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois tweeted that "[his] prayers are with the people of Edwardsville tonight, and I've reached out to the mayor to provide any needed state resources."

When KMOV reached out to Amazon for comment, spokesperson Richard Rocha offered the following statement: "The safety and well-being of our employees and partners is our top priority right now. We're assessing the situation and will share additional information when it's available."

 

Workers Trapped After Illinois Amazon 

Warehouse Collapses In Severe Weather

Mary Papenfuss

Sat, December 11, 2021

At least one person has reportedly died inside an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, after a roof and other parts of the building collapsed and up to 100 workers became trapped as violent storms, including a tornado, ripped through the region on Friday night.

Dozens of other people were trapped and at least 50 feared dead after tornadoes hit a candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky, and a nursing home in Monette, Arkansas, where at least one person was killed.

At least three storm-related deaths were also confirmed in Tennessee.

First responders surround a heavily damaged Amazon Distribution Center in Edwardsville, Illinois, Friday night after the building partially collapsed when violent storms, including a tornado, ripped through the area. (Photo: Michael Thomas via Getty Images)

Law enforcement authorities called the Amazon warehouse incident a “mass casualty event,” according to reporter Jenna Rae at KMOV-TV in St. Louis.

Up to 100 people were believed to be inside the building, working the night shift during the holiday rush, at the time of the collapse.

Rae reported late Friday that about two dozen workers were transported from the facility on Madison County Transit buses. A medical evacuation helicopter arrived on the scene shortly afterward, and excavators were still removing debris as the search and rescue operation continued early Saturday.

The National Weather Service said radar had confirmed a tornado just east of Edwardsville, which is outside of St. Louis, around the time the Amazon Fulfillment Center was damaged.

Meteorologist James Spann of ABC’s Birmingham, Alabama, affiliate WBMA tweeted footage of the tornado that struck the Amazon facility:

Severe storm warnings and tornado watches had been posted throughout the region on Friday.

In Tennessee, at least three deaths have been attributed to the weather.

In Arkansas, at least one person was killed, five people were seriously injured and around 20 were trapped by a possible tornado at the Monette Manor nursing home, according to The Associated Press. All have since been accounted for.

Dozens were also trapped and feared dead after a tornado struck a candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky.

“There were about 110 people in it at the time that the tornado hit it,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said at a news conference early Saturday. “We believe we’ll lose at least dozens of those individuals. It’s very hard, really tough, and we’re praying for each and every one of those families.”

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.