Georgia made it easier for parents to challenge school library books. Almost no one has done so
JEFF AMY
Sat, August 19, 2023 





Books sit in a cart in an elementary school library in suburban Atlanta on Friday, 18, 2023. Although not new, book challenges have surged in public schools since 2020, part of a broader backlash to what kids read and discuss in school. 

(AP Photo/Hakim Wright Sr.)

CUMMING, Ga. (AP) — When Allison Strickland urged a suburban Atlanta school board in June to remove four books from school libraries, she was following a path cleared by Georgia’s Republican lawmakers.

But after the bitterly debated Georgia law took effect Jan. 1, The Associated Press found few book challengers are using it.

One key element restraining complaints: The law only allows parents of current students to challenge books.

Although not new, book challenges have surged since 2020, part of a backlash to what kids read and discuss in public schools. Conservatives want to stop children from reading books with themes on sexuality, gender, race and religion that they find objectionable. PEN America, a group promoting freedom of expression, counted 4,000 instances of books banned nationwide from July 2021 to December 2022.

But while fights are ongoing in Forsyth County, where Strickland was protesting, at least 15 other large Georgia districts surveyed by AP said they have received no demands to remove books under the law.

Georgia conservatives last year aimed to ease book challenges. But lawmakers knew a parents-only restriction would also limit them.

“We are not going to turn this bill into a weapon for every taxpayer to harass the school system,” said state Rep. James Burchett, a Republican from Waycross, during a 2022 hearing.

Still, some books are disappearing. Kasey Meehan, PEN America’s Freedom to Read director, said some schools are removing books even before parents ask. That’s happened in Forsyth County, where documents obtained by AP show a librarian “weeded” two books Strickland was protesting from another high school’s library, just before they were challenged there.

Those who object to books say Georgia’s law is being interpreted too narrowly and removing books should be easier. In most states anyone can challenge a book, not just parents, Meehan said. But some districts elsewhere also limit protests over books to parents.

The Georgia law may be preventing widespread challenges by a handful of conservative activists. Research has found complaints nationwide are largely driven by just a few people — who sometimes aren’t parents.

Forsyth County, a fast-growing suburb with 54,000 students, has been a hotbed for conservative agitation over public education.

A parent of two West Forsyth High School students, Strickland complained in March about sexually explicit books, attaching excerpts from BookLooks. The conservative website highlights passages that its writers consider objectionable. Strickland was working with the Mama Bears, a group recruiting book challengers.

Strickland targeted four novels: “Dime,” by E.R. Frank, in which a girl is lured into prostitution; “Tilt,” by Ellen Hopkins, in which a 17-year-old girl gets pregnant and a 16-year-old boy falls in love with an HIV-positive boy; “Perfect,” another Hopkins book about teens facing unrealistic expectations; and “Oryx and Crake,” by Margaret Atwood, about a plague that kills most humans.

The principal examined the books, as legally required. In April, a Forsyth principal sided with a complaint, removing “The Nerdy and the Dirty” by B.T. Gottfred. But the West Forsyth principal concluded the books Strickland targeted should remain on shelves. She appealed to the school board.

“There is not one educational thing to be had from any of these books,” Strickland told board members, saying the books “run the gamut of child prostitution, forced rape, pedophilia, bestiality, sodomy, drug and alcohol abuse, all of very young minor children, often with adult partners.”

Others dissented, including T.J. McKinney, a departing teacher at a Forsyth middle school. She said students need to see their struggles reflected in books, and it’s pointless to shield older students from vulgarity or sex.

“The book is not introducing kids to sex. If you’re in high school, they’re having sex,” McKinney said. “They are not learning this from books.”

Forsyth Superintendent Jeff Bearden supported the principal’s recommendation to keep the books, as he did twice earlier. But the law requires the board to decide.

In April, board members backed administrators, retaining “Endlessly Ever After,” a choose-your-own-adventure fairy tale. But in May, the board overruled Bearden and required advance parental consent before students could read Gottfred’s “The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy.”

Faced with Strickland’s challenges in June, board members also required parental approval for the four books. The compromise left many unhappy.

“Members of the board, I ask you, are you really going to compromise on child pedophilia?” asked Mama Bears leader Cindy Martin before the vote. “If the answer is yes, then what will you compromise on next?”

“I see it as a loss,” McKinney said after the meeting. “The students still don’t have a right to choose their own books.”

Forsyth County was once a rural locale where white mobs terrorized the Black minority into fleeing in 1912. But suburban growth made it well-educated, affluent and diverse. Only 47% of Forsyth students were white and non-Hispanic last year.

But it’s also heavily Republican, and crowds attacked the system’s diversity, equity and inclusion plan in 2021. Agitation bled over into book protests. Officials pulled eight books from libraries in early 2022. They would later return all except “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” George M. Johnson’s memoir of growing up queer.

Opponents organized against the bans. High school student Shivi Mehta said she wants libraries to “stay whole.”

“I don’t want to have some books locked away,” Mehta said. “I don’t want to have books that I can’t read or can’t have access to because a group of politicians said I couldn’t.”

Critics continued reading explicit book excerpts at board meetings, urging removal. After telling a Mama Bears member to stop, the board banned her from speaking at meetings. The Mama Bears sued, and in November, a federal judge ruled the policy unconstitutionally restricted free speech. The district paid $107,000 in lawyer’s fees.

Others complained to the U.S. Department of Education that the district was excluding stories about people not white or straight. In a May warning, the department agreed, saying Forsyth schools may have created a hostile environment violating federal laws against race and sex discrimination, “leading to increased fears and possibly harassment” among students.

The district settled the complaint, agreeing to explain the book removal process, offer “supportive measures” and survey students about the issue.

But while federal government concerns may restrain administrators, the fight isn’t over.

“I think the momentum to ban or restrict books is not going away anytime soon,” Mehta said.

____

The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

'We're not waiting': Maui community shows distrust in government following deadly wildfires

Kathleen Wong, USA TODAY
Updated Fri, August 18, 2023 

Maui faces a rebuilding challenge of historic proportions after the deadly wildfires that killed over 100 people and destroyed a beloved town. And some residents say their toughest opponent may be the Hawaii state government itself.

Much of the aid efforts happening in the charred community of Lahaina and elsewhere are community-run because people don't feel as if the government is stepping up fast enough.

“We’re not waiting for our mayor to say we can or can’t. We're like, 'People need help and we’re helping them,'” said Lianne Driessen, who was born and raised on Maui and is director of sales and marketing at Trilogy Excursions, a family-run catamaran tour company based in Lahaina.

Her family lost their home in the devastating fire. Trilogy captains and boats didn't hesitate to start rescuing people from the ocean or transport people along the coast during recovery efforts.

Many have been frustrated when it comes to the lack of response and continued transparency from state and federal officials in the days following the deadliest U.S. wildfire in over a century.

The concern comes after decades of low public trust in the government given Hawaii’s history of colonialism and slow-moving bureaucracy.

“There’s a general distrust in the government,” said Noelani Ahia, a Maui born and raised indigenous healthcare professional running for Maui County Council for Wailuku-Waihee this November. She is one of the Native Hawaiian activists on the ground providing mental health support for people with post-traumatic stress disorder from the fires.

“The government they put in was white supremacy-centered from the assimilation and possession of our land,” Ahia said. “The government we have now are offshoots of that.”

Hawaii lost its last reigning monarch in 1893 to a government of nonnative American businessmen, plantation owners and politicians.

As a remote island chain that must be self-sufficient, the wildfire aftermath is a pivotal opportunity for officials to prove themselves as the community continues to show its resilience, critics say.

Volunteers unload pet food donations at Maui Humane Society in Puunene on Aug. 15, 2023. The organization estimates that over 3,000 animals are lost or missing from the fire and are treating found animals for severe burns and smoke inhalation.

More: 'Help is pouring in': How to assist victims in the Maui wildfires in Hawaii

Driessen added, “If we left it to our local government entity I think the rebuild is going to be incredibly slow.” She pointed out how the state took over five years to build a small pier out of Lahaina Harbor but with military assistance and dollars, the community could move much faster. “People need to know that.”

Officials continue to say that they were unprepared for the “unprecedented” wildfires, which doesn’t sit well with much of the public, especially when a fire weather watch was issued two days beforehand warning of tinder-like conditions.

Maui’s fire chief and Herman Andaya, Maui’s top emergency management official, were not even on island during the time of the fires, according to Honolulu Civil Beat. In the aftermath, it’s come to light that Andaya has no formal education or direct previous experience in emergency management.

Maui authorities defend not using sirens

During a Wednesday briefing, Andaya defended the decision, saying that the sirens would have sent people into the mountains, where the flames were. Instead, people were sent texts and voicemails warnings – however, cell service and power were already lost for most. Many ended up self-evacuating without knowing where to go.

Hours after making the comment, Andaya resigned.

As the fires spread rapidly across Hawaii's second-largest island, firefighters were stretched thin and resources were at capacity. The Maui Fire Department has not publicly answered Honolulu Civil Beat’s questions of response time and manpower.

“My guess is this is something that wildfires that the state is prepared for in the way it's prepared for hurricanes and tsunamis,” said Colin Moore, a political scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa on Oahu. “That’s not to excuse anything.”

Moore said that like in many other states, “trust in government in Hawaii is not particularly high,” although there is a uniquely “core distrust” in Hawaii, considering the island chain’s history of colonization.

He points out other incidents that has led to the public’s lack of faith in the government, such as in 2018 when a mistaken alert led residents to believe they were going to be hit by North Korean missile, or the “mismanaged” rail project on Oahu that was almost a decade late in opening and took extra billions to build.

Hawaii is also known to have notoriously apathetic voters with some of the lowest voter turnout in the country since the early 2000s.

“A lot of amazing people work in the county and I can only imagine they feel horrible… but it points to a bigger picture of a government that’s tied to business,” Ahia said.

Just days after the tragic fire, developers have been reportedly asking survivors of the fire to buy their properties, where their homes have been burned to the ground. The island was already facing a housing crisis that’s been pricing locals out – now it’s even more critical.

Su-Mi Lee, the chair of the political science department at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, said that while tourism is the state’s major source of the state’s revenue, it seems - at least publicly - that residents are a main priority.

“It might be too soon to build sentiments for any politicians or hold anyone accountable as everybody is busy with helping with rescue efforts,” she said.

Evans Smith, a professor of political science professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo and who has been living on the island for 20 years, told USA TODAY that he finds local and state governments in Hawaii are far less adversarial compared to their counterparts in other states.

Gov. Josh Green, who is also a medical doctor, built a relatively positive political reputation based on how COVID-19 was handled by the state when he was lieutenant governor. Recovery efforts for Hurricane Iniki in 1992, the last major hurricane to hit Hawaii, were well-approved, but that was a long time ago, Moore said.

A harmonious approach among state politicians is going to be tested in the coming weeks, months, even years, as the state recovers from the horrific tragedy, Smith said. He said many political leaders will have to show resilience and not be afraid to repeatedly ask for assistance at the highest levels for their constituents.

“There’s not a lot of political friction among elected officials and we’ll see if that holds up. I believe our leaders are going to face major challenges because this disaster is something that with even the best-laid plans, many weren’t prepared for,” Smith said. “There will be a hard learning curve going forward.”

Contributing: Terry Collins, USA TODAY

Kathleen Wong is a travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Hawaii. You can reach her at kwong@usatoday.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Maui residents have low public trust in government following wildfire

Material to be applied in Maui burn zone to stop contaminated run-off

David Douglas
Sat, August 19, 2023 

LAHAINA, Hawaii — With more of the burn zone searched each day, the charred black earth and ash will soon turn pink as a “water-based glue” is applied to prevent winds and rain from kicking it up and running off into the ocean.

The biodegradable, non-toxic material known as a “soil tackifier” will begin being applied by workers for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency incident response team in the coming days, using water trucks that will spray the material from hoses, an official with the agency said.

The process will not begin until the search and rescue operation is deemed complete, said Steve Calanog, Incident Commander for EPA Region 9 which covers Hawaii. As of Friday night, about 78% of the burn zone had been searched, county officials said.

At least 114 people have been confirmed dead in the wind-fueled wildfire that swept across the historic town of Lahaina.

Officials have said a number of toxic substances, including lead, asbestos and arsenic have likely contaminated the burn area after the fire moved through burning at extremely high temperatures. The move was intended to prevent the movement of potentially dangerous contaminants, calling it an “utmost precaution," Calanog said.

Unique conditions led to the decision, he said. The proximity to the ocean and leeward winds, which gust strongly most afternoons, contributed to the EPA, the state of Hawaii, and Maui County agreeing to the plan.

“It’ll be dyed pink,” Calanog said. "Once it’s applied and dried it’ll be visually obvious that we’ve gone through.”

As they do, workers will be also looking to remove household hazardous waste, which can include compressed gas cylinders, solvents, pesticides, and in some cases, radiologic sources.

The EPA says the glue has not been used extensively on other wildfires. It's environmentally safe, naturally breaking down after about six months or if physically disturbed by people walking on it.

A material safety data sheet for the brand, Soiltac, identifies the soil stabilizer as presenting no risk to human health and not being flammable, according to the U.S. Hazardous Materials Identification System.

Calanog called the EPA’s response to the fire “emotional” and “solemn."

“The cultural and historic significance of Lahaina is huge,” Calanog said. “We do this in a way that honors and respects the traditions of the State of Hawaii.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Maui Sued Big Oil in 2020, Citing Fire Risks and More
Hiroko Tabuchi
Fri, August 18, 2023 

A Lahaina resident searched burned rubble for salvageable belongings last Friday.


The words were strikingly prescient: Because of climate change, lush and verdant Maui was facing wildfires of “increased frequency, intensity and destructive force.”

They appeared in a 2020 lawsuit filed by Maui County seeking damages from Exxon, Chevron, and other giant oil and gas companies, accusing them of a “coordinated, multifront effort to conceal and deny their own knowledge” that the burning of fossil fuels would heat the planet to dangerous extremes.

Now, after wildfires driven by conditions linked to climate change have devastated the Hawaiian island, the lawsuit carries renewed heft.

The Maui fires “are clear and concrete evidence of something that otherwise might seem and feel abstract” that could “greatly strengthen” Maui’s case, said Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor of the history of science who has written about climate change disinformation.

But, she cautioned, “for decades, the fossil fuel industry has worked to undermine scientific understanding of climate change and its damaging effects. One way they have done this, repeatedly, is by questioning the link between climate change, in general, and specific damaging consequences.”

Ryan Meyers, senior vice president and general counsel at the American Petroleum Institute, an oil industry lobby group, called the Maui wildfires a tragedy but stressed that their immediate cause was still under investigation.

He called the litigation brought by Maui part of a “coordinated campaign to wage meritless lawsuits against our industry” and “nothing more than a distraction from important issues and an enormous waste of taxpayer resources.”

Maui is among more than two dozen states and municipalities, including Honolulu, which is about 100 miles from Maui, that are suing fossil fuel companies for climate damages.

This week, a group of youths in Montana won a landmark lawsuit after a judge ruled that the state’s failure to consider climate change when approving fossil fuel projects was unconstitutional.

And although lawsuits like the one filed by Maui have been delayed by procedural issues, the fires could be an important part of the county’s claim for damages should the case go to trial, legal experts said. Maui’s arguments are also likely to resonate with a local jury.

“Here in Hawaii, folks are in disaster recovery mode, and the longer arc of something like a lawsuit necessarily has to take a back seat,” said Richard Wallsgrove, law professor and adviser to the Environmental Law Program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “But it’s also clear that what’s at stake in these cases, and all the climate litigation cases that are brewing in Hawaii and elsewhere, is seen right there in the Maui wildfires.”

Scientists are increasingly able to attribute specific disasters, such as extreme weather or wildfires, to global warming, and even tie events to fossil fuel producers. And although that attribution can take time, scientists have pointed to Hawaii’s declining average rainfall as well as drought, hurricane winds and other conditions linked to climate change as factors that fueled the Maui fire.

At the same time, academic and congressional researchers, environmental groups, journalists and lawyers have chronicled how oil and gas companies, despite knowing for decades that burning fossil fuels would dangerously heat the planet, have worked to downplay or deny that knowledge.

The fossil fuel industry has tried to move the Maui case and other climate cases to federal court, where it hoped for better outcomes. But the U.S. Supreme Court decided last year that they should remain in state courts.

The industry has also argued that the plaintiffs’ claims relate to a global issue and amount to a demand for stricter regulation of fossil fuel emissions, both of which lie beyond any court’s purview. “Climate policy is for Congress to debate and decide, not the court system,” said Meyers of the oil industry group.

At a state Supreme Court hearing Thursday in the case brought by Honolulu, oil companies repeated many of those arguments and urged the judges to dismiss the claims.

The session opened with a moment of silence for those who died in the Maui fire.

“This case presents important questions,” said Theodore Boutros, Jr., an attorney representing the oil companies, “regarding whether plaintiffs can invoke state law to bring tort claims to address injuries they allege are caused by global greenhouse gas emissions.”

“We respectfully submit that the answer is no,” he said. In fact, the plaintiffs were “seeking to impose damages based on the actions of millions and billions of people around the world,” he added.

Victor M. Sher, representing Maui, pushed back against the notion that multinational corporations were exempt from local laws.

Under U.S. law, which places primary authority on states to protect its citizens, “both out-of-state and even international actors that cause harm within individual states can be held accountable under that state’s tort law,” he said.

Karen Sokol, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, said the oil companies were “trying to frame these cases as frivolous suits that are seeking to address climate change” using Hawaii state law.

“That’s part of the industry strategy,” she said. “They’re telling the courts: ‘You can’t handle this. It’s too big for you.’ ”

In its 2020 complaint, Maui said oil companies sought to “discredit the growing body of publicly available scientific evidence, and persistently create doubt” in the minds of the public. The companies “have promoted and profited from a massive increase” in the production and use of coal, oil and natural gas, all driving global warming, it said.

In Exxon’s case, the county pointed to the substantial amounts the company spent on radio, television and outdoor advertisements in Hawaii over the past 25 years to market its oil and gas products.

“These advertisements contained no warning” of the climate risks of burning fossil fuels, Maui charges. These advertisements also contained false or misleading statements “obfuscating the connection between Exxon’s fossil fuel products and climate change,” and misrepresented Exxon and its products as environmentally friendly, the complaint said.

Exxon declined to comment.

In its complaint, Maui County said it has suffered, and will continue to suffer, severe harms and losses, including direct impacts on public health, decreased tax revenue from tourism and increased costs of adapting to a warmer climate.

“Wildfires are becoming more frequent, intense and destructive in the county,” the complaint said. “The county’s fire ‘season’ now runs year-round, rather than only a few months of the year.”

Even as local governments in Hawaii seek damages from oil and gas companies, the state of Hawaii is being held to account over its climate policy.

A group of youths sued the island state’s Department of Transportation last year, accusing it of shirking its duty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and of violating their constitutional rights to a clean environment.

By promoting and funding highway projects that lead to more traffic, fuel use and planet-warming emissions, the department has hurt the ability of young people to “live healthful lives in Hawaii now and into the future,” they said.

Maui officials had no immediate comment. The Hawaii Department of Transportation said it did not comment on active litigation.

c.2023 The New York Times Company

'The next Maui could be anywhere': Hawaii tragedy points to US wildfire vulnerability

Terry Collins, USA TODAY
Updated Sat, August 19, 2023 

The deadly wildfires in Maui reveal a vulnerability in the United States that is increasing as quickly as threats from climate change: Huge swaths of the nation lie in dry danger zones where wildfires spark, and cash-strapped governments have ineffective emergency plans to save lives.

That was the deadly combination in the Maui disaster - namely, wildfire risk coupled with what some experts and victims have called questionable emergency preparedness. And it has played out in some of the deadliest fires in the nation and around the globe, alarming fire experts and community leaders.

Similar scenarios happened in Paradise, California, where 85 people died and nearly 19,000 structures were destroyed in the Camp Fire in 2018; and in Algeria, Italy and Greece, where questions of effective emergency response and preparedness have been raised after more than 40 people combined died from wildfires sparked by an intense heat wave, high winds and dry vegetation last month. Canada is experiencing a devastating record wildfire season, with over 33.9 million acres scorched and at least four people dead so far.

In Maui, where at least 111 people have died and more than 2,200 acres were burned in the Aug. 8 wildfires, the county already knew it had a high wildfire risk, according to a study it commissioned two years ago following an "unprecedented wildfire season" in 2019, where more than 20,000 acres were burned.

"Hawaii’s and Maui’s fire problem is more extreme than on the U.S. mainland," the study said, noting dozens of buildings and vehicles were damaged in a 2018 wildfire. While there were no deaths in either of those years, warnings were raised - and possibly not heeded by local officials.

Now, experts from around the world are taking a second look at many places that may also be at risk after Maui's crisis, which now is among the top ten deadliest wildfires on record in the U.S. since 1871.

"The next Maui could be anywhere," said Tirtha Banerjee, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of California, Irvine. "Realistically, almost any place could have a wildfire."

Properties destroyed in the West Maui Wildfire are seen near Front Street in Lahaina on Maui, Hawaii Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023.

America isn't the only country worried about wildfires

Thousands of communities, from urban enclaves, coastal towns and remote locales throughout the U.S., and abroad, similar to Maui, are vulnerable to wildfires because of the increasingly deadly combination of climate change and governments' lack of emergency plans and resources, experts say.

"There seems to be a consensus among those in the scientific community that it might get worse for a bit before it gets better," Banerjee said.

Alexis Normand, CEO of Greenly, a platform helping companies track their carbon use, said, a wildfire can happen in the "most unthinkable places around the world" under the right conditions. In the past month, big blazes in the Greek Islands, the Canary Islands and Indonesia's Sumatra Islands have led to intense burning stemming from heatwaves across Southern Europe and North Africa, Normand pointed out.

Normand also referred to the thousands of residents who are now evacuating from Canada's northwest territories, leading to emergency declarations due to wildfires. Close to 400 active fires are still burning across British Columbia.

A pedestrian walks along Honoapiilani Highway as properties destroyed by the West Maui Fire are seen in Lahaina on Maui, Hawaii Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023.

"There's also an increasing scarcity of water in places like France, Australia and Egypt," Normand said by phone from Paris. "I don’t want to sound too pessimistic, but the answer is definitely, yes. Wildfires are happening more frequently and in more uncommon places."

Global warming is causing wildfires to increase at the same time as communities might not be committed to investing in and executing preparedness plans to reduce wildfire risks, said Laurie Wayburn, co-founder and president of Pacific Forest Trust, a San Francisco-based nonprofit.

"As bad as the situation is here in America, it may be just as bad in Europe as they are learning the same lessons we are," Wayburn said. "It appears you have to be in the middle of a crisis to make you learn that you have to avoid tragedies from the onset."
Wildfires across US 'burning hotter, faster with more intensity'

Record high temps, extreme drought conditions and substantially high winds during major weather events, including storms with thunder and lightning, are among the causes for the recent spikes in wildfire activity in high-risk locations across the U.S., Canada and Europe, said Michele Steinberg, the wildlife division director at the National Wildfire Protection Agency.

In the U.S., nearly half the land area is composed of forest, shrubs, and grassland, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Currently, there are nearly 45 million U.S. homes located near or adjacent to these areas, the EPA said.

Within the last five years, wildfires have destroyed nearly 63,000 structures. A majority of them are homes, said Steinberg, who also serves on President Joe Biden's Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission.

"We’re definitely seeing a huge increase. It's significantly higher than in the past 10 years," Steinberg said. That's mostly due to Americans settling down in once-rural areas, particularly in the southern and western states in the last half-century or so, she said.

"We're moving into these fire-prone areas," Steinberg said. "Now we have a lot more wildfires that will burn hotter, faster and with more intensity due to these conditions."
'Most deadliest and devastating wildfires in front of us'

Andrew Bozzo, a fire captain at the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District in the San Francisco Bay Area, said "Americans are getting a front-row seat to wildfires like never before."

"The most deadliest and devastating wildfires are happening right in front of us," said Bozzo, a firefighter for 25 years. "We half-heartedly joke in the fire industry that all of those tactics we’ve learned . . . throw them out of the window."

Bozzo said Americans, and those in other countries, have simply not heeded the warnings about an evolving environment due to climate change. A former scientist, Bozzo said heat-trapping carbon dioxide is hitting all corners of the Earth at record levels.

Destroyed homes and businesses are seen in the aftermath of the Maui wildfires in Lahaina, Hawaii, on Aug. 16, 2023.

There's also a variety of factors contributing to wildfires globally, Bozzo said. Among them are the spread of invasive plants, trees, and grasses. And while rain and snowpacks may reduce drought conditions and the risk of fires starting, Bozzo said, it also increases vegetation growth, which can become fuel for fires during the dry summer months if not cut or removed.

Many municipalities may not make certain strategies, including thinning oversized forests by cutting trees and shrubbery and conducting prescribed burns to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, a priority, Bozzo said.

"By no means is this just limited to the U.S. There have always been wildfires in Greece and France, but have they been at this magnitude we're seeing? No," said Bozzo, who is also the co-founder of Tablet Command, an incident response software platform used by fire departments in San Francisco, Charlotte, North Carolina, Columbus, Ohio and Los Angeles County. "These wildfires . . . no, mega-fires . . . are not one-offs. The coordinated plans to prevent them has to be a continuous and committed effort."
Lessons learned from Maui wildfire: 'We're going to pay 10 times over'

In the 2021 Maui County report on wildfire prevention, officials were encouraged to take an "aggressive plan to replace hazardous fuel sources" that start wildfires.

Wildfire experts in Hawaii, including Camilo Mora, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Hawaii, Mānoa, said they have warned state officials for years that wildfire preparedness was essential. Mora said he was among many who cited that overgrown grasses and other quick-burning vegetation used as fuels put certain areas, including Maui, at risk.

Vegetation grows quickly amid rainfall, but also dries out in drought, Mora said. Left unattended, the vegetation is ripe for a quick burn during a fire. And that's what he believes happened in the Maui wildfire, as a result of not enough being done.

He cited Hawaii’s Forestry and Wildlife division, which handles fire suppression and fire prevention, has about $28 million in its operating budget for this fiscal year. Probably not enough funds to do what's necessary, Mora said.

"We didn't pay enough attention," Mora said. "This was not an unannounced tragedy, we knew this coming. It was just a matter of when."

The 2021 report also said island communities are "particularly vulnerable because populations tend tobe clustered and dependent" on single highways. "Escape routes and evacuation locations and resources for populations impacted by fire incidents are also impeded by fire incursions," the report said.

Residents in Lahaina reportedly were having problems getting out of the popular residential and tourist town as traffic was at a complete standstill on Honoapiilani Highway, the main road, while the wildfire spread.

While rebounding towns like Paradise, California, are working on their wildfire mitigation plans, Mora said he's pondering and calculating the emotional, physical and potentially fiscal impact the wildfire will have in Maui going forward.

He's sure Hawaii officials, local and state, are going to turn the tragedy into substantive action with wildfire prevention. He and thousands of others will be devastated if they don’t.

"More hands for the restoration and reconstruction are needed," Mora pleaded. "Because of the damage from this fire, we're probably going to pay 10 times over what it would've cost to fix this problem in the beginning."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Maui deadly fires could happen again in many US cities and towns

It Was an Oasis for Maui Elders. The Fire Brought Terror and Death.

Jack Healy
Sat, August 19, 2023

A photograph on a relativeÕs phone of Louise Abihai, one of the residents of the Hale Mahaolu Eono senior-living complex who is still missing, in Kahului, Hawaii, Aug. 17, 2023. (Bryan Anselm/The New York Times)

Before fire tore through the Hale Mahaolu Eono senior-living complex, trapping a man in his wheelchair and forcing a 95-year-old grandmother to flee through a blizzard of embers, before it killed two close friends and left neighbors missing, people felt lucky to live there.

The independent-living complex in Lahaina was one of the few housing options for low-income older adults on Maui, where soaring rents have forced more and more seniors into homeless shelters or onto five-year waiting lists for subsidized housing.

At Eono, residents said they paid as little as $150 a month for palm-fringed one-bedrooms overlooking the Pacific. They held group barbecues and monthly birthday celebrations. They felt like they had found stability on an island where many elders — known in Hawaiian as “kupuna” — had been priced out after a lifetime of raising families and serving tourists.

“If you got in there, you won the lottery,” said Sanford Hill, 72, a photographer who grew up on Oahu and spent two years homeless before he landed a spot at the complex. “You stay till you die.”

They did not think death would come like this.

Their 35-unit apartment complex in Lahaina may have been one of the first major buildings consumed as a brush fire tumbled down from the hills on Aug. 8. Two residents of Eono have been named among the 111 confirmed deaths, and another half-dozen residents are still not accounted for, families said in interviews.

Now, survivors and families of the missing are asking whether Maui officials and managers at the complex could have done more to save one of the most vulnerable clusters of people in Lahaina from the fast-moving inferno.

“We were all on our own,” said Tina Bass, 72, a resident who said she grabbed a neighbor cowering behind a bush in a parking lot and fled in her white minivan as flames hurtled toward the complex.

When fire broke out in the hills above Lahaina early on Tuesday morning, staff members at the complex knocked on doors and warned that residents might have to leave, said Hale Mahaolu, the nonprofit that operates the complex. But residents said they never received any formal guidance to flee. When the blaze, thought to be extinguished, rekindled later that afternoon and roared toward their complex, they said nobody came to help them.

Older people are often at greater risk when natural disasters strike, often trapped in sweltering nursing homes after hurricanes or pinned down by fires. The authorities on Maui have only begun to identify the dead, but the six victims whose names and ages have been released are older than 70.

“They had a duty to keep people safe,” Bass said. “Knock on their doors, drag them by the hand and stick them in your car.”

Hale Mahaolu, which operates government-subsidized housing for families and seniors across Maui, said in a statement that it was helping to get aid, money and housing resources to displaced residents, and locate missing ones. Grant Chun, its executive director, said that “all staff members and most tenants” were safe after the fire, and that the group was trying to reach missing residents.

“The safety of our tenants has always been our foremost priority,” Chun said in a statement. The organization did not say whether it had formal evacuation plans.

As an independent-living complex for people 62 and older, Hale Mahaolu Eono was not subject to the same safety rules requiring evacuation plans that govern assisted-living facilities and nursing homes, experts said.

The complex had an on-site manager and groundskeeper, but no nurses or aides. Some residents still had cars and jobs, such as Buddy Jantoc, a 79-year-old musician who still played gigs at hula shows. Jantoc was one of the first confirmed victims of the fire.

Residents spent their days ferrying grandchildren to and from school, archiving decades’ worth of photographs, or cooking chicken adobo and Filipino spare ribs.

They forged easy bonds with their neighbors, met in a community room to play cards, and every month gathered to celebrate birthdays. They celebrated the Fourth of July together with hot dogs.

But several residents did not have cars, families said. Some used walkers or wheelchairs. One man was legally blind. Another struggled to get onto the toilet.

“Where’s the help for them?” asked Clifford Abihai, whose 97-year-old grandmother, Louise Abihai, was still listed as missing.

Louise Abihai had grown up on Maui, in a home where she drew water from the well, family members said. She would chuckle recounting her days riding a donkey to school — an education that was cut short when she left elementary school to raise her brothers and sisters.

Abihai’s family was amazed at her vitality. She still went to 7 a.m. Mass at Maria Lanakila Catholic Church, and had driven until she bumped into a concrete pillar at age 95. She loved Korean soap operas and the K-pop group BTS, and always called her grandchildren on their birthdays. She also exasperated her family by leaving her cellphone off so she wouldn’t drain its battery.

But no matter how sharp and strong she was, her family said that at 97, she should not have been forced to try to flee a wildfire on her own.

“They’re independent. It doesn’t mean they can go outside and run,” Clifford Abihai, her grandson, said.

Abihai’s family papered West Maui with missing posters and chased down the faintest rumors of her presence. When someone reported spotting her at the Ritz-Carlton on the north side of the island, relatives raced to scour the emptied-out beaches.

They and other families say they have grown increasingly frustrated by not knowing whether their great-grandparents, aunties and uncles are alive or dead. They say they have gotten little information from local officials, the Federal Emergency Management Agency or staff members at Hale Mahaolu headquarters, which was far outside the fire zone.

On Thursday, Hale Mahaolu released a statement laying out its actions on the day of the fire. It said a staff member noticed smoke early that morning and several employees then began knocking on residents’ doors at 7:30 a.m. to suggest that they consider evacuating. The nonprofit said that some staff members offered rides to residents.

By about 11:30 a.m., the remaining on-site staff member decided to flee with his wife, Hale Mahaolu said. In its statement, the organization said the area had gotten “very hot and smoky,” though a satellite image taken about 20 minutes earlier showed no active flames.

Hale Mahaolu said that most residents “heeded our warnings to leave the property,” but that four people declined to leave when the lone staff member offered to help them evacuate.

“Our tenants are independent adults, who navigate their own lives,” the nonprofit said. “Similarly to regular apartment buildings, independent-living apartments do not typically evacuate tenants during disasters.”

Some residents challenged that timeline. Bass, who fled in her minivan with a neighbor, said nobody warned her. Hill, the photographer, said he was home until he left for a dentist’s appointment at 1 p.m. on Aug. 8 and never got a knock on his door.

“They didn’t notify me in any way,” he said.

Gloria Perreira, 71, said she did not smell smoke until around 2 p.m. that day, and said that quite a few people were still at the complex. By 3 p.m., the air was so thick with smoke that Perreira said she could no longer see nearby trees, and the hurricane-force gusts were spraying embers and flame everywhere.

“I said, ‘I’ve got to get the hell out,’” she said. She grabbed her medications and a water flask and bolted to her car. “Some of them in wheelchairs weren’t able to leave. I don’t know what happened to them.”

In the 10 days since the fire, families have been trying to stitch together accounts of their loved ones’ last hours through witnesses and memories of phone calls.

Virginia Dofa, 90, called family to report smoke billowing behind her building and urged someone to call 911, her daughter-in-law Barbie Dofa said. Relatives tried to reach her, but were blocked by gridlocked streets and a wall of fire. The authorities confirmed her death this week.

Joe Schilling, who recently moved into the complex after his old apartment was converted into a vacation rental, died while trying to help five other people at the complex, his family said on a fundraising page. His death has not been confirmed by Maui authorities. Jeff Bennett, a longtime friend, shook with sobs as he described his guilt over pointing Schilling toward Hale Mahaolu.

As Louise Abihai’s family members carried on with their increasingly desperate search, they thought about the advice she would give when asked her secret to long life: Go to church and make sure you pray.

“We’re still remaining hopeful because there’s no confirmation,” her great-granddaughter, Kailani Amine, said. “My grandmother did not live 97 years for this to happen to her.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

SPACE RACE 2.0

The Mysteries of the Dark Side of the Moon

Joelle Renstrom
Fri, August 18, 2023 

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images Plus.

If all goes according to plan, next week spacecraft from Russia and India will arrive at the moon’s south pole, an area thus far unexplored by both humans and landers. A successful landing by either country would represent a scientific first and would pave the way for future missions by these and other countries, such as the U.S. and China. Those missions will later be crewed—also a big deal, as no human has been to the moon in more than 50 years. And presumably, those crews will eventually lead the construction of lunar bases, which will have major implications both on Earth and in space.

Indeed, the lunar south pole appears to be the stage of the next space race. For practical and scientific reasons, as well as for geopolitical and astropolitical ones, this race is different from the Soviet–U.S. one of the 1960s. And although the U.S. isn’t directly involved in either of the current south pole missions, these missions will galvanize future moon exploration and habitation. They also set the stage for a future in which, once again, the world’s space-faring powers will have a choice between competition and collaboration.

In 1959, Russia’s Luna-2 became the first spacecraft to reach the moon’s surface, and in 1966, its Luna-9 made the world’s first successful lunar landing. Russia’s last uncrewed mission there, Luna-24, concluded in 1976. Nearly 50 years later, Luna-25, Russia’s latest lander, launched on Aug. 11. But Luna-25 isn’t the only craft with the south pole in its sights. The craft’s initial landing date, Aug. 23, was bumped up to Aug. 21, largely in an attempt to beat India’s moon-bound spacecraft, Chandrayaan-3, which launched in July and also has a target landing date of Aug. 23. (India’s spacecraft has taken a less direct route to the moon than Russia’s, in part because it’s carrying a bigger and heavier payload.)

Both missions seek to land on the moon’s mountainous south pole, a difficult and dangerous landing spot. Because of the lack of sunlight, much of the region—where temperatures can drop below –300 degrees Fahrenheit—has remained in endless darkness for billions of years. But hidden in this darkness could be something essential for a human future on the moon: frozen water.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, India’s Chandrayaan-1, and other spacecraft have observed the presence of billions of gallons of water ice in the lunar poles. But thus far, those observations have been conducted from afar. Russia and India both seek to confirm firsthand the presence of water ice—and see if there’s even more of it under the surface. Chandrayaan-3 will also study the moon’s surface, atmosphere, and tectonic activity, running at least two weeks’ worth of experiments. Luna-25 is scheduled to operate on the moon for a year, drilling, collecting, and analyzing samples.

Why is ice so important? Ice leads to water, which boosts the chances of long-term lunar habitation. It could also help astronauts produce oxygen and rocket fuel. And figuring out how to mine and process water ice could pave the way not only for future lunar bases, but also for travel beyond the moon.

Space exploration is rarely just about space or science, and this is especially true for Russia. Russia’s war against Ukraine put its collaboration with the U.S., with whom it shares the International Space Station, on precarious footing. Last year, Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, announced that it intended to pull out of that partnership in 2024—though it later walked that back, saying it wanted to remain involved with the ISS until at least 2028, at which point Russia’s own space station could be operational.

As Russia looks to walk away from collaborations at the ISS, it’s shaking hands with countries like China, which is not an ISS partner. According to the Russian News Agency, the director general of Roscosmos said that after it finishes three other pending lunar missions, it will embark on “the next phase—a manned mission and the construction of a lunar base with our colleagues from China.” The director general also said he “expect[s] many countries to join” the lunar base program it intends to create with China. It’s unclear who those other countries will be—though if the U.S. is not in that group, it’s reasonable to imagine that a Russia-China partnership might prompt the U.S. to accelerate the construction of the lunar base it already has planned on the south pole.

And what about India? You may not think of the country as a space superpower, but it has slowly and steadily developed a cosmic presence. In 2008 India sent Chandrayaan-1 into lunar orbit, the country’s first major space milestone. Its 2014 Mars Orbiter Mission made India’s space agency the fourth to successfully guide a spacecraft into the red planet’s orbit. Chandrayaan-2 would have become the first spacecraft to land on the south side of the moon in 2019, but it crashed. If Chandrayaan-3 touches down successfully, India will become just the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon. (China became the third in 2013 with its Yutu-1 rover; the Yutu-2 rover, which landed on the moon in 2019, remains in operation.)

Although it’s unclear who India’s space allies might be for future missions, the country should be considered a major player in the next chapter of space exploration. Space exploration, after all, has long eclipsed the exclusive province of the U.S. and Russia. China’s speedy and ambitious advancements in space include the operation of its own space station. All of these countries possess fierce military might, including nuclear weapons, which raises the stakes of these lunar missions. Soon, the moon’s south pole will be another venue for competition—or for collaboration.

Of Course They Are: The Right Is Blaming Hawaii Wildfire on Wokeness

Edith Olmsted
Fri, August 18, 2023 



As Hawaii reels from devastating wildfires and considers how to rebuild, far-right figures are… blaming wokeness for the whole thing.

The conspiracy theory essentially goes like this: An Obama-backed Hawaii official delayed the diversion of water to firefighters during the wildfires in Maui, because that official is a native Hawaiian who respects how water is used.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy helped fan the flames of the right-wing conspiracy theory on Thursday, arguing that “DEI,” or diversity, equity, and inclusion, is to blame for the whole thing.

“[W]e’re learning that the official who delayed the approval is an Obama Foundation ‘Asia Pacific Leader’ & a climate activist,” Ramaswamy tweeted. He’s a “climate activist who believes water should be ‘revered’ first and foremost. The DEI agenda is literally costing people their lives.”

The theory targets M. Kaleo Manuel, the deputy director of the Hawaii Commission for Water Resource Management (CWRM), following reports that requests for more water were delayed by officials.

On August 10, West Maui Land Co. Inc. sent a letter addressed to Manuel alerting him of a communication issue that occurred the day before.

According to the letter, West Maui Land Co. had reached out to CWRM to alert officials that the reservoirs firefighters were using to combat the wildfires were near-empty, and to request access to nearby streams. While much of the initial fire was already contained by then, West Maui Land was seeking additional resources for fire control. In response, CWRM asked if the Maui fire department was requesting commission, and directed West Maui Land Co. to inquire with a downstream user to ensure that their use of the stream would not be impacted by the diversion.

Permission was eventually granted, but only five hours after the initial request, and by that time “a flare up had shut down the Lahaina Bypass.”

“We watched the devastation unfold around us without the ability to help,” the letter said.

Here is the part that has right-wingers up in arms: Manuel had previously made comments about how native Hawaiians consider water one of the “earthly manifestations of God.” In a 2022 panel on sustainability, Manuel said that people have become used to “looking at water as something which we use, and not necessarily something we revere as that thing that gives us life.”

That comment has become the basis for right-wingers’ attack.

Elon Musk, happy to fan the flames of conspiracy, responded to a tweet which contained a clip of Manuel at the 2022 panel, saying that Manuel “refused” to release water. “Doesn’t that make him in large part responsible for their deaths?” Musk tweeted.

The clip first began circulating on X, formerly known as Twitter, after Jeremy Kauffman, a libertarian activist, shared it with the caption: “Meet M. Kaleo Manuel, the official who refused to release water in Maui, contributing to up to 106 deaths.” Kauffman also made sure to note that Manuel was a “Hawaiian studies major” in college.

Charlie Kirk, president of Turning Point USA, also reshared the video from Kauffman on X. “I’m sure all the victims of the Maui fire are grateful their leaders were focused on worshipping water rather than using it to save their lives,” Kirk wrote.

Conservative media outlets, like The Washington Examiner and The Free Beacon, have elevated the smear campaign further.

Again, Manuel’s comments are from nearly 10 months ago, and they’re not even that wild on their face: It does make sense to think about how we use water, as our planet deals with a spiraling climate crisis. But the right really loves its own conspiracy theories.

In Hawaii, concerns over 'climate gentrification' rise after devastating Maui fires

ISABELLA O'MALLEY and JENNIFER MCDERMOTT
Updated Fri, August 18, 2023
 

Kim Cuevas-Reyes, a 38-year-old cellphone store owner, snuck into Lahaina last Friday to see the remnants of her home with her own eyes. She took backroads and walked. What she saw stunned her.

“When you step into the house, it’s like an inch or two of ash. There is nothing," she said, adding that she hopes to stay and rebuild her home and destroyed business and is in touch with the insurance company.

More than 3,000 buildings in Lahaina were damaged by fire, smoke or both. Insured property losses alone already total some $3.2 billion, according to Karen Clark & Company, a prominent disaster and risk modeling firm.

With a housing crisis that has priced out many Native Hawaiians as well as families that have been there for decades, concerns are rising that the state could become the latest example of “climate gentrification,” when it becomes harder for local people to afford housing in safer areas after a climate-amped disaster.

It's a term Jesse Keenan, an associate professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University School of Architecture, first started lecturing about in 2013 after he noticed changes in housing markets following extreme weather events.

Jennifer Gray Thompson is CEO of After the Fire USA, a wildfire recovery and resiliency organization in the western U.S., and worked for Sonoma County during the destructive Tubbs Fire in October 2017. Thompson said Maui is one of the “scariest opportunities for gentrification” that she’s seen because of “the very high land values and the intense level of trauma and the people who are unscrupulous who will come in to try to take advantage of that.”

Thompson predicted potential developers and investors will research who has mortgages and said Maui residents should expect cold calls. “You won’t be able to go to a grocery store without a flyer attached to your car,” she said.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said Wednesday his state attorney general will draft a moratorium on the sale of damaged properties in Lahaina, to protect local landowners from being “victimized” by opportunistic buyers as Maui rebuilds.

Thompson said she supports that “wholeheartedly." But she acknowledged some people won’t be able to afford to rebuild and will want to sell their land.

While one extreme weather event cannot be entirely blamed on climate change, experts say storms, fires and floods, which are becoming more damaging in a warming world, help make Hawaii one of the riskiest states in the country. Earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes, which are not related to climate change, also add to this risk.

According to an analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency records by The Associated Press, there were as many federally declared disaster wildfires this month as in the 50 years between 1953 and 2003. Additionally, burned area in Hawaii increased more than fivefold since the 1980s, according to figures from the University of Hawaii Manoa.

Justin Tyndall, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, explained that Hawaii is the most expensive state to rent or own a home in the U.S. “by a considerable margin” with a median price single family home on Maui exceeding $1 million. “Even in the condominium market on Maui, the median price is close to $900,000, so there’s really no affordable options throughout all out of the state,” he explained.

Until now, when homeowners in Hawaii have considered climate change, Tyndall said, it's been coastal erosion, sea level rise and hurricanes, mainly. “Wildfire was something that was on people’s radars. ... But obviously the extensive damage, most people didn’t predict,” he said. Fire needs to be taken more seriously now, he said.

Maui has stringent affordable housing requirements for new multifamily construction, Tyndall said. But the practical effect has been that very little housing gets built. So new supply is low, both for affordable housing and rentals at market rate, "which just makes housing more expensive for everyone," he said.

Tyndall said the Native Hawaiian community has been hit the hardest by the housing crisis and there has been a “huge exodus” due to this lack of affordable housing.

On Wednesday, the Indigenous-led NDN Collective issued a statement supporting community-led rebuilding for Lahaina, “in ways that center the values, ancestral connections to land and water, and Indigenous knowledge systems of the kānaka ʻōiwi, Native Hawaiian people.”

After using the term in lectures, Keenan went on to popularize the concept of climate gentrification as a lecturer at Harvard University in 2018 and published a study that focused on Miami, where Black communities have historically lived at higher elevations because the wealthy wanted to live close to the beach. Now that seas are rising and higher ground is becoming more valuable, that's leading to disruption and displacement, Keenan said.

As with any gentrification, some people do see benefits.

“If you own a home, it’s great — the value of your home goes up. But if you’re a renter or a small business, your rent may go up to the extent that you become displaced over time,” Keenan said.

With wildfires, areas that don't burn become more desirable, changing cost of living considerably. The 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, was an example of this as people moved down into the Central Valley to Chico where there is far less risk of wildfire, Keenan added.

“It led to massive displacement; rental costs increased significantly, a really huge shift. Everything from the school district to their transit system,” he said.

Other examples are New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and various cities in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, where many people could not afford to come back.

“The rebuilding of these spaces look very different from the types of communities that were living there before and what made them unique and special to begin with,” said Santina Contreras, assistant professor at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy.

With respect to Maui, Contreras said there are many reasons to be concerned about climate gentrification, given the island’s natural beauty, history of development, high tourism demand and opportunity to build new hotels.

Not everyone finds the concept useful, though.

Katharine Mach, professor at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, cautioned against immediately labelling a situation climate gentrification, because that makes it difficult to tease out the other factors such as decades of discrimination, racism and land use changes.

Climate change is overlaid on top of inequities in how we manage flooding or rebuild after fire, she said. “You can call that climate gentrification, but you could also say it’s inequity in how we manage disasters in the United States.”

Portions of New Orleans remain covered in floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina, Sept. 9, 2005. With a housing crisis that has priced out many Native Hawaiians as well as families that have been there for decades, concerns are rising that Maui could become the latest example of “climate gentrification,” when it becomes harder for local people to afford housing in safer areas after a climate-amped disaster. Other examples include New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Paradise, Calif., after the 2018 Camp Fire. 

(AP Photo/David J. Phillip, Pool, File)

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Associated Press writers Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas, and Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

‘Some fires will last over the winter’: Canada will face blazes, smoke for a while, Environment Canada says

Smoke from the British Columbia, Northwest Territories fires will travel 'incredible distances'

Elianna Lev
Updated Fri, August 18, 2023








Residents watch the McDougall Creek wildfire in West Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, on August 17, 2023, from Kelowna. Evacuation orders were put in place for areas near Kelowna, as the fire threatened the city of around 150,000. Canada is experiencing a record-setting wildfire season, with official estimates of over 13.7 million hectares (33.9 million acres) already scorched. Four people have died so far.

 (Photo by Darren HULL / AFP)

British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and the Prairies are going to have a lot of smoke issues well into the fall, according to one weather expert. That’s because fires are expected to continue to burn well into that season.

Terri Lang is a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. She says the smoke is going to be worse in places that are directly downstream from the fires burning in B.C. and Northwest Territories, and in the vicinity of the fires.

However, she explains that smoke forecasting is exceptionally difficult. Not only does it depend on the winds at low levels where the fires are occurring, but the smoke from the fires can be carried to very high elevations in the atmosphere.

“They can be carried to incredible distances,” she tells Yahoo News Canada.

It depends on what the atmosphere is doing. Sometimes it just stays high up in the air, making the sun or moon orange-y, and then other times it’ll mix down to the surface and you’ll get bad cases where visibility and air quality drops. It’s really difficult to forecast.Terri Lang, meteorologist, Environment and Climate Change Canada

In Canada, the prevailing upper winds are westerly. Any angle from westerly that has fires coming from it is going to bring the smoke across in places to the east, and most of Canada is to the east of where the fires are coming from right now.

Lang says Quebec can expect to get hit with the smoke in the next few days, because of the ways the winds are carrying it

To make matters worse, no substantial rain is expected in the forecast. A tropical storm, which will start off as a hurricane, is coming up from the Gulf of California, but considering the deficit of rain Western Canada’s been experiencing for the past year, it would take a lot of precipitation to put out the incredible amount of fires burning.

Why are the wildfires so widespread this year?

As to why the wildfires continue to burn, Lang says Western Canada has been experiencing plenty of hot and dry conditions since May, which helps the fires thrive. Some parts of B.C. experienced the warmest and driest May on record.

“That really set the stage,” she says. “A lot of the spring rains failed to come.”

The past week much of the province has been heating up - with some regions seeing temperatures over 40 degrees. That combined with wind patterns has led to fires taking off.

“It’s good if you’re a fire but it’s bad if you’re fighting that fire,” she says.

Because of the incredible distances that smoke can carry, Canada, particularly in the western regions, is likely to continue seeing the smoke well into the fall and perhaps until the snow starts to come down.

Some fires will actually last over the winter, they get deep into the ground and the peat moss, and then in the spring they’ll fire up again. It’s just the nature of how fires are.Terri Lang, meteorologist, Environment and Climate Change Canada

Related: Follow the latest on the wildfires across Canada

Keith Swirlle rests in his truck while directing traffic from Yellowknife in Fort Providence, N.W.T., Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023. 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Canada wildfire evacuees can't get news media on Facebook and Instagram. Some find workarounds

MATT O'BRIEN
Fri, August 18, 2023


Evacuees from Yellowknife, territorial capital of the Northwest Territories, make their way along highway 3, at the edge of a burned forest, on their way into Ft. Providence, N.W.T., Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023.

 (Bill Braden /The Canadian Press via AP)

Before fleeing about 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) south of Yellowknife by car, Agnes Grandejambe looked to social media to find out almost everything she needed to know about escaping the encroaching wildfires.

Some from official government accounts. Mostly from friends and family, including an offer of help from her First Nation band.

But not from news media sites.

That's because Canadian news outlets — including the only one she trusts — have been blocked on Facebook and Instagram as a result of a dispute with the national government.

“People were posting how close the fires were. And we knew the highway kept opening and closing, so we said, ‘OK, we’ll just go,’” said the 65-year-old who is a longtime resident of the capital city of Canada's Northwest Territories.

Her preferred media site, Yellowknife-based Cabin Radio, has been doing its best to get around the ban with help from the station’s audience members who have been taking news from the Cabin Radio website — filled with the latest details — then snapping a screenshot and sharing that image on Facebook and Instagram so that their friends, family and others are more likely to see the information.

“Our audience did an incredible job of undermining that ban on our behalf,” said Ollie Williams, editor of Cabin Radio, speaking by phone after relocating west of Yellowknife to Fort Simpson. “They found workarounds and they got our coverage out to each other, regardless of Meta trying to keep that from happening.”

For their part, reporters have been gathering news and talking to first responders from their cars while themselves having to evacuate. Williams has been using a device for satellite internet service. And the station's general manager is sharing news with his team while volunteering as a bus driver carrying evacuees to the airport.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced earlier this month it would keep its promise to block news content in Canada on its platforms — everything from local outlets like Cabin Radio to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — in response to a new law that requires tech giants to pay publishers for linking to or otherwise repurposing their content online.

Meta stood by its decision Friday, pointing out in a statement issued about the wildfires that people in Canada can continue to use the apps "to connect with their communities and access reputable information, including content from official government agencies, emergency services and non-governmental organizations.”

A government minister on Friday called on Meta to lift the ban on news media.


“What Meta is doing is totally unacceptable,” said Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez on a call with reporters. “I warned them during conversations in the past of the risk of blocking news."

“I’m asking to go back on their decision and allow people to have access to news and information in Canada,” he said.

Meta has been alone in its action. Google’s owner Alphabet has also said it plans to remove news links in protest of the new law, although it hasn't yet followed through. The Online News Act, passed in late June after lengthy debate, doesn't take effect until later this year.

“Meta has preemptively installed a ban that is now having dangerous consequences,” Williams said. The editor said he doesn't put all of the blame on Meta for its arguments with the Canadian government, but local outlets like his had no say in that dispute and how it's governed.

“More importantly, nobody asked our audience,” Williams said. “So the people being affected by this and the people producing the coverage, trying to help, had no voice at any part in that process. The outcome is a stupid and dangerous ban.”

Samuel Woolley, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media, warns that Meta’s blocking of news runs the risk of misinformation taking the place of trusted and vetted content during a natural disaster, at a risk of people's lives.

For years, platforms like Facebook pushed journalists to rely on the platform while profiting from news sharing, he said. But now they are trying to recreate themselves as news-free platforms to get away from some of the responsibility of compensating journalists or being treated as a media entity.

Woolley adds that the loss of reliable news won’t be felt equally. Marginalized communities, people of color and low-income families — who may rely on social media for information when they can’t afford a newspaper subscription, for example — will be impacted the most.

It was Wednesday when Grandejambe decided to leave Yellowknife, packing two vehicles along with four of her adult children and her teenage grandson. She was offered assistance and advice from fellow members of the Behdzi Ahda First Nation, based in the Artic community of Colville Lake where she was born.

An official evacuation order came soon after. But it hasn't always been clear where to go and what to do.

On Friday, she spoke by phone from a motel in Edmonton, Alberta, after a long journey that included an hours-long wait for gas near Fort Providence — a problem that's been thoroughly covered by Cabin Radio.

Her family was still working to get registered at Edmonton’s Expo convention center that has opened up to evacuees from the Northwest Territories. While annoyed by the difficulty of getting good information and what she felt was poor planning by government authorities ahead of the evacuation order, Grandejambe said she was happy her family was safe.

“They’re good. Just calm, cool,” she said. “They’ve been taught since they were small, don't stress over something that’s not in our control.”

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AP writers Jim Morris in Vancouver, British Columbia and Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York contributed to this report.