Girl’s prayer at collapse site leads to meeting with Biden
Adriana Gomez Licon, Associated Press July 2, 2021
In this photo provided by a family member, 12-year-old Elisheva Cohen poses with President Joe Biden, Thursday, July 1, 2021, in Surfside, Fla., as the president and first lady visited the community devastated by the fatal collapse of the 12-story Champlain Towers South beachfront condominium a week earlier. (Contributed Photo via AP)
SURFSIDE, Fla. – Gazing at the mountain of rubble that had buried her father, uncle and dozens of others, a 12-year-old girl moved away from her relatives, sat down by herself and pulled out her phone. She opened a collection of Psalms and began to pray.
Elisheva Cohen’s moment of reflection at the site of the Florida condominium collapse captivated the Surfside mayor and led to an introduction to President Joe Biden, who asked to meet her Thursday when he arrived to console families affected by the disaster.
For days, families were kept away from the collapse site, which had been deemed unsafe. Then earlier this week, relatives were taken there briefly. Some shouted the names of loved ones and friends, hoping to hear their cries for help. Others cried.
Elisheva sat down alone, away from her mother and brother, and began to read prayers.
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett soon noticed her. He knelt down beside her to ask if she was OK.
“Yes” the girl told him.
“And that really brought it home to me,” Burkett said. “She wasn’t crying. She was just lost. She didn’t know what to do, what to say, who to talk to.”
Only six months ago, Elisheva celebrated her bat mitzvah with her mother and father, Dr. Brad Cohen, one of about 120 people missing under the rubble. The year that precedes the religious ceremony involves intensive study of Hebrew, the Bible and history.
That night, Dr. Cohen was proud. His youngest daughter was growing up and reaffirming her Jewish identity. Her father instilled a love for the teaching in both Elisheva and her teenage brother.
Before Dr. Cohen completed his medical residency and internships, he had spent weekends staying at the home of his mentor Rabbi Yakov Saachs, always desperate to learn more about his faith.
On his long commutes, he played cassette tapes, hungry to learn the teachings.
“Even though he was dog tired, it was a priority for him to try and glean as much information as he could,” Saachs told The Associated Press in a phone interview.
At Brad Cohen’s urging, the entire family became “more observant,” the rabbi said, following customs about not driving or doing business on the Sabbath.
The night before the collapse, her mother sent a message to Cohen with a selfie taken by Elisheva in front of a mirror. She wore a pink T-shirt with a high ponytail. They were staying in separate homes.
“Look how pretty,” the message read.
She was wearing the same outfit the next morning, when her mother “frantically woke her up” to tell her about the collapse.
For several days, Burkett shared Elisheva’s story far and wide. After Biden’s visit was announced, the girl’s mother, Soriya Cohen, bought her a new blue and white dress for the occasion. Her teenage brother was the first one in the family chosen to meet Biden. He had rushed home from a kibbutz in Israel as soon as he heard about the collapse.
But the teen had already arranged to have a class with a rabbi in Miami during the president’s visit.
“He said, ‘I already made a commitment,’” Saachs said. “So he said no.”
The mother also skipped the meeting with Biden, saying she felt the president’s visit was a diversion from the search efforts. Elisheva went with another family member.
The mayor said the most moving moment of Biden’s visit was when he shared Elisheva’s story with the president.
“I wanted him to know and see the face of that little girl who is praying for her father across from the rubble,” he said. “He looked at me and said, ‘Would you please bring her to me right now?’”
Police went to get Elisheva. Biden walked up to her and they hugged.
Associated Press Writer Kelli Kennedy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, also contributed to this report.
The Mega Heat Dome Over The Pacific Northwest Has Brought Death, Fire, And Misery
Nicole Fallert
Across the Pacific Northwest and into Canada, a record-breaking heat wave has pushed death tolls into staggering territory. In British Columbia alone, at least 500 heat-related deaths have been recorded since last Friday. In Oregon, 95 deaths have been attributed to scorching temperatures, as well as about 20 in Washington.
The past week has brought unprecedented temperatures to a region of North America ill-equipped to handle extreme heat as authorities struggle to respond to thousands of emergency calls, hundreds of deaths, and explosive wildfires. The unprecedented event is also a sign of more danger to come as climate change leads to more extreme weather across the country.
Many of the people killed or at risk of heat-related illness were children, older people, or those who live alone in a region where many people do not have air conditioning.
“For some folks, especially those who are elderly and those who are otherwise ill, they may not have the same [bodily] mechanisms built in. And if you don’t have access to clean water, if you don’t have access to a place to get cool, you could get overheated very quickly,” said Vasisht Srinivasan, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Washington. “It’s a very serious problem. When you have folks who are poor or don’t have access to stable housing, who don’t have access to housing with temperature control … the problem really starts to compound itself.”
David Jones, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, said one difficulty in treating heat-related illness is recognizing the symptoms, which can range from grumpiness to feeling lightheaded and cramping.
“It may not even be the heat that is the problem, but it is kind of exacerbating their own underlying condition,” Jones said. “And because of the heat, it kind of puts an extra stress on their body … which makes it dangerous for them.”
Srinivasan said that pandemic-era restrictions made people afraid to leave their homes for crowded cooling centers, and the heat wave forced hospitals to dip into reserves of cooling blankets and fans.
“Now on top of [COVID], you add a temporary, but very real, additional health crisis and hospitals are finding themselves sort of at the brink,” Srinivasan said. “This weekend, when dozens of patients arrived simultaneously with the same problems, resources tend to get strapped very quickly.”
The heat wave began last Friday when high pressure in the atmosphere forced warm air toward the ground. The compressed, warm air has been trapped under that high pressure in what meteorologists call a heat dome, which is rare for the Pacific Northwest region.
“The North West Territories have recorded their all-time highest temperatures not just in June, but at any point in the year,” Armel Castellan, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said
in a statement, adding that fewer than than 40% of homes on the coast have air conditioning. “We are setting records that have no business in being set so early in the season.”
Vancouver police spokesperson Tania Visintin confirmed 53 sudden deaths, in which the cause of death is not known and a coroner is called in to run an investigation, were reported on Tuesday alone, bringing the total since last Friday to 98. Two-thirds of the victims were 70 or older and the vast majority of deaths have occurred in homes.
“At times, there were officers going from one sudden death to another for their entire 12-hour shift,” Visintin said, adding that the department was forced to stop answering any nonurgent calls and deploy extra officers. “It is typical for three to four sudden death calls to come in each day in the city. But to have 53 in one day is unprecedented … it is truly gut-wrenching.”
The spokesperson added that “heat is looking like the obvious factor for most of the deaths,” although the British Columbia Coroners Service is still investigating. As of Thursday afternoon, the spokesperson said names and descriptions of the victims could not be provided.
“We’ve never seen anything like this, and it breaks our hearts,” Vancouver Police Sgt. Steve Addison said in a statement. “If you have an elderly or vulnerable family member, please give them a call or stop by to check on them.”
Scientists and health experts have attributed the record-setting temperatures to the climate crisis — and warn that it’s only going to get worse going forward.
“We cannot just turn up the AC; we have to turn up our level of efforts fighting the underlying cause of our changing world — climate change,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee wrote Tuesday in a Seattle Times op-ed. “Our recent discomfort is but the tip of the melting iceberg. What we felt this week is just the opening act in a looming global disaster.
The Oregon state medical examiner reported 95 heat-related deaths as of Friday. Temperature records were set across the state, with Portland reaching an all-time high of 116 degrees on Monday, the Oregonian reported.
“I’ve lived in Portland for the past 10 years, and when I got here, Portland was a very temperate city,” Jones said. “And over the course of that time, I think, in the wintertime, we’re seeing more snow, and in the summertime, we’re seeing more prolonged heat spells.”
He added that the city will have to adapt to address public health threats as heat waves become a more permanent presence.
“That’s going to mean more cooling stations throughout the city, that’s going to mean easier access to water, that’s going to mean shade and shelter, either provision or opportunities for people,” Jones said. “It’s one thing to talk about a hot day, it’s a whole other thing to talk about a hot two weeks.”
The casualties reveal the dangers of extreme weather to laborers too. Sebastian Francisco Perez, a 38-year-old farmworker from Guatemala, died in Oregon after being found unresponsive in a field as temperatures reached 104 degrees. A spokesperson for the Oregon Health and Safety Administration said the agency is investigating Brother Farm Labor Contractor and Ernst Nursery and Farms regarding his death last week
The farm declined BuzzFeed News’ request for comment.
Rebecca Muessle, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Portland, told BuzzFeed News the region has gone more than 40 years “without hitting a record like this,” adding that the rarity of the event makes it difficult to conclude that the heat wave is in fact indicative of future weather patterns.
Muessle said this particular heat wave had all of the right “ingredients” to be particularly brutal: the high pressure system, easterly winds bringing additional warmer air into the area, and the “incredibly deep layer of hot air” that manifested the heat dome system. Also missing were westerly winds that are typically responsible for bringing in cooler air from the Pacific Ocean.
“We just had no reprieve,” Muessle said. “So it was just almost like a blow-dryer of hot easterly winds that just kept the temperatures rising and rising.”
In Washington, Seattle set an all-time record on Monday when temperatures reached 107 degrees. A spokesperson for the Washington Department of Health told BuzzFeed News that since June 25, there have been 1,792 emergency department visits reported by hospitals for suspected heat-related illness across the state. Nearly 400 of those led to an inpatient admission and nearly 40% of patients seen for suspected heat-related illness were 65 years and older.
Seattle Fire Department spokesperson Kristin Tinsley told BuzzFeed News there have been “many sleepless nights for our on-duty crews who work 24-hour shifts.”
“We first set the record on June 27 for the busiest day of Seattle Fire medical and fire responses, 386 responses, and then a day later on June 28, we broke the record again with 544 responses,” they added.
Kevin Mundt with the Seattle Human Services Department told BuzzFeed News that of the 118 combined heat-related medical responses between June 26 and June 28, 11% were for unhoused people. The median age for heat-related medical responses was 67 years old, and most involved older people overheating in indoor living quarters, he added.
“Not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to gain access to [cool places],” Srinivasan said. “Lots of people in Seattle decided to pick a mini staycation and go get a hotel room for the weekend. Now, that’s great for the people who are able to do that, to have the resources to be able to do that, but unfortunately not everyone is able to do that.”
Raging wildfires spurred by the record-setting temperatures and drought paint an even grimmer picture in the Northwest down into California. On Thursday, more than 1,200 firefighters attacked the Lava fire near Mount Shasta, which had grown to nearly 24,000 acres.
Lytton, British Columbia, was almost entirely razed by a fast-moving wildfire Wednesday, forcing most of the town’s 1,000 residents to flee in record heat that hit 121 degrees.
And in Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown declared a state of emergency in response to the 10,000-acre Wrentham Market fire, the Statesman Journal reported. Another blaze, the Sunset Valley Fire, broke out Thursday near the Dalles, burning brush and wheat and causing evacuations and road closures.
Brown said in a statement on Wednesday that a large portion of the state was in extreme fire danger, and she readied every possible resource to combat the blazes.
“There’s a very real chance that we’re going to get more of these in the future,” Srinivasan said of the climate crisis. “And these aren’t going to be surprise isolated heat waves: ‘Oh my god, once in a century.’ I think this is going to be ‘Cool, it’s that time of year again,’ where this happens every year now.”
Ranchers cut cattle herds as drought reduces pasture, forage supplies
Ann Bailey, Grand Forks Herald
DEVILS LAKE — A steady stream of cattle from farms and ranches across North Dakota stepped out of stock trailers and into corrals at Lake Region Livestock Co. on Tuesday as drought conditions forced producers to reduce their herd numbers.
The livestock auction is selling from 800 to 1,000 head of cattle weekly, more than double the number it sold twice a month before the drought.
“We draw from a big area: I-94 to the Canadian border and from Minot to the (Red) River,” said Jim Ziegler, Lake Region Livestock Co. owner.
“In May, they started selling replacement quality heifers they normally would have kept,” said Ziegler, who bought the auction company in 1988. Livestock producers also are selling old cows and cows that don’t have calves, instead of holding them for another year.
Fortunately for farmers and ranchers selling cattle, there is good demand from livestock auction buyers, and prices are decent. At least so far.
“The rest of the United States is glad to have access to what we need to get rid of,” Ziegler said. That’s in contrast to a few years ago, when Oklahoma and Texas were in a drought and the liquidation of cattle herds saturated the market, weighing on prices.
Nine hundred and fifty to 1,150 cattle sold as slaughter animals are garnering an average sales price of about $1,000, and cow-calf pairs are selling for $1,600 to $1,800, Ziegler said.
Joe Bohl, a rancher from Rugby, watched cattle trot through the Lake Region Livestock sales ring on Tuesday, June 29, as he waited to sell the bull he hauled to the auction.
Bohl had a birds-eye view to watch the cattle from his perch about a half dozen rows above the floor of the sawdust-covered ring. Across the ring from Bohl, auctioneer Cliff Sanders handled the bidding while Marsha Duchsherer, auction clerk, recorded the sales.
Bohl sold only a single bull on Tuesday. But earlier this spring, he put up 50 black Angus heifers that other years he would have kept until January and sold as breeding stock.
After carefully building up his commercial herd for the past 40 years by selecting quality bulls and cows, it’s tough to part with the cattle. However, a potential feed shortage left him without another option. Bohl’s pastures are dried up, and the first cutting of his 300-plus acres of grass and alfalfa hayland yielded a fraction of what it usually does.
“Out of all my ground, this time I got a hundred bales,” Bohl said. That’s less than 15% of the number of bales he usually gets.
In dry years, sloughs are a typical Plan B for haying. But even those wet spots have dried up, said Alben Jallo, who sat in the chair next to Bohl at the auction.
“We didn’t drain our sloughs. We knew they would be good in dry times,” said Jallo, who has cows on his farm near Fordville, N.D. This year, though, the grass in the sloughs is dead and only cattails remain.
“In my lifetime, by far this is the driest situation we ever had to deal with,” said Bohl, 65. Only 1.6 inches of rain has fallen on his farm, 15 miles east of Rugby, this year.
“I think we’re in the bullseye of being the driest,” he said.
He has some hay carried over from 2020, but is downsizing his herd because he’s trying to conserve his supply so he will have enough to feed his remaining cattle this winter. Instead of feeding his 2021 calves until February as he usually does, Bohl likely will sell them in September.
Meanwhile, he may be forced to sell more of his cows if the drought doesn’t break soon. The price of feed is just too high to justify feeding the entire herd through the fall and early winter, Bohl said.
“I do have some carryover to get most of my cows through the winter, but I don’t have enough to get them all through,’ he said.
His is not a unique situation in the Rugby area.
“I would say every rancher has had to sell some,” he said.
Jim Ludwig, a cattle producer from New Rockford, N.D., was one of them. He was selling three cows at the sale and is feeding 30 cow-calf pairs because pastures are so short. He hopes for rain that will rejuvenate his pastures, but it looks like that’s not in the forecast, he said.
“The next 30 days (forecast) is for above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation,” Ludwig said.
Bohl and Jallo aren’t just concerned about their only livelihoods, but also the hit their sons will take as a result of selling off some of their cattle. Not only are they sacrificing future income, but they’re watching the genetic traits they’ve worked to build up over the years walk out the sales ring door.
“Those are the guys that are going to be hurt,” Jallo said.
Said Bohl: “That’s the hard part. … 40 to 50 years of genetics.”
Red Tide, stench of dead fish threatens St. Petersburg’s Fourth of July
Jake Sheridan, Tampa Bay Times
ST. PETERSBURG — Nick Finch’s son Wallace turns 4 next week. The father planned to celebrate during the Fourth of July weekend by grilling Sunday and taking his son’s friends to Lassing Park to swim out to the sandbar.
That was before thousands of dead fish showed up this week.
Finch, 27, did his best to withstand the odor on Thursday as he kicked a soccer ball with his son in the park.
“I’m not sure how long we’ll be outside with that smell,” Finch said.
That will be a question asked by many this Fourth of July Weekend as the stench of rotting fish fills the downtown waterfront.
The Red Tide blooms that have afflicted the region for weeks, producing fish kills and respiratory warnings, is now sending waves of dead fish piling up from North Shore Park south to the St. Pete Pier to Demens Landing and Lassing Parks.
Crews scooped dead fish from the shore on Wednesday, said Finch, who lives in Old Southeast, but they keep washing up.
Ben Kirby, the spokesperson for Mayor Rick Kriseman, said crews are busy cleaning up the waterfront to prepare for Fourth of July festivities and for the potential arrival of Tropical Storm Elsa. Florida is now within the storm’s cone of uncertainty and it is expected to reach the Gulf of Mexico by Tuesday.
The toxic algal blooms are a frequent menace along Florida’s west coast and it’s not unprecedented for outbreaks to occur within the bay. But Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission research scientist Kate Hubbard said this Red Tide outbreak stands out.
“It’s unusual to have the levels we’re seeing, and to have them this time of year,” Hubbard said. Her department is ramping up water testing and investigating fish kills to respond to the severe blooms.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Red Tide map shows a medium concentration of Karenia brevis, which causes the blooms, was found off the tip of Bayboro Harbor and low concentrations off the St. Pete Pier and Big Bayou directly off the St. Petersburg coast.
Winds pushed Red Tide into the bay, and the heavy rains that followed the recent drought may have helped the blooms grow by washing nutrients into the water, Hubbard said. Scientists are also investigating whether there’s a link to the 215 million gallons of polluted wastewater dumped into Tampa Bay in April from the old Piney Point fertilizer plant in Manatee County.
“Looking ahead 3½ days, it looks like there will still be Red Tide in the bay,” she said. She added that the Pinellas beaches along the Gulf have seen a recent drop in blooms. County officials say the Fort De Soto Park beaches still have medium and high concentrations, however.
At the far end of Demens Landing Park, rocks trapped in the dead sea creatures. John Lambo hadn’t seen them yet, but despite the smoke of his cigar, he could still smell them.
“It would probably keep me from coming here if I thought it was going to be like this every day,” said Lambo, who’s visiting from Houston.
Floating fish carcasses bobbed around the boats docked at the St. Petersburg Municipal Marina and under the long concrete walkway of the St. Pete Pier. After an hour and no bites, Pablo Barbosa gave up on fishing off the pier.
“As soon as I saw it, I knew exactly what was going on,” said Barbosa. He visited St. Petersburg from Georgia in 2018, in the middle of the historic Red Tide outbreak of 2017-18, which devastated the tourism industry.
Back at Lassing Park, the smell pushed Noel Jambor and his Jack Russell terrier, Loki, back to the car. He usually sees people kiteboarding in the water, but not today.
“No one’s going to come here right now,” Jambor said. “It stinks.”
Red Tide resources
Florida Poison Control Centers have a toll-free 24/7 hotline to report illnesses, including from exposure to Red Tide: 1-800-222-1222
There are several online resources that can help residents stay informed and share information about Red Tide:
Visit St. Pete/Clearwater, the county’s tourism wing, runs an online beach dashboard at www.beachesupdate.com.
The agency asks business owners to email reports of Red Tide issues to pr@visitspc.com.
Beachgoers should avoid swimming around dead fish.
Those with chronic respiratory problems should be particularly careful and “consider staying away” from places with a Red Tide bloom.
People should not harvest or eat mollusks or distressed and dead fish from the area. Fillets of healthy fish should be rinsed with clean water, and the guts thrown out.
Pet owners should keep their animals away from the water and from dead fish.
Residents living near the beach should close their windows and run air conditioners with proper filters.
Visitors to the beach can wear paper masks, especially if the wind is blowing in.
Source: Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County
Research shows the weed killer, once touted as a miracle farming innovation, may be introducing toxic chemicals into our bodies, water, wildlife, and soil.
This article is the first in our ‘Soil Series’, where we explore complex issues related to agriculture, our environment, and the future of our planet.
Herbicides have been a key — and normal — part of farming practices for years; they’re used to remove the past years’ crop to plant a new one, to form rows in orchards or vineyards, or to control weeds in fields. In fact, you may have sprayed herbicides in your own yard to get rid of weeds in your garden or grass. Sometimes, they’re even used to clear vegetation along train tracks or power lines.
In the 1970s, herbicides were used sparingly on farms; if you sprayed them everywhere, you’d kill weeds and crops. Then, in 1996, Monsanto (which is now part of the pharmaceutical company Bayer), created a new line of genetically modified, glyphosate-tolerant crops. Thanks to this new innovation, you could spray glyphosate herbicides in your field and your crops would remain hardy and thriving. In terms of efficiency and production, it was a huge win for farmers and appeared to be better for the environment than the more toxic herbicides that had been used in the past. All of this meant that glyphosate herbicides — which you can find in the store under the label RoundUp — became the most widely used herbicide in recent history.
But here’s the issue. In 2015, the World Health Organization and International Agency for Research on Cancer both classified glyphosates as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” In other words, the human consumption of glyphosate herbicides was being linked to lymphoma and other cancers in a growing body of research. This 2015 announcement began an all-out battle between Monsanto, the farming industry, and researchers.
Research conducted in 2005 by the Food and Agriculture Organization in the UN showed that glyphosate residue can stick around in water and soil for several months after it’s sprayed, which doesn’t bode well for the trickle-down effects on animals and humans. But authorities from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and European Food Safety Authority both concluded in 2017 that glyphosate was probably not giving people cancer. Again, the key word in all of these findings is “probably.”
Research conducted in 2005 by the Food and Agriculture Organization in the UN showed that glyphosate residue can stick around in water and soil for several months after it’s sprayed. Photo courtesy of Twenty20.
Individual people joined the battle over glyphosates, too. During the past five years, Monsanto has been sued more than 9,000 times by people who claim to have developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other kinds of cancer after exposure to Monsanto’s herbicide. In three landmark cases, verdicts were made resoundingly in favor of the victims. Monsanto continues to maintain that there are no links between human health and glyphosates.
Now, research is starting to look at the impacts of glyphosate herbicides on animals and the environment. At first, RoundUp appeared to be a better option than past compounds; compared to paraquat (which killed anyone who breathed it in or swallowed it, meaning that farmers wore respirators while spraying). So, glyphosate was actually better for animals because it inhibits a nutritional pathway in plants that isn’t present in animals. But the EPA still maintains that animals should be kept away from any plants that have been sprayed with RoundUp; they risk digestive or intestinal problems.
And if glyphosate stays in water for several months, scientists are concerned about the effects of the chemical compound on fish, mollusks, and insects. Specifically, glyphosates appear to affect microorganisms and invertebrates more than larger mammals. In one study, herbicide use affected earthworms negatively; worm reproduction was reduced by 56 percent in the three months after herbicides were sprayed, and the soil also had increased levels of nitrates and phosphates.
In one study, herbicide use affected earthworms negatively; worm reproduction was reduced by 56 percent in the three months after herbicides were sprayed, and the soil also had increased levels of nitrates and phosphates. Photo courtesy of Twenty20.
What can we do about this? In the U.S., federal law requires that glyphosate-based herbicides would only be banned if the costs are greater than the benefits. Basically, if prohibiting the use of these herbicides made corn and soybeans more expensive, this could adversely affect food security, making it an issue that federal law is not willing to tackle.
The EPA has also set limits for the amount of RoundUp that can be used on a wide range of crops (known as “tolerances”), which, for the moment, is keeping the likely toxicity levels at bay. But still, it’s important to be aware of these farming practices so you can protect yourself.
Consider washing your produce with a light (2 percent) saltwater solution to remove most pesticide residue. You can choose to buy organic produce and fabrics; anything with a USDA Certified Organic or Global Organic Textile Standard seal must be grown and produced without the use of herbicides or fertilizers. And investing in a local CSA (community supported agriculture) program can help smaller, organic farms thrive.
Jenni is a freelance writer and editor who focuses on health, psychology, purchasing, and parenting. You can find her work in The New York Times, the REI Co-op Journal, Slate, the Guardian, and beyond. She’s also the co-founder of The Writers’ Co-op, a business-focused membership program and podcast for freelance writers.
Deaths surge in U.S. and Canada from worst heatwave on record
Moira Warburton and Sergio Olmos
Smoke and flames are seen during the Sparks Lake wildfire at Thompson-Nicola Regional District, British Columbia, Canada
VANCOUVER/PORTLAND (Reuters) -A heatwave that smashed all-time high temperature records in western Canada and the U.S. Northwest has left a rising death toll in its wake as officials brace for more sizzling weather and the threat of wildfires.
The worst of the heat had passed by Wednesday, but the state of Oregon reported 63 deaths linked to the heatwave. Multnomah County, which includes Portland, reported 45 of those deaths since Friday, with the county Medical Examiner citing hyperthermia as the preliminary cause.
By comparison all of Oregon had only 12 deaths from hyperthermia from 2017 to 2019, the statement said. Across the state, hospitals reported a surge of hundreds of visits in recent days due to heat-related illness, the Oregon Health Authority said.
In British Columbia, at least 486 sudden deaths were reported over five days, nearly three times the usual number that would occur in the province over that period, the B.C. Coroners Service said Wednesday.
“This was a true health crisis that has underscored how deadly an extreme heat wave can be,” Multnomah County Health Officer Dr. Jennifer Vines said in the statement. “As our summers continue to get warmer, I suspect we will face this kind of event again.”
The heat dome, a weather phenomenon trapping heat and blocking other weather systems from moving in, weakened as it moved east, but was still intense enough to set records from Alberta to Manitoba, said David Phillips, senior climatologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, a government agency.
“In some of these places, their (temperature) records are being annihilated,” Phillips said. “It really is spectacular, unprecedented for us.”
It was unclear what triggered the dome, but climate change looks to be a contributor, given the heatwave’s duration and extremes, Phillips said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paused to remember the dead during remarks in Ottawa on Wednesday and expressed concern over the fire threat.
“We’ve been seeing more and more of this type of extreme weather event in the past years,” Trudeau said. “So realistically, we know that this heatwave won’t be the last.”
In Washington, U.S. President Joe Biden said climate change was driving “a dangerous confluence of extreme heat and prolonged drought,” warning that the United States was behind in preparing for what could be a record number of forest fires this year.
SMASHING RECORDS
Lytton, a town in central British Columbia, this week broke Canada’s all-time hottest temperature record three times. It stands at 49.6 degrees Celsius (121.28 degrees Fahrenheit) as of Tuesday. The previous high in Canada, known for brutally cold winters, was 45C, set in Saskatchewan in 1937.
In the U.S. Northwest, temperatures in Washington and Oregon soared well above 100F (38C) over the weekend. Portland set all-time highs several days in a row including 116F (47C) on Sunday.
In Washington state, where media also reported a surge in heat-related hospitalizations, Chelan County east of Seattle topped out at 119F (48C) on Tuesday.
Oregon Governor Kate Brown declared a state of emergency due to “imminent threat of wildfires” while the U.S. National Weather Service in Portland issued a red-flag warning for parts of the state, saying wind conditions could spread fire quickly.
The Portland Fire Department banned use of fireworks for the Fourth of July weekend, when Americans celebrate Independence Day.
FIRE AND MELTING ICE POSE RISKS
Most of Alberta and large parts of British Columbia and Saskatchewan are at extreme risk of wildfires, according to Natural Resources Canada’s fire weather map.
“All the ingredients are there. It’s a powder keg just looking for a spark,” said Mike Flannigan, professor of wildland fire at University of Alberta.
But the Chilcotin region, roughly 600 km (370 miles) north of Vancouver, was on flood warning due to the “unprecedented” amount of snow melting at “extraordinary” rates, according to a government release.
“These are the types of issues that are going to be confronted more and more over the next few years,” said Adam Rysanek, assistant professor of environmental systems at the University of British Columbia.
(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto, Nia Williams in Calgary, Moira Warburton in Vancouver, Steve Scherer in Ottawa, and Sergio Olmos in Portland; Writing by by Daniel Trotta; Editing by David Gregorio, Richard Chang and Aurora Ellis)
Nowhere is safe, say scientists as extreme heat causes chaos in US and Canada
Governments urged to ramp up efforts to tackle climate emergency as temperature records smashed.
People rest at the Oregon Convention Center cooling station in Portland. On the US west coast, Seattle and Portland have registered consecutive days of exceptional heat. Photograph: Kathryn Elsesser/AFP/Getty Images.Climate scientists have said nowhere is safe from the kind of extreme heat events that have hit the western US and Canada in recent days and urged governments to dramatically ramp up their efforts to tackle the escalating climate emergency.
The devastating “heat dome” has caused temperatures to rise to almost 50C in Canada and has been linked to hundreds of deaths, melted power lines, buckled roads and wildfires.
Experts say that as the climate crisis pushes global temperatures higher, all societies – from northern Siberia to Europe, Asia to Australia – must prepare for more extreme weather events.
Sir David King, the former UK chief scientific adviser, said: “Nowhere is safe … who would have predicted a temperature of 48/49C in British Columbia?”
King, who along with other leading scientists set up the Climate Crisis Advisory Group earlier this month, said scientists had been warning about extreme weather events for decades and now time was running out to take action.
“The risks have been understood and known for so long and we have not acted, now we have a very narrow timeline for us to manage the problem,” he said.
In Canada experts have been shocked by the rise in temperature, which on Tuesday hit 49.6C (121.1F) in the town of Lytton, British Columbia, smashing the national record for the third day in a row.
On the US west coast, Seattle and Portland have registered consecutive days of exceptional heat. Local authorities said they were investigating about a dozen deaths in Washington and Oregon that could be attributed to the scorching temperatures.
Michael E Mann, professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University and author of The New Climate War, said as the planet warmed up such dangerous weather events would become more common.
“We should take this very seriously … You warm up the planet, you’re going to see an increased incidence of heat extremes.”
Mann said the climate was being destabilized in part by the dramatic warming of the Arctic and said existing climate models were failing to capture the scale of what was happening.
“Climate models are actually underestimating the impact that climate change is having on events like the unprecedented heatwave we are witnessing out west right now,” he added.
On Wednesday the US president, Joe Biden, blamed the climate crisis for the heatwave in the western US and Canada which officials said had already broken 103 heat records across British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon and Northwest Territories.
The US National Weather Service said the peak in the region was 42.2 C on Tuesday in Spokane, Washington, another local record. About 9,300 homes lost power and the local utility Avista Utilities said planned blackouts would be needed, affecting more than 200,000 people.
In British Columbia (BC) at least 486 sudden deaths were reported over five days during the heatwave. The chief coroner said typically there would have been about 165 sudden deaths, suggesting more than 300 deaths could be attributed to the heat.
“While it is too early to say with certainty how many of these deaths are heat related, it is believed likely that the significant increase in deaths reported is attributable to the extreme weather BC has experienced and continues to impact many parts of our province,” Lisa Lapointe said in a statement.
Lapointe said the figures were preliminary and would increase as coroners in communities across the province entered other death reports into the agency’s system.
“Our thoughts are with people who have lost loved ones,” said Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, warning the blistering temperatures in a region of the country ill-prepared for such heat was a reminder of the need to address the climate crisis.
Police sergeant Steve Addison said: “I’ve been a police officer for 15 years and I’ve never experienced the volume of sudden deaths that have come in such a short period of time.”
Many of those who died over the five-day period were elderly people who lived alone and were found in residences that were hot and not well ventilated.
“People can be overcome by the effects of extreme heat quickly and may not be aware of the danger,” Lapointe said.
Scientists said that the scale of the heatwave in the US and Canada should serve as a “wake-up call” to policymakers, politicians and communities around the world, especially in the buildup to the crucial UN Cop26 climate summit to be hosted by the UK in November.
“The risk of heatwaves is increasing across the globe sufficiently rapidly that it is now bringing unprecedented weather and conditions to people and societies that have not seen it before,” said Prof Peter Stott from the Met Office. “Climate change is taking weather out of the envelope that societies have long experienced.”
Prof Simon Lewis of University College London described the situation as “scary” and warned that extreme heat events could have huge impacts on everything from food prices to power supplies.
“Everywhere is going to have to think about how to deal with these new conditions and the extremes that come along with the new climate that we are creating. That means everyone needs plans.”
He said it was crucial governments and policymakers heeded the warning signs and dramatically ramped up plans to halt fossil fuel emissions and prepare societies to deal with more extreme weather events.
“This is a warning in two senses,” said Lewis. “We have to get emissions down to zero fast to cut off the new extreme heatwaves, and we have to adapt to the new climate conditions we are creating.”
Newsletter: How many abandoned oil wells threaten your favorite national park?
By Sammy Roth, Staff Writer July 1, 2021
June has barely come to an end, and parts of California and the West are already suffering through unprecedented heat, punishing drought and rapidly spreading wildfire — a harrowing preview of life on a planet that is only getting more chaotic.
In Vancouver, police responded to 65 sudden deaths over four days as temperatures soared. A town even farther north obliterated Canada’s all-time temperature record with a 121-degree reading, which also would have shattered the record high in Las Vegas.
Portland broke its heat record three days in a row, ultimately reaching 116 degrees. In Seattle, where fewer than half of homes have air conditioning, the mercury hit 108 degrees, also an all-time high. There are at least 80 deaths being reported as potentially heat-related in the Pacific Northwest, and I’d be stunned if that number didn’t grow. Pay close attention to Spokane, in eastern Washington, where thousands of people lost power as the heat forced an electric utility to implement rolling blackouts.
Then there are the fires. We’re not yet seeing the kinds of landscape-devouring, sky-turns-orange mega-blazes that made last summer so nightmarish, but we’re already ahead of last year’s pace in terms of acres burned in the West. In Northern California’s Siskiyou County, the lightning-sparked Lava fire forced thousands of people to evacuate and is growing. The Inyo Creek fire closed the Mt. Whitney trailhead, and the Willow fire in Los Padres National Forest, near Big Sur, led to this stunning photograph:
Captain Justin Grunewald of the Mill Creek Hotshots takes a short rest amid his battle against the Willow fire.
(U.S. Forest Service)
The captain pictured is part of a hotshot crew. They’re the country’s most elite firefighting teams, but the federal government has had trouble keeping them staffed because pay is so low and the job is more grueling than ever. President Biden this week boosted firefighter pay to at least $15 an hour, up from as little as $13 today, my colleagues Chris Megerian and Anna M. Phillips report.
You probably don’t need me to tell you that climate change is the underlying condition connecting all these threads. It’s why so many scientists say we must rapidly move toward eliminating emissions from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
It’s also why fires, droughts and heat were on my mind as I explored a new analysis from the National Parks Conservation Assn., finding there are more than 31,000 “orphaned” oil and gas wells within 30 miles of national park sites nationwide.
These are wells that are no longer producing and yet haven’t been properly plugged, and whose operators are defunct or can’t be found, and thus can’t be forced to pay for cleanup. As The Times detailed in an investigation last year, California is littered with idle wells at risk of becoming orphaned, and cleaning them up could cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Left unplugged, they can spew planet-warming methane into the atmosphere, expose communities to toxic fumes and contaminate groundwater aquifers.
It’s no huge shock that many of these risky wells are near national park sites, considering how many park units there are — more than 400 overseen by the National Park Service, from name-brand parks such as Yosemite to national monuments, historic sites and scenic trails. Working with FracTracker Alliance, and using state-by-state orphaned-well data, the National Parks Conservation Assn. estimated there are 214,538 orphaned wells across the country, including 31,737 within 30 miles of a national park.
What really caught my eye was the park with the most risky wells nearby: Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. I hike in the Santa Monica Mountains all the time, and I definitely wouldn’t have guessed there are 5,705 orphaned oil and gas wells within 30 miles — nearly twice as many as the park with the next most, Harry S Truman National Historic Site in Missouri.
The Santa Monicas are truly a national treasure, stretching from Point Mugu on the coast to the Hollywood Hills, and offering jutting sandstone cliffs, foggy ocean views and a feeling of immense wilderness just steps from a sprawling metropolis.
“People go to the Santa Monicas to get into nature, to get away from the normal urban ills that we deal with day to day,” said Dennis Arguelles, a senior program manager at the National Parks Conservation Assn. “But to think that so close to the mountains there are all these wells contributing to poor air quality in the region, contributing to climate change — it’s just a stark reminder that … it’s hard to leave behind all the damage we’ve done to the environment over the decades.”
Here are some views from Nicholas Flat Trail, which I hiked two weeks ago:
The fog begins to clear as Nicholas Flat trail ascends from Leo Carrillo State Park into the Santa Monica Mountains in June 2021.
(Sammy Roth / Los Angeles Times)
A view from Nicholas Flat trail in the Santa Monica Mountains.
(Sammy Roth / Los Angeles Times)
National parks advocates worry that abandoned oil and gas wells could pollute air and water within parks and in surrounding towns. They also know that rising global temperatures are already beginning to decimate beloved landscapes, causing ice to melt in Glacier National Park, snowfall to plummet in Yellowstone and Joshua trees to start dying off in the park that bears their name.
The Santa Monica Mountains are no exception. A recent climate change planning document from the National Park Service features a photo of the burn scar from the 2018 Woolsey fire in the Santa Monicas, alongside a warning that, across the country, “it will not be possible to safeguard all park resources, processes, assets, and values in their current form or context over the long term.”
In addition to growing fire risk in the Santa Monicas, global warming could limit the range’s suitability for dozens of bird species and potentially harm plant life, mountain streams and natural ecosystems more broadly, according to the park service.
Here are the 10 national parks with the most orphaned oil and gas wells within 30 miles, per the conservation group’s analysis:
— Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (California): 5,705
— Harry S Truman National Historic Site (Missouri): 2,962
— George Rogers Clark National Historic Park (Indiana): 2,873
— Channel Islands National Park (California): 1,920
— Scotts Bluff National Monument (Nebraska): 1,751
— President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site (Arkansas): 1,588
— Theodore Roosevelt National Park (North Dakota): 1,585
— Mammoth Cave National Park (Kentucky): 1,313
— Fort Scott National Historic Site (Kansas): 1,189
— Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area (Tennessee): 1,187
You can scroll through an interactive map of parks and orphaned wells here. Zooming in on Southern California, it becomes clear why the Santa Monica Mountains top the list. The park is sprawling, and drawing a 30-mile buffer zone around it encompasses the entirety of Los Angeles, as well as the oil fields of Ventura County. If you ever need a reminder that L.A. is an oil town, this is it.
The remains of Southern California’s first commercial oil well, Pico No. 4, were moved from their original location years ago and reconstructed for posterity. (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)
America Fitzpatrick, energy program manager at the National Parks Conservation Assn., cautioned that the analysis is based on state-specific data that vary in quality, and that some states probably do a better job tracking abandoned wells than others. It’s also worth keeping in mind that in a place like Southern California, the freeway capital of the world, orphaned oil and gas wells are likely only a small contributor to air pollution and climate emissions.
Still, these abandoned wells are a problem worth tackling — and by some estimations, an economic opportunity.
Researchers from Columbia University and the think tank Resources for the Future found last year that the federal government could create as many as 120,000 jobs through a program to plug half a million orphaned wells, potentially keeping oil and gas workers employed as the fossil fuel industry shrinks. Some estimates of the total number of orphaned wells are much higher.
Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet reintroduced a bill last week that would put $8 billion toward cleaning up orphaned wells over the next decade and require oil and gas companies to set aside more money for cleanup before they’re allowed to drill.
“It’s really unfortunate that the American taxpayer has (had) to address the cleanup that these oil and gas companies should really be responsible for,” Fitzpatrick said. “But we do have this moment where we can provide for the cleanup of these wells, and also reform the system so we’re not continuing to dig ourselves into this hole.”
As for the Santa Monica Mountains, there are only a few orphaned wells within the park’s boundaries, per the interactive map. But in an interesting twist, the proposed Rim of the Valley expansion — which I wrote about last year, and is currently working its way through Congress — would add the site of Southern California’s first commercial oil well, known as Pico No. 4, to the park.
Whether that oil well ultimately serves as a monument to a long-gone era of fossil fuel extraction — or as a cruel reminder of our inability to save ourselves, and our parks, from a grim reality of worsening heat, drought and fire — is yet to be seen.
For now, here’s what else is happening around the West:
TOP STORIES
The Russian River, just north of drought-stricken Lake Mendocino in Ukiah, Calif. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Folks along California’s Russian River know climate change is worsening droughts, fires, floods and heat — and they’re determined to find a way to live with it. My colleagues Diana Marcum and Brian van der Brug paddled down the Russian River, producing powerful words and pictures about a region where residents are being asked to cut water use by 20% to 40%, and where as many as 2,300 wineries and farms may have their supplies cut off. It’s just one manifestation of a climate emergency in a state that could once again suffer its worst fire season on record, as The Times’ Faith E. Pinho and Alex Wigglesworth report.
President Biden and a bipartisan group of senators agreed on a nearly $1-trillion infrastructure deal. It includes a bunch of climate-related stuff, including $7.5 billion for electric car chargers, $49 billion for public transit and $55 billion to replace lead pipes and upgrade water systems — investments Biden is eager to highlight, my colleague Eli Stokols reports. But it’s still unclear whether the package will be approved — and even if it is, it’s a far cry from the much larger clean energy plan Biden originally proposed. The fate of ambitious climate action may rest in a separate bill that Democrats hope to pass without Republican votes.
It may be a while before we know whether saltwater intrusion from rising seas contributed to the horrifying Florida building collapse. But the disaster — more than 150 people are feared dead — has residents up and down the Sunshine State’s low-lying Atlantic shoreline nervous about what comes next as the ocean continues to rise, The Times’ Jenny Jarvie reports.
In a tiny bit of good news, drought also means less polluted beaches in Southern California. My colleague Rosanna Xia wrote about Heal the Bay’s latest beach record card, which found a big reduction in pollution last summer — seemingly because there wasn’t much rain to flush trash, pesticides and bacteria to the ocean through storm drains. Heal the Bay also published its third annual River Report Card, which is a good resource to have on hand if you enjoy fishing, swimming or kayaking in local streams.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an an appeal filed by Imperial Valley farmer Mike Abatti in a dispute over who controls the largest share of Colorado River water in the American West. The high court’s decision means the publicly owned Imperial Irrigation District will continue to shepherd the region’s 3.1 million acre-feet, the Desert Sun’s Janet Wilson reports. I wrote last year about how the case could affect the 40 million people across seven states who depend on the Colorado.
THE ENERGY TRANSITION
The Chevron oil refinery under storm clouds in El Segundo, Calif.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Oil companies face growing pressure from investors to do more on climate — but whether they’re responding is another question. L.A. Times columnist Michael Hiltzik wrote about what investors are demanding, noting that 60% of Chevron shareholders voted for the company to “substantially” reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. A few weeks before that, an Exxon Mobil lobbyist acknowledged in a private meeting — which was actually a sting operation by Greenpeace UK — that the company is working to weaken federal climate action despite its public pledges of support, as the New York Times’ Hiroko Tabuchi reports.
Returning to abandoned oil and gas wells, an artificial island off the coast of Ventura County tells the story of how drilling companies can often walk away from huge liabilities. The Desert Sun’s Mark Olalde found that taxpayers have footed millions of dollars in offshore cleanup costs as a result of the island’s operator using bankruptcy to avoid paying the full bill.
California officials are ordering utilities to buy 11,500 megawatts of new clean power. That is a staggering amount, and it’s designed to help replace the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors and several coastal gas plants, which I wrote about in May. Canary Media’s Jeff St. John notes that the requirement includes 1,000 megawatts of long-duration storage (which will make the Eagle Mountain pumped hydro folks happy) and 1,000 megawatts of 24/7 zero-carbon power (which will make the Imperial County geothermal folks happy). In Oregon, meanwhile, lawmakers passed a bill requiring the state’s major electric utilities to eliminate carbon emissions by 2040 — five years ahead of California’s timeline, as Dirk VanderHart reports for Oregon Public Broadcasting.
U.S. West faces little-known effect of raging wildfires: contaminated water
Donna Bryson
U.S. West faces little-known effect of raging wildfires: contaminated water
A fly fisherman tries his luck on the Poudre River inside the Cameron Peak fire burn scar west of Fort Collins
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (Reuters) – Early this spring, water bills arrived with notes urging Fort Collins Utilities customers to conserve. The Colorado customers may have thought the issue was persistent drought in the U.S. West.
But the problem was not the quantity of water available. It was the quality.
Utilities are increasingly paying attention to a little-known impact of large-scale fires: water contamination.
Huge forest fires last year denuded vast areas of Colorado’s mountains and left them covered in ash – ash that with sediment has since been washed by rains into the Cache la Poudre River. The river is one of two sources for household water in this college town of 165,000. With more and fiercer storms expected this year, officials worry about water quality worsening beyond what treatment systems can handle.
The problem could apply to watersheds across the U.S. West, which has faced ever-increasing extremes in heat, drought and wildfire amid climate change in recent years. The United States relies on water originating on forested land for about 80% of its freshwater supply, according to a government report https://on.doi.gov/3qvw4hf.
“If a wildfire is not in my watershed, it will be in someone else’s watershed,” said Sean Chambers, director of water and sewer in the nearby northern Colorado town of Greeley.
So far, Chambers and other northern Colorado utilities managers have avoided clogged pipes simply by skipping the Cache la Poudre water and using other supplies. But they worry that’s not a long-term solution, and so they sent out those notes pleading with customers to voluntarily conserve: Water lawns sparingly. Don’t let the hose run on the sidewalk when washing your car.
THE COST OF WATER
Corporate headhunter Jim Croxton moved to Fort Collins so he could take in the mountain scenery while fishing.
“I really don’t care about how big the fish are,” Croxton said after buying a half dozen flies at a Fort Collins fishing and guide shop. “I just like to be out in” nature.
He had considered drought to be the West’s water concern. But the utility’s letter urging conservation struck a chord; he had read about polluting fires affecting recreational fishing, too.
“Water in the West is a central issue,” Croxton said.
Fort Collins water rates rose 2% from January. That works out to less than $1 per month for the typical home, and generates about $600,000 toward covering an estimated $45 million in potential fire-related measures, according to calculations prepared for Fort Collins City Council.
Those measures include laying mulch on burn scars to hold down soil, and funding further fire impact research. To make up the balance, officials in Fort Collins, Greeley and other communities are pooling resources and seeking state and federal help.
Katrina Jessoe is an economist at UC Davis who has advised utilities on seeking funding to decontaminate water supplies from pollutants such as fertilizers.
“You can’t get around the fact that the cost of water is getting higher,” which could be a concern for low- and middle-income earners, Jessoe said.
Water managers say they need also to explore new ways of raising funds and making capital improvements to deal with fire-related contamination, for example, removing tastes and odors left by algae fed by nutrients in the sediments washed into reservoirs. The tastes and odors don’t mean the water is unsafe, but customers don’t like it.
Water managers are “making decisions right now that will affect whether or not this is a liveable place in 50 years, 100 years,” said John Matthews, who heads the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation, a nonprofit that advises on adapting water systems for climate change.
UNPRECEDENTED FIRES
The two fires that have marred the watersheds relied on by Fort Collins, Greeley, Thornton and other towns were notable not just for the devastation they caused, but for having burned at such high elevation.
“We really don’t understand these high-elevation fires very well, because they haven’t happened very often,” said Matt Ross, an ecosystem scientist at Colorado State University who is studying how last year’s fires are impacting algae blooms now.
The Cameron Peak Fire broke out in August and was the first in Colorado history to consume more than 200,000 acres, including swathes of the Arapahoe and Roosevelt national forests and Rocky Mountain National Park. The East Troublesome came close, burning 193,812 acres across the Continental Divide.
In both cases, flames tore through forests where rivers originate and where snowpack – that frozen reservoir – builds up over winter.
Given the large region burned, researchers need to understand how long it will take for vegetation to grow back, so it can keep sediment from washing into water sources, said biogeochemist Chuck Rhoades at the U.S. Forest Service.
“The implications are that people need to think a little bit more about how to manage and sustain reservoirs,” Rhoades said.
(Reporting by Donna Bryson; Editing by Katy Daigle and Lisa Shumaker)
The affordable 3D-printed home that could transform African urbanization
Sean Fleming, Senior Writer June 30, 2021
A lack of safe, affordable housing can trap people in poverty. Building homes can end that while creating jobs and income.
Image: CDC Group
Every day around 40,000 people move to one of Africa’s cities.
There is currently not enough housing stock to go round.
This company can 3D-print homes following an affordable, low-carbon process.
In Malawi, it has recently 3D-printed a home and a school.
There is a housing crisis taking place across many parts of Africa. Nigeria alone has an estimated shortfall of 17 million housing units. Part of the problem is that every day around 40,000 people relocate to one of Africa’s many vibrant, growing cities. But those cities are struggling to keep up with the demand for new homes, leaving many people with nowhere to live.
The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) says the shortage is caused in part by a lack of development in the continent’s house-building industry. But that might be about to change with the availability of new technology and techniques that could speed up and streamline the building of homes.
No place like a 3D-printed home
The first 3D printed affordable house in Africa, with the walls printed in less than 12 hours.
Image: LinkedIn/14Trees
A joint venture involving CDC Group – the UK government’s development finance institution – and the European building materials multinational LafargeHolcim, is 3D-printing houses and schools in a fraction of the time it would normally take.
The company’s first-ever affordable, 3D-printed home was built in Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi. 14Trees has also recently completed its first 3D-printed school, also in Malawi. Built in a fraction of the time a traditionally built school would take, it opened its doors to students on 21 June.
Tenbite Ermias, managing director of CDC Africa, said: “The rollout of 14Trees’ world-class, cutting-edge technology is going to have a tremendous developmental impact on Malawi and the wider region. It is a wonderful example of how we are investing in businesses that can support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.”
Growth of urban populations across six African regions
Image: Brookings Institute
But it’s not only in Africa where 3D house printing is promising to revolutionize the homes people live in. In the Mexican state of Tabasco, a collaboration between Mexican and US businesses has helped create the world’s first 3D-printed neighborhood. Built to withstand floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters, the 50 homes have two bedrooms, a living room, plus a kitchen and bathroom.
The technique is also being used in the United States and Europe to create unique homes for private buyers and to help alleviate the problem of homelessness. Meanehile in India, the country’s first 3D-printed home was completed in five days in the city of Chennai.
The 14Trees building projects are one example of public-private cooperation helping to create jobs as well as housing across Africa. The IFC is working with a Chinese multinational construction and engineering company, CITIC Construction, and plans to build 30,000 homes over a five-year period by partnering with local businesses across Africa, and estimates that each housing unit will create five full-time positions, equating to 150,000 new jobs in all.
What is the World Economic Forum doing to promote sustainable urban development?
“As sub-Saharan Africa becomes more urbanized, the private sector can help governments meet the critical need for housing”, Oumar Seydi, IFC Director for Eastern and Southern Africa writes on the IFC website. “The platform will help transform Africa’s housing markets by providing high quality, affordable homes, creating jobs, and demonstrating the viability of the sector to local developers.”
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Sir David King, the former UK chief scientific adviser, said: “Nowhere is safe … who would have predicted a temperature of 48/49C in British Columbia?”
